Flight Behavior
Barbara Kingsolver, 2012
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062124272
Summary
Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire.
In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction.
Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire.
She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome.
As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.
Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 8, 1955
• Where—Annapolis, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., DePauw University; M.S., University of
Arizona
• Awards—Orange Prize
• Currently—lives on a farm in Virginia
Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields. While her family has deep roots in the region, she never imagined staying there herself. "The options were limited—grow up to be a farmer or a farmer's wife."
Kingsolver has always been a storyteller: "I used to beg my mother to let me tell her a bedtime story." As a child, she wrote stories and essays and, beginning at the age of eight, kept a journal religiously. Still, it never occurred to Kingsolver that she could become a professional writer. Growing up in a rural place, where work centered mainly on survival, writing didn't seem to be a practical career choice. Besides, the writers she read, she once explained, "were mostly old, dead men. It was inconceivable that I might grow up to be one of those myself..."
Kingsolver left Kentucky to attend DePauw University in Indiana, where she majored in biology. She also took one creative writing course, and became active in the last anti-Vietnam War protests. After graduating in 1977, Kingsolver lived and worked in widely scattered places. In the early eighties, she pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she received a Masters of Science degree. She also enrolled in a writing class taught by author Francine Prose, whose work Kingsolver admires.
Kingsolver's fiction is rich with the language and imagery of her native Kentucky. But when she first left home, she says, "I lost my accent.... [P]eople made terrible fun of me for the way I used to talk, so I gave it upslowly and became something else." During her years in school and two years spent living in Greece and France she supported herself in a variety of jobs: as an archaeologist, copy editor, X-ray technician, housecleaner, biological researcher and translator of medical documents.
After graduate school, a position as a science writer for the University of Arizona soon led her into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her numerous articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Nation, the New York Times, and Smithsonian, and many of them are included in the collection, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. In 1986 she won an Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing, and in 1995, after the publication of High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University.
Writing
Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a writer's discipline and broadening her "fictional possiblities." Describing herself as a shy person who would generally prefer to stay at home with her computer, she explains that "journalism forces me to meet and talk with people I would never run across otherwise."
From 1985 through 1987, Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by day, but she was writing fiction by night. Married to a chemist in 1985, she suffered from insomnia after becoming pregnant the following year. Instead of following her doctor's recommendation to scrub the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, Kingsolver sat in a closet and began to write The Bean Trees, a novel about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky (accent intact) and finds herself living in urban Tucson.
The Bean Trees, originally published in 1988 and reissued in a special ten-year anniversary edition in 1998, was enthusiastically received by critics. But, perhaps more important to Kingsolver, the novel was read with delight and, even, passion by ordinary readers. "A novel can educate to some extent," she told Publishers Weekly. "But first, a novel has to entertain—that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessiblity. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with—who may not often read anything but the Sears catalogue—to read my books."
For Kingsolver, writing is a form of political activism. When she was in her twenties she discovered Doris Lessing. "I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do, if I could ever do that."
The Bean Trees was followed by the collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989), the novels Animal Dreams (1990), and Pigs in Heaven (1993), and the bestselling High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never (1995). Kingsolver has also published a collection of poetry, Another America: Otra America (Seal Press, 1992, 1998), and a nonfiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of l983 (ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 1989, 1996). The Poisonwood Bible (1998) earned accolades at home and abroad, and was an Oprah's Book Club selection.
Barbara's Prodigal Summer (2000), is a novel set in a rural farming community in southern Appalachia. Small Wonder, April 2002, presents 23 wonderfully articulate essays. Here Barbara raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world.
Two additional books became best sellers. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle came in 2007, again to great acclaim. Non-fiction, the book recounts a year in the life of Kingsolver's family as they grew all their own food. The Lacuna, published two years later, is a fictional account of historical events in Mexico during the 1930, and moving into the U.S. during the McCarthy era of the 1950's.
Extras
• Barbara Kingsolver lives in Southern Applachia with her husband Steven Hopp, and her two daughters, Camille from a previous marriage, and Lily, who was born in 1996. When not writing or spending time with her family, Barbara gardens, cooks, hikes, and works as an environmental activist and human-rights advocate.
