Fifty Shades Freed (Book Three of the Fifty Shades Trilogy)
E.L. James, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345803504
Summary
When unworldly student Anastasia Steele first encountered the driven and dazzling young entrepreneur Christian Grey it sparked a sensual affair that changed both of their lives irrevocably. Shocked, intrigued, and, ultimately, repelled by Christian’s singular erotic tastes, Ana demands a deeper commitment. Determined to keep her, Christian agrees.
Now, Ana and Christian have it all—love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Ana must somehow learn to share Christian’s opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own identity. And Christian must overcome his compulsion to control as he wrestles with the demons of a tormented past.
Just when it seems that their strength together will eclipse any obstacle, misfortune, malice, and fate conspire to make Ana’s deepest fears turn to reality. This book is intended for mature audiences. (From the publisher.)
See our Reading Guides for the other books in the Fifty Shades Trilogy: Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book; Fifty Shades Darker, the second.
Author Bio
E L James is a former TV executive, wife and mother of two based in West London. Since early childhood she dreamed of writing stories that readers would fall in love with, but put those dreams on hold to focus on her family and her career. She finally plucked up the courage to put pen to paper with her first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Sorry, There are no mainstream press reviews online for the Fifty Shades Darker, the second book in the Shades of Grey trilogy. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer 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 Fifty Shades Freed:
1. The third book of the trilogy opens after Ana and Christian's wedding. Is their marital relationship what you expected? Is it more of the same...or different from books one and two?
2. E.L. James introduces flashbacks into this novel. Why might she have done so? Do they enhance the flow of the novel...or slow it down?
3. Does James maintain the same page-turning level of suspense in this third installment as she did in the other two?
4. What does the title mean?
5. Some feel that James should have ended the series after the second book. Do you agree or disagree? Is the book repetitive or does it introduce something new, either in terms of plot or in the relationship between Ana and Christian?
6. Is Ana and Christian's relationship an abusive relationship masquerading as a romantic one...or something else?
7. What do you think of Christian's reaction to the news that Ana is pregnant? Would you want to bring a child into a "family" environment such as theirs? What kind of parents do you predict they'll be in the long run?
8. Why is Ana always apologizing? Readers have complained throughout the series that Ana is either stupid, dense, or lacking any kind of backbone. Do you agree or disagree? Does Ana change by the end of book three? If so, how?
9. If you were Ana's friend, what would you advise her regarding her relationship (and now marriage) to Christian?
10. What about Christian—does he change? Would you have stayed with him despite his good looks and wealth? What else is there to recommend him?
11. At the end of the book, Christian still looks upon Mrs. Robinson a friend, despite the pain she had caused him? Why? Does it bother you that he finds a way to exculpate a pedophile?
12. Does the series end where you wanted it to end? Does the ending feel forced or tacked on...or does it evolve naturally from what came before?
13. Are people who engage in BDSM troubled? Or is BDSM simply a more potent form of sexual expression, which explores the human soul on a deeper level?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Fifty Shades Darker (Book Two of the Fifty Shades Trilogy)
E.L. James, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345803498
Summary
Daunted by the singular tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house.
But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades.
While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her, and make the most important decision of her life. This book is intended for mature audiences. (From the publisher.)
See our Reading Guides for the other books in the Fifty Shades Trilogy: Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book; Fifty Shades Freed, the third.
Author Bio
E L James is a former TV executive, wife and mother of two based in West London. Since early childhood she dreamed of writing stories that readers would fall in love with, but put those dreams on hold to focus on her family and her career. She finally plucked up the courage to put pen to paper with her first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Sorry, There are no mainstream press reviews online for the Fifty Shades Darker, the second book in the Shades of Grey trilogy. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer 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 Fifty Shades Darker:
1. Talk about Ana's state of mind at the beginning of the book. Why does she allow Christian back into her life?
2. Does Ana's explanation about why she never said the safeword at the end of book one make sense to you? Christian wonders whether he can ever trust her again...and she apologizes. Why?
3. Jack, Ana's boss, is one of the new characters introduced in this installment. What do you think of him? Does your opinion of him change as the book progresses?
