The Farm
Tim Rob Smith, 2014
Grand Central Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446572767
Summary
If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.
Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.
Your mother...she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things—terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.
Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.
Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 19, 1979
• Where—London, England
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—ITW Thriller Award, Best First Novel; CWA Steel Dagger Award
• Currently—lives in London, England
After graduating from Cambridge University in 2001 and spending a year in Italy on a creative writing scholarship, Tom Rob Smith went to work writing scripts and storylines for British television. He lived for a while in Phnom Penh, working on Cambodia's first-ever soap opera and doing freelance screenwriting in his spare time.
While researching material for a film adaptation of a short story by British sci-fi writer Jeff Noon, Smith stumbled across the real-life case of "Rostov Ripper" Andrei Chikkatilo, a Russian serial killer who murdered more than 60 women and children in the 1980s. Chikkatilo's killing spree went unchecked for nearly 13 years, largely because Soviet officials refused to admit that crime existed in their perfect state. Intrigued, Smith recognized the potential of this concept as a work of fiction and worked up a script "treatment." His agent, however, suggested the material would be better showcased in a novel.
The result was Child 44, a gripping crime thriller about a Soviet policeman determined to stop a child serial killer his superiors won't even admit exists. Smith upped the action ante by setting the story in the Stalinist era of the 1950s, a period when opposing the state could cost you your life. And, in MGB officer Leo Stepanovich Demidov, he created the most fascinating Russian detective since Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko.
Child 44 became the object of an intense bidding war at the 2007 London Book Fair. (The buzz only increased when director Ridley Scott bought the film rights.) But the book proved worthy of its hype, garnering glowing reviews on its publication in the spring of 2008. Scott Turow (no slouch in the thriller department himself) proclaimed, "Child 44 is a remarkable debut novel—inventive, edgy and relentlessly gripping from the first page to the last."
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes and Noble interview:
• One of my first jobs was working in a sports complex, and I had to fill up all the vending machines. It was boring work and lonely, carrying boxes of Mars Bars down very long, fluorescent-lit corridors. But a moment sticks out. I was restocking a machine when a young boy, maybe five years old, approached me and asked if he could have a chocolate bar. I told him they were for sale: he needed to buy one. He thought about this very seriously for a while, ran off, and came back five minutes later with a conker [horse chestnut]. He honestly believed this was a fair exchange. I guess it must have had some value to him. Anyway, I gave him the chocolate bar for free. It wasn't mine, I suppose, to give away, but it made a dull day a little brighter."
• My Swedish grandparents used to be beekeepers. They made the best honey I've ever tasted. I spent my summer holidays living on their farm. It was a wonderful place to spend a summer. My parents, now retired, live on a small farm—a different farm—near the sea in the South of Sweden. So now I have another place to retreat from the world. They're not beekeepers though.
• I like running, although I suffer from a problem with my knees. They slide out of position, which has caused me some problems recently. If anyone out there can help, I'd be more than happy to hear suggestions. Hours of physiotherapy haven't really worked."
• When asked what book that most influenced his life or career as a writer, here is what Smith said:
In terms of my career as a writer, I'm going to pick Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow. It played a crucial part in my decision to write Child 44.
Back in August 2005, all I had was a story outline. It was set in a period I didn't, in all honesty, know that much about. I remember walking into a book shop in Piccadilly and browsing the Russian History section. The prologue was set in the famines of the 1930s, so Conquest's book seemed an obvious purchase. Had the book been oblique or impenetrable, had the book not engaged me emotionally, I'm not sure I would've taken the plunge. As it happened, Conquest's book provided me with a jolt of energy. It's a remarkable read—brilliantly lucid, yet never clinical or detached. There's a cool-headed outrage at the events it describes.
It's one thing to have the broad brushstrokes of a story, but it was when tiny moments started to occur to me, that's when I knew I could write Child 44. It was while reading Conquest's descriptions of villages where all the dogs and cats had been eaten that I began to wonder if there had been someone who loved their cat so much that they couldn't bear to eat it—even when they were starving to death. That was how the character of Maria (from the opening paragraph) was born. (Author bio and interview from Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
Is there anything more innerving than the realization that you can't trust your own mother? Maybe the realization that you can't trust your father either. That's the killer premise of The Farm.
