This Changes My Family and My Life Forever (Spanner Series, II)
Sally Ember, 2014
Smashwords
388 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781311724137 (Kindle)
Summary
How would YOU do with the changes after Public Contact is revealed? How does Dr. Clara Branon develop into the person selected by the Many Worlds Collective to be Earth's first Liaison late in 2012?
This Changes My Family and My Life Forever contains a few of the younger Earthers' stories of the first five years After Public Contact with the Many Worlds Collective (2013-2018) interspersed with "Snapshots" from Clara's earlier and current life and the first Chief of the Psi-Warriors' experiences. Clara relates stories from more than one timeline of the multiverse in which we all reside but which few can know through timulting the way Clara can.
Stories from "The Transition" to full membership for Earth. with its varied reactions, struggles and circumstances, are offered in TCMF&MLF from the points of view of Zephyr Branon, Dr. Clara Branon's adult son, Clara's nieces and nephews and their children. One of Clara's nephews, Moran Ackerman, becomes Chief of the Psi-Warriors and all species who train to become Earth's OverSeers. In his "Interludes," Moran shares experiences of the specialized psi training and some anecdotes from The Transition from his unique rabbinical and humorous perspectives.
Esperanza Enlaces, Clara's Chief Media Contact, a contemporary of Clara's son, edits, curates and partially narrates TCMF&MLF, allowing more of the on-again/off-again romances between Clara and Epifanio Dang and others to unfold in several timelines. Clara's grand-nephews and nieces also make appearances; a few continue to be featured due to their extraordinary psi talents in Volumes IV, VII and VIII of The Spanners Series by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
This is Vol. II of the Spanners Series. Vol. I is This Changes Everything (2013). Vol. III is This Is/Is Not the Way I Want Things to Change (2015).
Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• Where—Clayton (St. Louis), Missouri, USA
• Education—University of Massachusetts/Amherst, M.Ed. & Ed.D.
• Currently—Creve Coeur (St. Louis), Missouri
Sally Ember, Ed.D., has been passionate about writing since she was nine years old. She’s won prizes for her poetry, stories, songs and plays. She began meditation in her teens. Now, Sally delights fans of paranormal and romance by blurring the lines between fact and fiction in a multiverse of multiple timelines, often including exciting elements of utopian science fiction and Buddhism. Born Jewish on the cusp of Leo and Virgo, Sally's life has been infused with change.
In her "other" professional life, Sally has worked as an educator and upper-level, nonprofit manager in colleges, universities and private nonprofits in many parts of the USA before returning to live in St. Louis, Missouri, in August, 2014. Sally has a BA in Elementary Education, a Master's (M.Ed.) and a doctorate in education (Ed.D.).
Her sci-fi /romance/ speculative fiction/ paranormal/ multiverse/ utopian books for New Adult/adult/YA audiences, "The Spanners Series," are getting great reviews.
Vol I, "This Changes Everything," ebook is FREE everywhere, $17.99 paperback.
Vol II, "This Changes My Family and My Life Forever," ebook as $3.99 and paperback $19.99.
Vol III, "This Is/Is Not the Way I Want Things to Change," released @$3.99 as ebook and paperback $19.99 on 12/8/15. Look for Vol IV – X in 2016-2021. From Timult Books.
Currently, she meditates, writes, swims, reads and hosts her Google+ Hangout On Air (HOA) *CHANGES*, conversations with authors, LIVE almost every Wednesday, 10 - 11 AM Eastern USA (on hiatus until January, 2016).
Sally blogs regularly on wide-ranging topics and includes reviews, interviews, guest blog posts, and excerpts from her books. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Sally on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Clara Ackerman Branon is back, and earths transition continues.
I actually read Vol I and Vol II back to back, so for me it was like I'm reading one continuous book. I think though that one would need to read Vol I really to fully understand what is going to happen.
In this volume, we get introduced more to Clara's family (they are a large family!) who all get interviewed about how they experienced it all (when the news first broke, what changed for them, any difficulties, what are they planning for the future). One of the main narrator is Clara's nephew Moran, a Rabbi before transition, who will now become the Chief in the fight against those who resist and fight the transition. There is also more info about Clara, snippets about her life from young woman to past transition. We learn about her jobs, relationships with both man and woman and in communes, what does she listen to, read etc. Though I'm still confused about her relationship with her lover / not lover Epifanio - but hey, more volumes are to come.
