East of Denver
Gregory Hill, 2011
Penguin Group USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13:9780142196885
Summary
Winner, 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel
Mixing pathos and humor in equal measure, East of Denver is an unflinching novel of rural America, a poignant, darkly funny tale about a father and son finding their way together as their home and livelihood inexorably disappears.
When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams arrives at his family’s farm in eastern Colorado to bury a dead cat, he finds his widowed and senile father, Emmett living in squalor. He has no money, the land is fallow, and a local banker has cheated his father out of the majority of the farm equipment and his beloved Cessna.
With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare suddenly finds himself caretaker to both his dad and the farm, and drawn into an unlikely clique of old high school classmates: Vaughn Atkins, a paraplegic confined to his mother’s basement; Carissa McPhail, an overweight bank teller who pitches for the local softball team; and longtime bully D. J. Beckman, who now deals drugs throughout small-town Dorsey. Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot with his father and his fellow gang of misfits to rob the very bank that has stolen their future.
East of Denver is a remarkably assured, sharply observed, and utterly memorable debut. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Jose, Colorado, USA
• Education—University of Colorado, Boulder
• Awards—2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado
Gregory Hill was raised in Joes Colorado, which he calls "my favorite place in the world." He loves rock, having performed (guitar, tenor saxophone, vocals) in various bands since 1995. His current band is the Babysitters, a rock-and-roll power trio that includes his wife on drums.
Hill lives in Denver, where he works at the University of Denver library. His second novel (in the works) involves a ranch, a snow storm, the American Basketball Association, and some prehistoric megafauna.
Oh, and he has no sense of smell. "I was born that way," he says. (Adapted from the publihser and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
In his promising debut, Hill wrings lightness from a hopeless situation. Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams returns to the eastern Colorado farmland of his childhood and discovers that his widower father’s senility has worsened.... So Shakes moves in to look after his ailing pa.... But bills mount and foreclosure looms, and Shakes’s high school buddies devise a plan: rob a bank.... Though Shakes’s psychic paralysis is palpable, it’s hard to understand...what stalled his life’s takeoff back in Denver [or]....why he refuses to look for at least one parachute during his father’s nosedive.
Publishers Weekly
Suddenly caretaker of his senile father and the family farm in eastern Colorado, to which he has just returned, Stacey "Shakespeare" Williams links up with some old high school buddies and hatches a plan to rob the victimizing local bank. Do they really mean to go through with it? Dark comedy with an in-the-news edge.
Library Journal
A fine first novel from a writer with a great sense of character.
Booklist
You can go home again, but Lord knows why you'd ever want to. Such is the lesson learned by rural drifter Stacey "Shakespeare" Williams in this agreeable, offbeat debut novel..... The only hole is that we learn almost nothing of Shakespeare's back story.... Shakespeare eventually decides that his best option is an unrealistic plan to rob the bank; whether he'll go through with it is a running question throughout the book. A story about a father and son who bond against the odds, with an ending as quirkily satisfying as the rest of the book
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1) Is East of Denver a comedy? Or are the "funny" parts so tinged with sadness that the book can only be considered tragic? For instance, is it okay to laugh when Emmett misstates an idiomatic expression? Or should we pity him? Further, does the book respect Emmett or is it so unsentimental in its portrayal that it he becomes a clown?
2) Why does the book, after two hundred pages of more or less realistic behavior, go completely nuts for the last few chapters? Why does the book end where it does, without a complete resolution? Do Shakes and Emmett land the plane? What happens to the people inside the bank? Ultimately, is it a happy ending or a sad ending?
3) What role does hopelessness play in East of Denver? It seems that most of the characters are motivated not by a promise of a better life, but out of a certain despair for the gradual worsening of their own. Clarissa McPhail's eating disorder, Vaughan Atkins’ reluctance to leave his basement, and Shakespeare's ultimate decision for the future of the farm all seem to be the acts of people who've given up hope. Does this make these characters hard to like? Only Emmett, with his lack of mooring in time, seems to be impervious to the misery that gradually descends throughout the novel.