New York Times Book Review
The Farm sustains its high dramatic pitch from London to Sweden and back through an immersive and tough-to-predict series of revelations about falsehoods and fantasies.
Philadelphia Inquirer
A cast-iron premise and a breathtaking opening... Smith has constructed a canny and enthralling story, one that veers off in unexpected ways to complicate and deepen his carefully timed plot. Throughout, he keeps us off-kilter at every turn.
Seattle Times
Tom Rob Smith breathes new life into the landscape, transcending the traditional crime fiction genre with an intricately-knitted thriller steeped in mythology...[Smith] demonstrates the same craftsmanship that saw his highly-acclaimed novel Child 44 claim the Galaxy Book Award for Best New Writer and [be] long-listed for the Manbooker Prize, among its many plaudits. Meticulously weaving together literary themes of revenge and madness...this latest offering is a tapestry of fairytales old and new; so unsettling and oppressive that it blurs the distinctions between sanity and madness, reality and fantasy, leaving the reader guessing until the bitter end.
Independent (UK)
This is a neatly plotted book full of stories within stories, which gradually unravel to confound our expectations...Smith's twisting, turning novel shows that Scandi crime also retains the ability to surprise and thrill.
Guardian (UK)
Tom Rob Smith's The Farm is an absorbing, unsettling, multilayered novel...The Farm is beautifully crafted, its effect enhanced by the author's admission that his own family faced a similar experience."
Times (UK)
"Impossible to put down" has become as overused a thing to say about books as the one saying that the people writing them should stick with what they know. In the case of The Farm, it is close to true (I read it in about three sittings and real life felt like an impertinent interruption whenever I had to put it down). Child 44 was one of those rare books that managed to thrill both the Booker judges and the Richard and Judy brigade. The Farm is, perhaps, even better. It is so good, in fact, that you will finish it quickly and then be jealous of anyone who hasn't read it yet.
Independent (UK)
Gripping, atmospheric...This absorbing novel thrives on gradually revealing the intimate details of lives, showing how they become hidden not only from strangers, but from those closest to them. The relationship between parents and children is excellently explored as the author traces the toxic effect of lies and reveals some shocking home truths.
Observer (UK)
(Starred review.) A...superior psychological thriller.... [H]is father...tells Daniel that his mother is in the hospital.... [His mother insists]...that she has been plotted against, leaving Daniel uncertain as to whom and what to believe. Smith keeps the reader guessing up to the powerfully effective resolution that’s refreshingly devoid of contrivances.
Publishers Weekly
The unreliability of Tilde's narration—is she telling the truth about this sinister scheme or is she crazy?—provides the novel with a constant tension, but her deliberate and frustrating withholding of information also keeps it from truly taking off. Still, this is a worthy addition to the growing canon of Scandinavian crime thrillers that also includes Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo. —Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
Library Journal
From the very first page, The Farm has all the trappings of a thriller with a deep, dark conspiracy at its heart, but Smith isn't content to stick to formulas.... [A] thriller that weaves a satisfyingly juicy web of deception and is also an unpredictable page-turner. It's a rare thing to see an author so completely embody the trappings of his genre and also surprise the reader.
BookPage
Smith does creepy very well, setting scenes that slowly build in intensity, and he keeps readers guessing about who can and cannot be trusted. He also has a knack for finding the ominous in the picturesque.... A satisfying mystery on ground that, though familiar, manages to yield surprises in Smith's skillful telling.
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.)
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Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story
Jack Devine, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374130329
Summary
Jack Devine ran Charlie Wilson’s War in Afghanistan. It was the largest covert action of the Cold War, and it was Devine who put the brand-new Stinger missile into the hands of the mujahideen during their war with the Soviets, paving the way to a decisive victory against the Russians.
He also pushed the CIA’s effort to run down the narcotics trafficker Pablo Escobar in Colombia. He tried to warn the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, that there was a bullet coming from Iraq with his name on it.
He was in Chile when Allende fell, and he had too much to do with Iran-Contra for his own taste, though he tried to stop it. And he tangled with Rick Ames, the KGB spy inside the CIA, and hunted Robert Hanssen, the mole in the FBI.
Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story is the spellbinding memoir of Devine’s time in the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served for more than thirty years, rising to become the acting deputy director of operations, responsible for all of the CIA’s spying operations.
This is a story of intrigue and high-stakes maneuvering, all the more gripping when the fate of our geopolitical order hangs in the balance. But this book also sounds a warning to our nation’s decision makers: covert operations, not costly and devastating full-scale interventions, are the best safeguard of America’s interests worldwide.
Part memoir, part historical redress, Good Hunting debunks outright some of the myths surrounding the Agency and cautions against its misuses. Beneath the exotic allure—living abroad with his wife and six children, running operations in seven countries, and serving successive presidents from Nixon to Clinton—this is a realist, gimlet-eyed account of the Agency.
Now, as Devine sees it, the CIA is trapped within a larger bureaucracy, losing swaths of turf to the military, and, most ominous of all, is becoming overly weighted toward paramilitary operations after a decade of war. Its capacity to do what it does best—spying and covert action—has been seriously degraded. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 14, 1940
• Where—Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., West Chester State College; M.A., Villanova University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Jack Devine is a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a founding partner and President of The Arkin Group LLC.
Jack Devine’s career at the CIA spanned from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, including the fall of President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, and the fight to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Devine retired after serving as both the Acting Director and Associate Director of the CIA’s operations outside the United States, a capacity in which he had supervisory authority over thousands of CIA employees involved in sensitive missions throughout the world.
Devine joined the CIA in 1967, after his wife gave him a book about the CIA and its role in U.S. national security. Devine completed his training at “the Farm” and various other espionage and paramilitary courses. In his first Headquarters assignment he spent time as a “documents analyst” where he shared close quarters with Aldrich “Rick” Ames, who later became a spy for the Soviet Union. Ames would later reemerge as an employee and suspect in the hunt for a mole within the Agency.
His first overseas assignment was to Santiago, Chile in August, 1971. Devine learned the ins and outs of recruiting sources and running covert action operations in the tense atmosphere leading up to the military coup against Allende two years later. Despite theories to the contrary, Devine and his CIA colleagues did not orchestrate the coup, but instead provided covert support to the opposition while keeping close tabs on them and the Allende government. Devine was at the CIA station as events unraveled and as Chilean troops stormed the Presidential palace. Meanwhile, his wife Pat stayed at their home while a military raid took place next door. Eventually a colleague was able to escort her and their children to a safer location.
Devine subsequently spent much of the ‘80s in various posts around Latin America during which time he was unhappily brought into events surrounding Iran-Contra. Devine repeatedly warned the CIA leadership that their interlocutors on the Iranian side were untrustworthy; unfortunately, while he had managed to limit his own involvement, others continued to work with the Iranians—and the Contras—leading to the very public unraveling of the program in late 1986. Devine had already been transferred to the Afghan Task Force by the time the scandal was exposed, but he nevertheless was called in by the Justice Department and FBI to give his take on the events.
His service on the Afghan Task Force was perhaps the pinnacle of his varied career, and put him at the head of the largest covert action campaign of the Cold War. Devine replaced Gust Avrakotos, the chief of the South Asia Operations Group portrayed by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 2007 film, Charlie Wilson's War, and inherited a program funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the Afghan mujahideen. It was under Devine that the CIA ramped up threefold support to the mujahideen and made the critical decision to provide them with U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, a move that would ultimately shift the course of the war and force a Soviet retreat. By the time Devine left the Task Force for an assignment as Chief of Station in Rome, the war was winding down.
Devine would go on to run the Counter Narcotics Center and Latin America Division at CIA in the 1990s, and helped oversee the operation that captured Pablo Escobar in 1993. He also served as the head of the division during the military intervention in Haiti in the early 1990s, and was later promoted to Associate Director and Acting Director of Operations. Devine retired from CIA in 1999, after 32 years, and joined the private sector where he joined forces with prominent New York litigation attorney Stanley Arkin. Together they have provided high-end consulting services along with sophisticated international intelligence and investigative services for the last 15 years.
Devine is the recipient of the Agency’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal and several meritorious awards. He is a recognized expert in intelligence matters and has written op-eds and articles for The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Miami Herald and The World Policy Journal. He has also made guest appearances on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, as well as the History and Discovery channels, PBS and ABC Radio.
