The Living
Annie Dillard, 1992
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060924119
Summary
Annie Dillard evokes the frontier generation of the 19th century in Washington state's Puget Sound. Focusing primarily on three men and the settlement of Whatcom, Dillard presents us with a brilliant array of characters, their optimism and charity in the face of hardship, as well as racism, brutality and greed.
We watch as the inexorable rise of civilization rushes in upon the settlement, changing the region, the lives and fortunes of those who live there. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 30, 1945
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Hollins College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize (1975); Academy Award for
Literature, American Academy of Arts & Letters; National
Endowment for the Arts Grant; New York Public LIbrary
Literary Lion; Guggenheim Foundation Grant.
• Currently—lives in New York City
Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, best known for her narrative nonfiction. She has also published poetry, essays, literary criticism, autobiography, and fiction. She is married to the historical biographer Robert D. Richardson, Jr.
Dillard describes her childhood at length in An American Childhood. She is the oldest of three daughters, born to affluent parents who raised her in an environment that encouraged humor, creativity, and exploration. Her mother was a non-conformist and incredibly energetic. Her father taught her everything from plumbing to economics to the intricacies of the novel On The Road. Dillard's childhood was filled with days of piano and dance classes, rock and bug collecting, and devouring the books on the shelves of the public library. But there were also many troubles—like the horrors of war, which she often read about.
After graduating from high school, Dillard attended Hollins College (Hollins University since 1998), in Roanoke, Virginia, where she studied literature and creative writing. She married her writing teacher, the poet R. H. W. Dillard (her maiden name is Doak)—the person she says "taught her everything she knows" about writing. In 1968 she graduated with a Masters in English, after writing a 40-page thesis on Thoreau's Walden, which focused on the use of Walden Pond as "the central image and focal point for Thoreau's narrative movement between heaven and earth." The next couple of years after graduation Dillard spent painting and writing. During this time, she published several poems and short stories.
Dillard's family did not attend Presbyterian church but when she was a child she and her sister did. She also spent a few summers at a fundamentalist summer camp. During her rebellious teenage years, she quit church because of the "hypocrisy." When she told her minister, he gave her a stack of books by C. S. Lewis, which ended this rebellion. After her college years, Dillard became, as she says, "spiritually promiscuous," incorporating the ideas of many religious systems into her own religious understanding. Not only are there references to Christ and the Bible in her first prose book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but also to Judaism, Buddhism, Sufism, and even Eskimo spirituality. In the 1990s, Dillard converted to Roman Catholicism.
Writing
After a near-fatal bout of pneumonia in 1971, Dillard decided that she needed to experience life more fully and began work on Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She spent four seasons living near Tinker Creek, a suburban area surrounded by forests, creeks, mountains, and myriad animal life. When she wasn't in the library, she spent her time outdoors, walking and camping. After living there for about a year, Dillard began to write about her experiences near the creek. She started by transposing notes from her twenty-plus-volume reading journal. It took her eight months to turn the notecards into the book. Towards the end of the eight months, she was so absorbed that she sometimes wrote for fifteen hours a day, cut off from society without interest in current events (like the Watergate scandal).
The finished book brought her a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 at the age of twenty-nine. Her other books in this vein include Holy the Firm, Teaching a Stone to Talk, and For the Time Being. She has also written a memoir about growing up in Pittsburgh, An American Childhood, and two novels, The Living, and 2007's The Maytrees.
Dillard spent some years as a faculty member in the English department at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The Living is an august celebration of human frenzy and endurance. Her living are hectically alive, her dead recur in furious memory. And Annie Dillard, sometimes by an apparent crabwise indirection but with utter thoroughness, proves herself a fine novelist.
Thomas Keneally - New York Times Book Review
The kind of book a reader sinks into completely.... The characters are so compelling, the setting so detailed, so convincing, so absolutely complete.... The Living is an extraordinary accomplishment, one of those rare occasions when the written word results through the magic and talent of the author in the creation of the whole world
Boston Sunday Globe
The Living is an impressive piece of fiction and a riveting hunk of history.... The many readers who have been drawn in the past to Dillard's work for its elegant and muscular use of language won't be disappointed in these pages.... She has given herself a landscape large enough to challenge her talents.
Los Angeles Times
Pulitzer Prize-winner Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974) turns her hand to fiction with this historical novel of the American Northwest in the late 19th century. Focusing on the settlement at Whatcom on Bellingham Bay (near Puget Sound), Dillard offers a compelling portrait of frontier life. The novel has a large and richly varied cast of characters, from the engaging frontiersman Clare Fishburn and Eastern socialite-turned-pioneer Minta Honer to the disturbed and violent Beal Obenchain and kleptomaniac Pearl Sharp. The Living is unflinching in its delineations of pioneer life at its worst and best—racism and brutality on the one hand and optimism and charity in adversity on the other. Dillard's view of "the living" in its many senses is a fine novel that is an essential purchase for all fiction collections. — Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Center Library.
