On the Island
Tracy Garvis Graves, 2011
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142196724
Summary
Two people stranded on an island struggle to survive—and slowly fall in love.
Anna Emerson is a thirty-year-old English teacher desperately in need of adventure. Worn down by the cold Chicago winters and a relationship that’s going nowhere, she jumps at the chance to spend the summer on a tropical island tutoring sixteen-year-old T.J.
T.J. Callahan has no desire to go anywhere. His cancer is in remission and he wants to get back to his normal life. But his parents are insisting he spend the summer in the Maldives catching up on all the school he missed last year.
Anna and T.J. board a private plane headed to the Callahan’s summer home, and as they fly over the Maldives’ twelve hundred islands, the unthinkable happens. Their plane crashes in shark-infested waters. They make it to shore, but soon discover that they’re stranded on an uninhabited island.
At first, their only thought is survival. But as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.’s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Tracey Garvis Graves lives in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, with her husband, two children, and hyper dog Chloe. This is her first novel. She loves hearing from her fans. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(This book has few if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
The relationship between Anna and TJ was sweet and sexy and very real...the idea of their age difference was neither a shock nor unbelievable. The bonds created between individuals under duress are strong and enduring. And the romantic in me loved it as well..
Mostly Romance
Discussion Questions
1. The first sentence of the book tells you there is going to be a plane crash, and yet the author builds tension even before the crash. On page (tk) Anna buys two bottles of water and tells T.J. to put one in his backpack, and as readers, we are probably aware that Mick will have a heart attack even before Anna does. Why do you think the author structured it this way? How did it enhance the read?
2. What were your first impressions of Anna and T.J.? And how did they change? At what point do you think Anna started seeing T.J. as an adult? When did you see him as an adult?
3. Anna wishes desperately that the bag containing all the summer reading she packed for her trip would wash ashore. Of all the trappings of civilization she yearns for, it’s reading and books that she seems to miss the most. What five books would you pack if you knew you were facing years alone on a desert island?
4. Anna and T.J. face a number of hardships on the island and talk about their greatest fears. Which would you fear the most? Losing the one person you are stranded with? Dying of rabies or dehydration or an allergic reaction? Running out of water?
5. Do you think it was realistic that Anna and T.J. waited so long to be together? Would you have waited that long?
6. How do Anna and T.J. change and evolve throughout the course of the story? What events trigger such changes?
7. Strangely, 2004’s devastating South Asian tsunami is what ends up saving Anna and T.J. More than 200,000 people died in the tsunami—if you were Anna or T.J., how would you feel about the event?
8. Imagine you were the one getting the call that a loved one was still alive after all those years. Do you think your reaction would be similar to Anna’s sister’s?
9. The press conference scene was particularly dramatic for Anna and T.J. How would you handle becoming an overnight celebrity?
10. After three and a half years of only talking to one other person, imagine how overwhelming it would be to try and fit back into society. What do you think would be the most difficult thing to get used to?
11. What do you think about T.J.’s parents and the way they reacted to his relationship with Anna?
12. What did you think about John and Anna’s relationship? Do you know anyone in a situation similar to John and Anna’s (his failure to commit after 8 years together)? Do you think that Anna would have stayed with him if she hadn’t been stranded on the island?
13. The age difference between T.J. and Anna is 14 years. How would you feel about dating someone 14 years older or younger than you? How do you think your friends and family and the general public would react to that situation?
Do you think Anna made the right decision in breaking things off with T.J.? Do you think she made the right decision to follow her heart and marry him?
14. In the end, which character did you like the most and why? Which character did you like the least and why?
15. What major emotion or emotions did the story evoke in you as a reader?
16. Did the characters seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments? To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Shadow of Night: (All Souls Trilogy 2)
Deboroah Harkness, 2012
Penguin Group USA
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143123620
Summary
"Together we lifted our feet and stepped into the unknown"—the thrilling sequel to the New York Times bestseller A Discovery of Witches.
Deborah Harkness exploded onto the literary scene with her debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the magical "All Souls Trilogy" and an international publishing phenomenon. The novel introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.
Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh.
Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.
Deborah Harkness has crafted a gripping journey through a world of alchemy, time travel, and magical discoveries, delivering one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the season. (From the publisher.)
The first book in the All Souls Trilogy is A Discovery of Witches (2011), and the third is The Book of Life (2014).
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—outside of Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Mount Holyoke College; M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D., University of California-Davis
• Currently—lives in southern California
Deborah Harkness is a professor of history at the University of Southern California. She has received Fullbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships, and her most recent scholarly work is The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. She also writes an award-winning wine blog, Good Wine Under $20. (From the publisher.)