• Given that Barbara Kingsolver's work covers the psychic and geographical territories that she knows firsthand, readers often assume that her work is autobiographical. "There are little things that people who know me might recognize in my novels," she acknowledges. "But my work is not about me...."
• "If you want a slice of life, look out the window. An artist has to look out that window, isolate one or two suggestive things, and embroider them together with poetry and fabrication, to create a revelation. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread." (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Barbara Kingsolver's majestic and brave new novel... is both intimate and enormous, centered on one woman, one family, one small town no one has ever heard of — until Dellarobia stumbles into a life-altering journey of conscience. How do we live, Kingsolver asks, and with what consequences, as we hurtle toward the abyss in these times of epic planetary transformation?... One of the gifts of a Kingsolver novel is the resplendence of her prose. She takes palpable pleasure in the craft of writing, creating images that stay with the reader long after her story is done.... A majestic and brave new novel.
Dominique Browining - New York Times Book Review
Kingsolver has written one of the more thoughtful novels about the scientific, financial and psychological intricacies of climate change. And her ability to put these silent, breathtakingly beautiful butterflies at the center of this calamitous and noisy debate is nothing short of brilliant. Flight Behavior isn't trying to reform recalcitrant consumers or make good liberals feel even more pious about carpooling—so often the purview of environmental fiction—it's just trying to illuminate the mysterious interplay of the natural world and our own conflicted hearts.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
With her powerful new novel, Kingsolver (The Lacuna) delivers literary fiction that conveys an urgent social message. Set in a rural Tennessee that has endured unseasonal rain, the plot explores the effects of a bizarre biological event on a Bible Belt community. The sight that young wife and mother Dellarobia Turnbow comes upon—millions of monarch butterflies glowing like a “lake of fire” in a sheep pasture owned by her in-laws—is immediately branded a miracle, and promises a lucrative tourist season for the financially beleaguered Turnbows. But the arrival of a research team led by sexy scientist Ovid Byron reveals the troubling truth behind the butterflies’ presence: they’ve been driven by pollution from their usual Mexican winter grounds and now face extinction due to northern hemisphere temperatures. Equally threatening is the fact that her father-in-law, Bear, has sold the land to loggers. Already restless in her marriage to the passive Cub, for whom she gave up college when she became pregnant at 17, unsophisticated, cigarette-addicted Dellarobia takes a mammoth leap when she starts working with the research team. As her horizons expand, she faces a choice between the status quo and, perhaps, personal fulfillment. Spunky Dellarobia is immensely appealing; the caustic view she holds of her husband, in-laws, and neighbors, the self-deprecating repartee she has with her best friend Dovey, and her views about the tedium of motherhood combined with a loving but clear-eyed appraisal of her own children invest the narrative with authenticity and sparkling humor. Kingsolver also animates and never judges the uneducated, superstitious, religiously devout residents of Feathertown. As Dellarobia flees into a belated coming-of-age, which becomes the ironic outcome of the Monarchs’ flight path to possible catastrophe in the collapse of a continental ecosystem, the dramatic saga becomes a clarion call about climate change, too lucid and vivid for even skeptics to ignore.
