La Cucina
Lily Prior, 2001
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060953690
Summary
Since childhood, Rosa Fiore—daughter of a sultry Sicilian matriarch and her hapless husband—found solace in her family's kitchen. La Cucina, the heart of the family's lush estate, was a place where generations of Fiore women prepared sumptuous feasts and where the drama of extended family life was played out around the age-old table.
When Rosa was a teenager, her own cooking became the stuff of legend in this small community that takes pride in the bounty of its landscape and the eccentricity of its inhabitants. Rosa's infatuation with culinary arts was rivaled only by her passion for a young man, Bartolomeo, who, unfortunately, belonged to another. After their love affair ended in tragedy, Rosa retreated first into her kitchen and then into solitude, as a librarian in Palermo. There she stayed for decades, growing corpulent on her succulent dishes, resigned to a loveless life.
Then, one day, she meets the mysterious chef, known only is I'Inglese, whose research on the heritage of Sicilian cuisine leads him to Rosa's library, and into her heart. They share one sublime summer of discovery, during which I'lnglese awakens the power of Rosa's sensuality, and together they reach new heights of culinary passion. When I'Inglese suddenly vanishes, Rosa returns home to the farm to grieve for the loss of her second love. In the comfort of familiar surroundings, among her, growing family, she discovers the truth about her loved ones and finds her life transformed once more by the magic of her cherished Cucina.
Exuberant and touching, La Cucina is a magical evocation of lifes mysterious seasons and the treasures found in each one. It celebrates family, food, passion, and the eternal rapture of romance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Lily Prior is the author of La Cucina, Ardor, and Nectar and she divides her time between London and Italy. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Succulent saga...with a sensuous tone, a folkloric narrative style and a most original set of characters, La Cucina could well satisfy the hungriest of appetites.
People
Sumptuously appointed, celebratory and sensuous, this debut novel is a mouth-watering blend of commedia dell'arte and Greek tragedy. Prior cooks up a cinematic yarn full of characters so rich you'll fear they're fattening, but readers will be sure to splurge on this saucy tale chock full of sex, recipes and murder. Born in 1915, Rosa Fiore grows up on the family farm in the Sicilian village of Castiglione with six older brothers and her younger Siamese twin siblings, Guera and Pace (war and peace). Her childhood is punctuated by her parents' frequent lovemaking and the "disappearances" orchestrated by the local Mafiosi. Rosa spends most of her time in what is really the core of the family, la cucina, the kitchen, which is the outlet for all Rosa's passions except one, her lover, Bartollomeo. After he is murdered when she is 18, she flees to the big city of Palermo. There she becomes a librarian, abstaining from the pleasures of cooking and love for 25 years. One day, a mysterious Englishman named Randolph Hunt comes into the library, claiming to be researching the regional cuisine of Rosa's youth. She calls him simply l'Inglese. Reawakening her dormant spirit, l'Inglese initiates Rosa into the world of sexual and gastronomic abandon. But along with love comes risk of pain. When l'Inglese mysteriously "disappears," can the Mafia be involved? Ironic humor, fantastical subplot twists, attention to touching detail in setting and tone and a delightful gift for characterization make this sexy black comedy an award-winning recipe for pleasure. The combination of sex and food will undoubtedly invite comparisons with Like Water for Chocolate and 8U Weeks. Add a dash of Goodfellas, and there's something for everyone.
Publishers Weekly
Rosa Fiore, a middle-aged, overweight Italian librarian in Palermo, spends a quarter of a century furiously, exquisitely cooking away memories of the tragic murder of her first and only lover, Bartollomeo, whose throat was slit by his own father. Rosa's self-imposed exile, far from home, is filled with recipes so delicious she drives her neighbors wild. Rosa's dormant passion explodes in the arms of a mysterious stranger, l'Inglese, who enters her library to do research and immediately professes uncontrollable desire for Rosa's body and for her cooking knowledge. Thus begins a summer of gourmet meals and noisy sex. When l'Inglese disappears, Rosa's tortured daydreams of past frolicking lead to a house fire and her near death. Her slow recuperation begins when she is rescued by her long-estranged family, who bring her home. Reminiscent of Laura Esquivel and John Irving, mixed with a healthy dollop of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Prior's debut is clever, untamed, funny, and at times shocking. For larger fiction collections. —Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
Librarian readers will probably tire of the cliched description of Rosa: an overweight, undersexed spinster, chided by her staff and revolting to her patrons. However, the food she cooks is fabulous. —Bonnie Smothers
Booklist
[A] lonely, middle-aged librarian...experiences a sexual reawakening intimately linked to her sensual kitchen skills.... One day a mysterious stranger with thinning hair, a small mustache, and bad teeth arrives at the library to do culinary research... The two embark on an affair of torrid lovemaking.... But Rosa's new happiness ends abruptly when [her lover] vanishes.... Happily, though, a rosy—if inexplicable—ending lies in store for plucky Rosa. Less a banquet of the senses than a junk-food gorge.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. During the twenty-five years she is in Palermo, Rosa receives only two letters from her mother. How would you describe their relationship, both before Rosa journeys to Palermo and after she returns home?
2. After Bartolomeo's death, Rosa retreats into la cucina for solace and then leaves for Palermo. Why do you think she chose to leave Castiglione and her family? Why does she not return for such a long period of time?
