The Story of Land and Sea
Katy Simpson Smith, 2014
HarperCollins
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062335951
Summary
Set in a small coastal town in North Carolina during the waning years of the American Revolution, this incandescent debut novel follows three generations of family—fathers and daughters, mother and son, master and slave—characters who yearn for redemption amid a heady brew of war, kidnapping, slavery, and love.
Drawn to the ocean, ten-year-old Tabitha wanders the marshes of her small coastal village and listens to her father's stories about his pirate voyages and the mother she never knew.
Since the loss of his wife, Helen, John has remained land-bound for their daughter, but when Tab contracts yellow fever, he turns to the sea once more. Desperate to save his daughter, he takes her aboard a sloop bound for Bermuda, hoping the salt air will heal her.
Years before, Helen herself was raised by a widowed father. Asa, the devout owner of a small plantation, gives his daughter a young slave named Moll for her tenth birthday. Left largely on their own, Helen and Moll develop a close but uneasy companionship.
Helen gradually takes over the running of the plantation as the girls grow up, but when she meets John, the pirate turned Continental soldier, she flouts convention and her father's wishes by falling in love. Moll, meanwhile, is forced into marriage with a stranger. Her only solace is her son, Davy, whom she will protect with a passion that defies the bounds of slavery.
In this elegant, evocative, and haunting debut, Katy Simpson Smith captures the singular love between parent and child, the devastation of love lost, and the desperate paths we travel in the name of renewal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1985-86
• Where—Jackson, Mississippi, USA
• Education—B.A., Mount Holyoke College; M.F.A. Bennington College; Ph.D., University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Currently—lives in New Orleans, Louisiana
Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She attended Mount Holyoke College and received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has been working as an adjunct professor at Tulane University and lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Books
2013 - We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835.
2014 - The Story of Land and Sea
2016 - Free Men
(Author bio adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Set in the years around the Revolutionary War in a North Carolina coastal town, Katy Simpson Smith’s first novel is steeped in grief.... [The family's] losses are unrelenting; the act of merely keeping going seems almost heroic. From the start, Ms. Smith’s spare, rhythmic prose captivates.... Her refusal to serve up false redemption is admirable.
Carmela Ciuraru - New York Times
Smith has a real gift for describing both hope and despair, which is one of the hardest things for an author to do well. She’s also gifted at drawing realistic, three-dimensional characters, particularly Tabitha and her grandfather…Smith is absolutely a writer to watch.
NPR
Hypnotic…Smith employs a style of impressively measured, atmospheric understatement in her unabashedly stark descriptions, and we thrill to watch her characters row stoically into a darkening future.
Elle
With her preternaturally mature debut, Smith makes a persuasive bid to join the ranks of Hilary Mantel and Marilynne Robinson-people who have informed visions of history and the writing gifts to make them sing… Spartan, lyrical prose chimes in tune with austere times, wringing beauty from hard-bitten straits.
Independent Weekly
A luminous debut...
Oprah Magazine
Smith lyrically but firmly draws us still back in time to reveal the lives that surround her character…Transporting, tragic, both tranquil and turbulent, Smith captures life in any time period-but especially this era of newfound freedoms-with grace and powerful prose.
Interview Magazine
A bereaved father and his son-in-law struggle to understand the tragedies that have befallen them in Smith’s debut novel, which is set among the marshes of coastal North Carolina during the uncertain time of the American Revolution.... Smith’s soulful language of loss is almost biblical, and the descriptions of her characters’ sorrows are poetic and moving.
Publishers Weekly
Smith's spare prose and storytelling style is resonant of oral history or folk tales, and the early chapters...call to mind Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife. At first, this style creates something of a remove for the reader.... Despite the many sad events, the reader eventually engages, and the novel ends with a note of hope. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
[A] striking debut novel that reads like poetry and will linger like mythology, as Simpson’s language and metaphors weave threads of magic through each sentence.
BookPage
In her debut novel, Smith takes liberties with linear narrative and employs ever shifting points of view but still doesn't quite manage to imbue her stoic characters with inner lives.... Though Smith's homespun prose conveys a sense of the period without undo artifice, this is more a diorama of archetypes than a fully-fleshed drama.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Story of Land and Sea is set during and after the Revolutionary War. Of what significance is the historical time and place of the story? How would you describe the town of Beaufort during this period? What are the particular challenges of this time especially for the lives of the novel's women?
