The Supreme Macaroni Company (Valentine Trilogy, 3)
Adriana Trigiani, 2013
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062136589
Summary
For over a hundred years, the Angelini Shoe Company in Greenwich Village has relied on the leather produced by Vechiarelli & Son in Tuscany. This historic business partnership provides the twist of fate for Valentine Roncalli, the school-teacher turned shoemaker, to fall in love with Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner with a complex past...and a secret.
A piece of surprising news is revealed on a fateful Christmas Eve when Valentine and Gianluca join her extended family. Now faced with life altering choices, Valentine remembers the wise words that inspired her in the early days of her beloved Angelini Shoe Company: "A person who can build a pair of shoes can do just about anything." The proud, passionate Valentine is going to fight for everything she wants and savor all she deserves—the bitter and the sweetness of life itself. (From the publisher.)
This is the final book of the Valentine Trilogy. The first book is Very Valentine (2009); the second Brava Valentine (2010)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Big Stone Gap, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., St. Mary’s College, Indiana, USA
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
As her squadrons of fans already know, Adriana Trigiani grew up in Big Stone Gap, a coal-mining town in southwest Virginia that became the setting for her first three novels. The "Big Stone Gap" books feature Southern storytelling with a twist: a heroine of Italian descent, like Trigiani, who attended St. Mary's College of Notre Dame, like Trigiani. But the series isn't autobiographical—the narrator, Ave Maria Mulligan, is a generation older than Trigiani and, as the first book opens, has settled into small-town spinsterhood as the local pharmacist.
The author, by contrast, has lived most of her adult life in New York City. After graduating from college with a theater degree, she moved to the city and began writing and directing plays (her day jobs included cook, nanny, house cleaner and office temp). In 1988, she was tapped to write for the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World, and spent the following decade working in television and film. When she presented her friend and agent Suzanne Gluck with a screenplay about Big Stone Gap, Gluck suggested she turn it into a novel.
The result was an instant bestseller that won praise from fellow writers along with kudos from celebrities (Whoopi Goldberg is a fan). It was followed by Big Cherry Holler and Milk Glass Moon, which chronicle the further adventures of Ave Maria through marriage and motherhood. People magazine called them "Delightfully quirky... chock full of engaging, oddball characters and unexpected plot twists."
Critics sometimes reach for food imagery to describe Trigiani's books, which have been called "mouthwatering as fried chicken and biscuits" (USA Today) and "comforting as a mug of tea on a rainy Sunday" (New York Times Book Review). Food and cooking play a big role in the lives of Trigiani's heroines and their families: Lucia, Lucia, about a seamstress in Greenwich Village in the 1950s, and The Queen of the Big Time, set in an Italian-American community in Pennsylvania, both feature recipes from Trigiani's grandmothers. She and her sisters have even co-written a cookbook called, appropriately enough, Cooking With My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes, from Bari to Big Stone Gap. It's peppered with anecdotes, photos and family history. What it doesn't have: low-carb recipes. "An Italian girl can only go so long without pasta," Trigiani quipped in an interview on GoTriCities.com.
Her heroines are also ardent readers, so it comes as no surprise that book groups love Adriana Trigiani. And she loves them right back. She's chatted with scores of them on the phone, and her Web site includes photos of women gathered together in living rooms and restaurants across the country, waving Italian flags and copies of Lucia, Lucia.
Trigiani, a disciplined writer whose schedule for writing her first novel included stints from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. each morning, is determined not to disappoint her fans. So far, she's produced a new novel each year since the publication of Big Stone Gap. I don't take any of it for granted, not for one second, because I know how hard this is to catch with your public," she said in an interview with The Independent. "I don't look at my public as a group; I look at them like individuals, so if a reader writes and says, 'I don't like this,' or, 'This bit stinks,' I take it to heart.
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I appeared on the game show Kiddie Kollege on WCYB-TV in Bristol, Virginia, when I was in the third grade. I missed every question. It was humiliating.
• I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. In the writing world, I have been a playwright, television writer/producer, documentary writer/director, and now novelist.
