Sara's Laughter
Tom Milton, 2011
Nepperhan Press
186 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780982990445
Summary
Despite warnings from her mother that if she waited too long to get married she wouldn't be able to find a husband, Sara waited until she found the right man.
But now Sara is thirty-five and she is having trouble getting pregnant. She has tried everything except technologies that are not approved by her religion. Under pressure from her widowed father to give him a grandson, she is tempted to try anything, but she keeps hoping for a miracle.
Her hope is kept alive by a dream in which God told her husband she would have a baby. When her sister Becky, who doesn’t want to have children, gets pregnant accidentally from an extramarital fling, Sara comes up with a solution that would finally make her dream come true. But when things don’t go according to plan she loses her way, and she discovers a side of her nature she never imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 3, 1949
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A. Princeton University; M.A., University
of Iowa (Writers Workshop); Ph.D., Walden University
• Currently—lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Tom Milton was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After completing his undergraduate
degree at Princeton he worked for the Wall Street Journal, and then he was invited to the Writers Workshop in Iowa City, where he completed a novel and a master’s degree. He then served in the U.S. Army, and upon his discharge he joined a major international bank in New York. For the next twenty years he worked overseas, initially as an economic/political analyst and finally as a senior executive. He later became involved in economic development projects.
After retiring from his business career he joined the faculty of Mercy College, where he is a professor of international business. Five years ago he found a publisher for his novels, some of which are set in foreign cities where he lived (Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, and Santo Domingo). His novels are popular with reading groups because they deal with major issues, they have engaging characters, and they are good stories.
His first published novel, No Way to Peace, set in Argentina in the mid-1970s, is about the courage of five women during that country’s war of terror. His second novel, The Admiral’s Daughter, is about the conflict between a young woman and her father during the civil rights war in Mississippi in the early 1960s. His third novel, All the Flowers, set in New York in the late 1960s, is about a gifted young singer who gets involved in the antiwar movement because her twin brother joins the army to prove his manhood to his father. His fourth novel, Infamy, set in Madrid in 2007, is about the attempt of security agents to stop a terrorist attack on New York City that would use weapons of mass destruction. His next novel, A Shower of Roses, set in London in the early 1980s, is about a young nurse who is drawn by love into an intrigue of the Cold War. His next novel, Sara’s Laughter, set in Yonkers, NY in 1993, is about a woman in her mid-thirties who wants a child but is unable to get pregnant. And his latest novel, The Golden Door, is about a young Latina woman in Alabama whose future is threatened by a harsh anti-immigrant law that the state passed in 2011. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
On learning that, though elderly and barren, she’d finally have the child promised to her all those years ago, the Biblical matriarch, Sarah, laughs, surreptitiously. Whether read as a bitter or joyous, nervous or skeptical, it’s in Sarah’s laughter that many have searched for guidance when life fails to deliver on cherished dreams. Taking this Old Testament lesson as inspiration, Sara’s Laughter explores the compromises contemporary Catholics make in an attempt to reconcile the restrictions of their faith WITH the technological advances that make reproductive dreams a possibility. Although Sara, a good “Bronx Irish Catholic,” can’t escape the “voices” of her parents in her head, she resists the pressure to marry right after college and produce a grandson. Instead, she holds out for Mr. Right: Marcelo Solis, a Latino doctor who foregoes lucrative private practice to work at a clinic in the Bronx. However, after overcoming doubt and mistrust early in their relationship, and her father’s reservations about their mixed-race marriage, Sara and Marcelo find themselves facing a new challenge when Sara learns she’s all but infertile. Having already stepped outside the bounds of her faith as a single woman living in Manhattan (pre-marital sex, birth control), Sara must decide how far she’s willing to go “over the line” set by the doctrine of Humanae Vitae in order to have the family she so desperately wants. But when Sara’s troubled sister, Becky, calls, devastated, with news of her own unplanned pregnancy, Sara, misled by her own sense of entitlement (“Well, don’t you think we’d make better parents?”), accepts Becky’s promise to give her the child heedless of the repercussions: while Sara is “born with self-esteem,” Becky is not, and Sara knows Becky’s resentment won’t allow her to give her the one thing she wants. While Milton’s tour of Catholic reproduction issues— birth control, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, abortion—is laudably balanced, the treatment is too cursory and the ending too pat to be of much philosophical interest. Similarly, the doctrine of Humanae Vitae is prodded far too gently to appeal to skeptics or those interested in serious philosophical challenges to the doctrine. Regardless, Milton, author of five novels, including Infamy and The Admiral’s Daughter, is a talented storyteller who has real sympathy for his characters, and the result is an honest tale about relationships—the vicissitudes, the frustrations, the solace—and the enduring power of familial love. .