4. What do you think of Elena, or "Mrs. Robinson" as Ana refers to her? Why does Christian refuse to acknowledge his teenage sexual encounter with her? Why does she desire a friendship with Ana?
5. What's wrong with Leila?
6. What more do you learn about Christian's past? Does that knowledge provide further insight into his character?
7. Why does Ana wish to up the ante (or discipline) with Christian?
8. Talk about the party scene between Ana and Elena toward the end of the book.
9. What do you think of the marriage proposal?
10. Is this just a dirty book—or are there deeper issues at stake here?
11. What about the ending—is it satisfying? Or is it merely a set-up for the sequel?
12. If you've come this far in the trilogy, you'll most likely read the 3rd installment. Any predictions? Or have you had enough?
13. Do either Ana or Christian change from the first book through the end of the second (or does your attitude toward them change)? Has their relationship evolved...or does it remained as it was previously?
14. Review the questions from Fifty Shades of Grey—some of them pertain to this book as well.
15. Time for honesty: are these books a turn on? Would YOU do this? HAVE you done this?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Red House
Mark Haddon, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-0385535779
Summary
The set-up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. The stage is set for seven days of resentment and guilt, a staple of family gatherings the world over.
But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt. As we come to know each character they become profoundly real to us. We understand them, even as we come to realize they will never fully understand each other, which is the tragicomedy of every family.
The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner—a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 26, 1962
• Where—Northampton, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Whitbread Book of the Year; Common-
wealth Writer's Prize
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England
Mark Haddon was born in Northampton and educated at Uppingham School and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied English. In 2003, Haddon won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and in 2004, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best First Book for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a book which is written from the perspective of a boy with Asperger syndrome. Haddon's knowledge of Asperger syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum, comes from his work with autistic people as a young man. In an interview at Powells.com, Haddon claimed that this was the first book that he wrote intentionally for an adult audience; he was surprised when his publisher suggested marketing it to both adult and child audiences.
His second adult novel, A Spot of Bother, was published in September 2006, and The Red House in 2012.
Mark Haddon is also known for his series of Agent Z books, one of which, Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars, was made into a 1996 Children's BBC sitcom. He also wrote the screenplay for the BBC television adaptation of Raymond Briggs's story Fungus the Bogeyman, screened on BBC1 in 2004. In 2007 he wrote the BBC television drama Coming Down the Mountain.
Haddon is a vegetarian, and enjoys vegetarian cookery. He describes himself as a 'hard-line atheist'. In an interview with The Observer, Haddon said "I am atheist in a very religious mould". His atheism might be inferred from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time in which the main character declares that those who believe in God are stupid.
In 2009, he donated the short story "The Island" to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Haddon's story was published in the Fire collection. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[Haddon] is almost unrivalled at the notoriously tricky task of giving an authentic voice to children, and his ability to pinpoint the comic aspects of the everyday scenarios.
Sunday Times (UK)
Hugely enjoyable, sympathetic novel would make perfect reading for those setting out on holiday.
Observer (UK)
"[Haddon] writes like a dream. Never showy, but often lyrically descriptive, he takes the reader with him to the core of this crazy family. Secondly, he has a true understanding of the human heart.
Spectator (UK)
It’s every bit as charmingly idiosyncratic as his brilliant The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Daily Mirror (UK)
Engaging....From the first page in which the train carrying Dominic and Angela's family "unzips the fields", there is a vigor to Haddon's prose which carries you along. I read it twice, both times with enjoyment.
Independent (UK)
The story unfolds from all eight characters’ points of view, a tricky strategy that pays off, letting Haddon dig convincingly into all of the failures, worries and weaknesses that they can’t leave behind.
