Q: A Novel
Evan Mandery, 2011
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062015839
Summary
Q, Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, is the love of my life.
Shortly before his wedding, the unnamed hero of this uncommon romance is visited by a man who claims to be his future self and ominously admonishes him that he must not marry the love of his life, Q. At first the protagonist doubts this stranger, but in time he becomes convinced of the authenticity of the warning and leaves his fiancee.
The resulting void in his life is impossible to fill. One after the other, future selves arrive urging him to marry someone else, divorce, attend law school, leave law school, travel, join a running club, stop running, study the guitar, the cello, Proust, Buddhism, and opera, and eliminate gluten from his diet. The only constants in this madcap quest for personal improvement are his love for his New York City home and for the irresistible Q.
A unique literary talent, Evan Mandery turns the classic story of transcendent love on its head, with an ending that will melt even the darkest heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Manhasset, New York
Evan Mandery is an American author and criminal justice academic at the City University of New York.
Mandery began his writing career in non-fiction. His first book The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton and the Race to be Mayor of New York was published in 1999. His academic writing focuses on capital punishment, and his book Capital Punishment in America: A Balanced Examination, was first issued in 2004 and again in 2011. His most recent book on the subject, A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America, came out in 2013.
Mandery turned to fiction in 2007.
- His first novel Dreaming of Gwen Stefani was published in 2007. The novel deals with a mathematical genius and hot-dog vendor, who falls in love with Gwen Stefani.
- His second novel, First Contact, Or, It's Later Than You Think, published in 2010, revolves around a hyper-intelligent alien species and a dim-witted President, mistrustful of the aliens.
- Q: A Novel, published in 2011, is based on time travel. An unnamed protagonist is visited by his future self and advised not to marry the love of his life.
Evan is a professor at the City University of New York, and an avid poker player and golfer. He lives in Manhasset, New York, with his wife Valli Rajah-Mandery, a sociologist, and their three children.(Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/6/2013.)
Book Reviews
[A] delightful New York-infused novel …. A word to the tear prone: Don’t attempt to read the ending in public.
New York Times Book Review
[A] deeply funny, seriously smart novel, at times both romantic and pragmatic. Fans of Mark Kurlansky and Matthew Norman will appreciate Mandery’s eloquently witty authorial voice....Q is a remarkably refreshing work, full of energy and eminently absorbing.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Q raises some important moral questions. Was it ethical for the older version of the main character, I-55, to encourage the main character to change the path of his life? What about the other older versions?
2. Relatedly, and perhaps most importantly, was it ethical for the main character to decide to abandon Q? Did Q have a right to know the basis for his decision?
3. Are the main character and the future versions of himself the same people? If not, what implications does this have for how we think of ourselves? Is a ten-year old version of myself the same person as me? A thirty-year older version? Fifty?
4. In Q, the price of time travel is extremely high. Does it matter whether a new technology is egalitarian, meaning that it is accessible to all people? Would time travel, on the terms discussed in I, be an improvement to society?
5. The debate between Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud in Chapter 18 is central to the theme of the book. All of the future versions of the main character believe they are making the main character’s life better. Is this belief in progress real or is faux-Freud correct in saying that it is something humans have created to make their lives palatable?
6. Is Q’s father a believable character? Is it possible that he is a different person with Q than in his business dealings?
7. The author writes the entire book in present tense. What do you think of this as a literary technique? What, if anything, is the author’s message in making this choice?
8. Q is a comedy with a supremely tragic premise. Are these choices compatible or incompatible?
9. If you could visit yourself at an earlier point, where would you go and what, if anything, would you say?
10. If you could visit another place and time, where and when would you go?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Letters from Skye
Jessica Brockmole, 2013
Ballentine Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345542601
Summary
A sweeping story told in letters, spanning two continents and two world wars, Jessica Brockmole’s atmospheric debut novel captures the indelible ways that people fall in love, and celebrates the power of the written word to stir the heart.
March 1912: Twenty-four-year-old Elspeth Dunn, a published poet, has never seen the world beyond her home on Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye. So she is astonished when her first fan letter arrives, from a college student, David Graham, in far-away America. As the two strike up a correspondence—sharing their favorite books, wildest hopes, and deepest secrets—their exchanges blossom into friendship, and eventually into love. But as World War I engulfs Europe and David volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait for him on Skye, hoping he’ll survive.
June 1940: At the start of World War II, Elspeth’s daughter, Margaret, has fallen for a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Her mother warns her against seeking love in wartime, an admonition Margaret doesn’t understand. Then, after a bomb rocks Elspeth’s house, and letters that were hidden in a wall come raining down, Elspeth disappears. Only a single letter remains as a clue to Elspeth’s whereabouts. As Margaret sets out to discover where her mother has gone, she must also face the truth of what happened to her family long ago.
Sparkling with charm and full of captivating period detail, Letters from Skye is a testament to the power of love to overcome great adversity, and marks Jessica Brockmole as a stunning new literary voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jessica Brockmole, an American writer, spent several years living in Scotland, where she knew too well the challenges in maintaining relationships from a distance. She plotted her first novel on a long drive from the Isle of Skye to Edinburgh. She now lives in Indiana with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A love story to the power of the written word.
USA Today
Sensitive and absorbing and unique.
Fredericksburg Free Lance–Star
(Starred review.) Brockmole uses letters to tell a remarkable story of two women...and two world wars.... The beauty of Scotland, the tragedy of war, the longings of the heart, and the struggles of a family torn apart by disloyalty are brilliantly drawn, leaving just enough blanks to be filled by the reader’s imagination.
