Ten Things I've Learnt About Love
Sarah Butler, 2013
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594205330
Summary
About to turn thirty, Alice is the youngest of three daughters, and the black sheep of her family. Drawn to traveling in far-flung and often dangerous countries, she has never enjoyed the closeness with her father that her two older sisters have and has eschewed their more conventional career paths.
She has left behind a failed relationship in London with the man she thought she might marry and is late to hear the news that her father is dying. She returns to the family home only just in time to say good-bye.
Daniel is called many things—"tramp," "bum," "lost." He hasn't had a roof over his head for almost thirty years, but he once had a steady job and a passionate love affair with a woman he’s never forgotten. To him, the city of London has come to be like home in a way that no bricks and mortar dwelling ever was.
He makes sculptures out of the objects he finds on his walks throughout the city—bits of string and scraps of paper, a child’s hair tie, and a lost earring—and experiences synesthesia, a neurological condition which causes him to see words and individual letters of the alphabet as colors. But as he approaches his sixties his health is faltering, and he is kept alive by the knowledge of one thing—that he has a daughter somewhere in the world whom he has never been able to find.
A searching and inventive debut, Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is a story about finding love in unexpected places, about rootlessness and homecoming, and the power of the ties that bind. It announces Sarah Butler as a major new talent for telling stories that are heart-wrenching, page-turning, and unforgettable. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979
• Where—UK
• Education—B.A., M.A., Cambridge University; M.A., University of
East Anglia; M.S., University of London (current student)
• Currently—lives in Manchester and London, England, UK
Sarah Butler, author of Ten Things I've Learnt About Love, also runs Urban Word, a UK consultancy to develop literature and arts projects which explore and question our relationship to place. She has been writer in residence on the Central Line, the Greenwich Peninsula, and at Great Ormond Street Hospital (all in the UK), and has taught creative writing for the British Council in Kuala Lumpur. Ten Things I've Learnt About Love, her first novel, is published in twelve languages around the world. (Adapted from the publisher and Urban Word. Retrieved 7/25/2013.)
Book Reviews
Butler's lists have a surprising emotional resonance. They represent her two narrators' anguished and perhaps futile efforts to organize the sad and turbulent parts of life in an intrinsically chaotic city called London, circa right about now. And they are only the surface layer of a carefully structured story that invites and even requires puzzle-solving. This is a novel deeply committed to unfinishedness—the characters speak in sentences that trail off, plot points are left to be guessed at or pieced together. As a literary technique, the elliptical style is enormously effective, keeping the narrative in a constant, trembling state of tension, which gives the lists a grounding effect. This and the charming, gritty and appropriately damp view of London nearly devoid of any Cool Britiannia elements make for a novel that often evokes strong feeling.
Maria Russo - New York Times Book Review
Graceful and subtle...love, in all its shape-shifting complexity, is at the core of this novel; that and the consequences—good and bad—of keeping secrets.... The shifting and intricate dynamics of family life, and the vertiginously painful feelings of loss induced by relationship breakdown and bereavement, are written with imaginative precision. This is a thought- as well as emotion-provoking novel.... It also sparkles with hope.
Lisa Gee - Independent (UK)
It’s obvious from pretty early on where this is heading and Sarah Butler doesn’t try to disguise that, concentrating instead on the subtle and difficult interactions of family...life, before finding another increasingly suspenseful plot thread that has the reader racing towards the end. It all adds up to a moving and satisfying debut.
John Harding - Daily Mail (UK)
This poignant novel about fathers and daughters, homecoming and restlessness, is also a love letter to London… Butler has viewed the city in all its weathers and moods, and this shines through on every page. Equally elegant are her observations of the emotional turmoil of her main characters as they pace the capital’s highways and byways, united by a secret… A moving, life-affirming debut.
Marie Claire (UK)
Alice...sets out to travel the world, wandering from place to place until her sisters summon her home because their father is dying of pancreatic cancer. Alice is adrift and unsettled, unable to communicate her love to her father before he dies... [She] alternates narration with Daniel, a 60-year old homeless man whose heart troubles are causing him to revisit his past. The relationship they build is unusual, and Butler’s elegant prose...makes this a moving debut.
