Late Nights on Air
Elizabeth Hay, 2007
Counterpoint Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781582434803
Summary
Winner, 2007 Giller Prize
It’s 1975 when beautiful Dido Paris arrives at the radio station in Yellowknife, a frontier town in the Canadian north. She disarms hard-bitten broadcaster Harry Boyd and electrifies the station, setting into motion rivalries both professional and sexual.
As the drama at the station unfolds, a proposed gas pipeline threatens to rip open the land and inspires many people to find their voices for the first time.This is the moment before television conquers the north’s attention, when the fate of the Arctic hangs in the balance.
After the snow melts, members of the radio station take a long canoe trip into the Barrens, a mysterious landscape of lingering ice and infinite light that exposes them to all the dangers of the ever-changing air.
Spare, witty, and dynamically charged, this compelling tale embodies the power of a place and of the human voice to generate love and haunt the memory. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 22, 1951
• Where—Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada
• Education—University of Toronto (no degree)
• Awards—Giller Prize; Marian Engle Award
• Currently—Ottawa, Canada
Elizabeth Grace Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Her novel A Student of Weather (2000) was a finalist for the Giller Prize and won the CAA MOSAID Technologies Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award. She has been a nominee for the Governor General's Award twice, for Small Change in 1997 and for Garbo Laughs in 2003, and won the Giller Prize for her 2007 novel Late Nights on Air.
In 2002, she received the Marian Engel Award, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an established female writer for her body of work—including novels, short fiction, and creative non-fiction.
Born on October 22, 1951 in Owen Sound, Ontario, Hay is the daughter of a high school principal and a painter. She spent a year in England when she was fifteen, then returned to Canada to attend the University of Toronto.
In January, 1972, she quit the university before finishing and travelled out west by train. In 1974 she moved to Yellowknife, Northwest Territory. She worked for ten years as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, Winnipeg and Toronto and then moved to Mexico, where she freelanced. In 1986 she moved to New York City, and then returned to Canada in 1992 with her family. She lives in Ottawa with her husband Mark. She has two children: a son, Ben, and a daughter, Sochi.
Writing
In an interview with the CBC in 2007, Hay commented on the relationship between her writing and her career in radio.
When I worked in Yellowknife, I was writing poetry and stories on the side and not getting very far. I felt kind of schizophrenic, like my radio work was one type of thing and my writing was another and there was a gap between. That became even more pronounced when I started working for CBC’s Sunday Morning, doing radio documentaries. I took me a while to realize that there didn’t need to be such a wide gap between those two forms of writing, and that they could cross-fertilize. Good radio writing is similar to any good writing. It’s direct and economical and intimate and full of detail. Also, it sets your visual imagination working. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The plot of this novel is a faint signal, a series of short moments, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, often flecked with intimations of tragedy. Hay's writing is so alluring and her lost souls so endearing that you'll lean in to catch the story's delicate developments as these characters shuffle along through quiet desperation and yearning…There's real sadness here, but real tenderness, too. Hay listens to these people—their surprising comedy and their fragile needs—with enough sensitivity to catch, as she puts it, "a single word balanced atop a mountain of feeling."
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Elizabeth Hay has created her own niche in Canadian fiction by fastening her intelligence on the real stuff—the bumps and glories in love, kinship, friendship.
Toronto Star
Hay exposes the beauty simmering in the heart of harsh settings with an evocative grace that brings to mind Annie Proulx.
Washington Post
Dazzling....A flawlessly crafted and timeless story, masterfully told.
Jury citation - Scotiabank Giller Prize
Exquisite….Hay creates enormous spaces with few words, and makes the reader party to the journey, listening, marvelling.
Globe and Mail
Invites comparison with work by Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. Outside Canada, one thinks of A.S. Byatt or Annie Proulx.
Times Literary Supplement
Written by a master storyteller.
Winnipeg Free Press
Psychologically astute, richly rendered and deftly paced. It’s a pleasure from start to finish.
Toronto Star
After being fired from his latest television job, a disgraced Harry Boyd returns to his radio roots in the northern Canadian town of Yellowknife as the manager of a station no one listens to, and finds himself at the center of the station's unlikely social scene. New anchor Dido Paris, both renowned and mocked for her Dutch accent, fled an affair with her husband's father, only to be torn between Harry and another man. Wild child Gwen came to learn radio production, but under Harry's tutelage finds herself the guardian of the late-night shift. And lonely Eleanor wonders if it's time to move south just as she meets an unlikely suitor. While the station members wait for Yellowknife to get its first television station and the crew embarks on a life-changing canoe expedition, the city is divided over a proposal to build a pipeline that would cut across Native lands, bringing modernization and a flood of workers, equipment and money into sacred territory. Hay's crystalline prose, keen details and sharp dialogue sculpt the isolated, hardy residents of Yellowknife, who provide a convincing backdrop as the main cast tromps through the existential woods.