More
In her own words
I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and have lived in western Massachusetts, the Chicago area, Northern California, upstate New York, and Southern California. In other words, I’ve lived in three out of five time zones in the US! I’ve also lived in the United Kingdom in the cities of Oxford and London.
For the past twenty-eight years I’ve been a student and scholar of history, and received degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis. During that time I researched the history of magic and science in Europe, especially during the period from 1500 to 1700.
The libraries I’ve worked in include Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the All Souls College Library at Oxford, the British Library, London’s Guildhall Library, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Newberry Library—proving that I know my way around a card catalogue or the computerized equivalent. These experiences have given me a deep and abiding love of libraries and a deep respect for librarians. Currently, I teach European history and the history of science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
My previous books include two works of non-fiction: John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (Yale University Press, 2007). It has been my privilege to receive fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. And I was honored to receive accolades for my historical work from the History of Science Society, the North American Conference on British Studies, and the Longman’s/History Today Prize Committee.
In 2006, I took up my keyboard and entered the world of blogging and Twitter. My wine blog, Good Wine Under $20, is an online record of my search for the best, most affordable wines. These efforts have been applauded by the American Wine Blog Awards, Saveur.com, Wine & Spirits magazine, and Food & Wine magazine. My wine writing has also appeared on the website Serious Eats and in Wine & Spirits magazine. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Rich, period fun, particularly delightful in its witty characterization of historical immortals.... Shadow ramps up the supernatural suspense.
New York Daily News
Picking up where she left off in last year’s A Discovery of Witches, Harkness proves she’s not suffering from a sophomore slump with this addictive tale of magic, mayhem and two lovers.
Chicago Tribune
Deborah Harkness takes us places we’ve never been before.... Shadow of Night isn't just about wonderfully detailed descriptions of England in 1591, it's about being there. Readers time-travel as precisely and precariously as Diana and Matthew do.... Shadow ends as Discovery did with promises of more to come. Lucky for us.
USA Today
Harkness exudes her own style of magic in making the world of late 16th century England come alive.... Enchanting, engrossing and as impossible to put down as its predecessor, Shadow of Night is a perfect blend of fantasy, history and romance. Its single greatest flaw is, after almost 600 pages, it’s over. If you’ve already read and enjoyed A Discovery of Witches, picking up Shadow of Night is an absolute requirement. Otherwise, pick up both, and consider your summer reading list complete.
Miami Herald
The joy that Harkness, herself a historian, takes in visiting the past is evident on every page.... A great spell, the one that can enchant a reader and make a 600-page book fly through her fingertips, is cast.... Its enduring rewards are plenty.
Entertainment Weekly
Fans of Harkness’s 2011 debut A Discovery of Witches will be delighted.... Harkness delivers enough romance and excitement to keep the pages turning. Readers will devour it.
People
Propelled by her successful fiction debut, A Discovery of Witches, historian Harkness concocts an energetic if chaotic sequel filled with witches, daemons, vampires, wearhs, weavers, and warm-bloods (aka humans) racing to retrieve a lost manuscript that details the origins of supernatural species, which, in the wrong hands, could hasten their extinction. The first novel culminated in the mixed marriage of vampire/scientist Matthew de Clermont to historian/untrained witch Diana Bishop. This novel opens with the newlyweds time-traveling to Elizabethan England so Diana can study witchcraft; never mind they’re burning witches in Scotland or that in London an educated American woman doesn’t exactly blend in. There, they hope to retrieve magical manuscript Ashmole 782, last seen in Oxford’s 21st-century Bodleian library. Diana gets in touch with her inner firedrake, Matthew with his father, but they can’t find a tutor for ages, and they can’t rescue the manuscript without a trip to Prague. Supporting Diana and Matthew in their quest is a secret society that includes dashing Walter Raleigh and dangerous daemon Christopher Marlowe. Harkness delights in lining up the living dead and modern academic history, as in her explanation of how a forger named Shakespeare, with supernatural prompting, takes up playwriting. This tale of a feminist Yankee in Queen Elizabeth’s court charms amid the tumult, as the gifted heroine and her groom fight for generations and another sequel to come in order to protect the magical world that’s all around us.
Publishers Weekly
Picking up where...best-selling A Discovery of Witches left off, geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont and Oxford scholar and witch Diana Bishop travel back in time to Elizabethan England to hunt for the enchanted Ashmole 782 manuscript and to seek magic lessons for Diana. VERDICT Readers who enjoyed the first book's striking detail and complex world-building will be equally as thrilled with this second book in the trilogy, as Harkness, a scholar herself (history, Univ. of Southern California), focuses her lens on the denizens, culture, and geography of late 16th-century Europe.