Devine resides in New York City and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks Spanish and Italian. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/19/2014.)
Jack Devine’s Good Hunting gives readers an inside look at CIA—the good and the bad— from someone who rose from the bottom of the Agency to the top, during some of its most turbulent times. There are new insights into covert operations from Chile to Afghanistan to Iran-Contra and the lessons that should be drawn from them by government leaders and the public at large. Beyond that, it’s just a good read.
Walter Pincus - Washington Post
In addition to relating a rich catalog of espionage history and tradecraft, Mr. Devine tells the story of the relentless—and often painful—hunt for Soviet moles at the CIA and FBI during his career. He offers particular insights into Aldrich Ames, who remains one of the most damaging turncoats the CIA has ever seen.... [A] sense of complacency sometimes overshadows Mr. Devine's observations on the bureaucratic machinations among other Washington agencies, where he too often portrays the CIA as the good guys. These flaws, though, do not obscure this memoir of what life was like in the CIA's clandestine shadows before 9/11 changed the intelligence business and put the agency on the front pages, for both its triumphs and its deficiencies. Good Hunting is also a cautionary tale
Philip Mudd - Wall Street Journal
Well-written and engaging, studded with insights and opinions that are thoughtful. . . The most fascinating revelations in this close-to-the-chest memoir give the reader a glance inside the compartmentalized mind of a man who led this twin life with surefooted adeptness.
Boston Globe
Whether one agrees with Devine’s particulars, the insights derived from a long and varied career make this a top-line addition to the proliferating body of “insider” memoirs from the years when the Cold War gave way to the “war on terrorism,” and the rules began to change.
Publishers Weekly
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Library Journal
Veteran CIA covert operative....Devine explores his stints of glory, namely funneling guns with Charlie Wilson to Afghanistan's mujahedeen in order to defeat the Soviets and sustaining important relationships with changing directors.Devine's attention to detail translates into a finely delineated memoir of his selective undercover tradecraft.
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.)
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The Curvy Girls Club
Michele Gorman, 2014
Notting Hill Press (UK)
Avon-HarperCollins (US)
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781499179330
Summary
Where Confidence is the New Black
Fed up with always struggling to lose weight, best friends Katie, Ellie, Pixie and Jane start a social club where size doesn’t matter. It soon grows into London’s most popular club—a place to have fun instead of counting carbs—and the women find their lives changing in ways they never imagined.
But outside the club, life isn’t as rosy. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—It's not polite to ask a lady that! :-)
• Where—Pittsfield, Massachuesetts, USA
• Education—B.S. University of Massachusetts-Amherst; M.A. University
of Illinois-Chicago
• Currently—London, England, UK
Michele Gorman is the #1 best-selling author of Bella Summer Takes a Chance and The Expat Diaries (Single in the City) series. She also writes upmarket commercial fiction under the pen name Jamie Scott. Born and raised in the US, Michele has lived in London for 16 years.
If it weren't for Twitter and Facebook, Michele would be a much more prolific writer, but wouldn't have nearly as much fun, so do chat to her online. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website...and her blog.
Follow Michele on Facebook.
Book Reviews
This is a delightful book of friendship, acceptance, and belonging for anyone who has ever wondered: "What if?"
Publishers Weekly
Michele's writing is so engaging and witty, yet insightful and empathetic.
Sophie Kinsella, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
A fun, sassy writer who always makes me smile (a Times Top 10 Bestseller).
Carole Matthews - Sunday Times (UK)
An undeniable sense of fun on every page.
Nick Spalding, author of Love... From Both Sides
Gorman's writing is warm, witty, and wonderful.
Matt Dunn, author of A Day At The Office
Michele Gorman is one of my favorite chick lit writers.
Chick Lit Plus
Discussion Questions
1. The message of the book is about being happy in your own skin – no matter what that skin may look like. It’s something that Katie talks about near the beginning of the book, yet when the TV presenter makes fun of a skinny intern, Katie laughs. Is teasing a woman for being too thin the same as teasing a woman for being too fat? Do you feel more empathy for one group than the other?
2. Which character did you most identify with? Why?
3. Once you understand Pixie’s motives, is she justified in her actions involving the club and Katie? Do her arguments stand up from a business point of view (as opposed to an emotional one)?
