Bittersweet
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, 2014
Crown Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804138567
Summary
Suspenseful and cinematic, Bittersweet exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider’s hunger to belong.
On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it’s the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour.
Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Before she knows it, she has everything she’s ever wanted: friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.
But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact—and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family’s dark secrets and make Ev's world her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Raised—in Senegal, West Africa, and Vermont, USA
• Education—B.A., Vassar College
• Awards—Crazyhorse Fiction Prize; Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is an American author who spent part of her early years in Senegal, West Africa, with her two academic parents who were conducting ethnographic research. The family returned to American, living in Vermont. She spent her childhood summers on Lake Champlain, a setting similar to Bittersweet's lake Winloch. Miranda graduated from Vassar with a degree in English and went on to New York to work for the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y.
She is the author of three novels, including The Effects of Light (2005), Set Me Free (2007, winner of 2007 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best book of fiction by an American woman), and Bittersweet (2014). A recipient of the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, she lives and writes in Brooklyn and Vermont. (Bio compiled by LitLovers.)
Book Reviews
A fairy tale aspect—of the Grimm, not the Disney variety—pervades the novel, which artfully builds an increasing sense of menace.... Like a Downton-in-Vermont, Bittersweet takes swift, implausible plot turns, and its family secrets flow like a bottomless magnum of champagne, but Beverly-Whittemore succeeds in shining a light into the dark, brutal flaws of the human heart.
Margo Raab - New York Times Book Review
Mesmerizing gothic thriller…Bittersweet is worth savoring—it unfolds like a long summer day, leisurely revealing the dark.
Lisa Kay Greissinger - People
What begins a little like Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep quickly warps into a sickly addictive thriller…think ABC’s Revenge when it was good, only more scandalous…. With books like Bittersweet to stuff in beach bags, it’s beginning to feel a lot more like summer.
Stephan Lee - Entertainment Weekly
The theme of paradise lost courses through this coming-of-age tale tinged with mystery—Beverly-Whittemore’s solid, if not particularly inspired, third novel.... As the increasingly tragic story unfolds, the taste left in the reader’s mouth is more likely to be sour than bittersweet.
Publishers Weekly
Beverly-Whittemore captures both the idyllic beauty of a Vermont summer and its dark shadows …gothic tangles wind the plot more and more tightly.… A suspenseful tale of corruption and bad behavior among wealthy New Englanders. Readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories featuring dark secrets that affect generations will find much that appeals here.
Library Journal
Takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface....its strength lies in its elements of mystery. The result is a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the end.
BookPage
Suspenseful and intriguing, filled with characters who both fit the blue-blood mold and break the stereotypes we all associate with the upper class. Her short chapters, with their cliff-hanger endings, will keep readers turning pages late into the night.
Booklist
(Starred review.) As a young woman struggles to read Paradise Lost, she faces her own temptation. Is she brave enough to choose good over evil? ... As she uncovers evidence of dastardly deeds—some deliciously improbable—Mabel comes face to face with her own secrets. Beverly-Whittemore has crafted a page-turner riddled with stubborn clues, a twisty plot and beguiling characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Mabel is the narrator of Bittersweet, but she tells the story from a point in the future, the summer depicted in chapter sixty. Why do you think I chose to tell the story this way? How would the story have been different if it had been told by someone besides Mabel, or told by Mabel while she was experiencing the events?
2. At the beginning of Bittersweet, Mabel longs to be part of the Winslows’ inner circle. Have you ever wanted to be part of an inner circle? Did you get “in”? Once you were “in,” was it everything you dreamed it would be? Does becoming a Winslow turn out to be everything Mabel dreamed it would be?
3. In chapter nineteen, Galway says, “Thing about this family is, you stick around long enough and remember what you hear, you can piece together the truth about just about anyone.” In what ways do secrets work as a currency for the Winslows? How have the circumstances of Mabel’s childhood prepared her for this way of being? Does Mabel’s curious nature—and her drive to uncover secrets—help or hurt her desire to become a Winslow? How do different characters—Ev, Indo, Lu, Birch—play on her hunger for knowledge to try to get what they want?
4. On the whole, do you believe Mabel acts with bravery or cowardice? How about in the following moments: when she agrees to report to Birch on Ev’s behavior (chapter twenty-two); when she pushes Masha for final proof of John’s paternity (chapter forty-one); when she tells John who his father is; when she reveals John’s paternity to Ev (chapter forty-seven); when she agrees to keep Birch’s secret in exchange for Lu’s freedom (chapter fifty-nine); when she returns to Winloch for good (chapter sixty)?