Library Journal
The popular Pulitzer-winning Dillard (An American Childhood, 1987, The Writing Life, 1989, etc.) has come up with a novel at last—a panoramic and engrossing re-creation of 19th-century pioneer life in the Pacific Northwest—complete with gentlemanly gold miners, avuncular railroad speculators, misty-eyed sweethearts, assorted schemers and dreamers, and even a three-card- monte player or two. Ada and Rooney Fishburn were barely into their early 20s when they set off by covered wagon for the untamed western coastland just south of Canada. Youthful ignorance and optimism proved to be their greatest assets, though, as they arrived at Whatcom, a minuscule settlement in Bellingham Bay, and threw themselves into a lifelong battle against the physical hardship, grueling labor, and frequent tragedies of frontier life. With the help of other settlers and a tribe of friendly Lummi Indians, the Fishburns managed to survive—long enough to watch with amazement as gold, railroads, and real estate brought undreamed-of fortune and calamity to their isolated shore. By the time the two surviving Fishburn sons were grown, an ever-increasing influx of shopkeepers, politicians, and entrepreneurs arriving from the Midwest, the East Coast, and Europe had quickened the rhythms of the town sufficiently to send all of Whatcom's fortunes reeling. New personalities joined the fray, including John Ireland Sharp, the soul-searching school principal forever marked by the poverty he witnessed in New York City; Minta and June Randall, Baltimore heiresses who bet their hearts and their inheritances on this coastland; Johnny Lee, a Chinese railway worker whose younger brother was deliberately drowned; andbrooding, depraved Beal Obenchain, who toyed with his fellow settlers' psyches as a form of recreation. As usual in Dillard's work, sparkling prose and striking insights abound, though a tendency toward overdescription, plus a certain emotional distance from her many characters—who must regularly vacate the stage to let others have a turn—take some of the power out of her punch. Otherwise: a triumph of narrative skill and faithful research—headed for success.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Talk about the role of women in this story—especially the competing views by Eustace Honer and the Noosack chief, Kulshan Jim. Both feel the other culture mistreats its women. What do you make of the comparison?
2. Many of Dillard's characters are an eccentric bunch—but they are also richly drawn. Which ones do you have particular sympathy for—or find repellant—and why? In particular, talk about Ada and Rooney Fishburn: are they equipped for what faces them? John Ireland Sharp and his idealism? Minta and June Randall and the choices they make?
3. Death is ever present in this work. Discuss the ways in which Dillard uses the crab (pincers of death?) as a symbol of life's tenuous hold, death's constant presence.
4. The structure of this novel is interesting: Dillard covers the events at the beginning of the book in a breath-taking pace, and then revisits them. As a result, she has removed much of the suspense—readers know what happens. How does her unusual plot structure strike you? Why might she have written in this manner?
5. Consider the different cultures that bump up against each other. How do they impact one another—do they assimilate with or learn from each other...or remain untouched? In what way is this slice of frontier similar or different from the nation as a whole?
6. How does the influx of civilization—gold, the railroad, and real estate—affect Whatcom and its residents? In your view, are changes for the better or worse...or both?
7. Talk about how the dream of brotherhood is turned on its head with the brutal treatment of the socialists and unionists toward the Celestials and Terrestials.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page
The Reading Group: A Novel
Elizabeth Noble, 2003
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060760441
Summary
A bestseller in the UK, The Reading Group is about a group of women who meet regularly to read and discuss books, and how their lives become intertwined, both with the books they read and with each other's lives.
What starts out as a good idea born from a glass of wine and the need to socialize, turns into much more. Over the span of a year, Clare, Harriet, Nicole, Polly and Susan—five women of different ages, backgrounds and contrasting dilemmas — transform themselves through the shared community of a book group.
Their reading group becomes a forum for each of the women's views, expressed initially by the book they're reading and increasingly openly as the bonds of friendship cement. As the months pass, these women's lives become more and more intertwined.
In the The Reading Group, Nobel reveals the many complicated paths in life we all face as well as the power and importance of friendship. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 22, 1968
• Where—High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—Wonersh, Guildford, Surrey, England
Elizabeth Noble was born in Buckinghamshire, England. She was educated in England and Canada, where the family lived for several years in Toronto.