Library Journal
This novel is as much a love story about a bygone era as it is about Matthew and Diana. It overflows with a colorful cast of characters, many of whom Harkness has plucked straight from the history books, and Harkness renders the late 1500s in exquisite detail.... The writing is so rich, the characters so compelling...and best of all, Harkness manages to execute with aplomb the act of answering old questions while posing new ones that will intensify anticipation for the final installment. Readers who have been counting down the days, take heart: The wait was most assuredly worth it.
BookPage
[T]hanks to the magic of time travel, Harkness' (A Discovery of Witches, 2011) latest finds witch and Oxford professor Diana Bishop and her lover, scientist and vampire Matthew Clairmont, at the tail end of Elizabethan England, when Shakespeare's career is about to take off. There, by happenstance, they meet Christopher Marlowe, who commands an uncommonly rich amount of data about the ways of the otherworld. Asked why the odd couple should attract attention, he remarks matter-of-factly, "Because witches and wearhs are forbidden to marry," an exchange that affords Diana, and the reader, the chance to learn a new word.... it Marlowe gets to do some petticoat lifting...[and] Will Shakespeare comes onto the scene late, but there's good reason for that.... Clearly Harkness has great fun with all this, and her background as a literature professor gives her plenty of room to work with, and without, an ounce of pedantry. Sure, the premise is altogether improbable. But, that said, there's good fun to be had here, even for those who might wish for a moratorium on books about vampires, zombies, witches and other things that go bump in the night.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Harkness opens Shadow of Night with a quote by Queen Elizabeth I. How is the quote significant to the book?
2. The Elizabethan era is made vivid in the novel through the everyday details that Diana must contend with. What did you find most surprising, funny, or intriguing about life in the sixteenth century?
3. When Diana arrives in 1590, she is thrilled to experience firsthand a world that she had studied as a historian. If you could go back in time, what era would you visit? What would you do while there?
4. There is no question that Matthew is a compelling character, but is he a traditional romantic hero? Compare him with some of your favorite leading men in literature.
5. Who were the School of Night? What is the meaning behind the title Shadow of Night?
6. In Shadow of Night Harkness cheekily refers to Shakespeare’s plays without naming them. Can you recognize which work she’s referring to?
7. What does Diana learn about the materials used to make Ashmole 782?
8. If Shadow of Night was a film, which celebrities would you cast in the starring roles?
9. Did you read A Discovery of Witches? If so, in what ways has Diana changed since the last novel? If not, how did your own opinion about Diana change through the course of the book?
10. A Discovery of Witches ended with a cliffhanger. At the end of Shadow of Night, what do you think lies ahead?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Sarah Thornhill (Thornhill Trilogy 3)
Kate Grenville, 2012
Cannongate
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802120243
Summary
In the final book of a trilogy that began with her bestselling novel, The Secret River, Commonwealth Prize–winner Kate Grenville returns to the youngest daughter of the Thornhills and her quest to uncover, at her peril, the family’s hidden legacy.
Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, the pioneer at the center of The Secret River. Unknown to her, her father—an uneducated ex-convict from London—has built his fortune on the blood of Aboriginal people. With a fine stone house and plenty of money, Thornhill has re-invented himself. As he tells his daughter, he “never looks back,” and Sarah grows up learning not to ask about the past. Instead her eyes are on handsome Jack Langland, whom she’s loved since she was a child. Their romance seems destined, but the ugly secret in Sarah’s family is poised to ambush them both.
As she did with The Secret River, Grenville once again digs into her own family history to tell a story about the past that still resonates today. Driven by the captivating voice of the illiterate Sarah—at once headstrong, sympathetic, curious, and refreshingly honest—this is an unforgettable portrait of a passionate woman caught up in a historical moment of astonishing turmoil. (From the publisher.)
The first two books in the Thornhill Trilogy are (1) The Secret River ... and (2) The Lieutenant
Author Bio
• Birth—October 14, 1950
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A. University of Sydney; M.A. University of
Colorado
• Awards—Vogel Award (Australia); Orange Prize;
Commonwealth Writers Prize, Short-listed, Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Sydney, Australia
Kate Grenville was born in Sydney, Australia. After completing an Arts degree at Sydney University she worked in the film industry (mainly as an editor) before living in the UK and Europe for several years and starting to write.
In 1980 she went to the USA and completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, where her teachers included Ron Sukenick, Robert Steiner and Steve Katz.
