The Invisible Ones
Stef Penney, 2012
Penguin Group USA
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399157714
Summary
Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier.
Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he's been chosen more for his blood than his investigative skills. Still, he's surprised by the intense hostility he encounters from the Jankos, who haven't had an easy past. Touched by tragedy, they're either cursed or hiding a terrible secret-whose discovery Ray can't help suspecting is connected to Rose's disappearance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Edinburg, Scotland, UK
• Education—Bristol University
• Awards—Costa (Whitbread) Award
• Currently—lives in London, England
Stef Penney was born and grew up in Edinburgh. After earning a degree in philosophy and theology from Bristol University, she turned to filmmaking, studying film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art. On graduation she was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme. She is a screenwriter. Her debut novel, The Tenderness of Wolves, won the 2006 Costa Award. She published The Invisible Ones in 2012. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The mystery element of the story is adroitly handled, as clues and subtle inconsistencies in the Janko story are dropped in. Yet its destination is a total surprise, and if that is because it stretches the bounds of credibility, Penney is confident enough to let her characters say exactly that. The Invisible Ones is a book about love, deception, growing up, belonging, being an outsider and about how all our presents are haunted by our pasts. Its author is a supreme story-teller on top form.
London Times
Penney is a good storyteller. She unfurls various mysterious plot possibilities and unearths the insecurities that lurk in families and relationships. She imagines the Romany world carefully, avoiding cliche or judgement or anything too negative ... there are moments of transcendence here, moments where Penney's writing really excels.
Sunday Times (UK)
[A] haunting tale...this is a beautifully crafted novel with skilful characterisation and a plot which twists and turns.... [T]his story of loss, deceit and family tragedy lingers long after you've finished the book,
Daily Express (UK)
Penney's portrayal of the gypsy way of life is sympathetic. Seemingly bizarre customs are given a context; strong love is set against deadening control.... Ivo's return trip to Lourdes with JJ, Christo and their grandmother is a marvellously atmospheric piece of writing.
Financial Times
In her mesmerizing sophomore outing, Penney wraps a riddle in a mystery inside an enigma that intrigues from the very first page. As the tale—set in the ’80s—begins, private eye Ray Lovell wakes up in an English hospital with little memory and partial paralysis. While he recovers, other problems present. Lovell Price Investigations is broke and most of its cases involve adultery, about which Ray says: “These sorts of cases... can depress you if you let them.” Then Ray, who is half-Gypsy himself, is offered a job by a fellow Gypsy, Leon Wood, who wants Ray to find his daughter, Rose, who he hasn’t seen or spoken to in seven years, ever since she married Ivo Janko, another Gypsy (or traveler, as the British often call them). Why Leon wants to find Rose after so much time begins the mystery. He tells Ray it’s because her mother has died and she should know, but Leon suspects foul play even though Rose’s husband claims she ran off with a “gorjio” right after having a child, but Leon suspects foul play. Given his Gypsy heritage, Ray is able to insert himself into the itinerant lifestyle of that world—exactly the reason why Leon has hired him. But even with his knowledge of the traveling life, Ray is surprised by the stonewalling and half-truths he encounters while trying to learn the Janko family’s secrets. The narrative slides seamlessly between Ray’s point of view and that of J.J., Ivo’s cousin’s son, giving the reader a balanced perspective—and serving up two truly shocking twists at the story’s end. Fast-paced, with characters who will live in full color inside the reader’s head, Penney delivers an impressive follow-up to her debut bestseller, The Tenderness of Wolves.