Devon Shepherd - Foreword Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. To what extent is Sara influenced by the voice of her mother in her head?
2. What’s the difference between the messages Sara gets from her mother and her father about her inability to get pregnant?
3. What issues does Sara confront as she uses the technology available to women who have fertility problems?
4. Evaluate the advice that Sara gets from Dr. Vesely.
5. How would you describe Sara’s relationship with her mother?
6. Does Sara achieve separation from her mother?
7. Sara’s sister accuses her of being daddy’s little girl. Is this a valid accusation?
8. Why is Marcelo the right man for Sara?
9. Marcelo has two complications: he is married, and he isn’t white. Which complication is harder for Sara’s mother to deal with? What does that tell us about her mother?
10. How deep do you think her father’s racism is?
11. Would Becky have been a different person if she had been an only child?
12. Explain Becky’s behavior after she got pregnant.
13. What do you think of Sara’s solution to her sister’s problem?
14. What perspectives do we gain from Sara’s conversations at lunch with her friend Regina?
15. What perspectives do we gain from Sara’s conversations with Father Paul in front of St. Brigid?
16. How does Sara’s view of the local abortion clinic evolve during the story?
17. Would Sara have joined the protesters in front of the clinic solely as a matter of principle?
18. Why is Sara mesmerized by Brother Jeremiah?
19. What did Sara and Becky learn about themselves that changed their relationship?
(Questions issued by the author.)
A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar
Suzanne Joinson, 2012
Bloomsbury USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608198115
Summary
It is 1923. Evangeline (Eva) English and her sister Lizzie are missionaries heading for the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar. Though Lizzie is on fire with her religious calling, Eva’s motives are not quite as noble, but with her green bicycle and a commission from a publisher to write A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, she is ready for adventure.
In present day London, a young woman, Frieda, returns from a long trip abroad to find a man sleeping outside her front door. She gives him a blanket and a pillow, and in the morning finds the bedding neatly folded and an exquisite drawing of a bird with a long feathery tail, some delicate Arabic writing, and a boat made out of a flock of seagulls on her wall. Tayeb, in flight from his Yemeni homeland, befriends Frieda and, when she learns she has inherited the contents of an apartment belonging to a dead woman she has never heard of, they embark on an unexpected journey together.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar explores the fault lines that appear when traditions from different parts of an increasingly globalized world crash into one other. Beautifully written, and peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, the novel interweaves the stories of Frieda and Eva, gradually revealing the links between them and the ways in which they each challenge and negotiate the restrictions of their societies as they make their hard-won way toward home. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar marks the debut of a wonderfully talented new writer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
In 2006 I bought a box of letters from Deptford Market in London and wrote a short story, "Laila Ahmed," about my quest to find out who they belonged to. This story won a New Writing Ventures prize which gave me a year’s mentoring and enough money to buy a laptop. All of this contributed very well to helping me finish A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar. The moral of this story is: go to flea markets! And car boots...and don’t get me started on the buried stories to be found in second hand and thrift shops.
I live in a small, Sussex coastal town with my husband and two tiny children. We have embraced its English seaside charm, the pier, the blustery promenade and best of all, the rock pools.
I work part-time organising international literature projects for the British Council. I travel widely, and over the past ten years have travelled and worked across most countries in the Middle East and in China, Russia and Western and Eastern Europe. For several years I specialised in projects focusing on the Arabic speaking world. I am interested in international literature and... well, stories from anywhere in the world that grab me.