• I love rhinestones, faux jewelry. I bought a pair of pearl studded clip on earrings from a blanket on the street when I first moved to New York for a dollar. They turned out to be a pair designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. Now, they are costume, but they are still Schiaps! Always shop in the street—treasures aplenty.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is what she said:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. When I was a girl growing up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, I was in the middle of a large Italian family, but I related to the lonely orphan girl Jane, who with calm and focus, put one foot in front of the other to make a life for herself after the death of her parents and her terrible tenure with her mean relatives. She survived the horrors of the orphanage Lowood, losing her best friend to consumption, became a teacher and then a nanny. The love story with the complicated Rochester was interesting to me, but what moved me the most was Jane's character, in particular her sterling moral code. Here was a girl who had no reason to do the right thing, she was born poor and had no connections and yet, somehow she was instinctively good and decent. It's a story of personal triumph and the beauty of human strength. I also find the book a total page turner- and it's one of those stories that you become engrossed in, unable to put it down. Imagine the beauty of the line: "I loved and was loved." It doesn't get any better than that! (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Trigiani explores the delicate balance (and unbalance) between work, family, and love.... [O]ften hilarious.... A twist near the end of the book is not unexpected, but tense shifts get a little dizzying.... Trigiani’s ability to bring the large, warm, enveloping—if somewhat dysfunctional—family to life will keep any reader engrossed and entertained.
Publishers Weekly
Trigiani's latest introduces readers to Val Roncalli, shoemaker and member of a boisterously loud Italian American family...announces that Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner, has proposed to her. More shocking is that Val has accepted.... Val's eccentric family keeps the book going at a quick pace, distracting readers from Val's insecure baby steps toward marital bliss. —Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH
Library Journal
The third in a trilogy about the life of Valentine Roncalli. Trigiani re-enters familiar territory here, both in that this book follows two previous novels about the Roncalli family and in that it has many of her hallmarks: sprawling Italian families, old-world craftsmanship, and melodious love letters to New York City and Italy.... Fans of Trigiani's Valentine books will find plenty of fodder here.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Describe Valentine and Gianluca's relationship. Is he the true love she has waited for?
2. What are the biggest obstacles to their happiness as a couple? What are their greatest strengths? What does Val expect from marriage? How does the reality compare? What makes for a good marriage? Is it realistic to want it all?
3. Think about the advice Val received from her family. If you are or have been married, what advice would you give her? If you aren't married what do you think marriage might be like?
4. Is Gianluca a good husband? Is Valentine a good wife? How much can their differences be attribute to age? To gender? To culture? Do you think they found the right balance in their relationship?
5. Is having such a large and close family like the Roncalli clan a blessing? Are there any downsides? What is your family like? How do our families impact our romantic relationships?
6. Talk about Val's wedding. Do you like the idea of a big wedding? If you are married, what was your day like? If not, what kind of wedding would you like to have?
7. Keeping secrets partially define Val and Gianluca's relationship. What information do they keep from each other and how do they affect the course of their lives? What is the biggest secret they each keep from the other?
8. Gianluca wants them to live in Italy. Why doesn't Val want to? Is it possible for them to live part time in both NewYork and Italy while still building the business?
9. Val not only married an older man,she married one who was married before. How do both of these facts shape her marriage? What is it like for her to meet Gianluca's first wife? Why doesn't he like to talk about his first marriage with Val? Why does she need to know about his past?
10. What does building the business mean to Valentine? Is Gianluca right—does she put her ambition ahead of her family? How do we juggle both? How does Val?
11. How does Alfie impact their relationship and Val's ambitions?
12. Were you surprised about the turn of events toward the end of the novel? How does Val handle this change? How does her family help her get through it? Should Gianluca have told her about the house? Didn't she have a right to weigh in with her opinion? Did he do the right thing?
13. What do you think the future holds for Val?
14. Discuss the books title. Do you think it is appropriate for the story? What did Val gain in this novel? What lessons did she learn?
15. What did you take away from reading The Supreme Macaroni Company?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
Fannie Flagg, 2013
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400065943
Summary
A new comic mystery novel about two women who are forced to reimagine who they are and what they are capable of.
Mrs. Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, has just married off the last of her three daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and perhaps traveling with her husband, Earle. The only thing left to contend with now is her mother, the formidable and imposing Lenore Simmons Krackenberry—never an easy task. Lenore may be a lot of fun for other people, but is, for the most part, an overbearing presence for her daughter. Then one day, quite by accident, Sookie discovers a shocking secret about her mother’s past that knocks her for a loop and suddenly calls into question everything she ever thought she knew about herself, her family, and her future.