4. Thinking about Jane’s obsession with weight loss, how far is too far when it comes to losing weight? Where do you draw the line?
5. Who do you think was the stronger character, Katie or Pixie?
6. Ellie snoops on her boyfriend’s phone and finds something she doesn’t like. Have you ever snooped where you shouldn’t have? Do the ends justify the means?
7. Katie experiences prejudice from her employers. Are there any situations in which an employer is justified in wanting a person to look a certain way (let’s exclude modelling)?
8. Katie, Pixie, Jane and Ellie all struggle with self-esteem in different ways. What’s the biggest thing that gives a woman her self-esteem? How can someone improve her own self-esteem?
9. What were your first impressions of the main characters? Did those change by the end of the book?
10. Would you go on How to Look Good Naked?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)
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Ruin and Rising (Grisha Trilogy, 3)
Leigh Bardugo, 2014
Henry Holt & Co.
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805094619
Summary
The capital has fallen. The Darkling rules Ravka from his shadow throne.
Now the nation's fate rests with a broken Sun Summoner, a disgraced tracker, and the shattered remnants of a once-great magical army.
Deep in an ancient network of tunnels and caverns, a weakened Alina must submit to the dubious protection of the Apparat and the zealots who worship her as a Saint. Yet her plans lie elsewhere, with the hunt for the elusive firebird and the hope that an outlaw prince still survives.
Alina will have to forge new alliances and put aside old rivalries as she and Mal race to find the last of Morozova's amplifiers. But as she begins to unravel the Darkling's secrets, she reveals a past that will forever alter her understanding of the bond they share and the power she wields. The firebird is the one thing that stands between Ravka and destruction—and claiming it could cost Alina the very future she’s fighting for.
Ruin and Rising is the thrilling final installment in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy. The first is Shadow and Bone (2012), and the second is Seige and Storm (2013). (From the publisher.)
Read an excerpt.
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Jerusalem, Israel
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Currently—lives in Hollywood, California, USA
Leigh Bardugo is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Shadow and Bone (2012) and Siege and Storm (2013). Ruin and Rising (2014) is the third installment in her Grisha Trilogy. Leigh was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. She has worked in advertising, journalism, and most recently, makeup and special effects. These days, she’s lives and writes in Hollywood where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band. (From the author's website .)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [T]he characters are perfectly imperfect; they question themselves, take risks, and make plenty of mistakes. While The Darkling is a little too similar to Harry Potter's Voldemort, he is still a delicious combination of evil, cunning, and manipulation. Fans of the first two books will not be disappointed. (Gr 8 & up.) —Leigh Collazo, Ed Willkie Middle School, Fort Worth, TX
School Library Journal
Readers won't be able to turn the pages fast enough to the conclusion that will generate much discussion.
Booklist
(Starred review.)Bardugo’s Grisha Trilogy comes to a thunderous conclusion. If opener Shadow and Bone (2012) was a magical coming-of-age story and middle-volume Siege and Storm (2013) was a political thriller, then this third book is an epic quest.... Every time readers may think she’s written herself into a corner, Bardugo pulls off a twist that, while surprising, will keep them turning pages furiously. Triumphant. (13 and up.)
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The connection between Alina and the Darkling has changed in Ruin and Rising. How? Why? What does this change mean for each of them and how does it affect the events of the book?
2. Genya undergoes a big physical transformation throughout the series. How does her personality change too? What does Genya mean when she says, “I am not ruined. I’m ruination”?
3. What does the Apparat want from Alina? What methods does he use to try to manipulate her? How does she manipulate him?
4. What motives might the Darkling have for telling Alina his real name? How does she use this knowledge?
5. Alina says that David’s crime is a hunger for knowledge, not power. How does David’s way of thinking help and hurt Alina’s cause? How is David different from Morozova, and how is he the same?
6. Nikolai and Alina are allies. What are his reasons for wanting to marry her? How does she feel about those reasons and the idea of being his queen?
7. Why does Baghra decide to tell Alina the story of her childhood? How does it help Alina? What part of the story does Alina misinterpret and why do you think she makes this mistake?
8. Alina and Zoya start out as enemies. How does their relationship change? Why does Alina choose Zoya to be one of the people to lead the Grisha at the end of the story?