5. Why do Ev and Mabel become so close? Do they use each other, or is one of them always in power? Does the power dynamic between them shift? When and why? Have you ever had a friendship that reminds you of Ev and Mabel’s? Are you still friends with that person?
6. Why do Ev and John fall in love? Do you think John ever had an inkling of his paternity? Was it wrong for Ev to keep his paternity a secret? Should Mabel have told him who his father was? Do you believe Ev was ever pregnant? How does Ev’s justification of their incestuous marriage belie deeper truths about the Winslows’ moral universe?
7. Why do Mabel and Galway fall in love? At the end of the book, she explains that she has come to forgive Galway for not telling her what was on the back of the van Gogh; would you be able to forgive such an omission? Would you be able to accept the fact that Galway’s activism has been funded by his parents? Are Mabel and Galway a good match?
8. How would you compare Ev and Mabel’s friendship to Lu and Mabel’s? In what ways are the Winslow girls a product of their family? How do their attributes mirror those of the women in the generation above them—Indo, Tilde, and CeCe? Are the women in this family close? Why or why not?
9. The end of the book brings the revelation that Tilde has actually been trying to protect the Winslows all along. Did this make you reevaluate Tilde’s actions in earlier parts of the book, for example, when she reprimands cousin Hannah for being naked on the rocks (chapter thirty-two)? Are there any blind spots in Tilde’s plan of protection?
10. In their last conversation, Indo calls Mabel greedy (chapter forty-eight). Is this an accurate word to describe Mabel? Is being greedy an insult in Indo’s eyes? Who else might be called greedy in this book, and in what ways?
11. Birch is very charismatic and holds great power, but he might best be described as sociopathic. Is this aspect of his character a benefit or detriment to him and/or the Winslows? Do you think sociopathic tendencies can be useful for people in positions of power? Were Athol to have come to power, would he have acted like his father?
12. Do you believe it’s a curse or privilege to be born into the kind of money and privilege that the Winslows possess?
13. For much of Bittersweet, Mabel is reading Paradise Lost. Why do you think I made this the book Mabel was reading during her summer at Winloch? What themes do the two books share? What about Winloch makes it especially suited for a tale like Mabel’s? How does the natural world contribute to what occurs during Mabel’s summer at Winloch?
14. The end of Bittersweet—set at some point in the future—finds Mabel and Galway married with children, Birch dead, Tilde in charge, Athol miserable, Ev isolated, and Lu a scientist. What do you think has happened in the intervening years? Have Mabel and Ev gone back to college? Is Mabel in touch with her parents? How (and where) is Daniel? And what happens after this final Midsummer Night’s Feast—where do the Winslows go from here?
15. Does Bittersweet have a happy ending? Mabel has become a Winslow—is that a good thing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Palisades Park
Alan Brennert, 2013
St. Martin's Press
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250038173
Summary
Bestseller Alan Brennert's spellbinding story about a family of dreamers and their lives within the legendary Palisades Amusement Park
Growing up in the 1930s, there is no more magical place than Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey—especially for seven-year-old Antoinette, who horrifies her mother by insisting on the unladylike nickname Toni, and her brother, Jack. Toni helps her parents, Eddie and Adele Stopka, at the stand where they sell homemade French fries amid the roar of the Cyclone roller coaster. There is also the lure of the world’s biggest salt-water pool, complete with divers whose astonishing stunts inspire Toni, despite her mother's insistence that girls can't be high divers.
But a family of dreamers doesn't always share the same dreams, and then the world intrudes: There's the Great Depression, and Pearl Harbor, which hits home in ways that will split the family apart; and perils like fire and race riots in the park. Both Eddie and Jack face the dangers of war, while Adele has ambitions of her own—and Toni is determined to take on a very different kind of danger in impossible feats as a high diver. Yet they are all drawn back to each other—and to Palisades Park—until the park closes forever in 1971.
