Five Star Billionaire
Tash Aw, 2013
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812994346
Summary
Long-listed for the Man-Booker Prize
An expansive, eye-opening novel that captures the vibrancy of China today.
Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job—but when she arrives she discovers that the job doesn’t exist. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family’s real estate empire, only to find that he might not be up to the task. He has long harbored a crush on Yinghui, a poetry-loving, left-wing activist who has reinvented herself as a successful Shanghai businesswoman. Yinghui is about to make a deal with the shadowy Walter Chao, the five star billionaire of the novel, who with his secrets and his schemes has a hand in the lives of each of the characters.
All bring their dreams and hopes to Shanghai, the shining symbol of the New China, which, like the novel’s characters, is constantly in flux and which plays its own fateful role in the lives of its inhabitants.
Five Star Billionaire is a dazzling, kaleidoscopic novel that offers rare insight into the booming world of Shanghai, a city of elusive identities and ever-changing skylines, of grand ambitions and outsize dreams. Bursting with energy, contradictions, and the promise of possibility, Tash Aw’s remarkable new book is both poignant and comic, exotic and familiar, cutting-edge and classic, suspenseful and yet beautifully unhurried. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Raised—Kuala Lampur, Maylaysia
• Education—Cambridge University; University
of Warwick
• Awards—Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award;
Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region)
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, to Malaysian parents, he grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before moving to England to study law at Jesus College, Cambridge and at the University of Warwick and then moved to London to write. After graduating he worked at a number of jobs, including as a lawyer for four years whilst writing his debut novel, which he completed during the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia.
His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, was published in 2005. After Malaysian journalists reported that he had been paid over £500,000 for the novel, The Star and The New Straits Times called him the "RM3.5 million man," and local interest in his book deal continues today, even though the novelist himself has consistently denied the size of this advance, preferring to talk about the novel, which was longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region). It also made it to the long-list of the world's prestigious 2007 International Impac Dublin Award and the Guardian First Book Prize. It has thus far been translated into twenty languages. Aw cites his literary influences as Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Anthony Burgess, William Faulkner and Gustave Flaubert.
His second novel, titled Map of the Invisible World, was released in May 2009 to critical acclaim, with TIME magazine calling it "a complex, gripping drama of private relationships," and describing "Aw matchless descriptive prose" and "immense intelligence and empathy." His 2013 novel Five Star Billionaire has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013.
Based on royalties as well as prizes, Aw is the most successful Malaysian writer of recent years. Following the announcement of the Booker longlist, the Whitbread Award and his Commonwealth Writers' Prize award, he became a celebrity in Malaysia and Singapore, and is now one of the most respected literary figures in Southeast Asia. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/7/2013.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Aw has an eye for status distinctions. There is some Edith Wharton, as well as some Tom Wolfe, in how he invests awareness of these distinctions with moral and financial peril. Five Star Billionaire…[is] a busy yet sophisticated portrait of life in one of the most populous cities on earth…Mr. Aw is a patient writer, and an elegant one…a writer to watch. He works high and low, and is as interesting to read on pop music as he is on finance or sibling rivalry.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
In Five Star Billionaire, the Taiwanese-born, Malaysian writer Tash Aw chooses a refreshingly novel perspective.... Through five distinct Malaysian-Chinese voices, Mr. Aw wonderfully expresses the grit and cosmopolitan glamour of Shanghai today.... Mr. Aw has done more than merely satirize a social milieu; he has created a cast of compelling characters, all of whom have come to Shanghai to remake themselves, yet are haunted by their pasts in ways that they barely understand.... In Five Star Billionaire, Mr. Aw has achieved something remarkable.
Wall Street Journal
[Aw’s] ever-spiraling web of connections is as improbable as it is entertaining, but he knits his various threads with an elegance...coupled with a photorealistic eye for the minutiae of urban life.
