Crossings: A Novel
Alex Landragin, 2020
St. Martin's Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250259042
Summary
An unforgettable and explosive genre-bending debut—a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes.
On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence.
—The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl.
—Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies.
—Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations.
With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Alex Landragin is a French-Armenian-Australian writer. Currently based in Melbourne, Australia, he has also resided in Paris, Marseille, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Charlottesville.
Landragin has previously worked as a librarian, an indigenous community worker and an author of Lonely Planet travel guides in Australia, Europe and Africa. Alex holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and occasionally performs early jazz piano under the moniker Tenderloin Stomp. Crossings is his debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The novel’s formal gambits and transgressive literary figures lend a bit of highbrow window dressing to an otherwise anodyne romance. Imagine a slightly elevated Dan Brown thriller, or a sequel to The Time Traveler’s Wife, and you’re mostly there. Netflix would do well to option it immediately.
New York Times Book Review
A high-concept speculative adventure novel executed with intelligence and grace.… [A]n invigorating puzzle of a book that reads like a complete, intricate work of genre-defying fiction.
Vulture
[An] ambitious, sparkling debut.… While tacking back and forth through the three narratives is going to require more effort than some readers will be willing to give,… Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review) [O]utstanding for its sheer inventiveness. The alternative ordering of chapters creates a tension that heightens the awareness of the interlocking aspects of time and space, while deft writing seduces the reader. Highly recommended. —Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA
Library Journal
[A] remarkable tale across centuries, landscapes and human lives.… Each story is rich with characters, ideas and keenly imagined moments…. There’s a tension between wanting to read quickly… or slowing down to allow each story to breathe.
BookPage
(Starred Review) [A]n impressive debut novel.… Landragin carries off the whole handsomely written enterprise with panache. This novel intrigues and delights with an assured orchestration of historical research and imaginative flights.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Right from the opening line, appropriation is a major theme in Crossings. How does the novel explore this theme? And to what end?
2. The conceit of the crossing allows the reader to inhabit the bodies of characters of a variety of cultures, sexualities, genders, classes, and races. What does the novel have to say about identity?
3. Discuss how Crossings challenges the reader’s ability to distinguish the real from the fake, and why this might be important.
4. Crossings traverses 150 years and seven lifetimes in under four hundred pages. Discuss how language, form, and genre are used to drive the narrative forward across this timeframe.
5. "I am Alula. I am the one who remembers. You are Koahu. You are the one who forgets. "Memory and forgetting are major themes. Discuss how past and present relate in the novel. Crossings is preoccupied with history. What kind of history is the book interested in, and why?
6. Alula believes Koahu forgets his previous lives when he crosses, except in his dreams. And yet if he cannot remember his previous selves, what claim does he have to being the person she says he is? How does the novel suggest identity might be possible without memory?
7. If Alula decides on the spur of the moment to cross with Joubert as a desperate act of love, what does she learn about love as a result of her decision?
8. What role do morality and ethics play in Crossings? Is there a moral to the novel?
9. What is the nature of the relationship between Balthazar and Artopoulos? And is Artopoulos’s final judgment of Balthazar—"You are evil!"—justified?
10. The narrator of "City of Ghosts" claims to fall in love with Madeleine even though he disbelieves everything she believes. Is it truly possible to fall in love with someone whose belief system is so different to one’s own that one questions their capacity to reason?
11. Crossings is, in fact, two books, with two beginnings, middles, and ends. They’re quite different from each other, but they consist of exactly the same words. What is the effect of this structure? Which is the better book? Could a third sequence be envisaged?
12. Crossings may be a fantasy concept, but what corollaries does it have in our real lives? What religion or other belief system does crossing most resemble?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Hieroglyphics
Jill McCorkle, 2020
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781643750538
Summary
A mesmerizing novel about the burden of secrets carried across generations.
Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically— lost a parent when they were children.
Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.
Now, after many years in Boston, they’ve retired to North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know.
Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy.
Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d hoped to keep buried. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.
Hieroglyphics reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you.
In her deeply layered and masterful novel, Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world around us, a child learning to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1958
• Where—Lumberton, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A., Hollins College.
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Hillsborourgh, North Carolina
Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer and novelist. She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D. Rubin. She obtained her M.A. from Hollins College.
Novels
McCorkle has the distinction of having her first two novels published on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said, “One suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist, with July 7th, she is also a full grown one.”
