Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison, 1952
Knopf Doubleday
581 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679732761
Summary
Winner, 1953 National Book Award
Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century.
The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1914
• Where—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
• Died—April 16, 1994
• Where—New York, New York
• Education—Tuskegee Institute
• Awards—National Book Award
Ralph Ellison was born in 1914 in Oklahoma City, the son of Lewis Ellison, a construction worker, and his wife, Ida, a domestic. He was introduced to literature by his mother, who used to bring him books she borrowed from the homes she cleaned. A further exposure was provided by the ironies of segregation: in the 1920s, Oklahoma City had no black library, and books from the library's main branch were shelved haphazardly in a pool hall, where the young Ralph might find a volume of fairy tales alongside one of Freud—with no well-meaning librarian telling him what a child ought or ought not to be reading.
Ellison attended Alabama's Tuskegee Institute on a music scholarship, but in 1936 he moved to New York City, where he began writing short stories while supporting himself as a free-lance photographer and audio engineer. After serving in the Merchant Marine during World War II, he spent seven years writing Invisible Man, working out of an office located at the back of a jewelry store on Fifth Avenue. The book was published in 1952 and was awarded the National Book Award. It has been translated into seventeen languages.
The manuscript of Ellison's second novel was destroyed by a fire in 1967. He spent the remaining years of his life painstakingly reconstructing it, while publishing two volumes of nonfiction, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). He taught and lectured widely, was appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, served on the National Council on the Arts and Humanities and the Carnegie Commission on public television, and was a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Ralph Ellison died of cancer on April 16, 1994, at his home in New York City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
With this book the author maps a course from the underground world into the light. Invisible Man belongs on the shelf with the classical efforts man has made to chart the river Lethe from its mouth to its source (New York Times Books of the Century).
Wright Morris - New York Times (April, 1952)
Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity—powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto.
Atlantic Monthly
[O]ne of the lasting masterpieces of American literature. It chronicles the existential journey of an unnamed black man attempting to discover his identity and role in a hostile and confusing world that refuses to acknowledge his existence. Within the story of the protagonist's quest for definition, Ellison offers a vivid and unforgiving examination of the shortcomings of the self-serving black bourgeoisie, clumsy white philanthropists, dehumanizing American industry, and unrealistic revolutionary movements.... [A]n essential book,
Sacred Fire
Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel tells truths about the nature of bigotry and its effect on the minds of victims and perpetrators (Grade 11 and up).
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What makes Ellison's narrator invisible? What is the relationship between his invisibility and other people's blindness—both involuntary and willful? Is the protagonist's invisibility due solely to his skin color? Is it only the novel's white characters who refuse to see him?
2. One drawback of invisibility is that "you ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world" [p. 4]. How does the narrator try to prove that he exists? Does this sentence provide a clue to the behavior of other characters in the book?
3. What are the narrator's dreams and goals? How are these variously fulfilled or thwarted in the course of the book?
4. Is the reader meant to identify with the narrator? To sympathize with him? How do you think Ellison himself sees his protagonist?
5. What is the significance of the grandfather's deathbed speech [p.16]? Whom or what has he betrayed? What other characters in this book resort to the same strategy of smiling betrayal?
6. Throughout the novel the narrator gives speeches, or tries to give them, to audiences both black and white, at venues that range from a whites-only "smoker" to the funeral of a black street vendor murdered by the police. What role does oratory—and, more broadly, the spoken word—play in Invisible Man?
7. The "battle royal" sequence portrays black men fighting each other for the entertainment of whites. Does Ellison ever portray similar combats between blacks and whites? To what end?
8. Throughout the book the narrator encounters a number of white benefactors, including a millionaire college trustee, an amiable playboy, and the professional agitator Brother Jack. What does the outcome of these relationships suggest about the possibility of friendship or cooperation between the races?
9. What black men does the protagonist choose as mentors or role models? Do they prove to be any more trustworthy than his white "benefactors"? What about those figures whose authority and advice the narrator rejects—for example, the vet in The Golden Day and the separatist Ras the Exhorter? What characters in Invisible Man, if any, represent sources of moral authority and stability?
10. What cultural tendencies or phenomena does Ellison hold up for satire in this novel? For example, what were the real-life models for the Founder, the Brotherhood, and Ras the Exhorter? How does the author convey the failures and shortcomings of these people and movements?
