I See You
Clare Mackintosh, 2017
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 978110198829
Summary
A dark and claustrophobic thriller, in which a normal, everyday woman becomes trapped in the confines of her normal, everyday world…
Every morning and evening, Zoe Walker takes the same route to the train station, waits at a certain place on the platform, finds her favorite spot in the car, never suspecting that someone is watching her.
It all starts with a classified ad. During her commute home one night, while glancing through her local paper, Zoe sees her own face staring back at her; a grainy photo along with a phone number and a listing for a website called FindTheOne.com.
Other women begin appearing in the same ad, a different one every day, and Zoe realizes they’ve become the victims of increasingly violent crimes—including murder. With the help of a determined cop, she uncovers the ad’s twisted purpose…A discovery that turns her paranoia into full-blown panic. Zoe is sure that someone close to her has set her up as the next target.
And now that man on the train—the one smiling at Zoe from across the car—could be more than just a friendly stranger. He could be someone who has deliberately chosen her and is ready to make his next move. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976-77
• Raised— Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Royal Holloway University, Surrey
• Awards—Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year; Cognac Prix du Polar Best
International Novel
• Currently—lives in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, England
Clare Mackintosh, a former British policewoman, is the author of the thriller novels, I Let You Go (2014) and I See You (2017). The first book was a Richard & Judy book club pick, winner of Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award (beating J.K.Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith), and the Best International Novel at France's Cognac Festival Prix du Polar awards.
Education and career
After attending Aylesbury High School in Buckinghamshire, Mackintosh went to Royal Holloway University in Surrey, taking a degree in French and management. As part of her course work, she spent a year in Paris as a bilingual secretary. Upon graduation, however, she decided she wanted to enter police work. After training, she was transfered to Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds where she was promoted to town sergeant. Later, she became Thames Valley Police operations inspector for Oxfordshire. All told, Mackintosh spent 12 years in the police force
For a number of years, Mackintosh had been writing her own blog, and in 2011 she left police work to try her hand at writing full-time. She took on feature articles as a free-lancer, became a columnist for Cotswold Life, and eventually turned to fiction. After writing what she calls "a fairly mediocre chick-lit novel"—clever enough to gain her an agent but not a publisher—she realized she needed to write on a subject she knew something about: a hit-and-run accident in Oxfordshire that took the life of a young child. Some years later, Mackintosh went through her own devastating loss as a mother. Those two tragedies led her to write I Let You Go.
Personal
In 2006, Clare and her husband Rob Mackintosh became the parents of twin boys, delivered prematurely. Their son Alex contracted meningitis and died when he was a few weeks old. When her surviving son was 15 months old, Mackintosh gave birth to a second set of twins.
Mackintosh is founder and director of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival and has become patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity supporting the John Radcliffe Hospital's work with families facing difficult pregnancies. (Adapted from Wikipedia and other online sources, including Writing Magazine. Retrieved 1/17/2017.)
Book Reviews
[A] nasty little tale by the British author (and former police officer) Clare Mackintosh.… [I]n this well-told suspense story…Mackintosh supplies refreshinglly reaslistic domestic scenes.… With the exception of a forced and truly awful ending…[the author] really hits home for daily commuters.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
Mackintosh understands the complexities—the endless ups and downs—of police work and family life, and she presents them with skill and sensitivity. Beyond that, her greatest gift may be her plotting. About halfway through I Let You Go, she introduced a shocking twist that turned her tale on its ear and carried it to a new level. Now, in I See You, she hits us with an equal astonishment at her story’s very end. She’s a master of surprises…[and] seems destined to do important work for many years to come.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post
Mackintosh allots her characters the perfect amount of back story, allowing them to carry their own weight throughout the investigation. She also casts enough extras to keep readers guessing who could be behind these attacks…readers may find themselves wanting to reread this one.
Associated Press
(Starred review.) Although some shocking final twists don’t quite convince, Mackintosh scripts a hair-raising ride all the scarier because its premise—that our predictable routines make us easy targets—is sadly so plausible.
Publishers Weekly
[R]eaders will begin to believe that they, too, are being watched.… [A] chilling addition to the mystery and police procedural genres. The twists and red herrings will attract fans of Tana French and Lisa Gardner. —Natalie Browning, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community Coll. Lib., Richmond, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A well-crafted blend of calculated malevolence, cunning plot twists, and redemption that will appeal to fans of Sophie Hannah, Ruth Rendell, and Ruth Ware.