Entertainment Weekly
Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) sets his sights on the modern social novel with a seriously dysfunctional family. Radiologist Richard, newly remarried to Louisa, who has something of a “footballer’s wife” about her, hosts his resentful sister Angela and her family at his vacation home in the English countryside for the week. Both Richard’s new wife, and her cold-blooded 16-year-old daughter, Melissa, arouse the attentions of Angela’s teenage children: son Alex, and daughter Daisy, whose sexual curiosity might lead her to trouble. Angela’s uninterested husband, Dominic; their youngest son, Benjy; and the lurking ghost of their stillborn child round out the family. But most of all there’s the universe of media—from books and iPods to DVDs and video games—that fortifies everyone’s private world; intrudes upon a week of misadventures, grudges, and unearthed secrets; and illuminates Haddon’s busy approach to fairly sedate material, a choice that unfortunately makes the payoffs seldom worth the pages of scattershot perspective. Characters are well-drawn (especially regarding the marital tensions lurking below facades of relative bliss), but what emerges is typical without being revelatory, familiar without becoming painfully human. The tiresomely quirky Haddon misses the epochal timbre that Jonathan Franzen hit with Freedom, and his constantly distracted novel is rarely more than a distraction itself.
Publishers Weekly
Wealthy doctor Richard, having recently married trophy wife Louisa and inherited a teenage stepdaughter, the classically disaffected, aggressive Melissa, is feeling bad about his estrangement from sister Angela, particularly after Mum's death. So he invites Angela and her family—husband Dominic and three children—for a holiday at a rented house on the Welsh border. Could anything sound more grim and humdrum, not simply for the vacationers but for the reader? In fact, in the capable hands of British author Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), this is a stunning and absorbing read. The not unexpected happens—Richard and Angela scrap over who fared better in childhood; Angela's older son, Alex, struggles to shrug off teen dopiness and get it on with Melissa; misfit daughter Daisy, in a devout Christian phase, comes to a shattering new personal place; feckless Dominic's sins are revealed; and Benjy, still unplugged from adult tensions, plays Batman. Verdict: Refreshingly, Haddon takes the risk of making the ordinary extraordinary and succeeds; each character is poignantly real and each small trauma a revelation. And the language! Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Surprising and deeply moving....the set-up ensures that there will be revelations, twists and shifts in the family dynamic....sustaining suspense....while enriching the developing relationships among people....organic rather than contrived, the characters convincing throughout, the tone compassionate and the writing wise. A novel to savor.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What role does the Welsh landscape play in The Red House? How might this story be different if it portrayed an American family? Where would you set the story and what points of American culture would you add?
2. To what extent, if at all, did you see your family or your own family vacations reflected in The Red House?
3. What roles do death and absence play in the narrative? Discuss mortality as it relates to the characters of Angela, Richard, Karen, and Melissa.
4. Which character did you identify with most? Which characters would you want to spend a week with in a secluded vacation setting? Who seemed the most likable? The most perplexing?
5. Discuss the dining room table as a microcosm of the familial vacation experience. How do shifting places at the table reflect changing relationships and characters’ internal and external struggles? Talk about the role seating order plays in your own family or groups of friends.
6. Discuss inner monologue as a plot device. What are the recurring themes of the inner monologue of each character? Give examples of how the characters’ inner monologues come to light and come to the attention of other characters. How do the involved parties deal with the divulgence of these intimacies?
7. Romance, lust and longing weave themselves through the novel. Discuss the romantic and sexual urges of Louisa, Alex, Dominic, and Daisy. Are there any parallels between them? How do romantic overtures affect the other inhabitants of the red house?
8. What role does the house itself play in this novel? How might a different physical structure bring about alternate results for the characters? On another structural note, the novel is broken into sections, each titled with a day of the week.
9. Ian McEwan, Shakespeare, and the Legend of the Willow (Koong-se and Chang) all make appearances in the novel. What functions do these literary references serve in plot and character development?
10. On page 116, Daisy is reading Dracula, which Haddon quotes: “We need have no secrets amongst us. Working together and with absolute trust, we can surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark.” What resonance does this quote have in this context? How does it relate to matters at hand between the members of Richard’s and Angela’s family? To your own family?
11. From the start of the book, photography comes into play as a method of immortalizing landscape and human experience. What visual snapshots stick with you from the novels?
12. Where do you think the members of Richard and Angela’s families will find themselves in two months? Five years? Two decades? How might incidents from the vacation play themselves out in the future?
