Calico Joe
John Grisham, 2012
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345541338
Summary
A surprising and moving novel of fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, set in the world of Major League Baseball . . .
Whatever happened to Calico Joe?
It began quietly enough with a pulled hamstring. The first baseman for the Cubs AAA affiliate in Wichita went down as he rounded third and headed for home. The next day, Jim Hickman, the first baseman for the Cubs, injured his back. The team suddenly needed someone to play first, so they reached down to their AA club in Midland, Texas, and called up a twenty-one-year-old named Joe Castle. He was the hottest player in AA and creating a buzz.
In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records.
Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever…
In John Grisham’s new novel the baseball is thrilling, but it’s what happens off the field that makes Calico Joe a classic. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia
John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.
Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.
As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.
Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.
As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.
It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.
His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.
He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.
He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.
Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.
With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
Writing
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.
Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.
In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.
Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.
Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."
Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.
Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.
In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)
Book Reviews
John Grisham's legal thrillers are dense and hefty, full of twists and turns and tension. His latest novel, Calico Joe, is not like that at all. It's a sweet, simple story, a fable really. And like all fables, it has a moral: Good can come out of evil; it's never too late to confess your sins and seek forgiveness…if you believe in redemption—and who doesn't—you won't be disappointed. Grisham knows baseball as well as he knows crime.
Steven V. Roberts- Washington Post
An enjoyable, heartwarming read that’s not just for baseball fans.
USA Today
Only one player in Major League Baseball history has been hit and killed by a pitch, but bean balls—balls thrown near the head—have ended careers. Grisham's novel imagines the act and its consequences.... Interestingly, the novel's most fully formed character is Warren, and while the narrative and settings are solid, the story drifts toward a somewhat unsatisfying, perhaps too easy, conclusion. A reconciliation story, Hallmark style.
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)
Also, consider these talking points to help start a discussion for Calico Joe:
1. Calico Joe has been referred to as a fable. Why? What is a fable and how does it differ from a realistic novel?
2. Talk about the book's theme of reconciliation. What prompts the final act of reconciliation in this book? What, in fact, spurs any act of reconciliation? How does the novel reflect real life, perhaps your own, in which finding common ground, putting aside anger, and offering forgiveness seem at times insurmountable?
3. Some readers feel the story's characters lack depth; others feel they're beautifully developed. What do you think? How would you describe the three main characters, especially Warren, who, despite the book's title and narrator, is perhaps the story's central figure? (Then, again, perhaps, it's Paul.)
4. If you're a baseball fan, how well does John Grisham describe the game as it's played on the field? Does he make the game come alive for you? If you're not a baseball enthusiast, does your lack of passion for the game make Calico Joe less engaging?
5. Why do you think Grisham chose Paul, the son, as narrator? What difference does it make in how the story gets told?
6. What do you think of the book's ending? Is it satisfying? Is it predictable or surprising?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Someone Else's Love Story
Joshilyn Jackson, 2013
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062105653
Summary
For single mom Shandi Pierce, life is a juggling act. She's finishing college, raising her delightful son Nathan, and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced parents. She's got enough to deal with before she gets caught in the middle of a stickup in a gas station and falls in love with a man named William Ashe when he steps between the armed robber and her son to shield him from danger.
Shandi doesn't know that William has his own baggage. When he looked down the barrel of the gun in the gas station he believed it was destiny: it's been exactly one year since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn't define destiny the way other people do—to him destiny is about choice.
Now, William and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head-on, making choices that will reveal unexpected truths about love, life, and the world they think they know. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Elses's Love Story
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[T]here is love at [this novel’s] heart… there is much to gain from a closer read. (3 out of 4 stars)
USA Today
A surprising novel, both graceful and tender. You won’t be able to put it down.
Dallas Morning News
Someone Else’s Love Story is worth reading, even studying. Expressions of love come in many forms, as Jackson shows.
Omaha World-Herald
Joshilyn Jackson is a brilliant storyteller and has a unique gift of bringing quirkiness to her characters and a lot of twists and turns to her tale.
Wichita Falls Times Record Review
Someone Else’s Love Story is never predictable, full of humor and heart and characters you can’t help but love.
