Still Life with Bread Crumbs
Anna Quindlen, 2014
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812976892
Summary
Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof.
Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendant, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life.
Brilliantly written, powerfully observed, Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman, her heart, her mind, her days, as she discovers that life is a story with many levels, a story that is longer and more exciting than she ever imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 8, 1952
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column
• Currently—New York, New York
Anna Quindlen could have settled onto a nice, lofty career plateau in the early 1990s, when she had won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column; but she took an unconventional turn, and achieved a richer result.
Quindlen, the third woman to hold a place among the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists, had already published two successful collections of her work when she decided to leave the paper in 1995. But it was the two novels she had produced that led her to seek a future beyond her column.
Quindlen had a warm, if not entirely uncritical, reception as a novelist. Her first book, Object Lessons, focused on an Irish American family in suburban New York in the 1960s. It was a bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1991, but was also criticized for not being as engaging as it could have been. One True Thing, Quindlen's exploration of an ambitious daughter's journey home to take care of her terminally ill mother, was stronger still—a heartbreaker that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. But Quindlen's fiction clearly benefited from her decision to leave the Times. Three years after that controversial departure, she earned her best reviews yet with Black and Blue, a chronicle of escape from domestic abuse.
Quindlen's novels are thoughtful explorations centering on women who may not start out strong, but who ultimately find some core within themselves as a result of what happens in the story. Her nonfiction meditations—particularly A Short Guide to a Happy Life and her collection of "Life in the 30s" columns, Living Out Loud—often encourage this same transition, urging others to look within themselves and not get caught up in what society would plan for them. It's an approach Quindlen herself has obviously had success with.
Extras
• To those who expressed surprise at Quindlen's apparent switch from columnist to novelist, the author points out that her first love was always fiction. She told fans in a Barnes & Noble.com chat, "I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels."
• Quindlen joined Newsweek as a columnist in 1999. She began her career at the New York Post in 1974, jumping to the New York Times in 1977.
• Quindlen's prowess as a columnist and prescriber of advice has made her a popular pick for commencement addresses, a sideline that ultimately inspired her 2000 title A Short Guide to a Happy Life Quindlen's message tends to be a combination of stopping to smell the flowers and being true to yourself. Quindlen told students at Mount Holyoke in 1999, "Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world."
• Studying fiction at Barnard with the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Quindlen's senior thesis was a collection of stories, one of which she sold to Seventeen magazine. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Rebecca Winter is a 60-year-old photographer...[who] needs a fresh start after her marriage falls apart because her husband trades her in for a younger model.... Quindlen has always excelled at capturing telling details in a story, and she does so again in this quiet, powerful novel, showing the charged emotions that teem beneath the surface of daily life.
Publishers Weekly
Quindlen has made a home at the top of the bestsellers lists with novels that capture the grace and frailty of everyday life, and her latest work is sure to take her there again. With spare, elegant prose, she crafts a poignant glimpse into the inner life of an aging woman who discovers that reality contains much more color than her own celebrated black-and-white images.
Library Journal
A Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist and star in the pantheon of domestic fiction (Every Last One, 2010), Quindlen presents instantly recognizable characters who may be appealingly warm and nonthreatening, but that only serves to drive home her potent message that it’s never too late to embrace life’s second chances.
Booklist
A photographer retreats to a rustic cottage, where she confronts aging and flagging career prospects.... Occasionally profound, always engaging, but marred by a formulaic resolution in which rewards and punishments are meted out according to who ranks highest on the niceness scale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What part of Rebecca Winter’s life do you relate to the most? How did the way Rebecca handled her hardships compare to decisions you’ve made in your own life?
2. One of the themes of Still Life with Bread Crumbs is discovering how to age gracefully. What has been one of your biggest struggles when entering a different stage of life? What is something you’ve enjoyed?
3. Rebecca finds herself living far outside the comfort zone of her former New York City life. What do you think is the most difficult part of moving somewhere new? Have you ever been in a similar situation? How did you handle it?
4. At one point in the book, Jim says that he believes that people live in houses that look like them. How does your own house or apartment reflect your personality?
