Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
Emma Straub, 2012
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594631825
Summary
The enchanting story of a midwestern girl who escapes a family tragedy and is remade as a movie star during Hollywood’s golden age.
In 1920, Elsa Emerson, the youngest and blondest of three sisters, is born in idyllic Door County, Wisconsin. Her family owns the Cherry County Playhouse, and more than anything, Elsa relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience.
But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a child¹s game of pretend.
While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Irving Green, one of the most powerful executives in Hollywood, who refashions her as a serious, exotic brunette and renames her Laura Lamont. Irving becomes Laura’s great love; she becomes an Academy Award-winning actress—and a genuine movie star.
Laura experiences all the glamour and extravagance of the heady pinnacle of stardom in the studio-system era, but ultimately her story is a timeless one of a woman trying to balance career, family, and personal happiness, all while remaining true to herself.
Ambitious and richly imagined, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures is as intimate—and as bigger-than-life—as the great films of the golden age of Hollywood. Written with warmth and verve, it confirms Emma Straub’s reputation as one of the most exciting new talents in fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Emma Straub is an American author three novels and a short story collection. Raised on Manhattan's Upper West side, she now lives with her husband and two young sons in Brooklyn.
Emma comes by writing naturally: her father is Peter Straub, an award winning writer of horror fiction, a fact which makes even Emma admit to a belief in a writing gene. Here's what she told Michele Filgate of Book Slut:
I believe the writing gene is located just behind the gene for enjoying red wine and just in front of the gene for watching soap operas, both of which I also inherited from my father. What I do know for sure is that I watched my father write for a living my entire childhood, and I understood that it was a job like any other, that one had to do all day, every day. I think a lot of people have the fantasy that a writer sits around in coffee shops all day, waiting for the muse to appear.
So while genes may play a role, so does hard work and grit: determined to become a writer, she pushed on even after her first four books were turned down. As she told Alexandra Alter of the New York Times,
They all got rejected by every single person in publishing, in the world. It’s still true that I will go to a publishing party or event, and the first thing I will think of is, "I know who you are, you rejected novels 2 and 4."
It's nice to think that today Straub is having the last laugh.
Attending Oberlin College, Straub received her B.A. in 2002. She went on to earn her M.F.A. at the University of Wisconsin where she studied with author Lorrie Moore. Returning to New York, she worked for a number of years at the independent Book Court bookstore in Brooklyn.
Her novels include Modern Lovers (2016), The Vacationers (2014), and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures (2012). Her story collection is titled Other People We Married (2011). Straub's fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, New York Magazine, Tin House, New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and Paris Review Daily. She is also a contributing writer to Rookie. (LitLovers.)
Book Reviews
At once a delicious depiction of Hollywood’s golden age and a sweet, fulfilling story about one woman’s journey through fame, love, and loss.
Boston Globe
In her big-hearted first novel…Emma Straub follows…[an] actress's 50-year journey from summer stock extra to screen star to has-been. It's a witty examination of the psychic costs of reinvention in Hollywood's golden age…Straub…is terrific at capturing the gilded cocoon created by the Hollywood studios for its stars that was both seductive and insidious.
Caroline Preston - Washington Post
Straub vividly recaptures the glamour and meticulously contrived mythology of the studio-system era.
USA Today
Straub’s brisk pacing and emotionally complex characters keep the story fresh.... This bewitching novel is ultimately a celebration of those moments when we drop the act and play the hardest role of all: ourselves.
O, The Oprah Magazine
Straub makes masterful use of the golden age of Hollywood to tap contemporary questions about the price of celebrity and a working mother’s struggle to balance all that matters.
People
Dramatic, human and historical: like a classic Hollywood movie…Straub knows when to linger and when to be brief, and her portrayal of Elsa/Laura’s relationships is exquisite.... Peppered with stunningly crafted sentences and heart-twisting storytelling, the richness of this full life is portrayed with perceptive clarity.
BUST Magazine
In her debut novel (after her early-2012 story collection, Other People We Married), Straub weaves together snapshots of the long, large life of Elsa Emerson, the youngest daughter in a family of quintessentially blonde, corn-fed Midwestern sisters living in Door County, Wis. In the late 1920s, the family runs a summer playhouse, and Elsa’s first role, as a flower girl in Come Home, My Angel, coincides with a family tragedy. These two events shape her passion for acting and her desire to slip into a different character than that of the good, homespun girl she is. At 17, a few years before WWII, she moves to Los Angeles and finds Hollywood the perfect stage for her metamorphosis into Laura Lamont, a dark-haired, serious-eyed starlet who carries with her an air of mystery and gravity completely apart from her idyllic Midwestern upbringing. Written in a removed prose, Straub brings Elsa to life with the detached analysis of an actor examining a character, exemplifying Elsa’s own remote relationship to her identity. Through marriages, births, deaths, and career upheavals, Elsa and Laura coexist, sometimes uneasily—until Elsa learns to reconcile her two selves. An engaging epic of a life that captures the bittersweetness of growing up, leaving home, and finding it again.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. “Yes, I’m an actress,” Elsa said, except that the moment the words were out of her mouth, there on that spot on a street that existed only in the movies, she wasn’t Elsa Emerson anymore, at least not all of her. “I’m Laura Lamont” (p. 58). What does it mean for Elsa to become Laura Lamont? How does her new name change the way she feels about herself?
2. How is Elsa’s relationship with Gordon different from Laura’s relationship with Irving, and how does Elsa/Laura’s shifting identity affect her two marriages?