In 1990 she graduated from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, with a B.A. (Honors) in English language and literature. But it was the diploma (Intensive Secretarial) that she was awarded by the typing school above the Italian café in Covent Garden that got her into her chosen career— publishing. Over a six year period she worked in the editorial, marketing, publicity, and sales departments of several big publishing houses—moving every couple of years, once she had made a big enough mess in the filing (note to bewildered successors: check under "m" for miscellaneous). This makes her a tricky author. She speaks fluent publishing.
She took a career break — she called it "retired" — to have her two daughters, after her marriage in 1996. When her youngest daughter was ready to go to nursery school, and real work beckoned, she decided to try what she had been threatening to do for years, and wrote a hundred pages of The Reading Group.
Then it took her nine months to work up the courage to send it to an agent. The Reading Group was published in the UK in January 2004 and went straight to the number-one position in (London's) Sunday Times's Fiction Bestseller list. She was supposed to be signing stock in London bookshops the day the chart was announced, but she had grown bored and was trying on trousers—they didn't fit—in a ladies' clothing store when the call came. So she was literally caught with her pants down.
The book has since sold almost a quarter of a million copies in the UK. But the other day her elder daughter, Tallulah, told her she would rather she got a job in a chicken plucking factory because then she would be at home more, so she doesn't think there is much danger of her getting conceited.
She has recently finished her second novel— there were no vacancies at the chicken plucking factory—and begun her third.
She lives with her husband and their ungrateful children in a haunted vicarage in "the safest village in Surrey," England. They obviously don't know about the ghost.
Extras
From a 2005 interview with Barnes & Noble:
• Researching my novels has changed my life. This year alone, in the name of research, I have abseiled 100 feet off of a viaduct, learnt how to gamble, and danced on stage in a Las Vegas show. At the ripe old age of 36, I've finally realized that you are only here once, and I'm never going to say no to a new experience again (so long as its legal!).
• I am perpetually engaged in a quest to be thinner, fitter, have better hair, and look more stylish. I'm usually losing.
• Each morning, I pump up the volume on the stereo and dance about the living room with my five- and seven-year-old daughters. It's the best ten minutes of every day.
• I am incredibly close to my parents and siblings. We have gone in very different directions—my brother teaches mathematics in France, and my sister is a midwife—but we all have a strong sense of family.
• My friends are hugely important to me, and spending time with them is a precious part of my life.
• I like chocolate, floral white wines, cinema, and being lazy. I love U.S. import TV—Sex and the City, The West Wing, Desperate Housewives, and Six Feet Under (God bless HBO!).
• I dislike almost all politicians, pushy parents, and bad manners. And I hate, hate, hate cell phones, and the fact that they mean you can never be ‘unavailable.'
• I unwind in a hot bath with a big glass of wine, and my ultimate luxury would be 12 hours sleep a night (but my children do not agree).
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here's her answer:
A thousand books have influenced my life as a writer...but since you're making me, I'm going to name the classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which I read as a girl and remember as the first novel that gripped me and made me say, as I reluctantly got to the end, "I want to write one day." I absolutely loved, and felt for, Francie Nolan.
(Author bio from Barnes & Noble and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Tremendous amounts of female bonding, some witty byplay and very well-considered characters.
Seattle Times
A hot, soapy bubble bath of a novel. Go ahead and sink in.
Entertainment Weekly
Noble keeps engagement high as her characters connect and interconnect. Since the Briticisms are usually decipherable in context, this entertaining read is very accessible for Americans. —Whitney Scott
Booklist
Perfect indulgence for the eponymous set-or pandering to an anticipated audience? Or maybe both? As the London Evening Standard put it, The blurb has [the author] down as a simple Surrey housewife who knocked this out between the Hoovering and the hot sex, but further investigation reveals her to be a veteran of book marketing married to the head of Time Warner UK. Go figure! Well, either way, this U.K. bestseller is a frothy page-turner that dissects the relationships, desires and discoveries of five English women, all members of a book club. Over the course of a year, the women read 12 novels (including Atonement, Rebecca and The Alchemist) and, through their playful but intimate discussions (few of which revolve around the books), they bond closely while coping with such matters as a philandering husband, a mother with dementia, a pregnant but unmarried daughter, an infertility crisis, a wedding and a funeral. It's a testament to Noble's characterizations and plotting that the novel is not overwhelming, despite its numerous (perhaps too many) points of view, complicated backstories and interweaving contemporary crises. Light but never flip, this is funny, contemplative and touching reading, and the group's familiar book choices allow readers to feel as if they're part of the gang, too, as they race to the end, eager to find out what happens, why it does and what it all means.