11. Why might Tod Clifton have left the Brotherhood to peddle demeaning dancing Sambo dolls? What does the narrator mean when he says: "It was as though he [Clifton] had chosen...to fall outside of history"? How would you describe Ellison's vision of history and the role that African-Americans play within it?
12. Invisible Man may be said to exemplify the paranoid style of American literature. How does Ellison establish an atmosphere of paranoia in his novel, as though the reader, along with the narrator, "had waded out into a shallow pool only to have the bottom drop out and the water close over my head" [p.432]? Why is this style particularly appropriate to Ellison's subject matter?
13. Where in Invisible Man does Ellison—who was trained as a musician—use language to musical effect? (For example, compare the description of the college campus on pages 34-7 to Trueblood's confession on 51-68, to the chapel scene on 110-135, and Tod Clifton's funeral on 450-461.) What different sorts of language does Ellison employ in these and other passages? How does the "music" of these sections—their rhythm, assonance, and alliteration—heighten their meaning or play against it?
14. More than sixty years after it was first published, Invisible Man is still one of the most widely read and widely taught books in the African-American literary canon. Why do you think this is so? How true is this novel to the lives of black Americans in the 1990s?
15. In spite of its vast success (or perhaps because of it), Ellison's novel—and the author himself—were fiercely criticized in some circles for being insufficiently "Afrocentric." Do you think this is true? Do you think Ellison made artistic compromises in order to make Invisible Man accessible to white readers?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Doctor Sleep
Stephen King, 2013
Scribner
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451698855
Summary
Stephen King returns to the character and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.
On highways across America, a tribe of people called the True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, the True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the steam that children with the shining produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
-
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel, where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant shining power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of devoted readers of The Shining and satisfy anyone new to this icon in the King canon. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 21, 1947
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Maine
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in Bangor, Maine
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. King has published 50 novels, including seven under the pen-name of Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.
Early life
King's father, Donald Edwin King, who was born circa 1913 in Peru, Indiana, was a merchant seaman. King's mother, Nellie Ruth (nee Pillsbury; 1913–1973) was born in Scarborough, Maine. The two were married in 1939 in Cumberland County, Maine.
Stephen Edwin King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to De Pere, Wisconsin, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was eleven years old, the family returned to Durham, Maine, where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King was raised Methodist.
As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works, but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing.
King's primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause." King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H. P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled The Lurker in the Shadows that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to." King told Barnes & Noble Studios during a 2009 interview, "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."
Education and early career
King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School, in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC's horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt (he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965. That story was published the following year in a revised form as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.
From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That same year his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus, titled "Steve King's Garbage Truck", took part in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen, and took odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor," to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. The Fogler Library at the University of Maine now holds many of King's papers.
After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, being unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories have been published in the collection Night Shift. In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce, a fellow student at the University of Maine whom he had met at the University's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops. That fall, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels. It was during this time that King developed a drinking problem, which would plague him for more than a decade.
Writing, 1970-2000
In 1973, King's novel Carrie was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King threw an early draft of the novel in the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. King and his family moved to southern Maine because of his mother's failing health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming, later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to Salem's Lot (published 1975). In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he stated, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!" Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.
After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The Shining (1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand (1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Phillip (his third and last child), traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. He has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.
In 1985 King wrote his first work for the comic book medium, writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to assist with famine relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, and Alan Moore, as well as authors not primarily associated with that industry, such as Harlan Ellison. The following year, King wrote the introduction to Batman No. 400, an anniversary issue in which he expressed his preference for that character over Superman.
On June 19, 1999 at about 4:30 pm, King was walking on the shoulder of Route 5, in Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5. According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.
King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator. After five operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became worse. Soon it became nearly unbearable.
King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat once his leg was healed. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe.
During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story.
In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable and reduced his stamina. He has since resumed writing, but states on his website that:
I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be.
Writing, 2000's
In 2000, King published a serialized novel, The Plant, online, bypassing print publication. At first it was presumed by the public that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but he later stated that he had simply run out of stories. The unfinished epistolary novel is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet, and has said he sees e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012." But he also warns: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."
In August 2003 King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop of King," a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly given to Michael Jackson. In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel, Cell. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones. In 2007, Marvel Comics began publishing comic books based on King's Dark Tower series, followed by adaptations of The Stand in 2008 and The Talisman in 2009.
In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key, and a collection, Just After Sunset. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N., which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.