13. Benjy’s inscription in the visitor’s book reads, "I liked walking up the hill and the rain storm and shepherds pie at the granary." Do you think this is poignant? Explain why or why not. What is left out?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
One Breath Away
Heather Gudenkauf, 2012
Mira Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778313656
Summary
In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. Outside the school, the town of Broken Branch watches and waits.
Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility for the town’s children in her hands. Will Thwaite, reluctantly entrusted with the care of his two grandchildren by the daughter who left home years earlier, stands by helplessly and wonders if he has failed his child again. Trapped in her classroom, Evelyn Oliver watches for an opportunity to rescue the children in her care. And thirteen-year-old Augie Baker, already struggling with the aftermath of a terrible accident that has brought her to Broken Branch, will risk her own safety to protect her little brother.
As tension mounts with each passing minute, the hidden fears and grudges of the small town are revealed as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger who holds their children hostage. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—Birth—N/A
• Where—Wagner, South Dakota, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Edgar Award Finalist
• Currently—lives in Dubuque, Iowa
Heather Gudenkauf was born in Wagner, South Dakota, the youngest of six children. At one month of age, her family returned to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota where her father was employed as a guidance counselor and her mother as a school nurse. At the age of three, her family moved to Iowa, where she grew up.
Having been born with a profound unilateral hearing impairment (there were many evenings when Heather and her father made a trip to the bus barn to look around the school bus for her hearing aids that she often conveniently would forget on the seat beside her), Heather tended to use books as a retreat, would climb into the toy box that her father's students from Rosebud made for the family with a pillow, blanket, and flashlight, close the lid, and escape the world around her. Heather became a voracious reader and the seed of becoming a writer was planted.
Gudenkauf graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent the last sixteen years working with students of all ages and is currently an Instructional Coach, an educator who provides curricular and professional development support to teachers.Heather lives in Dubuque, Iowa with her husband, three children, and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Maxine. In her free time Heather enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking, and running.
Novels
2009 - The Weight of Silence
2011 - These Things Hidden
2012 - One Breath Away
2014 - Little Mercies
2016 - Missing Pieces
(Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) As Edgar-finalist Gudenkauf’s chilling third suspense novel opens, elementary school children and their teachers in Broken Branch, Iowa, are anxiously awaiting the dismissal that will herald the beginning of their spring vacation. Suddenly, the voice of the school secretary comes over the intercom: “Teachers, this is a Code Red Lockdown. Go to your safe place.” A gunman has entered the school. The police rush to the scene, followed by anxious parents, while teachers deal with distraught children. Veteran teacher Evelyn Oliver must contend with the gunman himself, who holds her third graders hostage, doing all she can to protect her students. Eighth-grader Augie Thwaite bravely does her bit in an effort to rescue her little brother, P.J., a captive in Mrs. Oliver’s classroom. Gudenkauf (These Hidden Things) uses multiple viewpoints to keep the tension high and the reader glued to the pages.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. One Breath Away is set in a sudden snow storm. What role does the weather play in the story, both literally and metaphorically?
2. Stuart asks “What kind of town is this? Doesn’t anyone know who their father is?” What role do fathers play in One Breath Away? Discuss the different relationships between fathers and children.
3. Discuss the influence of the small town setting on the characters.
4. One Breath Away is told from multiple points of views. What do we learn about the characters from the perspective of their families? What do we learn about Holly from her father? About Augie from her grandfather? About Mrs. Oliver from Cal?
5. The gunman in the story poses a physical threat to the children in Broken Branch and several characters are determined to protect the children—Mrs. Oliver, Meg, Augie. In what other ways do characters try to protect each other? How do they succeed? How do they fail?
6. On the day the gunman arrives in the school, Will is awaiting the birth of the calves. How are the seasons and the cyclical nature of life evoked in this novel?
7. The students as at the Broken Branch School have a day to remember. What is your most vivid school memory? What made it so memorable?
(Questions from author's website.)
The Stranger's Child
Alan Hollinghurst, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307474346
Summary
From the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Line of Beauty: a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.
In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge schoolmate—a handsome, aristocratic young poet named Cecil Valance—to his family’s modest home outside London for the weekend. George is enthralled by Cecil, and soon his sixteen-year-old sister, Daphne, is equally besotted by him and the stories he tells about Corley Court, the country estate he is heir to.