Publishers Weekly
Already being compared to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, this novel lacks the magical charm of its powerful predecessor.... [T]he story begins to feel heavy-handed, and there are few surprises, good or bad. [T]he narrative also includes a second story line set 20 years later that further reflects on the [original] relationship. However, David and Elspeth never truly come to life. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal
Told exclusively via letters between lovers, mother and daughter, and husband and wife, Brockmole’s novel will make readers feel that they’re illicitly reading someone’s diary. But the letter convention has its drawbacks. It’s difficult to get a full sense of who these characters are beyond what is written in their letters, which leaves them, at times, flat and two-dimensional. —Carolyn Kubisz
Booklist
The correspondence between Elspeth and David, as well as between Margaret and Paul, carefully traces the intertwining of lives. By turns lyrical and flirtatious, Brockmole's debut charms with its wistful evocation of a time when handwritten, eagerly awaited letters could bespell besotted lovers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
These questions were submitted by Linley Bartell, a member of Book Buddies. Thank you Linley!
1Q84
Haruki Murakami, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
1184 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307476463
Summary
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —"Q is for 'question mark. A world that bears a question." Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 12, 1949
• Where—Kyoto, Japan
• Education—Waseda University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives near Tokyo
Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. Murakami has been translated into 50 languages and his best-selling books have sold millions of copies.
His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, both in Japan and internationally, including the World Fantasy Award (2006) and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (2006), while his oeuvre garnered among others the Franz Kafka Prize (2006) and the Jerusalem Prize (2009). Murakami's most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009–2010). He has also translated a number of English works into Japanese, from Raymond Carver to J. D. Salinger.
Murakami's fiction, often criticized by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness he weaves into his narratives. He is also considered an important figure in postmodern literature. Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his works and achievement.
In recent years, Haruki Murakami has often been mentioned as a possible recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nonetheless, since all nomination records are sealed for 50 years from the awarding of the prize, it is pure speculation. When asked about the possibility of being awarded the Nobel Prize, Murakami responded with a laugh saying "No, I don't want prizes. That means you're finished.
Recognition / Awards
1982 - Noma Literary Prize for A Wild Sheep Chase.
1985 - Tanizaki Prize for Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
1995 - Yomiuri Prize for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
2006 - World Fantasy Award for Kafka on the Shore.
2006 - Franz Kafka Prize
2007 - Kiriyama Prize for Fiction
2007 - honorary doctorate, University of Liege
2008 - honorary doctorate, Princeton University
2009 - Jerusalem Prize
2011 - International Catalunya Prize
2014 - honorary doctorate, Tufts University
Controversy
The Jerusalam Award is presented a biennially to writers whose work deals with themes of human freedom, society, politics, and government. When Murakami won the award in 2009, protests erupted in Japan and elsewhere against his attending the award ceremony in Israel, including threats to boycott his work as a response against Israel's recent bombing of Gaza. Murakami chose to attend the ceremony, but gave a speech to the gathered Israeli dignitaries harshly criticizing Israeli policies. Murakami said, "Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us."
Murakami donated his €80,000 winnings from the Generalitat of Catalunya (won in 2011) to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami, and to those affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Accepting the award, he said in his speech that the situation at the Fukushima plant was "the second major nuclear disaster that the Japanese people have experienced... however, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands." According to Murakami, the Japanese people should have rejected nuclear power after having "learned through the sacrifice of the hibakusha just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/19/2014.)
Book Reviews
A book that...makes you marvel, reading it, at all the strange folds a single human brain can hold.... A grand, third-person, all encompassing meganovel. It is a book full of anger and violence and disaster and weird sex and strange new realities, a book that seems to want to hold all of Japan inside of it.... Murakami has established himself as the unofficial laureate of Japan—arguably its chief imaginative ambassador, in any medium, to the world: the primary source, for many millions of readers, of the texture and shape of his native country.... I was surprised to discover, after so many surprising books, that he managed to surprise me again.
Sam Anderson - New York Times Magazine
Murakami is clearly one of the most popular and admired novelists in the world today, a brilliant practitioner of serious, yet irresistibly engaging, literary fantasy.... Once you start reading 1Q84, you won’t want to do much else until you’ve finished it.... Murakami possesses many gifts, but chief among them is an almost preternatural gift for suspenseful storytelling.... Despite its great length, [his] novel is tightly plotted, without fat, and he knows how to make dialogue, even philosophical dialogue, exciting.... Murakami’s novels have been translated into a score of languages, but it would be hard to imagine that any of them could be better than the English versions by Jay Rubin, partnered here with Philip Gabriel.... There’s no question about the sheer enjoyability of this gigantic novel, both as an eerie thriller and as a moving love story.... I read the book in three days and have been thinking about it ever since.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post
[1Q84] is fundamentally different from its predecessors. We realize before long that it is a road. And what the writer has laid down is a yellow brick road. It passes over stretches of deadly desert, to be sure, through strands of somniferous poppies, and past creatures that hurl their heads, spattering us with spills of kinked enigma. But the destination draws us: We crave it, and the craving intensifies as we go along (unlike so many contemporary novels that are sampler menus with neither main course nor appetite to follow). More important, the travelers we encounter, odd and wildly disparate as they are, possess a quality hard to find in Murakami’s previous novels: a rounded, sometimes improbable humanity with as much allure as mystery. It is not just puzzlement they present, but puzzled tenderness; most of all in the two leading figures, Aomame and Tengo. Converging through all manner of subplot and peril, they arouse a desire in us that almost mirrors their own . . . Murakami makes us want to follow them; we are reluctant to relinquish them. Who would care about the yellow brick road without Scarecrow’s, Woodman’s and Lion’s freakiness and yearning? What is a road, particularly Murakami’s intricately convoluted road, without its human wayfarers?
