Siege and Storm (Grisha Trilogy, 2)
Leigh Bardugo, 2013
Henry Holt & Co.
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250044433
Summary
Darkness never dies.
Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land, all while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. But she can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.
The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka.
But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her—or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm.
Seige and Storm is the second installment of the Grisha Trilogy. The first is Shadow and Bone (2012), and the third Ruin and Rising (2014). (From the publisher.)
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
After narrowly escaping the Darkling at the end of Shadow and Bone, Alina and Mal are still on the run.... World-building and character development are top-notch, and relationships and motives are complex; Alina hungers for more power just as much as the Darkling does.... An action-packed, heartbreaking ending (Gr 8 & up). —Leigh Collazo, Ed Willkie Middle School, Fort Worth, TX
School Library Journal
Darkness is not easy to escape, even as the “Sun Summoner.” Alina finds herself trapped in a web of forbidden magic as she tries to start a new life in unfamiliar territory. Even with Mal by her side, the tempestuous Darkling’s game is putting a wedge between them....she cannot seem to trust anything as she did (Ages 12 & up). —Lisette Baez
Children's Literature
This second installment...takes off where Book 1, Shadow And Bone (Henry Holt/Macmillan, 2012/VOYA August 2012), left off: Mal and Alina escaped the King's palace and are fleeing another Grisha.... This action-packed, suspenseful grand tale of war, adventure and love, with a maritime setting, colorful battles, and female warriors, will appeal to a broad readership and is an enticing prelude to the anticipated Book 3. —Christina Miller
VOYA
Bardugo populates her fully realized world with appealing three-dimensional characters and an involving plot that keeps a steady pace. But she doesn’t skimp on the introspective moments that will bond readers to the main characters and have them tapping their feet impatiently for the concluding volume.... The buzz will be big (Grades 7-12). —Cindy Welch
Booklist
The Grisha Trilogy turns from bildungsroman to political thriller in its second installment.... Bardugo's sophomore effort smooths out many of the rookie wrinkles that marred Shadow and Bone...keeping readers immersed in the plot. Characters are rich and complex.... Scheming and action carry readers at a breathless pace to an end that may surprise them. (13 & up ).
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 Memory of Love
Aminatta Forna, 2010
Grove Atlantic
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802145680
Summary
Winner, 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-Best Book
In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to keep. In the capital hospital, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood.
Elsewhere in the hospital lies a dying man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic.
As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, these men are drawn unwittingly closer by a British psychologist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories.
A work of breathtaking writing and rare wisdom, The Memory of Love seamlessly weaves together two generations of African life to create a story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past—and, in the end, the very nature of love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK
• Education—University College London
• Awards—Commonwealth Prize-Best Fiction
• Currently—lives in London, England
Aminatta Forna, OBE is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water (2003), and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013), and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Background
Forna was born in Bellshill, Scotland, to a Sierra Leonean father, Mohamed Forna, and a Scottish mother, Maureen Christison. When she was six months old the family traveled to Sierra Leone, where Mohamed Forna worked as a physician. He later became involved in politics and entered government, only to resign citing a growth in political violence and corruption.
Between 1970 and 1973 Dr. Forna was imprisoned and declared an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience. He was hanged on charges of treason in 1975. The events of Forna's childhood and her investigation into the conspiracy surrounding her father's death are the subject of her 2003 memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water.
Forna studied law at University College London and was a Harkness Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
Early career
Between 1989 and 1999 Forna worked for the BBC, both in radio and television, as a reporter and documentary maker in the spheres of arts and politics. She is also known for her Africa documentaries: Through African Eyes (1995), Africa Unmasked (2002), and The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu (2009).
Forna is married to the furniture designer Simon Westcott and lives in south-east London.
In 2013 she assumed a post as Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Milestones and honors
In addition to her 2011 Commonwealth Prize, Forna received the 2014 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Fiction. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Services to Literature in 2017. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
In 2013, Forna served as a judge for The Man Booker International Prize. In 2015 she was a judge for Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award and, in 2017, a judge for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize).
Forna is a board member of the Royal National Theatre and sits on the advisory committee for the Royal Literary Fund, as well as the Caine Prize for African Writing. She continues to champion the work of up-and-coming diverse authors. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/5/2018.)