Publishers Weekly
When five women get together to start a book group, they never envision how their lives will change, become intertwined, and be reflected in their books of choice. Their meetings draw them into a surprising sisterhood as they work through a year of caring for an aging parent, unexpectedly becoming a grandmother, marital infidelity, a marriage gone stale, and infertility. Each chapter opens with the group's reading pick and uses it to frame the chapter, mirroring the plot and character development along a particular theme. Fast paced and funny, this is women's fiction worth staying up past your bedtime for. Noble's portrayal of each character remains steady throughout, and readers will readily relate to these women. Highly recommended for all libraries. —Amy Brozio-Andrews, Albany P.L., NY
Library Journal
British chick-lit bestseller hits all the right marketing buttons. Uplifting, interconnected stories of women in a reading club overcoming crises? Check. Twelve months' worth of mini book reviews? Check. And first-novelist Noble packages it so neatly, outlining the books and characters for reference before her story even begins. Harriet and Nicole are stay-at-home moms in their 30s whose husbands work "in the City." Harriet doubts she still loves sweet, upright Tim; Nicole loves philandering Gavin too much. Polly and Susan are a decade older. Polly, a divorced paralegal with a teenaged son and a college-aged daughter, has just accepted a marriage proposal from dashing lawyer Jack. Susan runs a soft-goods business; she and perfect husband Roger, a doctor, are dealing with her beloved mother's suddenly failing health. The club's fifth and most expendable member is Claire, the deeply depressed daughter of Susan's employee. A midwife who can't have children, Claire has withdrawn from long-suffering husband Elliot. Each month's chapter begins with a club meeting at which lightweight intellectual discussion takes place (hot for Heartburn, cool to Atonement), then follows the women's evolving situations. Harriet pulls back from the brink of adultery and wakes up to her real love for Tim once he threatens to walk. Catching Gavin in the act, Nicole finally finds the gumption to throw him out. When Polly's daughter Cressida announces that she's pregnant and doesn't want to marry the father, Polly decides to keep the child for her so that Cressida can finish her education. Jack balks at first, but the baby's charms win him over. Their mother's death brings together Susan and her bitter, long-absent older sister after they realize that Susan was actually adopted. Shocked to learn that Elliot is the father of Cressida's child, Claire finds her calling as a nurse in Romania. Bound to be a hit, but depressingly adept at perfecting the formula.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Consider the epigraph by Margaret Atwood: "the real, hidden subject of a book group discussion is the book members themselves." What does each member reveal by her book selection and contribution to the discussion every month? Is it possible to read a novel objectively, without filtering it through the prism of one's own life experiences?
2. As a reader, Harriet says, "I care so much more about the characters women create. And if I don't care, really care, by about page fifty, forget it." If Harriet judges a book by the emotional bonds she forms with the characters, what criteria do the other reading group members use in evaluating a good book? Consider the Harriet-led conversations on male authors, and on discerning a novel's timelessness. Do you agree with Harriet that, when reading classic literature, "you have to be able to apply what you call modern values to it and still find something relevant and pertinent in it?"
3. At the meeting to discuss The Alchemist, Harriet critiques the book saying, "I've heard the same points made more succinctly by Hallmark." As the women argue and analyze the book's relevance to their own lives, do they convince Harriet of the profundity inherent in simple truths?
4. When Polly, Susan, Harriet, and Nicole discuss Clare's infertility, what do they reveal about changing cultural attitudes toward pregnancy?
5. Compare Tim and Harriet's marriage to Jack and Polly's relationship. Are the crises that arise in each pairing similar? What happens when Tim acts on the lyrics, "If you love someone, set them free?" Does Polly do the same? How is Tim and Polly's situation different from Nicole's? How is it possible to differentiate between a love that needs to be set free, and a love that has to end?
6. Why does Susan think of motherhood as, "the steel ribbons that bind us — Mary and Clare, me and Mum, Polly and Cressida, Cressida and her unborn baby?" How is the strength of each woman's bond tested? What does Susan mean when she says, "we're all mothers, aren't we? Different stages maybe, different problems, but the love is the same. The instinct for self-sacrifice is the same." Do you agree that motherhood is intrinsic to each stage of womanhood?
7. Why does Rob become uncomfortable and embarrassed when Tim reveals the details of his marriage? Why does he think, "It might be okay for women to talk about that stuff?" What seems to be missing from the male characters' relationships with each other? As a "man's woman" with not a "single girlfriend left from school or university," do you think Nicole was handicapped in her relationship with Gavin? How has the "feminine cocoon" of The Reading Group strengthened Nicole? Where, do you suppose, the author might stand on the nature vs. nurture debate on gender and emotional bonding?
8. How would you describe Susan's relationship with her sister Margaret? Are the ties that bind real sisters more prone to jealousy and misunderstanding of female friendship? How does the revelation of Alice's enormous act of generosity and sister-love affect Susan and Margaret?