Publishers Weekly
Dellarobia Turnbow is in a perpetual state of fight or flight. Married at 17 to kind, dull Cub, she finds even the satisfaction of motherhood small consolation for the stultifying existence on her in-laws' struggling Tennessee sheep farm. When a fluke of nature upends the monotony of her life, Dellarobia morphs into the church's poster child for a miracle, an Internet phenomenon, and a woman on the verge of unexpected opportunity as scientists, reporters, and ecotourists converge on the Turnbow property. Orange Prize winner Kingsolver (The Lacuna) performs literary magic, generously illuminating both sides of the culture wars, from the global-warming debate to public eduction in America. It's a joy to watch Dellarobia and her precocious son, Preston, blossom under the tutelage of entomologist Ovid Byron. Verdict: Like E.O. Wilson in his novel Anthill, Kingsolver draws upon her prodigious knowledge of the natural world to enlighten readers about the intricacies of the migration patterns of monarch butterflies while linking their behavior to the even more fascinating conduct of the human species. Highly recommended. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL
Library Journal
Dellarobia thought she would escape a future of grim rural poverty by attending college. Instead, she got pregnant and married. Now 27, feeling stifled by the responsibility of two young children she loves and a husband she tolerates, Dellarobia...happens upon a forested valley taken over by a host of brilliant orange butterflies...[which has] landed in Tennessee because their usual winter habitat in Mexico has been flooded out.... Soon, a handsome black scientist with a Caribbean accent has set up in her barn to study the beautiful phenomena, which he says may spell environmental doom. Dellarobia is attracted to the sophisticated, educated world Dr. Byron and his grad school assistants represent...[y]et, she is fiercely defensive against signs of condescension toward her family and neighbors.... One of Kingsolver's better efforts at preaching her politics and pulling heartstrings at the same time.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the novel's title? Talk about the imagery of flight. How is it represented throughout the story?
2. How do the chapter titles relate both to scientific concepts as well as the events that unfold within each chapter itself?
3. Describe Dellarobia. How is she of this mountain town in Tennessee and how is she different from it? How are she and her family connected to the land and to nature itself? How are they disconnected? How does this shape their viewpoints? How does she describe herself? Do you agree with her self-assessment?
4. Talk about the characters names—Dellarobia, Preston, Cordelia, Dovey, Ovid Byron, Cub, Bear, Hester. How does the author's choice of nomenclature suit her characters? When you first meet these characters, including Pastor Bobby, what were your first impressions? Were your notions about them challenged as the story progressed?
5. Describe the small town in Tennessee where Dellarobia lives. What are the people like? Are they familiar to you? What is everyday life like for them? What are their major joys and concerns? How you strike a balance between protecting nature when your livelihood depends upon its destruction?
6. Talk about Della's relationships with the various people in her life: Cub, Hester, Pastor Bobby, Dovey, Ovid Byron. What do her experiences teach her about herself and life?
7. How does Della react when she first sees the Monarchs? What greater meaning do the butterflies hold for her? How is she like the butterflies? How does finding them transform her life? Were the butterflies a miracle?
8. As news of her discovery spreads, what are the reactions of her in-laws and her neighbors? How do they view Della? What are their impressions of the scientists and tourists who descend upon their remote town?
9. What does Dellarobia think about her new friends, and especially Ovid Byron? What about the scientists—how do they view people like Della, her family, and her neighbors? Does either side see they other realistically?
10. Cub and his father, Bear, want to sell the patch of forest where the Monarchs are to a lumber company for clear-cutting. What ramifications would this have, not only for the butterflies but for Della's family and her town? Why is it often difficult for people see the long-term effects of their immediate actions? Cub doesn't consider conserving nature to be his problem. What might you say to convince him otherwise?
11. Though she may not have a formal education beside her high school diploma, would you call Dellarobia wise? Where does her knowledge come from? Is she religious? Their Christian faith is very important to many of her neighbors. How does Barbara Kingsolver portray religion, faith, and God in the novel? What are your impressions of Pastor Bobby?
12. Della tells Ovid that...
Kids in Feathertown wouldn't know college-bound from a hole in the ground. They don't need it for life around here. College is kind of irrelevant.
Why isn't college important to these people? Should it be? Would you say the people of Feathertown respect education? Why is faith and instinct enough for some people? When she explained this to Ovid,
His eyes went wide, as if she'd mentioned they boiled local children alive. His shock gave her a strange satisfaction she could not have explained. Insider status, maybe.
Explain her attitude. Yet Dellarobia also believes that, "educated people had powers. What does she mean by this? How does education empower people? Can it also blind them?
13. After Dellarobia's parents died, what options did she have? She wanted to go to school—and did try—she tells Ovid.
People who hadn't been through it would think it was that simple: just get back on the bus, ride to the next stop. He would have no inkling of the great slog of effort that tied up people like her in the day to day. Or the quaking misgivings that infected every step forward, after a loss. Even now, dread still struck her down sometimes if she found herself counting on things being fine. Meaning her now-living children and their future, those things. She had so much more to lose now than just herself or her own plans.