How are these challenges demonstrated in the experiences of Helen, her daughter Tabitha, and her slave Moll? How do the lives of these eighteenth century women compare to those of women today? If you could go back in time and live during that period, would you?
2. Husbands lose wives, children lose mothers, and a mother loses her child in the novel. How do these losses affect each of them? How do each of the characters seem to cope—or not with his or her grief? Of all the profound experiences of loss and longing in the story, which was the most compelling to you?
3. Explain the significance of the title "The Story of Land and Sea." What does the contrast between the land and the sea bring to the novel? What do the sea and the land represent to each of the characters and how is each reflected in their lives?
4. Helen's "story of land and sea" comes in the form of trinkets—a brass bell, a broken pearl—she has gathered. Why are these small, everyday items so significant to her? What kind of treasures does her daughter Tabitha collect? Why do we collect objects—why are the important to us?
5. Tabitha, Helen's daughter, identifies the mother she never knew with the ocean. What specific human characteristics are suggested by the many and varied descriptions of the ocean throughout the novel?
6. For ten-year-old Tabitha, "the wicked are the heroes." Why? What is it about innocence and youth that might make such characters compelling? How would you describe Tabitha's childhood? In what ways is it unusual? We eventually come to know Tabitha's mother, Helen, as a child. Are mother and daughter alike? How is Tab both her mother's and her father's daughter?
7. Helen is a strong-minded woman, yet she is also a dutiful daughter who loves her father. Asa does not approve of John, yet Helen elopes with him anyway. What gives her the courage to defy her father and follow her heart? How does her sense of duty change over time?
8. Consider Helen's slave, Moll, who has been with Helen since both were young girls. Describe her relationship with Helen. Do they think of themselves as friends? Can a slave and a master truly be friends? How does the imbalance in their relationship affect how they see each other and how they experience the ordinary events of life, from marriage to childbirth? Though her life is held in bondage, in what ways does Moll demonstrate her power and independence? Of the two women, does one have more emotional power over the other?
9. After John's tragic loss, he decides to head west and takes Moll's son, Davy, with him. Why does he do this? Is he as heartless as Moll accuses of him of being? Shouldn't Moll be happy that going west holds the promise of eventual freedom for her son? What fuels her decision to run away, even though she is leaving two young daughters behind? Are you sympathetic to her choices? How does Asa respond to Moll's request for her freedom? Is it possible to sympathize with him?
10. Moll believes that "Love was weakness. Love was acknowledging the rightness of the world and this she could not do." Explain this. Why does she feel this way? What role does love play in each of the characters' lives? Is love a form of bondage or does it offer freedom? In thinking about Moll's marriage, Helen ponders a difficult question: What is a life without the ability to choose? How do you answer this?
11. Think about Helen. Miss Kingston a family friend, wishes the young woman had "a little imagination." What might she mean by this? Is her assessment of Helen correct? Of Helen it is said, "it's as well she kept herself from novels." Why? Can reading a novel be dangerous?
12. John grew up as a neglected orphan. How is he capable of such deep romantic and paternal love as an adult? Why are John and Helen drawn to each other? What does family mean to each of them? Compare and contrast John and Asa. How do their shared experiences and losses unite and divide them?
13. What is your opinion of Asa? He is a self-made businessman and a devout man. How does his business success and his faith sustain him? How do they fail him? How does losing the women he loves affect him? When John is leaving, Asa asks him if he will be lonely and gives him a shell. "Take it," he tells him. "You'll miss the sea." Why does he do this? Why does John later toss the shell away?
14. Consider the image of the blue martin momentarily trapped in Asa's house. What might it symbolize? How are the novel's themes—love, loss, sacrifice, duty, freedom, choice—demonstrated through various characters' experiences? Choose one or two themes and characters to explain.
15. Think about the structure of the novel. It begins in the present, goes back in time, then returns to the present. How does this structure add to the story's power? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story this way?
16. What did you take away from reading The Story of Land and Sea?
17. Think about the spiritual lives of the characters in this novel. How do the characters engage with both organized religion and personal faith? How do John and Asa respond differently after their wives die in childbirth? How do their religious beliefs change over time? Does Christianity look different to a slave owner like Helen and an enslaved person like Moll?
