Ham: Slices of a Life (Essays and Stories)
Sam Harris, 2014
Gallery Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476733418
Summary
ham (noun) [hæm]
1 the hind leg of a hog, salted, smoked, and cured
2 second son of Noah
3 somebody who performs in an exaggerated showy style
—always hamming it up
Just when you thought you knew everything about ham, you discover that ham is also:
4 a reason to laugh about everyday life, and 5 an irresistible collection of humorous essays from a man who was born to entertain us.
In sixteen brilliantly observed true stories, Sam Harris emerges as a natural humorist in league with David Sedaris, Chelsea Handler, Carrie Fisher, and Steve Martin, but with a voice uniquely his own. Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times for his "manic, witty commentary," and with a storytelling talent the New York Times calls "New Yorker– worthy," he puts a comedic spin on full-disclosure episodes from his own colorful life.
What better place to find painfully funny material than in growing up gay, gifted, and ambitious in the heart of the Bible belt? And that’s just the first cut: From partying to parenting, from Sunday school to getting sober, these slices of Ham will have you laughing and wiping away salty tears in equal measure with their universal and down-to-earth appeal. After all, there’s a little ham in all of us. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 4, 1961
• Where—Sand Springs, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—attended University of California-Los Angeles
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Samuel Kent Harris is an American pop and musical theatre recording artist, as well as a television, stage and film actor. In 2014 he published a collection of stories and essays entitled Ham: Slices of a Life.
Early years
Born in Oklahoma, Sam left home at the age of 15 to pursue a career, performing in regional and repertory theatre. He finished high school through correspondence courses and then attended UCLA in Los Angeles. Winning the Frank Sinatra Pop Singing Award—and praised by Sinatra himself ("This kid's got it!")—gave Harris the encouragement he needed to leave school.
For two years, according to his website, he "played every dump and dive in LA for a measly $25 a set," eventually soloing in Out of Control. Singing "God Bless the Child" in a straitjacket, he caught the attention of talent scouts for Star Search, which was scheduled for its first season in 1983.
Singing
On Star Search, with 25 million viewers tuning in week after week, Sam won the first season's grand prize. He became famous for his winning rendition of "Over the Rainbow," which has since become his signature song. His win on Star Search led to a contract with Motown Records, where his first single, "Sugar Don't Bite," became a Top 40 hit, reaching #36 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1984.
Today, he is a multi-million selling recording artist with nine studio albums to his credit. He can also be heard on numerous concert, guest artist and cast recordings. He has toured extensively in concert and has played to sold-out audiences at major venues including New York's Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles' Universal Amphitheater and London's West End.
He has appeared with the Boston Pops Symphony Orchestra, at the White House and has sung on a variety of television specials and live productions. In 2008, he released a new single, "War on War," which became an internet phenom with music videos made by the general public. The song became a part of his album, "Free," released that summer. The single "Change Is On The Way" was written to support the Obama campaign and was heard on numerous television shows and behind internet videos around the time of the election. In 2010, Sam wrote and released "My Reclamation," which has become the anthem for marriage equality.
Stage
On Broadway, he received a Drama Desk nomination for his role in the Tommy Tune directed revival of Grease, and a Drama League Award as well as Tony, Outer Critic's Circle and Drama Desk Award nominations for his work in Cy Coleman's Tony nominated musical The Life. He's also appeared on Broadway in Mel Brooks' Tony Award winning musical The Producers, in the national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and in the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret, Hair, and Pippin. He also starred in the self-penned shows Hardcopy, Different Hats, Revival and the critically acclaimed SAM. Harris' most recent theatrical outing was the film-to-musical adaptation of The First Wives Club seen in a limited run at San Diego's The Old Globe Theatre in the summer of 2009.
Films
Harris has appeared in three feature films to date: In the Weeds (2000, as Jonathan), the documentary Little Man (2005, as himself) and Elena Undone (2010, as Tyler).