Feeling like a stranger in her own life, and fearful of confronting her mother with questions, Sookie begins a search for answers that takes her to California, the Midwest, and back in time, to the 1940s, when an irrepressible woman named Fritzi takes on the job of running her family’s filling station. With so many men off to war, it’s up to Fritzi and her enterprising younger sisters to keep it going. Soon truck drivers are changing their routes to fill up at the All-Girl Filling Station. But before long, Fritzi sees an opportunity for an even more groundbreaking adventure when she receives a life-changing invitation from the U.S. military to assist in the war effort. As Sookie learns more and more about Fritzi’s story, she finds herself with new answers to the questions she’s been asking her whole life.
The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion is a perfect combination of comedy, mystery, wisdom, and charm. Fabulous, fun-loving, spanning decades, generations, and centered on a little-known aspect of America’s twentieth-century story, The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion is Fannie Flagg, the bestselling "born storyteller" (New York Times Book Review), at her irresistible best. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Real Name—Patricia Neal
• Birth—September 21, 1944
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Education—University of Alabama
• Currently—lives in Montecito, California
Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Standing in the Rainbow, and A Redbird Christmas. Flagg’s script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.
Before her career as a novelist, Flagg was known principally for her on-screen television and film work. She was second banana to Allen Funt on the long-running Candid Camera, perhaps the trailblazer for the current crop of so-called reality television. (Her favorite segment, she told Entertainment Weekly in 1992, was driving a car through the wall of a drive-thru bank.) She appeared as the school nurse in the 1978 film version of Grease, and on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And she was a staple of the Match Game television game shows in the '70s.
Quite early on in her writing career, Fannie Flagg stumbled onto the holy grail of secrets in the publishing world: what editors are actually good for.
Attending the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference in 1978 to see her idol, Eudora Welty, Flagg won first prize in the writing contest for a short story told from the perspective of a 11-year-old girl, spelling mistakes and all—a literary device that she figured was ingenious because it disguised her own pitiful spelling, later determined to be an outgrowth of dyslexia. But when a Harper & Row editor approached her about expanding the story into a full-length novel, she realized the jig was up. In 1994 she told the New York Times:
I just burst into tears and said, "I can't write a novel. I can't spell. I can't diagram a sentence." He took my hand and said the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. He said, "Oh, honey, what do you think editors are for?"
Writing
And so Fannie Flagg—television personality, Broadway star, film actress and six-time Miss Alabama contestant—became a novelist, delving into the Southern-fried, small-town fiction of the sort populated by colorful characters with homespun, no-nonsense observations. Characters that are known to say things like, "That catfish was so big the photograph alone weighed 40 pounds."
Her first novel, an expanded take on that prize-winning short story, was Coming Attractions: A Wonderful Novel, the story of a spunky yet hapless girl growing up in the South, helping her alcoholic father run the local bijou. But it was with her second novel where it all came together. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe—a novel, for all its light humor, that infuses its story with serious threads on racism, feminism, spousal abuse and hints at Sapphic love -- follows two pairs of women: a couple running a hometown café in the Depression-era South and an elderly nursing home resident in the late 1980s who strikes up an impromptu friendship with a middle-aged housewife unhappy with her life.
The result was not only a smash novel, but a hit movie as well, one that garnered Flagg an Academy Award nomination for adapting the screenplay. She won praise from the likes of Erma Bombeck, Harper Lee and idol Eudora Welty, and the Los Angeles Times critic compared it to The Last Picture Show. The New York Times called it, simply, "a real novel and a good one."
As a writer, though, this Birmingham, Alabama native found her voice as a chronicler of Southern Americana and life in its self-contained hamlets. "Fannie Flagg is the most shamelessly sentimental writer in America," The Christian Science Monitor wrote in a 1998 review of her third novel. "She's also the most entertaining. You'd have to be a stone to read Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! without laughing and crying. The cliches in this novel are deep-fat fried: not particularly nutritious, but entirely delicious."
The New York Times, also reviewing Baby Girl, took note of the spinning-yarns-on-the-front-porch quality to her work: "Even when she prattles—and she prattles a great deal during this book—you are always aware that a star is at work. She has that gift that certain people from the theater have, of never boring the audience. She keeps it simple, she keeps it bright, she keeps it moving right along—and, most of all, she keeps it beloved."