Publishers Weekly
Daniel and Alice, a father and daughter who have never met, tell their stories in alternating chapters, each beginning with a quirky list reflecting its narrator's current state of mind. Daniel lives on the street, having lost his way in life.... Alice, who knows nothing of Daniel, has been called home to...the bedside of the father who raised her and...sets Alice off on a reexamination of her relationship with her father and disapproving older sisters.... Butler's poignant first novel has a distinct sense of place and sympathetic characters who have much in common. —Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
Ten Things I've Learnt About Love explores the intricacies of familial relationships and what an individual is willing to sacrifice to preserve the relationships and the people in his or her life. Combining detailed storytelling with character-revealing lists of 10 things her protagonists have learned to treasure, Butler establishes herself as a talent to watch.
Carla Jean Whitley - Bookpage
Butler's graceful debut explores life's heartbreaks, unexpected family bonds, and the search for home.... [The] narrative's controlled suspense and unanswered questions make for a satisfying tale.
Booklist
The top 10 lists strewn throughout point to increasingly somber subjects: a mother's early death, infidelity, a father's death from cancer, and elder sisters who are both fervent and ambivalent in their affection for their much younger sibling, protagonist Alice.... [I]n alternating sections, Daniel, a homeless man, scours London for the daughter he fathered during a long-ago affair but has never met.... All he knows is that the woman he is searching for might have red hair, like her mother, and is named Alice.... Spare language and an atmosphere of foreboding will keep readers on tenterhooks. Whimsy and pathos, artfully melded.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is the function of the lists Alice and Daniel make? How do they shape your reading of the chapters?
2. How does Daniel's understanding of the city differ from Alice's? What does it mean to each of them to be "at home" there?
3. What is the significance of the quote from John Clare that opens the novel?
4. How do you think Alice's personality has been formed by her relationships with Cee and Tilly?
5. How have the choices that Cee and Tilly made about starting their own families differed from Alice's?
6. Why do you think Daniel has not sought help to improve his situation?
7. Why does Daniel make sculptures out of found objects?
8. Discuss the dynamics of Kal and Alice's relationship. Why have they come to such an impasse?
9. What do you think of Daniel's decision not to reveal the truth of his past to Alice? Why does he decide against doing so?
What do you think Alice has learned about herself by the end of the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Wolves of Andover
Kathleen Kent, 2010
Little, Brown & Co.
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316068628
Summary
In the harsh wilderness of colonial Massachusetts, Martha Allen works as a servant in her cousin's household, taking charge and locking wills with everyone. Thomas Carrier labors for the family and is known both for his immense strength and size and mysterious past.
The two begin a courtship that suits their independent natures, with Thomas slowly revealing the story of his part in the English Civil War. But in the rugged new world they inhabit, danger is ever present, whether it be from the assassins sent from London to kill the executioner of Charles I or the wolves—in many forms—who hunt for blood.
A love story and a tale of courage, The Wolves of Andover confirms Kathleen Kent's ability to craft powerful stories of family from colonial history. (From the publisher.)
This book is Kent's prequel to The Heretic's Daughter.
Author Bio
Kathleen Kent is a tenth-generation descendant of Martha Carrier. She lives in Dallas with her husband and son. The Heretic's Daughter is her first novel;The Wolves of Andover, its prequel, is her second.
Book Reviews
Martha Allen has been obliged to take residence in her cousin's New England Home as a servant. She meets strong-willed Welshman Thomas Carrier who served as a soldier in the English Civil War. As their friendship blossoms consequences from Thomas's actions back in England catch up with him and both their lives are put in grave danger. (Pick of the Paperbacks.)
Daily Express (UK)
A servant girl in New England forges an unlikely bond with the suspected murderer of Charles I (Pick of the Paperbacks review.)
