The Orphan Master's Son
Adam Johnson, 2012
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812982626
Summary
Winner, 2013 Pulitizer Prize
An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.
Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”
Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master’s Son ushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today’s greatest writers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—July 12, 1967
• Where—South Dakota, USA
• Where—Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., Arizona State University; M.F.A.,
McNeese State University; Ph.D., Florida State
University
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Adam Johnson, an American novelist and short story writer, was born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona. He earned a BA in Journalism from Arizona State University in 1992; a MFA from the writing program at McNeese State University, where he was a classmate of the writer Neil Connelly, in 1996; and a PhD in English from Florida State University in 2000.
Johnson is currently a San Francisco writer and associate professor in creative writing at Stanford University. He founded the Stanford Graphic Novel Project and was named "one of the nation's most influential and imaginative college professors" by Playboy Magazine.
Writing
His 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, was called by New York Times reviewer,Michiko Kakutani, "a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice." Johnson's interest in the topic arose from his sensitivity to the language of propaganda, wherever it occurs.
He also wrote the short-story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award in 2003. His work has been published in Esquire, Harper's Magazine, Tin House and The Paris Review, as well as Best New American Voices and The Best American Short Stories. His work focuses on characters at the edge of society for whom isolation and disconnection are nearly permanent conditions. Michiko Kakutani, described the central theme "running through his tales is also a melancholy melody of longing and loss: a Salingeresqe sense of adolescent alienation and confusion, combined with an acute awareness of the randomness of life and the difficulty of making and sustaining connections."
According to Daniel Mendelsohn, writing for New York Magazine, “Johnson's oh-so-slightly futuristic flights of fancy, his vaguely Blade Runner–esque visions of a cluttered, anaerobic American culture, illustrate something very real, very current: the way we must embrace the unknown, take risks, in order to give flavor and meaning to life.” A strain of absurdity also runs through is work, causing it to be described as "a funky new science fiction that was part irony and part pure dread." "Teen Sniper" is about young sniper prodigy enlisted by the Palo Alto police department to suppress the disgruntled workers of Silicon Valley. "The Canadanaut" follows a remote team of Canadian weapons developers who race to beat the Americans to the Moon.
Awards
Johnson has received a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Swarthout Writing Award, a Kingsbury Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. He was named Debut Writer of the Year in 2002 by Amazon.com, and in 2003 he was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series. He was nominated for a Young Lions Award from the New York Public Library and received scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers' conferences. In 2010, he won the Gina Berriault Literary Award. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Johnson does an agile job of combining fablelike elements with vivid emotional details to create a story that has both the boldness of a cartoon and the nuance of a deeply felt portrait. He captures the grotesque horrors that Jun Do is involved in, or witness to, even as he gives us a visceral sense of the world that his characters inhabit…In making his hero, and the nightmare he lives through, come so thoroughly alive, Mr. Johnson has written a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That's the genius of The Orphan Master's Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable…Johnson's book is an audacious act of imagination: an intimate narrative about one of the most closed nations on Earth…Yet the setting is precisely rendered…I haven't liked a new novel this much in years.
David Igantius - Washington Post
Adam Johnson's remarkable novel "The Orphan Master’s Son" is set in North Korea, an entire nation that has conformed to the fictions spun by a dictator and his inner circle…Mr. Johnson is a wonderfully flexible writer who can pivot in a matter of lines from absurdity to atrocity…We don't know what's really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel.
Wall Street Journal
Startling…Johnson's carefully layered story feels authentic...[He] writes light-footed prose, barely allowing harrowing glimpses of atrocity to register before accelerating onward. He resists the temptation to turn his subject matter into comic fodder, but never ignores the absurdity, provoking laughter with jagged edges that tends to die in your throat.