Boston Globe
Tash Aw’s brilliant new novel focuses on four Malaysian immigrants, all determinedly on the make.... The unputdownable story of how these lives interconnect and touch upon the billionaire of the title, a shadowy avenging angel, is played out against the noisy, glitzy backdrop of a society on the cusp between abandoning old values and embracing a lifestyle as flashy as its neon glow.
Daily Mail (UK)
Aw is a master storyteller and Five Star Billionaire can be read as The Way We Live Now for our times.... [It is a story] of lives lost and found, of the transience of material success and the courage required to hope and to trust again, to forgive oneself and to believe in the possibility of love.
Guardian (UK)
[Five Star Billionaire] aches with grieving humanity as it follows the crisscrossing ups and downs of five migrant characters trying to make their mark on contemporary Shanghai... Towering about them all is the theater of illusions that is the novel’s dominant character.... Sometimes it seems as if he has ingested every last detail of rising Asia’s latest glossy magazines, yet never lost sight of the emptiness in the models’ eyes or the wistfulness in the lonely readers’ hearts.... No one knows who anyone is—not even themselves—and when one character reveals himself as a (real) celebrity, he’s taken to be the most shameless fake of all.... Five Star Billionaire is hard to beat....
Pico Iyer - Time
Aw...follows five Malaysian immigrants in Shanghai as they try to realize the city’s dazzling promise.... These characters, whose lives intersect and overlap in the strangest of ways, create a portrait of an unforgiving city that “held its promises just out of your reach.” But like the characters, who are left confused and wanting more, one reaches the novel’s conclusion feeling disappointed.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A literary victory.... Think of Aw’s third novel as an ingenious game called "How To Be a Billionaire."... The playing board is Shanghai, that twenty-first-century city of limitless possibility; the power broker is the epyonymous Five Star Billionaire. A quartet of players...are revealed one by one.... Aw moves fluidly between past and present, creating a multilayered narrative about chasing, catching, and sometimes losing elusive opportunities.(starred review)
Library Journal
Making it in Shanghai: Five immigrants find life challenging.... Character interaction is a relief from the long slabs of exposition. The only break has been the voice of Walter Chao, who addresses the reader directly. He has overcome poverty in Malaysia to become a successful businessman....but is he reliable or a con man?... The answer comes only at the very end, in one throwaway sentence, Aw having seemingly lost interest in his own handiwork.... A clunky novel.
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.
Drowning Ruth
Christina Schwarz, 2000
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345460356
Summary
Oprah Book Club Selection (2000)
Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut.
Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge—she has carried her troubles with her.
On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night.
Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered.
Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—the state of Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Yale University
• Currently—Southern California
Christina Schwarz is an American novelist, best known for her Oprah Book Club pick Drowning Ruth (2000). Other works include The Edge of Earth (2013), So Long at the Fair (2009), and All is Vanity (2003). Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, Schwarz now lives in Southern California. (From the publisher .)
Book Reviews
[A] suspenseful, unusually well-crafted first novel . . . a richly textured book with an enveloping sense of the sisters' Wisconsin farm life . . . [S]he fuses this suspense with such strong period detail that Drowning Ruth creates a visceral sense of the forces that constrain its women's lives.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The vivid realism of the novel's setting adds depth to an already gripping plot. . . . Schwarz maintains her mystery with an expert hand . . . Drowning Ruth is a remarkable debut: surprising, unsettling and sure.
Maile Meloy - New York Times Book Review
[T]his unusually deft and assured first novel conveys a good deal more than thrills and chills.
Paul Gray - Time
"Ruth remembered drowning." The first sentence of this brilliantly understated psychological thriller leaps off the page and captures the reader's imagination. In Schwarz's debut novel, brutal Wisconsin weather and WWI drama color a tale of family rivalry, madness, secrets and obsessive love.... Schwarz deftly uses first-person narration to heighten the drama. Her prose is spare but bewitching, and she juggles the speakers and time periods with the surety of a seasoned novelist.
