The Apple Orchard
Susan Wiggs, 2013
Harlequin
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778314936
Summary
Tess Delaney makes a living restoring stolen treasures to their rightful owners. People like Annelise Winther, who refuses to sell her long-gone mother's beloved necklace—despite Tess's advice. To Annelise, the jewel's value is in its memories.
But Tess's own history is filled with gaps: a father she never met, a mother who spent more time traveling than with her daughter. So Tess is shocked when she discovers the grandfather she never knew is in a coma. And that she has been named in his will to inherit half of Bella Vista, a hundred-acre apple orchard in the magical Sonoma town called Archangel.
The rest is willed to Isabel Johansen. A half sister she's never heard of.
Against the rich landscape of Bella Vista, Tess begins to discover a world filled with the simple pleasures of food and family, of the warm earth beneath her bare feet. A world where family comes first and the roots of history run deep. A place where falling in love is not only possible, but inevitable.
And in a season filled with new experiences, Tess begins to see the truth in something Annelise once told her: if you don't believe memories are worth more than money, then perhaps you've not made the right kind of memories. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 17, 1958
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Awards—4 RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America: for Best Romance, Favorite Book of the Year, and twice for Best Short Historical; Holt Medallion; Career Achievement Award from Romance Times (twice)
• Currently—lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA
Susan Wiggs is an American author of historical and contemporary romance novels. She began writing as a child, finishing her first novel, A Book About Some Bad Kids, when she was eight. She temporarily abandoned her dream of being a novelist after graduating from Harvard University, becoming a math teacher instead . She continued to read, especially reveling in romance novels.
Writing
After running out of reading material one evening in 1983, Wiggs began writing again, using the working title A Book About Some Bad Adults. For three years Wiggs continued to write, and in 1987 Zebra Books published her first novel, a Western historical romance named Texas Wildflower. Her subsequent historical and contemporary romances have been set in a wide range of settings and time periods. Many of her novels are set in areas where she's lived or visited. She gave up teaching in 1992 to write full-time, and has since completed an average of two books per year.
In 2000, Wiggs began writing single-title women's fiction stories in addition to historical romance novels. The first, The You I Never Knew, was published in 2001. After writing mass-market original novels for several years, Wiggs made her hardcover debut in 2003 with Home Before Dark.
Many of her novels are connected, allowing Wiggs to revisit established characters. Her books have been published in many languages, including French, German, Dutch, Latvian, Japanese, Hungarian and Russian.
Recognition
Wiggs's books are frequently named finalists for the RITA Award, the highest honor given in the romance genre. She received the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Romance of the year in 1993 for Lord of the Night. She won a second RITA in 2000 when The Charm School was named "Favorite Book of the Year."
She has also won the RITA in 2001 for Best Short Historical for The Mistress and, again, in 2006 for Lakeside Cottage. She has also been the recipient of the Holt Medallion, the Colorado Award of Excellnce, and the Peninsula Romance Writer's of America Blue Boa Award. Romantic Times has twice named her a Career Achievement Award winner.[4]
Personal
Wiggs lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her family. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/9/2012.)
Book Reviews
This brilliant and epic family drama...fills the senses...courtesy of Wiggs' amazing narrative and supreme skill as a writer. (Top pick.)
RT Book Reviews
Wiggs who is know for her insightful, emotion-filled women's fiction, has again written a tale with universal appeal. The background story of the Danish resistance as well as recipes from that part of the world are a nice touch, and add depth and atmosphere to Tess' story.
Booklist
Antiques treasure hunter Tess Delaney lives a high-octane existence and is on the cusp of the success she's fought for...[when] brokerage firm, banker Dominic Rossi... inform[s] her that she has a grandfather and a half sister she never knew about...and that she's named in his will as half owner of an orchard.... [A] lovely, poignant story of a woman who thinks she has it all until she discovers she truly does, and none of it is what she expected.... Wiggs tells a layered, powerful story of love, loss, hope and redemption
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.
Apple Tree Yard
Louise Doughty, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374105679
Summary
An intelligent, erotically charged thriller with deep moral implications.
Yvonne Carmichael, a renowned geneticist, public authority, and happily married mother of two, sits in the witness box. The charge is murder.
Across the courtroom, not meeting her eye, sits her alleged accomplice. He wears the beautiful pin-striped suit he wore on their first meeting in the Houses of Parliament, when he put his hand on her elbow and guided her to a deserted chapel, where she began to undress. As the barrister’s voice grows low and sinuous, Yvonne realizes she’s lost herself and the life she’d built so carefully to a man who never existed at all.
After their first liaison, Yvonne’s lover tells her very little about himself, but she comes to suspect his secrecy has an explanation connected with the British government. So thrilled and absorbed is she in her newfound sexual power that she fails to notice the real danger about to blindside her from a seemingly innocuous angle.
Then, reeling from an act of violence, Yvonne discovers that her desire for justice and revenge has already been compromised. Everything hinges on one night in a dark little alley called Apple Tree Yard.
Suspenseful, erotically charged, and masterfully paced, Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard is an intelligent psychological thriller about desire and its consequences by a writer of phenomenal gifts. (From the publisher.)
The 2017 BBC mini-series stars Emily Watson and Ben Chaplin.
Author Bio
• Birth—September 4, 1963
•p> Where—Melton Mowbray (East Midlands), England, UK
• Education—Leeds University; M.A., University of East Anglia
• Currently—lives in London, England
Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, including the recently published Apple Tree Yard, which is currently being translated into eleven languages.
Her first novel, Crazy Paving (1995), was shortlisted for four awards including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her sixth novel, Whatever You Love (2010) was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
She has also won awards for radio drama and short stories, along with publishing one work of non-fiction, A Novel in a Year (2007), based on her hugely popular newspaper column. She is a critic and cultural commentator for UK and international newspapers and broadcasts regularly for the BBC. She was a judge for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and is currently Chair of Judges for this year’s Fiction Uncovered promotion.
Doughty was born in the East Midlands and grew up in Rutland, England’s smallest county, a rural area that later provided the setting for her third novel, Honey-Dew. She attended Leeds University and the University of East Anglia, where she did the MA in Creative Writing course with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. She then moved to London and spent the rest of her twenties in a series of temporary jobs including teaching and secretarial work.
It was her experiences as a temp secretary that provided the material for her Crazy Paving, a black comedy about accidents, Chaos Theory and urban terrorism. That was followed by Dance With Me (1996), a novel about ghosts, mental illness and sexual betrayal, and Honey-Dew (1998), a satire of the traditional English mystery.
Doughty took a dramatic departure with her fourth novel, the internationally acclaimed Fires in the Dark (2003), based on the history of the Romany people and her own family ancestry. It was followed by Stone Cradle (2006) and Whatever You Love (2010). In 2007, she published her first work of non-fiction, A Novel in a Year, based on her newspaper column of the same name.
She has written major features, columns and cover articles for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, and her broadcasting career includes presenting radio series such as BBC R4′s A Good Read and Writers’ Workshop. She is a regular guest on the radio arts programme Saturday Review. She lives in London. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
At the start of Louise Doughty’s taut and psychologically persuasive novel we find [Yvonne] taking the witness stand at the Old Bailey, accused of complicity in a violent crime and about to be exposed in a highly damaging and compromising lie.... This is a novel that explores the ease with which we can stray off our safe, familiar paths and become addicted to the stories we tell about ourselves. A disquieting, perceptive and gripping read.
Daily Mail (UK)
Doughty’s achievement is to imagine a horribly mundane tragedy—the kind that could happen to anyone, but a tragedy nonetheless.... It gives nothing away to state that the comprehensiveness of [Yvonne’s] public disgrace is harrowingly well-realised.... The trial itself is a masterful piece of evasion and selective disclosure.... A compelling cautionary tale of what happens when fantasy begins to occlude real life. "The trouble with stories is, they are addictive," Doughty states. In this case, she may never have written a truer word.
Guardian (UK)
Louise Doughty has written a gripping thriller that calls our own thoughts on morality into question and is impossible to put down. Intelligent and captivating, Apple Tree Yard makes you realise how one bad decision can change the course of your life forever.
Stylist Magazine (UK)
Doughty controls the progress of this narrative beautifully, parsing out information with tantalising hints at what is to come.... Apple Tree Yard is a chilling novel, in part because of the unsparing light it shines on our ability to deceive ourselves. Doughty has a particular gift for unsettling stories, for making us ask difficult questions of ourselves, and this is her strongest book yet. It’s not a comfortable read, but it is entirely compelling.
Observer (UK)
Doughty is a brilliant storyteller who knows how to build the suspense to a breaking point.
Times (London)
If a prologue to a novel is to whet the reader’s appetite, Louise Doughty provides irresistible temptation with the opening to Apple Tree Yard.... Recollection, interspersed with the growing tension as the trial plays out in the Old Bailey, provides a perfectly dovetailed structure. But within the thriller framework lies a wealth of acutely observed detail, a dissection of social attitudes and an examination of lust, trust, predatory sex, risky behaviour and responsibility.... As deftly as her lover lured Yvonne into a high-risk relationship, Doughty has skilfully led the reader to cast aside misgivings and trust her confident lead. That the result is unsettling is evidence that there is considerably more to Apple Tree Yard than thrilling narrative alone.
Herald Scotland
Doughty...drops sharp, shiver-inducing insights, like winter raindrops, on every page.... The story is compelling, but Doughty makes sure that we’re enthralled by teasing us with tantalising glimpses of future events. Her writing is piercing and potent, overpowering emotions captured in sharp, pithy phrases. For all the tachycardia-inducing detail of the plot, Doughty’s view is broad, steeping the story in authenticity. She provides convincing examples of the effects of trauma, such as the atmosphere after a vitriolic outburst at a middle-class dinner party: "ugly and baffled silence...thick in the yellow room"; and describes the larger world, such as a stranger’s personal drama on the street. The court scene is one of the best I’ve ever read, the suspense and tension building to a taut peak. A major theme is how we build up illusions about people we don’t know, and fall for our ideal rather than the individual. Others include the way female victims are treated by the criminal law system, the sly manipulation of juries, and the way a series of facts can be arranged and interpreted in a variety of ways, all telling different narratives. Riveting.
Independent (UK)
Riveting from the opening scene.... [T]this taut British psychological thriller from Doughty boasts just about everything a mystery lover could want.... Eventually, even Doughty’s cunningly constructed and cannily revealed plot can’t camouflage the emotional void at what should be Apple Tree Yard's core.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Apple Tree Yard opens with a prologue that situates us very close to the end of the story. Why does the author choose to begin here rather than at some other point—for example, the day Yvonne Carmichael and her lover first meet? How does Doughty use the prologue to introduce characters, structure the plot, and create suspense?
2. The story of Yvonne and Mark is told in three parts, all titled with letters: X and Y; A, T, G and C; and DNA. What is the significance of each of these titles? How are they symbols that define the main characters and the underlying themes of truth and self-deception?
3. There are places in the narrative where Yvonne takes great care in describing her appearance—her clothing and footwear, hair, makeup, etc. Where do these descriptions occur? What do they reveal about Yvonne’s state of mind and her values, hopes, and concerns?
4. How does Yvonne describe her lover and their first meeting? What are some words and images that, perhaps, give away more than she intends? Why does she call him X? As you read her first e-mail to him, what did you think would happen in this story?
5. Do Yvonne and Guy have a good marriage? Is Guy supportive of Yvonne’s career? What is his attitude toward infidelity? Is it surprising that their marriage survives Yvonne’s affair, trial, and imprisonment?
6. How do Yvonne’s interactions and conversations with her adult children and her best friend, Susannah, illuminate her character?
7. After Yvonne is attacked, Mark Costley seems deeply and genuinely concerned about her. Does his behavior contradict how he treated her and managed their time together before the events in chapter 8? What does it say about the kind of husband and father he might be?
8. Why did Yvonne decide not to press charges against George Craddock? Might she have made a different decision if she did not think that Craddock knew about her affair? How do you feel about the decision at the conclusion of the scene where she meets with Kevin?
9. By her own admission, Yvonne waits a long time while Mark Costley is in George Craddock’s flat. What is her explanation for why she does this, for why, in fact, she does everything Mark tells her to do that afternoon? How does her version of this part of the story differ from the prosecuting attorney’s? Which version is closer to the truth?
10. We do not learn that Yvonne’s lover is named Mark Costley until the beginning of the trial. Why is this detail withheld? How does not knowing his name affect our experience of the story and what we believe or do not believe about Mark? Is there significance to his name?
11. During the trial, Witness G testifies for the prosecution that Mark Costley was rejected by the national security service because he was assessed to have “difficulties distinguishing the boundaries between truth and fiction.” What are some indications this might also be true of Yvonne?
12. At the trial, Yvonne hears evidence that suggests Mark was not in love with her but was using her (as he used many other women) to play out his fantasies of a more dangerous and interesting life. Yet he killed the man who raped her. Is this because he truly loved her or was it an extension of his fantasy life that got out of control?
13. Apple Tree Yard is the story of a woman who makes bad choices. She begins an affair with a total stranger who insists on having sex in public places. She declines to press charges against a man who violently rapes her, then encourages her lover to confront her attacker. After she and her lover are arrested for murder, she agrees to a plan to hide their relationship, which involves lying to her lawyers and the court. How does all of this fit with Yvonne’s image of herself as a happily married successful professional? What is her worst sin: infidelity, secrecy, perjury, or murder? What are her motivations?
14. In the final pages of Apple Tree Yard, Yvonne reveals two secrets. First, that the document containing her e-mails to X/Mark has been deleted, but not by her. Second, that when Mark took her to the flat she thought was a safe house, she told him she wanted him to kill George Craddock, to “smash his face in.” Do these revelations change anything you believed to be true about Yvonne? What do they say about her relationships with Guy and Mark?
15. The phrase “There’s something I haven’t told you” is central to the outcome of the trial. What are some of the many things that the characters in Apple Tree Yard do not tell each other? What are the consequences? Why does Yvonne tell us that “relationships are about stories, not truth”?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara, 1934
Penguin Group USA
251 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375719202
Summary
Modern Library's List of the 20th-Century's 100 Best Novels
In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville social circuit is electrified with parties and dances, where the music plays late into the night and the liquor flows freely. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English—the envy of friends and strangers alike. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
Appointment in Samarra brilliantly captures the personal politics and easy bitterness of small-town life. It is John O’Hara’s crowning achievement, and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American novelist. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 31, 1905
• Where—Pottsville, Pennsylvania, USA
• Death—April 11, 1970
• Where—Princeton, New Jersey
• Education—Niagara University
• Awards—National Book Award for Ten North Frederick
John O’Hara received instant acclaim for Appointment in Samarra, his first novel, and quickly came to be regarded as one of the most prominent writers in America. He won the National Book Award for his novel Ten North Frederick and had more stories published in The New Yorker than anyone in the history of the magazine. His fourteen novels include A Rage to Live, Pal Joey, Butterfield 8, and From the Terrace, and his more than four hundred short stories have been collected in twelve volumes. (From the publishers.)
More
John O'Hara was the son of a prosperous doctor, but his father had died when O'Hara was 19, leaving him unable to afford the college of his choice, Yale. He did attend Niagara University in New York State. By all accounts, this disappointment affected O'Hara deeply for the rest of his life and served to hone the keen sense of social awareness that characterizes his work. He worked as a reporter for various newspapers before moving to New York City, where he began to write short stories for magazines.
In his early days he was also a film critic, a radio commentator and a press agent; later, with his reputation established, he became a newspaper columnist. O'Hara received much critical acclaim for his short stories, more than 200 of which, beginning in 1928, appeared in The New Yorker. Many of these stories (and his later novels) were set in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a fictionalized version of Pottsville, a small city in the coal region of the United States.
In 1934 O'Hara published his first novel, Appointment in Samarra, which was acclaimed on publication. This is the O'Hara novel that is most consistently praised by critics. Ernest Hemingway wrote: "If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read Appointment in Samarra." On the other hand, writing in the Atlantic Monthly in March, 2000, critic Benjamin Schwarz and writer Christina Schwarz claimed: "So widespread is the literary world's scorn for John O'Hara that the inclusion... of Appointment in Samarra on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best [English-language] novels of the twentieth century was used to ridicule the entire project."
Harold Bloom included Appointment in Samarra as one of the works in the Western canon. This successful work was followed by several other novels such as BUtterfield 8. During World War II O'Hara was a correspondent in the Pacific theater. After the war, he wrote screenplays and more novels including Ten North Frederick, for which he won the 1955 National Book Award. But his books became increasingly wordy and his critical reputation suffered, although his shorter work was still esteemed. He was also attacked by some for his frank treatment of sexuality, which approached the boundaries of what was then permissible; Butterfield 8 was considered particularly shocking and was banned in Australia until 1963.
Despite his obvious writing skill, most of O'Hara's longer work was not highly esteemed by the literary establishment. Some of this may have been due to extra-literary factors, such as his social climbing, his vigorous self-promotion and his politically conservative newspaper columns. Martin Kich of Wright State University states, "O'Hara's achievements have been so long and thoroughly denigrated that he is now typically considered a novelist of the second or even the third rank."
His 1939 epistolary novel, Pal Joey, led to the notable musical of the same name, with libretto by O'Hara and songs by Rodgers and Hart. The 1940 production starred Gene Kelly and Vivienne Segal; it was successfully revived in 1952 and became a 1957 motion picture starring Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth.
Brendan Gill, who worked with him at The New Yorker, ranks him as "among the greatest short-story writers in English, or in any other language" and credits him with helping "to invent what the world came to call the New Yorker short story."
Oh, but John O'Hara was a difficult man! Indeed, there are those who would describe him as impossible, and they would have their reasons.
Gill indicates that O'Hara was nearly obsessed with a sense of social inferiority due to not having attended college.
People used to make fun of the fact that O'Hara wanted so desperately to have gone to Yale, but it was never a joke to O'Hara. It seemed... that there wasn't anything he didn't know about in regard to college and prep-school matters.
Of O'Hara, Hemingway once said, cruelly, "Someone should take up a collection to send John O'Hara to Yale." O'Hara also yearned for an honorary degree from Yale. According to Gill, Yale was unwilling to award the honor because O'Hara "asked for it."
According to biographer Frank MacShane, O'Hara thought that Hemingway's death made him the leading candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote to his daughter "I really think I will get it," and "I want the Nobel prize... so bad I can taste it." MacShane says that T. S. Eliot told O'Hara that he had, in fact, been nominated twice. When Steinbeck won the prize in 1962, O'Hara wired, "Congratulations I can think of only one other author I'd rather see get it."
John O'Hara died from cardiovascular disease in Princeton, New Jersey and is interred there in the Princeton Cemetery. The epitaph on his tombstone, which he wrote himself, reads: "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well." Of this, Gill commented:
From the far side of the grave, he remains self-defensive and overbearing. Better than anyone else? Not merely better than any other writer of fiction but better than any dramatist, any poet, any biographer, any historian? It is an astonishing claim. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[O'Hara] is the only American writer to whom America presents itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry James, or France to Proust.... He knows, and persuades us to believe, that life's deepest intentions may be expressed by the angle at which a hat is worn, the pattern of a necktie, the size of a monogram, the pitch of a voice, the turn of a phrase of slang, a gesture of courtesy and the way it is received."
Lionel Trilling - New York Times
If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read Appointment in Samarra.
Ernest Hemingway
Appointment in Samarra...was, and is, an almost perfect book—taut, vivid, tough-minded, and compassionate.
Brendan Gill - in Here at The New Yorker (p. 271)
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)
Also, consider some of these LitLovers discussion pointers to get you started with Appointment in Samarra:
1. What is the basis of Julian English's anger and self-destructive behavior —a man who has it all? What precipitates his tossing the drink in his benefactor's face? And when Julian actually tosses the drink, why does O'Hara switch perspectives, telling us about the incident through the eyes of others? Were you surprised by Julian's action?
2. O'Hara is renowned for nuance and his descriptive powers as a writer. You might talk about how he uses those qualities to describe the era, small-town life, and his characters. Consider, also, his dialogue and use of slang.
3. Some critics have claimed O'Hara to be snobbish— consumed with the life of the upperclasses. Do you feel that assessment is on target in Appointment in Samarra? What role does social class play in this work, or perhaps a better question—what do you perceive as O'Hara's attitude toward class?
4. Discuss the book's epigraph and title (borrowed from a Somerset Maugham story). What might they suggest about destiny? Is / was Julian in charge of his own fate, or were his actions predestined?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Aquarium
David Vann, 2015
Grove/Atlantic
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802123527
Summary
David Vann’s dazzling debut Legend of a Suicide was reviewed in over a 150 major global publications, won 11 prizes worldwide, was on 40 "best books of the year" lists, and established its author as a literary master. Since then, Vann has delivered an exceptional body of work, receiving, among others, best foreign novel in France and Spain (France’s Prix Medicis Etranger, Spain’s Premi Llibreter), a California Book Award, and the mid-career St. Francis College Literary Prize. Aquarium, his implosive new book and first to be published by Grove, will take Vann to a wider audience than ever before.
Twelve year old Caitlin lives alone with her mother—a docker at the local container port—in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish.
Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tanks one day, who seems as enamored of the fish as she, Caitlin cracks open a dark family secret and propels her once-blissful relationship with her mother toward a precipice of terrifying consequence.
In crystalline, chiseled yet graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her. Relentless and heartbreaking, primal and redemptive, Aquarium is a transporting story from one of the best American writers of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1966
• Where—Adak Island, Alaska, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Cornell University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Coventry, England, UK
David Vann is an American born author and creative writing professor at the University of Warwick in England. Vann has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a National Endowment of the Arts fellow, a Wallace Stegner fellow, and a John L’Heureux fellow.
Born in the Aleutian Islands, Vann spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. For twelve years, no agent would send out his first book, Legend of a Suicide, so he went to sea and became a captain and boat builder. Legend of a Suicide, a largely autobiographical novel, was finally published in 2008 and has won ten prizes, including the Prix Medicis Etranger in France for best foreign novel, the Premi Llibreter in Spain for best foreign novel, the Grace Paley Prize, a California Book Award, and the L’Express readers’ prize (France).
His work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers. His books have been selected for the New Yorker Book Club, the Times Book Club, and the Samlerens Bogklub in Denmark. He has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, CNN, PBS, National Geographic, and E! Entertainment.
Awards
2007 - Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2008 - California Book Award - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2009 - AWP Nonfiction Award - Last Day On Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter
2010 - Prix Medicis Etranger (France) - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2011 - Premi Llibreter (Spain) - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2013 - St. Francis College Literary Prize - Dirt
Works
2005 - A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea
2008 - Legend of a Suicide: Stories and a Novella
2011 - Caribou Island
2011 - Last Day On Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter
2012 - Dirt
2013 - Goat Mountain
2014 - Crocodile: Memoirs from a Mexican Drug-Running Port (in Spanish)
2015 - Aquarium
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/23/2015.)
Book Reviews
Aquarium is a genuine departure for Vann, an authentically new direction…. Aquarium has a vastly different feel from Vann's other books, a tone and texture quite removed from the relentlessness of his Alaskan (and rural Californian) tales. It leaves more air and space for the reader, it dwells less on physical mechanics, and it has a softer touch, as befits its gentle child protagonist.
Lydia Millet - New York Times Book Review
Elegantly written and fiercely imagined...physically, this book is so gorgeous it enhanced my reading experience. I found myself turning pages slowly, then running my hand across each smooth page. The photographs throughout the text, along with the turquoise capital letters that begin each chapter and mark the author's name and book title on every creamy, thick page, reminded me that no electronic reader could provide this tactile and visual experience...suspenseful
at times, this is a painful novel, but its beauty propels it toward redemption.
Elizabeth Taylor - Chicago Tribune
Much like the waters of the Seattle tourist attraction at its heart, David Vann’s new novel, Aquarium, virtually bends light, plunging the reader into the relentless darkness of tormented souls in a splintered family.... His language hits the reader like shrapnel in a metalworker’s studio—fragmented and sharp-fitting for novels so packed with shattering turns.
Tyrone Beason - Seattle Times
Gripping, painful, but ultimately hopeful, Aquarium is a coming-of-age story that explores the limits of love and forgiveness. Vann submerges you so deeply in Caitlin’s world, you’ll be gasping for breath when you finally surface.
Isabella Biedenharn - Entertainment Weekly
If deprivation was to Larkin what daffodils were to Wordsworth, then David Vann’s daffodils are fish...Told bravely but persuasively.... The author has metamorphosed himself into a 12-year-old girl with startlingly brilliant results. Aquarium is as rich as good poetry and as addictive as a first-class detective novel.
Wynn Wheldon - Spectator
A triumph.
Daily Mail (UK)
A stirring tale that isn’t as simple as it first appears.
Esquire (UK)
This novel is arguably Vann’s brightest.... Caitlin’s tale with its many surface ripples proves immersive, the narrative propelling us along like a forceful current....Once again, and in contrast to many of his peers, Vann’s trademark limpid prose enables us to observe far more of what lies beneath.
Weekend Australian
Vann’s elegantly written, emotionally intense novel juxtaposes the contained world of undersea creatures with the life of a family forced beyond its self-protective isolation.... The conflict between mother and daughter...feels improbably extreme at times, it’s more than made up for by Caitlin’s emotional depth and nimble imagination.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A 12-year-old's fragile world, mesmerizing innocence, and emerging adolescence are the heart of this alluring novel from Vann.... Caitlin juggles protective love for her mother with her irresistible need to seek out and embrace her roots.... [A] lovely, wrenching novel —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
By pulling no punches in this explicit exploration of family, forgiveness, duty, acceptance, parent-child relationships, and what constitutes abuse, Vann has outdone himself.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] kind of modern fairy tale, one laced with treachery and trials and the greatest demon of all to battle, the past.... Like all good heroines who make their ways out of the woods, Caitlin is clever and brave.... Vann's novels are striking, uncompromising portraits of American life; here is another exceptional example.
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.)
Arcadia
Lauren Groff, 2012
Hyperion
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781401341909
Summary
In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what would become a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after.
Arcadia's inhabitants include Handy, a musician and the group's charismatic leader; Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah's only child, the book's protagonist, Bit, who is born soon after the commune is created.
While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. If he remains in love with the peaceful agrarian life in Arcadia and deeply attached to its residents--including Handy and Astrid's lithe and deeply troubled daughter, Helle—how can Bit become his own man? How will he make his way through life and the world outside of Arcadia where he must eventually live?
With Arcadia, her first novel since her lauded debut, The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff establishes herself not only as one of the most gifted young fiction writers at work today but also as one of our most accomplished literary artists. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 23, 1978
• Where—Cooperstown, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Amherst College; M.F.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Awards—Pushcart Prize
• Currently—lives in Gainesville, Florida
Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer, who was as born and raised in Cooperstown, New York. She graduated from Amherst College and from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with an MFA in fiction.
Novels
Groff is the author of three novels. Her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton (2008), is a contemporary tale about coming home to Templeton, a stand-in for Cooperstown, New York. Interspersed in the book are voices from characters drawn from the town's history, as well as from James from Fenimore Cooper's 1823 The Pioneers, the first book in the Leatherstocking Tales. Fenimore Cooper set his book in a fictionalized Cooperstown which he, too, called Templeton. Groff's debut landed on the New York Times Bestseller list and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers.
Groff's second novel, Arcadia (2012), recounts the story of the first child born in a fictional 1960s commune in upstate New York. It, too, became a New York Times Bestseller and received solid reviews and was also named as one of the Best Books of 2012 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, NPR, Vogue, Toronto Globe and Mail, and Christian Science Monitor.
Fates and Furies (2015), Groff's third novel, examines a complicated marriage over the course of 24 years aas told by first the husband, then his wife. Like her previous novels, it, too, was published to wide acclaim, some calling it "brilliant," with Ron Charles of the Washington Post saying that "Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better."
Stories
Groff has had short stories published in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Five Points, and Ploughshares, as well as the anthologies Best New American Voices 2008, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best American Short Stories—the 2007, 2010 and 2014 editions. Many of her stories appear in her collection Delicate Edible Birds (2009).
Personal
Groff is married with two children and currently lives in Gainesville, Florida. Groff's sister is the Olympic Triathlete Sarah True. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2015.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Groff has taken a quaint, easily caricatured community and given it true universality, not just the knee-jerk kind that Arcadian platitudes espoused. Even more unexpectedly, she has expanded this period piece so that it stretches from 1965 to 2018, coaxing forth a remarkable amount of suspense from the way her characters change over time. And a book that might have been small, dated and insular winds up feeling timeless and vast.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Lauren Groff's second novel, Arcadia, arrives bearing enthusiastic blurbs from Kate Walbert and Richard Russo…But readers doomed to miss their subway stops will wish the cover also included a warning: "This novel will swallow you whole"…The book's real treat…is Groff's writing. As in her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, Groff's sentences are lush and visual…Her descriptions of the young Bit, meanwhile, uncannily illuminate the hidden world of children.
John Wilwol - New York Times Book Review
Page by page through Lauren Groff's story about a hippie commune in western New York, I kept worrying that it was too good to last. Not the commune—it's a mess from the start—I'm talking about the novel, which unfolds one moment of mournful beauty after another…Arcadia offers something surprising: if not a redemption of utopian ideals, then at least a complicated defense of the dream…Groff's miracle is to record the death of the fantasy but then show how the residue of affection can persist and, given the right soil, sprout again. Arcadia wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
(Starred review.) Groff’s dark, lyrical examination of life on a commune follows Bit, aka Little Bit, aka Ridley Sorrel Stone, born in the late ’60s in a spot that will become Arcadia, a utopian community his parents help to form.... Groff’s beautiful prose make this an unforgettable read.
Publishers Weekly
Groff...eschews counterculture stereotypes to bring Bit's interior and exterior worlds to life. Her exquisite writing makes the reader question whether to hurry up to read the next beautiful sentence or slow down and savor each passage. Highly recommended. —Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
(Starred review.) This beautifully crafted novel follows Bit Stone, the first child to be born in the late 1960s on an upstate New York commune.... [Groff] gives full rein to her formidable descriptive powers, as she summons both the beauty of striving for perfection and the inevitable devastation of failing so miserably to achieve it. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
(Starred review.) An astonishing novel, both in ambition and achievement, filled with revelations that appear inevitable in retrospect.... A novel of "the invisible tissue of civilization," of "community or freedom," and of the precious fragility of lives in the balance.
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)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Arcadia (quotes refer to hardcover):
1. Talk about Little Bit. Aside from his name's stated meaning, "little bit of a hippie," what is the thematic significance of his name? What do you think of him as a child...an adolescent...and eventually as an adult? How does Arcadia shape his adult life—has it been a positive or negative influence? Finally, what does he come to understand by the end of the novel?
2. What do you think of Hannah and Abe—as parents and as members of the commune?
3. Do you think it's right to sequester children in a commune like Arcadia, far from the reality of society? Is Bit, or any of the children, prepared for adult life? Or, on the other hand, perhaps you believe that the security of a protected environment gives children a chance to develop the inner-strength and values they'll need as adults.
4. Talk about the hardships members of the commune face. Why do Hannah and Abe remain under such difficult conditions? Would you stay, even given a strong commitment?
5. Why do the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales hold such power for Little Bit? What do they express for him, inwardly, that he can't find words to express outwardly? What dark forebodings might they hold for Arcadia?
6. What do you think of Handy—how would you describe him? What do you think of him as a husband and father? What kind of a leader is he? What role does he play in Arcadia—initially and over time?
7. Talk about Handy's first reaction to the completed Arcadia House. What is Abe expecting—why is he deflated by Handy's response? What eventually happens to Abe and Handy's relationship—and why? At one point Handy accuses Abe of "fomenting discord" while Abe insists he (Abe) has stayed true to their original aims, implying that Handy has not [p. 123].
8. How do you view Hannah and Bit's secret marijuana field? Were you rooting for their harvest to succeed—even though they're raising an illegal drug to sell on the open market? Or do you find it understandable—given that Arcadia desperately needs money to feed themselves through the winter?
9. What is Abe attempting to teach the boys during his tutorial on Milton. What does he mean when he quotes, "the mind is its own place" [p. 120, hardcover ]? Is it? And how might that insight help Bit survive the expulsion from Eden and his life in adulthood?
10. Comment on the observation that "when we lose the stories we have believed about ourselves, we are losing more than stories, we are losing ourselves." What are some of the stories of your life that have been shattered?
11. What do you think happens to Helle in the third part of the novel?
12. Did you have expectations about hippie communes before reading Arcadia, and if so, does the book offer any revelations—new ways of understanding the communal movement? Or has the book confirmed what you've tended to think of communes?
13. What are the ideals and goals of Arcadia...and in what way do they change over the years? Are those ideals eventually corrupted...or were they simply too naive or quixotic, making them impossible to live up to? If the latter, why? If corrupted, how?
14. Arcadia champions individual freedom. To what extent can personal freedom exist in a utopian community?
15. Follow-up to Question 14: The word Arcadia hearkens back to a mythical province of ancient Greece—a mountainous, pastoral area where humans and nature existed in complete harmony. Are utopian communities possible?
16. SPOILER ALERT: What led to the downfall of Arcadia? To what degree is Handy responsible? Or are other factors to blame?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Arcadia
Iain Pears, 2016
KnopfDoubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101946824
Summary
Three interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers. But who controls the future—or the past?
In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor Rosie.
One day, while chasing Lytten’s cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a young man who is about to embark on a quest of his own—and may be the one chance Rosie has of returning home.
These breathtaking adventures ultimately intertwine with the story of an eccentric psychomathematician whose breakthrough discovery will affect all of these different lives and worlds.
Dazzlingly inventive and deeply satisfying, Arcadia tests the boundaries of storytelling and asks: If the past can change the future, then might the future also indelibly alter the past? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 1, 1955
• Where—Coventry, England, UK
• Education—Ph.D., Oxford University
• Awards—Martin Beck Award (Sweden)
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England
Iain Pears is an English art historian, novelist, and journalist. He was educated at Warwick School, Warwick, Wadham College and Wolfson College, Oxford.
Before writing, he worked as a reporter for the BBC, Channel 4 (UK) and ZDF (Germany) and correspondent for Reuters from 1982 to 1990 in Italy, France, UK, and US. In 1987 he became a Getty Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at Yale University.
Pears first came to international prominence with his best selling book An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997), which was translated into several languages. All told, he has published some dozen books—seven in the Jonathan Argyll series (1991-2000) featuring detective art historian Argyll who works with the (fictitious) Italian Art Squad.
In his stand alone novels, Pears is known for experimenting with different narrative structures, presenting four consecutive versions of the same events in An Instance of the Fingerpost, three stories interleaved in The Dream of Scipio (2002), three stories told in reverse chronological order in Stone's Fall (2009), and allowing the reader to switch between multiple narratives in the electronic book version of Arcadia (2015).
Pears currently lives with his wife and children in Oxford. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/22/2016.)
Book Reviews
Every so often you read a novel to which the best critical response is simply "Wow!," followed by a sigh of pleasure. Eighteen years ago I felt this way about Iain Pears’s intricate historical mystery An Instance of the Fingerpost. The book dazzled for many of the usual reasons—fascinating characters, a richly presented fictive world, polished writing, lively dialogue, a serious engagement with ideas about life and morality—but, more unusually, it was also a masterpiece of plot construction. All this is again true, and then some, of Mr. Pears’s Arcadia.
Michael Dirda - Wall Street Journal
[Pears] is a master at creating structurally intricate novels.... As Pears steadily builds his multiplicity of stories, his orchestrations become something far more ambitious, a calculated and at times quite droll assault on the very nature of narrative itself.
Steve Donoghue - Washington Post
A complex romp through time and genres...that intertwines 10 major characters over several centuries, with allusions abounding to Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Shakespeare, and a raft of others.... [It’s] fun to puzzle out how all the strands fit together.
Patricia Hagen - Minneapolis Star Tribune
A fantastical extravaganza.... A complex time-travelling, world-hopping caper with insistently epic stakes.
Steven Poole - Guardian (UK)
Pears’s prose is a pleasure to read.... A dream of perfection in beautiful language.... A compelling narrative; switching from one [storyline] to another means we are constantly in a state of suspense.... I was entirely captured.
Marion Halligan - Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
A many-layered narrative in which real and imagined worlds continually collide.... Aficionados of fantasy fiction will find plenty here to relish.
Max Davidson - Mail on Sunday (UK)
The most striking thing about Pears’s writing—his plots and ideas are complex, but his style is simple and clear.... Fantastic fun and, in spite of its complexity, a swift read.
Bryan Applebaum - Sunday Times (UK)
Not so much a novel as a cornucopia of narratives.... As a novelist, Iain Pears doesn’t repeat himself, and he gives with a generous hand.
Andrew Taylor - Spectator (UK)
Extremely clever but, better than that, immensely entertaining.... Pears almost seamlessly merges genres of fantasy, sci-fi, spy thriller, romance, and more.
Jaine Blackman - Oxford Times (UK)
[A] clever, well-constructed story. Living in an environmentally ravaged future governed by a technocratic so-called Scientific Government, the "psychomathematician" Angela Meerson builds a machine that could in theory access the resources of a parallel universe.... A fun, immersive, genre-bending ride.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This complex, entertaining tale...involves time travel, British spies betraying one another, and apocalyptic scenarios.... [A] diverse group of characters and multiple worlds...[creates] an impressive and quite enjoyable mystery fantasy. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal
Pears darts from one [alternate future] to the other...[with] plenty of metacommentary on the art of storytelling, science fiction...the destruction wrought by greed, and other weighty matters. A head-scratcher but an ambitious pleasure. When puzzled, press on: Pears' yarn is worth the effort.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Where does the title of the book come from? What is Arcadia, and why do you think the author chose this title for the novel? How might the title serve as a clue that suggests or otherwise echoes the major themes of the text?
2. What is Anterwold? Why does Henry Lytten write about this place, and what characteristics does he give it? What are some of his major influences in the creation of this world?
3. Consider what the book has to say about the subject of history and our past. Angela is trying to find out how easy—or difficult—it is to change the course of history. What does she determine? What does the book suggest about the relationship between the past and the future?
4. How many points of view are represented in the book? Who are the narrators of the stories contained within the novel, and how does the shifting perspective affect your interpretation of the story? Does any one point of view seem to stand out from all the rest?
5. Consider the theme of morality. Can readers easily identify who is "good" and who is "bad"? What do the intentions and motives of certain characters—Oldmanter, or Angela, or Alex Chang, for instance—reveal to us about their nature? Does the book present a particular vision of morality? Discuss.
6. Evaluate setting. What settings does Pears employ in Arcadia? Does any one setting stand out from all the rest? What themes does each setting help to reveal or reinforce?
7. Consider utopia and dystopia as a motif in the book. How would the various characters in Arcadia define utopia? Would their definitions be consistent with one another? Which character or group of characters do you think is correct about creating a society that "works," as Henry Lytten would say?
8. Evaluate the theme of time. How is time represented or defined within the book, and what does this indicate about the relationship between past and present as well as cause and effect? Why does Angela believe that elderly people with dementia or Alzheimer’s are more in tune with the true nature of time?
9. Consider representations of status or social class in the book. How is status or class determined amongst the different groups of characters? What allows a character to achieve a high rank in each time and place? Does there seem to be social mobility in any of these places? If so, what allows or causes characters to shift positions?