Booklist
Most readers will peg the villain early on, while the epilogue will remind them of the loose ends the author—and authorities—has left dangling. The author's meticulous detail to investigative accuracy and talent in weaving a thrilling tale set her work apart from others in the field.
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 I See You…then take off on your own:
1. Talk about Zoe Walker, her personality, as well as her life above ground: job and family life. Does she make a credible and/or sympathetic character?
2. What about Kelly Swift. She's on a lousy assignment, what is considered a probationary period for having attacked a rapist. How would you describe Kelly? Author Clare Mackintosh was a policewoman in a former life; how much do you think her previous job influenced her portrayal of Kelly?
3. How does Mackintosh ratchet up the suspense in her novel, the element in any good thriller that keeps you turning the page?
4. Did you guess the villain's identity before the end? If so, how?
5. The novel's ending has everyone is talking. Did you see the twist coming? Do you think it's well done, or does it feel forced?
6. What about the epilogue. How does it affect your reading of the book? What feeling does it leave you with? Why might the author have chosen to include it?
7. Do you think the world is filled with the kind of evil that this and the many other recent thrillers would have us believe? Think of recent books, their victims, and sociopathic villains. Is the world this dangerous?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Celine
Peter Heller, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451493897
Summary
From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.
Working out of her jewel box of an apartment at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career of tracking down missing persons, and she has a better record at it than the FBI.
But when a young woman, Gabriela, asks for her help, a world of mystery and sorrow opens up. Gabriela's father was a photographer who went missing on the border of Montana and Wyoming. He was assumed to have died from a grizzly mauling, but his body was never found.
Now, as Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, investigating a trail gone cold, it becomes clear that they are being followed—that this is a case someone desperately wants to keep closed.
Inspired by the life of Heller’s own remarkable mother, a chic and iconoclastic private eye, Celine is a deeply personal novel, a wildly engrossing story of family, privilege, and childhood loss. Combining the exquisite plotting and gorgeous evocation of nature that have become his hallmarks, Peter Heller gives us his finest work to date. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 13, 1959
• Raised—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.F.A, Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Iowa Writers' Workshop's Michener Fellowship; National Outdoor's Book Award
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado
Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, and a contributing editor at Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure. He is an award winning adventure writer and the author of four books of literary nonfiction. The Dog Stars, his first novel, was published in 2012.
Heller was born and raised in New York. He attended high school in Vermont and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he became an outdoorsman and whitewater kayaker. He traveled the world as an expedition kayaker, writing about challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucuses, Central America and Peru.
At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry, he won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem "The Psalms of Malvine." He has worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, logger, offshore fisherman, kayak instructor, river guide, and world class pizza deliverer. Some of these stories can be found in Set Free in China, Sojourns on the Edge. In the winter of 2002 he joined, on the ground team, the most ambitious whitewater expedition in history as it made its way through the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet. He chronicled what has been called "The Last Great Adventure Prize" for Outside, and in his book Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River.
The gorge—three times deeper than the Grand Canyon—is sacred to Buddhists, and is the inspiration for James Hilton’s Shangri La. It is so deep there are tigers and leopards in the bottom and raging 25,000 foot peaks at the top, and so remote and difficult to traverse that a mythical waterfall, sought by explorers since Victorian times, was documented for the first time in 1998 by a team from National Geographic. The book won a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, was number three on Entertainment Weekly’s "Must List" of all pop culture, and a Denver Post review ranked it "up there with any adventure writing ever written."
In December, 2005, on assignment for National Geographic Adventure, he joined the crew of an eco-pirate ship belonging to the radical environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it sailed to Antarctica to hunt down and disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet.
The ship is all black, sails under a jolly Roger, and two days south of Tasmania the engineers came on deck and welded a big blade called the Can Opener to the bow—a weapon designed to gut the hulls of ships. In The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals, Heller recounts fierce gales, forty foot seas, rammings, near-sinkings, and a committed crew’s clear-eyed willingness to die to save a whale. The book was published in 2007.
In the fall of 2007 Heller was invited by the team who made the acclaimed film The Cove to accompany them in a clandestine filming mission into the guarded dolphin-killing cove in Taiji, Japan. Heller paddled into the inlet with four other surfers while a pod of pilot whales was being slaughtered. He was outfitted with a helmet cam, and the terrible footage can be seen in the movie. The Cove went on to win an Academy Award. Heller wrote about the experience for Men’s Journal.
