Dead Letters
Caite Dolan-Leach, 2017
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399588853
Summary
A missing woman leads her twin sister on a twisted scavenger hunt in this clever debut novel that will keep you guessing until the end—for readers of Gone Girl and The Girl Before.
“Ahoy, Ava! Welcome home, my sweet jet-setting twin! So glad you were able to wrest yourself away from your dazzling life in the City of Light; I hope my ‘death’ hasn’t interrupted anything too crucial.”
Ava Antipova has her reasons for running away: a failing family vineyard, a romantic betrayal, a mercurial sister, an absent father, a mother slipping into dementia. n Paris, Ava renounces her terribly practical undergraduate degree, acquires a French boyfriend and a taste for much better wine, and erases her past.
Two years later, she must return to upstate New York. Her twin sister, Zelda, is dead.
Even in a family of alcoholics, Zelda Antipova was the wild one, notorious for her mind games and destructive behavior. Stuck tending the vineyard and the girls’ increasingly unstable mother, Zelda was allegedly burned alive when she passed out in the barn with a lit cigarette.
But Ava finds the official explanation a little too neat. A little too Zelda. Then she receives a cryptic message—from her sister.
Just as Ava suspected, Zelda’s playing one of her games. In fact, she’s outdone herself, leaving a series of clues about her disappearance. With the police stuck on a red herring, Ava follows the trail laid just for her, thinking like her sister, keeping her secrets, immersing herself in Zelda’s drama and her outlandish circle of friends and lovers.
Along the way, Zelda forces her twin to confront their twisted history and the boy who broke Ava’s heart. But why? Is Zelda trying to punish Ava for leaving, or to teach her a lesson? Or is she simply trying to write her own ending?
Featuring a colorful, raucous cast of characters, Caite Dolan-Leach’s debut thriller takes readers on a literary scavenger hunt for clues concealed throughout the seemingly idyllic wine country, hidden in plain sight on social media, and buried at the heart of one tremendously dysfunctional, utterly unforgettable family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Finger Lakes region, New York, USA
• Education—Trinity College (Dublin); American University of Paris
• Currently—lives in Paris, France
Caite Dolan-Leach is an American writer and translator currently living in Paris, France. Born in a small town in the Finger Lake region of upstate New York, she studied French in high school; by her senior year, as she claims in a Paris Review Daily interview…
French was the only class I bothered to attend with any diligence. I was too busy organizing my escape to far-flung climes; a foreign language was the most likely thing to help me secure this imagined, overseas future.
In her first "escape to farflung climes," Dolan-Leach attended Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She has since lived in Italy, South Africa, and France, where she attended the American University of Paris and now lives.
Dolan-Leach's first novel, Dead Letters, was published in 2017, and she has co-translated of two other novels: Orphans (U.S., 2014) by Hadrien Laroche and Newspaper (U.S., 2015) by Edouard Leve. (Adapted from various online sources.)
Book Reviews
Dolan-Leach’s clever thriller explores the fraying ties that bind twin sisters.… When it comes, the answer may feel somewhat contrived, but on the way to it readers will enjoy this full-bodied novel about a family of vintners.
Abigail Meisel - New York Times Book Review
Ava, the star of this atmospheric debut, isn’t convinced her calculating twin sister, Zelda, is really dead—especially after she starts getting enigmatic emails from Zelda’s account, propelling her on a complicated hunt for the truth (The Must List).
Entertainment Weekly
The disappearance of Ava’s wild-child twin is just the beginning of this roller-coaster read that’s as enthralling as it is WTF?!
Cosmopolitan
(Starred review.) [A] smart, dazzling mystery with a twist that…leaves the reader hunting for the next clue. Dolan-Leach revels in toying with both Ava and her audience, placing small hints and red herrings throughout her text, and the result is captivating.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] compelling mystery with only hints of murder…that centers on family and particularly on the power of genetics, sisterhood, and loss. A story as compassionate and insightful as it is riveting. —Michele Leber, Arlington, VA
Library Journal
Considering questions of identity, loyalty, and reliance, Dolan-Leach’s tautly crafted crime debut will resonate with fans of Gillian Flynn’s and Paula Hawkins’s domestic psychological thrillers.