Greenville News
Witty, cleverly constructed and including a truly surprising twist, Someone Else’s Love Story turns out to be a nuanced exploration of faith, family and the things we do for love. (3 ½ stars)
People
Finely drawn characters make the miraculous plausible, from the opening hostage scene in a North Georgia convenience store to an ending that hits the mark of "surprising yet inevitable" mastered and articulated by Flannery O’Connor.
Atlanta Magazine
[W]itty and insightful.... [A]a novel at once funny and touching, whose characters’ many flaws are overshadowed by all the ways in which they look out for one another. The final denouement of Jackson’s roller-coaster love story will leave the reader both thoroughly sated and hungry for more. Publishers Weekly
[O]riginal and amusing.... [T]he plot takes an unexpected turn with the introduction of a new character late in the book. Unfortunately, the clunky transitions among narrators and jumps between the past and present distract at times from the story. Still, Jackson's many fans and those who love authentic Southern fiction should enjoy this title. —Amber McKee, Cumberland Univ. Lib., Lebanon, TN
Library Journal
There are scenes that will make you gasp, pause or even tear up as Jackson’s characters fumble toward imperfect enlightenment. Someone Else’s Love Story will delight and surprise with its unexpected compassion, empathy and humanity.
BookPage
Jackson's novel perfectly captures the flavor and rhythm of Southern life as a young woman preparing for college finds herself caught up in a real-life drama ... Wrapped in a thoughtful, often funny and insightful narrative...Jackson presents the reader with a story that is never predictable and is awash in bittersweet love, regret and the promise of what could be. A surprising novel, both graceful and tender. You won't be able to put it down.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What does the title tell you about the story this story? What do we learn from the first line? How does the book's opening set the stage for the events that follow?
2. "That afternoon in the Circle K, I deserved to know, right off, that I had landed bang in the middle of a love story. Especially since it wasn't—it isn't—it could never be, my own. " Why could this story never be Shandi's? If it's not hers, than whose love story is it?
3. Everyone sees William as a hero for his acts during the robbery. How does William answer this? Would you call it brave? Why did Shandi have such faith that William would save them?
4. Destiny and choice are major themes in the novel. What does destiny mean to William? What about Shandi?
5. Shandi and Walcott have known each other forever. Discuss their relationship. How is it transformed? Why do we often miss the obvious in our lives?
6. How do the religious references sprinkled through the story—Natty's virgin birth for example—add a deeper level of flavor and meaning to the book?
7. Why is William angry with Bridget and not her "imaginary God"? When bad things happen most people blame God. Why? Why doesn't William?
8. Think about the novel's structure. The story moves back in forth in time between Shandi and Williams's pasts and their present. How does this form of storytelling shape your reading experience and comprehension of events as they unfold? How would the story be different if it began with William instead of Shandi?
9. How does their meeting change both William and Shandi? Would you call their meeting fate or destiny or maybe a miracle? "It isn't every day he meets a girl who killed a miracle," William thinks when he agrees to help Shandi. Why does her having "killed" a miracle so intrigue him?
10. How do each of these characters' certainties and beliefs change when they are confronted by unexpected circumstances—the robbery, the fireworks, the DNA results, meeting Natty's father for example?
11. The possibility of goodness and forgiveness are also themes in the book. Talk about how they are demonstrated in various characters' lives and experiences.
12. How many different kind of love stories are in the book? How do they all intertwine?
13. We're you surprised at the ending? Was it exactly what should happen for all the characters?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
An Officer and A Spy
Robert Harris, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385349581
Summary
Robert Harris returns to the thrilling historical fiction he has so brilliantly made his own. This is the story of the infamous Dreyfus affair told as a chillingly dark, hard-edged novel of conspiracy and espionage.
Paris in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of twenty-thousand. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that “proved” Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans.
At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus’s guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself.
Bringing to life the scandal that mesmerized the world at the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Harris tells a tale of uncanny timeliness—a witch hunt, secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, the fate of a whistle-blower—richly dramatized with the singular storytelling mastery that has marked all of his internationally best-selling novels. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 7, 1957
• Where—Nottingham, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—Cesar Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
• Currently—lives near Newberry, England
Robert Dennis Harris is an English novelist. He is a former journalist and BBC television reporter. Although he began his career in non-fiction, his fame rests upon his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His most recent works centre on contemporary history.