Richard Eder - Boston Globe
Profound.... A multilayered narrative of loyalty and loss.... A fully articulated vision of a not-quite-nightmare world.... A big sprawling novel [that] achieves what is perhaps the primary function of literature: to reimagine, to reframe, the world.... At the center of [1Q84’s] reality...is the question of love, of how we find it and how we hold it, and the small fragile connections that sustain us, even (or especially) despite the odds.... This is a major development in Murakami’s writing.... A vision, and an act of the imagination.
David L. Ulin - Los Angeles Times
Fascinating.... A remarkable book in which outwardly simple sentences and situations snowball into a profound meditation on our own very real dystopian trappings.... One of those rare novels that clearly depict who we are now and also offer tantalizing clues as to where literature may be headed.... I’d be curious to know how Murakami’s yeoman translators Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel divided up the work...because there are no noticeable bumps in the pristine and deceptively simple prose.... More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world, and he’s not afraid to incorporate elements of surrealism or magical realism as tools to help us see ourselves for who we really are. 1Q84 is a tremendous accomplishment. It does every last blessed thing a masterpiece is supposed to—and a few things we never even knew to expect.
Andrew Ervin - San Francisco Chronicle
Do you miss the girl with the dragon tattoo? Do you long for the thrill of following her adventures again through three volumes of exciting, intelligent fiction? If so, I have good news for you. She’s got a sort of soul sister in one of the two main characters in Haruki Murakami’s wonderful novel 1Q84.... With more than enough narrative and intellectual heft to make it enjoyable for anyone with a taste for moving representations of modern consciousness in the magical realist mode, this story may easily carry you away to a new world and keep you there for a long time.... The deep and resonant plot...unfolds at a leisurely pace but in compelling fashion by luring us along with scenes of homicidal intrigue, literary intrigue, religious fanaticism, physical sex, metaphysical sex and asexual sex. And music.... Murakami’s main characters find themselves drawn toward each other as irresistibly, magnetically, hypnotically, soulfully and physically as any characters in Western fiction. Given the plain-spoken but appealing nature of the prose (translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel), most of you will feel that same power as an insinuating compulsion to read on, despite the enormous length, hoping against hope for a happy ending under a sky with either two moons or one. Two moons—two worlds—a girl with—900 pages—1Q84 is a gorgeous festival of words arranged for maximum comprehension and delicious satisfaction.
Alan Cheuse - NPR
1Q84 is one of those books that disappear in your hands, pulling you into its mysteries with such speed and skill that you don’t even notice as the hours tick by and the mountain of pages quietly shrinks.... I finished 1Q84 one fall evening, and when I set it down, baffled and in awe, I couldn’t help looking out the window to see if just the usual moon hung there or if a second orb had somehow joined it. It turned out that this magical novel did not actually alter reality. Even so, its enigmatic glow makes the world seem a little strange long after you turn the last page (Grade: A)
Rob Brunner - Entertainment Weekly
A 932-page Japanese novel set in Tokyo in which the words "sushi" and "sake"’ never appear but there are mentions of linguine and French wine, as well as Proust, Faye Dunaway, The Golden Bough, Duke Ellington, Macbeth, Churchill, Janaeek, Sonny and Cher, and, give the teasing title, George Orwell? Welcome to the world of Haruki Murakami.... A symmetrical and multi-layered yarn, as near to a 19th-century three-decker as it is possible to be.... The label of fantasy-realism has been stuck to it, but it actually has more of a Dickensian or Trollopian structure.... Explicit, yet subtle and dream-like, combining viciousness with whimsy...this is Murakami’s unflagging and masterful take on the desire and pursuit of the Whole.
Paul Theroux - Vanity Fair
Murakami’s new novel is the international literary giant at his uncanny, mesmerizing best.... The spell cast by Murakami’s fiction is formed in the tension between his grounded accounts of everyday life and the otherworldly forces that keep intruding on that life, propelling the characters into surreal adventures.... Translation is at the center of what Murakami does; not a translation from one tongue to another, but the translation of an inner world into this, the outer one. Very few writers speak the truths of that secret, inner universe more fluently.
Laura Miller - Salon
(Starred review.) Murakami’s trademark plainspoken oddness is on full display in this story of lapsed childhood friends Aomame and Tengo, now lonely adults in 1984 Tokyo, whose destinies may be curiously intertwined.... Murakami’s fans know that his focus has always been on the quiet strangeness of life, the hidden connections between perfect strangers, and the power of the non sequitur to reveal the associative strands that weave our modern world.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) At the core of this work is a spectacular love story about a girl and a boy who briefly held hands when they were both ten. That said, with the fiercely imaginative Murakami as author, the story’s exposition is gloriously labyrinthine. —Terry Hong
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Unquestionably Murakami’s most vividly imagined parallel world.... Gradually but inexorably, the tension builds.... When Murakami melds fantasy and realism, mystery and epic, it is no simple genre-bending exercise; rather, it is literary alchemy of the highest order. —Bill Ott
Booklist
(Starred review.) Ambitious, sprawling and thoroughly stunning . . . Orwellian dystopia, sci-fi, the modern world (terrorism, drugs, apathy, pop novels)—all blend in this dreamlike, strange and wholly unforgettable epic.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. 1Q84 is a vast and intricate novel. What are the pleasures of reading such a long work, of staying with the same characters over such a long period of time?
2. Murakami has said he is a fan of the mystery writer Elmore Leonard. What elements of the mystery genre does 1Q84 employ? How does Murakami keep readers guessing about what will happen next? What are some of the book’s most surprising moments?