Newsday
The death of Kim Jong Il couldn't have come at a better time for novelist Adam Johnson. "The Orphan Master’s Son" is a richly textured political thriller about the hidden world of North Korea with all of its misery, violence and defiant acts of love under impossible circumstances. Stunning and evocative imagery abounds on every page.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Starred review.) Johnson’s novel accomplishes the seemingly impossible: an American writer has masterfully rendered the mysterious world of North Korea with the soul and savvy of a native, from its orphanages and its fishing boats to the kitchens of its high-ranking commanders. While oppressive propaganda echoes throughout, the tone never slides into caricature; if anything, the story unfolds with astounding empathy for those living in constant fear of imprisonment—or worse—but who manage to maintain their humanity against all odds. The book traces the journey of Jun Do, who for years lives according to the violent dictates of the state, as a tunnel expert who can fight in the dark, a kidnapper, radio operator, tenuous hero, and foreign dignitary before eventually taking his fate into his own hands. In one of the book’s most poignant moments, a government interrogator, who tortures innocent citizens on a daily basis, remembers his own childhood and the way in which his father explained the inexplicable: ‘...we must act alone on the outside, while on the inside, we would be holding hands.’ In this moment and a thousand others like it, Johnson juxtaposes the vicious atrocities of the regime with the tenderness of beauty, love, and hope.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Readers who enjoy a fast-paced political thriller will welcome this wild ride through the amazingly conflicted world that exists within the heavily guarded confines of North Korea. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] fantastical, careening tale…Informed by extensive research and travel to perhaps the most secretive nation on earth, Johnson has created a remarkable novel that encourages the willing suspension of disbelief.…Johnson winningly employs different voices, with the propagandizing national radio station serving as a mad Greek chorus. Part adventure, part coming-of-age tale, and part romance, The Orphan Master's Son is a triumph on every level.
Booklist
The Orphan Master runs an orphanage...and Jun Do may have been the only non-orphan in the place, but that doesn't keep his father, a man of influence, from mistreating him as merrily as if he weren't one of his own flesh and blood. For this is the land of Kim Jong Il, the unhappy Potemkin Village land of North Korea, where even Josef Stalin would have looked around and thought the whole business excessive. Johnson's tale hits the ground running, and fast.... The reader will have to grant the author room to accommodate the show-offishness, which seems to say, with the rest of the book, that in a world run by a Munchkin overlord like Kim, nothing can be too surreal. Indeed, once Fearless Leader speaks, he's a model of weird clarity: "But let's speak of our shared status as nuclear nations another time. Now let's have some blues." Ambitious and very well written, despite the occasional overreach.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Orphan Master's Son:
1. What makes Pak Jun Do believe he is the son of the Orphan Master? Is he right? How does a child become an orphan, what are they used for, and why are they despised by North Koreans?
2. What is the thematic significance of the Americans mistaking Jun Do as "John Doe"? What does the appellation "John Doe" mean to Americans? What does it suggest about Jun Do himself, as well as the millions of people who live under the North Korean flag?
3. How would you describe life in North Korea for its citizens? What do you find most horrifying about the way in which Adam Johnson portrays that society? How would you—or any of us—fare under such circumstances?
4. What do you make of the various characters who express their horror at life in America and the American's lack of protection by their own government? Why would North Koreans prefer their life to that of Americans?
5. Talk about the treatment of women in North Korea? What actually happens to beautiful young women who are born in the provinces? What is their fate?
6. Jun Do tells the Second Mate's wife that he can no longer distinguish dream from reality: that the Second Mate was devoured by sharks or that he floated away on a raft with only a radio. The wife tells Jun Do to "choose the beautiful story." Then the following exchange takes place:
'But isn't it more scary to be utterly alone upon the waters, completely cut off from everyone, no friends, no family, no direction, nothing but a radio for solace?'
She touched the side of his face. 'That's your story,' she said. 'You're trying to tell me your story, aren't you?... Oh, you poor boy. You poor little boy.... Come in off the water, things can be different. You don't need a radio. I'm right here. You don't have to choose to be alone.'
a) What does she mean? Is Jun Do telling his own story?
b) Why is Jun Do more frightened to be "alone upon the waters" than to be eaten by sharks?
c) Why does Jun Do miss the Junma, the captain, and his radio?
d) What is the symbolic significance of his radio work...and the fact he does it at night?
7. Even though Kim Jong Il is offstage more than not, he is ever present in the lives of the characters. How does Adam Johnson portray Dear Leader in this novel? Does Johnson lend him psychological depth? Or is he a cartoonish, one-dimensional villain?
8. The book is disjointed as it shifts perspective, time periods, and even genres. Did you find the structure confusing? The author has described his book as a "trauma narrative." What does he mean?