Heller’s most recent memoir, about surfing from California down the coast of Mexico, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, was published in 2010. Can a man drop everything in the middle of his life, pick up a surfboard and, apprenticing himself to local masters, learn to ride a big, fast wave in six months? Can he learn to finally love and commit to someone else? Can he care for the oceans, which are in crisis? The answers are in. The book won a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, which called it a "powerful memoir…about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea." It also won the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature. (From the author's website.)
In 2012, Heller published his first novel, The Dog Stars, to wide acclaim. It received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist and was chosen as a "Best Book of the Month" by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Heller currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
Book Reviews
This is a mystery that needs to be savored; be prepared to treat yourself to prose that is lush but never overblown and to be transported to the various landscapes in America featured in the book. Heller betrays his painter’s roots in where his eye strays and where his focus is in his writing. Some readers may find his attention to setting detracts from the story being told; he draws the reader into realistic places as well as fully realized characters. READ MORE
Cara Kless - LitLovers
A terrific piece of fiction.… A pulpy, twisty plot.… Celine is tough, tired, and very funny—exactly the sort of person you want to spend 300 pages with. This may be hardboiled fiction, but it’s made with a free-range egg and served with a side of Jacques Pepin’s mustard sauce.
Craig Fehrman - Outside Magazine
Despite its intriguing premise, Heller’s third novel is a missing persons mystery that never quite finds its mark.… Heller, a gifted nature writer as well as novelist, handles certain set pieces well. But too often the novel seems lost in the wilderness.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Celine is a paradox, a Sarah Lawrence blue blood who is also a licensed PI…a quick draw and a crack shot.… Heller blends suspense with beautiful descriptive writing of both nature and civilization to create a winner. —Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) This captivating, tender, brainy, and funny tale of the mysterious powers of beauty and grief, nature and family will leave readers hoping that Heller is planning a National Park series featuring this stealthy, irrepressible duo.
Booklist
[T]he book's best moments come in its evocative descriptions of the American West in early autumn. Celine herself is a delight.… An imperfect but largely satisfying detective novel anchored by a charming and unforgettable heroine.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What tone does the opening scene of the book set for the rest of the story, in both establishing the atmosphere and its main themes and characters?
2. How did the interweaving of Celine’s backstory with that of Paul’s and his family’s create tension and momentum as you read?
3. Discuss the different, and even opposite, sides of Celine’s and Pete’s personalities—their hard-edged, more masculine sides and their softer, artistic, and sensitive sides. How do their careers allow both of those sides to prosper, and what does their unique relationship suggest about what they love about each other?
4. How does the couple balance out each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make for an effective partnership at home and in work? Does either of them seem more dominant in either space?
5. How does Celine’s complicated experience with motherhood motivate her work as a private investigator? Did you feel that that blurring of professional and personal lines enhanced or hindered her relationship with her clients—especially with Gabriela?
6. Celine imagines that for Gabriela home is a "space within the relative safety of her own skin." Celine may share this sensibility to some degree. Which of her actions, tendencies, and memories in the book are most reflective of this very private and self-protective mindset?
7. How does an urban versus a rural setting bring out different sides of different characters, especially Celine’s? Can you track a progression of what kinds of places they settle in depending on their moods and mindsets, or is their mood more affected by where they are at any given time?
8. What service does Celine offer her clients on a more psychological level, beyond her unearthing of the facts of certain mysteries in their lives? Do you think she absorbs their secrets and suffering, and, if so, how does that motivate her to continue to the next case, even at the age of sixty-eight?
9. How does Hank take up the work of emotional excavation and investigation on his mother, perhaps work she’s unable to do herself? What does this suggest about our abilities to confront our own pasts with clear eyes?
10. What do all of the characters’ secrets, revealed to us gradually throughout the book, have in common? How do the characters differ in the steps they have to take to discover their own truths?
11. Although Celine’s role as a mother is a paramount focus of the book, what did you also take away from reading about the complicated role of fathers in their children’s lives? Do you think that Celine or Hank has more in common with Gabriela in this sense?
12. When Celine considers Paul’s circumstances for disappearing and leaving Gabriela, she displays a great deal of compassion—something that’s key to why she’s a good investigator. How do you think she’s been able to channel that in spite of all that she experienced as a child?
13. The book makes the case that the world feels different after the 9/11 attacks, and also uses the grandeur of nature to indicate the smallness of humanity. Did you feel at the end of the book that ultimately humanity’s preservation was worth the effort despite these perspectives? What do those scales of comparison illustrate about how we understand our own power in the universe? Which characters are most accepting of that balance in the novel?