5. "Language had always failed her when it came to describing her photographs…There was nothing she could say about the cross photographs that could come close to actually seeing them." Rebecca realizes this after speaking at the Women’s Art League event. Do you ever find it difficult to describe the effect that art --- photographs, paintings, writing --- has had on you? What might that say about the power of artwork?
6. Throughout the book, Sarah is often the perfect antidote for Rebecca’s unhappiness. Do you have a person like this in your life? Think about one of the times that you were most grateful for him or her.
7. One of the turning points for Rebecca is when Ben tells her, "You will always be Rebecca Winter." How has Rebecca’s personal identity become entangled with her identity as an iconic artist? What helps her to ground herself?
8. The dog gradually becomes a bigger part of Rebecca’s life as she moves further away from her past self—the "not a dog person" city girl. The dog pictures are even the catalyst for Rebecca’s break with TG. What do you think the presence of the dog means in Rebecca’s life, especially after she discovers his name is Jack? How might the constant company of an animal have a different effect from that of the company of people?
9. When Rebecca finally learns the meaning of the crosses, she wonders if the great artists had ever considered "the terrible eternity of immortality" for their subjects. We live in a culture of camera phones and constant photography. Was there ever a moment when you were particularly grateful to have a certain photograph? Do you ever wish that our lives were less documented?
10. O. Henry’s short story and the story of Rebecca’s mother’s Mary Cassatt both have a bittersweet quality to them. Think about a moment in your life that might have been upsetting or sad. Was there someone who helped you see beauty or happiness in that moment instead?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Blue Angel
Francine Prose, 2000
HarperCollins
344 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060882037
It has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . . .
Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; PEN-America prize for translation; Guggenheim Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
When it comes to an author as eclectic as Francine Prose, it's difficult to find the unifying thread in her work. But, if one were to examine her entire oeuvre—from novels and short stories to essays and criticism—a love of reading would seem to be the animating force.
That may not seem extraordinary, especially for a writer, but Prose is uncommonly passionate about the link between reading and writing. "I've always read," she confessed in a 1998 interview with Atlantic Unbound. "I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop.... The only reason I wanted to be a writer was because I was such an avid reader." (In 2006, she produced an entire book on the subject—a nuts-and-bolts primer entitled Reading Like a Writer, in which she uses excerpts from classic and contemporary literature to illustrate her personal notions of literary excellence.)
If Prose is specific about the kind of writing she, herself, likes to read, she's equally voluble about what puts her off. She is particularly vexed by "obvious, tired clichés; lazy, ungrammatical writing; implausible plot turns." Unsurprisingly, all of these are notably absent in her own work. Even when she explores tried-and-true literary conventions—such as the illicit romantic relationship at the heart of her best known novel, Blue Angel—she livens them with wit and irony. She even borrowed her title from the famous Josef von Sternberg film dealing with a similar subject.
As biting and clever as she is, Prose cringes whenever her work is referred to as satire. She explained to Barnes & Noble editors, "Satirical to me means one-dimensional characters...whereas, I think of myself as a novelist who happens to be funny—who's writing characters that are as rounded and artfully developed as the writers of tragic novels."
Prose's assessment of her own work is pretty accurate. Although her subject matter is often ripe for satire (religious fanaticism in Household Saints, tabloid journalism in Bigfoot Dreams, upper-class pretensions in Primitive People), etc.), she takes care to invest her characters with humanity and approaches them with respect. "I really do love my characters," she says, "but I feel that I want to take a very hard look at them. I don't find them guilty of anything I'm not guilty of myself."
Best known for her fiction, Prose has also written literary criticism for the New York Times, art criticism for the Wall Street Journal, and children's books based on Jewish folklore, all of it infused with her alchemic blend of humor, insight,and intelligence.
Extras
• Prose rarely wastes an idea. In Blue Angel, the novel that the character Angela is writing is actually a discarded novel that Prose started before stopping because, in her own words, "it seemed so juvenile to me."