On her return to Australia in 1983 she worked at the Subtitling Unit for SBS Television. In 1984 her first book, a collection of stories—Bearded Ladies—was published.
Since then she's published six novels and four books about the writing process (one co-written with Sue Woolfe).
The Secret River (2005) has won many prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize for Literature and the Christina Stead Prize, and has been an international best-seller. (It also formed the basis for a Doctorate of Creative Arts from University of Technology, Sydney) The Idea of Perfection (2000) won the Orange Prize.
Her other works of fiction have been published to acclaim in Australia and overseas and have won state and national awards. Much-loved novels such as Lilian's Story (1985), Dark Places (1995), and Joan Makes History (1988) have become classics, admired by critics and general readers alike.
Lilian's Story was filmed starring Ruth Cracknell, Toni Collette and Barry Otto. Dream House was filmed under the title Traps, starring Jacqueline MacKenzie.
Kate Grenville's novels have been widely published in translation, and her books about the writing process are used in many writing courses in schools and universities.
She lives in Sydney with her family. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
It is with often marvelous vividness and clarity that Grenville evokes Sarah’s world.... Through the eyes of this young woman, the physical and cultural strangeness of a nation still clambering into existence spring richly to life.
Guardian (UK)
Sarah Thornhill displays [Grenville’s] gift for creating character full blaze.... A great work of truth.... What unfolds is a box of surprises, richly wrapped in language so colorful and lively, you can taste it.... You believe in [Sarah’s] honesty, her perceptiveness, her way of ‘reading’ others.... A wonderful novel.
Scotsman
Grenville’s extraordinary trilogy is a major achievement in Australian literature.
Australian Book Review
A moving piece of fiction.... Powerfully realized.... Sarah Thornhill is the book of a writer of the first rank.... A haunting performance.
Age (Australia)
A powerful saga of colliding histories [that] blends romance and honesty.
Independent (Ireland)
A beguiling love story.... The voice of illiterate Sarah is Grenville’s great triumph.... An imaginatively convincing recreation of history and a celebration of country tenderly and beautifully observed, but above all it is a powerful plea for due acknowledgement and remembrance of the veils of the past.
Adelaide Advertiser
Revisits the fascinating, trouble territory of the history wars.... Grenville’s vivid fiction performs as testimony, memory, and mourning within the collective post-colonial narrative.
Australian
This is a beautiful book, one that pulses with insight and compassion.... Grenville’s descriptions are a delicate fretwork of words.... Not only is Sarah Thornhill gorgeously written, but the love story at its heart is as real and true as it is unexpected. This is a novel that will be treasured by generations to come. It is that rare book that manages to wholly engage both head and heart. Grenville has done a splendid job.
Canberra Times
Grenville's great strength is her sensual fleshing-out of the past.... Her vision of our colonial history is at once compelling and fable-like, as she writes contemporary white self-knowledge back into it.
Monthly (Australia)
A captivating tale of a woman's fight to find an identity of her own in a "new" colony. [Grenville's] wonderful account shows how hard it can be simply to be yourself.... A deeply moving conclusion to a romantic but by no means sentimental story.
Telegraph (UK)
A wrenching conclusion to a tough-hearted trilogy about the colonizing of Australia…With characters whose pasts are as dark and broken as these, it's impossible to trust the local settlers' favorite claim: "Never looked back." In fact, the members of this crew are always looking over their shoulders, sometimes to their detriment. And because of that, Sarah Thornhill is a novel that can't be easily categorized—exuberant, cruel, surprising, a triumphant evocation of a period and a people filled with both courage and ugliness.
Susann Cokal - New York Times Book Review
Sarah Thornhill, the youngest daughter of a wealthy yet provincial British ex-convict, grows up in 19th-century Australia learning not to ask questions about her family's past. When Sarah falls in love with a local man whose mother was Aboriginal, her chance at happiness is shattered by the racial and class prejudice churning within her family and Australia's burgeoning white society.... Verdict: Grenville concludes the Thornhill family saga and her exploration of Australian history begun in The Secret River, winner of the Commonwealth Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker, and continued in The Lieutenant. This is a more subdued but equally exceptional historical novel, with multilayered characters and a beautifully styled plot. Fans of literary fiction will clamor for this final volume. —Kelsy Peterson, Prairie Village, KS
Library Journal
The saga of the Thornhill clan in early-19th-century Australia concludes in the final volume of Commonwealth Writer's Prize winner Grenville's (The Secret River, 2006, etc.) trilogy. Sarah Thornhill is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, a man "sent out" from England in 1806 to New South Wales. Years later, with Sarah on the cusp of womanhood, Thornhill has become a prosperous river freighter, landowner and landlord... While the story is fictional, the book instructs on Australia's early history: the land; the wealth to be made from sheep, seals and whales; the conflict between those who had "worn the broad arrow," arriving as convicts, and those who came from proper society; and the oppressive and often bloody relationship between white settlers and the aboriginal people, termed "blacks." .... Beautifully written, with sufficient backstory to be enjoyed without first reading the previous two installments, this novel can be read as a dissection of a cultural clash or an allegory for colonialism, but at heart, the novel uses fiction to search for reason within history.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “The Hawkesbury was a lovely river, wide and calm, the water dimply green, the cliffs golden in the sun, and white birds roosting in the trees like so much washing. It was a sweet thing of a still morning, the river-oaks whispering and the land standing upside down in the water” (p. 3). How does this sanctity of the land pervade the novel? For which characters is the land most important? When is it desecrated and why?