Since then she has published several other novels—including Life After Life (2013) and Hieroglyphics (2020). Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books
Stories
McCorkle has also published four collections of short stories, out of which four stories have been tapped for Best American Short Stories and several collected in New Stories from the South. Her short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Southern Review, Narrative Magazine and American Scholar among others.
Her story “Intervention” is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. An essay, “Cuss Time,” originally published in American Scholar was selected for Best American Essays. Other essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, Southern Living, Our State, Allure and Real Simple.
Teaching
McCorkle has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, and Brandeis where she was the Fannie Hurst Visiting Writer. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard for five years where she also chaired Creative Writing.
Currently, McCorkle teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at NC State University and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a frequent instructor in the Sewanee Summer Writers Program and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Awards
New England Booksellers Award
John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature
North Carolina Award for Literature
McCorckle lives with her husband, photographer Tom Rankin, in Hillsborough, NC. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[V]ibrant, engaging…. McCorkle’s art lies in chronicling the many minor episodes that build one person’s unique life…. The tone of Hieroglyphics is dreamier and more interior than that of McCorkle’s previous novel [Life After Life].… [A] generous, humane writer.
Sylvia Brownrigg - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review) [E]ngrossing…. McCorkle finds an elegant mix of wistfulness and appreciation for life…. Throughout, McCorkle weaves a powerful narrative web, with empathy for her characters and keen insight on their motivations. This is a gem.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) It isn’t a mystery, yet… Hieroglyphics builds like one as characters appear, slowly reveal more of their pasts and secrets…. The prose is magnetic, drawing you in and holding your attention as questions slowly turn into answers
BookPage
(Starred review) [P]owerful… masterful…. McCorkle offers a poignant meditation on the timeless question: is there existence beyond the grave?… A deeply moving and insightful triumph.
Booklist
(Starred review) Four characters take turns narrating [until on] closer reading… the ingenious structure of this novel reveals itself.… [Hierglypics] gathers layers like a snowball racing downhill before striking us in the heart.
Kirkus Reviews
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 HIEROGLYPHICS … then take off on your own:
1. How have the tragedies in both Lil's and Frank's childhoods shaped their lives and their ideas about both life and death? How have their separate histories informed the adults they have become—Lil, for instance, wanting to be the mother for her children she never had?
2. How do Frank and Lil each face the prospect of death, which in their advanced ages, is not far off?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) What role have Frank's academic pursuits had on his beliefs about death—how does he view death? How do you view death? Lil writes to her children: "Your father has lately pitched death like one of his adventurous trips or a romantic rendezvous." What does she mean?
4. What is Lil's purpose, or her desire, in writing down her reminiscences—what does she hope to accomplish? What do her journal entries reveal about her and her state of mind? Do you keep a journal? If so, why? Is it for you? Is it for posterity?
5. What do you make of Shelley? Why is she so wary of Frank and his desire to visit his old home?
m. Shelley "learned early that she was treated best when not noticed … no one wants what the average or below-average person has, and so they leave you alone, and sometimes being left alone seems the best choice." What does this passage actually mean, and what does it reveal about Shelley. Do you agree with her: being "left alone seems the best choice"?
6. Discuss how the murder trial is woven into this story.
7. Do you find the ending of the novel uplifting or depressing? Ultimately, how would you define the novel's conclusion about what is essential when it comes to living life … and facing death?
8. What are hieroglyphics, and why might Jill McCorkle have chosen the term as the title of her novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Death of Vivek Oji
Akwaeke Emezi, 2020
Penguin Publishing
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525541608
Summary
What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet.
What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious.
Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men.
But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens—and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis—the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1987
• Where—Umuahia, Nigeria
• Education—M.P.A., New York University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Akwaeke Emezi is the author of The Death of Vivek Oji, a New York Times bestseller, published in 2020.
When Emezi's first novel, Freshwater (2019), was published, it was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, the Wellcome Book Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Freshwater was also awarded the Otherwise Award and named a Best Book of the Decade by BuzzFeed and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, and the Chicago Public Library.
Emezi's second book, Pet (2019), was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
Selected as a "5 Under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation, Emezi has been profiled by Vogue (photographed by Annie Leibovitz) and by Vanity Fair as part of "The New Hollywood Guard." Freshwater has been translated into ten languages and is currently in development as a TV series at FX, with Emezi writing and executive producing with Tamara P. Carter. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
[A] dazzling, devastating story…. A puzzle wrapped in beautiful language, raising questions of identity and loyalty that are as unanswerable as they are important.