14. What sacrifices does Celine make for her clients, especially for Paul in regard to his involvement in the Chilean coup? Do you think they’re grateful for what she does?
15. Think about your own family and how you have dealt, individually and collectively, with secrets and difficult times. How would things have been different for your family if the losses Paul and Gabriela faced transpired for you? Could you empathize with either or both of them?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Women in the Castle
Jessica Shattuck, 2017
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062563668
Summary
Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold…
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war.
The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers.
Then she locates Ania, another resister’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart.
Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.
Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah’s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck’s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history.
Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship. (From the publisher.)
Read the author's NY Times Op-Ed article.
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972
• Where—Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Brookline, Massachusetts
Jessica Shattuck is the award-winning author of The Hazards of Good Breeding (2003), which was a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and of Perfect Life (2009). Her third novel The Women in the Castle (2017), was inspired by her grandparents' experiences in Germany during World War II.
Shattuck's other writing has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Glamour, Mother Jones, Wired, and The Believer, among other publications. A graduate of Harvard University, she received her MFA from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and three children in Brookline, Massachusetts. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In her beautiful, perceptive novel, Jessica Shattuck does an about-face from other World War II books. Most of those books, if not all, focus on victims of the fascists or on those opposing them. In a daring move, Shattuck takes as her viewpoint the Germans themselves — those who are left standing (barely) after the fall of Berlin. READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Shattuck’s characters represent the range of responses to fascism. Her achievement — beyond unfolding a plot that surprises and devastates — is in her subtle exploration of what a moral righteousness like Marianne’s looks like in the aftermath of war, when communities and lives must be rebuilt, together.
Mary Pols - New York Times Book Review
[A]n intricately woven narrative with frequent plot twists that will shock and please.…[and] a unique glimpse into what the average German was and was not aware of during World War II.… A beautiful story of survival, love, and forgiveness.
Publishers Weekly
There are too many ideas in this novel; as each emotional arc builds, the narrative abruptly switches to another character's voice, confusing the reader.… [R]eaders will have to triangulate numerous characters. —Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT
Library Journal
(Starred review.)The reader is fully immersed in the experiences of these women, the choices they make, and the burdens they carry…a rich, potent, fluently written tale of endurance and survival.
Booklist
[S]imple, stark lessons on personal responsibility and morality. Inevitably, it makes for a dark tale.… [The] novel seems atypical of current World War II fiction but makes sincere, evocative use of family history to explore complicity and the long arc of individual responses to a mass crime.
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 THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE … then take off on your own:
1. What does the novel reveal about the method and degree of Hitler's appeal to the German populace? In what way does it address the most problematic question of the War: how the German people allowed themselves to be swept away by Hitler and Nazi propaganda. Just as important, how much—and at what point—did ordinary citizens truly know about the impoundment and murder of Europe's Jewish population.
2. Describe each of the three women—Marianne, Ania, and Benita. Talk about their different views of the Hitler regime as it unfolded and their various reasons for supporting it. What was each woman's role, or position, in German society, and how did each experience the war? What about the years after the war?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) Which woman's story do you find most compelling, frightening, or horrifying? Are you more sympathetic toward one than the other two?
4. Most of the recent books about World War II focus on the horrors of the holocaust, and for good reason. Yet ordinary Germans also suffered, especially as the war neared the end. What was it like for the country as Nazism collapsed? Consider the population at large, but most particularly the women at Burg Lingenfels. How are the three of them luckier than most survivors?
5. What roles do hope…denial…and forgiveness play in this novel? Is Jessica Shattuck's book an attempt to somehow exonerate the citizens who supported Hitler's rise to power?
6. Has reading The Women in the Castle, changed in any way your understanding of World War II?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
The following Questions were generously contributed to LitLovers by REBECCA DIXON from the Baldwin Public Library in Baldwin, Wisconsin—many thanks, Rebecca:
7. Was Marianne right to interfere in Benita’s romance with Muller? Do you think that relationship would have saved her, or was it doomed by his feelings of guilt?
8. What about World War I helped cause World War II?
9. There was much debate about whether assassination was the right thing to do with Hitler. How do you feel? Are you aware of the Bonhoeffer attempt?
10. How are America and American soldiers seen in the eyes of the characters?
11. Many characters in the story say they don’t believe in God or are not sure. How is our belief tested in times of war? How can we explain God’s actions or lack of them during the Holocaust?