What are the factors that hold back people in Dellarobia's circumstances? How can they be overcome? How is each character's ideas about the future colored by his or her circumstances?
14. Flight Behavior illuminates the conflicting attitudes of different classes towards nature and the idea of climate change. How does each side see this issue? Where do they find common ground? Do you believe in global warming or climate change? Explain the basis of your beliefs. How much do you know about both the proponents and opponents in this debate?
15. Why do so many Americans fear or dislike science? Why do so many others fear or dislike religion? What impact do these attitudes have on the nation now and what do they portend for our future?
16. For Dellarobia...
Nobody truly decided for themselves, there was too much information. What they actually did was scope around, decide who was looking out for their clan, and sign on for the memos on a wide array of topics.
Do you agree that this is a fair assessment of a divided America? How can we get beyond our judgments and stereotypes?
17. How is media both a help and a hindrance in our understanding of social issues? How does it offer clarity and how does it add confusion? How is the media portrayed in Flight Behavior? What impact does it have on Dellarobia and the fate of the butterflies? People are envious that the media pays attention to Dellarobia, yet she says being interviewed was like, "having her skin peeled off." Why are so many people consumed by a desire for fame?
18. Ovid has doubts about his work. He asks Dellarobia:
What was the use of saving a world that had no soul left in it. Continents without butterflies, seas without coral reefs, he meant. What if all human effort amounted basically to saving a place for ourselves to park?
How would you answer him?
19. Flight Behavior interweaves important themes: religion and science, poverty and wealth, education and instinct or faith, intolerance and acceptance, How are these themes used to complement each other and how do they conflict? Choose one theme and trace it throughout the novel, explaining how it illuminates a particular character's life.
20. At the end of the novel, Dellarobia recalls when Ovid Byron first met Preston and declared the boy a scientist.
A moment, Dellarobia now believed, that changed Preston's life. You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from everything that comes next.
Have you ever had such a defining moment in your life? Was there a special person who influenced you and helped guide or shift the course of your life?
21. What do you think will happen to Dellarobia, Preston, and Cordelia?
22. What did you take away from reading Flight Behavior?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Bared to You (Crossfire Series, 1)
Sylvia Day, 2012
Penguin Group USA
2012 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425263907
Summary
Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness...
He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily...
Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other’s most private wounds...and desires.
The bonds of his love transformed me, even as i prayed that the torment of our pasts didn't tear us apart. (From the publisher.)
Bared to You is the first in the Crossfire Series. Reflected in You is the second installment.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Readers' Crown Award (2), National Readers
Choice Award (2), Romantic Times Magazine Reviewers'
Choice Award
• Currently—lives in San Diego, California
The #1 New York Times & #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of over a dozen award-winning novels translated into three dozen languages. With a few million copies of her books in print, her work has appeared on multiple international bestseller lists, including (but not limited to) USA Today, Publishers Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, the Globe and Mail, Veja, Volkskrant, Nielsen, and Indiebound. Sylvia was elected President-Elect of Romance Writers of America in 2011 and took office as President in 2012.
Sylvia is a lifelong California resident who loves to travel. Her adventures have taken her to Japan, Holland, Germany, France, Mexico, Jamaica, and all over the United States. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in Orange County (the O.C.), and later lived in Monterey, Oceanside, and the Temecula Valley.
She is a Japanese-American who enjoys the many Japanese cultural events in Southern California as well as frequent family jaunts to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Sea World. Her childhood career aspirations were few—become a dolphin trainer at Sea World or a bestselling novelist. Obviously, the dolphin trainer career took a back seat. She is now a wife and mother of two, a full-time writer, and a former Russian linguist for the U.S. Army Military Intelligence.