Publishers Weekly
A wonderfully constructed gothic suspense novel set on a stark Wisconsin farm in 1919. The story goes backward and forward in time and is told by Amanda, her niece Ruth, and an omniscient narrator.... Mattie's mysterious drowning during a winter blizzard and guilty lies soon engulf Amanda and threaten to change the lives of several others in the small rural community. A compelling complex tale of psychological mystery and maddeningly destructive provincial attitudes. —Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Fairfax, VA
School Library Journal
Schwarz keeps the focus on the choices, interactions, and all-too-frequent misunderstandings of her people, all of whom react to the effects of tragedy with surprising complexity. The narrative jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint a bit too jerkily at times, but the charm of its detail and the generous insight into even small, imperfect lives more than compensate for minor technical lapses. An engrossing debut from a writer to watch.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the story, Amanda seems to be alternately portrayed as either sinister and mentally unbalanced or as a sad woman who is a victim of circumstance. What are your feelings about her? Were you mostly sympathetic to her or turned off by her controlling spirit?
2. Did you find most of the main players in Drowning Ruth to be complicated and not easily categorized? Who intrigued you the most?
3. Do you think the author skillfully built up the suspense of the fateful night on the lake? Did you guess what would happen?
4. Ruth and Amanda’s relationship is one of the most compelling elements of the novel. At times they are presented in a mother/daughter dynamic, but at other moments they seem poised as siblings almost, or even as foils to each other—especially when Amanda speaks to us about her own childhood. How do you think Amanda regarded Ruth? What, in your mind, was the real significance of their relationship? Did Amanda truly love Ruth?
5. The lake is a striking backdrop throughout the novel, and most of the traumatic or profound moments occur there: Mathilde and Clement die there, Amanda forces Ruth to swim in it, Imogene and Ruth both fall in love upon it. Do you think the author intended for it to be symbolic of something? If so, what?
6. The complicated and varied relationships between women—friends, sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces—lie at the heart of this novel. Did any of these relationships, in particular, strike a chord with you?
7. Do you feel that Amanda’s jealousy of her sister was abnormal or just common sibling rivalry? Why do you think the author juxtaposed their relationship with Ruth and Imogene’s?
8. Men hover at the edges of the novel. The three main male characters—Carl, Clement, Arthur—though different, are all ultimately ineffectual in some sense. Carl leaves, Clement womanizes, Arthur cannot determine whom he truly loves. Even Amanda’s father is barely realized. Why do you think the author created these male characters this way?
9. The island seems to be a very important metaphor. Both Mathilde and Amanda become pregnant there, and it is where they retreat to during Amanda’s term. She, especially, is preoccupied throughout the novel with this locale. What does the island represent?
10. Did you like the continuously shifting narration? What was the overall effect of this plot device?
11. Ruth and Imogene’s intense friendship commences with the voluntary loss of Ruth’s dead, black tooth. Why do you think the author chose such an unusual, visually graphic scene to mark the unfolding of their intertwined lives?
12. In the end, does Ruth follow her heart, or is she still under Amanda’s control? Does Ruth return home truly of her own volition?
13. Were the book to continue, do you think the author would have chosen for Ruth and Arthur to unite? Why or why not? What type of man do you envision Ruth with?
14. Drowning Ruth was an Oprah Book Club selection. Have you read any other Oprah picks? If so, how did this compare?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Visitation Street
Ivy Pochoda, 2013
HarperCollins
306 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062249906
Summary
Summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an isolated blue-collar neighborhood where hipster gourmet supermarkets push against tired housing projects and the East River opens into the bay.
Bored and listless, fifteen-year-olds June and Val are looking for fun. Forget the boys, the bottles, the coded whistles. Val wants to do something wild and a little crazy: take a raft out onto the bay.
But on the water during the humid night, the girls disappear. Only Val survives, washing ashore in the weeds, bruised and unconscious.
This shocking event echoes through the lives of Red Hook's diverse residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop is a place to share neighborhood news, and he trolls for information about June's disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father's murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect in the investigation, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe. Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she's buried deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Juilliard dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.