Early life
Born in Nottingham, Harris spent his childhood in a small rented house on a Nottingham council estate. His ambition to become a writer arose at an early age, from visits to the local printing plant where his father worked. Harris went to Belvoir High School in Bottesford, and then King Edward VII School, Melton Mowbray, where a hall is now named after him. There he wrote plays and edited the school magazine. Harris read English literature at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he was president of the Union and editor of the student newspaper Varsity.
Early career
After leaving Cambridge, Harris joined the BBC and worked on news and current affairs programmes such as Panorama and Newsnight. In 1987, at the age of thirty, he became political editor of The Observer. He later wrote regular columns for the Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph.
Personal
Harris lives in a former vicarage near Newbury, with his wife Gill Hornby, herself a writer and sister of best-selling novelist Nick Hornby. They have four children. Harris contributed a short story, "PMQ", to Hornby's 2000 collection Speaking with the Angel.
Non-fiction (1982–90)
Harris's first book appeared in 1982. A Higher Form of Killing, a study of chemical and biological warfare, was written with fellow BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman. Other non-fiction works followed: Gotcha, the Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis (1983), The Making of Neil Kinnock (1984), Selling Hitler (1986), an investigation of the Hitler Diaries scandal, and Good and Faithful Servant (1990), a study of Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher's press secretary.
Fiction
• Fatherland (1992)
Harris's million-selling alternative-history first novel Fatherland has as its setting a world where Germany has won World War II. Publication enabled Harris to become a full-time novelist. HBO made a film based on the novel in 1994. According to Harris, the proceeds from the book enabled him to buy a house in the country, where he still lives.
• Enigma (1995)
His second novel Enigma portrayed the breaking of the German Enigma code during World War II at Bletchley Park. It too became a film, with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet starring and with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard.
• Archangel (1998)
Archangel was another international best seller. It follows a British historian in contemporary Russia as he hunts for a secret notebook, believed to be Stalin's diary. In 2005 the BBC made its story into a mini-series starring Daniel Craig.
• Pompeii (2003)
In 2003 Harris turned his attention to ancient Rome with his acclaimed Pompeii, yet another international best-seller. The novel is about a Roman aqueduct engineer, working near the city of Pompeii just before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. As the aqueducts begin to malfunction, he investigates and realizes the volcano is shifting the ground and damaging the system and is near eruption. Meanwhile, he falls in love with the young daughter of a powerful local businessman who was illicitly dealing with his predecessor to divert municipal water for his own uses, and will do anything to keep that deal going.
• Imperium (2006)
He followed this in 2006 with Imperium, the first novel in a trilogy centered on the life of the great Roman orator Cicero.
• The Ghost (2007)
Harris was an early and enthusiastic backer of British Prime Minister Tony Blair (a personal acquaintance) and a donor to New Labour, but the war in Iraq blunted his enthusiasm. "We had our ups and downs, but we didn't really fall out until the invasion of Iraq, which made no sense to me," Harris has said.
In 2007, after Blair resigned, Harris dropped his other work to write The Ghost. The title refers both to a professional ghostwriter, whose lengthy memorandum forms the novel, and to his immediate predecessor who, as the action opens, has just drowned in gruesome and mysterious circumstances.
The dead man has been ghosting the autobiography of a recently unseated British prime minister called Adam Lang, a thinly veiled version of Blair. The fictional counterpart of Cherie Blair is depicted as a sinister manipulator of her husband. Harris told The Guardian before publication: "The day this appears a writ might come through the door. But I would doubt it, knowing him."
Harris said in a US National Public Radio interview that politicians like Lang and Blair, particularly when they have been in office for a long time, become divorced from everyday reality, read little and end up with a pretty limited overall outlook. When it comes to writing their memoirs, they therefore tend to have all the more need of a ghostwriter.
Harris hinted at a third, far less obvious, allusion hidden in the novel's title, and, more significantly, at a possible motive for having written the book in the first place. Blair, he said, had himself been ghostwriter, in effect, to President Bush when giving public reasons for invading Iraq: he had argued the case better than had the President himself.
The New York Observer, headlining its otherwise hostile review "The Blair Snitch Project," commented that the book's "shock-horror revelation" was "so shocking it simply can't be true, though if it were it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the recent history of Great Britain."
• Lustrum (2009)
The second novel in the Cicero trilogy, Lustrum, was published in October 2009. It was released in February 2010 in the US under the alternative title of Conspirata.