3. Laura Lamont becomes a movie star in the studio system era. How do Hollywood and the lives of its actors, producers, and directors change over the course of the novel?
4. How do Laura’s friendships contribute to her happiness?
5. How do sibling relationships function in the novel?
6. What sacrifices is Laura forced to make for success? Does her ambition affect her personal happiness?
7. How do you think the choices have changed for contemporary actresses in Hollywood? What might Laura’s life have been like if she moved to California now?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead, 2012
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307743954
Summary
Maggie Shipstead’s irresistible social satire, set on an exclusive New England island over a wedding weekend in June, provides a deliciously biting glimpse into the lives of the well-bred and ill-behaved.
Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be overrun by tipsy revelers as Winn prepares for the marriage of his daughter Daphne to the affable young scion Greyson Duff.
Winn’s wife, Biddy, has planned the wedding with military precision, but arrangements are sideswept by a storm of salacious misbehavior and intractable lust: Daphne’s sister, Livia, who has recently had her heart broken by Teddy Fenn, the son of her father’s oldest rival, is an eager target for the seductive wiles of Greyson’s best man; Winn, instead of reveling in his patriarchal duties, is tormented by his long-standing crush on Daphne’s beguiling bridesmaid Agatha; and the bride and groom find themselves presiding over a spectacle of misplaced desire, marital infidelity, and monumental loss of faith in the rituals of American life.
Hilarious, keenly intelligent, and commandingly well written, Shipstead’s deceptively frothy first novel is a piercing rumination on desire, on love and its obligations, and on the dangers of leading an inauthentic life, heralding the debut of an exciting new literary voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1983
• Where—Orange County, California, USA
• Education—M.A. Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Stegner Fellowship
• Currently—Not sure where she lives (but is open to suggestions).
Maggie Shipstead was born in 1983 and grew up in Orange County, California. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House, VQR, Glimmer Train, The Best American Short Stories, and other publications. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead's smart and frothy debut novel, is set on a perfect John Cheever island—the kind where old-money families gather to drink gin and nurture loyalties. Beneath the surface of this summery romp, however, lie animosities, well-paced sexual suspense and a clash between appearances and authenticity…. Frequent shifts in point of view give the book a waltzlike rhythm, with beats of startling beauty.
Dylan Landis — New York Times Book Review
At just 28 years old, Shipstead captures the bride's forlorn sister in all her wounded disappointments…What's more surprising is Shipstead's unnerving insight into the comic-tragedy of middle-aged men, that mixture of smothered envy, aspiration and lust that mutates into irritated superiority…. The sea breeze blowing through Seating Arrangements is Shipstead's affection for these spoiled people, her tender handling of their sorrows and longings, which you'll respond to even if you don't summer on Nantucket. She's already producing the kind of humane comedy we expect from Richard Russo and Elinor Lipman…. Shipstead's weave of wit and observation continually delights.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
This is one of those rare debut novels that neither forsakes plot for language nor language for plot. It is gratifying on every scale…. The novel is teeming with the sort of casual philosophizing that encourages passage-underlining and earnest recommendation.”
Boston Globe
Seating Arrangements delightfully and poignantly upends the WASP idyll, poking holes into the studiously shabby carpets to reveal the limitations of a privileged world that revolves around the same plummy prep-school pedigrees, club memberships and summer havens…through prose that sparkles while it slays.
USA Today
This debut answers the question of whether the rich are different from you and me. The answer is yes, because we wouldn't be caught dead in slacks with whales embroidered on them. Like so many recent movie comedies, the novel takes us into the home—and then the summer home—of a wealthy New England family in the days leading up to a daughter's wedding. We have misbehaving bridesmaids and the bumbling father of the bride, who, in this case, is lusting after one of the bridesmaids. Oh, and the bride is seven months pregnant. But never mind that, her father is beside himself because he can't get a membership in the local country club. The characters are an accumulation of over-the-top WASP-like traits: Harvard educations, social clubs, old money, bigotry, family secrets, and funny nicknames like Winn and Biddy. Shipstead's yeoman prose describes the family's mishaps in cinemagraphic detail. Verdict: A hilarious, if somewhat tasteless, escapist read.—Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
Zestful yet acerbic…for all its madcap quirkiness, Shipstead’s adroit escapade artfully delivers a poignant reflection on the enduring if frustrating nature of love, hope, and family.
Booklist
New England blue bloods suffer through three days of wedding festivities in Shipstead's debut, a bleak comedy of manners—think a modern-day Edith Wharton on downers. Winn Van Meter (Deerfield, Harvard), a banker apparently oblivious to the recession, and his stoic wife Biddy (ancestors on the Mayflower) are throwing a wedding for daughter Daphne (Deerfield, Princeton).... The one outsider, bridesmaid Dominique (Deerfield, U. of Mich., but Egyptian!!), observes their escapades with a jaundiced eye. Despite Shipstead's flair for language and scene setting, her characters are worse than cartoonishly unlikable—they are, with the exception of Dominique, yawn-provokingly uninteresting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends / Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. / And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors; / Departed, have left no addresses.” This is the novel’s epigraph, from “The Wasteland,” T. S. Eliot’s epic poem of ruin and desolation. How does this verse relate to Seating Arrangements? Why has the author elected to place it at the front of her novel?
2. Winn is obsessed with status, with matters of appearance and pedigree and joining all the right clubs. What do you think the author thinks of Winn? What did you think of him? Is he sympathetic? Does your view of him change over the course of the novel? Do you think Winn himself changes or grows over the course of the novel?