Book Reviews
[A] luminous tale of passion and betrayal.… [Forna] forces us to see past bland categorizations like "postcolonial African literature," showing that the world we inhabit reaches beyond borders and ripples out through generations. She reminds us that what matters most is that which keeps us grounded in the place of our choosing. And she writes to expose what remains after all the noise has faded: at the core of this novel is the brave and beating heart, at once vulnerable and determined, unwilling to let go of all it has ever loved.
Maaza Mengiste - New York Times Book Review
[Forna] threads her stories like music.… One is left hauntingly familiar with the distant and alien; not quite able to distinguish the emotional spirits of fiction from the scars of real experience.
Times (UK)
[Forna is] among the most powerful of new voices from Africa.… A novel about the persistence of hope and the redemptive power of love.
Toronto Globe and Mail
[An] elegantly rendered novel of loss and rehabilitation… [that] coalesces into an ambitious exploration of trauma and storytelling.
San Francisco Chronicle
A remarkable feat of storytelling.… [and] a thrilling story of friendship and betrayal.
Karen Holt - Essence
A sprawling, epic novel of love in Sierra Leone from Aminatta Forna, a rising literary star.
Marie Claire
The real pleasure of Forna’s storytelling is in her scrutiny of her characters' inner lives and her ability to connect their choices to the moral dilemmas of a traumatized society
The New Yorker
Forna’s] visceral appreciation of her troubled country is evident on every page of The Memory of Love. So, too, is her probing intelligence—and her compassion.
Salon.com
To read The Memory of Love is to experience, not simply learn about, the inner existences of its characters, even as they lapse in and out of their lives.
Anjali Joseph - Times Literary Supplement (UK)
[A]dmirable if uneven.… Forma's material doesn't measure up to the book's length..… [S]cenes that drag or come off as forced, certainly [don't] ruin the experience, but [they do] occasionally glut what amounts to a heartening cry for moral responsibility.
Publishers Weekly
Forna's second novel after her well-regarded memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, takes place in Sierra Leone and weaves stories, past and present, involving Kai, a young surgeon; Elias, an older patient; and Adrian, a British psychiatrist.
Library Journal
Fate and tragedy intertwine in this stunning and powerful portrait of a country in the aftermath of a decade of civil war. —Kristen Huntley
Booklist
(Starred review.) A soft-spoken story of brutality and endurance.… Forna’s insight, elegance and elegiac tone never falter. Tragedy and its aftermath are affectingly, memorably evoked in this multistranded narrative from a significant talent.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At the start of the story, a dying old man, Elias Cole, is chronicling his life to Adrian, a British psychologist. He says,
This is how it is when you glimpse a woman for the first time, a woman you know you could love. People are wrong when they talk of love at first sight. It is neither love nor lust. No. As she walks away from you, what you feel is loss. A premonition of loss (p. 1).
How does the premonition reappear in the course of the story?
2. Cole’s narrative introduces two of the principal characters, Saffia and Julius Kamara. What first impressions of these people do you get from Elias’s description? Were the impressions accurate? Is the storytelling more confessional than therapeutic? Is Cole creating a myth or unburdening himself?
3. What brought Adrian Lockheart to post-conflict Sierra Leone? What keeps him there?
Adrian’s empathy sounded slight, unconvincing in his own ears. So he nudged his patients along with questions aware of the energy it cost him to obtain a sliver of trust (p. 21).
How do his sessions with his patients affect him? Did you find the name "Lockheart" symbolic? How does Adrian relate to his patients, their experiences, and their culture? What is the divide he cannot cross?
4. A dramatic medical emergency immediately precedes the first meeting between Kai Mansaray, an orthopedic surgeon, and Adrian. How do their differing reactions serve to clarify the differences between the two men? "In the days and weeks that follow, the rhythms of their lives begin to intertwine" (p. 51). In what ways do they start to connect? How does this affect each of them? What is the importance of the friendship to each of them?
5. Elias Cole unravels his story to Adrian, very slowly and very carefully. Why? From his portrayal of his own interaction with the Dean, what do you gather about the nature of his character? Why is he mesmerized by Saffia?
6. When they first meet, Ileana is cold to Adrian. "You should have been here from the start. But of course you weren’t. Nobody was. You all turn up when it’s over" (p. 85). Why does Ileana feel this way, and is her anger justified? What makes her experience different from Adrian’s? Which other characters share her opinion? When he leaves, has Adrian verified or disproved her initial judgment? What is different about her that makes her ask to stay?