9. In his days on tunnel patrol, Jun Do thinks to himself...
Never use your imagination. The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.
a) How might this statement be considered a thematic concern throughout the novel?
b) What does it mean for individuals who are told not to use their imagination?
c) What does it mean for art or music or literature?
10. The author's wit is on display in The Orphan Master's Son. Were you disturbed by Johnson's humor to convey the grim horrors of life under the DPRK? Or does the author's use comedy, even farce, resemble Charles Dickens in it's ability to highlight a society's malignant insanity?
11. The book converts the second-half of the novel into an adventurous, almost lunatic, quest. Does the second half seem far-fetched to you? Does it matter?
12. How would you describe this book: thriller, coming-of-age, romance, satire?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)
A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
Joshilyn Jackson, 2012
Grand Central Publishing
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446582353
Summary
A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family.
Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager.
But it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past—and who will stop at nothing to defend their future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Jackson's signature style-the feisty, bighearted voice of Gods in Alabama and Backseat Saints-propels this funny, dark whodunit, where strong women who've made bad choices band together to come out on top.
Melissa Ruggieri - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[There are] hundreds of moving parts in the machinery of Jackson's intricate mystery, all deliciously unraveled one tantalizing clue at a time.
Gena Webb - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A quirky mystery that serves up a delicious blend of likeable characters, plot twists and life as seen through the eyes of three remarkable women in a Southern family, namely Mosey, Ginny, and Liza. The dialogue is authentic and the writing insightful and unexpectedly witty.
Larry Cox - Tucson Citizen
The Slocumb women suffer from an unfortunate curse: every 15 years something bad happens. Ginny gave birth to Liza when she was 15. And Liza had Mosey when she was 15. Now it’s Mosey who’s 15, and she’s nervous. But the curse strikes in a different form, bringing a stroke to Liza that renders her mute and crippled, leaving her husband “Big” to care for her. Wanting to put a pool in the yard for Liza’s water therapy, Ginny has a willow uprooted, unearthing the bones of a baby—Liza’s baby. This macabre discovery sends Mosey, Ginny, and Big in search of answers about the baby and Mosey’s identity. Their quest, told in alternating points-of-view among all main characters, uncovers an old feud between Liza and best friend Melissa, an illicit affair, the vengeance of the thwarted party, and drug addiction long hidden. Along the way Mosey puts her life in danger and learns a thing or two about family. Jackson’s newest (after Backseat Saints) is highly immersive, evoking the suffocation of rural Mississippi and using a teen pregnancy mystery to create a compelling page-turner. While Jackson doesn’t entirely avoid clichés, the care that she’s taken in developing the relationships between the Slocumb women makes up for it.
Publishers Weekly
Jackson (Backseat Saints) has written an unusual Southern family saga revolving around three generations of lonely, hardscrabble Slocumb women. Grandmother Ginny is the glue that holds them together when her ex-drug addict daughter, Liza, has a severe stroke, leaving her voiceless except for a few vowel sounds. Fifteen-year-old granddaughter Mosey is the same age her mother and grandmother were when they had their daughters, but Mosey isn't like her forebears; she's scarcely been kissed by a boy. When Ginny decides to pull out the old willow tree in the backyard to make room for a pool to use in rehabilitating Liza, a shallow grave is uncovered, revealing a small skeleton dressed in tattered baby clothes and unleashing a series of events for which Liza seems to have an explanation—but she can't tell. The story is told in the alternating voices of the women as the mystery unfolds. Verdict: Liza, as the unreliable narrator, is used to perfection in this warm family story that teeters between emotional highs and lows, laughter and tears. Book groups will eat this up. —Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Mesmerizing tale of a family coping with the revelation of a secret that will change their lives.... Jackson's most absorbing book yet, a lush, rich read with three very different but equally compelling characters at its core.
Booklist
Jackson (Backseat Saints, 2010, etc.) sticks with her specialty—plucky Southern women who overcome male ill treatment from their past—in this novel about a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter who confront a suddenly uncovered family secret.... Snappy dialogue with a Southern twang, spiritual uplift and undeniably likable characters—"Quirky Cute" at its best.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. One of the opening scenes in A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty depicts Tyler Baines chopping down the Slocumb willow tree. What does this tree symbolize for Big? For Liza? For Mosey?