3. How is Daphne different from her father? Is her world view different or is it the same? How do Daphne’s and Livia’s values differ?
4. Discuss Dominique’s role in Seating Arrangements. How is she different from the other characters in the novel, and how does this alter the reader’s perspective?
5. Discuss the scene where the whale explodes. What do you think the whale symbolizes for the author? What do you think the explosion is meant to dramatize or represent?
6. On page 164, Biddy draws herself a bath and spends a quiet moment reflecting on her predicament and her marital expectations after Winn’s inescapably obvious attentions to Agatha following her fall from the deck. “The obviousness was what she could not tolerate. She had known what she was when she married him, had expected to be the kind of wife who looked the other way from time to time, but she had also expected him to be discreet. And he had been. She assumed there had been other women, but she had never come across any evidence of them, which was all she asked. A simple request, she had thought: cheap repayment for her forbearance, her realism, her tolerance. At times his discretion had been so complete she had allowed herself to believe maybe there hadn’t been others, but she didn’t like to risk being foolish enough to believe in something as unlikely as her husband’s fidelity.” What is Biddy’s view of marriage? Does the author share this view? Do you? Is fidelity essential to a good marriage? What exactly is a good marriage, in your view? In Shipstead’s?
7. Aunt Celeste brings levity, acerbic wit, and a rather dark personal history to a host of subjects that are often treated sanctimoniously, among them, romantic love and the possibility of living happily ever after. What is Celeste’s contribution to the Van Meter family, and to the novel as a whole? What is your opinion of her? The author’s?
8. In what way does the Duff family differ from the Van Meter family? How are they aware of their differences, whether social, financial, or historical? Do you think the author is pointing out their differences primarily, or their similarities?
9. On page 170, Winn recollects a story he was told one night at the Vespasian, while still a young man, about his grandfather’s inheritance. How is this story significant, and how has it informed the truths and myths of his family history?
10. In chapter eleven, Livia and Francis have a fascinating conversation in which the author provides several nuanced reflections on varieties of love: maternal, filial, familial, romantic. How do these ruminations embody—or shape—our perception of love and its obligations, in the world of Seating Arrangements and in the world at large?
11. Following the aforementioned conversation, Francis says to Livia, “Another reason I like you is that I think we have similar roles in our families. We’re the critical ones. We represent a threat to their way of life, a new order.” What does he mean? How, in particular, might Livia be perceived as a threat to her family’s way of life? Is she more or less of an iconoclast than her aunt Celeste?
12. Discuss the debacle of Winn’s bridal toast in which he equates marriage with death. Do you think the author intends the reader to perceive this as farcical or tragic?
13. Look at the end of chapter seventeen, which closes with Livia listening to her parents in their bedroom and the line, “Their door shut behind them, and she heard the murmur of their voices, the unknowable language they spoke only to each other.” How does this recast our sense of Winn and Biddy’s marriage?
14. Discuss the epilogue and, in particular, the final image of Daphne and Winn dancing. What note does the author strike at the novel’s conclusion? How has the novel, and the family, recovered from its various catastrophes and regained its balance after the tawdriness of the events that preceded it and the spectacularly deflating effect of the patriarch’s wedding toast? Is this a happy ending? Do you think the author intends it to be so?
15. Is it surprising, given the novel’s themes and its central voice—an older, patrician male—to discover that its author is a twenty-eight-year-old woman? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Beautiful Lies
Clare Clark, 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544103801
Summary
London 1887. For Maribel Campbell Lowe, the beautiful bohemian wife of a maverick politician, it is the year to make something of herself. A self-proclaimed Chilean heiress educated in Paris, she is torn between poetry and the new art of photography. But it is soon plain that Maribel’s choices are not so simple. As her husband’s career hangs by a thread, her real past, and the family she abandoned, come back to haunt them both. When the notorious newspaper editor Alfred Webster begins to take an uncommon interest in Maribel, she fears he will not only destroy Edward’s career but both of their reputations.
Inspired by the true story of a politician’s wife who lived a double life for decades, Beautiful Lies is set in a time that, fraught with economic uncertainty and tabloid scandal-mongering, uncannily presages our own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Clare Clark is the author of four novels, including The Great Stink, which was long-listed for the Orange Prize and was named a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and Savage Lands, which was long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2010. Her work has been translated into five languages. She lives in London. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
As in her previous novels, Clark takes real events as her inspiration but allows herself the freedom to invent and embellish. Her historical research is immaculate without being overbearing…. As always, Clark doesn't rush through her plot. She develops the story gently, with revelations about Maribel's past folded carefully into scenes from the present, yielding a complex tapestry of tales. A captivating fable of truth and memory, Beautiful Lies speaks to us quietly yet with strength.
Andrea Wulf — New York Times Book Review
The charm of Beautiful Lies is that Clark breaks the usual Victorian moral code, exploring both the colorful world outside the drawing room and the depths of her characters' minds. A stirring and seductive novel.
Economist
An uplifting and ultimately optimistic tale, as well as being impressively narrated. The historical context is sound, and the plot thoroughly engages the reader. It is based on real figures and their circumstances, which are not widely known. This is a wonderful story; I have read Clare Clark’s previous three novels, all of which have been reviewed by the HNS, and this is by far the best.