Evocative and moving, with the trademark brilliance at transforming historical events into irresistible fiction that made Alan Brennert’s Moloka'i and Honolulu into reading group favorites, Palisades Park takes us back to a time when life seemed simpler—except, of course, it wasn't. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• Where—Englewood, New Jersey, USA
• Education—University of California, Los Angeles
• Awards—Nebula Award for Best Short Story; Emmy Award
(for L.A. Law)
• Currently—lives in Southern California
Alan Brennert is a United States television producer and screenwriter who has lived in Southern California since 1973 and completed graduate work in screenwriting at the University of California Los Angeles. His earliest television work was in 1978 when he penned several scripts for Wonder Woman. He was story editor for the NBC series Buck Rogers and wrote seven scripts for that series.
He won an Emmy Award as a producer and writer for L.A. Law in 1991. For science and fantasy readers, he might be best known as a writer for The New Twilight Zone and the revival of The Outer Limits. One of his best regarded episodes was for The New Twilight Zone, an adaptation of his own story Her Pilgrim Soul, which became a play.
Since 2001 he has written episodes of the television series Stargate Atlantis and Star Trek Enterprise (as Michael Bryant).
He also writes books and stories, the majority of which are science fiction or fantasy. His first story was published in 1973 and in 1975 he was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction. He also won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1991 and had stories in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best volumes.
His 2003 historical novel, Moloka'i, focuses on life in Honolulu in the early 1900s and the leper colony at Kalaupapa in Hawaii, made famous by Father Damien, Mother Marianne Cope and Lawrence M. Judd, historical people who appear in the novel.
In 2009, Brennert returned to Hawai'i with another historical novel, Honolulu, centering on a Korean picture bride in the early 1900s.
Brennert's 2013 novel, Palisades Park goes stateside, all the way east to the author's home state of New Jersey and its once famous amusement park. The book follows a family from the depression era, through World War II, and up to 1971.
Brennert contributed many acclaimed DC Comics stories for Detective Comics, The Brave and The Bold, Batman: Holy Terror and Secret Origins in the 1980s and 1990s. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/16/2014.)
Book Reviews
Palisades Park is a perfect novel. Alan Brennert does a spectacular job of laying out a family saga from 1922 to 1974... he gracefully conjures up a place and time that is no more.
Newark Star-Ledger
An epic journey through the life of a treasured amusement park, with a cast of characters who experience great wonders and tragedies.
Lancaster Sunday News
Brennert writes his valentine to the New Jersey playground of his youth in Ragtime style, mixing fact and fiction. It’s a memorable trip.
People Magazine
[A] love letter to Palisades—and to a bygone age.... Brennert convincingly incorporates into the narrative authentic figures and anecdotes about the park, and creates a real emotional pull in his evocative descriptions of the eccentric, hardworking people who made up the Palisades family in good times and in bad.
Publishers Weekly
Brennert again writes his specialty—a book that has such a strong sense of place, the location becomes the story's main character.... Verdict: This tightly researched book (the author grew up at the foot of the Palisades) makes for fascinating reading, down to the tiniest authentic detail.... This nostalgic coming-of-age tale of a little girl with big dreams is the perfect read. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson NC
Library Journal
When Eddie Stopka first visits New Jersey’s Palisades amusement park with his family in 1922, he is so charmed he knows he is destined to come back. When he does return, it is to become a french-fry vendor, marking the beginning of nearly half a century of work at the park.... [R]ewarding depictions of the more cheerful, hopeful American of old. —Sarah Grant
Booklist
A literate, thoughtful saga covering half a century in the life of a family whose world centers on a New Jersey amusement park.... A pleasure to read, especially for those who collect giant pineapples, roller coasters and other roadside attractions.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Was there a place like Palisades Park where you grew up? What did it mean to you?
2. Was Eddie justified in running away from home? Was he justified in refusing all contact with his mother and stepfather? What would you have done?
3. How was the Palisades “family” of workers and concessionaires like a real family, and how was it different?
4. Have you ever had a dream or ambition in life that you never pursued (or did)?
5. Are you a parent? Would you have encouraged or discouraged your daughter from pursuing the dangerous life of a high diver?
6. Can you imagine being a daredevil like Toni? Could you have defied social conventions of the time to live the life she led?
7. Do you think Eddie was right or wrong in enlisting in the Navy? Can you understand Adele’s angry response to it?
8. What was your reaction to Adele’s abandonment of her family?
9. Why did the author include the (true life) role the Mafia played in the history of the park (especially as regards the later civil rights protests)?
10. How does Toni’s stand against the park’s policy about African-Americans fit in with other incidents in her life?
11. Jack’s postwar illness was once called “shell shock” and would today be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. How has the treatment of this veteran’s disability changed (or not) since the Korean War?
