Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Einstein's Daughter
Tim Symonds, 2014
MX Publishing
206 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781780925721
Summary
In 1986 Einstein’s first son, Hans Albert Einstein, investigated an old shoebox tucked away on the top shelf of a wardrobe. It contained several dozen yellowed letters in German type, exchanges between Albert and Mileva. Italian, Swiss, German and Austro-Hungarian postmarks reflected their peripatetic life. Letters dated between early 1901 and 1903 mention a daughter they refer to as Lieserl. After September 1903 her name never appears again, anywhere.
Lieserl remains a subject of mystery and speculation. Researchers regularly trek to Serbia to conduct investigations. They comb through registries, synagogues, church and monastery archives throughout the Vojvodina region, the place of her birth and short life, but to no avail.
In The Mystery of Einstein’s Daughter Holmes exclaims, ‘the most ruthless effort has been made by public officials, priests, monks, friends, family and relatives by marriage, to seek out and destroy every document with Lieserl’s name on it. The question is—why? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1937
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of California-Los Angeles
• Currently—lives in Sussex, England
Tim Symonds was born in London. He grew up in Somerset, Dorset and Guernsey. After several years working in the Kenya Highlands and along the Zambezi he emigrated to the United States. He studied at Göttingen and at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Political Science.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery Of Einstein’s Daughter was written in a converted oast house near Rudyard Kipling’s old home, Bateman’s in Sussex and in the forests and hidden valleys of the High Weald. The plot is based on an original research paper published by Tim Symonds, entitled "A Vital Detail In The Story Of Albert Einstein."
The author’s other detective novels include Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Bulgarian Codex and Sherlock Holmes and The Dead Boer at Scotney Castle. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
[T]o remove the duo of Holmes and Watson from their original context is to me rather disturbing and also removes much of their real appeal as characters. Thankfully, the author of this novel, Tim Symonds, places his Holmes and Watson in a context that I could fully see Conan Doyle approving of and one that draws the reader into an exciting mystery. What makes the Symonds’ book work is the author’s keen sense of timing and his expansive knowledge of history and period traditions and culture.... Symonds’ command of historical detail cannot be overstated: The man has been able to gather a wealth of compelling details about everything from restaurants of the period to the spectre of scarlet fever and weaves all of this into the narrative. While the novel is of course fiction, the supporting details when sourced from history are fully accurate and the reader will learn many fascinating things about England, Serbia, and the general state of life at the time just by reading this very engrossing mystery.... Any complaints? Well, perhaps the book could have been longer, and that isn’t just to say it was so good I didn’t want it to end, though it was in fact that good.... Tim Symonds’ take on Sherlock Holmes is a fine one, and one of very few worthy of Conan Doyle’s characters found in contemporary post-canonical writing concerning Holmes and Watson. Highly recommended.
InSerbia
Discussion Questions
1. The novel is closely based on a real life event in Einstein's youth, during his time at the Zurich Polytechnic. How many people know Einstein sired an illegitimate daughter, and what was her fate?
2. Taking Sherlock Holmes out of his "comfort zone" of London left him with a fast learning track to go along in deepest Serbia. How much research do you think an author needs to do to get the facts and atmosphere right, in this case Serbia in 1905? (Answer, it took Tim Symonds 3 years and about 30 books)
3. How well does it work for a fictitious character, Sherlock Holmes, to investigate a real and larger-than-life character like Albert Einstein? The author found it really interesting because millions in the world truly believe Holmes existed while millions can imagine Einstein as some figment of the world of science's collective mind
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Before We Met
Lucie Whitehouse, 2014
Bloomsbury USA
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620402757
Summary
Hannah, independent, headstrong, and determined not to follow in the footsteps of her bitterly divorced mother, has always avoided commitment. But one hot New York summer she meets Mark Reilly, a fellow Brit, and is swept up in a love affair that changes all her ideas about what marriage might mean.
Now, living in their elegant, expensive London townhouse and adored by her fantastically successful husband, she knows she was right to let down her guard.
But when Mark does not return from a business trip to the U.S. and when the hours of waiting for him stretch into days, the foundations of Hannah’s certainty begin to crack. Why do Mark’s colleagues believe he has gone to Paris not America? Why is there no record of him at his hotel? And who is the mysterious woman who has been telephoning him over the last few weeks?