7. "And the bridge is the one Elias Cole described. Exactly as he described, Adrian is certain of it. Julius’s bridge" (p. 89). This bridge is mentioned several times in the novel. Why is it "Julius’s bridge?" Why is it significant? Talk about some of the other connecting elements of the story.
8. "Agnes is searching for something. Something she goes out looking for and fails to find. Time after time" (p. 116). Adrian is anxious and troubled by his patient—Kai calls her his holy grail. Talk about her unusual condition—an obsessive traveler, a fuguer, and how it connects with her wartime experience. Is Adrian’s concern just clinical? Can he help her? Why is she so compelling?
9. "The man on the table has dreams, he dreams of marrying" (p. 117). What is the nature of Kai’s interest in his patient Foday? How does he separate his professional and personal lives? What do you know about Kai from his relationships with his old friend Tejani, and later with Adrian? How do these friendships differ?
10. The July 1969 moon landing, as remembered by Elias Cole, is a watershed event in the novel.
"To fly," repeated Julius. "To test the limits of our endeavour, of our courage." He was serious. "Otherwise what point is there in being alive?" (p. 150).
How are the various characters affected, are they changed? Discuss the significance to the story.
11. "Elias Cole. How that name takes Kai back to another time, drops him down into a place in the past he doesn’t want to go" (p. 176). How do the secrets that are guarded keep people from confronting the past? How does it affect the present? Who are the characters who encircle Elias Cole? How are they connected?
12. Memory is a central theme of the book. Talk about the memories of war and of terror, of love, and of pain. Which characters are most haunted by the past? How does each of them endure?
13. Adrian first notices Mamakay when she is with Babagaleh, Elias Cole’s manservant.
As he walked away, he had been suddenly and shockingly aware of something fleetingly and exquisitely possible. So much so, he almost turned back, to say something to Babagaleh—anything—to find a reason to look at her again (p. 137).
Why is Adrian drawn to Mamakay? Do you think there are some parallels between this relationship and the one between Elias Cole and Saffia? What are the differences?
14. How is Adrian changed by his relationship with Mamakay? How does it affect his views of the country and its people?
15. "A lot of people here believe in dreams. So do you, don’t you? Psychologists?" (p. 278). Mamakay tells Adrian. People sleep and wake and dream throughout the story. What shapes the dreams? What is their impact?
16. Consider this passage:
Much later, after they have swum together, he watches Abass play on alone in the waves, crashing through the surf over and over. And he feels his love for the boy rise in his chest, pressing against his ribcage, crushing his lungs and his heart, as if it would suffocate him (p. 262).
Freetown is located on the coast, and the closeness of the sea is always present in the novel. What role does the sea play? Why does Kai feel like a "drowning man watching a ship sail by" (p. 342)? Find other references to the sea in the book.
17. What is the nature of Kai’s relationship with Abass? Why is it such a visceral one? What does Kai do for Abass and what does Abass do for Kai?
18. Late in the book Attila, the head psychiatrist of the mental hospital, says to Adrian,
When I ask you what you expect to achieve for these men, you say you want to return them to normality. So then I must ask you, whose normality? Yours? Mine? (p. 319).
Discuss the nature of each man’s normality. Have Adrian’s ideas about normality changed since the beginning of the book?
19. "But the hope has to be real—Attila’s warning to Adrian. I fall down. I get up. Westerners Adrian has met despise the fatalism. But perhaps it is the way people have found to survive" (p. 320). What do you think of this hypothesis? Do you believe, as is suggested, that the population as a whole is suffering from PTSD? Is that everyone’s secret?
20. Did you find Elias Cole’s final revelation concerning Vanessa shocking? How do Cole’s secrets differ from some of the other characters secrets? Do you think Adrian has gotten to the "point of Elias Cole" (p. 401)? Is Cole a sympathetic character?
21. Read the following passage:
Kai is right. For years nobody wanted to know about the killings, the rapes. The outside world shifted its gaze, by a fraction, it was sufficient. The fragmentation of the conscience. What indeed did Adrian think he was doing here? The truth—he had never known for sure" (pp. 424-425).
What do you think Adrian was doing in Sierra Leone? Why did he stay and why did he decide to leave?
22. In the end, why didn’t Kai leave?
They do not see, for they cannot, as they cross the peninsula bridge, the letter traced by a boy’s forefinger into cement on the far side of the bridge wall half a century ago, beneath the initials of the men who once worked the bridge. J. K. (p. 445).