10. Examine the theme of loyalty in the book. What examples of loyalty or disloyalty are depicted therein? To what are the characters faithful? Does the loyalty of the characters shift or remain consistent? Does Pears’s overall treatment of loyalty propose anything about human nature?
11. What does the novel suggest about identity? Are the characters easily identified in the various storylines? Is the identity of any particular character surprising, and if so, why? Does the book suggest whether identity is a static or fluid state? What seems to determine or shape the identity of the characters?
12. How does Arcadia uphold or otherwise defy traditional notions of genre? Is the book easily categorized? Explain. What genres are represented therein?
13. Evaluate the theme of storytelling. What is the role of the storyteller within the novel, and how are the storytellers treated in each time and place? What might this suggest about the purpose of storytelling?
14. How many stories does Arcadia contain? What stories influence Henry Lytten’s tale, and what stories influence Arcadia as a whole? What do these influences indicate about literary discourse and the relationships amongst texts?
15. In Arcadia, minor characters are revealed as major characters and major characters become minor ones, depending on which storyline a reader focuses on. What are some examples of this, and what might this convey about our own relationships to one another?
16. What is the Devil’s Handwriting? Who wants to find it and what do they want to do with it? Why is it significant to those who want to get their hands on it? Is it recovered? What does it ultimately reveal?
17. Consider the treatment of colonization and the treatment of indigenous peoples as a theme of the book. What does the novel suggest about this topic? How does Pears tackle the idea of the foreign in the novel?
18. Who are the Renegades, and what are some of their beliefs? Why do the elite scientists hope to contain them? Which group do you identify with more, in terms of what they wish to uphold and accomplish?
19. The author has revealed in interviews that Arcadia was conceived and written with the help of software. Discuss the role of technology in the formation and arrangement of the book. Do you think that the use of technology in the creation of this book was a success? Why or why not?
20. Evaluate the final chapter of the novel. Were you surprised at the conclusion? Explain. How does the conclusion relate to the overall structure of the book and the major themes of Arcadia?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Archetype
M.D Waters, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525954231
Summary
A breathtakingly inventive futuristic suspense novel about one woman who rebels against everything she is told to believe.
Emma wakes in a hospital, with no memory of what came before. Her husband, Declan, a powerful, seductive man, provides her with new memories, but her dreams contradict his stories, showing her a past life she can’t believe possible: memories of war, of a camp where girls are trained to be wives, of love for another man. Something inside her tells her not to speak of this, but she does not know why. She only knows she is at war with herself.
Suppressing those dreams during daylight hours, Emma lets Declan mold her into a happily married woman and begins to fall in love with him. But the day Noah stands before her, the line between her reality and dreams shatters.
In a future where women are a rare commodity, Emma fights for freedom but is held captive by the love of two men—one her husband, the other her worst enemy. If only she could remember which is which. . . .
The first novel in a two-part series, Archetype heralds the arrival of a truly memorable character—and the talented author who created her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
M.D. WATERS lives with her family in Maryland. Archetype is her first novel. Its sequel, Prototype, will be published in July 2014. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Emotional involvement powers this absorbing gothic thriller in science fiction trappings.... The novel follows a familiar emotional pattern—a woman’s initial need for safety and love, recognition of betrayal, and painful declaration of independence—but it works better than it should because of debut author Waters’s commitment to Emma’s struggle.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Waters takes a cliched premise—a woman wakes up with no memories—and transforms it into an original and compelling thriller that takes a look at a possible and terrifying future. Comparisons to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and S.J. Watson's Before I Go To Sleep are justified. —Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.
Library Journal
Waters' debut novel explores a future in which fertile women have devolved into a scarce and precious commodity.... The first few chapters are also a tough read; the author made a deliberate decision to obfuscate Emma's circumstances in order to gin up the tension, and while the story ultimately works, it's difficult to maintain interest early on. Starts slow but eventually picks up steam.
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 Arrangement
Sarah Dunn, 2017
Little, Brown & Co.
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316013598
Summary
A hilarious and emotionally charged novel about a couple who embark on an open marriage — what could possibly go wrong?
Lucy and Owen, ambitious, thoroughly-therapized New Yorkers, have taken the plunge, trading in their crazy life in a cramped apartment for Beekman, a bucolic Hudson Valley exurb.
They've got a two hundred year-old house, an autistic son obsessed with the Titanic, and 17 chickens, at last count. It's the kind of paradise where stay-at-home moms team up to cook the school's "hot lunch," dads grill grass-fed burgers, and, as Lucy observes, "chopping kale has become a certain kind of American housewife's version of chopping wood."
When friends at a wine-soaked dinner party reveal they've made their marriage open, sensible Lucy balks. There's a part of her, though-the part that worries she's become too comfortable being invisible-that's intrigued. Why not try a short marital experiment? Six months, clear ground rules, zero questions asked.
When an affair with a man in the city begins to seem more enticing than the happily-ever-after she's known for the past nine years, Lucy must decide what truly makes her happy — "real life," or the "experiment?" (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 28, 1969
• Where—Phoenix, Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Garrison, New York
Sarah Dunn an American author and television writer. She is known for the ABC sitcom American Housewife (starring Katy Mixon), as well as for her novels, The Big Love (2004), Secrets to Happiness (2009), and The Arrangement (2017). Her books have been translated into 19 different languages.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Dunn headed east to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated magna cum laude as an English major. She remained in Philadelphia after college, writing a humor column for the Philadelphia City Paper and waiting tables at TGI Fridays. A few years later, at the age of 24, Dunn published The Official Slacker Handbook, and was subsequently lured out to Hollywood to write for Murphy Brown, Spin City, Veronica’s Closet and Bunheads. With Spin City co-creator Bill Lawrence, Dunn penned Michael J. Fox's final episode of the series.
On her (now defunct) website, Dunn claimed to have moved from Los Angeles to New York five times, and from New York back to Los Angeles four times, which means she is still living in New York …or, as of this writing, in the state of New York. In 2007, Dunn married former New York Observer executive editor Peter Stevenson, and the couple lives in Garrison, New York, with their children.
Dunn is a member of the all-female television writer group "The Ladies Room," which also includes Vanessa McCarthy, Stephanie Birkitt, and Julie Bean. The group was founded in July 2016. (Adapted from various online sources.)
Book Reviews
Author Dunn is a bit of a genius when it comes to depicting upper-middle-class social mores, and this book will have readers snorting (yes, snorting) with laughter.
New York Post
For couples who have ever considered having an open marriage, or relationship, or whatever — sure, go ahead, have an affair — pick up a copy of Sarah Dunn's novel first. Because it's possible The Arrangement could push couples on the fence one way or the other, as she delves into the lives of one duo weighing whether to give that "open marriage" a test drive.… Of course, rules are broken, as are hearts and lives even in their cozy little suburban bunker. And Dunn writes it all with a removed grace.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Sarah Dunn has a terrific eye for the absurd, especially the ridiculous in everyday life.… Dunn's harpooning of the self-righteous denizens of Beekman is deliciously spot-on.… It's an arrangement worth telling — and reading.
Newark Star Ledger
The way this novel pushes and explores boundaries is commendable.
Toronto Globe and Mail
Meshes humor and hardship.
Time
This funny, honest novel pushes you to ponder what makes us happy.
Good Housekeeping
A smart, side-splitting exploration of contemporary attitudes toward love and commitment…not just revelatory and intriguing, but often downright hysterical.
Harper's Bazaar
Sarah Dunn's take on that point in middle-aged married life when everything falls apart is pure comedic genius, and you will absolutely find yourself looking at everyone you know and wondering who in the novel they most resemble.
Newsweek
Dunn's latest, about an attempted open marriage, is damn funny.
Marie Claire
Dunn has a keen eye for the comforts and absurdities of upscale suburban life.… Sensible insights about love are the novel's ultimate destination, but the ride is wildly entertaining.
People
This funny and relatable tale from the writer who crafted many of the mishap-laden stories on Murphy Brown and Spin City delivers the perfect escapist read in these angsty political times.
Esquire
Deliciously inventive…refreshing.
Elle
Dunn again plumbs the messiness and fallibility of romantic relationships in her latest novel.… At times…minor characters’ foibles border on the cartoonish, but they nevertheless contribute to an overall levity of tone that helps buoy what could otherwise have become a veritable catalogue of failing relationships.
Publishers Weekly
Dunn expertly reveals the intricacies that make up a marriage. Her characters are sure to strike a chord with readers, as they struggle to define themselves and their roles as spouses.… [A] multilayered novel that takes readers from funny to serious in a story full of truths, lies, and everything in between. —Erin Holt, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN
Library Journal
Dunn's television-writing background is evident in her witty dialogue. She grounds her novel in the minutia of suburban life, contrasting the heady days of new romance with school drop-offs and soccer games.… [An]engaging and exhilarating exposé.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Despite Owen and Lucy's self-made troubles, they are eminently sympathetic and disarmingly appealing. [W]itty and well-written, it's the most satisfying sort—a true guilty pleasure. Dunn's dryly humorous story about a marriage that goes dangerously off-road never loses its groove.
Kirkus Reviews
The book charms with the author's compassion for all her foolish, bumbling characters...The Arrangement will make you smile.
BookPage
Dunn has perfectly captured middle-aged marriage, with its mix of the boring quotidian and moments of deep happiness.… Readers will be laughing helplessly as circumstances grow ever more fraught, but will also muse about what makes a truly happy marriage possible.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Arrangement … then take off on your own:
1. If you are married, or in a long-term relationship, have you ever thought about an open marriage? Or been tempted? Or maybe even had one? Why or why not?
2. Talk about the reasons Lucy and Owen decide to experiment with an open marriage? How is it supposed to make them stronger?
3. What are the cracks in any long-term relationship that propel people to wander out of bounds, either openly or (more often) secretly? Is the idea of "love" delusional? Must "new" love inevitably yield to "stale" love?
4. Talk about the couple's divergent experiences: Owen finding no real fulfillment, only more irritation; and Lucy falling inconveniently in love. What is it about Ben that makes Lucy fall for him? In what way is Owen also in over his head?
5. What do you think of Izzy. Crazy? Likable? In what way would you say Izzy remains true to her character?
6. What are the joys—or not—of a committed, monogamous relationship?
7. Talk about the rules that Lucy and Owen come up with. Do they make sense to you? If you were to do something similar, what rules would you insist on?
8. What does the book suggest about the differences between men and women?
9. Dunn's secondary characters are wonderfully drawn. Talk about some of them.
10. Numerous reviewers mention the book's humor. What made you laugh?
11. What is your take-away from The Arrangement?
12. If you've read the Autho Bio (above), you'll know that Sarah Dunn has written for television sitcoms. Can you detect notes of sit-com dialogue in The Arrangement?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Arrangement
Ashley Warlick, 2016
Penguin Publising
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525429661
Summary
She’d made it sound as though her husband would be joining them for dinner. She’d made it sound that way on purpose, and then she arrived alone.
Los Angeles, 1934. Mary Frances is young, restlessly married, and returning from her first sojourn in France.
She is hungry, and not just for food: she wants Tim, her husband Al’s charming friend, who encourages her writing and seems to understand her better than anyone.
After a night’s transgression, it’s only a matter of time before Mary Frances claims what she truly desires, plunging all three of them into a tangled triangle of affection that will have far-reaching effects on their families, their careers, and their lives.
Set in California, France, and the Swiss Alps, The Arrangement is a sparkling, sensual novel that explores the complexities of a marriage and the many different ways in which we love.
Writing at the top of her game, Ashley Warlick gives us a completely mesmerizing story about a woman well ahead of her time, who would go on to become the legendary food writer M. F. K. Fisher. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972
• Where—Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Education—B.A., Dickinson College
• Currently—lives in Greenville, South Carolina
Ashley Warlick is the author of four novels. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship and the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, her work has appeared in The Oxford American, McSweeney’s, Redbook, and Garden and Gun, among others.
She teaches fiction in the MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the editor of the South Carolina food magazine edibleUpcountry. Warlick is also the buyer at M. Judson, Booksellers and Storytellers in Greenville, SC, where she lives with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
If you love historical fiction, you'll fall hard for this one.... Filled with food and passion, this is the perfect book to accompany a candlelit dinner.
Bustle.com
If you occasionally partake in culinary pleasures, you'll probably enjoy digging into Ashley Warlick's novelization of beloved food writer M. F. K. Fisher's life.
InStyle
[Warlick's] writing is smooth and elegant. The love and anguish experienced as marriages unravel is palpable and painful to the reader.
Historical Novel Society
(Starred review.) This stellar novel...fictionalizes the beginnings of the seminal food writer M.F.K. Fisher...amid the triangle of her professor husband, Al, and their friend Tim Parrish in 1930s Los Angeles.... It’s a treat to find such a beautifully written treatment of love in its different forms.
Publishers Weekly
This reimagining of the life of legendary food writer M.F.K. Fisher deals with appetites of all kinds. Mary Frances, as she is called as the novel opens, is married to uncommunicative Al and eager for a passionate interlude with Al's friend Tim. You can imagine what happens when she acts on her desires.
Library Journal
Blending fact and fiction, this historical novel covers nine eventful years in the life of legendary food writer M.F.K. Fisher...: a beautiful, talented protagonist; lush settings; illicit sex; mouthwatering food. But the novel falls flat...it never makes us care about its star-crossed trio.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the first chapter, Mary Frances thinks of her night with Tim: "It wasn’t love, but rather an appetite’s demand: direct, imperative, true as love perhaps, but far more dangerous" (p. 13). What impact does Mary Frances’s appetite—for sex, for food, for success in her writing—have on her life? Do you see it as a dangerous force, or a more positive one?
2. M.F.K. Fisher is one of the most admired food writers of all time. Did the fact that the book is based on events from her life influence the way you read it? Why or why not?
3. What types of struggles does Mary Frances face as a woman, both in her career as a writer and in her personal life? How does she deal with them? Do you think she fully overcomes them? Which of these issues do you see as a product of the time, and which do you think she might still face today?
4. The book’s descriptions of food are just as sensual as its descriptions of desire. What role does hunger play in the book? In your opinion, does Mary Frances seek pleasure or sustenance?
5. How does his divorce from Gigi affect Tim? Do you think he would have given himself over to Mary Frances if Gigi hadn’t wanted a divorce? Discuss how marriage is viewed by each of the book’s main characters.
6. Mary Frances and Tim’s journey to France begins in the middle of the book. How does this section act as a turning point? What is different before and after this trip? How does travel change Mary Frances’s perspective?
7. Mary Frances and Al have a very complicated relationship. Do they really love each other? Who do you think holds more power in the relationship? How does each of their writing concern their relationship? What about their childlessness? Why do you think they stay married so long?
8. The characters live in several unconventional "arrangements" in the book—Al and Mary Frances living with Gigi; Mary Frances traveling with Tim and his mother; then Mary Frances, Al, and Tim all living together in Switzerland. Are these arrangements a good idea? How do they affect the characters? How would they be viewed today?
9. The novel is set between two major historical events—the Great Depression and World War II. What effect do these events have on the story? The characters?
10. What do you make of the book’s ending? Is Mary Frances happy? Is she satisfied?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis, 1925
CreateSpace
316 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781452849102
Summary
Winner, 1926 Pulitzer Prize
New York Times Book of the Century
The Pulitzer Prize winning Arrowsmith (an award Lewis refused to accept) recounts the story of a doctor who is forced to give up his trade for reasons ranging from public ignorance to the publicity-mindedness of a great foundation, and becomes an isolated seeker of scientific truth. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 7, 1885
• Where—Sauk Centre, Minnesota, USA
• Death—January 10, 1951
• Where—Rome Italy
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Nobel Prize; Pulitzer Prize
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American society and capitalist values, as well as for their strong characterizations of modern working women.
Born in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. He had two siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician and a stern disciplinarian who had difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat popeyed—had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War.
Early life and writings
Lewis entered Yale in 1903 but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-important loquacity made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did initiate a few relatively long-lived friendships among students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer.
Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, write fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. While working for newspapers and publishing houses (and for a time at the Carmel-by-the-Sea, California writers' colony), he developed a facility for turning out shallow, popular stories that were purchased by a variety of magazines. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.
Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham.
Lewis's first serious novel, Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, appeared in 1914, followed by The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life (1915) and The Job (1917). That same year also saw the publication of another potboiler, The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, an expanded version of a serial story that had originally appeared in Woman's Home Companion. Free Air, another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919.
Marriage and family
In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at Vogue magazine. They had one son, Wells Lewis (1917–1944), named after British author H. G. Wells. Wells Lewis was killed while serving in the military in World War II.
Lewis divorced Grace in 1925 and married Dorothy Thompson, a political newspaper columnist, in 1928. They had a son, Michael Lewis, in 1930. Their marriage had virtually ended by 1937, and they divorced in 1942. Michael Lewis became an actor, and died in 1975 at age 44.
Success
Upon moving to Washington, D.C., Lewis devoted himself to writing. As early as 1916, Lewis began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completed Main Street, which was published in 1920. As his biographer Mark Schorer wrote, the phenomenal success of Main Street "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history." Based on sales of his prior books, Lewis's most optimistic projection was a sale of 25,000 copies. In the first six months of 1921, Main Street sold 180,000 copies, and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million. According to Richard Lingeman, Main Street earned Lewis the equivalent of $3 million in 2002 dollars.
Lewis followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis would return in future novels, including Gideon Planish and Dodsworth.
Lewis continued his success in the 1920s with Arrowsmith (1925), a novel about the challenges faced by an idealistic doctor. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis refused). Adapted as a 1931 Hollywood film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman, it was nominated for four Academy Awards.
Next came Elmer Gantry (1927), which depicted an evangelical minister as deeply hypocritical. The novel was denounced by many religious leaders and banned in some U.S. cities. Adapted for the screen more than a generation later, the novel was the basis of the 1960 movie starring Burt Lancaster, who earned a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
Lewis closed out the decade with Dodsworth (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. The book was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1934 by Sidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1936 film version. Directed by William Wyler and a great success at the time, the film is still highly regarded. In 1990, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and in 2005 Time magazine named it one of the "100 Best Movies" of the past 80 years.
Alcoholism
After an alcoholic binge in 1937, Lewis checked into the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for treatment. His doctors gave Lewis a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other." Lewis checked out after 10 days, lacking, one of his physicians wrote to a colleague, any "fundamental understanding of his problem."
Nobel Prize
In 1930, Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award. In the Swedish Academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid to Babbitt. In his Nobel Lecture, Lewis praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us — not readers alone, but even writers — are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today." He also offered a profound criticism of the American literary establishment: "Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."
Later years and death
After winning the Nobel Prize, Lewis wrote eleven more novels, ten of which appeared in his lifetime. The best remembered is It Can't Happen Here, a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency.
Lewis died in Rome on January 10, 1951, aged 65, from advanced alcoholism, although his friend and admirer, William Shirer, says he simply had a heart attack. Lewis's cremated remains were buried in Sauk Centre. A final novel, World So Wide (1951), was published posthumously.
In summing up Lewis' career, Shirer concludes, "It has become rather commonplace for so-called literary critics to write off Sinclair Lewis as a novelist. Compared to...Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Faulkner...Lewis lacked style. Yet his impact on modern American life...was greater than all of the other four writers together." (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Artistically, Arrowsmith is an authentic step forward. The novel is full of passages of a quite noble felicity and the old skill in presenting character through dialogue never fails.
Henry Longan Stuart - New York Times (3/8/1925)
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)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Arrowsmith:
1. How does Martin view Winnemac Medical School? What does he find fault with? How do his views differ from those of his classmates?
2. Talk about Madeleine—what kind of young woman is she? Why does Martin turn to her initially, and why does he want to marry her? Why does Martin tell Madeleine that he would work to become a successful surgeon, the very thing he has criticized?
3. Describe Leora—in what ways is she different from Madeleine? Why is Martin attracted to her? And what about the luncheon to which Martin invites both Leora and Madeleine!
4. Martin Arrowsmith, the book's hero: what do you think of him—what kind of character is he? Is he steadfast in his principles or vacillate with the wind? Is he an arrogant know-it-all, or a callow young man who has yet to achieve maturity?
5. Sinclair Lewis can be unmercifully funny—but always to make a point. How, for instance, does he use the character of Roscoe Geake to criticize the medical establishment? (What of Geake's speech, "The Art and Science of Furnishing the Doctor's Office"?) On who or what else does Lewis train his satiric eye (don't overlook the Nautilis Health Fair)?
6. Does Martin deserve his suspension from medical school? Was he rude and arrogant, or standing on principle? After he returns to school, how and why is he changed?
7. Talk about Gottlieb's experience working at Hunziker in Pittsburgh. Why does he take the position; is it an ethical compromise on his part? How does Martin react when he learns of Gottlieb's position? Are the pressures facing Gottlieb prevalent today?
8. Martin's first position out of medical school is a country doctor? What kind of doctor does he make...and why can't he win the trust of the townspeople? Why does Martin become dissatisfied in Wheatsylvania? What is he seeking there that he cannot find? In what way is Sinclair Lewis using Wheatsylvania as a critique of small town America? Do you think his portrait is fair or unfair?
9. Martin eventually becomes acting director of public health in Nautilis, but again controversy and unpopularity seek him out. What's wrong in Nautilis? Is Martin the maker of his own conflict...or is he a true reformer in a corrupt system?
10. After a stop in Chicago, Martin ends up at the McGurk Institute in New York with his old mentor Max Gottlieb. What problematic issues arise in this environment? Again, what is Sinclair Lewis training his critical eye on this time?
11. What are the differences between Tubbs and Gottlieb? What does each represent in the world of science and medicine?
12.. What does Martin learn from Oliver Marchand when the McGurk commission travels to St. Hubert?
13. What role do women play in this novel? How does Lewis portray them? Are they men's equals?
14. Is Martin right to withhold phage from people who are desperately ill? In what way is this issue relevant today?
15. The narrator says in Chapter 36, "the papers were able to announce that America, which was always rescuing the world from something or other, had gone and done it again." Is that a fair assessment of America's position in the world? Is it relevant to today? Does America try to be the world's savior?
SPOILER alert: Go no farther unless you've finished the book.
16. Is Leora's death necessary in this story? Did you feel her loss?
17. Throughout the novel, Martin is a seeker. Still, is his final act justified—that of abandoning his family and retreating into the woods of Vermont to pursue pure research?
18. What has changed, from from the early 20th century to today, in the way medicine and medical research are practiced? What has not changed—what issues addressed in Arrowsmith continue to plague science and medicine 100 years later?
19. Does this novel end on an optimistic...or pessimistic note?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Arsonist
Sue Miller, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307594792
Summary
A family and a community tested when an arsonist begins setting fire to the homes of the summer people in a small New England town.
Troubled by the feeling that she belongs nowhere after working in East Africa for fifteen years, Frankie Rowley has come home—home to the small New Hampshire village of Pomeroy and the farmhouse where her family has always summered. On her first night back, a house up the road burns to the ground. Then another house burns, and another, always the houses of the summer people.
In a town where people have never bothered to lock their doors, social fault lines are opened, and neighbors begin to regard one another with suspicion. Against this backdrop of menace and fear, Frankie begins a passionate, unexpected affair with the editor of the local paper, a romance that progresses with exquisite tenderness and heat toward its own remarkable risks and revelations.
Suspenseful, sophisticated, rich in psychological nuance and emotional insight, The Arsonist is vintage Sue Miller—a finely wrought novel about belonging and community, about how and where one ought to live, about what it means to lead a fulfilling life. One of our most elegant and engrossing novelists at her inimitable best. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 29, 1943
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Awards—
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Since her iconic first novel, The Good Mother in 1986, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters.
While not strictly speaking autobiographical, Miller's fiction is, nonetheless, shaped by her experiences. Born into an academic and ecclesiastical family, she grew up in Chicago's Hyde Park and went to college at Harvard. She was married at 20 and held down a series of odd jobs until her son Ben was born in 1968. She separated from her first husband in 1971, subsequently divorced, and for 13 years was a single parent in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working in day care, taking in roomers, and writing whenever she could.
In these early years, Miller's productivity was directly proportional to her ability to win grants and fellowships. An endowment in 1979 allowed her to enroll in the Creative Writing Program at Boston University. A few of her stories were accepted for publication, and she began teaching in the Boston area. Two additional grants in the 1980s enabled her to concentrate on writing fulltime. Published in 1986, her first novel became an international bestseller.
Since then, success has followed success. Two of Miller's books (The Good Mother and Inventing the Abbots) have been made into feature films; her 1990 novel Family Pictures was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Oprah Winfrey selected While I Was Gone for her popular Book Club; and in 2004, a first foray into nonfiction—the poignant, intensely personal memoir The Story of My Father—was widely praised for its narrative eloquence and character dramatization. The Senator's Wife was published in 2008, followed by The Lake Shore Limited in 2010 and The Arsonist in 2014.
Miller is a distinguished practitioner of "domestic fiction," a time-honored genre stretching back to Jane Austen, Henry James, and Leo Tolstoy and honed to perfection by such modern literary luminaries as John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, and Richard Ford.
A careful observer of quotidian detail, she stretches her novels across the canvas of home and hearth, creating extraordinary stories out of the quiet intimacies of marriage, family, and friendship. In an article written for the New York Times "Writers on Writing" series, she explains:
For me everyday life in the hands of a fine writer seems...charged with meaning. When I write, I want to bring a sense of that charge, that meaning, to what may fairly be called the domestic.
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I come from a long line of clergy. My father was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian church, though as I grew up, he was primarily an academic at several seminaries — the University of Chicago, and then Princeton. Both my grandfathers were also ministers, and their fathers too. It goes back farther than that in a more sporadic way.
• I spent a year working as a cocktail waitress in a seedy bar just outside New Haven, Connecticut. Think high heels, mesh tights, and the concentrated smell of nicotine. Think of the possible connections of this fact to the first fact, above.
• I like northern California, where we've had a second home we're selling—it's just too far away from Boston. I've had a garden there that has been a delight to create, as the plants are so different from those in New England, which is where I've done most of my gardening. I had to read up on them. I studied Italian gardens too—the weather is very Mediterranean. I like weeding—it's almost a form of meditation.
• I like little children. I loved working in daycare and talking to kids, learning how they form their ideas about the world's workings—always intriguing, often funny. I try to have little children in my life, always.
• I want to make time to take piano lessons again. I did it for a while as an adult and enjoyed it.
• I like to cook and to have people over. I love talking with people over good food and wine. Conversation — it's one of life's deepest pleasures.
• When asked what book most influenced her life, here is her response:
In terms of prose style or a particular way of telling a story or a story itself, there is no one book that I can select. At various times I've admired and been inspired by various books. But there is a book that made the notion of making a life in writing seem possible to me when I was about 22. It was called The Origin of the Brunists.
I opened the newspaper on a Sunday to the Book Review, and there it was, a rave, for this first novel, written by a man named Robert Coover—a man still writing, though he's more famous for later, more experimental works. The important thing about this to me, aside from the fact that the book turned out to be extraordinary and compelling (it's about a cult that springs up around the lone survivor of a coal mining disaster, Giovanni Bruno), was that I knew Robert Coover. He had rented a room in my family's house when I was growing up and while he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where my father taught.
Bob Coover, whose conversations with friends drifted up through the heating ducts from his basement room to mine. Bob Coover, a seemingly normal person, a person whose life I'd observed from my peculiar adolescent vantage for perhaps three years or so as he came and went. It was thrilling to me to understand that such a person, a person not unlike myself, a person not somehow marked as "special" as far as I could tell, could become a writer. If he could, well then, maybe I could. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Subtle.... Miller writes effectively about the tense underpinnings of a summer community.... Full of Miller’s signature intelligence about people caught between moral responsibility and a hunger for self-realization.
Jean Hanff Korelitz - New York Times Book Review
Thoughtful intense.... An ambitious, big-issue novel.... The Arsonist takes place far removed from national news or world conflicts, but it, too, reflects the most urgent matters of our time.... When even mentioning the widening distance between the classes is considered an act of class warfare, it’s encouraging to watch Miller’s novel negotiate this awkward fact of American life.... The continuing miracle of Miller’s compelling storytelling [is] she knows these people matter, and as she moves gently from one character's perspective to another, her sensitive delineation of their lives convinces us of that.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Entertaining and highly readable.... Miller’s scenes are terrific. She is expert at moving people in and out of rooms in a visual and easy way [and] describing physical chemistry and attraction in a way that manages to avoid all cliche.... Fantastic sizzle, both sexual and spiritual.... A cracking good romance... Will keep you reading.
Boston Globe
Lyrical, compelling.../ Miller’s portrayal of the fragility of relationships and fear of the unknown—of the thing sthat happen to and around us that we can’t control—are spot-on.... Miller is a nuanced storyteller who portrays real life... Provocative, suspenseful, and emotional.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Miller eschews easy cliffhangers or narrative deceits. The momentum grows instead from her compassionate handling of these characters.... Not all questions are answered, nor all mysteries solved, but the end of the book is imbued with the same quiet energy that’s been building throughout; it’s not happy, exactly—that would be too easy—but, in true Sue Miller fashion, it’s triumphant.
Elle
A provocative novel about the boundaries of relationships and the tenuous alliance between locals and summer residents when a crisis is at hand.... Miller, a pro at explicating family relationships as well as the fragile underpinnings of mature romance, brilliantly explores how her characters define what ‘home’ means to them and the lengths they will go to protect it.
Publishers Weekly
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, nascetur neque iaculis vestibulum, sed nam arcu et, eros lacus nulla aliquet condimentum, mauris ut proin maecenas, dignissim et pede ultrices ligula elementum. Sed sed donec rutrum, id et nulla orci. Convallis curabitur mauris lacus, mattis purus rutrum porttitor arcu quis
Library Journal
With her trademark elegant prose and masterful command of subtle psychological nuance, Miller explores the tensions between the summer people and the locals in a small New Hampshire town.... In this suspenseful and romantic novel, Miller delicately parses the value of commitment and community, the risky nature of relationships, and the yearning for meaningful work. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
The heart of the story really lies in Sylvie and Alfie’s marriage.... Miller’s portrayal of early Alzheimer’s and the toll it takes on a family is disturbingly accurate and avoids the sentimental uplift prevalent in issue-oriented fiction.... Miller captures all the complicated nuances of a family in crisis.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. On page 9, Frankie says that she is “undeniably an American after all.” How has Frankie’s time in East Africa affected the way she views her home country? What aspects of American life are most difficult for Frankie to readjust to?
2. Frankie describes the house in Pomeroy as “no more her home than the Connecticut house had been.” (p.12) Why is the concept of “home” fluid for Frankie? What place would you argue is most like home for her?
3. Describe how Frankie and Sylvia’s relationship evolves over the course of the novel. Would you say that Frankie is similar to her mother in any ways? If so, is she cognizant of these traits? By the end of the novel, is their relationship strengthened?
4. The town of Pomeroy is divided between two populations: the summer people and the year-round residents. Describe the interactions between these groups. As the novel progresses, how does the schism between the classes become more pronounced?
5. When Frankie describes her aid work in Africa, she asserts that it seemed like her parents had trouble listening, yet later on, when pressed by Bud to discuss it, she has trouble articulating her role in great detail. Why do you think Frankie is hesitant to discuss her work at length? What assumptions does she face from others about her work?
6. How would you characterize Frankie’s romantic relationships? Does her relationship with Bud fit into the mold of her past encounters? What attracts her to him?
7. As Alfie’s illness progresses, Sylvia finds “the managing of appearances” increasingly difficult.” (p. 29) Discuss the role of gossip in Pomeroy. In what ways is gossip a form of social currency?
8. Why do you think the author chose to provide the backstory of Sylvia and Adrian’s high school romance? How does their shared connection manifest throughout the novel? Is Sylvia embarrassed by it?
9. On page 108, Alfie describes how his brain is changing in a rather bold and straightforward way. As the novel progresses, how does his character change as a result of his illness?
10. Describe how the social landscape of Pomeroy is affected by the fires. How do the fires bring the community together? Ignite debate? How are relationships between neighbors changed?
11. On page 132, Frankie discusses her spiritual inclinations, admitting that the “ideas in Christianity” always appealed to her. What does she mean by that? How has her need for “goodness” affected her throughout her life?
12. Discuss the history of Pomeroy as described by both Pete and Sylvia. How has the town changed over time? In what ways does the economy depend on tourism? Have issues of class difference always been apparent?
13. How does Bud integrate himself into the town of Pomeroy? Do you think he is respected? At what points is he made to feel like an outsider?
14. Characterize Sylvia and Alfie’s relationship. Would you describe their marriage as a happy one? As Sylvia moves from the role of wife to caretaker, what emotions take hold? How does Frankie view her parents’ relationship?
15. The discussion of privilege occurs throughout The Arsonist, on both a personal and global level. How does it manifest throughout the plot? How, specifically, does Frankie struggle with the ideas of privilege? How does her privilege as an American and as a Caucasian prevent her from fully embracing her role as an aid worker?
16. On page 284, Sylvia admits to Frankie that she is afraid of feeling foolish. What do you think Frankie is afraid of?
17. Given Bud’s discovery that Tink’s confession came about under suspicious circumstances, do you think Tinkwas innocent?
18. How does Frankie’s experience on the Amtrak train act as a catalyst for her decision to turn around? Do you think she was ever committed to the idea of going to New York?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Art Forger
B.A. Shapiro, 2012
Algonquin Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203160
Summary
On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.
Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperate to improve her situation, she lets herself be lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting—one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when the long-missing Degas painting—the one that had been hanging for one hundred years at the Gardner—is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery.
Claire’s search for the truth about the painting’s origins leads her into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life. B. A. Shapiro’s razor-sharp writing and rich plot twists make The Art Forger an absorbing literary thriller that treats us to three centuries of forgers, art thieves, and obsessive collectors. it’s a dazzling novel about seeing—and not seeing—the secrets that lie beneath the canvas. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Her own words
I am the author of six novels (The Art Forger, The Safe Room, Blind Spot, See No Evil, Blameless and Shattered Echoes), four screenplays (Blind Spot, The Lost Coven, Borderline and Shattered Echoes) and the non-fiction book, The Big Squeeze. In my previous career incarnations, I have directed research projects for a residential substance abuse facility, worked as a systems analyst/statistician, headed the Boston office of a software development firm, and served as an adjunct professor teaching sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. I like being a novelist the best.
I began my writing career when I quit my high-pressure job after the birth of my second child. Nervous about what to do next, I said to my mother, "If I'm not playing at being superwoman anymore, I don't know who I am." My mother answered with the question: "If you had one year to live, how would you want to spend it?" The answer: write a novel and spend more time with my children. And that's exactly what I did. Smart mother.
After writing six novels and raising my children, I now live in Boston with my husband Dan and my dog Sagan. And yes, I'm working on yet another novel but have no plans to raise any more children. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Shapiro writes with assurance, even if she stumbles over the odd phrase or detail.... For those willing to forgive the occasional misstep, The Art Forger will reward their forbearance and, through its engaging premise, their intelligence.... In the end, with plots uncovered and deceptions laid bare, Shapiro’s abiding mystery lies not in the act of forgery itself but in its elusive morality. As Claire reminds us, people see “what they want to see.”
Maxwell Carter - New York Times Book Review
Precise and exciting.... Readers seeking an engaging novel about artists and art scandals will find The Art Forger rewarding for its skillful balance of brisk plotting, significant emotional depth and a multi-layered narration rich with a sense of moral consequence.
Washington Post
Ingeniously and skillfully plotted.
Huffington Post
Shapiro’s new novel (after The Safe Room) is filled with delightful twists, turns, and ruminations on what constitutes truth in art. Broke and painting copies of famous artists’ work for a reproduction site, artist Claire Roth is enticed by gallery owner Aidan Markel’s request to forge a painting by Degas that was stolen from the Isabella Gardner Museum in 1990 (in the largest unsolved art heist in history). As Claire works, she wonders if the painting she’s forging is legitimate. Meanwhile, Claire steps in when her blocked artist lover can’t finish his work for a deadline, essentially painting what becomes something of an art world sensation. Her lover slips into denial about her contribution and Claire weighs the repercussions of going public, knowing that it will damage her reputation even more badly than her heart. An intricate shell game exploring the permutations of the craft and ethics of art, Shapiro’s novel is a lively ride, melding Claire’s discoveries with fictionalized 19th-century letters from Gardner that hint at even deeper complexities. The wit, Claire’s passion for her work, what it takes to create a piece that can pass modern scrutiny, and the behind-the-scenes look at the lives of working artists and the machinations of the art world overcome an ending that ties things up too neatly. The choice of present tense for much of the book keeps the reader at a remove from the action, but Shapiro’s research, well-integrated into a strong premise, captivates..
Publishers Weekly
By page two of this novel, the reader is fully engrossed into the world of struggling artist Claire Roth, nicknamed "The Great Pretender" who copies famous paintings for a website called Reproductions.com....This well-researched work combines real elements (though After the Bath never existed) with the understanding that the art world is as fragile and precarious as the art itself, particularly for young hopefuls. —Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH
Library Journal
Classy and pleasurably suspenseful.... An entrancingly visual, historically rich, deliciously witty, sensuous, and smart tale of authenticity versus fakery in which Shapiro artfully turns a clever caper into a provocative meditation on what we value most.
Booklist
A cleverly plotted art-world thriller/romance with a murky moral core. That nobody knows anything seems to be Shapiro's (The Safe Room, 2002, etc., as Barbara Shapiro) assessment of art authentication, given the number of misdetected paintings strewn through her engrossing if unlikely story.... Despite a shaky premise, this is convincingly researched, engaging storytelling. Intelligent entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At the novel's opening, Claire is a pariah in the art world. Has the community been unfair to her? In what ways, if any, is she responsible for her own exile? Does she share any blame for Isaac Cullion's death?
2. The Art Forger explores the darker side of human nature. All of the characters in the novel have a price, a line they're willing to cross to further their own ambitions. Do you think Claire does the wrong things for the right reasons? Is she a moral person or not? What about Isabella Stewart Gardener? What compromises would you make to secure what you most desire?
3. B. A. Shapiro juggles three plot lines in the novel, moving back and forth through time. Each section tells of secrets and deceit. How does each of these storylines intersect and deepen the themes of the novel?
4. This novel was inspired by an actual art heist, which included works by Manet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. But what if Rembrandt didn't paint Storm of Galilee? What if an unknown artist did instead? Would the painting be any less beautiful? Would it no longer be admired? Would it suddenly be worthless? What is it that gives an object value?
5. It is estimated that 40 percent of all artworks put up for sale in any given year are forgeries. Theodore Rousseau, an expert from the Metropolitan Museum, said, "We can only talk about the bad forgeries, the ones that have been detected. The good ones are still hanging on museum walls." Does knowing this affect the way you view great art? How can we tell the difference between what is inauthentic and what is real?
6. The novel explores the idea that we often only see what we want to see. If an expert is told a painting is a masterpiece, she sees one. If an artist desires recognition, she convinces herself that her deal with the devil is for good. How are people complicit in missing the truth?
7. Art forger Han van Meegeren, whose techniques Claire uses to create her own forgery, was a frustrated Dutch painter. An unappreciated artist struggling for recognition, his intention was to hoodwink the art dealers and critics who refused to recognize his own artistic genius. How is Claire similar to or different from Meegeren?