Television
Harris co-created the television series Down to Earth (1984, which ran for 4 years and 104 episodes). He was a series regular on The Class (2006-2007 - Perry Pearl). Harris is also credited on Rules of Engagement, (Jackie, recurring, 2009), The Wayne Brady Show (2003 - Actor, 1 episode) and the Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration (2001, music supervisor). He has also appeared on numerous talk shows including The Rosie O'Donnell Show (1997 and 2000 - 3 episodes), The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1994 - 1 episode), Brunch as a co-host (2006 - 1 episode), The Oprah Winfrey Show (1997 and 2001 - two episodes), Dr. Phil's 500th episode (2005), The View (2007 - 1 episode), The Tyra Banks Show (2010), The Dr. Drew Show (2011).
Personal life
Harris and Danny Jacobsen, a director and presentation coach for numerous blue-chip companies and also a film producer, have been together since 1994. They adopted a son, Cooper Atticus Harris-Jacobsen, in 2008. The couple married on November 1, 2008. (Adapted from the author's website and Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/24/2014.)
Book Reviews
The essays in Ham are both rip-roaringly funny and sentimental, drawing natural (and justified) comparisons to David Sedaris and David Rakoff.
Esquire
Reading singer-actor Harris’s essays is like having your smartest gay BFF propped up on your pillow sipping cosmos, regaling you with gossip and his keen wit.
People
[V]ividly crafted series of essays.... Harris, the first-season champion of Star Search in 1983, explores his youth in Sand Springs, Okla.; he felt he was “odd and bizarre and deviant,” an unathletic kid whose father, the high school band leader, was embarrassed by but resigned to Harris’s obsession with theater... “Liver” is the most hilarious piece of this charmingly candid collection.
Publishers Weekly
It turns out that the pop singer has the writing chops to tell a good tale, but be prepared for a slew of name-dropping.... There's melancholy aplenty, but most of the stories are uplifted by Harris' quirky sense of humor.... Entertaining and occasionally moving tales from the wilds of showbiz.
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.)
This Dark Road to Mercy
Wiley Cash, 2014
HarperCollins
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062088253
Summary
A Land More Kind Than Home made Wiley Cash an instant literary sensation. His resonant new novel, This Dark Road to Mercy, is a tale of love and atonement, blood and vengeance, a story that involves two young sisters, a wayward father, and an enemy determined to see him pay for his sins.
When their mother dies unexpectedly, twelve-year-old Easter Quillby and her six-year-old sister, Ruby, are shuffled into the foster care system in Gastonia, North Carolina, a little town not far from the Appalachian Mountains.
But just as they settle into their new life, their errant father, Wade, an ex–minor league baseball player whom they haven't seen in years, suddenly reappears and steals them away in the middle of the night.
Brady Weller, the girls' court-appointed guardian, begins looking for Wade, and quickly turns up unsettling information linking him to a multimillion-dollar robbery. But Brady isn't the only one hunting him. Also on the trail is Robert Pruitt, a mercurial man nursing a years-old vendetta, a man determined to find Wade and claim what he believes he is owed.
The combination of Cash's evocative and intimate Southern voice and those of the alternating narrators, Easter, Brady, and Pruitt, brings this soulful story vividly to life. At once captivating and heartbreaking, This Dark Road to Mercy is a testament to the unbreakable bonds of family and the primal desire to outrun a past that refuses to let go. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Where—Gastonia, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of North Carolina;
Ph.D., University of Louisiana
• Currently—lives in Wilmington, North Carolina
Wiley Cash is from western North Carolina, a region that figures prominently in his fiction. A Land More Than Home, his first novel was published in 2012, followed by This Dark Road to Mercy in 2014.
Wiley holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (where he studied under author Ernest Gaines).
He has received grants and fellowships from the Asheville Area Arts Council, the Thomas Wolfe Society, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. His stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Roanoke Review and Carolina Quarterly, and his essays on Southern literature have appeared in American Literary Realism, South Carolina Review, and other publications.
Wiley lives with his wife and two daughters in Wilmington, North Carolina. He serves as the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and teaches in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA. (Adapted from previous and current bios on the author's website. Retrieved 10/4/2017.)