But what Cecil writes in Daphne’s autograph album will change their and their families’ lives forever: a poem that, after Cecil is killed in the Great War and his reputation burnished, will become a touchstone for a generation, a work recited by every schoolchild in England. Over time, a tragic love story is spun, even as other secrets lie buried—until, decades later, an ambitious biographer threatens to unearth them.
Rich with Hollinghurst’s signature gifts—haunting sensuality, delicious wit and exquisite lyricism—The Stranger’s Child is a tour de force: a masterly novel about the lingering power of desire, how the heart creates its own history, and how legends are made. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 26, 1954
• Where—Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Man Booker Prize; Newdigate Prize for Poetry
• Currently—lives in London, England
Alan Hollinghurst is an English novelist and winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. His 2011 novel, The Stranger's Child was longlisted for the Man Booker.
The only child of James Kenneth Holinghurst (a bank manager) and his wife Lilian, he attended Canford School in Dorset. He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford graduating in 1975; and subsequently took the further degree of Master of Literature (1979). While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1974, the year before Motion.
In the late 1970s he became a lecturer at Magdalen, and then at Somerville College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1981 he moved on to lecture at University College London. In 1997, he went on an Asia book tour in Singapore.
In 1981 he joined The Times Literary Supplement and was the paper's deputy editor from 1982 to 1995. Hollinghurst is openly gay and lives in London. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Among the sometimes bloodless English male novelists of [Hollinghurst's] generation, he is the one whose cleverness is least in conflict with his ability to make the reader feel as well as see the story…As always, Mr. Hollinghurst maintains an almost perfect balance between momentum and still life. He is also shrewdly funny.
Emma Brockes - New York Times
Hollinghurst's fine new book, The Stranger's Child—the closest thing he has written to an old-fashioned chronicle novel—contains a whole hidden literary curriculum, out of which he has fashioned something fresh and vital.
Thomas Mallon - New York Times Book Review
Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child could hardly be better.... Most novelists tend to be slightly showoffy, in one way or another; it's how they make clear that what they're doing is art. But Alan Hollinghurst doesn't need to be a prose Johnny Depp. Instead, he writes with the relaxed elegance and unobtrusive charm of a Cary Grant. Part social history, part social comedy and wholly absorbing, The Stranger's Child does everything a novel should do and makes it look easy.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post
At once classically literary and delightfully, subversively modern...The Stranger's Child is easily [Hollinghurst’s] most subtle and most ambitious novel. Hollinghurst is a master observer of human and social behavior. As told in five sections spanning nearly a century, The Stranger's Child uses the mode to startling, marvelous effect, as his characters grow old and perish while the fractured, uncertain memories of each remain—for future inhabitants to debate and unearth.... Fans of Hollinghurst know him for his flawless phrasing, his wickedly funny depictions of class and society, and his distinctive, enduring sensuality, all of which continue here, but in telling the story of a young poet's legacy over the course of a century, Hollinghurst displays an exciting shift from earlier work.... Unlike other novels that make use of lengthy passages of time and revolve around long-deceased characters, The Stranger's Child is not as absorbed with nostalgia. It's a clear-eyed look at how strange and perplexing memory is, and how vague and uncertain our relationships, sexual and otherwise, can be. It's a thrilling, enchanting work of art, and the latest in what we can only hope will be a very long career.
Adam Eaglin - San Francisco Chronicle
Magnificent...insightful. Hollinghurst explores how a living, breathing existence can become a biographical subject riddled with omissions and distortions.... Hollinghurst divides the novel into five novella-length sections, in each of [which] he demonstrates his knack for conjuring the moments between events, the seeming down time in which the ramifications of turning points in life sort themselves out. His immersion in each period is fluid and free of false notes, collectively fusing into a single symphonic epic...[a] beautifully written, brilliantly observed and masterfully orchestrated novel.