3. Why would Murakami choose to set his story in 1984, the year that would serve as the title for George Orwell’s famous novel about the dangers of Big Brother?
4. The taxi driver in Chapter 1 warns Aomame that things are not what they seem, but he also tells her: "Don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always only one reality" (p. 9). Does this statement hold true throughout the novel? Is there only one reality, despite what appears to be a second reality that Aomame and Tengo enter?
5. Aomame tells Ayumi: "We think we’re choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everything's decided in advance and we pretend we’re making choices. Free will may be an illusion" (p. 192). Do the events in the novel seem fated or do the characters have free will?
6. When Tamaru bids goodbye to Aomame, he says: "If you do go somewhere far away and I never see you again, I know I’ll feel a little sad. You’re a rare sort of character, a type I’ve seldom come across before" (p. 885). What type of person is Aomame? What qualities make her extraordinary?
7. The dowager insists, and Aomame agrees, that the killing they do is completely justified, that the men whom they kill deserve to die, that the legal system can’t touch them, and that more women will be victims if these men aren’t stopped. Is it true that Aomame and the dowager have done nothing wrong? Or are they simply rationalizing their anger and the desire for vengeance that arises from their own personal histories?
8. Tengo realizes that rewriting Air Chrysalis is highly unethical and that Komatsu is asking him to participate in a scam that will very likely cause them both a great deal of trouble. Why does he agree to do it?
9. How does rewriting Air Chrysalis change Tengo as a writer? How does it affect the course of his life?
10. How do the events that occur on the night of the huge thunderstorm alter the fates of Aomame, Tengo, Fuka-Eri, and the dowager? Why do Aomame and the dowager let go of their anger after the storm?
11. At first, Ushikawa is a creepy, totally unlikable character. How does Murakami make him more sympathetic as the novel progresses? How do you respond to his death?
12. Near the end of the novel, Aomame declares: "From now on, things will be different. Nobody else’s will is going to control me anymore. From now on, I’m going to do things based on one principle alone: my own will" (p. 885). How does Aomame arrive at such a firm resolve? In what ways is the novel about overcoming the feeling of powerlessness that at various times paralyzes Aomame, Ayumi, Tengo, Fuka-Eri, and all the women who are abused by their husbands? What enables Aomame to come into her own power?
13. What does the novel as a whole seem to say about fringe religious groups? How does growing up in the Society of Witnesses affect Aomame? How does growing up in Sakigake cult affect Fuka-Eri? Does Leader appear to be a true spiritual master?
14. What is the appeal of the fantastic elements in the novel—the little people, maza and dohta, the air chrysalis, two moons in the sky, alternate worlds, etc.? What do they add to the story? In what ways does the novel question the nature of reality and the boundaries between what is possible and not possible?
15. What makes the love story of Tengo and Aomame so compelling? What obstacles must they overcome to be together? Why was the moment when Aomame grasped Tengo’s hand in grade school so significant?
16. In what ways does 1Q84 question and complicate conventional ideas of authorship? How does it blur the line between fictional reality and ordinary reality?
17. References to the song "Paper Moon" appear several times in the novel. How do those lyrics relate to 1Q84?
18. What role does belief play in the novel? Why does Murakami end the book with the image of Tengo and Aomame gazing at the moon until it becomes "nothing more than a gray paper moon, hanging in the sky" (p. 925)?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
& Sons
David Gilbert, 2013
Random House
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812984354
Summary
The panoramic, deeply affecting story of an iconic novelist, two interconnected families, and the heartbreaking truths that fiction can hide.
The funeral of Charles Henry Topping on Manhattan’s Upper East Side would have been a minor affair (his two-hundred-word obit in The New York Times notwithstanding) but for the presence of one particular mourner: the notoriously reclusive author A. N. Dyer, whose novel Ampersand stands as a classic of American teenage angst. But as Andrew Newbold Dyer delivers the eulogy for his oldest friend, he suffers a breakdown over the life he’s led and the people he’s hurt and the novel that will forever endure as his legacy. He must gather his three sons for the first time in many years—before it’s too late.
So begins a wild, transformative, heartbreaking week, as witnessed by Philip Topping, who, like his late father, finds himself caught up in the swirl of the Dyer family.
- First there’s son Richard, a struggling screenwriter and father, returning from self-imposed exile in California.
- In the middle lingers Jamie, settled in Brooklyn after his twenty-year mission of making documentaries about human suffering.
- And last is Andy, the half brother whose mysterious birth tore the Dyers apart seventeen years ago, now in New York on spring break, determined to lose his virginity before returning to the prestigious New England boarding school that inspired Ampersand.
But only when the real purpose of this reunion comes to light do these sons realize just how much is at stake, not only for their father but for themselves and three generations of their family.
In this daring feat of fiction, David Gilbert establishes himself as one of our most original, entertaining, and insightful authors. & Sons is that rarest of treasures: a startlingly imaginative novel about families and how they define us, and the choices we make when faced with our own mortality. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
David Gilbert is the author of the story collection Remote Feed, the novels The Normals (2004) and & Sons (2013). His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, and Bomb. He lives in New York with his wife and three children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A contemporary New York variation on The Brothers Karamazov, featuring a J. D. Salinger–like writer in the role of Father, and a protagonist who turns out to be as questionable a tour guide as the notoriously unreliable narrator of Ford Madox Ford’s classic The Good Soldier.... a big, ambitious book about fathers and sons, Oedipal envy and sibling rivalry, and the dynamics between art and life, talent and virtue. The novel is smart, funny, observant and...does a wonderful job of conjuring up its characters’ memories of growing up in New York City in layered, almost Proustian detail.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
A witty and ultimately tragic take on the perennial subject of how the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons. There are echoes of Turgenev here, to say nothing of Jonathan Franzen and John Irving. But the music is entirely Gilbert’s, and at the end of this bravura performance you'll want to give him a standing ovation.