Times (UK)
Kent doesn't disappoint...taking readers back to Massachusetts before the Salem witch trials as strong-willed 23-year-old Martha Allen falls in love with strong-armed hired hand Thomas Carrier.... Kent brings colonial America to life by poking into its dark corners and finding its emotional and personal underpinnings.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he author combines harsh images of early Colonial life with a well-paced story and careful details. The result is a taut narrative that will satisfy historical fiction lovers. —Anna Karras Nelson, Collier Cty. P.L., Naples, FL
Library Journal
This prequel to Kent’s The Heretic’s Daughter (2008) focuses on the early life of outspoken, tart-tongued Martha Allen, from whom the author is descended.... An example of the currently popular genre-blender, the book is part historical fiction, part romance, and part suspense. Skillfully meshing these various elements, the author’s latest effort is bound to please fans of each. —Michael Cart
Booklist
Kent tells the fictionalized story of her ancestor Martha Carrier's courtship with her future husband years before she became a victim of the Salem Witch Trials.... Kent has more fun with the Londoners...than her somewhat morose ancestors, but she lovingly captures their daily grind and brings looming dangers, whether man or beast, to harrowing life.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What must it be like for Martha, a strong, independent woman, to be a servant in her cousin’s home?
2. Why is Martha so determined to gain the upper hand in her early dealings with Thomas and John?
3. Giving birth in the early colonies was often dangerous. Discuss what it must have been like for a woman at that time to be pregnant, lacking a proper diet and adequate medical care. Patience often behaves in a weak and ineffectual way. Does knowing about the perils of childbirth that she faced make you feel more compassion for her?
4. Just before Martha’s encounter with the wolves, she remembers a poem recited by an elderly great-aunt. The last line is "it is not wolf, but man, and brings a maiden’s death" (page 53). Discuss what you think that passage means.
5. Wolves were a real threat in the early colonial wilderness. What do the wolves foreshadow beyond the coming of the assassins?
6. Martha carries a dark secret. At what point do you think Thomas intuits her painful past experiences?
7. When Martha discovers the scroll inside Thomas’s trunk, a small piece of wood falls to the floor and "an aversion as strong as anything she had ever felt unfurled its way down her spine" (page 141). Discuss whether you believe some people have the ability to sense past events through physical objects.
8. In chapter 12, Brudloe tells the miller Asa Rogers that it can’t be difficult to track down one colonial lout—meaning Thomas. The miller answers, "To find men of stature in this place, in this hard wilderness, one has only to stand on a Boston wharf and look westwards" (page 148). Discuss the events that helped make the colonists so capable.
9. Martha’s father tells her that he did not raise her to be liked, but rather to be "reckoned with" (page 266). What do you think he means?
10. Often we think of the New World colonies as established on the eve of the American Revolution. History shows, however, that independent thought and action took root much earlier. Discuss ways in which the early spy rings of the colonial settlers aided the colonists’ growing independence.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
LitClub: The Ladies of Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia
LIKE SO MANY book clubs, this group began with a couple of friends who enjoyed reading. Let's do something a little more formal, they thought—and here they are!
When did you decide to become The Ladies of Atlanta?
It was back in 2012 when a couple of us started planning. We invited other ladies who liked to read, and it's continued to grow from there.
So how many members now?
We've got 14 in all. But we continue to invite new people in on a regular basis.
So let's talk about your books.
We're pretty new, so here's what we've read so far:
Power and Beauty
Trouble and Triumph
In Search of Satisfaction
Don't Say a Word
Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl
Gods and Kings
Song of Redemption
As you can see, our book club selections reach across genre, authors and historical periods—fiction and nonfiction.
Your members are doing more reading on Kindles.
The Kindle has enriched our discussions and understanding of our readings. For example, during our meeting for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, we were able to do on-the-spot research—viewing photos of the author and her hometown in North Carolina, as well as verifying the existence of her slave holder.
You mentioned that you "tend to have lively conversations." What makes them so much fun?
When we disagree—those are the best. We might be discussing the evolution of a character or realistic themes of literature. The really intense discussions allow us to grow and help us see other view points.
Where do you meet?
Our meetings are held in various places around the metro area of Atlanta—in homes and restaurants. The venue is limited only by the creativity of the hostess.
The hostess has flexibility to plan the meal according to her taste. We have ordered meals and prepared meals; even when we meet in a restaurant, the venue is often chosen based on a theme relevant to the book.
Your group has a Facebook page, right?
Yes. We use it to post our book selections so members can check during the month and keep abreast of current events. Anyone interested can find us through Facebook's search using in "The Ladies Book Club of Atlanta"... or email us at
How do you choose your books?
We select our books by group vote at meetings. Books are suggested by members or by web sites such as Litlovers.
Generally, how would you describe your club and its members?