Booklist
Ava discovers a burner phone that Zelda left behind, and soon she's getting messages from beyond the grave.… Dolan-Leach nimbly entwines the clever mystery of Agatha Christie [and] the wit of Dorothy Parker.… A sharp, wrenching tale of the true love only twins know.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Dead Letters…then take off on your own:
1. In what ways are the twins different from one another, and how are they similar? Describe their relationship, as well as the different path in life each has followed. Why, for instance, did Ava run off while Zelda stayed put?
2. What do the "dead letters" tell us about each of the young women?
3. What role does Nadine play in all of this? What do you think of her?
4. At what point does Ava suspect that her sister is still alive, and why? What about you—did you think likewise?
5. What red=herrings (false leads) does Caite Dolan-Leech set out for readers to lead us off track.
6. Did the ending catch you off guard? If not…when did you begin to suspect the truth? Go back over the text and suss out the hints that were there all the time. Did you pick up on any of them…or skip right over them (come on, be honest).
7. How does the twist change your understanding of the novel's title?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Fall of Lisa Bellow
Susan Perabo, 2017
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476761466
Summary
When a middle school girl is abducted in broad daylight, a fellow student and witness to the crime copes with the tragedy in an unforgettable way.
What happens to the girl left behind?
A masked man with a gun enters a sandwich shop in broad daylight, and Meredith Oliver suddenly finds herself ordered to the filthy floor, where she cowers face to face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow, the most popular girl in her eighth grade class.
The minutes tick inexorably by, and Meredith lurches between comforting the sobbing Lisa and imagining her own impending death. Then the man orders Lisa Bellow to stand and come with him, leaving Meredith the girl left behind.
After Lisa’s abduction, Meredith spends most days in her room. As the community stages vigils and searches, Claire, Meredith’s mother, is torn between relief that her daughter is alive, and helplessness over her inability to protect or even comfort her child. Her daughter is here, but not.
Like Everything I Never Told You and Room, The Fall of Lisa Bellow is edgy and original, a hair-raising exploration of the ripple effects of an unthinkable crime. It is a dark, beautifully rendered, and gripping novel about coping, about coming-of-age, and about forgiveness. It is also a beautiful illustration of how one family, broken by tragedy, finds healing. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1969
• Where—St. Louis, Missouri, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Arkansas
• Currently—lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Susan Perabo is an American author of novels and short stories. Her novels include The Fall of Lisa Bellow (2017) and The Broken Places (2001). She has published two collections of short stories, Why They Run the Way They Do (2016), and Who I Was Supposed to Be (1999).
Her fiction has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, and New Stories from the South, and has appeared in numerous magazines, including One Story, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, and The Sun.
Perabo holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and is Writer in Residence and Professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She is also on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program at Queens University. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Despite the central crime element, Lisa Bellow is more character study than suspense novel. Unfortunately, the prose isn’t quite strong enough to make up for a languid plot. Nonetheless, Perabo makes some interesting observations about character and family life, and her book should have some emotional resonance with anyone who’s felt out of place or left behind.
Steph Cha - USA Today
Dark and suspenseful (Best Books To Read in 2017).
Glamour.com
Told through the incredibly honest eyes of an eighth grade girl and her despairing mother, this moving story touches on tragedy, loss, and what happens to those affected.
RealSimple.com
Absolutely masterful…this should be the book to launch Susan Perabo into the realm of Known Writers, those folks whose each new work marks the landscape in overt ways. All her powerful skills are on display here—the vivid, telling details, the strangely askance story actually being told, the murky irresolution that’s somehow gratifying despite not delivering on what most readers will likely expect…this is a dynamite, stunning book that’ll hang in you long after you finish it.
