The Lion (John Corey Series #5)
Nelson DeMille, 2010
Grand Central Publishing
437 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446580830
Summary
In this eagerly awaited follow-up to The Lion's Game, John Corey, former NYPD Homicide detective and special agent for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is back. And, unfortunately for Corey, so is Asad Khalil, the notorious Libyan terrorist otherwise known as "The Lion."
Last we heard from him, Khali had claimed to be defecting to the US only to unleash the most horrific reign of terrorism ever to occur on American soil. While Corey and his partner, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, chased him across the country, Khalil methodically eliminated his victims one by one and then disappeared without a trace.
Now, years later, Khalil has returned to America to make good on his threats and take care of unfinished business. "The Lion" is a killing machine once again loose in America with a mission of revenge, and John Corey will stop at nothing to achieve his own goal—to find and kill Khahil. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, Brad Matthews, Michael
Weaver, Ellen Kay
• Birth—August 22, 1943
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Hofstra University
• Awards—Estabrook Award
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York
Nelson DeMille has a over a dozen bestselling novels to his name and over 30 million books in print worldwide, but his beginnings were not so illustrious. Writing police detective novels in the mid-1970s, DeMille created the pseudonym Jack Cannon: "I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday," DeMille told fans in a 2000 chat.
Between 1966 and 1969, Nelson DeMille served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. When he came home, he finished his undergraduate studies (in history and political science), then set out to become a novelist. "I wanted to write the great American war novel at the time," DeMille said in an interview with January magazine. "I never really wrote the book, but it got me into the writing process." A friend in the publishing industry suggested he write a series of police detective novels, which he did under a pen name for several years.
Finally DeMille decided to give up his day job as an insurance fraud investigator and commit himself to writing full time—and under his own name. The result was By the Rivers of Babylon (1978), a thriller about terrorism in the Middle East. It was chosen as a Book of the Month Club main selection and helped launch his career. "It was like being knighted," said DeMille, who now serves as a Book of the Month Club judge. "It was a huge break."
DeMille followed it with a stream of bestsellers, including the post-Vietnam courtroom drama Word of Honor (1985) and the Cold War spy-thriller The Charm School (1988) Critics praised DeMille for his sophisticated plotting, meticulous research and compulsively readable style. For many readers, what made DeMille stand out was his sardonic sense of humor, which would eventually produce the wisecracking ex-NYPD officer John Corey, hero of Plum Island (1997) and The Lion's Game (2000).
In 1990 DeMille published The Gold Coast, a Tom Wolfe-style comic satire that was his attempt to write "a book that would be taken seriously." The attempt succeeded, in terms of the critics' response: "In his way, Mr. DeMille is as keen a social satirist as Edith Wharton," wrote The New York Times book reviewer. But he returned to more familiar thrills-and-chills territory in The General's Daughter, which hit no. 1 on The New York Times' Bestseller list and was made into a movie starring John Travolta. Its hero, army investigator Paul Brenner, returned in Up Country (2002), a book inspired in part by DeMille's journey to his old battlegrounds in Vietnam.
DeMille's position in the literary hierarchy may be ambiguous, but his talent is first-rate; there's no questioning his mastery of his chosen form. As a reviewer for the Denver Post put it, "In the rarefied world of the intelligent thriller, authors just don't get any better than Nelson DeMille."
Extras
From a Barnes & Noble interview:
• DeMille composes his books in longhand, using soft-lead pencils on legal pads. He says he does this because he can't type, but adds, "I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it's done in handwriting."
• In addition to his novels, DeMille has written a play for children based on the classic fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin."
• DeMille says on his web site that he reads mostly dead authors—"so if I like their books, I don't feel tempted or obligated to write to them." He mentions writing to a living author, Tom Wolfe, when The Bonfire of the Vanities came out; but Wolfe never responded. "I wouldn't expect Hemingway or Steinbeck to write back—they're dead. But Tom Wolfe owes me a letter," DeMille writes.
• When ashed what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is what he said:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read this book in college, as many of my generation did, and I was surprised to discover that it said things about our world and our society that I thought only I had been thinking about, i.e., the ascendancy of mediocrity. It was a relief to discover that there was an existing philosophy that spoke to my half-formed beliefs and observations.
(Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The Lion reminds us what makes DeMille one of the greatest storytellers of ours or any time.
Providence Journal
Authors just don't gett any better than Nelson DeMille.
Denver Post
A chilling reminder of how vulernable we still are despite all our homeland security measures.
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Scott Brick, narrator of 2000’s The Lion’s Game, has wisely been brought back to give voice to this sequel in which the titular master assassin Asad Khalil returns to the U.S. to murder everyone who ruined his fun the first time around, including wisecracking hard-boiled federal agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield. The shocking first strike against Kate occurs in the middle of a recreational sky dive, smartly written by DeMille and heart-thumpingly enacted by Brick. The unwavering Khalil speaks in a slithery, chilling whisper, while series protagonist Corey is full of brashness and bravura. But as the plot proceeds like “a straight ball down the middle,” a description provided by the author in an interview with the narrator, both of the antagonists begin to display signs of strain. Thanks to Brick, they sound a little more anxious, uncertain, and human the closer they come to their final mano a mano confrontation.
Publishers Weekly
Corey is a more developed character this time around, and Khalil is every bit as intelligent, cold, and compelling as he was in The Lion's Game. If the book has a flaw, it's that it might be a little close... to the earlier book. On the other hand, Khalil is a single-minded guy, and it doesn't stretch credibility at all to imagine that he'd pick up right where he left off. —David Pitt
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Lion:
1. Khalil is single-minded in his desire to kill. What motivates him—what are the roots of his actions? Do you consider Khalil the essence of evil...or is there some justification, even if warped, for his killing? Is revenge ever a justification?
2. What difficulties does New York area law enforcement officials face as they try to combat terrorists? Do those issues ring true in real life? How does John Corey rise above those difficulties—or does he?
