The Persian Pickle Club
Sandra Dallas, 1995
St. Martin's Press
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312147013
Summary
It is the 1930s, and hard times have hit Harveyville, Kansas, where the crops are burning up, and there's not a job to be found. For Queenie Bean, a young farm wife, a highlight of each week is the gathering of the Persian Pickle Club, a group of local ladies dedicated to improving their minds, exchanging gossip, and putting their quilting skills to good use.
When a new member of the club stirs up a dark secret, the women must band together to support and protect one another. In her magical, memorable novel, Sandra Dallas explores the ties that unite women through good times and bad. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 11, 1939
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Denver
• Awards—numerous, see below
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado, USA
Award-winning author Sandra Dallas was dubbed “a quintessential American voice” by Jane Smiley, in Vogue magazine. Sandra’s novels with their themes of loyalty, friendship, and human dignity have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and have been optioned for films.
A journalism graduate of the University of Denver, Sandra began her writing career as a reporter with Business Week. A staff member for twenty-five years (and the magazine’s first female bureau chief,) she covered the Rocky Mountain region, writing about everything from penny-stock scandals to hard-rock mining, western energy development to contemporary polygamy. Many of her experiences have been incorporated into her novels.
While a reporter, she began writing the first of ten nonfiction books. They include Sacred Paint, which won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Western Heritage Wrangler Award, and The Quilt That Walked to Golden, recipient of the Independent Publishers Assn. Benjamin Franklin Award.
Turning to fiction in 1990, Sandra has published eight novels. She is the recipient of the Women Writing the West Willa Award for New Mercies, and two-time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award, for The Chili Queen and Tallgrass. In addition, she was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Assn. Award, and a four-time finalist for the Women Writing the West Willa Award.
The mother of two daughters—Dana is an attorney in New Orleans and Povy is a photographer in Golden, Colorado— Sandra lives in Denver with her husband, Bob.
Her Own Words:
• Because of my interest in the West—I wrote nine nonfiction books about the West before I turned to fiction—I’m a sucker for women’s journals of the westward movement. I wanted The Diary of Mattie Spenser to have the elements of a novel but to read as much like a 19th century journal as possible. Mattie is a woman of her time, not a current-day heroine dressed in a long skirt, and the language is faithful to the Civil War era.
• I added dialogue to keep the diary entries from being too stilted for contemporary readers. Making the diary believable has had an unforeseen consequence: Many readers believe it is an actual journal. They’ve asked where the diary is kept and what happened to the characters after the journal ended. One reader accused me of rewriting some of Mattie’s entries because she recognized my style. Another sent me a copy of an early Denver photograph, asking if the man in the picture was one of the characters in the book. (Author bio from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Out of [a] rather threadbare plot, Sandra Dallas manages to assemble a colorful exploration of Depression-era Kansas and the meaning of friendship.... [T]he members of the Persian Pickle Club turn out to be an engaging bunch, especially given Ms. Dallas's knack for capturing the quirky details of their lives.
New York Times Book Review
Affecting.... A book about how times can never be so hard that they can't be eased when people come together.
Denver Post
This entertaining second novel from the author of the well-received Buster Midnight's Cafe could be a sleeper. Set in Depression-era Kansas and made vivid with the narrator's humorous down-home voice, it's a story of loyalty and friendship in a women's quilting circle. Young farm wife Queenie Bean tells about the brief membership of a city girl named Rita, whose boredom with country living and aspirations to be an investigative reporter lead her to unearth secrets in the close-knit group, called the Persian Pickle Club after a coveted paisley print. Queenie's desire to win Rita's friendship ("We were chickens...and Rita was a hummingbird'') clashes with her loyalty to the Pickles when Rita tries to solve the murder of a member's husband, in the process unearthing complicated relationships among the women who meet each week to quilt and read aloud to each other. The result is a simple but endearing story that depicts small-town eccentricities with affection and adds dazzle with some late-breaking surprises. Dallas hits all the right notes, combining an authentic look at the social fabric of Depression-era life with a homespun suspense story.
Publishers Weekly
Hard times in Depression-era Harveyville, Kansas, are softened by the conviviality of a weekly quilting circle called the Persian Pickle Club. Queenie Bean, the "talkingest" member of the group, narrates the novel with snappy style. Over the course of a year, during which the club experiences more sorrow than sewing, Queenie and her pals depend on one another more than ever. When Queenie forms a fast friendship with the newest "Pickle," a flashy, big-city gal named Rita, the equilibrium of the group changes, for Rita is a novice newspaper reporter intent on making a name for herself. The story Rita most wants to crack involves the mysterious death of one of the club ladies' husbands. Will secrets long stitched into the collective fabric of friendship hold? This and other suspenseful questions of small-town life will entertain readers who enjoyed Fannie Flag's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Random, 1987), Olive Ann Burns's Cold Sassy Tree, or Dallas's first novel, Buster Midnight's Cafe. —Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. The Denver Post called this "A book about how times can never be so hard that they can't be eased when people come together." How do the gatherings of the Persian Pickle Club ease its member's troubles?