Publishers Weekly
Against the backdrop of a judicial inquiry into a proposed construction of a gas pipeline across the Arctic that would threaten the northern environment and the native way of life, this novel follows an engaging assortment of characters working in the Yellowknife CBC radio station in the mid-1970s Canadian North. Inspired by a radio drama about adventurer John Hornby, who traveled extensively through the Northwest Territory before starving, Gwen Symon arrives as a dewy-eyed newcomer with dreams of working behind the scenes in radio. Mentored by the talented but hard-drinking station manager, Gwen ends up working the late shift on air. She gradually comes into her own, just as radio makes way for television and the station crew begins to disband. Before they do, Gwen and friends set out on a journey to retrace Hornby's route. Equal parts Northern Exposure and Lost in the Barrens, this novel, already the winner of Canada's prestigious Giller Prize, compellingly captures one of the many small moments in which the Canadian North began to lose its essence. A strong choice for all libraries. —Barbara Love
Library Journal
Lost souls converge on a remote radio outpost in the Canadian subarctic, in Hay's meditative latest (Garbo Laughs, 2003, etc.). The town of Yellowknife, on the shores of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, is the bleak terrain on which Hay tests the mettle of her ensemble cast, denizens of the town's CBC affiliate. Announcer Harry is reeling from a disastrous foray into Toronto television. Receptionist Eleanor and reporter Dido fled ill-advised marriages-in beautiful, enigmatic Dido's case, a marriage aborted by an affair with her father-in-law. Ralph, the station's book reviewer, worships Eleanor from afar. Eddy, the engineer, has a vaguely unsavory background. Gwen has driven 3,000 miles to start her radio apprenticeship in the hinterlands. She finds on-air announcing torturous, whereas dulcet-voiced Dido is a natural. Dido is a guy magnet and smooth-talking Yank Eddy handily outstrips all rivals. When Eddy blackens her eye, Dido cohabits briefly with Harry, exploiting his neediness. Interwoven with the workplace drama is a larger controversy-Judge Berger has landed in Yellowknife, a stop on his nationwide tour to elicit citizen comment on whether to block construction of an Arctic gas pipeline across pristine Native lands and wildlife habitats. Eddy and Dido (future toasts of Los Angeles and New York) leave to pursue their exalted destinies, clearing the stage for the quieter but more absorbing lives of lesser mortals. Harry, Ralph, Eleanor and Gwen decide to retrace the route of doomed Arctic explorer John Hornby. For weeks during the summer, the foursome backpack and canoe across frigid lake country, encountering late-receding ice, unremitting daylight, mosquitoes and flies. Wildlife sightings are awe-inspiring (muskoxen, ptarmigans and a vast herd of caribou) and frightening (Gwen provokes a grizzly near Hornby's shack). Richly observed detail of the stunted yet flourishing plant life of the northern latitudes is representative of the outwardly modest but inwardly lush lives of the characters. The sheer ordinariness of existence in the most atypical of settings is Hay's preferred territory, which she mines with prodigious skill.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Harry Boyd, an admitted romantic, tries to make an impression on Dido Paris by setting her news script on fire while she is on the air. Fire is an ancient metaphor for passion, and Late Nights on Air could be described as an anthology of romantic love. Mrs. Dargabble’s first husband had urged her to "jump," and many of the characters do, with differing results — from the sexually charged union of Eddy and Dido to more gradual entanglements. Discuss the varieties of love present in this small, isolated community. Which ones strike you as the most successful?
2. One of Elizabeth Hay's great novelistic strengths is her sense of place and the ways she knits her characters into their settings. In her first novel, A Student of Weather, the places included Saskatchewan, New York City, and Ottawa; her second novel, Garbo Laughs, is set in Ottawa, most memorably during the ice storm of 1998. In Late Nights on Air, set in Yellowknife and the North, the sense of place and her characters' relationship to it is particularly intense. Sometimes readers talk about a novel's setting as if it were a character in itself. Do you think that is the case in Late Nights on Air? What descriptions of place, in Yellowknife or on the canoe trip into the Arctic wilderness, have stayed with you most? How does the sense of place work to underscore and echo the characters and their situations or to contrast with them?
3. In Late Nights on Air, fictional characters interact with a real, contemporary person, Judge Thomas Berger. Although they only interact with him minimally and formally, Berger and his commission are important components in the novel. Discuss Berger’s approach and personality, the ways in which it informs the Inquiry, and the place of the man and the Inquiry in Late Nights on Air.
4. Late Nights on Air begins with Harry falling in love with the sound of Dido's voice. In the novel, Gwen finds her radio voice — both in the sense of finding an attractive physical voice and in the sense of expressing her own personality. Voice and sound in general are natural preoccupations for people who work in radio, and the novel pays consistent attention to them, from Gwen's fascination with sound effects to the voices of the announcers (in English and Dogrib), and the many descriptions of natural sounds and music. Discuss some of the ways Elizabeth Hay uses voice to characterize her men and women, and to highlight her larger themes.
5. Elizabeth Hay says in her acknowledgements that the story of the adventurer John Hornby was always at the back of this book. A fascination with Hornby and Edgar Christian is one of the things Gwen and Harry have in common, and the explorers' cabin is the destination of the canoe trip that takes Harry and Gwen, Eleanor and Ralph into the wilderness, where their lives will change forever. Does Hornby’s story of a quixotic and doomed exploration connect with, and perhaps comment on, the story of the modern characters — and if so, in what ways?
6. One of the most sophisticated elements in an Elizabeth Hay novel is the fact that her flawed characters don’t find any conversion or easy resolution: Dido, for example, cannot bear criticism, and Harry, a veteran radio man, can’t separate his personal failure in television from the medium in general. Problems don’t get neatly wrapped up in Late Nights on Air, and the characters, though changed, in many ways end as imperfect as they began. Discuss some of the things that the characters have learned in the end — about each other and about themselves. Discuss some of the situations or personalities that never get "fixed," and the particular flavour this gives the book.
7. Harry's relationship with Dido is never really fulfilled, but Harry’s yearning remains largely undiminished. What do you think the author is saying about human beings in general?
8. Just before he died, Eleanor's father was reading her the French story of "la fille qui etait laide" — a girl so ugly that she hid herself in the forest where the fresh air, sun, and wind made her beautiful. The narrator tells us that, in the summer of 1975, a version of that story would unfold. The theme of this kind of transformation has been seen before in an Elizabeth Hay novel (A Student of Weather). Who is the transformed woman in Late Nights on Air — or should it be "women"? How does it happen?
9. Discuss Dido and her personality, and how she powerfully affects each of the characters — Harry, Gwen, Eleanor, Eddy. To what extent is she affected by her past? Where does her power really lie? Is she, in fact, as confident and strong as she seems?
10. There are frequent instances of foreshadowing in Late Nights on Air. The narrator writes, for example, about three unfortunate things that would happen to Harry in the coming winter, and in another place that "the events of the following summer would make these pictures of Ralph's almost unbearably moving." The reader is regularly pulled into the characters' futures, but without knowing the details. In what way does foreshadowing function in the novel? How does it affect your reading experience?
11. Eleanor, who is reading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, has a religious awakening in the course of the book. Most of the other characters don’t share her connection with institutionalized religion, but there is a strong undercurrent of spirituality in the book, felt differently by different characters. Discuss the varieties of religious or spiritual experience you find in the book.
12. There is an elegiac tone in Late Nights on Air, and a sense that an older, more human way of life is disappearing, as radio gives way to television and as the traditional ways of the North are threatened by the pipeline and, more generally, by the South. Where are the shades of grey in the conflict between old ways and "progress"? Does the novel give you a sense of where the novelist stands on this?
13. John Hornby’s biographer, George Whalley, tells Gwen that both he and his subject approach life "'crabwise,' meaning sideways and backwards rather than head-on." Harry likes this idea of "a wandering route notable for its 'digressions and divagations'.... A route of the soul, perhaps." Does "crabwise," in the sense Hay is using the term, suggest something of the structure chosen for Late Nights on Air? In what way does this approach reflect the characters’ yearnings and the way they are able to express themselves? Is this true of human beings in general?