Book Reviews
Twelve-year-old Easter and her six-year-old sister Ruby are caught in the foster care system...[when] their erstwhile father... spirits them away from the one stable home the girls have known. Add to this mix a thug looking for Wade, owing to some missing money....this book captures the reader's attention from the start and never lets go. —Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Library Journal
[A] striking take on Southern literature.... In the rhythms and cadence of the South, Cash offers a tale about...seeking redemption. The story unfolds in three voices: 12-year-old Easter...; Brady, weary, bitter, intent on finding justice...; and Robert Pruitt...an ex-con driven by 'roid-rage.... A story of family, blood loyalty and making choices that can seem right but end up wrong.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In This Dark Road to Mercy, people are not always what they seem, and assumptions are sometimes proven wrong. Easter, for example, may be a kid, but she's incredibly smart and mature for her age as evidenced from the very first page of the novel. What assumptions does Easter make about Wade, based on her mother's stories and her fragmented memories? Do you think she was right about him? Why or why not? Who else has suffered because of assumptions made about them by others?
2. Wade makes two remarks to Easter regarding their skin color (white) versus that of their schoolmates (black) during their first meeting in the book. Later on, Wade unthinkingly buys the girls an inflatable raft decorated with the Confederate flag. Discuss the subtle themes of race, class, and other social factors running through this novel. How important to the story is it that the main characters are underprivileged or otherwise struggling financially? How might the story have been different if the characters were middle class, or even wealthy?
3. When Easter discovers her mother unconscious and on drugs, she decides not to call 911, but to let her mother sleep it off. Why? Identify other moments in the novel where Easter decides to do something other than the more obvious or expected thing. What effect does this have on your opinion of her? 4. Marcus accuses Easter of not wanting anyone to know about their relationship. He seems to be hinting that it's because he is black and she is white. Do you think he's right? Why or why not? Why else might Easter have wanted to keep her feelings about Marcus private?
5. Though we don't yet know his motivations, we are introduced to Wade when he first contacts Easter on the schoolyard after school one day. Later she overhears him talking to Miss Crawford about trying to get the girls back. He claims he was tricked into signing away his parental rights and says, "I know how the law works, and I know it never works for people like me." What does he mean by this? Do you feel sympathetic toward Wade? Use examples from the novel to illustrate your opinion.
6. Wade and the girls are on the run for most of the novel. Identify what, and whom, they are running from and discuss how other characters are similarly "on the run," either literally or metaphorically.
7. Easter often seems fearless. When Pruitt first approaches her on the edge of the schoolyard, she instinctively denies her name and pretends not to know Wade at the same time that she understands instinctively that Pruitt is trying to scare her. Describe how she balances some fears, such as she feels walking away from Pruitt, against other things she might fear. What frightens Easter the most?
8. On page 2, Easter describes Ruby as looking just like their mother, while she (Easter) looks like Wade. How does Easter feel about this? Why does it mean so much to her when she and Wade dye their hair and, with their suntans, "finally looked like a family" (p. 125)? What, in the end, finally makes Easter feel comfortable with her natural coloring?
9. Wade tells Easter, "I wanted to be a good dad, but I screwed that up, too." (P. 136) Brady Weller could just as easily have delivered this line. Why do you think the author chose to make Brady one of the narrative voices in this novel? Identify the parallels between him and Wade and between each man and their children.
10. A running thread through the novel is the competition between baseball greats Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, each of whom are trying to break the homerun record set by Roger Maris in 1961. How does this competition relate to the main plot of the novel? Why do you think Easter and Ruby are such fans of Sosa's? Discuss the significance of the baseball game in St. Louis where the story comes to a climax.
11. As Brady zeroes in on Wade's and the Quillby girls' location, he asks his daughter Jessica, "Would you let them stay with their dad, or would you follow the law and make sure they get back where they're supposed to be?" (p. 146). Jessica answers, "I don't know…I'm not a dad." Do you think she's suggesting that Brady think like a father and not like a cop or guardian? Discuss how these two philosophical positions might differ with regard to the situations presented in the novel.
12. When does Easter first begin to think that maybe Wade isn't such a bad person after all? Do you think people can really change? Did Wade? If so, why do you think he abandons the girls at the stadium? Is it more for their sake, or his own?
13. Over dinner, Jessica points out to Brady that no one ever asks kids what they want and what would make them happy. What do you think about this observation? Is there wisdom in asking young children what they want when it comes to guardianship? Is there an inherent danger in relying on their opinion? Do you think Brady ultimately made the right choice in trying to trap Wade? What would you have done? Do you think the girls are happy in the end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
I Shall Be Near to You
Erin Lindsay McCabe, 2014
Crown Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804137720
Summary
An extraordinary novel about a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight beside her husband, inspired by the letters of a remarkable female soldier who fought in the Civil War.