• While she once had no problem slamming a book in one of her literary critiques, these days Prose has resolved to only review books that she actually likes. The ones that don't adhere to her high standards are simply returned to the senders.
• Prose's novel Household Saints was adapted into an excellent film starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor in 1993.
• Another novel, The Glorious Ones, was adapted into a musical.
• In 2002 Prose published The Lives of the Muses, an intriguing hybrid of biography, philosophy, and gender studies that examines nine women who inspired famous artists and thinkers—from John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono to Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Alice in Wonderland. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
There is a way of getting inside your characters that renders them intimately known and comprehensively exposed—at once privileged and gutted—and Francine Prose is very good at it. Her people convict themselves out of their own mouths.... Once you start reading [Blue Angel], you'll be hooked. It's not that Prose has simply reversed the politically correct line for mischief's sake. Rather, she has upped the stakes by making Angela as unknowable as Nabokov's Lolita.
Lorna Sage - New York Times Book Review
A literary arsonist with blistering wit, sends up both smug academics and politically correct undergrads in the satrical bonfire Blue Angel.
Entertainment Weekly
Her trenchant satire of sexual harassment gives political correctness a much deserved poke in the eye.
Vanity Fair
Screamingly funny.
USA Today
A mesmerizing and hilarious tour de force.
Us Weekly
Prose is a pro, and this funny yet devastating novel will rock literary and academic worlds alike.
Mademoiselle
Trust the iconoclastic Prose to turn conventional received wisdom on such subjects as predatory professors, innocent female students...on their silly heads. In this astutely observed, often laugh-aloud funny and sometimes touching academic comedy, she proves more skeptic than cynic, with an affection for her central character that is surprisingly warm.... [T]inglingly contemporary and timelessly funny.
Publishers Weekly
Prose's latest novel charts the downward spiral of a creative writing professor caught up in a sexual harrassment scandal.... Like the professor's debasement in the Marlene Dietrich film of the same name, Swenson's impending entanglement is compelling and fascinating to behold. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisburg, VA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. "[T]he writer need not paint a picture of an ideal world, but only describe the actual world, without sermons, without judgement" (pg. 3). How does this quote from the first chapter resonate throughout the novel? Do you think it reflects what Francine Prose is aiming to accomplish in Blue Angel? Is she successful? Why or why not?
2. Angela's favorite novel is Jane Eyre, which is about a governess who falls in love with the scarred, angry father of her charge. One of Swenson's favorite novels is The Red and Black, which is about a young man who also happens to be social climber. How is this ironic?
3. Much is made of the fact that Angela is a compulsive liar. That said, what do we really know about Angela? Working backwards from the end of the novel, reconstruct her history. Who is her father? Was she molested?
4. "What if someone rose to say what so many of them are thinking, that there's something erotic about the act of teaching, all that information streaming back and forth like some...bodily fluid" (pg. 22). Discuss this quote from Chapter 2. Is it true?
5. One theme central to the novel is that of truth, which is crystallized during the dinner party given by Dean Francis Bentham. Swenson witnesses Magda commit what he calls professional suicide by elaborating on an attempt to teach her students a Philip Larkin poem in which the word "fuck" is used. Was Swenson projecting his own fear of the truth, or did you get the sense that Magda was walking a fine line? In a situation such as that, is there such a thing as too much truth?
6. How would you characterize Swenson's relationships with the women in Blue Angel: Sherrie, Magda, Ruby and Angela. Is there something that he wants from them that they can't give him? If so, what is it and does it affect Swenson's final fall from grace?
7. How do you feel about Swenson? Did you empathize with him? Were you angry with him? Regardless of Angela's predatory nature, did you hold him more responsible for the eventual outcome of the situation than she? Why or why not?
8. Discuss the current climate of political correctness. What are pros and cons of political correctness? Is too much political correctness better than no political correctness?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Famous Writers I Have Known
James Magnuson, 2014
W.W. Norton & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393240887
Summary
In this brilliant mix of literary satire and crime caper, Frankie Abandonato, a small-time con man on the run, finds refuge by posing as V. S. Mohle—a famously reclusive writer—and teaching in a prestigious writing program somewhere in Texas. Streetwise and semiliterate, Frankie finds that being treated as a genius agrees with him.