Michael Upchurch - Seattle Times
A sly and ravishing masterpiece... The novel skips with indecent ease through 100 years of British political and literary history, concealing its mighty ambition in charm and louche wit. It's a devastating history of gay love, erasure and resilience. It's also a ripping yarn, a simple love (or rather, lust—Hollinghurst's characters are too Wildean for love) story as literary whodunit: Brideshead Revisited crossed with Possession... Behind the bloom of Hollinghurst's prose, another project quietly unfurls. As much as The Stranger's Child is about England and Englishness, about war, about the impulse toward biography, it's profoundly and unmistakably a secret literary history. It's the tapestry of British literature turned around to reveal its seams, to reveal that the history of the British novel has been the history of gay people in Britain. It's Oscar Wilde and A.E. Housman, E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf and the entire Bloomsbury set, a history—as Cecil's is—of invisibility, secrecy and scandal, censure and frenetic posthumous outing. This precis might be stuffy; the book never is. The Stranger's Child restores gay life and love to the vibrant center of the British novel without a hint of solemnity or righteousness, only supple prose and a sodden, fun bunch of obviously, gloriously gay characters. Seldom has literary restitution proved so pleasurable.
Parul Sehgal - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Masterful.... Few novels so skillfully revealed what's really said behind polite facades, and The Stranger's Child displays that talent on a broader canvas.... Hollinghurst is a superior novelist of manners, and the brilliance of The Stranger's Child is in how it reveals the ways bad blood and secrets muck with history. When everybody strains to say the appropriate thing, the facts suffer. That theme is perfectly suited for Hollinghurst, who can reveal a host of hidden messages in the simplest utterance (or pursed lips).... Psychologically penetrating...brilliant.
Mark Athitakis - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Cecil Valance, with his truculent gaiety and his big hands, is a wonderful creation, the perfect type of upper-class aesthete of the time: self-assured and overbearing—a bully, mocking, and entirely in thrall to himself and his distinctly modest talent.... Hollinghurst is a master storyteller, and his book is thrilling in the way that the best Victorian novels are, so that one finds oneself galloping somewhat shamefacedly through the pages in order to discover what happens next. The writing is superb—I can think of no other novelist of the present day, and precious few of the past, who could catch human beings going about the ordinary business of living with the loving exactitude on display here. Two or three times on every page the reader will give a cry of recognition and delight as yet another nail is struck ringingly on the head.... Dazzlingly atmospheric...fantastically intricate windings of a plot, with all manner of excursions along the way—a sequestered cache of letters, questions of doubtful paternity, clandestine affairs—in other words, all the twists and turns that human relations will insist on making. For the daring of its setting out, and for the consistent flash and fire of the writing, The Stranger's Child is to be cherished.
John Banville - New Republic
A sweeping multi-generational family saga...beautifully written. The Stranger’s Child has been compared to the work of Evelyn Waugh, E. M. Forster, and, as with Hollinghurst’s previous novels, Henry James, as well as that of contemporaries like Ian McEwan (for Atonement, which, on the surface, has many similarities) and Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day). But Hollinghurst brings a precise elegance to the genre, building upon the novels that came before it. This was the first novel in a long while that pulled me in wholeheartedly. We live in a time when things struggle to stick: competing influences, recommendations, and links, bombarding us and casting aside one new thing for the next.... It seems difficult to imagine that we wouldn’t take all of these characters with us through our lives in turn.
Elizabeth Minkel - Millions
The Booker Prize-winning author’s new novel covers a century and traces a love triangle torn from the pages of Brideshead Revisited though at least one side of the triangle is addressed more directly than Waugh did in his classic tale. With ambition and scope Hollinghurst uses a "love in wartime" narrative to explore the deep and wildly complicated connections between memory and what passes for history. —Publishers Weekly Top 100
Publishers Weekly
With the prewar ambience of Atonement, the manor-house mystique of Gosford Park, and the palpable sexual tension of Hollinghurst's own The Line of Beauty, this generously paced, thoroughly satisfying novel will gladden the hearts of Anglophile readers. —Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont
Library Journal
Cecil Valance is a poet of terrific talent who, according to a guest in a comfortably English countryside house, is "not so good as Swinburne or Lord Tennyson." In his defense, he is still young.... War is looming, and Cecil...seems pleased at the prospect of trying his skills out on the Kaiser's boys. Alas, things don't work out as planned.... Now a biographer, working with the clues, is making the claim that Valance belongs in the canon not just of modernist British poetry, but of gay literature as well—a claim that, though seemingly well defended, stirs up controversy.... How do we know the truth about anyone's life? Hollinghurst's carefully written, philosophically charged novel invites us to consider that question.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Much of The Stranger’s Child concerns attempts to get at the truth of Cecil Valance. What does the novel as a whole say about our ability to truly know another person? In what ways does it illustrate the limits of our knowing? Do we as readers of the novel know Cecil more accurately than George, Daphne, Dudley—even Sebastian Stokes? What about Paul Bryant?