One thing I like very much about the Spanners Series is the message that we can all live together in peace, learn from each other, be there for each other. All differences (religious, racial, gender, and even between species and inhabitants of other planets) are overcome. I mean, how cool would that be to be able to communicate with animals - and not in a jokey, Eddie Murphy Dr Dolittle kind of way, but accept them and their needs / interests as equal to humans. And those people who resist change (yes, there will always be those, even if it is clear that the change is for the better) will not be eliminated, but gently persuaded to recognize at what is best for them.
Another thing I really like is the cover artwork and I hope the author doesn't change the cover art throughout the series, that would be a shame. It's pretty and imaginative. Once you have read the first few chapters and read about the first encounter with 'The Band', have a look at the cover again and you will go 'ahhhh'.
I very much enjoyed this series and the somewhat unusual structure of the book with interviews and different narrators. It is blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction. One of the great plus for me was that abbreviations or foreign language used (one of the main characters is Hispanic) are always explained in brackets straight away. Because of the non-fiction style, it does not halt the flow of the story at all, but is in fact very helpful. On the minus side, as there are several of Clara's relatives are interviewed, it can sometimes be a bit 'samey' at some stage. But the writing is easy to read, so it is not a big deal and I found myself skipping over a few pages.
A satisfying continuation from Volume I—let's see what's coming up in the next volume.
The Pegster Reads
Discussion Questions
1. If you have or know children or grandchildren any of the ages of Clara's son, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, how would you respond if they began to exhibit Excellent Skills the ways Clara's family did?
2. How would you resond and what would you say to people if you discovered that YOU have Excellent Skills and have been chosen to be trained further?
3. Consider your current job, home life, interests and neighborhood: how would these change or how would you change within them After Public Contact, during The Transition?
4. What parts of Clara's "Snapshots" most interested you and why?
5. What did you learn in Volume II that you were glad the author included and what do you wish had been depicted more?
6. The author is seeking collaborators in the teen/young adult-new adult age range for Vol VIII and older adults for Volume IX. How would you contribute if you were to join that effort?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
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Sedition
Katharine Grant, 2014
Henry Holt & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805099928
Summary
An unforgettable historical tale of piano playing, passions, and female power...
♦ The setting: London, 1794.
♦ The problem: Four nouveau rich fathers with five marriageable daughters.
♦ The plan: The young women will learn to play the piano, give a concert for young Englishmen who have titles but no fortunes, and will marry very well indeed.
♦ The complications: The lascivious (and French) piano teacher; the piano maker’s jealous (and musically gifted) daughter; the one of these marriageable daughters with a mating plan of her own.
While it might be a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a title and no money must be in want of a fortune, what does a sexually awakened young woman want? In her wickedly alluring romp through the late-Georgian London, Italian piano making, and tightly-fitted Polonaise gowns, Katharine Grant has written a startling and provocative debut. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1958
• Raised—Lancashire, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Katharine Grant is (as K.M. Grant) a children's book author, best known in the UK for her DeGranville Trilogy. Sedition (2014) is her debut novel for adults.
Born Katharine Mary Towneley, she is the third daughter of Sir Simon Towneley and Lady Mary Fitzherbert. She grew-up She was brought up in Lancashire, England, amid the ghosts of her ancestors, one of whom was the last person in the UK to be hung, drawn, and quartered.
She has written regularly for most newspapers in Scotland and is currently the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Glasgow. She lives in Glasgow with her husband and three children. (Adapted from publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/9/2014.)
Book Reviews
Grant’s portraits of the encounters between Alathea and her father are disturbing in their matter-of-factness. Although there are no graphic descriptions, Grant’s economical prose somehow makes these scenes even more vivid and brutal. Alathea’s father is a complex character who should be entirely despicable, and yet isn't quite. Grant never paints in strokes of black and white, of good and evil. Alathea, who ought to be considered the victim, seems strangely in control.