4) Sense of place questions: The author has said that East of Denver represents the "unhomesteading of America," going so far as to claim that the book can be interpreted as a reverse of Hal Borland's growing-up-on-the-plains memoir, High Wide and Lonesome. Is there a greater geographical, political, environmental message within this concept of "unhomesteading?" And how is the barren, yet teeming-with-life, nature of the landscape reflected in the book's characters?
5) The plot of East of Denver is unconventional, almost meandering at times. Is this a weakness or is it a deliberate attempt to mimic the undirected nature of life overcome by dementia?
6) Why don't we ever find out what Shakes did for work in Denver? It seems like his job/friends/living conditions would be relevant to the story. But the book barely mentions his Denver life.
7) Are there any biblical allusions in the story? The bush with snake in it, the garden, the conclusive flight toward the heavens. . .are these deliberate biblical references with some sort of message? Or did the author put them in just to make people ask questions like this one?
(Questions kindly provided by the author...with a big assist from Nancy McWhorter, one of LitLovers' loyal readers!)
Wish You Were Here
Graham Swift, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307744395
Summary
On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton—once a Devon farmer, now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park—receives the news that his brother, Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in combat in Iraq.
For Jack and his wife, Ellie, this will have unexpected, far-reaching effects. For Jack in particular it means a crucial journey: to receive his brother’s remains and to confront his most secret, troubling memories.
A hauntingly intimate, deeply compassionate story about things that touch and test our human core, Wish You Were Here also looks, inevitably, to a wider, afflicted world. Moving toward a fiercely suspenseful climax, it brilliantly transforms the stuff of headlines into a heart-wrenching personal truth. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 4, 1949
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Dulwich College; Cambridge; University of York
• Awards—Booker Prize; James Tait Black Memorial Prize
• Currently—lives in London, England
Graham Colin Swift is a well-known British author and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of poet Ted Hughes.
Some of his works have been made into films, including Last Orders, which starred Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins and Waterland which starred Jeremy Irons.
Last Orders was a joint winner of the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and a mildly controversial winner of the Booker Prize in 1996, owing to the superficial similarities in plot to William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
Waterland was set in The Fens; it is a novel of landscape, history and family, and is often cited as one of the outstanding post-war British novels and has been a set text on the English Literature syllabus in British schools.
Works
1980 - The Sweet-Shop Owner
1982 - Shuttlecock (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize)
1983 - Waterland
1988 - Out of This World
1992 - Ever After
1996 - Last Orders (Booker Prize)
2003 - The Light of Day
2007 - Tomorrow
2009 - Making an Elephant: Writing from Within
2012 - Wish you Were Here
2016 - Mothering Sunday
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Causality, in Swift's hands, is buried, unpredictable; it runs through people and events in the odd way a water leak can move through a house, running down walls seemingly far removed from the source. Guns go off in the novel; there are weddings; there are funerals; there are inquests and revelations; hearts break; smoke rises from pyres. But none of these events happen in quite the order, or for the reasons, you would expect. Moving gracefully and without fanfare among multiple points of view, the novel might be said to evoke a collective psychic wound that is expressed variously in various characters, simultaneously drawing people together and driving them irretrievably apart, destroying some lives and saving others according to its own unknowable agency.
Stacey D'Erasmo - New York Times Book Review
Wish You Were Here is an extraordinary novel, the work of an artist with profound insight into human nature and the mature talent to deliver it just the way he wants. The 62-year-old British author has set this unhurried exploration of grief and longing in the English countryside, but it's infected with the violent terrors of contemporary life. As he did with Waterland (1983)—as every truly great novelist does—in this new book, he demonstrates that perfect coordination between style and story. You could no more separate this plot from the way Swift constructs it than you could detach the melody from a symphony.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Vivid, emotionally raw.... Swift is a writer who clearly revels in dialogue and nuance, and in Jack he has crafted a marvelously rich character whose quiet, outwardly closed-off nature belies profound internal turmoil.... Thoughtful and sensitive.