The rest of the time I write. My next book is inspired by the Art Deco Shoreham Airport in Sussex, and is about early female pilots, inter-war London and the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine. I combine working on this with studying for a Ph.D in Creative Writing. Writers I admire include Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys, Vladimir Nabokov, EM Forster, William Faulkner, TS Eliot, Lawrence Durrell, AS Byatt, Marilynne Robinson, Janice Galloway, Carson McCullers, Olivia Manning, Freya Stark, Graham Greene, Alice Oswald, Sinead Morrisey, H.D., Stevie Smith, Ann Quin, Sylvia Townsend Warner. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The dramatic opening of Suzanne Joinson’s thrilling and densely plotted first novel offers only a suggestion of the tumult to come…. Joinson, who has herself traveled widely on behalf of the British council, controls her narrative with skill: this is an impressive debut, its prose as lucid and deep as a mountain lake. Joinson also has a gift for evoking finely calibrated shifts of feeling… [she] illuminates her narrative with a playfulness that borders on the Gothic…. Through Frieda and Eva and their companions, Joinson explores notions of freedom, rootlessness, dislocation – any writer’s reliable arsenal. But she makes these themes her own.
Sara Wheeler - New York Times Book Review
It takes less than a page for Suzanne Joinson to seize your attention…. there is so much here that is wonderful: the author’s crisp, uncluttered story-telling, her graceful prose, and her ability to inhabit the character of a young woman in 1924 and a contemporary young woman with equal depth and ease. It is an impressive first novel
Nan Goldberg - Boston Globe
Ms. Joinson layers her basic narrative with references to religious hypocrisy, cultural ignorance and sexual gamesmanship, throwing in for good measure Arabic ornithological mythology, bicycling tips for the novice female rider, and the dangers of cult worship. . . . Ms. Joinson succeeds in keeping us moving and takes us to places very far away before we reach the end of this immensely satisfying story.
Norman Powers - New York Journal of Books
Present and past meld into an exploration of conflicting traditions in an impressive debut that shifts smoothly between 1920s Turkestan and present-day England. In 1923, Evangeline (Eva) English accompanies her fragile sister, Lizzie, on a missionary trip to the ancient Chinese-ruled Muslim city of Kashgar under the supervision of the stern Millicent Frost, who suspects, accurately, that Eva, with her prized bicycle—a “glorious, green BSA Lady’s Roadster”—and passion for writing, is more interested in adventure than proselytizing. Surprisingly (and disappointingly), Eva’s story is lacking in cycling and exciting exploits. In the present day, well-traveled but stuffy researcher Frieda Blakeman is startled by the appearance of both a letter deeming her the next-of-kin of a recently deceased woman, and Tayeb, an illegal Yemeni immigrant who takes refuge outside her London apartment. Though Frieda and Tayeb’s growing bond and the unfolding revelations of the modern story are more compelling than Eva’s frustratingly limited experiences and the unpleasantly stereotyped Millicent, Joinson has created in Frieda’s unusual history and the parallel struggles of Tayeb and Eva as outsiders and observers an intriguing window into the difficulties of those who attempt to reach across cultural barriers.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) "I may as well start with the bones," observes Eva, who in 1923 is traveling with sister Lizzie and officious Miss Millicent Frost to the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, where they will serve as missionaries. Lizzie truly has a calling, but Eva is quite literally along for the ride; she's got her bicycle and is planning to write a travelog. The bones, "scalded, sun-bleached, like tiny flutes," lead them to a young woman in the throes of childbirth, whose subsequent death results in their house arrest by hostile Moslem locals considering charges of murder. Meanwhile, in contemporary London, the somewhat disaffected Frieda, raised by commune-dwelling parents, befriends a gentle Yemeni refugee she's found sleeping on her doorstep and puzzles out why she has inherited the contents of a flat whose occupant she doesn't know. Refreshingly, the two stories are equally absorbing (not always the case), and their connection comes as both surprising and obvious. Verdict: Beautifully written in language too taut, piercing, and smartly observed to be called lyrical, this atmospheric first novel immediately engages, nicely reminding us that odd twists of fate sometimes aren't that odd. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
This complex and involving historical novel examines the idea of home, the consequences of exile, the connection between mother and daughter, and the power dynamics of sexual relationships.