Historical Novels Society
Clark’s fourth novel (after Savage Lands) offers an informative if disjointed portrait of the Victorian era, encompassing socialist politics, spiritualism, economic crisis, tabloid journalism, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and family secrets. Maribel Campbell Lowe is the wife of an earnest MP, whose passion for the socialist cause puts his political career at risk. Maribel’s photography hobby brings her into contact both with the Indians of Buffalo Bill’s show and the growing spiritualist movement, whose members are fascinated by the possibility of spirits appearing in photographs, a sometimes accidental and often duplicitous practice. The core of the book is Maribel’s personal history, a secret life she has hidden at the cost of losing her family. When a devious newspaper editor comes close to revealing her past, and destroying her reputation and her husband’s career, bright, resourceful Maribel must take a stand. Individual vignettes—Maribel’s photo studio, the lively spirit of the Wild West Show, her husband’s involvement with socialism—will charm devotees of the Victorian era, but no meaningful connection between them is made, and the novel bursts at the seams as Clark struggles to wrap them up by the end.
Publishers Weekly
On the face of it, Edward and Maribel Campbell Lowe are a respectable Victorian couple with an estate in Scotland and a fashionable flat in Belgravia. He is a reform-minded member of Parliament whose associates include Oscar Wilde and William Morris. She is a beautiful, Chilean-born society matron who smokes too much and dabbles in photography. But Maribel is not who she appears to be, and unresolved ties to her past threaten to expose her family to scandal and ruin. At the dawn of tabloid journalism, with Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show arriving in London to massive crowds and unprecedented press coverage, the Campbell Lowes provide great fodder for the gossipmongers. Edward's firebrand politics on behalf of the homeless and unemployed lead to considerable notoriety, casting an unkind spotlight on the couple. Verdict: Inspired by a real-life politician of the era and his wife, Clark (The Great Stink) presents another engaging, compulsively readable window into Victorian society. This should be a popular choice in public libraries.— Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) An enthralling novel about an elaborate fiction, Beautiful Lies dazzles with its presentations of late Victorian London’s political and social occupations and a remarkable woman with something to hide.... An unpredictable, historically authentic take on how we all carry secrets.
Booklist
A well-rendered novel of extraordinary lives in Victorian London. Bodices are ripped, to be sure, but Clark (Savage Lands, 2010, etc.) offers much more than a genre romance with her tale of the darkly beautiful Maribel Campbell Lowe.... Enter newsman Alfred Webster, who...begins to warm up to a carefully hidden secret from Maribel's past.... Clark's characters play fine and psychologically dense games of cat and mouse.... It makes for a grand adventure, and Clark's novel is so richly textured and detailed that the reader might rightly wish that she return to her former profession as a historian.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think the author chose to open the story with a misdirect—in particular, a charade? What effect did this have on your reading experience? How does it set the tone for the story to come?
2. Initially, for what reasons did you suspect Maribel never spoke of or contacted her family? What were you able to piece together as the novel progressed? Why do you think she sent her mother her address in London and told her about her marriage to Edward?
3. Maribel’s London is increasingly in turmoil, with political upset driving nearly every conversation. On page 11, the author writes that, as a politician’s wife, Maribel was able to keep pace with the rest of them and make a fine argument herself, “But for all that, she couldn’t help resenting it, just a little.” What does this insight tell you about Maribel? Does your opinion of her change throughout the novel? Why or why not?
4. Mrs. Bryant, we learn, used to tell Maribel that she was histrionic, while Maribel felt that if she didn’t leave home she would suffocate. Edith, the sister for whom Maribel never spared a thought, is thrilled to see her and seems crushed at the thought of never seeing her again. And yet Ida, the sister Maribel imagines will understand her journey and forgive her mistakes, the only family member she seems to care for, flat out rejects her and insists she stay out of her life forever. Discuss how truth can be shaped by perception and will and how the characters in this novel, Maribel in particular, experience this chimerical reality.
5. Why doesn’t Maribel believe in spirits or séances? What compels Charlotte to disagree and pursue the possibility? Given her skepticism, why do you think the so-called “spirit photograph” Maribel takes of Charlotte disturbs her so much? Why does she so steadfastly refuse to let Mr. Pigeon examine it? Discuss the role of spiritualism in the novel and the arguments made for and against its authenticity.
6. After several aborted attempts to contact Ida, Maribel decides to let go of her need to see her sister until she can present herself as “the best possible version of herself that she had left home for, the version of herself for which she had risked everything.” (p. 164) What do you think she means by this? What is it about her current status that she finds lacking? By the end of the story, do you think Maribel has achieved that “best possible version?” Why or why not?
7. At first, Maribel finds herself increasingly attracted to Mr. Webster. She admires his passion for truth and his willingness to use his position as newspaper editor to sway public opinion and influence political decisions. Edward, on the other hand, distrusts and dislikes Webster from the start. Identify the various turning points in the relationship between the Campbell Lowes and Mr. Webster. In what ways do their opinions change?
8. Early in the novel, it’s plain that Maribel doesn’t want her family to contact her in any way for fear of the scandal they might cause her and Edward. Discuss the irony of Ida’s reaction when she discovers Maribel waiting in her kitchen. Do you feel any sympathy for Maribel? Why or why not?
9. Several times in the novel, various characters express the sentiment that, “When there is nothing that can be done, and the knowledge that there is nothing that can be done is too much to bear, it is always better to do something.” How do the characters of Beautiful Lies prove this to be true? Who do you think would disagree with this concept and why?
10. Why won’t the nun at the convent in Meiriz tell Maribel anything about her son? Discuss the significance of the metaphor she offers instead: “If she lights this tinderbox she will see only the pretty flames. It will be her husband who must afterwards sift through the charred remains. He and the boy.” Discuss how this metaphor might apply to other situations in the novel.