3. Is Corey a likable character? Do you enjoy his sarcasm and wise-cracks, finding them funny and refreshing? Or do you find them tiresome and inappropriate? Is Corey fully developed as a real character, or is he a one-dimensional "good guy"? What about the other characters—his wife, Kate Mayfield, or his adversary, Asad Khalil? Another way to put it: does DeMille emphasize plot over character...or character over plot? And what's the difference?
4. What are Corey's views, which he expresses early on in the book, toward the countries of the Middle East and especially Iran? Do you agree with him?
5. Talk about the different skills that the hero and protagonist bring to their struggle? How is each trained? How do the two match up against one another—are Corey and Khalid equally matched, or does one seem to out match the other?
6. What does Corey see as Khalil's weakness...and how does he plan to use it against him?
7. Is Khalil's failure to kill Kate believable? How does she manage to survive?
8. What is Khalil's connection to the terrorist mission? How critical is his role in their truck bomb plot—or is that part of the story confusing?
9. Does this book give you pause to think about the security of the U.S. (and other Western countries) in the face of true terrorism? Does Khalil's fanaticism mirror real life terrorists? How realistic is Khalil from everything you've heard and read about actual terrorists?
10. A number of readers felt that (1) the book's opening sky diving scene is exciting; (2) the book's middle section drags and lacks suspense; (3) the ending is suspenseful, but confusing. Do you agree—or disagree—with that assessment?
11. Overall, does this book "deliver" as a top-notch thriller? Is it fast-paced with surprising twists? Or is it ponderous and predictable? Is the ending satisfying...does it wrap up loose strings? Or is it ambiguous, leaving issues unresolved?
12. Have you read other books in the John Corey series? If so how does this one compare, especially with its prequel, The Lion's Game? If you haven't read other Corey thrillers, does this book inspire you to do so?
13. Should there be a movie version? If so, how would you cast it?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Love the One You're With
Emily Giffin, 2008
St. Martin's Press
342 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312348663
Summary
Ellen's relationship to Andy doesn't just seem perfect on the surface, it really is perfect. She loves his family, and everything about him, including that he brings out the best in her.
That is, until Ellen unexpectedly runs into Leo. The one who got away. The one who brought out the worst in her. The one she can't forget. This is the story about why we chose to love the ones we love, and why we just can't forget the ones who aren't right for us.
Emily Giffin brings both humor and heart to her novels and has an uncanny ability to tap into the things women are really thinking and feeling. In Love the One You're With, she proves, once again, why she is the fastest rising star of women's fiction writing today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1979
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Raised—Naperville, Illinois
• Education—B.A., Wake Forest University; J.D., University of Virginia
• Currenbtly—lives in Atlanta, Georgia
Emily Giffin is the bestselling American author of eight novels commonly categorized as "chick lit." More specifically, Giffin writes stories about relationships and the full array of emotions experienced within them.
Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she also served as manager of the basketball team, the Demon Deacons. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. But Giffin soon determined to seriously pursue her writing.
In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers, but Giffin was undaunted. She began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.
2002 was a big year for Emily Giffin. She married, found an agent, and signed a two-book deal with St. Martin's Press. While doing revisions on Something Borrowed, she found the inspiration for a sequel, Something Blue.
In 2003, Giffin and her husband left England for Atlanta, Georgia. A few months later, on New Year's Eve, she gave birth to identical twin boys, Edward and George.
Something Borrowed was released spring 2004. It received unanimously positive reviews and made the extended New York Times bestsellers list. Something Blue followed in 2005, and in 2006, her third, Baby Proof, made its debut. No new hardcover accompanied the paperback release of in 2007. Instead, Giffin spent the year finishing her fourth novel and enlarging her family. Her daughter, Harriet, was born May 24, 2007.
More novels:
2008 - Love the One You're With
2010 - Heart of the Matter
2012 - Where We Belong
2014 - The One & Only
2016 - First Comes Love
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Emily on Twitter.
Book Reviews
Giffin's talent lies in taking relatable situations and injecting with enough wit and suspense to make them feel fresh. The cat-and-mouse game between Ellen and Leo lights up these pages, their flirtation as dangerously addictive as a high-speed car chase. The ending isn't explosive, but what Ellen learns is quietly thrilling: Sometimes, you have to do whatever it taks to be with the one you love.
People
[Giffin’s books] are smart, sad and witty.... In her latest novel, newlywed photographer Ellen begins to have misgivings about her marriage when she runs into an old flame and feels the familiar lightning bolt of attraction. She contemplates an affair. It all sounds very formulaic, doesn’t it? It isn’t.... Giffin is bold enough to allow a mainstream heroine to be happily married while still maintaining her curiosity about the road—or the guy—not taken, let alone considering infidelity. And she’s able to show the strains that these considerations take on family, friends and husband.... It’s the difference between appealing to a mass audience and a reader who wants her ideals challenged rather than affirmed, often intentionally ending in ambiguity and compromise. It’s the stuff of real life, stripped of literary pretensions.
National Post (Canada)
Love that’s clouded by the memory of an old romantic relationship is the subject of Emily Giffin’s aptly titled Love the One You’re With.... Readers will follow Ellen with fascination and trepidation as she enters the dangerous waters of what might have been—or still could be.
Hartford Courant
Giffin’s book is instantly relatable—few don't wonder how their lives would be different if they had turned left rather than right at life's big forks. Her writing is realistic and entertaining. There are unexpected plot twists and measured jabs at materialism and Southern societal norms…[and] Giffin's funny, honest voice lends credence to this modern riff on the old adage that the grass appears greener on the other side of the fence.