Publishers Weekly
Penney's Costa Award-winning debut, The Tenderness of Wolves, offers edge-of-civilization suspense in Canada's Northern Territory in the 1860s. Set in 1980s England, her new novel might seem like a departure, but it's not; here Penney probes the edge-of-civilization otherness of England's Romany (or Gypsies) while presenting a mystery rooted in the stranglehold of family. As the novel opens, Det. Ray Lovell gets a visit from Leon Wood, a Gypsy whose daughter, Rose, went missing years ago after marrying into the Janko family. Since Lovell has Gypsy roots, he's the only investigator Wood trusts. Trying to breach the silence surrounding Rose's disappearance, Lovell goes up against the entire Janko clan, including patriarch Tener; Tener's son Ivo, husband to Rose and father to Christo, who's languishing from an inherited disease that has killed off much of the family; Sandra, Ivo's cousin and the mother of JJ; and JJ himself, who's 14, smart, and the family's bridge to the outer world. Told alternately from Lovell's and JJ's perspectives, the story ends with a bone-rattling surprise that conveys how much the Jankos have endured. Verdict: Another stunner from Penney; highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
Perhaps one of the first novels involving a half-Gypsy as a detective. Penney uses the missing-person plot rather than the whodunit to provide a thread for her narrative. One day Romany Leon Wood shows up at Ray Lovell's failing detective agency to hire him to find his missing daughter, Rose. Lovell has some immediate concerns about the case, primarily because Rose has been missing for seven years. Leon has a Gypsy's reluctance to go to the police about the case but trusts Lovell because he's half Romany—his father was born in a field in Kent while his mother was gorjio, or non-Romany. The novel starts with Lovell in a hospital, partially paralyzed and vaguely remembering a recent sexual encounter, though he's unsure whether this was memory or hallucination. As he gets well, he takes us back to his initial steps in tracing Rose's disappearance. Besides Lovell, Penney uses JJ Janko, a Romany teenager, as her other narrator. JJ is concerned about Ivo, his uncle, but especially about Ivo's son Christo, who's suffering from a rare and seemingly incurable disease, one that Ivo himself had had as a child and "miraculously" recovered from. (Ivo had made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where they also take Christo in a desperate attempt to cure him.) Fortunately, Lovell has a pediatrician friend who's able to give insight into the nature of Christo's illness and how it's genetically transmitted from generation to generation...and it turns out that it's impossible for Ivo to be Christo's father. Penney gives her plot plenty of twists and saves the best for the end, with a truly unforeseen and unpredictable conclusion.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The author chose to tell this story with two narrators, each of whom offers a different view into Romany culture. Would the story have been stronger or weaker with just one narrator? Do the narrators’ positions affect your perspective on the culture?
2. Why do you think the author chose JJ to illustrate Romany culture? How would the story have been influenced by a different narrator—Tene or Sandra, for example? What effect does JJ’s voice have on the story?
3. JJ reflects on a disastrous study date with a classmate at the end of chapter 16, saying that he and Stella are “like trains on tracks that run more or less parallel but will never meet. I can’t go on her tracks, and she can’t go on mine.” In what ways is Romany culture different from the outside world? In what ways is it the same?
4. Romany face a significant amount of prejudice and stereotyping. What are some examples in the novel? What impact does this have on the characters? How are Romany themselves prejudiced against outsiders? How does Ray Lovell walk the line between his two cultures?
5. Ray Lovell’s viewpoint moves between his past and his present. How does solving the mystery "alongside" him enhance your reading experience?
6. “Pure blood” is a significant concern through this novel. How does pure blood shape the “one of us” mentality? How has the desire for pure blood affected the Janko family? Are there other cultures or instances in history where “pure blood” has been a valuable trait?
7. The Jankos visit the healing bathhouses at Lourdes in an attempt to cure Christo’s mysterious disease, through prayer and holy water. JJ says that his family is not religious, though we learn that their culture is rich in folklore. How does their belief in the healing power of Lourdes align with their folkloric traditions? Are there ways in which it conflicts?
8. Luck is a prevalent theme in the novel. Are the Jankos lucky or unlucky? Explain with specific instances that the Jankos attribute to luck.
9. The Invisible Ones is set in the 1980s. Why do you think the author chose this time period? In what ways does it affect your reading experience?
10. Sandra and Lulu have very different reactions to Ray’s revelation about Ivo. Sandra is arguably much closer to Ivo, but she responds much more calmly to the news. Were you surprised by this? Why do you think the two reacted so differently?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
When the Killing's Done
T. C. Boyle, 2011
Penguin Group USA
369 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670022328
Summary
Principally set on the wild Channel Islands off the coast of California, T.C. Boyle's new novel is a gripping adventure with a timely theme. Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Park Service biologist spearheading the efforts to save the islands' native creatures from invasive species.
Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is a local businessman who is fiercely opposed to the killing of any animals whatsoever and will go to any lengths to subvert her plans. As their confrontation plays out in a series of scenes escalating in violence, drama, and danger, When the Killing's Done relates a richly humane tale about the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1948
• Where—Peekskill, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York at Potsdam; Ph.D., Iowa University
• Awards—PEN/Faulkner Award, 1998
• Currently—lives near Santa Barbara, California
T. Coraghessan Boyle (kuh-RAGG-issun) received his doctorate in nineteenth-century English literature from the University of Iowa in 1977. Since 1977, Boyle has taught creative writing at the University of Southern California. While in college, Boyle exchanged his middle name, John, for the unusual Coraghessan (kuh-RAGG-issun), the name of one of his Irish ancestors.
Boyle is the author of Descent of Man (1979), Water Music (1982), Budding Prospects (1984), Greasy Lake (1985), World's End (1987, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), East Is East (1990), The Road to Wellville (1993), which was made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins, and Without a Hero (1994). His work has appeared in major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, Paris Review, and Atlantic Monthly. Boyle lives with his wife, Karen, and their three children near Santa Barbara, California, in a house designed in 1909 by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
More
In the interest of time and space, it might be easier to note the writers that T. C. Boyle isn't compared to. But let's give the reverse a try: Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Evelyn Waugh, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Kingsley Amis, Thomas Berger, Robert Coover, Lorrie Moore, Stanley Elkin, Tom Robbins, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Don DeLillo, Flannery O'Connor. Oh, let's not forget F. Lee Bailey. And Dr. Seuss.
