The Brave
Nicholas Evans, 2010
Little, Brown & Co.
353 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316033787
Summary
Tom Bedford is living alone in the isolated wilds of Montana. Having distanced himself from his own troubled past, he rarely sees his ex-wife, and his son, Danny, is away in Iraq and hasn't spoken to him for years.
Tom hasn't always been so removed from society. As a boy, his mother was a meteoric rising star in the glitzy, enchanted world of 1960s Hollywood. There, she fell in love with the suave Ray Montane, who played young Tom's courageous onscreen hero, Red McGraw, the fastest draw around.
Tommy and his mother lived in a glamorous, Hollywood version of the Wild West. Everything was perfect, until the gold flaking on their magical life began to chip away, revealing an uglier truth beneath. Ray was not who he seemed. Tommy and his mother fell into a deadly confrontation with him, and they fled Hollywood forever, into the wilderness of the real West.
As a man, Tom has put all of that behind him—or so he thinks. Unexpectedly, his ex-wife calls, frantic: Danny has been charged with murder. In the chaos of war, his son has been caught in a violent skirmish gone bloodily awry. The Army needs someone to pay for the mistake. Tom, forced into action, is now suddenly alive again and fighting to save the son he'd let slip away.
To succeed, he must confront the violence in his own past, and he finds that these two selves—the past and the present—which he'd fought so long to keep separate, are inextricably connected. As father and son struggle to understand one another, both are compelled to learn the true meaning of bravery.
Beautifully interlacing the past and present, the author of The Horse Whisperer reminds us that we are tied to the glories and mistakes of our own history. The Brave lives up to its name, as one the most courageous and full-hearted novels of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 26, 1950
• Where—Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Currently—lives in Devon, England
Nicholas Evans is an English journalist, screenwriter, television and film producer, and novelist.
He was born at in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and educated at Bromsgrove School, but before studying at Oxford University, he served in Africa with the charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). He then studied journalism and worked as a newspaper reporter and television screenwriter.
His 1995 novel, The Horse Whisperer was No.10 on the list of bestselling novels in the United States according to the New York Times and, with 15 million copies sold, one of the best-selling books of all time.
In the UK, The Horse Whisperer was listed on the BBC's Big Read, a 2003 survey with the goal of finding the "nation's best-loved book." Made into a motion picture in 1998, Robert Redford directed and starred in the film version opposite Kristin Scott Thomas, along with Scarlett Johansson and Sam Neill.
Evans lives in Devon. His son, Max Evans, is head of geography at Preston Manor High School. He has a daughter, Lauren and another son Harry, from a relationship he had with Jane Hewland, the TV producer famous for Network 7 and Gamesmaster. Evans is married to singer/songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming.
Evans, Cumming, and several of their relatives were poisoned in September 2008 after consuming Deadly webcap mushrooms that they gathered on holiday. The poisoning was non-fatal, though Evans and the others had to undergo kidney dialysis. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
As a student at the Ashlawn Preparatory School in 1959 England, eight-year-old, cowboy-crazy Tommy Bedford, the hero of Evans's latest outdoor soap opera, is teased for being a bed wetter and gets the shock of his young life when he learns that his sister, glamorous "Next Big Thing" actress Diane Reed, is really his mother. Soon afterwards, she and Tommy move to L.A., where Diane falls for TV cowboy Ray Montane, and their tortured relationship leads to a horrifying act of violence that has lifelong repercussions for Tommy. In a parallel, present-day plot, 50-ish Tom, now a writer and documentary filmmaker who specializes in the American West, lives in Montana, is divorced and estranged from his adult son, Danny, who has been accused of committing an atrocity while serving in Iraq, for which he will be tried in a military court. Alternating past and present, Evans expertly juggles his twin narratives until they come shatteringly together as father and son yield to the combined weight of the secrets they hide. Combining elements of the prep school drama, the Hollywood novel, the western, and the war story, Evans (The Horse Whisperer) skillfully mixes genres to create a real crowd-pleaser.
Publishers Weekly
In his first novel in five years Evans displays a sure hand at drawing characters and their motivations and settings as diverse as a gloomy boarding school, glamorous Hollywood, and the wide-open spaces of the West. This should appeal to all lovers of good storytelling. —Dan Forrest
Library Journal
Ever the master of intense and complex relationships, Evans has crafted a time-traveling plot that admirably juggles issues of identity and fidelity to one's self and one's principles. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. The Brave opens with the last time that Tommy sees his mother, after she’s been sentenced to death. What do you think of their interaction here? Is Tommy right to be so upset? How might Tom reflect on it now, as an adult?
2. What do you make of young Tommy’s childhood obsession with cowboys? Do you think that his experience of them as an English boy would have varied from that of an American youth?
3. Tommy is devoted to his older sister, Diane, who he later learns is his mother. What did you think of this revelation? Was Diane right not to have told Tommy for so long—or to have told him at all? What might you have done in Diane’s shoes?
4. Conversely, what did you think of the role that Diane’s parents played in this decision—and in Tommy’s life in general
5. Moving from boarding school in England to Hollywood is a major change in landscape for Tommy. How might Diane and Tommy’s lives have gone differently had they stayed home?