Booklist
Eva has accompanied her younger sister Lizzie, a talented photographer, and Lizzie's domineering religious mentor Millicent to Asia in 1923 without missionary zeal but in search of adventure. Traveling by bicycle, Eva keeps a notebook she hopes to turn into a book about the journey.... Shift to [present day] London and Frieda, a think-tank specialist on Islamic youth.... Slowly Frieda and Eva's connections are revealed. Each struggles to find her voice and independence despite social pressures. Each must define love for herself, even if it defies convention.... As often happens in novels that travel between past and present, the past sparkles while the present pales.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar:
1. Talk about the two main characters—Eva and Frieda. In what ways are they different from one another? Are there any similarities? How do both women use cycling? How does each attempt to achieve independence? Do you find one's story more interesting than the other's? If so, which one...and why?
2. How would you describe the relationship between the two sisters, Eva and Lizzie?
3. Talk about Millicent Frost—what do you think of her? Is she a committed Christian and missionary? Is she evil? A hypocrite?
4. What about Tayeb—what do you think of him as a character? What is the significance of the bird he draws on the wall? Do his reflections enhance the story for you...or do you find them a distraction from the main storyline?
5. Millicent is held accountable for the death of the young woman who died during child birth. Talk about Millicent's actions—should she have assisted the woman? Was there a better alternative? Today, laws for helping strangers vary according to country, state or province. In some jurisdictions, a person who is uncertified in first aid can be held legally liable if mistakes are made during an attempt to assist a stranger. In other jurisdictions, laws protect people, certified or not, from liability as long as they respond in a rational manner. Research the difference between "Good Samaritan" and "Duty to Rescue" laws. What do you think of the laws?
6. Why do you think the two stories are told through different points of view—Eva's in the first person and Frieda's in the third? What is gained by the double perspective? Could Eva's story have been told in the third person rather than through journal entries? Might we, for instance, have learned more about Millicent's and Lizzie's natures using a third-person narrator? Or does the journal provide more immediacy than a third-person narrator would?
7. Talk about the different forms that love and intimacy take in this novel. Are some forms more "legitimate" than others...or does this novel suggest that all forms of intimacy are legitimate? How do you see intimacy?
8. Talk about the different religions encountered in this novel. What is the book's attitude toward religion? Does the novel see religion as a positive force...a power used to control...or what? Is there a difference between religions and the way in which they are practiced? Does the novel validate one religion over another?
9. How do both Eva and Frieda attempt to make sense of their parents' actions and/or views of love? In what way does the novel suggest that we are destined to repeat the mistakes of our parents? Do you believe most of us are so destined?
10. At what point did you figure out the identity of the mysterious dead woman? What clues lay along the way?
11. Talk about Kashgar. How would you describe the city and its culture? Is Joinson's portrayal adequate? What all is going on within the city? Do you find similarities between the events in 1923 and events in the 21st century?