Boyle, widely admired for his acrobatic verbal skill, wild narratives and quirky characters (in one short story, he imagines a love affair between Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev's wife), has dazzled critics since his first novel in 1981.
Consider this example, from Larry McCaffery in a 1985 article for the New York Times:
Beneath its surface play, erudition and sheer storytelling power, his fiction also presents a disturbing and convincing critique of an American society so jaded with sensationalized images and plasticized excess that nothing stirs its spirit anymore.... It is into this world that Mr. Boyle projects his heroes, who are typically lusty, exuberant dreamers whose wildly inflated ambitions lead them into a series of hilarious, often disastrous adventures.
But as much as critics will bow at his linguistic gifts, some also knock him for resting on them a bit too heavily, hinting that the impressive showmanship attempts to hide a shortage of depth and substance. Craig Seligman, writing in the New Republic in 1993, pointed out that...
Boyle loves a mess. He loves chaos. He loves marshes and jungles, and he loves the jungle of language: luxuriant sentences overgrown with lianas of lists, sesquipedalian words hanging down like rare fruits. For all its exoticism, though, his prose is lucid to the point of transparency. It doesn't require much deeper concentration than a good newspaper (though it does require a dictionary).
Reviewing The Tortilla Curtain in 1995, New York Times critic Scott Spencer scratched his head over why Boyle had invited readers along for this particular ride:
Mr. Boyle's fictional strategy is puzzling. Why are we being asked to follow the fates of characters for whom he clearly feels such contempt? Not surprisingly, this is ultimately off-putting. Perhaps Mr. Boyle has received too much praise for his zany sense of humor; in this book, that wit often seems merely a maddening volley of cheap shots. It's like living next door to a gun nut who spends all day and half the night shooting at beer bottles.
Growing up, Boyle had no aspirations to be a writer. It wasn't until his studies at State University of New York, where he as a music student, that he bumped into his muse. "I went there to be a music major but found I really couldn't hack that at the age of 17," he told The Writer in 1999. "I just started to read outside my classes—literature and history. I wound up being a history and English major; when I wandered into a creative writing class as a junior, I realized that writing was what I could do."
He then started teaching, in part to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam War, and later applied to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
After a collection of short stories in 1979, he released his first novel, Water Music, called "pitiless and brilliant" by the New Republic, and has shuttled back and forth between novels and short stories, all known for their explosions of character imagination. Mr. Boyle's literary sensibility...thrives on excess, profusion, pushing past the limits of good taste to comic extremes," McCaffery wrote in his 1985 New York Times piece. "He is a master of rendering the grotesque details of the rot, decay and sleaze of a society up to its ears in K Mart oil cans, Kitty Litter and the rusted skeletons of abandoned cars and refrigerators."
In his review of Drop City, the 2003 novel set in California commune that won Boyle a National Book Award nomination, Dwight Garner joins the chorus of critical acclaim over the years—"Boyle has always been a fiendishly talented writer"—but he also acknowledges some of the criticism that Boyle has faced in these same years:
The rap against Boyle's work has long been that he's a sort of madcap predator drone, raining down hard nuggets of contempt, sarcasm and bitter humor on the poor men and women in his books while rarely giving us characters we're actually persuaded to feel anything about. This is partly a bum rap—and I'd hate to knock contempt, sarcasm and bitter humor—but there's enough truth in it that it's a joy to find, in Drop City that Boyle gives us a lot more than simply a line of bong-addled innocents led to slaughter.
But perhaps the neatest summary of Boyle's work would be from Lorrie Moore, one of the novelists to which he has been compared. In a 1994 New York Times review of Boyle's short story collection Without a Hero, she praised Boyle's "astonishing and characteristic verve, his unaverted gaze, his fascination with everything lunatic and queasy." She continues...
God knows, Mr. Boyle can write like an angel, if at times a caustic, gum-chewing one. And in this strong, varied collection maybe we have what we'd hope to find in heaven itself (by the time we begged our way there): no lessening of brilliance, plus a couple of laughs to mitigate all that high and distant sighing over what goes on below."
Extras
• Boyle changed his middle name from John to Coraghessan ( "kuh-RAGG-issun") when he was 17.
• He is known almost as much for his ego as his writing. "Each book I put out, I think, 'Goodbye, Updike and Mailer, forget it," the New Republic quoted him as saying. "I joke at Viking that I'm going to make them forget the name of Stephen King forever, I'm going to sell so many copies.