6. Decades later, Tom leads a solitary life in Montana. Is his solitude incidental or chosen?
7. How would you connect Tom’s early obsession with cowboys and Indians with his later interest in the Blackfeet tribe? How do his ideas about Native Americans change? Why do you think that Nicholas Evans chose to make this a theme of the book?
8. Tommy’s childhood hero, the actor Ray Montane, turns out to be a violent man. How do themes of violence in the novel relate to the Hollywood setting? Is there something about both that is particularly “American”?
9. Later in the book, we learn that Diane made a sacrifice for her son in the aftermath of Ray’s death. How did this decision affect the direction that Tom’s life took?
10. Tom and his son, Danny, disagree about the Iraq war, and they hardly speak to each other. What do you make of this disagreement between father and son? Which one of them is more likely to change the other’s mind?
11. After Danny is accused of a war crime, Tom reinserts himself into his son’s life to try and help him. Was Tom right to suddenly reappear like this? How would you feel about it if you were Danny?
12. How are the ideas of the “Wild West” and heroism related in the novel?
13. Where do you think Tom and Danny will be in their relationship five years down the road?
14. What do you make of the book’s title?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Persuasion
Jane Austen, 1817 (posthumously)
Penguin Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780141439686
Summary
Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine.
Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy.
The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?
Jane Austin once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work. (From the publisher.)
Persuasion has yielded three film adaptations: a 1995 version starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds (a LitLovers favorite!), a 2007 TV miniseries with Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones, and a 1971 miniseries with Ann Firbank and Bryan Marshall.
Author Bio
• Born—December 16, 1775
• Where—Steventon in Hampshire, UK
• Death—July 18, 1817
• Where—Winchester, Hampshire
• Education—taught at home by her father
In 1801, George Austen retired from the clergy, and Jane, Cassandra, and their parents took up residence in Bath, a fashionable town Jane liked far less than her native village. Jane seems to have written little during this period. When Mr. Austen died in 1805, the three women, Mrs. Austen and her daughters, moved first to Southampton and then, partly subsidized by Jane's brothers, occupied a house in Chawton, a village not unlike Jane's first home. There she began to work on writing and pursued publishing once more, leading to the anonymous publication of Sense and Sensibility in 1811 and Pride and Prejudice in 1813, to modestly good reviews.
Known for her cheerful, modest, and witty character, Jane Austen had a busy family and social life, but as far as we know very little direct romantic experience. There were early flirtations, a quickly retracted agreement to marry the wealthy brother of a friend, and a rumored short-lived attachment—while she was traveling—that has not been verified. Her last years were quiet and devoted to family, friends, and writing her final novels. In 1817 she had to interrupt work on her last and unfinished novel, Sanditon, because she fell ill. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, where she had been taken for medical treatment. After her death, her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published, together with a biographical notice, due to the efforts of her brother Henry. Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral.
Jane Austen's delightful, carefully wrought novels of manners remain surprisingly relevant, nearly 200 years after they were first published. Her novels—Pride and Prejudice and Emma among them—are those rare books that offer us a glimpse at the mores of a specific period while addressing the complexities of love, honor, and responsibility that still intrigue us today. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
(Older books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Critics, especially [recently], value Persuasion highly, as the author’s most deeply felt fiction, the novel which in the end the experienced reader of Jane Austen puts at the head of the list.... Anne wins back Wentworth and wins over the reader; we may, like him, end up thinking Anne’s character "perfection itself."
Judith Terry - Modern Library Ed. (cover image—top-right)
On the most basic level Persuasion is a love story, both interesting and entertaining. On a deeper level it examines human foibles and societal flaws. The question of the importance of propriety is raised frequently as is the issue of appearance vs. reality.... Family relationships and duty to family are both foci of the story. Within this family context relationships between men and women are examined...
Diana Mitchell - Penguin Group USA (From the Teacher's Guide)
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 Persuasion:
1. First, talk about Sir Elliot. What matters most in his view of life? What does his reaction to Lady Russell's proposals suggest about the kind of man he is?
2. What do we come to learn (and when do we learn it) about Sir Walter's three daughters—Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary? Describe them. How does Sir Walter treat each of them, especially the two eldest, Elizabeth and Anne?
3. How would you describe Lady Russell? Does her—or did her—influence over Anne work toward Anne's betterment or detriment?
4. When younger, was Anne right to have followed Lady Russell's advice? Did it show passivity on Anne's part or good judgment to have allowed herself to be guided by her elders? Contrast her with Louisa Croft's assertion later in the book that she would never be dissuaded from following her own desires.
5. Talk about the Musgrove family and their affection for and interactions with one another. How do they feel about Mary Elliot Musgrove as their daughter- and sister-in-law? How do they receive Anne? What do you make of Anne's first visit when all complain to her, behind the others' backs, about how the two boys are raised?
6. Do you find Mary's hypochondria funny...or irritating...or what? Consider, also, the scene where Mary manipulates Anne into looking after young Charles so that she, Mary, can go dinner at the Musgrove's and meet Captain Wentworth!