Are there some distances that cannot be brdged?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Down the River Unto the Sea
Walter Mosley, 2018
Mulholland Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316509640
Summary
Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island.
A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter are the only light in his solitary life.
When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of—and why.
Running in parallel with King's own quest for justice is the case of a Black radical journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and women within the city's poorest neighborhoods.
Joined by Melquarth Frost, a brilliant sociopath, our hero must beat dirty cops and dirtier bankers, craven lawyers, and above all keep his daughter far from the underworld in which he works. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: King's client's, and King's own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 12, 1952
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Johnson State College
• Awards—Mystery Writers Grand Master; Shamus Award, Private Eye Writers of America; Grammy Award for Best Album Notes
• Currently—lives in New York City
When President Bill Clinton announced that Walter Mosley was one of his favorite writers, Black Betty (1994), Mosley's third detective novel featuring African American P.I. Easy Rawlins, soared up the bestseller lists. It's little wonder Clinton is a fan: Mosley's writing, an edgy, atmospheric blend of literary and pulp fiction, is like nobody else's. Some of his books are detective fiction, some are sci-fi, and all defy easy categorization.
Mosley was born in Los Angeles, traveled east to college, and found his way into writing fiction by way of working as a computer programmer, caterer, and potter. His first "Easy Rawlins" book, Gone Fishin' didn't find a publisher, but the next, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) most certainly did—and the world was introduced to a startlingly different P.I.
More
Part of the success of the Easy Rawlins series is Mosley's gift for character development. Easy, who stumbles into detective work after being laid off by the aircraft industry, ages in real time in the novels, marries, and experiences believable financial troubles and successes. In addition, Mosley's ability to evoke atmosphere—the dangers and complexities of life in the toughest neighborhoods of Los Angeles—truly shines. His treatment of historic detail (the Rawlins books take place in Los Angeles from the 1940s to the mid-1960s) is impeccable, his dialogue fine-tuned and dead-on.
In 2002, Mosley introduced a new series featuring Fearless Jones, an Army vet with a rigid moral compass, and his friend, a used-bookstore owner named Paris Minton. The series is set in the black neighborhoods of 1950s L.A. and captures the racial climate of the times. Mosley himself summed up the first book, 2002's Fearless Jones, as "comic noir with a fringe of social realism."
Despite the success of his bestselling crime series, Mosley is a writer who resolutely resists pigeonholing. He regularly pens literary fiction, short stories, essays, and sci-fi novels, and he has made bold forays into erotica, YA fiction, and political polemic. "I didn't start off being a mystery writer," he said in an interview with NPR. "There's many things that I am." Fans of this talented, genre-bending author could not agree more!
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Mosley is an avid potter in his spare time.
• He was a computer programmer for 15 years before publishing his first book. He is an avid collector of comic books. And ahe believes that war is rarely the answer, especially not for its innocent victims.
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is what he said:
The Stranger by Albert Camus probably had the greatest impact on me. I suppose that's because it was a novel about ideas in a very concrete and sensual world. This to me is the most difficult stretch for a writer—to talk about the mind and spirit while using the most pedestrian props. Also the hero is not an attractive personality. He's just a guy, a little removed, who comes to heroism without anyone really knowing it. This makes him more like an average Joe rather than someone beyond our reach or range.
(Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble .)
Book Reviews
Great stuff.… The vibrant characters and pulsating dialogue are primo Mosley.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
Walter Mosley is back with a whole new character to love.… As gorgeous a novel as anything he's ever written. And with Joe King Oliver I'm betting, and hoping, he's given us a character we haven't see the last of.
Richard Lipez - Washington Post
Gritty.… The plot soars.… Few mystery writers can examine issues of race-how it divides and binds people-as clearly and unflinchingly as Walter Mosley.
Oline Cogdill - Associated Press
A wild ride that delivers hard-boiled satisfaction while toying with our prejudices and preconceptions.… The darker and uglier the story gets, the more Joe King Oliver comes alive.… The journey is fun and joyful.… A fitting work for a world riddled with dark contradiction."
Steph Cha - Los Angeles Times
Remarkable.… Walter Mosley's latest novel [is] all the more relevant in Black Lives Matter era.