Rosetta doesn't want her new husband Jeremiah to enlist, but he joins up, hoping to make enough money that they'll be able to afford their own farm someday. Though she's always worked by her father’s side as the son he never had, now that Rosetta is a wife she's told her place is inside with the other women. But Rosetta decides her true place is with Jeremiah, no matter what that means, and to be with him she cuts off her hair, hems an old pair of his pants, and signs up as a Union soldier.
With the army desperate for recruits, Rosetta has no trouble volunteering, although she faces an incredubous husband. She drills with the men, proves she can be as good a soldier as anyone, and deals with the tension as her husband comes to grips with having a fighting wife. Rosetta's strong will clashes with Jeremiah's while their marraige is tested by broken conventions, constant danger, and war, and she fears discovery of her secret even as they fight for their future, and for their lives.
Inspired by more than 250 documented accounts of the women who fought in the Civil War while disguised as men, I Shall Be Near To You is the intimate story, in Rosetta’s powerful and gorgeous voice, of the drama of marriage, one woman’s amazing exploits, and the tender love story that can unfold when two partners face life’s challenges side by side. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Erin studied literature and history at University of California, Santa Cruz, earned a teaching credential at California State University, Chico, and taught high school English for seven years before completing her MFA in Creative Writing at St. Mary’s College of California in 2010. A recipient of the 2008 Jim Townsend Scholarship for Excellence in Creative Writing and the 2009 Leonard Michaels Scholarship for Literary Excellence, Erin has taught Composition at St. Mary’s College of California and Butte College.
Erin loved writing from the moment she learned how—cutting her teeth on sock puppet plays, poems, and short stories written from the point of view of her horse. Now she prefers to focus on writing historical fiction—a perfect outlet for a former diarist and pen pal letter writer.
A California native, Erin lives in the Sierra Foothills with her husband, son, and a small menagerie that includes one dog, four cats, two horses, ten chickens, and three goats. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Inspired by the actual letters of a woman who fought in the Civil War, McCabe’s debut imagines the challenges faced by newlyweds Rosetta and Jeremiah Wakefield when she decides to join him in battle.... [W]ithout being preachy or having an agenda, McCabe offers a feminine perspective on a dark time in U.S. history.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) McCabe makes every sentence count, with a narrative full of authentic dialogue, historical realism, and great feeling. Loosely based on true events, including the letters of the more than 200 women who are known to have served as men in the Civil War, this beautiful novel is literary...[and] Rosetta an unforgettable heroine.
Booklist
(Starred review.) McCabe's debut novel echoes with the Civil War battlefield's ear-shattering noise and gut-wrenching smells, but its heart is a shining story of enduring love.... Based on often overlooked history, McCabe offers an extraordinary novel, one creating a memorable character through which we relive our national cataclysm.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Alice Hoffman, 2014
Scribner
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451693577
Summary
Mesmerizing and illuminating, Alice Hoffman’s The Museum of Extraordinary Things is the story of an electric and impassioned love between two vastly different souls in New York during the volatile first decades of the twentieth century.
Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father’s "museum," alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River.
The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father’s Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as a tailor’s apprentice. When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the suspicious mystery behind a young woman’s disappearance and ignites the heart of Coralie.
With its colorful crowds of bootleggers, heiresses, thugs, and idealists, New York itself becomes a riveting character as Hoffman weaves her trademark magic, romance, and masterful storytelling to unite Coralie and Eddie in a sizzling, tender, and moving story of young love in tumultuous times. The Museum of Extraordinary Things is Alice Hoffman at her most spellbinding. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1952
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Adelphi Univ.; M.A., Stanford Univ.
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Born in the 1950s to college-educated parents who divorced when she was young, Alice Hoffman was raised by her single, working mother in a blue-collar Long Island neighborhood. Although she felt like an outsider growing up, she discovered that these feelings of not quite belonging positioned her uniquely to observe people from a distance. Later, she would hone this viewpoint in stories that captured the full intensity of the human experience.