A year after she first sat down at the keyboard, Sylvia sold her first book to Kensington Brava and three years later—to the day—she sold her 15-17th single title books. In addition to her novels, she’s written numerous novellas and short stories for both print and digital-first release. Sylvia’s work has been called an “exhilarating adventure” by Publishers Weekly and “wickedly entertaining” by Booklist. She’s been honored with the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice award, the EPPIE award, and the National Readers’ Choice Award, as well as multiple nominations for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award of Excellence.
Sylvia travels extensively in conjunction with various speaking engagements. In addition to presenting workshops before writing groups around the country, she is a frequent panelist at events such as the RT Book Lovers Convention, Romance Writers of America’s National Convention, and Comic-Con. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Day creates two multidimensional characters in heroine Eva and hero Gideon, whose successful and attractive exteriors hide traumatized pasts. Especially notable is Day's portrayal of Eva. The heroine is a rape survivor who is able to independently overcome her abuse and find a full and fulfilling sex life.
RT Book Reviews
So hot it practically sizzles, Bared to You charts the life of Manhattan newbie, Eva, and her steamy romance with the unspeakably dashing Gideon. Move over Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins, this is the dawn of a new Day.
Amuse
I read this story over a sweltering weekend, and I was glad I had the air conditioner on full blast since this book cranked up the heat even more! Reaching the last page in this lusty, earthy book was sweet yet sad. I wanted more time with these fascinating characters.
First for Women
An erotic romance that should not be missed.
Romance Novel News
Bared to You obliterates the competition.... Unique and unforgettable.
Joyfully Reviewed
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Bared to You:
1. Readers and reviewers have talked about the addictive quality of Bare to You. Do you find the book addictive—was it hard to tear yourself away from its pages? Why or why not?
2. Despite his flaws, do you find yourself liking Gideon Cross? If so, how does the author manage to make a character likable who has so many dysfunctionalities?
3. Were there points in the story where you could guess what's coming next? If so, what are they? How did that affect your reading experience?
4. Did you tire of the back-and-forth of the relationship; the hot-cold, up-down, on-off? Do you want them to stay together?
5. Why are Gideon and Eva initially attracted to one another? What personality traits to the share? In what ways do their troubled pasts effect the relationship?
6. Would you ever—or have you ever—become involved with a "Gideon"? Or if you have a daughter, how would you feel if she brought him home?
7. Talk about Eva Tramell as a character. Has Gideon met his match in Eva? If so, in what way? Or do you see Eva as soft and submissive when it comes to Gideon? How has her character evolved since Bared to You?
8. Did you tire of reading the back-and-forths of the relationship; the hot-cold, up-down, on-off? Do you want them to stay together?
9. How would you describe Eva and Gideon's relationship? Many readers describe it as abusive or unhealthy. Do you agree? Or do you view it as a passionate love story with characters destined to be together? What do you think makes Eva stay with Gideon?
10. Both characters are young (24 and 28). Do their ages make the story less or more believable? For example, it believable that Travis is a multi-billionaire and such a young age?
11. Bared to You has been compared to Fifty Shades of Grey. If you've read Fifty, what similarites do you see?
12. Did your opinion of Gideon change when you learned about his past?
13. Will you be reading the second installment, Bared to You?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Reflected in You (Crossfire Series, 2)
Sylvia Day, 2012
Penguin Group USA
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425263914
Summary
Gideon Cross. As beautiful and flawless on the outside as he was damaged and tormented on the inside. He was a bright, scorching flame that singed me with the darkest of pleasures. I couldn't stay away. I didn't want to. He was my addiction.... My every desire.... Mine.
My past was as violent as his, and I was just as broken. We’d never work. It was too hard, too painful.... Except when it was perfect. Those moments when the driving hunger and desperate love were the most exquisite insanity.
We were bound by our need. And our passion would take us beyond our limits to the sweetest, sharpest edge of obsession. (From the publisher.)
Reflected in You is the second in the Crossfire Series. Bared to You is the first installment.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Readers' Crown Award (2), National Readers
Choice Award (2), Romantic Times Magazine Reviewers'
Choice Award
• Currently—lives in San Diego, California
The #1 New York Times & #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of over a dozen award-winning novels translated into three dozen languages. With a few million copies of her books in print, her work has appeared on multiple international bestseller lists, including (but not limited to) USA Today, Publishers Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, the Globe and Mail, Veja, Volkskrant, Nielsen, and Indiebound. Sylvia was elected President-Elect of Romance Writers of America in 2011 and took office as President in 2012.