Andrea Wulf - New York Times Book Review
The darkness of Sedition is its driving force. A subversive and thrilling gothic tale, it will keep you up all night. It’s the sort of novel you say you’ll read for only 10 more minutes because it’s already way past your bedtime. Two hours later, your light is still on. [Grant’s] girls are wonderfully drawn. Spiteful, cliquey, and a curious tumble of innocence and hormones, they drive the plot in ferocious and unexpected directions.... She manages to be carnal without being graphic, detailed without being anatomical.… Sedition is not just about sex, although it is good on female passion. It is about the power of music and cultural clashes: old blood against new money; new musical genius against conservative sensibilities. Grant captures a dizzying sense that this is a world being remade simultaneously by bankers and Bach…. The plot grows, like the music, to a staggering climax, and Grant happily subverts the cliches of the heaving bosoms and seductive Frenchmen. She writes as Alathea plays the piano—with wit, verve and not a little mischief.
Times (UK)
In its fairly irresistible combination of transgressive sex and a richly layered evocation of history, Sedition demands comparison with Sarah Waters' untouchably brilliant novel.…. Her imagination is marvellously gothic and the Georgian London she conjures up brims with invention and detail.… Grant also has a gift for sly comedy.... Her characterization, too, is superlative…. Quite unforgettable.
Guardian (UK)
Seduction’ would be nearer the mark.... Packed full of colourful characters and with an unexpectedly poignant coda, this is an original, winningly-imagined tale of the ties that bind (and some very naughty pianoforte lessons).
Daily Mail (UK)
Sedition.… is as dark and deceitful as it is gloriously bawdy, the beautiful bastard child of Choderlos de Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses and Sarah Waters's Fingersmith.
Observer (UK)
This is one of those precious novels. The kind that bookworms burrow inside to devour with relish from cover to cover. The kind you’ll secrete behind all the other books on your shelves in case friends steal it and somehow "forget" to give it back.... Not a dull or superfluous page.... Grant at times writes like Jane Austen on crack cocaine or Dickens sating himself at an orgy—drawing freely on the literary posturing of past greats, but entirely, refreshingly modern, entirely herself…. She makes you gasp and laugh and re-read. . . Her style is a triumph of wit and brio.
Scotsman (UK)
A fast paced, sexy, historical read about the intriguing tutor/student relationship. . . . Grant’s girls are vividly described: funny, witty, melancholy, rowdy, elegant and kick-ass, each learning the skills to be the mistress of their own destiny.
Marie Claire (UK)
(Starred review.) [A] witty, dark, and sophisticated tale set in 1790s London..... Grant eschews period cliches in favor of sharp, unsentimental storytelling that evokes the era with zest and authenticity.... The novel’s epigrammatic voice...is another of its delights, detached in tone but delivering what are often dark ironies with memorable brevity and cleverness.
Publishers Weekly
Drawn in by the compellingly edgy language, the beautiful evocation of emotions through music, ...the reader is ultimately frustrated by the brevity of the novel.... A longer book that allowed greater development of secondary characters would have strengthened the emotional and narrative impact. —Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA
Library Journal
Sedition could easily have dissolved into semi-kinky melodrama, a chronicle of Belladroit’s conquests. Thanks to author Katharine Grant’s sly writing, it never does… A thumping debut filled with sex, manipulation and a dash of romance. Wickedly dark and provocative, Sedition is a bold reminder that the thirst for power and status remains unquenched over the ages.
BookPage
Late eighteenth-century London is the well-detailed setting for this fun, lascivious gambol through the lives of women and men with decidedly carnal appetites.... Although the dark theme of incest winds through the story, overall the plot and characters are handled with grace and precision. —Julie Trevelyan
Booklist
The grooming of five young Englishwomen for the marriage market goes wildly off the rails in a debut that...takes some surprisingly saucy turns.... Grant's tale, though fresh and spirited, sags in the middle before picking up some speed for the concluding concert.... [A] cleverly seductive romp, which conceals, beneath its witty surface, some very dark comments on fathers and daughters.
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 Rise & Fall of Great Powers: A Novel
Tom Rachman, 2014
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679643654
Summary
Following one of the most critically acclaimed fiction debuts in years, New York Times bestselling author Tom Rachman returns with a brilliant, intricately woven novel about a young woman who travels the world to make sense of her puzzling past.
Tooly Zylberberg, the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, conducts a life full of reading, but with few human beings. Books are safer than people, who might ask awkward questions about her life. She prefers never to mention the strange events of her youth, which mystify and worry her still.