2. On page 70, Mosey realizes she isn’t who she thought she was. At first, she feels liberated. Then she feels confused and lost. How is she like Liza and Big? What makes her different? Do you think a child takes on traits like compassion, humor, and good sense from her biological parents, or do you think that she learns these from the people who raise her?
3. Several men in this novel cheat on their spouses (Coach, Lawrence), but the women cheat on one another in a different way. What kind of emotional betrayals show up in their friendships, and in their families? Who do you think is the most loyal person in this story?
4. Though Liza and Melissa were inseparable when they were young, Big believes that Noveen was a better friend to Liza than Melissa ever was. Patti turns out to be a wonderful friend to Mosey. What have the Duckins women given to Liza and Mosey? How was Melissa different?
5. One theme in A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is belonging. On page 224, Big says, “Bogo wasn’t the only stray that Mosey had adopted for us all recently.” Who do you think are the “strays” in this story? When do they find a home?
6. When Mosey enters Liza’s tree house and sees her old Moomin books covered in Magic Marker, she says, “If I had doubted for a second this place was Liza’s, I didn’t doubt it now” (p. 245). Have you ever found a secret place or a secret box that belonged to someone you love? What part of this person did you find there?
7. Was Big smart to keep the details of her family crisis from Lawrence? If she had shared more with him, do you think he could have helped her, or protected Mosey?
8. Did Liza do the right thing by taking Mosey from her mother when she was small? Would you still feel that way if Mosey had been a Duckins or a Richardson instead? Why?
9. Big and Liza are determined to keep Mosey from getting too close to boys. Do you think they’re overreacting? What would you do to keep your daughter from making the same mistakes you made?
10. When something bad happens, Big, Liza, and Mosey often respond with action—though sometimes their approaches aren’t quite ethical. Does Liza break Lawrence’s ex-wife’s plates on purpose, or was it an accident? Did you enjoy it a little, since Sandy cheated on Lawrence and lashed out at Big? Do you think Claire Richardson was at all justified in her attacks on Liza? On Big? Do you blame her less because she lost both her daughters? Though it was wrong of Big to throw bricks at the church’s windows, do you think it was justified, given how she was treated by the church community? How does knowing the pain each character has been through change the way you respond to her actions?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
An Available Man
Hilma Wolitizer, 2012
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345527547
Summary
In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around.
When Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish sixty-two-year-old science teacher, is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. Even an attractive married neighbor offers herself to him.
The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching. But then his stepchildren surprise him by placing a personal ad in The New York Review of Books on his behalf. Soon the letters flood in, and Edward is torn between his loyalty to Bee’s memory and his growing longing for connection. Gradually, reluctantly, he begins dating (“dating after death,” as one correspondent puts it), and his encounters are variously startling, comical, and sad. Just when Edward thinks he has the game figured out, a chance meeting proves that love always arrives when it’s least expected.
With wit, warmth, and a keen understanding of the heart, An Available Man explores aspects of loneliness and togetherness, and the difference in the options open to men and women of a certain age. Most of all, the novel celebrates the endurance of love, and its thrilling capacity to bloom anewb. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1930
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Manhattan, New York, and on
Long Island, New York
Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including Summer Reading, The Doctor’s Daughter, Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love, as well as a nonfiction book, The Company of Writers. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University. Author Meg Wolitzer is her daughter. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[W]onderful…As dark as this material might sound, it isn't. Wolitzer's vision of the world, for all its sorrow, is often hilarious and always compassionate.
Nancy Kline - New York Times Book Review
[F]unny, wise and touching…Wolitzer writes so well and knows so much that her books combine absurdity with poignancy in a deft and captivating way.
Rive Lindbergh - Washington Post
“[Hilma Wolitzer is an] American literary treasure.... Wolitzer uses her gift for her chosen medium, long-form fiction, to deliver a message far broader than this deceptively accessible novel first seems to address. An Available Man is not just a cautionary tale of geriatric loneliness and sex. It’s a meditation - and then, a breathtaking roller-coaster ride, and then, a meditation again - on what we lose when we allow loss and longing to make us unavailable to ourselves.
Boston Globe
Impressively readable… Wolitzer is such a capable storyteller. …(S)ucceeds, precisely because the writer understands that it's not a childish insistence on finding everything delightful but the full complexity of experience that gives a romance, late-life or otherwise, its real beauty.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Families are Wolitzer’s turf, and she’s an observant and often humorous chronicler of domesticity and the stuff that comes with it: illness, loss, boredom, crankiness, and, on good days, love.