Brooklyn Rail
The novel’s tension arises as much from Perabo’s insight into a complex and changing family dynamic as from the horror of an unusual but believable situation. Perabo’s female characters are particularly strong…as the novel plays with the reader’s understanding of what is actually going on in Meredith’s world.
Publishers Weekly
The second novel from writer Susan Perabo is wrenching, a dark yet beautifully told story of family, fear and grief.
BookPage
Gripping…Perabo captures both the unease and bravado of adolescence alongside the worries of parenthood and is unafraid to explore the family members’ flaws as they attempt to emerge from chaos.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Claire Oliver…is as fine a fictional character as we have encountered in some time, dark, moody, passionate about her children, keenly self-aware, and very, very funny.… You will hate to leave the inside of this woman’s head when you finish the book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Fall of Lisa Below…then take off on your own:
1. Discuss the residual trauma of Lisa Bellow's kidnapping on Meredith Oliver, especially as retreats into an imaginary world, plagued by nightmares she believes that Lisa might be having. How, ultimately, does Meredith's understanding of, or at least her view of, Lisa change by the end of the book?
2. What about the anxiety Lisa has been facing in school while attempting to navigate the teenage social hierarchy? Does the mean-girl atmosphere ring true? Does any of it bring back memories of your own middle or high school experience? Might Lisa be excused (or not) for banking on her new-found notoriety in order to chuck her older friends and move up in the world?
3. What do you think of Claire Oliver? In what way is she ambivalent about motherhood? Claire is quite funny; in what way, or for what purposes, does she use her humor?
4. How would you describe the Olivers' marriage? Talk about the changes in family dynamics after the kidnapping and the array of stresses the family faces. In what way does each member manage to cope?
5. How does this novel frame survivor guilt? How do the characters, if they ever do, achieve resolution and acceptance?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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All Grown Up
Jami Atttenberg, 2017
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544824249
Summary
A wickedly funny novel about a thirty-nine-year-old single, childfree woman who defies convention as she seeks connection.
Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister.
But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true.
Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother—who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood—and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke.
But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart?
Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Raised—Buffalo Grove, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., John Hopkins University
• Currently—lives in New Orleans, Louisiana
Jami Attenberg is an American writer of fiction and essays. She grew up in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Writing.
Her early works were published in numerous zines and in a 2003 chapbook called Deli Life. Her first book, Instant Love, a collection of interconnected short stories, was published in 2006. That work has been followed by a series of novels:
2008 - The Kept Man
2010 - The Melting Season
2012 - The Middlesteins
2015 - Saint Mazie
2017 - All Grown Up
2019 - All This Could Be Yours
Attenberg's work has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines, including Nerve and The New York Times. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Adapted from Wikipedia. First retrieved 10/28/2012.)
Book Reviews
All Grown Up is a smart, funny-sad portrait of contemporary urban life in which basic human values seem to have gone awry…. Jami Attenberg is a gifted writer, full of insight and wit, and while her observations are sometimes stark, there’s almost always a comic lift around the corner. She’s created a winning, vulnerable heroine in Andrea although at times you’d like to throttle her. But Andrea’s emotions are always meditated through kindness, and her actions, though at times misdirected, are never cruel. So we root for Andrea to change and grow and find happiness. READ MORE …
Molly Lundqist - LitLovers
[F]or all her foibles and missteps, the grown-up Andrea is primarily sympathetic: funny, honest about her warts-and-all character, dry, all too human, often kind (her treatment of her sister-in-law notwithstanding) and stuck in a place that is far better than the one she came from. To my way of thinking, an unmet opportunity to grow has always equaled tragedy, but here status quo is the goal. It's no easy task to build a novel around a character who doesn't necessarily evolve, or perhaps evolves quietly, with baby steps, on tiptoe, close to the finish line, and maybe, please God, it's not too late. But for all the dark clouds coasting overhead, Attenberg, with her wry sense of humor, manages to entertain and move us nonetheless. Whatever Andrea's objectives are, we're rooting for her.