Charlotte Observer
A chance encounter with an old flame in Giffin's bittersweet, sometimes mawkish fourth novel causes Ellen Dempsey to consider anew what could have been. Shortly after marrying Andy, Ellen runs into Leo, her intense first love. Leo, a moody writer, has secretly preoccupied Ellen ever since he broke her heart, so after seeing him again, Ellen wonders if her perfect life is truly what she wants or simply what she was expected to want. This scenario is complicated by Ellen's past: the early death of her mother and subsequent disintegration of her family have left Ellen insecure and saddled with unresolved feelings of guilt. These feelings intensify when Andy's career takes the newlyweds from Ellen's beloved New York City to suburban Atlanta. As Ellen's feelings of inadequacy and resentment grow, her marriage begins to crumble. The novel is sometimes bogged down by characters so rooted in type that they, and the story line, can only move in the most obvious trajectory. However, Giffin's self-aware narrator and focus on troubled relationships will satisfy those looking for a light women's lit fix.
Publishers Weekly
New York City-based photographer Ellen Graham is a happy newlywed—until a chance meeting with an old boyfriend leads her to revisit the past and question her present in Giffin's (Baby Proof) fourth novel. When Ellen crosses paths with her journalist ex, Leo, her obsessive love for him resurfaces. Leo quickly finds an inroad to Ellen's life, offering her up a plum photography assignment she can't refuse. Ellen remains faithful to her husband but can't deny her strong feelings for Leo. Nonetheless, she agrees to move to Atlanta to make her husband happy. Of course, once settled there, Ellen is profoundly unhappy and reconnects with Leo, making plans to take photographs for another of his articles. The tension builds as Ellen balances on the brink of an action that could change the course of her life. Giffin delivers another relatable and multifaceted heroine who may behave unexpectedly but will ultimately find her true path.
Karen Core - Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Ellen and Leo’s meeting at the crosswalk is accidental—or it is fate? Do you believe in fate or destiny? How have fate and destiny played a role in your own life?
2. After running into Leo on the street, Ellen becomes very preoccupied with thoughts of him. Do you think that this is a normal reaction to running into someone you once loved? Do you feel that it is okay to maintain relationships with exes? Explain.
3. The Grahams’ world is vastly different from the world in which Ellen grew up. Would you be attracted to the Grahams’ world? Do you feel that a desire to leave Ellen’s roots behind played a role in her initial friendship with Margot? Do you think it is possible to maintain a close friendship with someone from a much different background? Why or why not?
4. In many ways, Andy seems to be an ideal husband. He is thoughtful, considerate, successful. How do you feel about the fact that Ellen often questions her relationship with him? How do you feel when she compares Andy and Leo?
5. How is Leo different from Andy? Can you think of any ways in which they are similar? What do their similarities and differences say about Ellen? Are the two men reflections of truly different sides of her?
6. Margot was the first person to be supportive of Ellen’s desire to be a photographer. Was Leo? Was Andy supportive of her career? Why or why not?
7. What do you think it says about Ellen that she likes to view the world through the lens of her camera?
8. Do you think that Ellen made the right decision by taking the offer to shoot Drake Watters? At what point do you feel Ellen should have told Andy about Leo’s involvement with the Drake and/or Coney Island projects? Do you feel he would have been accepting if she had been straightforward with him? Do you think it is ever okay to withhold the truth from a spouse? Explain.
9. When Andy suggests the move to Atlanta, did you find yourself rooting for Ellen to agree—or hoping that she’d stay in New York? Do you feel she had good reasons for her decision?
10. What are your overall thoughts on Leo? Do you feel that he is genuine in what he says to Ellen throughout the book? Did your thoughts change at all as the story progressed?
11. Margot doesn’t tell Ellen that Leo came back to the apartment to see her. She does this for Ellen’s “own good.” Do you agree? Do you see this as a betrayal or act of friendship—or both? If you were in Ellen’s shoes, would you be angry?
12. In many friendships, there is a delicate balance of power. Whom do you feel has the power in Margot and Ellen’s relationship? Does that balance of power shift? If so, what causes it to shift?
13. At Ellen and Andy’s going away party, Margot recognizes Leo’s byline in the magazine and puts the pieces together. How do you think Margot feels being caught between her loyalty to her best friend and her brother? Do you feel she handled her conflicting loyalties well throughout the book?
14. Describe the relationship between Ellen and her sister Suzanne. Do you think Suzanne has a positive or negative influence on Ellen and her decision-making? Do you feel Suzanne is a truer friend to Ellen than Margot? If so, how? If not, why not?
15. After the Coney Island shoot, Leo and Ellen go back to Leo’s apartment and are interrupted by a phone call from Suzanne. Do you feel Ellen would have gone further with Leo had her sister not called when she did? Do you feel that Ellen had already cheated on Andy prior to this moment?
16. At what point does a relationship with another man become a true infidelity? When you share secrets with him? When there is physical contact? Do you believe Ellen cheated on Andy on the red-eye flight with Leo?
17. Throughout the book, did Leo give any warning signs that he wouldn’t be good for Ellen? Do you feel Andy gave any warning signs that he also might not be good for Ellen?
18. Do you feel Ellen made the right decision at the end of the book? Were you surprised by her choice?
19. Do you think Ellen and Andy’s relationship was changed by this experience? Do you think Ellen ever confesses what happened in Leo’s apartment? Would you confess?
20. Discuss Ellen’s revelation that love is a choice and not a surge of passion. Do you agree?
(Questions from author's website.)
The Invisible Bridge
Julie Orringer, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
784 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400034376
Summary
A grand love story set against the backdrop of Budapest and Paris, an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are ravaged by war, and the chronicle of one family’s struggle against the forces that threaten to annihilate it.
Paris, 1937.
Andras Levi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sevigne.
As he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter’s recipient, he becomes privy to a secret history that will alter the course of his own life.
Meanwhile, as his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena and their younger brother leaves school for the stage, Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty. At the end of Andras’s second summer in Paris, all of Europe erupts in a cataclysm of war.
Orringer takes us from the small Hungarian town of Konyar to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras’s room on the rue des Ecoles to the deep and enduring connection he discovers on the rue de Sevigne, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond.
The Invisible Bridge is the story of a love tested by disaster, of brothers whose bonds cannot be broken, of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war.