8. Shapiro has a Ph.D. in sociology and has studied deviant behavior. How do you think her background informs her characters and the ethically muddy—some might say unprincipled—decisions they make? Does it make her characters more sympathetic or less?
9. Boston features prominently in The Art Forger. How does the author use the city as a nod to Claire's state of mind?
10. Gorgeous art can make people do incredibly ugly things, and the novel seems to suggest that it's not only for money. Why do you think that beauty and originality can have that effect on people?
11. What do the meetings between Edgar Degas and Isabella Stewart Gardner show about the relationship between a collector and an artist?
12. Claire falls hard for Aiden Markel, but she keeps secrets from him. He is also keeping secrets from her. Can a relationship survive this kind of betrayal? Do you think Aiden loves Claire? Why does Claire choose the wrong men? Do you think Aiden and Claire love art more than they love each other?
13. At the end of the novel, critics are praising Claire's work. Collectors are clamoring for the very same paintings that have hung, unsalable, in her studio for years. Why is her work suddenly more valuable? Is she successful only because she has become a celebrity?
14. Is art a commodity like any other product? What does the book suggest about the intersection of art and commerce, about talent and reputation?
15. Sometimes getting exactly what you want isn't quite what you expected. Our society loves to create celebrities and then tear them down. Can you give some examples? What happens when your dreams are realized and you can't handle it, or you don't feel you've earned it? Does Claire deserve the fame she is awarded at the end of the book?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Art of Crash Landing
Melissa DeCarlo, 2015
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062390547
Summary
A young woman travels for the first time to her mother’s hometown, and gets sucked into the mystery that changed her family forever.
Mattie Wallace has really screwed up this time. Broke and knocked up, she’s got all her worldly possessions crammed into six giant trash bags, and nowhere to go. Try as she might, Mattie can no longer deny that she really is turning into her mother, a broken alcoholic who never met a bad choice she didn’t make.
When Mattie gets news of a possible inheritance left by a grandmother she’s never met, she jumps at this one last chance to turn things around. Leaving the Florida Panhandle, she drives eight hundred miles to her mother’s birthplace—the tiny town of Gandy, Oklahoma.
There, she soon learns that her mother remains a local mystery—a happy, talented teenager who inexplicably skipped town thirty-five years ago with nothing but the clothes on her back. But the girl they describe bears little resemblance to the damaged woman Mattie knew, and before long it becomes clear that something terrible happened to her mother, and it happened here.
The harder Mattie digs for answers, the more obstacles she encounters. Giving up, however, isn’t an option. Uncovering what started her mother’s downward spiral might be the only way to stop her own.
Hilarious, gripping, and unexpectedly wise, The Art of Crash Landing is a poignant novel from an assured new voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—University of Oklahoma; University of Central Oklahoma
• Currently—lives in East Texas
Melissa DeCarlo was born and raised in Oklahoma City, and has worked as an artist, graphic designer, grant writer, and even (back when computers were the size of refrigerators) a computer programmer. The Art of Crash Landing is her first novel. Melissa now lives in East Texas with her husband and a motley crew of rescue animals. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
DeCarlo has created a compulsively likable mess of a protagonist who will keep readers laughing and cringing—even as they begin really rooting for her...surprising, poignant and page-turning...a strong debut and a thoroughly entertaining read.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
[A] pitch-perfect novel about family secrets, self-forgiveness and redemption…DeCarlo’s debut novel’s originality and fresh voice will endear her to readers…Every character in DeCarlo’s novel is complex and richly drawn…this story is so vibrant and universally human that it’s sad to see it end.
Dallas Morning News
Decarlo’s excellent debut chronicles what happens when 30-year-old Mattie Wallace finds herself uStunning...DeCarlo has loudly claimed her seat at the table of today’s elite contemporary Southern women writers including Joshilyn Jackson, Fannie Flagg and Sue Monk Kidd. They continue the work of literary giants like Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, crafting haunting stories about the peculiar, the impolite
Oklahoma Gazette
A success...Mattie made me laugh with some of her sarcastic remarks and her self-deprecating humor.
Oklahoman
This first novel by an Oklahoma-born Texan is written with verve, assurance and some salty language.
Toronto Star
[E]xcellent debut.... Mattie Wallace finds herself Unearthing family secrets in her mother’s hometown.... DeCarlo’s writing bristles with Mattie’s vibrant personality. The book’s final pages feel somewhat rushed and condensed...[but] otherwise a triumphant first novel.
Publishers Weekly
[A] fascinating, mysterious novel.... This debut is thick with secrets; it will cause readers to question everyone and everything. The author does an outstanding job combining suspense with heartache, adding a dash of romance and, at the end, hope. —Erin Holt, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN
Library Journal
DeCarlo deftly weaves in flashbacks about Mattie’s childhood and creates a cast of wonderfully full-blooded, fallible characters…Best of all is Mattie herself, who has cultivated a measure of humanity in addition to impressive survival skills and whose briskly told story is instantly involving. An impressive debut.
Booklist
Grief, laughter, sarcasm, heartache, sadness—Melissa DeCarlo’s debut novel has it all. Starting out with light-hearted humor thanks to the narration of its spunky protagonist, The Art of Crash Landing wvolves into a compelling, genuine story about a woman’s search for her identity.
BookPage.com
A journey into her mother's past helps a young woman right her own future.... Mattie's voice is fresh, her penchant for off-color language balanced with a revealing earnestness and vulnerability... DeCarlo's debut is confident and accomplished, filled with heart and humor.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Early on in the book it becomes clear that Mattie has a long history of making bad decisions. Have any other characters in the book made what seem like self-destructive choices in their lives? How have those choices shaped present circumstances?
2. Queeg loves his aphorisms, and as much as Mattie teases him about them, it’s clear that she loves them too. How about you? Do you have some favorite quotes?
3. Even though Queeg was only Mattie’s stepfather for three years, it’s obvious they’re still close. Why do you think Mattie maintained a close relationship with Queeg? Are there relationships from your past that you’re surprised you’ve maintained? Some you’re surprised you’ve let go?
4. Even taking into account her many flaws, Mattie is often harder on herself than she deserves. Why do you think she does that? Do you think having a negative self image is more common problem for women than men? Why or why not?
5. Part of the reason Mattie finds Tawny annoying is how much the girl reminds Mattie of herself as a teenager. How do you think being around Mattie that summer will influence Tawny in the future? If you could meet your teenaged self, what advice would you give?
6. How is Mattie letting her past steer her present course through life? Are any of the other characters doing the same thing? Are there any times in your life you’ve caught yourself giving too much power to your past?
7. What do you think about Luke? Why do you suppose he goes out of his way to be kind to Mattie?
8. Even thirty-five years later, Karleen still harbors strong feelings about Genie. Why do you think the dynamic between them changes when Genie goes off to college? How does that reflect the evolution of friendships over time? Did you have a close friend when you were growing up? Are you still in touch?
9. As she investigates her mother’s history, Mattie’s own past and her relationship with her mother are revealed one piece at a time. As you progressed through the book, how did your feelings toward Mattie change? What about your feelings toward her mother?
10. How do you think JJ’s experiences shaped him into the man he became?
11. The two settings in the book are the Florida panhandle with its beaches and seagulls, and a small town in Oklahoma with its wind and storms. Do you think the settings were important to the story? Why or why not?
12. What was the emotional significance of the old Malibu to Genie and to Mattie? Do you have anything you’ve held onto longer than you should because of the memories tied to it? What would it take for you to let it go?
13. The ability or inability to let go of guilt and move on with life is a recurring theme in this novel. What are some of the characters whose stories reflect this theme, and how did they deal with (or not deal with) their guilt? How common is it in real life for people to harbor guilt that holds them back from realizing their potential?
14. If could check back in with Mattie a year after the book’s ending, what do you think you’d find? What do you wish you’d find? Are the answers to those two questions the same or different?(Questionns issued by the publisher.)
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The Art of Falling
Kathryn Craft, 2014
Sourcebooks
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402285196
Summary
One wrong step could send her over the edge...
All Penny has ever wanted to do is dance—and when that chance is taken from her, it pushes her to the brink of despair, from which she might never return. When she wakes up after a traumatic fall, bruised and battered but miraculously alive, Penny must confront the memories that have haunted her for years, using her love of movement to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.
Kathryn Craft's lyrical debut novel is a masterful portrayal of a young woman trying to come to terms with her body and the artistic world that has repeatedly rejected her. The Art of Falling expresses the beauty of movement, the stasis of despair, and the unlimited possibilities that come with a new beginning. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Syracuse, New York, USA
• Education—M.S. Miami University (Ohio)
• Currently—lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Kathryn Craft writes stories that seek beauty and meaning at the edge of darkness. Rich with material for further thought or discussion, her novels make a perfect choice for book clubs. Pre-order links are live for her debut novel, The Art of Falling, published by Sourcebooks in 2014. The Philadelphia dance world in which the story is set serves as a harsh microcosm of our society, with its celebrity-driven expectations of women's bodies.
As a former modern dancer, choreographer, and 19-year dance critic, Kathryn knows this world. Her interest in body image is personal and life-long (isn't every woman's?) but she researched the issue more academically while obtaining a master's in health and physical education from Miami University, Ohio. Every page of the novel is infused with a dancer's heightened awareness of the human body and its movement.
While the Leaves Stood Still (Sourcebooks, Spring 2015), her second novel, is based on true events surrounding the 1997 suicide standoff that resulted in her husband's death.
She loves to bring writers together, so for more than a decade has served in a variety of positions on the boards of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group and the Philadelphia Writers' Conference. Kathryn also hosts writing retreats for women and speaks often about writing. She is a contributing editor at the Blood-Red Pencil blog, writes a monthly series, "Turning Whine into Gold" at the Writers in the Storm blog, and freelances as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com. She is a proud member of the Liar's Club, co-founded by New York Times best-selling thriller writer Jonathan Maberry and cross-genre fantasy author Gregory Frost. Kathryn is happy to skype with book clubs. Contact her here. (From the author's website.)
Visit the Kathryn's author page on Amazon.
Book Reviews
Kathryn Craft is deeply knowledgeable about the demands of dance, but her story transcends the art form's insular world. The Art of Falling is a story of friendship and personal growth, and a helluva good read.
Elizabeth Zimmer, dance critic - Metro New York
Dancer Penny Sparrow struggles to regain balance after a mysterious accident leaves her injured, in Craft’s mixed debut.... The characters and their dialogue are often maudlin, but Craft, a former dance teacher, choreographer, and critic, delivers an enjoyable portrait of the hidden world of dance and the mind of a dancer.
Publishers Weekly
Craft, a former dancer and choreographer, captures the entanglement of pain and despair and beauty and hope that often knits our lives and, through the character of Penny, illustrates how self-acceptance is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.
Booklist
Penelope Sparrow...wakes up in the hospital after a 14-story plunge.... To see the truth, Penny will have to recognize the lies and rough condemnation of the dance world. Craft's debut novel lovingly traces the aesthetics of movement and gently explores the shattering pain of despair. A sensitive study of a woman choreographing her own recovery.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think a person could survive a fourteen-story fall? Discuss cases of miraculous survival that the media has covered. How do you think such a thing would affect your own life?
2. What is your perception of Penny as a dancer? Do you think she has what it takes to make it in a performance career? Why or why not?
3. Evelyn clearly believed in her daughter from a young age and provided Penny with the special training she needed to succeed in her field. What other endeavors require a similar focus? Compare and contrast the risks of focused training and generalized education in today’s society.
4. After Angela’s previous roommate dies, she tells Penny that the woman “just couldn’t hang on any longer.” How much power do you believe we can have over our own deaths? Discuss experiences you have had with dying people who seemed to “let go.”
5. Penny thinks she has walked a safe line between “low calorie” and “nutritionally healthy.” Do you think Penny has an eating disorder? Why or why not? How would you define “eating disorder”?
6. Penny says, “Restricting was the closest feeling I’d ever had to self-love.” What do you think she meant by that? How is restricting also like self-hate?
7. Each of the novel’s characters has a different notion about the relationship between eating and body image. In this regard, compare and contrast Penny, Bebe, Evelyn, Margaret MacArthur, Angela, and Kandelbaum. With which of these characters do your thoughts and/or influences align regarding the limitations of your body? Do these thoughts help or hinder you? Have your thoughts changed over time?
8. Discuss how Penny’s developing body image was influenced by her mother, her father, miss Judith, and Bebe.
9. Laura MacArthur was told outright that she had to lose weight to be in the company. In Penny’s case, was the pressure to be thin from the dance world, or from within Penny? In what way does our society at large send signals to all women about the ideal body image? Have you ever felt pressure—at work, at school, or at home—to have a body that was different in a significant way than yours? How did you deal with it?
10. Penny describes the scale as “my partner in crime, my lover, and my nemesis.” What does this mean? Do you have a relationship with the scale? If yes, what is it, and does it influence your day-to-day lifestyle?
11. Angela and Kandelbaum are Penny’s first friends outside the dance world. Why is this significant? What drew the three of them into such a fast friendship? What were they able to give to one another?
12. Discuss the structure of the novel. How did the author use the opening situation to raise the two questions that drive the novel’s interweaving story lines? Was the technique effective in drawing the novel to a satisfactory conclusion?
13. While reading, when did you first suspect Penny might have tried to kill herself? Now that you’ve finished the book, do you still think Penny tried to commit suicide? Why or why not?
14. In the psych ward, Penny says, “Just because I suffered traumatic memory loss didn’t mean I was out of my mind. If anything, I was out of my body.” What do you think she means by this?
15. Is Dmitri a villain? In what ways did he support Penny’s dream, and in what ways did he hinder her? And when he put his own interests first—was that a bad thing? Whose fault was it that she had to part ways with the company?
16. Penny says, “My passion for dance and my passion for Dmitri could no longer be separated; I didn’t know where one ended and the other began.” Explain what that means and how this issue is related to her relationships with her mother and her own body.
17. Discuss the role that muscle memory plays in Penny’s healing. Have you ever experienced a time when your muscles seemingly remembered something your brain had forgotten?
18. Discuss the concept of space as a dancer’s partner. What role does “space” play in other arts: Visual? Architecture? Music? Literature?
19. How was Evelyn’s weight a metaphor in her relationship with Penny? Why was their relationship so strained, and when did it start to heal?
20. Compare and contrast Kandelbaum and Penny in terms of faith and other kinds of support. Do you think Kandelbaum would have considered suicide if he was left on his own after losing Angela? Was Penny able to set a foundation of faith that she could rely upon in the future?
21. Penny and Angela discuss a wrestling match between body and soul at death’s doorstep. Compare Angela’s death with what Penny remembers of her actions before the fall. Are body and soul separate entities, or are they inextricably interwoven?
22. Compare the Penelope Sparrow who moved to New York to start auditioning to the same character at the end. How has she changed? Name a few of the major turning points that stick out to you.
23. What is Penny hoping to accomplish with Real People Dance? Do you think the world will accept them? In what ways is America’s tolerance for individual body differences and intolerance for unhealthy lifestyles becoming more apparent?
24. Were you surprised that Penny hires her mother as musical director for the new company? Do you think they’ll be able to work together? What has changed about their relationship?
25. What do you think Penny’s life will be like after the close of the book? In what ways will it be different from the career she envisioned as a child, and in what ways will it differ from her experience with Dance DeLaval? If she and Dmitri meet again, what do you think that would be like?
B O N U S Q U E S T I O N S
Here are a few bonus questions you might also like.
1. Did you trust Penelope as the narrator?
2. When she said in the psych ward, “The conversation I needed to re-establish was neuromuscular,” what do you think she meant? Do you think she was right about that as being key to her healing?
3. One of the first things people said about you as a baby was undoubtedly, “You look just like your mother (or father).” Discuss the relationship between what Penny thinks of her mother’s body and what she thinks of her own. Were comparisons to your own parents problematic for you? Why?
4. On p. 53, Evelyn says Penny “deserves” a place on her wall. Do you think people “deserve” success? Did Penny? Why or why not?
5. On p. 191, Kandelbaum talks about what the world would be like if our bodies were all the same. What additional thoughts do you have about the importance of our differences?
(Questions issued by the author and publisher.)
The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach, 2011
Little, Brown & Company
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316126694
Summary
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.
Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.
As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths.
Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment—to oneself and to others. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1975-76
• Where—Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.F.A.,
University of Virginia.
• Currently—lives in Brookly, New York, New York.
Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and was educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder and coeditor of n+1. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Not only a wonderful baseball novel—it zooms immediately into the pantheon of classics, alongside The Natural by Bernard Malamud and The Southpaw by Mark Harris—but it's also a magical, melancholy story about friendship and the coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer.... Mr. Harbach has the rare abilities to write with earnest, deeply felt emotion without ever veering into sentimentality, and to create quirky, vulnerable and fully imagined characters who instantly take up residence in our hearts and minds. He also manages to re-work the well-worn, much-allegorized subject of baseball and make us see it afresh, taking tired tropes about the game (as a metaphor for life's dreams, disappointments and hopes of redemption) and interjecting them with new energy. In doing so he has written a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting.... You don't need to be a baseball fan to fall under this novel's spell, but The Art of Fielding possesses all the pleasures that an aficionado cherishes in a great, classic game: odd and strangely satisfying symmetries, unforeseen swerves of fortune, and intimations of the delicate balance between individual will and destiny that play out on the field.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Chad Harbach makes the case for baseball, thrillingly, in his slow, precious and altogether excellent first novel.... It seems a stretch for a baseball novel to hold truth and beauty and the entire human condition in its mitt, well The Art of Fielding isn't really a baseball novel at all, or not only. It's also a campus novel and a bromance (and for that matter a full-fledged gay romance), a comedy of manners and a tragicomedy of errors...Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Now get out there and play.
Gregory Cowles - New York Times Book Review
all in all the most delightful and serious first book of fiction that I have read in a while.... Baseball matters desperately in this novel. But so does physical affection and, whether felt by a freshman or a college president, the unquenchable desire to know another human being in a deep and important way before the end of things. In this regard, the novel takes its place among a few charmed works of art that deal with the national pastime in the context of human yearning - books by superb writers such as Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Mark Harris. It also stands among the best school novels we have, from This Side of Paradise to A Separate Peace.
Alan Cheuse - Chicago Tribune
Delightful debut... Erudite enough to reference Herman Melville, Homer and T.S. Eliot, yet sufficiently geeky to pay homage to the epic struggles of ill-fated ball-players such as Steve Blass, Steve Sax and Mackey Sasser.... [A] showcase for...Harbach's mad skills, his humor and above all, the humanity with which the author infuses each of his characters....The author's observations about baseball can be both pithy and witty... wonderfully insightful. And the writing throughout, as Walt Whitman once said of the game itself, is glorious...a natural talent, one who has the potential to become a Hall of Famer.
Adam Langer - San Francisco Chronicle
Dazzling debut.... The Art of Fielding might be the best book you'll read this year.... Harbach's debut novel has a succulent heft to it—a growing weight of love and devotion that is comprised of Harbach's deft and boundlessly emotive writing. The remarkable sincerity with which he develops characters renders their conflicts and complexities so authentic it's impossible not to care about them. The Art of Fielding is youthful, invigorating and fiercely intelligent writing.... [It] is not really a book about baseball. Westish College sports are a backdrop as life's more prevalent struggles--doubt, romance, grief and determination--collide and merge marvellously.... This is a book about love, family and dedication...A nearly flawless construction of dazzlingly clear sentences... The most enjoyable aspect of The Art of Fielding is the true-to-life humanity Harbach's characters are infused with. Their heartache, loss and yearning are palpable. The Art of Fielding brims with its author's extraordinary talents. It's going to be hard waiting to see what Harbach does next.
Alex Lemon - Dallas Morning News
His first time at bat, Harbach wins. Confident and deliberate, Art imitates baseball.... The Art of Fielding is an old-fashioned novel in the very best way—unhurried , engrossing, a universe unto itself.... It's that rare, big social novel with the quiet confidence not to overreach for grand statements on the times, and a debut that never feels like it's straining to impress. There's just quiet confidence in honest storytelling—Harbach is all Derek Jeter, not Alex Rodriguez.... Harbach's images are so lively and surprising, his characters so intoxicatingly engaging, that The Art of Fielding becomes something special and unique, a complete and satisfying fictional universe....Harbach, in his first time at bat, has made the near-impossible act of writing a very good American novel feel almost effortless.
David Daley - USA Today
Debut novel hits a grand slam... Resplendent... Ambitious and accomplished... Harbach's characters are well developed and eminently realistic. The rich portrayals of their psychological struggles and interactions add a warmth and dept to the already colorful narrative....Harbach's novel is mature, compelling, graced with both charm and humor, and shaped as much by his expressive prose as by its memorable and substantive characterizations. Harbach is a gifted storyteller and his debut novel may well herald a fresh, new talent in the realm of contemporary American fiction. The Art of Fielding, like baseball itself, is beautiful in its simplicity, yet made great by the effortless subtlety of its many nuanced intricacies.
Jeremy Barber - Sunday Oregonian
Recalling works as disparate as Chaim Potok's The Chosen, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, and Scott Lasser's Battle Creek, Harbach's big-hearted and defiantly old-fashioned debut demonstrates the rippling effects of a single baseball gone awry. When college shortstop phenom Henry Skrimshander accidentally beans teammate Owen Dunne with a misplaced throw, it starts a chain reaction on the campus of Westish College, "that little school in the crook of the baseball glove that is Wisconsin." Owen is solicitously visited in the hospital by school president Guert Affenlight, a widower, who falls in love with the seductive gay student, a "serious breech of professional conduct" that sends potentially devastating ripples through the school. Affenlight's daughter, Pella, after a failed marriage in San Francisco, returns to become part of a love triangle with Henry and Mike Schwartz, the team captain and Henry's unofficial mentor. And just when Henry's hopes of playing for the St. Louis Cardinals come within reach, he suffers a crisis of confidence, even as his team makes a rousing run at the championship. Through it all, Henry finds inspiration in the often philosophically tinged teachings found in The Art of Fielding ("Death is the sanction of all that the athlete does"), by a fictional retired shortstop. Harbach manages incisive characterizations of his five main players, even as his narrative, overlong and prone to affectation, tests the reader's patience.
Publishers Weekly
In this deft first novel, a baseball prodigy comes to Westish College, a small school in upper Wisconsin. Henry Skrimshander is recruited by Mike Schwartz, who plays at Westish and recognizes Henry as one of the greatest shortstops ever. Henry's roommate, the pot-smoking, gay, African American Owen Dunne, also joins the team. College president Guert Affenlight develops a passionate crush on Owen, with whom he improbably begins a clandestine relationship. Unfortunately, as Henry closes in on a fielding milestone, he loses his confidence and falls apart. Guert's long-lost daughter, who has returned to Westish after the collapse of her marriage and hooked up with Mike, tries to help Henry find his throwing arm again. Meanwhile, the ongoing affair between Owen and Guert becomes increasingly difficult to hide as the book climaxes at the Division III national championship. Verdict: Succeeding on many levels, this highly enjoyable and intelligent novel offers several coming-of-age tales set against the background of an exciting and convincing baseball drama. Harbach paints a humorous and resonant portrait of a small college community while effectively portraying the Wisconsin landscape and a lake that provides an almost mystical source of solace and renewal. —Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Does male friendship always involve competition? In what ways? Can men ever be just friends? Are their relationships more competitive than those between women?
2. After a long streak of errorless games, why does Henry lose his once-effortless throw? What has changed in Henry? Do you think this sort of crisis is unique to athletics? Could, say, a painter go through a similar crisis?
3. Harbach never writes from Owen’s point of view. In what ways did this affect your understanding of Owen’s character? Of his feelings toward Guert? Is their relationship one-sided, or perfectly reciprocal?
4. Mike devotes much of his time and energy to mentoring and helping Henry. Does he give Henry too much of his time and energy? Can someone give too much?
5. After hitting Owen and losing his accuracy, Henry immerses himself in grueling physical activity: running the stadium steps, racing Starblind, doing endless chin-ups, swimming in the lake. Why does he do this? Is his body to blame for his throwing problems? Discuss the relationship between the body and the mind in The Art of Fielding.
6. Are Pella and Henry in love? What brings them together? Why do they stay together?
7. Guert is decades older than Mike, Henry, Owen, and Pella, but in what ways is he similar to the students, despite his age?
8. “Monomania”—the obsessive pursuit of a single thing—is one of the major themes of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Is it also a major theme of The Art of Fielding? If so, for which characters, and in what ways?
9. The athletes talk about sacrificing their bodies to get better, and the "sacrifice bunt" is a baseball term that comes up frequently. Is Henry sacrificing himself when he stops eating? Why? Is his last at bat a sacrifice?
10. Are Mike, Henry, and Pella all striving for perfection? Is perfection possible? Is it worth striving for, even if it’s impossible? Why or why not? Do their desires evolve over the course of the novel? In what ways?
11. When Affenlight is confronted about his relationship with Owen, he thinks: "What kind of conversation would they be having if Owen were a girl? Bruce would be using the same legalese, the expression on his face would still be stern, but he’d be pouring himself a scotch. The gleam in his eye would say, Good for you, Guert. Still got it, eh?" Do you think this is true? Would you have seen Guert differently?
12. Why does Pella exhume her father’s body and bury it in the lake?
13. In Aparicio Rodriguez's The Art of Fielding, he writes: "There are three stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being." He adds: "Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few." What do you think this means? How does it relate to Chad Harbach’s book?
14. It has been said that baseball is a metaphor for life. Do you agree? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
Jan-Philipp Sendker, 2012
Other Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781590514634
Summary
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of.
Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
• Jan-Philipp Sendker, born in Hamburg in 1960, was the American correspondent for Stern from 1990 to 1995, and its Asian correspondent from 1995 to 1999. In 2000 he published Cracks in the Great Wall, a nonfiction book about China. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is his first novel. He lives in Berlin with his family. (From the publisher.)
• Kevin Wiliarty has a BA in German from Harvard and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. A native of the United States, he has also lived in Germany and Japan. He is currently an academic technologist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he lives with his wife and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This tearful, circuitous German bestseller traces the lost romance between a blind young monk and a poor crippled girl in pre-WWII Burma. Sendker employs an elaborate secondhand flashback device to send Julia, an American lawyer, to Burma on a hunch that she might find clues to the whereabouts of her Burmese father, Tin Win, a prominent New York celebrity lawyer who was blind as a child and vanished four years ago, apparently of his own volition. Julia, born to Win and his American wife in 1968, is a New Yorker used to metropolitan conveniences. She arrives in the village of Kalaw by virtue of a beautiful 1955 love letter from her father to a woman named Mi Mi and immediately bristles at the pace and privation of village life. A stranger named U Ba soon helps Julia unravel the mystery of her father, from his astrologically inauspicious birth and abandonment by a superstitious mother to his ensuing blindness and delivery to Buddhist monks who teach him to use his other senses keenly. When Tin Win meets Mi Mi, a kind, crippled creature, she acts as his eyes as he carries her upon his back. Their love remains unbroken through 50 years of incredible vicissitudes. An epic narrative that requires enormous sentimental indulgence and a large box of tissues.
Publishers Weekly
Four years before the start of the novel, Julia Win's father, Tin Win, vanished. After receiving a copy of an old love letter written by him to a woman named Mi Mi, Julia travels to a remote village in Burma to find him. While at a teahouse in Burma, Julia meets U Ba, who claims to know what happened to her father. But the Tin Win of whom U Ba speaks is nothing like the father Julia remembers. She doubts at first that the story is true. But the more she listens and the more time she spends in Burma, the more she believes. Julia is moved by the tragic love story involving Tin Win, a blind boy in rural Burma, and Mi Mi, whose misshapen feet made it impossible for her to walk. Verdict: The heart of this sentimental novel is the romance between the teenagers Tin Win and Mi Mi in pre-World War II Burma. Recommended for readers who enjoy sweetly tragic romances. —Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. of Maryland
Library Journal
German journalist Sendker's first novel, originally published in German in 2002, is a love story set in Burma and imbued with Eastern spirituality and fairy-tale romanticism. Tin Win, a successful Wall Street lawyer originally from Burma, has been missing since his passport was discovered near the Bangkok airport four years ago. After finding an unmailed love letter he wrote to a Burmese woman named Mi Mi, his daughter Julia, also a Manhattan lawyer, goes in search of her father who never told his American Catholic wife or their two children anything about his life before America. In a teahouse in Kalaw, a small town in Burma—the opening pages are a lovely rendering of her sensory overload—Julia encounters a mysterious older man named U Ba who says he has been waiting for her. He also claims to know Tin Win and asks her one question, "Do you believe in love?" Although the novel is ostensibly being narrated by Julia, her encounter with U Ba is really a framing device for him to tell Tin Win's romantic story: After his father dies and his mother deserts him on his sixth birthday, Tin Win is raised lovingly by his widowed aunt Su Kyi, but by ten years old he has gone blind. Su Kyi takes him to the monastery where the saintly abbot teaches him to follow the wisdom of the heart. At 14 he encounters Mi Mi when, with a newly discovered magical skill to hear and interpret heartbeats, he hears her heart beating. He falls in love immediately. Mi Mi was born with mangled feet and cannot walk but is lovely and has a magical gift for healing song. Their love has a purity of trust and oneness that cannot be destroyed. How Tin Win regains his sight and ends up in America is less important than the love he and Mi Mi maintain in mutual silence for 50 years. Fans of Nicholas Sparks and/or Elizabeth Gilbert should eat this up.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In your opinion, what does the back-and-forth between Julia’s and U Ba’s narratives add to the telling of the love story between Tin Win and Mi Mi? How do these stories interrelate?
2. Tin Win is born to parents who abandon him as a child but Mi Mi is born into a close-knit family. Mi Mi’s mother, especially, adores her daughter. Do you see this developmental difference reflected in the adult each one becomes, or in the way the two relate to one another?
3. After he loses his sight, Tin Win spends several years in a monastery under the tutelage of the abbot, U May. In your opinion, what does U May model for Tin Win? How does Tin Win grow in these years?
4. Tin Win’s wealthy uncle, U Saw, finances Tin Win’s eye operation and subsequent education abroad. But to U Saw’s discredit, his motives are self-interested, and for his own convenience, he obstructs all communication between Tin Win and Mi Mi. Is U Saw portrayed as a villain—or is he even villainous?
5. A portion of the novel is in the form of letters. Does this change the mood or the flow of the novel? The way you see the characters?
6. Tin Win and Mi Mi develop an intense, literally symbiotic relationship: he walks for her; she acts as his eyes. They become inseparable, but then they are separated for decades. Given what you know about each character, how do you think they are able to withstand the time apart?
7. Discuss the role of memory in the novel, both individual and collective.
8. Burma (now known as Myanmar) was occupied by the British from the nineteenth century until 1948. How important is this colonial history to the major events of the novel?
9. Prophecy and superstition play a significant role in Burmese culture. Do you think this belief system inspires a fundamental feeling of security or of anxiety in the main characters of the novel, and why?
10. The novel contrasts Western and Eastern values: individualism and personal achievement versus kinship and transcendence. Where and how are these differences brought to light?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Garth Stein, 2008
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061537967
Summary
Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver.
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life's ordeals.
On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has made to succeed professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny's wife; the three-year battle over their daughter, Zoe, whose maternal grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoe at his side. Having learned what it takes to be a compassionate and successful person, the wise canine can barely wait until his next lifetime, when he is sure he will return as a man.
A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Los Angelos, California, USA
• Reared—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Garth Stein, a former documentary film maker, was co-producer of the Academy Award-winning short film, The Lunch Date, and director of When Your Head's Not a Head, It's a Nut. He is the author of three novels, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, Raven Stole the Moon, and The Art of Racing in the Rain , and a play, Brother Jones. He lives in Seattle with his family. (From the publisher.)
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
I've climbed Mt. Rainier
I've explored the deepest cave in North America
I've acted with Carol Channing
I've ridden my bicycle to Alaska
I've met Bill Clinton
I've played basketball with Slick Watts
I've bathed in the Dead Sea, piloted a boat in the Suez Canal
I've paddled an outrigger in the Java Sea
I've fathered three sons whom I love very, very much.
What book most inspired his life as a writer?
Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski. Actors must make clear and definite decisions at every turn about a character's intention, desires, and needs. A writer must assume the role of each actor in the story. A writer must know everything about every character in his writing. There are no accidents in fiction. Studying acting—especially this book—has greatly enhanced my writing. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
If you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoe, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama.
Publishers Weekly
Enzo narrates his life story, beginning with his impending death. Enzo's not afraid of dying, as he's seen a television documentary on the Mongolian belief that a good dog will reincarnate as a man. Yes, Enzo is a dog. And he belongs to Denny: husband, father, customer service technician. Denny's dream is to be a professional race-car driver, and Enzo recounts the triumphs and tragedies—medical, financial, and legal—they share in this quest, the dangers of the racetrack being the least of their obstacles. Enzo ultimately teaches Denny and the reader that persistence and joie de vivre will see them through to the checkered flag. Stein (Raven Stole the Moon) creates a patient, wise, and doggish narrator that is more than just fluff and collar. This should appeal to fans of both dogs and car racing; recommended for public libraries.
Library Journal
Stein uses a dog as narrator to clever effect in this tear-jerker about an aspiring race-car driver who suffers more woes than Job but never mistreats his dog. Lab mix Enzo believes he is different from other dogs, that he has a human soul in a dog body. Enzo is frustrated that he can use only "gestures" to communicate with his beloved owner Denny. Denny works in a Seattle auto-repair shop to earn money to race. Enzo watches racing channels on TV, soaking up facts and lore. Dog and man are happy in their bachelor Eden. Enter Eve. She and Enzo are wary at first. Then she goes into labor while Denny's away racing and she keeps Enzo beside her. Enzo adores the baby, Zoe, but he soon smells that something is off with Eve. By the time Zoe is a toddler, Eve has increasingly bad headaches but refuses to see a doctor until it's too late. Now come the travails. During Eve's painful, lingering death, her parents, who have never approved of Denny, loom increasingly large. When Eve dies, they sue for permanent custody of Zoe. Their case is weak until Denny is charged with rape: After a reunion of Eve's family shortly before her death, Denny gave a ride home to Eve's 15-year-old cousin, who attempted to seduce him; he rebuffed her but Enzo was the only witness. Eve's evil parents are behind the trumped-up charges. Noble Denny keeps fighting for Zoe, living by his mantra, "That which you manifest is before you." When he almost buckles, Enzo provides some rather unique assistance. Pointedly inspirational.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Some early readers of the novel have observed that viewing the world through a dog's eyes makes for a greater appreciation of being human. Why do you think this is?
2. Enzo's observations throughout the novel provide insight into his world view. For example:
—"The visible becomes inevitable."
—"Understanding the truth is simple. Allowing oneself to experience it, is often terrifically difficult."
—"No race has ever been won in the first corner; many races have been lost there."
How does his philosophy apply to real life?
3. In the book's darkest moments, one of Zoe's stuffed animals—the zebra—comes to life and threatens him. What does the zebra symbolize?
4. Can you imagine the novel being told from Denny's point of view? How would it make the story different?
5. In the first chapter, Enzo says: "It's what's inside that's important. The soul. And my soul is very human." How does Enzo's situation—a human soul trapped in a dog's body—influence his opinions about what he sees around him? How do you feel about the ideas of reincarnation and karma as Enzo defines them?
6. Do you find yourself looking at your own dog differently after reading this novel?
7. In the book, we get glimpses into the mindset and mentality of a race car driver. What parallels can you think of between the art of racing and the art of living?
8. The character of Ayrton Senna, as he is presented in the book, is heroic, almost a mythic figure. Why do you think this character resonates so strongly for Denny?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Art of the Wasted Day
Patricia Hampl, 2018
Penguin Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525429647
Summary
A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream
The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude.
Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales.
Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.
Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love—and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry.
Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life.
The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 12, 1946
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Minnesota; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in St. Paul, Minnesota
Patricia Hampl first stepped onto the literary scene with A Romantic Education, a Cold War memoir about her Czech heritage. The Florist's Daughter (2007) is her memoir about her mother's death. Four of her books have been named Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Granta, American Scholar, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.
Hampl teaches fall semesters in the English MFA program at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Awards and honors
1976 - Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
1976 - National Endowment for the Arts Grant
1979 - Bush Foundation Fellowship
1981 - Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship
1995 - Fulbright Fellowship
1996 - McKnight Distinguished University Professorship
1999 - Pushcart Prize
2001 - Distinguished Achievement Award, Western Literature Association
(Author bio adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/23/2018.)
Book Reviews
Hampl’s lyrical repetitions and abstractions can be as poetic as prayer.
Wall Street Journal
The Art of the Wasted Day is literary art in and of itself.… Hampl invites readers to take a journey to explore the idea of a life steeped in leisure without schedules.
Washington Post
About how rich life is when one focuses, at least part of the time, on being rather than on doing… it’s about being still, being aware, about seeing what is in front of your eyes, about being open to what one thinks and remembers and feels.
Chicago Tribune
A wise and beautiful ode to the imagination—from a child’s daydreams, to the unexpected revelations encountered in solitary travel, meditation, and reading, to the flights of creativity taken by writers, artists, and philosophers.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
(Starred review) [A] wonderfully lavish and leisurely exploration of the art of daydreaming.… Hampl captures art of day dreaming with astonishing simplicity and clarity in this remarkable and touching book.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) An exquisite anatomy of mind and an incandescent reflection on nature, being, and rapture.… Memoirist extraordinaire Hampl [is] a master of judiciously elegant vignettes and surprising, slowing unfurling connections.
Booklist
(Starred review) Although reveling in solitude, the author is no stranger to loneliness.… [But whereras] loneliness eats away at you," writes the author. "Solitude fills and fills you." A captivating and revelatory memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, 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)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Artemis
Andy Weir, 2017
Crown/Archetype
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553448122
Summary
The bestselling author of The Martian returns with an irresistible new near-future thriller—a heist story set on the moon.
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire.
So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 16, 1972
• Where—Davis, California, USAb
• Education—University of California, San Diego (no degree)
• Currently—lives in Mountain View, California
Andy Weir is an American novelist and software engineer known internationally for his debut novel The Martian, which was later adapted into a film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott in 2015. Artemis, his second novel, was released in 2017.
Early life
Weir was born and raised in California, the only child of an accelerator physicist father and an electrical-engineer mother who divorced when he was eight. Weir grew up reading classic science fiction such as the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov At the age of 15, he began working as a computer programmer for Sandia National Laboratories. He studied computer science at UC San Diego, although he did not graduate. He worked as a programmer for several software companies, including AOL, Palm, MobileIron and Blizzard, where he worked on Warcraft 2.
Writing
Weir began writing science fiction in his 20s and published work on his website for years. His first work to gain significant attention was "The Egg", a short story that has been adapted into a number of YouTube videos and a one-act play.
Weir is best known for his first published novel, The Martian. He wrote the book to be as scientifically accurate as possible and his writing included extensive research into orbital mechanics, conditions on Mars, the history of manned spaceflight, and botany. Originally published as a free serial on his website, some readers requested he make it available on Kindle.
First sold for 99 cents, the novel made it to the Kindle bestsellers list. Weir was then approached by a literary agent and sold the rights of the book to an imprint of Penguin Random House. The print version (slightly edited from the original) of the novel debuted at #12 on the New York Times bestseller list. A Wall Street Journal review called the novel "the best pure sci-fi novel in years." In 2015 it was adapted to film, starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain.