18. Part One ends in a tragic event. How does John cope with his losses in order to make a life for himself? How can we as readers also move on from that event? How do some of the characters maintain a sense of hope in their lives?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Miniaturist
Jessie Burton, 2014
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062306845
Summary
On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt.
But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office—leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.
Nella's life changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist—an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways...
Johannes's gift helps Nella pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand—and fear—the escalating dangers that await them all.
In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation...or the architect of their destruction?
Enchanting, beautifully written, and exquisitely suspenseful, The Miniaturist is a magnificent story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Currently—lives in London, England
Jessie Burton was born in London in 1982. She studied at Oxford University and the Central School of Speech and Drama, and still works as an actress in London. She lives in southeast London, not far from where she grew up. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A fabulously gripping read that will appeal to fans of Girl With a Pearl Earring and The Goldfinch, but Burton is a genuinely new voice with her visceral take on sex, race and class.
Guardian
This debut novel, set in 17th-century Amsterdam, hits all the marks of crossover success: taut suspense, a pluck heroine- and a possibly clairvoyant miniature-furniture designer.
New York magazine
[A] haunting debut.
Good Housekeeping
A standout portrayal of the wide range of women’s ingenuity.
Booklist
As in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, the pleasure lies in giving in to well-wrought illusions, and the result is a beach read with meat on its bones - perfect for the Labor Day transition from play to work.
New York magazine/Vulture.com
The Miniaturist is one of the year’s most hyped novels, and it’s easy to see why. Burton conjures every scent and crackle of Nella’s world (A-).
Entertainment Weekly
Rich in 17th century atmosphere…Debut novelist Jessie Burton has a terrific subject... All those severe portraits of people in dark clothes and starched white ruffs, along with those glossy, death-scented still lifes, spring to life.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Miniaturist is a masterpiece of atmosphere and tension …. The themes Burton explores are as relevant today as they were long ago …. a thoroughly engaging, beautifully written work of historical fiction.
Washington Independent Review of Books
[A] sumptuous backdrop...about a young Dutch girl from the village of Assendelft...chosen to be the bride of...wealthy merchant with a shocking secret.... Strangely enough, however, the central mystery, the miniaturist’s uncanny knowledge of the future, is never solved, and the reader is left unsatisfied.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A talented new writer of historical fiction evokes 17th-century Amsterdam, the opulent but dangerous Dutch capital, where an innocent young wife must navigate the intrigues of her new household.... With its oblique storytelling, crescendo of female empowerment and wrenching ending, this novel establishes Burton as a fresh and impressive voice.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(The questions below were kindly submitted to LitLovers by Joanna Brown and Wendy Mazenauer, who developed them for their book club discussion. Thank you, Joanna and Wendy!)
1. In retrospect, we realise the identity of the very first character we meet in the church. She plays the part of a fleeting observer. Does this allure to her importance in the story?
2. It wasn't a conventional marriage and initially, Johannes is very cold towards Nell. How did you perceive their marriage?
3. "Words are water in this city. One drop of rumour could drown us." says Marin. Discuss the irony of this statement.
4. Peebo's escape could almost be marked as symbolic of events to come. Discuss?
5. In what way did Nella's discovery of her husband's homosexuality change her personality?
6. What part does Cornelia play in the narrative? How does her cooking add to this?
7. Throughout the novel, Nella is often referred to as "childlike". In what way would you say this is so? How do we see her mature?
8. When Nella discovers that the Miniaturist is a woman, her whole perception of the person changes. Discuss this and the effect that the Miniaturist has on the storyline.
9. Given Miren's puritanical exterior, how do you feel about her more worldly, private acceptance of her brother's homosexuality and her own secret life? Does she gain your respect?
10. How do Nella's feelings towards Johannes change as the story progresses?
11. Do you see Johannes as a victim or a hero?
12. In this novel we are confronted with the still-life subject matter of the Dutch painters during the 17th century. These painters were often depicting political innuendoes. How does this subject matter (‘natures mortes’—death in life: rotting fruit with insects crawling through it; slaughtered animals; dying plants etc) relate to the state of Holland at that time? Think also of the starling trapped in the church; the moulding sugar and the phrase “things can change."
(Questions kindly submitted by Joanna Brown and Wendy Mazenauer, two LitLovers readers.)