7. Describe the kind of marriage that Admiral and Mrs. Croft seem to have. How do they view one another? How does their marriage differ from, say, Charles and Mary Musgrove's? Is the Croft's relationship typical of that era, do you suppose?
8. With their newfound wealth, both Captain Wentworth and Admiral Croft are able to join the upper ranks of English society. How have sailors such as Captain Wentworth and Admiral Croft made their fortunes? What is Austen's opinion of this? What is yours? What other options are available for social mobility in the early 19th century?
9. What kind person is Captain Wentworth? What kind of woman does he say he admires? What is the impact on him when he learns that Anne turned down Charles Musgrove in marriage?
10. Why does Mary disparage Charles Hayter? What is his economic and social standing with respect to her own?
11. When Anne meets Captain Benwick in Lyme, what drew the two together? Were you expecting a romance to develop between the two? Why...or why not?
12. How does Wentworth react to Louisa's fall? Whom does he blame—himself or Louisa? What does he begin to realize about Anne...and Louisa?
13. When Anne first reaches Bath, at first sge believes Mr. Elliot is interested in her sister, Elizabeth. Yet Anne hopes that he might not be "to nice, or too observant, if Elizabeth were his object." What does she mean?
14. When it becomes apparent that Mr. Elliot has turned his attentions toward Anne, what makes her uncertain of his sincerity? In the end, what does Anne learn about Elliot's motivations?
15. In all of her novels, Austen casts a gentle, satirical eye on English society. In Persuasion, her gaze seems more critical: what might she be saying in this work about rank and property—and about the possible rise of a middle class?
16. In a letter, Austen described Anne Elliot as "almost too good for me." Do you find Anne "too good" to be true? Is her goodness cloying and sentimental? Or is her goodness something different—an integrity combined with strength and acceptance? How do you see the heroine of this novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060838676
Summary
Under "a blossoming pear tree" in West Florida, sixteen-year-old Janie Mae Crawford dreams of a world that will answer all her questions and waits "for the world to be made." But her grandmother, who has raised her from birth, arranges Janie's marriage to an older local farmer.
So begins Janie's journey toward herself and toward the farthest horizon open to her. Zora Neale Hurston's classic 1937 novel follows Janie from her Nanny's plantation shack, to Logan Killicks's farm, to all-black Eatonville, to the Everglades, and back to Eatonville—where she gathers in "the great fish-net" of her life. Janie's joyless marriage to Killicks lasts until Joe Starks passes by, on his way to becoming "a big voice."
Joe becomes mayor of Eatonville and is just as determined as Killicks was to keep Janie in her proper place. Through twenty years with Joe, she continues to cope, hope, and dream; and after Joe's death, she is once again "ready for her great journey," a journey she now undertakes with one Vergible Woods, a.k.a. Tea Cake. Younger than Janie, Tea Cake nevertheless engages both her heart and her spirit.
With him Janie can finally enjoy life without being one man's mule or another's bauble. Their eventful life together "on de muck" of the Everglades eventually brings Janie to another of her life's turning points; and after burying Tea Cake, she returns to a gossip-filled Eatonville, where she tells her story to her best friend, Phoeby Watson, and releases Phoeby to tell that story to the others.
Janie has "done been tuh de horizon and back." She has learned what love is; she has experienced life's joys and sorrows; and she has come home to herself in peace. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 7, 1891
• Where—Eatonville, Florida, USA
• Death—January 28, 1960
• Where—Fort Pierce, Florida
• Education—B.A., Barnard College (the school's first black
graduate); anthropology at Columbia University
In her award-winning autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Zora Neale Hurston claimed to have been born in Eatonville, Florida, in 1901. She was, in fact, born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891, the fifth child of John Hurston (farmer, carpenter, and Baptist preacher) and Lucy Ann Potts (school teacher). The author of numerous books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God; Jonah's Gourd Vine; Mules and Men; and Moses, Man of the Mountain, Hurston had achieved fame and sparked controversy as a novelist, anthropologist, outspoken essayist, lecturer, and theatrical producer during her sixty-nine years.
Hurston's finest work of fiction appeared at a time when artistic and political statements—whether single sentences or book-length fictions—were peculiarly conflated. Many works of fiction were informed by purely political motives; political pronouncements frequently appeared in polished literary prose. And Hurston's own political statements, relating to racial issues or addressing national politics, did not ingratiate her with her black male contemporaries. The end result was that Their Eyes Were Watching God went out of print not long after its first appearance and remained out of print for nearly thirty years. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been one among many to ask: "How could the recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen short stories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and a prizewinning autobiography virtually 'disappear' from her readership for three full decades?"
That question remains unanswered. The fact remains that every one of Hurston's books went quickly out of print; and it was only through the determined efforts, in the 1970s, of Alice Walker, Robert Hemenway (Hurston's biographer), Toni Cade Bambara, and other writers and scholars that all of her books are now back in print and that she has taken her rightful place in the pantheon of American authors.