Taken from home as a girl, Tooly found herself spirited away by a group of seductive outsiders, implicated in capers from Asia to Europe to the United States. But who were her abductors? Why did they take her? What did they really want? There was Humphrey, the curmudgeonly Russian with a passion for reading; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who sowed chaos in her wake; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader whose worldview transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he disappeared.
Years later, Tooly believes she will never understand the true story of her own life. Then startling news arrives from a long-lost boyfriend in New York, raising old mysteries and propelling her on a quest around the world in search of answers.
Tom Rachman—an author celebrated for humanity, humor, and wonderful characters—has produced a stunning novel that reveals the tale not just of one woman but of the past quarter-century as well, from the end of the Cold War to the dominance of American empire to the digital revolution of today.
Leaping between decades, and from Bangkok to Brooklyn, this is a breathtaking novel about long-buried secrets and how we must choose to make our own place in the world. It will confirm Rachman’s reputation as one of the most exciting young writers we have. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Where—London, England, UK
• Raised—Vancouver, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in London
Tom Rachman was born in London and raised in Vancouver, Canada. A graduate of the University of Toronto and the Columbia School of Journalism, he has been a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, stationed in Rome. From 2006 to 2008, he worked as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He lives in London.
The Imperfectionsists (2010) is his first novel; The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (2014) his second, followed by The Italian Teacher (2018). (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/09/2014.)
Book Reviews
The tale begins to wobble in the second chapter, as Tooly...shows signs that she may be as zany as her name suggests.... [W]e are told that she is wearing mismatched Converse sneakers, one black and one red. She also, we learn, plays the ukulele in her spare time. So it’s going to be like that. Suddenly, in the middle of her long walk, like someone in a musical, she bursts "into a sprint.... Then she halts, "breathless and grinning" (Tooly tends to grin, and frown, and squeal), because she has a "secret." And her secret is that she has "nowhere to run, no place to hasten toward, not in this city or in the world." I’m afraid Tooly has another secret: She is annoying.
Jim Windolf - New York Times Book Review
This book is mesmerising: a thorough work-out for the head and heart that targets cognitive muscles you never knew you had. Thanks, though, to Rachman’s lightness of touch and quite considerable streaks of silliness, it feels much more like dancing than exercise.
Times (UK)
Some novels are such good company that you don’t want them to end; Tom Rachman knows this, and has pulled off the feat of writing one.... Rachman has written a hugely likeable, even loveable book about the people we meet and how they shape us.
Telegraph (UK)
A bookshop-lover’s book, and beautiful prose-lover’s book, and read-it-all-in-one-weekend book.
New Republic
[A] suspenseful novel that whisks readers around the world [in a]...coming-of-age story.... The novel weaves a critique of modern society through Tooly’s odyssey, with a cast of characters grappling with the mundane realities of the 21st century. The novel loses steam toward the end, but the journey is still worth taking.
Publishers Weekly
Rachman follows his breakout debut, The Imperfectionists, with a novel featuring an American named Tooly Zylberberg, who runs a bookstore in Wales. Tooly is still confused after being abducted as a child and shuttled worldwide by book-loving Russian Humphrey, sexy Sarah, and mysterious ringleader Venn. Now she's trying to find out what really happened to her.
Library Journal
[Rachman's novel] spans the last 30 years in [a ]tale of a rocky road to adulthood. Over the course of flashbacks and fast-forward escapades, Tooly gradually pieces together the jigsaw of her unconventional life.... Rachman’s kaleidoscopic second novel demonstrates that one’s family is very often made up of the people you find and who find you along the way. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
(Starred review.) [T]he haunting tale of a young woman reassessing her turbulent past.... [T]he overwhelming emotions here are loss and regret, as Tooly realizes how she was alienated from her own best instincts by a charismatic sociopath. Brilliantly structured, beautifully written and profoundly sad.
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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What Is Visible
Kimberly Elkins, 2014
Grand Central Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455528967
Summary
A vividly original literary novel based on the astounding true-life story of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person who learned language and blazed a trail for Helen Keller.
At age two, Laura Bridgman lost four of her five senses to scarlet fever. At age seven, she was taken to Perkins Institute in Boston to determine if a child so terribly afflicted could be taught. At age twelve, Charles Dickens declared her his prime interest for visiting America.