Publishers Weekly
Heartbreaking, maddening, comical, and poignant…This sweet story of a man’s diving back into the dating pool at an older age will especially appeal to readers in that demographic.
Library Journal
Wolitzer [writes] of the pain of losing a partner and its aftermath...with remarkable insight, grace, and humor. A warm, keenly incisive view of life’s vicissitudes by a writer too seldom heard from.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. There are so many themes in this novel (romantic love, family relationships, loneliness, bereavement, forgiveness, etc.). Which one resonated with you the most?
2. Why do you think there’s such a dearth of “available men” above a certain age? Do you think society places different expectations on women and men as they age?
3. What do you think contributed to the success of Edward and Bee’s marriage? What did you make of Edward’s difficulty coping after Bee’s death?
4. Edward’s family and friends conspire to help him find a new love. But Olga has chosen loneliness rather than being with the wrong person. Is being part of a couple best for everyone?
5. Why do you think Julie felt more comfortable going to Edward with her dating issues and other problems than to her biological father, Bruce Silver?
6. Do you think Laurel’s mental state absolves her for the way she treated Edward at the end of their first love affair, and for her unsettling persistence when she comes back into his life? Does Laurel deserve the way Edward keeps her at arm’s length?
7. Were you surprised by who Edward ends up falling in love with? Who were you rooting for?
8. When Edward goes to the different members of his family with the news that he’s fallen in love, their reactions are not what he expects. Why do you think that is?
9. Is there anyone in your life with whom you would have liked to set Edward up?
10. How would you feel if someone put up a personal ad for you as Edward’s stepchildren did for him?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)
Sipping From the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt
Jean Naggar, 2011
Amazon Encore
380 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781612181417
Summary
A memoir of the vanished worlds of an unusual childhood.
Born into a prominent, sophisticated Jewish family who spent time in Europe and lived in the Middle East, author Jean Naggar tells in this coming-of-age memoir the story of her protected youth in an exotic, multicultural milieu. To Naggar, her childhood seemed a magical time that would never come to an end.
But in 1956, Egyptian President Nasser’s nationalizing of the Suez Canal set into motion events that would change her life forever. An enchanted way of life suddenly ends from multinational hostilities, and her closeknit, extended family is soon scattered far and wide. Naggar’s own family moves to London where she finishes her schooling and is swept into adulthood and the challenge of new horizons in America.
Speaking for a different wave of immigrants whose Sephardic origins highlight the American Jewish story through an unfamiliar lens, Naggar traces her personal journey through lost worlds and difficult transitions, exotic locales, and strong family values. The story resonates for all in this poignant exploration of the innocence of childhood in a world breaking apart. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 5, 1937
• Where—Alexandria, Egypt
• Raised—Cairo, Egypt; Brighton, England, UK
• Education—B.A., London University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA
Jean Naggar was born Jean Mosseri in Alexandria, Egypt on December 5th, 1937. She grew up in Cairo and attended the Gezira Preparatory School and the English School in Heliopolis before going to boarding school at Roedean School, Brighton, England.
She and her family left Egypt in 1957 following the international Suez crisis. She attended Westfield College at London University and was awarded a BA Hons. degree from London University in 1960.
In 1962 she married Serge Naggar and moved to New York City where, in 1978, she founded the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc., (JVNLA).
Jean and Serge are the parents of three grown children and grandmother of seven.
Her son, Alan Naggar, is an actor, director and theatrical producer in California.
Her son, David Naggar, works at Amazon.com in charge of digital Kindle content. He moved there after 16 years in various executive positions at Random House followed by a year as President of iAmplify, an internet start-up focused on digital content and distribution.
Her daughter, Jennifer Naggar Weltz, is her partner in the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. Jennifer runs the financial and administrative side of the business while also operating as agent of her own list and as rights director for the agency. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
An intriguing way of life that no longer exists. Glamorous, exciting, filled with the sophisticated life of a Jewish family living in Europe and the Middle East, Naggar documents times of elegant lifestyles, to the tumultuous struggles of war. The book is beautifully written, with vivid descriptions of homes, meals, glamorous clothing and social events while living in Egypt, later on in England, and finally in New York City. The history of this extended family is a most interesting look at a loving, religious, educated culture. And like every family, there is passionate love and loss, but always there is the undercurrent of delight and an indomitable will to do more than just survive.