New York Newsday
Six months from now, Gilbert’s should be among the half-dozen or so names cited by critics and serious readers when they’re asked who produced 2013’s most dazzlingly smart, fully realized works of fiction.
Washington Post
This great big novel is also infused with warmth and wisdom about what it means to be a family.
Boston Globe
[& Sons is] about the emotional bonds between fathers, sons and brothers—the overwhelming love that can’t be adequately expressed and the burden of unspoken expectations.... Gilbert is an inventive, emotionally perceptive writer.
Associated Press
& Sons is a work of pure genius...full of genuine poignancy and gut-punch pathos.... [Gilbert’s] acts of empathy—at its core, every author’s task—are so daring and truly moving that you’ll have to discover their slow and beautiful unfolding for yourselves.... This is a book to return to as the decades pass, and, as they pass, to pass down, so that the pages might accumulate many shades of ink and so aid other fathers in communicating and other sons in finding their fathers, in that wonderful, silent, deeply flawed way—and meanwhile, to take its place on the shelf of American classics.
Buffalo News
A thought-provoking and engrossing read.... I found myself falling into [the characters’] lives, caring for them, worrying for them and ultimately missing them as the novel came to a close.
Chicago Tribune
Very nearly a masterwork. Gilbert is an assured, versatile and often very funny writer.
Dallas Morning News
Gilbert has great narrative gifts and a wonderful eye for the madness of families and the madness of writers.... & Sons is a novel that creates an imaginary author who is so real and flawed that the reader feels he understands American literature itself a little better after reading his story.
Los Angeles Times
If you read only a few books this year, this one should be one of them.
Huffington Post
Clear the sand from your beach-book-overloaded mind for this smart, engrossing saga about a reclusive famous author and his late-life attempt to make amends to the many people he’s let down. Perfect for fans of Jonathan Franzen or Claire Messud.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] throwback literary novel.... Its rueful, poetic vision of faded WASP grandeur is frequently heartbreaking.
People
Throughout & Sons, Gilbert provides lengthy excerpts from [his] novel-within-a-novel, and, as far as the reader can tell, Ampersand is caustic, comic, and clever, like Gilbert’s own novel.... Gilbert has a rich theme, and plenty of talent. He has a wonderfully sharp eye for the emotional reticence of the men of A. N. Dyer’s generation and class, for the ways in which their more open, more voluble children must become expert readers of patriarchal gaps and silences, in order to make sense of what he finely calls "these heavily redacted men."... Gilbert often writes superbly, his sentences crisp, witty, and rightly weighted.... Some of [his metaphors] realign the visual world, asking us, as Nabokov’s best metaphors do, to estrange in order to reconnect.... Every page proposes something clever and well turned. Gilbert is bursting with little achievements.... This is a writer capable of something as beautifully simple, and achingly deep, as this description of Richard and Jamie, as they see their mother approaching them in the pub: "The brothers straightened, reshaped as sons."
James Wood - New Yorker
When someone uses the term "instant classic," I typically want to grab him and ask, "So this is, what, like the new Great Expectations? You sure about that?" But David Gilbert’s novel & Sons, seductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak, made me reconsider my stance on such a label... This is the book I’d most like to lug from one beach to another for the rest of summer, if only I hadn’t torn through it in two very happy days this spring.... Gilbert’s portrait of [New York City] and its literary set is as smart and savage in its way as Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, half love letter, half indictment, and wholly irresistible.
NPR
In her iconic essay Goodbye to All That, Joan Didion famously described New York City as "the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself."... David Gilbert’s layered & Sons probes that nexus from the inside, limning the emotional decay of two prominent Manhattan families and literary masterpiece that cages them.... Vivid, inventive.
Oprah Magazine
A Franzenish portrait of a biting, aging New York writer, David Gilbert’s novel is perceptive, witty, and—like all great books about remote fathers and their sons—prone to leaving male readers either cursing or calling their dads
New York Magazine
Gilbert’s finely wrought prose...teems with elaborate word plays and tests the reader’s perceptiveness at every turn.
Vanity Fair
If the stylish brilliance of recent novels by Rachel Kushner, Jess Walter, and Peter Heller has been hinting at a new golden age of American prose, then David Gilbert’s ambitious, sprawling, and altogether masterful second novel, & Sons, confirms it.... By turns challenging and multilayered, weird and hilarious...& Sons is more than worth the effort.
Daily Beast
Brilliant...weaves together the frayed threads of fame, fatherhood, family and friendship into a meditation on the blessing and curse of creativity.... Thoughtful, farcical, acerbic and original, Gilbert’s crisp writing and sinuous mind could grab and hold any reader
Bloomberg
The book’s central figure is an aging, Salinger-esque writer, A. N. Dyer, who, as his health declines, grapples with complexities involving family, friendships and his influential life’s work. Gilbert could have dealt with Dyer’s books as a necessary afterthought, tossing off some titles and quickly setting down to the real business of regret and death and endlessly messy human relationships. Instead, Gilbert really got into it. & Sons conjures a career’s worth of drool-worthy fictional fiction that’s so convincingly evoked, I almost recall writing a paper on it in freshman English class.
New York Times Magazine
[A] big, rich book.... With wit and heart, Gilbert illuminates the complicated ways that fathers and sons misunderstand, disappoint, and love one another and how their behavior affects the women in their lives.