11. Maribel and other Victorian photographers struggle to be recognized as artists in a world where general opinion holds that a camera captures only fact—that “art” is not part of the equation. It is this same belief, shared by the spiritualists Mr. Webster supports, that ultimately undoes him. How else is truth manipulated for personal ends in Beautiful Lies? Identify elements of the story that lend themselves as evidence one way or the other in the argument about the camera’s ability to capture only the reality before it.
12. When Edward suggests Maribel take another round of photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Indians, she declines, calling them “players in a flagrantly fictionalized version of their lives,” to which Edward replies, “Aren’t we all?” (p.475) Explain what he means by this. Do you agree or disagree, and why? Is anyone in the novel just what they appear to be?
13. Mr. Webster protests against “the indefensible muzzling of the press by the Establishment.” Distasteful though he may be, what wrongs has Mr. Webster really committed? Do you think he deserved his fate? Why or why not?
14. It is often said that history repeats itself. In her Author’s Note, Clare Clark draws several parallels between England in 1887 and England in 2012. Similar comparisons might be made between the novel’s events and socio-political climate and the United States today. Discuss these similarities. How have things changed, and how have they remained the same?
15. Throughout the novel, the question of truth’s relationship to beauty pops up in quotations (including the novel’s epigraph) and in conversation between characters. What do you think: Are truth and beauty one and the same, in the end? Is there a kind of truth to be found in beautiful lies? What makes a lie beautiful or ugly? Discuss the meaning of the book’s title, “Beautiful Lies” and its relation to the work itself.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Inn at Rose Harbor
Debbie Macomber, 2012
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345528926
Summary
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber comes a heartwarming new series based in the Pacific Northwest town of Cedar Cove, where a charming cast of characters finds love, forgiveness, and renewal behind the doors of the cozy Rose Harbor Inn.
Jo Marie Rose first arrives in Cedar Cove seeking a sense of peace and a fresh start. Coping with the death of her husband, she purchases a local bed-and-breakfast—the newly christened Rose Harbor Inn—ready to begin her life anew. Yet the inn holds more surprises than Jo Marie can imagine.
Her first guest is Joshua Weaver, who has come home to care for his ailing stepfather. The two have never seen eye to eye, and Joshua has little hope that they can reconcile their differences. But a long-lost acquaintance from Joshua’s high school days proves to him that forgiveness is never out of reach and love can bloom even where it’s least expected.
The other guest is Abby Kincaid, who has returned to Cedar Cove to attend her brother’s wedding. Back for the first time in twenty years, she almost wishes she hadn’t come, the picturesque town harboring painful memories from her past. And while Abby reconnects with family and old friends, she realizes she can only move on if she truly allows herself to let go.
A touching novel of life’s grand possibilities and the heart’s ability to heal, The Inn at Rose Harbor is a welcome introduction to an unforgettable set of friends. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 22, 1948
• Where—Yakima, Washington, USA
• Education—high school
• Awards—Quill Award; RITA and Distinguished Lifetime Achievement (Romance Writers of America)
• Currently—Port Orchard, Washington
Debbie Macomber is a best-selling American author of over 150 romance novels and contemporary women's fiction. Over 170 million copies of her books are in print throughout the world, and four have become made-for-TV-movies. Macomber was the inaugural winner of the fan-voted Quill Award for romance in 2005 and has been awarded both a Romance Writers of America RITA and a lifetime achievement award by the Romance Writers of America.
Beginning writer
Although Debbie Macomber is dyslexic and has only a high school education, she was determined to be a writer. A stay-at-home mother raising four small children, Macomber nonetheless found the time to sit in her kitchen in front of a rented typewriter and work on developing her first few manuscripts. For five years she continued to write despite many rejections from publishers, finally turning to freelance magazine work to help her family make ends meet.
With money that she saved from her freelance articles, Macomber attended a romance writer's conference, where one of her manuscripts was selected to be publicly critiqued by an editor from Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. The editor tore apart her novel and recommended that she throw it away. Undaunted, Macomber scraped together $10 to mail the same novel, Heartsong, to Harlequin's rival, Silhouette Books. Silhouette bought the book, which became the first romance novel to be reviewed by Publishers Weekly.
Career
Although Heartsong was the first of her manuscripts to sell, Starlight was the first of her novels to be published. It became #128 of the Silhouette Special Edition category romance line (now owned by Harlequin). Macomber continued to write category romances for Silhouette, and later Harlequin. In 1988, Harlequin asked Macomber to write a series of interconnected stories, which became known as the Navy series. Before long, she was selling "huge" numbers of books, usually 150,000 copies of each of her novels, and she was releasing two or three titles per year. By 1994, Harlequin launched the Mira Books imprint to help their category romance authors transition to the single title market, and Macomber began releasing single-title novels. Her first hardcover was released in 2001.
In 2002, Macomber realized that she was having more difficulty identifying with a 25-year-old heroine, and that she wanted to write books focusing more on women and their friendships. Thursdays at Eight was her first departure from the traditional romance novel and into contemporary women's fiction.
Since 1986, in most years Macomber has released a Christmas-themed book or novella. For several years, these novels were part of the Angel series, following the antics of angels Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. Macomber, who loves Christmas, says that she writes Christmas books as well because "Every woman I know has a picture of the perfect Christmas in her mind, the same way we do romance. Reality rarely lives up to our expectations, so the best we can do is delve into a fantasy."
In general, Macomber's novels focus on delivering the message of the story and do not include detailed descriptive passages. Her heroines tend to be optimists, and the "stories are resolved in a manner that leaves the reader with a feeling of hope and happy expectation." Many of the novels take place in small, rural town, with her Cedar Cove series loosely based on her own hometown. Because of her Christian beliefs, Macomber does not include overly explicit sexual details in her books, although they do contain some sensuality.