We are a group of women who have a shared love of reading, and we formed a book club to enjoy fellowship, break bread, socialize and discuss the chosen reading selections. We are diverse in background and experiences which gives us insight into various aspects of literature and enriches the discussions. We encourage new members to join—the only requirement is a commitment to participate actively in the group.
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman, 2012 (U.S., 2014)
Atria Books
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476738024
Summary
In this bestselling and delightfully quirky debut novel from Sweden, a grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Fredrik Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful and charming exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1981
• Raised—Helsingborg, Sweden
• Education—no degree
• Currently—Stockholm
Fredrik Backman, Swedish author, journalist, and blogger, was voted Sweden's most successful author in 2013.
Backman grew up in Helsingborg, studied comparative religion but dropped out and became a truck driver instead. When the free newspaper Xtra was launched in 2006, the owner reached out to Backman, then still a truck driver, to write for the paper. After a test article, he continued to write columns for Xtra
In spring 2007, he began writing for Moore Magazine in Stockholm, a year-and-a-half later he began freelancing, and in 2012 he became a writer for the Metro. About his move to writing, Backman said...
I write things. Before I did that I had a real job, but then I happened to come across some information saying there were people out there willing to pay people just to write things about other people, and I thought "surely this must be better than working." And it was, it really was. Not to mention the fact that I can sit down for a living now, which has been great for my major interest in cheese-eating. (From his literary agent's website.)
Backman married in 2009 and became a father the following year. He blogged about preparations for his wedding in "The Wedding Blog" and about becoming a father on "Someone's Dad" blog. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, he wrote the Olympic blog for the Magazine Cafe website and has continued as a permanent blogger for the site.
In 2012, Backman debuted as an author, publishing two books on the same day: a novel, A Man Called Ove (U.S. release in 2014), and a work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World. His second novel, My Grandmother Sent Me to Tell You She's Sorry, came out in 2013 (U.S. release in 2015). (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher. Retrieved 7/23/2014.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [A]s time passes, [the] characters slowly weave themselves into his life, offering Ove a chance at rebirth. The debut novel...is a fuzzy crowd-pleaser that serves up laughs to accompany a thoughtful reflection on loss and love. Though Ove’s antics occasionally feel repetitive, the author writes with winning charm.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Readers seeking feel-good tales with a message will rave about the rantings of this solitary old man with a singular outlook. If there was an award for ''Most Charming Book of the Year,'' this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down.
Booklist
[A] charming debut. The book...takes its time revealing that [its] dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold.... [T]he narration can veer toward the preachy or overly pat, but wry descriptions, excellent pacing and the juxtaposition of Ove’s attitude with his deeds add plenty of punch to balance out any pathos.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does the opening scene, in which Ove attempts to purchase a computer, succinctly express the main points of Ove’s ongoing battle with the stupidities of the modern world?
2. Ove loves things that have a purpose, that are useful. How does this worldview fail him when he believes himself to be useless? How is he convinced that he can still be useful?
3. As readers, we get to know Ove slowly, with his past only being revealed piece by piece. What surprised you about Ove’s past? Why do you think the author revealed Ove’s past the way that he did?
4. We all know our own grumpy old men. How do Ove’s core values lead him to appear as such a cranky old coot, when he is in fact nothing of the sort? Which of these values do you agree or disagree with?
5. Although Ove has some major "disagreements" with the way the world turned out, there are some undeniable advantages to the modernization he finds so hollow. How do these advantages improve Ove’s life, even if he can’t admit it?
6. Parveneh’s perspective on life, as radically different from Ove’s as it is, eventually succeeds in breaking Ove out of his shell, even if she can’t change his feelings about Saabs. How does her brash, extroverted attitude manage to somehow be both rude and helpful?
7. Ove strives to be “as little unlike his father as possible.” Although this emulation provides much of the strength that helps Ove persevere through a difficult life, it also has some disadvantages. What are some of the ways that Ove grows into a new way of thinking over the course of the book?
8. Ove is a believer in the value of routine—how can following a routine be both comforting and stultifying? How can we balance routine and spontaneity? Should we? Or is there sense in eating sausage and potatoes your whole life?
9. The truism “it takes a village to raise a child” has some resonance with A Man Called Ove. How does the eclectic cast of posers, suits, deadbeats, and teens each help Ove in their own way?