Expertly crafted, magnificently written, emotionally haunting, and impossible to put down, The Invisible Bridge resoundingly confirms Julie Orringer’s place as one of today’s most vital and commanding young literary talents. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 12, 1973
• Where—Miami, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.F.A., University of Iowa; Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University
• Awards—Ploughshares Cohen Award; Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Julie Orringer is a short story writer and author of two higly acclaimed works of historical fiction. Both were bestsellers. The Invisible Bridge was published in 2010, and The Flight Portfolio in 2019.
Orringer is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Cornell University, and was a Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. Her stories have appeared in the Paris Review, Yale Review, Ploughshares, Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She lives in Brooklyn, New York City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[T]he horrors of war never become Ms. Orringer's primary subject. She devotes far more attention to conveying the intricacies of Jewish life and describing the ways in which they were cherished and preserved. This is a book in which one family's cooking rituals can take on an almost totemic importance.... Andras's most enduring wish…is to create a kind of family memorial. And Ms. Orringer, writing with both granddaughterly reverence and commanding authority, has done it for him.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
We all know what happened in the Holocaust, even if few among us can ever understand it, and the close of the novel demonstrates the refreshing trust Orringer has in her audience. The Invisible Bridge provides another literary glimpse of the day-to-day horrors of that time, and also reminds us of the potential contributors to the postwar world—the architects and painters, the professionals and tradesmen—who were lost from Mitteleuropa…The strength of The Invisible Bridge lies in Orringer's ability to make us care so deeply about the people of her all-too-real fictional world. For the time it takes to read this fine novel, and for a long time afterward, it becomes our world too.
Andrew Ervin - New York Times Book Review
Orringer uses the symbolism of invisible bridges in many inventive ways, re-engineering traditional dimensions of time and space, calibrating the immensity of world-war deaths against the specifics of one family's life, and building emotional connections between parents and children, husbands and wives, the preserved and the obliterated…She maintains a fine balance between the novel's intimate moments…and its panoramic set-pieces. Even those monumental scenes manage to display a tactful humility: This is a story, they keep reminding us, and it's not bringing anybody back. With its moving acknowledgment of the gap between what's been lost and what can be imagined, this remarkably accomplished first novel is itself, in the continuing stream of Holocaust literature, an invisible bridge.
Donna Rifkind - Washington Post
Orringer's stunning first novel far exceeds the expectations generated by her much-lauded debut collection, How to Breath Underwater. In this WWII saga, Orringer illuminates the life of Andras Levi, a Hungarian Jew of meager means whose world is upended by a scholarship to the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris. There, he makes an unlikely Hasz), a woman nine years his senior whose past links her to a wealthy Hungarian family familiar to Andras. Against the backdrop of grueling school assignments, exhausting work at a theater, budding romance, and the developing kinship between Andras and his fellow Jewish students, Orringer ingeniously depicts the insidious reach of the growing tide of anti-Semitism that eventually lands him back in Hungary. Once there, Orringer sheds light on how Hungary treated its Jewish citizens—first, sending them into hard labor, though not without a modicum of common decency—but as the country's alliance with Germany strengthens, the situation for Jews becomes increasingly dire. Throughout the hardships and injustices, Andras's love for Claire acts as a beacon through the unimaginable devastation and the dark hours of hunger, thirst, and deprivation. Orringer's triumphant novel is as much a lucid reminder of a time not so far away as it is a luminous story about the redemptive power of love.
Publishers Weekly
In September 1937, Andras Levi leaves Budapest for Paris, where he will study at the Ecole Speciale on a scholarship. Before he leaves, he encounters Elza Hasz, who asks him to carry a letter to Paris addressed to C. Morgenstern. Andras posts the letter and begins his studies, getting help from a Hungarian professor, a desperately needed job from a theater director he met on the train, and an introduction to some friends from an actress at the theater. The daughter is sullen and disinterested, but the mother turns out to be Claire Morgenstern, recipient of the mysterious letter, and it is with Claire that Andras launches a tumultuous affair. Soon, a painful secret about Claire's past emerges—and then war comes to sweep everything aside. Verdict: With historic detail, a complex cast of characters, and much coincidental crossing, this book has a big, sagalike feel. Unfortunately, it also has a paint-by-the-numbers feel, as if the author were working too hard to get through every point of the story she's envisioned. The result is some plain writing, not the luminous moments we remember from her story collection, How To Breathe Underwater. Nevertheless, this should appeal to those who like big reads with historic significance. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
A long, richly detailed debut novel from prizewinning short-story writer Orringer (How to Breathe Underwater, 2003), unfolding from a little-explored area of the Holocaust. The brothers Andras and Tibor Levi, Hungarian Jews, are models of aspiration. As the narrative opens, Andras is bound for Paris to study architecture, Tibor for Italy to study medicine. The year is 1937, far enough along in the proceedings that neither should be surprised to learn that bad things are about to happen; yet both are so resolutely set on their paths that, it seems, the outside world does not always figure. Andras is helped along by a few fellow Jews at the Parisian academy, as well as a seemingly sympathetic artist who inspires him to contemplate, at 22, converting to "become a Christian, and not just a Christian-a Roman Catholic, the Christians who'd imagined houses of God like Notre-Dame, like the Saint-Chapelle, like the Matyas Templom or the Basilica of Szent Istvan in Budapest." This will not be the first time Andras gives free play to lofty-mindedness, but the mood gives way to earthlier concerns when he meets a woman who has an engagingly complex past-and whose story will travel alongside Andras's through the labor-camp system and, eventually, the Nazi death machine. Tibor's story is a quieter version of Andras's; indeed, the reader sometimes wonders whether Orringer has forgotten about him, though only for a time. The author works large themes of family, loyalty and faith across a huge sweep of geography and history. Her settings are the smart avenues of world capitals, snowy dirt tracks on the road to Stalingrad, even the woods of upstate New York. Her story develops without sentimentality or mawkishness, though it is full of grand emotions. Though the events of the time, especially in Hungary, are now the stuff of history books and increasingly fewer firsthand memories, Orringer writes without anachronism, and convincingly. Written with the big-picture view of Doctor Zhivago or Winds of War.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What does the opening chapter establish about the cultural and social milieu of prewar Budapest? What do Andras’s reactions to Hasz household reveal about the status of Jews within the larger society? How do the differences between the Hasz and Levi families affect their assumptions and behavior during the war? Which scenes and characters most clearly demonstrate the tensions within the Jewish community?