2. Queenie says, "It was marrying that made women appreciate other women." Grover is a nice man who listens to Queenie's fears and shares his own. What do women characters provide each other?
3. Does Rita think she is a good friend to Queenie? Is she aware of the trouble her insensitive questions cause?
4. Tom bends down and tests the dryness of the dirt, realizing that there's no way of growing crops in it, but then turns up the road, apparently happy. How is this ability to ignore disaster echoed elsewhere in the book?
5. Quilting is central to this story. How is Harveyville like a quilt? What are the patterns? What is the stitching that holds it together?
6. Tyrone, the Reverend, and his sister are the only characters in the book who loudly profess devotion to God, yet they are the most disliked members of the community How else does this book turn morality and religion on its head?
7. Rita is a different kind of woman from the other members of the club-she doesn't seem to want to empathize with anyone. Discuss how her goals and feelings differ from those of the members.
8. At the end, Rita sends a "Friendship Forever" quilt to Queenie and the club. What is Rita trying to tell the club?
9. Rita includes a card that says, "If you wonder who's responsible, I did it." Who really did do it? Does it
matter?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Testimony
Anita Shreve, 2008
Little, Brown & Co.
308 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316067348
Summary
At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape.
A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices—those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal—that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.
Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in Testimony a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Raised—Dedham, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A. Tufts University
• Awards—PEN/L.L. Winship Award; O. Henry Prize
• Currently—lives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts
Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of nearly 20 books—including two works of nonfiction and 17 of fiction. Her novels include, most recently, Stella Bain (2013), as well as The Weight of Water (1997), a finalist for England's Orange prize; The Pilot's Wife (1998), a selection of Oprah's Book Club; All He Even Wanted (2003), Body Surfing (2007); Testimony (2008); A Change in Altitude (2010). She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
More
For many readers, the appeal of Anita Shreve’s novels is their ability to combine all of the escapist elements of a good beach read with the kind of thoughtful complexity not generally associated with romantic fiction. Shreve’s books are loaded with enough adultery, eroticism, and passion to make anyone keep flipping the pages, but the writer whom People magazine once dubbed a “master storyteller” is also concerned with the complexities of her characters’ motivations, relationships, and lives.
Shreve’s novels draw on her diverse experiences as a teacher and journalist: she began writing fiction while teaching high school, and was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975 for her story, "Past the Island, Drifting." She then spent several years working as a journalist in Africa, and later returned to the States to raise her children. In the 1980s, she wrote about women’s issues, which resulted in two nonfiction books—Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone—before breaking into mainstream fiction with Eden Close in 1989.
This interest in women’s lives—their struggles and success, families and friendships—informs all of Shreve’s fiction. The combination of her journalist’s eye for detail and her literary ear for the telling turn of phrase mean that Shreve can spin a story that is dense, atmospheric, and believable. Shreve incorporates the pull of the sea—the inexorable tides, the unpredictable surf—into her characters’ lives the way Willa Cather worked the beauty and wildness of the Midwestern plains into her fiction. In Fortune’s Rocks and The Weight of Water, the sea becomes a character itself, evocative and ultimately consuming. In Sea Glass, Shreve takes the metaphor as far as she can, where characters are tested again and again, only to emerge stronger by surviving the ravages of life.
A domestic sensualist, Shreve makes use of the emblems of household life to a high degree, letting a home tell its stories just as much as its inhabitants do, and even recycling the same house through different books and periods of time, giving it a sort of palimpsest effect, in which old stories burn through the newer ones, creating a historical montage. "A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell," she says. "I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house."
Shreve’s work is sometimes categorized as "women’s fiction," because of her focus on women’s sensibilties and plights. But her evocative and precise language and imagery take her beyond category fiction, and moderate the vein of sentimen-tality which threads through her books. Moreover, her kaleidoscopic view of history, her iron grip on the details and detritus of 19th-century life (which she sometimes inter-sperses with a 20th-century story), and her uncanny ability to replicate 19th-century dialogue without sounding fusty or fussy, make for novels that that are always absorbing and often riveting. If she has a flaw, it is that her imagery is sometimes too cinematic, but one can hardly fault her for that: after all, the call of Hollywood is surely as strong as the call of the sea for a writer as talented as Shreve. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Shreve, consummate craftsman and frequent provocateur, is on fire in her latest novel, a mesmerizing read centering on a sex scandal at a prestigious Vermont prep school....Shreve views all of the characters, even the most flawed, with a good deal of compassion, revealing the heartbreaking consequences of a single reckless act.