In 1973, Walker, distressed that Hurston's writings had been all but forgotten, found Hurston's grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest and installed a gravemarker. "After loving and teaching her work for a number of years," Walker later reported, "I could not bear that she did not have a known grave." The gravemarker now bears the words that Walker had inscribed there:
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
GENIUS OF THE SOUTH
NOVELIST FOLKLORIST ANTHROPOLOGIST
(1891-1960)
(From Wikipedia.)
More
During the 1920s, African-American culture in the United States received an exhilarating shot in the arm in the era known as the Harlem Renaissance. For the first time, black American art, music, and literature was being taken seriously among the intelligentsia as a significant force in contemporary culture. At the front of that movement were several writers, including Zora Neale Hurston.
Hurston's work reflected the liberation and experimentation of post-war America. She published stories and co-founded the groundbreaking journal Fire! with poet Langston Hughes and novelist Wallace Thurman. By the ‘30s, Hurston was a bestselling writer, but with the Renaissance on the wane and a new era of politics, economic depression, and the "social realism" movement, Hurston's once glorious literary career was running into dire straits. She would end her life destitute, practically forgotten, buried in an unmarked grave in Florida. However, a resurgence of interest in her work during the 1970s and the tireless work of writer Alice Walker would help reestablish Hurston in her rightful place as one of America's greatest and most influential writers.
Born in Eatonville, Florida, in 1891 to a father who was a Baptist preacher, Hurston was well-versed from birth in the dynamics of the Southern black experience. She brought that keen vision to her writing and published her first story in the Howard University literary magazine while attending the school in 1921.
Still, it was not until Hurston moved to New York City in 1925 that she really began to make waves on the literary scene. Her writing was characterized by its unflagging honesty and strength, qualities that Hurston herself exuded. She often ruffled feathers by refusing to adhere to the constricting gender conventions prevalent at the time. This strength and self-confidence was already apparent in the writer's very first works. Her debut novel Jonah's Gourde Vine was praised by the New York Times as "the most vital and original novel about the American Negro that has yet been written by a member of the Negro race." Her second was a bona fide classic, Mules and Men, a compendium of African American folk tales, songs, and maxims that drew on Hurston's extensive studies in Anthropology.
Critical reaction
By the time Hurston published her signature work Their Eyes Were Watching God, the freestyle experimentalism of the Harlem Renaissance was being increasingly overcast by the Great Depression. As a result, a backlash ensued. Their Eyes Were Watching God, which told of a woman named Janie Crawford who goes through three marriages to separate men as she struggles to realize herself, was too steeped in the experimentalism of the Renaissance to please critics. Furthermore, her portrayal of a black woman's search for personal liberation was too much for many black men to stomach. Richard Wright, the acclaimed author of Native Son, even dismissed Their Eyes Were Watching God for not being "serious fiction." Today, such criticism may seem absurd, or at the very least, incredibly short-sighted, but at the time, Hurston's daring prose was not in vogue amongst the social realists.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, instead, displays a true structural adventurousness, splitting between the eloquence of the narrative voice and the idiomatic, ungrammatical dialogue of the black, southern characters. While works of the social realism movement were easily categorized by their left-wing politics and gritty delivery, Their Eyes Were Watching God was less simple to pigeonhole. It is at once a product of the Harlem Renaissance, an example of Southern literature along the lines of Faulkner, and a work of feminist literature. Consequently, the novel was criticized for being out of step with the times, and it went out of print very shortly after being published, leading to the collapse of Hurston's career and her standing as a significant literary figure.
Hurston would die in 1960, back in Florida, destitute, forgotten. Her books long unavailable, her death barely registered. She would not return to the public eye until 1975, when Alice Walker published an essay titled "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in Ms. magazine. Along with other writer including Robert Hemenway and Tony Cade Bambara, Walker went on a crusade to revitalize Hurston's career fifteen years after the writer's death.
When Their Eyes Were Watching God was finally republished, it was reevaluated as a classic. Today, the novel is required reading in universities all over the country, and Hurston is widely acknowledged as one of the first great African-American women writers. As a final tribute to her idol, Walker also traveled to Florida where Hurston is buried and placed a marker on her grave, a long-overdue tribute to a great American writer reading with beautiful simplicity: "Zora Neale Hurston: Genius of the South."
Extras
• Hurston's earliest work was a comedic play called Mule Bone, which she co-wrote with Langston Hughes. However, the play would not be performed until 1991 due to an arduous legal battle that also brought an untimely end to the friendship between Hurston and Hughes.
• Spike Lee's audacious debut film She's Gotta Have It has been viewed by some as a hip adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and the fact that the film opens with a quotation from Zora Neale Hurston may prove such theories correct. ("More" and "Extras" from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Alice Walker (The Color Purple) was responsible for kindling our current interest in this lovely but once neglected work. Their Eyes was a favorite of hers, now a favorite of many, and "short-listed" as a favorite of book clubs everywhere.
A LitLovers LitPick (Apr. '08)
A classic of black literature, Their Eyes Were Watching God belongs in the same category—with that of William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway—of enduring American literature.