Lloyd Sachs - Chicago Tribune
Down the River Unto the Sea is a well-constructed crime novel, urgent in its plotting and carefully observed in the behaviors and the voices of its supporting cast. Mosley makes it all look simple, creating in Joe King Oliver another fascinatingly flawed detective brimming with potential.
Michael Berry - San Francisco Chronicle
This is one of those books that leaves you a little breathless—not only while you're reading, but once the back cover's closed, too. For anyone who loves hard-bitten PI thrillers, reading Down the River unto the Sea couldn't be more right.
Teri Schlichenmeyer - Miami Times
(Starred review) [An] excellent standalone from MWA Grand Master Mosley…. The novel’s dedication—to Malcolm, Medgar, and Martin—underlines the difference that one man can make in the fight for justice.
Publishers Weekly
In this latest from Mystery Writers Grand Master Mosley, a stand-alone and possible series launch, top NYPD investigator Joe King Oliver is framed by bad guys on the force and ends up at Rikers. Now he runs his own agency with teenage daughter….
Library Journal
(Starred review) [R]emarkable energy…. Mosley writes with great power here about themes that have permeated his work: institutional racism, political corruption, and [how both] affect… society at large [and] individual men and women.
Booklist
[S]o many aspects of this novel are reminiscent of other Mosley books that it tempts one to wonder whether he's stretching his resources a little thin. But ultimately it's Mosley's signature style—rough-hewn, rhythmic, and lyrical—that makes you ready and eager for whatever he's serving up.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for Down the River Unto the Sea … then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot 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 implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better 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.)
The Memory of Love
Linda Olsson, 2011 (The Kindness of Your Nature, New Zealand)
Penguin Publishing
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143122432
Summary
From the beloved author of Astrid & Veronika, a moving tale of friendship and redemption … Olsson is doing what she does best: illuminating the terrain of friendship and examining the many forms that love can take.
Marion Flint, in her early fifties, has spent fifteen years living a quiet life on the rugged coast of New Zealand, a life that allows the door to her past to remain firmly shut.
But a chance meeting with a young boy, Ika, and her desire to help him force Marion to open the Pandora’s box of her memory. Seized by a sudden urgency to make sense of her past, she examines each image one-by-one: her grandfather, her mother, her brother, her lover.
Perhaps if she can create order from the chaos, her memories will be easier to carry. Perhaps she’ll be able to find forgiveness for the little girl that was her. For the young woman she had been. For the people she left behind.
Olsson expertly interweaves scenes from Marion’s past with her quest to save Ika from his own tragic childhood, and renders with reflective tenderness the fragility of memory and the healing power of the heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Stockholm, Sweden
• Education—J.D., University of Stockholm; University of Wellington
• Currently—lives in Auckland, New Zealand
Linda Olsson is a Swedish-born novelist who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Published in 2003, her first novel, Astrid and Veronika, became an international best seller and was translated into 15 languages. She writes all of her novels in both English and Swedish.
Born and raised in Stockholm, Olsson attended the University of Stockholm. After graduating with a law degree, she worked in banking and finance, eventually getting married and giving birth to three boys.
In 1986, her family left Sweden for Africa where Olsson initially intended to take up a post in Kenya. But she traveled on to Singapore, Britain, and Japan, finally settling in New Zealand with her family in 1990. She continued her studies at the University of Wellington, graduating in English and German literature.
During her time in London, Olsson signed up for a course in creative writing and was encouraged to begin writing short stories. In 2003, after arriving in New Zealand, she won a short story competition run by the Sunday Star Times. She then enrolled in a postgraduate course, "Writing the Novel," and was inspired to try her hand at long-form fiction.
Olsson's first novel was completed in 2005. Astrid and Veronika (originally titled "Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs") became a Swedish bestseller. Subsequent novels include Sonata for Miriam (2009), The Memory of Love (2011—The Kindness of Your Nature in New Zealand ), The Blackbird Sings at Dusk (2016—not available in the U.S.), and A Sister in My House (2016, 2018 in the U.S.).
Under the pen name Adam Sarafis, OLsson has also collaborated with Thomas Sainsbury on the thriller Something is Rotten (2015). (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/6/2018.)
Book Reviews
Exquisitely rendered…quietly gripping.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Haunting and beautiful, [The Memory of Love] is a reminder of the fragility of happiness and the impossibility of living without hope.