Bette-Lee Fox - Booklist
Shreve's novels (Body Surfing; The Weight of Water) benefit from propulsive plots, and her mixed latest, with its timely theme of debauchery among children of privilege, does not lack in this regard. The first paragraph foreshadows a tragedy in which three marriages are destroyed, the lives of three students at a private school in Vermont are ruined, and death claims an innocent victim. The precipitating event is a sex tape involving three members of the boys' basketball team and a freshman girl. Beginning with an account of the debacle by the Avery School's then headmaster, and segueing to the voices of the participants in the orgy, plus their parents and others touched by the scandal, the narrative explores the widening consequences of a single event. Shreve's character delineation is astute, and the novel's moral questions—ranging from the boys' behavior to the headmaster's breach of legal ethics to the guilt of those involved in the death—are salient if heavy-handed, while the female characters are "wicked" in the way women have always been stereotypically portrayed. The novel is clever, but the revolving cast of narrators often feels predictable and forced, keeping the novel on the near side of credible.
Publishers Weekly
Recounting a student sex scandal at a prestigious Vermont private academy, this explosive novel from Shreve (Body Surfing) is more transfixing than a multicar pileup on the interstate. Told from the perspectives of the students involved, the school administrator, the parents, and numerous bystanders, the story keeps unraveling as it slingshots back and forth in time. At each revelation, readers keep hoping that things will turn out differently, that there will be survivors, despite the carnage before their eyes. Yet that one night can never be undone: "A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go." Shreve arrows in on many targets—underage drinking, instant exposure via the Internet, familial expectations, youthful insecurities, and peer pressure, among them—as she flawlessly weaves a tale that is mesmerizing, hypnotic, and compulsive. No one walks away unscathed, and that includes the reader. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
A sex scandal at a Massachusetts prep school seen through the eyes of students, teachers, parents and anyone else of even peripheral relevance. Shreve (Body Surfing, 2007, etc.) offers snapshot sketches within a framing device involving a researcher's interviews. Although the scandal—three of the school's basketball stars caught on tape being sexually serviced by a freshman girl—is almost tame by current real-life scandal standards, it is understandably life-shaking to those involved. Headmaster Mike Bordwin's attempts to contain the situation backfire when the girl's outraged parents call the police. His hard-won career disintegrates, as does his already shaky marriage. Those losses are nothing compared to his private sense of guilt; Bordwin knows Silas, a gifted scholarship student, was part of the filmed party only because he was very drunk, and he was drunk because he'd caught his mother in bed with Bordwin that morning. A sensitive moral innocent, Silas is horrified at his own behavior. Unable to face his girlfriend, he spends a cold New England night outside writing an apology and freezes to death. Naturally his mother, a devout Catholic, blames herself and her adulterous affair for the loss of her beloved only child. The other boys' mothers have their own guilt. Ellen sent Rob to boarding school to protect him from the very temptations to which he succumbed. Expelled, Rob now loses his early admission to Brown. Michelle, who has long sensed dark tendencies in James, now wishes she had been a stronger parent. James, who calls himself J.Dot, is a shallow unrepentant party animal. He blames the girl. As does Shreve, who paints "Sienna" as a 14-year-old vixen with no qualms about pretending she's the victim, although she purposefully set out to seduce the boys, particularly J.Dot. Afterward she moves on to a new school and, one suspects, new victims. Thoughtful Rob is the only one with a genuinely positive outlook on his future. Slick but lacking depth.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The story in Testimony is told from many different perspectives. Why do you think Anita Shreve chose this narrative style for the novel? Can you see any connection between this style and some of the novel’s themes
2. Some characters in Testimony—for example, the students—narrate from the first person point of view. For other characters, such as Mike and Owen, the author always uses the third person. Rob’s mother, Ellen, speaks in the second person. What do these different points of view tell you about the roles of various characters in the story? Did you find yourself empathizing most with any character in particular?
3. Several characters comment that if the sexual incident at Avery had occurred at a local public school, it would have drawn little or no attention. Do you agree with this assessment? Is it fair that this elite institution be held to a different standard?
4. When Mike initially brings J.Dot into his office and accuses him of taking advantage of the girl in the video, J.Dot replies that “She knew better” (123). Do you think that Sienna knew better? Setting aside the letter of the law, how responsible do you think Sienna is for what happened?
5. When Sienna calls her mother on Wednesday morning (129), she cries hysterically. Her roommate, Laura, implies that Sienna may have been acting. Do you think that Sienna is acting or are her emotions genuine? Is it possible for both to be true at the same time?
6. When Silas first reflects on what he did on the videotape, he repeats the phrase “I wanted” (43) many times. When Anna recounts her affair with Mike, she too uses this refrain, “I wanted” (210). What do Silas and Anna each want? Are these purely sexual wants or are they more complicated? Why do you think mother and son use the same language of desire to condemn themselves? How much do you think desire is to blame for what happened.
7. Discuss the evolution of Anna and Owen’s marriage over the course of the novel. Are you surprised that they do not separate after all that has happened? Do you believe that by the end of the book Owen has forgiven Anna?
8. To describe her relationship with Silas, Noelle often uses the metaphor of walking through doors together. Did you feel this was an apt metaphor? How does the significance of this image change as the novel progresses?
9. Some of the parents of the boys feel a keen sense of responsibility for their sons’ behavior. Ellen in particularly says, “And, of course, you are. You are responsible” (189). Do you believe the parents of J.Dot, Silas, and Rob made decisions that in some way led to this event How culpable should parents of teenagers feel for the behavior of their children?