12. Compare and contrast the dreams and desires of each member of the Stopka family and how they changed over the course of the story.
13. Would the lives of Eddie, Adele, Toni and Jack have been different if not influenced by Palisades Park? How?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Belle Cora
Phillip Margulies, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385532761
Summary
I had crossed all the lines they you say you can never cross without being destroyed, and here I was, alive and strong.
In the grand tradition of Moll Flanders and Vanity Fair, this is the story of a good girl who became a bad woman. At the old homestead her name is never spoken and her picture is turned to the wall, but in the vast world beyond everyone remembers her as the celebrated madam of the finest parlor house in San Francisco.
Now, at the end of her life, after half a century of successfully hiding the details of her scarlet past, Belle has decided to reveal all her secrets.
In 1838, Arabella Godwin and her beloved younger brother, Lewis, are orphaned and shipped away from their home in New York City to live on their aunt's desolate farm upstate. The comforts she has always known are replaced with grueling work and a pair of cunning enemies in her cousins Agnes and Matthew.
Amid this bleak existence, there emerges light in the form of a local boy, Jeptha Talbot. He is everything good that Arabella craves. His love saves her and becomes an obsession that will last her whole life.
Time and again she will be broken and remade. She will bear a gambler’s child, build a fortune, commit murder, leave a trail of aliases in her wake and sacrifice almost everything—though perhaps not enough—for the man whose love she cannot bear to lose. At last her destiny will take her to Gold Rush California, to riches and power.
Until the day she mysteriously disappears.
Told with unflagging wit and verve, Belle Cora brings to life a turbulent era and an untamed America on the cusp of greatness. Its heroine is a woman in conflict with her time, who nevertheless epitomizes it with her fighting spirit, her gift for self-invention, and her determination to chart her own fate. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1952
• Raised—on Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Phillip Margulies is the author and editor of many books on science, politics and history for young adults. He has won two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A rollicking first novel that tracks an American Moll Flanders on her roller-coaster ride from respectability into quite profitable sin and back again…an enjoyable allegory for the settling of the American West, with plenty of sex and violence along the way… With vivid detail, Margulies depicts a society in which a "ruined" girl has few options… Contemporary readers will, of course, applaud Belle's spunk…We're in the hands of a professional, and a good time of a certain sort is guaranteed."
San Francisco Chronicle
Phillip Margulies has taken the scant known facts about Belle and created a magnificent heroine. Although not always a sympathetic figure, her frankness about her failings and her justification for the artful actions she is often forced to take to guarantee self-preservation make her utterly compelling. But this is far more than just one woman’s story. It is also an epic detailed exploration of the underbelly of 19th-century America, with all its vice, bigotry, political corruption and religious hypocrisy. The descriptions are rich, the characters well-fleshed, and the novel’s crowning achievement is that it doesn’t try to appease modern sensibilities and presents an honest reflection of this era. A memorable and outstanding work on many levels."
Historical Novel Society.org
Belle Cora is historical fiction with a nugget of truth at its core; the heroine is based on a real 19th century madam, and the story is sprinkled with bits of genuine primary sources. The writing is clear and precise, the characters enthralling. It has a bit of a good-girl-gone-bad narrative at the center, but it’s always more about the heroine’s determination to survive by any means than a novel that’s looking for an excuse for its characters to misbehave in a titillating fashion. Above all else, it tells a great story."
Bookriot
(Starred review.) Margulies, the author of numerous science and history books for young adults, strikes gold in his first novel. Depicted as the deathbed autobiography of Arabella Godwin, aka Belle Cora,... Margulies' writing never falters, and the reader will easily get lost in the world he’s built. Belle’s remarkable story mirrors that of her young country, on the verge of civil war, and her sharp, engaging voice brings her tale to vivid life.
Publishers Weekly
The legendary Belle Cora...begins her memoir after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, revealing secrets and deception in her own life and broader society.... The charm and self-invention that served Arabella throughout her life give voice to a story that will captivate historical fiction fans as they follow her exploits during a turbulent era. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Mankato
Library Journal
[R]eaders will find author Phillip Margulies’ rollicking debut novel Belle Cora as exquisitely seductive as its enigmatic heroine.... Weaving an evocative tale in a nonlinear, flashback-style narrative, Belle Cora will captivate readers from start to finish, evoking a bittersweet blend of compassion and contempt for a heroine who defies tradition, and often pays a heavy price.