The Children Act
Ian McEwan, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101872871
Summary
Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge who presides over cases in the family court. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity.
But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now her marriage of thirty years is in crisis.
At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: Adam, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, is refusing for religious reasons the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents echo his wishes.
Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely expressed faith? In the course of reaching a decision, Fiona visits Adam in the hospital—and encounter that stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 21, 1948
• Where—Aldershot, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Sussex; M.A. University of East Anglia
• Awards—(see blow)
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England
Ian Russell McEwan is an English novelist. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (nee Moore). His father was a working class Scotsman who had worked his way up through the army to the rank of major. As a result, McEwan spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve.
McEwan was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson's pioneering creative writing course.
Career
McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. He achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its alleged obscenity. His second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978.
The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels, both of which were adapted into films. The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed "Ian Macabre." These were followed by The Child in Time (1987), winner of the 1987 Whitbread Novel Award; The Innocent (1990); and Black Dogs (1992). McEwan has also written two children's books, Rose Blanche (1985) and The Daydreamer (1994). His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about the relationship between a science writer and a stalker, was popular with critics and adapted into a film in 2004.
In 1998, he won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam. His next novel, Atonement (2001), received considerable acclaim; Time magazine named it the best novel of 2002, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2007, the critically acclaimed movie Atonement, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, was released in cinemas worldwide. His next work, Saturday (2005), follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon. Saturday won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 2005, and his novel On Chesil Beach (2007) was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize.
McEwan has also written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, an oratorio and a libretto titled For You with music composed by Michael Berkeley.
In 2008 at the Hay Festival, McEwan gave a surprise reading of his then novel-in-progress, eventually published as Solar (2010). The novel includes a scientist hoping to save the planet from the threat of climate change and got its inspiration from a 2005 Cape Farewell expedition. McEwan along with fellow artists and scientists spent several weeks aboard a ship near the north pole.
McEwan's twelfth novel, Sweet Tooth (2012), is historical in nature and set in the 1970. In an interview with the Scotsman newspaper, McEwan revealed that the impetus for writing the novel was a way for him to write a "disguised autobiography." McEwan's 13th novel, The Children Act (2014), is about a high court judge.
Controversy
In 2006 McEwan was accused of plagiarism, specifically a passage in Atonement that closely echoed one from a 2012 memoir, No Time for Romance, by Lucilla Andrews. McEwan acknowledged using the book as a source for his work; in fact, he had included a brief note at the end of the book referring to Andrews's autobiography, among several other works. Writing in the Guardian in November 2006, a month after Andrews' death, McEwan professed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt to the author.
The incident recalled critical controversy over his debut novel The Cement Garden, key plot elements that closely mirrored some of those in Our Mother's House, a 1963 novel by Julian Gloag, which had also been made into a film. McEwan denied charges of plagiarism, claiming he was unaware of the earlier work.
In 2011 McEwan caused controversy when he accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. In the face of pressure from groups and individuals opposed to the Israeli government, specifically British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP), McEwan wrote a letter to the Guardian in which he said...
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics, and for me the emblem in this respect is Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra—surely a beam of hope in a dark landscape, though denigrated by the Israeli religious right and Hamas. If BWISP is against this particular project, then clearly we have nothing more to say to each other.
He announced that he would donate the ten thousand dollar prize money to Combatants for Peace, an organization that brings together Israeli ex-soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters.
Recognition
McEwan has been nominated for the Man Booker prize six times to date, winning the Prize for Amsterdam in 1998. His other nominations were for The Comfort of Strangers (1981, Shortlisted), Black Dogs (1992, Shortlisted), Atonement (2001, Shortlisted), Saturday (2005, Longlisted), and On Chesil Beach (2007, Shortlisted). McEwan also received nominations for the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and 2007.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2005, he was the first recipient of Dickinson College's Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholar and Writers Program Award, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. In 2008, McEwan received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College, London, where he used to teach English literature. In 2008, The Times (of London) featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Personal
McEwan has been married twice. His 13-year marriage to spiritual healer and therapist Penny Allen ended in 1995 and was followed by a bitter custody battle over their two sons. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, was formerly the editor of the Guardian's Review section.