In 2009, King published Ur, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle and available only on Amazon.com, and Throttle, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill, which later was released as an audiobook Road Rage, which included Richard Matheson's short story "Duel". On November 10 that year, King's novel, Under the Dome, was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986's It. It debuted at No. 1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.
Writing, 2010s
On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book would be a collection of four previously unpublished novellas called Full Dark, No Stars. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications and later released in mass market paperback by Simon & Schuster. The following month, DC Comics premiered American Vampire, a monthly comic book series written by King with short story writer Scott Snyder, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque, which represents King's first original comics work. King wrote the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five-issue story arc. Scott Snyder wrote the story of Pearl.
In 2011 King published 11/22/63. It was nominated for the 2012 World Fantasy Award Best Novel. The eighth Dark Tower volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole, was published in 2012.
King's most recent novel is the 2013 Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining (1977).
Awards
Alex Award
Balrog Award
Black Quill Award
Bram Stocker AWards (14)
British Fantasy Society Awards (6)
Deutscher Phantastik Pries (5)
Horror Guild Awards (6)
Hugo Award
International Horror Guild Awards (2)
Locus Awards (5)
Mystery Writers of America Awards (2, incl.,Grand Master)
National Book Foundation, Medal of Distringuished Contribution to American Letters
O. Henry Award
Quill Award
Shirely Jackson Award
Thriller Award
World Fantasy Awards (4)
World Horror Convention, World Horror Grandmaster Award
Personal life
King and his wife own and occupy three different houses, one in Bangor, one in Lovell, Maine, and they regularly winter in their waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico, in Sarasota, Florida. He and Tabitha have three children, Naomi, Joe and Owen, and three grandchildren.
Shortly after publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addictions taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since. The first novel he wrote after quitting drugs and alcohol was Needful Things.
Tabitha King has published nine of her own novels. Both King's sons are published authors: Owen King published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom King, who writes under the professional name Joe Hill, published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005. His debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was published in 2007 and will be adapted into a feature film by director Neil Jordan. King's daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida with her same-sex partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.
King is a fan of baseball, and of the Boston Red Sox in particular; he frequently attends the team's home and away games, and occasionally mentions the team in his novels and stories. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League Championship in 1989. He recounts this experience in the New Yorker essay "Head Down," which also appears in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. In 1999, King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which featured former Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon as the protagonist's imaginary companion. In 2004, King co-wrote a book titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season with Stewart O'Nan, recounting the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series and World Series. In the 2005 film Fever Pitch, about an obsessive Boston Red Sox fan, King tosses out the first pitch of the Sox's opening day game. (From Wikipedia. See complete article.)
Book Reviews
Mr. King's earlier books were full of phantasms and demons, but he grows ever more adept at rooting his dark thoughts and toughest struggles in reality…He remains amazingly resourceful. He's so good at scaring that he can even raise goose bumps when he writes about the measles.
New York Times - Janet Maslin
King is a pro: by the end of this book your fingers will be mere stubs of their former selves, and you will be looking askance at the people in the supermarket line, because if they turn around they might have metallic eyes. King's inventiveness and skill show no signs of slacking: Doctor Sleep has all the virtues of his best work.
What are those virtues? First, King is a well-trusted guide to the underworld. His readers will follow him through any door marked "Danger: Keep Out"…[because they know] he will also get them out alive…Second, King is right at the center of an American literary taproot that goes all the way down: to the Puritans and their belief in witches, to Hawthorne, to Poe, to Melville, to the Henry James of The Turn of the Screw, and then to later exemplars like Ray Bradbury.
New York Times Book Review - Margaret Atwood
[P]icks up the narrative threads of The Shining many years on. Young psychic Danny Torrance has become a middle-aged alcoholic...[and] remains blissfully unaware of the actions of the True Knot, a caravan of human parasites...as they search for children with “the shining” (psychic abilities of the kind that Dan possesses), upon whom they feed.... Less terrifying than its famous predecessor...[it]is still a gripping, taut read.
Publishers Weekly
[A] return to form for the old master.... Danny (now Dan) Torrance...meets a young girl with a shining even stronger than his own. Together, he and young Abra Stone must take on a tribe of people called the True Knot.... Verdict: This is vintage King, a classic good-vs.-evil tale that will keep readers turning the pages late into the night. —Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins
Library Journal
(Starred review.) King clearly revels in his tale, and though it's quite a bit more understated than his earlier, booze-soaked work, it shows all his old gifts.... His cast of characters is as memorable as any King has produced.... Satisfying at every level. King even leaves room for a follow-up, should he choose to write one—and with luck, sooner than three decades hence.