3. Rosa and l'Inglese are instantly attracted to one another. What is it that l'Inglese sees in Rosa that she does not see in herself?
4. Compare Rosa's love for and relationship with Bartolomeo to that of l'Inglese. How does each relationship alter Rosa's life and what does she learn from each one?
5. Rosa knows next to nothing about l'Inglese's background or his personal life. What exactly is their relationship based on? In one instance she replies to l'Inglese, "'Yes, I trust you,' I said, although I was not entirely convinced that I did" (pg. 165). What do you think this means?
6. Shortly before l'Inglese disappears, Rosa says, "For the first time in my life I was completely happy. I had the feeling that if I were to die tomorrow I would be satisfied with my life; I had known what it was to experience life and to experience love" (pg. 167). Does she still believe this after l'Inglese disappears?
7. "I mourned for l'Inglese, for the time we had had together, and for myself: for my true self, which I had become with him, quite suddenly, in a blaze of color like a butterfly, and which I would never be again (pg. 186)." Do you think Rosa is selling herself short by believing that she could only be her "true self" when she was with l'Inglese? When she returns home, Rosa learns some surprising things about her loved ones, but what does she learn about herself?
8. How does the Sicilian setting contribute to the story? Can you imagine the novel having been set in another location, even another part of Italy?
9. Discuss la cucina and how it plays out in the story. What is your favorite moment in the story that you think best reflects the essence of la cucina?
10. Discuss the ending of the novel. Does l'Inglese indeed return, or is Rosa having a daydream? What, in your opinion, is the novel really about?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Summer Rental
Mary Kay Andrews, 2012
St. Martin's Press
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312642709
Summary
Sometimes, when you need a change in your life, the tide just happens to pull you in the right direction.... Ellis, Julia, and Dorie. Best friends since Catholic grade school, they now find themselves, in their mid-thirties, at the crossroads of life and love.
Ellis, recently fired from a job she gave everything to, is rudderless and now beginning to question the choices she’s made over the past decade of her life. Julia—whose caustic wit covers up her wounds—has a man who loves her and is offering her the world, but she can’t hide from how deeply insecure she feels about her looks, her brains, her life. And Dorie has just been shockingly betrayed by the man she loved and trusted the most in the world…though this is just the tip of the iceberg of her problems and secrets.
A month in North Carolina’s Outer Banks is just what each of them needs. Ty Bazemore is their landlord, though he’s hanging on to the rambling old beach house by a thin thread. After an inauspicious first meeting with Ellis, the two find themselves disturbingly attracted to one another, even as Ty is about to lose everything he’s ever cared about.
Maryn Shackleford is a stranger, and a woman on the run. Maryn needs just a few things in life: no questions, a good hiding place, and a new identity. Ellis, Julia, and Dorie can provide what Maryn wants; can they also provide what she needs? Five people questioning everything they ever thought they knew about life. Five people on a journey that will uncover their secrets and point them on the path to forgiveness. Five people who each need a sea change, and one month that might just give it to them. (From the publisher.)
Read an Excerpt.
Author Bio
• Aka—Kathy Hogan Trocheck
• Birth—July 27, 1954
• Where—Tampa Florida
• Raised—St. Petersberg, Florida
• Education—B.A., Iniversity of Georgia
• Currently—lives in Atlanta, Georgia
In In 2003, a writer named Mary Kay Andrews burst on the book scene with an entertaining, lighthearted confection entitled Savannah Blues. Hailed as a promising debut, the book received positive reviews; but not everyone realized it was actually the work of journalist-turned-novelist Kathy Hogan Trocheck, author of a bestselling mystery series begun in 1990 and featuring ex-cop-turned P.I. Callahan Garrity. Trocheck explained in an interview with Reading Group Guides.com the reason for adopting a pseudonym (derived, by the way, from combining the names of her two children): "Because Blues is so different from my Callahan books, I wanted a chance to try for a whole new group of readers, people who like women's fiction, Southern fiction, and still, mysteries. That Mary Kay is a pseudonym for Kathy Hogan Trocheck is not a secret from my fans."
Savannah Blues introduced readers to Eloise "Weezie" Foley, whose marriage to the wealthy Talmadge Evans III suffers a fatal blow when he announces he is in love with someone else. When Talmadge's mistress moves into his Savannah mansion, it's the backyard carriage house for Weezie, who soon begins to devise a plan to get revenge on her cheating hubby. Blues may have been a marked departure from Trocheck's grittier early work, but it was a rousing success on all fronts. Publishers Weekly hailed it as "delightfully breezy, richly atmospheric" and Kirkus reviews called it "pure fun."
Soon, Mary Kay Andrews had assumed a life of her own. A year later, she published Little Bitty Lies, followed in 2005 by the joyfully wacky New York Times bestseller Hissy Fit. Having revisited the world of her irresistible protagonist Weezie Foley twice more in Savannah Breeze and Blue Christmas, Andrews continues to craft her winning brand of witty, Southern-fried fiction -- much to the delight of her many fans.
Extras
• When Andrews was a journalist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she covered the famous "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" murder case. As Kathy Hogan Trocheck, Andrews's mysteries have been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards.
• When she isn't writing, Mary Kay Andrews lectures and teaches at writing workshops.