Otago Times (New Zealand)
Linda Olsson writes beautifully, capturing the fragile nature of her characters and the beauty of the rugged landscape around her with great precision and subtlety. A hugely evocative book. The story gets under your skin and will live on long after the final page has been turned.
Gisborne Herald (New Zealand)
The emotional weather of the story is changeable and dramatic, with storm clouds sometimes threatening, unpredictable tides and winds of inner conflict, and chance meetings.… It is the storytelling, of course, that is most seductive, with the right balance between the disclosure and holding back of information to keep us reading to the end—appreciating at every twist a writer delighting in her craft.
Sunday Star Times (New Zealand)
[A] tender, loving story…concerned with searching and healing.… You sense an author of real integrity.
Weekend Herald (New Zealand)
Olsson's lyrical style is perfectly suited to the reflective tenderness that characterises Marion's narrative voice.… The tragedies of the novel, combined with the powerful resonance of the windswept and lonely coast, makes [The Memory of Love] a heavily atmospheric novel of great emotional weight.
Listener (New Zealand)
Olsson successfully intertwines New Zealand and Sweden to create a beautiful and compelling story.
Mahrangimatters (New Zealand)
One of the most stirring and sensitive books I have read for a long time.… An outstanding read.
Star (New Zealand)
[A] touching, if far-fetched, tale.… The author’s prose is at times pinched and lapidary, while at others, effusive and overstated, and sometimes both.… [Yet] Olsson handles Marion and Ika’s story in a beautifully natural fashion.
Publishers Weekly
[A] deeply poetic novel...and a credit to Olsson’s narrative technique….Fans of Jennifer Haigh and Heidi W. Durrow will appreciate this darkly emotional novel.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. What is the particular appeal of reading this kind of emotionally rich and complex novel? Does witnessing Marion’s struggle to make sense of her life help you to make sense of your own?
2. How is little Marianne affected by being taken from her grandfather to live with her mother and Hans in Stockholm? What coping strategies does she develop to manage her loneliness, fear, and confusion?
3. What is the effect of the narrative moving back and forth between Marion’s past and present? What are some of the most surprising and traumatic moments in her personal history? Why would Olsson choose to reveal these moments gradually rather than all at once?
4. Late in the novel, Marion tries to look at her relationship with Ika objectively and asks herself, “Had I used him? Was he simply a tool for me to give my soul peace? Redeem myself? Could I ever isolate my feelings for Ika from my past? See him as he was, see his true needs?” (p. 171). In what ways might Marion’s personal history have colored her relationship with Ika? Is she using him to fulfill her own needs or is she motivated more by compassion than selfishness?
5. In what ways does her relationship with Ika change Marion? Why would a mostly silent, slightly autistic nine-year-old boy lead to such major transformations in her? In what ways does he serve as a doorway into her buried past?
6. What is the significance of Marion first finding Ika lying on the beach? Does it remind her of earlier events in her life?
7. Marion, Ika, and George have all suffered major losses. Marion has lost her parents, her brother, and her grandfather, as well as her husband through divorce. Ika’s mother died soon after giving birth to him, and he never knew his father. George has lost his wife. “My home died with my wife,” he says (p. 156). In what ways might these losses have prepared them to create a new family, and a new home, with each other? Is there any way these terribly painful experiences can be seen as gifts?
8. Why does Marion feel compelled to make sense of her life, her history? Why is it so important to put the events of her life in some kind of order, to see it “as a whole”? (p. 9). How does she find that wholeness and accept her past by the end of the book?
9. Why does Olsson end the novel with George taking Marion and Ika on a helicopter flight over the project Marion and Ika have been working on? What is the significance of this heightened perspective and of Marion and Ika being able to see their project in its entirety rather than just its individual parts?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Milkman
Anna Burns, 2018
Graywolf Press
360 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781644450000
Summary
Winner, 2018 Man Booker Prize
In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown.
So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes “interesting,” the last thing she ever wanted to be.
Despite middle sister’s attempts to avoid him―and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend―rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers.
Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1962
• Where—Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
• Education—studied Russian, no degree
• Awards—Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in East Sussex, England
Anna Burns is the the author of several novels, most famously, Milkman (2018) for which she won the 2018 Man Booker Prize, the first author from Northern Ireland to do so.
Burns was born in Belfast to a working-class family with seven children. She lived with her aunt nearby, an arrangement not uncommon among large Irish families with small homes and an arrangement that gave Burns quiet time to read after a day with her raucous siblings.