2. Why do Andras and his friends at the Ecole Speciale tolerate the undercurrent of anti-Semitism at the school even after the verbal attack on Eli Polaner (pp. 39–40) and the spate of vandalism against Jewish students (p. 94)? To what extent are their reactions shaped by their nationalities, political beliefs, or personal histories? Why does Andras agree to infiltrate the meeting of Le Grand Occident (pp. 97–102)? Is his belief that “[the police] wouldn’t deport me... Not for serving the ideals of France” (p. 102), as well as the reactions of Professor Vago and Andras’s father to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia (p. 266) naïve, or do they represent widespread opinions and assumptions?
3. Andras and Klara’s love blossoms against the background of uncertainties and fear. Is Klara’s initial lack of openness about her background justified by her situation? Why does she eventually begin an affair with Andras? Are they equally responsible for the arguments, break-ups, and reconciliations that characterize their courtship? Do Klara’s revelations (pp. 214–34) change your opinion of her and the way she has behaved?
4. Despite the grim circumstances, Andras and Mendel produce satirical newspapers in the labor camps. What do the excerpts from "The Snow Goose" (p. 331), The Biting Fly (pp. 360–61), and The Crooked Rail (p. 437) show about the strategies that helped laborers preserve their humanity and their sanity? What other survival techniques do Andras and his fellow laborers develop?
5. In Budapest, the Levi and Hasz families sustain themselves with small pleasures, daily tasks at home and, in the case of the men, working at the few jobs still available to Jews (pp. 352–55, pp. 366–77, pp. 405–10). Are they driven by practical or emotional needs, or both? Does the attempt to maintain ordinary life represent hope and courage, or a tragic failure to recognize the ever-encroaching danger? What impact do the deprivations and degradations imposed by the Germans have on the relationship between the families? Which characters are the least able or willing to accept the threats to their homeland and their culture?
6. What details in the descriptions of Banhida (pp. 356–63, pp. 392–99), Turka (pp. 486–503), and the transport trains (pp. 558–66) most chillingly capture the cruelty perpetrated by the Nazis? In addition to physical abuse and deprivation, what are the psychological effects of the camps’ rules and the laws imposed on civilian populations?
7. General Marton in Banhida (pp. 399–402), Captain Erdo, and the famous General Vilmos Nagy in Turka all display kindness and compassion. Miklós Klein engages in the tremendously dangerous work of arranging emigrations for fellow Jews (pp. 422–23). What motivates each of them to act as they do? What political ideals and moral principles lie at the heart Nagy’s stirring speech to the officers-in-training (pp. 506–7)? (Because of his refusal to support official anti-Semitic policies, Nagy was eventually forced to resign from the Hungarian army; in 1965, he was the first Hungarian named as a Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Institute.)
8. Why does Klara refuse to leave Budapest and go to Palestine (p. 510)? Is her decision the result of her own set of circumstances, or does it reflect the attitudes of other Jews in Hungary and other countries under Nazi control?
9. “He could no sooner cease being Jewish than he could cease being a brother to his brothers, a son to his father and mother” (p. 46). Discuss the value and importance of Jewish beliefs and traditions to Andras and other Jews, considering such passages as Andras’s feelings in the above quotation and his thoughts on the High Holidays (pp. 201–3); the weddings of Ben Yakov and Ilana (pp. 255–56) and of Andras and Klara (p. 317); the family seder in wartime Budapest (pp. 352–55); and the prayers and small rituals conducted in work camps.
10. The narrative tracks the political and military upheavals engulfing Europe as they occur. What do these intermittent reports demonstrate about the failure of both governments and ordinary people to grasp the true objectives of the Nazi regime? How does the author create and sustain a sense of suspense and portending disaster, even for readers familiar with the ultimate course of the war?
11. Throughout the book there are descriptions of Andras’s studies, including information about his lessons and the models he creates and detailed observations of architectural masterpieces in Paris. What perspective does the argument between Pingsson and Le Corbusier offer on the role of the architect in society (pp. 273–74)? Whose point of view do you share? What aspects of architecture as a discipline make it particularly appropriate to the themes explored in the novel? What is the relevance of Andras’s work as a set designer within this context?
12. Andras’s encounters with Mrs. Hász (p. 6) and with Zoltan Novak (pp. 19–20) are the first of many coincidences that determine the future paths of various characters. What other events in the novel are the result of chance or luck? How do the twists and turns of fortune help to create a sense of the extraordinary time in which the novel is set?
13. Does choice also play a significant role in the characters’ lives? What do their decisions (for example, Klara’s voluntary return to Budapest; Gyorgy’s payments to the Hungarian authorities; and even Joszef’s attack on Andras and Mendel (p. 492)) demonstrate about the importance of retaining a sense of independence and control in the midst of chaos?
14. The Holocaust and other murderous confrontations between ethnic groups can challenge the belief in God. “(Andras) believed in God, yes, the God of his fathers, the one to whom he’d prayed...but that God, the One, was not One who intervened in the way the needed someone to intervene just then. He had designed the cosmos and thrown its doors open to man, and man had moved in.... The world was their place now” (p. 432). What is your reaction to Andras’s point of view? Have you read or heard explanations of why terrible events come to pass that more closely reflect your personal beliefs?
15. What did you know about Hungary’s role in World War II before reading The Invisible Bridge? Did the book present information about the United States and its Allies that surprised you? Did it affect your views on Zionism and the Jewish emigration to Palestine? Did it deepen your understanding of the causes and the course of the war? What does the epilogue convey about the postwar period and the links among past, present, and future?