Saturday Review
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston draws a sharp portrait of a proud, independent black woman looking for her own identity and resolving not to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or romantic dreams.... Their Eyes Were Watching God has been called the first African American feminist novel because of its portrayal of a strong black woman rebelling against society's restrictions — and the received wisdom of her Nanny, no less — to seek out her own destiny. But ultimately, this is not a novel that looks out to the world to make political protest or social commentary; it concerns itself with describing the power that lies within us to define ourselves and our lives as we see fit, unbound and unfettered by society's limitations and prejudices. As Alice Walker once wrote, "There is enough self-love in that one book — love of community, culture, traditions — to restore a world.
Sacred Fire
Discussion Questions
1. What kind of God are the eyes of Hurston's characters watching? What is the nature of that God and of their watching? Do any of them question God?
2. What is the importance of the concept of horizon? How do Janie and each of her men widen her horizons? What is the significance of the novel's final sentences in this regard?
3. How does Janie's journey—from West Florida, to Eatonville, to the Everglades—represent her, and the novel's increasing immersion in black culture and traditions? What elements of individual action and communal life characterize that immersion?
4. To what extent does Janie acquire her own voice and the ability to shape her own life? How are the two related? Does Janie's telling her story to Pheoby in flashback undermine her ability to tell her story directly in her own voice?
5. What are the differences between the language of the men and that of Janie and the other women? How do the differences in language reflect the two groups' approaches to life, power, relationships, and self-realization? How do the novel's first two paragraphs point to these differences?
6. In what ways does Janie conform to or diverge from the assumptions that underlie the men's attitudes toward women? How would you explain Hurston's depiction of violence toward women? Does the novel substantiate Janie's statement that "Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business"?
7. What is the importance in the novel of the "signifyin'" and "playin' de dozens" on the front porch of Joe's store and elsewhere? What purpose do these stories, traded insults, exaggerations, and boasts have in the lives of these people? How does Janie counter them with her conjuring?
8. Why is adherence to received tradition so important to nearly all the people in Janie's world? How does the community deal with those who are "different"?
9. After Joe Starks's funeral, Janie realizes that "She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her." Why is this important "to all the world"? In what ways does Janie's self-awareness depend on her increased awareness of others?
10. How important is Hurston's use of vernacular dialect to our understanding of Janie and the other characters and their way of life? What do speech patterns reveal about the quality of these lives and the nature of these communities? In what ways are "their tongues cocked and loaded, the only real weapon" of these people?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Compass Rose
John Casey, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375410253
Summary
It’s been more than two decades since Spartina won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being “possibly the best American novel... since The Old Man and the Sea” (The New York Times Book Review), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical landscape of salt ponds and marshes in John Casey’s fictional Rhode Island estuary.
Elsie Buttrick, prodigal daughter of the smart set who are gradually taking over the coastline of Sawtooth Point, has just given birth to Rose, a child conceived during a passionate affair with Dick Pierce—a fisherman and the love of Elsie’s life, who also happens to live practically next door with his wife, May, and their children. A beautiful but guarded woman who feels more at ease wading through the marshes than lounging on the porches of the fashionable resort her sister and brother-in-law own, Elsie was never one to do as she was told.
She is wary of the discomfort her presence poses among some members of her gossipy, insular community, yet it is Rose, the unofficially adopted daughter and little sister of half the town, who magnetically steers everyone in her orbit toward unexpected—and unbreakable—relationships. As we see Rose grow from a child to a plucky adolescent with a flair for theatrics both onstage and at home during verbal boxing matches with her mother, to a poised and prepossessing teenager, she becomes the unwitting emotional tether between Elsie and everyone else. “Face it, Mom,” Rose says, “we live in a tiny ecosystem.”
And indeed, like the rugged, untouched marshes that surround these characters, theirs is an ecosystem that has come by its beauty honestly, through rhythms and moods that have shaped and reshaped their lives.
With an uncanny ability to plunge confidently and unwaveringly into the thoughts and desires of women— mothers, daughters, wives, lovers—John Casey astonishes us again with the power of a family saga. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1939
• Where—Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., L.L.B., Harvard University; M.F.A.,
University of Iowa
• Awards—National Book Award
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia
John D. Casey is an American novelist and translator. He graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. cum laude in 1962, Harvard Law School with a LLB in 1965, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa with a M.F.A. in 1968.
Casey's work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Harpers, Esquire, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah.
He and his current wife, artist Rosamond Casey, live with their two daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia. His papers are held at University of Virginia library.
His has two adult daughters from his first marriage to novelist Jane Barnes: Nell Casey and Maud Casey. Maud Casey is a published author in her own right, with two well-reviewed novels and a collection of short stories to her credit. Nell Casey is the editor of the best-selling essay collection "Unholy Ghost" on depression and creativity, including essays by herself and her sister, and editor of a second essay collection "An Uncertain Inheritance" by contributors caring for family through illness and death. (Adpated from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[B]eautiful, elegiac…Like the love affair that is the novel's magnetic pole, Compass Rose gathers its quiet strength from a slow accretion of instants of intimacy "both ferocious and serene," moments that bubble up, collapse and decompose in the natural order of things, on their way to becoming the history of a place…Casey's portrayal of that patch of South County is carefully observed, lovingly rendered and delicately parsed—a full-throated celebration of the natural world.