10. As Silas writes in his journal, all his entries are addressed to Noelle. How does the tenor of the letters change over the course of the novel? Do you believe Noelle is capable of forgiving him? Should she forgive him?
11. Were you surprised when you learned who filmed the incident? All of the students involved seem to have made an unspoken agreement to protect this person’s identity. Do you agree with their reasons for doing so
12. One of the big questions driving Testimony is “Why did these students do what they did?” In his letter to Ms. Barnard, Rob writes that “It was an act without a why” (303). What does Rob mean by this Do you think the other three would agree with his assessment? If not, how might their answers be different?
13. What do you think will happen to the students in the future? What course can you see their lives taking in the months and years following the close of the novel? How will they be affected by the incident and its aftermath?
14. At the end of the novel, Rob suggests that, in an unexpected way, his life may turn out better because of what happened at Avery (304). Do you agree with his logic? Can you see any redemptive effects the scandal may have for other characters?
(Questions issued by publishers.)
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Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurtry, 1975
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684853901
Summary
In this acclaimed novel that inspired the Academy Award-winning motion picture, Larry McMurtry created two unforgettable characters who won the hearts of readers and moviegoers everywhere: Aurora Greenway and her daughter Emma.
Aurora is the kind of woman who makes the whole world orbit around her, including a string of devoted suitors. Widowed and overprotective of her daughter, Aurora adapts at her own pace until life sends two enormous challenges her way: Emma's hasty marriage and subsequent battle with cancer.
Terms of Endearment is the story of a memorable mother and her feisty daughter and their struggle to find the courage and humor to live through life's hazards — and to love each other as never before. (From the publisher.)
The novel was adapted to film in 1983 and starred Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, and Jeff Daniels.
In 1992 McMurtry followed up with The Evening Star, a sequel to Terms of Endearment. It, too, was adapted to film in 1996.
Author Bio
• Birth—June 3, 1936
• Where—Wichita Falls, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., North Texas State University; M.A., Rice
University; studied at Stanford University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 1986
• Currently—Archer City, Texas
Back in the late 60s, the fact that Larry McMurtry was not a household name was really a thorn in the side of the writer. To illustrate his dissatisfaction with his status, he would go around wearing a T-shirt that read "Minor Regional Novelist." Well, more than thirty books, two Oscar-winning screenplays, and a Pulitzer Prize later, McMurtry is anything but a minor regional novelist.
Having worked on his father's Texas cattle ranch for a great deal of his early life, McMurtry had an inborn fascination with the West, both its fabled history and current state. However, he never saw himself as a life-long rancher and aspired to a more creative career. He achieved this at the age of 25 when he published his first novel. Horseman, Pass By was a wholly original take on the classic western. Humorous, heartbreaking, and utterly human, this story of a hedonistic cowboy in contemporary Texas was a huge hit for the young author and even spawned a major motion picture starring Paul Newman called Hud just two years after its 1961 publication. Extraordinarily, McMurtry was even allowed to write the script, a rare honor for such a novice.
With such an auspicious debut, it is hard to believe that McMurtry ever felt as though he'd been slighted by the public or marginalized as a minor talent. While all of his books may not have received equal attention, he did have a number of astounding successes early in his career. His third novel The Last Picture Show, a coming-of-age-in-the-southwest story, became a genuine classic, drawing comparisons to J. D. Salinger and James Jones. In 1971, Peter Bogdonovich's screen adaptation of the novel would score McMurtry his first Academy award for his screenplay. Three years later, he published Terms of Endearment, a critically lauded urban family drama that would become a hit movie starring Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine in 1985. A sequel, Evening Star, was published in 1992 and adapted to film in 1996.
McMurtry published what many believe to be his definitive novel. An expansive epic sweeping through all the legends and characters that inhabited the old west, Lonesome Dove was a masterpiece. All of the elements that made McMurtry's writing so distinguished—his skillful dialogue, richly drawn characters, and uncanny ability to establish a fully-realized setting—convened in this Pulitzer winning story of two retired Texas rangers who venture from Texas to Montana. The novel was a tremendous critical and commercial favorite, and became a popular miniseries in 1989.
Following the massive success of Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's prolificacy grew. He would publish at least one book nearly every year for the next twenty years, including Texasville, a gut-wrenching yet hilarious sequel to The Last Picture Show, Buffalo Girls, a fictionalized account of the later days of Calamity Jane, and several non-fiction titles, such as Crazy Horse.
Interestingly, McMurtry would receive his greatest notoriety in his late 60s as the co-screenwriter of Ang Lee's controversial film Brokeback Mountain. The movie would score the writer another Oscar and become one of the most critically heralded films of 2005. The following year he published his latest novel. Telegraph Days is a freewheeling comedic run-through of western folklore and surely one of McMurtry's most inventive stories and enjoyable reads. Not bad for a "minor regional novelist."
Extras
McMurtry comes from a long line of ranchers and farmers. His father and eight of his uncles were all in the profession.