2. “Three Irish in a house together, can’t go long without some of the old songs.... Paddy...stood in the corner with his eyes closed and out of the fiddle came a wild keening voice.... After a time Maeve lifted up her voice and sang along with the fiddle, the words caressing the music as it went up and down.... And there was Daunt...the tears stand glittering in his eyes.... I was the only one dry-eyed. That was what it was to belong to a place. To be brought undone by the music of the land where you’d been born. Us currency lads and lasses had no feeling like that about the land we call ours. It had no voice that we could hear, no song we could sing. Nothing but a blank where the past was. Emptiness, like a closed room, at our backs” (pp. 196-197). How does this emptiness propel Sarah’s search for meaning in the book?
3. Have you ever read a novel whose characters are complex and subtle, yet totally illiterate? Is it surprising there is no culture of books or schools in the Thornhill family? How does living with Daunt and his books affect Sarah? “Gone away into reading like another country where I could never follow” (p. 197).
4. When there is no written history, how is knowledge of the past further complicated by secrets and tangled suppositions? What are some of these secrets and suppositions?
5. Will Sarah’s compulsion to tell her story and that of her family force her to learn her letters? “But of all the crimes done, the worst would be to let the story slip away. For what it’s worth, mine had best take its place, in with all the others” (p. 304).
6. William Thornhill was a man who “never looked back” (p. 3). He is who he is, someone who has to create his own story and legacy. “As far as some people went, ‘sent out’ meant tainted for all time” (p. 5). How do success and money have a way of blunting the hard shapes of the past? Consider the transformation of “emancipist” into “old colonist.”
7. What is one part of his past that Thornhill cannot ignore? “So what was that terrible twisting across his face? That thing that was like an animal eating away at him from the inside?” (p. 30).
8. What are the varying attitudes toward native people? Mrs. Thornhill? Mrs. Langland? Maeve? And how about Daunt? He says “These are folk too clever to break their backs heaving dirt. I’ve come round to the view that a man shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to judge them. I’d say no more than this, that their ways are not the same as our ways” (p. 211). Is his tolerance shared by others? How has Anglo-Irish history shaped his views? (see p. 218).
9. What draws Sarah and Jack together? What do they have in common in their young childhood? What is Will’s role in their growing closeness?
10. Does Sarah ever grow to see a validation of her parents’ separating her from Jack? How did they accomplish this split?
11. When Sarah makes her extraordinary journey to New Zealand, what motivates her to abandon child and husband for the dangerous sea voyage? Is it expiation? For her? For her father? Sarah goes to give. What does she gain?
12. What is Jack’s role in Sarah’s quest to New Zealand? “Would there never be an end to it, the hole in my life where Jack should of been?” (p. 209).
13. How do the native New Zealand traditions incorporate and pass on events of the past? Consider both the songlines and the visible story lines of the tattoos.
14. What are the ways Jack reclaims his own maternal heritage? Has his own quest, one that required his rejecting the Langland family and the only world he can remember, resulted in peace and belonging for him? Do you think his seafaring years provided him fortitude?
15. Grenville speaks in her acknowledgments notes about “the possibility of a story that was not just about the past, but the present and its unfinished business” (p. 307). What is suggested about the larger world, not only Australia and New Zealand? Does Sarah herself grow to take comfort in feeling like part of a bigger world, one that existed before her and would exist long after?
16. Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore wrote that Britain “had hoped that transportation would do four things: sublimate, deter, reform, and colonize.” From what you know about Australia, was the policy a success?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Lotus Eaters
Tatjana Soli, 2010
St. Martin's Press
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312674441
Summary
Winner, 2010 James Tait Black Prize
A unique and sweeping debut novel of an American female combat photographer in the Vietnam War, as she captures the wrenching chaos and finds herself torn between the love of two men.