In 2002, McEwan discovered that he had a brother who had been given up for adoption during World War II when his mother was married to a different man. After her first husband was killed in combat, McEwan's mother married her lover, and Ian was born a few years later. The brothers are in regular contact, and McEwan has written a foreword to Sharp's memoir. (Excerpted and adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) As in Atonement, what doesn’t happen has the power to destroy; as in Amsterdam, McEwan probes the dread beneath civilized society. In spare prose, he examines cases, people, and situations, to reveal anger, sorrow, shame, impulse, and yearning. He rejects religious dogma that lacks compassion, but scrutinizes secular morality as well.... Few will deny McEwan his place among the best of Britain’s living novelists.
Publishers Weekly
Obsession is a familiar subject for McEwan, most memorably explored in his 1997 Enduring Love. This time the theme is a touchstone in a novel exploring a man's fixation on having an open marriage, a boy's fascination with the judge who will decide his fate, and a couple's determination to follow the strictures of their religion no matter the cost. —Henrietta Verma
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Irrefutably creative.... With his trademark style, which is a tranquil mix of exacting word choice and easily flowing sentences, McEwan once again observes with depth and wisdom the universal truth in the uncommon situation.
Booklist
(Starred review.) British judge faces a complex case while dealing with her husband's infidelity in this thoughtful, well-wrought novel..... McEwan, always a smart, engaging writer, here takes more than one familiar situation and creates at every turn something new and emotionally rewarding.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
How did The Children Act affect your perception of family courts? What makes it so challenging for parents and the courts alike to follow the deceptively simple mandate that “the child’s welfare shall be the . . . paramount consideration”?
2. How would you react if your spouse made a proposal like Jack’s? Is Jack’s interest in Melanie purely sexual? When he asserts that couples in long marriages lose passion, is he right?
3. How would you have ruled in the first case described in The Children Act, regarding the education of Rachel and Nora Bernstein? Does Fiona approach religious freedom the same way in her ruling for Adam’s case?
4. How did your impression of Adam and his parents shift throughout the novel? How does his childhood exposure to religion compare to your own?
5. At the heart of Adam’s testimony is a definition of scripture, secured by faith in his religious leaders to interpret scripture perfectly. How should the government and the court system consider religious texts?
6. Both Jack and Adam are drawn to romantic ideals, albeit at opposite stages of life. Are their dreams reckless or simply passionate?
7. As Fiona reflects on her life, which choices bring her solace? How does she reconcile her childlessness with her notions of the ideal woman? How does her personal history affect her decisions in court?
8. Discuss Fiona’s sojourn to Newcastle. What is she pursuing on that journey? What is Adam pursuing when he follows her there?
9. What does “The Ballad of Adam Henry” (page 187) reveal about the nature of youth, and the nature of mortality?
10. What is Fiona able to experience through music that she can’t access any other way? For Mark (possibly with a new lover to impress), and for the Gray’s Inn community, what is the significance of the Great Hall concerts?
11. In the novel’s closing scene, what transformations do Jack and Fiona undergo?
12. How does The Children Act enhance your experience of Ian McEwan’s previous novels? What is unique about the way his characters approach moral dilemmas?
13. Explore a few of the recordings of Benjamin Britten’s setting for “Down by the Salley Gardens” that are available online. How do the melody and the verses affect you? In your experience, what does it mean to take love and life “easy”?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Bone Clocks
David Mitchell, 2014
Random House
640 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400065677
Summary
Following a terrible fight with her mother over her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her family and her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena.
Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.
A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting on the war in Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Rich with character and realms of possibility, The Bone Clocks is a kaleidoscopic novel that begs to be taken apart and put back together by a writer the Washington Post calls "the novelist who’s been showing us the future of fiction."
An elegant conjurer of interconnected tales, a genre-bending daredevil, and a master prose stylist, David Mitchell has become one of the leading literary voices of his generation. His hypnotic new novel, The Bone Clocks, crackles with invention and wit and sheer storytelling pleasure—it is fiction at its most spellbinding. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 12, 1969
• Where—Southport, Lancashire, UK
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of Kent
• Awards—John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
• Currently—lives in County Cork, Ireland
David Mitchell is an English novelist, the author of several novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has lived in Italy, Japan and Ireland. Mitchell currently lives with his wife Keiko Yoshida and their two children in Ardfield, Clonakilty in County Cork, Ireland.