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 Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion, 2013
Simon & Schuster
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476729091
Summary
Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.
Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father.
When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.
Arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, Graeme Simsion’s distinctive debut will resonate with anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of great challenges. The Rosie Project is a rare find: a book that restores our optimism in the power of human connection. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956-57
• Where—Auckland, New Zealand
• Education—B.S, Monash University; M.B.A., Deakin University;
Ph.D., University of Melbourne; Advanced Diploma, Screen-
writing, RMIT*
• Awards—Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award
• Currently—lives in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia
Graeme C. Simsion is a New Zealand born Australian author, screen-writer, playwright and data modeller. He won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book, The Rosie Project.
Prior to writing fiction he was an information systems consultant and wrote two books and several papers about data-modelling. He established a consulting business in 1982 and sold it in 1999. At that time Simsion Bowles and Associates had over seventy staff. He co-founded a wine distribution business, Pinot Now with Steven Naughton.
From 2002-2006, as a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, he conducted the largest published study of data modeling practitioners (489 participants, most with substantial industry experience), to address the question, Is data modeling better characterized as description or design? The research included interviews with thought leaders, surveys of practitioners, and practical modeling tasks.
He concluded that, in contrast to the assumption implicit in most data modeling research, data modeling is best characterized as a design discipline (the term design is used in the broad sense of design theory, rather than its more narrow and casual usage in the information systems field). His work was published as his PhD thesis "Data Modeling: Description or Design," University of Melbourne, 2006 and in Data Modeling Theory and Practice (Technics Publications, 2007).
He is married to Professor Anne Buist and has two children. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/03/2013.)
* RMIT is the renamed Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Book Reviews
The Rosie Project is the kind of Panglossian comedy in which everything is foreordained to work out for the best. That’s not a genre that can be dismissed entirely—at least not without sacrificing P. G. Wodehouse, which no one should be prepared to do—but it’s one that doesn’t comfortably accommodate things like autism spectrum disorders.... The ultimate convention of romantic comedy is that love conquers all, but to propose that it can so easily mitigate such a painful condition may be to take convention too far.
Gabriel Roth - New York Times Book Review
Read-out-loud laughter begins by page two in Simsion’s debut novel about a 39-year-old genetics professor with Asperger’s—but utterly unaware of it—looking to... find love.... His plans take a backseat when he meets Rosie, a bartender who wants him to help her determine her birth father’s identity.
Publishers Weekly
Funny, touching, and hard to put down, The Rosie Project is certain to entertain even as readers delve into deep themes. For a book about a logic-based quest for love, it has a lot of heart….[an] immensely enjoyable novel.
Booklist
Polished debut fiction, from Australian author Simsion, about a brilliant but emotionally challenged geneticist who develops a questionnaire to screen potential mates but finds love instead.... The story lurches from one set piece of deadpan nudge-nudge, wink-wink humor to another: We laugh at, and with, Don as he tries to navigate our hopelessly emotional, nonliteral world....sparkling.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do Don’s Asperger’s conditions help him or hinder him? Does Don’s having Autism offer any advantages in his life?
2. Don goes through a number of spectacularly bad dates. What have been some of your own dating nightmares?
3. Where do you fall on the spectrum between structure and chaos in life? Are you highly rigid in your routines or very relaxed?
4. Do you agree with Don’s assessment that “humans often fail to see what is close to them and obvious to others”? (p. 88)
5. What do you think of Gene and Claudia’s relationship? Do you know anyone in an open marriage? Can it work?
6. Don says that the happiest day of his life was spent at the Museum of Natural History. Do you have a happiest day of your life? Or is there a special place where you are happiest?
7. As Don’s affection for Rosie grows, he becomes aware of his instincts overriding reason. What is the role of instinct versus reason when it comes to choosing a life partner?
8. Do you have anyone on the Autism spectrum in your life?
9. Don watches a number of movies to try to learn about romance, including When Harry Met Sally, The Bridges of Madison County, An Affair to Remember, and Hitch. What are your top five romantic movies?
10. Have you ever had a moment of breaking out of your routine and opening up in a significant way? Or has someone broken through your routine for you?