• Boyle's philosophy on reading and writing, as told to The Writer: "Good literature is a living, brilliant, great thing that speaks to you on an individual and personal level. You're the reader. I think the essence of it is telling a story. It's entertainment. It's not something to be taught in a classroom, necessarily. To be alive and be good, it has to be a good story that grabs you by the nose and doesn't let you go till The End." (From Barnes and Noble)
Book Reviews
Boyle's terrifically exciting and unapologetically relevant When the Killing's Done...demonstrates that it's possible to write an environmental novel that provokes discussion instead of merely thumping away on conventional wisdom.... When the Killing's Done presents a smarter, sharper vision of our environmental challenges than [Boyle's] doomsday novel, A Friend of the Earth. By corralling all these pigs, rats, dwarf foxes, golden eagles and human beings into one stormy tale, he's created a raucous exploration of the clumsy role that even the best-intentioned people play in these fragile environs.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
(Starred review.) Boyle (The Women) spins a grand environmental and family drama revolving around the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara in his fiery latest. Alma Boyd Takesue is an unassuming National Park Service biologist and the public face of a project to eradicate invasive species, such as rats and pigs, from the islands. Antagonizing her is Dave LaJoy, a short-tempered local business owner and founder of an organization called For the Protection of Animals. What begins as the disruption of public meetings and protests outside Alma's office escalates as Dave realizes he must take matters into his own hands to stop what he considers to be an unconscionable slaughter. Dave and Alma are at the center of a web of characters—among them Alma's grandmother, who lost her husband and nearly drowned herself in the channel, and Dave's girlfriend's mother, who lived on a sheep ranch on one of the islands—who provide a perspective that man's history on the islands is a flash compared to nature's evolution there. Boyle's animating conflict is tense and nuanced, and his sleek prose yields a tale that is complex, thought-provoking, and darkly funny—everything we have come to expect from him.
Publishers Weekly
Boyle is no stranger to environmental fiction. His 2000 novel, A Friend of the Earth, chronicles the exploits of Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, an ecological martyr. Here, Boyle delves deep into environmental philosophy by creating two characters passionate about saving animals but in diametrically opposed ways. The tension is centered on the population of rats on the Channel Islands off the coast of California. Alma, a biologist, is attempting to exterminate the rats to prevent further damage to the fragile ecosystem on the island. Dave, an animal rights activist, is equally passionate about all the inhabitants of the island, including the rats. Boyle's characters are challenging, to say the least, for they are complicated and often inconsistent. While the desire to preserve and protect nature does not defuse many of the conflicts between the two, their ethical similarities invite the reader to question where these two ideologies ultimately clash. Boyle uses the conflicts between his characters to explore the changing philosophy of human and animal relationships. Verdict: Whether we regard this work as environmental fiction or a philosophical treatise on land ethics, Boyle has delivered yet another quandary to ponder. —Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Boyle’s great subject is humankind’s blundering relationship with the rest of the living world.... Incisive and caustically witty, Boyle is fluent in evolutionary biology and island biogeography, cognizant of the shared emotions of all sentient beings, in awe over nature’s crushing power, and, by turns, bemused and appalled by human perversity. Boyle brings all these powers and concerns to bear as he creates magnetic characters and high suspense, culminating in a piercing vision of our needy, confused, and destructive species thrashing about in the great web of life. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
In one of his richest and most engaging novels, Boyle (The Women, 2009, etc.) characteristically combines a dark sense of humor and a subversive streak as he illuminates the dark underbelly of all-American idealism. The focus is California environmentalism, the idealization of the natural world, which is more often dangerous, even deadly, than idyllic.... The novel never reduces its narrative to polemics—there are no heroes here—while underscoring the difficult decisions that those who consider themselves on the side of the angels must face.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book opens with the dramatic story of Alma's grandmother's boat accident. What is Anise's family history? Does your family have any great stories that have been passed down through the generations?
2. What does the title of the novel refer to?
3. Alma muses that "if she had enough money—say, five hundred billion or so—she'd buy up all the property in town, raze the buildings, tear out the roads and reintroduce the grizzly bear" (p. 41). Do you think Dave might say something similar? If you had nearly limitless funds, what good work would you do?
4. On pp. 64 – 65, we see Dave's response to Alma's presentation and his vandalizing of her car. Do you believe his personal relationship with Alma influenced his actions? In what ways are Alma's opinion of and interactions with him colored by their former relationship?
5. There are numerous example of Dave's inability to deal with his anger, usually targeted at other people. On p. 69, Dave questions whether his behavior exhibits "a fundamental inconsistency: pro-animal, antihuman." Does it?
6. Alma considers her footprint in the global ecology and feels "guilt over being alive, needing things, consuming things, turning the tap or lighting the flame under the gas burner" (p. 191). Do you feel the same way? Is it possible to exist without imposing on some other creature or resource?