Early life
Mitchell was born in Southport in Merseyside, England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire. He was educated at Hanley Castle High School and at the University of Kent, where he obtained a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature. He lived in Sicily for a year, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England, where he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his pregnant wife.
Work
Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.
In 2012 his novel Cloud Atlas was made into a film. In recent years he has also written opera libretti. Wake, based on the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster and with music by Klaas de Vries, was performed by the Dutch Nationale Reisopera in 2010. For his other opera, Sunken Garden, he collaborated with the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa. It premiered in 2013 with the English National Opera.
Mitchell's sixth novel, The Bone Clocks, was released on September 2nd, 2014. In an interview in The Spectator, Mitchell said that the novel has "dollops of the fantastic in it", and is about "stuff between life and death." The book was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
Personal
In a Random House essay, Mitchell wrote:
Mitchell has the speech disorder of stammering and considers the film The King's Speech (2010) to be one of the most accurate portrayals of what it's like to be a stammerer: "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old.
One of Mitchell's children is autistic, and in 2013 he and wife Keiko translated into English a book written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy with autism, The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism.
List of works
Novels
Ghostwritten (1999)
number9dream (2001)
Cloud Atlas (2004)
Black Swan Green (2006)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
The Bone Clocks (2014)
Slade House (2015)
Utopia Avenue (2020)
(Bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)
Book Reviews
Holly Sykes…attests to this highly cerebral author's ability to create a thoroughly captivating character. Holly's poignant charm and Mr. Mitchell's sheer fluency as a writer help the reader speed through this 600-plus-page novel with pleasure…Mitchell is able to scamper nimbly across decades of Holly's life, using his prodigious gifts as a writer to illuminate the very different chapters of her story. Like a wizard tapping his wand here and there, he turns on the lights in a succession of revealing little dioramas…Mitchell's heavy arsenal of talents is showcased in these pages: his symphonic imagination; his ventriloquist's ability to channel the voices of myriad characters from different time zones and cultures; his intuitive understanding of children and knack for capturing their solemnity and humor; and his ear for language…Holly's emergence from The Bone Clocks as the most memorable and affecting character Mr. Mitchell has yet created is a testament to his skills as an old-fashioned realist, which lurk beneath the razzle-dazzle postmodern surface of his fiction
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Astonishing.... No one, clearly, has ever told Mitchell that the novel is dead. He writes with a furious intensity and slapped-awake vitality, with a delight in language and all the rabbit holes of experience.... In his sixth novel, he’s brought together the time-capsule density of his eyes-wide-open adventure in traditional realism with the death-defying ambitions of Cloud Atlas until all borders between pubby England and the machinations of the undead begin to blur. . . . He clearly believes not just in words, alternate realities, burps of synchronicity, but in the excitement of thinking about belief and extending its borders without losing the clank of the real.... Not many novelists could take on plausible Aboriginal speech, imagine a world after climate change has ravaged it and wonder whether whales suffer from unrequited love.... Very few [writers] excite the reader about both the visceral world and the visionary one as Mitchell does.
Pico Iyer - New York Times Book Review
A hell of a great read...wild, funny, terrifying...a slipstream masterpiece all its own.... David Mitchell is a genre-bending, time-leaping, world-traveling, puzzle-making, literary magician, and The Bone Clocks is one of his best books.
Esquire
A fantastic, perilous journey over continents and decades. Fans of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas will find this equally ambitious and mind-bending.
Marie Claire
Mitchell is back to try to shoot the moon again in a sweeping epic, The Bone Clocks, that, like Cloud Atlas, spans the ages and tinkers with the hidden gears of human history. It reads as if it were dreamed up whole and plotted out in a huge unlined notebook packed with drawings, charts, explosions of scribbles.
GQ
(Starred review.) A globe-trotting, time-bending epic that touches down in, among other places, England, Switzerland, Iraq, and Australia.... Is The Bone Clocks the most ambitious novel ever written, or just the most Mitchell-esque? . . . From gritty realism to far-out fantasy, each section has its own charm and surprises. With its wayward thoughts, chance meetings, and attention to detail, [David] Mitchell’s novel is a thing of beauty.... The less said about the plot the better, but fans of Mitchell’s books will be thrilled.