Michael Patrick Brady - Boston Globe
Swift's stunning new novel (after Light of Day) begins with deceptive slowness, detailing the lives of Jack and Ellie, the English husband-and-wife proprietors of a trailer park on the Isle of Wight. Jack and his brother Tom grew up on a dairy farm, but...Jack learns that the burden of repatriating his brother's remains has fallen on his shoulders.... Swift (Last Orders) creates an elegant rawness with language that carries the reader through several layers of Jack's consciousness at once—his lonely past, his uncertain future, and the ways in which his father and his brother both refuse to leave him alone, despite how long they've been gone.
Publishers Weekly
This perfectly titled novel is about longing for the people in our lives who have died. Taking place over just a few days, it focuses on Jack Luxton's journey to retrieve the remains of his brother Tom, a soldier who died in Iraq.... [L]like his Booker Prize-winning Last Orders, it uses a death as a provocation for the examination of self and country. Verdict: Swift has written a slow-moving but powerful novel about the struggle to advance beyond grief and despair and to come to grips with the inevitability of change. Recommended for fans of Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje, and Kazuo Ishiguro, authors with a similar method of slowly developing an intense interior narrative. —Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC
Library Journal
A subtly powerful novel.... Brilliantly illuminating the wounded psyches of his characters, circling back to corral the secrets of the past while finding the timeless core within present conflicts, and consummately infusing this gorgeously empathic tale with breath-holding suspense, Swift tests ancient convictions about birthright, nature, love, heroism, war, death, and the covenant of grief. Readers enthralled by Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan will queue up for Swift’s virtuoso novel. —Donna Seamen
Booklist
A novel as contemporary as international terrorism and the war in Iraq and as timeless as mortality, from one of Britain’s literary masters. "The past is past, and the dead are the dead," was the belief of the strong-willed Ellie, whose husband, Jack, a stolid former farmer, is the protagonist of Swift’s ninth and most powerful novel. As anyone will recognize who is familiar with his prize-winning masterworks, such a perspective on the past is in serious need of correction, which this novel provides in a subtly virtuosic and surprisingly suspenseful manner. It’s a sign of Swift’s literary alchemy that he gleans so much emotional and thematic richness from such deceptively common stock.... Profound empathy and understated eloquence mark a novel so artfully nuanced that the last few pages send the reader back to the first few, with fresh understanding.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “Wish you were here” is a powerful phrase in the novel. Why is it so significant?
2. Jack says, “…cattle aren’t people, that’s a fact” (p. 4). But in what ways in the novel are cattle like people, or vice versa?
3. What parallels can you draw between Jack and Tom and the earlier pair of Luxton brothers?
4. “To become the proprietor of the very opposite thing to that deep-rooted farmhouse. Holiday homes, on wheels.” (p. 29) What is Swift telling us through Jack’s observation?
5. What does their Caribbean holiday symbolize to Ellie? To Jack?
6. Did Jack really want to leave Devon, ten years earlier? If Ellie hadn’t suggested the Isle of Wight, what do you think might have happened?
7. Before they move, Jack sells the ancestral Luxton cradle, but keeps the shotgun and the medal. Why?
8. Madness comes up again and again—mad-cow disease, the madness of war, the possibility that Jack has gone mad. What point is Swift making?
9. Time shifts frequently over the course of the novel, hopscotching across decades. How does Swift use these shifts to expand and deepen the story?
10. Why does Ellie refuse to accompany Jack back to Devon?
11. Why is putting down Luke such a pivotal act for Tom and Jack?
12. What do we learn when Swift shifts from Jack’s point of view to others’—Major Richards’s, the hearse driver’s, Bob Ireton’s? What do we learn from the brief section told from Tom’s perspective?
13. At several points, Swift writes extended hypothetical passages—what might have happened if one character had said or done something slightly different. What effect does this have? How does it help to fully form the characters?