7. Do Alma and Dave conform to your expectations of dedicated environmentalists? Are you similarly committed to any strong beliefs or principles? Have you ever been in a situation where you were pressured to compromise them?
8. As Dave sabotages the rat poison, he feels a "giddiness rising in him, the surge of power and triumph that rides up out of nowhere to replace the bafflement and rage and depression Dr. Reiser and his pharmaceuticals can't begin to touch. This is who he is. This" (p. 82). Does Dave do his animal rights work for himself or for his cause, or are the two completely intertwined? Does it matter?
9. Have you ever found yourself in battle with nature, either as victim or as aggressor? What was the result?
10. In what ways are Dave and Alma similar? How does each character's perspective shift by the end of the novel?
11. Which character did you feel was more sympathetic than the others? Who was least appealing? Which character best approximated your own feelings toward animals and the environment?
(Question from author's website.)
Carry the One
Carol Anshaw, 2012
Simon & Schuster
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451636888
Summary
Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidentally hits and kills a girl on a dark country road.
For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen and her brother and sister, craft their lives in response to this single tragic moment. As one character says, “When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.” Through friendships and love affairs; marriage and divorce; parenthood, holidays, and the modest calamities and triumphs of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we’d expect.
As they seek redemption through addiction, social justice, and art, Anshaw’s characters reflect our deepest pain and longings, our joys, and our transcendent moments of understanding. This wise, wry, and erotically charged novel derives its power and appeal from the author’s exquisite use of language; her sympathy for her recognizable, very flawed characters; and her persuasive belief in the transforming forces of time and love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March, 1946
• Where—Grosse Pointe, Michigan, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Vermont College of Fine Arts
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois, and Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Carol Anshaw is an American novelist and short story writer. Her books include Lucky in the Corner, Seven Moves, Aquamarine, and Carry the One. Her stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories in 1994 and 1998.
Anshaw was born in Michigan and grew up with her family, which happily divided its time between Michigan, where her father was a contractor, and Ft Lauderdale, Florida. In 1968 she moved to Chicago, marrying Charles J. White III in 1969, whom she divorced in 1985.
In 1992 she acquired her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has won a National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, an NEA Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Carl Sandburg Award and Society of Midland Authors Award.
Anshaw teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also a painter, currently working on a sequence of paintings of the novelist and poet, Vita Sackville-West.
Since 1996, Anshaw has been in a relationship with Jessie Ewing. The two divide their time between Chicago and Amsterdam. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Splendid...seductive...vivid.... In sketches, landscapes, and erotic etchings, [Anshaw] carries not just one but all her characters through a quarter century of adulthood. And she makes the task look graceful.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) The one that must be carried when the Kenney siblings add themselves up is the girl who was hit and killed when Nick and Alice were driving home, stoned and stupid, from their sister Carmen’s wedding. That’s the first chapter: the rest of the novel and the rest of their lives—sex and drugs and prison visits, family parties and divorce, raising teenagers, painting, politics, and addiction—play out with that guilt and loss forever in the background. Anshaw has a deft touch with the events of ordinary life, giving them heft and meaning without being ponderous. As the siblings’ lives skip across time, Carmen’s marriage, shadowed by the accident, falls apart; painter Alice’s career moves forward unlike her life, as she remains stuck on the same woman, her former sister-in-law; and astronomer Nick fights, with decreasing success, his craving for drugs. Funny, touching, knowing—about painting and parents from hell, about small letdowns and second marriages, the parking lots where people go to score, and most of all, about the ways siblings shape and share our lives—Anshaw (Seven Moves) makes it look effortless. Don’t be fooled: this book is a quiet, lovely, genuine accomplishment.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) In her fourth novel (after Lucky in the Corner), award-winning writer Anshaw presents memorable characters whose lives have been affected by a single tragedy, which results in heartbreak and missed second chances. Twenty years earlier, siblings Alice and Nick leave their sister Carmen's wedding at 3 a.m., stoned, tipsy, and unfamiliar with the dark country roads; Olivia, Nick's girlfriend, is driving. A few miles on, Olivia hits and kills a girl walking on the side of the road. Over the years, the accident is always in the background for all the characters. Alice, a successful artist, goes in and out of lesbian relationships and obsessively paints more than a dozen portraits of the girl who was killed. Carmen's marriage does not last, and she buries herself in worthy causes. Olivia serves a brief prison sentence and then leaves Nick because of his drug habit. Nick, now a promising astronomer, is the one who broods the most deeply over the past. Verdict: Anshaw deftly depicts family ties broken and reconnected, portraying the best and the worst of this group of eccentrics. Recommended for readers of well-crafted literary fiction. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
From a 1983 wedding through Election Day 2008, Anshaw (Lucky in the Corner, 2002, etc.) tracks a Chicago family unsettled by a fatal accident. [Characters] haunted by memories of the dead girl...yet Anshaw doesn't suggest the accident fundamentally changed the arcs of their lives; her understanding of human fallibility and existential contingency is too subtle for that kind of artistic determinism. Instead, she quietly follows her characters through the usual stuff of growing up and growing older: marriages, breakups, material success and spiritual uncertainty.... Sharply observed and warmly understanding—another fine piece of work from this talented author.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At her wedding reception, Carmen, in a moment of doubt about marriage, thinks: “Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. Forward was the only available direction.” How much of life is lived on this principle—taking the step that seems to come next? How often does this turn out to be following one bad decision with another based on the first? How does this apply to the characters in this book?