Sylvia is a lifelong California resident who loves to travel. Her adventures have taken her to Japan, Holland, Germany, France, Mexico, Jamaica, and all over the United States. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in Orange County (the O.C.), and later lived in Monterey, Oceanside, and the Temecula Valley.
She is a Japanese-American who enjoys the many Japanese cultural events in Southern California as well as frequent family jaunts to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Sea World. Her childhood career aspirations were few—become a dolphin trainer at Sea World or a bestselling novelist. Obviously, the dolphin trainer career took a back seat. She is now a wife and mother of two, a full-time writer, and a former Russian linguist for the U.S. Army Military Intelligence.
A year after she first sat down at the keyboard, Sylvia sold her first book to Kensington Brava and three years later—to the day—she sold her 15-17th single title books. In addition to her novels, she’s written numerous novellas and short stories for both print and digital-first release. Sylvia’s work has been called an “exhilarating adventure” by Publishers Weekly and “wickedly entertaining” by Booklist. She’s been honored with the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice award, the EPPIE award, and the National Readers’ Choice Award, as well as multiple nominations for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award of Excellence.
Sylvia travels extensively in conjunction with various speaking engagements. In addition to presenting workshops before writing groups around the country, she is a frequent panelist at events such as the RT Book Lovers Convention, Romance Writers of America’s National Convention, and Comic-Con. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The scorching sex scenes and fast-paced plot are strengthened by Day's superb writing, and readers will find themselves getting pulled deeper into Gideon and Eva's world. I can't wait to see what Day does next!
RT Book Reviews
The sensual saga of Eva and Gideon continues in the hotly anticipated follow-up to Bared to You.... The New York Times bestselling novel of “Erotic romance that should not be missed."
Romance Novel News
The steamy sex scenes and intriguing plot twists will have readers clamoring for more.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Reflected in You:
1. Readers and reviewers have talked about the addictive quality of Reflected in You. Do you find the book addictive—was it hard to tear yourself away from its pages? Why or why not?
2. Despite his flaws, do you find yourself liking Gideon Cross? If so, how does the author manage to make a character likable who has so many dysfunctionalities?
3. Were there points in the story where you could guess what's coming next? If so, what are they? How did that affect your reading experience?
4. Did you tire of the back-and-forth of the relationship; the hot-cold, up-down, on-off? Do you want them to stay together?
5. Why are Gideon and Eva initially attracted to one another? What personality traits to the share? In what ways do their troubled pasts effect the relationship?
6. Would you ever—or have you ever—become involved with a "Gideon"? Or if you have a daughter, how would you feel if she brought him home?
7. Talk about Eva Tramell as a character. Has Gideon met his match in Eva? If so, in what way? Or do you see Eva as soft and submissive when it comes to Gideon? How has her character evolved since Bared to You?
8. Did you tire of reading the back-and-forths of the relationship; the hot-cold, up-down, on-off? Do you want them to stay together?
9. How would you describe Eva and Gideon's relationship? Many readers describe it as abusive or unhealthy. Do you agree? Or do you view it as a passionate love story with characters destined to be together? What do you think makes Eva stay with Gideon?
10. Both characters are young (24 and 28). Do their ages make the story less or more believable? For example, it believable that Travis is a multi-billionaire and such a young age?
11. Reflected in You has been compared to Fifty Shades of Grey. If you've read Fifty, what similarites do you see?
12. Did your opinion of Gideon change when you learned about his past?
13. Compare Reflected in You with Bared to You. Which novel do you prefer? Will you be reading the third installment, Entwined With You, when it is released in December, 2012?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
And When She Was Good
Laura Lippman, 2012
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061706875
Summary
When Hector Lewis told his daughter that she had a nothing face, it was just another bit of tossed-off cruelty from a man who specialized in harsh words. But now, Heloise considers it a blessing to know how to avoid attention. At home, she's merely a mom and a lobbyist with a good cause and a mediocre track record.