Dominique Browning - New York Times Book Review
Much of the enjoyment of this novel is derived from the unobtrusive skill with which Casey charts the entanglements, convergences, repulsions, and compromises of life in a close-knit community…Perhaps the greatest achievement of Casey’s unadorned, clear, and flexible writing is its setting [of] rare moments of individual displacement and transcendence within a narrative that dramatically relates the complex procedures of human relations both public and intimate.
Boston Globe
Casey tepidly returns to characters orbiting Rhode Island fisherman Dick Pierce, the lynchpin of his 1989 National Book Award-winning novel, Spartina, in this uneven outing. Game warden Elsie Buttrick has just given birth to Dick's illegitimate daughter, Rose, and over the next 16 years the fiercely independent Elsie grapples with motherhood, aging, and love, and throws herself into a crusade to stop her land-grabbing brother-in-law from expanding his seaside resort. Meanwhile, Dick's wife, May, reconciles a public humiliation with an intense love for Rose. As Elsie's lust flares, May sinks deeper into her devotion to her children and Rose. Though the lyrical narrative has strong roots in the women's interiors, it's the connectedness of their "tiny ecosystem" that the book best evokes. Yet plodding moments—clearing a field of stones, for example—slow the pace, and the omission of many potentially dramatic scenes—a father admitting his infidelities to his sons, a woman capitulating to a landowner's demands—limit the story's emotional range. While fans of Casey's previous books will enjoy this encore, many readers will be left lukewarm by the lack of narrative consequence.
Publishers Weekly
With its emotionally intricate interior monologues and many complicated relationships among multiple characters, this is a novel best suited to those who have read Spartina. They will most readily appreciate Casey’s rich paean to the prideful seaside residents of a Rhode Island community and their long and tangled history with the land and each other. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
Casey writes old-fashioned novels in the best sense—character driven, thick with dialogue, nuanced and multilayered as they reveal relationships.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Have you read Spartina? How did your knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the characters affect your reading experience?
2. A compass rose is the circular design on a nautical chart, with directional points resembling the petals of a flower. What is the metaphor of the title? In what ways is Rose like a compass?
3. Miss Perry compares the end of her life to the last days of Rome (page 62). Where else might that metaphor apply?
4. Which characters care the most about class distinctions? How does that enhance or detract from their lives?
5. Elsie seems to relish being an observer. What does that say about her as a character? Where does it lead her?
6. On page 96, Johnny says, “Shame is a group thing. When a group mistrusts the outside, they have to trust the inside.” Where else does this play out in the story? Are there characters who should feel shame but don’t?
7. Reread Dick’s monologue on pages 100–101. What message is he sending to his sons? How do they use the insights he’s sharing?
8. On page 124, Miss Perry says, “It is disconcerting that someone I don’t much care for, I mean Phoebe Fitzgerald, has taken a wider interest in everyday life than Jack has.” What is she talking about? Compare and contrast the ways in which Phoebe and Jack interact with the other characters.
9. Discuss the triangles in the novel: Rose, Elsie, Mary; Rose, Elsie, May; Elsie, May, Dick. How do the characters benefit from these relationships?
10. On page 161, Phoebe quotes Deirdre: “It was a metaphor for how to deal with anything—you just start taking care of little things and pretty soon you’re feeling better about everything.” Which characters in the novel behave this way? How does it affect the others?
11. What is the significance, both metaphorical and to the characters, of the loss of Spartina?
12. On page 264, Mary talks about heroism and what men and women perceive as heroic. Which characters do you consider to be heroic, and why?
13. Discuss the passage on pages 286–89 in which Elsie watches a snake raid a bluebirds’ nest. What is its significance?
14. “It wasn’t fair that men got the verbs and she ended up with adjectives” thinks Elsie (page 305). What does she mean by this? Are there women in the novel who “get the verbs”?
15. Rose is a natural-born singer, while Elsie has a tin ear. What does this signify about their relationship?
16. Which of her three mother-figures is most influential for Rose: Elsie, Mary, or May?
17. Discuss Rose’s relationship with Dick. Do you think he regrets that she was born?
18. Why does Elsie seek out Dick for a sexual encounter after so many years?
19. Miss Perry once said to Elsie, “Do we stand outside of nature, or do we stand inside it? Is nature everything but us? Or is it simply everything?” (page 352). What is the role of nature in the novel? How does Casey use nature as a metaphor?
20. The last line of the novel is “Here we are. We live in South County.” Why is this such an important notion? What does it mean to live there?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Katherine Howe, 2009
Hyperion
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781401341336
Summary
A spellbinding, beautifully written novel that moves between contemporary times and one of the most fascinating and disturbing periods in American history—the Salem witch trials.
Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key secreted within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest to find out who this woman was, and to unearth a rare colonial artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge of herbs and other, stranger things.
As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.
Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the trials in the 1690s, and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Where—Houston, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University; M.A., Boston
University (completing Ph.D. at Boston U.)