14. How does the Robinsons’ transformation of Jebb Farm work as a metaphor for twenty-first-century life?
15. “...anyone (including the owners of Jebb Farmhouse, had they been in occupation) might have seen two hand-prints on the top rail, one either side of the black-lettered name.” (p. 267) What do Jack’s hand-prints symbolize?
16. “Security” means different things to the Luxtons and the Robinsons. Which definition do you think Swift endorses?
17. What does the medal represent? What does it mean when Jack tosses it into the sea?
18. Does Tom really believe Ellie had a hand in Jimmy’s death? Why does he say it?
19. Tom’s ghost plays a major role in the novel’s final scene. What does he represent?
(Questions isssued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
The Hangman's Daughter
Oliver Potzsch, 2008 (Lee Chadeayne, trans., 2010)
Amazon Crossing; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547745015
Summary
Magdalena, the clever and headstrong daughter of Bavarian hangman Jakob Kuisl, lives with her father outside the village walls and is destined to be married off to another hangman’s son—except that the town physician’s son is hopelessly in love with her. And her father’s wisdom and empathy are as unusual as his despised profession.
It is 1659, the Thirty Years’ War has finally ended, and there hasn’t been a witchcraft mania in decades. But now, a drowning and gruesomely injured boy, tattooed with the mark of a witch, is pulled from a river and the villagers suspect the local midwife, Martha Stechlin.
Jakob Kuisl is charged with extracting a confession from her and torturing her until he gets one. Convinced she is innocent, he, Magdalena, and her would-be suitor to race against the clock to find the true killer. Approaching Walpurgisnacht, when witches are believed to dance in the forest and mate with the devil, another tattooed orphan is found dead and the town becomes frenzied.
More than one person has spotted what looks like the devil—a man with a hand made only of bones. The hangman, his daughter, and the doctor’s son face a terrifying and very real enemy.
Taking us back in history to a place where autopsies were blasphemous, coffee was an exotic drink, dried toads were the recommended remedy for the plague, and the devil was as real as anything, The Hangman’s Daughter brings to cinematic life the sights, sounds, and smells of seventeenth-century Bavaria, telling the engrossing story of a compassionate hangman who will live on in readers’ imaginations long after they’ve put down the novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Oliver Potzsch , born in 1970, has worked for years as a scriptwriter for Bavarian television. He is a descendant of one of Bavaria's leading dynasties of executioners. Pötzsch lives in Munich with his family.
Lee Chadeayne is a former classical musician and college professor. He was one of the charter members of the American Literary Translators Association and is editor-in-chief of ALTA News. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This work seamlessly merges brutality and compassion, and its elegant plot, appealing characters and satisfying conclusion will keep the reader wide awake and turning pages well into the night.
Shelf Awareness
Readers who like a plot-driven story with identifiable heroes and villains will be drawn to this ambitious novel. And unlike some stories in the genre, The Hangman’s Daughter only gets better as the climax approaches — an exciting duel between the hangman and his nemesis. It truly delivers the thing so many of us look for in our novels: entertainment.
BookPage
The translator has done very well by the author; both setting and characters are vividly drawn, making for a compelling read . . . Based on the author's research into his own family history, this novel offers a rare glimpse into a less commonly seen historical setting. If you liked Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, give this a try.
Library Journal
[Pötzsch's] novel reads quite vividly.... Based on the author’s family history, this excellent story brings 17th-century Bavaria alive with all its fears, superstitions and politics. Jacob Kuisl is not your ordinary hangman, and readers will root for him and his search for the truth. There’s enough 'unreality' in the evil of superstitions that this novel may appeal to fantasy readers, and the twists and turns of the plot will appeal to mystery fans.
School Library Journal
[A] romantic theme to this fast-paced thriller. When an orphan is found dead with a mysterious sign etched in his skin....[t]he complexity of the mystery is matched by the layering of sensory and social detail that firmly sets this historical fiction in a seventeenth century Bavarian village, revealing the stresses of family relationships and the complex interactions of authority in the village and the general willingness to accept a supernatural explanation rather than scientific and logical reasoning. —Elisabeth Greenberg
Children's Literature
Discussion Questions
1. Why do the orphans refuse to tell the townspeople what they witnessed? How does this mistrust shape their fate? Do you think they made the right choice?