16. “In the end, what astonished him the most was not the vastness of it all—that was impossible to take in, the hundreds of thousands dead from Hungary alone, and the millions from all over Europe—but the excruciating smallness, the pinpoint of which every life was balanced” (p. 558). Does The Invisible Bridge succeed in capturing both the “vastness of it all” and the “excruciating smallness” of war and its impact on individual lives?
17. Why has Orringer chosen “Any Case” by the Nobel Prize–winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborkska as the coda to her novel? What does it express about individuals caught in the flow of history and the forces that determine their fates?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Secret Cardinal
Tom Grace, 2007
Vanguard Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781593154844
Summary
Inspired by true events, masterful storyteller Tom Grace delivers his most provocative novel yet.
When Ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny is invited to Rome to consult on the functioning of the Vatican Library, he is still grieving the death of his wife and son and welcomes the distraction of the seemingly simple assignment.
But Pope Leo XIV has a startlingly different task in mind for him. In a private audience, Kilkenny learns of an unreported atrocity committed against the underground Church in China and its link to Yin Daoming, the long-imprisoned Bishop of Shanghai who has served thirty years of a life sentence in a Chinese laogai for refusing to renounce the Church of Rome. The aging pope then reveals the dangerous truth about Bishop Yin, a secret that he has kept for over twenty years. Decades of diplomacy have failed to end China’s persecution of the Catholics loyal to the pope, or to free Bishop Yin. The pope wants Yin free and asks Kilkenny to devise a plan to accomplish this seemingly impossible task.
With help from the U.S. president, American Special Forces, and the C.I.A., he assembles a team of ten men and one woman that will use some of the most advanced weapons, aircraft, and computer technology to execute this extraordinary mission. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Southeastern Michigan, USA
• Education—University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Southeastern Michigan
Tom Grace was born, raised, and presently resides in Southeastern Michigan. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan, earning two degrees in the field. In just over twenty years of practice, Grace has worked on projects ranging from modest home renovations to major urban designs for Chicago and London. Much of his work has involved scientific and engineering research facilities, cutting-edge technologies that invariable find their way into his novels.
Grace credits his second career as a writer in equal parts to a voracious appetite for books, an overactive imagination, and a compulsive desire to set challenging long-term goals for himself. He wrote the first draft of his debut novel over a year’s worth of lunch hours. Spyder Web was published in 1999, and his writing earned favorable comparisons to Ian Fleming and Clive Cussler. Grace’s hero, Nolan Kilkenny, returned in Quantum (2000), Twisted Web (2003), Bird of Prey (2004), and The Secret Cardinal (2007).
In addition to intricately woven plots and break-neck pacing, Grace’s novels are infused with technology that is either state-of-the-art or just over the horizon. His scenarios often seem eerily prescient, so much so that Bird of Prey was cited in a National Security Briefing on the Chinese space program and space-based weaponry.
As both an author and architect, Grace lives by Mies van der Rohe’s famous aphorism: "God is in the details." Painstaking research underpins each of his novels, creating the factual foundations that support the stories.
Tom Grace resides in Michigan with his wife, five children and a yellow Labrador in a modernist home of his own design. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Secret Cardinal is a deft blend of fact and fiction…a suspenseful tale rich with intrigue, unexpected turns and gritty characters.
National Catholic Register
Like The Da Vinci Code, this story features plenty of Vatican intrigue and several gory murders. But in The Secret Cardinal those representing the Catholic Church are the good guys.
US Catholic (Editor's Choice.)
Grace's latest featuring series hero ex-navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny spins a complicated fugue around papal succession. After the tragic loss of his beloved wife and unborn son, Kilkenny arrives at the Vatican and is soon called to the side of the dying pope Leo XIV. The pope discloses that more than 20 years earlier he made Yin Daoming—who has been a religious prisoner in China for longer than that—a secret cardinal. He asks Kilkenny to head up a team to go to China, free Yin and bring him back to the Vatican. Standing in Kilkenny's way is intelligence agent Liu Shing-Li of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a very serious fellow indeed. Interspersed with rescue mission chapters are detailed descriptions of the Vatican's inner workings and the details of the process of pope selection, which thrills—only readers may find distracting. But Grace (Bird of Prey) builds a suspenseful head of steam as Kilkenny and friends overcome twists and obstacles in a dangerous race against Liu's forces.
Publishers Weekly
One is the most powerful man in the Catholic Church. The other is a man the Chinese government wants to destroy but fears turning into a martyr. Both are men of peace. Grace's fifth thriller (after Bird of Prey) featuring former Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny begins with Kilkenny on assignment in Rome helping an old family friend improve Vatican Library operations. Soon Kilkenny is swept up in Pope Leo's dying wish—to save the long-imprisoned Yin Daoming, the bishop of Shanghai, whose only crime is practicing his faith. As Kilkenny and his elite team plan to rescue Yin and smuggle him out of China, covert forces try to thwart the rescue effort and prevent any chance of the bishop becoming the next pope. Grace's spinning web of international intrigue makes for a gripping read, and the character of Yin provides a look at the power of one man of faith against incredible obstacles. Recommended for all popular fiction collections.
Susan O. Moritz - Library Journal
[The author] doesn't give us a lot of time to slow down and ponder the story's many imponderables; we're too busy running around after Kilkenny...on a mission to save the Catholic Church. Fans of high-flying adventure yarns will enjoy the romp, even if they find themselves rolling their eyes now and then. —David Pitt
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Secret Cardinal:
1. Be sure to read the Author's Note at the end of the story. Also visit the author's website to read some of the posted news clips regarding Chinese imprisonment of Catholic bishops. How does the fact that The Secret Cardinal is based on real-life events affect your reading?
2. Talk about Nolan Kilkenny? What kind of character is he? What skills does he bring to his mission? What about his moral code: does he have one? How does he differentiate which actions are acceptable, or unacceptable, in accomplishing his goal?