Helen Schulman - New York Times
All Grown Up is a smart, addictive, hilarious and relevant novel.
Meredith Maran - Washington Post
All Grown Up [is] a smart, funny/sad and unflinchingly honest novel about a single New Yorker.… In sparkling prose, [Attenberg] brings this wonderful character so fully to life that after the book ended, I found myself wishing Andrea well as if she were a good friend and wondering what she would do next.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Andrea, 39, is totally single. No kids, no men, nothing keeping her from living her life to its full potential, which she does. Until her niece is born with a tragic illness, and Andrea's whole family is forced to confront their values, their lifestyles, and their choices. Told in vignettes, All Grown Up asks what happens after you've got the whole "adult" thing under control (Best Books to Read in 2017).
Glamour
Attenberg captures the kaleidoscopic flow of Andrea’s life in spare and witty vignettes that build to a surprising and moving conclusion.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC.com
Bravo to Attenberg, who, with hilarity and honesty, tells the story of an adult woman who wants what she wants, not what she’s supposed to want.
Marie Claire
Thank you, Jami Attenberg, for pushing back against society’s assumptions about what is allowed to matter in our lives. For giving us a different kind of narrative. All Grown Up is not all fluffy and lovely. It turns out that we have other stories—we single people. We human beings.
Bustle
Revolutionary…. [A] perceptive study of love, sacrifice, and what it really means to be an adult.
Tablet
Jami Attenberg deftly travels inside the head of a 39-year-old woman who has no interest in doing what she’s supposed to do and follows her heart instead of her mind—a story that’s sexy, charming, and impossible to put down.
Newsweek
Powerful.… All Grown Up is so intimately [and] sharply observed.
Vogue
Jami Attenberg will have you laughing, cursing, and ranting right along with her book's vibrant main character, Andrea — a 39-year-old single New Yorker trying to figure out how hold her life together. (And trying to figure out what 'having your life together' even means.) This book has got serious spunk.
Bustle
With a satirical voice and astounding pathos, Attenberg’s latest protagonist draws readers into the enthralling and thought-provoking world she inhabits, against the backdrop of an important social conversation about contemporary gender roles.
Harpers Bazaar
[A] bildungsroman with a twist.… The novel’s darkly comic voice is a delight to read, capturing Andrea’s sharp insights as well as her self-destructiveness, while brief chapters that shift back and forth in time effectively convey both the chaos and the stasis of her personal landscape.
Publishers Weekly
Not all the supporting characters are fleshed out, an ailing child is less than a Macguffin, but …Attenberg's novel is layered and deceptive, as is her heroine. You'll enter Andrea's world for the throwaway lines and sardonic humor, but stay for the poignancy and depth. —Liz French
Library Journal
Attenberg's latest novel follows Andrea Bern: on the cusp of 40, single, child-free by choice, and reasonably content, she's living a life that still, even now, bucks societal conventions.… Wry, sharp, and profoundly kind; a necessary pleasure.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available: in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for All Grown Up…then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Andrea Bern and, especially, her life as a single woman in New York? Some 50 years after first-wave feminism, is she a throw-back to those early days; in other words, is her choice of being single and childless still "defying convention"?
2. What role has art played in Andrea's life? Why has she forsaken it? What do you think of her fascination, maybe even compulsion, to draw the Empire State Building over and over. Can you think of any symbolic significance her repeated drawing might have?
3. Talk about her relationships to her family. How would describe her upbringing in New York? In what way have those earlier years shaped her present life, left her adrift?
4. Can a case be made for her to abandon her brother and wife when they need her most? Why does it take a year-and-a-half for her to visit them in New Hampshire?
5. Talk about Greta's outpouring of misery when she and Andrea have lunch together at Balthazar. What do you think of Andrea's response? Is she capable of empathy? She reaches out to help a stranger that day but not Greta, who has been always kind to her.