Weir is working on his second novel, initially titled Zhek. He describes it as "a more traditional sci-fi novel, with has aliens, telepathy, faster-than-light travel, etc."
Personal
He currently lives in Mountain View, California, in a rented two-bedroom maisonette. Since he has a deep fear of flying, he never visited the set of the filming of The Martian in Budapest, which is where most of the Mars scenes were shot. With some therapy and medication, however, he was able to fly to Houston to visit Johnson Space Center and to San Diego to attend Comic-Con.
Weir refers to himself as an agnostic. As a fiscally-conservative social liberal, he tries to keep his political views out of his writing. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/22/2015.)
Book Reviews
This is a heist narratie at heart — but it lacks the core elements of modern heist narratives: no team of charming specialists, no surprise plot twists. That may be fine for "hard" science fiction fans who prioritize idea over execution, or who simply crave well-researched technical speculation presented as fiction. Otherwise, this is a 300-page film pitch that, like its predicessor, will probably be more appealing after it goes to Hollywood.
N.K. Jemisin - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) Jazz Bashara, the heroine of this superior near-future thriller … grew up in Artemis … where she dreams of becoming rich.… The independent, wisecracking lead could easily sustain a series. Weir leavens the hard SF with a healthy dose of humor.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [Sci Fi] fans everywhere can once again rejoice because [Weir's] done it again.… Narrated by a kick-ass leading lady, this thriller has it all—a smart plot, laugh-out-loud funny moments, and really cool science. —Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage P.L., AK
Library Journal
(Starred review.) An exciting, whip-smart, funny thrill-ride …one of the best science fiction novels of the year.
Booklist
Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative.… One small step, no giant leaps.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Artemis … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Jazz Bashara? Did you enjoy her flippancy, finding it amusing? Or did you find it tiresome? How do you view Jazz's illegal activities: first her smuggling and then her involvement in the aluminum smelting scheme? Does she have a moral compass? Is she an easy or difficult character to root for?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: If Jazz is so intelligent, which both she and others make frequent mention of, why does she remain in her menial, low-paying job? What role has the rift with her father had on her life choices.
3. What is the moon city like? Consider aspects such as safety, living with 1/6 the gravity of earth, the monetary system, economic stratification … even the seemingly insignificant details like watches or the taste of coffee. Is Artemis a place you would want to visit as a tourist?
4. Follow-up to Question 3: Andy Weir endows his stories with nerdy scientific detail. Many find this minutia fascinating, others not so much. Which camp are you in?
5. Are you satisfied with the way the novel ended? Did the pacing of the last segment live up to the phrase "compulsive reading" or "a real page-turner" for you?
6. If you've read (and/or seen) The Martian, Weir's first work, how does this novel compare? Some (not all, by any means) believe it was written more as a future film than as a literary work.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
As Close to Us as Breathing
Elizabeth Poliner, 2016
Little, Brown & Co.
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316384148
Summary
A multigenerational family saga about the long-lasting reverberations of one tragic summer by "a wonderful talent [who] should be read widely" (Edward P. Jones).
In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut shoreline, affectionately named "Bagel Beach," has long been a summer destination for Jewish families. Here sisters Ada, Vivie, and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage, with children in tow and weekend-only husbands who arrive each Friday in time for the Sabbath meal.
During the weekdays, freedom reigns. Ada, the family beauty, relaxes and grows more playful, unimpeded by her rule-driven, religious husband. Vivie, once terribly wronged by her sister, is now the family diplomat and an increasingly inventive chef. Unmarried Bec finds herself forced to choose between the family-centric life she's always known and a passion-filled life with the married man with whom she's had a secret years-long affair.
But when a terrible accident occurs on the sisters' watch, a summer of hope and self-discovery transforms into a lifetime of atonement and loss for members of this close-knit clan. Seen through the eyes of Molly, who was twelve years old when she witnessed the accident, this is the story of a tragedy and its aftermath, of expanding lives painfully collapsed.
Can Molly, decades after the event, draw from her aunt Bec's hard-won wisdom and free herself from the burden that destroyed so many others?
Elizabeth Poliner is a masterful storyteller, a brilliant observer of human nature, and in As Close to Us as Breathing she has created an unforgettable meditation on grief, guilt, and the boundaries of identity and love (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1960
• Where—Middletown, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Bowdin College; J.D., University of Virginia; M.F.A. American University
• Currently—teaches at Hollis University in Roanoke, Virginia
Elizabeth Poliner is the author of the novels As Close to Us as Breathing (2016) and Mutual Life & Casualty (2005). She has also published two collections of poetry: Sudden Fog (2011) and What You Know in Your Hands (2015).
Her stories and poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals. A recipient of seven individual artist grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, she has also been awarded fiction scholarships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers' conferences. She teaches creative writing at Hollins University (From the publishser.)
Book Reviews
[A]n exquisitely written investigation of grief and atonement, and an elegy for a Jewish family bound together by tradition and tribe.
Publishers Weekly
Poliner demonstrates how a tragic accident shatters...families.... This elegant novel is for readers who enjoy the depiction of complicated family dynamics and those who believe that people will be able to overcome tragic events. —Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Molly's coming-of-age is the delicate connective tissue that binds together the novel's chronologically fragmented episodes.... Beautifully written, stringently unsentimental, and yet tender in its empathy for the perennial human conflict between service and self.
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.)
As Good as Gone
Larry Watson, 2016
Algonquin Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616205713
Summary
Calvin Sidey is always ready to run, and it doesn’t take much to set him in motion. As a young man, he ran from this block, from Gladstone, from Montana, from this country. From his family and the family business. He ran from sadness, and he ran from responsibility. If the gossip was true, he ran from the law.
It’s 1963, and Calvin Sidey, one of the last of the old cowboys, has long ago left his family to live a life of self-reliance out on the prairie.
He’s been a mostly absentee father and grandfather until his estranged son asks him to stay with his grandchildren, Ann and Will, for a week while he and his wife are away. So Calvin agrees to return to the small town where he once was a mythic figure, to the very home he once abandoned.
But trouble soon comes to the door when a boy’s attentions to seventeen-year-old Ann become increasingly aggressive and a group of reckless kids portend danger for eleven-year-old Will.
Calvin knows only one way to solve problems: the Old West way, in which scores are settled and ultimatums are issued and your gun is always loaded.
And though he has a powerful effect on those around him—from the widowed neighbor who has fallen under his spell to Ann and Will, who see him as the man who brings a sudden and violent order to their lives—in the changing culture of the 1960s, Calvin isn’t just a relic; he’s a wild card, a danger to himself and those who love him. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Raised—Bismark, North Dakota, USA
• Education—B.A., M.F.A., Unversity of North Dakota; Ph.D., University of Utah
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Milwaukee, Wisoconsin
Larry Watson was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and married his high school sweetheart. He received his BA and MFA from the University of North Dakota, his Ph.D. from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Ripon College. Watson has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987, 2004) and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Watson is the author of several novels and a chapbook of poetry. His fiction has been published in more than ten foreign editions, and has received numerous prizes and awards. Montana 1948, published in 1993, was nominated for the first IMPAC Dublin International Literary Prize. The movie rights to Montana 1948 and Justice have been sold to Echo Lake Productions and White Crosses has been optioned for film. His most recent novel, As Good as Gone was released in 2016.
He has published short stories and poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, North American Review, Mississippi Review, and other journals and quarterlies. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and other periodicals. His work has also been anthologized in Essays for Contemporary Culture, Imagining Home, Off the Beaten Path, Baseball and the Game of Life, The Most Wonderful Books, These United States, and Writing America.
Watson taught writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for 25 years before joining the faculty at Marquette University in 2003.
Awards
Milkweed National Fiction Prize,
Mountains and Plains Bookseller Award,
Friends of American Writers Award,
Banta Award,
Critics Choice Award,
ALA/YALSA Best Books for Young Adults Winner
(Author bio from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
There’s a plainspoken toughness to this writer...that has led to him be overlooked in the large herd of fine Montana novelists. As Good As Gone is the latest of his books to forge satisfying drama from the intersection of Western mystique and middle-class reality. Mr. Watson points up some grubby truths behind the archetypal Western tale of the loner who comes to town and dispenses rough justice.... As Good As Gone is nuanced rather than explosive, and its traces of heroism are found not in violence but in a show of restraint.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
Watson is a naturally gifted storyteller, plainspoken and unpretentious...excellent at building suspense, and As Good as Gone is frequently exciting in a cinematic sense.... And even though the novel isn't perfect, Watson is a generous writer, and his love of the West and the people who live there shines through.”
Michael Schaub - NPR.org
[T]he virile, enigmatic character of Calvin, Watson...[and the] wistful territory covered here will be familiar to Watson’s fans.... A master of spare, economical storytelling, Watson sweeps us up in a captivating family drama that departs as quickly as it came, leaving us gratified yet hungry for more.
Seattle Times
Whether Watson is describing the inside of a 1952 Ford Tudor, a homey tree-lined street in Missoula, an afternoon branding a herd of cattle...he writes evocatively and with great persuasion. This book is vintage Watson: laconic, dramatic and tough as a dry Montana stream bed.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] remarkable novel. It is like watching the sunrises over the prairies of Montana about which Watson writes so eloquently. But as with the reward of the lavender-and golden-hued sky to come, the ultimate effect of this novel is well worth the time spent watching.
New York Journal of Books
Fans of Larry Watsonwill recognize his mastery of foreshadowing.... And when [all] erupts, readers are in for a heart-pounding read. Watson keeps readers speculating until the end of this tense, fast-paced story of family drama as modern times clash with Old West mores.
Shelf Awareness
[An] excellent family drama from Watson....a very well done novel in which every character faces an individual conflict, resulting in a rich, suspenseful read.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [S]tunning.... Having received numerous awards for his fiction, Watson is sure to win more praise for his powerful characterizations in the manner of Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig. Readers won't get a novel any better than this. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Watson has written rich, sometimes heartbreaking novels...featuring resolute men and women whose very strength of character...has left them ill-equipped to deal with emotional turmoil. So it is for Calvin Sidey.... Fine writing in the grand western tradition of William Kittredge and Mark Spragg.
Booklist
Calvin's "capacity for ferocity," deserves a Clint Eastwood performance. Watson's powerful characterizations frame large and connected themes: family loyalty, the conflicting capacities of love, and the tenuous connections between humans.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for As Good as Gone...then take off on your own:
1. What kind of man is Calvin Sidey? In what way does he adhere to—and break with—the archetypal cowboy hero of classic Western novels and films?
2. Why does Calvin agree to return to Gladstone and care for his grandchildren? He himself doesn't understand why:
Hadn't he banished long ago any feelings of obligation to others? Did he say yes simply because of blood? Could he have said no to anyone but his son? Or is his solitary life less endurable than he believes?
What do you think? Does Cal come to realize why by the end of the novel?
3. Early in the book, Bill recalls a remark Beverly Lodge once made: "Men—once they have an excuse to go, they're liable to stay gone." While he doesn't think the remark applies to him, he considers other men he knows who delay going home at the end of the day by heading for drinks to the Elks Club or VFW. Does the observation about men have any truth to it (the novel, don't forget, takes place in the 1960s)? Have men changed?
4. Why did Calvin abandon his family? What does it say that he has been on the run for so many years? Even Beverly understands that he "is always ready to run, and it doesn’t take much to set him in motion.” How might Cal be ill-equipped to cope with the mid-20th century?
5. Calvin is an enigmatic character who has a powerful effect on those in Gladstone. What accounts for his reputation?
6. Cal says to his grandson, "Believe me when I say I've sunk a hell of a lot more fence posts than I've roped cattle." What does this comment suggest about the romantic myth of the old west?
7. As Good as Gone follows a mythic plotline: a stranger arrives in town to dispense justice and set things right. If you are familiar with other books or films in the Western genre—or especially with classical Greek mythology—how does this novel follow the mythical outline?
8. Enumerate the various troubles in the Sidey household, which Cal unwittingly walks into. Consider Will's problems with his friends, Anne's ex-boyfriend, and Bill's unfinished business with Lonnie Black Pipe.
9. Why is Marjorie so distrustful of Calvin?
10. Then there's Beverly Lodge: how does her rush to soften Cal help her discover something hidden within herself?
11. Talk about the novel's ending. How do the characters change, or grow, and what do they come to understand about themselves and the obligations of family?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner, 1930
Knopf Doubleday
267 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679732259
Summary
At the heart of this 1930 novel is harrowing, darkly comic tale of the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member—including Addie herself— and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.
Faulkner's use of multiple viewpoints to reveal the inner psychological make-up of the characters is one of the novel's chief charms. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 25, 1897
• Where—New Albany, Mississippi, USA
• Death—July 6, 1962
• Where—Byhalia, Mississippi
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 1950; 2 Pulitizer prizes; others
William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His family was rooted in local history: his great-grandfather, a Confederate colonel and state politician, was assassinated by a former partner in 1889, and his grandfather was a wealth lawyer who owned a railroad. When Faulkner was five his parents moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he received a desultory education in local schools, dropping out of high school in 1915. Rejected for pilot training in the U.S. Army, he passed himself off as British and joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918, but the war ended before he saw any service. After the war, he took some classes at the University of Mississippi and worked for a time at the university post office. Mostly, however, he educated himself by reading promiscuously.
Faulkner had begun writing poems when he was a schoolboy, and in 1924 he published a poetry collection, The Marble Faun, at his own expense. His literary aspirations were fueled by his close friendship with Sherwood Anderson, whom he met during a stay in New Orleans. Faulkner's first novel, Soldier's Pay, was published in 1926, followed a year later by Mosquitoes, a literary satire. His next book, Flags in the Dust, was heavily cut and rearranged at the publisher's insistence and appeared finally as Sartoris in 1929. In the meantime he had completed The Sound and the Fury, and when it appeared at the end of 1929 he had finished Sanctuary and was ready to begin writing As I Lay Dying. That same year he married Estelle Oldham, whom he had courted a decade earlier.
Although Faulkner gained literary acclaim from these and subsequent novels—Light in August (1932), Pylon (1935), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), The Wild Palms (1939), The Hamlet (1940), and Go Down, Moses (1942)—and continued to publish stories regularly in magazines, he was unable to support himself solely by writing fiction. he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Warner Brothers, forming a close relationship with director Howard Hawks, with whom he worked on To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Land of the Pharaohs, among other films. In 1944 all but one of Faulkner's novels were out of print, and his personal life was at low ebb due in part to his chronic heavy drinking. During the war he had been discovered by Sartre and Camus and others in the French literary world. In the postwar period his reputation rebounded, as Malcolm Cowley's anthology The Portable Faulkner brought him fresh attention in America, and the immense esteem in which he was held in Europe consolidated his worldwide stature.
Faulkner wrote seventeen books set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, home of the Compson family in The Sound and the Fury. "No land in all fiction lives more vividly in its physical presence than this county of Faulkner's imagination," Robert Penn Warren wrote in an essay on Cowley's anthology. "The descendants of the old families, the descendants of bushwhackers and carpetbaggers, the swamp rats, the Negro cooks and farm hands, the bootleggers and gangsters, tenant farmers, college boys, county-seat lawyers, country storekeepers, peddlers—all are here in their fullness of life and their complicated interrelations." In 1950, Faulkner traveled to Sweden to accept the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. In later books—Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), A Fable (1954), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962)—he continued to explore what he had called "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself," but did so in the context of Yoknapatawpha's increasing connection with the modern world. He died of a heart attack on July 6, 1962 (From the publisher.
Book Reviews
As I Lay Dying uses thirteen narrators to explore the many voices found in a Southern family and community.
In this particular novel, Addie Bundren, the wife and mother to a poor white farm family, is on her deathbed. Friends and family members gather to help ease her pain and to prepare for her funeral. She is a proud, bitter woman who is ready to die. She feels her husband is worthless, her neighbors overly-religious and annoying, and of all her children, she only loves her son Jewel. As her last wish, she requests that her husband bury her among her family in the town of Jefferson. And so, upon her death, her family, for the most part begrudgingly, follows through with her wish. We hear from everyone involved in the journey, including Addie from the grave—a testament to Faulkner’s creation of an environment so believable that such outrageousness is allowed. The humor is dark. You might not expect to laugh at the image of a dead women’s corpse falling from a casket into a river—but you will.
Faulkner used multiple narratives, each with his or her own interests and biases, to create a puzzle that readers could piece together the "true" circumstances of the story.
The conclusion presents a key to understanding the back-ground to the central event in a way that traditional linear narratives simply cannot accomplish. With that said, in As I Lay Dying, all of the narrators are believable, even Addie who is dead when we hear from her. This method of narration greatly effects how you encounter the story since a character speaking from his own point-of-view creates a limited but intimate perspective while an omniscient narrator often gives the impression of authorial investment and oversight, yet maintains a distance from the characters.
The most brilliant aspect of this novel is how Faulkner carefully weaves bits and pieces from the many narrative voices, thereby creating a rich tapestry of often conflicting and competing perspectives. With this complex technique, seamlessly accomplished, we are forced to analyze the information and come to our own understanding.
Southern Literary Review
The critics...now tell us that his style is florid, that his plots are hard to follow, that he sometimes shows bad taste in his choice of material.... On the other hand, I can think of no other living American author who writes with the same intensity or who carries us so completely into a world of his own. There is no American author or our time who has undertaken and partly completed a more ambitious series of novels and stories..... Faulkner has been writing a sort of human comedy that was partly inspired by his reading of Balzac.
Malcolm Cowley - New York Times (10/29/1944)
For all the range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity [Faulkner's works] are without equal in our time and country.
Robert Penn Warren
Faulkner… belongs to the full-dressed post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust.
Edmund Wilson
For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must return to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics.
Ralph D. Ellison
Discussion Questions
1. Which are the most intelligent and sympathetic voices in the novel? With whom do you most and least identify? Is Faulkner controlling your closeness to some characters and not others? How is this done, given the seemingly equal mode of presentation for all voices?
2. Even the reader of such an unusual book may be surprised to come upon Addie Bundren's narrative on page 169, if only because Addie has been dead since page 48. Why is Addie's narrative placed where it is, and what is the effect of hearing Addie's voice at this point in the book? Is this one of the ways in which Faulkner shows Addie's continued "life" in the minds and hearts of her family? How do the issues raised by Addie here relate to the book as a whole?
3. Faulkner allows certain characters--especially Darl and Vardaman—to express themselves in language and imagery that would be impossible, given their lack of education and experience in the world. Why does he break with the realistic representation of character in this way?
4. What makes Darl different from the other characters? Why is he able to describe Addie's death [p. 48] when he is not present? How is he able to intuit the fact of Dewey Dell's pregnancy? What does this uncanny visionary power mean, particularly in the context of what happens to Darl at the end of the novel? Darl has fought in World War I; why do you think Faulkner has chosen to include this information about him? What are the sources and meaning of his madness?
5. Anse Bundren is surely one of the most feckless characters in literature, yet he alone thrives in the midst of disaster. How does he manage to command the obedience and cooperation of his children? Whyare other people so generous with him? He gets his new teeth at the end of the novel and he also gets a new wife. What is the secret of Anse's charm? How did he manage to make Addie marry him, when she is clearly more intelligent than he is?
6. Some critics have spoken of Cash as the novel's most gentle character, while others have felt that he is too rigid, too narrow-minded, to be sympathetic. What does Cash's list of the thirteen reasons for beveling the edges of the coffin tell us about him? What does it tell us about his feeling for his mother? Does Cash's carefully reasoned response to Darl's imprisonment seem fair to you, or is it a betrayal of his brother?
7. Jewel is the result of Addie's affair with the evangelical preacher Whitfield (an aspect of the plot that bears comparison with Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter). When we read Whitfield's section, we realize that Addie has again allied herself with a man who is not her equal. How would you characterize the preacher? What is the meaning of this passionate alliance, now repudiated by Whitfield? Does Jewel know who his father is?
8. What is your response to the section spoken by Vardaman, which states simply, "My mother is a fish"? What sort of psychological state or process does this declaration indicate? What are some of the ways in which Vardaman insists on keeping his mother alive, even as he struggles to understand that she is dead? In what other ways does the novel show characters wrestling with ideas of identity and embodiment?
9. This is a novel full of acts of love, not the least of which is the prolonged search in the river for Cash's tools. Consider some of the other ways that love is expressed among the members of the family. What compels loyalty in this family? What are the ways in which that loyalty is betrayed? Which characters are most self-interested?
10. The saga of the Bundren family is participated in, and reflected upon, by many other characters. What does the involvement of Doctor Peabody, of Armstid, and of Cora and Vernon Tull say about the importance of community in country life? Are the characters in the town meant to provide a contrast with country people?
11. Does Faulkner deliberately make humor and the grotesque interdependent in this novel? What is the effect of such horrific details as Vardaman's accidental drilling of holes in his dead mother's face? Of Darl and Vardaman listening to the decaying body of Addie "speaking"? Of Vardaman's anxiety about the growing number of buzzards trying to get at the coffin? Of Cash's bloody broken leg, set in concrete and suppurating in the heat? Of Jewel's burnt flesh? Of the "cure" that Dewey Dell is tricked into?
12. In one of the novel's central passages, Addie meditates upon the distance between words and actions: "I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words" [pp. 173-74]. What light does this passage shed upon the meaning of the novel? Aren't words necessary in order to give form to the story of the Bundrens? Or is Faulkner saying that words--his own chosen medium--are inadequate?
13. What does the novel reveal about the ways in which human beings deal with death, grieving, and letting go of our loved ones?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Ashford Affair
Lauren Willig, 2013
St. Martin's Press
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250027863
Summary
The Ashford Affair, a page-turning novel about two women in different eras, and on different continents, who are connected by one deeply buried secret.
As a lawyer in a large Manhattan firm, just shy of making partner, Clementine Evans has finally achieved almost everything she’s been working towards—but now she’s not sure it’s enough. Her long hours have led to a broken engagement and, suddenly single at thirty-four, she feels her messy life crumbling around her. But when the family gathers for her grandmother Addie’s ninety-ninth birthday, a relative lets slip hints about a long-buried family secret, leading Clemmie on a journey into the past that could change everything. . . .
Growing up at Ashford Park in the early twentieth century, Addie has never quite belonged. When her parents passed away, she was taken into the grand English house by her aristocratic aunt and uncle, and raised side-by-side with her beautiful and outgoing cousin, Bea. Though they are as different as night and day, Addie and Bea are closer than sisters, through relationships and challenges, and a war that changes the face of Europe irrevocably. But what happens when something finally comes along that can’t be shared? When the love of sisterhood is tested by a bond that’s even stronger?
From the inner circles of British society to the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the red-dirt hills of Kenya, the never-told secrets of a woman and a family unfurl. Kirkus Reviews predictred that "Willig's crossover into mainstream fiction heralds riches to come." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 28, 1977
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; J.D., Harvard University
• Awards—RITA Award: Gold Leaf Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
A native of New York City, Willig discovered historical romance fiction when she was only six years old, while she was attempting to find books about her idol, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
After graduating from the Chapin School, Willig attended Yale University, where she majored in Renaissance Studies and Political Science, and was Chairman of the Tory Party of the Yale Political Union. Ms. Willig then studied graduate level early modern European history at Harvard University before entering and graduating from Harvard Law School. Willig briefly worked for Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a law firm in New York, while authoring her "Pink Carnation" series of books, until she gave up law in order to focus full time on the series.
What makes her books unique is that the historical romance novel structure of each novel is framed by a modern chick lit-style story—following Eloise Kelly, an American grad student, as she attempts to write her dissertation and uncover the identity of the Pink Carnation (the leader of the ring of spies and Willig's Pimpernel). Along the way, Eloise finds love with an attractive Englishman (descended from a family of spies), Colin. The books also feature several different romantic adventures detailing the exploits of the fictional Purple Gentian, the Pink Carnation, the Black Tulip, and a host of other characters from early 19th century England and France.
Lauren's books have been named a Romantic Times Top Pick! and Lauren has been nominated for a Quill Award in 2006. She has won the RITA Award for Best Regency Historical Romance, the Booksellers Best Award for Long Historical Romance, and the Golden Leaf Award.
In Spring of 2010, Willig taught Reading the Historical Romance at her alma mater, Yale University, along with fellow alumna and romance novelist Andrea DaRif, penname: Cara Elliott. The course received a great deal of attention for helping to bring the romance novel academic notice.
In 2013, Willig published her first book outside the Pink Carnation series: The Ashford Affair. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Willig takes us from the twilight of the British aristocracy to colonial Kenya to modern-day New York City in her first historical romance.... In 1906, five-year-old Addie Gillecote leaves Kenya after her parents’ death to live in London with...the Lord and Lady of Ashford...[and treated as a charity case.... Well-researched details of life in the 1920s lends texture to this solid historical novel.
Publishers Weekly
With this standalone, new readers will have the opportunity to enjoy Willig's talent for balancing multiple, connected storylines without the added pressure of a long-standing series, while returning fans will enjoy hidden "Pink Carnation" references and the pleasure of another novel well done. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L. , OH
Library Journal
Willig veers away from her Pink Carnation Regency spy series in this stand-alone.... Though it lacks the swashbuckling charm of her long-running series, Willig’s new outing takes readers from WWI-era London to Kenya of the 1920s to New York in the 1990s, offering plenty of twists and intrigue to keep them entertained. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Multigenerational tale, from an author of popular Regency/historicals, takes a family from estates in England and Kenya to a Manhattan law firm..... The panoramic canvas Willig chooses to cover is a bit overambitious—the law firm minutia, although entertaining, is essentially a digression—but she makes up for the unwieldiness with sharp, scintillating dialogue and expert scene-craft. Willig's crossover into mainstream fiction heralds riches to come.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Addie wants “her” girls to have the chances their mother didn’t; Marjorie, in turn, pushes Clemmie to focus on work, rather than marrying young like she did. How do their ambitions impact their children? What role does the weight of familial expectations play in shaping the major characters in this novel? Have there been times in your life when you’ve felt constrained or propelled by your parents’ wishes?
2. Addie and Bea love each other dearly, in their own way, but neither really understands what makes the other tick. Do you think their friendship is an unhealthy one? Do you have legacy friends from your childhood with whom you have a similar dynamic?
3. In The Ashford Affair, we see Bea and Addie on either side of World War I, a moment of huge social and cultural change. How does that changing landscape affect the lives of these two characters? What do you think would have happened to them both if World War I hadn’t intervened?
4. Ashford Park has a powerful hold on both Addie and Bea, so much so that Bea names her home in exile “Ashford Redux”. What do you think Ashford represents to each of them?
5. In the case of both Addie and Frederick, and Clemmie and Jon, it takes two tries for true love to conquer all; Clemmie comments at one point that if she and Jon had gotten together the first time, they would probably have broken up, that they were too young. What do you think might have happened if Clemmie and Jon had dated after Rome, or if Addie and Frederick hadn’t been derailed by Bea? Would those relationships have been very different from the ones they eventually achieve? Why or why not?
6. Both in England and in Kenya, Bea feels betrayed by the difference between what she’s led to expect from life and what she receives. She complains that she wasn’t trained for this new world. Do you have sympathy for her? Have there been times when you’ve felt the same way, or known people who have?
7. In the 1920s, large numbers of Europeans moved to Africa, seeing it as a place of hope and opportunity, a place to make one’s fortune or to get away from the memories of the Great War. Frederick, Bea and Addie all find very different things in Kenya. What does Kenya mean to each of them? Does it matter that it’s Kenya, or would the same story have played out anywhere?
8. The world of Bea, Frederick and Addie in Kenya is essentially the English aristocracy transplanted to the African landscape. None of them questions his or her right to make a home there or to use native labor. Does the colonial aspect of this bother you or make you think less of them? Or is it simply a reflection of the times?
9. Addie makes some choices in the novel that ripple down through history to deeply impact her loved ones. She decides not to tell Marjorie and Anna that Bea was still alive. Do you think this was the right or wrong thing to do? Why? Do you sympathize with Addie and Marjorie’s decision not to tell Clemmie about her real relationship with Addie? How might the story have been different if these two decisions had gone the other way?
10. After finishing the novel, what do you think of Bea? Do you find her sympathetic? Unlikeable? What did you think happened to her—and were you surprised when you learned that she was still alive?
11. Clemmie comments at the end of the novel that her grandmothers—both of them—lived through so much, while her generation has been ridiculously sheltered. Do you think that’s true in general or just true of her? Were the World War I and II generations really tougher and more daring or do we just perceive it that way?
12. Clemmie’s sense of self is shaken by learning the truth about her family. Do you think she overreacts? How would you respond to a similar revelation? Have you ever learned something about your family that has shaken you?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Ask Again, Yes
Mary Beth Keane, 2019
Scribner
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982106980
Summary
A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, and the power of forgiveness.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren’t close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city.
What goes on behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come.
Ask Again, Yes by award-winning author Mary Beth Keane, is a beautifully moving exploration of the friendship and love that blossoms between Francis’s youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian’s son, Peter, who are born six months apart.
In the spring of Kate and Peter’s eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact.
But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past.
Ask Again, Yes reveals how the events of childhood look different when reexamined from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so.
Kate and Peter’s love story is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 3, 1977
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—Rockland County, New York
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives in Pearl River, New York
Mary Beth Keane was born in the Bronx to Irish parents and grew up in Rockland County, New York. She attended Barnard College and the University of Virginia, where she received an MFA in Fiction.
In 2011, Keane was named one of the National Book Foundation’s "5 under 35," and in 2015 she was awarded a John S. Guggenheim fellowship for fiction writing.
Keane currently lives in Pearl River, New York, with her husband and their two sons. She is the author of The Walking People (2009), Fever (2013), and Ask Again, Yes (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[T]houghtful, compassionate…. Keane’s novel… illustrates the mutability of memory and the softening effects of time. "We repeat what we don’t repair," Keane writes, and Kate and Peter’s story poignantly demonstrates how grace can emerge from forgiveness, no matter how hard-won.
Publishers Weekly
Remarkable.
Booklist
(Starred review) Keane's story embraces family lives in all their muted, ordinary, yet seismic shades… [and] offers empathy and the long view.… Tender and patient, the novel avoids excessive sweetness while planting itself deep in the soil of commitment and attachment. Graceful and mature. A solidly satisfying, immersive read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Ask Again, Yes grapples with the idea of learning from the past. What lessons do Kate and Peter learn from their parents’ experiences? What mistakes did they repeat?
2. Do Francis Gleeson and Anne Stanhope—both Irish immigrants—experience things differently than their American-born spouses? Do you think this contributes to tensions within the couples, and between the two families?
3. Ask Again, Yes is set over the course of four decades. How do attitudes toward mental health and addiction change over that time? How do these changes affect the characters? For example, how do Brian and George Stanhope differ in their attitudes toward drinking?
4. Francis marvels at how many pieces had to come together for a woman like Lena to exist and for him to have met her (page 7). What role do you think fate plays in this novel? Do the characters have free will to make their own choices? Why or why not?
5. When Kate learns about the episode at Food King, she momentarily thinks that it couldn’t have been as dramatic as Peter was making it out to be. Then she realizes that it was, in fact, the opposite, "that it was such a big deal that the adults had been careful not to talk about it in front of the kids" (page 85). What role does keeping secrets—from children, parents, partners—play throughout the novel? Do you think certain events could have been avoided if the characters had been more open with each other?
6. The idea of inherited traits and characteristics appears frequently in the novel. Trauma is another thing that is passed down from generation to generation. Do Kate and Peter address the legacy of trauma they’ve inherited from their parents?
7. Redemption is an important theme throughout Ask Again, Yes. Discuss the many ways in which the characters forgive each other.
8. The novel is divided into four parts. Discuss the significance of each of the part titles—"Gillam," "Queens," "Two by Two," and "Muster." Why do you think Mary Beth Keane chose to structure the story this way?
9. At the end of the book, Francis thinks, "It was always the same. People didn’t change" (page 385). Do you think he really believes this?
10. What does the book’s title, "Ask Again, Yes," mean to you?
11. This novel is specific to these two families, yet it also feels universal in its themes. Do you see echoes of your family’s history in the Gleesons or the Stanhopes?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories
Hilary Mantel, 2014
Henry Holt & Co.
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781627792103
Summary
Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories.
In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel’s trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display.
Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way.
Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 6, 1952
• Where—Glossop, Derbyshire, England, UK
• Education—University of Sheffield
• Awards—(See below)
• Currently—lives in England
Hilary Mary Mantel CBE* is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards. In 2009, she won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall and won the prize a second time in 2012 for the first book's sequel Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel thus became the first British writer and the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize more than once.
Mantel was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the Derbyshire mill village of Hadfield, attending the local Roman Catholic primary school. Her family is of Irish origin but her parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, were born in England. After losing touch with her father at the age of eleven, she took the name of her stepfather, Jack Mantel. Her family background, the mainspring of much of her fiction, is explained in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.
Mantel attended Harrytown Convent in Romiley, Cheshire, and in 1970 went to the London School of Economics to read law. She transferred to the University of Sheffield and graduated as Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1973. After graduating she worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital, and then as a saleswoman. In 1974 she began writing a novel about the French Revolution, which was later published as A Place of Greater Safety.
In 1977 she went to live in Botswana with her husband, Gerald McEwen, a geologist, whom she had married in 1972. Later they spent four years in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia—a memoir of this time, Someone to Disturb, has been published in the London Review of Books. During her twenties she suffered from a debilitating and painful illness. This was initially diagnosed as a psychiatric illness for which she was hospitalised and treated with anti-psychotic drugs. These produced a paradoxical reaction of psychotic symptoms and for some years she refrained from seeking help from doctors. Finally, in Africa, and desperate, she consulted a medical text-book and realised she was probably suffering from a severe form of endometriosis, a diagnosis confirmed back in London. The condition and necessary surgery left her unable to have children and continued to disrupt her life, with continued treatment by steroids radically changing her appearance. She is now patron of the Endometriosis SHE Trust.
Novels
Her first novel, Every Day is Mother's Day, was published in 1985, and its sequel, Vacant Possession, a year later. After returning to England, she became the film critic of The Spectator and a reviewer for a number of papers and magazines in Britain and the United States.
Her novel Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), which drew on her first-hand experience in Saudi Arabia, uses a threatening clash of values between the neighbours in a city apartment block to explore the tensions between Muslim culture and the liberal West.
Her Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize-winning novel Fludd is set in 1956 in a fictitious northern village called Fetherhoughton, centring on a Roman Catholic church and a convent. A mysterious stranger brings about transformations in the lives of those around him.
A Place of Greater Safety (1992) won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award, for which her two previous books had been shortlisted. A long and historically accurate novel, it traces the career of three French revolutionaries, Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, from childhood to their early deaths during the Reign of Terror of 1794.
A Change of Climate (1994), set in rural Norfolk, explores the lives of Ralph and Anna Eldred, as they raise their four children and devote their lives to charity. It includes chapters about their early married life as missionaries in South Africa, when they were imprisoned and deported to Bechuanaland, and the tragedy that occurred there.
An Experiment in Love (1996), which won the Hawthornden Prize, takes place over two university terms in 1970. It follows the progress of three girls—two friends and one enemy—as they leave home and attend university in London. Margaret Thatcher makes a cameo appearance in this novel, which explores women’s appetites and ambitions, and suggests how they are often thwarted. Though Mantel has used material from her own life, it is not an autobiographical novel.
Her next book, The Giant, O'Brien (1998), is set in the 1780s, and is based on the true story of Charles O'Brien or Byrne. He came to London to earn money by displaying himself as a freak. His bones hang today in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The novel treats O'Brien and his antagonist, the Scots surgeon John Hunter, less as characters in history than as mythic protagonists in a dark and violent fairytale, necessary casualties of the Age of Enlightenment. She adapted the book for BBC Radio 4, in a play starring Alex Norton (as Hunter) and Frances Tomelty.
In 2003, Mantel published her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which won the MIND Book of the Year award. That same year she brought out a collection of short stories, Learning To Talk. All the stories deal with childhood and, taken together, the books show how the events of a life are mediated as fiction. Her 2005 novel, Beyond Black, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Set in the years around the second millennium, it features a professional medium, Alison Hart, whose calm and jolly exterior conceals grotesque psychic damage. She trails around with her a troupe of 'fiends', who are invisible but always on the verge of becoming flesh.
The long novel Wolf Hall, about Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell, was published in 2009 to critical acclaim. The book won that year's Man Booker Prize and, upon winning the award, Mantel said, "I can tell you at this moment I am happily flying through the air." Judges voted three to two in favour of Wolf Hall for the prize. Mantel was presented with a trophy and a £50,000 cash prize during an evening ceremony at the London Guildhall. The accounted for 45% of the sales of all the nominated books. On receiving the prize, Mantel said that she would spend the prize money on "sex and drugs and rock' n' roll".
The sequel to Wolf Hall—Bring Up the Bodies—was published in 2012, also to wide acclaim. It won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year and the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Mantel is working on the third novel of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, called The Mirror and the Light.
She is also working on a short non-fiction book called The Woman Who Died of Robespierre, about the Polish playwright Stanisława Przybyszewska. Mantel also writes reviews and essays, mainly for the Guardian, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. The Culture Show programme on BBC 2 broadcast a profile of Mantel on 17 September 2011.
In September 2014, in an interview published in the Guardian, Mantel confessed to fantasizing about the murdering of Margaret Thatcher in 1983, and fictionalized the event in a short story called "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6 August 1983." That story became the title story in her 2014 collection.
Awards
1987 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize
1990 Southern Arts Literature Prize for Fludd
1990 Cheltenham Prize for Fludd
1990 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for Fludd
1992 Sunday Express Book of the Year for A Place of Greater Safety
1996 Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love
2003 MIND Book of the Year for Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir)
2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall
2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Wolf Hall
2010 Walter Scott Prize for Wolf Hall
2012 Man Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies
2012 Costa Book Awards (Novel) for Bring Up the Bodies
2012 Costa Book Awards (Book of the Year) for Bring Up the Bodies
2013 David Cohen Prize
She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to literature.(Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2014.)
*Commander of the British Empire
Book Reviews
Hilary Mantel's vastly entertaining new collection of stories…have their own special tang and quidditas. Even as one appreciates the suave authorial style—light, pared-down, technically scintillating, like the Olympic gymnast who nails her landing every time—one has the sense too that Mantel is working with some fairly edgy and complex private material in these contemporary fables…Mantel is…a funny and intelligent and generously untethered writer.
Terry Castle - New York Times Book Review
[Mantel] evokes a shadowy region where boundaries blur and what might have happened has equal weight with what actually occurred…. Despite the plethora of sharply observed social detail, her short stories always recognize other potential realities…. Even the most straightforward of Mantel’s tales retain a faintly otherworldly air.
Washington Post
Genius.
Seattle Times
Here are stories in which horror shudders between the high gothic of Grimm and the menacing quotidian. Oppression comes from air conditioners that ‘labor and hack’ and from "the smell of drains." Cruelty is made manifest by a wayward young girl who finds an even more outcast target in the form of a severely deformed child…. These are Ms. Mantel’s signature strokes—freaks made human and humans made freakish, and always with the expiation of a dark and judgmental humor.