• The Fear Index (2011)
His novel, The Fear Index, focusing on the 2010 Flash Crash was published by Hutchinson in September 2011. It follows an American expat hedge fund operator living in Geneva who activates a new system of computer algorithms that he names VIXAL-4, which is designed to operate faster than human beings, but which begins to become uncontrollable by its human operators.
• An Officer and a Spy (2013)
Harris's latest novel is the true story of French officer Georges Picquart, who is promoted in 1895 to run France's Statistical Section, its secret intelligence division. He gradually realizes that Alfred Dreyfus has been unjustly imprisoned for acts of espionage committed by another man who is still free and still spying for the Germans. He risks his career and his life to expose the truth.
• Third Cicero novel
Harris has said his next novel will be his long-promised conclusion to his Cicero trilogy.
Work with Roman Polanski
Harris wrote a screenplay of his novel Pompeii for director Roman Polanski. The film, to be produced by Summit Entertainment, was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 as potentially the most expensive European film ever made, set to be shot in Spain. Media reports suggested Polanski wanted Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson to play the two leads. The film was cancelled as a result of the actors' strike.
Polanski and Harris then turned to Harris's bestseller, The Ghost. They co-wrote a script and Polanski announced filming for early 2008, with Nicolas Cage, Pierce Brosnan, Tilda Swinton, and Kim Cattrall starring. The film was then postponed by a year, with Ewan McGregor and Olivia Williams replacing Cage and Swinton.
The film, retitled The Ghost Writer in all territories except the UK, was shot in early 2009 in Berlin and on the island of Sylt in the North Sea, which stood in for London and Martha's Vineyard respectively, owing to Polanski's inability to travel legally to those places. In spite of his incarceration, he oversaw post-production from his house arrest and the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2010, with Polanski winning the Silver Bear for Best Director award. Harris and Polanski later shared a Cesar Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Harris was inspired to write his most recent novel, An Officer and a Spy, by Polanski's longtime interest in the Dreyfus Affair. He has written a screenplay based on the story, which Polanski is set to direct. The screenplay is titled D, after the initial famously written on the secret file that secured Dreyfus's conviction.
TV and radio appearances
Harris has appeared on the BBC satirical panel game Have I Got News for You in episode three of the first series in 1990, and in episode four of the second series a year later. In the first he appeared as a last-minute replacement for the politician Roy Hattersley. He made a third appearance on the programme on 12 October 2007, seventeen years, to the day, after his first appearance. Since the gap between his second and third appearance was nearly 16 years, Harris enjoys the distinction of the longest gap between two successive appearances in the show's history.
On 2 December 2010, Harris appeared on the radio programme Desert Island Discs, when he spoke about his childhood and his friendships with Tony Blair and Roman Polanski.
Harris appeared on the American PBS show Charlie Rose on 10 February 2012. Harris discussed his novel The Fear Index which he likened to a modern day Gothic novel along the lines of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Harris also discussed the adaptation of his novel, The Ghost, directed by Roman Polanski.
Columnist
Harris was a columnist for the Sunday Times, but gave it up in 1997. He returned to journalism in 2001, writing for the Daily Telegraph. He was named "Columnist of the Year" at the 2003 British Press Awards. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/26/2014.)
Book Reviews
Robert Harris, in his fine novel An Officer and a Spy, lucidly retells the famous, bizarrely complicated and chilling story.… Drawing on the vast trove of books about the [Dreyfus] affair and some newly available materials, Harris tells a gripping tale.
Louis Begley - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) [E]asily the best fictional treatment of the Dreyfus Affair yet, in this gripping thriller told from the vantage point of French army officer Georges Picquart.... Picquart pursues the truth, at personal and professional risk.... Harris perfectly captures the rampant anti-Semitism that led to Dreyfus’s scapegoating, and effectively uses the present tense to lend intimacy to the narrative.
Publishers Weekly
Maj. Georges Picquart, a rising star in the French military circa 1895....is a fascinating protagonist and narrator, personally flawed but determined to pursue the truth even when government resistance threatens his career, his life, and everyone around him. His story draws an uncomfortable parallel to current events; as Valerie Plame, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange can attest, 21st-century governments still resent troublemakers who reveal embarrassing truths. —Bradley Scott, Corpus Christie, TX
Library Journal
Col. Georges Picquart...begins to have doubts about [Drefus's] guilt and is fairly sure espionage is continuing.... [But] much of the population, inflamed by the popular press, already sees Dreyfus as a traitor and delights in conveying their virulent anti-Semitism. Espionage, counterespionage, a scandalous trial, a coverup and a man who tries to do right make this a complex and alluring thriller.