But, lest she be pegged as simply a champion of the good ol’ days, it's worth noting that her writing can be something of a clarion call for social change. In Fried Green Tomatoes, Flagg comments not only on the racial divisions of the South but also on the minimization of women in both the 1930s and contemporary life. Just as Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison commit to a life together—without menfolk—in the Depression-era days of Whistle Stop, Alabama, middle-aged Evelyn Couch in modern-day Birmingham discovers the joys of working outside the home and defining her life outside meeting the every whim of her husband.
On top of her writing, Flagg has also stumped for the Equal Rights Amendment.
I think it's time that women have to stand up and say we do not want to be seen in a demeaning manner," Flagg told a Premiere magazine reporter in an interview about the film adaptation of Fried Green Tomatoes.
Extras
• Flagg approximated the length of her first novel by weight. Her editor told her a novel should be around 400 pages. "So I weighed 400 pages and it came to two pounds and something," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1987." I wrote until I had two pounds and something, and, as it happened, the novel was just about done."
• She landed the Candid Camera gig while a writer at a New York comedy club. When one of the performers couldn't go on, Flagg acted as understudy, and the show's host, Allen Funt, was in the audience.
• Flagg went undiagnosed for years as a dyslexic until a viewer casually mentioned it to her in a fan letter. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Structured much like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Flagg's latest novel alternates between the pedestrian life of Sookie Poole, a timid middle-aged southern woman and that of her brash, adventurous ancestry, a quartet of Polish sisters who ran a filling station and flew planes during WWII.... Readers looking for nuance will not find it here, but there are plot twists, adventure, heartbreak, and familial love in spades, making this the kind of story that keeps readers turning pages in a fever.
Publishers Weekly
Alabama sweetheart Sookie Poole has been a loving wife, a caring mother, and, most important, a patient daughter.... [But now] Sookie is inspired to reexamine her own life.... [F]ull of heartwarming charm that is sure to provoke lighthearted laughter. A complex story told simply and honestly, this is an easy read and another treat for Flagg fans. —Shannon Marie Robinson, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH
Library Journal
Flagg highlights a little-known group in U.S. history...in an appealing story about two women who gather their courage, spread their wings and learn, each in her own way, to fly.... This is a charming story written with wit and empathy. The author forms a comfortable bond with readers and offers just the right blend of history and fiction. Flagg flies high, and her fans will enjoy the ride.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. A lot of Southern identity is wrapped up in one’s family history. “Now, just who are your people?” is an oft-quoted phrase around the region. Sookie’s biggest crisis comes when she realizes that her “people” aren’t actually who she thought they were. How does Sookie’s discovery of her true family affect her identity? How does your own heritage affect your identity?
2. Though Sookie tells us that Lenore’s nickname, “Winged Victory,” came from the way she entered a room—as if she were the statuesque piece on the hood of a car rushing in—how might “Winged Victory” reflect Lenore’s personality in other ways? Does her representation as a classical goddess serve to heighten the air of history and tradition that surrounds her? How might the image of a winged woman tie Lenore in with the ladies of the WASPs?
3. Though Sookie tells us that Lenore’s nickname, “Winged Victory,” came from the way she entered a room—as if she were the statuesque piece on the hood of a car rushing in—how might “Winged Victory” reflect Lenore’s personality in other ways? Does her representation as a classical goddess serve to heighten the air of history and tradition that surrounds her? How might the image of a winged woman tie Lenore in with the ladies of the WASPs?
4. Sookie’s best friend, Marvaleen, is constantly trying different suggestions from her life coach, Edna Yorba Zorbra. From journaling to yoga to the Goddess Within group, which meets in a yurt, Marvaleen tries every method possible to get over her divorce. How does Sookie’s approach to dealing with her problems differ from Marvaleen’s? Do you think her friendship with Marvaleen might have helped push her to confront the question of her mother?
5. In The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, we learn about a mostly unknown part of American history—the WASPs of World War II. These women went for thirty-five years without recognition because their records of service were sealed and classified. Were you surprised to learn about this? What parts of the WASPs’ story spoke to you?
6. As Sookie comes to terms with her new identity, so must the rest of her family. Sookie’s realization that “Dee Dee may not be a Simmons by birth, but she was certainly Lenore’s granddaughter, all right” becomes a comforting thought. Have there been times in your life when you have felt so connected to people that you considered them family? What types of circumstances can create such a bond?