Publishers Weekly
Curiouser and curiouser...mind-bending, interlocking tales that are reminiscent of a (very) adult version of Alice in Wonderland.... [The Bone Clocks] won’t disappoint (Editor's Pick).
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Another exacting, challenging and deeply rewarding novel from logophile and time-travel master Mitchell. As this long (but not too long) tale opens, we’re in the familiar territory of Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006)—Thatcher’s England, that is. A few dozen pages in, and Mitchell has subverted all that.... The next 600 pages...[move] back and forth among places..., times and states of reality.... Speculative, lyrical and unrelentingly dark—trademark Mitchell, in other words.
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 Fallen Snow
John J. Kelley, 2012
Stone Cabin Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780988414808
Summary
In the fall of 1918 infantry sniper Joshua Hunter saves an ambushed patrol in the Bois le Prêtre forest of Lorraine...and then vanishes. Pulled from the rubble of an enemy bunker days later, he receives an award for valor and passage home to Hadley, a remote hamlet in Virginia's western highlands. Reeling from war and influenza, Hadley could surely use a hero. Family and friends embrace him; an engagement is announced; a job is offered.
Yet all is not what it seems. Joshua experiences panics and can't recall the incident that crippled him. He guards a secret too, one that grips tight like the icy air above his father's quarry. Over the course of a Virginia winter and an echoed season in war-torn France, The Fallen Snow reveals his wide-eyed journey to the front and his ragged path back. Along the way he finds companions—a youth mourning a lost brother, a nurse seeking a new life and Aiden, a bold sergeant escaping a vengeful father. While all of them touch Joshua, it is the strong yet nurturing Aiden who will awaken his heart, leaving him forever changed.
Set within a besieged Appalachian forest during a time of tragedy, The Fallen Snow charts an extraordinary coming of age, exploring how damaged souls learn to heal, and dare to grow. (From the book.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 9, 1965
• Where—Niceville, Florida, USA
• Education—B.S., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University (now Virginia Tech)
• Currently—Washington, D.C.
John J Kelley is a writer crafting tales about healing, growth and community. Born and raised in the Florida panhandle, he graduated from Virginia Tech and served as a military officer. After pursuing traditional careers for several years, he has devoted the last three to completing his first novel.
A member of The Writer's Center, John lives with his partner in Washington, DC, where he can often be found wandering Rock Creek Park when not hovering over his laptop at a nearby coffee shop.
John's debut novel recounts the struggle of a young WWI sniper returning to a Virginia community reeling from war, influenza, and economic collapse. The novel received a Publishers Weekly starred review and was named a ForeWord Reviews Book-of-the-Year Award Winner. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) In a gripping tale of self-exploration and atonement, Kelley's debut skillfully evokes the unpredictability of life in 1918 through mesmerizing descriptions and fully realized characters. Joshua Hunter volunteers to fight in the Great War to escape his rural Virginia home, becoming a respected sniper in wartime France. Unfettered from his close-knit Appalachian community's expectations, he develops a growing quietness and strength despite the ugliness of war. Returning home a crippled war hero, Joshua feels the old familiar expectations becoming more onerous. And even an engagement and job offer cannot erase the past, the echoes of war, and a well-guarded secret. Kelley's novel is emotionally complex and brimming with grit. Told in a plainspoken manner through parallel story lines—the present in Appalachia and the past in France—this story will appeal to readers of coming-of-age stories with a historical bent.
Publishers Weekly
Kelley's characters are introspective, and when they speak it is from the heart, honestly and without frills…. The real story here is about a soldier trying to come back to a place where he no longer fits in, and about the family and friends who only slowly come to realize that he is no longer "the old Joshua." Although The Fallen Snow is in part a tale of romantic love between two men, it is also in many ways a timeless tale of men changed by war. (5-stars)
Clarion Reviews
A timeless and timely novel of the physical and emotional cost of war. (5-stars)
San Francisco Book Review
A universal story that delivers its message that love can never take root inside the head, but in the heart.
Jill Wisoff, Unabridged
Neither a war novel nor a coming-of-age novel nor a romance novel—it is simply a novel worth reading.
Lisa Jones - 300 Word Book Reviews
A 2012 Book-of-the-Year Award Winner
ForeWord Magazine
Discussion Questions
1. The Fallen Snow is told in parallel timelines: the present of Joshua’s return to Virginia, and a second of his wartime experiences in France. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story in this fashion? Did you find the format helpful or a hindrance to your enjoyment of the tale?