12. Talk about the connection between women cyclists and the development of more comfortable women's attire.
13. What about the ending of the novel? Was it satisfying...or disappointing?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Marriage Plot |
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—Excerpt—
She lifted her face and pressed SPEAK again. The elevator was waiting at the end of the floral runner. Waiting, Madeleine realized, because she’d failed to close the sliding gate when she’d staggered out of the thing a few hours earlier. Now she shut the gate securely and pressed the button for the lobby, and with a jolt the antique contraption began to descend through the building’s interior gloom. “No, that’s not the plan. The plan is to see Maddy for breakfast and then leave after the ceremony.” Madeleine turned and looked vaguely down Benefit Street. “There’s a place this way.” And right now Phyllida was looking at Madeleine with the proper expression for this moment: thrilled by the pomp and ceremony, eager to put intelligent questions to any of Madeleine’s professors she happened to meet, or to trade pleasantries with fellow parents of graduating seniors. In short, she was available to everyone and everything and in step with the social and academic pageantry, all of which exacerbated Madeleine’s feeling of being out of step, for this day and the rest of her life. Madeleine installed her parents at a table near the bay window, as far away from the pink- haired girl as possible, and went up to the counter. The guy took his time coming over. She ordered three coffees—a large for her—and bagels. While the bagels were being toasted, she brought the coffees over to her parents. Phyllida asked, “So, are we going to meet Leonard today?” To her surprise, Madeleine found herself contemplating this proposal. Why not tell her parents everything, curl up in the backseat of the car, and let them take her home? She could move into her old bedroom, with the sleigh bed and the Madeline wallpaper. She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight. “No, they don’t,” Madeleine said. “And, anyway, I am. Now. Speaking to you.” Phyllida was waving as they came up the steps. In the flirtatious voice she reserved for her favorite of Madeleine’s friends, she called out, “I thought that was you on the ground. You looked like a swami!” “Maybe I’ll take a trip, too,” Madeleine said in a threatening tone. “By the Van Wickle Gates. At the top of College Street. That’s where we’ll come through.” It felt deeply pleasurable to say this, to name her sadness, and so Madeleine was surprised by the coldness of Mitchell’s reply.“Why are you telling me this?” he said. * * *
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The Andromeda Strain
Michael Crichton, 1969
Knopf (1969); HarperCollins (current)
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061703157
Summary
This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis. As in most crises, the events surrounding the Andromeda Strain were a compound of foresight and foolishness, innocence and ignorance. Nearly everyone involved had moments of great brilliance, and moments of unaccountable stupidity....
Thus begins this extraordinary novel of the world's first space-age biological emergency.
The Andromeda Strain sets forth with almost documentary verisimilitude the unfolding story of "Project Wildfire"—the crash mobilization of the nation's highest scientific and medical resources when an unmanned research satellite returns to earth mysteriously and lethally contaminated.
Four American scientists, chosen in advance for their experimental achievements in the fields of clinical microbiology, epidemiology, pathology, and electrolyte chemistry, are summoned under conditions of total news blackout and utmost urgency to Wildfire's secret laboratory five stories beneath the Nevada desert.
There—surrounded by banks of the most sophisticated computer-assisted equipment, and sealed off from the outside world except for a telecommunications link with the national security apparatus—they work against the threat of a worldwide epidemic to find an antidote to the unknown microorganism that has inexplicably killed all but two inhabitants (an elderly derelict and an infant) of the tiny Arizona town where the satellite was retrieved.
Step by step they begin to unravel the puzzle of the Andromeda Strain, until, terrifyingly, their microbacterial "adversary" ruptures the hypersterile seal of the laboratory and their already desperate search for a biomedical answer becomes a split-second race against an atomic deadline.
With its narrative force, its scientific detail, its suspense—as four brilliant individualists work together under ultimate pressure—this novel makes real for the reader the real world of today's science and medicine at the top-secret levels of the Science-Space-Military high command. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 23, 1942
• Raised—Roslyn (Long Island), New York, USA
• Death—November 4, 2008
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—A.B., M.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Edgar Award for Best Novel (1969)
John Michael Crichton—the American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter—is best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at #1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively).
Crichton's literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. He was the author of, among others, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next (the final book published before his death), Pirate Latitudes (published November 24, 2009), and a final unfinished techno-thriller, Micro, which was published in November 2011
Background
John Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, but raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York. He showed a keen interest in writing from a young age and at the age of 14 had a column related to travel published in The New York Times. Crichton had always planned on becoming a writer and began his studies at Harvard College in 1960. During his undergraduate study in literature, he conducted an experiment to expose a professor whom he believed to be giving him abnormally low marks and criticizing his literary style. Informing another professor of his suspicions, Crichton plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. The paper was returned by his unwitting professor with a mark of B-minus.
His issues with the English department led Crichton to switch his concentration to biological anthropology as an undergraduate, obtaining his A.B. summa cum laude in 1964. He was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the UK in 1965.
Crichton later enrolled at Harvard Medical School, when he began publishing work. By this time he had become exceptionally tall. By his own account, he was approximately 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m) tall in 1997. In reference to his height, while in medical school, he began writing novels under the pen names "John Lange" and "Jeffrey Hudson" ("Lange" is a surname in Germany, meaning "long", and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th-century dwarf in the court of Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of England). In Travels, he recalls overhearing doctors who were unaware that he was the author of The Andromeda Strain, discussing the flaws in his book. A Case of Need, written under the Hudson pseudonym, won him his first Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1969. He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name "Michael Douglas." The back cover of that book carried a picture, taken by their mother, of Michael and Douglas when very young.