9. What happens to Alina’s power at the end of the book? Why? How does this affect her future and her understanding of her past? Why does Harshaw choose to fight on?
10. Alina’s side? Why do Tolya and Tamar stay loyal to her? What are the motives of some of her other allies?
11. What are the Darkling’s strengths as a leader? Why do people choose to follow him? Why does Sergei make the choice that he does?
12. Alina and Mal have a long history together. How does this infl uence their friendship? Their romance? How does it make their relationship stronger? How does it hold them back?
13. Why does the Darkling choose to punish Nikolai the way that he does? How does Nikolai’s transformation affect him, both physically and mentally, by the end of the book?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling, 2011
Crown/Archetype
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307886279
Summary
Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night)
. . . or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly)
. . . or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law)
. . . or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages).
If so, you’ve come to the right book . . . mostly!
In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls.
Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 24, 1979
• Where—Cambridge, Massachesetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Darthmouth College
• Awards—Emmy
• Currently—lives in West Hollywood, California
Vera Mindy Chokalingam, known professionally as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She is the creator and star of the Fox and Hulu sitcom The Mindy Project, and also serves as executive producer and writer for the show. She is also known for her work on the NBC sitcom The Office, where she portrayed the character Kelly Kapoor and served as executive producer, writer and director.
Her memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concers) was published in 2011. Her second book, Why Not Me? was released in 2015. Both became top sellers.
Early life
Kaling was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a Tamil father, Avu Chokalingam, an architect, and a Bengali mother, Dr. Swati Chokalingam (nee Roysircar), an obstetrician/gynecologist.
Both of Kaling's parents are Hindus from India, who met while working at the same hospital in Nigeria. Kaling's mother was working as an OBGYN, and her father was overseeing the building of a wing of the hospital. The family emigrated in 1979, the same year Kaling was born. Kaling's mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Kaling has an older brother, anti-affirmative action activist Vijay Jojo Chokalingam.
Kaling graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College where she graduated with a B.A. in Playwriting.
While at Dartmouth, she was a member of the improvisational comedy troupe, The Dog Day Players, and the a cappella singers, The Rockapellas. She was creator of the comic strip Badly Drawn Girl in The Dartmouth (the college's daily newspaper), and a writer for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern (the college's humor magazine). She was a Classics major for much of college, studying Latin, which she had not studied since 7th grade.
Career
While a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth, Kaling was an intern on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. She described herself as a terrible intern, "less of a 'make copies' intern and more of a 'stalk Conan' intern."
After college, Kaling moved to Brooklyn and took what she said was one of her "worst job" experiences"—a production assistant for three months on the Crossing Over With John Edward psychic show. At the same time, Kaling did stand-up in New York City.
In August 2002, Kaling and Brenda Withers, a college friend, wrote an off=Broadway play called Matt & Ben, Kaling played Ben Afflect to Brenda Withers' Matt Damon. The play was named one of Time magazine's "Top Ten Theatrical Events of The Year" and was "a surprise hit" at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. The play reimagined how Damon and Affleck came to write the movie Good Will Hunting.
Kaling also wrote a popular blog called "Things I’ve Bought That I Love," which reemerged on her website on September 29, 2011. The blog was written under the name Mindy Ephron, "a name Kaling chose because she was amused by the idea of her 20-something Indian-American self as a long-lost Ephron sister."
The Office
When working in 2004 to adapt The Office from its BBC progenitor, producer Greg Daniels hired Kaling as a writer-performer after reading a spec script she wrote. Daniels called Kaling "very original," saying that "if anything feels phony or lazy or passé, she’ll pounce on it."
Kaling joined the The Office, as the only woman on a staff of eight. She was only 24. She took on the role of character Kelly Kapoor, debuting in "Diversity Day"—the series’ second episode. Since then she wrote at least 22 episodes, including "Niagara," for which she was co-nominated for an Emmy with Greg Daniels. Kaling both wrote and directed the webisode "Subtle Sexuality" in 2009.
In a 2007 interview with The A.V. Club, she stated that her character Kelly is "an exaggerated version of what I think the upper-level writers believe my personality is." After the "Diwali" episode, Kaling appeared with Daniels on NPR's Fresh Air.