2. What do you think of Sophie and her actions?
3. The man referred to as “the devil” compares himself to Jacob Kuisl: “You’re like myself…Killing, that’s our business…we’re…more alike than you’d think” (p. 379). Explain why you agree or disagree with this. Discuss the similarities and differences between the two.
4. How does the town of Schongau function as a character in the story?
5. Many of the book’s central characters are real historical figures. Does knowing this affect the way you read the novel?
6. Were you surprised to discover the identity of “Moneybags?” Who had you suspected? Do you think justice was served?
7. Why do you think Oliver Pötzsch chose the title The Hangman’s Daughter?
8. Jakob Kuisl’s “holy of holies” is a “small study filled to the ceiling with dusty files and old books about what an executioner is and does” (p. 433). What would your holy of holies contain?
9. At twelve Jakob Kuisl vows: “Never would he follow in his father’s footsteps; never in his life would he become a hangman” (p. 12). Discuss what you think happens later in life to change his mind.
10. Jakob Kuisl is described as “An angel with a huge sword. An avenging angel” (p. 163). Discuss why the hangman is both respected and feared? Do you think that regardless of his profession, he is an honorable man?
11. How do you think the Schongau witch trials differ from the more familiar Salem witch trials?
12. “Jakob Kuisl, too, knew all about potions and was suspected of sorcery. But he was a man. And he was the executioner” (p. 48). Why are these important distinctions? Both Jakob and Martha are viewed as outsiders in their community, but discuss some of the differences between the executioner and the midwife.
13. “If you want to know who is responsible for anything, ask who benefits from it” (p. 127). Did Johann Lechner’s handling of events hinder or help the investigation? Why does he think the Landgrave should be convinced the witch controversy has been contained? Do you think his actions are based solely on greed or for the welfare of Schongau?
14. Is holding one person responsible, whether guilty or not, justified if it saves a community? Where else have you seen a situation like this?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Heart Like Mine
Amy Hatvany, 2013
Simon & Schuster
345 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451640564
Summary
Thirty-six-year-old Grace McAllister never longed for children. But when she meets Victor Hansen, a handsome, charismatic divorced restaurateur who is father to Max and Ava, Grace decides that, for the right man, she could learn to be an excellent part-time stepmom. After all, the kids live with their mother, Kelli. How hard could it be?
At thirteen, Ava Hansen is mature beyond her years. Since her parents’ divorce, she has been taking care of her emotionally unstable mother and her little brother—she pays the bills, does the laundry, and never complains because she loves her mama more than anyone. And while her father’s new girlfriend is nice enough, Ava still holds out hope that her parents will get back together and that they’ll be a family again. But only days after Victor and Grace get engaged, Kelli dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances—and soon, Grace and Ava discover that there was much more to Kelli’s life than either ever knew.
Narrated by Grace and Ava in the present with flashbacks into Kelli’s troubled past, Heart Like Mine is a poignant, hopeful portrait of womanhood, love, and the challenges and joys of family life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—Western Washington University
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Amy, the youngest of three children, grew up in Washington State. When she graduated with a degree in sociology, she discovered most sociologists are unemployed. Soon followed a variety of jobs—some of which she loved, like decorating wedding cakes; others which she merely tolerated, like receptionist. In 1998, Amy finally decided to sell her car, quit her job, and take a chance on writing books.
The literary gods took kindly to her aspirations, and The Kind of Love that Saves You was published in 2000. The Language of Sisters was published two years later, in 2002. (Both were published under her previous last name, Yurk.)
Amy spends most of her time today with her second and final husband, Stephan. (Seriously, if this one doesn’t work out, she’s done, kaput, no more husbands.) She stays busy with her two children, Scarlett and Miles, and her “bonus child,” Anna. Their blended family also includes two four-legged hairy children, commonly known as Black Lab mutts, Kenda and Dolcé.