10. Although we all identify with Ove to some extent, especially by the end of the story, we certainly also have our differences with him. Which of the supporting cast (Parveneh, Jimmy, the Lanky One, Anita) did you find yourself identifying with most?
11. What did you make of Ove’s ongoing battle with the bureaucracies that persist in getting in his way? Is Ove’s true fight with the various ruling bodies, or are they stand-ins, scapegoats, for something else?
12. On page 113, after a younger Ove punches Tom, the author reflects: "A time like that comes for all men, when they choose what sort of men they want to be." Do you agree with this sentiment, especially in this context? How does the book deal with varying ideas of masculinity?
13. On page 246, the author muses that when people don’t share sorrow, it can drive them apart. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?
14. What do you think of Ove’s relationship with the mangy cat he adopts? What does the cat allow him to express that he couldn’t otherwise say?
15. On Ove and Sonja’s trip to Spain, Ove spends his time helping the locals and fixing things. How does Ove the “hero” compare and contrast to his behavior in the rest of the book? Is that Ove’s true personality?
16. Ove and Sonja’s love story is one of the most affecting, tender parts of the book. What is the key to their romance? Why do they fit so well together?
17. Saab? Volvo? BMW? Scania?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Bookman's Tale
Charlie Lovett, 2013
Viking Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670026470
Summary
A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller’s search through time and the works of Shakespeare for his lost love
Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman’s Tale is a former bookseller’s sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature’s most tantalizing mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession.
Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn’t sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books.
But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn’t really her. The watercolor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture’s origins.
As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare’s time, Peter communes with Amanda’s spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
• Education—Davidson College; M.F.A., Vermont
College of Fine Arts
• Awards—
• Currently—lives in Winston-Salem, US, and Oxfordshire, England, UK
In his words:
I was born in Winston-Salem, NC in 1962 and grew up as the child of an English professor. We spent our summers in the rural North Carolina mountains, so I felt an early affinity for the countryside. I was educated at Summit School, Woodberry Forest School (Virginia), and Davidson College (NC) and in 1984 went into the antiquarian book business with my first wife, Stephanie. About the same time I began to seriously collect books and other materials relating to Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
When I left the book business in the early 1990s, I continued to be a book collector, and now have a large (and growing) collection of rare (and not so rare) books and artifacts connected to Lewis Carroll and his world (my most recent major acquisition is Lewis Carroll’s own 1888 typewriter). I have written five books about Lewis Carroll and countless articles. I have served as the president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, and as editor of the London based Lewis Carroll Review. I have lectured on Lewis Carroll in the US and Europe at places such as the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, UCLA, and Oxford University.
In 1997 I received my MFA in Writing from Vermont College (now Vermont College of Fine Arts). During my work on this degree I researched and wrote Love, Ruth, a book about my mother, Ruth Candler Lovett, who died when I was two years old. Maya Angelou called the book “tender, sensitive, and true.”
After completing my MFA, I traveled with my wife, Janice and daughter, Jordan, to England where we lived for six months. We immersed ourselves in the culture, made lifelong friends, and become closely connected to the village of Kingham, Oxfordshire. Ten years later, we purchased the cottage we had rented in 1997 and renovated it. My wife and I now spend about 6–8 week a year in Kingham, and have traveled extensively throughout the UK.
In 2001, my wife was hired to oversee the third grade drama program at Summit School in Winston-Salem, NC. Bemoaning the dearth of good material for elementary school performance, she asked if I would write a play. Thus began my career as a children’s playwright. In the ensuing years, as Writer-in-Residence at Summit, I have written plays for third graders and for eighth and ninth graders.
Fourteen of my plays have been published, including my first, Twinderella, which won the Shubert Fendrich Playwriting Award, beating over 750 other entries. The plays have proved extremely popular and have been seen in over 3000 productions in all fifty states and more than 20 foreign countries.
One of the great joys of being a playwright has been the chance to communicate with students who are performing in my shows, whether by e-mail or by visiting their schools. I have made many author visits to schools to see productions, talk with students, and hold master classes.
During all my years as a writer (including eleven books of non-fiction) I have worked on writing fiction. I wrote my first novel-length manuscript in the early 1990s and, with luck, it will never see the light of day, but it did prove to me that I could write a book-length work of fiction. In 2008, my novel The Program, about an evil weight loss clinic, was published by the micro-press Pearlsong Press. My YA novel The Fat Lady Sings was also published by Pearlsong.