Book Reviews
Mary Kay Andrews spins a beach blanket sizzler around three lifelong friends...This warm weather treat has a lot going for it, not least the sunny forecast that summer love can blossom into a four-season commitment.
Publishers Weekly
[A] tailor-made beach read…another charmer.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Andrews…is at her warm and funny best…[she] simply excels at creating the kind of characters readers can relate to, and she has a fabulous sense of humor to boot
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Each of the four characters comes to Ebbtide with a major problem. How would you characterize each problem?
2. Which of the characters’ dilemmas did you find the easiest to relate to? Which one felt the least identifiable to you, and why?
3. There is a famous saying that “money is only something you need in case you don’t die tomorrow.” Do you feel that money could have solved each one of these characters’ problems, including Ty Bazemore? Why or why not?
4. Maryn Shackleford leaves her life behind to create a new identity. If you were in her position would you have done the same? Would it be easy to leave your life behind? Have you ever been tempted to do so?
5. Does the idea of a month-long rental with a group of girlfriends appeal to you? Where would be your dream place to go? What problems could you foresee occurring?
6. Do you think it’s possible to be married to someone and not realize he’s gay? If Dorie’s situation happened to you, what would you do?
7. For someone who has devoted her entire life to her career, being fired is the ultimate devastation. Can you relate to Ellis’s situation? Do you understand why this threw her so much? Do you think being fired can actually end up being the best thing that ever happened to you?
8. Julia fights against the physical realities of growing old. What do you really think she’s worried about? Do you embrace the concept of aging with humor, acceptance, or dread?
9. Ty and Ellis could not be more opposite. But did you see any ways in which they are similar? Can you see their relationship working in the long term?
10. What is your go-to karaoke song?
11. If you were to create a soundtrack to go along with this book, what would be on the playlist?
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Lost Memory of Skin
Russell Banks, 2011
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061857638
Summary
Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.
Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor’s motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man.
When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor’s past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men’s relationship shifts.
Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.
Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore.
The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 28, 1940
• Where—Newton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—University of North Carolina
• Awards—John Dos Passos Award for Fiction
• Currently—lives in upstate New York
Russell Banks was raised in a hardscrabble, working-class world that has profoundly shaped his writing. In Banks's compassionate, unlovely tales, people struggle mightily against economic hardship, family conflict, addictions, violence, and personal tragedy; yet even in the face of their difficulties, they often exhibit remarkable resilience and moral strength.
Although he began his literary career as a poet, Banks forayed into fiction in 1975 with a short story collection Searching for Survivors and his debut novel, Family Life. Several more critically acclaimed works followed, but his real breakthrough occurred with 1985's Continental Drift, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel that juxtaposes the startlingly different experiences of two families in America. In 1998, he earned another Pulitzer nomination for his historical novel Cloudsplitter, an ambitious re-creation of abolitionist John Brown.
Since the 1980s, Banks has lived in upstate New York—a region he (like fellow novelists William Kennedy and Richard Russo) has mined to great effect in several novels. Two of his most powerful stories, Affliction (1990) and The Sweet Hereafter (1991), have been adapted for feature films. He has also received numerous honors and literary awards, including the prestigious John Dos Passos Prize for fiction. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] major new work…destined to be a canonical novel of its time…it delivers another of Mr. Banks's wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life…This book expresses the conviction that we live in perilous, creepy times. We toy recklessly with brand-new capacities for ruination. We bring the most human impulses to the least human means of expressing them, and we may not see the damage we do until it becomes irrevocable. Mr. Banks, whose great works resonate with such heart and soul, brings his full narrative powers to bear on illuminating this still largely unexplored new terrain.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
This is bleak stuff, with flashes of humor that land like sparks on dry grass, and also pretty fascinating. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Banks may be the most compassionate fiction writer working today, and the Kid is only his most recent lens into the souls of seemingly decent men who do terribly indecent things out of ignorance, thirst and desperation in a deeply uncaring world. Balancing impressively on a moral tightrope, Banks never absolves the Kid of his actions even as he sympathizes with him.
Helen Schulman - New York Times Book Review
[L]ike so much else Banks has written, this novel is ambitious and often compelling—a book that works with important ideas about the way we're reshaping our lives in the Internet age, while being reshaped ourselves, spiritually, sexually.
Sue Miller - Washington Post
Lost Memory of Skin...may be [Banks] boldest imaginative leap yet into the invisible margins of society...a haunting book, made so by the fraught, enigmatic relationship of the Professor and the Kid. The contradictions that seem to split the Kid—his obsession with sex but innocence of it, for instance—are never resolved. Mr. Banks in not an apologist, only an observer; he has brought the novelist's magnifying glass to bear on figures we otherwise try hard not to notice.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
For his latest novel, the acclaimed author of Cloudsplitter and The Sweet Hereafter again takes inspiration from a sanctuary of sorts. "The Kid," a young sex offender, lives with other registered offenders (including a disgraced state senator) in a makeshift camp beneath a Florida causeway based on a real colony that was shut down in 2010. After a police raid, the Kid meets "the Professor," a pompous, rotund man claiming to be researching homelessness. He wants to study—and cure—the Kid in order to prove his theories about society. But just as the study commences, the Professor, claiming that his life is in danger because of past work as a government spy, turns the tables, paying the Kid to interview him instead. Bloated and remarkably repetitive, this is more a collection of ideas and emblems than a novel. Though the Kid remains mostly opaque, he's a sympathetic character, but the nature of his crime, once revealed, lets Banks off the hook and simplifies rather than complicates matters. Banks continually refers to the Professor's weight and mental superiority, the latter a contrivance allowing for long rhetorical passages into the nature of man, sexual obsession, pornography, truth, and commerce that come as no surprise. Most frustrating is Banks's almost pathological restating of his characters' traits and motives, resulting in a highly frustrating novel in desperate need of an editor.