New York Times Book Review
Remarkably assured and graceful…. Emezi has once again encouraged us to embrace a fuller spectrum of human experience.
Washington Post
Instead of getting flattened by death, Vivek becomes more vivid on each page. He glows like the sun, impossible to look at directly yet utterly charismatic. I missed him when the novel was done.
NPR
Powerful…. [A] slim book that contains as wide a range of experience as any saga—a little bit like Vivek’s brief yet gloriously expansive life.
Los Angeles Times
Electrifying.
Oprah Magazine
[A] brisk tale that whirs around the mysterious death of a young Nigerian man…. While Emezi leans on cliches…, they offer sharp observations about the cost of transphobia and homophobia, and about the limits of honesty…. Despite a few bumps, this is a worthy effort.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review) How [Vivek Oji] came to his untimely end is the focus of this haunting novel… [T]his achingly beautiful probe into the challenges of living fully as a nonbinary human being, is an illuminating read. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred Review) [A] deeply unsettling yet ultimately redeeming story about one young man’s struggles in Nigeria in a society which too often straitjackets one’s identity.… This is another knockout performance from a writer who… refuses to color within the lines.
Booklist
(Starred Review) There’s something heartbreaking about the fact that his story can only be told by others, especially since some of them never saw [Vivke] as he wanted to be seen.… Even so, the novel ends on a note of hope. Vividly written and deeply affecting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. "They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died." The novel begins in the aftermath of Vivek Oji’s death, despite his being the titular character. How did knowing that Vivek has already died shape your reading experience? What is suggested by framing the book in this way?
2. In the second chapter, the narrator tells us that this story could be told through a stack of photographs. Near the end of the book, Osita and the girls visit Kavita with a stack of photographs to tell Vivek’s story. How are these stacks of photographs connected? Did you draw any meaning from the use of photographs, as opposed to words or physical mementos?
3. As Vivek grows more uncomfortable with his family at home, he finds solace with the daughters of the Nigerwives. What actions do the girls take to make Vivek feel comfortable and secure? If a biological family is unable to accept a child, can friendships be a sufficient replacement?
4. When the boys are in school, Osita does not comprehend Vivek’s fugue states, and these ultimately lead to the cousins' falling-out. How did you interpret Vivek’s fugues? Could Osita have dealt with these and his relationship with Vivek better, or is he excused because of his age? Were you surprised when Osita and Vivek become intimate later? How does their relationship change in the intervening years?
5. After Vivek’s death, Kavita is very concerned with finding his Ganesh necklace, and at the end of the book, it is the one item of Vivek’s that Osita keeps. What does the necklace represent about Vivek’s identity and ancestry? What does it mean that he wore it until the end of his life, despite the alterations he made to his appearance?
6. When she was younger, Juju expressed skepticism about the community the Nigerwives had built around their shared identity, but when she is older she falls into easy community with Vivek, Osita, and the girls. What is most important in building a group of friends? How does the Nigerwives’ shared identity as outsiders bring them together despite their individual differences?
7. After Vivek’s death, Osita, Kavita, Chika, and Juju all cope with their grief differently—by running away to party, by pushing for answers, by hiding in bed, or by falling silent. How do these varied responses pull them apart, and how are they ultimately able to push past these tensions?
8. When they were younger, Osita and Elizabeth were an item, and later Osita is with Vivek and Elizabeth is with Juju. Vivek and Juju share a kiss, and after Vivek’s death, Osita and Juju sleep together. What did you make of the many ways the friends are enmeshed? How does the author present a wide spectrum of expressing feeling and affection through physical touch?
9. In the chapter featuring Ebenezer, we learn of a girl with long hair who previously walked through the market and whom Ebenezer sees arguing on the day of the riots. Did you have any sense in that moment that the girl was Vivek, and if so, what made you think that? If not, when did it become clear? In what way did this method of storytelling inform your ideas of how Vivek presented and how acceptable it was to others?
10. "You keep talking as if he belonged to you, just because you were his mother, but he didn’t. He didn’t belong to anybody but himself," Somto tells Kavita when the group of friends goes to visit her. Do you think Somto is right in saying this about Kavita, and if so, is she right to bring it up then? How does possessiveness play into our relationships with the dead? How about our relationship with our friends?