But in discreet hotel rooms, she's the woman of your dreams—if you can afford her hourly fee.
For more than a decade, Heloise has believed she is safe. Only now her secret life is under siege. One county over, another so-called suburban madam has been found dead in her car, a suicide. Or is it?
And then she learns that her son's father might be released from prison, which is problematic because he doesn't know he has a son. He also doesn't realize that he's serving a life sentence because Heloise betrayed him.
Heloise has to remake her life—again. Disappearing will be the easy part. The trick will be living long enough to start a new life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 31, 1959
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.S., Northwestern University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a well known and respected writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team.
Lippman is a former reporter for the (now defunct) San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter (like Lippman herself) turned private investigator.
Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. Her 2007 release, What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York Times bestseller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which has been optioned for the movies by Academy Award–winning actor Frances McDormand.
Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. In January, 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College.
Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.
Awards
2015 Anthony Award-Best Novel (After I'm Gone)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Short Story ("Hardly Knew Her")
2008 Barry Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Macavity Award-Best Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2007 Anthony Award-Best Novel (No Good Deeds)
2007 Quill Award-Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2006 Gumshow Award-Best Novel (To the Power of the Three)
2004 Barry Award-Best Novel (Every Secret Thing)
2001 Nero Award (Sugar House)
2000 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
2000 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
1999 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (Butchers Hill)
1998 Agatha Award-Best Novel (Butchers Hill)
1998 Edgar Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
1998 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
And When She Was Good is a steady, surprising tale about how Heloise adapts when her business is put in jeopardy.... There are easy, conventional ways for Ms. Lippman to escalate and end her story. But she cares less about mayhem than about ways for Heloise to adapt her talents to changing times. Call it sustainability: this book gives Heloise power, versatility and the gift of foresight, all of which serve her well in a crisis. Ms. Lippman's nominal subject may be prostitution, but her book is not about a woman who takes care of clients. It's about a woman who can take care of herself.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The consequences of long-buried secrets involving misogyny, motherhood, and morality play out in this excellent stand-alone.… Lippman delivers an intense character study about a strong, complex woman… [compelled] to make some desperate choices.
Publishers Weekly
While the author slowly ratchets up the tension until the final, blood-drenched showdown, this is really a story about a woman wresting control of her life…. It's a page-turner, but often an uncomfortable one,… [in light] of her more unsavory decisions. —Stephanie Klose, Library Journal
Library Journal
Lippman…puts a madam at the center of her latest dysfunctional family.… Like Mary Cassatt, Lippman studies families with a different eye than her male contemporaries, showing the heartbreaking complexity of life with those you love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Specific discussion questions will be added if and when they are made available by the publisher.
Tigers in Red Weather
Lisa Klaussmann, 2012
Little, Brown & Company
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316211338
Summary
Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha's Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war.
Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena's husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena--with their children, Daisy and Ed--try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.
Brilliantly told from five points of view, with a magical elegance and suspenseful dark longing, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut novel from a writer of extraordinary insight and accomplishment. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Liza Klaussmann worked as a journalist for the New York Times for over a decade. She received a BA in Creative Writing from Barnard College, where she was awarded the Howard M. Teichman Prize for Prose. She lived in Paris for ten years and she recently completed with distinction an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, in London, where she lives. She is the great-great-great granddaughter of Herman Melville. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Klaussmann's strongest suit is the cut-glass quality of her prose, which presents the characters' perceptions in bold contours while still suggesting their emotional fragility.
Sam Sacks - The Wall Street Journal
With echoes of Nancy Drew murder mysteries and The Great Gatsby that extend well beyond the names Nick and Daisy-plus allusions to Wallace Stevens, to which it owes its abstruse title. Tigers in Red Weather is a deftly constructed, suspenseful family melodrama that exposes the dark innards of privilege.