2. How do Carmen, Alice, and Nick change over the course of the novel? Which of them changes the most, which the least?
3. Even before the accident, the lives of everyone involved were entwined (by marriage, sex, family, friendship). Discuss how the nature of these relationships is affected by the accident. Does the accident strengthen any bonds? Does it weaken others? How does each character’s perceptions of the others change throughout the course of the novel?
4. As the driver of the car, Olivia is the only one who serves prison time for Casey’s death, and as Nick enviously reflects, “prison was forcing her to atone.” Do you think the others try to atone in their own ways? Do you think Nick’s envy of Olivia’s punishment is justified? Do you agree that, in a way, Olivia is the one who suffers the easiest punishment, because even though prison is brutal, it’s a physical, finite sentence for what they collectively did?
5. Nick’s is the only life that eventually falls completely apart. Do you think his drug use is related to his guilt, knowing he could’ve prevented Casey’s death? Why or why not?
6. Mourning and loss are themes of the book. How do the characters grieve differently? How does this grief affect their choices? In what ways can mourning be a selfish experience? What do the characters mourn besides the loss of Casey’s life?
7. Discuss the way parenthood and parent/child relationships are portrayed in the novel. Think about Gabe and Carmen; Rob and Heather; Nick, Carmen, and Alice’s relationships with Horace and Loretta; and even Terry and Shanna Redman.
8. Romantic relationships seem to be tough for all of the characters. Alice spends her time yearning for Maude (who cannot seem to decide what she wants) and sleeping with other women to fill the void, but once they are finally together, they fall out of love. Carmen’s first marriage fails, and she looks at her second as a “small mistake.” After Olivia leaves, Nick turns to prostitutes and never has a meaningful relationship again. Even Tom finds that his affair with Jean was the thing keeping his marriage together. Discuss these relationships and the dynamics within the couples.
9. Alice is deeply affected by her visit to the Anne Frank house, but when she tries to talk about it with Anneke, the curator politely changes the subject. “Anne Frank is complicated,” she says. What is it about the house that you feel touches Alice so deeply? Is this exchange applicable to Alice’s feelings about the accident?
10. When Kees Verwey sees Alice’s paintings of Casey, he says to her: “…You are honoring her with these, giving her a kind of life. What if these are the best paintings you will ever make?” Alice replies, “Then maybe not showing them is the terms of my atonement.” Do you agree with Verwey or with Alice? Do you think she should have shown them? Or do you think it would have been wrong to profit from Casey’s death, the way Tom profited from the song he writes about the accident?
11. When Nick visits Shanna Redmond, she says to him about Casey: “She was such a careless kid…Never looked both ways like I told her. You can tell them that. The others. Not that it was her fault. But it wasn’t all theirs either.” Do you think Nick ever passes this message along? Do you think it would have helped the others to hear it? Or at that point, was it meaningless, given all they had been through?
12. Alice feels Casey is dictating the paintings of her unlived life. Do you think she is? As with the ending of the book, do you feel information sometimes passes between the world of the living and that of the dead?
13. How much of our present is shadowed by our past? How long do we carry regrets forward?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Bungalow
Sarah Jio, 2011
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452297678
Summary
A sweeping saga of long-lost love, a mysterious painting, an unspeakable tragedy and the beach bungalow at the center of it all.
In the summer of 1942, newly engaged Anne Calloway sets off to serve in the Army Nurse Corps on the Pacific island of Bora-Bora. More exhilarated by the adventure of a lifetime than she ever was by her predictable fiance, she is drawn to a mysterious soldier named Westry, and their friendship soon blossoms into hues as deep as the hibiscus flowers native to the island. Under the thatched roof of an abandoned beach bungalow, the two share a private world-until they witness a gruesome crime, Westry is suddenly redeployed, and the idyll vanishes into the winds of war.