11. After meeting with the "children," Kavita decides that Vivek’s gravestone should display the other name he was going by, Nnemdi. Does this prove Kavita’s acceptance of Vivek, even if it comes too late? How did this shape your understanding of Vivek’s identity? Did the connection between Ahunna and Vivek resonate with your beliefs on family, inheritance, and reincarnation?
12. At the end of the book, we learn that Vivek died after fighting with Osita, not at the hands of rioting strangers. Were you surprised by this final reveal? Do you agree with Osita that Vivek would have stayed safe and alive if only he had kept his dresses within the "bubble" of Juju’s room? How does this last bit of information shape your feelings about Osita and your ideas of whom Vivek was most under threat from?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Migrations: A Novel
Charlotte McConaghy, 2020
Flatiron Books
220 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250204028
Summary
A novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds—and her own final chance for redemption.
Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life.
But when the wild she loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination.
She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and track their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his eccentric crew with promises that the birds will lead them to fish.
As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s dark history begins to unspool. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of unsent letters, and obsessed with pursuing the terns at any cost, Franny is full of secrets.
When her quest threatens the safety of the entire crew, Franny must ask herself what she is really running toward—and running from.
Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is both an ode to our threatened world and a breathtaking page-turner about the lengths we will go for the people we love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Charlotte McConaghy is an author and screenwriter based in Sydney, Australia. She holds a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School and has published eight young adult books in Australia, including the "Chronicles of Kaya" series.
Migrations, released in 2020, is Conaghy's first adult novel and her U.S. debut. Widely praised, reviewers have referred to Migrations as both adventure-thriller and literary fiction. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Visceral and haunting… [and]a first-rate work of climate fiction…. This novel’s prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet’s landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates…. Migrations is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over.
New York Times Book Review
The beauty and the heartbreak of this novel is that it’s not preposterous. It feels true and affecting, elegiac and imminent…. The fractured timeline fills each chapter with suspense and surprises, parceled out so tantalizingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens…. Ultimately hopeful.
Washington Post
An aching and poignant book… often devastating in its depictions of grief… of living in a world that has changed catastrophically…. But it’s also a book about love, about trying to understand and accept the creatureliness that exists within our selves, and what it means to be a human animal, that we might better accommodate our own wildness within the world.
Guardian (UK)
A good nautical adventure…. Migrations moves at a fast, exciting clip, motored as much by love for "creatures that aren’t human" as by outrage at their destruction.
Wall Street Journal
Powerful…. Vibrant…. Unique…. McConaghy has a gift for sketching out enveloping, memorable characters using only the smallest of strokes…. Migrations, rather than struggle to convince readers of some plan of environmental action, instead puts humans in their place.
Los Angeles Times
Thrilling…. McConaghy creates a detailed portrait of a woman on the cusp of collapse, consumed with a world that is every bit as broken as she is.… In understanding how nature can heal us, McConaghy underlines why it urgently needs to be protected.
Time
[The] cunky chronicle of Franny Stone, a troubled woman who follows a flock of endangered Arctic terns…. While McConaghy’s plot is engaging, her writing can be a heavy-handed distraction…. Lovers of ornithology and intense drama will find what they need in this uneven tale.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] thrillerlike dimension… [and] consummate blend of issue and portrait, warning and affirmation, this heartbreaking, lushly written work is highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review) [T]ransfixing, gorgeously precise…. Some may find this darkly enrapturing work of ecofiction too heavily plotted, but all the violence, shock, and loss Franny navigates do aptly, and unnervingly, foreshadow a possible environmental apocalypse.
Booklist
Toggling back and forth in time and from place to place, the plot floats through gut-wrenching vignettes of Franny’s escapades, strung together like clues on a life-or-death scavenger hunt…. Prepare to mourn a bleak image of the future and to embrace an everlasting hope in Franny’s heroic example.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. The novel’s epigraph is taken from a poem by Rumi: "Forget safety. / Live where you fear to live." How does that directive resonate throughout Franny’s life? Do you think it’s good advice?
2. Discuss the novel’s first lines: "The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone here." How does the disappearance of wildlife in mass extinctions shape the characters and plot? What are the similarities and differences between Franny’s world and our own? Would you describe this novel as dystopian? Why or why not?