But my big break-through as a writer came when I put together two of my passions—rare books and the English countryside—to write The Bookman’s Tale, the book that was ultimately accepted by Viking and by several other publishers worldwide. When I told her about the success of The Bookman’s Tale, a close friend in England said, “It’s the old case of the man who takes twenty years to become an overnight success.”
Presently I’m working on two major projects—a book about Lewis Carroll’s religious life and First Impressions, the follow-up to my first novel, which will do for Jane Austen what The Bookman’s Tale did for William Shakespeare. (From the author's website. Retrieved 7/24/2013.)
Book Reviews
The Bookman’s Tale has plenty of richness to offer….Daring intricacy.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Bard is back in this rollicking literary mystery….This novel has something for everyone: William Shakespeare, a love story, murder and even a secret tunnel.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
All too good to resist….The Bookman’s Tale is a book about books, written for lovers of books.
Fayetteville Observer
Lovett’s debut is a century-spanning web of literary mystery that ensnares American Peter Byerly, a rare bookseller.... Peter stumbles into the argument about the authorship of Shakespeare’s work.... As [he] continues his sleuthing, he finds himself a potential suspect in a murder investigation.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) An American antiquarian bookseller now living in England...discovers, in an 18th-century book about Shakespeare forgeries, a Victorian miniature portrait of a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to his late wife. His research...leads Peter on a dangerous quest to prove the book's authenticity.... [A] gripping literary mystery that is compulsively readable until the thrilling end. —Katie Lawrence, Chicago
Library Journal
Fans of mysteries, of love stories, and of rare books will all find moments in Lovett’s novel to treasure.
Booklist
A pleasurably escapist trans-Atlantic mystery is intricately layered with plots, murders, feuds, romances, forgeries....all centered on the book that supposedly inspired Shakespeare's play A Winter's Tale.... Did Shakespeare really write his plays or not?... A cheerily old-fashioned entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Spoiler Alert: some questions may reveal the plot.
1. Do you believe that Shakespeare was the true author of his plays?
2. It's ironic that Robert Greene's most immortal words are those deriding Shakespeare as "an upstart Crow" (p. 31). Can you think of any other writers who were belittled by their contemporaries but went on to achieve greater and more enduring fame?
3. Consider Dr. Strayer's "typed list of things [Peter] needed to do in order to move on with his life" (p. 7) after Amanda's death. Can following such a list help someone recover from grief?
4. Peter's first visit to the Conservation Department at Ridgefield University transforms the way he regards books, "He had thought of books before only as his shield, but now they seemed to be taking on lives of their own, not so much as works of literature or history or poetry but as objects, collections of paper and thread and cloth and glue and leather and ink" (p. 15). Have you ever experienced a similar epiphany?
5. As Harbottle watches a performance of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, he takes some offense at the character of Autolycus. "Was knavery really Bartholomew's profession? Surely the proudest moments of his career did not drip with honesty, but Bartholomew did not believe he had ever done anyone real harm" (p. 64). Are Harbottle's crimes—as he believes—mostly harmless?
6. When Bartholomew Harbottle offers Robert Cotton the opportunity to purchase Shakespeare's manuscripts, the latter is reluctant because he "doesn't collect contemporary literature" (p. 67). Are there any writers at work today who you feel might attain literary immortality? Why?
7. At one point, Peter contemplates how he would feel if he were asked to change his name from Byerly to Ridgefield in order to preserve Amanda's family name. Since he always felt estranged from his parents, why might this be difficult for him? How would you feel in his position?
8. Philip Gardner spurns the woman he loves and his own child in order to keep his affair a secret from his wife. Does he do so for his own comfort or for the preservation of his family estate?
9. Was Peter justified in hiding from his own Amanda the letter in which Amanda Devereaux writes about her desire to have a child?
10. Is Peter really visited by Amanda's spirit or is she a figment of his imagination?
11. Are high-quality forgeries themselves works of art?
12. There are many unacknowledged children in The Bookman's Tale: Robert Greene's son, Fortunato; Bartholomew Harbottle's son, Matthew; and Phillip Gardner's son, Phillip Devereux. Why do you think this might be?
(Questions issued by publisher.)