Publishers Weekly
From his makeshift tent in the shantytown under the causeway, the Kid can see the sun rise over the city of Calusa and feel the Atlantic breeze riffling the royal palm fronds. But the dichotomy between paradise and the squalor of the encampment is not lost on him. The only area within the city limits that is more than 2500 feet from a school, park, or library, the causeway bridge shelters homeless sex offenders on probation with nowhere else to go. Living in anonymity, the damaged group runs the gamut from a politician with a penchant for little girls to this lonely, asocial boy, whose only sexual relationship took place in an Internet chat room. When the Professor arrives to interview the Kid for a sociological study, the Kid wants to trust the man, and we hope he'll be saved through human interaction. But the Professor has his own demons. Verdict: Multiaward winner Banks (Affliction) has written a disturbing contemporary novel that feels biblical in its examination of good and evil, penance and salvation, while issuing a cri de coeur for penal reform. The graphic language may be off-putting for some but necessarily advances the theme of illusion vs. reality in the digital world. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Banks is in top form in his seventeenth work of fiction, a cyclonic novel of arresting observations, muscular beauty, and disquieting concerns… a commanding, intrepidly inquisitive, magnificently compassionate, and darkly funny novel of private and societal illusions, maladies, and truths.
Booklist
Banks (The Reserve,2008, etc.) once again explores the plight of the dispossessed, taking a big risk this time by making his protagonist a convicted sex offender. He hedges his bets slightly: The Kid is a 22-year-old who got jailed for showing up at a 14-year-old girl's house,,,, Though there's plenty of plot, including a hurricane and a dead body fished out of a canal, the slow growth of the Kid's self-knowledge and his empathy for others is the real story, offering the only ray of hope in an otherwise bleak consideration of a broken society and the damaged people it breeds. Intelligent, passionate and powerful, but very stark indeed.
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 Lost Memory of Skin (Caution: PLOT SPOILERS ahead):
1. What do you make of the Kid? Do you find him sympathetic or unlikable? What is the nature of his sex offense? Does the punishment fit the crime?
2. What role did the Kid's mother play in his life and developing sex addiction? To what degree is she responsible or not responsible?
3. What is the symbolic significance of the Adam and Eve story? How does the story of Eden and the serpent tie into the Kid's sojourn in the Panzecola Swamp?
4. How do you feel about the Professor? In what ways is he similar to the Kid (starting with the fact that their last names are the same)? Is it difficult for you to get beyond his size to find him sympathetic—does his weight affect how you view him? Why might the author have chosen to create the Professor as an obese character?
5. Gloria, the Professor's wife, suggests that sex offenders are "just programmed to do what they do. You know, hardwired." The Professor disagrees, responding:
If, as it appears, the proportion of the male population who commit these acts has increased exponentially in recent years...then there's something in the wider culture itself that has changed..., and these men are like the canary in the mine shaft.... [It's] as if their social and ethical immune systems, the controls over their behavior, have been somehow damaged or compromised (p.125-hardcover).
Later, we learn that the Professor intends to cure the Kid of his pedophilia....
He intends to cure the Kid by changing his social circumstances. By giving him power. Autonomy. He believes that one's sexual identity is shaped by one's self-perceived social identity, that pedophilia...is about not sex, but power...about one's personal perception of one's power (p. 159-hardcover).
—Who do you think is correct? Is the Professor correct in his belief that pedophilia is a societal condition and curable? Or is Gloria correct in that pedophilia is hardwired into the brain and incurable?
6. What is the ongoing significance of Captain Kydd's treasure map? What is the Professor's purpose in telling the Kid about the buried treasure...and why does he provide him with a phony map?
7. Why do you think the Professor estranged from his parents? Why does he turn away at the last moment when he has driven all night to see them?
8. What symbolic role does weather play in this novel, especially the hurricane?
9. Do you believe the Professor's story? Do you believe he is murdered...or that he commits suicide? Does it matter? Why do you think the author has left his death an open question?
10 . The Writer tells the Kid whether something is true, or not, doesn't matter:
What you believe matters, however. It's all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don't believe something is true simply because you can't logically prove what's true, you won't do anything. You won't be anything (p. 398-hardcover).
a) Do you agree with the Writer's philosophy? Or are you skeptical—like the Kid, who says, "If everything's a lie, then nothing's true."
b) Where do you think Russell Banks comes down on the question? In other words, does the weight of the novel suggest that the Writer or the Kid is correct?
11. Why does the Kid shy away from, even reject, Dolores's maternal kindness?
12. What role do pets play in this novel? Why is the Kid so devoted to them? Is there a difference between his attachment to Iggy at the beginning...and Annie and Einstein later on?
13. What is the significance of the book's title?
14. Why are the three main characters referred to as the Kid, the Professor, the Writer—their names aren't used, although the secondary characters are named.