Real Simple
& Sons is an often funny, always elegant, lingering gaze back at a world in which writers are still gods at the very center of culture.
Esquire
The opening scene of Gilbert’s finely textured new novel isn’t supposed to be a puffed-up affair, but it might as well be: A.N. Dyer, one of New York’s hermetic literary giants, is scheduled to deliver the eulogy for his childhood friend Charlie Topping. What follows...is a vivid and often amusing portrait of the New York’s Upper East Side literary scene, as relayed by the dearly departed’s son, Philip.... There’s a lot to digest and reflect on in this ambitious and crowded narrative—the complicated bond between fathers and sons, the illusive nature of success and the price of fame.
Publishers Weekly
This large-scale novel explores the dysfunctional family of A.N. Dyer, a famous New York writer who recalls J.D. Salinger.... The narrator is the son of Dyer's deceased friend, a mysterious, creepy character who seems to harbor a grudge against Dyer's family. Letters between Dyer and the narrator's father...reveal behavior by Dyer that has had tragic consequences. Vedict: Like Jonathan Franzen, Gilbert works on an expansive canvas as he examines the tragedies and comedies of a modern American family.—James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal
[C]harming, often funny... [with] the "& sons" of the title, suggesting that literature might be a family business, but more pointedly that, in a household run with distant dictatorial benevolence, as if in a company, there's going to be trouble. So it is with [famous author A.N.] Dyer's boys, gathered as Dad feels his own mortality approaching, who are a hot mess of failure coupled with ambition.... Gilbert tantalizes with a big question: Will Dad, before he kicks the bucket, share some of his fortunes in any sense other than the monetary and bring his sons into the fold? Read on for the answer, which takes its time, most enjoyably, to unfold.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. First of all, thank you for reading the book. Want to get that out of the way. A big thanks. One of the scariest things a person can tell me is, Oh, hey, I’m reading your book. It makes me want to crawl directly into the nearest hole. Funny choice of career. Here I’ve published a book with a big time publisher—dream come true—and the knowledge that someone might actually read my book makes me cringe to the point of splitting in two. I’m cringing now. The other scary thing you can tell me is, Oh, hey, I read your book, particularly if you tweak the verb with a raised eyebrow, like a hairy umlaut. I might smile in return, and I might say, Oh Great, that’s great, but in reality I’m performing a private Seppuku ceremony, a thousand doubts the blade. Anyway, discuss vis-a-vis A.N. Dyer and ask yourself, Why would anyone want to be a writer?
2. It took me six years to write this book, which seems a ridiculous amount of time. I mean, it’s a kind of a long book, but six years long? At best three years, maybe three and a half while also maintaining a full time gig with Doctors Without Borders. Now A.N. Dyer hasn’t written a truly new book in something like twenty years (forgive the vagueness, but it’s been a year since I actually read this book), why do you think he’s stopped writing? I have my ideas, obviously. I think it has something to do with the break-up of his marriage—duh—but also with the birth of his third son, the young Andy. Has this boy perhaps taken on the role of fiction? What is Andy’s relationship with fiction in terms of his relationship with his father? Did I just answer my own question? I don’t think I’m very good at this.
3. You know when you go to the theater and you read the Playbill and there are those bios for the actors and the director and the playwright – I love reading those bios – did you know that those bios are actually written by the actors and the director and the playwright? You probably did, but from some reason I didn’t, or not until maybe ten years ago. I just assumed there was a national bio database, very official, probably housed in a suburb of D.C., that fact checked and sourced and confirmed all this professional information. Yes, yes, Patty St. John did indeed play Fastrada in the Tacoma Players 2007 production of Pippin. It wasn’t until I started seeing those personalized messages that suddenly became popular—Ms. St. John would like to express her gratitude to her Chihuahua Chekov for teaching her how to be human—that I realized, Wait a sec, these things are actually self-constructed. At first I was shocked. It seemed dubious. And kind of braggy too. How much of this is truly true? But then I found myself digging into these credits, not only to suss out a career but also to suss out a person, and suddenly a deeper appreciation began to emerge from those handmade bios. A trajectory. I mean, how do we compose our lives for public consumption? What do we say? And where are the divergences, the betraying tells? Who is composing who? Or is it whom? And does David Gilbert live in New York City or does he live in Brooklyn or in Queens? Is that a question?
4. I don’t normally like books about writers. A writer writing about a writer writing, well, that sentence alone is tedious. I want to read about someone who does something. Like I wish someone would write the great American novel about scuba diving. That would be cool. Shipwrecks. Sharks. Those giant clams and your foot is suddenly caught. There has to be treasure too. We as a nation deserve a fabulous piece of scuba diving literature. But another book about a writer? And an old privileged white male writer at that? I almost feel as if I should apologize. That said, what interested me was the tension between fiction and life and how we twist our own stories to suit our will. I remember in 5th grade English class the teacher mentioning in Huck Finn the theme of Appearance Versus Reality, underlined twice on the chalkboard, and I was blown away by the notion—yes, yes, appearance versus reality! It was my Matrix moment. My teenage anthem. Like Jake with Chinatown, it explained all things without explaining a thing. It is, after all, the mother of all themes and introduces by far the most interesting element of any decent piece of writing, the subtext. So: what is the subtext of & Sons? Sorry, that’s a terrible question.
5. Okay, how about this: who is telling the story? And how is he telling the story? Is this an act of autobiography or an act of fiction and is there a difference between the two? I mean, we have the one narrator and then we have each chapter divided into three separate character-driven parts (and here I have to acknowledge Richard Powers since I essentially stole that structure from him ((a really useful structure by the way, if you’re ever looking for structure)), and Philip Roth’s Zuckerman books in the way Zuckerman jumps into other people’s heads yet always remains distinctly individual). I guess the question is: how good a writer is Philip Topping? Also, a follow-up: what writer is the biographer of your life? (For me, it’s Charles Schulz.)