9. When Jack picks up baby Spencer for the first time, he felt, "something instinctive, quite beyond his control." And when Spencer smiles, Jack "felt as if he'd won first prize. He wanted to make him smile again." Cressida's pregnancy seriously jeopardized her future, almost destroyed Polly's chance for marriage and love a second time around, and leaves Polly with a baby to raise during her retirement years. But in the face of these massive complications what simple, powerful truth does baby Spencer represent? Conversely, was Nicole's decision to deny the truth an act of courage or selfishness, given her changed circumstances?
10. As a member of the "sandwich generation," Susan cares for her children as well as for her Alzheimers afflicted mother. Polly raised her daughter Cressida to maturity, but now cares for her daughter's child, as well. Alice rescues her sister, and keeps her secret to her grave. Are all the women in The Reading Group caretakers, of one sort or another? Where does their unhesitating instinct for self-sacrifice come from? How does the reading group help the women sort through their complicated lives?
11. How does Elizabeth Noble's fictional reading group resemble your own? Has your group become more friendly over book discussions?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page
Vanishing Acts
Jodi Picoult, 2005
Simon & Schuster
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743454551
Summary
Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her beloved, widowed father, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiance, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons.
But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall ... until a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret about herself that changes the world as she knows it — and threatens to jeopardize her future.
With Vanishing Acts, Jodi Picoult explores how life — as we know it — might not turn out the way we imagined; how the people we've loved and trusted can suddenly change before our very eyes; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat. Once again, Picoult handles an astonishing and timely topic with under-standing, insight, and compassion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1966
• Where—Nesconset (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.Ed., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Hanover, New Hampshire
Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has approximately 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.
Early life and education
Picoult was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island in New York State; when she was 13, her family moved to New Hampshire. Even as a child, Picoult had a penchant for writing stories: she wrote her first story— "The Lobster Which Misunderstood"—when she was five.
While still in college—she studied writing at Princeton University—Picoult published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. To pay the bills, after graduation she worked at a variety of jobs, including copy writing and editing textbooks; she even taught eighth-grade English and attained a Masters in Education from Harvard University.
In 1989, Picoult married Timothy Warren Van Leer, whom she met in college, and while pregnant with their first child, wrote her first book. Song of the Humpbacked Whale, her literary debut, came out in 1992. Two more children followed, as did a string of bestseller novels. All told, Picoult has more than 20 books to her name.
Writing
At an earlier time in her life, Picoult believed the tranquility of family life in small-town New England offered little fodder for writing; the truly interesting stuff of fiction happened elsewhere. Ironically, it is small-town life that has ended up providing the settings for Picoult's novels. Within the cozy surroundings of family and friends, Picoult weaves complex webs of relationships that strain, even tear apart, under stress. She excels at portraying ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Disoriented by some accident of chance, they stumble, whirl, and attempt to regain a footing in what was once their calm, ordered world.
Nor has Picoult ever shied from tackling difficult, controversial issues: school shooting, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teen suicide, and racism. She approaches painful topics with sympathy—and her characters with respect—while shining a light on individual struggles. Her legions of readers have loved and rewarded her for that compassion—and her novels have been consistent bestsellers.
Personal life
Picoult and her husband Timothy live in Hanover, New Hampshire. They have three children and a handful of pets. (Adapted from a 2003 Barnes and Noble interview and from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)
Book Reviews
Delia Hopkins was six years old when her father allowed her to be his assistant in the amateur magic act he performed at the local senior center's annual Christmas pageant. "I learned a lot that night," recalls Delia, who is now 32, at the start of Picoult's absorbing new novel (her 12th, after My Sister's Keeper). "That people don't vanish into thin air...." She has come to know this even better as an adult: she makes her living finding missing people with her own search-and-rescue bloodhound. As she prepares for her wedding, however, Delia has a flash of memory that is so vivid yet so wildly out-of-place among the other memories from her idyllic New Hampshire upbringing that she describes it to a childhood friend, who happens to be a reporter. Soon, her whole world and the world of the widowed father she adores is turned upside down. Her marriage to her toddler's father, a loving but still struggling recovering alcoholic, is put on hold as she is forced to conduct a search-and-rescue mission on her own past and identity. It will cut to the heart of what she holds to be true and good. As in previous novels, Picoult creates compelling, three-dimensional characters who tell a story in alternating voices about what it might mean to be a good parent and a good person, to be true to ourselves and those we love. Picoult weaves together plot and characterization in a landscape that is fleshed out in rich, journalistic detail, so that readers will come away with intriguing questions rather than pat answers.