A timeless story of enduring passion, The Bungalow chronicles Anne's determination to discover the truth about the twin losses—of life, and of love—that have haunted her for seventy years. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Washington state, USA
• Education—B.A., Western Washington University
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Sarah Jio is a veteran magazine writer and the health and fitness blogger for Glamour magazine. She has written hundreds of articles for national magazines and top newspapers including Redbook, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cooking Light, Glamour, SELF, Real Simple, Fitness, Marie Claire, Hallmark magazine, Seventeen, The Nest, Health, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, The Seattle Times, Parents, Woman’s Day, American Baby, Parenting, and Kiwi. She has also appeared as a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Sarah has a degree in journalism and writes about topics that include food, nutrition, health, entertaining, travel, diet/weight loss, beauty, fitness, shopping, psychology, parenting and beyond. She frequently tests and develops recipes for major magazines.
Her first novel The Violets of March, published in April, 2011, was chosen as a Best Book of 2011 by Library Journal. Her second novel, The Bungalow, was published in December of the same year. Blackberry Winter came out in 2012. The Last Camellia and Morning Glory were both issued in 2013.
Sarah lives in Seattle with her husband, Jason, and three young sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[The Bungalow is] extraordinarily real ... a true page-turner.
Womans Day
In this rare piece of historical chick lit, a sweeping love story unfolds between a young nurse and a mysterious soldier.
Marie Claire
Feed the kids before you settle in with journalist Sarah Jio's engrossing first novel, The Violets of March. This mystery-slash-love story will have you racing to the end—cries of 'Mom, I'm hungry!' be damned!
Redbook
This book had the perfect mix of adventure, mystery, romance and sorrow.
First for Women
Jio’s second novel (after The Violets of March) is a saccharine romance framed around WWII and the Tahitian island of Bora-Bora. A letter found by her grandchild in the trash spurs Anne Calloway Godfrey of Seattle to recount a wartime romance and the dissolution of a childhood friendship. Conflicted about her impending nuptials to Gerard Godfrey, the young Anne and her best friend Kitty enlist as nurses for the war effort. But once Anne reaches the beautiful island of Bora-Bora, she finds the other nurses, including Kitty, disappointingly man hungry. While Kitty becomes entangled in a dangerous romance with one soldier, Anne is drawn to another, Westry Green, an officer, due to a shared interest in a nearby deserted bungalow, considered cursed by the native Tahitians. Though the bungalow becomes the site of Anne and Westry’s romantic rendezvous, Anne’s cloying, self-righteous attitude, obnoxious behavior, and naïve mistakes in dealing with Westry make it hard for readers to buy their relationship. Meanwhile Kitty’s romantic entanglements harden her and ruin her relationship with Anne. Jio attempts to deepen her story with the addition of a murder mystery but an overwhelming profusion of deadening wartime cliches makes for a dull, frustrating read.
Publishers Weekly
It's 1942, and best friends Kitty and Anne, questioning their staid suburban lives, decide to join the Army Nurse Corps for a nine-month tour in the South Pacific. Anne leaves behind a mystified fiancé, she but feels a strong need to taste adventure before settling down. Free spirit Kitty finds that flirting with soldiers is much more fun than nursing the wounded, while Anne falls in love with Westry, a serious-minded soldier. Anne and Westry happily meet in secret in an abandoned beach bungalow, until the night they witness a murder. Before they can decide whether to report the crime, Westry is deployed, and Anne fears she'll never see him again. When she receives a letter more than 50 years later postmarked from Tahiti, Anne and her young niece decide it's time to find out what really happened all those years ago. Verdict: This unabashedly romantic novel just narrowly avoids being sappy, thanks to Jio's (The Violets of March) deft handling of her plot and characters. Fans of Nicholas Sparks will enjoy this gentle historical love story. —Rebecca Vnuk, Forest Park, IL
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What are Anne’s initial feelings about marrying Gerard Godfrey? What do you think of her assessment early in the novel that “passion is for fools?” Did you expect her to eventually come to a different conclusion? How did she change as a person throughout the course of the novel?
2. When Kitty tells Anne that she has signed up to go to the South Pacific, Anne decides suddenly to go with her. She says, “I needed to go to the South Pacific with Kitty. Why, exactly? The answer was still hazy.” Why do you think Anne felt so compelled to accompany Kitty? Out of friendship? Or reluctance to go ahead with her own wedding? Or do you believe fate had some hand in drawing her to the island?
3. What do you make of Kitty’s fainting episode at the beginning of the novel? Do you think it was staged, like Stella suggested? What were your first impressions of Kitty?
4. When Westry and Anne first meet, he says to her that “the tropics bring out the savage in all of us...this place has a way of revealing the truth about people, uncovering the layers we carry and exposing our real selves.” Did you find that to be true? In what ways?
5. At the beginning of the novel, Anne is jealous of Kitty’s ability to live in the moment—she initially finds herself unable to do so. How does that change after she falls in love with Westry? What do you think the ability to live in the moment implies about the character of a person? How does it influence Kitty’s actions? Anne’s?
6. What techniques does the author use to evoke the time period of the novel? The story takes place mainly in the past, but the very beginning and end are set in the present day. What does this framing lend to the novel? How does it color your reading of the part of the story set in the 1940s?