14. "Gwen found herself thinking about the vulnerable rivers and birds and plants and animals and old ways of life." She learns, for example, that an oil spill, in turning the ice black, ruins its reflective power so that it absorbs light and melts, thus changing the environment. At one of its deepest levels, this is a book about ecology, about the fragile interdependence of people, animals and their environment. Discuss the ways this plays out in Late Nights on Air.
15. In addition to its rewards, the canoe trip taken by Harry, Eleanor, Gwen, and Ralph has its share of ordeals, including Harry and Eleanor getting lost, Gwen’s encounter with a bear, and Ralph’s fate. Discuss the various ways in which the characters are de-stabilized and reoriented in the course of the trip, and how the trip impacts upon their lives later.
16. Dido is so different in her relationship with Harry than she is with Eddy. What is it about the two men — and what is it about Dido — that cause such different responses?
17. This is a book where couples are often frustrated and love is not reciprocated or is cut off too soon — Harry and Dido, Dido and Eddy (a relationship that endures but on unknown terms), Eleanor and Ralph. Perhaps unexpectedly, an unconventional couple comes together at the end of the book. Were you surprised? Are there hints throughout the book? Does it work for you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller, 2012
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062060617
Summary
Winner - 2012 Orange Prize
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia to be raised in the shadow of King Peleus and his golden son, Achilles. “The best of all the Greeks”—strong, beautiful, and the child of a goddess—Achilles is everything the shamed Patroclus is not. Yet despite their differences, the boys become steadfast companions. Their bond deepens as they grow into young men and become skilled in the arts of war and medicine—much to the displeasure and the fury of Achilles’ mother, Thetis, a cruel sea goddess with a hatred of mortals.
When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece, bound by blood and oath, must lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.
Built on the groundwork of the Iliad, Madeline Miller’s page-turning, profoundly moving, and blisteringly paced retelling of the epic Trojan War marks the launch of a dazzling career. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 24, 1978
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Raised—New York, New York
• Education—B.A., M.A., Brown University
• Awards—Orange Prize-Fiction
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Madeline Miller was born in Boston and grew up in New York City, New York, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She attended Brown University, where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. She has also studied at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms.
Miller has been teaching and tutoring Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students for more than a decade. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Miller's first novel, The Song of Achilles (2011) won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her second novel is Circe (2018). (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Only the finest of historical novelists are able to adequately convey the sheer strangeness and otherness of the past, particularly the ancient past. By this criterion alone, Madeline Miller shows exceptional promise...a remarkably fresh take on one of the most familiar narratives in western literature.... It is quite an achievement.
Nick Rennison - London Times
Miller draws on her knowledge of Classical sources wisely….[she] is particularly good at characterization…The novel is well paced, engaging and tasteful. For a writer of Miller’s training and talent, the characters of the Iliad and the Odyssey offer a wealth of further story-telling possibilities.
Carolyne Larrington - Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Miller’s prose is more poetic than almost any translation of Homer… This is a deeply affecting version of the Achilles story: a fully three-dimension man—a son, a father, husband and lover—now exists where a superhero previously stood and fought.
Guardian (UK)
For a whistlestop tour around the life and times of Achilles, you’d be hard pressed to find a better guide than Madeline Miller…This accomplished and enjoyable novel…is original, clever, and in a class of its own…an incredibly compelling and seductive read. Her skill is considerable: she has to make us believe in Achilles and Patroclus almost as if they were modern-day characters in a Hollywood movie…It’s an entirely successful piece of writing, sitting comfortably between literary and commercial genres. It does what the best novels do—it transports you to another world— as well as doing something that few novels bother to: it makes you feel incredibly clever.
Vic Groskop - Independent on Sunday (UK)
Extraordinary… Beautifully descriptive and heartachingly lyrical, this is a love story as sensitive and intuitive as any you will find.
Daily Mail (UK)
You don’t need to be familiar with Homer’s The Iliad (or Brad Pitt’s Troy, for that matter) to find Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles spellbinding....her explorations of ego, grief, and love’s many permutations are both familiar and new....[A] timeless love story.
O Magazine
(Starred review.) [S]urefooted.... [A] novel that combines the poetic drama of The Iliad with a 21st-century understanding of war, sex, sexual politics, and Trojan War heroism.... [Miller] breaks new ground retelling one of the world’s oldest stories about men in love and war, but it is the extraordinary women—Iphigenia, Briseis, and Thetis—who promise readers remarkable things to come as Miller carves out a custom-made niche in historical fiction.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Debut author Miller has chosen to retell [The Iliad] from the point of view of Patroclus, an exiled Greek prince who is taken in by Peleus, the father of Achilles. It isn't long before the lonely boy is befriended by Achilles. Over the years their tentative friendship grows into a deep and passionate love that stands firm in the face of the disapproval of their elders, dire prophecies, and the wrath of the gods themselves. Miller skillfully weaves tender scenes of the boys' relationship with breathtaking descriptions of battles and their bloody aftermath.... [A] masterly vision of the drama, valor, and tragedy of the Trojan War. —Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage P.L., AK
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. In the Iliad, Patroclus is a relatively minor character. Why do you think the author chose him to be her narrator? Which other figures in the story might make interesting narrators?
2. Near the beginning of their friendship, Achilles tells his father that he values Patroclus because “he is surprising.” What do you think Achilles means by that? How is Patroclus different from the other foster boys? Why?
3. What do you think are the reasons behind Thetis’ opposition to Patroclus?
4. How do the boys change during their time with Chiron? Do the centaur’s lessons continue to be a guiding force in their lives?
5. On the island of Scyros, what motivates Deidameia’s desire to speak to Patroclus alone? What does she hope to achieve?
6. To what extent does Achilles’ ultimate destiny shape his choices? Is there such a thing as free will in this world?
7. Historical events can sometimes turn upon the will or personality of a single person. Aside from Achilles, are there other characters whose faults or virtues significantly affect the Trojan War’s outcome?
8. Myths are often called “timeless” for their insights into human behavior. What parallels do you see between the characters and conflicts of this novel and today? What pieces of Patroclus and Achilles’ story can be universalized?
9. What is the significance of song and music in the novel?
10. Patroclus is often a self-critical narrator. Consider how other characters in the novel regard him—do they see him in the same way he sees himself?
11. As represented in the novel, what are some of Odysseus’ defining qualities? Do you find him a sympathetic character? Why or why not?