US Review of Books
Discussion Questions
1. In the beginning of the book, Jean sees a black snake in the garden. What does the snake symbolize? How does the discovery of the snake affect the tone of the story?
2. Early on, Jean talks about her Auntie Helen and her ties to Israel and the Zionist movement. Though they lived in the same house, Jean was never aware of her aunt's Israeli connections until later. What does this reveal about Jean's childhood and her understanding of the larger forces around her?
3. Jean appears to be somewhat conflicted about marriage, as there are many instances in her family history of women who have been robbed of an education, and even a childhood, by marriage. Yet, as a teenage girl, she longs to get married and is distraught when she is told that she cannot marry her first love. How have the marriages of the women before her shaped Jean's understanding of the institution of marriage?
4. The narrator describes the celebration of Passover dinner in rich and abundant detail. Discuss the irony of celebrating the exodus of the Jews of Pharaoh’s Egypt for this particular family, whose lives are torn apart by their own exodus during the Suez Crisis. How does this represent the unease between Egypt and its Jewish population?
5. The theme of isolation comes up several times throughout the narrative. Jean and her siblings are isolated from the adult world in their nursery, and the family compound, complete with its own synagogue isolates them from the rest of Cairo. How is this isolation a metaphor for the Jews’ relationship with Egypt and the larger Arab world?
6. Though Jean considers Egypt to be her home, her parents send her to school in Britain and she grows up speaking English, French and Italian. In light of Egypt's colonial past, how does her education affect her ties to her homeland? How do her schooling and her upbringing shape her later in life?
7. Several people in the memoir barely escape death: Jean's great-great grandfather Ezekiel leaves an inn in the middle of the night after hearing a voice in a dream and escapes a massacre; Bert, the driver, avoids a bombing when he brings cough medicine to Jean’s Uncle Ellis, and Jean herself changes flights, thus avoiding being on a plane that crashes. Do you think this recurring theme of near-death suggests that the author believes she cheated death by getting out of Egypt?
8. How does personal spirituality, as opposed to religion, mold the lives of the Mosseri clan from both an ethnic and traditional standpoint? What other cultural influences play into the author’s and her family’s belief in fate, the power of prayer and their various superstitions?
9. Jean describes her overprotective family as keeping her “in stasis, waiting for life to happen, sensing powerful darknesses around me but never touching them.” Referring to the Suez Crisis that forced their exodus, she says “The moment when my parents' world shattered was also the moment that set me free.“ How was she set free by leaving Egypt?
10. After Jean's family leaves Egypt, she moves to the UK and eventually to New York, where she goes on to have a successful career as a literary agent. How might her life have been different had she stayed in Egypt?
11. At the end of the book, Jean is talking to her grandchildren about making kaak, a traditional Arabic dish. How does food function in the book as a way to tie the present generations to the past?
12. What does the family's relationship with their Egyptian Muslim driver, Osta Hussein, whom Jean describes as 'above suspicion' even at the height of the Suez Crisis, represent? What does it reveal about personal loyalty versus loyalty to one's country or religion?
13. By the time she is writing this story, the author has close ties to Europe, the Arab world and the United States. Discuss the ways in which she is influenced by all of these regions. In what ways is she a product of all three?
14. After the Suez crisis, tens of thousands of Egyptian Jews were forced to leave Egypt along with citizens of French and British descent. While the French and British citizens had countries to return to, the Jews, including Jean's family, were scattered across the globe. Discuss the implications of this difference, in particular with regard to Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
15. When Jean's mother marries her father, she goes to live in the family's compound with her husband's mother and sister instead of establishing a home of her own for her family. How is this a metaphor for the family's sense of displacement and greater search for a home?
16. In the book, Jean returns to Egypt one final time in 1990. So much has changed that she finds her homeland nearly unrecognizable. What do you think the author would make of the seismic changes in Egypt in 2011? Would she think it represented a true break from Egypt's troubled past or more of the same?