7. Sookie tells her friend one day, “I’m telling you, Dena, when you live long enough to see your children begin to look at you with different eyes, and you can look at them not as your children, but as people, it’s worth getting older with all the creaks and wrinkles.” Have you experienced this change yet with your own parents or children? If so, what were the circumstances in which you began to see them in a different light? How did this make your relationship even more special?
8. “Blue Jay Away,” Sookie’s brand-new invention, keeps Sookie’s house finches and chickadees fed, while also making Sookie famous. Who do you think have been the blue jays in Sookie’s own life? Has she learned to manage them successfully?
9. As Pat Conroy says, Fannie Flagg can make even the Polish seem Southern. A large part of Southern and Polish identity is found in their culture—the food, the music, the values. What are some of the things that are unique to your culture? How do they help bring people together?
10. Throughout the book, Dee Dee and Lenore often represent many characteristics that Sookie finds frustrating about being a Simmons, such as the time Dee Dee had to be driven to the church in the back of a moving van so that her Gone with the Wind wedding dress wouldn’t be messed up. Once Sookie gains perspective on her family, however, she comes to love and accept Dee Dee’s obsession with their history. Have there been times when your own friends or family have frustrated you with their opinions? How were you able to gain perspective and accept their differences?
11. A major theme in this book is accepting your home. Sookie experiences a homecoming many times—after she first meets Fritzi and returns to Point Clear, when she goes to Lenore’s bedside at Westminster Village, and when she flies to Pulaski for the All-Girl Filling Station’s last reunion. What is your favorite part about going home? Who are the people who make home a home for you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Secrets of Casanova
Greg Michaels, 2013
Booktrope Editions
350 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620151785
Summary
Paris of 1755 is bloated with opportunity. That’s the way Jacques Casanova, an unredeemed adventurer with an ever-surging appetite for pleasure, needs it.
But times, men, and gods are changing—and Jacques luck is fading. When he is thrust to the center of a profound mystery, he doesn’t care if vice or virtue leads him onward. “After all,” he declares, “a man who asks himself too many questions is an unhappy man.” But as Jacques’ challenges mount, what questions will he ask? What price must he pay to uncover a treasure of inestimable value? (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1948
• Where—Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Texas, Austin
• Currently—lives on the West Coast, USA
After Greg Michaels received his BA in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, a chance experience thrust him into a career as a professional actor and fight director. To date he's acted in fifty theater productions, more than forty television shows, and choreographed dozens of fights for stage and screen. In The Secrets of Casanova, Greg again proves his skill at telling a theatrical story. He lives with his wife, two sons, and Andy the hamster.
In his words:
If your scrapbook includes a souvenir photo of a hairy barbarian from Universal Studios Hollywood, there's a good chance that I'm the hairy barbarian in the photo. I performed the role of swordsman Kobad Shah in the live stunt show, "Conan the Barbarian: A Sword & Sorcery Spectacular." Wielding a broadsword in each hand, I fought to the death over 5,000 times—always to my death, never the big guy's.
Yep, I've been an actor my whole adult life. I've lived and worked in New York, Los Angeles and parts in between, performing mostly in theater and television. Onstage I've pleased audiences in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac, been booed as the bad guy, Teddy, in When Ya Comin' Back, Red Ryder? I brought audiences to tears in The Cherry Orchard, and playing Custer's Native American scout, Bloody Knife, was a personal triumph.
As for TV, I've acted in nearly 40 productions—from the silly to the significant, including The Dukes of Hazzard, X-Files, and Amber's Story. If you were a viewer of General Hospital many years ago, you might have seen my characterization of Van (the villain). (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
(See helpful customer reviews of this book on Amazon.com.)
Michaels’ debut novel puts a brilliantly original spin on an historical figure whose very name is a cliche. This Casanova must wrestle not only with falling hopelessly and passionately in love, but embarking on a mysterious quest that is as much a spiritual awakening as a swashbuckling adventure...so erotic and so sensitively written, I found it difficult to believe its author was a man.
—Robin Maxwell, national best-selling author of The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn
More colorful than 50 Shades of Grey, more playful than the Crossfire series, this debut novel limns the life and times of Casanova. Peopling his story with fascinating characters from Voltaire to the pope of the hour, Michaels deftly evokes the sights, sounds, and the all-too-pungent scents and stenches of eighteenth-century Europe.