11. Is it smart to have a list of criteria for a potential partner or is it limiting?
12. Don gets in trouble with the dean for using the genetics lab for his personal project with Rosie. Is it ever okay to break the rules in order to help someone?
13. Do you feel happy for Don when he “eliminates a number of unconventional mannerisms” (p. 268) in order to win Rosie, or has he lost something?
14. Does Gene get his comeuppance?
15. Were you surprised at the ultimate revelation of Rosie’s biological father? Did you suspect someone else?
(Questions 1-15 issued by publisher.)
Additional Questions by LitLovers
16. After his lecture on Aspergers, Don confronts Julie with what he considers her lack of understanding: earlier, she obliquely refereed to Aspergers as a "fault"—as in "[it's] something you're born with. It's nobody's fault." She also worries that the nickname "Aspies" will get "them thinking it's some sort of club." How do Don and Julie view Aspergers? Do you agree with Don's approach...or Julie's?
17. Follow-up to Question 12: Don comes to see that morality and ethics are nuanced. What brings him to this point? And is morality nuanced? Is there such a thing as a purely moral/ethical stance, as Don has, up to this point, always believed?
18. Don accuses Gene of being just like him. One would hardly consider Gene autistic, so what does Don mean? In what way are the two men similar?
19. SPOILER ALERT: Don comes to the realization that he loves Rosie. Does he? Is he capable of the same kind of love as those of us feel who are low on the autism spectrum? Don realizes he feels happiness with her...is that the same as love? Or is his concept of love—compatibility and pleasure in each other's company—a better basis for marriage than deep feelings? Will Don's love, or his idea of love, be satisfying for Rosie over the long haul? What do you think?
20. SPOILER ALERT: Follow up to Question 17: Don has autism. How would you rate the chances for a happy marriage between Don and Rosie? What problems might they encounter? Is the book's ending overly optimistic, too much like a fairytale? Or is the ending based on optimism tinged with realism?
21. Overall, talk about the changes that Rosie precipitates in Don? In some ways, this novel can be seen as an adult coming-of-age story. How does Don grow over the course of the novel...not just the changes in his appearance or social behavior but in his essentials?
(Questions 16-21 by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks!)
A Medical Affair
Anne McCarthy Strauss, 2013
Booktrope
~350 pp.
AISN: B00FJBLSCY (Kindle)
Summary
Until the night of her first asthma attack, Heather Morrison is a successful New York City executive in the process of adopting a daughter from China. On the first night in her newly-purchased condo on the Upper West Side, she awakens in a panic, fighting for breath.
Moments later, her panic-stricken eyes meet those of Dr. Jeffrey Davis, a pulmonary specialist, in the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital. Jeff gets Heather's breathing under control, but their mutual attraction is undeniable. Despite the fact that he is married, Jeff Davis soon steps beyond the bounds of ethically correct behavior to pursue Heather, resulting in a late-night tryst in his office that escalates quickly into a passionate but dangerous affair.
Despite her increasing discomfort with the situation, Heather rationalizes her relationship with Jeff, hoping for a happy ending she knows deep down won't occur. Six months into it, Jeff's wife discovers his involvement with Heather, driving him to abruptly break off the affair, but not before Heather begins, with the help of friends, to understand the ethical and legal impropriety and seriousness of what has transpired. Emotionally overwrought and fragile after the breakup, Heather also struggles with an addiction to several medications Jeff prescribed while she was under his care.
With initial misgivings, she begins the process of bringing Jeff to justice, discovering to her horror after initiating legal action that by doing so, she has jeopardized her chances of adopting the daughter she has dreamed of adopting for so long. Heather's life comes crashing down around her as she sinks into the depths of humiliation and despair, only to find the strength within her, through the help of friends and compassionate professionals, to fight her way back into life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 8, 1952
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Marquette University
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York
Anne McCarthy Strauss is a versatile writer, researcher and public relations professional. She is also an avid supporter of victims’ rights. She has spent the last decade educating women and men on the seldom revealed but all too frequent occurrence of affairs between doctors and their patients. Her novel, A Medical Affair, is the story of a doctor who violates a sacred trust by having an affair with one of his patients.
Anne’s byline has appeared in Old House Journal, Waterfront Home & Design, Design Trade Magazine, Design New England, Distinction, Log Home Design Ideas and Florida Design Review. She has been a regular contributor to Martha’s Vineyard Magazine and Vineyard Style.