15. Why does the Kid return to the Causeway at the end? And why does he decide to move his tepee out of the light and closer to the overhang of the Causeway?
16. The kid makes a distinction between shame and guilt. He comes to the conclusion that he is guilty but that he need not feel shame. Talk about his distinction. Do you agree with his assessment?
17. Should the Kid have returned the money to the Professor's wife or not? Did learning, later, that the Professor left the family well provided for affect your answer?
18. What revelation does the Kid undergo at the end of the novel. What future do you see for him?
19. Some reviewers claim that Banks hedges the very issue he wants to explore in his book by not making his protagonist a hardcore sex offender—that, because the Kid has engaged in a lighter offense, the author hasn't truely grappled with the hard issue of habitual sex offenders. What do you think?
20. Has your understanding, or your opinion, of sex offenders changed after reading Lost Memory of Skin? Is their position as society's untouchables fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Gold Coast
Nelson DeMille, 1990
Grand Central Publishing
626 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446360852
Summary
Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America.
Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief. Bellarosa draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world.
Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, and laced with sexual passion and suspense, The Gold Coast is Nelson DeMille's captivating story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, Brad Matthews, Michael
Weaver, Ellen Kay
• Birth—August 22, 1943
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A. Hofstra University
• Awards—Estabrook Award
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York
Nelson DeMille has a dozen bestselling novels to his name and over 30 million books in print worldwide, but his beginnings were not so illustrious. Writing police detective novels in the mid-1970s, DeMille created the pseudonym Jack Cannon: "I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday," DeMille told fans in a 2000 chat.
Between 1966 and 1969, Nelson DeMille served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. When he came home, he finished his undergraduate studies (in history and political science), then set out to become a novelist. "I wanted to write the great American war novel at the time," DeMille said in an interview with January magazine. "I never really wrote the book, but it got me into the writing process." A friend in the publishing industry suggested he write a series of police detective novels, which he did under a pen name for several years.
Finally DeMille decided to give up his day job as an insurance fraud investigator and commit himself to writing full time—and under his own name. The result was By the Rivers of Babylon (1978), a thriller about terrorism in the Middle East. It was chosen as a Book of the Month Club main selection and helped launch his career. "It was like being knighted," said DeMille, who now serves as a Book of the Month Club judge. "It was a huge break."
DeMille followed it with a stream of bestsellers, including the post-Vietnam courtroom drama Word of Honor (1985) and the Cold War spy-thriller The Charm School (1988) Critics praised DeMille for his sophisticated plotting, meticulous research and compulsively readable style. For many readers, what made DeMille stand out was his sardonic sense of humor, which would eventually produce the wisecracking ex-NYPD officer John Corey, hero of Plum Island (1997) and The Lion's Game (2000).
In 1990 DeMille published The Gold Coast, a Tom Wolfe-style comic satire that was his attempt to write "a book that would be taken seriously." The attempt succeeded, in terms of the critics' response: "In his way, Mr. DeMille is as keen a social satirist as Edith Wharton," wrote the New York Times book reviewer. But he returned to more familiar thrills-and-chills territory in The General's Daughter, which hit no. 1 on the New York Times' Bestseller list and was made into a movie starring John Travolta. Its hero, army investigator Paul Brenner, returned in Up Country (2002), a book inspired in part by DeMille's journey to his old battlegrounds in Vietnam.
DeMille's position in the literary hierarchy may be ambiguous, but his talent is first-rate; there's no questioning his mastery of his chosen form. As a reviewer for the Denver Post put it, "In the rarefied world of the intelligent thriller, authors just don't get any better than Nelson DeMille."
Extras
(From a Barnes & Noble interview)
• DeMille composes his books in longhand, using soft-lead pencils on legal pads. He says he does this because he can't type, but adds, "I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it's done in handwriting."
• In addition to his novels, DeMille has written a play for children based on the classic fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin."
• DeMille says on his web site that he reads mostly dead authors—"so if I like their books, I don't feel tempted or obligated to write to them." He mentions writing to a living author, Tom Wolfe, when The Bonfire of the Vanities came out; but Wolfe never responded. "I wouldn't expect Hemingway or Steinbeck to write back—they're dead. But Tom Wolfe owes me a letter," DeMille writes.
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is what he said:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read this book in college, as many of my generation did, and I was surprised to discover that it said things about our world and our society that I thought only I had been thinking about, i.e., the ascendancy of mediocrity. It was a relief to discover that there was an existing philosophy that spoke to my half-formed beliefs and observations. (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The Gold Coast'' glitter is Nelson DeMille's sharp evocation of the vulpine Bellarosa and of Sutter, a wonderfully sardonic, self-mocking man betrayed by a midlife crisis. In his way, Mr. DeMille is as keen a social satirist as Edith Wharton....The novel bogs down only when Mr. DeMille insists—all too frequently—on ending chapters with heavy-handed portents. The reader does just fine without them.