12. Hitler is used as the definition of evil since. What other world situations have been compared to the Holocaust? Has there been anything as bad in your opinion? Do you see any situations today that cause concern?
13. Can history repeat itself? What needs to be done to make sure there are no more Naziis?
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The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World
Peter Wohlleben, 2015 (2016, U.S. printing)
Greystone Books
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781771642484
Summary
Are trees social beings?
In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network.
He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.
Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.
After learning about the complex life of trees, a walk in the woods will never be the same again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Bonn, Germany
• Education—studied Forestry
• Currently—lives in Hummel, Germany
Peter Wohlleben is a German forest ranger and author, who has spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally-friendly woodland in Germany, where he is working for the return of primeval forests. He is the author of numerous books about trees.
Wohlleben's love of the forest goes back to his childhood. He grew up in Bonn, Germany, in the 1960s and ’70s, raising spiders and turtles, and playing outside. When, as a teen, he was exposed to the sobering prospects for the world's ecological future, he decided his life's mission would be to help.
He studied forestry, and began working for the state forestry administration in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1987. Later, as a young forester in charge of a 3,000-odd acre woodlot in the Eifel region, about an hour outside Cologne, he felled old trees and sprayed logs with insecticides. But he did not feel good about it: "I thought, 'What am I doing? I'm making everything kaput.'"
His 2015 book, The Hidden Life of Trees became a surprise bestseller and is still at the top of the lists in Germany. The book has hit a nerve around the globe, as well, drawing attention of the importance of the world's forests. (Adapted from the publisher and the New York Times.)
Book Reviews
The matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news—long known to biologists—that trees in the forest are social beings.
Sally McGrane - New York Times
[A] declaration of love and an engrossing primer on trees, brimming with facts and an unashamed awe for nature.
Andrea Wulf - Washington Post
[A] passionate and penetrating guide to the inner workings of each tree and every woodland.
Gerard Helferich - Wall Street Journal
The book is dreamy and strange; it tells about trees and their tightknit communities in the forest. The book is full of science. But it's written from the standpoint of a person who lives and works with trees in the forest rather than someone who studies them.… Wohlleben enumerates myriad ways in which trees actually communicate with each other. For example, when confronted with a parasite, some trees will emit [protective] chemicals…nearby trees, whose contact with the original tree is through…the tips of their roots, will then emit the chemical repellent in turn.
NPR.org
German forester Peter Wohlleben’s account of anthropomorphized trees…infuriates scientists and utterly charms everyone else who reads it.
Brian Bethune - Maclean's Magazine
Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees breaks entirely new ground…[Wohlleben] has listened to trees and decoded their language. Now he speaks for them.
Thomas Pakenham - New York Review of Books
[F]ascinating.… Wohlleben anthropomorphizes his subject, using such terms as friendship and parenting, which serves to make the technical information relatable, and he backs up his ideas with information from scientists. He even tackles the question of whether trees are intelligent.
Publishers Weekly
In this spirited exploration, [Wohlleben] guarantees that readers will never look at these life forms in quite the same way again.… [E]ven general readers will gain a rich appreciation of a forest's dynamism. —Kelsy Peterson, Forest Hill Coll., Melbourne, Australia
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Hidden Life of Trees…then take off on your own:
1. What struck you most—what did you find most interesting or surprising—in reading about the secret life of trees?
2. Talk about the ways trees form communities underground via the "woodwide web." Explain what Peter Wohlleben means when he talks about how "social" trees are.
3. Describe the parental behavior of trees…and the "childish" behavior of their offspring.
4. Do you think that Wohlleben over anthropomorphizes trees in his book—that he makes them, perhaps, too human? Or is that question in and of itself a reflection of our own anthropocentric attitudes that hinder any acceptance of other forms of "being."
5. (Follow-up to Question 4): Are trees "beings"? Actually, maybe start with a definition of the word being. What does Wohlleben think? What do you think?
6. (Follow-up to Question 4): How much of what Wohlleben writes about in The Hidden Life of Trees is based on scientific research?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
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Close Enough to Touch
Colleen Oakley, 2017
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501139291
Summary
From the author of Before I Go comes an evocative, poignant, and heartrending exploration of the power and possibilities of the human hear.
Love has no boundaries...
Jubilee Jenkins has a rare condition: she’s allergic to human touch. After a nearly fatal accident, she became reclusive, living in the confines of her home for nine years.
But after her mother dies, Jubilee is forced to face the world—and the people in it—that she’s been hiding from.