BookPage
The fictional memoir of an actual madam who ruled Gold Rush–era San Francisco.... Margulies' recreation of Arabella's milieu and astute observations of the hypocritical sexual mores of a bygone time lend resonance to this episodic epic. A convincing melodrama in which the victim takes charge.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What role do the forward and the introduction play in Belle Cora?
2. Why do you think the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 prompted Belle to tell her life’s story?
3. Belle mentions that the book’s purpose is not to instruct others on how to live, and insists that her sole purpose is "to tell what happened." Based on the rest of the novel, is she as indifferent to morality as she pretends?
4. In Belle's introduction Belle calls Harriet Atherton, mother of the feeble-minded Jennifer "my old enemy, the good Christian woman." Yet Belle's mother was also a good Christian woman who would never have approved of the way Belle has lived her life. What led Belle away from the faith of her forebears?
5. Why does Lewis become so attached to Horace during the children’s journey from New York to Livy? How does this foreshadow Lewis’s later attachments to Matthew, to Tom Cross/Jack Cutter, and to David Broderick?
6. Lewis and Belle are uprooted from their home and family. How do their different ages and personalities at the time make this trauma unique for each of them? Which is the more severely damaged? Is the criminal path they both take in life the result of this early trauma?
7. Belle loses her mother and father at the age of nine. Later she encounters a series of (mostly unsatisfactory) surrogate parents; beginning with her grandmother and grandfather, then her aunt and uncle. Who are some of the others and how do they succeed or fail in their role?
8. Belle’s aliases are a big part of the book. How does shedding her name help Belle move past disappointments and forge a new identity? What are the limitations to self-reinvention here?
9. Lewis is obviously Belle’s favorite brother. But between the other two, Edward and Robert, who do you think she cares for more, and why?
10. Belle’s love for Jeptha is rooted in her feeling that he understands and approves of her: yet from about the middle of Book Two she begins to lie to him, putting herself beyond the reach of his understanding. Does Belle turn Jeptha into a fool, loving someone whom he doesn’t really know? Or are we allowed to keep a secret or two even from those closest to us?
11. The last chapters of Book Two turn on an historical episode; thousands of people across the United States believed that the world would end by October 1844. How does this event compare with recent end-of-the-world predictions associated with the prophecies of Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar, and the frequent end-time prophecies of evangelists like Billy Graham? Why do people continue to predictions despite their perfect record of 100% inaccuracy?
12. In her discussion of Aunt Agatha's beliefs near the end of Book 2, Belle calls into question the very logic of eternal reward and punishment in the afterlife. She asks how a good person can be happy in heaven knowing that a loved one suffers forever. What do you think of her reasoning?
13. The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance really did take over the city in 1851 and 1856, with the excuse that the city was lawless and its government hopelessly corrupt. For over a century, mainstream historians sided with the vigilantes. More recently, revisionist historians agree with Belle that the vigilantes were unjustified Why do you think historians changed their views? What does this say about the role played in American politics by the legend of the taming of the West?
14. In Books Two through Four, Agnes, Belle’s nemesis, outwardly resembles the Victorian ideal of passive femininity though in fact she is a cunning schemer. But when Belle meets her near the end of Book Five, Agnes has turned into a proponent of free love and feminism. Is Agnes’s transformation convincing? Are we meant to believe it?
15. Where does Belle stand with respect to women’s rights?Belle has a great deal of freedom, and she earns her own money. But she gets these things by running a brothel, where wealthy men pay for sex with beautiful women. In the end, which sort of woman did more to advance the cause of women's dignity and freedom? The madams like Belle, or the respectable women who wanted to close the brothels and the gambling halls?
16. As a narrator Belle is at pains to wise us up about the seamy side of life. Yet in the end she has a word to say in favor of self-deception: “They protect us, these vast lies the whole community embraces…. If they believe in an absurdity, it is because they know deep down that it is more useful to them than the truth.” Does she mean it? Is it true?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Prayers for the Stolen
Jennifer Clement, 2014
Crown Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804138789
Summary
A haunting story of love and survival that introduces an unforgettable literary heroine...
Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny and smart. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester.
In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they “make them ugly”—cropping their hair, blackening their teeth—anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight.
While her mother waits in vain for her husband’s return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity and fun in the face of so much tragedy. When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there.