When Amy’s not with friends or family, she is most likely reading, cooking, or zoning out on certain reality television shows. Top Chef is a current favorite. She eagerly awaits auditions for the cast of “Top Author.” (“Quick Edit” instead of “Quick Fire” Challenge? C’mon, producers! That’s gripping television!). (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
There are no storybook perfect endings here, but this compelling novel raises the possibility of a hopeful way forward.
Seattle Times
Grace McAllister....is unexpectedly thrust into the role of full-time stepmother when Victor’s ex-wife dies of a heart attack.... Grace assumes the difficult job of managing seven-year-old Max and Ava, 13.... Grace generously explores memories and old photo albums with the children, but what Ava discovers on her own roils this fragile arrangement as the incipient family.... Hatvany maintains a difficult balance between compelling and saccharine prose.... Forced into a tough position, Grace is an easy protagonist to root for, at times overshadowing the broadly drawn, less relatable Victor. Look beyond the more melodramatic aspects and there’s a lot to like.
Publishers Weekly
Will delight readers…vivid and written with a depth of feeling.
Library Journal
The voices are so down-to-earth and familiar and the events so much like real life that readers will feel like they know the characters. Grace is a wonderful, witty woman.... You learn to love her right away and are glad when she meets Victor, a smart and gentle man. You feel the pain of Victor's two children through his ex-wife, Kelli.... From the chapters about Kelli, one can sense a painful past, ultimately revealed. What keeps the reader turning pages is not suspense (there are no real surprises here) but rather the desire to keep company with the likable cast. An uplifting and heartwarming experience.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Consider the two epigraphs that Hatvany opens the novel with. How do they frame the novel? How do you interpret the title, Heart Like Mine, in relation to these two quotations?
2. On the surface, Kelli and Grace are very different characters. What do they share? How do their upbringings shape the kind of women they become?
3. Heart Like Mine is narrated by the three women in Victor’s life—but we never hear from him directly. As a group, discuss your impressions of Victor. How does each narrator present a different side of him?
4. While family dynamics are at the heart of this novel, friendships are also integral to these characters’ lives. Discuss the role of female friendship. What do Kelli, Grace, and Ava each get from a friend that they can’t get from a significant other or a family member? How do you experience this in your own life?
5. How are mothers and fathers portrayed differently in the novel? What do you think the author is saying about the significance of each parental figure in a child’s life?
6. Shortly after Kelli dies, Grace admits, “However much I loved Victor and worried for Max and Ava, I wasn’t sure I could go through this without losing myself completely.” Could you empathize with her in this moment? Did you agree with her when she later concluded, “It didn’t matter whether I felt ready or not”?
7. Discuss the ways that Max expresses his grief over losing his mom. How do they differ from the ways that Ava shows her sadness? What methods does each child use to try to cope with Kelli’s death?
8. A pivotal moment in the novel occurs on page 87, when Victor asks Grace to leave the room before he tells Max and Ava that their mother died. Did you think this was the right thing for him to do for his children? Why or why not?
9. Consider Grace’s coworker’s comment about how having children changes you: “But you really don’t know what love is until you’re a mother. You can’t understand it until you’ve had a baby yourself, but it’s the most intense feeling in the world” (page 109). Do you agree with this? Do you think Grace comes to share this belief?
10. On page 67, Ava thinks, “I also thought it was weird that Mama was always telling me how pretty I was, but then practically in the next breath, she insisted being smart was more important.” Based on what you learned about Kelli’s past over the course of the novel, how can you explain this apparent contradiction?
11. How does Ava’s relationship with her father change after Kelli’s death? What did you think about her comment on page 295 that, “I didn’t want him to think I was like Mama. I wanted him to believe I was stronger than that”?
12. Ava recalls her parents fighting about how much Victor was working at the restaurant. Did you side with either Kelli or Victor while you were reading these scenes?