3. Arctic terns have the longest natural migration of any animal, and during their lives they may travel the equivalent distance of to the moon and back three times. What do Arctic terns symbolize in the novel, and why are Franny and Niall so drawn to them in particular?
4. The first time Franny sees Niall lecture, he quotes Margaret Atwood:
We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them.
Why does he pick that passage? How do the themes of love and destruction echo throughout the novel?
5. What does Ireland represent for Franny? Australia? Discuss the importance of home and belonging in this novel, and how Franny’s search for it shapes her life.
6. Franny says: "It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay." Why does she have so much trouble staying, even with the people she most loves? Did you find that aspect of her character sympathetic? Right before their car accident, Niall tells Franny, "There’s a difference between wandering and leaving. In truth, you’ve never once left me." Do you agree?
7. Anik tells Franny: "The stronger you are, the more dangerous the world." What does he mean? Discuss this statement with regard to Franny and Ennis in particular.
8. Franny’s conscience is split between protesting destructive fishing practices and depending on a fishing vessel to follow the terns. She and Niall devote much of their lives together to conservation, although their lifestyle sometimes runs counter to that effort (for instance, they still drive, fly, smoke, etc.). Did you sympathize with these contradictions?
9. At the Mass Extinction Reserve (MER) base, the conservationists prioritize saving animals that help humanity, such as pollinators, rather than, in Franny’s words, "the animals that exist purely to exist, because millions of years of evolution have carved them into miraculous being." Is that prioritization selfish or justifiably practical? What do we lose in allowing the wild to disappear?
10. Niall and the other scientists at MER argue over the best way to protect birds. Niall believes that migration is inherent to their nature, while Harriet counters that they should learn to survive without migration, as a necessary adaptation. Whose argument do you find more convincing?
11. In one of his lectures, Niall says of wildlife: "They are being violently and indiscriminately slaughtered by our indifference. It has been decided by our leaders that economic growth is more important." How does that resonate in our world, as leaders debate the appropriate response to climate change? What is our responsibility to the planet?
12. Franny loves the sea "with every breath of me, every beat of me." What does the sea represent for her? Why is she so drawn to it?
13. Franny describes her life up until she decides to follow the terns as "a migration without a destination." Why do you think she spends so much of her life without ambition or direction? What are the positives and negatives of that sort of existence?
14. When Ennis tells Franny about his wife, Saoirse, asking him to leave so he won’t see her Huntington’s disease progress, Franny is adamant: "You have to go back to your family. You don’t understand how important it is." Do you think Ennis was right to do what his wife asked? Is his inability to stay similar to Franny’s?
15. Ennis tells Franny about Point Nemo, "the remotest place in the world, farther from land than anywhere else." When she asks what it’s like, he replies, "There’s nowhere crueler or lonelier…. It’s quiet." Why are Ennis and Franny so drawn to Point Nemo? How does it resonate with the rest of the novel?
16. Franny believes "the fear world is worse than death. It is worse than anything." Do you agree? What is she afraid of?
17. Why does Franny take responsibility for the deaths of Niall and Greta? Do you think she is right to blame herself and plead guilty?
18. At a few key moments in the novel, including on the last page, Franny remembers her mother’s advice: "Look for the clues to life, they’re hidden everywhere." What does she mean? Discuss the role of fate vs. free will in these characters’ lives.
19. What does Franny hope to accomplish by following the terns on their last migration? What about Ennis? What do you think the future holds for them?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
top of page (summary)
Luster
Raven Leilani, 2020
Farrar. Straus and Giroux
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374194321
Summary
No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her.
And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric.
She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era.
It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1990-91
• Raised—Bronx, New York, and Albany, New York, USA
• Education—M.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
Raven Leilani Baptiste is an American writer whose debut novel, Luster, was published in 2020 under the name Raven Leilani. Her writing, she has said, is influenced by her experiences and her love of art, poetry, comic books and music.
Leilani grew up in a family of artists in the Bronx and later moved to a suburb of Albany, New York. She attended an art high school, aiming for a career as a visual artist. Her first job after college was as an imaging specialist at Ancestry.com., but several jobs, and several years, later she enrolled in New York University's MFA program for creative writing. At NYU she studied under Zadie Smith and with writers Katie Kitamura and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Leilani's writing has also been published in Granta, Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern,
Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. (Adapted rom the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/10/2020.)