17. In this age of email, there will be no handwritten letters lost in an attic to show future generations how we lived and who we really were. How does the personal exploration involved in writing a memoir affect the writer? Future generations? Is this just a matter of personal closure or an attempt to preserve the histories of individuals to add depth to the political overlay that dominates every “history”?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt
Caroline Preston, 2011
HarperCollins
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061966903
Summary
For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father’s old Corona typewriter. Despite Frankie’s dreams of becoming a writer, she must forgo a college scholarship to help her widowed mother. But when a mysterious Captain James sweeps her off her feet, her mother finds a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of her unsuitable beau.
Through a kaleidoscopic array of vintage postcards, letters, magazine ads, ticket stubs, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, fashion spreads, menus, and more, we meet and follow Frankie on her journey in search of success and love. Once at Vassar, Frankie crosses paths with intellectuals and writers, among them “Vincent” (alumna Edna St. Vincent Millay), who encourages Frankie to move to Greenwich Village and pursue her writing.
When heartbreak finds her in New York, she sets off for Paris aboard the S.S. Mauritania, where she keeps company with two exiled Russian princes and a “spinster adventuress” who is paying her way across the Atlantic with her unused trousseau. In Paris, Frankie takes a garret apartment above Shakespeare & Company, the hub of expat life, only to have a certain ne’er-do-well captain from her past reappear. But when a family crisis compels Frankie to return to her small New England hometown, she finds exactly what she had been looking for all along.
Author of the New York Times Notable Book Jackie by Josie, Caroline Preston pulls from her extraordinary collection of vintage ephemera to create the first-ever scrapbook novel, transporting us back to the vibrant, burgeoning bohemian culture of the 1920s and introducing us to an unforgettable heroine, the spirited, ambitious, and lovely Frankie Pratt. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 25, 1953
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A.,
Brown University
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia
As a girl growing up in Lake Forest, Illinois, Caroline Preston used to pore through her grandmother’s and mother’s scrapbooks and started collecting antique scrapbooks when she was in high school. She majored in American Studies at Dartmouth College, and received a master’s in American Civilization from Brown University. Inspired by her interest in manuscripts and ephemera, she worked as an archivist at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard’s Houghton Library.
Preston is the author of three previous novels. Jackie by Josie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was drawn from her (brief) researching stint for a Jackie O. biography. Gatsby’s Girl chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan. In The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, she has drawn from her own collection of vintage ephemera to create a novel in the unique form of a scrapbook.
Preston has been awarded a Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale, where she is a Distinguished Artist. She lives with her husband, the writer Christopher Tilghman, in Charlottesville, Virginia and has three mostly grown-up sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a retro delight. Meticulously assembled and designed by the author from her own huge collection of memorabilia, it turns scrapbooking into a literary art form. Fans of the Roaring ’20s, Nick Bantock and modernism will all find something of value in Preston’s nostalgic ephemera.
Washington Post
Somehow, Preston manages to make this scene feel fresh—partly because [this] really is a scrapbook, each page composed of artifacts: advertisements, yearbook photos, ticket stubs, menus from the automat, and paper dolls modeling their finest.... [I]ts vintage graphics and sweet, sincere storytelling make it a pure pleasure.
Boston Globe
Literal, literary and lovely....Preston’s book is a visual journey unlike any other novel out there right now....Can be devoured in the course of a pot of tea on a cold day [but] pick [it] up the next day just to look at the images.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In her whimsical mash-up of historical fiction and scrapbooking, Caroline Preston uses vintage images and artifacts, paper ephemera and flapper-era souvenirs.... Apparently no junk shop or eBay seller was spared in Preston’s search for ways to bring her fictional heroine to life.
O Magazine
The epistolary novel is ages old, the Twitter novel a la mode, but...The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt—to my knowledge—is the first scrapbook novel....[A] charming and transporting story, a collage of vintage memorabilia...and other ephemera depicts the adventures of an aspiring flapper-era writer.
Vanity Fair
When she graduates from high school in 1920, Frankie gets a scrapbook and her father's old Corona, which keeps her busy at Vassar and thereafter, as she pursues a writing career and sails for France on the SS Mauritania. Her story is illustrated with various memorabilia appropriate to scrapbooking: vintage postcards, magazine ads, ticket stubs, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, menus, and more.