6. Why all the Wizard of Oz allusions? Seriously. I think a lot of readers assume that the writer has relative control of his/her text but I can tell you that that simply is not true. I mean, that’s not true either, and no need to bring up Derrida or any of the deconstructionists, please God no, though during the Eighties I used to say Paul-De-Man instead of You’re Da Man (and got just as many laughs), but in all seriousness, I wrote a draft of this book and looked over it and saw all of these Wizard of Oz references, which I then burnished since it seemed so odd and unexpected and must mean something. So tell me about Dorothy? And Kansas and Oz? Who is the Wicked Witch?
7. Is this tedious?
8. Why did I write this book? Finally a question for me. I wrote this book because I have a son and a father and I myself am a son and a father and this funhouse mirror effect has been interesting, to say the least. Raising children is an act of love as well as an act of fiction in which the characters slowly free themselves from the supposed author. I remember being scared about having a boy. There seemed so much pressure involved. How would I teach someone how to be a man when I had no idea how to be a man myself? My own father is a wonderful guy, very impressive, an intimidating figure to me growing up as well as bit distant. He himself was the product of a strict family, raised by a step-father after his own father’s early death. Anyway, my Dad had a successful career in banking, and I remember when I was in my early thirties and just starting my own family, I was at an event and my father had to get up and say a few words and he was as always confident and charming, a commanding presence, and this old friend of his was sitting next to me and she leaned over and said,
It really is amazing, seeing your dad in these situations, so comfortable and at ease, considering how painfully shy he was as a boy. I mean, he could barely look you in the eye and had a bit of stammer. Amazing, the transformation.
Now this surprised me. I’ve always known him as a reserved and self-contained man, a bit unknowable, but never as a shy and awkward boy, and so I remember imagining: what if I could meet him when he was younger, say seventeen, how would my impressions change? That was the impetus behind & Sons. Hence this follow-up question: What if you could meet your father when he was five, or ten, or fifteen, at the height of his vulnerability? How would your feelings for the man change? We all reinvent ourselves with our children.
8. Let’s talk about the book within the book, Ampersand. Go ahead, I’m listening.
9. Okay, the women in the book—what women, I know. But hey, the book’s called & Sons, what did you expect? That said, there are women, in particular Isabel Dyer and Eleanor Topping, and they do play their part. How do these women function within this world of boys (notice I didn’t use the word men)? Does it ring true? My mother disagrees. I really wanted to make Richard’s wife Candy a bigger character and there was a scene in an early outline where she bonded with A.N. Dyer (much to the frustration of Richard), but I couldn’t quite find the narrative space for its inclusion. I’m curious, did I get away with my impersonation of Alice Munro in that Isabel chapter? I’m a fan of her stories and I loved trying to write in her particular style, not just overtly but covertly (and setting some action on a train). That said, is there a deeper purpose to my impersonation? What does it say about the fluid nature of authorship?
10. The novel has a prologue and an epilogue, though thankfully not tagged as prologue and epilogue since I myself always skip prologues and epilogues. I’ve never understood their purpose. Just start the book and end the book. I’ve never read a prologue and said, Wow, now that’s a great prologue. And an epilogue is like that awkward encounter with a friend after you say goodbye and depart down the street in the same direction. Oh, yeah, hay (awkward laugh). That said, I am guilty of writing a prologue and epilogue (italicized, no less). For me to stoop to this shame, there must be a reason…I hope.
11. Does Phillip Topping work as a narrator? I mean, yeah, he’s kind of unreliable, (unreliable narrator is like subtext 101), but do you believe him? I know, I know, I just said he’s unreliable, but how much of what he says is believable. The same with A.N. Dyer. I know, I know, A.N. Dyer is being filtered through Phillip, his biggest fan, who at the same time is trying to channel A.N. Dyer—so many layers of fiction. I guess the question is: who is the dog and who is the tail?
12. Do you like the letters? Regardless, they look great. The Random House interior designers did an incredible job to create that sense of reality. That was very important to me, to maintain a tight grip on the real, just like all the locations in New York and beyond are very real places, the same with the schools. That reality was key. Why do you think I cared so much? Sometimes I think of A.N. Dyer as a spider who has spun his web in the corner of these realities, a beautiful and intricate construction, lovely to behold, and not once does he think of the poor creatures who blindly fly into these traps and find themselves stuck and immobilized, a sudden character in one of his dramas. What stories do you tell yourself about your own life that you know are untrue, those exaggerations that have become fact? How of much of who were are is what we steal? And if fiction can bring a family together, do we care about the truth?
13. If you called someone up and told them to come find you in front of your favorite work of art, where would you be standing?
14. With Richard in the beginning, when he’s at the movie studio and feels as if his dreams are about to come true, Richard playing the fantasy forward and then discovering, too late for his ego, that he has misread the situation, can you relate to this mortifying situation? I certainly can. I once thought a girl was madly in love with me but actually she was in love with my best friend—wait, is that me or a movie I saw? How much of our memory is collage?
15. Dream Snap is an anagram of Ampersand? Do those kinds of games interest you? If they do, play on.
16. When I started & Sons I wrote a single word on a Post-It note and stuck it to the wall in front of my desk. What was that word? Five dollars to anyone who guesses right.
(Questions from author's website.)