And by age twenty, she was considered the nineteenth century's second most famous woman, having mastered language and charmed the world with her brilliance. Not since The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has a book proven so profoundly moving in illuminating the challenges of living in a completely unique inner world.
With Laura-by turns mischievous, temperamental, and witty-as the book's primary narrator, the fascinating kaleidoscope of characters includes the founder of Perkins Institute, Samuel Gridley Howe, with whom she was in love; his wife, the glamorous Julia Ward Howe, a renowned writer, abolitionist, and suffragist; Laura's beloved teacher, who married a missionary and died insane from syphilis; an Irish orphan with whom Laura had a tumultuous affair; Annie Sullivan; and even the young Helen Keller.
Deeply enthralling and rich with lyricism, What Is Visible chronicles the breathtaking experiment that Laura Bridgman embodied and its links to the great social, philosophical, theological, and educational changes rocking Victorian America. Given Laura's worldwide fame in the nineteenth century, it is astonishing that she has been virtually erased from history. What Is Visible will set the record straight. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—State of Virginia
• Education—B.A., Duke University, M.A., Florida State;
M.F.A., Boston University
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Kimberly Elkins’ fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, Best New American Voices, Iowa Review, Village Voice, Chicago tribune, Maisonneuve, Glamour, Prevention, Mcgraw-Hill's college textbook Arguing Through Literature, and Slice, among others.
She was a finalist for the 2004 National Magazine Award and has received fellowships from the Edward Albee and William Randolph Hearst foundations, the SLS fellowship in Nonfiction to St. Petersburg, Russia, the St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award, and a joint research fellowship from the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, and the Massachusetts Historical Society for research on her novel.
Residencies include the Millay Colony and Blue Mountain Center, and she was also the 2009 Kerouac Writer in Residence. Kimberly is the 2012 runner-up for the Nelson Algren Award and has also won a New York Moth Slam. She has taught at Florida State University and Boston University, and is currently a Visiting Lecturer and Advisor for the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Hong Kong, the first MFA in Asia.
Previous jobs include executive assistant to Harvey Weinstein at Miramax, and assistant to Elia Kazan at the Actors’ Studio Playwrights’ Unit. She has a B.A. from Duke University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State, and an MFA in Fiction from Boston University. Kimberly Elkins grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
What Is Visible contemplates the bare requisites of being human, more fundamentally than most meditations on haves and have-nots. When Laura is put on display, she wants to be seen as “a present to them all from God, to show how little one can possess of what we think it means to be human while still possessing full humanity.” A novel’s extraordinary power is to allow a reader to take possession of the inner life of another. This one provides entree to a nearly unthinkable life, and while no one would want to live there, it’s a fascinating place to visit.
Barbara Kingsolver - New York Times Book Review
Based on historical fact, this fictional portrait of Laura Bridgeman, the world’s first deaf and blind prodigy (also living without the senses of taste or smell), is an engrossing and moving read. (Best Books of 2014: Most inspirational.)
Woman's Day
(Starred review.) Laura Bridgman...has been all but forgotten by history. Fortunately, Elkins revives this historical figure with a wonderfully imaginative and scrupulously researched debut novel.... Laura comes across as a willful, mysterious marvel, showing “how little one can posses of what we think it means to be human while still possessing full humanity.”
Publishers Weekly
The best historical fiction offers readers a new look at a well-known subject, or illuminates an episode or individual that has been lost to history. Playwright Kimberly Elkins achieves the latter in What Is Visible, a strikingly original debut novel. (Fiction Pick of the Month-June 2014.)
BookPage
The audacious liberties Elkins takes—inventing a romance for Laura, taking great pains to highlight the most tragically ironic hypocrisies of her famous caregivers—make the story sometimes feel like a writer's exercise rather than a novel. However, Elkins does inspire the reader to imagine life experienced only through touch. —Nicole R. Steeves, Chicago P.L.
Library Journal
Told in alternating chapters by Laura, Howe, his poet wife, and Laura’s beloved teacher, this is a complex, multilayered portrait of a woman who longed to communicate and to love and be loved. Elkins fully captures her difficult nature and her relentless pursuit of connection. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
The story of Helen Keller's forgotten forerunner comes nimbly to life in Elkins' debut novel.... Flitting back and forth over the course of a half-century, the novel is told from alternating viewpoints, including Laura's own.... An affecting portrait which finally provides its idiosyncratic heroine with a worthy voice.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did reading What is Visible affect your ideas about sensory perception. Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like to live with only one sense?