—Vicki Leon, author of The Joy of Sexus & other nonfiction histories
Discussion Questions
1. What was your early impression of Casanova? Did he change through the course of the book? In what ways?
2. What seems to be the author’s view on religion and spirituality?
3. Most of the main characters in the book have some association with religion. Discuss their views.
4. Was Casanova a calculated seducer? Name some ways he says he seduced women.
5. Are there parallels between France in 1755 and the United States, present day?
6. What did you know about the republic of Venice before reading this book? What do you know now?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Stella Bain
Anita Shreve, 2013
Little, Brown & Co.
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316098861
Summary
When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in.
A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.
In a narrative that takes us from London to America and back again, Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, set against the haunting backdrop of a war that destroyed an entire generation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Raised—Dedham, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A. Tufts University
• Awards—PEN/L.L. Winship Award; O. Henry Prize
• Currently—lives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts
Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of nearly 20 books—including two works of nonfiction and 17 of fiction. Her novels include, most recently, Stella Bain (2013), as well as The Weight of Water (1997), a finalist for England's Orange prize; The Pilot's Wife (1998), a selection of Oprah's Book Club; All He Even Wanted (2003), Body Surfing (2007); Testimony (2008); A Change in Altitude (2010). She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
More
For many readers, the appeal of Anita Shreve’s novels is their ability to combine all of the escapist elements of a good beach read with the kind of thoughtful complexity not generally associated with romantic fiction. Shreve’s books are loaded with enough adultery, eroticism, and passion to make anyone keep flipping the pages, but the writer whom People magazine once dubbed a “master storyteller” is also concerned with the complexities of her characters’ motivations, relationships, and lives.
Shreve’s novels draw on her diverse experiences as a teacher and journalist: she began writing fiction while teaching high school, and was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975 for her story, "Past the Island, Drifting." She then spent several years working as a journalist in Africa, and later returned to the States to raise her children. In the 1980s, she wrote about women’s issues, which resulted in two nonfiction books—Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone—before breaking into mainstream fiction with Eden Close in 1989.
This interest in women’s lives—their struggles and success, families and friendships—informs all of Shreve’s fiction. The combination of her journalist’s eye for detail and her literary ear for the telling turn of phrase mean that Shreve can spin a story that is dense, atmospheric, and believable. Shreve incorporates the pull of the sea—the inexorable tides, the unpredictable surf—into her characters’ lives the way Willa Cather worked the beauty and wildness of the Midwestern plains into her fiction. In Fortune’s Rocks and The Weight of Water, the sea becomes a character itself, evocative and ultimately consuming. In Sea Glass, Shreve takes the metaphor as far as she can, where characters are tested again and again, only to emerge stronger by surviving the ravages of life.
A domestic sensualist, Shreve makes use of the emblems of household life to a high degree, letting a home tell its stories just as much as its inhabitants do, and even recycling the same house through different books and periods of time, giving it a sort of palimpsest effect, in which old stories burn through the newer ones, creating a historical montage. "A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell," she says. "I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house."
Shreve’s work is sometimes categorized as "women’s fiction," because of her focus on women’s sensibilties and plights. But her evocative and precise language and imagery take her beyond category fiction, and moderate the vein of sentimen-tality which threads through her books. Moreover, her kaleidoscopic view of history, her iron grip on the details and detritus of 19th-century life (which she sometimes inter-sperses with a 20th-century story), and her uncanny ability to replicate 19th-century dialogue without sounding fusty or fussy, make for novels that that are always absorbing and often riveting. If she has a flaw, it is that her imagery is sometimes too cinematic, but one can hardly fault her for that: after all, the call of Hollywood is surely as strong as the call of the sea for a writer as talented as Shreve. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Shreve’s 17th novel is a tragic yet hopeful story of love, memory, loss, and rebuilding. A young woman wakes up with amnesia in a battlefield hospital tent in Marne, France, in 1916. She thinks her name is Stella Bain, and she thinks she knows how to nurse and drive an ambulance.... The novel is both tender and harsh, and the only false note is the use of present tense, which prevents the reader from being pulled in more closely. Shreve’s thoughtful, provocative, historical tale has modern resonance.