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat…. Some of the stories are so brief and twisted…they have a hint of the cruelty of Roald Dahl’s short stories (the ones that were definitely for grown-ups)…. Mantel’s narrators never tell everything they know, and that’s why they’re worth listening to, carefully.
USA Today
The stories in Mantel's new collection reflect her interest in human frailty and assaults of all kinds, from the most intimate to those by or against the state.... [D]espite a title that promises action, [the book] offers something closer to an interesting conversation than a compelling narrative. There are pleasures here, but Mantel lovers toughing out the wait for the final book in the Cromwell series might do better visiting or revisiting her earlier work like A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, or Fludd.
Publishers Weekly
Mantel proves herself a skilled practitioner of short fiction as well…. "What would Anita Brookner do?" asks one of Mantel’s protagonists. The answer, we’d like to think, is this: She’d read Mantel’s latest, and she’d delight in it.
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 Association of Small Bombs
Karan Mahajan, 2016
Penguin Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525429630
Summary
Nominated, 2016 National Book Awards
An expansive and deeply humane novel that is at once groundbreaking in its empathy, dazzling in its acuity, and ambitious in scope.
When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family’s television set at a repair shop with their friend Mansoor Ahmed one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning.
A bomb—one of the many "small" bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world—detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents.
Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine.
Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland.
Karan Mahajan writes brilliantly about the effects of terrorism on victims and perpetrators, proving himself to be one of the most provocative and dynamic novelists of his generation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— April 24, 1984
• Where—Stamford, Connecticut, USA
• Raised—New Dehli, India
• Education—B.A., Stanford University
• Awards—Joseph Henry Jackson Award
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Karan Mahajan was born in 1984 and grew up in New Delhi, India. He attained a degree in English and economics from Stanford University.
Mahajan's 2008 novel, Family Planning (2010, U.S.) won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award and was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. It was published in nine countries. The Association of Small Bombs, his second novel, was released in 2016.
His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR’s All Things Considered, New Yorker (online), Believer, Paris Review Daily, and Bookforum. A graduate of Stanford University and the Michener Center for Writers, he lives in Austin, Texas. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The Association of Small Bombs, is wonderful...is smart, devastating, unpredictable and enviably adept in its handling of tragedy and its fallout. If you enjoy novels that happily disrupt traditional narratives — about grief, death, violence, politics — I suggest you go out and buy this one. Post haste.
Fiona Maazel - New York Times Book Review
Brilliant.... Mr. Mahajan’s writing is acrid and bracing, tightly packed with dissonant imagery.... The Association of Small Bombs is not the first novel about the aftermath of a terrorist attack, but it is the finest I’ve read at capturing the seduction and force of the murderous, annihilating illogic that increasingly consumes the globe.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
[A] beautifully written novel.... Ambitious.... Carries us deep into the human side of a tragedy.
Washington Post
Karan Mahajan’s The Association of Small Bombs urgently depicts the toll of terrorism on victims and perpetrators.
Vanity Fair
Besides having one of the most instantly memorable titles for a novel in recent memory, Karan Mahajan’s new novel explores the life of a young man in the aftermath of a horrific event that takes the life of two of his friends. With a story that crosses continents and addresses questions of nationalism, terrorism, and the effects of violence, this novel seems ready to engage with some of our era’s looming issues.
Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Mahajan’s talent is in conveying the sense that the world is gray, not black-and-white, and he accomplishes this by weaving together the evolving motives and passions of his characters so intricately that in the end we see each as culpable, and human.... [S]earing. (Mar.)
Publishers Weekly
[A] broad array of story lines connected to a 1996 detonation of a small but potent bomb in a humble Delhi marketplace.... The anchoring characters are Mansoor and Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who...worries about his victims and his ill mother. Mahajan’s terrorists and social activists are never content to settle into one venue or mindset.
Booklist
Mahajan's effort to make a thriller out of the story...can feel pat.... But he's strong at exploring the very long shockwaves of small-scale violence:... a devastating cruelty for upending lives to no useful political purpose.... An engaging if plot-thick novel that's alert to the intersection of the emotional and political.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available. In the meantime use these LitLovers talking points to kick start a discussion for The Association of Small Bombs, then take off on your own...
1. It seems easy at times for those of us who live in western societies to ignore or, worse, seem not to care about bombings that occur in Africa, the Middle East, or South Asia. But The Association of Small Bombs insists that we must care. Has reading the novel changed the way you view distant events?
2. A great deal of thought has gone into what inspires terrorists. In both Shockie and Malik, and later Ayub, the author attempts to present bomb makers/terrorists who readers may find sympathetic. Do you? Does the book provide insights into a terrorist's psyche or motivations? Are terrorists monsters or sociopathic killers?
3. Talk about the different phases and shapes of grief that Mansoor and the Khuranas experience as they attempt to cope with the loss of Tushar and Nakul. Why, for instance, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, does Mansoor walk away from the bodies of his friends? Consider Vikas' obsession to film Delhi markets, his need perhaps to "hide" behind his camera.
4. Follow-up to Question 3: How, in particular, does the death of their children undermine the Khuranas' marriage? Were there visible rifts before the bombings?
5. In his grief, Vikas thinks to himself:
When things are good, you can think of no other way of living; when things are in ruins, there appear a million solutions for how this fate could have been avoided.
Is this a thought pattern common to most of us? Do we often reflect on how our troubles might have been prevented, how we might have done things differently; by the same token, how typical is it to accept, without questioning, our good fortune?
6. Talk about Ayub and his influence over Mansoor? Describe how he helps Mansoor heal, both physically (using visualization and holistic techniques) and spiritually (turning to prayer). What about the young men's faith?—Ayub's belief, for instance, that "prayer keeps keeps you focused on the eternal present." Would you consider Aybu and Mansoor's faith radical Islam...or is it more nuanced?
7. Six years later, when he learns he is permanently impaired, Mansoor feels rage toward Vikas and Deepra Khurana. "Why," he wonders, "had they been so irresponsible—with him in particular?" He recalls that Uncle Vikas had "perversely cajoled him into going with Tushar and Nakul to the market" (p. 162). Is he right to blame the Khuranas for what happened? Should the adults have been more cautious?
8. The Association of Small Bombs makes comparisons between the life of the West with its emphasis on individualism and materialism and the traditional Indian values. Some of the evidence is persuasive. On the other hand, we are also shown an India beset with an responsive political system, a corrupt justice system, sectarian violence, and dire poverty. Is there justification for either view point?
8. Discuss the underlying motivations of the terrorists in the novel. In The Association of Small Bombs, they don't seem to murder in the name of Allah; instead, they seem more politically motivated. What are the issues?
9. One of the major questions posed by the book is this: how can people force governments to address their grievances? After the failure of the protest organized by Ayub and Tara, Ayub wonders whether peaceful protest has any affect: "What would Gandhi do if he were alive today? Would the press even notice him?" Ayub, once a staunch believer in nonviolence, comes to believe that violent, not peaceful, methods bring change. Later, however, at the end of the book, he thinks of a bomb as a "child. A tantrum directed at all things." What do you think?
10. Think about the title: what is its significance? What are the various meanings of "small bombs"? Consider the line that Vikas says toward the end of the book, after he and Deepra form their Association: "The deadliness of an attack should not be measured by its size."
11. Does The Association of Small Bombs offer any path for hope?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Astonish Me
Maggie Shipstead, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307962904
Summary
A gorgeously written, fiercely compelling glimpse into the demanding world of professional ballet and its magnetic hold over two generations.
Astonish Me is the irresistible story of Joan, a young American dancer who helps a Soviet ballet star, the great Arslan Rusakov, defect in 1975. A flash of fame and a passionate love affair follow, but Joan knows that, onstage and off, she is destined to remain in the background. She will never possess Arslan, and she will never be a prima ballerina. She will rise no higher than the corps, one dancer among many.
After her relationship with Arslan sours, Joan plots to make a new life for herself. She quits ballet, marries a good man, and settles in California with him and their son, Harry. But as the years pass, Joan comes to understand that ballet isn’t finished with her yet, for there is no mistaking that Harry is a prodigy. Through Harry, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she’d left behind—back into dangerous secrets, and back, inevitably, to Arslan.
Combining a sweeping, operatic plot with subtly observed characters, Maggie Shipstead gives us a novel of stunning intensity and deft psychological nuance. Gripping, dramatic, and brilliantly conjured, Astonish Me confirms Shipstead’s range and ability and raises provocative questions about the nature of talent, the choices we must make in search of fulfillment, and how we square the yearning for comfort with the demands of art. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1983
• Where—Orange County, California, USA
• Education—M.A. Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Stegner Fellowship; Dylan Thomas Prize
• Currently—N/A
Maggie Shipstead was born in 1983 and grew up in Orange County, California. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House, VQR, Glimmer Train, The Best American Short Stories, and other publications. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Dazzling.... Maggie Shipstead’s thrilling second book, Astonish Me, is an homage to, and exposé of, the exhilarating, punishing world of ballet; it’s also a searing rumination on insecurity, secrecy, and friendship.... Shipstead nails the details of being perpetually en pointe: the adrenaline rush after a performance, the intimate atmosphere of the dressing room, the nagging feelings of inadequacy, the erotically charged and emotionally cruel competitiveness, and the inability to shake perfectionism long after retirement. Like a brilliant choreographer, she has masterminded a breathtaking work of art.
O Magazine
Impressively sure-footed...Shipstead’s new novel, Astonish Me, swaps the privileged world of private-school prepsters that populated her best-selling debut, Seating Arrangements, for the equally rarefied realm of professional ballet—brilliantly exposing its dark, slavish underbelly with insight and panache.... Shipstead’s handling of her characters is supple and satisfying. The triumphs and mistakes they make onstage mirror the movements and missteps they make offstage.
Elle
Joan Joyce, a ballerina...abandons the dance world when she becomes pregnant. [But her] son, Harry, reveals a gift for and a love of ballet.... Shipstead’s prose moves fluidly through settings as varied as a ballet rehearsal and a suburban backyard, and her characterizations are full. The story proceeds with a quiet insistence that is matched by the inevitability of its denouement.
Publishers Weekly
Explosive....Shipstead moves her story back and forth in time with the same seamless precision found in the details of a beautiful ballet, capturing the brutality of the training, the impossible perfection on stage, and the messy fallout that erupts when personal and professional lines blur. —Beth Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Languishing in the corps de ballet of a premier New York company while her lover, internationally renowned dancer Arslan Ruskov, is captivating critics and audiences, Joan becomes pregnant and reunites with her high-school boyfriend, Jacob, now a doctoral student in Chicago.... Readers...will rejoice in the emotionally nuanced tale of barre-crossed lovers and the magnetic, mysterious world of professional dance. A supple, daring, and vivid portrait of desire and betrayal. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
[T]he denouements provided for the novel's many well-drawn characters would be more satisfying if readers hadn't been distracted by flashbacks that serve no compelling artistic purpose. Perceptive and well-written though marred by its peculiar chronology.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What does “Astonish me” mean, as a metaphor in the novel?
2. Who is the main character? Is that person also the hero?
3. Shipstead skips forward and backward in time throughout the novel. How does she use these leaps to fill in the story?
4. “Elaine ingests a steady but restricted diet of cocaine without apparent consequence. The key, she has said to Joan, is control. Control is the key to everything.” (page 8) What does Elaine mean by “control”? Which characters in the novel lose control, and to what effect?
5. Jacob wants to live “an intentional life” but doesn’t really know what he intends. The dancers have been taught that “going through the motions” is preferable (page 42). What role does intent really play in their lives? How does this connect to the notion of control?
6. And how does the perfectionism required of ballet dancers play into intent and control?
7. On page 54, Jacob tells Joan, “Every family has a mythology.” What is his mythology for their family? How does Joan’s secret endanger it?
8. Is Joan’s aggressive pursuit of Arslan out of character for her? Why does she do it?
9. Throughout the novel, characters wonder why Arslan chose Joan to help him defect. Why do you think he chose her?
10. How does Sandy shape her daughter’s future? What effect does her behavior at Disneyland have?
11. “I think things can be true even if they didn’t really happen,” Jacob says on page 144. What does he mean by this? How does it play out in his family’s life?
12. When Joan says to Chloe, “Ballet isn’t about you” (page 180), what does she mean? If ballet requires losing oneself, how does it also lead to selfish behavior off-stage?
13. Jacob adored Joan from childhood; Harry adored Chloe from childhood. How else does the younger generation resemble the older one? How do they differ?
14. Why do Harry’s feelings for Chloe change?
15. Discuss the roles of nature vs. nurture. Which is more important in Harry’s life? What about for Chloe?
16. What does “parent” mean, in terms of the novel? Which characters make good parents?
17. What is the metaphor of Emma Livry, the ballet dancer whose tutu catches fire?
18. Shipstead shows us how Jacob reacts to Ludmilla’s phone call, but we don’t see Harry’s reaction. How do you imagine it went?
19. What does Rodina, the title of Arslan and Chloe’s ballet, mean? (In Russia, it refers to “motherland.”)
20. Do you think Jacob decides to stay through the end of the performance?
21. What do we learn from section V? How does it affect your understanding of the novel?
(Quetions issued by the publisher.)
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan, 2018
Little, Brown & Company
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316463997
Summary
A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.
Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird.
In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.
Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Emily X.R. Pan currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern U.S. to immigrant parents from Taiwan. She received her MFA in fiction from the New York University Creative Writing Program, where she was a Goldwater Fellow.
She is the founding editor-in-chief of Bodega Magazine, and a 2017 Artist-in-Residence at Djerassi. The Astonishing Color of After is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) The subtlety and ambiguity of the supernatural elements place this story in the realm of magical realism, full of ghosts and complex feelings and sending an undeniable message about the power of hope and inner strength (Ages 12–up).
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) An exploration of grief and what it means to accept a loved one's suicide, this book's lyrical and heart-rending prose invites readers to take flight into their own lives and examine their relationships.… [N]ot to be missed (Gr 9-up). —Stephanie Charlefour, formerly of Wixom Public Library, MI
School Library Journal
(Starred review.) Dynamic, brave Leigh emerges vividly in Pan's deft hand, and her enthralling journey through her grief glows with stunning warmth, strength, and resilience.
Booklist
[H]aving Leigh express her feelings in terms of color is distracting and adds little to the story. [Still, this is an] evocative novel that captures the uncertain, unmoored feeling of existing between worlds …[and] seeking hope and finding beauty even in one's darkest hours (Ages 14-18).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens, "My mother is a bird." What role does the bird play throughout the story and how does it change as the story progresses?
2. The story has a nonlinear narrative where it’s told in the present and through flashbacks. Why do you think it was told through this narrative structure? Did you find it effective?
3. Throughout the book, Leigh struggles with her identity as someone who is half white and half Taiwanese. How do you think she ends up finding her identity?
4. Communication is an ongoing issue in the book, whether it is Leigh with her grandparents or with her best friend, Axel. Does communication ever get easier for Leigh? Have you ever experienced something similar to her?
5. What significance do food and tea bring to the book? How did they affect your understanding of the characters?
6. When Leigh meets Feng, she is jealous of Feng’s connection with her grandparents. How does Feng serve as a foil to Leigh’s character?
7. The book has a realistic setting with elements of magic. Why did the author choose to incorporate magic? What impact did magic have on the novel?
8. Why do you think Leigh’s mother kept her sister a secret from her daughter? If Leigh had known this secret earlier, how would it have changed the way she viewed her family?
9. Grief is at the core of this novel as Leigh tries to find closure after her mom’s death by suicide. How does her family treat mental health? Why do you think there’s still a stigma on mental health issues?
10. How does Leigh use color to convey her emotions? What color do you think represents the novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Astor Place Vintage
Stephanie Lehmann, 2013
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451682052
Summary
Amanda Rosenbloom, proprietor of Astor Place Vintage, thinks she’s on just another call to appraise and possibly purchase clothing from a wealthy, elderly woman. But after discovering a journal sewn into a fur muff, Amanda gets much more than she anticipated.
The pages of the journal reveal the life of Olive Westcott, a young woman who had moved to Manhattan in 1907. Olive was set on pursuing a career as a department store buyer in an era when Victorian ideas, limiting a woman’s sphere to marriage and motherhood, were only beginning to give way to modern ways of thinking.
As Amanda reads the journal, her life begins to unravel until she can no longer ignore this voice from the past. Despite being separated by one hundred years, Amanda finds she’s connected to Olive in ways neither could ever have imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkeley; M.F.A.,
New York University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Stephanie Lehmann grew up in San Francisco, wrapping herself in warm sweaters and bingeing on television. Wanting early on to be a writer, she talked her parents into buying her an electric typewriter and, at the age of 12, began writing short stories. Thus began her first experience with rejection letters.
Lehmann received her B.A. in psychology from the University of California-Berkeley and finally, screwing up her courage, moved to New York City. She attended New York University's graduate program in creative writing and received her M.A. She married a fellow student from her writing program who is an English teacher. The two live in New York, watch television together, and have grown children.
Stephanie Lehmann is the author of several books: Astor Place Vintage (2013), You Could Do Better (2006), The Art of Undressing (2005), Are You In the Mood (2004), and Thoughts While Having Sex (2003). (For the longer, funnier biography see the author's website.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Enchanting.... [T]he stories of two New York women a century apart, interweaving their lives through playful synchronicity and hints of the supernatural. The present-day timeline involves Amanda Rosenbloom, who owns the eponymous Astor Place Vintage clothing store and....[who] discovers the 1907 diary of Olive Westcott, an upper-class woman who dreamed of becoming a department store buyer.... Lehmann does a seamless job of moving between the past and present and gives a definite sense of place to the story’s two periods.... First-class storytelling with an enticing dose of New York City history.
Publishers Weekly
The past meets the present in Lehmann's work of feminist literary fiction. In 2007, 39-year-old Amanda... finds a journal, started in 1907 by a woman named Olive.... These two women are separated by a century but have a lot in common. Olive is rebelling against the 19th-century concept of a woman's "place" in society, and Amanda feels herself caught between two historic eras.... The author combines an impressive knowledge of history, sociology and psychology to create an intellectually and emotionally rewarding story.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When Amanda first visits Jane Kelly’s apartment to assess her clothes, she ponders, “funny how styles from your own parents’ day tend to call out with that seductive aura of nostalgia” (page 10). What era’s styles appeal you?
2. While Amanda is being hypnotized, her doctor asks her to think of a place that makes her feel “comfortable and content” (page 29), and she has some difficulty deciding on one. Why do you think it was such a challenge for her? What place would you choose?
3. Olive is both unable and unwilling to rely on financial aid from men—from her father or a potential husband—yet Amanda regularly accepts checks from her married lover, Jeff. Which of the two women seems more modern?
4. Amanda’s fascination with history was originally inspired by her collection of Time-Life books called This Fabulous Century. She thinks, “I used to pore over every word and stare at the glossy photographs with laser-like eyes trying to take in every detail and see beyond the edges to find aswers to questions I couldn’t quite put into words” (pages 74–75). Are there books in your life that have had a similar effect on you?
5. Do you think Olive’s father’s car accident was a true accident, or was it somehow suicide? If Olive had not been forced to find work to support herself after his death, in what ways might her life have turned out differently?
6. A woman of Olive’s socioeconomic background is expected to become a wife and mother; and the idea of working is considered base, and therefore shocking, to friends and family. As a store clerk she is offered low wages and few opportunities for advancement. Despite this, Olive pursues a career. How does this illustrate her character? How do Olive’s ways of dealing with change compare to Amanda’s? How are their challenges different?
7. Amanda continues to see Jeff even though she knows she shouldn’t. Why do you think it’s so hard for her to end the affair? Do you see this as weakness in her character? Does the fact that she dated Jeff before he got married affect your opinion of their affair?
8. When Amanda finds out she is not pregnant, why do you thinks she seem disappointed? How does her pregnancy scare contrast with Olive’s?
9. Psychic Lola Cotton seems to contact Olive’s dead mother, telling Olive: “‘She wants you to know . . . you must not feel guilty. She forgives you’” (page 49). Olive views this with skepticism. Is she too focused on looking forward to deal with feelings about her mother’s death?
10. Amanda wonders whether her whole life is “ruled by nostalgia.” She thinks, “The past doesn’t just go away; it lingers on. You can actually touch and see the remains, and to the extent that these souvenirs survive, the past is the present. You can’t say that for the future.... You can never hold the future in your hands” (page 100). Do you agree? Does Amanda spend too much of her life looking back? Why is it so hard for her to leave Jeff? What finally convinces her to do it?
11. As a single woman in the early 1900s, Olive cannot stay alone at a reputable hotel; there are women-only areas in restaurants and bars; the idea of her working is met with significant disapproval; and the Victorian attitudes about women’s sexuality leave her ignorant and unprepared. At the end of the book she thinks, “Perhaps the day will come when women exist in the world as equals to men” (page 386). Do you think that day has come? If not, do you think it ever will?
12. The theme of change as constant and unstoppable is present throughout the novel. Is the past always worth leaving behind? Is newer always better? Is it possible to strike a balance between preserving what is worthy about the past while allowing for modern developments?
13. The author leaves the story open at the end, and we never know whether Jane Kelly reads the journal, whether Amanda starts a relationship with Rob, even whether Olive and Angelina ever open a hat shop. Why do you think the author chose to end her book this way? What do you think happens to the characters?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Astral
Kate Christensen, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385530910
Summary
The Astral is a huge rose-colored old pile of an apartment building in the gentrifying neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For decades it was the happy home (or so he thought) of the poet Harry Quirk and his wife, Luz, a nurse, and of their two children: Karina, now a fervent freegan, and Hector, now in the clutches of a cultish Christian community.
But Luz has found (and destroyed) some poems of Harry’s that ignite her long-simmering suspicions of infidelity, and he’s been summarily kicked out. He now has to reckon with the consequence of his literary, marital, financial, and parental failures (and perhaps others) and find his way forward—and back into Luz’s good graces.
Harry Quirk is, in short, a loser, living small and low in the water. But touched by Kate Christensen’s novelistic grace and acute perception, his floundering attempts to reach higher ground and forge a new life for himself become funny, bittersweet, and terrifically moving. She knows what secrets lurk in the hearts of men—and she turns them into literary art of the highest order. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 22, 1962
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Reed College; Iowa
Writers' Workshop.
• Awards—PEN/Faulkner Award
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
Kate Christensen is an American novelist. She won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for her fourth novel, The Great Man, about a painter and the three women in his life. Her other novels are In the Drink (1999), Jeremy Thrane (2001), The Epicure's Lament (2004), Trouble (2009), and The Astral (2011).
She is a graduate of Reed College, Class of 1986, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her essays, articles, reviews, and stories have appeared in many anthologies and periodicals, most recently The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Elle, Wall Street Journal, Tin House, The Wilson Quarterly, The B&N Review, and Fivechapters.com. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Engaging…wonderfully drawn. It’s worth noting that Christensen has somehow — again — created a captivatingly believable male narrator, although she can’t see 60 on the horizon, has not been married to a tempestuous Mexican woman for 30 years or published largely ignored poetry in academic journals. (Her previous novel, The Great Man, won the PEN/Faulkner Award.) And yet here she is doing what talented novelists do: creating a voice so rich with the peculiar timbre of lived experience that you feel as though she’s introduced you to a witty, deeply frustrated (and frustrating) new friend.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Not once during The Astral did this reader ever feel like the narrative strayed from the vivid, first-person voice of Harry. Another pleasure of this novel is that Christensen manages to shape this itinerant narrative with unexpected tensions and tenderness. By the conclusion, Harry alters his ways, moving outside the familiar grooves of his old life and begins to chart new territory of employment and relationships. Taken altogether, this entertaining novel reads like an ode to Brooklyn and broken marriages, endings and beginnings, and the spaces in between.
S. Kirk Walsh - Boston Globe
[The] characters’ ruminations on how the forces of love and deception work in tandem within a relationship are both searing and concise... [Chistensen] is a forceful writer whose talent is all over the page. Her prose is visceral and poetic, like being bludgeoned with an exquisitely painted sledgehammer. She is a portrait artist, drawing in miniature, capturing the light within.
Janelle Brown - San Francisco Chronicle
Ah, urban beauty: Christensen gets what’s funny about it, and also what’s disappointing. [Christensen’s] a mischievous writer with a keen eye and ear for comedy, one who sets up precarious scenarios and then lets her characters hash things out.
New York Observer
(Starred review.) Like the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn of its setting, Christensen's unremittingly wonderful latest (after Trouble) is populated by an odd but captivating mix of characters. At the center is Harry Quirk, a middle-aged poet whose comfortable life is upended one winter day when his wife, Luz, convinced he's having an affair, destroys his notebooks, throws his laptop from the window, and kicks him out. Things, Harry has to admit, are not going well: their idealistic Dumpster-diving daughter, Karina, is lonely and lovelorn, and their son, Hector, is in the grip of a messianic cult. Taking in a much-changed Greenpoint, Brooklyn, while working at a lumberyard and hoping to recover his poetic spark, Harry must come to terms with the demands of starting anew at 57. Astute and unsentimental, at once romantic and wholly rational, Harry is an everyman adrift in a changing world, and as he surveys his failings, Christensen takes a singular, genuine story and blows it up into a smart inquiry into the nature of love and the commitments we make, the promises we do and do not honor, and the people we become as we negotiate the treacherous parameters of marriage and friendship and parenthood.
Publishers Weekly
The Astral, a big, rose-hued apartment building in Brooklyn, NY, has long been home to poet Harry Quirk and his family. But Harry's wife, Luz, has discovered poems that seem to confirm her suspicions of infidelity, and she's tossed him out. Harry, sensing that he's failed as a poet, husband, and father (son Hector is trapped in a crazy Christian cult), decides to straighten out. This latest from Christensen arrives with some promise, as her recent The Great Man won a PEN Faulkner Award. This could be a real charmer; watch.
Library Journal
Christensen perfectly embodies the voice of a male poet in crisis, Harry Quirk ... [she] is a master at nailing Harry’s antagonizing voice, and her protagonist does not disappoint. Readers will be sucked into extremely realistic familial dramas.... With acute perception and witty humor, this bittersweet novel moves along at a tremendous pace, entertaining until its climactic final scene. —Megan Fishman
Bookpage
Christensen (Trouble, 2009, etc.) knows her way around aging characters. Having won the PEN/Faulkner Award for her lively septuagenarians in The Great Man (2007), she now creates a charmingly ribald bohemian poet flailing about in late middle age. A masterpiece of comedy and angst.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Harry Quirk’s obsession with his imploding marriage forms a central arc in The Astral. Do you trust his narrative of the marriage and its dissolution? How does your opinion of him evolve as you read the novel?
2. Luz is convinced that Harry is sleeping with Marion. Although her accusations of sexual intimacy are unfounded, Harry and Marion are very close friends. Do you think that it is possible to commit emotional infidelity, and if so, is Harry guilty of it? How would you define an “emotional affair”?
3. In Chapter Fourteen, Harry visits his wife’s therapist, Helen. What do you make of Harry’s animosity towards her? Why do you think the author included this confrontation?
4. Harry’s work-in-progress, “an epic poem of loss and displacement,” is titled The Astral. How does this echo the symbolic role of The Astral apartment building in the novel?
5. During the course of the novel, Harry and Karina pay several visits to Hector at the Sag Harbor compound. How do these experiences compare, and what do they contribute to our understanding of Hector and his situation? Do you think Hector is a true believer of the Children of Hashem cult, or is he an opportunist like his older consort Christa?
6. The Astral portrays a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, rapidly changing Brooklyn of artists, artisans, immigrants, and long-settled locals. Discuss the tensions inherent in such a quilt of social types. How does the author portray the interactions between immigration and gentrification?
7. Kate Christensen once wrote an influential essay titled “Loser Lit” in praise of such books as Lucky Jim, A Confederacy of Dunces, Jernigan and Wonder Boys, whose books center on self-defeating characters whose often comic misadventures as they slide to the bottom have garnered these novels fervent cult followings. To what extent do you think Harry Quirk qualifies as a Loser Lit antihero?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Astrid & Veronika
Linda Olsson, 2007
Viking Penguin
259 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143038078
Summary
With extraordinary emotional power, Linda Olsson's stunningly well-crafted debut novel recounts the unusual and unexpected friendship that develops between two women. Veronika, a young writer, rents a house in a small Swedish village as she tries to come to terms with a recent tragedy while also finishing a novel.
Her arrival is silently observed by Astrid, an older, reclusive neighbor who slowly becomes a presence in Veronika's life, offering comfort in the form of companionship and lovingly prepared home-cooked meals.
Set against a haunting Swedish landscape, Astrid & Veronika is a lyrical and meditative novel of love and loss, and a story that will remain with readers long after the characters' secrets are revealed. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Stockholm, Sweden
• Education—J.D., University of Stockholm; University of Wellington
• Currently—lives in Auckland, New Zealand
Linda Olsson is a Swedish-born novelist who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Published in 2003, her first novel, Astrid and Veronika, became an international best seller and was translated into 15 languages. She writes all of her novels in both English and Swedish.
Born and raised in Stockholm, Olsson attended the University of Stockholm. After graduating with a law degree, she worked in banking and finance, eventually getting married and giving birth to three boys.
In 1986, her family left Sweden for Africa where Olsson initially intended to take up a post in Kenya. But she traveled on to Singapore, Britain, and Japan, finally settling in New Zealand with her family in 1990. She continued her studies at the University of Wellington, graduating in English and German literature.
During her time in London, Olsson signed up for a course in creative writing and was encouraged to begin writing short stories. In 2003, after arriving in New Zealand, she won a short story competition run by the Sunday Star Times. She then enrolled in a postgraduate course, "Writing the Novel," and was inspired to try her hand at long-form fiction.
Olsson's first novel was completed in 2005. Astrid and Veronika (originally titled "Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs") became a Swedish bestseller. Subsequent novels include Sonata for Miriam (2009), The Memory of Love (2011—The Kindness of Your Nature in New Zealand ), The Blackbird Sings at Dusk (2016—not available in the U.S.), and A Sister in My House (2016, 2018 in the U.S.).
Under the pen name Adam Sarafis, OLsson has also collaborated with Thomas Sainsbury on the thriller Something is Rotten (2015). (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/6/2018.)
Book Reviews
Unlike the voice of the novel’s omniscient narrator, [the voices of the two women] are natural and vivid, utterly convincing. And unlike the novel’s flatly depicted present, the physical world of the past, in which their stories take place, generously opens to admit us. By the halfway mark, it’s the characters’ voices that are keeping Olsson’s readers going, not her irritating attempt to create suspense. And when the crucial revelations arrive, they’re disappointing. Neither Veronika’s tragedy nor Astrid’s truly illuminates the character of the woman who suffers it. Yet Astrid & Veronika survives this potential derailment because the braiding together of the two women’s voices is simply so beguiling.
Linda Harleman - New York Times
Linda Olsson evokes, with great beauty and precision, the landscape of a friendship between two very different women, each caught in a tragic moment from the past. Their connec-tion, initially as tentative and fragile as the first filaments of ice, gradually strengthens, allowing each woman to give voice to her stories, and in doing so to reclaim "a heart for beauty." Subtle, penetrating, and beautifully written, Astrid and Veronika affirms the power of narrative to transform.
Kim Edwards (author of The Time Traveler's Wife)
In Swedish novelist Olsson's somber debut, Veronika Bergman returns to Sweden after a childhood following her diplomat father around the world (her mother abandoned the family), and after publishing her first novel titled Single, One Way, No Luggage. She rents a small house in a rural town to work on her second, but in solitude finds herself seized by feverish dreams and paralyzed by the "stillness" of the landscape and the memories of her recently dead fiance. Reclusive septuagenarian Astrid Mattson, thought by the village to be a witch, takes an interest in Veronika, and the two strike up a friendship based on loss. Against the backdrop of the changing seasons and their small, plangent houses, the two women slowly tell each other their most closely guarded secrets (which concern their mothers and lovers), and venture, tentatively, out of the safety of their routines. Olsson has a clear feel for the emotional wellsprings of both characters, but can't convert her terse lyricism into a fully realized story.
Publishers Weekly
This is the first novel for Olsson, a native of Stockholm who now lives in New Zealand. Though the pace of her narrative lags at times, readers of Anne Tyler and Jodi Picoult will appreciate the lyrical prose and expert rendering of the themes of heartbreak and loss. —Allison Block
Booklist
Two women, four decades apart in age, share their emotional scars while living next door to each other in a small Swedish town. Olsson's restrained debut has the hallmarks of an Ingmar Bergman film: a leisurely pace, a chilly Scandinavian setting leavened by rich observations of nature and characters whose prim, polite facades eventually disappear, exposing years of anger and hurt. Veronika, a 30-year-old writer, arrives in a tiny village looking for a solitary place where she can work on the follow-up to her successful first novel. The house next to the one she rents is owned by Astrid, a septuagenarian shut-in whose husband is slowly dying in a nursing home miles away. Veronika is sad and embittered, Astrid is so closed-off she has a reputation as the village witch, but as their routines increasingly intersect, their relationship thaws, and they become close friends. Over dinners, hikes and trips into town, they discuss the things that prompted them to seclude themselves. By and large, those things are men: Astrid was cruelly rejected by her grandfather as a child, her true love died when she was a teen, and she spent years in a loveless marriage to a domineering man; Veronika left her boyfriend in Stockholm to live with another man in New Zealand, but that relationship had a tragic ending. It's a story with lots of potential to become overwrought, three-hanky fare, but Olsson refuses to give in to that temptation. Her prose is empathetic while remaining steely and unadorned, never overselling the amount of psychic damage that either character has sustained or glossing over the women's flaws. While the plot demands that the conclusion offer some familiar statements about our capacity toheal, Olsson's observations about breakups and dysfunctional families are carefully thought out and free of cliche. The slow pace is sometimes maddening, but it places the women's personal dramas in strong relief. An appealing, if oddly stoic, meditation on friendship.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Astrid has been solitary for so long. Why, then, do you think she is drawn to Veronika, essentially a stranger, and then later allows herself to open up to her so freely?
2. The houses in the novel serve almost as characters. The author describes Astrid’s house as “dark and warm . . . It was an organic part of her and its shapes were ingrained in her body” (p. 9). Discuss how the author uses the houses in the novel. What is the importance of a home in our lives? How does our house/living space define us? What do you think your house/living space says about you?
3. Astrid’s mother committed suicide when Astrid was six-years-old; Veronika’s mother left when Veronika was a child. Talk about the theme of the “absent mother” and how it influences these characters’ lives.
4. What did you think of Astrid’s confession regarding the death of her child? Were you able to understand her actions? Did knowing this about her past affect the way you felt about her? What do you think Astrid expected Veronika’s reaction would be to her story? Was Astrid taking a risk in telling her? Why do you think Veronika reacts in the way she does?
5. Veronika feels very guilty about the death of her fiancé and agonizes over what she could have done differently that day to prevent his death. Why do you think she feels so guilty?
6. When Astrid tries on the floral swimsuit during Veronika’s birthday “outing,” the women burst out into laughter. (p. 85). Why do the women find this moment so hysterically funny? How does this day, Veronika’s birthday, serve as a turning point in the novel?
7. After her husband dies, Astrid says to Veronika , “There was nothing more to be afraid of. . . . It was never about him. It was about me” (p.167). What does she mean?
8. Veronika visits her father after her fiancé’s death, and when she is leaving her father begins to say, “I wish . . .” but doesn’t complete the sentence (p. 200). What do you think he was going to say? How would you describe Veronika’s relationship with him?
9. Great literary novels skillfully incorporate sometimes elaborate symbolism. In Astrid & Veronika, Ollson makes repeated and significant references to water. Discuss the symbolic function of water in the novel and consider how water may be connected with Olsson’s major themes.
10. Discuss how the seasons shape the novel. How do the seasons influence the characters? Discuss the ways that the seasons affect you throughout the year? Are your memories connected to the seasons in which they took place?
11. In her letter to Veronika, Astrid mentions “a great love” (p. 241). Whom do you think she is talking about?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Assemetry
Lisa Halliday, 2018
Simon & Schuster
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501166761
Summary
A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about love, luck, and the inextricability of life and art, from 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday.
Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice.
The first section, "Folly," tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War, "Folly" also suggests an aspiring novelist’s coming-of-age.
By contrast, "Madness" is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow.
These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.
A stunning debut from a rising literary star, Asymmetry is an urgent, important, and truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976
• Raised—Medfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—Harvard University
• Awards—Whiting Award
• Currently—lives in Milan, Italy
Lisa Halliday has worked as a freelance editor and translator in Milan, where she lives with her husband. Her short story "Stump Louie" appeared in The Paris Review in 2005, and she received a Whiting Award for Fiction in 2017. Asymmetry is her first novel. (From the pubisher.)
Book Reviews
Asymmetry is extraordinary, and the timing of its publication seems almost like a feat of civics.… Halliday’s prose is so strange and startingly smart that its mere existence seems like commentary on the state of fiction.… It’s a first novel that reads like the work of an author who has published many books over many years.… Halliday has written, somehow all at once, a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas, and a politically engaged work of metafiction.
Alice Gregory - New York Times Book Review
A scorchingly intelligent first novel …a clever comedy of manners set in Manhattan as well as a slowly unspooling tragedy about an Iraqi-American family, which poses deep questions about free will, fate and freedom, the all-powerful accident of one’s birth and how life is alchemized into fiction.… [Asymmetry] will make you a better reader, a more active noticer. It hones your senses.
Parul Segha - New York Times
A brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
It’s hard to deny, by the novel’s end, that Alice/Halliday has pulled off this stunt of transcendence. As with a gymnast who’s just stuck a perfect routine, your impulse is to ask her, what’s next?
Christian Lorentzen - New York Magazine
Lisa Halliday’s debut novel, Asymmetry, begins with a lopsided affair—a perfect vehicle for a story of inexperience and advantage.… Alice and Amar may be naive, but Halliday is knowing–about isolation, dissatisfaction and the pain of being human.
Time
Asymmetry is a debut burnished to a maximum shine by technical prowess, but it offers readers more than just a clever structure: a familiar world gone familiarly mad.
New Republic
(Starred review.) [A] stellar and inventive debut, a puzzle of seemingly incongruous pieces that, in the end, fit together perfectly.… Any reader who values innovative fiction should treasure this.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) While the first story may have readers wondering about the characters' motivations…, the second builds a picture of life as a dual national, the eventual need to pick a side.… [T]hought-provoking…evocative. —Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] beautiful debut…. Halliday deftly and subtly intersects the two disparate stories, resulting in a deep rumination on the relation of art to life and death. — Cortney Ophoff
Booklist
(Starred review.) Two seemingly unrelated novellas form one delicately joined whole in this observant debut.… A singularly conceived graft of one narrative upon another; what grows out of these conjoined stories is a beautiful reflection of life and art.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Halliday chose to title her novel Asymmetry? Discuss the central relationships within the book. In what ways are they unequal? Are there other things that are asymmetrical within the book in addition to the interpersonal relationships? Discuss them with your book club.
2. Alice tells Ezra, "I guess you could say … that I’m a good old-fashioned girl" (p. 17). Describe the context of this statement. How did you interpret the statement? How would you describe Alice? Did your perception of her change throughout the novel? In what ways?
3. Discuss the structure of the novel. Did the titles of each section frame your understanding of the narrative that follows? If so, how? Who or what do you think "Folly" and "Madness" refer to?