Hannah begins to dig into her husband’s life, uncovering revelations that throw into doubt everything she has ever believed about him. As her investigation leads her away from their fairytale romance into a place of violence and fear she must decide whether the secrets Mark has been keeping are designed to protect him or protect her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Raised—Warwickshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Lucie Whitehouse was born in the Cotswolds in England 1975 and grew up in Warwickshire. She studied Classics at Oxford University and then began a career in publishing while spending evenings, weekends and holidays working on the book that would eventually become The House at Midnight (2008). Next came her novel The Bed I Made (2010), followed by Before We Met (2014).
Having married in 2011, she now divides her time between the UK and Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband. She writes full time and has contributed features to the London Times, Sunday Times, Independent, Elle and Red Magazine. (From publisher.)
Book Reviews
Lucie Whitehouse's third novel is slow to get going, but a growing sense of dread makes this "marriage thriller" a nail-biter.... Characters, particularly the more minor ones, are not fleshed out.... But despite its flaws, once Before We Met hits its stride, it turns into a creepily effective thriller, Whitehouse ramping up the chills with her dark wintry weather and her glimpses into the creation of a disturbed mind.
Guardian (UK)
The tension builds revelation by revelation and barely loosens its grip throughout—the kind of thriller to keep you turning pages into the small hours and then miss your stop on your morning commute.... the quiet tension of the first half dissipates into a more action-packed and rather predictable run of events. Whitehouse has a feel for a compelling plot but she has a tendency to over-write around the edges.
Alice Jones - Independent (UK)
This type of domestic thriller...is clearly having a moment, and there are some terrific and terrifying versions out there. Some aspects of what Whitehouse is doing here have been done before, and better. That said, there’s no doubt that Whitehouse’s writing keeps you glued to the page—I read this in one sitting, and it was an enjoyable one at that..
Daneet Steffens - Boston Globe
Newly married Hannah thinks she knows her husband, Mark, until the night he doesn’t arrive home and she realizes nothing it what it seemed. Even when you think you’ve figured it out, this one is hard to put down.
Good Housekeeping
Whitehouse takes a familiar premise—a woman with doubts about her new husband—and spins it into an intriguing thriller that avoids romantic-suspense clichés.... As [Hannah] struggles with her trust issues, she must consider whether Mark is trying to protect her.... [The novel] soon picks up speed and builds to a tense, unexpected climax.
Publishers Weekly
Will hook readers from the first page...a gripping cat-and-mouse read.
Booklist
[T]he relationship between two newlyweds following the husband's disappearance.... Whitehouse cleverly builds the suspense bit by bit, taking the reader deftly from the couple's initial newlywed bliss to Hannah's growing realization that things may not be what they seem.... [A] well-drawn, taught thriller all the way to the end.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Orfeo
Richard Powers, 2014
W.W. Norton
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393240825
Summary
The National Book Award–winning author of The Echo Maker delivers his most emotionally charged novel to date, inspired by the myth of Orpheus.
In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present.
Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els—the "Bioterrorist Bach"—pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey.
Through the help of his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime collaborator, Els hatches a plan to turn this disastrous collision with the security state into a work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around them. The result is a novel that soars in spirit and language by a writer who “may be America’s most ambitious novelist” (Kevin Berger, San Francisco Chronicle). (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 18, 1957
• Where—Evanston, Illinois, USA
• Education—M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—National Book Award-Fiction
• Currently—lives in the Smoky Mountian region of Tennessee
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. The Echo Maker, perhaps his best known work, won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.
Early years
One of five children, Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois. His family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood where his father was a local school principal. When Powers was 11 they moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok, which Powers attended through his freshman year, ending in 1972.
During that time outside the U.S. he developed skill in vocal music and proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction, primarily, and classics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Education
The family returned to the U.S. when Powers was 16. Following graduation in 1975 from DeKalb High School in DeKalb, Illinois, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a major in physics, which he switched to English literature during his first semester. There he earned the BA in 1978 and the MA in Literature in 1980.
He decided not to pursue the PhD partly because of his aversion to strict specialization, which had been one reason for his early transfer from physics to English, and partly because he had observed in graduate students and their professors a lack of pleasure in reading and writing (as portrayed in Galatea 2.2).
Career
For some time Powers worked in Boston, as a computer programmer. Viewing the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander, on a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, he was inspired to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first book, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985.
To avoid the publicity and attention generated by that first novel, Powers moved to the Netherlands where he wrote Prisoner's Dilemma, followed up with The Gold Bug Variations. During a year's stay at the University of Cambridge, he wrote most of Operations Wandering Soul; then, in 1992 Powers returned to the U.S. to become writer-in-residence at the University of Illinois.