After high school, Hoffman went to work for the Doubleday factory in Garden City. But the eight-hour, supervised workday was not for her, and she quit before lunch on her first day! She enrolled in night school at Adelphi University, graduating in 1971 with a degree in English. She went on to attend Stanford University's Creative Writing Center on a Mirrellees Fellowship. Her mentor at Stanford, the great teacher and novelist Albert Guerard, helped to get her first story published in the literary magazine Fiction. The story attracted the attention of legendary editor Ted Solotaroff, who asked if she had written any longer fiction. She hadn't — but immediately set to work. In 1977, when Hoffman was 25, her first novel, Property Of, was published to great fanfare.
Since that remarkable debut, Hoffman has carved herself a unique niche in American fiction. A favorite with teens as well as adults, she renders life's deepest mysteries immediately understandable in stories suffused with magic realism and a dreamy, fairy-tale sensibility. (In a 1994 article for the New York Times, interviewer Ruth Reichl described the magic in Hoffman's books as a casual, regular occurrence — "...so offhand that even the most skeptical reader can accept it.") Her characters' lives are transformed by uncontrollable forces — love and loss, sorrow and bliss, danger and death.
Hoffman's 1997 novel Here on Earth was selected as an Oprah Book Club pick, but even without Winfrey's powerful endorsement, her books have become huge bestsellers — including three that have been adapted for the movies: Practical Magic (1995), The River King (2000), and her YA fable Aquamarine (2001).
Hoffman is a breast cancer survivor; and like many people who consider themselves blessed with luck, she believes strongly in giving back. For this reason, she donated her advance from her 1999 short story collection Local Girls to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Hoffman has written a number of children's books, including Fireflies: A Winter's Tale (1999), Horsefly (2000), and Moondog (2004).
• Aquamarine was written for Hoffman's best friend, Jo Ann, who dreamed of the freedom of mermaids as she battled brain cancer.
• Here on Earth is a modern version of Hoffman's favorite novel, Wuthering Heights.
• Hoffman has been honored with the Massachusetts Book Award for her teen novel Incantation.
• When asked what books most influenced her life or career, here's what she said:
Edward Eager's brilliant series of suburban magic: Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, Magic or Not, Knight's Castle, The Time Garden, Seven-Day Magic, The Well Wishers. Anything by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, J. D. Salinger, Grace Paley. My favorite book: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
[A] collection of curiosities, each fascinating in its own right, but haphazardly connected as a whole.... Though [two interconnecting] stories have Hoffman’s trademark magical realism and hold great potential, their connection is tenuous—literally and thematically—and their complexities leave them incompletely explored.
Publishers Weekly
New York, 1911. Coralie Sardie works for her father, the "professor" and impresario of the Museum of Extraordinary Things, a freak show in Coney Island.... Hoffman blends social realism, historical fiction, romance, and mystery in a fast-paced and dramatic novel filled with colorful characters and vivid scenes of life in New York more than a century ago. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. The novel is framed by two spectacular fires. Why do you think the author chose to structure the novel this way? What effect does each fire have on the major characters and on the people of Manhattan and Brooklyn?
2. How does Raymond Morris, known as the Wolfman, change Coralie’s perception of her father and their circumscribed world? What parallels does Coralie find between her own life and those of the characters in Jane Eyre?
3. Why does Coralie keep Maureen in the dark about her night swims and her father’s sexual exploitation? Would Maureen have been able to protect Coralie if she had known?
4. Eddie says “the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go” (139). Was Eddie able to let his past go? Did you sympathize with his decision to move away from his father?
5. Why does Eddie feel compelled to solve the mystery of Hannah Weiss’s disappearance? What makes him a good “finder”?
6. When Coralie steps into the lion’s cage, the trainer Bonavita tells her “you have a form of bravery inside you” (196). Do you agree? Does Coralie agree? In what instances does she defy her father, and when does she acquiesce to his demands?
7. Consider Coralie’s claim that “curiosity had always been my downfall” (253). Did her curiosity about her father and the outside world worsen her situation or improve it? How naïve is Coralie?
8. What did you make of the living wonders at The Museum of Extraordinary Things? How did their treatment differ at Dreamland? What enables some of the wonders, such as the Butterfly Girl, to achieve a semblance of a normal life?
9. What sort of atmosphere does Alice Hoffman create by using dreams as a recurring motif? How do Coralie’s and Eddie’s dreams expose their inner lives and connect them to the past and future?