The first printing of McMurtry's novel In a Narrow Grave is one of his most obscure for a rather obscure reason. The book was withdrawn because the word "skyscrapers" was misspelled as "skycrappers" on page 105. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
There is something very winning about Larry McMurtry's latest novel, Terms of Endearment something that makes one keep reading along despite the book's many obvious faults. Partly, I suppose, it's simply trust in Mr. McMurtry...[who] has never been less than winning. Partly, it's the star of the story, Aurora Greenway.... The novel can't seem to make up its mind what it wants to be....It starts off a drawing-room farce.... At other times it veers into pure sensibility.... and concludes with the slightly lugubrious story of [Aurora's] daughter's marital misadventures and eventual death from cancer.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
McMurtry [is] trying his hand at what seems, for most of the book's length, to be a kind of comedy of manners centered upon a well-to-do widow of forty-nine.... Respecting McMurtry's earlier achievements, one would like to think that the author is taking large risks.... But the evidence does not support such a wish. Terms of Endearment remains an odd, misshapen, surprisingly amateurish novel composed of disparate parts that never cohere.
Robert Towers - New York Times Book Review
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 Terms of Endearment:
1. Aurora Greenway claims "only a saint could live with me, and I can't live with a saint." How would you describe Aurora? Is she a sympathetic character. Is she fully-drawn with emotional and psychological complexity...or is she one-dimensional and cartoonish?
2. What kind of mother is Aurora...what is her relationship with her daughter, Emma? How might Aurora's nurturing skills (or lack of) have shaped Emma's personality and her approach to life?
3. Of Aurora's many suitors (first of all...are 5 suitors even realistic for a woman entering her 50's?) is there one in particular you were rooting for? Why does she treat them with such disdain...and why do they keep coming back?
4. Mr. McMurtry is a very funny writer—known for his snappy, humorous dialogue and near slap-stick plot points. Which parts of this story do you find particularly funny?
5. What do you think of Flap Horton, Emma's husband? Why do the two stay together as a couple?
6. Because the first part of the book is comedic, reviewers and readers have commented that the last part, which revolves around Emma, feels "tacked on." In other words, it doesn't mesh well with what comes before—almost as if the novel is two separate books. Do you agree...did you have difficulty switching gears? Or do you think the story moves smoothly into the Emma section and onto its final pages?
7. What are "terms of endearment" and what—thematically— does the expression mean in the context of this book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Gone, Baby, Gone
Dennis Lehane, 1998
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061336218
Summary
The neighborhood is no place for the innocent, the young, the defenseless or the pure. This is a territory of broken families, bitter cops, whacked out ex-cons, and a mother who watches herself on the nightly news as her missing child floats further and further into the unkown.
Boston private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, don't want this case. But after pleas from the child's aunt, they embark upon an investigation and ultimately risk losing everything- their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives-to find this little-girl-lost.
Capturing the voices that echo within blue collar Boston, Dennis Lehane is a master storyteller, who weaves together embittered people, tattered emotions, and brutal crime to create relentless, heart-pounding novels of suspense. Gritty and evocative, the novels of Dennis Lehane are ones you will never forget. (From the publisher.)
The novel was adapted to film in 2007 by Ben Affleck and stars Morgan Freeman, Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, and Ed Harris.
Moonlight Mile (2010) is the sequel to this novel, even though it comes 2 books later.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 4, 1965
• Where—Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Eckerd College; M.F.A., Florida International University
• Awards—Shamus Award, Best First Novel; Anthony Award; Dilys Award
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Dennis Lehane is an American author. He has written several award-winning novels, including A Drink Before the War and the New York Times bestseller Mystic River, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.
Another novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, was also adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film. His novel Shutter Island was adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese in 2010. Lehane is a graduate of Florida International University in Miami, Florida.
Personal Life
Lehane was born and reared in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, and continues to live in the Boston area, which provides the setting for most of his books. He spent summers on Fieldston Beach in Marshfield. Lehane is the youngest of five children. His father was a foreman for Sears & Roebuck, and his mother worked in a Boston public school cafeteria. Both of his parents emigrated from Ireland. His brother, Gerry Lehane, who is two and a half years older than Dennis, is a veteran actor who trained at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence before heading to New York in 1990. Gerry is currently a member of the Invisible City Theatre Company.
He was previously married to Sheila Lawn, formerly an advocate for the elderly for the city of Boston but now working with the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office as an Assistant District Attorney. Currently, he is married to Dr. Angela Bernardo, with whom he has one daughter.
He is a graduate of Boston College High School (a Boston Jesuit prep school), Eckerd College (where he found his passion for writing), and the graduate program in creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He occasionally makes guest appearances as himself in the ABC comedy/drama TV series Castle.
Literary Career
His first book, A Drink Before the War, which introduced the recurring characters Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, won the 1995 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel. The fourth book in the series, Gone, Baby, Gone, was adapted to a film of the same title in 2007; it was directed by Ben Affleck and starred Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as Kenzie and Gennaro. Reportedly, Lehane "has never wanted to write the screenplays for the films [based on his own books], because he says he has 'no desire to operate on my own child.'"