All told, Powers has published a dozen books, winning him numerous literary awards and other recognitions. These include, among various others, a MacArthur Fellowship; Pushcart Prize, PEN/Faulkner Special Citation, Man Booker long listing; nominations for the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the National Book Award itself in 2006.
In 2010 and 2013, Powers was a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, during which time he partly assisted in the lab of biochemist Aaron Straight. In 2013, Stanford named him the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English.
While writing his 2018 novel, The Overstory, Powers left Palo Alto, California, moving to the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/16/2018.)
Book Reviews
Why…was I unable to resist the emotional pull of Orfeo? Why did I pick it up eagerly each day and find myself moist-eyed when I came to its last pages? That, I think, has everything to do with Powers's skill at putting us into the mind of his protagonist. Peter Els is blessed (or cursed) with an almost painfully exquisite musical sensibility. Throughout Orfeo we experience tonal patterns of all kinds—from bird song to the overtone series of a single piano note to the "caldera of noise" at a John Cage happening and the "naked pain" in the Largo of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony—filtered through Peter's lyrical consciousness.
Jim Holt - New York Times Book Review
Extraordinary…his evocations of music, let alone lost love, simply soar off the page…. Once again, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our finest novelists.
Newsday
Orfeo… establishes beyond any doubt that the novel is very much alive.
Troy Jollimore - Chicago Tribune
Orfeo is that rare novel truly deserving of the label ‘lyrical'…. Richard Powers offers a profound story whose delights are many and lasting.
Harvey Freedenberg - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Powers deftly dramatizes the obsession that has defined Els’s life: ‘How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul?'
The New Yorker
Powers proves, once again, that he's a master of the novel with Orfeo, an engrossing and expansive read that is just as much a profile of a creative, obsessive man as it is an escape narrative.
Elizabeth Sile - Esquire
Orfeo reveals how a life, and the narrative of a life, accumulates, impossibly, infinitely, from every direction…. In this retelling of the Orpheus myth Powers also manages enchantment.
Scott Korb - Slate
(Starred review.) When Els’s dog has a heart attack, police respond to his 911 call and stumble into a room converted into an amateur biochemical engineering lab.... Powers’s talent for translating avant-garde music into engrossing vignettes on the page is inexhaustible. Els’s obsession...isolates him from everyone he loves, becomes the very thing that aligns him with the reader.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Retired composer Peter Els has an unusual hobby, do-it-yourself genetic engineering. Is his work dangerous? We’re not sure.... Powers has a way of rendering the world that makes it seem familiar and alien, friendly and frightening. He is sometimes criticized as too cerebral, but when the story’s strands knit fully together in the final act, the effect is heartbreaking and beautiful. —Keir Graff
Booklist
(Starred review.) The earmarks of the renowned novelist's work are here—the impressive intellect, the patterns connecting music and science and so much else, the classical grounding of the narrative—but rarely have his novels been so tightly focused and emotionally compelling.... [T]his is taut, trim storytelling.
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 using these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Orfeo:
1. We're told at the beginning of Orfeo that Americans have shortened their attention spans. “The country’s collective concentration was simply shot,” Powers writes. “People couldn’t hold a thought or pursue a short-term goal for anywhere near as long as they could a few years before.” Do you agree? If so, why...or how?
2. Throughout his life Peter has craved a sense of awe: "surprise...suspense...and a sense of the infinite...beauty"—a nobel goal, perhaps. But in his attempts to attain the sublime, what has he sacrificed?
3. The music that Peter has worked his life to create has as its goal "to change its listeners....to raise everyone he every new from the dead and make them laugh with remembering." Is he overstating his belief in music's capabilities? What is music's effect on the human soul? What is it to you personally?
4. What drives Peter? What is he so desperate to encode melody in the nucleotides of bacteria? What might Richard Powers be suggesting about the place of music in life...or the place of all art?
5. "All I ever wanted was to make one slight noise that might delight you all," Peter says. what does he mean? Is he being disingenuous...or sincere?
6. The book can be seen as a commentary on government's overreaching and the media's gullibility. In fact, Powers draws parallels between viruses and viral media. In light of 9/11, is the nation overly tramatized? Or do think our fearfulness is justified?
7. If you're not already familiar with the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, do some research. Why has the author chosen this to name his book after Orpheus (more precisely, the the opera by Monteverdi)? Is the title symbolic? Is it ironic?
8. On the lam from government agents, Peter revisits his past. To which character are are you most sympathetic? His exwife, perhaps, or his daughter? How did Richard's pursuit of transcendence and music interfer, even damage, his relaitonships with those closest to him?