The program has been funded by Rex Schoeninger, the world’s richest novelist, who is dying. Buzzards are circling, angling for the remains of Rex’s fortune, and Frankie quickly realizes that he has been presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Complicating matters is the fact that Rex is haunted by a twenty-five-year feud with the shadowy Mohle. What rankles Rex is that, while he has written fifty bestsellers and never gotten an ounce of literary respect, Mohle wrote one slender novel, disappeared into the woods, and become an icon. Determined to come to terms with his past, Rex has arranged to bring his rival to Texas, only to find himself facing off against an imposter.
Famous Writers I Have Known is not just an unforgettable literary romp but also a surprisingly tender take on two men—one a scam artist frantic to be believed, the other an old lion desperate to be remembered. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
James Magnuson is the author of eight previous novels in addition to his new 2014 Famous Writers I Have Known. He is a former Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for his fiction, and the winner of the Jesse Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters.
Magnuson currently directs the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. (From the publisher.)
In his words:
Some thirty-plus years ago, I was a totally broke playwright in New York. One June weekend I went to a wedding in the far reaches of the Catskills and caught a ride back to Manhattan with a young Princeton professor of African Religion. Somewhere along the Taconic Parkway, he asked me what I did, and I spent a half hour telling him about the one-acts I'd been putting on in various churches and street theaters in East Harlem.
Two weeks later he called and asked if he could nominate me for an award. What award is that, I wanted to know. It's an award for promising young writers and scholars, he said. I certainly was unknown and whether or not I was promising was open to debate, but I spent a weekend filling out the application form he sent me. . . . (Read more on the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The novel’s screwball premise suggests a mash-up of an academic comedy by David Lodge and a wisecracking Elmore Leonard caper. Its title and its author’s day job...promise a knowing satire of academia and the literary world.... The novel is breezy and diverting enough, but as satire goes, it’s pretty mild-mannered. Magnuson’s lampoon of writing programs lacks the venom and specificity that, say, Francine Prose brought to similar material in Blue Angel. And his characterization of Schoeninger, “best-selling author of all time, philanthropist, champion of education,” resembles a tamer version of the hero from The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature.
Adam Langer - New York Times Book Review
Conman and writer—not two career choices [one] would likely put together—but James Magnuson's new novel, Famous Writers I Have Known, does just that. Director of the University of Texas's writing program, Magnuson knows a thing or two about teaching his craft.... The story he tells of his unusual and comic and sweetly told caper will be addictive in itself for all passionate writers and readers.
NPR
New York City hustler Frankie Abandonato finds himself....mistaken for a famous author, the reclusive, J.D. Salinger-like V.S. Mohle.... [Y]oung fans whisk Frankie away to an elite writing program where the great man is slated to teach.... Part satire of the creative writing industry (MFAs, awards, egos), part snappy grifter tale, this novel is a fast, fun read. Magnuson’s writing is strong, though his characters’ relationships sometimes lack believability.
Publishers Weekly
[A] poorly designed caper....will disappoint readers looking for more hard-edged action, while those expecting literary scuttlebutt will find a campus scene that's altogether too mellow. Only toward the end does the action resume, with Frankie, self-described poor schlub that he is, making mistake after mistake. A novel that aims to appeal to two different readerships but is unlikely to satisfy either one.
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 Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust
Edith Hahn Beer, 1999
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780688177768
Summary
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.
In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.
Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust—complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 24, 1914
• Where—Vienna, Austria
• Education—University of Vienna (studies interrupted)
• Death—March 17, 2009
• Where—London, England, UK
Edith Hahn Beer was an Austrian Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by hiding her Jewish identity and marrying a Nazi officer.Her memoir in 2000: The Nazi Officer's Wife: How a Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust.
Early life
Hahn was one of three daughters born to Klothilde and Leopold Hahn. Her parents owned and ran a restaurant (in June 1936, Leopold Hahn died while working at a famous Hotel as the restaurant manager in the Alps).