3. One reader notes that Kilkenny's mission demonstrates the adage that we are not alone in the world: Kilkenny's survival and success depend on teamwork and "help from unexpected quarters." What does the reader mean by that observation—and do you agree with it?
4. What about the technology devised by the military? Eye-popping? Which was most impressive? Think also about the consequences, in real life, of the U.S. military becoming involved in such a mission? Should it?
5. How has Yin Daoming survived his years of imprisonment? What special strengths does he exhibit? How has he...how does anyone...maintain faith in the face of isolation and torture?
6. What is your reaction to the torture scenes? Overly graphic...or powerful and necessary to the storyline?
7. Talk about the Vatican sections of the book, especially those regarding the papal selection: did you find them interesting and enlightening...or a dull and unnecessary digression?
8. How different do you find this book in its treatment of the Catholic church from, say Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons?
9. Does this book deliver in terms of a thriller: is it fast-paced with surprising twists and turns? Or is it plodding and predictable? Is the ending satisfying...or lacking in someway?
10. Should more attention be paid to the Chinese treatment of Catholics? Should more international efforts be directed toward achieving the bishops' release? Why has this issue not reached the scandalous proportions of any sex-charged political story that has captured public attention? Does the US, or any Western country, have the necessary leverage to affect change in China's behavior?
11. Is this book a religious book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Generosity: An Enhancement
Richard Powers, 2009
Picador-Macmillan
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312429751
Summary
What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments?
Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio• Birth—June 18, 1957
• Where—Evanston, Illinois, USA
• Education—M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—National Book Award-Fiction
• Currently—lives in the Smoky Mountian region of Tennessee
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. The Echo Maker, perhaps his best known work, won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.
Early years
One of five children, Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois. His family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood where his father was a local school principal. When Powers was 11 they moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok, which Powers attended through his freshman year, ending in 1972.
During that time outside the U.S. he developed skill in vocal music and proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction, primarily, and classics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Education
The family returned to the U.S. when Powers was 16. Following graduation in 1975 from DeKalb High School in DeKalb, Illinois, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a major in physics, which he switched to English literature during his first semester. There he earned the BA in 1978 and the MA in Literature in 1980.
He decided not to pursue the PhD partly because of his aversion to strict specialization, which had been one reason for his early transfer from physics to English, and partly because he had observed in graduate students and their professors a lack of pleasure in reading and writing (as portrayed in Galatea 2.2).
Career
For some time Powers worked in Boston, as a computer programmer. Viewing the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander, on a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, he was inspired to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first book, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985.
To avoid the publicity and attention generated by that first novel, Powers moved to the Netherlands where he wrote Prisoner's Dilemma, followed up with The Gold Bug Variations. During a year's stay at the University of Cambridge, he wrote most of Operations Wandering Soul; then, in 1992 Powers returned to the U.S. to become writer-in-residence at the University of Illinois.
All told, Powers has published a dozen books, winning him numerous literary awards and other recognitions. These include, among various others, a MacArthur Fellowship; Pushcart Prize, PEN/Faulkner Special Citation, Man Booker long listing; nominations for the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the National Book Award itself in 2006.
In 2010 and 2013, Powers was a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, during which time he partly assisted in the lab of biochemist Aaron Straight. In 2013, Stanford named him the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English.
While writing his 2018 novel, The Overstory, Powers left Palo Alto, California, moving to the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/16/2018.)
Book Reviews
[A]n excellent introduction to Powers's work, a lighter, leaner treatment of his favorite themes and techniques.... Powers is, when he chooses to be, an engaging storyteller (though he would probably wince at the word), and even as he questions the conventions of narrative and character, Generosity gains in momentum and suspense. In the end, he wants to have it both ways, and he comes very close to succeeding.
Jay McInerney - New York Times
Sixteen years after Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac, Richard Powers has heard the alarming implications of treatments that let us buy better moods and personalities. His cerebral new novel offers a chilling examination of the life we're reengineering with our chromosomes and brain chemistry.... Although you might expect a novel so weighted with medical and philosophical arguments to flatten its characters into brittle stereotypes, ultimately that's the most impressive aspect of this meditation on happiness and humanness. As Generosity drives toward its surprising conclusion, these characters grow more complex and poignant, increasingly baffled by the challenge and the opportunity of remaking ourselves to our heart's content.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
About halfway into Powers's follow-up to his National Book Award-winning The Echo Maker, a Nobel Prize-winning author, during a panel discussion, talks about how "genetic enhancement represents the end of human nature.... A story with no end or impediment is no story at all." This then, is a story with both. Its hero, at least initially, is Russell Stone, a failed author of creative nonfiction turned reluctant writing instructor who cannot help transmitting to his students something of his flagging faith in writing. One of them, a Berber Algerian named Thassadit Amzwar, is so possessed by preternatural happiness that she's nicknamed "Miss Generosity" by her prematurely jaded classmates and has emerged from the Algerian civil war that claimed the lives of her parents "glowing like a blissed out mystic." After Stone learns that Thassadit may possess a rare euphoric trait called hyperthymia, her condition is upgraded from behavioral to genetic, and Powers's novel makes a dramatic shift when Thassadit falls into the hands of Thomas Kurton, the charismatic entrepreneur behind genetics lab Truecyte, whose plan to develop a programmable genome to "regulate the brain's set point for well-being" may rest in Miss Generosity's perpetually upbeat alleles. Much of the tension behind Powers's idea-driven novels stems from the delicate balance between plot and concept, and he wisely adopts a voice that is sometimes painfully-aware of the occasional strain ("I'm caught... starving to death between allegory and realism, fact and fable, creative and nonfiction"). Like Stone and Kurton, Powers strays from mere record to attempt an impossible task: to make the world right.