2. A subtle interplay of opposing seasons exists between the two timelines. Events in Virginia unfold from autumn to late winter / cusp of spring while scenes in France take place from spring to late summer / cusp of autumn. Were you aware of this juxtaposition while reading the tale? Did the seasons—or the dichotomy of seasons—color the mood of certain scenes or the overall story?
3. The natural setting plays an essential role in the novel, often used to emphasize character attributes and situations. What is the significance of placing the drama within a wilderness threatened by relentless logging? How do Joshua, Elisabeth and Katie respond to their surroundings, and what do their responses reveal about them?
4. Speaking of natural elements, what is the metaphor of the fallen snow, both as explained by Joshua’s grandmother and as it emerges within the story? Does the nature of snow, ethereally and physically, contribute to themes of the tale? If so, in what way?
5. Of course, the novel extends beyond the rural Virginia setting, with a number of scenes in and near the western front as well as in wartime Paris. Did you find the war-zone scenes convincing? Was Paris, long associated with romance, a fitting setting for Aiden and Joshua to explore and ultimately consummate their relationship?
6. A number of symbols appear in The Fallen Snow. How do the following play a role and what do you feel each represents? Moon / Moonlight, the Saint Christopher medal, Music & Art, the Stone Cabin.
7. The human, flawed characters of The Fallen Snow at times bruise each other emotionally. What are examples of characters ignoring the feelings of others? How do intention and instinct play into their hurtful actions?
8. Joshua struggles with the role of instinct throughout the novel, from his feelings for Aiden and Katie to his actions as a sniper, even in his attempts to recover from his trauma. How does instinct help him? When do his instincts harm or lead him astray? In what ways do other characters act on instinct?
9. Though Joshua clearly suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), known then as “shell-shock,” he ignores the single, fleeting acknowledgment of his trauma in the opening pages. His reaction is unsurprising, as the condition was in that era considered a mental defect, a weakness. Have attitudes truly changed today? Would a modern-day Joshua face any less of a challenge?
10. Joshua also struggles with expectations before, during and after the war. What were some of those expectations? Were they realistically depicted? Does Joshua handle them maturely? Does he ultimately resolve them?
11. Elisabeth faces many challenges as well. Some are physical concerns, while others involve expressing herself and asserting her will. As the story unfolded, did you feel she was a victim of the actions of others, namely Wayne, or did she constrain herself? In what ways does she seek to find her voice? Does she succeed? On a related matter, do you feel her faith in Wayne was justified?
12. In response to both real and perceived expectations, the characters of The Fallen Snow sometimes repress their emotions. Can you cite examples? Could you relate to the characters’ motivations and feelings?
13. Kelley has shared that one inspiration for writing The Fallen Snow is his fascination with the ways individuals learn life lessons from others, even when the individuals are not aware of the sharing. An example he cites is Claire’s account of her mourning of David, which echoes and informs Joshua’s experience after the war. What are other examples of a character sharing a life lesson with another character?
14. It has also been suggested the book explores the many ways people experience love. What relationships are explored in the novel (husband and wife, for example)? Did a particular relationship intrigue you? If so, why? Did you reflect upon your own relationships as a result?
15. How do you see Katie and Joshua’s relationship? Does Joshua love Katie? What does Katie see in Joshua? Given the expectations of the era, they might well have married. From what you learn of them, how do you envision that relationship might have evolved? Could they have been happy together?
16. Regret and atonement are prominent themes of the novel. What regrets do the following characters carry, as expressed or suggested—Joshua, Wayne, Elisabeth, Aiden, Grandmother? Did particular regrets strike a chord with you? If so, which ones and why?
17. Did you have a favorite character? If so, who? Did a particular character capture your interest? What did you think of Harrison, the African American veteran, and his brief but revealing encounter with Joshua? How did each major and minor character evolve during the course of the novel?
18. Of all the characters, Claire is most cognizant of her longing for home. But she is not the only lost soul. In what ways do Joshua and other characters reveal their need for home, their quest for a place where they belong?
19. Kelley has said that, while it was clear from the start the novel was a coming-of-age tale, he found defining the genre a challenge. In your opinion, what genre best defines The Fallen Snow?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)