4. Amar recounts how at a dinner with Maddie and one of Maddie’s high school friends, the conversation turned to religion. Were you surprised to learn that Amar was religious, given that he identifies as an empiricist? How does he reconcile the two belief systems that are seemingly at odds? Explain his argument in favor of religion.
5. Amar says that his mother has told him, "You would be happier …if you were more like your brother. Sami lives in the moment, like a dog," and then notes with irony that Sami’s name means "high, lofty, or elevated—not traits you’d readily associate with [a dog]" (p. 149). Did you find yourself making certain assumptions about the characters based on their names? If so, what were they? Ezra’s name isn’t revealed immediately when he starts spending time with Alice. What’s the effect?
6. Amar "once heard a filmmaker say that in order to be truly creative a person must be in possession of four things: irony, melancholy, a sense of competition, and boredom" (p. 152). Do you agree? What do you think leads to creativity? As a well-respected author, Ezra is viewed by many as "truly creative." Do you think he possesses all the characteristics enumerated in the statement? Share some examples.
7. When they are discussing a homeless man in their neighborhood, Ezra chastises Alice, telling her, "Don’t sentimentalize him" (p. 38). Explain this statement. Why does Ezra object to the way that Alice is speaking about the man? Are any of the other characters guilty of sentimentalizing others within the narrative? What are the dangers in doing so?
8. Ezra asks Alice, "Do you ever think this isn’t good for you?" (p. 49) of their relationship. Why might it be detrimental to Alice? What do you think of their relationship? Did your feelings about it change as you got to know Ezra and Alice as a couple? Why or why not? What do you think they see in each other?
9. Amar muses, "Sometimes I wonder whether we hide lovers from others because it makes it easier to hide ourselves from ourselves" (p. 179). What are the reasons that Alice and Ezra give each other for keeping their relationship hidden? Do you think they’re being truthful about the rationale behind their actions? Explain your answer.
10. When Amar is speaking with Hassan, Hassan tells him to "think about the future." Upon reflection, Amar says, "If I were to articulate the prevailing impression of the… weeks I spent in Iraq …it would be to venture that the future meant something very different there from what it means in, say, America" (p. 222). Based on Amar’s descriptions of his visit in Iraq, do you agree? Why is it so hard for Zahra’s family to understand the concept of making New Year’s resolutions? Compare his world view to that of Zahra’s family. Do Ezra and Alice also experience different perceptions of what "the future" means? Explain your answer.
11. Amar tells Sami that the more time he spent in the Middle East, the more he understood why Alastair said "the more time a foreign journalist spends in the Middle East, the more difficult it becomes for him to write about it" (p. 226). Explain the sentiment that Alastair expresses. What causes Amar’s view to evolve? Why does Sami disagree? What does Sami think the role of art should be? What do you think?
12. Passages from several books are interspersed within the text of Asymmetry. What books do these excerpts come from? Why do you think that Halliday has included these passages? Did the excerpts affect your reading? If so, how?
13. Both Amar and Alice make unexpected disclosures to strangers—to the doctor in the airport and to the judge during jury duty respectively. What are the disclosures that each of the characters share? Why are they able to make these assertions in front of virtual strangers? Were you surprised by their pronouncements?
14. Consider the parallels between Asymmetry and Alice in Wonderland, beginning with the first sentence and including all the foods and beverages (and pills) Alice and Ezra eat and drink, the description of Alice's first ride up Ezra's elevator, Amar's reflection on rabbit holes, and Ezra's reference on page 261 to penetrating the looking-glass. Discuss these and any other similarities between the two books. What might this connection be trying to say?
15. Chad Harbach praised Asymmetry, saying, "Halliday’s debut novel starts like a story you’ve heard, only to become a book unlike any you’ve read. The initial mystery is how its pieces fit together; the lasting one is how she pulled the whole thing off." Were you able to solve the "mystery" of how the seemingly disparate stories related to each other? Talk about it with your book club. Did you find the stories more powerful by reading them in tandem?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
At First Sight
Nicholas Sparks, 2005
Grand Central Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780759514409
Summary
Nicholas Sparks brings back two characters from his beloved bestseller, True Believer, in this continuing saga of extraordinary love.
There are few things Jeremy Marsh was sure he'd never do: he'd never leave New York City; never give his heart away again after barely surviving one failed marriage; and most of all, never become a parent. Now, Jeremy is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter.
But, just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling and mysterious message reopens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 31. 1965
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Notre Dame
• Currently—lives in New Bern, North Carolina
Nicholas Charles Sparks is an American novelist, screenwriter and producer. He has published some 20 novels, plus one non-fiction. Ten have been adapted to films, including Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John, The Last Song, The Lucky One, and most recently The Longest Ride.
Background
Sparks was born to Patrick Michael Sparks, a professor of business, and Jill Emma Marie Sparks (nee Thoene), a homemaker and an optometrist's assistant. He was the middle of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister, "Dana", who died at the age of 33 from a brain tumor. Sparks said that she is the inspiration for the main character in his novel A Walk to Remember.
His father was pursuing graduate studies at University of Minnesota and University of Southern California, and the family moved a great deal, so by the time Sparks was eight, he had lived in Watertown, Minnesota, Inglewood, California, Playa del Rey, California, and Grand Island, Nebraska, which was his mother's hometown during his parents' one year separation.
In 1974 his father became a professor of business at California State University, Sacramento teaching behavioral theory and management. His family settled in Fair Oaks, California, and remained there through Nicholas's high school days. He graduated in 1984 as valedictorian from Bella Vista High School, then enrolled at the University of Notre Dame under a full track and field scholarship. In his freshman year, his team set a record for the 4 x 800 relay.
Sparks majored in business finance and graduated from Notre Dame with honors in 1988. He also met his future wife that year, Cathy Cote from New Hampshire, while they were both on spring break. They married in 1989 and moved to New Bern, North Carolina.
Writing career
While still in school in 1985, Sparks penned his first (never published) novel, The Passing, while home for the summer between freshman and sophomore years at Notre Dame. He wrote another novel in 1989, also unpublished, The Royal Murders.
After college, Sparks sought work with publishers or to attend law school, but was rejected in both attempts. He then spent the next three years trying other careers, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone and starting his own manufacturing business.
In 1990, Sparks co-wrote with Billy Mills Wokini: A Lakota Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding. The book was published by Random House sold 50,000 copies in its first year.
In 1992, Sparks began selling pharmaceuticals and in 1993 was transferred to Washington, DC. It was there that he wrote another novel in his spare time, The Notebook. Two years later, he was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park, who picked The Notebook out of her agency's slush pile, liked it, and offered to represent him. In October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for The Notebook from Time Warner Book Group. The novel was published in 1996 and made the New York Times best-seller list in its first week of release.
With the success of his first novel, he and Cathy moved to New Bern, NC. After his first publishing success, he began writing his string of international bestsellers.
Personal life and philanthropy
Sparks continues to reside in North Carolina with his wife Cathy, their three sons, and twin daughters. A Roman Catholic since birth, he and his wife are raising their children in the Catholic faith.
In 2008, Entertainment Weekly reported that Sparks and his wife had donated "close to $10 million" to start a private Christian college-prep school, The Epiphany School of Global Studies, which emphasizes travel and lifelong learning.
Sparks also donated $900,000 for a new all-weather tartan track to New Bern High School. He also donates his time to help coach the New Bern High School track team and a local club track team as a volunteer head coach.
In addition to track, he funds scholarships, internships and annual fellowship to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
When we last left 37-year-old Jeremy Marsh (in Sparks's True Believer), the science columnist had traveled from his New York base to Boone Creek, N.C., to get a story—and ended up falling in love with Lexie Darnell, the 30-year-old town librarian. Now Lexie's pregnant—but it's true love (and a portable job) that's allowing divorce Jeremy to move down so they can marry and build a life together. The book centers on the tension-filled runup to the wedding. Sparks pulls out all the smalltown stops—psychic grandmother, meddling mayor, sullen townie ex, jealous best friends—and offers Mars/Venus commentary on what makes his characters tick. Jeremy's writer's block, instead of heightening the will-they-or-won't-they tension, is as enervating for readers as it is for him. More compelling are the mysterious e-mails Jeremy receives that suggest Lexie may not be telling the truth (about who the father is, for one thing), and the character of Lexie's psychic grandmother, Doris, who has correctly predicted the sex of every child born in the town. As the wedding gets closer (and house renovations suck more and more money from Jeremy's dwindling savings), Jeremy and Lexie have some serious talking to do, and Sparks throws in a substantial zinger at the end. It's majorly manipulative and totally effective. Have plenty of tissues on hand.
Publishers Weekly
With his trademark sensitivity, Sparks delves into the nitty-gritty of relationships, and considers the sacrifices that each partner has to make in order to have a successful marriage. And readers beware: this is multiple-hankie romance. —Patty Engelmann.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. This novel picks up a few weeks after True Believer left off, where we learn that Jeremy and Lexie are engaged. By this point, Jeremy and Lexie have known each other less than a month. How did Lexie and Jeremy know so quickly? What role, if any, did her pregnancy play into the decision? Do you know any couples personally who got engaged so quickly? How long did it take you to realize that you wanted to marry your spouse? In his biography, Nicholas says that he told Cathy that they would get married one day, within 24 hours of meeting her. She laughed, but they've been married since 1989. Did this factor into the author's decision to open the novel in this manner?
2. Alvin thinks Jeremy is making a mistake and feels free to tell him so. If you were Jeremy's friend, what would you have said? Lexie is nervous about meeting Jeremy's family, and though they were referenced quite a bit in both True Believer and At First Sight, they are minor characters, in that the reader never even learns the names of Jeremy's parents. Why did the author do this? Should the characters have been developed further? Why or why not?
3. The story largely takes place during the forty week period while Lexie is pregnant, which always changes a relationship. Yet, during this time, Jeremy and Lexie are still getting to know each other. How does the pregnancy affect the development of the relationship? Are the developments more positive or negative? At the same time, Jeremy and Lexie are remodeling a house, and Jeremy struggles with writer's block. It seems, to Jeremy anyway, that when it rains it pours. Describe how these challenges affect Jeremy? How do they affect Lexie?
4. Mayor Gherkin plays a lesser role in this novel than in True Believer. The town, too, plays a lesser role. Doris, Jed, Rachel and Alvin, on the other hand, play more prominent roles in At First Sight. Who was the most important of the minor characters? Who was the least important? Why did the author choose to "switch" the prominence of the characters in the sequel?
5. Describe the symbolism of the mysterious lights in the cemetery. In what ways does this symbolism portrayed in the relationship between Lexie and Jeremy?
6. Working late one night, Jeremy receives an e-mail that calls into question whether the child is actually his. At first he dismisses it; later, however, he begins to wonder how well he really knows Lexie. Should Jeremy have told Lexie about the e-mail right away? Would he have believed her? How might the relationship have played out differently had Jeremy been less secretive? In what ways was Lexie secretive? Who was more at fault when the problems in their relationship began to arise?
7 After Jeremy and Lexie are married, Jeremy takes a walk on the beach, where he spies some wild horses grazing on the dunes. This paragraph is one of the author's favorite passages in the novel. Were there any passages that you found particularly insightful, well-written or interesting?
8. Doris tells Lexie that a happy marriage means meeting your spouse's needs, while they do the same for you. If your spouse could meet only one of your needs, what would it be? What would your spouse's be? (The Ten Needs, from the book, His Needs, Her Needs, are: Communication, Affection, Honesty, Family commitment, Financial Support, Sex, Recreational companionship, domestic support, physical attractiveness, and admiration)
9. Toward the end of the novel, just as Lexie and Jeremy are settling into life as a married couple, new tension is suddenly added to the relationship. How would you react had this happened in your marriage?
10. This is the first of Nicholas's novels in which life after the characters fell in love is described in detail. It's also the first novel in which the characters were in love when the book began. In what other ways was this novel different than the author's previous work? Can this novel still be described as a love story? Why or why not?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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At Last (Patrick Melrose Series, 5)
Edward St. Aubyn, 2012
Picador : Macmillan
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250023902
Summary
Here, from the writer described by The Guardian as “our purest living prose stylist” and whom Alan Hollinghurst has called “the most brilliant English novelist of his generation,” is a work of glittering social comedy, profound emotional truth, and acute verbal wit. At Last is also the stunning culmination of one of the great fiction enterprises of the past two decades in the life of the English novel.
As readers of Edward St. Aubyn's extraordinary earlier works—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and the Man Booker Prize finalist Mother's Milk—are well aware, for Patrick Melrose, “family” has always been a double-edged sword. At Last begins as friends, relatives, and foes trickle in to pay final respects to his mother, Eleanor. An Americam heiress, Eleanor married into the British aristocracy, giving up the grandeur of her upbringing for “good works” freely bestowed on everyone but her own son, who finds himself questioning whether his transition to a life without parents will indeed be the liberation he had so long imagined.
The service ends, and family and friends gather for a final party. Amid the social niceties and social horrors, Patrick begins to sense the prospect of release from the extremes of his childhood, and at the end of the day, alone in his room, the promise some form of safety...at last. (From the publisher.)
The four previous novels in the series—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk—have been collected in a single volume in the U.S., titled The Patrick Melrose Novels.
Author Bio
• Birth—January 14, 1960
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Betty Trask Award; Prix Femina
Etranger; South Bank Show Award;
• Currently—lives in London, England
Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He was educated at Westminster school and Keble college, Oxford University. He is the author of seven novels of which Mother’s Milk was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, won the 2007 Prix Femina Etranger and won the 2007 South Bank Show award on literature.
His first novel, Never Mind (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This novel, along with Bad News (1992), Some Hope (1994), and Mother's Milk (2005) have been collectively published under the title The Patrick Melrose Novels. The series is semi-autobiographical.
His other fiction consists of On the Edge (1998), which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and A Clue to the Exit (2000).
The Patrick Melrose series
The series begins with Never Mind (1992) in Patrick’s fifth year in a mansion in the South of France. It paints a picture of his father as a monstrous member of the fading English nobility who believes in suave public school (elite English boarding school) cruelty and that a truly noble man is languid. It is revealed that Patrick was the product of rape and that at this mansion his father raped him, not for any sexual pleasure but out of mere insatiable cruelty.
In the second book, Bad News (1992), Patrick is in his early 20s, reveling in a heroin addiction, and in New York to collect his father’s ashes. The novel portrays Patrick’s searches and highs and avoidance of the significance of his father’s death and the vague pleasure he gets from it.
In Some Hope (1994), Patrick is recovering from his addiction, finally admits to a friend about his father’s actions towards him in his childhood and goes to a party which is also attended by Princess Margaret where St Aubyn gets to sketch an absurd upper class.
In Mother’s Milk (2005) Patrick has a family and children. His mother, who in his childhood victimized him through inaction, now actively victimizes him through having an insatiable need to be charitable and effectively disinheriting Patrick by giving away the family home he grew up in to a new age religion foundation. He descends to a lower class than that of his ancestors and works as a lawyer.
If Mother’s Milk is about the wonders of birth and early childhood, At Last (2012) is a meditation on death. In the final instalment of the series his midlife crisis has caused his wife to leave him and his horrible mother has died. He finally deals with and accepts his history.
In 2012 Mother's Milk was made into a feature film, opening in the UK to some excellent reviews in publications such as the Guardian, Sight & Sound and the Observer. The screenplay was written by St Aubyn and director Gerald Fox. It stars Jack Davenport, Adrian Dunbar, Diana Quick and Margaret Tyzack in her last performance. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The thing that everyone loves about this man...is that his prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching intellect. As a sketcher of character, his wit—whether turned against pointless members of the aristocracy or hopeless crack dealers—is ticklingly wicked. As an analyser of broken minds and tired hearts he is as energetic, careful and creative as the perfect shrink. And when it comes to spinning a good yarn, whether over the grand scale of three volumes or within a single page of anecdote, he has a natural talent for keeping you on the edge of your seat.... [An] amazing book.
Melissa Katsoulis - London Times
St. Aubyn’s technique is to crystallise emotional intensity into sentences of arctic beauty, which can be caustically witty or brutal. His novels are uncommonly well controlled, and thus their impact is all the more powerful…. In At Last this crystallisation and control are on glittering display…. We have reached the pinnacle of a series that has plunged into darkness and risen towards light. At Last is both resounding end and hopeful beginning.
Philip Womack - Telegraph (UK)
For fans of the Melrose cycle, At Last provides some of the exultation and relief of watching [a] sailor, so often nearly drowned, bob, gasping, to the surface…if this is, as St. Aubyn's publisher claims, the "culmination" of the Melrose cycle, we can only wish Patrick well and be thankful that his travails have furnished the material for some of the most perceptive, elegantly written and hilarious novels of our era.
Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review
[T]he final installment of a remarkable cycle of novels…which chronicle the life of Mr. St. Aubyn's alter ego, Patrick, while creating a glittering (and scathing) portrait of the upper-class British world his family inhabits. The books are written with an utterly idiosyncratic combination of emotional precision, crystalline observation and black humor, as if one of Evelyn Waugh's wicked satires about British aristos had been mashed up with a searing memoir of abuse and addiction, and injected with Proustian meditations on the workings of memory and time…the Melrose books underscore [St. Aubyn's] gift for lassoing the extremes of human experience in coolly chiseled language; for using irony and exactitude to reconfigure the raw, painful facts of life into an art that somehow manages to be affecting, alarming and, yes, amusing, all at the same time.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
St. Aubyn writes with exquisite control and a brilliant comic touch.... An intelligent and surprisingly hopeful novel, a fitting conclusion to one of the best fictional cycles in contemporary fiction.
Anthony Domestico - Boston Globe
[O]ne of the most amazing reading experiences I've had in a decade. After all the suffering and torment and despair that Patrick Melrose has been through over the years, [St. Aubyn] leaves him in a very interesting place, and he does it all with his incredible examination of the sweep of time and the way our understanding of people changes over decades. All of that is done with this incredible, biting, witty, hilarious prose style, the elegant, classic English sentences that he writes and these amazing put-downs, and he's great at dissecting an entire social world with a really wicked scalpel.
Michael Chabon - Los Angeles Times
St. Aubyn’s skill with characterization, his dissection of how a personality warps, settles, or improves over time, is nowhere more evident than in his aging of Patrick, whose mood and mental state are a gauge for the tone of each novel.... At Last is far less dramatic than any previous Melrose book, although the humor and perfectly observed dialogue remain. Its calm is entirely suited to the wisdom Patrick Melrose has painfully, finally earned.
Victoria Beale - New Republic
It's tough competition for the most-underrated writer in the English language—there's plenty of neglect to go around—but if you put a Colt Commander to my head, I might well say it's St. Aubyn, the chronically under-published chronicler of abuse, dysfunction, alcoholism and worse in the English upper classes. At Last is the final novel, one thinks, in his series about his alter ego, the neurotic Patrick Melrose. It's pretty much a lock to be one of the funniest, saddest, most beautiful books of the year.
Lev Grossman - Time
In this fifth and final book in St. Aubyn's "Patrick Melrose" series, ...Patrick attends the funeral of his mother, who died after a lingering illness.... As his story ends, we find him reexamining his life. Can he connect with his sons? He would never hurt them as his father hurt him, but he is hurting them just the same by being so remote. Verdict: This well-written work has dark undertones and subtle, cutting humor, like an Augusten Burroughs novel with less zaniness and more cruelty. For those willing to tackle an emotionally difficult, unflinching narrative. —Shaunna Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
With this title, St. Aubyn caps his five-volume cycle of Melrose novels. ...[E]vents in At Last take place over the course of a single day; in this case, the day of Patrick’s mother’s funeral. Despite his loss and his reduced circumstances...Patrick has “at last” found a measure of peace. With lacerating humor and razor-sharp imagery, St. Aubyn continues to work out his themes: the follies of the British upper class, “the psychological impact of inherited wealth,” the complex dynamics between parent and child. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
A London funeral stirs up a lot of memories but few epiphanies in this British author's latest, which concludes [the Patrick Melrose] trilogy.... Now, after two mute years in a wheelchair, his mother Eleanor has died, making Patrick a 45-year-old orphan. The action, such as it is, covers the crematorium funeral and subsequent reception; mixed in are family memories.... Patrick, more forgiving now, sees his "supposed persecutors," his parents, as "unhappy children" themselves. It's a curious conclusion. St. Aubyn tries for a Muriel Spark kind of black comedy but lacks her finesse.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Edward St. Aubyn describes Patrick as being torn between the lure of consolation and the lure of disappointment. Why does he find those options alluring? What aspects of a powerful, albeit masochistic, bond are captured in the fact that he mourns not the loss of his mother but the loss of longing for closeness to her?
2. Why does Nicholas derive pleasure from being snarky? In the book's opening scenes, was it fun or annoying to see him creating tension, on what should have been a somber occasion? At the end of the novel, do people react to his closing chapter with phoniness or candor?
3. Discuss Eleanor's marriage to David and what we learn about it in this novel. Why was she unable to choose between being his collaborator and his antagonist when it came to raising Patrick?
4. Patrick contemplates Eleanor's emotional legacy throughout her funeral. What legacies will he leave for Robert and Thomas? How is he able to break the cycle of his family's cruelty?
5. Discuss Annette's observations about Eleanor's spiritual side, delivered in a fairly lengthy eulogy. How does Annette's depiction compare to other impressions of Eleanor? What would Eleanor have thought of these spiritual philosophies, and those that Erasmus continues to ponder throughout the service?
6. What does Nancy's spending say about her memories of Jean, her stepfather? Why can't Nancy simply accept the reality of her situation? Why is the myth of endless wealth important for her to uphold?
7. St. Aubyn has spoken candidly with interviewers about the horrific incidents from his own life that inspired aspects of Patrick's story, including being brutalized by his father and recovering from drug addiction. How does it affect your reading to know that the plot is partially autobiographical?
8. What makes St. Aubyn a master of the art of gallows humor? Why are morbid subjects and despicable people often the best material for comedy?
9. On page 262, the author describes Patrick as getting comfortable with Keatsian mysteries, finally open to questions that can't necessarily be answered. What questions in your life and legacy can't really be answered? How could you make peace with this uncertainty?
10. Discuss the author's notion that those who appear to deserve the most blame actually deserve the most help. When is this true in the novel, and in your own life?
11. Why was it easy for Eleanor to give charitably to strangers but not to her own family and staff? What does her generosity say about her personality? What were some of the most striking differences between her public and private personae?
12. How does the transatlantic connection enhance At Last? What is Patrick's perspective on America, and how is his identity shaped by knowing about Eleanor's grandfather Jonson? Why was Southern culture meaningful to Eleanor? Did her image of it extend very far beyond the stereotypes of Porgy and Bess?
13. In At Last, how do Patrick's interactions with Mary, his wife, compare to his interactions with Julia, his former girlfriend? Is his attitude toward women different now that his mother is gone?
14. Discuss the transformations that Patrick has experienced in the Melrose novels you have read previously. He has evolved from anger and addiction to middle-age crises; what has he become in this final portrait?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
At Swim, Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill, 2001
Simon & Schuster
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743222952
Summary
Set during the year preceding the Easter Uprising of 1916—Ireland's brave but fractured revolt against British rule—At Swim, Two Boys is a tender, tragic love story and a brilliant depiction of people caught in the tide of history. Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O'Neill.
Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack's old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves.
All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys' burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—south of Dublin, Ireland, UK
• Education—Presentation College, Glasthule, County Dublin
• Currently—lives in County Galway, Ireland
Jamie O'Neill is an Irish author, who lived and worked in England for two decades; he now lives in Gortachalla, in County Galway, Ireland. His critically-acclaimed novel, At Swim, Two Boys (2001) earned him the highest advance ever paid for an Irish novel and frequent claims that he was the natural successor to James Joyce, Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett.
O'Neill was born in Dún Laoghaire in 1962 and was educated at Presentation College, Glasthule, County Dublin, run by the Presentation Brothers, and (in his words) "the city streets of London, the beaches of Greece." He was raised in a home without books, and first discovered that books "could be fun" when he read Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. O'Neill was unhappy at home; he had a very difficult relationship with his father and ran away from home at age 17.
O’Neill met Russell Harty in 1982, during a two-week holiday in London. They became a couple and lived together in London and at Rose Cottage, Harty's home in Giggleswick, Yorkshire. Harty encouraged O'Neill's writing and read his manuscripts; he even mailed manuscripts of early novels to publishers without O'Neill's consent or knowledge, and a book deal was agreed with Weidenfeld. Soon after that, in 1988, Russell Harty died of Hepatitis. Hounded by the tabloid press, O'Neill's nude photograph was splashed across the front of the Sunday Mirror; the picture was taken shortly after his arrival in London when he earned some money as a model. He turned down offers of up to £50,000 for interviews about his private life with Russell Harty.
This newspaper coverage was how O'Neill's parents in Ireland discovered that their son was gay. This event would have been traumatising enough; his distress was deepened when members of the Harty family threw him out of the cottage, burned his clothes and left him homeless. They did, however, allow him to take the couple's pet dog, Paddy; even though they did want it.
After Russell Harty's death, O'Neill sought therapeutic help. The following year, O'Neill's first novel, Disturbance, was published; Kilbrack followed in 1990. Both novels had been mostly finished while Harty was alive. But then, grieving for Harty and alone in London, O'Neill struggled to write, parted company with both his agent and publisher, and took the job as a night porter at the Cassell Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Surrey from 1990 up to 2000.
Two years after Russell Harty's death, Paddy was to accidentally introduce O'Neill to his future partner. O'Neill was in a London pub when he noticed the dog was missing. Paddy had been found by a ballet dancer named Julien Joly. They began a relationship and Joly was instrumental in helping O'Neill put his life back together. During the ten years that followed, O'Neill wrote At Swim, Two Boys, which was published in 2001. Its official launch at Somerset House in London was abandoned on the day—it was September 11, 2001. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I was reading in Toronto last year, in the big library there (I should say now that At Swim, Two Boys culminates in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916). Well, there was a big crowd, appreciative audience, curious, listening. We had a great Q & A afterwards, with intelligent, searching questions. After an hour and a half of this, I began to think we had my book nicely wrapped up. Then, just at the end, this hesitant hand pokes up at the back. "I was just wondering," says its owner, ‘what is this Rising thing anyway?' And everyone turns and says, ‘Yeah, I was wondering about that too.' And you realize how small, how insignificant is your tiny country's big history.
• But my most favoured memory is of a reading at Concordia University in Montreal. I stood on the podium and looked out on the faces. Generations of Irish faces, the high complexion of the men, that particular kink of the women's hair (those are some genes, I tell you). In the front row sat a priest, suited and collared. On his left, a lesbian couple. On his right, two gay men growing old together. Students, teachers; the university GLBT society. And I thought to myself, what a privilege to have brought such unlikely people together. What a very great privilege it is."
• When asked what book tht most influenced his life, this is what he answered:
Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott. I come from a home that had no books. Shelves we had, wide sweeps of shelves, with capidamonte roses, holiday china, objets not so much d'art as d'artifice. But no books. And the only reading was the local evening newspaper, read out loud at tea-table, religiously, column after column of the classified ads. Even at school I never read, leastways I never finished, the books on the English syllabus. I took my exams, even, without reading them. I don't know why, but those books were chosen specifically to dampen teenage spirits. It wasn't that life was too interesting. Life was already dull enough without being further wearied by dried-up withered prose.
It came to my final exams and, the way schoolboys do, I thought to cram 13 years of idled study into the last two weeks of term. I cleared all distractions from my room—music, games, everything. The last thing on my shelf was an old crusty copy of Ivanhoe. It had been given me by a mean-minded aunt (as I had thought) some years before, and had been gathering dust on my shelf ever since. There's no point throwing that out, I thought—I'm never going to be reading that. Well, of course, it's all I did those two weeks, read Ivanhoe. Read it two, three times. It was a revelation to me. Books can be fun, they can be entertaining, you can learn things out of books—a book can be interesting. Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott. Whoever would have thought? (Interview from Barnes & Noble.com.)
Book Reviews
Jamie O'Neill's wonderful novel At Swim, Two Boys is built on such risks—on the hazards of love, heroism, history and tenderness.... Such elements could easily be drawn together into an excess of the worst sort of stage Irishness, not to mention a sexual politics that could seem anachronistic—and that's before you begin to consider the ticklish business of celebrating under-age lovers and a grown man's entanglement with them both. But O'Neill's writing has such authority and life that you consider these questions only afterward; none of it matters as you're tugged along on the tides of the book.... A dangerous, glorious book: the kind that is likely to make absolutely anyone cry and laugh in public places.
New York Times
In exquisitely sculpted prose, Jamie O'Neill...achieves a kind of richness of scope and ambition that makes one reluctant to come to its tragic and inevitable close.
Robin Hemley - Chicago Tribune
Dublin burned, British troops and Irish separatists exchanged gunfire and artillery shells, and about two hundred and thirty civilians were killed during Easter week in Ireland in 1916. As Tim Pat Coogan writes in 1916: The Easter Rising, the rebel leader James Connolly, injured and confined to the Irish Volunteer headquarters after a few days of bloody fighting, passed the time reading a detective novel. During a rare quiet moment, Connolly dryly remarked, "A book like this, plenty of rest and an insurrection—all at the same time. This certainly is revolution de luxe." Out in the streets, his militia battled to take the city, fighting with a bravery that has been repeatedly eulogized since. Within a week, the group was forced to surrender, and, like most of the leaders of the rebellion, Connolly himself was executed. Into this turbulent landscape Jamie O'Neill casts the heroes of his historical novel, At Swim, Two Boys, whose title is a play on the title of Flann O'Brien's landmark Irish comic novel At Swim-Two-Birds. This story takes place in the year leading up to the Easter Rising and investigates the complicated weave of alliances in Ireland; the two Dublin boys struggle not only with their political affiliations but with their religious and sexual identities. W. B. Yeats spoke to Ireland's scars of strife, famously noting in "Easter, 1916" that, after the Rising, "All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born."
Lauren Porcaro - The New Yorker
(Starred review.) This powerful debut novel, which took Irishman O'Neill 10 years to write, has a truly exhilarating style as the author rhythmically bends language that is, at times, of his own making.... Over the many pages of his novel, O'Neill creates a stunningly vivid world ("a strange land of rainshine and sunpour") in a language all his own. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
Published... in Great Britain, this novel has been compared to works by James Joyce (or Flann O'Brien, whose At Swim-Two-Birds the title plays on), but it has more in common with the film Chariots of Fire in its painterly depiction of male athleticism and relationships. The sheltered son of a pro-British shopkeeper, 16-year-old Jim develops a doting and eventually homosexual relationship with Doyler, a bright boy from an impoverished family, as the two train for an ambitious swim across Dublin Bay on Easter 1916, a date that happens to coincide with a planned Republican uprising. Both become entangled with McMurrough, scion of wealthy Irish gentry, who is back in Dublin following imprisonment in England for indecent behavior. Jim is too naive and Doyler too politically sophisticated for their years, while McMurrough is typecast as an Oscar Wilde figure. Still, these are rich characterizations, and together with the playfully rendered Irish dialect they outweigh the book's imperfections. O'Neill also offers gorgeous descriptions of the Dublin environs and remarkable details of the period. Recommended for most fiction collections. —Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA.
Library Journal
The hunger for liberation—political, emotional, and sexual— gnaws at the big heart of this young Irish writer's engrossing, often very moving debut. The title, of course, alludes to "Flann O'Brien's" subversive comic masterpiece At Swim-Two-Birds. But O'Neill's real influences appear to be James Joyce's Ulysses and James Plunkett's Strumpet City, a romantic-epic portrayal of Dublin beset by the Troubles. O'Neill focuses initially on Arthur Mack, a widowed Dublin shopkeeper and Boer War veteran whose stubborn loyalty to Britain conflicts with the swirling energies of incipient rebellion against "foreign" rule that capture his neighbors. If Mack is a dreamy, distracted Leopold Bloom, his 16-year-old son James, a model youth seemingly destined for the priesthood or a teaching career, is a kind of Stephen Dedalus—a passive, well-meaning boy whose life changes under the charismatic influence of his pal Doyler Doyle, a rebel with several causes who draws James into a plan to swim to a nearby island and plant a green flag (symbolizing Ireland's independence). The rapidly growing love the boys share is interrupted when Doyler is imprisoned for "sedition," then absorbed in his duties as a Volunteer soldier—and is consummated, with bitter irony, when the Dublin streets become a blood-soaked "nighttown." O'Neill's replete characterizations of the aforementioned are deepened by the complex relationships each forms with such other figures as Jim's stoical, quietly perceptive Aunt Sawney, aristocratic Irish nationalist Eveline MacMurrough, and the latter's adult nephew Anthony, a sardonic homosexual (formerly convicted of "indecency") whose imaginary "conversations" with his deceased cellmate explore both Anthony's reluctant involvement with the Volunteers and his conflicted (and, really, rather contrived) dealings with both Doyler and James. Excess and overstatement do crop up, but O'Neill's warm empathy with his characters, stinging dialogue, and authentic tragic vision more than compensate: altogether, his first the best literary news out of Ireland since the maturity of Roddy Doyle.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Irish have long been a storytelling people, and Jamie O'Neill is certainly no exception. He brings to life the Irish struggle for independence with an intensity and an honesty that is staggering. In what ways do you find O'Neill's writing to be reminiscent of that of other great Irish authors, both contemporary and classic? What techniques may O'Neill have borrowed from authors such as James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Oscar Wilde, and even Frank McCourt?
2. Language, both in the narrative and, especially, in the dialogue between characters, makes this a rich and sometimes challenging read, but it also pulls us into the world of Ireland in a way that nothing else could. Why is language so significant in this novel? Discuss the ways that O'Neill wields words to shed light on individual characters and to illuminate the underlying forces that shape the tumultuous Ireland of the early 1900s.
3. Focusing on Aunt Eva, Aunt Sawney, Nancy, and even MacMurrough's Nanny Tremble, look at the different things women stand for in this novel. In what ways do their representational roles—as church, as Ireland, as universal mother—clash? Do they ever exist outside of these compart-mentalized spheres? Also, does the novel suggest that women are above the weakness of the flesh, or that they are saintly beings? Is the author toying with the ideal of the Christian woman (holy and untawdried)?
4. Passion, lust, and love manifest themselves in very interesting ways in this story. While Jim and Doyler share a free and beautiful passion for one another, Brother Polycarp and MacMurrough are at times like sexual predators; one could almost say that they fall perfectly into the stereotypical homosexual deviant role that society perpetuates. To what extent do you think MacMurrough's predatorial behavior is a fulfillment of the expectations that society has for him as a gay man? Discuss the ways in which his love and desire for other men become subverted into lust and carnal desire though the lens of society's eye.
5. MacMurrough compartmentalizes his desires, his intellect, and his feelings of sympathy, empathy, and love in the voices of Dick, Scrotes, and Nanny, respectively. Are we to believe that he is literally schizophrenic? Or do these voices (and the way that they seem to meld into one voice by the end) point to larger themes?
6. Similarly, what instigates the transformation that MacMurrough undergoes throughout the course of the novel? Why does he seem, at least by the end, somehow freed from his self-hatred and ready to experience love again in the most selfless form? How much of this change can be attributed to Jim, who has a great capacity for love?
7. Symbols play a role of great importance in this story, and whether it is a flag, a stripe, a medal, or a religious emblem, the sacredness of these objects divides and unites the characters time and time again. What is it about the nature of symbols that makes them so powerful to these people—and to all people, for that matter? Why, for instance, does Doyler's red badge mean so much to him? Do you think symbol worship in this novel verges on idolatry? Is it dangerous?
8. By the end of the novel, Jim seems set on more fighting. How do you feel about his choice to continue the fight? Are you left with a feeling of disillusionment? Do you think the author is making an overarching statement about war?
9. This novel, like some other covertly or overtly gay novels written in the twentieth century (The Well of Loneliness, Maurice, Giovanni's Room), ends in tragedy. Is this simply the plight of the gay character in modern literature? Is the reunion between Jim and Doyler in the last pages of the novel enough of a happy ending to make At Swim, Two Boys a novel of triumph rather than tragedy?
10. We watch as the characters in this novel struggle with their feelings of desire in a society that will not even recognize it. (Think back to the scene in which Jim tries to confess to the priest.) Discuss the ways in which Jim, Doyler, and MacMurrough try to rediscover a hidden history through the stories they tell one another about the Spartans. Why is having this history so significant to them? How does the notion of queer sexuality recycle, revise, and challenge traditional perceptions of gender in this novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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At the Water's Edge
Sara Gruen, 2015
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385523233
Summary
A gripping and poignant love story about a privileged young woman’s awakening as she experiences the devastation of World War II in a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands.
After disgracing themselves at a high society New Year’s Eve party in Philadelphia in 1944, Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a former army colonel who is already ashamed of his son’s inability to serve in the war.
When Ellis and his best friend, Hank, decide that the only way to regain the Colonel’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster—Maddie reluctantly follows them across the Atlantic, leaving her sheltered world behind.
The trio find themselves in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands, where the locals have nothing but contempt for the privileged interlopers. Maddie is left on her own at the isolated inn, where food is rationed, fuel is scarce, and a knock from the postman can bring tragic news. Yet she finds herself falling in love with the stark beauty and subtle magic of the Scottish countryside.
Gradually she comes to know the villagers, and the friendships she forms with two young women open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears: the values she holds dear prove unsustainable, and monsters lurk where they are least expected.
As she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, Maddie becomes aware not only of the dark forces around her, but of life’s beauty and surprising possibilities. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Vancouver, Canada
• Raised—London, Ontario
• Education—Carleton University (Ottawa)
• Currently—lives in western North Carolina
Sara Gruen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Water for Elephants and Riding Lessons. She lives in western North Carolina with her husband, three sons, and a menagerie of rescued animals. (From the publisher.)
More
Sara Gruen is a Canadian-born author, whose books deal greatly with animals; she is a supporter of numerous charitable organizations that support animals and wildlife.
Gruen moved to the U.S. from Canada in 1999 for a technical writing job. When she was laid off two years later, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction. A devoted animal lover, her first novel, Riding Lessons (2004), explored the intimate and often healing spaces between people and animals and was a USA Today bestseller. She wrote a second novel, Flying Changes (2005), also about horses.
Although her first two novels sold several hundred thousands of copies—and Riding Lessons was a best seller—her third release, Water for Elephants, was initially turned down by her publisher at the time, forcing Gruen to find another publisher. That book, of course, went on to become one of the top-selling novels of our time. Readers fell in love with its story of Jacob, the young man tossed by fate onto a rickety circus train that was home to Rosie, the untrainable elephant. This #1 New York Times bestseller has been printed in 44 languages and the movie version (2011) stars Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz, and Robert Pattinson.
Gruen sold her fourth novel, Ape House (2010), on the basis of a 12-page summary to Random House, which won that and another of her novels in a bidding war with 8 other publishers. Ape House features the amazing Bonobo ape. When a number of apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA.
Gruen has had a life-long fascination with human-ape discourse, with a particular interest in Bonobo apes. She has studied linguistics and a system of lexigrams in order to communicate with apes, and is one of the few visitors who has been allowed access to the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where the apes have come to love her. In bringing her experience and research to bear on her fourth novel, she opens the animal world to us as few novelists have done.