Publishers Weekly
Shreve is back with a period piece that will keep readers thinking. In the midst of World War I, a woman finds herself lost and alone in London with no idea of who she is or how she got there.... As the story unfolds, Stella does find her identity and the reasons that made her abandon her American family and head off to Europe to help in the war.... [A]n emotional conclusion.... As usual, [Shreve's] plotlines and domestic drama do not disappoint. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC
Library Journal
A woman awakens in a field hospital in Marne, France, in 1916. Fragments of memory surface: She recalls that she was serving near the front as a nurse's aide and ambulance driver before suffering a shrapnel wound and shell shock and that her name is Stella Bain.... Although the novel's structure is somewhat disjointed, and the preliminary amnesiac chapters seem gratuitous in light of the full revelations that follow, the characters are well-drawn and sympathetic. Many surprises are in store. An exemplary addition to Shreve's already impressive oeuvre.
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.
Moonrise
Cassandra King, 2013
Maiden Lane
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781940210001
Summary
Moonrise is a novel of dark secrets and second chances, New York Times’ bestselling author Cassandra King’s homage to the gothic classic Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
When Helen Honeycutt falls in love with Emmet Justice, a charismatic television journalist who has recently lost his wife in a tragic accident, their sudden marriage creates a rift between her new husband and his oldest friends, who resent Helen’s intrusion into their tightly knit circle. Hoping to mend fences, the newlyweds join the group for a summer at his late wife’s family home in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.
Helen soon falls under the spell not only of the little mountain town and its inhabitants, but also of Moonrise, her predecessor’s Victorian mansion, named for its unique but now sadly neglected nocturnal gardens. But the harder Helen tries to fit in, the more obvious it is that she will never measure up to the woman she replaced.
Someone is clearly determined to drive her away, but who wants her gone, and why? As Emmet grows more remote, Helen reaches out to the others in the group, only to find that she can’t trust anyone. When she stumbles on the secret behind her predecessor’s untimely death, Helen must decide if she can ever trust—or love—again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1944
• Where—Lower Alabama, USa
• Education—B.A., M.A., Alabama college
• Currently—lives in the Low Country, South Carolina
Cassandra King is the author of five novels, most recently the critically acclaimed Moonrise (2013), her literary homage to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Moonrise is a Fall 2013 Okra Pick and a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) bestseller. It has been described as “her finest book to date.”
Fellow Southern writers Sandra Brown, Fannie Flagg, and Dorothea Benton Frank hailed her previous novel, Queen of Broken Hearts (2008), as “wonderful,” “uplifting,” “absolutely fabulous,” and “filled with irresistible characters.” Prior to that, King’s third book, The Same Sweet Girls (2005), was a #1 Booksense Selection and Booksense bestseller, a Southeastern Bookseller Association bestseller, a New York Post Required Reading selection, and a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Her first novel, Making Waves in Zion, was published in 1995 by River City Press and reissued in 2004 by Hyperion. Her second novel, The Sunday Wife (2002), was a Booksense Pick, a People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week, a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month selection, a Books-a-Million President’s Pick, a South Carolina State Readers’ Circle selection, and a Salt Lake Library Readers’ Choice Award nominee. In paperback, the novel was chosen by the Nestle Corporation for its campaign to promote reading groups.
King’s short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Alabama Bound: The Stories of a State (1995), Belles’ Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women (1999), Stories From Where We Live (2002), and Stories From The Blue Moon Cafe (2004). Aside from writing fiction, she has taught writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars, worked as a human-interest reporter for a Pelham, Alabama, weekly paper, and published an article on her second-favorite pastime, cooking, in Cooking Light magazine.
A native of L.A. (Lower Alabama), King currents lives in the Low Country of South Carolina with her husband, novelist Pat Conroy, whom she met when he wrote a blurb for Making Waves. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Cassandra King’s new novel Moonrise is both something familiar, like a well-loved leather recliner, and a writer’s mind game, which challenges the reader to keep up with sentences, plot and characters.... The tour de force of writing comes from King’s choice of voice.... [T]he plot moves along, and there are enough twists to make it a satisfying Southern read, with men and women the reader feels could be met along the small street in Highlands, or overhear their conversations at the local watering hole.
Stephanie Harvin - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
At this point many will recall, correctly, Daphne Du Maurier’s modern gothic masterpiece Rebecca, published in 1939 and set in Cornwall, England, in 1927. King happily acknowledges the inspiration, but Moonrise is fully her own, not a retelling or an adaptation.
Tuscaloosa News
In Moonrise, Cassandra King weaves the mystery of place and event into the truths of heart and heartlessness that shape human relationships.