Jubilee finds safe haven at her local library where she gets a job. It’s there she meets Eric Keegan, a divorced man who recently moved to town with his brilliant, troubled, adopted son. Eric is struggling to figure out how to be the dad—and man—he wants so desperately to be.
Jubilee is unlike anyone he has ever met, yet he can't understand why she keeps him at arm's length. So Eric sets out to convince Jubilee to open herself and her heart to everything life can offer, setting into motion the most unlikely love story of the year. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Colleen Oakley is the author of three novels, You Were There Too (2020), Close Enough to Touch (2017), and Before I Go (2015).
Oakley is also the former senior editor of Marie Claire and editor in chief of Women's Health & Fitness. Her articles, essays and interviews have been featured in the New York Times, Ladies' Home Journal, Marie Claire, Women's Health, Redbook, Parade and Martha Stewart Weddings. She lives in Georgia with her husband, four kids and the world's biggest lapdog. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
If you overlay The Rosie Project onto one of Jodie Picoult’s medical crisis novels, you might end up with something like Close Enough to Touch, Colleen Oakley’s new rom-com. Her novel combines a dash of screwball for laughs, a tad of woe for pathos, and a certain predictability for comfort. You know the broad outlines of where it’s headed — but you’ll have a delightful time getting there. READ MORE …
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
This novel is the ideal pick for book clubs or just for curling up with a rainy day read… [a] sweet story of love and life.
Romance Times Book Reviews
Heart wrenching and humorous, Oakley delivers an out-of-the-ordinary love story with steady quips and endearing characters.… [Jubilee's] journey from recluse to recovery is fascinating, aided by supportive and supporting characters.
Publishers Weekly
Long a recluse in her New Jersey home, deathly allergic Jubilee Jenkins must finally venture forth and meets troubled, new-in-town Eric. You can't go wrong—a People Best New Book Pick, a US Weekly "Must" Pick, and a Publishers Lunch Buzz Book
Library Journal
Oakley has produced an affecting work that, while avoiding maudlin sentimentality, makes the reader care about Daisy and her determination to live while dying.
Booklist
Oakley masterfully creates a high-stakes story that still feels solidly real. All of her characters are well-rounded and charming.… A romantic, sweet story about taking chances and living life fully.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What effect does the alternating narrative between Jubilee’s and Eric’s perspectives have on your understanding of the events and characters in the book? How would the story have been different if it was just from Jubilee’s point of view?
2. Do you think Eric is a good dad to Aja? To Ellie? Why or why not? Compare and contrast his parenting style with that of Jubilee’s mother, Victoria. Consider the challenges each parent faces.
3. Why do you think Eric agreed to adopt Aja? How did that change his relationship with Stephanie? With Ellie?
4. How does Jubilee’s relationship with her mother affect her outlook on life? What would you do in her mother's shoes, having a child with a unique condition like Jubilee’s?
5. How is Jubilee affected by each of the people she interacts with as she reenters the world? How do they affect her perspective about her condition? Consider her interactions with Madison, Eric, Aja, Michael the pillow-golfer, and Louise.
6. Is Eric’s long-distance father-daughter book club experiment a success? What is so powerful about the shared reading experience? How has a book brought you closer to another family member or friend?
7. Why do you think Jubilee resists pursuing treatments or management for her condition? Why wouldn’t she want to see a doctor for an Epipen prescription?
8. Consider this quote: “People did stare at me in high school—like I was a curiosity—but I didn't think anyone ever noticed me. It’s a strange feeling, to be seen but invisible at the same time.” (p. 94) What is the difference between being seen and being noticed? Why is the difference important to Jubilee?
9. How has Jubilee’s nine-year seclusion affected her emotional maturity?
10. Discuss the importance of female friendship. How does Madison and Jubilee’s relationship affect each of the women?
11. Why is Jubilee the only adult who is able to get through to Aja? How do their shared experiences link them?
12. How does the truth about Jubilee’s condition change her relationship with Eric? With Madison?
13. Throughout the book, Jubilee starts to understand that her biggest fear isn’t actually physical touch but having emotional connections, only to be let down or disappointed by them. How does each character experience and deal with their own fears of vulnerability throughout the book?
14. Did the letter Jubilee found from her mother change your view of her? How so?
15. In the end, Jubilee asks Madison “if love is worth the risk.” How would you have answered that?
16. What was your reaction to the epilogue? Do you think Jubilee and Eric end up together for good? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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