12. Consider the explosive falling out between Achilles and Agamemnon. In what ways are each of them at fault for the rift? Could it have been avoided, or was it inevitable given that Achilles’s fate is determined?
13. Achilles and Briseis each claim Patroclus’ loyalty and affection. In what ways are they similar or different? What are the dynamics of each of their relationships with Patroclus?
14. What does the encounter between Priam and Achilles reveal about Achilles? Why do you think Achilles grants his request?
15. Near the end of the book, Odysseus comes to speak to Pyrrhus on Patroclus’ behalf. Why do you think he does this? How did it change (or not) your opinion of Odysseus?
16. Peleus warns his son that any mortal who visits the sea-nymphs in their caves beneath the sea does not return the same. How is this belief borne out by the character of Pyrrhus, who was raised there? In what way does Pyrrhus confirm or deny Patroclus’ fears about the gods?
17. In the final pages of the book, we learn more about Thetis. How does this affect our view of her?
18. Patroclus tells Thetis that he is “made of memories.” What does he mean by that? What role does memory—both personal and cultural—play in the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
David McCullough, 2011
Simon & Schuster
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-1416571766
Summary
The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.
After risking the hazardous journey across the Atlantic, these Americans embarked on a greater journey in the City of Light. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history.
As David McCullough writes, “Not all pioneers went west.” Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, who enrolled at the Sorbonne because of a burning desire to know more about everything. There he saw black students with the same ambition he had, and when he returned home, he would become the most powerful, unyielding voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate, almost at the cost of his life.
Two staunch friends, James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse, worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Cooper writing and Morse painting what would be his masterpiece. From something he saw in France, Morse would also bring home his momentous idea for the telegraph.
Pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans launched his spectacular career performing in Paris at age 15. George P. A. Healy, who had almost no money and little education, took the gamble of a lifetime and with no prospects whatsoever in Paris became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the day. His subjects included Abraham Lincoln.
Medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote home of his toil and the exhilaration in “being at the center of things” in what was then the medical capital of the world. From all they learned in Paris, Holmes and his fellow “medicals” were to exert lasting influence on the profession of medicine in the United States.
Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James were all “discovering” Paris, marveling at the treasures in the Louvre, or out with the Sunday throngs strolling the city’s boulevards and gardens. “At last I have come into a dreamland,” wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe, seeking escape from the notoriety Uncle Tom’s Cabin had brought her. Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris and even more atrocious nightmare of the Commune. His vivid account in his diary of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris (drawn on here for the first time) is one readers will never forget. The genius of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the son of an immigrant shoemaker, and of painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, three of the greatest American artists ever, would flourish in Paris, inspired by the examples of brilliant French masters, and by Paris itself.
Nearly all of these Americans, whatever their troubles learning French, their spells of homesickness, and their suffering in the raw cold winters by the Seine, spent many of the happiest days and nights of their lives in Paris. McCullough tells this sweeping, fascinating story with power and intimacy, bringing us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’s phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.” The Greater Journey is itself a masterpiece. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1933
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—National Book Award (twice); Pulitzer Prize (twice); Presidential Medal of Honor
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
David McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.
McCullough's first book was The Johnstown Flood (1968), and he has since written nine more on such topics as Harry S. Truman, John Adams, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Wright Brothers. McCullough has also narrated numerous documentaries, such as The Civil War by Ken Burns, as well as the 2003 film Seabiscuit, and he hosted American Experience for twelve years.
McCullough's two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001), have been adapted by HBO into a TV film and a mini-series, respectively. McCullough's history, The Greater Journey (2011), is about Americans in Paris from the 1830s to the 1900s.
Youth and education
McCullough was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Ruth (nee Rankin) and Christian Hax McCullough. He is of Scots-Irish descent. He was educated at Linden Avenue Grade School and Shady Side Academy, in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
One of four sons, McCullough had a "marvelous" childhood with a wide range of interests, ranging from sports to drawing cartoons. McCullough's parents and his grandmother, who read to him often, introduced him to books at an early age. His parents often talked about history, a topic he says should be discussed more often. McCullough "loved school, every day"; he contemplated many career choices, everything from architect, actor, painter, writer, to lawyer, and contemplated attending medical school for a time.
McCullough attended Yale University, graduating with honors in English in 1955. He considered it a "privilege" to study at Yale because of faculty members such as John O'Hara, John Hersey, Robert Penn Warren, and Brendan Gill. He occasionally ate lunch with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder. Wilder, says McCullough, taught him that a competent writer maintains "an air of freedom" in the storyline, so that a reader will not anticipate the outcome, even if the book is non-fiction.
While at Yale, he became a member of Skull and Bones. He served apprenticeships at Time, Life, the United States Information Agency, and American Heritage, where he enjoyed research. "Once I discovered the endless fascination of doing the research and of doing the writing, I knew I had found what I wanted to do in my life."
Early career
After graduation, McCullough moved to New York City, where Sports Illustrated hired him as a trainee. He later worked as an editor and writer for the United States Information Agency in Washington, D.C. After working for twelve years, including a position at American Heritage, in editing and writing, McCullough reached a point where he believed he "could attempt something" on his own.
Although he had no idea that he would end up writing history, McCullough "stumbled upon" a story that he felt was "powerful, exciting, and very worth telling." After three years of writing in his spare time (while still at American Heritage), he published The Johnstown Flood. The book, a chronicle of one of the worst flood disasters in United States history, was published in 1968 to high praise. John Leonard, of the New York Times, said of McCullough, "We have no better social historian." Despite precarious financial times, but encouraged by his wife Rosalee, he decided to become a full-time writer.
People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis.
Recognition
After the success of The Johnstown Flood, two new publishers offered him contracts, one to write about the Great Chicago Fire and another about the San Francisco earthquake. Not wishing to become "Bad News McCullough," he decided to write about people who "were not always foolish and inept or irresponsible." He also remembered Thornton Wilder telling told him that "he got an idea for a book or a play when he wanted to learn about something. Then, he'd check to see if anybody had already done it, and if they hadn't, he'd do it."
McCullough decided to write a history of the Brooklyn Bridge, which he had walked across many times.
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
Published in 1972, critics hailed The Great Bridge (1972) as "the definitive book on the event."
Five years later, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal was released, gaining McCullough widespread recognition. The book won the National Book Award in History, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Cornelius Ryan Award.
In 1977, McCullough traveled to the White House to advise Jimmy Carter and the United States Senate on the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which would give Panama control of the Canal. Carter later said that the treaties, which were agreed upon to hand over ownership of the Canal to Panama, would not have passed, had it not been for the book.