But when a local murder tied to the cartel implicates a friend, Ladydi’s future takes a dark turn. Despite the odds against her, this spirited heroine’s resilience and resolve bring hope to otherwise heartbreaking conditions.
An illuminating and affecting portrait of women in rural Mexico, and a stunning exploration of the hidden consequences of an unjust war, Prayers for the Stolen is an unforgettable story of friendship, family, and determination. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Greenwich, Connecticut, USa
• Raised—Mexico City, Mexico
• Education—B.A., New York University; M.F.A, Columbia University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Mexico City, Mexico
Jennifer Clement is an American author who was raised and lives in Mexico. Born in 1960 in Greenwich, Connecticut, Clement moved in 1961 with her family to Mexico City, where she later attended Edron Academy. She moved to the USA to finish high school at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield, Michigan, before studying English Literature and Anthropology at New York University. She received her MFA from the University of Southern Maine. Clement now lives in Mexico City and has two children.
Writing
Clement wrote Widow Basquiat (2000), considered one of the most important books on the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Her three novels include A True Story Based on Lies (2001), which was a finalist in the Orange Prize for Fiction in the United Kingdom, The Poison That Fascinates (2008), and Prayers for the Stolen (2014), her first novel to be published in the U.S.
She is also the author of several books of poetry: The Next Stranger (1993), Newton’s Sailor (1997), Lady of the Broom (2002), and Jennifer Clement: New and Selected Poems (2008). In addition to the influence of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Clement says her poetry is inspired by scientific writings, including those of Louis Pasteur and Isaac Newton.
Clement's prize-winning story "A Salamander-Child" has been published as an art book with work by the Mexican painter Gustavo Monroy. She has been translated into 22 languages.
Recognition and honors
Along with her sister Barbara Sibley, Clement is the co-director and founder of the San Miguel Poetry Week. She also severed as president of PEN Mexico and received numerous grants, poet-in residencies, and fellowships.
Honors
2012 - National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship in Fiction
2009 - President of PEN MEXICO (until 2012)
2002 - Finalist in the Orange Prize for Fiction , UK (for A True Story Based on Lies)
2001 - The Canongate Prize for New Writing
2000 - The Bookseller's Choice List, UK, (for the memoir Widow Basquiat)
(Author bio dapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/15/2014.)
Book Reviews
Beguiling, and even crazily enchanting… [Clement] writes a poet’s prose, spare and simple, creating her world through patterns of repeated and varied metaphors and images that blossom inside the reader like radiant poppies…Prayers for the Stolen gives us words for what we haven’t had words for before, like something translated from a dream in a secret language. The novel is an ebullient yet deeply stirring paean to its female characters’ resiliency and capacity for loyalty, friendship, compassion and love, but also to the power of fiction and poetry.
Francisco Goldman - New York Times Book Review
[A] beautiful, heart-rending novel.... Fiercely observed comparisons of human and inanimate life form a continuing motif throughout the story...[Clement] achieves the formidable feat of smooth, clear English that pulses with an energy and sensibility that is convincingly Latin American… So compelling...Prayers for the Stolen is a powerful read
Wall Street Journal
The author builds a powerful narrative whose images re-create an alarming reality that not everyone has dared to address but that everyone has definitely heard. Let's pray for spoons.
El Paso Times
Hghly original…[Clement’s] prose is poetic in the true sense: precise as a scalpel, lyrical without being indulgent.
Guardian (UK)
What a marvelous writer Clement is....[With] power in a prose that is simple and simply beguiling.
Scotsman (UK)
Bold and innovative…The rich mixture of the outlandishly real and the hyperfabulistic has a certain superstitious power over the reader. Jennifer Clement employs poetry's ability to mirror thought… superbly drawn.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
That is the triumph of Clement’s tone in the novel—she shows the black comedy in the details and the emergency in the broader picture.... There is a chance that fiction can make a difference.
Telegraph (UK)
Beautifully written.... Clement's prose is luminous and startlingly original. The sentences are spare and stripped back, but brilliantly manage to contain complex characters and intense emotional histories in a few vividly poetic words. Her portrayal of modern Mexico is heartbreaking; a dangerous and damaging environment for women, but her portrait of Ladydi and her refusal to be one of the lost girls is defiantly bold and bravely uncompromising
Sunday Express (UK)
Despite its violent premise, this is a darkly comic read with one of the funniest, most touching narrators in years, highlighting a very real issue in a remarkably fresh way. An inspiring story of female resilience.