Over 170 million copies of her books are in print throughout the world. This Matter of Marriage, became a made-for-tv movie in 1998. In 2009, Hallmark Channel broadcast "Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle," their top-watched movie of the year. The next year Hallmark Channel aired "Call Me Mrs. Miracle," based on Debbie's novel of the same name, and it was the channel's highest rated movie of 2010. In 2011 Hallmark premiered "Trading Christmas," based on Debbie's novel When Christmas Comes (2004).
Debbie also now writes inspirational non-fiction. Her second cookbook, Debbie Macomber's Christmas Cookbook, and her second children's book, The Yippy, Yappy Yorkie in the Green Doggy Sweater (written with Mary Lou Carney), were released in 2012. There is also a Debbie Macomber line of knitting pattern books from Leisure Arts and she owns her own yarn store, A Good Yarn, in Port Orchard, Washington.
Now writing for Random House, Debbie published two Ballantine hardcovers in 2012, The Inn at Rose Harbor and Angels at the Table (November). The same year also saw the publication of two inspirational non-fiction hardcovers, One Perfect Word (Howard Books) and Patterns of Grace (Guideposts April). Starting Now, the ninth in her Blossom Street series, was issued in 2013.
Recognition
Macomber is a three-time winner of the B. Dalton Award, and the inaugural winner of the fan-voted Quill Award for romance (2005, for 44 Cranberry Point). She has been awarded the Romantic Times Magazine Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award and has won a Romance Writers of America RITA Award, the romance novelist's equivalent of an Academy Award, for The Christmas Basket. Her novels have regularly appeared on the Waldenbooks and USAToday bestseller lists and have also earned spots on the New York Times Bestseller List. On September 6, 2007 she made Harlequin Enterprises history, by pulling off the rarest of triple plays—having her new novel, 74 Seaside Avenue, appear at the #1 position for paperback fiction on the New York Times, USAToday and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. These three highly respected bestseller lists are considered the bellwethers for a book's performance in the United States.
She threw out the first pitch in Seattle Mariners games at Safeco Field in 2007 and 2012. The Romance Writers of America presented Debbie with their prestigious 2010 Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award.
Personal
Macomber has mentored young people, is the international spokesperson for World Vision’s Knit for Kids and serves on the Guideposts National Advisory Cabinet. She was appointed an ambassador for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America national office in 1997.
Debbie and her husband, Wayne, raised four children and have numerous grandchildren. They live in Port Orchard, Washington and winter in Florida. When not writing, she enjoys knitting, traveling with Wayne and putting on Grandma Camps for her grandchildren, for whom she has built a four-star tree house behind her home in Port Orchard. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
Each unique character in this tale is suffering from one type of disaster or sadness that finds healing at the seaside inn in Cedar Cove. I found this to be a typical Debbie Macomber story filled to the brim with nostalgia and magical warmth and love. She has a wonderful way of leaving the reader with a stronger faith and belief in miracles by the end of the book. This is a most difficult book to put down until the very last page has been turned and left you with complete contentment. I truly loved this book in her new series of the town of Cedar Cove.
Fresh Fiction
The prolific Macomber introduces a spin-off of sorts from her popular Cedar Cove series, still set in that fictional small town but centered on Jo Marie Rose, a youngish widow who buys and operates the bed and breakfast of the title. This clever premise allows Macomber to craft stories around the B&B’s guests...while using Jo Marie and her ongoing recovery from the death of her husband Paul in Afghanistan as the series’ anchor.... With her characteristic optimism, Macomber provides fresh starts for both. — Patty Wetli
Booklist
Debbie Macomber has written a charming, cathartic romance full of tasteful passion and good sense. Reading it is a lot like enjoying comfort food, as you know the book will end well and leave you feeling pleasant and content. The tone is warm and serene, and the characters are likable yet realistic. A quick, light read, The Inn at Rose Harbor is a wonderful novel that will keep the reader’s undivided attention.
Bookreporter
Slow-paced, emotionally charged romance; the first in a planned series by best-selling genre novelist Macomber. Rose Harbor is...beautiful, a touch staid, full of folk who look and act the part of locals.... There, Jo Marie Rose has just moved to open a B&B. She had found romance...well, in her late 30s,...only to suffer the death of her husband in far-off Afghanistan.... Macomber's players are grief-ridden in different degrees and ways, and the saving grace of this book, full of explication and asides...is that the author recognizes that life is tough and that people need room to deal with that.... There's also plenty of narrative room for the promised sequel for those who can't wait to find out what happens to Mary Smith, Kent Shivers and the rest.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Debbie chose a bed-and-breakfast in the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Cedar Cove, Washington, as the backdrop for The Inn at Rose Harbor. How do you think the choice of a bed-and-breakfast versus a hotel or motel impacts the story? How is the depiction of Jo Marie’s bed-and-breakfast different or similar to your travel experiences?
2. In The Inn at Rose Harbor, the bed-and-breakfast turns out to be a place where its innkeeper and her guests heal from different kinds of heartache. Have you ever had a similar experience, where a trip or a stay in a certain place turned out to be so much more than you thought it would be, more than just a vacation or a respite from work and the stress of everyday living? If so, share the miracle of this trip and how it impacted your life, as the stay at the Rose Harbor Inn forever changed the lives of Jo Marie’s first two guests.