Joanne Kaufman - New York Times
What happens to a priggish, WASPy, disillusioned Wall Street lawyer when a Mafia crime boss moves into the mansion next door in his posh Long Island neighborhood? He ends up representing the gangster on a murder rap and even perjures himself so the mafioso can be released on $5 million bail. That's the premise of DeMille's (The Charm School) bloated, unpersuasive thriller. Attorney John Sutter has problems that would daunt even Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby. His marriage is crumbling, despite kinky sex games with his self-centered wife, Susan, who's the mistress of his underworld client Frank Bellarosa. The IRS is after Sutter, and his law firm wants to dump him. As a sardonic morality tale of one man's self-willed disintegration, the impact is flattened by its elitist narrator's patrician tones. A comic courtroom scene and some punches at the end, however, redeem the novel somewhat.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. The Gold Coast is in many ways an heir to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. How are Frank Bellarosa and Jay Gatsby alike? How do DeMille’s and Fitzgerald’s depictions of American society differ? How are they similar?
2. Toward the beginning of the novel, Frank Bellarosa says to John, “In this country, I see the kids getting more interested in the old ways…At first they don’t want to be Italian, then they get more Italian when they get older…people are looking for something. Because maybe American culture doesn’t have some things that people need.” What do you think Bellarosa means by this? What might American culture lack?
3. Toward the middle of the novel, Susan asks John, “So, how will we treat Mr. Bellarosa? As a crass, unprincipled interloper, or as an American success story?” How do Susan and John end up treating Bellarosa? What is your opinion of him?
4. DeMille has said that he believes there is “great affinity, duality between the demise of the ‘old’ Mafia and the old-money WASP world.” Do you agree? Are there parallels between John Sutter’s and Frank Bellarosa’s seemingly opposed worlds?
5. After John and Susan make love on the beach, John muses about F. Scott Fitzerald’s Jay Gatsby and says, “I’m not sure what that green light meant to Jay Gatsby nor what it symbolized beyond the orgiastic future…The green light that I see at the end of Daisy’s vanished pier is not the future; it is the past, and it is the only comforting omen I have ever seen.” What does the “green light” represent to John and why is it important to him? How is John’s “green light” different from Gatsby’s?
6. While sailing with his family around the north coast of Long Island, John says, “I couldn’t help but reflect on the ancient idea that land is security and sustenance, that land should never be sold or divided. But even if that were true today, it were true only as an ideal, not a practicality.” Why is the “ancient idea” of land ownership so important to John? What does he fear will happen after all the Gold Coast land has been sold and divided?
7. After John gets in trouble with the IRS, he says, “It was then, I suppose, that a strange thing began to happen to me: I started to lose faith in the system.” Does this moment in the novel constitute a turning point for John? How do John’s notions about law, society, and justice begin to shift here?
8. Bellarosa quotes Machiavelli many times throughout the course of the novel and he
seems to believe that most people are driven by their desire for power. Do you agree? Who has power in this novel and what gives them this power – is it money, respectability, force?
9. Bellarosa is in many ways a hard-edged criminal, but both John and Susan admit to being seduced by him. What is seductive about him and why are both John and Susan so taken with him?
10. John makes a surprising choice during Bellarosa’s murder trial. Reflecting on his decision, he says, “The history of the world is filled with dead martyrs who would not compromise. I used to admire them. Now I think that most of them were probably very foolish.” Do you think John made a smart decision during Bellarosa’s trial or do you think he could have or should have acted differently?
11. What do you make of Susan Sutter? How do you understand her actions at the end of the novel?
12. At the end of the novel, John says: “There is an ebb and flow in all human events, there is a building up and a tearing down, there are brief enchanted moments in history and in the short lives of men and women, there is wonder and there is cynicism, there are dreams that can come true, and dreams that can’t.” What do you make of the ending of the novel? Does DeMille leave us with a bleak or hopeful vision for the future?
13. The Gold Coast was written in 1990—almost twenty years ago. Do you think this novel’s depiction of American society is still relevant today?
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Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
200-300 pp. (varies by publisher)
Summary
A passionate young woman, her cowardly lover, and her aging, vengeful husband are the central characters in this stark drama of the conflict between passion and convention in the harsh world of seventeenth-century Boston.
Tremendously moving and rich in psychological insight, this tragic novel of sin and redemption addresses our Puritan past. Depicting the struggle between mind and heart, Hawthorne fashioned a masterpiece of American fiction. (From Penguin Signet Classics.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 4, 1804
• Where—Salem, Massachusetts, USA
• Death—May 19, 1864
• Where—Plymouth. New Hampshire
• Education—Bowdoin College
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th-century American novelist and short story writer.
Short overview
Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem Witch Trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne."
He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honors society. He published his first work anonymously, the novel Fanshawe, in 1828. He also published several short stories in various periodicals, which in 1837 he collected and published as Twice-Told Tales. For several years, he worked at a Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Sophia Peabody in 1842.
The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died in 1864, survived by his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend Franklin Pierce.
Early years
William Hathorne, the author's great-great-great-grandfather, a Puritan, was the first of the family to emigrate from England, first settling in Dorchester, Massachusetts before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held various political positions, including magistrate and judge, who was infamous for his harsh sentencing. William's son and the author's great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. Having learned about this, the author may have added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.
Hawthorne's father, Nathaniel Hathorne, Sr., was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in what is now Suriname in South America. After his death, young Nathaniel, his mother and two sisters moved in with maternal relatives, the Mannings, in Salem, where they lived for 10 years. In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers before moving to a home in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake. It had been recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning. Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods." In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters. For fun, and in spite of his homesickness, he distributed to his family seven issues of his homemade newspaper, The Spectator. Written by hand in August and September, 1820, his newspaper included essays, poems, and news showcasing the young author's developing adolescent humor.