6. Andrea seems to live life on her own terms, unapologetically. Is that something to admire, something to strive for?
7. Read and comment on the passage below: Why does Andrea have a "problem" with what other people accept as a normal, even desirable, outcome in life?
Other people you know have no problem at all with succeeding at their careers and buying apartments and moving to other cities and falling in love and getting married and hyphenating their names and adopting rescue cats and, finally, having children.
8. Does Andrea evolve toward the end of the novel? Does she grow, learn, mature? Do you end up rooting for her…or not?
9. Jami Attenberg's novel is akin to a series of linked stories. Does that structure appeal to you?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Mother's Promise
Sally Hepworth, 2017
St. Martin's Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250077752
Summary
All their lives, Alice Stanhope and her daughter, Zoe, have been a family of two, living quietly in Northern California. Zoe has always struggled with crippling social anxiety and her mother has been her constant and fierce protector.
With no family to speak of, and the identity of Zoe’s father shrouded in mystery, their team of two works—until it doesn’t. Until Alice gets sick and needs to fight for her life.
Desperate to find stability for Zoe, Alice reaches out to two women who are practically strangers but who are her only hope: Kate, a nurse, and Sonja, a social worker.
As the four of them come together, a chain of events is set into motion and all four of them must confront their sharpest fears and secrets—secrets about abandonment, abuse, estrangement, and the deepest longing for family.
Imbued with heart and humor in even the most dismal moments, The Mother’s Promise is an unforgettable novel about the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters and the new ways in which families are forged. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 10, 1980
• Where—Australia
• Education—Monash University
• Currently—lives in Melbourne, Australia
Sally Hepworth is a former Event Planner and HR professional. A graduate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, she started writing novels after the birth of her first child.
She is the author of Love Like The French (2014, published in Germany). The Secret of Midwives (2015), The Things We Keep (2016), and The Family Next Door (2018).
Sally has lived around the world, spending extended periods in Singapore, the U.K., and Canada, and she now writes full-time from her home in Melbourne, Australia, where she lives with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The Mother’s Promise is a chick-lit tearjerker that nevertheless conveys with sympathy and some depth in the stories of four Northern California women who face difficult health and family problems, including important issues not typically found in fiction.… Author Sally Hepworth…knows how to spin an engrossing plot. While some of the key twists are obvious 100 pages before their Big Reveals…they later take surprising turns.
Fran Hawthorne - New York Journal of Books
[A] difficult novel of women struggling with fear and loss.… This bittersweet, emotionally intense novel is recommended for readers who appreciate issue-driven stories by Jodi Picoult and Lisa Genova —Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
Library Journal
When a devoted single mom discovers she has ovarian cancer, her own health is the least of her worries. What will happen to her daughter?… Saccharine at times, the tale's threads knot up a bit too easily and implausibly. A sentimental parable about the power of motherhood, friendship, and love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Sonja, Kate, and Alice all have service-oriented jobs but are very isolated when it comes to their personal struggles. Where do we see key moments in the story when they begin to open up their personal lives to others? What prompts these changes and why were they each so isolated before?
2. Where do we see examples of different characters hiding information in order to protect each other? In each example, do the secrets improve or worsen the situation? Would you make the same decisions?
3. In this novel we see two women struggling in their marriages in very different ways. On page 118, Sonja wonders, "Then again, what did it mean to make a marriage succeed? Was it simply about staying together? Or was there something more she should be striving for?" How do you define a successful marriage?
4. What does Kate mean when, on page 164, she realizes that "marriage wasn’t meant to be conditional"?
5. How does Kate’s relationship with Zoe help her better understand her relationship with her own father?
6. Were you surprised when the identity of Zoe’s father was revealed? What was your reaction to the explanation that George gave to Sonja about his relationship with Alice?
7. Why does Alice react to Kate in such a strong, negative way at first? What are key moments when we see her attitude begin to change? Why does it change?