9. Talk about the book's other powerful stories of fraught connections between music and politics—Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," written in a Nazi death camp, and Shostakovich's relationship with the Stalin regime.
10. Peter believes that we are glutted with artistic attempts to be original and transcendent. What do you make of his observation that "the job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste."
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup, 1853, 1968, 2008
Penguin Group (USA)
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143125419
Summary
Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.
After his rescue, Northup published this exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life. It became an immediate bestseller and today is recognized for its unusual insight and eloquence as one of the very few portraits of American slavery produced by someone as educated as Solomon Northup, or by someone with the dual perspective of having been both a free man and a slave. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 1808
• Where—Minerva, New York, USA
• Death—1863?
• Where—unknown
Solomon Northup was a free-born African American from New York, the son of a freed slave. A farmer and violinist, he owned a property in Hebron. In 1841 he was kidnapped by slave-traders, having been enticed with a job offer as a violinist. When he accompanied his supposed employers to Washington, DC, they drugged him and sold him as a slave.
He was shipped to New Orleans where he was sold to a plantation owner in Louisiana. He was held in the Red River region of Louisiana by several different owners for 12 years, during which time his friends and family had no word of him. He made repeated attempts to escape and get messages out of the plantation. Eventually he got news to his family, who contacted friends and enlisted the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, to his cause. He regained his freedom in January 1853 and returned to his family in New York.
Northup sued the slave traders in Washington, DC, but lost in the local court. District of Columbia law prohibited him as a black man from testifying against whites and, without his testimony, he was unable to sue for civil damages. Later, in New York State, two men were charged with kidnapping but two years later the charges were dropped.
In his first year of freedom Northup published an account of his experiences in the memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853). Northup also gave dozens of lectures throughout the Northeast about his experiences in order to support the abolitionist cause. The details of his death are uncertain.
Northup's memoir was adapted and produced as a 2013 film directed and produced by Steve McQueen, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/25/2014.)
Book Reviews
I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank’s Diary, only published nearly a hundred years before.... The book blew [my] mind: the epic range, the details, the adventure, the horror, and the humanity.... I hope my film can play a part in drawing attention to this important book of courage. Solomon’s bravery and life deserve nothing less. (From the Forward.)
Steve McQueen, director of 12 Years a Slave
If you think the movie offers a terrible-enough portrait of slavery, please, do read the book.... The film is stupendous art, but it owes much to a priceless piece of document. Solomon Northup’s memoir is history.... His was not simply an extraordinary story, but an account of the life of a great many ordinary people.
Daily Beast
Northup published a memoir of his 12-year nightmare in 1853, the year after Uncle Tom’s Cabin came out, and it was so successful that he went on to participate in two stage adaptations. The book dropped from sight in the 20th century, but the movie tie-in will certainly reestablish its virtually unique status as a work by an educated free man who managed to return from slavery.
Hollywood Reporter
Discussion Questions
1. Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave was one of some 150 so-called "Slave Narratives" published before the Civil War. Their purpose was to give the white Northerners a first-hand glimpse of slavery and to enlist them in the antislavery crusade. They were both literature and propaganda. What is the essence of Northup's description of Southern slavery?
2. One of the distinguishing features of Twelve Years a Slave is its specificity. Unlike most slave narratives, Northup did not employ pseudonyms for persons or places and rarely wrote in generalities. Northup also studiously avoided stereotypes: there are good masters and bad; slaves who resist and those who collapse before white power. Northup hoped that this frank portrayal would convince readers of the authenticity of his story. Does it? How does it achieve that aim?
3. After witnessing the brutalities not only of white masters against enslaved blacks, but also white brutality against other whites, Northup observed, "It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives" (p. 135). Do you think this observation is accurate? Does it seem accurate to state that both whites and enslaved blacks that lived in the South were mutually affected by the system of slavery?
4. Although Northup says little directly about the struggle against slavery that is preoccupying the nation in the decade before the Civil War, Twelve Years a Slave is one of the most powerful weapons in the antislavery arsenal. What makes it so?
5. Another distinguishing mark of Twelve Years a Slave is the author's free status. Most of the slave narratives-like that of Frederick Douglass, for example-were written by an author who had been born into slavery. How does Northup's free status shape his narrative? How might it have influenced the book's reception?