Although it was uncommon for a girl of that time to attend high school, her professor persuaded her father to give in and he sent her to high school. She continued her studies at university and was studying law at the time of the Anschluss, when she was forced to leave the university because she was Jewish.
World War II
In 1939, Hahn and her mother were sent to the ghetto in Vienna. They were separated in April 1941, when Hahn was sent to an asparagus plantation in Osterburg, Germany and then to the Bestehorn box factory in Aschersleben. Her mother had been deported to Poland two weeks before Hahn was able to return to Vienna in 1942. With duplicate copies of the identity papers of a Christian friend, Christa Beran, aka Christl Denner Beran, she went to Munich.
In Munich, she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member who sought her hand in marriage, and she volunteered as a German Red Cross nurse. The couple lived together in Brandenburg an der Havel and married to legitimize the impending birth of their daughter, Angelika, born in 1944. Vetter became a prisoner-of-war and was sent to a Siberian labour camp in March 1945.
Later life
Following the war, she used her long-hidden Jewish identity card to reclaim her true identity. The Allies' need for jurists called her law education into use and she was appointed as a judge in Brandenburg. Hahn pleaded with the Soviet occupation authorities to free Vetter and he was released in 1947, but their marriage ended shortly afterward. Vetter died in 2002.
Pressed by the authorities to work as an informer, she fled with her daughter to London, where her sisters settled after they had sought refuge in Palestine at the onset of the war. Hahn worked as a housemaid and a corset designer. She married Fred Beer, a Jewish jewellery merchant, in 1957 and they remained married until his death in 1984. After his death, she moved to Netanya, Israel.
In December 1997, a collection of Hahn's personal papers was sold at auction for $169,250. The collection, known as the Edith Hahn Archive, was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (From Wikiepdia. Retrieved 1/17/2014.)
Book Reviews
Born to a middle-class, nonobservant Jewish family, Beer was a popular teenager and successful law student when the Nazis moved into Austria. In a well-written narrative that reads like a novel, she relates the escalating fear and humiliating indignities she and others endured, as well as the anti-Semitism of friends and neighbors..... Her story is important both as a personal testament and as an inspiring example of perseverance in the face of terrible adversity.
Publishers Weekly
A well-written, tense, and intimate Holocaust memoir by an author with a remarkable war experience. Young Beer (nee Hahn) was a promising Viennese Jewish law student until the German Anschluss annexing Austria.... Beer took on an Austrian friend's documents... [even] marrying one Nazi.... She admitted her Jewishness to him but lived outwardly as a normal Hausfrau..... This engaging book goes deep...in explaining how the survival instinct allows one to sleep with the enemy. (Author tour)
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The author describes Viennese Jews: "We had all the burdens of being Jewish in an anti-Semitic country, but none of the strengths—the Torah learning, the prayers, the welded community. We spoke no Yiddish or Hebrew. We had no deep faith in God. We were not Polish Chasidim or Lithuanian yeshiva scholars. We were not bold free Americans…" (page 26). Does this effect your empathy for Edith and her family? Why or why not?
2. It's always surprising to see moments of beauty in wartime accounts. Did you see any of these moments in this book? If so, what?
3. "That was the only reason I stayed in Austria, you see. I was in love, and I couldn't imagine life without my Pepi," says the author (page 75). And yet, Pepi refuses to marry her. Do you think it is because he wants to stay and protect his Aryan mother or because he doesn't want to marry a Jew?
4. "Frau Fleschner and the overseer assured us that as long as we worked here, our families would not be deported. I had the feeling that they tried to look out for us more and more as time went on" (page 93). How did you feel about the owners of the labor camp in Osterburg? Do you think they were slave owners or do you see them as the worker's saviors?
5. "We all thought about converting to Christianity. What would have once seemed unthinkable, a shameful betrayal of our parents and our culture, now seemed like a perfectly reasonable ploy" (page 98). Do you think that if you had been a Jew at that time you would have converted in order to save your life?