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)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for An Officer and a Spy:
1. Describe the Paris of the late 19th century, with its demimonde decadence, pugnacious press, and political enmities. How well does Harris do in bring the ambience of the city to life? Are there any parallels to our current time?
2. What is the effect of France's loss of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans? How does that set the stage for the events that occur in the novel?
3. Talk about France's anti-Semitism. How deeply does it run permeate the culture and why?
4. What made Dreyfus such a satisfying target for the French public? What does Picquart mean when he reflects, after the Dreyfus's conviction, that it is "as if all the loathing and recrimination bottled up since the defeat of 1870 has found an outlet in a single individual"?
5. Why does the military stonewall Picquart's later finding of Dreyfus's innocence? Why is is so difficult for institutions to admit to wrong doing or mistakes?
6. General Gonse asks an interesting question of Picquart: "I know your views on the Chosen Race—really, when all is said and done, what does it matter to you if one Jew stays on Devil's Island?" Exactly, Does it matter...in the larger scope of events? Why or why not?
7. What happens when institutions place their own survival above all else? Does this occur today? Do we have institutions in government, business, religion, education that are concerned with their own preservation at the expense of their integrity—that place their continued existence over what is morally right?
8. History is rife with "cover-ups"—we've seen them time and again. Why is it so difficult to follow a moral path in public life?
9. What do you think of the final scene (no spoilers here) between Picquart and Dreyfus?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Forgotten Roses
Deborah Doucette, 2014
Owl Canyon Press
250 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780991121106
Summary
Rebecca Griffin has everything she could ever want—or so says her big-hearted, opinionated Italian-American family. But now her marriage is unraveling and her teenage daughter is hurtling toward a self-destructive calamity.
While Rebecca struggles to hang onto her husband and save her daughter, she learns of the mysterious death of a young The woman long ago at a local prison. As Rebecca’s mother, Eva, reveals their family’s connection to the girl, Rebecca is drawn into the story—it haunts her. A search for answers takes Rebecca from her small idyllic New England town, to the congested streets of East Boston and the tight-knit Italian neighborhood where many of her family still resides.
As she tries to uncover the facts of the young girl’s life and violent death, the puzzle pieces in Rebecca’s own life begin to take shape and she faces the difficult truth about her husband, Drew. Rebecca, her troubled daughter, Dana, and an enigmatic figure from the past unknowingly embark on a collision course one desperate autumn night when the answers they seek come to light in the most forgotten of places from the most innocent of messengers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 30, 1948
• Raised—Newton and Nadick, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Sherborn, Massachusetts
Deborah Doucette began her writing career as a free-lance journalist subsequently writing the non-fiction book Raising Our Children’s Children: Room In The Heart, slated for second edition release in July, 2014. Her novel, The Forgotten Roses, is about the choices women face, the pull of family, a mystery and a little magic. She is a blogger for the Huffington Post, an artist, and mother of four.
Deborah lives in a small town west of Boston with her red standard poodle Fiamma (Italian for flame) enjoying the comings and goings of her twin grandchildren, and working on a new novel. (From the author.)
Visit the publisher's website.
Follow Deborah on Facebook
Book Reviews
The Forgotten Roses finds a way to be both harrowing and humorous. Doucette weaves a dark tale (laced with deftly comedic underpinnings) in a New England town rife with rumor, mystery, and murder all under a thin veil of magic. This clever, multi-layered, multi-generational book has a warm local flavor made hot with Italian-American spice...Doucette knows her characters intimately and what she describes—from gardens to grandmothers - and marriage to mayhem feels genuine and oddly familiar. Doucette paints portraits of characters which make them come alive as we read, makes us feel we know them. Let Doucette capture and pull you in with her words, so that she can frighten, amuse and mystify you with her droll inner dialog, excellent descriptive capacity and wise-cracking mind. A mystery. A Treat. A great read.