Psychologies
With Ladydi, Jennifer Clement has created a feisty teenage heroine who is an unforgettable character
Good Housekeeping
[A]n expose of the hideously dangerous lives girls lead in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Despite its social significance, the book doesn’t read like homework; Clement is more a poet than a documentarian.... Clement treats the brutal material honestly but not sensationally, conveying the harshest moments secondhand rather than directly.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) In Clement’s powerful new novel, Ladydi Garcia Martinez tells the story of how she grew up in a remote Mexican mountain village disguised as a boy.... Clement’s deft first-person narrative style imbues authenticity to her depiction of a world turned upside down by drug cartels, police corruption, and American exploitation. —Donna Chavez
Booklist
A young girl struggles to survive under the desolate but terrifying umbrella of the Mexican drug wars.... Some thematic elements recall Clement's 2002 novel A True Story Based on Lies, but overall, this is a much richer and more durable tale. A stark portrait of women abused or abandoned by every side in an awful conflict.
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.)
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress
Ariel Lawhon, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345805966
Summary
They say behind every great man, there's a woman. In this case, there are three...
Stella Crater, the judge's wife, is the picture of propriety draped in long pearls and the latest Chanel. Ritzi, a leggy showgirl with Broadway aspirations, thinks moonlighting in the judge's bed is the quickest way off the chorus line. Maria Simon, the dutiful maid, has the judge to thank for her husband's recent promotion to detective in the NYPD. Meanwhile, Crater is equally indebted to Tammany Hall leaders and the city's most notorious gangster, Owney "The Killer" Madden.
On a sultry summer night, as rumors circulate about the judge's involvement in wide-scale political corruption, the Honorable Joseph Crater steps into a cab and disappears without a trace. Or does he?
After 39 years of necessary duplicity, Stella Crater is finally ready to reveal what she knows. Sliding into a plush leather banquette at Club Abbey, the site of many absinthe-soaked affairs and the judge's favorite watering hole back in the day, Stella orders two whiskeys on the rocks—one for her and one in honor of her missing husband. Stirring the ice cubes in the lowball glass, Stella begins to tell a tale—of greed, lust, and deceit. As the novel unfolds and the women slyly break out of their prescribed roles, it becomes clear that each knows more than she has initially let on.
With a layered intensity and prose as effervescent as the bubbly that flows every night, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress is a wickedly entertaining historical mystery that will transport readers to a bygone era with tipsy spins through subterranean jazz clubs and backstage dressing rooms. But beneath the Art Deco skyline and amid the intoxicating smell of smoke and whiskey, the question of why Judge Crater disappeared lingers seductively until a twist in the very last pages. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Ariel Lawhon is co-founder of the popular online book club, She Reads, a novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus).
Lawhon's first novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014) is centered around the still-unsolved disappearance of New York State Supreme Court Judge, Joseph Crater. Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
Her second novel, Flight of Dreams (2016) is a fictional exploration of the mystery behind the the 1937 Hindenberg blimp explosion. I Was Anastasia (2018), Lawhon's third novel, follows Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia Romonov, the lone survivor of the execution of the Czar of Russia and his family. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Good crime stories don't stay buried, and Ariel Lawhon's new novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress digs up the case of the so-called Missingest Man in New York and feasts on its bones…. This case was an a la carte menu of the era's social hot buttons: chorus girls, speakeasies, bootleggers, Tammany Hall corruption, nattily clad gangsters and irritating rich people.… Lawhon has a gift for lean banter and descriptive shorthand.... But don't let Lawhon's straightforward style and narrative restraint fool you. This book is more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line. It all pays off. Clues accumulate. Each scene proves important. Everyone lies. Once the rabbit is out of the hat everything takes on a different texture, reorganizes and makes sense. A second reading, like a second cocktail, is almost better than the first.
Chelsea Cain - New York Times Book Review
A gripping, fast-paced noir novel.... captures a New York City period full of high-kicking showgirls, mob-linked speakeasies and Tammany Hall political scandal.... Lawhon brings fresh intrigue to this tale, making the final outcome a guessing game for the reader as events unfold... Her version is built colorfully around many of the actual places and people who were key figures in the case... Stella, Maria and Ritzi are central to Lawhon's tale and give it a depth of emotion that is often missing from crime thrillers... the story moves forward with momentum, thanks to well-crafted scenes and fluid dialogue. Also, despite the many decades since Judge Crater went missing, the mystery of his disappearance is still a powerful magnet for its fictional retelling.