During his clinical rotations at the Boston City Hospital, Crichton grew disenchanted with the culture there, which appeared to emphasize the interests and reputations of doctors over the interests of patients. Crichton graduated from Harvard, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. He never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his writing career instead.
Reflecting on his career in medicine years later, Crichton concluded that patients too often shunned responsibility for their own health, relying on doctors as miracle workers rather than advisors. He experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, coming to believe that these included real phenomena that scientists had too eagerly dismissed as paranormal.
In 1988, Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Personal life
Crichton was a diest.
As an adolescent Crichton felt isolated because of his height (at 6'9"). As an adult he was acutely aware of his intellect, which often left him feeling alienated from the people around him. During the 1970s and 1980s he consulted psychics and enlightenment gurus to make him feel more socially acceptable and to improve his karma. As a result of these experiences, Crichton practiced meditation throughout much of his life.
Crichton was a workaholic. When drafting a novel, which would typically take him six or seven weeks, he withdrew completely to follow what he called "a structured approach" of ritualistic self-denial. As he neared writing the end of each book, he would rise increasingly early each day, meaning that he would sleep for less than four hours by going to bed at 10 pm and waking at 2 am. In 1992, Crichton was ranked among People magazine's 50 most beautiful people.
He married five times; four of the marriages ended in divorce. He was married to Suzanna Childs, Joan Radam (1965–1970), Kathleen St. Johns (1978–1980), and actress Anne-Marie Martin (1987–2003), the mother of his daughter Taylor Anne (born 1989). At the time of his death, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander, who was six months pregnant with their son. John Michael Todd Crichton was born on February 12, 2009.
Death
In accordance with the private way in which Crichton lived his life, his throat cancer was not made public until his death. According to Crichton's brother Douglas, Crichton was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2008. He was undergoing chemotherapy treatment at the time of his death, and Crichton's physicians and family members had been expecting him to make a recovery. He unexpectedly died of the disease on November 4, 2008 at the age of 66.
Michael's talent outscaled even his own dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the earth. In the early days, Michael had just sold The Andromeda Strain to Robert Wise at Universal and I had recently signed on as a contract TV director there. My first assignment was to show Michael Crichton around the Universal lot. We became friends and professionally. Jurassic Park, ER, and Twister followed. Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place. —Steven Spielberg at Michael Crichton's death.
Crichton had an impressive collection of 20th century American art, which was auctioned by Christie's in May 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Pre-internet books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
The Andromeda Strain is a reading windfall—compelling, memorable, superbly executed. Everything hangs on plot, and the plot is inspired. Which means that the book probably cannot last as "literature." But Crichton's narrative line is so strong, and his resources for sustaining it are so abundant, that The Andromeda Strain can't miss popular success. It's a sure best seller. And if one judges the book by the standards of its intentions...it achieves something important. It transmits intelligence. It expands our knowledge of the world we live in.
Webster Schott - New York Times (6-8-1969)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Andromeda Strain:
1. The Andromeda Strain, written over 40 years ago in 1969, remains a classic in the scientific-thriller genre. What is its lasting appeal? Does it have relevance to the 21st century?
2. Research some of the scientific technology—then in its infancy—mentioned in the book. Trace the development, for instance, of remote surveillance, voice activation, computer imaging, handprint identification, and biosafety lab procedures. Was Crichton a visionary...or were these inventions already on their way to common usage?
3. Are extraterrestrial microbes an actual, potentially serious, threat today?
4. What current governmental bodies are chartered to control epidemics—extraterrestrial or earthbound (biochemical or viral)? How equipped are we as a society to cope with a major epidemic? Have the dangers of a planetwide disease (of any kind) lessened or increased since The Andromeda Strain was published?
5. Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain shortly after the end of the Vietnam War. In what way does that war influence the tone of the novel? In other words, how is Chricton's personal attitude toward the military reflected in the novel? Does his skepticism seem relevant today...or outdated?