7. Does Anne believe what Tita tells her about the bungalow—that those who set foot there are destined to face a lifetime of heartache? Do you? Does Anne live a life of heartache? Does Westry? Or is there more to it than that?
8. How does Kitty change after she gives up Adella? Why do you think it is that she doesn’t seem to want to be friends with Anne anymore? When she explains the reasons behind her actions at the very end of the novel, did you sympathize with her?
9. Consider the female friendships in the novel. How do Stella, Anne, Liz, Mary and Kitty all support one another? In what ways do they fail one another? Were you surprised by Mary’s death? Do you think anything could have been done to prevent it?
10. Were you surprised by Westry’s behavior after Atea’s murder? Why did you initially think he acted the way he did? Were you surprised when the truth was finally revealed?
11. When Anne visits her mother in New York, her mother tells her, “When you marry, make sure he loves you, really loves you.” Anne is sure that Gerard loves her when she marries him—but does Anne love Gerard then? Why do you think she marries him? Because she loves him, or because of what she assumes was going on between Kitty and Westry? Imagine yourself in a similar position—what would you do?
12. Art plays a powerful role in this book. Why do you think Westry, Anne, and Jennifer are all so drawn to specific works of art? Have you ever experienced anything like this in your own life?
13. What were your impressions of the end of the novel? Was it the fact that justice had finally been carried out that allowed Westry and Anne to reunite? Or was it simply fate? Ultimately, did you believe in the curse?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Mill River Recluse
Darcie Chan, 2011
e-Book
Summary
New York Times and USA Today bestseller
Disfigured by the blow of an abusive husband, and suffering her entire life with severe social anxiety disorder, the widow Mary McAllister spends almost sixty years secluded in a white marble mansion overlooking the town of Mill River, Vermont. Her links to the outside world are few: the mail, the media, an elderly priest with a guilty habit of pilfering spoons, and a bedroom window with a view of the town below.
Most longtime residents of Mill River consider the marble house and its occupant peculiar, though insignificant, fixtures. An arsonist, a covetous nurse, and the endearing village idiot are among the few who have ever seen Mary. Newcomers to Mill River—a police officer and his daughter and a new fourth grade teacher—are also curious about the reclusive old woman. But only Father Michael O'Brien knows Mary and the secret she keeps--one that, once revealed, will change all of their lives forever.
The Mill River Recluse is a story of triumph over tragedy, one that reminds us of the value of friendship and the ability of love to come from the most unexpected of places. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Wisconsin, USA
• Raised—Wisconsin, Colorado, and Indiana
• Education—B.A., Indiana University; J.D.,
University of Baltimore
• Currently—lives in Westchester County, New York
Darcie Chan was born in Wisconsin and grew up in the small towns of Brandon, Wisconsin; La Junta and Cheraw, Colorado; and Paoli, Indiana. She has two younger sisters.
Thanks to loving and supportive parents who are both educators, she learned to read and write at an early age. As a child, she fell in love with books and became quite obsessed with Walter Farley's Black Stallion series of books, among many others. Her passion for reading and writing continued through college at Indiana University, Bloomington, and law school at the University of Baltimore.
Currently, Darcie works as an attorney and lives in northern Westchester County, New York, with her husband, their son, and two cats. In her spare time, Darcie enjoys reading, writing fiction, gardening, playing piano, and cooking.
The Mill River Recluse is her first novel. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A] real page-turner.
IndieReader.com
Chan's sweet novel displays her talent.... A comforting book about the random acts of kindness that hold communities together.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Mill River Recluse is not written in a single timeline, but instead with alternating timelines that link near the end. What did you think of this structure? Did you find it difficult to follow? Was it effective in driving the story forward, or was it disorienting or annoying? Did you prefer one timeline over the other?
2. Of all the characters in The Mill River Recluse, with which one did you most identify, and why?
3. The opening scene of The Mill River Recluse is of Mary McAllister taking her own life to avoid having to suffer further agonizing pain and certain eventual natural death resulting from her metastatic cancer. Do you think Father O’Brien knew Mary planned to take her own life when he left the marble mansion that last night? What do you think about Mary’s decision to take things into her own hands? Did this scene give you pause about whether you wanted to continue reading the story?
4. How does Mary McAllister evolve from a shy teenager into a woman held prisoner by social anxiety and agoraphobia? Do you agree with the way in which Father O’Brien tried to help her? Would you have done anything differently had you been in his position?
5. Patrick McAllister is shockingly cruel, particularly toward the most vulnerable people and animals in his life. His parents fawn over him, catering to his every whim without adequate discipline, while Conor McAllister, his grandfather, struggles to exert what good influence he can. Do you think that Patrick became the person he did because of his parents and their relationship with him?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)