Publishers Weekly
Well-oiled Picoult sets her latest expertly devised search-and-rescue tale in rural New Hampshire, where a kidnapping case is uncovered 28 years too late. As usual, Picoult (My Sister's Keeper, 2004, etc.) spins a terrifically suspenseful tale by developing just the right human-interest elements to make a workable story. Single mom Delia Hopkins works with the local Wexton police and a bloodhound named Greta to find lost children. Delia's close relationship with her divorced, 60-ish father, Andrew, who runs a senior-citizens' home, grows strained when he's suddenly arrested on kidnapping charges. The victim is Delia herself, named Bethany Matthews before her father fled with her from a drunken Mexican mother in Arizona. For 28 of her 32 years, Delia has believed her mother was dead. With Andrew extradited to Phoenix, the strange history of the case unravels, complicated by the choice of Delia's fiance, Eric (father of daughter Sophie), as Andrew's lawyer and the assignment of her childhood buddy Fitz to cover the case for his newspaper. Picoult is a thorough, perceptive writer who deliberately presents alternating viewpoints, so that the truth seems constantly to be shifting. When Delia finally meets the attractive, remarried Elise Vasquez, she can't quite vilify a woman who has been sober for many years and works as a curandera (healer). Her father's story is both suspect and understandable, especially in light of his horrific treatment in prison, caught up in the violence of rival gangs. The magnetic Eric is a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon when stressed, while dependable, silent lover Fitz waits in the wings for his chance. Meanwhile, Delia and Sophie make a fascinating digression into the mythical world of the local Hopi tribe. At times, Picoult goes over the top, allowing Sophie to get lost so that Greta can find her and, at the eleventh hour, inserting into the trial the possibility of Delia's sexual abuse . An experienced novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When she learns she was kidnapped as a child, Delia's choice of profession takes on a new significance. What motivated Delia to pursue a career in search-and-rescue? Does she view it differently once she knows about her past?
2. Delia says that as children she, Fitz, and Eric each had their roles: "Fitz was the dreamer; I was the practical tactician. Eric, on the other hand, was the front man: the one who could charm adults or other kids with equal ease." Have they continued these roles into adulthood? How so? Is each one comfortable in his or her role, or is there a longing to be something different?
3. In one instance Eric muses that "there are people in this world who have done worse things than Andrew Hopkins." What is your opinion of what Andrew did—taking Delia away from her mother and creating a new life for the two of them? From a legal standpoint, is he guilty of a crime? How about from a moral standpoint?
4. Andrew himself says, "Does it really matter why I did it? By now, you've already formed your impression. You believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future." A person cannot change his or her past actions, but can they make up for the hurt they've caused by helping others? Does the good that Andrew has done for the town of Wexton and for the senior citizens in his care--not to mention the happy childhood he gave Delia--make up for or excuse his taking his daughter? What do you make of Elise's remark to Andrew that Delia "turned out absolutely perfect"?
5. Eric believes that he does not have "the experience or the wits or the confidence" to represent Andrew. Why then does he agree to take on the case? Why does he continue to act as Andrew's attorney even when it causes tension between him and Delia?
6. In one instance Delia says to Fitz about meeting her mother for the first time, "I want this to be perfect. I want her to be perfect. But what if she's not? What if I'm not?" How does the reality measure up when she finally meets her mother? What kind of understanding do Delia and Elise come to? Why does Elise give Delia the "spell"--is it to help Andrew or her daughter?
7. Delia believes "it takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it." How do the characters in the novel, including Delia herself, prove this to be true?
8. During the trial, Eric tells the court he is an alcoholic. What does the exchange between Eric and Delia while he is questioning her on the witness stand reveal about their relationship? Do they view each other differently after this exchange? As two people who love alcoholics, how does Delia's treatment of Eric differ from Andrew's treatment of Elise? Whose actions and reactions, given their partner's disease, do you support?
9. Eric says to Andrew, "Everyone deserves a second chance." How does the idea of second chances play out in Vanishing Acts? Are there any characters who deserve a second chance and don't get one? And, conversely - are there any characters who do get a second chance - and squander it?
10. Elise tells Delia, "If you had grown up with me, this is one of the things I would have tried to teach you: marry a man who loves you more than you love him. Because I have done both now, and when it is the other way around, there is no spell in the world that can even out the balance." Discuss this in terms of Delia's relationships with both Eric and Fitz. Which man do you think Delia should be with, and why?
11. Both Delia and Sophie quickly develop a close relationship with Ruthann. When Ruthann commits suicide, Delia is there to witness it. Why does she not try to stop Ruthann? What does Delia come to realize about herself from this experience?
12. Many of the chapters told from Andrew's point of view occur while he is in prison, "where everyone reinvents himself." What do these scenes, which depict in graphic detail the harsh realities of life behind bars, reveal about Andrew? What do they add to the overall storyline?