Other works
McCullough's fourth work was his first biography, reinforcing his belief that "history is the story of people." Released in 1981, Mornings on Horseback tells the story of seventeen years in the life of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. The work ranged from 1869, when Roosevelt was ten years old, to 1886, and tells of a "life intensely lived." The book won McCullough's second National Book Award, his first Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography, and New York Public Library Literary Lion Award.
Next, he published Brave Companions, a collection of essays written over a period of twenty years. Essays cover historical or literary figures such as Louis Agassiz, Alexander von Humboldt, John and Washington Roebling, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Conrad Aiken, and Frederic Remington.
McCullough's next book, his second biography, Truman (1993), was about the 33rd president. That book won McCullough his first Pulitzer Prize for "Best Biography or Autobiography" and his second Francis Parkman Prize. Two years later, the book was adapted as an HBO television movie by the same name, with Gary Sinise in the role of Truman. Commenting on his subject, Truman said
I think it's important to remember that these men are not perfect. If they were marble gods, what they did wouldn't be so admirable. The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.
Seven years later, in 2001, McCullough published his third biography John Adams, about the life of the second US president. One of the fastest-selling non-fiction books in history, it won McCullough's second Pulitzer Prize for "Best Biography or Autobiography." He intended the book to be about the two founding fathers and back-to-back presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but he became so intrigued with Adams that he decided to focus on Adams alone. In 2008 HBO adapted the book as a seven-part miniseries by the same name, with Paul Giamatti in the title role.
Published in 2005, McCullough's 1776, tells the story of the founding year of the US, focusing on George Washington, the amateur army, and other struggles for independence. Because of McCullough's popularity, its initial printing was 1.25 million copies, many more than the average history book. Upon its release, the book became a number-one bestseller in the US.
McCullough considered writing a sequel to 1776 but instead wrote about Americans in Paris between 1830 and 1900. The Greater Journey, published in 2011, covers 19th-century Americans, including Mark Twain and Samuel Morse, who migrated to Paris and went on to achieve importance in culture or innovation. Others included in the book are Elihu Washburne, the American ambassador to France during the Franco-Prussian War, and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in the US.
Personal life
David McCullough lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and is married to Rosalee Barnes McCullough, whom he met at age 17 in Pittsburgh. The couple has five children and nineteen grandchildren. He enjoys sports, history and art, including watercolor and portrait painting.
His son David Jr., an English teacher at Wellesley High School in the Boston suburbs, achieved sudden fame in 2012 with his commencement speech. He told graduating students, "you're not special" nine times, and his speech went viral on YouTube. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/2/2015.)
Book Reviews
[McCullough] explores the intellectual legacy that France settled on its 19th-century visitors. The result is an epic of ideas, as well as an exhilarating book of spells…McCullough's grand tour is impressionistic and discursive, proceeding by way of crossed paths and capsule biographies. This is history to be savored rather than sprinted through, like a Parisian meal. It amounts to a meaty collection of short stories, expertly and flavorfully assembled, free of gristly theory.
Stacy Schiff - New York Times
The Greater Journey is a lively and entertaining panorama, with abundant details along the way. A parade must keep moving, and McCullough is a practiced hand at managing such a cast. His specialty is clarity. His voice is straightforward, more journalistic than literary despite its largely artistic subject matter.
Michael Sims - Washington Post
There is not an uninteresting page here as one fascinating character after another is explored at a crucial stage of his development.... Wonderful, engaging writing full of delighting detail.
John Barron - Chicago Sun-Times
From a dazzling beginning that captures the thrill of arriving in Paris.... The Greater Journey will satisfy McCullough's legion of loyal fans...it will entice a whole new generation of Francophiles, armchair travelers and those Americans lucky enough to go to Paris before they die.
Bruce Watson - San Francisco Chronicle
(Starred review.) One of America’s most popular historians and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, McCullough (1776) has hit the historical jackpot. Travelers before the telephone era loved to write letters and journals, and McCullough has turned this avalanche of material into an entertaining chronicle of several dozen 19th-century Americans who went to Paris, an immense, supremely civilized city flowing with ideas, the arts, and elegance, where no one spit tobacco juice or defaced public property. They discovered beautiful clothing, delicious food, the art of dining ("The French dine to gratify, we to appease appetite," wrote John Sanderson). Paris had not only pleasures but professional attractions as well. Artists such as Samuel F.B. Morse, Whistler, Sargent, and Cassatt came to train. At a time when American medical education was fairly primitive, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and other prospective physicians studied at the Sorbonne’s vast hospitals and lecture halls—with tuition free to foreigners. Authors from Cooper to Stowe, Twain, and James sometimes took up residence. McCullough mixes famous and obscure names and delivers capsule biographies of everyone to produce a colorful parade of educated, Victorian-era American travelers and their life-changing experiences in Paris.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A highly readable and entertaining travelogue of a special sort, an interdisciplinary treat from a tremendously popular Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.... Highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) McCullough’s research is staggering to perceive, and the interpretation he lends to his material is impressive to behold.... Expect his latest book to ascend the best-seller lists and be given a place on the year-end best lists.
Booklist
(Starred review.) An ambitious, wide-ranging study of how being in Paris helped spark generations of American genius.... A gorgeously rich, sparkling patchwork, eliciting stories from diaries and memoirs to create the human drama McCullough depicts so well
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Greater Journey opens with a quotation by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens: “For we constantly deal with practical problems, with moulders, contractors, derricks, stonemen, trucks, rubbish, plasterers, and what-not-else, all while trying to soar into the blue.” How does this quotation set the stage for The Greater Journey? What kinds of “practical problems” did Americans in Paris face, and how did they manage to “soar into the blue?”
2. What were some of the challenges travelers faced on the journey from America to Paris? “Great as their journey had been by sea, a greater journey had begun, as they already sensed, and from it they were to learn more, and bring back more, of infinite value to themselves and their country than they yet knew.” What is the “greater journey” that these Americans began after their voyage across the ocean? Why do you think McCullough chose the title The Greater Journey for this book?
3. Describing Augustus Saint-Gaudens, McCullough writes, “he had something he was determined to accomplish, and thus became accomplished himself.” What were some of the reasons that Americans made the trip to Paris? What did they need to accomplish in Paris, and how did they become accomplished there?
4. Describe the role of women within the community of Americans in Paris. What unique problems did women face in the city during the 19th century? How did female students, artists, and wives write about their experiences in Paris, as compared to their male counterparts?