On a stifling day in 1975, the North Vietnamese army is poised to roll into Saigon. As the fall of the city begins, two lovers make their way through the streets to escape to a new life. Helen Adams, an American photojournalist, must take leave of a war she is addicted to and a devastated country she has come to love. Linh, the Vietnamese man who loves her, must grapple with his own conflicted loyalties of heart and homeland.
As they race to leave, they play out a drama of devotion and betrayal that spins them back through twelve war-torn years, beginning in the splendor of Angkor Wat, with their mentor, larger-than-life war correspondent Sam Darrow, once Helen's infuriating love and fiercest competitor, and Linh's secret keeper, boss and truest friend.
Tatjana Soli paints a searing portrait of an American woman’s struggle and triumph in Vietnam, a stirring canvas contrasting the wrenching horror of war and the treacherous narcotic of obsession with the redemptive power of love. Readers will be transfixed by this stunning novel of passion, duty and ambition among the ruins of war. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Salzburg, Austria
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Warren Wilson College
• Awards—James Tait Black Prize; Dana Award
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California, USA
Tatjana Soli is an American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, The Lotus Eaters, won the 2010 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Dana Award, her second novel, The Forgetting Tree, was published in 2012, and The Last Good Paradise came out in 2015.
Soli graduated from Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) and the Warren Wilson College (Asheville, North Carolina) with an MFA. She received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is married and lives in Orange County, California.
Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Boulevard, Five Chapters, The Normal School, The Sun, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Inkwell Journal, Nimrod, Third Coast, Carolina Quarterly, Sonora Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Washington Square Review, and Web del Sol. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
[Q]uietly mesmerizing…Ms. Soli has done prodigious research about the Vietnam War, particularly about the role of female war photographers, and so is able to imbue an otherwise deeply romantic book with a strong sense of history.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Splendid…Helen's restlessness and grappling, her realization that "a woman sees war differently," provide a new and fascinating perspective on Vietnam. Vivid battle scenes, sensual romantic entanglements and elegant writing add to the pleasures of The Lotus Eaters.
Danielle Trussoni - New York Times Book Review
Though the novel explores war primarily from the journalists' viewpoint, the secondary characters are generously drawn. In Soli's hands, edgy, frightened soldiers and hardened commanders rise above stock characters. But Helen is at the heart of this story as she, like many journalists, pays a dear personal price for covering violence.
Marsha Hamilton - Washington Post
If it's possible to judge a novel by its first few lines, then The Lotus Eaters Tatjana Soli's fiction debut, shows great promise right from the start! The author explores Helen's psyche with startling clarity, and portrays the chaotic war raging around her with great attention to seemingly minor details. The real heartbreak in The Lotus Eaters is found in subtle, unexpected moments.
Boston Globe
This suspenseful, eloquent, sprawling novel illustrates the violence of the Vietnam War as witnessed by three interconnected photographers. Helen Adams, the first woman combat photographer sent to cover the Vietnam war, navigates the boys' club of war photographers, pushing her way onto military missions. Soon after her arrival in Saigon, she falls under the spell of seasoned, jaded, and married Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist, Sam Darrow, while also feeling a confusing pull toward his assistant, Linh, a Vietnamese ex-soldier and knowledgeable photographer and guide. Linh, who has lost his wife and entire family to the war, roams the country with Darrow and then Helen (whom Darrow asks Linh to protect). Soli looks at the complex motivations and ambitions of the waves of American photographers who descended on Vietnam seeking glory and fame through their gut-wrenching photos of mass graves, crippled children, and dying soldiers, while also reveling in sex, drugs, and good times as the war raged around them. This harrowing depiction of life and death shows that even as the country burned, love and hope triumphed.