8. How do Zoe’s relationships with Kate and Harry affect her? Where do we see examples of the effect they have on her in her actions and demeanor?
9. On page 16, Sonja thinks, "Happiness was something you shared, chatted about, asked after. Suffering was something that you had to do behind closed doors, in silence, all alone." Where do we see difference characters living by this statement? Where do we see them going against it, and with what outcomes?
10.What do you imagine the future to hold for Zoe? What about for Kate and Sonja?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Miranda and Caliban
Jacqueline Carey, 2017
Tom Doherty Assoc.
pp. 352
ISBN-13: 9780765386793
Summary
A lovely girl grows up in isolation where her father, a powerful magus, has spirited them to in order to keep them safe.
We all know the tale of Prospero's quest for revenge, but what of Miranda? Or Caliban, the so-called savage Prospero chained to his will?
In this incredible retelling of the fantastical tale, Jacqueline Carey shows readers the other side of the coin—the dutiful and tenderhearted Miranda, who loves her father but is terribly lonely.
And Caliban, the strange and feral boy Prospero has bewitched to serve him. The two find solace and companionship in each other as Prospero weaves his magic and dreams of revenge.
Always under Prospero’s jealous eye, Miranda and Caliban battle the dark, unknowable forces that bind them to the island even as the pangs of adolescence create a new awareness of each other and their doomed relationship.
Miranda and Caliban is bestselling fantasy author Jacqueline Carey’s gorgeous retelling of The Tempest. With hypnotic prose and a wild imagination, Carey explores the themes of twisted love and unchecked power that lie at the heart of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, while serving up a fresh take on the play's iconic characters. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— October 9, 1964
• Where—Highland Park, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Lake Forest College
• Awards—Locust Award-Best First Novel
• Currently—lives in western Michigan
Jacqueline Carey is the author of the New York Times bestselling Kushiel's Legacy series, beginning with Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen and Kushiel's Avatar, The Sundering epic fantasy duology, postmodern fables "Santa Olivia" and "Saints Astray," and the Agent of Hel contemporary fantasy series. Carey lives in west Michigan. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Carey turns Shakespeare’s Tempest on its head…with this brilliant deconstruction.… The foreordained pattern of the play mixes beautifully with Carey’s intricate characterization and eye for sensory detail, building mercilessly to dazzling, and devastating, tragic effect.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) In this stand-alone, Carey evokes the same stunning worldbuilding and imagery of her "Kushiel's Legacy" and "Sundering" series, as she stirs new emotions from an old story and reveals another side to Shakespeare's epic play.
Library Journal
Infused with dark magic, broken trust, and lost innocence.… Miranda and Caliban, both narrators with distinct voices, are given rich inner lives through Carey’s delicate, sensitive portrayal.
Booklist
[A]n eye-opening…back story of Shakespeare's The Tempest as a tale of star-crossed lovers. [Carey]…transforms the largely passive Shakespearean Miranda into a dutiful yet dignified and ultimately tragic figure.… Intriguing and impressive.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use these LitLovers talking points to help start your discussion for Miranda and Caliban…then take off on your own:
1. While it's not necessary, it would be helpful to read The Tempest by Shakespeare to determine how Jacqueline Carey has reimagined the original. If you are all ready familiar with the play, what alterations has Carey made in the bard's characters and plot.
2. How do you describe Miranda? Does her dutifulness to her father make her seem passive to you?
3. Talk about Prospero, the island's god-like character, who in Shakespeare's play is kind and wise. How does Carey portray him in her version? In what way does Prospero view his daughter as a tool for his own purposes? How is he blinded by prejudice to Caliban?
4. Given his bestial appearance and behavior, what attracts Miranda to Caliban? What does she see in him at first, which, of course, later blossoms under her tutelage. What does she learn from Caliban about her father and his plans for her?
5. What is Prospero motivations for capturing and civilizing Caliban? What are his intentions for the boy?
6. Discuss the role of vengeance in this story?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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