Book Reviews
There is nothing on offer like Luster―the story of a Black woman who is neither heroic nor unduly tragic.… She is destructive but tender, ravenous for experience but deeply vulnerable―and often wickedly funny.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
The relationship between Edie and Rebecca is a living thing with its own heartbeat, and it is here that Leilani is at her most nimble, her writing sinewy and sharp…. [I]t is Edie’s hunger for recognition—more than her desire for self-improvement or the humiliation of heterosexuality, or her attempts to wrestle her life into something worth the pain—that colors the novel.
Jazmine Hughes - New York Times Book Review
Luster is a crackling debut about sex, art and the inescapable workings of race…. [J]ust when one fears that Luster might sink into endless woeful lusting, the book slyly pivots…. Edie addresses us in a funny, shrewd narrative voice that precisely describes the wide-ranging contours of her life.
John Powers - NPR
There are no perfect Black women in Raven Leilani’s debut novel, Luster, and that is by design.… Edie’s matter-of-fact confessions, underscored by Leilani’s caustic prose, are on-brand for Millennial literature of the past few years…. The most interesting moments in Luster are those between Edie and other Black women and girls, especially Akila, because they subvert expectations of what Black women should mean to one another.
Atlantic
Blistering… thrums with observational humor…. Luster is not a novel concerned with romantic drama. It’s all about attention―why we crave it and what forms it takes. Leilani carefully pulls the strings of Edie, Rebecca, Eric and Akila, revealing how lonely they all are…. Unsettling and surreal.
Time
[S]trikingly observed…. What ensues over the next 200-plus pages is indeed a wild ride: an irreverent intergenerational tale of race and class that’s blisteringly smart and fan-yourself sexy…. Leilani paints a complex, gloriously messy portrait of three people pushing boundaries.
Oprah Magazine
Darkly funny with wicked insight…. This keenly observed, dynamic debut is so cutting, it almost stings.
Elle
Wildly beguiling…. [Leilani is] a phenomenal writer, her dense, dazzling paragraphs shot through with self-effacing wit and psychological insight.
Entertainment Weekly
[This] moving examination of a young black woman’s economic desperation and her relationship to violence… is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged. Edie’s frank, self-possessed voice will keep a firm grip on readers all the way to the bitter end.
Publishers Weekly
Luster is a gritty novel about appetites—for sex, companionship, attention, money—and what happens when they are sated…. Edie is deftly written… suffering from the rootlessness of an addict’s child…. Leilani’s writing is cerebral and raw…. [She's] a powerful new voice.
BookPage
(Starred review) Leilani’s radiant debut belongs to its brilliant, fully formed narrator. Old soul Edie has an otherworldly way of seeing the world and reflecting it back to readers…. A must for seekers of strongly narrated, original fiction.
Booklist
(Starred review) An unstable ballet of race, sex, and power. Leilani’s characters act in ways that often defy explanation, and that is part of what makes them so alive.… Sharp, strange, propellent—and a whole lot of fun.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When we meet Edie, the narrator of Raven Leilani’s Luster, she is an aspiring painter who hasn’t taken a brush to canvas in years. She explains, "The last time I painted, I was twenty-one. The president was black. I had more serotonin and I was less afraid of men" (7). Discuss the reasons for Edie’s initial paralysis when it comes to making art. Later, what motivates her to start painting again?
2. In the novel’s opening chapter, Edie goes on her first date with Eric, an older man she met online. Rather than diminishing her attraction to him, their age difference forms part of Eric’s appeal for Edie. "Beyond the fact of older men having more stable finances and a different understanding of the clitoris, there is the potent drug of a keen power imbalance," she observes (7). As their relationship evolves, what forms does Eric’s power over Edie take? Why is a relationship marked by "a keen power imbalance" appealing to her?
3. The novel takes us through Edie’s past, shedding light on her sexual history and the loneliness that has defined her life since she was young. Considering her dynamic with Eric, she thinks, "If I’m honest, all my relationships have been like this, parsing the intent of the jaws that lock around my head. Like, is he kidding, or is he hungry? In other words, all of it, even the love, is a violence"(206). What role does violence play in Edie’s connection with Eric? How do her prior experiences of sex, love, and violence inform her response to him?