3. Cedar Cove quickly embraces Jo Marie Rose as one of its own. What qualities does Jo Marie possess that enable people to warm to her so openly? Do you think her ease in settling into the community of Cedar Cove had more to do with her personality or with the nature of the town—or both?
4. One of the recurrent themes in The Inn at Rose Harbor is second chances—that it’s never too late to start over, to adopt a fresh outlook on life. Which character struggling to overcome the past do you relate to the most and why?
5. As the story begins Richard is a difficult, unsympathetic character. Do you feel that he changes by the end of the book, and if so, how? Did his journey make you feel any different about someone in your life?
6. Jo Marie decides to have a rose garden planted at The Inn at Rose Harbor. What significance does this rose garden have for Jo Marie?
7. The one thing Josh hopes to retrieve from his stepfather when he returns to Cedar Cove is his late mother’s Bible. What memento or heirloom from a family member do you treasure and why?
8. Abby’s chance encounter with an old high school friend, who welcomes her back to Cedar Cove with honest enthusiasm, is the spark that gradually enables Abby to reconnect with those she loves and to begin to forgive herself. She also seeks forgiveness once again from Angela’s parents. Discuss the challenges and differences between forgiving yourself and forgiving others. Do you think one is more important than the other?
9. How does Jo Marie grow from the beginning of the story until the end? How have her guests, and her budding relationship with Mark, enriched her life and opened her to life’s possibilities?
(From the author's website.)
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Stephen Greenblatt, 2011
W.W. Norton
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393343403
Summary
Winner, 2011 National Book Award, Nonfiction
Winner, 2012 Pulitzer Prize, Nonfiction
One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.
The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 7, 1943
• Raised—Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A, Ph.D., Yale University; B.A., M.A.,
Cambridge University
• Awards—National Book Award; Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in
Stephen Jay Greenblatt is a Pulitzer Prize winning American literary critic, theorist and scholar. He is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term.
Greenblatt has written extensively on Shakespeare, the Renaissance, culture and new historicism and is considered to be an expert in these fields. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on the New York Times Best Seller List for nine weeks.
Education and career
Greenblatt was born in Boston and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating from Newton North High School, he was educated at Yale University (B.A. 1964, M.Phil 1968, Ph.D. 1969) and Pembroke College, Cambridge (B.A. 1966, M.A. 1968). Greenblatt has since taught at University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University. He was Class of 1932 Professor at Berkeley (he became a full professor in 1980) and taught there for 28 years before taking a position at Harvard University, where in 1997 Greenblatt became the Harry Levin Professor of Literature. He was named John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities in 2000. Greenblatt is considered "a key figure in the shift from literary to cultural poetics and from textual to contextual interpretation in U.S. English departments in the 1980s and 1990s."
Greenblatt is a permanent fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. As a visiting professor and lecturer, Greenblatt has taught at such institutions as the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, the University of Florence, Kyoto University, the University of Oxford and Peking University. He was a resident fellow at the American Academy of Rome, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has been president of the Modern Language Association.
Family
Greenblatt has three children. He was married to Ellen Schmidt from 1969–96; they have two sons (Joshua, an attorney, and Aaron, a doctor). In 1998 he married fellow academic Ramie Targoff, also a Renaissance expert and a professor at Brandeis University; they have one son (Harry).
New Historicism
Greenblatt first used the term “new historicism” in his 1982 introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance wherein he uses Queen Elizabeth's “bitter reaction to the revival of Shakespeare’s Richard II on the eve of the Essex rebellion" to illustrate the “mutual permeability of the literary and the historical." While some critics have charged that it is “antithetical to literary and aesthetic value, others praise new historicism as “a collection of practices” employed by critics to gain a more comprehensive understanding of literature by considering it in historical context while treating history itself as “historically contingent on the present in which [it is] constructed."
Greenblatt has said ...
My deep, ongoing interest is in the relation between literature and history, the process through which certain remarkable works of art are at once embedded in a highly specific life-world and seem to pull free of that life-world. I am constantly struck by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago.
Publishing
Greenblatt joined M. H. Abrams as general editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature published by W.W. Norton during the 1990s. He is also the co-editor of the anthology's section on Renaissance literature and the general editor of the Norton Shakespeare, “currently his most influential piece of public pedagogy." (From Wikipedia. Read the complete article.)
Book Reviews
A warm, intimate…volume of apple-cheeked popular intellectual history. Mr. Greenblatt…is a very serious and often thorny scholar…. But he also writes crowd pleasers…. The Swerve…brings us Mr. Greenblatt in his more cordial mode. He wears his enormous erudition lightly…. There is abundant evidence here of what is Mr. Greenblatt's great and rare gift as a writer: an ability, to borrow a phrase from The Swerve, to feel fully "the concentrated force of the buried past."
Dwight Garner - New York Times
In The Swerve, the literary historian Stephen Greenblatt investigates why [Lucretius's] book nearly died, how it was saved and what its rescue means to us. [Greenblatt]...was amazed by how personally it spoke to him. Such encounters have become central to the philosophy Greenblatt has elaborated in several decades of work as a literary historian and theorist of the “new historicism” in literary studies. It combines hardheaded investigations of historical context with a profound feeling for the way writers somehow pull free from time, to enter the minds of readers.
Sarah Bakewell - New York Times Book Review
Pleasure may or may not be the true end of life, but for book lovers, few experiences can match the intellectual-aesthetic enjoyment delivered by a well-wrought book. In the world of serious nonfiction, Stephen Greenblatt is a pleasure maker without peer.
Long Island Newsday
[The Swerve] is thrilling, suspenseful tale that left this reader inspired and full of questions about the ongoing project known as human civilization.