The Girl You Left Behind
Jojo Moyes, 2013
Pamela Dorman Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670026616
Summary
A spellbinding love story of two women separated by a century but united in their determination to fight for what they love most
Jojo Moyes’s bestseller, Me Before You, catapulted her to wide critical acclaim and has struck a chord with readers everywhere. Moyes returns with another irresistible heartbreaker that asks, “Whatever happened to the girl you left behind?”
France, 1916: Artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his young wife, Sophie, to fight at the front. When their small town falls to the Germans in the midst of World War I, Edouard’s portrait of Sophie draws the eye of the new Kommandant. As the officer’s dangerous obsession deepens, Sophie will risk everything—her family, her reputation, and her life—to see her husband again.
Almost a century later, Sophie’s portrait is given to Liv Halston by her young husband shortly before his sudden death. A chance encounter reveals the painting’s true worth, and a battle begins for who its legitimate owner is—putting Liv’s belief in what is right to the ultimate test.
Like Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress and Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key, The Girl You Left Behind is a breathtaking story of love, loss, and sacrifice told with Moyes’s signature ability to capture our hearts with every turn of the page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., London University
• Awards—Romantic Novel of the year (twice)
• Currently—lives in Essex, England
Jojo Moyes is a British journalist and the author of 10 novels published from 2002 to the present. She studied at Royal Holloway, University of London and Bedford New College, London University.
In 1992 she won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University, London. She subsequently worked for The Independent for the next 10 years (except for one year, when she worked in Hong Kong for the Sunday Morning Post) in various roles, becoming Assistant News Editor in 1988. In 2002 she became the newspaper's Arts and Media Correspondent.
Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her first book Sheltering Rain was published. She is most well known for her later novels, The Last Letter From Your Lover (2010), Me Before You (2012), and The Girl You Left Behind ( 2013), all of which were received with wide critical accalim.
She is one of only a few authors to have won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award twice—in 2004 for Foreign Fruit and in 2011 for The Last Letter From Your Lover. She continues to write articles for The Daily Telegraph.
Moyes lives on a farm in Saffron Walden, Essex with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [E]nchanting...entwines two love stories set 90 years apart, connected by a painting called The Girl You Left Behind. In 1916, 22-year-old Sophie Lefevre struggles against a new German commandant...in her occupied village in northern France.... Jumping ahead to London in 2006, the story turns to 32-year-old Liv Halston, whose architect husband David bought Sophie’s painting.... An unfortunate coincidence twists the knife deeper, and Liv is forced to fight tooth and nail for what she has come to love most in the world. Lovely and wry, Moyes’s newest is captivating and bittersweet.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Moyes has created a riveting depiction of a wartime occupation that has mostly faded from memory. Liv and Sophie are so real in their faults, passion, and bravery that the reader is swept along right to the end. This one is hard to put down
Library Journal
Moyes’ latest is made heartwarming, thanks to the vibrancy of its main characters, both of whom will keep readers on their toes with their chemistry and witty repartee....humorous and romantic through and through.
Booklist
Moyes’ twisting, turning, heartbreaking novel raises provocative moral questions while developing a truly unique relationship between two people brought together by chance. With shades of David Nicholls’ beloved One Day, Me Before You is the kind of book you simply can’t put down—even when you realize you don’t want to see it end.... A big-hearted, beautifully written story that teaches us it is never too late to truly start living.
BookPage
The newest novel by Moyes (Me Before You, 2012, etc.) shares its title with a fictional painting that serves as catalyst in linking two loves stories, one set in occupied France during World War I, the other in 21st-century London. In a French village in 1916, Sophie is helping the family while her husband, Edouard, an artist who studied with Matisse, is off fighting.... Cut to 2006 and....Edouard's descendants recently hired [Paul] to find the painting.... Moyes is a born storyteller who makes it impossible not to care about her heroines.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At one point, the Kommandant asks Sophie if they can just “be two people” (p. 72). What did you make of this—did you ever find yourself sympathizing with the Kommandant or any of the German soldiers? Is there room for sympathy on both sides?
2. Does Edouard’s portrait of Sophie capture who she already was or who she had the potential to become?
3. Before you knew the truth about Liliane Bethune, how did you feel about the treatment she received at the hands of the other villagers?
4. Sophie strikes a deal with the Kommandant in hopes that he, in turn, will reunite her with Edouard. Would you be willing to make a similar trade? Would most men appreciate Sophie’s sacrifice?
5. Unlike Helene, Aurelien angrily condemns Sophie’s relationship with the Kommandant. Why do you think Aurelien reacted as he did?
6. Have you ever experienced real hunger? If you were a French villager in St. Peronne, how far might you go in order to feed yourself and your loved ones?
7. How did you think Sophie’s story would end? Were you surprised by what Liv uncovered?
8. When Liv takes a group of underprivileged students on a tour of Conaghy Securities, most of them had never considered architecture as an art form. Why is this type of cultural exposure important for young people of all backgrounds?
9. Liv feels that she cannot go on without the portrait of Sophie—it is that important to her. Do you think a material object should hold such significance? Have you ever loved a piece of art or another object so much that you couldn’t bear to part with it?
10. Do you think the present–day Lefevre family’s interest in the financial worth of The Girl You Left Behind—and their apparent lack of interest in its beauty—made their claim any less worthy?
11. Why does Liv ultimately choose to try to save the painting rather than her home? What would you have done in her position?
12. Is Paul right to fear that Liv would eventually resent him for the loss of the painting?
13. In general, if a stolen artwork is legally acquired by its current owner, whose claim is more legitimate: the new owner or the original owner and his or her descendants? Should there be a statute of limitations? What if the current owner is a museum?
(Questions issued by publisher.)