Library Journal
Selecting from her own collection of period mementos, Preston (Gatsby's Girl, 2006, etc.) creates a literal scrapbook for a young New Hampshire woman coming of age in the 1920s. Frankie receives a blank scrapbook and her deceased father's typewriter as high-school graduation gifts and begins to record her adventures with the keepsakes she collects. Although Vassar offers Frankie a scholarship, Frankie still can't afford to attend college. Instead she takes a job caring for elderly Mrs. Pingree (see old debutante picture). The dowager's visiting nephew Jamie, a dashing, emotionally damaged World War I vet in his 30s, emotionally seduces 17-year-old Frankie (see his scribbled notes). When the not-yet-sexual affair is discovered, Mrs. Pingree gives Frankie a $1,000 check (see society-pages article about Jamie's wife). Soon Frankie heads off to Vassar, a haven of socialites and bluestockings (see bridge score card, pack of bobbed hair pins). Her rich, intellectual but neurotic Jewish roommate Allegra is a supportive friend until Frankie wins the literary prize (read snippet of Frankie's story about Jamie romance). After graduation, Frankie moves to Greenwich Village and finds a job at True Story. Allegra's brother Oliver, working at a new magazine called the New Yorker, becomes her constant companion. Though smart, kind and attentive (see admission tickets to movies, dancehalls, ballgames), he doesn't propose. When Frankie realizes why, she goes to Paris (see Cunard baggage sticker), where the past catches up with her and a whole new chapter of life starts. Lighter than lightweight but undeniably fun, largely because Preston is having so much fun herself.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (Caution—spoilers ahead):
1. What can you glean of Frankie Pratt's personality and character from her scrapbook? How would you describe her? Is there depth to Frankie—both as a fictional character and a human being? In other words, does the scrapbook medium lend itself to character development? If so, how has the author achieved it?
2. What takes place—what is said—between Frankie's mother and Mrs. Pingree? Exactly what kind of "deal" is struck? What do you make of the check for $1,000?
3. How does Frankie differ from her Vassar roommate? How would you describe Allegra Wolf? What influence does she have on Frankie—is it a healthy influence or not? Why does Allegra cultivate Frankie's friendship? What does Frankie gain from the relationship?
4. What about the types of literature the two roommates are drawn to? How do their literary preferences differ...and what do those differences suggest about the young women?
5. During Christmas break of her freshman year, Frankie realizes her mother has "taken on extra nursing jobs to make ends meet." Mrs. Pratt says to her daughter, "I'm so glad you escaped." How does Frankie feel about the sacrifice her mother is making? What are your thoughts?
6. Throughout the book, Frankie is exposed to people of wealth and privilege—with Mrs. Pingree, at Vassar, in New York, on the Mauritania, and in Paris. To what extent do these class distinctions shape Frankie's approach to life?
7. Why is Frankie drawn to Edna St. Vincent Millay? Talk about Millay's poem, "Lament," and its expression of loss. Why does the poem appeal to Frankie?
8. Why does Allegra Wolf not want to introduce Frankie to her brother Oliver? What is Oliver's reasoning?
9. What do you make of Captain Pingree? What are his feelings toward Frankie during the summer she works for his mother and during her stay in Paris? Are his intentions "honorable"? Why does he wish her to leave Paris?
10. In what way is Frankie a sort of Forrest Gump figure?
11. Would you say that Frankie exemplifies the typical woman of her time...or does she challenge accepted mores?
12. Talk about your experience reading the scrapbook-as-novel. What do you think of using such as a medium as the basis for a novel? Does it work? Is it as rich an experience as reading a novel of words? Richer? Have you read other graphic novels before? What about other modes of literary "text"—letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, email, PowerPoint (Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad), or Twitter? How successful are these mediums, particularly the newer ones? Why do authors attempt them—what do you think they want to accomplish?
13. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is considered historical fiction as well as a graphic novel. Does Caroline Preston's use of memorabilia—photos, ads, book jackets, ticket stubs, buttons, menus, and more—enhance your understanding of the 1920s and '30s? What have you learned about the era that you didn't know before?
14. What does Frankie Pratt learn by the end of the novel? Has she matured or grown? If so, in what ways?
15. Are you satisfied with the ending? Has Frankie sacrificed her dreams by returning to New Hampshire? Has she given up...or has she gained something more valuable? Will her life as a wife exclude life as a writer?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)