The veteran of dozens of MediaBistro courses and Maui Writers Retreats, she is a staunch advocate of lifelong learning. She is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), and holds a B.A. in Journalism from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
A lifelong New Yorker, Anne lives on Long Island with her husband and their two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
I need to warn anyone and everyone of what this book can do to your love/obsession with reading. First, I finished this book over a period of two days. I started A Medical Affair on Friday evening and finished it by Saturday night. I literally could not put this book down on Saturday to which my Kindle Fire battery needed to be recharged by mid-afternoon.
My Kindle Fire took a few hours to recharge and during that time, I tried to occupy my time until I could read again. When I wasn’t reading A Medical Affair, I was thinking about the characters and the storyline and how it would play out.
Heather meets Dr. Jeff Davis in the ER after he treats her asthma attack. Both of them feel a little attraction and sparks for one another.
Heather and Jeff’s love affair is started by Jeff. In my mind, he is a predator. He knew exactly what he was doing. He had an agenda the entire time. He knew what to say to Heather to make her go along with it. He used medicine to control her as well.
I enjoyed reading A Medical Affair. The book had everything I love about reading. There was mystery, romance, suspense, and strong characters and a great storyline. Most of all, the book kept my eyes glued to each page.
Beauty Brite (http://beautybrite.com)
Discussion Questions
1. Having read A Medical Affair, do you believe, given the imbalance of power in the doctor-patient relationship, that it is ever possible for a patient to have a consensual affair with her doctor?
2. As you read the back story, you learn that Heather Morrison came from a dysfunctional family of origin and was sexually abused as a child. Do you think these facts contributed to her having been unable to resist the advances of Dr. Jeffrey Davis?
3. Do you think Hope for Children Adoption Agency should have allowed Heather to adopt Lin despite what they learned about her when she went to China?
4. Heather quickly develops serious addictions to prescription drugs during her affair with Jeff. Do you think her stay at a rehabilitation facility will enable her to overcome her dependency and move forward in her life as a single mother?
5. Heather’s friendships with Trista and Miguel are a large part of her support system. Do you think the portrayal of these friendships was realistic? How do they compare with your own friendships?
6. Heather showed tremendous strength when she reported Jeff to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct and initiated a law suit against him. Would most women find the strength to go after a predator the way Heather did? Would you?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)
The Mountaintop School for Dogs And Other Second Chances
Ellen Cooney, 2014
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544236158
Summary
When twenty-four year old Evie impulsively ventures to the mountaintop Sanctuary to learn to become a dog trainer, she’s proceeding under falsehoods, having lied on her application.
She claimed to have experience with animals without explaining it was all from books, and she never mentioned the rehab program she’s just now coming out of. But she hadn’t known that the Sanctuary is a secret command center for a rescue network that engages in kidnappings of abused dogs, or that she’d be the only training-trainee they have.
Evie’s unique, vivid voice is a force of nature, and she meets her matches in the indomitable Mrs. Auberchon and other members of the staff, including a mysterious teenager named Giant George and an elderly golden retriever, Boomer, the Sanctuary’s butler.
At the heart of the novel are the wounded, healing dogs whose pasts, as Evie puts it, need to be erased like viruses on a computer: Tasha the Rottweiler, Alfie the greyhound, Shadow the hound mix, Dora the Scottie, Hank the lab/pit bull, Josie the yappy and deaf “small mix,” and Dapple the brood hound, whose rescue becomes Evie’s first kidnapping. These dogs meet all expectations as beautifully drawn, fully realized, unforgettable characters.
And as Evie begins her new education, which often involves learning things about cruelty and inhumanity she will wish she doesn’t know, the real adventure of Mountaintop opens up and keeps on opening, charged with her anger, convictions, intelligence, humor, mistakes, and most of all, her alive-ness.. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1952
• Where—Clinton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—M.A., Clark University
• Currently—lives in the state of Maine
Ellen Cooney is the author of A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies (2005) and The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (2014), as well as several other novels. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker and many literary journals. She has taught writing at MIT, Harvard, and Boston College, and now lives in Maine with her dogs Andy, Skip, and Maxine—who are each, in their own way, rescues.