13. Do you believe that maternal instincts are innate, or do you think that they are acquired? What do you think the novel is saying about the ways that mothering is either a learned skill or a natural ability?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
The Gin Lovers
Jamie Brenner, 2013
St. Martin's Press
439 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250035936
Summary
What price would you pay for happiness? For Charlotte, freedom from her marriage might be the one thing she can’t afford.
It’s 1925, and the Victorian era with its confining morals is all but dead. Unfortunately, for New York socialite Charlotte Delacorte, the scandalous flapper revolution is little more than a headline in the tabloids. Living with her rigid and controlling husband William, her Fifth Avenue townhouse is a gilded cage.
But when William’s rebellious younger sister, the beautiful and brash Mae, comes to live with them after the death of their mother, Charlotte finds entrée to a world beyond her wildest dreams—and a handsome and mysterious stranger whom she imagines is as confident in the bedroom as he is behind the bar of his forbidden speakeasy.
Soon, Charlotte realizes that nothing is as it seems. Secrets are kept and discovered, loves are lost and found, and Charlotte is finds herself on the brink of losing everything—or having it all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Logan Belle
• Birth—March 24, 1971
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., George Washington University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New york
Jamie Brenner, also writing as Logan Belle, grew up in Main Line Philadelphia on a steady diet of Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, and Aaron Spelling. Her novel The Gin Lovers was praised by Fresh Fiction as one of the Top Thirteen Books to read in 2013.
Writing under the pen name Logan Belle, Jamie is the author of the upcoming Miss Chatterley (Pocket Star/Simon & Schuster), a modern day re-telling of D.H. Lawrence’s erotic classic Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Also writing as Logan Belle, she published the erotic romance The Librarian (Pocket Star) which has been translated into a dozen languages, and the burlesque trilogy Blue Angel (Kensington).
Jamie has worked in book publishing as a scout, publicist, and agent. She currently lives in New York City, where she is busy raising two daughters who aren't allowed to read her books. (See the author's website.)
Book Reviews
“13 Books to read in 2013″
FreshFiction.com (seen on Good Morning Texas)
Brimming with passion, romance, flappers, speakeasies, prohibition and love, this story will bring the Manhattan of the 1920’s to life right before your eyes.
Romance Junkies
It almost brought me to tears, and the writing was so well-crafted that for the amount of time it took me to read this, I was living in this world.
Under the Covers
I was hooked on all the drama!
Impressions of a Reader
It truly is a soap opera, it's just on paper and not on the screen.
Heroes and Heartbreakers
Discussion Questions
1. What is your first impression of Charlotte Delacorte? How does your impression of her change over the course of the book? Do you think she is fundamentally the same person at the end of the story? Why or why not?
2. Which characters in the novel represent the old world, and what characters represent the changing times? Is either set of characters all good or all bad? Is there a way to have the best of both worlds?
3. Although Charlotte’s mother-in-law, Geraldine, dies before the book begins, it could be argued that she had as much influence over the course of events as anyone else in the novel. Would William and Charlotte have had a successful marriage if Geraldine had remained in the picture? If so, could Charlotte have been happy in her role as Mrs. William Delacorte?
4. Boom Boom and Amelia are both scheming and ruthless women in their own ways. With whom do you empathize more and why? And do you think they had to scheme to get what they wanted as women at the time? Why?
5. Money plays a big role in this novel – for those who have it, and those who do not. What couples would have worked better with moneyfrom the beginning, and what couples were better off for their struggle?
6. Do you think Fiona really loved Mae? If so, at what point in the story do you start to believe so and why? Do you think they would have still fallen for one another if they were in modern society? Why or why not?
7. Do you think there could have been hope for William and Charlotte if he had brought her in on his schemes from the beginning? Or do you think things would have ultimately come to pass the same way? Why?
8. Do you think Prohibition was a positive thing for our society, or negative? Why? What events or characters in this story, if any, affected your opinion on Prohibition?
9. Charlotte’s father, Black Jack, is only in a few scenes in the book, but his influence looms large over her. What role does Charlotte’s father play in her fate?
10. Who is more of a hero in this story, Jake or Rafferty? And why?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)