6. Jeremy Stone believes that human...
intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying.
Crichton's book explores the limits of human intelligence: its vulnerability to self-delusion and irrationality...it's capacity to destroy the planet coupled with its incapacity to control the danger...and its susceptibility to malfunction under stress. How does this idea (or ideas) play out in the novel? Do you agree with Crichton's/Stone's concept of human intelligence? Or is it overwrought?
7. Talk about the "Odd Man" hypothesis, which seems authentic and factual. Is there any truth at all to the theory, or is it purely fictional? If the latter, why the ruse to make it sound plausible? (Hint: look up "false document" literary technique.)
8. This novel might be viewed as a cautionary tale. If so, a caution against what?—disease preparedness, government secrecy, the limits of human intelligence, scientific and technological overreach? Something else?
9. Stone comments at the end that "the important thing is that we now understand." What exactly is understood?
10. Describe the moral dilemma the scientists face regarding the destruction of the Andromeda strain?
11. Does something like Project Scoop exist today? Should it exist? Is it possible for civilians to know whether or not something like it might exist? To what extent should government keep secrets from its citizens...as well as potential foes?
12. Michael Crichton was writing science fiction. Yet a contemporary reviewer wrote in 1969 (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that the author had convinced him—"with his copies of Government files and memos and computer-based output mapping, with his reference notes to actual scientific papers (not to mention the actual news that the crew members of Apollo 11 will be quarantined after their return from the moon)—that it was all really happening." Do you find this same degree of realism in Crichton's novel? Or has the novel become less realistic, less plausible after 40 years.
13. What about the ending of this book? Science fiction thrillers usually end with the defeat of either humanity or the extraterrestrial threat. Is the ending to The Andromeda Strain disappointing? Is it, as one reviewer puts it, "a series of phony climaxes" and "a huge biological cop-out"? Or does Crichton resolve his plot satisfactorily—with a conclusion that flows logically from events in the novel?
14. Watch two movies and compare them to Crichton's novel: The Andromeda Strain (based on the novel) and Contagion, a 2011 film about a (fictional) viral epidemic.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Golden Door
Tom Milton, 2012
Nepperhan Press
228 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780983941217
Summary
Maya Mendez, who has lived with her family in Alabama for fifteen years as an illegal immigrant, suddenly faces an uncertain future when the state passes a new immigration law. The law will make it a crime for her parents to work and will prohibit her from attending a public university.
Maya has recently graduated from high school, and in two months she plans to start at the University of Alabama, which recruited her for the women’s soccer team before the law was passed. Since the law doesn’t become effective until after the fall semester begins, and since it might be stopped by challenges, Maya goes to Tuscaloosa in early August to join the soccer team for practice. Meanwhile, she finds herself in the middle of a conflict between her parents—her father still wants to pursue his dream of living in America, and her mother wants to go back to Mexico.
As the months pass and the law moves through the court system, Maya becomes a key player on a soccer team that has its most successful season in years. But the spirit of the law eventually catches up with her family, and out of its tragic consequences she struggles to find a mission in life. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 3, 1949
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A. Princeton University; M.A., University
of Iowa (Writers Workshop); Ph.D., Walden University
• Currently—lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Tom Milton was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After completing his undergraduate
degree at Princeton he worked for the Wall Street Journal, and then he was invited to the Writers Workshop in Iowa City, where he completed a novel and a master’s degree. He then served in the U.S. Army, and upon his discharge he joined a major international bank in New York. For the next twenty years he worked overseas, initially as an economic/political analyst and finally as a senior executive. He later became involved in economic development projects.
After retiring from his business career he joined the faculty of Mercy College, where he is a professor of international business. Five years ago he found a publisher for his novels, some of which are set in foreign cities where he lived (Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, and Santo Domingo). His novels are popular with reading groups because they deal with major issues, they have engaging characters, and they are good stories.