Despite young Hawthorne's protests, his uncle Robert Manning insisted that he attend college. With financial support from his uncle, he was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition. On the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, Hawthorne met future Franklin Pierce, the future U.S. president, and the two became fast friends. Once at the school, he also met the future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge. Years after his graduation with the class of 1825, he would describe his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard:
I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.
Early career
In 1836 Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. During this time he boarded with the poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in Boston. He was offered an appointment as weighter and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year, which he accepted in January, 1839. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." He contributed short stories, including "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil", to various magazines and annuals, though none drew major attention to the author. Horatio Bridge offered to cover the risk of collecting these stories in the spring of 1837 into one volume, Twice-Told Tales, which made Hawthorne known locally.
While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne bet his friend Jonathan Cilley a bottle of Madeira wine that Cilley would get married before him. By 1836 he had won the wager, but did not remain a bachelor for life. After public flirtations with local women Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody, he began pursuing the latter's sister, illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Seeking a possible home for himself and Sophia, he joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia. He paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine." He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure would prove an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance. Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in July, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. His neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent when at gatherings. At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.
Sophia, like Hawthorne, was also reclusive. Throughout her early life, she had frequent migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments. She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. Of his wife, whom he referred to as his "Dove," Hawthorne wrote that she is,...
in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!
Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. In one of her journals, she wrote:
I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the ... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts.
On the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage, the poet Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat, Pond Lily, was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror... She was the very image of death-agony." The incident later inspired a scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance.
The Hawthornes had three children. Their first, a daughter, was born March 3, 1844. She was named Una, a reference to The Faerie Queene, to the displeasure of family members. Hawthorne wrote to a friend,
I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it.
In 1846, their son Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846, with the news: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew".[39] Their final child, Rose, was born in May 1851. Hawthorne called her "my autumnal flower."
Middle years
In April 1846, Hawthorne was officially appointed as the "Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem" at an annual salary of $1,200. He had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow:
I am trying to resume my pen... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.
Like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, this employment was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. A Democrat, Hawthorne lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. Hawthorne wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser which was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England. Hawthorne was deeply affected by the death of his mother shortly thereafter in late July, calling it, "the darkest hour I ever lived." Hawthorne was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests that came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Agassiz and Theodore Parker.
Hawthorne returned to writing and in early 1850 published The Scarlet Letter, which included a preface referring to his three-year tenure in the Custom House and makes several allusions to local politicians, who did not appreciate their treatment. One of the first mass-produced books in America, it sold 2,500 volumes within ten days and earned Hawthorne $1,500 over 14 years. The book was immediately pirated by booksellers in London and became an immediate best-seller in the United States; it initiated his most lucrative period as a writer. One of Hawthorne's friends, the critic Edwin Percy Whipple, objected to the novel's "morbid intensity" and its dense psychological details, writing that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them," though 20th century writer D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter.
Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts at the end of March 1850. Hawthorne became friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection, titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", was printed in The Literary World on August 17 and August 24. Melville, who was composing Moby-Dick at the time, wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black." A year later, in 1851, Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne.
Hawthorne's time in The Berkshires was quite productive. The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which poet and critic James Russell Lowell said was better than The Scarlet Letter and called "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made" and The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person, were written here. He also published in 1851 a collection of short stories retelling myths, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, a book he had been thinking about writing since 1846. Nevertheless, the poet Ellery Channing reported that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place". Though the family enjoyed the scenery of The Berkshires, Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small red house. They left on November 21, 1851, with the author noting, "I am sick to death of Berkshire... I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence."
The Wayside and Europe
In 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord. In February, they bought The Hillside, a home previously inhabited by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, and renamed it The Wayside. Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. That year Hawthorne wrote the campaign biography of his friend Franklin Pierce, depicting him as "a man of peaceful pursuits" in the book, which he titled The Life of Franklin Pierce. Horace Mann said, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote". In the biography, Hawthorne depicted Pierce as a statesman and soldier who had accomplished no great feats because of his need to make "little noise" and so "withdrew into the background." He also left out Pierce's drinking habits despite rumors of his alcoholism and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like a dream." With Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool shortly after the publication of Tanglewood Tales. The role, considered the most lucrative foreign service position at the time, was described by Hawthorne's wife as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London." In 1857, his appointment ended at the close of the Pierce administration and the Hawthorne family toured France and Italy. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne grew a bushy mustache.
The family returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun, his first new book in seven years. Hawthorne admitted he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble".
Later years and death
At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with William D. Ticknor to Washington, D.C.. There, he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862.
Failing health prevented him from completing several more romances. Suffering from pain in his stomach, Hawthorne insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott was concerned Hawthorne was too ill. While on a tour of the White Mountains, Hawthorne died in his sleep on May, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Pierce sent a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody to inform Hawthorne's wife in person; she was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself. Hawthorne was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. Pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Alcott, James Thomas Fields, and Edwin Percy Whipple. Emerson wrote of the funeral: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered,—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it."
His wife Sophia and daughter Una, originally buried in England, were re-interred in adjacent plots to Hawthorne in 2006.
Literary style and themes
Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism, cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England, combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.
Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales, however, he noted, "I do not think much of them", and he expected little response from the public. His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience. In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture."
Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, The Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A Collection of Wax Figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Criticism
Edgar Allan Poe wrote important and somewhat unflattering reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Poe's negative assessment was partly due to his own contempt of allegory and moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism, though he admitted, "The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth." Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man." Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it." Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he admired the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales. Evert Augustus Duyckinck said of Hawthorne, "Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind."
Contemporary response to Hawthorne's work praised his sentimentality and moral purity while more modern evaluations focus on the dark psychological complexity. Beginning in the 1950s, critics have focused on symbolism and didacticism.
The critic Harold Bloom has opined that only Henry James and William Faulkner challenge Hawthorne's position as the greatest American novelist, although he admits that he favours James as the greatest American novelist. Bloom sees Hawthorne's greatest works to be principally The Scarlet Letter followed by The Marble Faun and certain short stories including "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", "Young Goodman Brown", "Wakefield" and "Feathertop." (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
The Scarlet Letter, a romantic work of fiction in a historical setting is considered Nathaniel Hawthorne's magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.... The book's immediate and lasting success are due to the way it addresses spiritual and moral issues from a uniquely American standpoint. In 1850, adultery was an extremely risque subject, but because Hawthorne had the support of the New England literary establishment, it passed easily into the realm of appropriate reading. It has been said that this work represents the height of Hawthorne's literary genius; dense with terse descriptions. It remains relevant for its philosophical and psychological depth, and continues to be read as a classic tale on a universal theme.
Literary Classics Press
The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.
Edgar Allan Poe (said of Hawthorne generally)
It is beautiful, admirable, extraordinary; it has in the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of as the mark of Hawthorne's best things--an indefinable purity and lightness of conception...One can often return to it; it supports familiarity and has the inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art
Henry James
If we have a national heroine of our version of the Protestant will in America, then it must be Hester Prynne, Hawthorne's triumph.
Harold Bloom
Discussion Questions
Below are two sets of discussions questions: the first from Random House US and the second from Vintage Classics (a division of Random House UK):
1. Hawthorne came from a long line of Puritans (one of his forefathers was a judge during the Salem witch trials), and Puritan beliefs about subjects like guilt, repression, original sin, and discipline inform the book on every level. What is your impression of how the Puritan worldview is taken up and treated by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter?"
2. Kathryn Harrison, in her Introduction to this volume, asserts that Hester Prynne can be seen in many ways as the first great modern heroine in American literature. Do you agree?
3. Dimmesdale is in many ways as central a character as Hester in the novel; for you as a reader, is he equally important to the story?
4. The highly charged symbolism of The Scarlet Letter is one of its most distinctive features. Discuss the central symbol of the story—the scarlet letter itself. What does it signify? How does it function in the novel? How does its meaning change over time?
5. Critics have sometimes disagreed about whether Hawthorne condones or condemns the adultery of Hester and Dimmesdale in the novel. Can either view be supported? Which do you feel is the case?
6. Describe and discuss the character of Roger Chillingworth in the novel. What does he represent in terms of the larger themes explored by the book?
7. How does Hester change over time in the novel—and how does she change in the eyes of the society around her?
8. The final scaffold scene brings the various themes, characters, and plotlines woven throughout the novel to a powerful conclusion. Describe your response to this scene, and to the disputed event that occurs near its end.
(Questions issued by Random House US.)
1. Critics are divided over Hawthorne’s attitude to Hester’s affair, and whether the novel ultimately condemns or condones her actions. What do you think Hawthorne’s views are? What are your own?
2. Where Hawthorne does seem to uncritically hold Hester up for our admiration is in her steadfast refusal to name Pearl’s father. Why do you think this is? Do you share his admiration for this action?
3. As noted in the biography section, Hawthorne changed his name in his early 20s, adding a W to the original Hathorne. Some critics have suggested this was to distance himself from famous Puritan ancestors, particularly one forebear who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. From your reading of the book, do you think this could be true? How does Hawthorne depict the Puritan community and their leaders?
4. The priest in the story, Dimmesdale, is a figure of hypocrisy who preaches virtue from the pulpit and refuses to take his daughter’s hand in public—but pays a terrible personal price for his actions. What points do you think Hawthorne is trying to make about organised religion? How far is Dimmesdale responsible for his own actions and how much are the townsfolk responsible for forcing him into his position?
5. The critic Kathryn Harrison has written that Hester is "the herald of the modern American heroine, a mother of such strength and stature that she towers over her progeny much as she does the citizens of Salem." Do you agree?
6. Because the novel is set before the time in which he is writing, Hawthorne deliberately uses an old-fashioned style with some archaic language. Do you find this effective or a distraction?
7. The novel contains hints, early on, that Hester is descended from an impoverished but formerly noble family in England: "She saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility." There is a suggestion, toward the end, that Pearl may have returned to these roots by marrying into a wealthy European family, possibly nobility. What role, more generally, does class play in the novel?
8. How does Hawthorne describe the scarlet letter itself and in what different forms does it appear in the novel?
9. "Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil." What role does the character of Hester’s estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth play? Do you think he is morally more degenerate than Hester and her lover, or do you have sympathy for his campaign of revenge? Do you think he redeems himself at all with his bequest to Pearl at the end of the story?
(Questions issued by Vintage Classics.)
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