2. How did the multiple narrators featured in the book—Laura, Julia, Dr. Howe, Sarah—impact the storytelling for you? Who was your favorite narrator? Who was your least favorite? How would the story have been different if only one character told it?
3. How did the knowledge that What is Visible is based on historical fact influence your reading of the novel? How do you think fictionalizing a life, or writing a book “based” on a real historical person, influences our understanding of that character and their life and times?
4. Since Laura cannot see, what do you think the title, WHAT IS VISIBLE, might mean?
5. How did you feel about Laura’s occasional violence toward her teachers? At what point or points throughout the book could you empathize with Laura? When did you feel the most estranged from her thoughts and behavior?
6. Julia Ward Howe had a fairly unsympathetic relationship with the blind students at Perkins, and Laura in particular, for most of the book. Do you feel, however, that over the course of the book that Julia genuinely changed and grew and became a more sympathetic character?
7. Did you find Dr. Howe to be a likable character? If not, why not? Why do think he left Laura $2,000 in his will, and left his wife nothing? Did this surprise you?
8. Although Laura could not see, she was very concerned with her own concept of “appearance.” How did Laura’s appearance impact her life? Do you think that if Laura had been allowed to get glass eyes, as Helen Keller did, that her life would have been different?
9. Laura’s religion was deeply important to her. But how did her choice of religion contribute to her fall from grace, and even from history?
10. When she’s baptized, Laura believes she can see underwater for that one miraculous moment. What do you think about the possibility of such a miracle?
11. What do you really think Dr. Howe’s feelings were about Charles Sumner and Sumner’s about him? Does Sumner ultimately emerge as a sympathetic character?
12. Sarah Wight decided to stay with Edward Bond and even bear his children after finding out that he had syphilis. Do you feel she made the right choice? Do you think she regretted it?
13. Dr. Howe refused to take money to finance a lifelong teacher and companion after Sarah Wight was dismissed. Do you believe, as Helen Keller said, that if Laura had had her own Annie Sullivan that she would have “outshone” Helen and been remembered for her accomplishments?
14. Why do you think Laura engaged in self-cutting?
15. Laura claimed that she had actually regained her sense of taste temporarily. Do you think this was true or that it was wishful thinking—or perhaps a need to please Kate?
16. In the end, it is revealed that Dr. Howe was having an affair with Kate at the same time that Laura was. Were you surprised to find out that the baby was his? How did Laura’s misconception in thinking the baby was hers illuminate her skewed understanding of how things work in the world?
17. Consider Dr. Howe’s involvement with the Secret Six in financing John Brown’s campaign, ultimately leading to the massacre at Harper’s Ferry. Do you think that Dr. Howe was right to finance Brown as an expression of his fervent abolitionism?
18. What is Visible tells of how Helen Keller was chosen from a photograph to be “the second Laura Bridgman,” and about how Helen was given glass eyes—a secret that was kept from the public during her lifetime. Has the book changed the way you view Helen Keller or Annie Sullivan?
19. How would you answer the question Laura asks Helen that begins and ends the novel: which sense would you most treasure?
(Questions from author's website.)
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The Stories We Tell
Patti Callahan Henry, 2014
St. Martin's Press
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250040312
Summary
Patti Callahan Henry is back with a powerful novel about the stories we tell and the people we trust.
Eve and Cooper Morrison are Savannah’s power couple. They’re on every artistic board and deeply involved in the community. She owns and operates a letterpress studio specializing in the handmade; he runs a digital magazine featuring all things southern gentlemen. The perfect juxtaposition of the old and the new, Eve and Cooper are the beautiful people. The lucky ones. And they have the wealth and name that comes from being part of an old Georgia family.
But things may not be as good as they seem.
Eve’s sister, Willa, is staying with the family until she gets "back on her feet." Their daughter, Gwen, is all adolescent rebellion. And Cooper thinks Eve works too much. Still, the Morrison marriage is strong. After twenty-one years together, Eve and Cooper know each other. They count on each other. They know what to expect. But when Cooper and Willa are involved in a car accident, the questions surrounding the event bring the family close to breaking point. Sifting between the stories—what Cooper says, what Willa remembers, what the evidence indicates—Eve has to find out what really happened. And what she’s going to do about it.