The family was a bookish one, Burns told the UK's Guardian during an interview, and library cards were precious family commodities. Someone was forever taking someone else's card in order to sign out extra books.
Burns left Belfast for London where she studied Russian. She never attained a degree, however. Turning to writing was almost serendipitous. One morning she woke up and began to record her dream in a beautiful sketchbook she'd bought sometime before. One page, then another page; then she began keeping a sort of journal about the day.
In 2002 Burns published her first novel, No Bones; the novel was shortlisted for the (then) Orange Prize. Constructions came next in 2007 and Milkman in 2018.
Four years before Milkman, however, a surgical injury had left Burns with excruciating back pain, and she found herself unable to write. Struggling to make ends meet, she house-sat for various people around England and was forced to depend on food banks. The pain was so bad, she was unsure she would be able to finish Milkman.
When Burns finally completed the novel, it was turned down by several publishers before being taken up by Graywolf Press. Then along came the Man Booker Prize and £50,000. (Adapted from various sources online, primarily The Guardian.)
Book Reviews
A “challenging, experimental” novel that might be easier to understand if read aloud has brought Northern Ireland its first success in the Man Booker prize. Milkman by Anna Burns was the “unanimous” choice of the panel of jurors, whose chairman, Kwame Anthony Appiah, said that it was “enormously rewarding…if you persist with it.”
David Sanderson - Times (UK)
[A] strange and intriguing novel that tackles the Northern Ireland conflict from the perspective of an 18-year-old girl.... Milkman calls to mind several seminal works of Irish literature.... But for all the comparisons, Milkman has its own energy, its own voice.... The narrator...is original, funny, disarmingly oblique and unique: different. The same can be said of this book.
Claire Kilroy - Guardian (UK)
Eccentric and oddly beguiling.… What makes it memorable is the funny, alienated, common-sensical voice of middle sister, who refuses to join in the madness.
Sunday Times (UK)
Milkman is delivered in a breathless, hectic, glorious torrent.… It’s an astute, exquisite account of Northern Ireland’s social landscape.… A potent and urgent book, with more than a hint of barely contained fury.
Irish Independent
I haven’t stopped talking about Anna Burns’s astonishing Milkman. The voice is dazzling, funny, acute.… Like all great writing it invents its own context, becomes its own universe.
Eoin McNamee - Irish Times
From the opening page her words pull us into the daily violence of her world—threats of murder, people killed by state hit squads—while responding to the everyday realities of her life as a young woman.
Kwame Anthony Appiah - Chair, Man Booker Prize panel
[A]n acute, chilling, and often wry portrait of a young woman—and a district—under siege.… There is a touch of James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus in the… narrator of this claustrophobic yet strangely buoyant tale.… This is an unforgettable novel.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for MILKMAN … then take off on your own:
m. Describe middle-sister. She's 18 years old and bookish. What else? She says she prefers 19th century books "because I did not like the 20th century." What does that statement (or any of her others) suggest about her?
m. What is it about the middle-sister that draws Milkman to her? Reviewers call him creepy. Do you agree? How else would you describe him: agressive, violent, obsessive intimidating ... all of the above, none of the above, something else?
m. When Milkman finally prevails in his pursuit, middle-sister says, "I'd been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the commuity, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invastion." There's a lot to unpack in that sentence, which encapsulates the primary tension within the novel. Care to talk about what the statement means, say, phrase by phrase?
m. How would you describe the society in which the book is set (presumaly Belfast, though never acknowledged). Consider the city's atmosphere, the sense of totalitarian oppression.
m. The book is concerned with power. How does power operate in Milkman—on a personal as well as societal level? Who has power and for what purpose? How is power used and over whom?
m. Milkman is also about tribalism. Talk about how group identity functions in this novel. Consider the us versus them allegiances, even down to the brand of butter or tea.
m. Did you find the author's stream-of-consciousness style difficult?
m. What about the lack of character names? The author says that in her initial writing that she used names, but that the book never worked until she removed them. Why might the writing have gone more smoothly without names? Does the lack of names lend a dystopian quality to the work?
m. The author wrote Milkman years before the onset of the #MeToo movement, yet its subject of sexual predation is timely. How did you experience the book in light of today's more aware society. How might you have read it several years ago…or even (if you're old enough) 40 years ago when the events of the book supposedly (thought not specifically) take place?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)