C. Anthony Martignette, Author, Lunatic Heroes and Beloved Demons
The Forgotten Roses is a mesmerizing story that pulls readers into the lives of thre women drawn together by a young woman's mysterious and tragic death. Deborah Doucette's novel is beautifully written with characters that are rich, complex and memorable. A spell-binding novel.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Barbara Walsh, Author of August Gale: A Father and Daughter's Journey Into the Storm
In The Forgotten Roses, Deborah Doucette spins a harrowing tale of three women and their shared journey into an entangled and deeply disturbing past. Doucette is a fresh new voice, and her lush, lyrical prose stays with you long after you've read the last line.
Kim Triedman, Author of The Other Room and Plum(b)
Discussion Questions
1. At the outset, the protagonist, Rebecca Griffin, seems stuck and unsettled. What is the turning point that begins to push her forward
2. Rebecca’s family and culture has had an enormous influence on the her, in both good ways and bad. Her upbringing had essentially created a blueprint for living. What are the ways in which they have held her back, and the ways in which they have strengthened her.
3. What are the parallels among the journeys of each of the main characters—Rebecca, Dana and Serena.
4. How have Rebecca’s past choices affected her children’s choices and behavior? And what legacy does she leave them in the end?
5. How does this quote from The Forgotten Roses resonate with you in your own life: “We unwittingly fashion our futures from the patterns of our past.”
6. In this day and age, is there a clear difference between a “good girl” and a “bad girl” or are the lines “blurred” as the pop song suggests? Are there good girls and bad girls in the story?
7. One of the elements in the story is the historical and systematic attempt to manipulate the “moral reform” of girls and women in society. (Although not mentioned by name in the book, the Magdalene Asylums are a good example of that). Was it a shock to learn that not long ago a young woman could be incarcerated for “shaming her family?” Do you feel that inequities in the justice system exist today for women?
8. In the end, there were no definitive answers regarding Deitzhoff’ and the goings on at the log cabin. The characters had to make choices without the benefit of the clear-cut information they sought. Was this lack of neatly tied-up loose-ends troubling, or merely a fact of life?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
After I'm Gone
Laura Lippman, 2014
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062083395
Summary
When Felix Brewer meets Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative—if not all legal—businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But in July 1976, Bambi's world implodes when Felix, facing prison, vanishes.
Though Bambi has no idea where her husband—or his money—might be, she suspects one woman does: his mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day after Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her lover—until her remains are discovered in a secluded park.
Now, twenty-six years later, Roberto Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for cash, is investigating her murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealousy, resentment, greed, and longing stretching over five decades. At its center is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten: the enigmatic Felix Brewer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 31, 1959
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.S., Northwestern University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a well known and respected writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team. Lippman is a former reporter for the (now defunct) San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter (like Lippman herself) turned private investigator. Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. Her 2007 release, What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York Times bestseller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which has been optioned for the movies by Academy Award–winning actor Frances McDormand.
Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. In January, 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College.
Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.
Awards
2015 Anthony Award-Best Novel (After I'm Gone)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Short Story ("Hardly Knew Her")
2008 Barry Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Macavity Award-Best Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2007 Anthony Award-Best Novel (No Good Deeds)
2007 Quill Award-Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2006 Gumshow Award-Best Novel (To the Power of the Three)
2004 Barry Award-Best Novel (Every Secret Thing)
2001 Nero Award (Sugar House)
2000 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
2000 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
1999 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (Butchers Hill)
1998 Agatha Award-Best Novel (Butchers Hill)
1998 Edgar Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
1998 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Although Ms. Lippman derived her story from the real-life disappearance of a Baltimore crook and also bases Sandy on a real homicide detective, this novel's murder case springs strictly from her own fecund imagination…Ms. Lippman is able to sustain a remarkable degree of detail about all these characters and still keep them sharply distinct and interesting.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Lippman is as skillful at plot as she is at characters and setting, and the twists in the novel’s final pages are both surprising and satisfying. [...] Like everything else Lippman has written, After I’m Gone transcends the limits of genre.
Washington Post
Equal parts love story, tragedy and murder mystery, Lippman’s latest thriller delivers twist and emotional depth with its tale of a philandering scheemer whose long-time mistress turns up dead years after he skipped town.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) On July 4, 1976, shady businessman Felix Brewer escapes the law by fleeing suburban Maryland, leaving behind his wife, Bambi; three daughters; and a mistress, Julie Saxony. So begins bestseller Lippman's finely wrought study of what it means to move forward without answers.