In Visitation Street, Ivy Pochoda combines intensely vivid prose with breathtaking psychological insight to explore a cast of solitary souls, pulled by family, love, betrayal, and hope, who yearn for a chance to break free. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 22, 1977
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard College; M.F.A. Bennington College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Ivy Pochoda is the American author of four novels: These Women (2020) Wonder Valley (2017), The Visitation (2013) and The Art of Disappearing (2009)
Pochoda grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a house filled with books. She has a BA from Harvard College in English and Classical Greek with a focus on dramatic literature, and an MFA from Bennington College in fiction.
During her college years at Harvard, Pochoda played squash, leading the school to national championships in all four of her years on the team. She was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Player of the Year, and was a four-time All-American and First Team all-Ivy. In May 2013, she was inducted into the Harvard Hall of Fame.
After graduation in 1998, Pochoda played squash professionally, joining The Women's International Squash Players Association full-time. She reached a career-high world ranking of 38th in March 1999 and continued playing professionally until 2007.
In 2009, she published her first novel (The Art of Disappearing) and become the James Merrill House writer-in-residence at Bennington College, where she also obtained her Masters in 2011.
Ivy currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Justin Nowell. (From the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/27/2020.)
Book Reviews
A powerfully beautiful novel
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
A stunner of a literary thriller. Grade A-
Entertainment Weekly
Utterly transporting.
People
(Starred review.) Exquisitely written.... Examines how residents of Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood deal with grief, urban development, loss, and teenage angst.... Pochoda (The Art of Disappearing) couples a raw-edged, lyrical look at characters’ innermost fears with an evocative view of Red Hook, a traditionally working-class area of Brooklyn undergoing gentrification that still struggles with racism and the aftermath of drug violence.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [R]eaders meet a full cast of utterly believable characters.... It's an opera set in one small community, and as...the neighborhood characters play their parts, large and small, Pochoda's riveting prose will keep readers enthralled until the final page. Verdict:The prose is so lyrical and detailed that readers will easily imagine themselves in Red Hook. A great read for those who enjoy urban mysteries and thrillers with a literary flair. —Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Blue-collar Red Hook, a section of Brooklyn’s waterfront in rough transition, becomes one big outdoor theater as temperatures rise in Pochoda’s beyond-category urban drama…. The mysteries of sexuality, guilt, race and class conflicts, artistic pursuits, and psychic abilities are all in play as Pochoda transforms Red Hook into a microcosm of human longing. With prose as cleansing and propelling as a sea breeze, and characters running like strong currents, Pochoda pulls us deeply into this transfixing tale of visitations both alarming and liberating.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A mystery about a missing girl and the ghosts she leaves behind. One summer evening, teenagers Val and June float on a rubber raft out into the bay off Brooklyn's Red Hook section. Only Val returns, her near-dead body washed upon the shore. But Val can't seem to tell anyone what happened to them or why June disappeared without a trace.... Who saw Val and June take the boat out? Can June possibly be alive?.... A terrific story in the vein of Dennis Lehane's fiction.
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 Visitation Street:
1. Consider the personalities of June and Val in the opening chapter. How are they different from one another? Why is Val so intent on taking the raft into the bay?
2. Red Hook—situated across the bay from Manhattan and bound by water—is both a literal and metaphorical setting in the novel. Talk about the way Red Hook isolates and traps the characters—in particular, Val, Jonathan, and Cree. In what sense does each of them feel trapped? What does each yearn for?
3. What is the thematic significance of the book's title? What is a visitation—and what does the title sugggest about the power of the past to "visit" itself upon the present? What are the ghosts in this story—are they real?
4. Follow-up to Question 3: In what way does the past take hold of each of the main characters—Jonathan, Cree, Cree's mother Gloria, and Ren?
5. What draws Val and Jonathan to one another (over and above physical attraction)? Why does Jonathan care so much about Valerie? From what does he want to save her?