Sara Gruen’s awards include the 2007 Book Sense Book of the Year Award, the Cosmo Fun Fearless Fiction Award, the Bookbrowse Diamond Award for Most Popular Book, the Friends of American Literature Adult Fiction Award and the ALA/Alex Award 2007. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A gripping, compelling story...wholly diverting and well written. I read it in one sitting.... At the Water’s Edge will likely fly off bookstore shelves.
Emily Rapp Black - Boston Globe
Powerfully evocative.
USA Today
A page-turner of a novel that rollicks along with crisp historical detail, waves of deep emotions and a dash of Scottish mystical mythology.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Bestselling author Sara Gruen returns with the breathtaking tale of a young Philadelphia socialite who reluctantly follows her husband to a remote town in Scotland in search of the Loch Ness Monster. At the same time another monster, Hitler, threatens to tear their world apart. At the Water’s Edge is a daring story of adventure, friendship, and love in the shadow of WWII.
Harper’s Bazaar
[R]iveting.... A slow start gives way to mystery upon mystery, building to a gripping climax. Though some aspects, particularly an ambiguous brush with the supernatural, are a little pedestrian, Gruen’s beautiful setting and deeply sympathetic characters ensure a memorable read for new and returning fans alike.
Publishers Weekly
Gruen skillfully weaves in historical reference points, making Maddie’s story seem larger than that individual focus.... At the Water’s Edge captivates with its drama, intrigue and glimpses of both the dark and light of humanity.... For all her faults, Maddie’s tragic history and her courage in the face of her present predicament will win readers to her side (A Top Pick).
BookPage
Gruen...is not likely to replicate the success of the best-selling Water for Elephants (2006) with this silly novel.... [Her] handling of air raids, food rations, sad telegrams and reports from the front makes the thinness of the story's premise all the more awkward. At heart, this is an unlikely romance novel. A little too unlikely.
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.)
At the Wolf's Table
Rosella Postorino, 2019 (2018 in Italy; as The Tasters)
Flatiron Books
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250179142
Summary
The international bestseller based on a haunting true story that raises provocative questions about complicity, guilt, and survival.
They called it the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf’s Lair. "Wolf" was his nickname. As hapless as Little Red Riding Hood, I had ended up in his belly. A legion of hunters was out looking for him, and to get him in their grips they would gladly slay me as well.
Germany, 1943: Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Sauer’s parents are gone, and her husband Gregor is far away, fighting on the front lines of World War II.
Impoverished and alone, she makes the fateful decision to leave war-torn Berlin to live with her in-laws in the countryside, thinking she’ll find refuge there.
But one morning, the SS come to tell her she has been conscripted to be one of Hitler’s tasters: three times a day, she and nine other women go to his secret headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, to eat his meals before he does.
Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters begin to divide into The Fanatics, those loyal to Hitler, and the women like Rosa who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as they risk their lives every day for Hitler’s.
As secrets and resentments grow, this unlikely sisterhood reaches its own dramatic climax, as everyone begins to wonder if they are on the wrong side of history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Reggio Calabria, Italy
• Raised—San Lorenzo al Mare, Ligura
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Campiello Prize, Pozzale Luigi Russo Award, Rapallo Prize, and others
• Currently—lives in Rome, Italy
Rosella Postorino is a bestselling Italian author and an editor. She was born in Reggion Calabria, the toe of Italy, at the narrow strait separating the mainland from Sicily. She grew up farther north, however, in Liguria, the region known as the Italian Riveria.
Postorino speaks fluent English, Italian, French, and German. Her novels have garnered numerous Italian literary awards. At the Wolf’s Table is her first to be translated into English.
Novels
2007 - The room above
2009 - The summer that we lost God
2013 - The docile body
2018 - The tasters (At the Wolf's Table, 2019 in the U.S.)
(Author bio adapted from online sources. Retrieved 2/25/2019.)
Book Reviews
[E]ngrossing.… [Postorino's] ability to beautifully convey feelings of guilt, shame, love and remorse in a single gesture is a sign that we will be hearing more from her.
Susan Ellingwood - New York Times Book Review
Postorino reconstructs a truly unusual everyday existence in which the rules have changed and there is no room for accommodations…. With literary skill she weaves together historical facts and fiction.
Corriere della Sera (Italy)
Hailed as the new The Reader… the wording is rich, precise. At every twist and turn, the masterfully developed narration avoids predictability and comforting outcomes, up to the surprise ending.
La Repubblica (Italy)
This book―which speaks of love, hunger, survival and remorse―will end up engraved on your heart.
Marie Claire (Italy)
Unsettling and compelling.… At the Wolf’s Table stays with you, and for a long time.
La Repubblica (Italy)
Masterful…A unique story in which every reader will see themselves reflected.
L’Unione Sarda (Italy)
You’ll fly into this novel with your heart in your throat and a constant feeling of identification all the way through to the final, magnificent chapter.
Io Donna (Italy)
Compelling and truly well written.
Huffington Post (Italy)
A necessary book of great power that brings to mind Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved and the finest Italian fiction.
La Riviera (France)
As engaging as a great film.
Vanity Fair (Italy)
Discussion Questions
1. Though she risks her life every day for Hitler, Rosa claims not to be a Nazi. Do you agree? How is her involvement in the war similar to or different from her husband Gregor’s, who enlisted to fight?
2. Rosa imagines her father telling her
You’re responsible for any regime you tolerate.… Each person’s existence is granted by the system of the state in which she lives,even that of a hermit, can’t you understand that? You’re not free from political guilt, Rosa.
Do you agree? How does this novel address the idea of collective guilt in Germany? Are any of the characters innocent?
3. Rosa never meets Hitler, but his presence hangs over the entire novel. What role does he play in the story? Discuss the different ways in which the characters view him.
4. Rosa compares herself to Little Red Riding Hood, and Hitler to the wolf: "I had ended up in his belly. A legion of hunters was out looking for him, and to get him in their grips they would gladly slay me as well." Do you think the comparison holds up? Are there other fairy-tale elements to Rosa’s story?
5. Rosa describes her love with Gregor as either "a mouth that doesn’t bite, or the opportunity to unexpectedly attack the other, like a dog that turns against its master." What does she mean? How do we see that duality—safety and danger—in her relationships throughout the novel?
6. Rosa keeps secrets from her loved ones from a very early age. She says of her childhood relationship with her mother:
My pain at the wrong I had done to her was so great that the only way to bear it was to love my mother less, to say nothing, to keep it a secret. The only way to survive my love for my mother was to betray that love.
Discuss that apparent paradox. How else do secrets shape Rosa’s life and relationships?
7. Rosa tells us: "The ability to adapt is human beings’ greatest resource, but the more I adapted, the less human I felt." What do you think she means? How does this novel address sacrifice and survival?
8. Rosa never asks Albert directly about his experiences at the concentration camps: "I was afraid and couldn’t speak and didn’t want to know." What do you make of their relationship? What draws them together and keeps them apart? Do you consider Albert a villain in this story? Does Rosa’s romantic involvement with him make her guilty or culpable in some way?
9. Rosa argues, "There’s no such thing as universal compassion—only being moved to compassion before the fate of a single human being." Do you think there’s any truth to that? How does the novel either bear out or contradict that statement?
10. Much of this novel is about female friendship. What is the nature of Rosa’s relationships with the other tasters? How does her outsider status, as a Berliner rather than a villager, play a role? How does this novel address issues of class and status, particularly through Rosa’s friendship with the Baroness?
11. Among the tasters, Rosa is closest to Elfriede, another outsider with secrets. How are the two women similar and different, and why do they develop such an intense friendship?
12. Why do you think Elfriede risks everything to help Heike get an abortion and, later,tell the SS guards that Leni was raped? When Elfriede is found out and deported,Rosa tells Albert, "It’s our fault." Do you agree? Why or why not?
13. Rosa and Gregor’s marriage doesn’t last after the war, in part because they were too careful with one another:
If only we had shared our memories, I told myself at times. We couldn’t. To us it would have seemed like squandering our miracle. Instead we tried to protect it, to protect one another. For the rest of those years we were trying so hard to protect one another that we ended up with nothing but that: barricades.
Rosa never tells Gregor about her experiences as a taster and never tries to track down anyone from her past. Why does she make those decisions?
14. Discuss Rosa’s views on loss:
When you lose someone, the pain you feel is for yourself, the pain that you’ll never see them again, never hear their voice again, that without them, you think, you’ll never make it. Pain is selfish.
Would you describe Rosa’s choices in this novel as selfish? Is survival inherently selfish?
15. At the Wolf’s Table is based on the true story of the women who served as Hitler’s food tasters. Were you aware of that piece of history? Did you come away from this novel with a different understanding of World War II and the Holocaust? Do you sympathize with Rosa and the other tasters?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Atlanta's Most Eligible Bachelor (Southern Men Don't Fall in Love, I)
Mia Mae Lynne, Chronicles of Fate, 2010
Book & Spirit, LLC
254 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781943651023
Summary
Douglas Arthur Bader
“Atlanta’s Most Eligible Bachelor” has it all. His career was on the rise at Whitman Stacks Law firm located on the perimeter of Atlanta. His cell phone rang constantly of women who wanted to possess the man with deep blue eyes and sandy blonde hair. Women of all ages fell for his boyishly handsome good looks and his impeccable manners. He was elusive to any type of commitment. “Three date max” was his motto until crossing paths with Lisa Dunbar.
Lisa Dunbar
After a moderately successful career as a traveling professional soccer player, Lisa has finally come home to settle down and start her career as a newly licensed CPA in Atlanta. She is hired at Grant & Co. CPA’s by Mona Grant. Staunchly independent, Lisa takes life’s challenges as they come. She’s satisfied with her single status as an African American woman and has no time to look for love. Her chance meeting with a man that she only knows as a commitment phobic bachelor alters her plans for her future.
The meeting, explosive. The romance intense. This first book in the “Southern Men don’t fall in Love” series explores how fate can set the time and place for a romance to begin. Doug and Lisa embark on a journey of self discovery as they learn that they are deeply connected beneath the skin.
Author Bio
• Birth—March 4, 1966
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.S., University of Akron; M.S., American Graduate University
• Currently—Twinsburg, Ohio
Mia Mae Lynne lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Her mom was a part-time nurse in a private nursing home and her dad was a local truck driver for Chase Brass & Copper Company. She has two sisters.
In her early life, she participated in several activities including ballet, acrobatics, roller skating, and ice skating. Realizing that her talents were classroom oriented, she focused more on academics. She completed high school in the East Cleveland School system. She was also an active member of the INROADS program.
Mia attended and graduated from the University of Akron with a B.S. in Accounting. She pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in her freshman year and spent many hours studying and partying with friends.
In September, 1989 Mia was married in Cleveland, Ohio. She and her husband moved to Louisville, KY where their first son, Carlos, was born. In 1992 the family moved to Rome, Georgia where their second son, Marcus, was born. With two beautiful boys to light up her life, Mia dedicated herself to her family. She worked full time in the aerospace industry during the day and was a soccer mom evenings and weekends. In 2008, with Christmas fast approaching, the first novel in her series, "The Chronicles of Fate," was born. Following "Tempting Fate" seven more books were written.
In 2009, Mia lost her father. In the heartbreak that followed, her marriage dissolved, she lost her job, and moved to Cleveland to be closer to her mother.
Even with all the tragedies, Mia never lost faith in her work and in 2010 Mia began the process of editing and copyrighting her series.
In April, 2015, she opened her self-publishing company, Book & Spirit, LLC. She renamed her series from "The Chronicles of Fate" to "Southern Men Don't Fall in Love". Several contributors came forward to assist with the project including her son, Carlos, who volunteered to translate the series into Spanish. He hired two of his college friends to edit the books into Spanish of the America's and European Spanish.
The first book of the renamed series was Atlanta's Most Eligible Bachelor. It was released November 4, 2015 in English, Spanish (ES and SA), large print, and standard editions in honor of her son, Carlos', birthday. She plans to release her next book, Atlanta's Most Eligible Bachelor II, on April 26, 2016 in honor of her son Marcus. She plans to release books twice a year to commemorate the two most important men in her life.
Now between writing and editing her books, her new career in the aerospace industry and watching her sons' college and professional soccer careers, Mia spends her time as a student of spiritualism. She received training from the Fellowship of the Spirit. She looks forward to visiting Lily Dale, New York, again in her future.
Trivia & Facts
♦ She is naturally left-handed.
♦ She has a Master's degree in Contract Management from American Graduate University.
♦ She is a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Georgia.
♦ In the span of nine months, she wrote eight books that were published seven years later.
♦ She does tarot readings for friends and family.
♦ She reads books on Astrology, Tarot, Numerology and related books in the metaphysical genre. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Mia Mae on Facebook and here for her books.
Book Reviews
If you love sweet romances about destiny deciding your soul mate, you will love this book. It was a good clean read. It really cute how Lisa and Doug's paths continued to cross. The more they ran into each other the more they realized how much they had in common.
Amazon Customer Review (Kindle)
This book was wonderful. First let me say that I usually do not like straight romance novels, however this one totally captured my interest. Such intrigue and suspense to see if they are true soul mates and meant to be together. I was actually sad to see this end. Can't wait for the next book in the series.
Amazon Customer Review - LAS
Oh my goodness, this is the most enjoyable read of 2016 for me already and I HAVE NOT EVEN FINISHED THE BOOK YET!!!! I look forward to other books from this author. I will be sad when I finish the book. I'm trying to drag it out as long as possible until the next one.
Amazon Customer Review
Good book! It's the second time in 2 days I've read that an author has included the family in the story line. Thank you for realizing that we would love reading about these kind of lovers. Can't wait for your next book
Amazon Customer Review
Riveting story. Can't wait for the next volume sometimes southern men do fall in love after all loved hearing the family background. A
Amazon Customer Review - laohio
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Doug and Lisa were destined to be together or did they just experience Groundhog Day?
2. Did Doug really enjoy his bachelor lifestyle before meeting Lisa? Was he completely happy with his life?
3. Are there any social stereotypes portrayed throughout the novel?
4. What does Lisa find charming about Doug's arrogance, if anything?
5. Who does the author more closely relate to in the series? Doug or Lisa? How can we tell this throughout the novel?
6. Will Doug and Lisa stay together as a couple or do you think their future will be as crazy as their courtship?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, 1957
Penguin Group USA
1088 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451191144
Summary
Atlas Shrugged (1957) is a mystery story, Ayn Rand once commented, "not about the murder of man’s body, but about the murder—and rebirth—of man’s spirit."
It is the story of a man—the novel’s hero—who says that he will stop the motor of the world, and does. The deterioration of the U.S. accelerates as the story progresses. Factories, farms, shops shut down or go bankrupt in ever larger numbers. Riots break out as food supplies become scarce. Is he, then, a destroyer or the greatest of liberators? Why does he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies but against those who need him most, including the woman, Dagny Taggart, a top railroad executive, whom he passionately loves? What is the world’s motor—and the motive power of every man?
Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, and charged with awesome questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a novel of tremendous scope. It presents an astounding panorama of human life—from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy (Francisco d’Anconia)—to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction (Hank Rearden)—to the philosopher who becomes a pirate (Ragnar Danneskjold)—to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph (Richard Halley).
Dramatizing Ayn Rand’s complete philosophy, Atlas Shrugged is an intellectual revolution told in the form of an action thriller of violent events—and with a ruthlessly brilliant plot and irresistible suspense.
We do not want to spoil the plot by giving away its secret or its deeper meaning, so as a hint only we will quote here one brief exchange from the novel:
If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?
I…don’t know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?
To shrug. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Also known as—Alice Rosenbaum
• Birth—February 2, 1905
• Where—St. Petersburg, Russia
• Died—March 6, 1982
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—University of Petrograd
Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision that sustained her throughout her life. At the age of nine she decided to make fiction writing her career. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she thought of herself as a European writer, especially after encountering authors such as Walter Scott and—in 1918—Victor Hugo, the writer she most admired.
During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and—in 1917—the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. The final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father's pharmacy and periods of near-starvation. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.
When her family returned from the Crimea, she entered the University of Petrograd to study philosophy and history. Graduating in 1924, she experienced the disintegration of free inquiry and the takeover of the university by communist thugs. Amidst the increasingly gray life, her one great pleasure was Western films and plays. Long a movie fan, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screen writing.
In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. Although she told Soviet authorities that her visit would be short, she was determined never to return to Russia. She arrived in New York City in February 1926. She spent the next six months with her relatives in Chicago, obtained an extension to her visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter.
On Ayn Rand's second day in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille saw her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra, then as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank O'Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death fifty years later.
After struggling for several years at various nonwriting jobs, including one in the wardrobe department at the RKO Corporation, she sold her first screenplay, Red Pawn to Universal Studios in 1932 and saw her first stage play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. Her first novel, We the Living, was completed in 1933 but was rejected by publishers for years, until The Macmillan Company in the United States and Cassells and Company in England published the book in 1936. The most autobiographical of her novels—it was based on her years under Soviet tyranny—We the Living was not well-received by American intellectuals and reviewers. Ayn Rand was up against the pro-communism dominating the culture during "the Red Decade."
She began writing The Fountainhead in 1935. In the character of the architect Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the kind of hero whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as "he could be and ought to be." The Fountainhead was rejected by twelve publishers but finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. When published in 1943, it made history by becoming a best seller through word-of-mouth two years later, and gained for its author lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.
Ayn Rand returned to Hollywood in late 1943 to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead, but wartime restrictions delayed production until 1948. Working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions, she began her major novel, Atlas Shrugged, in 1946. In 1951 she moved back to New York City and devoted herself full time to the completion of Atlas Shrugged.
Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. Although she considered herself primarily a fiction writer, she realized that in order to create heroic fictional characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles that make such individuals possible. She needed to formulate "a philosophy for living on earth."
Thereafter, Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy— Objectivism. She published and edited her own periodicals from 1962 to 1976, her essays providing much of the material for nine books on Objectivism and its application to the culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in her New York City apartment.
Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year, so far totaling more than twenty million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. Her vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture. (Author biography from Barnes & Noble, courtesy of The Ayn Rand Institute.)
Book Reviews
This gargantuan book comes among us as a demonstrative act rather than as a literary work.... It is an earnest one, belligerent and unremitting in its earnestness. What is important is the spirit in which the book is written. Like The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged is a defense of and a tribute to the superior individual...superior in every way—in body as well as mind and especially in his cpacity for life. Its spirit, regard-less of the specific doctrines it preaches, is calculated to appeal to those who feel that life could and should have more meaning than they have experienced.
Granville Hicks - New York Times (11/13/1957)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.
Alan Greenspan (former Chairman, U.S. Fed. Reserve)
(Audio version.) The problem with Rand is easily detectable... by careful listeners of this production: a good essayist with a flair for the dramatic turn of phrase, she wasted her obvious writing skills in an effort to support outlandish personal opinions cloaked in the guise of logic. An absolutist thinker, she devotes one whole essay to an effort to persuade us that we really should see things as black and white, with no shades of gray. Born in Soviet Russia, Rand so despised socialism and collectivist thinking that she leapt to the furthest extreme possible to become the champion of unbridled capitalism, the rights of the individual at the expense of the community, and the diminution of all regulation by the state, with the exception of a judicial system and the control of crime. Among the sadly dated ideas she conveys are the attitude that homosexuals are mutant symptoms of a sick society and the belief that anyone with an interest in internationalism is a "one world" proponent. To use one of her own favored words, Rand's political and social philosophy is critically "muddled." C.M. Herbert's voice is efficient and cold, making it a perfect choice for the narration of this author's work. Recommended only as documentation of an anomaly in the history of ideas. —Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NC.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What and where is the "utopia of greed"?
2. Why does Dagny Taggart, a woman of ruthless logic who passionately loves life, chase a mysterious stranger’s plane in her own plane when she knows it will lead to her virtually certain death?
3. Why do Dagny Taggart and Lillian Rearden—both highly affluent women—fight over a cheap metallic bracelet? Who gets to keep the bracelet, and at what cost? What is Lillian’s real motive in trapping her husband Hank in infidelity?
4. Why does Francisco d’Anconia, heir to the greatest fortune in the world and a productive genius with boundless ambition, seek ever more outrageous ways to destroy his own business empire? Why does he turn into a playboy who forsakes the woman he loves and instead seduces prominent women who are of no interest to him?
5. When an entire country tells them that their railroad bridge, constructed from a new ultralight metal, won’t stand under the onrush of a speeding train, why are Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden so confident that it will? Were you convinced by the arguments offered against them by their opponents? Whom did you side with? Why?
6. According to Atlas Shrugged, selfishness is both moral and practical. What does Ayn Rand mean by "selfishness"? Compare the actions and character of James Taggart, Hank Rearden, Orren Boyle, and Francisco d’Anconia: Who is selfish and who is not? Can you present arguments for or against Ayn Rand’s view of selfishness? Contrast Ayn Rand’s approach with that of the ethics of Christianity.
7. What basic motive unites people who brag about their sexual promiscuity and people who demand economic handouts from the government?
8. Explain the meaning and wider significance of the following quote from Atlas Shrugged: "The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality." Explain what ideas underlie the maxim that "money is the root of all good."
9. Capitalism is often defended by appeal to the "public good"; that is, solely because its economic efficiency benefits society. Contrast this with Ayn Rand’s defense of capitalism, as dramatized in Atlas Shrugged.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Atomic Weight of Love
Elizabeth J. Church, 2016
Algonquin Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616204846
Summary
In her sweeping debut novel, Elizabeth J. Church takes us from the World War II years in Chicago to the vast sun-parched canyons of New Mexico in the 1970s as we follow the journey of a driven, spirited young woman, Meridian Wallace, whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era.
In 1941, at seventeen years old, Meridian begins her ornithology studies at the University of Chicago. She is soon drawn to Alden Whetstone, a brilliant, complicated physics professor who opens her eyes to the fundamentals and poetry of his field, the beauty of motion, space and time, the delicate balance of force and energy that allows a bird to fly.
Entranced and in love, Meridian defers her own career path and follows Alden west to Los Alamos, where he is engaged in a secret government project (later known to be the atomic bomb). In married life, though, she feels lost and left behind. She channels her academic ambitions into studying a particular family of crows, whose free life and companionship are the very things that seem beyond her reach.
There in her canyons, years later at the dawn of the 1970s, with counterculture youth filling the streets and protests against the war rupturing college campuses across the country, Meridian meets Clay, a young geologist and veteran of the Vietnam War, and together they seek ways to mend what the world has broken.
Exquisitely capturing the claustrophobic eras of 1940s and 1950s America, The Atomic Weight of Love also examines the changing roles of women during the decades that followed. And in Meridian Wallace we find an unforgettable heroine whose metamorphosis shows how the women’s movement opened up the world for a whole generation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956 (?)
• Where—Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
• Education—B.A., University of New Mexico; J.D.,University of New Mexico
• Currently—lives in Los Alamos, New Mexico
Elizabeth J. Church was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Her father, a research chemist, was drafted out of Carnegie Mellon University, where he was pursuing his graduate studies, and was sent to join other scientists working in secret on the Manhattan Project. Church’s mother, a biologist, eventually joined her husband in Los Alamos.
While The Atomic Weight of Love is not their story, it is the story of many of the women who sacrificed their careers so that their husbands could pursue unique opportunities in scientific research. Along with other Los Alamos children, Church grew up in an environment that gave her ready access both to nature and to female teachers who had advanced degrees in mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, and other disciplines.
Church practiced law for over thirty years, focusing on mental health and constitutional law issues. After circumstances taught her the brevity of life, she walked away from the law to pursue her original dream of writing.
She has written extensively for legal publications and scientific journals. Her short story "Skin Deep" won first prize in Literal Latté’s 2001 fiction contest, and "Lying with Dogs" was published in Natural Bridge in 2002. This is her first novel. (From the publishers.)
Book Reviews
As characters go, Meri is a little too passive, Alden too one-dimensional a domestic tyrant, and Clay too good to be true. Nonetheless, readers will enjoy following Meri’s long, vivid journey, which concludes in her 80s.
Publishers Weekly
Church’s debut will likely strike a chord, especially with women who find that not much has changed in our patriarchal society since Meri’s time, and that Meri’s story might well be their own. —Poornima Apte
Booklist
Church's debut novel explores the relationship between sacrifice and love. Set during World War II and the decades leading up to the Vietnam War, the novel follows Meridian Wallace as she transforms from a bright ornithologist-to-be studying at the University of Chicago into an unhappy housewife.... An elegant glimpse into the evolution of love and womanhood.
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.)
Atonement
Ian McEwan, 2002
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307387158
Summary
Winner, 2001 National Book Critics' Circle Award
Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives–together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.
As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece. (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
His fellow Brits once dubbed him "Ian Macabre" due to his string of dazzling yet morbid novels. But this time around, Ian McEwan has written a gorgeous, lush book, taking on the genteel shades of Jane Austen, in particular her Northanger Abbey and its young heroine with the over-active imagination that lands her in so much trouble. But McEwan moves beyond Austen's staid world ... Read more.
A LitLovers LitPick (Jan. '07)
This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive.... With each book McEwan ranges wider, and his powers have never been more fully in evidence than here.
Publishers Weekly
Moving deftly between styles, this is a compelling exploration of guilt and the struggle for forgiveness. Recommended for most public libraries. —Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MA.
Library Journal
Every lustrously rendered, commanding scene is charged with both despair and diabolical wit, and McEwan's Jamesian prose covers the emotional spectrum from searing eroticism to toxic guilt. In sum, he excels brilliantly at depicting moral dilemmas and stressed minds in action without losing a keen sense of the body's terrible fragility, the touching absurdity of desire, and time's obstinacy. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
The story is compelling, the characters well drawn and engaging, and the outcome is almost always in doubt. The descriptions of the retreat and the subsequent hospitalization of the soldiers are grim and realistic. Readers are spared little, yet the journey is worth the observed pain and distress. Well-read teens will find much to think about in this novel. —Susan H. Woodcock, Chantilly Regional Library, VA.
School Library Journal
McEwan's latest, both powerful and equisite, considers the making of a writer, the dangers and rewards of imagination, and the juncture between innocence and awareness, all set against the late afternoon of an England soon to disappear.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What sort of social and cultural setting does the Tallis house create for the novel? What is the mood of the house, as described in chapter 12? What emotions and impulses are being acted upon or repressed by its inhabitants? How does the careful attention to detail affect the pace of Part One, and what is the effect of the acceleration of plot events as it nears its end?
2. A passion for order, a lively imagination, and a desire for attention seem to be Briony’s strongest traits. In what ways is she still a child? Is her narcissism—her inability to see things from any point of view but her own—unusual in a thirteen-year-old? Why does the scene she witnesses at the fountain change her whole perspective on writing? What is the significance of the passage in which she realizes she needs to work from the idea that—other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value? Do her actions bear this out?
3. What kind of a person is Emily Tallis? Why does McEwan decide not to have Jack Tallis make an appearance in the story? Who, if anyone, is the moral authority in this family? What is the parents’ relationship to Robbie Turner, and why does Emily pursue his conviction with such single-mindedness?
4. What happens between Robbie and Cecilia at the fountain? What symbolic role does Uncle Clem’s precious vase play in the novel? Is it significant that the vase is glued together by Cecilia, and broken finally during the war by Betty as she readies the house to accept evacuees?
5. Having read Robbie’s note to Cecilia, Briony thinks about its implications for her new idea of herself as a writer: No more princesses! . . . With the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced, some principle of darkness, and even in her excitement over the possibilities, she did not doubt that her sister was in some way threatened and would need her help. Why is Robbie’s uncensored letter so offensive within the social context in which it is read? Why is Cecilia not offended by it?
6. The scene in the library is one of the most provocative and moving descriptions of sex in recent fiction. How does the fact that it is narrated from Robbie’s point of view affect how the reader feels about what happens to him shortly afterwards? Is it understandable that Briony, looking on, perceives this act of love as an act of violence?
7. Why does Briony stick to her story with such unwavering commitment? Does she act entirely in error in a situation she is not old enough to understand, or does she act, in part, on an impulse of malice, revenge, or self-importance? At what point does she develop the empathy to realize what she has done to Cecilia and Robbie?
8. How does Leon, with his life of agreeable nullity, compare with Robbie in terms of honor, intelligence, and ambition? What are the qualities that make Robbie such an effective romantic hero? What are the ironies inherent in the comparative situations of the three young men present Leon, Paul Marshall, and Robbie?
9. Lola has a critical role in the story’s plot. What are her motivations? Why does she tell Briony that her brothers caused the marks on her wrists and arms? Why does she allow Briony to take over her story when she is attacked later in the evening? Why does Briony decide not to confront Lola and Paul Marshall at their wedding five years later?
10. The novel’s epigraph is taken from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, in which a naïve young woman, caught up in fantasies from the Gothic fiction she loves to read, imagines that her host in an English country house is a villain. In Austen’s novel Catherine Norland’s mistakes are comical and have no serious outcome, while in Atonement, Briony’s fantasies have tragic effects upon those around her. What is McEwan implying about the power of the imagination, and its potential for harm when unleashed into the social world? Is he suggesting, by extension, that Hitler’s pathological imagination was a driving force behind World War II?
11. In McEwan’s earlier novel Black Dogs, one of the main characters comes to a realization about World War II. He thinks about the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend. Does McEwan intend his readers to experience the war similarly in Atonement? What aspects of Atonement make it so powerful as a war novel? What details heighten the emotional impact in the scenes of the Dunkirk retreat and Briony’s experience at the military hospital?
12. When Robbie, Mace, and Nettle reach the beach at Dunkirk, they intervene in an attack on an RAF man who has become a scapegoat for the soldiers’ sense of betrayal and rage. As in many of his previous novels, McEwan is interested in aggressive human impulses that spin out of control. How does this act of group violence relate to the moral problems that war creates for soldiers, and the events Robbie feels guilty about as he falls asleep at Bray Dunes?
13. About changing the fates of Robbie and Cecilia in her final version of the book, Briony says, "Who would want to believe that the young lovers never met again, never fulfilled their love? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism?" McEwan’s Atonement has two endings —one in which the fantasy of love is fulfilled, and one in which that fantasy is stripped away. What is the emotional effect of this double ending? Is Briony right in thinking that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end?
14. Why does McEwan return to the novel’s opening with the long-delayed performance of The Trials of Arabella, Briony’s youthful contribution to the optimistic genre of Shakespearean comedy? What sort of closure is this in the context of Briony’s career? What is the significance of the fact that Briony is suffering from vascular dementia, which will result in the loss of her memory, and the loss of her identity?
15. In her letters to Robbie, Cecilia quotes from W. H. Auden’s 1939 poem, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," which includes the line, "Poetry makes nothing happen." In part, the novel explores the question of whether the writing of fiction is not much more than the construction of elaborate entertainments—an indulgence in imaginative play—or whether fiction can bear witness to life and to history, telling its own serious truths. Is Briony’s novel effective, in her own conscience, as an act of atonement? Does the completed novel compel the reader to forgive her?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Attack
Yasmina Khadra, 2005 (Trans., by John Collin, 2006)
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307275707
Summary
Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues and community, he represents integration at its most successful.
He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city, and on the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to the emergency room. But this night of turmoil and death takes a horrifyingly personal turn. His wife’s body is found among the dead, with massive injuries, the police coldly announce, typical of those found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers.
As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr. Jaafari is torn between cherished memories of their years together and the inescapable realization that the beautiful, intelligent, thoroughly modern woman he loved had a life far removed from the comfortable, assimilated existence they shared.
From the graphic, beautifully rendered description of the bombing that opens the novel to the searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs. Intense and humane, devoid of political bias, hatred, and polemics, it probes deep inside the Muslim world and gives readers a profound understanding of what seems impossible to understand. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Mohammed Moulessehoul
• Birth—January 10, 1955
• Where—Kenadsa, Sahara, Algeria
• Education—Officer in Algerian Army
• Currently—Aix-en-Provence, France
Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul, who is the author of four other books published in English: Double Blanc, Morituri, In the Name of God and Wolf Dreams. He took the feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by military censors while he was still in the army. He lives in France. (From the publisher.)
Extras
From an interview with Barnes & Noble:
When asked about his favorite books, here is what he said:
•The Stranger by Albert Camus—for the calm power of its simplicity in translating the absurdity of the human condition.
•The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck—for its realism and the extraordinary handling of its characters. John Steinbeck is my favorite author.
•Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky—for its talent at revealing the pettiness of humans and their awful stupidity.
•The Days by Taha Hossein—for the lucidity of its story and for the beauty of its language.
•Sophie's Choice by William Styron—for the crudeness of its humanism and its implacable concern with reconstructing horror in its absolute cruelty, human cruelty.
•Regain by Jean Giono—for his poetry and the sobriety of his talent.
•The Quai of Flowers Doesn't Answer by Malek Haddad —for its beauty.
•Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy—for his genius.
•The Trial by Franz Kafka—for many reasons.
•The Swallows of Kabul—because I wrote it.
Book Reviews
By the end of The Attack, Israel's heavy firepower appears to have marginally eclipsed Palestinian suicide bombing in the ugly-weapon stakes for Khadra, but his achievement in this novel is neither his take on the local politics nor his moral finessing. Instead, it is the way that he limns, quite brilliantly, the character of a man torn to pieces by extremism and extreme social distress, neither of which has been of his own making.
Jonathan Wilson - Washington Post
Khadra, the pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, an exiled Algerian writer celebrated for his politically themed fiction (The Swallows of Kabul), turns his attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this moving novel unlikely to satisfy partisans on either side of the issue. Dr. Amin Jaafari is a man caught between two worlds; he's a Bedouin Arab surgeon struggling to integrate himself into Israeli society. The balancing act becomes impossible when the terrorist responsible for a suicide bombing that claims 20 lives, including many children, is identified as Jaafari's wife by the Israeli police. Jaafari's disbelief that his secular, loving spouse committed the atrocity is overcome when he receives a letter from her posthumously. In an effort to make sense of her decision, Jaafari plunges into the Palestinian territories to discover the forces that recruited her. Khadra, who nicely captures his hero's turmoil in trying to come to terms with the endless violence, closes on an appropriately grim note.
Publishers Weekly
Khadra (The Swallows of Kabul) has the ability to convey that damning sense of unrelenting anxiety that may indeed be the object of terrorism. His latest novel concerns Dr. Amin Jaafari, an esteemed surgeon of Arab-Bedouin descent who has worked against the odds to become a relatively well-appointed citizen of Tel Aviv. In an instant, the doctor's life is turned inside-out by a suicide-bomb attack near the hospital where he practices. The very worst of it comes when he learns that his beloved wife, who perished in the attack, is believed to have been the one who actually carried out the bombing. Incensed by this accusation, Amin rejects the idea that their idyllic marriage may not have been all that it seemed. His relentless search for the truth leads him back to a place from his past, and the story comes full circle. This could prove to be a book of some importance owing to its fine technique and relevance to current world affairs. Yasmina Khadra is a pseudonym for Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former officer in the Algerian army who lives in France. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati and Hamilton Cty.
Library Journal
Within relatively few pages, The Attack tells us so much about the complex realities of life in modern Israel. The narrator is a much-honored surgeon in Tel Aviv, Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli. As Amin works on the victims of a suicide attack, saving lives, his friend, a Jewish policeman, tells him his wife was also in the attack. Amin is horrified by his wife's death, and stunned to learn the police believe it was she who was the suicide bomber. What unfolds is Amin's determination to find out if indeed his wife was the bomber, and then to learn why she did this outrageous act. Amin had believed their marriage was happy, that their comfortable life in Israel, their assimilation in Israeli society, was a success. What follows is a tense few weeks as Amin follows every tiny lead that might bring him to the truth. He is doing this as he is lost in grief and irrational rage. His once-friendly neighbors have trashed his home and threatened him, since he is the husband of a terrorist. So, with his life completely upturned, he uses his intelligence and family ties to discover the truth about his wife, about her decision, about the condition of the Palestinian community, including Amin's own relatives. You may recognize the author because of his book The Swallows of Kabul. He is a former Algerian army officer, now living in France, and seems to be an ideal interpreter of the life of an Arab living an assimilated life in a Western country. The Attack is suspenseful and insightful. —Claire Rosser
KLIATT
"How could she?" That's the question haunting an eminent Arab Israeli surgeon, whose wife has become the latest suicide bomber. Khadra (pseudonym of a retired Algerian army officer) moves from Algeria (Wolf Dreams, 2003) and Afghanistan (The Swallows of Kabul, 2004) to Israel/Palestine. A huge explosion kills 19 people, 11 of them schoolchildren, in a fast-food restaurant in Tel Aviv. Amin Jaafari operates on the injured before returning to his beautiful home, under the illusion that his wife Sihem is visiting her grandmother's farm. Then he gets a call to identify her body in the morgue and is interrogated by the cops for three days before being cleared. Amin is still in denial; after all, they were a close, loving couple, they were not practicing Muslims, and most of their friends were Jews. Only when he finds a note from her implying her guilt does he accept the truth. He is attacked by a mob outside his home and is given shelter by a fellow doctor and old flame, Kim Yehuda. Desperately confused and angry, Amin drives to Bethlehem; that is where Sihem had mailed her note. He exposes himself to danger by forcing a meeting with the radical imam, but gets nowhere; Kim sympathetically points out that he needs a shrink more than a sheikh. But Amin feels betrayed, doubly so when he suspects, on flimsy evidence, that Sihem was having an affair with his nephew Adel, whom he tracks down in Jenin after scary encounters with Intifada leaders. Yes, says Adel, Sihem had been part of an Intifada cell; no, they were never lovers. Khadra keeps the story moving at a good clip, but there's a flaw at its center; how could Amin's intimate marriage have contained such a devastating secret? Sihem is a shadowy figure, and her freelance self-destruction, opposed by her cell, is unconvincing. Amin's question is never satisfyingly answered. The action is always convincing, the relationships less so.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What was your reaction to the novel’s powerful opening scene? How did your perception of this scene shift as the narrator’s life later unfolded for you?
2. What were your initial perceptions of Amin and Sihem’s marriage? Whom did you trust during the interrogation in chapter four?
3. Why does Kim remain so supportive of Amin? In what way is her friendship different from Navid’s? Why are they more patient with him than most of their colleagues are?
4. Discuss the very concept of an attack, which forms the novel’s title. What is the nature of the attacks that take place in the book, including not only the terrorist explosions but also the beating Amin receives when he tries to return to home. What emotional and psychological attacks take place? What motivates the novel’s numerous attackers?
5. How were you affected by the structure of the novel, including the author’s use of present tense, the first-person narration, and the way the timeline unfolds? What makes fiction itself a useful form in examining horrific realities?
6. Revisit the passages that emphasize two of the novel’s elderly characters: Kim’s grandfather, Old Yehuda, who in chapter six recalls Hitler’s rise; and in chapter sixteen, Omr, Amin’s great-uncle, who recalls the destruction of family orchards to make way for an Israeli colony. What do Yehuda and Omr reveal about the history of violence, not only in the Middle East but throughout humanity?
7. At the end of chapter seven, Amin tells Kim he has no idea why he did not tell Navid about the letter. In your opinion, why did he keep the receipt of Sihem’s letter asecret?
8. In the novel’s latter chapters, Amin believes his wife was having a romantic affair with Adel. What parallels exist between her actual liaisons with him and the infidelities usually associated with adultery? Was Sihem seduced?