USA Today
A fine and subtle first novel.... [Klaussmann's] written an elegant playbook on passive aggression, a study of the desires and resentments that burn away souls behind teeth-clenched smiles.... This is a well-crafted novel that tracks the way familial disappointments can ferment into poisonous hatreds. Its alluring accumulation of bile reminded me of Maggie O'Farrell's The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.... Klaussmann is a master at unexpressed despair, which is always eventually expressed, of course.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Tennessee Williams knew it; so did Harper Lee. There's something about a story anchored in the summer months that makes deception a little juicier, desire a little sultrier, and murder just a little more wicked. Brimming with all three, Liza Klaussmann's skillfully constructed debut novel of family intrigue and restless secrets...arrives this summer as a riveting addition to the genre.... Klaussmann's full-bodied prose considers the shortcomings of intimacy and the pitfalls of searching for an overarching family truth—all with the seductive pull of a Gothic melodrama.
Antonina Jedrzejczak - Vogue
Klaussmann's...sharp observations and lyrical prose make for a poignant read.
Sara Vilkomerson - Entertainment Weekly
Tigers in Red Weather has the irresistible, opiate undertow of a fine Southern gothic novel; it's best read in long, languid, effortless pulls.
Laura Miller - Salon
Klaussmann's carefully crafted soap opera skillfully commingles mystery with melodrama, keeping readers guessing about what really happened until the end. While her characters' duplicitous behavior will elicit strong reactions, Ed's psychological progression is the most fascinating to watch. The shocking finale, seen through Ed's all-knowing eyes, scintillates as much as it satisfies.
Publishers Weekly
A meditation on love, desire, and personal choices, this rich and compelling literary debut novel by a former New York Times journalist and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Herman Melville is sure to appeal to a variety of readers
Library Journal
A smart, unsettling debut.... Klaussmann's pitch-perfect portrait of the Derringer marriage gives the novel a strong emotional charge. Their complicated, painfully loving relationship and their mutual tenderness for fresh-faced Daisy ring true....... Stinging dialogue and sharp insights offer strong foundations on which this novice author can build.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Does Tigers in Red Weather have a main character? If so, who do you think it is?
2. What does the murder represent in the novel? Does it have equal impact on all of the characters?
3. Is Nick a heroine or villain? Do you believe her assertion that she didn’t have an affair with Tyler? Does she really love Daisy, or does she resent her?
4. What brings about Hughes’s newfound feelings for Nick later in the novel? Is there a specific catalyst?
5. Hughes finds Ed’s behavior disturbing throughout the novel, but it’s not just the boy’s actions he’s threatened by. How does Ed’s way of thinking, and the knowledge he’s accumulated, threaten Hughes’s relationships and his world?
6. Why is the first-person used only in Ed’s section?
7. Tigers in Red Weather is divided into five sections, each focused on a different character. Which sections did you enjoy most and least, and why? What do you think we’re meant to feel about each of the characters? How does the author show us that something is off about Ed long before his first-person narration grants us a window into his psyche?
8. Why does Helena stay with Avery, despite her unhappiness?
9. Why is so much of Daisy’s character told from a child’s point of view? What does that say about her role in the novel?
10. On page 134, after witnessing Tyler and Peaches kiss, Daisy wishes she could be like Scarlett O’Hara, independent and free, and forget about Tyler, but she’s also scared. When you were a child, who were your role models, literary or otherwise? What they did represent for you? Now that you’re older, who do you look up to?
11. If you ranked the characters from most to least moral, where do they stand?
12. What does the title of the book mean? How is the poem related to the story?
13. On page 298, Ed tries to explain to Hughes his hunch that people are “going about it all the wrong way.” What do you think Ed means? Which people, and what do you think Ed would approve of as the “right” way? Why does Ed’s comment so unsettle Hughes?
14. On page 351, Nick says to Hughes, “It’s the strangest thing, but I have this feeling.... Like everything...” And Hughes replies, “Yes. Everything is.” Complete Nick’s sentence for her. What do you imagine she’s trying to say? Given the circumstances, is there any other way to interpret it? Why do you think the author chose to leave this vague, and how did it affect your experience as a reader?
15. What did you make of the ending of Tigers in Red Weather? Do you think Ed is rehabilitated?
(Questions issued by publisher.)