6. What do you think of Ren? Why is he so protective of Cree? Why does he warn Cree to avoid Val and tell no one about his attempt to swim out to the raft. SPOILER ALERT: Was he right to hide June's body?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Talk about the issue of race in this book? How does it affect personal relationships as well as the criminal-judicial system?
8. Although Fadi plays a small part in the outcome of the story—he is more of an observer than a participant, except at the end—why has the author given his character such prominent place in the story? What role does he play in the community? How does he view Red Hook and its residents? What is he trying to achieve with his newsletter and bulletin board? Why doesn't the newsletter increase his business?
9. Discuss the book's ending—is it satisfying? What do you think will happen to Cree, Val, and Jonathan? What about Ren?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Inamorata
Megan Chance, 2014
Lake Union Publihsing
420 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781477823033
Summary
American artist Joseph Hannigan and his alluring sister, Sophie, have arrived in enchanting nineteenth-century Venice with a single-minded goal. The twins, who have fled scandal in New York, are determined to break into Venice’s expatriate set and find a wealthy patron to support Joseph’s work.
But the enigmatic Hannigans are not the only ones with a secret agenda. Joseph’s talent soon attracts the attention of the magnificent Odile Leon, a celebrated courtesan and muse who has inspired many artists to greatness. But her inspiration comes with a devastatingly steep price.
As Joseph falls under the courtesan’s spell, Sophie joins forces with Nicholas Dane, the one man who knows Odile’s dark secret, and her sworn enemy. When the seductive muse offers Joseph the path to eternal fame, the twins must decide who to believe—and just how much they are willing to sacrifice for fame. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Megan Chance is a critically acclaimed, award-winning author of historical fiction. Her novels have been chosen for the Borders Original Voices and IndieBound’s Booksense programs. A former television news photographer and graduate of Western Washington University, Chance lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Chance’s eighth novel (after Bone River) is a thrilling depiction of the world of Venetian artists in the late 19th century, as well as an exploration of the myth of the muse. Chance gets better with each book, and this look at the dynamic between inspiration, desperation, and creation makes for a breathtaking tale.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Odile’s gift is to inspire a great work of art, but the cost is that the artist never creates again. Do you think, as she does, that such a price is worth it? Is there any work of art or literature that you feel would be worth such a sacrifice? Do you think, as Odile does, that art requires sacrifice?
2. What do you think of the role of art in our lives? Do you agree, as the characters in the book do, that it can give life meaning and, as Odile says, give mankind a reason to strive, something that counters death and suffering? How important do you think art is?
3. Nicholas thinks of himself as a savior, even though his wish to save men from Odile has backfired more than once—leading men to commit suicide in some cases. Do you think he’s right? Do you believe, as Nicholas does, that their deaths are a mercy compared to what will happen to them in Odile’s hands?
4. Odile asks Joseph where his “vision” comes from, and he answers that it doesn’t matter. Do you agree? Do you think where talent or inspiration comes from is important? Does knowing the source of an artist’s inspiration change the way you view his work?
5. Sophie’s love for her brother and his for her was tempered and changed by abuse. What do you think of the their relationship? Do you think it wrong or immoral, particularly given what forged it?
6. Do you think the inspiration Joseph takes from his sister is tainted by their relationship? Or does the depth of his talent redeem it and make it all right—or even necessary?
7. In the book we discover that Joseph’s writing of an anonymous letter to Edward Roberts’ father led to Edward’s suicide. Do you think Joseph’s writing of this letter was justified, given what Edward did to them?
8. Do you believe Sophie and Joseph cripple each other? Do you think they live “half a life,” as Odile believes? Or do you think, as Sophie does, that theirs are lives “doubly lived?”
9. What do you think of the reasons that motivate Nicholas and Odile—his need to “matter” and hers to be recognized? Do you think those worthy or admirable motivations?
10. If you had been offered the gift that Madeleine offered Odile, would you take it?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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
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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.)