6. How does Northup depict black life in the North?
7. In the North, free black people lived in fear of kidnappers, who operated with near impunity in almost all Northern cities. Yet, Northup seems impervious to the possibilities that he might be targeted and that the offer to join a circus might be too good to be true. What might have made Northup miss the seemingly obvious danger?
8. Solomon Northup was a keen observer of human nature. Did his ability to discern people's character build solidarity with his fellow slaves or did his analytic skills to observe how others dealt with the reality of enslavement distance him from the slave community? With what types of men and women did Northup find commonality or comradeship?
9. Solomon Northup never gave up hope of regaining his freedom and resisted the dehumanization of enslavement in many ways. How did he and other slaves resist slavery?
10. The family played a critical role in Northup's life in both freedom and slavery. How does his portrayal of black family life shape his narrative and his critique of slavery?
11. Related to the emphasis on family life is the role played by women, black and white, in Northup's narrative. In fact, females are among the most important characters in Twelve Years a Slave. How do women serve as a measure for the nature of slavery?
12. Describe the position of women within the slaveholding world. How would you characterize someone like Eliza or Patsy? What are the differences between the experiences of enslaved women and slaveholding mistresses like Mrs. Epps? Are women more or less vulnerable than men to the brutality of a slave society, or is it a different kind of vulnerability altogether? What advantages or disadvantages might enslaved women have over enslaved men?
13. Northup has a good deal to say about labor. What is his understanding of the nature of work, the development of a work ethic, the relations between employees and employers (in the North) and slave and masters (in the South), and the quality and productivity of labor in both sections?
14. Music plays a large role in Northup's life. Northup's omnipresent fiddle was a source of empowerment and a symbol of his subordination. What does the fiddle tell us about Northup and African American life in slavery and freedom?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Austenland
Shannon Hale, 2007
Bloomsbury USA
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620404867
Summary
Jane is a young New York woman who can never seem to find the right man—perhaps because of her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Predjudice.
When a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-obsessed women, however, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined.
Is this total immersion in a fake Austenland enough to make Jane kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 26, 1974
• Where—Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Utah; M.A., Universityof Montana
• Awards—Newbery Honor
• Currently—lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
Shannon Hale is an American author of young adult fantasy and adult fiction, including the Newbery Honor book Princess Academy, the Books of Bayern series, two adult novels, and two graphic novels that she co-wrote with her husband. Her comic adult novel, Austenland, was adapted to film in 2013.
Early life
Shannon Bryner was born in Salt Lake City, where she began writing at the age of 10. She attended West High School. After high school, she pursued acting in television, stage, and improvisational comedy. She also studied studying in Mexico and the United Kingdom. She spent a year and a half as an unpaid missionary in Paraguay, then returned to the United States to earn her bachelor's degree in English from the University of Utah and a master's in creative writing from the University of Montana. Hale also worked as an instructional designer, developing web-based training for Avaltus and Allen Communication before becoming a full-time writer.
Published works
Her first published book, The Goose Girl, met with numerous rejections until it was finally published in 2003. In 2004 her second novel, Enna Burning, which follows a minor character from The Goose Girl, was published. The third installment in the Bayern series, River Secrets, was released in September 2006. By then Hale had earned numerous awards for her 2005 release, Princess Academy, including the prestigious Newbery Honor. A sequel to Princess Academy came out in 2012, called Palace of Stone.
She has published three adult novels, Austenland, The Actor and the Housewife, and Midnight in Austenland (a sequel to Austenland). She and her husband Dean Hale have also published a graphic novel, Rapunzel's Revenge. A sequel, entitled Calamity Jack, was published in 2010.
A young adult fantasy novel and the fourth book in the Books of Bayern series, Forest Born, came out in 2009.
Personal life
Shannon has four children with husband Dean Hale. The family resides in South Jordan, Utah, where Sharon is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/24/2014.)
Book Reviews
Cheeky irreverence…. For all her breezily amused tone, Hale treats Jane and her fellow park "clients" with affection, and she shows that the Janes of today are as likely as the Darcys to shy from commitment.
Los Angeles Times
An homage to Austen and Fielding….Austenland offers hope that after years of fruitless searching for a companion, just when you're ready to give up on love, it will find you all on its own.
Houston Chronicle
he Austen-themed resort called Pembrook Park exists so far only in Austenland, a just-published chick-lit novel by Shannon Hale, whose author's note describes her as "an avid Austen fan and admirer of men in britches." Hale's heroine is a "Sex and the City" career gal who can't keep a boyfriend and who has a crush on Mr. Darcy. Oh, not the "real" one—the one played by Colin Firth in the BBC Pride and Prejudice.