4. In her relationship with Eric, the fact that Edie is black contributes to "our asymmetry, which even in New York is a stumbling block for waitresses and cabbies and which Eric is totally oblivious to, even as I am routinely making assurances that yes we are going to the same place, and yes, it is a single check" (5). Consider Edie’s feelings about this asymmetry. What factors allow Eric, a "friendly, white, midwestern man," to remain unaware of it (36)?
5. Early in their relationship, Eric informs Edie that he and his wife, Rebecca, have reached an understanding: their marriage is open, but governed by rules that she has laid out for him. Talk about the significance of these rules for Edie, Eric, and Rebecca. How does this significance shift over the course of the novel? Are there unspoken rules that apply to the changing relationships between these characters?
6. Edie’s curiosity about Eric’s life with his wife drives her to enter their home on a day when she expects neither will be there. To her surprise, she encounters Rebecca in the couple’s bedroom, and winds up attending their anniversary party, where she notes, "Eric’s fly is down and this current iteration, this soft, breathing haircut—I can’t say what it is, but I get this feeling that this is actually his most honest form, and it really pisses me off" (56). Why do you think Edie reacts this way? How does the "form" Eric takes in his private encounters with Edie differ from the man his family and friends know? How does it change as his relationship with Edie progresses?
7. Over the course of the novel, Edie engages in a variety of work: as a managing editorial coordinator at a publishing house, as a delivery person, as a job applicant, and—in a way that is complicated, and unspoken—within Eric and Rebecca’s home. Consider Edie’s expectations for each of these kinds of labor and the work environments, as well as what expectations are held of her—directly and indirectly. What role do aspects of Edie’s identity play in these dynamics? How does work figure into Edie’s self-concept and self-worth? What other characters do "work" in the book and how does that work play into your understanding of who they are and their places in the world? Finally, how does the idea of work engage with the idea of art—the reality of being a worker with the ambition of being an artist?
8. Edie is fired from her publishing job because of her "inappropriate sexual behavior" at the office: she has had affairs as fleeting as a single encounter or as significant as her abruptly truncated relationship with Mark, the head of the art department (25). What motivates Edie to pursue these encounters with her coworkers? What makes her relationship with Mark special?
9. After Edie loses her job and apartment, Rebecca allows her to move into the couple’s home—without Eric’s knowledge. Talk about why Rebecca makes this decision. What does she gain from getting to know Edie during her stay in New Jersey? What does Edie get out of their time together?
10. Eavesdropping on a conversation between Eric and Rebecca, Edie thinks that they resemble "a couple of aliens who have seen all the invasion agitprop and want to reiterate that they come in peace" (141-142). Consider the evolution of Eric’s marriage to Rebecca. Why might their relationship feel alien to Edie?
11. Like Edie, Eric and Rebecca’s adopted daughter, Akila, is black. Edie feels that she has been "invited here partly on the absurd presumption that I would know what to do with Akila simply because we are both black" (120). Discuss Eric and Rebecca’s parenting of Akila. How do they approach parenting a black girl as white parents? What impact do they expect Edie’s presence in their home will have on her?
12. Talk about Edie’s relationship with Akila. How does their shared race affect the development of their relationship? What does Akila make of Edie’s relationship with each of her parents?
13. When Eric begins to pull away from her, Edie thinks, "I have learned not to be surprised by a man’s sudden withdrawal. It is a tradition that men like Mark and Eric and my father have helped uphold"(153–154). Discuss Edie’s father and mother. How have her relationships with them influenced what Edie expects from the people in her life? How have they shaped her view of herself as a woman and an artist?
14. Edie finds inspiration for her long-dormant art practice throughout her stay with Eric and Rebecca. After she realizes that Eric has gotten her pregnant, Edie feels that her paintings are better than ever, noting, "I can’t sleep knowing what is happening inside my body, and when I don’t sleep, I paint. I have never been so tired. I have never been so prolific" (194). Talk about the art Edie creates during her time in New Jersey. Why does pregnancy have this effect on her?
15. Discuss the closing lines of the novel: "I’ve made my own hunger into a practice, made everyone who passes through my life subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficiently, into paint. And when I am alone with myself, this is what I am waiting for someone to do to me, with merciless, deliberate hands, to put me down onto the canvas so that when I’m gone, there will be a record, proof that I was here" (227). What are some of the ways Edie has sought to create a record of her existence? At the novel’s end, what has she learned about herself as an artist?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)