2. What role does keeping secrets play in the The Stranger’s Child? Why do so many characters feel compelled to lead secret lives?
3. Several characters are said to have had “a bad war,” suffering from what would now be described as post traumatic stress disorder. How has the war affected Dudley Valence and Leslie Keeping in particular? In what ways does World War I cast a shadow over the entire novel?
4. Before her interview with Sebby Stokes for the memoir he’s writing about Cecil, Daphne thinks: “What she felt then; and what she felt now; and what she felt now about what she felt then; it wasn’t remotely easy to say” [p. 141]. Later in the novel, frustrated with Paul’s interview for his biography of the poet, Daphne muses: “He was asking for memories, too young himself to know that memories were only memories of memories” [p.382]. In what ways does the novel suggest that memory, of both facts and feelings, is an extremely unreliable method of recovering the truth?
5. What is suggested by the divergent attitudes expressed in the novel toward Victorianism, especially as it is embodied in Corley House? Why does Dudley detest the house so violently? What is the effect of Mrs. Riley’s modernist makeover?
6. How do English attitudes towards homosexuality change over the period the novel covers, from 1913 to 2008? Why is it important, in terms of Cecil Valance’s biography, that the true nature of his sexuality, and the true recipient of his famous poem “Two Acres,” be revealed?
7. What other important generational changes in English life does the novel trace?
8. The Stranger’s Child is, among many other things, a wonderfully comic novel. What are some of its funniest moments and most amusing observations?
9. Cecil Valance is a purely fictional character—though he resembles the World War I poet Rupert Brooke—but he inhabits a milieu in the novel that includes real people: literary scholars Jon Stallworthy and Paul Fussell appear at a party, John Betjeman attends a rally to save St. Pancras Station, and Cecil is said to have known Lytton Strachey and other members of the Bloomsbury group. What is the effect of this mixing of real and fictional characters?
10. Near the end of the novel, Jennifer Keeping tells Rob that Paul Bryant’s story of his father’s heroic death in World War II is a fiction, that in fact Paul was a bastard. For Rob, this revelation makes Paul “if anything more intriguing and sympathetic” [p. 422]. Do you agree with Rob—is Paul a sympathetic character? How does Paul’s own secret past shed light on his motivations and tactics as a biographer?
11. In what ways does A Stranger’s Child critique English manners and morals? In what ways might it be said to celebrate them—if at all?
12. The novel is filled with remarkable subtleties of perception. After Cecil leaves “Two Acres,” Daphne thinks: “Of course he had gone! There was a thinness in the air that told her, in the tone of the morning, the texture of the servants’ movements and fragments of talk” [p. 75]. Where else does this kind of finely attuned awareness appear in the novel? What do such descriptions add to the experience of reading of The Stranger’s Child?
13. The novel opens with George, Daphne, and Cecil reciting Tennyson’s poetry on the lawn of “Two Acres” and ends with Rob viewing a video clip of a digitally animated photograph (on the website Poets Alive! Houndvoice.com) that makes it appear as if Tennyson is reading his poetry [p. 424]. What is Hollinghurst suggesting by bookending his novel in this way?
14. What does the novel say about how literary reputations are created, preserved, revised?
15. Why do you think Hollinghurst ends the novel with Rob’s unsuccessful attempt to recover Cecil’s letters to Hewitt before they go up in smoke? Is this conclusion satisfying, or appropriately open-ended?
(Questions issued by publisher.)