Publishers Weekly
[S]mart and mesmerizing...an involving and elegant novel of the psychological ravages of crime.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Coaxing the inevitable out of the improbable, Lippman is a bet you just can't lose.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. We begin the novel with Felix Brewer's point of view as he goes on the lam. Yet we don't return to Felix until the very last chapter, in which we see Felix through the eyes of his housekeeper, Consuelo. Why do you think the author chose to begin and end the story this way? Is this novel about Felix? Why or why not?
2. Young Bambi describes herself as a prize, and she certainly knows how to manage the game. What is it about Felix that draws her in so quickly and completely? Do you think his absence for much of their adult life influenced her feelings for him positively or negatively?
3. When Sandy reminisces about his first date with his departed wife, Mary, he recalls, "He was poised, as if on a tightrope, and things were either going to go very wrong or very right, no in-between." (p. 34) Do you think this kind of perspective is borne out by the events of the novel? Use examples to support your opinion.
4. On page 39, as he investigates the location where a dog-walking couple happened upon Julie Saxony's body, Sandy notes that everything seems too coincidental. He finds it odd that the location is so near Bambi's childhood home; that her disappearance occurred on the tenth anniversary of Felix's disappearance; and, finally, that her body "wasn't supposed to be found." He deduces that the killer wanted "people (not cops)" to think Julie had run off with Felix. In the end, for what "people" did the killer set up that assumption and why? What were the consequences of this choice?
5. One of the benefits of a novel with multiple point-of-view characters is that we get to see how each person's views of each other and of certain circumstances vary. Compare Felix's perspective of his relationships to Bambi and Julie in the first chapter to the reality these women express through their own perspectives. How else does the author use this technique to explore the complexity of the characters' relationships and of Julie's mysterious murder?
6. This novel revolves around two "father figure," older male characters: Felix, whose absence anchors the story, and Sandy, around whose investigation the story unfolds. Though he did it through criminal activity, Felix provided well for his family and valued his role as a father…until he left town. Sandy is a policeman, but looking back over his life he sees little more than a string of failures, especially regarding his son, Bobby, and his wife, Mary. Discuss these two characters and your opinions of them. What do you think the novel has to say about the total of our successes and shortcomings at the end of life?
7. Like any good mystery, the investigation of Julie Saxony's case is anything but straightforward. What clues did you pick up along the way, and which red herrings distracted you the most? On page 118, Sandy says, "Ruling stuff out was a kind of an answer." What does he rule out as he pursues Julie's killer?
8. Crow tells Sandy that his wife, a private investigator, "says money is the thing that drives people. Money and pride." (p. 142) Money—who has it, who doesn't—indeed plays a major role in this story. Identify some of the ways money influences the decisions made by characters in this novel. Was Julie's murder really about money in the end, as Sandy believes, or something else? How does pride factor into the events surrounding Julie's murder?
9. On page 145, Sandy admits with some surprise that "the things [he] thought he remembered best were the things he was getting wrong." But he also wonders if, as long as they were loving (particularly regarding Mary), it really mattered whether his memories were inaccurate. What do you think? How else do memories play a role in the mystery of After I'm Gone?
10. Sandy Sanchez, our detective, frequently expresses irritation that so many norteamericanos assume his nickname comes from his appearance. They are unaware, he explains with frustration, that fair hair and blue eyes—such as his own—are quite common in Cuba. Identify other characters in the novel who struggle with stereotypes. Who defies the stereotypes that others put on them? In what ways do some characters seem to support their stereotypes?
11. When Bambi almost offhandedly remarks that she's going to confess to Julie's murder, what did you think? Was it immediately apparent to you—as it was to the police—that she was lying? Why would she do this? What secrets did you unravel or fail to catch along the way to the big reveal?
12. After the truth is revealed, Bambi muses aloud to Bert, "It would be nice if at least one of us got what we wanted in this world. At least our kids seem to have. There's some comfort in that." (p. 312). What do you think—do any of the characters in After I'm Gone get what they want? At what cost?
13. In addition to the suspense of unraveling a murder mystery, this novel explores what happens to the Brewer women and Julie in the aftermath of Felix's disappearance. As we ride along on their journey, with glimpses into their most private thoughts and sometimes those of their closest friends, what did you come to think of these five women? Did your opinion of them, and their actions, change throughout the novel? If so, how? If not, why not?
14. Discuss the significance of the title, "After I'm Gone." In what ways does it refer to Felix? To what other characters and situations might it also apply?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)