6. The men in this book—Pepi and Werner—come across as weak and cowardly compared to the strength of the women, both Jewish and Christian—Edith, her mother, Frau Docktor Maria Niderall, Christl Denner Beran, even Werner's ex-wife Elisabeth. Would you describe this as a feminist book as well as a Holocaust memoir?
7. There are many degrees of heroism in this story—from the Bestehorn forewoman's advice on how to make Edith's impossible work quota to Christl's gift of her identity. Discuss other acts of kindness in the book and whether or not you regard them as heroic deeds.
8. Edith's husband Werner is a complex man. While he knowingly marries a Jew, he does not want to have a Jewish child. Although Edith is able to use her connections to get him out of prison, he does not like his wife's new job or status. What do you think of Werner? Do you forgive him his flaws as the author seems to?
9. As Edith lives her life as Grete, an ordinary Hausfrau, she is in constant fear that her Jewish identity will be discovered. Is there a particular incident in the book where you share her fear?
10. "For the first time it occurred to me that maybe my life as a U-boat did not weigh heavily on the scales of suffering, that the hideous experiences which had transformed the men in the transit camp might make it impossible for them ever to accept me as one of their own" (page 278). Discuss other groups or people throughout history who might also suffer from survivor guilt.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Longest Date: Life as a Wife
Cindy Chupack, 2014
Viking Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670025534
Summary
An award-winning writer for Sex and the City and Modern Family takes a hilarious, heartbreaking look at marriage
Cindy Chupack has spent much of her adult life writing about dating and relationships for several hit TV series and as a sex columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine. At the age of thirty-nine, she finally found The One—and a wealth of new material.
Marriage, Cindy discovered, was more of an adventure than she ever imagined, and in this collection of essays she deftly examines the comedy and cringe-worthy aspects of matrimony. Soulful yet self-deprecating, The Longest Date recounts her first marriage (he was gay) and the meeting of Husband No. 2, Ian.
After the courtship and ceremony, both Cindy and Ian realized that happily ever after takes some practice, and near constant negotiation over everyday matters like cooking, sex, holidays, monogamy, and houseguests. The Longest Date takes a serious turn when it comes to infertility.
The Longest Date is the perfect companion for anyone navigating a serious relationship, be it newlyweds or couples moving in that direction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 29, 1970
• Where—Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University
• Awards—Golden Globe Awards (3); Emmy Awards (2)
• Currently—Los Angeles, California
Cindy Chupack is a screenwriter who has won three Golden Globes and two Emmys for her work as a writer/executive producer of HBO’s Sex and the City and writer/co-executive producer of ABC’s Modern Family.
Several episodes she penned—"Little Bo Bleep" (Modern Family) and "Evolution," "Attack of the 5'10" Woman," "Just Say Yes," "Plus One is the Loneliest Number," "I Love a Charade," and "Splat!" (Sex and the City—were individually nominated for Writer's Guild and/or Emmy awards. Chupack also worked on Everybody Loves Raymond as a writer/co-executive producer.
In May 2010, NBC announced it had commenced production of Love Bites, a television series created by Chupack for the NBC network.
Her first book, The Between Boyfriends Book, was published in 2003, and her second, a comic memoir about marriage, The Longest Date, in 2014. She has also written humorous essays for The New York Times, Real Simple, Harper's Bazaar, People, Allure, Slate, and Glamour.
Chupack is from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received a journalism degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois..(From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Chupack chronicles the ups and downs of marriage in this amusing collection of short, real-life stories. The comedy writer leaves no stone unturned.... The pieces that touch on fertility issues deserve their own category: Chupack and her husband...detail this often painful subject with both sorrow and hope.
Publishers Weekly
Laugh-out-funny and surprisingly poignant.
Booklist
An award-winning TV writer and magazine sex columnist gives the scoop on the "honest, horrible, hysterical truth about the early years of marriage."... Rather, they are beginnings that, for all the pain and loss they may entail, offer the chance to "see higher highs than you ever imagined." A straight-talking, funny and poignant memoir.
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.)