Lehane's Mystic River was made into a film in 2003; directed by Clint Eastwood, it starred Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon. The novel itself was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystère de la Critique.
Lehane's first play, Coronado, debuted in New York in December 2005. Coronado is based on his acclaimed short story "Until Gwen," which was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly and was selected for both The Best American Short Stories and The Best Mystery Short Stories of 2005.
Lehane described working on his historical novel, The Given Day, as "a five- or six-year project" with the novel beginning in 1918 and encompassing the 1919 Boston Police Strike and its aftermath. The novel was published in October, 2008.
On October 22, 2007 Paramount Pictures announced that they had optioned Shutter Island with Martin Scorsese attached as director. The Laeta Kalogridis-scripted adaptation has Leonardo DiCaprio playing U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, "who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island." Mark Ruffalo played opposite DiCaprio as U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule. Shutter Island was released on February 19, 2010.
Teaching Career
Since becoming a literary success after the broad appeal of his Kenzie and Gennaro novels, as well as the success of Mystic River, Lehane has taught at several colleges. He taught fiction writing and serves as a member of the board of directors for a low-residency MFA program sponsored by Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He has also been involved with the Solstice Summer Writers' Conference at Boston's Pine Manor College and taught advanced fiction writing at Harvard University, where his classes quickly filled up.
In May 2005, Lehane was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Eckerd College and was appointed to Eckerd's Board of Trustees later that year. In Spring 2009, Lehane became a Joseph E. Connor Award recipient and honorary brother of Phi Alpha Tau professional fraternity at Emerson College in Boston, MA. Other brothers and Connor Award recipients include Robert Frost, Elia Kazan, Jack Lemmon, Red Skelton, Edward R. Murrow, Yul Brynner, and Walter Cronkite. Also in Spring 2009, Lehane presented the commencement speech at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts, and was awarded an honorary degree.
Film Career
Lehane wrote and directed an independent film called Neighborhoods in the mid 1990s. He joined the writing staff of the HBO drama series The Wire in 2004. Lehane returned as a writer for the fourth season in 2006 Lehane and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony and the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay for their work on the fourth season. Lehane remained a writer for the fifth and final season in 2008. Lehane and the writing staff were nominated for the WGA Award award for Best Dramatic Series again at the February 2009 ceremony.He served as an executive producer for Shutter Island. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Bibliography
The Kenzie-Gennaro Novels
1994 - A Drink Before the War
1996 - Darkness, Take My Hand
1997 - Sacred
1998 - Gone, Baby, Gone
1999 - Prayers for Rain
2010 - Moonlight Mile
Joe Coughlin Novels
2008 - The Given Day
2012 - Live by Night
2015 - World Gone By
Stand-alones
2001 - Mystic River
2003 - Shutter Island
2006 - Coronado
Book Reviews
Vanished, in this complex and unsettling fourth case for PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (after Sacred, 1997) is four-year-old Amanda McCready, taken one night from her apartment in Dorchester, a working-class section of Boston, where her mother had left her alone. Kenzie and Gennaro, hired by the child's aunt and uncle, join in an unlikely alliance with Remy Broussard and Nick Raftopoulos, known as Poole, the two cops with the department's Crimes Against Children squad who are assigned to the case. In tracing the history of Amanda's neglectful mother, whose past involved her with a drug lord and his minions, the foursome quickly find themselves tangling with Boston's crime underworld and involved in what appears to be a coup among criminals. Lehane develops plenty of tension between various pairs of parties: the good guys looking for Amanda and the bad guys who may know where she is; the two PIs and the two cops; various police and federal agencies; opposing camps in the underworld; and Patrick and Angie, who are lovers as well as business partners. All is delivered with abundant violence—e.g., bloated and mutilated corpses; gangland executions; shoot-outs with weapons of prodigious firepower; descriptions of sexual abuse of small children; threats of rape and murder—that serves to make Amanda's likely fate all the more chilling. Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution, at the same time leaving readers to ponder moral questions about social and individual responsibility long after the last page is turned.
Publishers Weekly
Four-year-old Amanda McCready has disappeared without a trace, and after several days, the police have no leads. Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro reluctantly take the case, knowing that the odds are that Amanda is already dead. Their investigation is complicated by Amanda's mother, Helene, who seems more interested in drinking at the local bar than in finding her daughter. After a second child disappears, Kenzie and Gennaro are drawn into a dark nexus of pedophiles, drug dealers, and a shady police unit with a hidden agenda. Ultimately, the detectives must make a decision that could destroy both their personal and professional relationship. Lehane, a Shamus Award winner for A Drink Before the War, has written a tense, edge-of-your-seat story about a world that is astoundingly cruel and unbearably violent to its most innocent members. This fourth Kenzie-Gennaro pairing will appeal to readers who like their mysteries coated with a heavy dose of realism and their endings left untidied. Recommended for all public libraries. —Karen Anderson, Arizona State Univ. West Lib., Phoenix
Library Journal
Lehane combines the intensity of Andrew Vachss, who also writes unflinchingly about child-abuse and abandonment cases, with the charismatic appeal of his protagonists, a working-class Nick and Nora who walk the meanest of streets. The wrenching portrait of a bent cop whose instincts are admirable but whose actions are appalling only adds to the emotional impact of this grim, utterly unsentimental blue-collar tragedy. —Bill Ott
Booklist
Book Club 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 Gone, Baby, Gone:
1. Why are Kenzie and Gennaro initially reluctant to take the case? Why do they finally agree?
2.. Talk about Helene McCready, Amanda's mother. No need to ask "what kind of mother is she"; nonetheless...what makes her the way she is—is there any explanation? Why does the investigation team suspect she has something to do with her daughter's disappearance?
3. What clues begin to lead everyone to believe Amanda has been killed? Did you also believe she was dead?
4. Why is Cheese Olamon willing to cooperate with Kenzie and Gennaro?
5. What complications arise because of the fact that the investigation takes place in Dorchester? Given a similar starting point, what is it that determines the starkly different paths two people choose?
6. Why does Lionel decide to take matters into his own hands? Is he correct in his assessment? Is his decision morally just? Is there a difference between legality and morality?
7. Broussard remarks, "If society doesn’t work, how do we, as allegedly honorable men, live? On the fringes." He believes, in other words, that because society fails in its duty, that he and others are forced to take action, even if illegal. Do you agree with him?
8. Does Angie condone Broussard and Lionel's actions? Is she, ultimately, like Broussard?
9. In the stand-off between Angie and Patrick at the end...whom do you side with? What would your decision have been had it been up to you? What would you have done?
10. Were you surprised by the twists and turns of the plot? What about the conclusion—satisfying...or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Them
Nathan McCall, 2007
Simon & Schuster
339 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416549161
Summary
This combination fo superbly developed characters, a realistic story line, and descriptions that profoundly capture the essence of this country's urban experience—in black and white—is the formula for the making of this truly great American novel. (From the publisher.)
In Them, Nathan McCall, best known as a memoirist, has tried his hand at fiction with a timely tale of gentrification and its attendant misunderstandings. Set in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, Them traces the gradual yuppification of a historically black neighborhood and the explosive racial tensions that follow suit. At its center is the tentative relationship—never quite the friendship the novel would have you believe—that develops between resident paranoiac Barlowe Reed and the white armchair liberal who moves in next door.
McCall, to his credit, gives voice to a whole slew of viewpoints, whether the characters are nostalgic '60s civil rights activists struggling to adapt their tactics to a new plight or eager gentrifiers who are blind to why their gestures of civic pride fall short.... Still, Them meets its subject matter head on and gives a nervy glimpse of a community under siege. (Amelia Atlas, from Barnes & Noble.)
Author Bio
Nathan McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler, has worked as a journalist for the Washington Post. Currently, he teaches in the African American Studies Department at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) The embattled characters who people McCall's trenchant, slyly humorous debut novel (following the 1994 memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler and a 1997 essay collection) can't escape gentrification, whether as victim or perpetrator. As he turns 40, Barlowe Reed, who is black, moves to buy the home he's long rented in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. His timing is bad: whites have taken note of the cheap, rehab-ready houses in the historically black neighborhood and, as Barlowe's elderly neighbor says to him, "They comin." Skyrocketing housing prices and the new neighbors' presumptuousness anger Barlowe, whose 20-something nephew is staying with him, and other longtime residents, who feel invaded and threatened. Battle lines are drawn, but when a white couple moves in next door to Barlowe, the results are surprising. Masterfully orchestrated and deeply disturbing illustrations of the depth of the racial divide play out behind the scrim of Barlowe's awkward attempts to have conversations in public with new white neighbor Sandy. McCall also beautifully weaves in the decades-long local struggle over King's legacy, including the moment when a candidate for King's church's open pulpit is rejected for "linguistic lapses... unbefitting of the crisp doctoral eloquence of Martin Luther King." McCall nails such details again and again, and the results, if less than hopeful, are poignant and grimly funny.
Publishers Weekly
McCall (Makes Me Wanna Holler) follows up his autobiography with a first novel that focuses directly on the old Fourth Ward of Atlanta, the former home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now the neighborhood is changing, as white couples find this the perfect place to resettle. The "gentrification" of the area begins next door to Barlowe Reed, an African American through whom McCall filters the anger, tensions, and sensibilities of the community. With his new neighbor Sandy and her husband, Sean, old grievances, beliefs, and hopes are explored and tested. McCall manages to make the characters fully genuine, and narrator Mirron Willis brings them quite expertly to life. Much more happens within the minds of these characters than in many more action-packed stories. Recommended.
Joyce Kessel - Library Journal
McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler (1994), offers a sensitive look at the dynamics of gentrification. —Vanessa Bush.