5. Describe the friendship between James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse. What seems to have drawn these men of different backgrounds and professions to each other? What kind of support did Cooper offer Morse during the creation of Gallery of the Louvre, and how did Morse include the Cooper family within the painting?
6. The painter George Healy sailed to Paris in the 1830s, and according to his granddaughter, “His love of France and the French never changed him from an out-and-out American.” Which of the other travelers within The Greater Journey would you also describe as out-and-out Americans? How did they express their patriotism while they lived overseas?
7. Consider the significance of letters and journals within the book. What kind of information does McCullough draw from historical letters and diaries? How would you compare the importance of letters and journals in the 19th century to the present day? How have issues of privacy, diplomacy, and record-keeping changed?
8. In The Greater Journey, we see France in political turmoil—Restoration, Franco-Prussian War, and Commune-led Paris—through the eyes of the young sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, medical student Mary Putnam, and the diplomat Elihu Washburne. What perspective on politics and violence does each of them offer? How do their motivations and opinions on war and revolution differ?
9. Oliver Wendell Holmes called medicine “the noblest of arts.” How is medical study portrayed in The Greater Journey? What advances in the profession does the book chronicle? What are some major differences between medical practice in 19th-century Paris and medicine as we know it today?
10. Compare the two painters who dominate the final chapters of The Greater Journey: Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. How were their lives and work similar, and how were they different?
11. How would you classify The Greater Journey—is it the history of a community, the history of a place, or both? What is McCullough’s particular style of narrating history? Which of McCullough’s “narrators”—the men and women who witnessed the history of Paris—provides the clearest view of his or her environment?
12. If you could tour Paris with any of the historical figures in The Greater Journey, who would it be? Would you want to explore the Louvre with Samuel Morse, discuss politics with Elihu Washburne, attend a concert with Louis Moreau Gottschalk, witness surgery with Elizabeth Blackwell, or appraise canvases with John Singer Sargent? Explain your answer.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The House I Loved
Tatiana de Rosnay, 2012
St. Martin's Press
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312593308
Summary
Paris, France: 1860’s. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moulding it into a “modern city.” The reforms will erase generations of history—but in the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand.
Rose Bazelet is determined to fight against the destruction of her family home until the very end; as others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement of the old house on rue Childebert, ignoring the sounds of change that come closer and closer each day. Attempting to overcome the loneliness of her daily life, she begins to write letters to Armand, her beloved late husband. And as she delves into the ritual of remembering, Rose is forced to come to terms with a secret that has been buried deep in her heart for thirty years.
The House I Loved is both a poignant story of one woman’s indelible strength, and an ode to Paris, where houses harbor the joys and sorrows of their inhabitants, and secrets endure in the very walls. (From the publisher.)
Read an excerpt
Author Bio
• Birth—September 28, 1961
• Where—Suburbs of Paris, France
• Education—B.A., University of East Anglia (UK)
• Currently—lives in Paris, France
Tatiana de Rosnay, born in the suburbs of Paris, is of English, French and Russian descent. Her father is French scientist Joël de Rosnay, her grandfather was painter Gaëtan de Rosnay. Tatiana's paternal great-grandmother was Russian actress Natalia Rachewskïa, director of the Leningrad Pushkin Theatre from 1925 to 1949.
Tatiana's mother is English, Stella Jebb, daughter of diplomat Gladwyn Jebb, and great-great-granddaughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer. Tatiana is also the niece of historian Hugh Thomas.
Tatiana was raised in Paris and then in Boston, when her father taught at MIT in the 70's. She moved to England in the early 1980s and obtained a Bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich. On her return to Paris in 1984, she was a press officer, then became a journalist and literary critic for Psychologies Magazine.
Since 1992, de Rosnay has published twelve novels in French and three in English. She has also worked on the series Family Affairs for which she has written two episodes with the screenwriter Pierre-Yves Lebert. The series was broadcasted on TF1 during the summer of 2000.
In 2006 de Rosnay published her most popular novel, Sarah's Key, selling over three million copies in French and almost two million in English. In 2009 the book was adapted into French cinema, under the same title by Serge Joncour, with Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia; the movie was converted to English in late 2011. She published A Secret Kept in 2009, Rose in 2011, and The House I Loved in 2012.
In January 2010, several French magazines issued a ranking of the top French novelists, placing de Rosnay at number eight. In January 2011, Le Figaro magazine published a ranking of the top ten most read French authors, positioning de Rosnay at fifth. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In her quietly elegant 11th novel, the bestselling author of Sarah’s Key again explores the idea of home as both sanctuary and embodiment of history… [Rose’s] letters, poetic and honest, reveal a world soon to be destroyed by progress. A mesmerizing look at how the homes and neighborhoods we occupy hold not only our memories but our secrets as well.
People
Parisian Rose Bazelet is a woman in mourning, for her husband and son, both long dead; for her distant daughter; and because of Napoleon III’s ambitious urban planning agenda in the mid-19th century, an enormous project that could destroy her beloved family estate. With the planners already leveling nearby houses, Rose hides in her cellar and writes letters to her deceased husband about her struggle to save their home. As the letters continue, and destruction grows near, Rose remembers her married life. With the planners “rattling about at the entrance” and taking her friend Alexandrine, who has come to rescue her, by surprise, Rose reveals to her late husband the dark secret she could never bring herself to tell him when he was alive. Though bestseller de Rosnay’s epistolary narrative is slow to build, it’s fraught with drama, as the Sarah’s Key author aims to create an immersive experience in a hugely transformative period in Paris (see Paul La Farge’s Haussmann, or the Distinction), when the city was torn between modernity and tradition. In Rose, one gets the clear sense of a woman losing her place in a changing world, but this isn’t enough to make up for a weak narrative hung entirely on the eventual reveal of a long-buried secret.
Publishers Weekly
A strong marketing campaign and interest from fans of de Rosnay's popular Sarah's Key will undoubtedly spur demand for the title. However, many readers will likely be disappointed by de Rosnay's latest Paris novel, which relies more on telling than showing. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Mankato
Library Journal
Those who enjoyed Sarah’s Key will recognize de Rosnay’s love for her native France and appreciate the poignancy and tenacity of her characters.