Associated Press
A romp through New York in the late 20's…Populated by gangsters and crooked politicians, society ladies and dancers, this story is nothing like your day-to-day life and yet... you will find the three women mentioned in the title (a wife, a maid and a mistress) strangely recognizable…. Ariel Lawhon has cleverly re-imagined what might have happened if three women in his life really did know.
Charlotte Observer
As rumors swirl about political corruption, an NYC judge disappears in 1930 without a trace. Caught in the scandal are his wife and showgirl mistress – plus his dutiful maid, whose detective husband is investigating the case. Inspired by a real-life unsolved mystery, this mesmerizing novel features characters that make a lasting impression."
People Magazine
Set among seedy speakeasies and backstage dressing rooms during Prohibition, the twists and turns in the tale of lust, greed, and deceit keep you guessing until the final pages....The Nancy Drew in you can’t wait to solve the artfully hidden clues in this historical mystery.
Daily Candy
A romp through 1930s New York populated by gangsters and crooked politicians, society ladies and dancers.
Deep South Magazine
Turns a historical mystery into nail-biting entertainment.
Nashville Scene
An intriguing mystery… Lawhon’s storytelling skills bring the characters to life and will have readers sympathizing with them even when they cheat and steal. She weaves reality and fantasy together so well — if you’re looking for a page-turner filled with glitz and glamour as well as murder, greed and deceit, this one’s for you.”
Romantic Times
In extended flashbacks, [Lawhon] paints a sordid portrait of mobsters and mayhem, corruption and carnage, greed and graft as she slyly builds the suspense to a stunning revelation. A story of a bygone New York, [the book] is also a tale of three women.... A fascinating story, but rendered colorless by its lack of momentum and stock characters. (Jan.)
Publishers Weekly
This story is at once an intricate tale of disparate but coexisting definitions of love and loyalty as well as a tale of what it meant to be a person of power in New York City in the early 20th century. Historical fiction and true crime readers will thoroughly enjoy this book.
Library Journal
In this tale of Jazz Age New York, Lawhon walks one of fiction’s trickiest tightropes, creating a novel that is both genuinely moving and full of pulpy fun.…The imagined events of the novel become even more poignant when the reader discovers that the story is based on the real-life disappearance of Joseph Crater and that most of the characters were real people, like the notorious madam Vivian Gordon and the vile gangster Owney Madden. It’s a great story, told with verve and feeling.
Booklist
Lawhon (Eye of the God, 2009) offers a fictional solution to the never-solved disappearance of New York Supreme Court Judge Joseph Crater in 1930, a headline story in its day.... [O]nly Ritzi's story...carries any dramatic weight. There is some cheesy fun to be had here with Prohibition mobsters and politicians, but the plot and prose are pedestrian.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Many of the scandals depicted in The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress could easily be on the cover of People magazine today. We often tend to romanticize bygone eras like the 1930s. Did this novel open your eyes to the fact that the more things change the more they stay the same?
2. What did you think when Maria returned to Judge Crater’s room and took the envelope her husband had planted there? Was it a gutsy move or foolish?
3. There is a very unusual bond that develops between Maria, Ritzi and Stella. How is their connection different from female friendships today? Are there similarities?
4. The three women actually exert a tremendous amount of influence over the men in their lives, but it’s all done in a very surreptitious way. What does this say about the dynamic between men and women in the 1930s?
5. “Only fools underestimate the strength of Stella Crater.” Were you surprised at Stella’s evolution from seemingly “good wife” to ultimate power player?
6. There are some interesting counterpoints going on in the novel: Jude and Maria’s happy marriage compared with Judge Crater and Stella’s marriage of convenience; Maria’s inability to have a child and Ritzi’s unwanted child. How did these juxtapositions enhance your enjoyment of the novel?
7. Did you find the contents of Ritzi’s letter to Stella surprising? What about Maria’s role?
8. There are many real people and events woven into the storyline. Were you inspired to find out more about people like Judge Crater, Owney Madden, William Klein, and Ritzi? Who was the person who intrigued you the most?
9. Who would you cast as Stella, Maria, and Ritzi if the book were to be made into a movie?
10. Judge Crater’s disappearance remains a mystery to this day. What do you think happened to him?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)