13. Right versus wrong is a dominant theme in Vanishing Acts--whether Andrew was right or wrong to kidnap Delia, whether Eric is right or wrong to hide his continued drinking from Delia, whether Delia is right or wrong not to stop Ruthann. How do the multiple perspectives in the story blur these lines and show how two people can view the same situation completely different? Were there any instances where you changed your mind about something in the story after reading a different character's viewpoint?
14. Fitz tells Delia, "I think you're angry at yourself, for not being smart enough to figure this out all on your own...If you don't want someone to change your life for you again, Dee, you've got to change it yourself." How do Fitz's words make Delia see her circumstances differently?
15. Ruthann introduces Delia to the Hopi creation myth, which suggests that humans have outgrown the world four times already, and are about to inhabit a fifth. Do most people outgrow their origins? Is reinvention part of the human experience? How do each of the characters' actions support or disprove this?
16. At one point, we learn that Fitz has not been writing about Andrew's trial, but about Delia. In fact, when he reads the first few pages to her, we can recognize them as the first few pages of this book. How does this affect the story you read? Is Fitz a reliable narrator?
17. Much is made of the nature of memory - whether it is stored physically, whether it can be conjured at will, whether it can be organically triggered or planted. Ultimately, do you believe Delia's recovered memories at the end of the book? Why or why not?
18. How are each of the main characters--Delia, Fitz, Eric, Andrew, and Elise--most changed by the events that take place? Where do you envision the characters five years from now?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
top of page
The Living Blood (Immortal Brethren series #2)
Tananarive Due, 2002
Simon & Schuster
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780671040840
Summary
Acclaimed for her riveting fiction, which tests the boundaries of supernatural suspense, Tanarive Due returns with a gloriously imagined tale of an ancient cult's undying powers—now embodied by a child who can grow to become either monster or savior.
Jessica Jacobs-Wolde worked hard to rebuild her life in Maimi after the disappearance of her husband, David, and the death of her daughter Kira at his hand. Four years later, she is still coming to terms with a shocking truth: David, who is part of an ancient group of immortals—a hidden African clan that has survived for more than a thousand years—gave Jessica and their second daughter, Fana, the gift of his healing blood.
Now Jessica is running an isolated clinic in Botswana—one that has swiftly earned a reputation for its astounding success rate in curing desperately ill children—and she hopes to find the tribe of souls with whom Fana truly belongs. Just three and a half years old, the girl is displaying signs of tremendous power—conjuring storms, editing her mother's memories, and striking people down with a thought. Her growing abilities need to be tamed—and soon. Already Fana's dreams are haunted by a shadowy entity, someone—or something—she can only call the Bee Lady.
Unaware that they are being tracked by Lucas Shepard, a doctor from Florida who hopes to save his dying son, and by a group of fortune hunters who will stop at nothing to exploit the power coursing through her veins, Jessica journeys to Ethiopia in search of the Life Brothers. There, she will be reunited with her immortal beloved. There, the full force of Fana's powers will be revealed. And there, Jessica,David, Fana, and the good doctor Shepard, though himself a mere mortal, will engage in an epic and transcontinental battle over the ultimate fate of humanity.
Blending the supernatural with a thrilling vision of our times, this is a powerful and sweeping tale of love, horror, immortality, and redemption from an astounding storyteller. (From the publisher.)
This is the second in Due's "African Immortals" series, which begins with My Soul to Keep (1997). The third book in the series is Blood Colony (2008).
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Education—B.A., Northwestern (USA); M.A., University of
Leeds (UK)
• Awards—American Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Southern California, USA
Tananarive Due—pronounced tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo—is the American Book Award-winning author of nine books, ranging from supernatural thrillers to a mystery to a civil rights memoir.
Her most recent novel, Blood Colony (2008), is the long-awaited sequel to her 2001 thriller The Living Blood and 1997’s My Soul to Keep, a reader favorite that Stephen King said "bears favorable comparison to Interview with the Vampire."
Due also collaborates with her husband, novelist and screen-writer Steven Barnes. Due and Barnes published Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel, which they wrote in collaboration with actor Blair Underwood. Publishers Weekly called Casanegra "seamlessly entertaining." In the Night of the Heat, is the second in the series.
The Living Blood, which received a 2002 American Book Award, "should set the standard for supernatural thrillers of the new millennium," said Publishers Weekly, which named The Living Blood and My Soul to Keep among the best novels of the year. The Good House was nominated as Best Novel by the International Horror Guild. The Black Rose, based on the life of business pioneer Madam C.J. Walker, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. My Soul to Keep and The Good House are both in film development at Fox Searchlight.