Booklist
Amid Baron Haussmann's demolition of her quartier, a woman refuses to leave her home in de Rosnay's latest (Sarah's Key, 2008, etc.).... [S]he writes a letter...reflecting on her life, and attempting to parse her own motivations. All tends toward the revelation of a secret she has confessed to no one. De Rosnay's delicacy and the flavor of her beloved Paris are everywhere in this brief but memorable book. Replete with treats, particularly for Paris-lovers—indeed for anyone wedded to a special place.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. One of the central elements of the novel is Rose’s deep and abiding love for the house in
which she spent her married life, which becomes apparent from her many memories tied
to every room. What does the house represent for Rose and how did it change her life?
By the end of the novel, it seems as though Rose views her house as the most important
thing in her life. Although others would see the house as a possession, do you think
Rose views it that way? Have you ever had this experience of loving a place or a thing as
deeply as if it were a living person?
2. Baron Haussmann was described by his opponents as the "Atilla of the straight line"
and "the Ripper Baron", nicknames that Rose approved of. But Alexandrine, the flower
girl, does not agree, and has another point of view, that of a necessary progress that Paris
badly needed. How do Rose's and Alexandrine's opinions differ and why? Whose do you
feel closest to?
3. Rose loves her son Baptiste deeply, despite the fact that he was associated with an
extremely difficult time of her life – and more than she seems to love their natural
daughter, Violette. Why do you think this is? Do you think it’s true to life or even
possible to love someone (or something) who comes out of intense hardship? Why or
why not? Have you ever experienced or seen relationships like those which Rose has with
each of her children?
4. Secrets are an important theme throughout The House I Loved. By the end of the novel,
we learn that Rose has kept a devastating secret for her entire life from everyone she
holds dear. How do you think it affects a person to keep such an important secret for so
long? How did it affect Rose? Have you ever had a similar experience?
5. In a sense, Rose’s letters to her husband throughout the novel are her way of finally
revealing her secret. Do you see any purpose in her telling the secret at this point in her
life, with her husband already gone? Does it change or help her? And if so, how?
6. Between the years of 1852 and 1870, Napoleon III and Baron Haussman remodeled
major sections of Paris in an attempt to bring the city into the “modern” era. Did you
know anything about this major period of time in Paris’s history before reading this
novel? What surprised or interested you about how Tatiana recreated that era?
7. How do you feel that Rose's secret past (the episode she hides from her husband and
entourage) relates to what Haussmann, the "ripper Baron,” is doing to Paris? How exactly
does Rose, in the final pages, describe her personal ordeal and compare it to Haussmann's
tearing down of her home?
8. Flowers play an important part in this novel. Discuss what Rose learns through the
flower-shop and Alexandrine's job as a florist. Pick out the rare roses and their names,
and how Tatiana de Rosnay uses the symbol of roses and flowers throughout the book.
9. Alexandrine the flower-girl, and Gilbert, the ragpicker, are close to Rose, in different
ways. Discuss the differences and similiarities of their relationship with Rose, of their
secret past, of how they each try to help Rose.
10. The elegant Baronne de Vresse fascinates Rose with her fashionable crinolines and the
balls she attends in Paris and Biarritz. Rose loves clothes and fashion, yet she strongly
disapproves of the fashionable Emperor and Empress. Why do you think this is so? How
does it speak to who Rose is as a character?
11. Rose discovers the joys of reading late in life. How and when does this happen? What is
the first book she falls in love with? Who are the authors she most enjoys reading? Have
you read them? How did you fall under the spell of reading?
12. If you have read Sarah's Key and A Secret Kept, Tatiana's previous novels, can you pick
up a couple of themes that are common to all three books?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Lone Wolf
Jodi Pioult, 2012
Simon & Schuster
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439102749
Summary
A life hanging in the balance...a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family secrets, love, and letting go.
In the wild, when a wolf knows its time is over, when it knows it is of no more use to its pack, it may sometimes choose to slip away. Dying apart from its family, it stays proud and true to its nature. Humans aren’t so lucky.
Luke Warren has spent his life researching wolves. He has written about them, studied their habits intensively, and even lived with them for extended periods of time. In many ways, Luke understands wolf dynamics better than those of his own family. His wife, Georgie, has left him, finally giving up on their lonely marriage. His son, Edward, twenty-four, fled six years ago, leaving behind a shattered relationship with his father. Edward understands that some things cannot be fixed, though memories of his domineering father still inflict pain. Then comes a frantic phone call: Luke has been gravely injured in a car accident with Edward’s younger sister, Cara.
Suddenly everything changes: Edward must return home to face the father he walked out on at age eighteen. He and Cara have to decide their father’s fate together. Though there’s no easy answer, questions abound: What secrets have Edward and his sister kept from each other? What hidden motives inform their need to let their father die...or to try to keep him alive? What would Luke himself want? How can any family member make such a decision in the face of guilt, pain, or both? And most importantly, to what extent have they all forgotten what a wolf never forgets: that each member of a pack needs the others, and that sometimes survival means sacrifice?
Another tour de force by Picoult, Lone Wolf brilliantly describes the nature of a family: the love, protection, and strength it can offer—and the price we might have to pay for those gifts. What happens when the hope that should sustain a family is the very thing tearing it apart? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1966
• Where—Nesconset (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.Ed., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Hanover, New Hampshire
Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has approximately 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.
Early life and education
Picoult was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island in New York State; when she was 13, her family moved to New Hampshire. Even as a child, Picoult had a penchant for writing stories: she wrote her first story— "The Lobster Which Misunderstood"—when she was five.
While still in college—she studied writing at Princeton University—Picoult published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. To pay the bills, after graduation she worked at a variety of jobs, including copy writing and editing textbooks; she even taught eighth-grade English and attained a Masters in Education from Harvard University.
In 1989, Picoult married Timothy Warren Van Leer, whom she met in college, and while pregnant with their first child, wrote her first book. Song of the Humpbacked Whale, her literary debut, came out in 1992. Two more children followed, as did a string of bestseller novels. All told, Picoult has more than 20 books to her name.
Writing
At an earlier time in her life, Picoult believed the tranquility of family life in small-town New England offered little fodder for writing; the truly interesting stuff of fiction happened elsewhere. Ironically, it is small-town life that has ended up providing the settings for Picoult's novels. Within the cozy surroundings of family and friends, Picoult weaves complex webs of relationships that strain, even tear apart, under stress. She excels at portraying ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Disoriented by some accident of chance, they stumble, whirl, and attempt to regain a footing in what was once their calm, ordered world.