10. Professor Sardie and Abraham Hochman both present themselves as things they are not. How did you feel about their deception and self-aggrandizement? Do circumstances make one worse than the other? In what ways did the culture of early-twentieth-century New York City favor the corrupt and those who bent the rules?
11. Where, and to whom, did Eddie look “to find what [he] was missing” (327)? What did Moses Levy, Abraham Hochman, the hermit, and Mr. Weiss each have to teach him?
12. Why did Maureen choose to stay with the Professor and Coralie, in spite of his treatment of her? Of the lessons that Maureen taught Coralie, which were the most important?
13. Consider the role that animals play in the novel. Why does Coralie save the tortoise? What is the symbolism of the trout that Eddie cannot kill? In what other instances do animals reveal something about a character?
14. In thinking of her father, Coralie says “perhaps there is evil in certain people, a streak of meanness that cannot be erased by circumstance or fashioned into something brand new by love” (246). Do you think a person can be innately evil? Are the morally ambiguous actions of other characters, such as Eddie or the liveryman, redeemed?
15. Hoffman’s portrait of New York City is of a rapidly evolving, volatile place. Which historical details stood out most vividly to you? If you’ve spent time in New York, was it hard to imagine the city as it was in the early-twentieth-century? What places are currently undergoing similar transformations or experiencing similar tensions?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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What I Had Before I Had You
Sarah Cornwell, 2014
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062237842
Summary
Written in radiant prose and with stunning psychological acuity, award-winning author Sarah Cornwell's What I Had Before I Had You is a deeply poignant story that captures the joys and sorrows of growing up and learning to let go.
Olivia Reed was fifteen when she left her hometown of Ocean Vista on the Jersey Shore. Two decades later, divorced and unstrung, she returns with her teenage daughter, Carrie, and nine-year-old son, Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Distracted by thoughts of the past, Olivia fails to notice when Daniel disappears from her side. Her frantic search for him sparks memories of the summer of 1987, when she exploded out of the cocoon of her mother's fierce, smothering love and into a sudden, full-throttle adolescence, complete with dangerous new friends, first love, and a rebellion so intense that it utterly recharted the course of her life.
Olivia's mother, Myla, was a practicing psychic whose powers waxed and waned along with her mercurial moods. Myla raised Olivia to be a guarded child, and also to believe in the ever-present infant ghosts of her twin sisters, whom Myla took care of as if they were alive—diapers, baby food, an empty nursery kept like a shrine. At fifteen, Olivia saw her sisters for the first time, not as ghostly infants but as teenagers on the beach. But when Myla denied her vision, Olivia set out to learn the truth—a journey that led to shattering discoveries about herself and her family.
Sarah Cornwell seamlessly weaves together the past and the present in this riveting debut novel, as she examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the powerful forces of loss, family history, and magical thinking. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Narberth, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—M.F.A, University of Texas-Austin
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; Gulf Coast Fiction Prize
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Sarah Cornwell grew up in Narberth, Pennsylvania. Her fiction has appeared in the 2013 Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Missouri Review, Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, and Hunger Mountain, among others, and her screenwriting has been honored with a Humanitas Prize. A former James Michener Fellow at University of Texas-Austin, Sarah has worked as an investigator of police misconduct, an MCAT tutor, a psychological research interviewer, and a toy seller. She lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) The “you” in the title of this psychological mystery debut refers to children, not partners. In Olivia Reed’s case, what her mother Myla had before she had her were stillborn twins, infant ghosts she’s told will follow her through life.... Depth of insight, dreamy prose, and an engrossing storyline mark this wonderful debut.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Cornwell’s first novel is an authentic and artful coming-of-age story that is uniquely multigenerational. In lyrical language, she renders a turbulent adolescence that is achingly believable and a heartfelt tribute to the struggles of mental illness…. With great attention to detail and a smooth flow between past and present, this emotionally charged narrative is as memorable as it is compelling.
Booklist
[When her son] Daniel disappears, and as Olivia searches for him, she must confront the ghosts of her past.... Only the search for Daniel can heal the still-raw wounds. Gorgeously crafted, Cornwell's tale shimmers and shimmies with nimble dialogue and poignantly flawed characters.... Cornwell's debut novel enchants.
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.)