Booklist
From memoirist and journalist McCall (What's Going On: Personal Essays, 1997, etc.), a debut novel about an Atlanta neighborhood undergoing gentrification—or invasion, depending on your point of view. The Old Fourth Ward, birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr., is a little run-down now that affluent blacks have been siphoned off to the integrated suburbs, but it's still a cozy African-American community that's tolerant of the old men who sit gabbing every day outside the Auburn Avenue Mini Mart, of the drunk couple often staggering along the sidewalks and of the homeless man always hustling for odd jobs. The Fourth suits Barlowe Reed, who dreams of buying the shabby house he rents at 1024 Randolph St., if he can just get a decent raise out of his cracker boss at the Copy Right Print Shop. It also appeals to Sean and Sandy Gilmore, part of an influx of whites drawn to the handsome old houses available "for the cost of a ham sandwich." Sean and Sandy want to be good neighbors; they can't understand why everyone regards them with hostility and suspicion. Readers will get it, as potholes neglected for years are filled in, police patrols appear out of nowhere to roust the drunks, and whites get elected to all the offices of the Fourth Ward Civic League, which promptly calls for an end to outdoor card-playing (so rowdy) and frontyard barbecues ("those hideous steel drums"). The tentative friendship between next-door neighbors Sandy and Barlowe doesn't stand a chance in this increasingly tense atmosphere as tires are slashed and fires started in the mailboxes of white-owned homes. McCall's characterizations are vivid rather than deep: With the exception of Sandy, all white folks are cluelessly arrogant, and among the somewhat more fully drawn African-Americans, only Barlowe has any real depth. The plot is similarly schematic; what matters here is McCall's painfully honest portrait of a nation racked by racial mistrust. Squirm-inducing, which surely was the author's intention.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the book's title. What is its meaning? How is the word "them" used throughout the novel, and in what ways does its significance change?
2. This book is divided into three parts. Why do you think Nathan McCall chose this structure?
3. Though their differences are obvious, what characteristics do Sandy and Barlowe share? In spite of different worldviews that complicate their relationship, why do you think these two are ultimately able to bond?
4. "If Barlowe could have assembled the words that reflected his knowing, he might have said something like this: 'Between two people with perceptions shaped by realities as alien as ours, some things really are inscrutable; one person's truths can transcend another's language, rendering them utterly incapable of seeing eye to eye'" (p. 225). What does this mean? Do you agree?
5. Though the overarching conflict of the novel may be between the blacks and the whites who inhabit the Old Fourth Ward, some discord emerges within each race as well. In what instances do stereotypes inspire misunderstandings among residents of the same race?
6. Were you surprised to discover that Sean turned The Hawk in to the police? Do you think his action was justified?
7. Though Viola's official cause of death was liver failure, people in the neighborhood assumed she died of heartbreak after The Hawk mysteriously disappeared. Do you believe Sean is therefore implicated in Viola's death?
8. Contrast and compare how Sean and Barlowe each dealt with the occasional intrusions of Viola and The Hawk. Would you characterize Viola's death as a sad yet ultimately necessary result ofgentrification, or a needless tragedy set in motion when the neighborhood's balance is thrown off kilter?
9. Although Sean and Sandy are obviously not welcome in the neighborhood, and in spite of several dangerous personal attacks, Sandy resists Sean's pressure to leave the Old Fourth Ward. Do you think her resolve is admirable or foolish? Is she to blame for what happens to Sean in the novel's violent climax?
10. In what ways does the author make statements about black self-sufficiency?
11. The Gilmores ultimately leave the Old Fourth Ward. Were there any instances throughout the novel when you believed that they would establish a happy life there?
12. Though they didn't intend to make a negative impact on the neighborhood, the Gilmores, like other whites, certainly did. Were there ways in which their presence produced positive results?
13. Do you think that, in leaving the neighborhood, the Smiths helped resolve a personal dilemma? Did they inadvertently help advance the process of gentrification?
14. Throughout the novel, Barlowe struggles with the feeling of "not knowing how to live" (p. #83). What does this mean? Are there other characters who deal with similar internal conflict?
15. Discuss Barlowe's transformation throughout the novel. What events and relationships inspire changes in his feelings, reactions, and goals? What ultimately enables him to feel at peace with himself by the end of book?
16. The instances in the book that involve segregated meetings or gatherings among ward residents primarily result in each group's strengthened dedication to remaining segregated. Do you think those actions symbolize continued racial divisions in this country? If so, how?
17. Is the issue of gentrification about race or class?
18. In the story, Barlowe shares this quote with Sandy: "They say liberals conduct their lynchins from shorter trees" (p. #206). What do you suppose that means? What is it's significance to the story?
19. How is it possible that in Atlanta, a city with an African American mayor, blacks in neighborhoods such as the Old Fourth Ward are powerless to hold off encroachment on their communities?
20. How might Barlowe's challenges in figuring out "how to live" have affected his ability to find fulfilling relationships with women?
21. What, if any, symbolic significance do you see in Tyrone's pigeons?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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