Nor has Picoult ever shied from tackling difficult, controversial issues: school shooting, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teen suicide, and racism. She approaches painful topics with sympathy—and her characters with respect—while shining a light on individual struggles. Her legions of readers have loved and rewarded her for that compassion—and her novels have been consistent bestsellers.
Personal life
Picoult and her husband Timothy live in Hanover, New Hampshire. They have three children and a handful of pets. (Adapted from a 2003 Barnes and Noble interview and from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)
Book Reviews
Picoult tackles this sensitive subject with her usual flawless research and convincing characters ... as is Picoult's signature style, the reader is left just as torn as the characters over the best solution. Thought-provoking and gripping.
SHE
Jodi Picoult takes a controversial and provocative subject and uses it as a backdrop to a touching and emotional drama. Her characters are believable and well drawn and the book is all the more powerful for it.
Sunday Express (UK)
You can always rely on Jodi Picoult to spin a riveting read around an issue of our times.
Good Housekeeping
Picoult returns with two provocative questions: can a human join a wolf pack, and who has the right to make end-of-life decisions? Luke Warren, a vital free spirit, has devoted himself to understanding wolf behavior, to the point of having once abandoned his family to live with wolves. Now divorced and raising his 17-year-old daughter, Cara, near his wolf compound, Luke sustains a traumatic brain injury in an accident. His ex-wife, Georgie, remarried to a lawyer, summons Cara’s brother, Edward, from Thailand, where he’s lived for years alienated from his family, who assume the estrangement stems from his father’s rejection of Edward’s homosexuality. Cara wants to keep her father on life support; Edward struggles with resentment but believes his father wouldn’t want to exist in a vegetative state. As Cara and Edward navigate their own conflicts and Luke languishes in a coma, Picoult folds in mesmerizing excerpts of Luke’s book about life with the wolves. There are no surprises, as Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper) as usual probes intriguing matters of the heart while introducing her fans to subjects they might not otherwise explore. You can always count on Picoult for a terrific page-turner about a compelling subject.
Publishers Weekly
Luke Warren has spent decades learning the inner workings of wolf packs. Yet his relationship with his own family is strained. Divorced from his wife and estranged from his son, Edward, Luke remains close to his daughter, Cara. When the two are involved in a car accident that leaves Luke in a coma, Edward must return home to make important medical decisions regarding life-sustaining measures. With facts that aren't always clear and emotional baggage getting in the way, Cara and Edward find themselves on opposite sides regarding what is best for their father. Verdict: Picoult (Sing You Home) once again has written a compelling story involving current issues and family drama with a unique twist. The inclusion of Luke's relationship with wolves adds an element of depth, and details like these are why readers find Picoult's books impossible to put down. Her many fans won't be disappointed. —Madeline Solien, Deerfield P.L., IL
Library Journal
The thoroughly researched wolf lore is fascinating; the rest of the story is a more conventional soap opera of hospital, and later courtroom histrionics. Readers will care less about Luke's prospects for survival than they will about the outcome for his wild companions.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Edward and Cara strongly disagree over whether to keep Luke on life support. Which character did you think was most likely to know Luke’s wishes? Did your opinion change over the course of the novel?
2. What emotions, such as guilt and anger, influence Edward and Cara’s decisions about how to handle their father’s coma? In your opinion, how much weight should the paper Luke signed before he went to Canada have carried? Should Cara’s age have prevented her from being next-of-kin?
3. Cara sees her father as a hero whereas to Edward he is all too human. Why was Cara so much closer to her father than Edward was? Did this portrayal of a family’s dynamic remind you of any relationships in your own life?
4. At the scene of the accident, an EMT tells Cara that if it wasn’t for her, her father might not be alive. She thinks: “Later, I will wonder if that comment is the reason I did everything I did…Because I know her words couldn’t be farther from the truth.” (p. 8) When you learn what Cara means, does it justify her actions, including accusing her brother of attempted murder? If she hadn’t felt such guilt, do you think she would have been less opposed to ending her father’s life? Why or why not?
5. What motivates Edward to arrange for the termination of his father’s life after Cara says, “I can’t do this. I just want it to be over.”? (p. 143) Why does he overlook her earlier objections? How did you react to the scene in which Edward pulls the plug on the ventilator?
6. Luke is the most enigmatic character in the book—a man in a coma, a man torn between the wolf and human world. How do his chapters balance what you learn about him from the other characters? How would the novel and your understanding of Luke and his relationship with wolves have been different without those chapters?
7. Georgie knows Luke is unusual from the moment she meets him, and she’s attracted to his rawness and vigor. Was it fair of Georgie to expect Luke to live a conventional life? Was it unfair of Luke to expect Georgie to sacrifice her own hopes?
8. Luke seems torn between his love for his wolf family and for his human family; and ultimately his human family suffers. Do you think he loved his wolves more, as Edward believed? Do you think he ever could have found a happy medium between the two worlds?
9. Consider the role each member of the Warren family plays in the family unit both before and after the family dissolves. How does the family compare to a wolf pack, where “everyone has a position in it; everyone’s expected to pull his own weight.”? (p. 14) Do you think the Warrens know and understood each other as well as the wolves seem to know each other? Is there one person to blame for the family’s break-up? What could the family have done differently to prevent the collapse?
10. Discuss the Warrens’ family issues that have long gone unspoken or misunderstood, such as Edward’s reason for leaving. What other issues have the Warren family avoided? What were the repercussions of doing so? How would you characterize the way they relate?
11. Why do you think Edward kept his reason for leaving a secret for so long? When he reveals the truth in court, how do Cara and Georgie react? Do his revelations about Luke have a bearing on the hearing?
12. Georgie says of her children, “You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings.” (p. 271) Do you agree? Discuss why and how she favors each of her children at different points in the novel. How does it affect her relationship with Joe to be on the other side of the aisle during the hearing?
13. The moment when Luke opens his eyes and seems to follow Cara is a compelling one, but Dr. Saint-Clare explains that it is merely a reflex. Did you agree with Cara’s perception or the doctor’s? Did it change how you felt about Luke’s chances?
14. Picoult writes: “Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions inside the walls of a hospital.” (p. 70) How do Cara, Georgie, and Edward’s experiences give truth to this statement? Did Dr. Saint-Clare’s testimony affect your belief in the kind of medical miracles Cara hoped for?
15. Ultimately, both the advocate and the judge reach the same conclusions about whether Luke would want to live or die. After reading the chapters from Luke’s point of view, what do you think he would have wanted? In a situation such as this, can there be an answer that is wholly right or wholly wrong? Discuss.
(Questions issued by publisher.)