A riveting story about the power of truth, The Stories we Tell will open your eyes and rearrange your heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—R.N., Auburn University; M.C.H., Georgia State
• Currently—lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama
New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry has published nine novels: Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks, Between the Tides, The Art of Keeping Secrets, Driftwood Summer, The Perfect Love Song, Coming up for Air, and And Then I Found You—her most recent. Hailed as a fresh new voice in southern fiction, Henry has been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and nominated four different times for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Novel of the Year. Her work is published in five languages and in audiobook by Brilliance Audio.
Henry has appeared in numerous magazines including Good Housekeeping, skirt!, South, and Southern Living. Two of her novels were Okra Picks and Coming up For Air was selected for the August 2011 Indie Next List. She is a frequent speaker at fundraisers, library events and book festivals. A full time writer, wife, and mother of three—Henry lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Patti Callahan Henry grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of an Irish minister, and moved south with her family when she was 12 years old. With the idea that being a novelist was “unrealistic,” she set her sights on becoming a pediatric nurse, graduating from Auburn University with a degree in nursing, and from Georgia State with a Master’s degree in Child Health.
She left nursing to raise her first child, Meagan, and not long after having her third child, Rusk, she began writing down the stories that had always been in her head. Henry wrote early in the mornings, before her children woke for the day, but it wasn’t until Meagan, then six, told her mother that she wanted “to be a writer of books” when she grew up, that Henry realized that writing was her own dream as well. She began taking writing classes at Emory University, attending weekend writers’ conferences, and educating herself about the publishing industry, rising at 4:30 AM to write. Her first book, Losing the Moon, was published in 2004. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Henry has mastered the art of the slow reveal, leading the reader down unexpected paths. Readers who enjoy southern women’s fiction a la Joshilyn Jackson (Someone Else’s Love Story, 2013) will appreciate this emotionally satisfying novel.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. The book opens with the narrator, Eve, telling us about her eye color changing. In what ways was this event a premonition of the other changes in Eve’s life?
2. Let’s talk about the title of this book—The Stories We Tell. What do you believe the author means by “stories?” What are the stories we tell in a relationship as we come to know each other?
3. The art and craft of letterpress is an integral part of the story. What do you think about Eve’s obsession with typography, letterpress machines, and fonts? How does it fit in with the notion of “stories?”
4. Creativity and art are healing balms for both Willa and Eve in different ways. How do you believe working has helped Eve and singing/songwriting has helped Willa? What is it about the creative process that helps people to heal?
5. Willa has a traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), which affects her memory and her emotions. How do you think this injury affected Eve’s willingness to believe Willa’s version of that night? Were you able to trust Willa’s story and perceptions?
6. Gwen is rebelling in different ways during the crisis, and Eve talks about adolescence meaning “a disturbance.” How much do you think Gwen’s behavior was a reflection of the tension in her parents’ marriage?
7. Eve and Max have an obvious attraction to each other, yet both of them try to keep it professional. Do you think they could have avoided falling in love? Or can you avoid such a thing?
8. What do you think of the term “financial infidelity? ”In what ways do you think this kind of infidelity breaches ethics? Or does it?
9. Image, family, and success appear to be of the utmost importance to Cooper. Do these ideas oppose each another? At what point in the story did you, as a reader, start to doubt Cooper’s story?
10.The Ten Good Ideas came from Willa and Eve’s childhood remodeling of The Ten Commandments. What ideas, both as a child and as an adult, would you include in this list? Which idea resonated the most with you?
11. The tagline for Eve’s company is, “There’s a story behind everything.” Max often expressed himself with stories—fables, folk tales, and fairy tales. Willa expressed herself in songs and she also believed her dreams told her about her life. In what ways do you incorporate this kind of storytelling into your own life?
12. Eve’s family plays a pivotal role in her life and in her beliefs. How do you believe this influenced her belief in Cooper? How do you believe this affected her final decision?
13. Savannah, as a city, seems almost like a character in the novel. In what ways does this distinct setting influence the story? Would this have been a different kind of story if it had been set elsewhere?
14. Did you have a sense of who was telling a “true story” throughout this novel—and who wasn’t? Did that change throughout your read? How did you think it would end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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