Publishers Weekly
Seen through the lens of young American freelance photographer Helen Adams, this evocative debut novel is a well researched exploration of Vietnam between 1963 and 1975, when the United States pulled out of the conflict. Helen, who has come to Vietnam partly to discover what really happened to her brother, is determined to see the real Vietnam, combat and all. The narrative focuses on Adams, Pulitzer Prize-winning combat photojournalist Sam Darrow, and his Vietnamese assistant, Linh, revealing their relationships, loyalties, and ambitions and the terrible toll the war takes on them all. As readers, we come to understand the characters' attraction to and ambivalence about the war, how love can survive and thrive under such extreme conditions (Helen and Linh have an affair), the courage needed to report under war conditions and the journalistic principles involved, and the fragile beauty of this war-torn country and its people. Verdict: Like Marianne Wiggins's Eveless Eden and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried before it, Soli's poignant work will grab the attention of most readers. A powerful new writer to watch. —Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ., Arlington, VA
Library Journal
Soli’s debut revolves around three characters whose lives are affected by the Vietnam War. Helen Adams comes to Vietnam...and quickly falls into an affair with the grizzled but darkly charismatic war photographer Sam Darrow.... Darrow sends her his Vietnamese assistant, Linh.... While Linh wants nothing more than to escape the war, Darrow and Helen are consumed by it, unable to leave until the inevitable tragedy strikes. The strength here is in Soli’s vivid, beautiful depiction of war-torn Vietnam, from the dangers of the field, where death can be a single step away, to the emptiness of the Saigon streets in the final days of the American evacuation. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
An impressive debut novel about a female photographer covering the Vietnam War. Helen Adams is an experienced photojournalist with ten years in Vietnam on her resume. The cinematic opening chapter shows her at the center of the chaotic, violent, desperate streets of Saigon in 1975, on the cusp of the communist takeover, as Vietnamese and Americans race to escape. The narrative then flashes back to a decade earlier, when Helen arrives in bustling Saigon as a young, naive photographer so anxious not to "miss out" on the war that she has dropped out of college to travel there.... This is a visceral story about the powerful and complex bonds that war creates. It raises profound questions about professional and personal lives that are based on, and often dependent on, a nation's horrific strife. Graphic but never gratuitous, the gripping, haunting narrative explores the complexity of violence, foreignness, even betrayal. Moving and memorable.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Soli pulled the novel’s title, "The Lotus Eaters," from an episode in Homer’s The Odyssey and uses Homer’s description of the land of the lotus eaters as the novel’s opening epigraph. What connection do you see between Homer’s lotus eaters and the main characters of this novel? What, if anything, in this novel acts like the lotus described by Homer, so powerful and seductive it causes one to abandon all thoughts of home? Does each character have a different “lotus” that draws them in? How does the title illuminate the main themes of the novel?
2. The novel begins with the fall of Saigon, and then moves back in time twelve years to the beginning of the war. How do you think this structure contributed to your experience of the novel? Did this glimpse of Helen in 1975 influence how you related to her character at earlier points in her life? Did knowing the outcome affect your judgment of her actions and the action of those around her?
3. Helen makes a pivotal decision at the end of Chapter One—to send Linh on the plane and stay behind to "see it end." Why does she make this decision? Ho did you feel about it? Did your feelings about it change over the course of the novel?
4. What does Helen think of Vietnam and the Vietnamese people when she first arrives in Saigon? How do her feelings evolve throughout the novel? How does this evolution affect how she comes to view the war and her role in it?
5. In Chapter Three, Darrow says, "The cool thing for us is that when this one’s done, there’s always another one.... The war doesn’t ever have to end for us." Why does he say this to Helen? What does it show about how Darrow views the war and about Darrow himself? When Helen repeats these words back to him in Chapter Eleven, how has their meaning changed?
6. In Chapter Nineteen, Helen believes that "Violence had poisoned them all." In what ways are Darrow, Helen, and Linh poisoned? What, if anything, keeps each of them from being destroyed by it?
7. Throughout the novel, Helen finds herself in love, and loved by, two very different men. How would you characterize each of her relationships? Did you prefer Helen in one relationship over the other? What are each relationship’s strengths and weaknesses? Which man do you ultimately believe is Helen’s great love?
8. Mark Twain said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." Bravery and courage are frequently mentioned in the novel. In what ways do the various characters display these traits? In what ways do they fail?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Forgetting Tree
Tatjana Soli, 2012
St. Martin's Press
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250001047
Summary
From Tatjana Soli, author of The Lotus Eaters, comes a breathtaking novel of a California ranching family, its complicated matriarch, and the enigmatic caretaker who may destroy them
When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she’s consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son Joshua at kidnappers’ hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she’s devoted her life to preserving.
But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: an illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life. And she's chosen a caregiver, the inscrutable, Caribbean-born Minna, who may just be the darkest force of all.
Haunting, tough, triumphant, and profound, The Forgetting Tree explores the intimate ties we have to one another, the deepest fears we keep to ourselves, and the calling of the land that ties every one of us together. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Salzburg, Austria
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Warren Wilson College
• Awards—James Tait Black Prize; Dana Award
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California, USA
Tatjana Soli is an American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, The Lotus Eaters, won the 2010 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Dana Award, her second novel, The Forgetting Tree, was published in 2012, and The Last Good Paradise came out in 2015.