In her words:
The Mountaintop School For Dogs And Other Second Chances is my ninth novel. My life in fiction officially began with the publication of Small Town Girl, in 1983. Since then I’ve published with big, small, and university presses, plus an adventure in e-publishing with my eighth novel, Thanksgiving. My short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and many literary journals, but I haven’t done any stories lately. With my last several novels, each time I finish, I feel I want to write stories again, but then I start missing the thing of a long haul and find myself itchy to start a new one.
I was born in Clinton, Massachusetts in 1952 and lived for many years in Boston and Cambridge. I taught creative writing at Boston College, Northeastern University, the (former) Seminars at Radcliffe, Harvard University Extension and Summer School, and most recently at MIT, where I had a long, excellent gig as a writer in residence in the writing program. My life in books and writing has also included jobs as freshman comp teacher, copy writer, freelance journalist, film reviewer, bookstore clerk, and even, way back in the day, as an assembly-line packer for a book manufacturer in my home town.
As I like to say at my public appearances, and to anyone who asks about my career, “I’ve been around.” I was a child and adolescent poet and playwright. My first poem was published in a local paper when I was eight and then I just kept going. My schools put on my plays as a matter of routine. One year, in high school, when I’d been feeling a little lazy, I was insulted to discover a Thornton Wilder play might end up being chosen for a yearly drama thing, but it got me to hunker down and write a new one. I finally began writing fiction as a graduate student in English at Clark University in Worcester, MA, working on a thesis about Virginia Woolf, which I needed to take a break from. I was supposed to go on from my master’s to a Ph.D. in literature and a career as an academic who also wrote plays and poetry: my old fantasy.
But fiction took over. I don’t feel I “found it.” It was more that it just happened. I didn’t even know what I was doing when I started writing a semi-autobiographical piece about a girl obsessed with bomb shelters in the Cold War days of my youth, but it became that first novel. Sometimes I think I became a fiction writer after eliminating poet, playwright, and academic, as if the whole thing were logical. Mostly, I think I became a fiction writer because fiction is where you get to do everything, and that’s what I hope shows most in my work.
I write fulltime now and live in mid-coast Maine. I welcome inquiries and comments from book groups and readers of all sorts. One of my greatest pleasures is finding email from someone who just read one of my books and wanted to say they felt moved, or inspired, or connected, or less lonely or misunderstood, or even upset about a turn of a plot or something I described.
Now that Mountaintop is making its way in the world, I especially welcome comments from people who share my experience of living with animals who were rescued from lives of neglect, abuse, tragedy. My own three dogs inspired me to write about the profound and life-affirming things that happen when humans have the chance to truly connect with animals: comedy, really, because comedy is the opposite of the tragic.
My dogs drive me crazy at least once a day. But they make me laugh a whole lot more, and while I hope and trust they’ve forgotten their earlier experiences of being in terrible situations, I never stop remembering that at any given moment, somewhere, for every animal being loved by a human, another is being hurt by one. I like to think it’s not a mere fantasy that maybe a reader or two of Mountaintop will want to go to a shelter and bring home a homeless pet (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Cooney’s good-natured narrative teaches readers about many different aspects of dog behavior and training alongside Evie, making the book ideal for animal aficionados...Dog lovers rejoice! Cooney has crafted an uncomplicated, feel-good, canine-filled tale of cross-generational friendship, healing, and solidarity.
Publishers Weekly
Cooney’s latest novel is both a joyful romp and a thoughtful meditation. The author’s delicate touch with the pain and trauma endured by abused animals and her sensitive portrayal of dedicated rescuers send a powerful message. Love is a great teacher and we are all a little unadoptable. Readers of Garth Stein and Carolyn Parkhurst will adore this title.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A charming novel about damaged souls looking for a "forever home."
Shelf Awareness
As knowledgeable as she is about the world of dog rescue and rehabilitation, Cooney (Lambrusco, 2008) is equally empathic in her treatment of a scarred and scared young woman.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Who is your favorite Sanctuary dog? If you could adopt any one of them, which dog would you be least likely to choose? Would you trust your instincts about imagining a future for the dog with you? Would breed matter? Size? Personality?
2. When we first meet Evie, she’s emerging from the troubled years of her early twenties and wondering what to do with her life. Although finding the Sanctuary’s ad is accidental, did you feel her decision was only impulsive? She explains, “I felt that I stood in the doorway of a crowded, noisy room, picking up the sound of a whisper no one else seemed to hear” (page 3). Have you ever had to make a similar choice about following your instincts, or some sort of “calling,” even though it means entering a great unknown? How much does selfconfidence play into this? Courage?