• Currently—lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts
Katherine Howe's ancestors settled Essex County, Massachusetts, in the 1620s and stayed there through the 20th century. Family members included Elizabeth Proctor, who survived the Salem witch trials, and Elizabeth Howe, who did not.
Katherine is completing a Ph.D. in American and New England Studies at Boston University, which included teaching a research seminar on New England witchcraft. The idea for her debut novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, developed while she was studying for her doctoral qualifying exams, walking her dog through the woods between Marblehead and Salem. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts with her husband and assorted animals.
Extras
From a 2009 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I had a diverse array of pre-academia jobs, including late-night experimental music disc jockey, teaching assistant at a science museum, Madison Avenue shop girl, and researcher at the Museum of Modern Art. This means that at various moments in time I have, for professional reasons, fed dead mice to a corn snake, have handled world class artwork, have been asked to please stop playing so much Captain Beefheart, and have tried to fit fragile silk chiffon over too-perky breast implants. It also means that I have learned that children love corn snakes, that art museums do a vital service to our culture, that sale shopping is terrifying for everyone involved, and that the hour from three to four AM is the hardest.
• I often play a game with myself that I have started to call "time travel tourism." I will be walking along in Boston or Cambridge, and I will imagine what would happen if, all of a sudden, I stepped through some kind of time fabric rip and found myself on the exact spot where I was standing—but in, say, 1877. How would people react to seeing a woman suddenly appear in blue jeans and a pea coat? Would anyone accept the cash I was carrying? Where could I go for help? Would the hologram on my driver's license prove that I was from the future? If I couldn't get back, how would I support myself? A lot of my writing grows out of these kinds of thought experiments.
• A few years ago my husband and I adopted a shaggy orange mutt, who is the rather transparent inspiration for Arlo in Physick Book. Like Arlo, he is of indeterminate size and color, depending on his mood, and like Arlo, he is both brave and noble while also being kind of a wimp. He also tends to show up unexpectedly under my desk or in the armchair that I have just left to get something to eat. I take him walking in the woods with me, and when I sit on my favorite rock to think, he will sit with his back to mine, keeping watch.
• A few years ago Douglas Coupland wrote an essay called "Harolding in West Vancouver," about his habit of poking around in graveyards ("Harolding" comes from the cult film Harold and Maude, in which the morbid title character likes to hang out in graveyards). I also enjoy Harolding, especially in the very old graveyards and burying grounds scattered around New England. The iconography on colonial headstones has been the subject of a good amount of scholarship—weeping willows, cherubic angel faces, skulls and crossbones. I enjoy the quiet in graveyards, and in wondering about the back stories of the people who are buried there.
• This past summer my husband and I bought our first house, and so, whether I want to or not, I have discovered gardening. We planted a few tomato plants, just to see what would happen, and to our surprise the tomatoes entirely took over one whole wall of the kitchen. We had so many tomatoes that we started bringing plastic bags of them, unsolicited, whenever we went to friends' houses for dinner. Big tomatoes, small tomatoes, pink tomatoes, yellow tomatoes—and the passage describing the tomato plants in Physick Book had been written a year earlier! Physick Book also features a character who is a steeplejack, or someone who restores antique church steeples. We live across the street from a meeting house, and one afternoon I was working in the garden and heard scraping coming from some indeterminate place. I looked up and saw a man on a scaffold around the steeple, scraping off all the old paint: a steeplejack at work. I think living here is going to make me superstitious.
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer here is her response:
When I was about 13, a friend of my parents gave me a copy of he Writing Life by Annie Dillard. It was, quite frankly, way over my head at the time, but I already thought of myself as a writer by then, had already learned that writing was an activity on which I absolutely depended, and so I was determined to absorb from it what I could. What struck me first was the spareness of Dillard's language; like a lot of people I have to force myself not to use too many adjectives or adverbs, and as a teenager that problem was especially acute. Dillard writes with a clarity and precision that astonishes me, and I still spend time with her sentences to see how she is able to accomplish so much in such an efficient space.
Of course, the book itself is also a meditation on the act of being a writer, or on writing as an activity in everyday life. She captures the fear that undergirds the practice of writing, which is something I did not fully understand until recently. Revision, Dillard says, is the rebuilding of a house; at times, a supporting wall must come down, and there is nothing that you can do about it but grab a sledgehammer, swing, and duck. It takes courage to throw out bad work, she is saying, and seeing another writer name and confront that fear helps me to confront my own. Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
This charming novel is both a tale of New England grad-student life in 1991 and the Salem witch hunts in 1692.... I liked this book very much, but I want to ask the author's editor to please, in the future, keep her from wrapping or folding her characters' arms around their middles. And also point out that Connie's shoulder bag gets dropped on the floor so often it begins to sound like a character itself. But these are minor complaints. And by the end of this book, as any graduate student should, Katherine Howe has filled us in on much more than we used to know about that group of unfortunate women who paid the price of their lives due to a town's irrational fears.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
Set in Cambridge and Marblehead, Mass., Howe's propulsive if derivative novel alternates between the 1991 story of college student Connie Goodwin and a group of 17th-century outcasts. After moving into her grandmother's crumbling house to get it in shape for sale, Connie comes across a small key and piece of paper reading only "Deliverance Dane." The Salem witch trials, contemporary Wicca and women's roles in early American history figure prominently as Connie does her academic detective work. What follows is a breezy read in which Connie must uncover the mystery of a shadowy book written by the enigmatic Deliverance Dane. During Connie's investigation, she relies on a handsome steeplejack for romance and her mother and an expert on American colonial history for clues and support. While the twisty plot and Howe's habit of ending chapters with cliffhangers are straight out of the thriller playbook, the writing is solid overall, and Howe's depiction of early American life and the witch trials should appeal to readers who enjoyed The Heretic's Daughter. The witchcraft angle and frenetic pacing beg for a screen adaptation.