Publishers Weekly
Algerian refugee Thassadit Amzwar has witnessed a great deal of violence in her young life, yet she radiates joy. Now attending college in Chicago, she meets Russell Stone, writing instructor and all-around slump of a guy, who is fascinated by Thassadit's glowing countenance. After consulting with campus counselor (and eventual love interest) Candace Weld, Stone theorizes that Thassadit may be the carrier of a gene that produces happiness. Once the story makes its way to the media, all hell breaks loose. The cheerful refugee is publicly sanctified, vilified, and sought after—especially by genome companies that want to market her genetic good fortune. Offering some very meaty ethical issues, this fast-paced, science-laden story offers each character a chance to become heroic in his or her own way. Verdict: Intelligent, thought-provoking, multilayered, and emotionally engaging, this follow-up to Powers's National Book Award winner, The Echo Maker, astonishes with its depiction of our annoying cultural habit of creating, exalting, and disposing of celebrities within the span of a few minutes. Master storyteller Powers has a keen eye for the absurdity of modern life. Highly recommended. —Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty
Library Journal
Nothing less than the phenomenon of happiness is explored in this rich, challenging novel from polymathic Powers (The Echo Maker). Think of it as an extended Socratic or Platonic dialogue, animated and communicated by three generously imagined characters. The central contrasting figures are Thassadit Amzwar, an inexplicably optimistic and upbeat refugee from the horrors of ongoing ethnic and other conflicts in the northern African powder keg of Algeria, whose student visa brings her by way of Canada to Chicago and the "creative nonfiction" adult-education class ("Journal and Journey") taught by failed fiction writer and generally downcast would-be autodidact Russell Stone. Thassa's fellow students, a motley gathering of borderline-hopeful underachievers, suspect she's nuts and dub her "the Bliss Chick." But Russell believes there's something really different about this irrepressible survivor of unthinkable calamity, as does the novel's third major character and de facto antagonist, Thomas Kurton, a young scientific phenom who grows up to become a celebrity geneticist whose search for a "happiness gene" is chronicled in a widely seen film and who hopes to appropriate the luminously cheerful Algerian to star in his researches. A lesser writer might have made this a 21st-century Frankenstein. Powers instead channels his heady confluence of ideals and motives into suspenseful intellectual drama, set in painstakingly realistic Middle-American urban jungles populated by intelligent, well-meaning people who aim to do good by any means necessary. Even the irresistible Thassa comes abrasively alive, in her exasperated response to Christian fundamentalists determined to claim her as one of their own: "I'm a Maghreb Algerian Kabyle Catholic Atheist French Canadian on a student visa. I can't help these people." The mystery of Thassa's impermeable optimism is never explained; it neither should nor could be. Exuberant, erudite and satisfyingly enigmatic.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Writing and the role of the imagination are central to Generosity. What is creative nonfiction? How does Russell's course — Creative Nonfiction 14, Sect. RS: Journal and Journey — relate to the novel you are reading?
2. On page 12 Richard Powers writes, "Blogs, mashups, reality programming, court TV, chat shows, chat rooms, chat cafés, capital campaigns, catalog copy, even war-zone journalism all turn confessional. Feelings are the new facts. Memoir is the new history. Tell-alls are the new news." Do you agree with this analysis? What does it mean for popular culture to be so dominated by "true confessions" and "memoir"? How does this relate to our emphasis on "reality" television? Where does this leave the novel?
3. On page 181 there is a press conference to announce:
Happiness gene identified? Did you think it would evade detection forever? The Alzheimer's gene, the alcoholism gene, the homosexuality gene, the aggression gene, the novelty gene, the fear gene, the stress gene, the xenophobia gene, the criminal-impulse gene, and the fidelity gene have all come and gone. By the time the happiness gene rolls around, even journalists should have long ago learned to hedge their bets.
What does the idea of a happiness gene mean to you? Do you agree with Thomas Kurton when he says, "Why shouldn't we make ourselves better than we are now? We're incomplete. Why leave something as fabulous as life up to chance?" Do you want to reverse the aging process and live forever?
4. Why does Russell's moment of celebrity as a magazine writer end so soon?
5. Why do you think Richard Powers made Thassa Algerian? What did you learn about Algeria from the novel that you didn't know before?
6. Why does John Thornell attack Thassa? What do you think of Russell's reaction to the attack?
7. Does your view of Thomas Kurton change in the course of the novel?
8. What role does the idea of prophecy play in the novel?
9. What is Powers's view of free will? What's your view of our future if genetic determinism prevails?
10. What was your first impression of Thassa? What did you decide was the root of her happiness? And how much did you change your view by the end of the novel?
11. How are Russell and Candace good for each other while also being an unlikely couple? How fair or unfair do you think it is for Candace to be asked not to see Thassa? Did she surprise you by complying, and why do you think she did?
12. Discuss the happiness experiments that Candace tells Russell about on pages 125-27. How do their careers — his as a writer and hers as a psychotherapist — shape the way they interpret life's circumstances? Is it easy for you to approach good surprises without worrying, applying the mentality of "A dime's a dime. Grab it when you see it"?
13. Ultimately, what is Tonia's role in Thassa's life?
14. Discuss Thassa's appearance on Oona's television show. What does Thassa's experience with the media say about the way we gather information, and the way identities (of celebrities and regular viewers alike) are manufactured in the age of new technology?
15. Should Thassa have been allowed to sell her eggs? Was Truecyte entitled to a licensing fee? Discuss the need for boundaries between science, medicine, and big business.
16. How did you react to the novel's closing scene? Who did you think was narrating the novel up until that point? Were you surprised by Thassa's final appearance?
17. Who are the novel's most generous characters? Are these also the happiest ones?
18. How would you respond if you tried some of Russell's writing assignments, such as "Find one thing in the last day worth telling a total stranger," or to Candace's suggestion — "Close your eyes and write a sentence in the air. Use your left hand. Just one sentence. A simple one"?
19. What do you believe about the nature of happiness? Which factor is stronger in determining whether someone will be happy: genetics or generosity? What (or who) brings you the most happiness? Would you be willing to take a pill or participate in genetic-engineering experiments if it meant being happier?
20. Are there themes and ideas in Generosity you recognize from other books by Richard Powers? And in what ways is this novel a departure or different from his other books?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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