Susan Zurenda - Spartanburg Herald Journal
Moonrise touches all the right notes to make it a suspenseful story and also a romantic one. Kudos to Ms. King for getting it right.... King's best asset is her ability to create a glowing array of characters in this story.... This is King's first novel since Queen of Broken Hearts was published in 2006 and her popular writing style has been missed. She has always been able to create heart-warming stories that play to the reader's emotions and intelligence and with Moonrise she continues that tradition. This is a story that impacts the reader, and its mixture of emotions will linger long after you have closed the book.
Jackie K. Cooper - Huffington Post
King’s latest novel takes inspiration from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, keeping the best of the latter’s atmospheric tension without falling into melodramatic cliche.... [Moonrise is] a suspenseful modern Gothic that gives a nod to its predecessors while still being fresh. The choice of present-tense narrative is an unfortunate distraction, but King’s light touch even in scenes that could have bogged down, and her deep understanding of her characters’ motivations makes this an exciting read.
Publishers Weekly
Much is made in this work's publicity of its homage to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, which is not surprising. There's an almost scarily magnetic husband, a somewhat gauche second wife gingerly following a universally admired first one, and a misty, strikingly beautiful estate.... King nicely focuses on untangling...complex emotions, which makes for the real suspense. Verdict: Though occasionally too stiff in the Rebecca parallels, this is a fresh and charming read. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
When a book is inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, you know it is going to be darkly romantic and full of perplexing secrets. In Cassandra King’s hands, the bones of the story remain, but the setting is new and the characters are differently motivated, making Moonrise feel both fresh and familiar.... By the end of the book, it has become less of a ghost story and more about jealousy and sabotage of a different kind than we read in Rebecca, thus both mimicking and moving farther away from the du Maurier model.... Moonrise is a compelling and readable novel, and is a nice companion for brisk fall evenings or stormy nights.
Bookreporter
[A] rhododendron tunnel leading to a beguiling ancestral home, the strange death of a first wife, an increasingly confused heroine—King's latest alludes heavily to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca....[C]onstant reminders of Rosalyn's elegance make [Helen] only more keenly aware of her own shortcomings. [N]arrative shifts, however, deflect attention from Helen's mounting fears, deflating du Maurier's haunting psychological thriller into a predictable tale of romantic obstacles.... Gothic echoes of Manderley and the first Mrs. de Winter set up unfulfilled promises.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Houses play an important role in Moonrise in any number of ways, and they are often contested spaces--either inherited, temporary, or uncomfortable, etc. How does architecture contribute to our understanding of the characters in the novel? How are the houses revealing of larger constructions of "home"?
2. Early in the novel, Tansy observes, "The graveyard is where all our stories end." Is this true? How does the nocturnal garden at Moonrise challenge (or confirm) Tansy's claim?
3. Water is an important symbol in Moonrise, as it is in all of King's work. It takes many forms here: the drought, the experience at the falls, Kit's Oriental garden, the rain at the novel's conclusion, to name a few. How does water function as a symbol in the novel?
4. Moonrise is told from three distinct narrative perspectives. What might we conclude about the voices that are absent from the novel, however, most obviously Rosalyn's?
5. One of the concerns of the novel is the legitimacy of narrative: Emmett possesses the authority of his news channel, and thus is a "trusted interpreter" of events. How is Helen's cookbook also an important text? Rosalyn's journal? Myna's poems?
6. Like Maxim de Winter, Emmett is the older, wealthier, and arguably more powerful partner in his marriage, and, in fact, his role in Helen's success remains unclear. (Kit and Tansy intimate that he assisted in the creation of Helen's cooking show, but this rumor is never disproved.) How does power play out in their relationship? What parallels are evident here between Moonrise and Rebecca?
7. What role does nature (butterflies, the garden, the mountains, etc.) play in the novel? How is it both threatened and threatening?
8. Moonrise is filled with unconventional relationships-the friendship between Willa and Linc, the connection between Tansy and Noel, and even the "sisterhood" of Rosalyn and Kit. Many of these characters define themselves in very conventional ways according to expectations of class and gender. How do these friendships allow characters to see themselves in new, less restricted ways? What risks are inherent is stepping out of these established boundaries?
9. Meals become a site of dramatic tension throughout the novel. Revisit some of the scenes that revolve around food, and examine the ways that the food itself speaks to issues that the characters themselves are unable/unwilling to articulate.
(Questions issued by publisher.)