9. In chapter nine, Amin’s taxi driver lauds a militant imam and plays one of his recordings. What elements of persuasion did you detect in the imam’s diatribe? What similar tactics are used by religious and political leaders in other circumstances around the world?
10. In chapter eleven, the imam at the Grand Mosque tells Amin, “The margin between assimilation and disintegration is quite narrow. There’s not much room for maneuver.” Do you agree? Is assimilation a dangerous goal? Knowing what you do about Amin’s upbringing, is it surprising that he was an advocate for assimilation? Does assimilation require a secular society?
11. What is Amin’s goal in investigating the truth about Sihem himself, and confronting those who assisted her, rather than letting the Israeli authorities handle it? In the end, has he achieved his quest?
12. Adel and the militants Amin encounters emphasize their anger about being humiliated, saying emotional and cultural destruction are just as devastating as physical destruction. What do these observations imply about solutions for peace? What did you learn from the novel—not only about daily life in the Middle East but also about the prospects for peace?
13. The author is a retired army officer from Algeria, a former French colony. After he won a small French literary prize for a collection of short stories, his writing came to the attention of Algerian army officials and he was forced to submit future works to army censors. Thus, he created a female pseudonym to avoid censorship. He now lives in France and has since revealed his true name, Mohammed Moulessehoul. In what way did his life prepare him to write The Attack? Would your impressions of the novel have been different had you thought the author was female?
14. Compare The Attack to the author’s previous novel, The Swallows of Kabul, which is set in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. In what ways do these novels complement each other? How do the dynamics of marriage play out in each of these books?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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August Heat (Inspector Montalbano series #10)
Andrea Camilleri, 2006 (trans., 2009)
Penguin Group USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143114055
Summary
When a colleague extends his summer vacation, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is forced to stay in Vigàta and endure the August heat. Montalbano's long-suffering girlfriend, Livia, joins him with a friend-husband and young son in tow-to keep her company during these dog days of summer.
But when the boy suddenly disappears into a narrow shaft hidden under the family's beach rental, Montalbano, in pursuit of the child, uncovers something terribly sinister. As the inspector spends the summer trying to solve this perplexing case, Livia refuses to answer his calls-and Montalbano is left to take a plunge that will affect the rest of his life.
Fans of the Sicilian inspector as well as readers new to this increasingly popular series will enjoy following the melancholy but unflinchingly moral Montalbano as he undertakes one of the most shocking investigations of his career. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 6, 1925
• Where—Porto Empedocle, Sicily, Italy
• Education—Faculty of Literature (no degree);
Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica
• Awards— Nino Martoglio International Book Award
• Currently—lives in Rome, Italy
Andrea Camilleri is an Italian writer. Originally from Porto Empedocle, Sicily, Camilleri, began studies at the Faculty of Literature in 1944, without concluding them, meanwhile publishing poems and short stories.
From 1948 to 1950 Camilleri studied stage and film direction at the Silvio D'Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts (Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica) and began to take on work as a director and screenwriter, directing especially plays by Pirandello and Beckett. As a matter of fact, his parents knew Pirandello and were even distant friends, as he tells in his essay on Pirandello "Biography of the changed son". His most famous works, the Montalbano series show many pirandellian elements: for example, the wild olive tree that helps Montalbano think is on stage in his late work "The giants of the mountain."
With RAI, Camilleri worked on several TV productions, such as Inspector Maigret with Gino Cervi. In 1977 he returned to the Academy of Dramatic Arts, holding the chair of Movie Direction and occupying it for 20 years.
In 1978 Camilleri wrote his first novel Il Corso Delle Cose (The Way Things Go). This was followed by Un Filo di Fumo (A Thread of Smoke) in 1980. Neither of these works enjoyed any significant amount of popularity.
In 1992, after a long pause of 12 years, Camilleri once more took up novel-writing. A new book, La Stagione della Caccia (The Hunting Season) turned out to be a best-seller.
In 1994 Camilleri published the first in a long series of novels: La forma dell'Acqua (The Shape of Water) featured the character of Inspector Montalbano, a fractious Sicilian detective in the police force of Vigàta, an imaginary Sicilian town. The series is written in Italian but with a substantial sprinkling of Sicilian phrases and grammar. The name Montalbano is an homage to the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; the similarities between Montalban's Pepe Carvalho and Camilleri's fictional detective are remarkable. Both writers make great play of their protagonists' gastronomic preferences.
This feature provides an interesting quirk which has become something of a fad among his readership even in mainland Italy. The TV adaptation of Montalbano's adventures, starring the perfectly-cast Luca Zingaretti, further increased Camilleri's popularity to such a point that in 2003 Camilleri's home town, Porto Empedocle—on which Vigàta is modelled—took the extraordinary step of changing its official name to that of Porto Empedocle Vigàta, no doubt with an eye to capitalising on the tourism possibilities thrown up by the author's work.
On his website, Camilleri refers to the engaging and multi-faceted character of Montalbano as a “serial killer of characters." meaning that he has developed a life of his own and demands great attention from his author, to the demise of other potential books and different personages. Camilleri added that he writes a Montalbano novel every so often just so that the character will be appeased and allow him to work on other stories.
In 1998 Camilleri won the Nino Martoglio International Book Award.
Camilleri now lives in Rome where he works as a TV and theatre director. About 10 million copies of his novels have been sold to date and are becoming increasingly popular in the UK and North America.
In addition to the degree of popularity brought him by the novels, in recent months Andrea Camilleri has become even more of a media icon thanks to the parodies aired on an RAI radio show, where popular comedian, TV-host and impression artist Fiorello presents him as a raspy voiced, caustic character, madly in love with cigarettes and smoking (Camilleri is well-known for his love of tobacco).
He received an honorary degree from University of Pisa in 2005. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
With his eye for beautiful women, his taste for fine literature and a tendency to stop in his tracks to indulge in a meal, the idiosyncratic Montalbano is totally endearing.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
The joys of August Heat arise less from the central plot than from its margins: Montalbano's never-flagging fondness for food, his ruminations on aging and his commentaries on Italian society.... Often, the investigation serves as a kind of scaffolding from which to hang skit-length romps.... But the occasional absurdity doesn't detract from the novel's myriad pleasures.
Washington Post
Camilleri's 10th mystery to feature Sicilian Insp. Salvo Montalbano (after 2008's Paper Moon) cleverly balances a compelling story line with engaging characters. Urged by his girlfriend, Livia, to find a summer rental for a friend of hers in Vigàta, Montalbano ends up selecting a house with a tainted past. The man who built the house died in a fall soon after its construction, and his 20-year-old stepson, Ralf Gudrun, vanished. After the young son of Livia's friend disappears, Montalbano finds the missing boy, essentially unharmed, but in the process stumbles upon a corpse, later identified as that of an attractive 16-year-old girl who disappeared six years earlier. Suspects include a real estate developer with unhealthy sexual appetites as well as the missing Gudrun. While the solution is less complicated than, say, those Peter Lovesey provides for his similar series sleuth, Peter Diamond, the humor and humanity of Montalbano make him an equally winning lead character.
Publishers Weekly
Montalbano’s various weaknesses lead directly to the troubling finale, leaving him forced to, yes, strip off his clothes one more time and dive into the sea, hoping to swim away his regrets. Combine the movies Body Heat and The Seven-Year Itch, blending the noir of the former with the farce of the latter, and you have something like this beguiling tragicomedy. —Bill Ott
Booklist
The victim in Inspector Salvo Montalbano's tenth case (The Paper Moon, 2008, etc.) has been waiting six years in a chest in an illegally constructed apartment. It's not easy to find a Sicilian beach house for rent during August. So when his girlfriend Livia, denied a vacation with the inspector by his colleague's change of summer plans, insists that he find a rental for her friend Laura, Montalbano's proud of his discovery, until the plagues begin: cockroaches, mice, spiders, floods. Finally Laura's toddler disappears-into a pit, it turns out, that leads to a secret ground-floor apartment constructed and buried in defiance of the building code. It's the exact duplicate of Laura's apartment, except for the corpse in the chest. The victim, 16-year-old Caterina Morreale, was obviously assaulted and killed by someone who had access to the apartment on the day it was hidden from view to await a government amnesty on illegal construction. Was the killer well-connected contractor Michele Spitaleri, who liked his girls young? Foreman Angelino Dipasquale? Mason Gaspare Micciche? Watchman Filiberto Attanasio, a habitual offender? Or Ralf Speciale, late stepson of the German businessman for whom the apartment was built? With help from a most unusual young woman, Montalbano battles the usual corruption, incompetence and indifference, compounded this time by heat that repeatedly moves him to strip to his underwear. He comes up with a solution as satisfying as it is unsurprising. Despite its noirish undertones, the perfect beach read for those lucky enough to have found suitable accommodations.
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)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for August Heat:
1. How would you describe the character of Inspector Salvo Montalbano?
2. How does Livia strike you? Is she justified in her anger at Salvo over the rental and how he dealt with the body found in the basement?
3. What is it about the developer Michele Spitaleri that makes Montalbano dislike him and want to prosecute him?
4. After Montalbano and Fazio's nighttime visit to Spitaleri's construction site to extract information from the watchman, Montalbano feels remorse for his actions. Why? Should he feel remorseful?
5. What was your reaction to the attraction between Salvo and Adriana?
6. What does the Inspector come to understand about attempting to prosecute Spitaleri for the death of the Arab workman? What is the reason given by his colleague, Inspector Lozupone of the neighboring precinct, for not following through on an investigation of the accident?
7. Author Andrea Camilleri drops several red-herrings, false leads, along the way toward the final solution. Did any of them trip you up? In other words, whom did you initially suspect?
8. Were you surprised by the ending? If not, what led you to the murderer?
9. What does Salvo realize by the end, when he dives into the Mediterranean?
10. Does this dectective story deliver in terms of intrigue, mystery, characters? Is it a compelling read? If you're a fan of other detective series, how does this one compare, particularly the character of Inspector Montablano? Similar...different? As good as...?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Auntie Poldi and the Sicilan Lions (Auntie Poldi Adventures, 1)
Mario Giordono, 2018
Houghton Mifflin
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328863577
Summary
On her sixtieth birthday, Auntie Poldi retires to Sicily, intending to while away the rest of her days with good wine, a view of the sea, and few visitors.
But Sicily isn’t quite the tranquil island she thought it would be, and something always seems to get in the way of her relaxation. When her handsome young handyman goes missing—and is discovered murdered—she can’t help but ask questions.
Soon there’s an investigation, a smoldering police inspector, a romantic entanglement, one false lead after another, a rooftop showdown, and finally, of course, Poldi herself, slightly tousled but still perfectly poised.
This "masterly treat" (Times Literary Supplement) will transport you to the rocky shores of Torre Archirafi, to a Sicily full of quirky characters, scorching days, and velvety nights, alongside a protagonist who’s as fiery as the Sicilian sun. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Mario Giordano, the son of Italian immigrants, was born in Munich. He is the author of 1,000 Feelings for Which There Are No Names; he has also written thrillers, books for children, and screenplays. Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions is his first novel translated into English. He lives in Berlin. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A lively, humorous portrait of Sicilian society and gastronomy.
Times (UK)
Funny, smart and, above all, atmospheric.
Toronto Globe and Mail
To the ranks of amateur sleuths from Miss Marple to Jessica Fletcher, welcome Auntie Poldi—a 60-year-old German widow who has bought a villa on Sicily to drink wine and enjoy the sea view. Then her young handyman, Valentino, is found murdered, and she has a case on her hands.
Long Island Newsday
[W]inning.… Despite some clunky moments, such as the recurring appearance of the figure of Death, Poldi’s pursuit of Valentino’s killers is done with breezy good humor. Wry, appreciative observations of Sicilian food, people, and history herald a series worth tracking.
Publishers Weekly
Poldi is flamboyant, earthy, and always forthright.… The mystery is well-plotted and red herrings abound, [but] the true draw of the book is the Sicilian setting and the eccentric Auntie Poldi. Fans of quirky stories such as Alan Bradley's "Flavia de Luce" series may enjoy this amusing romp
Library Journal
(Starred review) The category of lusty Bavarian widow has been woefully underrepresented—until now.… Fans of international mysteries or just those who fantasize about good wine and languorous meals on the Italian coast will devour this mystery debut.
Booklist
(Starred reivew) Poldi is an irresistible newcomer with a mature voice and a vision of who she is and who she never will be, not afraid to take chances, and willing to fail.… Giordano’s wit and his formidable heroine's wisdom combine to make this debut a smash.
Kirkus Reviews
absolutely enchanting, combining whimsy, mystery, sorrow and Sicilian hot blood, with a lusty, tart heroine who "[knows] a thing or two about good places, friendship and things that sustain us."
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Mystery Questions to help start a discussion for AUNTIE POLDI AND THE SICILIAN LIONS … then take off on your own.
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Austenland
Shannon Hale, 2007
Bloomsbury USA
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620404867
Summary
Jane is a young New York woman who can never seem to find the right man—perhaps because of her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Predjudice.
When a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-obsessed women, however, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined.
Is this total immersion in a fake Austenland enough to make Jane kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 26, 1974
• Where—Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Utah; M.A., Universityof Montana
• Awards—Newbery Honor
• Currently—lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
Shannon Hale is an American author of young adult fantasy and adult fiction, including the Newbery Honor book Princess Academy, the Books of Bayern series, two adult novels, and two graphic novels that she co-wrote with her husband. Her comic adult novel, Austenland, was adapted to film in 2013.
Early life
Shannon Bryner was born in Salt Lake City, where she began writing at the age of 10. She attended West High School. After high school, she pursued acting in television, stage, and improvisational comedy. She also studied studying in Mexico and the United Kingdom. She spent a year and a half as an unpaid missionary in Paraguay, then returned to the United States to earn her bachelor's degree in English from the University of Utah and a master's in creative writing from the University of Montana. Hale also worked as an instructional designer, developing web-based training for Avaltus and Allen Communication before becoming a full-time writer.
Published works
Her first published book, The Goose Girl, met with numerous rejections until it was finally published in 2003. In 2004 her second novel, Enna Burning, which follows a minor character from The Goose Girl, was published. The third installment in the Bayern series, River Secrets, was released in September 2006. By then Hale had earned numerous awards for her 2005 release, Princess Academy, including the prestigious Newbery Honor. A sequel to Princess Academy came out in 2012, called Palace of Stone.
She has published three adult novels, Austenland, The Actor and the Housewife, and Midnight in Austenland (a sequel to Austenland). She and her husband Dean Hale have also published a graphic novel, Rapunzel's Revenge. A sequel, entitled Calamity Jack, was published in 2010.
A young adult fantasy novel and the fourth book in the Books of Bayern series, Forest Born, came out in 2009.
Personal life
Shannon has four children with husband Dean Hale. The family resides in South Jordan, Utah, where Sharon is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/24/2014.)
Book Reviews
Cheeky irreverence…. For all her breezily amused tone, Hale treats Jane and her fellow park "clients" with affection, and she shows that the Janes of today are as likely as the Darcys to shy from commitment.
Los Angeles Times
An homage to Austen and Fielding….Austenland offers hope that after years of fruitless searching for a companion, just when you're ready to give up on love, it will find you all on its own.
Houston Chronicle
he Austen-themed resort called Pembrook Park exists so far only in Austenland, a just-published chick-lit novel by Shannon Hale, whose author's note describes her as "an avid Austen fan and admirer of men in britches." Hale's heroine is a "Sex and the City" career gal who can't keep a boyfriend and who has a crush on Mr. Darcy. Oh, not the "real" one—the one played by Colin Firth in the BBC Pride and Prejudice.
Newsweek
Jane [Hayes] is forced to confront her Austen obsession when her wealthy great-aunt Carolyn dies and leaves her an all-expenses-paid vacation to Pembrook Park, a British resort where guests live like the characters in Jane's beloved Austen novels.... Nods to Austen are abundant in contemporary women's fiction, and an intriguing setup and abundant wit are not enough to make this one stand out.
Publishers Weekly
In her first novel for adults, Newbery Honor Medalist Hale (Princess Academy) puts an intriguing twist on Austenmania by writing about a Jane Austen fantasy camp tailor.... The hijinks that follow are entertaining if predictable. An amusing trifle likely to please chick-lit readers and Austen aficionados who enjoy modern twists on the author's classic tales. —Nanette Donohue
Library Journal
Jane, called Miss Erstwhile for the duration of her stay, tries to get used to corsets and other Regency amusements while sorting out whether the attentions of a Darcyesque Mr. Nobley, not to mention a good-looking gardener, are sincere or part of the show. A clever confection for fans of contemporary Austen knockoffs. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
The novel is clever in its depiction of the many ways in which romance can fall away, and Jane is no fool as she attempts to sort out the real from the make-believe.... But ultimately this is a romance novel in which lovers who are meant to be together overcome miscues and misunderstandings before the final clinch. Mindless froth that Austen addicts will love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Austenland opens, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirtysomething woman in possession of a satisfying career and fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little, and Jane Hayes, pretty enough and clever enough, was certainly thought to have little to distress her” (1). How does this sentence set the stage for the novel? Compare it to the famous first sentence of Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Which of these universal “truths” is actually true, if either?
2. Austenland, besides chronicling Jane’s stay at Pembrook Park, lists all thirteen “boyfriends” she’s had in her lifetime. How well does the reader get to know Jane’s past? How much has she changed from her first relationship at age twelve to the one that is now just beginning?
3. Jane observes of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice: “Stripped of Austen’s funny, insightful, biting narrator, the movie became a pure romance” (2). What would Austenland be like without Jane’s own funny, insightful, biting narration?
4. Looking at the gallery of portraits in Pembrook Park, Jane feels “an itch inside her hand” to paint a portrait, “but she scratched the desire away. She hadn’t picked up a paintbrush since college” (36). How is Jane’s artistic itch intensified during her stay at Pembrook Park? How does she come to the realization that “she wanted to love someone the way she felt when painting—fearless, messy, vivid” (125)? In the end, has she found that type of artistic love?
5. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s mother, Mrs. Bennet, is known for her determination to marry off her daughters and for her frequent social blunders. How does Miss Charming, Jane’s fellow visitor to Pembrook Park, resemble Mrs. Bennet? What are some of Charming’s funny faux pas and verbal blunders?
6. Jane realizes, “Wait a minute, why was she always so worried about the Austen gentlemen, anyway? What about the Austen heroine?” (105) Is the heroine given short shrift by many Austen fans today? Why or why not?
7. Jane calls herself and Mr. Nobley “Impertinence and Inflexibility” (133). How do these nicknames originate? How do these traits compare to the pride and prejudice of Darcy and Elizabeth in Austen’s novel?
8. Jane’s great-aunt Carolyn set the whole Pembrook Park adventure into motion. What do you think Carolyn’s intentions were in sending Jane to this Austenland? Do you think Jane fulfilled those expectations?
9. Jane comes to wonder what kind of fantasy world Jane Austen might have created for herself: “Did Austen herself feel this way? Was she hopeful? Jane wondered if the unmarried writer had lived inside Austenland with close to Jane’s own sensibility—amused, horrified, but in very real danger of being swept away” (123). Is it possible to guess at Austen’s attitude toward romance by reading her work? Why or why not?
10. Looking at Henry Jenkins, Jane realizes that “just then she herself was more Darcy than Erstwhile, sitting there admiring his fine eyes, feeling dangerously close to falling in love against her will” (190). Are there other occasions in which Jane is more Darcy than Erstwhile? Is it possible that today’s single, thirtysomething woman is more a Darcy than a so-called spinster?
11. Jane walks away from Nobley and Martin at the airport with the parting words, “Tell Mrs. Wattlesbrook I said tallyho” (186). Why does Jane enjoy her last line so much? What does she mean by “tallyho”?
12. What might Jane Austen think of Austenland, if she were alive today? Could she have possibly anticipated how influential her novels would become, even for twenty-first-century audiences? Could she ever have imagined a fan like Jane Hayes?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Authenticity Project
Clare Pooley, 2020
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984878618
Summary
The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other.
But what if they were?
And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local cafe. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street.
Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves—and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.
The Authenticity Project's cast of characters—including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends—is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward—and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.
The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for—and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Clare Pooley is a British blogger and author of both a memoir and a novel. She is the daughter of Peter Pooley CMG, a former Director-General of the European Commission. Pooley earned a degree in economics from Newnham College, Cambridge.
Career
Pooley first pursued a career in advertising at J. Walter Thompson, where she attained the position of managing partner and group head. She left the agency, however, after the birth of her third child.
In 2015, Pooley began a blog, "Mummy was a Secret Drinker," about her life following a resolution to give up alcohol. She blogged under a pseudonym until the announcement of her first book, which was published in 2017. That book, The Sober Diaries, recounted her first year of sobriety, as well as an account of her successful battle with breast cancer. Her second book, The Authenticity Project, a novel, came out in 2020.
Personal life
Pooley lives with her husband and their three children in London, England. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2/25/2020.)
Book Reviews
Poole succeeds in persuasively conveying the daily texture of city life, and in creating appealing characters we want to see happy.… [The] cheerful premise demands bite to balance its not-always-believable sweetness.… At times, its overly broad characterization and cliched gestures detract from the story.… And yet, several reversals and a neat twist mean that The Authenticity Project grows stronger toward its end: a rarity for novels.… [A]n enjoyable read that is cozy…in the best sense of the word.
USA Today
This wistful, humorous tale from Pooley… maintains a quick, satisfying pace as the characters’ simple, spontaneous acts affect each other’s lives. This is a beautiful and illuminating story of self-creation.
Publishers Weekly
Not only a charming story of strangers connecting in beguiling ways, this debut fiction by memoirist and blogger Pooley is a thoughtful meditation on authenticity in the age of self-promotion. Recommended for readers looking for a pick-me-up.
Library Journal
The secret sauce that spices this book is that all the diarists are busybodies to some degree, so they wind up interacting in strange and unexpected ways.… The book is composed of fairly short chapters…, and while it moves along at a bracing clip, the thread is always easy to follow.
BookPage
A group of strangers…in London become fast friends after writing their deepest secrets in a shared notebook.… The message is strong, urging readers to get off their smartphones and social media and live in the real, authentic world.…An enjoyable, cozy novel that touches on tough topics
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Julian writes, "Everyone lies about their lives." Is this true? Do you?
2. Julian calls his notebook "The Authenticity Project." Do you think people are increasingly searching for authenticity in today’s world? If so, why? How do they go about it? How do you?
3. We are all connected via huge social media communities, but increased online interaction often comes at the expense of the type of local, real-life community provided by Monica’s Cafe and Julian’s Supper Club. What do these communities give us that virtual ones do not?
4. Most of the characters in the book are lonely, but in very different ways. What are the various forms of loneliness explored in The Authenticity Project?
5. The story is told from the perspectives of six main characters. Who did you relate to the most, and why? Which character is least like yourself?
6. Baz keeps the truth from his grandmother in order to spare her feelings. Julian avoids the truth to protect himself. Are there times when admitting the truth isn’t the right thing to do? Explain.
7. We all make snap judgements about each other, and often they’re wrong. What incorrect assumptions do The Authenticity Project characters make about each other, and what are the consequences?
8. There is a scene in the book where Monica and Alice first see each other through the café window, and both want what the other has. What does The Authenticity Project teach us about envy?
9. Riley is the only character in the novel who doesn’t have an obvious fatal flaw. Does this make him more loveable, or less? How does Riley act as a touchstone for the other characters?
10. If you found "The Authenticity Project," what truth would you tell?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Ernest J. Gaines, 1971
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553263572
Summary
The "editor" introduces the novel by explaining that after days of asking Miss Jane Pittman to tell her story to him, she finally did in the summer of 1962. He wants to hear her history because he is a teacher and her experiences have not been included in the history textbooks he uses.
The teacher records Miss Jane as she speaks. Miss Jane is over a hundred years old, however, and sometimes forgets things. When she does so, her friends fill in the gaps with their memories. Since a group is contributing to her story, the editor feels that the tale belongs to all of them.
Some time after the story has been gathered, Miss Jane dies, and the editor meets many of the people from her life at her funeral. Upon meeting them, the editor again reflects that Miss Jane's story applies to all of them not just herself. (From Wikipedia.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 15, 1933
• Where—Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., San Francisco State University; fellowiship
to Stanford University
• Awards—Wallace Stegner Fellow, 1957; National Endowment
for the Arts grant, 1967; Dos Passos Prize, 1993; MacArthur
Foundation fellow, 1993; National Book Critics Award, 1993;
National Humanities Medal, 2000; he American Academy of
Arts and Letters, 2000; Chevalier, Order of Arts and Letters
(France), 2000.
• Currently—lives in San Francisco and Oscar, Louisiana
Ernest Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements.
In addition to The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Mr. Gaines is also the author of A Lesson Before Dying, A Gathering of Old Men, Bloodline, and Of Love and Dust.
In 1996 he was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Miss Jane Pittman’s American journey spanned over one hundred years, from the 1860s to the 1960s, and took her from picking cotton on a Louisiana plantation to taking part in dismantling the walls of segregation in her southern town.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is her story, told in her own words (although the narrator is putatively a high school teacher who comes to interview her for a school project but soon fades to the background). In Miss Jane, Ernest Galnes created one of the most memorable women in all of American literature. Although she witnessed first hand the wrenching transition of a people from slavery to freedom, Gaines makes her more than a vehicle for that epic story. Miss Jane is a filly realized, three-dimensional character with her own loves and hates, strengths and weaknesses, which makes her observations on the incredible events around her all the more authentic and compelling. Gaines’s skill in giving her a distinct and memorable voice with which to tell her story amplifies the humanity of Miss Jane.
When her story begins, Jane is a slave girl named Ticey, still working on a plantation in Louisiana as the Civil War winds down. She changes her name to Jane at the instigation of a confederate soldier, a minor rebellion against her owners that costs her a severe beating. After emancipation, she leaves the plantation and joins up with a group of ex-slaves on their way to Ohio. The group is massacred by former confederate soldiers, with only Jane and Ned, a young boy who Jane unofficially adopts, surviving. Jane then settles in Louisiana and serves as an influence for several black men who work hard to achieve dignity and economic and political equality: first Ned, who changes his name to Ned Douglass after his hero Frederick and becomes a campaigner for the most basic civil rights for blacks, but who is eventually lynched by whites; Joe Pittman, Jane’s common-law husband and breaker of wild horses, who is killed by a black stallion; and Jimmy Aaron, a young civil rights worker born on a plantation in Louisiana, who becomes one of the movement’s martyrs.
Miss Jane is a complex character, by turns superstitious and sensible, a survivor and a risk-taker. Through the story of her life, she speaks of tolerance and human understanding, commitment and sacrifice, human dignity and its price. With The Autobiography of Mus Jane Pittman, Gaines makes the small truths, the everyday pains, and the hard choices of this woman add up to moments of illumination. The book was a bestseller and was later made into a popular television movie, which later won awards.
Sacred Fire
Discussion Questions
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The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb
Melanie Benjamin, 2011
Random House
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385344159
Summary
In her national bestseller Alice I Have Been, Melanie Benjamin imagined the life of the woman who inspired Alice in Wonderland. Now, in this jubilant new novel, Benjamin shines a dazzling spotlight on another fascinating female figure whose story has never fully been told: a woman who became a nineteenth century icon and inspiration—and whose most daunting limitation became her greatest strength.
Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead, I would define it.
She was only two-foot eight-inches tall, but her legend reaches out to us more than a century later. As a child, Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump was encouraged to live a life hidden away from the public. Instead, she reached out to the immortal impresario P. T. Barnum, married the tiny superstar General Tom Thumb in the wedding of the century, and transformed into the world’s most unexpected celebrity.
Here, in Vinnie’s singular and spirited voice, is her amazing adventure—from a showboat “freak” revue where she endured jeering mobs to her fateful meeting with the two men who would change her life: P. T. Barnum and Charles Stratton, AKA Tom Thumb. Their wedding would captivate the nation, preempt coverage of the Civil War, and usher them into the White House and the company of presidents and queens. But Vinnie’s fame would also endanger the person she prized most: her similarly-sized sister, Minnie, a gentle soul unable to escape the glare of Vinnie’s spotlight.
A barnstorming novel of the Gilded Age, and of a woman’s public triumphs and personal tragedies, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb is the irresistible epic of a heroine who conquered the country with a heart as big as her dreams—and whose story will surely win over yours. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Melanie Hauser
• Birth—November 24. 1962
• Where—Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
• Education—Indiana University (Purdue University at
Indianapolis)
• Currently—lives near Chicago, Illinois
Melanie Benjamin is the pen name of American writer, Melanie Hauser (nee Miller). Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Melanie is one of three children. Her brother Michael Miller is a published non-fiction author and musician. Melanie attended Indiana University—Purdue University at Indianapolis then married Dennis Hauser in 1988; they presently reside in the Chicago, Illinois area with their two sons.
Early writing
As Melanie Hauser, she published short stories in the In Posse Review and The Adirondack Review. Her short story "Prodigy on Ice" won the 2001 "Now Hear This" short story competition that was part of a WBEZ (Chicago Public Radio) program called Stories on Stage, where short stories were performed and broadcast.
When Melanie sold her first of two contemporary novels, she had to add Lynne to her name (Melanie Lynne Hauser) to distinguish her from the published sports journalist Melanie Hauser.
The first of Melanie's contemporary novels, Confessions of Super Mom was published in 2005; the sequel Super Mom Saves the World came out in 2007. In addition to her two contemporary novels, Melanie also contributed an essay to the anthology IT'S A BOY and maintained a popular mom blog called The Refrigerator Door.
Fictional biographies
Under the pen name Melanie Benjamin (a combination of her first name and her son's first name), she shifted genres to historical fiction. Her third novel, Alice I Have Been, was inspired by Alice Liddell Hargreaves's life (the real-life Alice of Alice in Wonderland). Published in 2010, Alice I Have Been was a national bestseller and reached the extended list of The New York Times Best Seller list.
In 2011, Benjamin fictionalized another historical female. Her novel The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb focuses on the life of Lavinia Warren Bump, a proportionate dwarf featured in P.T. Barnum's shows.
Her third fictionalized biography, The Aviator's Wife, was released in 2013 and centers on Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of famed aviator, Charles Lindberg. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Benjamin…knows how to combine research and readability. And she's given Vinnie such dignity and courage…that her heroine commands attention from the first page.
Washington Post
Mercy Lavinia "Vinnie" Warren Bump, the diminutive wife of Gen. Tom Thumb, narrates her life story in this vivaciousfictionalized autobiography that takes her from a small New Englandtown to a seedy Mississippi showboat and eventuallyinto the entourage of the impresario P.T. Barnum. Born withproportionate dwarfism, Vinnie, a "perfect woman in miniature," rejects a career as a schoolteacher in favor of showbusiness, eventually finding an intellectual soul mate in Barnum andinternational fame that leads her into the opulence of New Yorksociety and meetings with heads of state from theWhite House to Europe and India. Benjamin (Alice I HaveBeen) centers the latter half of her tale around Vinnie and Barnum'sodd-couple friendship and touchy businessrelationship, sometimes glossing frustratingly over Vinnie'sown adventures—a three-year tour of Australia and Asia isgiven only a few pages—and leaving the last 40 yearsof her life untold. But the smart and unyieldingly ladylikeVinnie emerges as an effervescent narrator with a love of life and a grand story worth the price of admission.
Publishers Weekly
This follow-up to Benjamin's Alice I Have Been is loosely based on the life of Lavinia "Vinnie" Warren Bump, who married world-famous "little person" Charles Stratton (aka Gen. Tom Thumb). Benjamin tells Vinnie's story from her upbringing in a modest but proud Massachusetts family to her early forays into show business on a seedy riverboat to her eventual fame and fortune as one of P.T. Barnum's popular attractions. In an essentially arranged marriage, she reserves her emotional intimacy for Barnum and her sister Minnie, with tragic results. Verdict: Vinnie's first-person narration grabs you from the opening pages, providing hints of the absorbing and entertaining story to come. The novel is also a delightful cavalcade of late 19th-century Americana, as you travel with Vinnie up and down the Mississippi, head westward via the expanding railroad, and hobnob with New York's rich and famous. Those interested in "behind the scenes" of show business will be equally entranced. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What are the parallels between Vinnie's celebrity and the definition of celebrity today?
2. Why did Vinnie determine to only communicate her optimism—what was she trying to hide behind, or hide from herself, by choosing not to dwell on the many obstacles in her way?Why did Vinnie go along with Barnum's humbug concerning the infant?
3. Which is the true love story of the book—the story of Vinnie and Barnum, Vinnie and Charles, Vinnie and Minnie, or Vinnie and the public?
4. Why do you think the notion of the Tom Thumb wedding so swept the nation that, even today, there are reenactments with children?
5. What was the most interesting historical fact in the book for you? Which was the most startling?
6. Sylvia points out a photograph in the window of a store. It's of PT Barnum. "Really?" I was surprised and, I confess, a little disappointed; the man in the photograph looked so very...ordinary. Curly hair parted on the side, a wide forehead, a somewhat bulbous nose, an unremarkable smile. He resembled any man I might have passed in the street; he certainly did not resemble a world-famous impresario. Colonel Wood, I had to admit, looked much more the part than did this man (p. 78). Vinnie is used to people making immediate assumptions about her based on her appearance. What assumptions, though, does Vinnie make about people for the same reasons? Are pre-conceived notions about people something that is ingrained in us?
7. What do you think it means to live one's life in the public eye, as Vinnie and Charles did? How would you react to being scrutinized by the press for your every action? Compare how you may have felt in Vinnie's day compared to today's twenty-four hour news and gossip cycle.
8. For Vinnie, what do you think was the best part of being famous? What was the worst?
9. Toward the end of her stage career, Vinnie asks herself, "had I ever been simply Lavinia Warren Stratton? To anyone--even myself?" (p. 363) Do you think Vinnie chose this life for herself, or did she essentially hop on a ride and couldn't get off? Was the price she had to pay for her fame and fortune her own chosen identity?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Autobiography of Us
Aria Beth Sloss, 2013
Henry Holt & Co.
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805094558
Summary
A gripping debut novel about friendship, loss and love; a confession of what passed between two women who met as girls in 1960s Pasadena, California
Coming of age in the patrician neighborhood of Pasadena, California during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream of lives beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. Their struggle to define themselves against the backdrop of an American cultural revolution unites them early on, until one sweltering evening the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changes everything.
Decades later, Rebecca’s haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth about that night, the years that followed, and the friendship that shaped her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Aria Beth Sloss is a graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Arts Foundation, the Yaddo Corporation, and the Vermont Studio Center, and her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, the Harvard Review, and online at The Paris Review and FiveChapters. She lives in New York City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
sharply imagined debut...Sloss writes with assured grace, capturing the conflicted sensibilities of a generation of women.
O, the Oprah Magazine
Every female friendship has a script of its own. The one playing out in this debut novel is a gripping hybrid—Beaches crossed with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
More Magazine
At its heart, the novel is a tragic elegy to spirited women in decades past who were forced to silence their dreams and desires, and whose lives were not what they might otherwise have been.
Shelf Awareness
A smooth first-person narrative about two best friends who come of age in 1960s Pasadena marks Sloss's layered debut novel. Alex is beautiful, theatrical, and comes from wealth. Introspective, secretive, and brainy narrator Rebecca lives "house-poor" with her earnest father and beautiful, thrifty mother, who wants her daughter to have what she lost during the Depression. Once inseparable, the friends strike out on different paths at their college and a total break occurs after junior year. The incident, involving lies, alcohol, and some bad judgment, changes Rebecca's relationship with her parents as well. Stifled by early '60s sexism, she grows passive, marrying Paul, a genial, patrician New York lawyer. Despite achieving her mother's goals, her marriage is a sham and her small life revolves around her two sons and the letters she writes to Alex but never sends. Home for her mother's funeral, Rebecca reconnects with her one-time best friend, but she begins to see the insignificance of her life. Here the narrative accelerates as it builds toward the chaotic dénouement. The story's hopeful end is tempered with the realization that, had the central characters been born a generation later, maybe their lives would have been better.
Publishers Weekly
Mary is a serious lawyer, married with two kids, whose husband is a perennial mama's boy incapable of grocery shopping on his own. Mixed in with the trials and tribulations of the protagonists are humorous vignettes from the lives of some of their other friends and acquaintances—many of whom
Library Journal
Captivating, engrossing, surprising… Sloss’ debut novel sweeps across the tumultuous events of the late 1950s through the 1980s and… celebrates the terrible struggle to find one’s identity as it elegiacally rues the necessary losses.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Describe the friendship between Alex and Rebecca. They seem to be polar opposites, yet their bond is very strong, even from the start. What do you think initially draws them together, and what keeps their friendship alive after so many years?
2. Early in their lives, Alex and Rebecca both fi nd unique callings, especially for women of the era—Alex as an actress and singer, and Rebecca as a doctor. Alex says, “That’s the thing about callings—they choose you.” Yet, she also believes that you choose your own destiny. “You don’t guess about your life, you choose. Or else…You get swallowed up like the rest of them.” What does this contradiction say about Alex as a character? What do you think she believes about choice and destiny by the end of the book, and how might Rebecca agree or disagree with her at different points in their lives?”
3. Life in 1960s Southern California was all about keeping up appearances. To what extent do the characters in the novel protect their private lives and inner desires? Which characters do not conform to the norms of society, and how are they viewed? If you lived during that era, how differently do you think your life thus far would have turned out?
4. Why does Rebecca keep writing letters to Alex that go unanswered—first when Alex goes off to camp and she stops responding and later as an adult when Rebecca cannot even bring herself to send the letters at all? What motivates her to continue writing?
5. Why does Rebecca feel betrayed after learning of Alex’s physical encounter with Bertrand? Why does she go on to spend the night with him herself?
6. Motherhood is an important theme in this book. To what extent do you see Rebecca’s and Alex’s relationships with their mothers influencing the choices they make at different points in their lives? How do those relationships impact Rebecca’s and Alex’s own conceptions of motherhood? How would you compare your own relationship with your mother to the ones portrayed in the novel?
7. There is a shift in the relationship between Rebecca and her parents after they learn about her pregnancy. How did you read that shift initially, and how did your perception of it change as the book progressed?
8. Rebecca says: “How little we know the ones we love. How little we know of anyone, in the end.” How does knowing—and not knowing—someone play into the important relationships in this book? Do you believe the kind of knowledge Rebecca refers to in that line is actually possible? Do you think that Rebecca was able to know Alex, in the end?
9. Life seems to get in the way of many of the characters’ dreams. Discuss the theme of unfulfilled dreams in the novel. To what extent do the social and cultural constructs of the time get in the way of these characters realizing their dreams? Would they all face the same or similar issues today?
10. What do you make of Rebecca’s decision not to go with Alex in the end? Do you think she made the right decision? Do you think she really, as she says, regrets “everything”?
11. Rebecca tells Violet that Alex was “the great love” of her life. What does that phrase mean within the context of this book? What does it mean to you?
12. The story, set against the backdrop of America’s civil rights movement and feminist wave, is deeply engaged with the issues that characterized the era. It is evident how certain aspects of society and life have changed, yet how far have we come since then? Are the obstacles faced by the women in this book still relevant today? If so, where and how have you encountered them?
(Questions issued by publisher.)