Kaling's contract was set to expire at the end of Season 7. But in September, 2011, she signed a new contract to stay for Season 8; she was promoted to full Executive Producer status. Her Universal Television contract included a development deal for a new show (eventually titled The Mindy Project), in which she appears as an actor and contributes as a writer.
The Mindy Project
In 2012, Kaling pitched a single-camera comedy to Fox called The Mindy Project, which she wrote and produced. Fox began airing the series in 2012. Although canceled by Fox in May 2015, the series was later picked up by Hulu for a 26 episode fourth season.
Additional TV and film
Kaling's TV appearances include a 2005 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing Richard Lewis's assistant. She is featured on the CD Comedy Death-Ray and guest-wrote parts of an episode of Saturday Night Live in April 2006.
After her film debut in The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Steve Carell, Kaling appeared as a waitress in the film Unaccompanied Minors. In 2007 she held a small part in License to Wed starring fellow The Office actors John Krasinski, Angela Kinsey, and Brian Baumgartner.
She was also in the 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum tour guide and voiced Taffyta Muttonfudge in Disney's animated comedy film, Wreck-It Ralph. In 2011 she played the role of Shira, a doctor who is a roommate and colleague of the main character Emma (played by Natalie Portman) in No Strings Attached. Kaling also made an appearance as Vanetha in The Five-Year Engagement (2012). She also did voiced the role Disgust in the 2015 Pixar animated film, Inside Out.
Personal life
Kaling has said she has never been called Vera, her first name,[15] but has been referred to as Mindy since her mother was pregnant with her while her parents were living in Nigeria. They were already planning to move to the United States and wanted, Kaling said, a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the TV show Mork & Mindy. The name Vera is, according to Kaling, the name of the "incarnation of a Hindu goddess."[15]
When Kaling started doing stand-up, the emcees could never pronounce her last name, Chokalingam, so they made fun of it. Eventually she changed it to Kaling. She stopped doing stand-up because it required a lot more time than she had. She toured solo as well as with Craig Robinson before he was on The Office.
Kaling has said that she never saw a family like hers on TV, which gave her a dual perspective she uses in her writing.[2] The "everyone against me mentality" is what she thinks she learned as a child of immigrants.[2] She loves reading books by Jhumpa Lahiri, even naming her Mindy Lahiri character after her.[29]
Kaling considers herself Hindu. She lives in West Hollywood, California. (From .)
Book Reviews
[A] breezy, intermittently amusing and somewhat unfocused first essay collection....The problem is that Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? doesn’t provide enough strong evidence of this awesomeness. A mix of childhood memoir, inside-Hollywood confessional and commentary on important cultural matters...the book takes unnecessary detours that sometimes do it a disservice.... What she says is entertaining and makes you want to be her BFF, but some of the details will fade as quickly as those tannins leave the tongue
Washington Post
The fashion opinions of Kelly Kapoor mixed with a Miss Manners-esque advice column.
EW.com
If you love Kelly and think the three minutes or so allotted her on episodes of The Office are too few, you can take home Mindy.
The New Yorker
[H]ilarious and relatable—just like Kaling’s classic Tweets.
Ladies Home Journal
(Audio version.) Kaling charts the course of her varied life, while offering often hilarious, sometimes poignant tips and words of wisdom mined from her childhood and adult life.... Kaling’s fresh humor, one-liners, and analogies...make this audio worth listening to a second time and sharing with friends.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?:
1. Mindy Kaling knows, and admits in the book's introduction, that the book will be (has been) compared to Tina Fey's Bossy Pants. Is she correct? Have you read Fey's book...and if so, what do you think? Perhaps, more to the point, why the comparisons to begin with? What do the two women have in common?
2. Discuss Kaling's background—her childhood, family, and education—and how it shaped her success in the entertainment field, as a writer, a comic, and an actress.
3. Talk about speciic moments in Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? that you found especially relatable to your own life: her embarrassments and disappointments, her triumphs, or her observations about contemporary culture.
4. Do you find the book humorous? Which parts are particularly funny to you...and why? Do any parts of the book make you sad or angry (the People magazine photo shoot with only size 0 clothing)?
5. Do you come away liking Mindy Kaling more after having read her book...or less?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)