Newsweek
Jane [Hayes] is forced to confront her Austen obsession when her wealthy great-aunt Carolyn dies and leaves her an all-expenses-paid vacation to Pembrook Park, a British resort where guests live like the characters in Jane's beloved Austen novels.... Nods to Austen are abundant in contemporary women's fiction, and an intriguing setup and abundant wit are not enough to make this one stand out.
Publishers Weekly
In her first novel for adults, Newbery Honor Medalist Hale (Princess Academy) puts an intriguing twist on Austenmania by writing about a Jane Austen fantasy camp tailor.... The hijinks that follow are entertaining if predictable. An amusing trifle likely to please chick-lit readers and Austen aficionados who enjoy modern twists on the author's classic tales. —Nanette Donohue
Library Journal
Jane, called Miss Erstwhile for the duration of her stay, tries to get used to corsets and other Regency amusements while sorting out whether the attentions of a Darcyesque Mr. Nobley, not to mention a good-looking gardener, are sincere or part of the show. A clever confection for fans of contemporary Austen knockoffs. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
The novel is clever in its depiction of the many ways in which romance can fall away, and Jane is no fool as she attempts to sort out the real from the make-believe.... But ultimately this is a romance novel in which lovers who are meant to be together overcome miscues and misunderstandings before the final clinch. Mindless froth that Austen addicts will love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Austenland opens, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirtysomething woman in possession of a satisfying career and fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little, and Jane Hayes, pretty enough and clever enough, was certainly thought to have little to distress her” (1). How does this sentence set the stage for the novel? Compare it to the famous first sentence of Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Which of these universal “truths” is actually true, if either?
2. Austenland, besides chronicling Jane’s stay at Pembrook Park, lists all thirteen “boyfriends” she’s had in her lifetime. How well does the reader get to know Jane’s past? How much has she changed from her first relationship at age twelve to the one that is now just beginning?
3. Jane observes of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice: “Stripped of Austen’s funny, insightful, biting narrator, the movie became a pure romance” (2). What would Austenland be like without Jane’s own funny, insightful, biting narration?
4. Looking at the gallery of portraits in Pembrook Park, Jane feels “an itch inside her hand” to paint a portrait, “but she scratched the desire away. She hadn’t picked up a paintbrush since college” (36). How is Jane’s artistic itch intensified during her stay at Pembrook Park? How does she come to the realization that “she wanted to love someone the way she felt when painting—fearless, messy, vivid” (125)? In the end, has she found that type of artistic love?
5. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s mother, Mrs. Bennet, is known for her determination to marry off her daughters and for her frequent social blunders. How does Miss Charming, Jane’s fellow visitor to Pembrook Park, resemble Mrs. Bennet? What are some of Charming’s funny faux pas and verbal blunders?
6. Jane realizes, “Wait a minute, why was she always so worried about the Austen gentlemen, anyway? What about the Austen heroine?” (105) Is the heroine given short shrift by many Austen fans today? Why or why not?
7. Jane calls herself and Mr. Nobley “Impertinence and Inflexibility” (133). How do these nicknames originate? How do these traits compare to the pride and prejudice of Darcy and Elizabeth in Austen’s novel?
8. Jane’s great-aunt Carolyn set the whole Pembrook Park adventure into motion. What do you think Carolyn’s intentions were in sending Jane to this Austenland? Do you think Jane fulfilled those expectations?
9. Jane comes to wonder what kind of fantasy world Jane Austen might have created for herself: “Did Austen herself feel this way? Was she hopeful? Jane wondered if the unmarried writer had lived inside Austenland with close to Jane’s own sensibility—amused, horrified, but in very real danger of being swept away” (123). Is it possible to guess at Austen’s attitude toward romance by reading her work? Why or why not?
10. Looking at Henry Jenkins, Jane realizes that “just then she herself was more Darcy than Erstwhile, sitting there admiring his fine eyes, feeling dangerously close to falling in love against her will” (190). Are there other occasions in which Jane is more Darcy than Erstwhile? Is it possible that today’s single, thirtysomething woman is more a Darcy than a so-called spinster?
11. Jane walks away from Nobley and Martin at the airport with the parting words, “Tell Mrs. Wattlesbrook I said tallyho” (186). Why does Jane enjoy her last line so much? What does she mean by “tallyho”?
12. What might Jane Austen think of Austenland, if she were alive today? Could she have possibly anticipated how influential her novels would become, even for twenty-first-century audiences? Could she ever have imagined a fan like Jane Hayes?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)