Publishers Weekly
Howe's debut novel explores the Salem witch trials from the perspective of Connie Goodwin, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Harvard. While cleaning out her grandmother's house near Salem in the summer of 1991, Connie discovers an old key along with a fragment of paper bearing only the words Deliverance Dane. At the urging of her adviser, Connie embarks upon a frenzy of research in local archives. Evidence mounts that Deliverance was a local herbalist and wise woman who became a victim of the witch trials. Finding Deliverance's "physick book" of recipes becomes a priority for Connie, particularly when she realizes that it may hold the key to curing her new boyfriend of his mysterious ailment. Howe inserts short interludes featuring Deliverance and her descendants, adding depth to the story. Howe's own connection to Salem (two of her ancestors were accused of witchcraft) adds a welcome personal touch. This enjoyable novel is too slow-paced to be considered a thriller, but it's a solid selection that may appeal to readers who enjoyed recent novels about Salem's witches (i.e., Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader and Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter).
Laura Bliss - Library Journal
(Starred review.) Historian Howe’s spellbinding, vividly detailed, witty, and astutely plotted debut is deeply rooted in her family connection to accused seventeenth-century witches Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor and propelled by an illuminating view of witchcraft. In all a keen and magical historical mystery laced with romance and sly digs at society’s persistent underestimation of women. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
A first novel about alchemy, magic and witchcraft, set unsurprisingly in Salem, Mass., in the late 17th century and also, perhaps surprisingly, in Marblehead, Mass., in 1991. Connie Goodwin has just passed her doctoral oral exam in colonial American history at Harvard, and she looks forward to working with her mentor, Professor Manning Chilton, on breaking new ground in her dissertation. Then Connie gets an unexpected call from her New Age-y mother Grace, who is about to lose the house in Marblehead she inherited from her own mother because she's neglected for 20 years to pay the taxes on it-can Connie get it cleaned up and on the market for her? The house is, of course, eerie as well as abandoned. As Connie begins to look through Granna's house, she picks up an old Bible that gives her both an otherworldly feeling and an electric charge. Out of the Bible falls an antique key with a tiny scroll bearing the cryptic words "Deliverance Dane." Ever the good historian, Connie begins to track down the name. Eventually she finds allusions to a "Physick Book": a manual of medicine used by knowledgeable women in the colonial era, but also a book of spells. The volume seems ever more elusive as Connie's desire grows stronger to track it down. She's also feeling some uncomfortable pressure from Professor Chilton, who wants the book as badly as Connie, ostensibly because he thinks it will be helpful in a scholarly presentation he plans to make but more overtly because he seems to have some sinister agenda of his own. Howe alternates her narrative between Connie's groping attempts to track down the truth about the past and flashbacks to the real story of Deliverance Dane. We learn that she was a witch condemned in the 17th century, desperate for good reasons to keep her book hidden from ecclesiastical authorities. Informative, though not as creepy as it purports to be.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The story follows several sets of mothers and daughters: Connie and Grace, Grace and Sophia, Deliverance and Mercy, Mercy and Prudence. How do these mother/daughter relationships differ from one another? How are they the same? Did you identify with one set more than the others?
2. Most of the main characters in the novel are women. How have women’s roles changed from the 17th century to the 20th century? What about their obligations and opportunities?
3. As an historian, Connie likes to interpret the past in light of the present. Sam, however, is a preservationist: he likes to keep the past intact, sometimes at the expense of the present. How are their opposing feelings about the past made apparent? Would you classify yourself as an historian or a preservationist?
4. How do some of the buildings, such as Saltonstall Court, the Harvard Faculty Club, and the Milk Street House, function as characters in the story?
5. Discuss the role of Arlo in the novel. Does he share characteristics with the "cunning folk" in Connie’s past?
6. What role does religion play in the novel? Is Christianity contradictory or complementary to magic in this story?
7. Do you think magic, as represented in this book, exists in the real world? If so, how does it manifest itself? Do we use different terms to describe it today?
8. Deliverance has a chance to escape with her daughter the night before she is put to death. Why does she make the choice she does?
9. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is the latest in a long line of books about witchcraft in Salem. Why do you think we’re still so enthralled by this moment in history? What does Salem have to teach us about our culture today?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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