Boston Globe
But Swerve is an intense, emotional telling of a true story, one with much at stake for all of us. And the further you read, the more astonishing it becomes. It's a chapter in how we became what we are, how we arrived at the worldview of the present. No one can tell the whole story, but Greenblatt seizes on a crucial pivot, a moment of recovery, of transmission, as amazing as anything in fiction.
Philadelphia Inquirer
The Swerve is one of those brilliant works of non-fiction that's so jam-packed with ideas and stories it literally boggles the mind.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR
Can a poem change the world? Harvard professor and bestselling Shakespeare biographer Greenblatt ably shows in this mesmerizing intellectual history that it can. A richly entertaining read about a radical ancient Roman text that shook Renaissance Europe and inspired shockingly modern ideas (like the atom) that still reverberate today.
Newsweek
It's fascinating to watch Greenblatt trace the dissemination of these ideas through 15th-century Europe and beyond, thanks in good part to Bracciolini's recovery of Lucretius' poem.
Salon.com
(Starred review.) In this gloriously learned page-turner, both biography and intellectual history, Harvard Shakespearean scholar Greenblatt (Will in the World) turns his attention to the front end of the Renaissance as the origin of Western culture's foundation: the free questioning of truth.... In an obscure monastery in southern Germany lay the recovery of a philosophy free of superstition and dogma. Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things." ... [The] finding lay what Greenblatt...terms a historic swerve of massive proportions, propagated by such seminal and often heretical truth tellers as Machiavelli, Giordano Bruno, and Montaigne. We even learn the history of the bookworm.... Nearly 70 pages of notes and bibliography do nothing to spoil the fun of Greenblatt's marvelous tale. 16 pages of color illus.
Publishers Weekly
Whether one poem ["The Nature of Things" by Lucretius] could be so influential is questionable. In addition to this overzealous history, book lovers are rewarded with brilliant descriptions of the history of books, libraries, and fascinating detail about manuscript production.... "Greenblatt's masterful account transcends [Bracciolini's] significant discovery," read the review of the National Book Award-winning Norton hardcover. —Susan Baird, formerly with Oak Lawn P.L., Chicago
Library Journal
Greenblatt (Humanities/Harvard Univ.; Shakespeare's Freedom, 2010, etc.) makes another intellectually fetching foray into the Renaissance—with digressions into antiquity and the recent past—in search of a root of modernity. More than 2,000 years ago, Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius wrote On the Nature of Things, which spoke of such things as the atomic structure of all that exists, of natural selection, the denial of an afterlife, the inherent sexuality of the universe, the cruelty of religion and the highest goal of human life being the enhancement of pleasure. It was a dangerous book and wildly at odds with the powers that be.... Greenblatt brilliantly ushers readers into this world.... More wonderfully illuminating Renaissance history from a master scholar and historian.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt is essentially making the argument that a poem changed the world. Do you agree that the written word can carry this kind of power? And do you think a literary rediscovery could potentially initiate a new “swerve” today?
2. Lucretius’s "On the Nature of Things" appealed to readers in part because it spoke from a lost world. People are still fascinated with the classical past. Why do humans have this nostalgia for the past, and how can this type of preoccupation help us move forward?
3. How were the intolerable ideas in Lucretius tolerated, or at least allowed to pass, after the text was copied and circulated?
4. Discuss Greenblatt’s ability to bring Poggio Bracciolini and his contemporaries to life for us, despite the very great distance in time—six hundred years—between their world and ours. How does Greenblatt handle the unfamiliarity of their world and its assumptions?
5. Greenblatt suggests that book hunting kept Bracciolini from succumbing entirely to the corrosive cynicism of his world. Why should an obsession with uncovering ancient books from a pagan past have meant so much to him?
6. What do you make of the fact that Bracciolini didn’t really grasp the importance of his discovery? Was his discovery of Lucretius’s poem just a fortunate accident?
7. What parallels do you notice between the world that suppressed Lucretius’s poem and the world in which we live today? What differences?
8. How does Greenblatt’s discussion of the loss of books to bookworms and the destruction of libraries (both willful and accidental) speak to current debates over printed versus digital books?
9. Did it surprise you that monasteries became havens for—and even producers of—forgotten books at a time when people were censoring books and burning libraries for religious reasons? Discuss the complicated relationship between the church and literary/scientific endeavors over the years.
10. "On the Nature of Things" could be thought of as a poem that “went viral.” How has the dissemination of ideas changed since the Renaissance? Can you think of another book or piece of literature that gained popularity and swayed popular thought in a similar way? Do you think literature is more likely to have a world changing impact, or can music, film, or art generate the same effect?
11. Lucretius claimed that the ideas in his work should liberate humans from fear of death, but his contemporary Cicero said that these ideas only made matters worse, since total extinction—a return to atoms colliding in an infinite universe—was more frightening than any punishment in the afterlife. Where do you stand on this debate?
12. It seems the term “Epicureanism” still conveys rash, indulgent pleasure seeking. Did Greenblatt’s exploration of the true nature of Epicurus and his followers change how you think about our collective pursuit of pleasure?
13. What is the significance of the fact that Lucretius conveyed his scientific ideas in the form of a poem? What are the consequences in our own age of the extreme separation of poetry and science?
14. How do the atomic “swerves” described in Lucretius’s poem mirror the larger “swerve” initiated by the poem itself? What might Lucretius have thought of Greenblatt’s “co-opting” his term to describe human events much larger than invisible atoms?
(Questions issued by publisher.)