His first published novel, No Way to Peace, set in Argentina in the mid-1970s, is about the courage of five women during that country’s war of terror. His second novel, The Admiral’s Daughter, is about the conflict between a young woman and her father during the civil rights war in Mississippi in the early 1960s. His third novel, All the Flowers, set in New York in the late 1960s, is about a gifted young singer who gets involved in the antiwar movement because her twin brother joins the army to prove his manhood to his father. His fourth novel, Infamy, set in Madrid in 2007, is about the attempt of security agents to stop a terrorist attack on New York City that would use weapons of mass destruction. His next novel, A Shower of Roses, set in London in the early 1980s, is about a young nurse who is drawn by love into an intrigue of the Cold War. His next novel, Sara’s Laughter, set in Yonkers, NY in 1993, is about a woman in her mid-thirties who wants a child but is unable to get pregnant. And his latest novel, The Golden Door, is about a young Latina woman in Alabama whose future is threatened by a harsh anti-immigrant law that the state passed in 2011.
Extras
From a conversation with Tom Milton appearing at the end of The Golden Door:
Q: All your heroines get into trouble. All have their values tested by events. And all have something in common—they define themselves by what they believe in, not by their relationships with men. Does that make you a feminist?
A: I belong to a generation that fought for civil rights, for peace, for women’s liberation, and for the environment. We’re still a long way from achieving our goals in these areas, including social and economic justice for women, so I’m an advocate for those goals. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
What does it feel like to be an illegal immigrant? Tom Milton addresses this question directly in The Golden Door, a book written in the voice of Maya Mendez, a young Mexican woman who has spent fifteen years living in the US. She’s an achiever with high grades at school, excellent soccer skills, and a brown belt in karate, and she’s just won a scholarship to the University of Alabama when an immigration law is passed that makes it impossible for her parents to work and for her to attend university. Written largely in the first person, the novel discusses her identity struggles as she moves between the differing opinions of her parents: her father, who wants to fulfill his dream of living in America, and her mother who believes they are unwanted in the US and should simply return to Mexico, where they belong. Through her relationships with her mentor, Judson, her rich, white boyfriend, Shelby, and her friend, Erin, Maya tries to understand what it means to be an illegal alien. She tries to determine whether a life in America is something she should continue to pursue, despite the challenges implicit in a law that makes her an instant outsider. Initially, she feels exempt from its grasp. But then her father is deported and the university rescinds her scholarship after Shelby’s father, an influential alumnus, tries to end Maya’s relationship with his son by having her extradited. The Golden Door tackles some relevant issues in a direct manner, using first-person dialogue between the characters to explain the various conflicts. At times this dialogue feels a little stilted and forced, but on the whole it succeeds in holding a reader’s attention. Milton also succeeds in breaking some of the stereotypes associated with Latinos by giving us a protagonist who has everything in her favor. Not only is she attractive, but she’s intelligent, ambitious, and the best soccer player on her university team. Clearly, she is an asset to the country. Her parents, too, struggle to understand how they are considered to be “taking jobs away from Americans,” when there is a dearth of American labor to get those jobs done. The Golden Door is a good read for young, thinking adults aged fifteen and older, and its address of immigration issues is easily applicable to American controversy on the same subject, as well as stereotypes that persist to this day.
Lauren Kramer - Forward Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss this novel’s treatment of racism, violence, and gender identity.
2. Discuss the statement by Trevor that the people who support anti-immigrant laws like the one in Alabama want to turn America into a gated community.
3. Maya’s father believes that the words engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty are still true, whereas her mother insists they are no longer true. What do you think?
4. Explain how Maya is affected by the conflict between her father and her mother.
5. How does Maya’s relationship with Shelby help her or hinder her in finding her identity?
6. What role does Judson play in Maya’s development?
7. What roles do Father Philip and Trevor play in Maya’s development?
8. What new perspectives does Maya gain from Erin?
9. What role does the coach play in Maya’s development?
10. How are Maya’s values tested by her relationship with Diego?
11. Explain how the plot is driven by the hopes, dreams, beliefs, or values of the characters. Which character has the most effect on what happens?
12. Describe the three situations where Maya uses her karate skills. Was she justified in using those skills?
13. Does Maya resolve the conflict between her parents? Explain.
14. Given the events of the story, is the ending inevitable? Explain.
15. How would you project Maya’s future?
(Questions courtesy of author.)