3. Evie makes the case that it’s not a good idea to feel pity for an abused rescued dog. What is the novel saying about the difference between sympathy and empathy? What is it saying about methods of teaching and learning, not only in terms of dogs but for humans as well? What about the distinctions made between “training” and “teaching,” and the function of a teacher’s creativity? How does the early scene with Evie putting the trash can in the pen with Hank show what type of trainer she’ll become?
4. There are no graphic scenes in the novel of violence or cruelty. What is your reaction to the clinical typenotes on the past experiences of the Sanctuary dogs? What about the brief video in which the man involved in dogfighting mourns a dog who was killed in a fight, while saying, “I loved that dog”? Have you ever wished, as Evie does, that you didn’t know what you know about cruelties committed by humans?
5. How much of a role does the setting play in Mountaintop? The mountain itself? The location is never named—do you imagine the mountain in a specific place? How does Evie’s ascent of the mountain reflect elemental themes in literature and human experience? Did you feel a close presence of nature? Does the author use forces of nature to advance and enhance the story? What about the effects of nature on Evie?
6. What does alternating chapters between Evie and Mrs. Auberchon do for the novel? How does it affect the novel’s balance? What is the effect of having Evie in first person and Mrs. Auberchon in third? How effective is the final scene, especially when Mrs. Auberchon reveals her secret?
7. In her oneparagraph application essay touching on the story of the monk and Buddha, Evie scorns the monk’s refusal to speak or write of his visionexperience. Why does she react this way? Do you think she’s right? What is the novel saying about spirituality? What about the insistence on making an effort to communicate, to connect? What is your favorite act of connection between a human and a dog in the novel? Between a human and a human? Between a dog and a dog?
8. How do you feel about the Sanctuary’s involvement with the Network and the issue of kidnapping abused dogs? Did you feel that Evie’s participation in kidnapping the brood hound, Dapple, was of deep significance to her? How successful is Evie at imagining the old life of Shadow, the hound mix who had been living outdoors on a chain before he was kidnapped? What did it feel like when Shadow found his voice?
9. “Alpha” is a significant word in Mountaintop. The subject of domination and submission plays a crucial part in Evie’s learning process, along with teaching (and living) practices based on controlling behavior through use of intimidation, pain, and fear. Does the novel succeed in revealing how the dogs of the Sanctuary don’t only need to recover from harm done to their bodies, but to their spirits, their confidence, their dogness? Have you ever witnessed someone being harshly overcontrolling of their dog? How does the Sanctuary’s rejection of “alphaness” affect you? Can a dog and a human be true companions if a human insists on an alpha dynamic?
10. What is the novel saying about different types of obedience? Do you think Evie successfully manages to describe and understand how obedience is sometimes a positive thing, and sometimes not? Were you surprised that after Evie met Dora the Scottie, she came to feel that sometimes being an alpha is okay? What about the scene at the inn with Tasha, when Evie unwittingly behaves in a dominant manner that’s close to being abusive?
11. What are your reactions to Mrs. Auberchon? Do your early impressions of her change when you discover she’s the Sanctuary Warden, and what that means? What is your favorite scene with her?
12. Mountaintop has many funny moments, either through Evie’s narration or in comic scenes. What would this book be like without those moments of lightness? How necessary were they for your reading of the novel? Did it happen that you were moved to sadness and laughter in moments that came closely together? How did this affect your relationship with the characters?
13. What about Evie’s family? Is she doing the right thing in deciding she wants to be separate and out of touch, at least while she’s in her program? What do you imagine her parents are like? How much of Evie’s pre-Sanctuary life was determined by her parents’ divorce? What about the staffers, whom Evie so misunderstood? They aren’t present in many scenes, but do you feel they’re fully present in the world of the novel?
14. Were you bothered that Giant George/Eric is a character whose past is never known? Do you imagine a past he might have had? What is the novel saying about the relationship of anyone’s past to the future? Do you think Evie is naive or overly optimistic in coming to believe a past of abuse and loneliness can be erased like a virus on a computer? Evie wonders early on if it’s possible to “go to the place inside someone where loneliness is, when the someone was never anything but lonely” (page 90). Does she find an answer to that question?
15. If you imagine yourself going to the Sanctuary, say a few weeks after the end of the novel, what do you think is happening with the pit bulls? With the other dogs? With the humans?
(Questions from the author's website.)