Soli graduated from Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) and the Warren Wilson College (Asheville, North Carolina) with an MFA. She received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is married and lives in Orange County, California.
Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Boulevard, Five Chapters, The Normal School, The Sun, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Inkwell Journal, Nimrod, Third Coast, Carolina Quarterly, Sonora Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Washington Square Review, and Web del Sol. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
The lesson Soli has to teach...is a salient one for the modern world: even a remote citrus ranch can be a crossroads where cultures collide, and those collisions can be life-changing for everyone involved. Soli writes with patience and wisdom about both sides of this relationship, allowing both of her central female characters the freedom to be eccentric and inconsistent, but also to learn from each other.
Jane Smiley - New York Times Book Review
Soli, who made a splash with her debut, The Lotus Eaters, will captivate readers again with this twisting, intriguing tale of a grieving California woman. Claire and her husband, Forster, live an idyllic life on a citrus farm in California with their three children until their 10-year-old son is murdered in a robbery. Fifteen years later, Claire and Forster have divorced, their eldest daughters are grown, and Claire is diagnosed with breast cancer. Alone on the ranch, she needs a helping hand, and along comes Minna, a mysterious young beauty. The two women forge a co-dependent bond, and Claire sinks deeper under Minna’s spell, even though she senses danger lurking beneath. Though the story is slow and befuddling at times, Soli successfully paints an intimate portrait of two vulnerable women trying to make sense of their separately tragic lives—and becoming eerily entwined for their efforts. With her knack for beautiful prose and striking detail, this is a solid follow-up to her debut.
Publishers Weekly
When life hands you lemons...burn down the lemon tree. The author of the best seller The Lotus Eaters gives us a very different but equally compelling novel about finding what's worth fighting to preserve and the act of surviving in all its moral complexity. The main character, Claire, marries into a family that owns a citrus farm in southern California. When the loss of their son tears her and her husband apart, Claire fights to protect her two daughters from further loss.... Verdict: A lush, haunting novel for readers who appreciate ambiguity, this work should establish Soli as a novelist with depth and broad scope. —Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Lib., Marshall, VA
Library Journal
The fate of a struggling Southern California citrus farm shifts after the arrival of a mysterious Haitian woman. The second novel by Soli (The Lotus Eaters, 2010) centers on Claire, the matriarch of an orchard that's been the source of plenty of financial and emotional heartbreak. Her young son was killed there, and the aftermath of his death drove a wedge between her and her husband and two daughters. Years later, when Claire is diagnosed with breast cancer, she begins to search for live-in help and is introduced to Minna, a young woman...[whose background] isn't quite what she's claimed it was. This book aspires to be a multilayered story about class and race distinctions...[but Soli's] noble goal is undercut somewhat by baggy, sometimes pedantic storytelling.... (Soli's affinity for sentence fragments amplifies the prose's stiff feel.) Minna's own section of the novel, which chronicles her travels from Haiti to Miami to California, features some of Soli's most engaging writing, though it owes a clear debt to the troubled Haitian heroines of the works of Edwidge Danticat. Ambitious but overripe.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Soli named her novel "The Forgetting Tree"? How does the meaning of the title relate to the characters in the book?
2. How does the Baumsarg citrus farm shape the characters in the novel?
3. How does the loss of Josh Baumsarg affect the family? Forster and Claire react differently. How do you feel about the way they chose to live their lives afterwards?
4. Describe Minna. What is it about her that makes such an impression on Claire and her daughters?
5. How does Claire view herself as a mother? Did this perception change after losing Josh? As her daughters have grown into adults? In what ways did Claire’s relationships with Gwen and Lucy evolve throughout the novel? What particular dynamics between parents and their adult children does Soli seem interested in exploring?
6. Describe Claire's relationship with her mother, Raisi, and her mother-in-law, Hanni. What life lessons does she learn from them? How does she pass these on to her own children? To Minna?
7. The novel is structured in four parts. Why do you think Soli chose this way to tell it? What do you think of this technique? Does it change the way you experience the story?
8. In Chapter 17, Claire “could no longer tell the difference between her white and Minna’s black” What does she mean by this, and how does this suggest a theme of the novel?
9. Does knowing Minna’s past absolve her from responsibility to Claire? Do you think she overcomes these motivations by the end of the novel?
10. Jean-Alexi states that the “lost got to help the lost in this world.” In what ways are Claire and Minna lost? In what ways do they help each other out of this state? In what ways do they fail?
11. Why does Claire eventually let the farm go? Do you think this is a good or bad thing?
(Questions issued by publisher.)