Due’s novel Joplin’s Ghost blends the supernatural, history and the present-day music scene as a rising R&B singer’s life is changed forever by encounters with the ghost of Ragtime King Scott Joplin. Due also brought history to life in The Black Rose, a historical novel based on the research of Alex Haley—and Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which she co-authored with her mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. Freedom in the Family was named 2003's Best Civil Rights Memoir by Black Issues Book Review. (Patricia Stephens Due took part in the nation’s first “Jail-In” in 1960, spending 49 days in jail in Tallahassee, Florida, after a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter). In 2004, alongside such luminaries as Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, Due received the "New Voice in Literature Award”" at the Yari Yari Pamberi conference co-sponsored by New York University’s Institute of African-American Affairs and African Studies Program and the Organization of Women Writers of Africa.
Due has a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Leeds, England, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar. Due currently teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Due has also taught at the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s Writers’ Week, the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and the summer Imagination conference at Cleveland State University. She is a former feature writer and columnist for the Miami Herald.
Due lives in Southern California with her husband, Steven Barnes; their son, Jason; and her stepdaughter, Nicki. (From www.tananarivedue.com.)
Book Reviews
Like the hurricane that threatens Florida at its climax, this stunning sequel to My Soul to Keep (1997) is an event of sustained power and energy. Its predecessor introduced Jessica Jacob-Wolde, a journalist who belatedly discovers that her "perfect" husband, David, is a renegade from a secretive 1,000-year-old clan of Ethiopian immortals who will kill to prevent members from sharing their life-extending blood with mortals. David has returned to Africa to do penance among his Life Brothers, and Jessica, whom he resurrected from the dead with a transfusion from himself, follows close behind, setting up a jungle clinic to dispense dilutions of her blood as medicine. Jessica's daughter Fana, whom David did not know Jessica was pregnant with when he transfused her, has begun to show magical powers, and her precocious divinity is the catalyst for a volatile brew of subplots that includes a violent schism among the Life Brothers, an alternative medicine guru's desperate efforts to save his leukemic son with Jessica's blood and a force of unspeakable evil trying to channel itself through Fana. Due exercises assured control over her wildly gyrating story, exploring its drama in terms of African culture, African-American experience and a variety of parent-child relationships. What's more, she fuses clich d themes from a variety of genres jungle adventure, transcontinental espionage, natural disaster into an amalgam that reclaims their powers to excite. A rare example of a sequel that improves upon the original, this novel also should set a standard for supernatural thrillers of the new millennium. My Soul to Keep was one of the most talked-about debuts in the horror field since the advent of Stephen King. Expect heavy interest sales for this sequel.
Publishers Weekly
In this sequel to My Soul To Keep, protagonist Jessica Jacobs-Wolde has joined the ranks of immortals thanks to a ceremonial infusion of magical blood from her husband, David, a member of an ancient, secret society the Life Brothers. After being accused of murder, David disappears, leaving Jessica alone in Florida to await the birth of their daughter, Fana. Two years later, Jessica and Fana move first to South Africa and then to Botswana. With rising horror, Jessica watches as little Fana begins to demonstrate tremendous psychic powers that give her control of life and death over mortals. Jessica believes that with their age-old knowledge, only David and his Brothers can give Fana the guidance she needs. So Jessica ventures into Ethiopia to find the Colony to which her husband has retreated. How unfortunate that this intriguing plot is so poorly executed. The writing is flaccid, and the story moves at a glacial pace. Better editing might have made this a more readable novel. Not recommended.
Library Journal
Readers will be glad to see the resurrection of the characters from Due's last novel, My Soul to Keep (1997), but there is nothing to keep readers new to the author from enjoying this sequel. It reunites Jessica and Dawit for the rearing of their daughter, Fana, and in the many pages of this mesmerizing narrative, Due shares the lives of Jessica and her sister, Alex, since they learned of Dawit's existence as a Life Brother. From Miami to South Africa to Botswana to Tallahassee, these women are constantly reminded of Dawit's extraordinary curse-gift through the positive powers and negative abilities of the child Fana. These women's determination to use the living blood in a healing and charitable way to help children is the decision that sets this novel on its course. In five compelling sections, Due explores human behavior, scientific discovery, medical and natural healing practices, and religious ideology. Due ends the novel at a place to begin the next installment. — Lillian Lewis
Booklist
This supernatural thriller continues the story of reporter Jessica Jacobs-Wolde, four years after the death of her first child and the disappearance of her husband. She has revealed the secret of the living blood (from book one) to her sister, a doctor, and together with Fana, the child she gave birth to nine months after her husband's disappearance, the sisters live as quietly as possible in remote African villages. The constant action takes Jessica and Fana eventually to Ethiopia, to the place where the immortals live, to be reunited with Fana's father, Jessica's husband. It doesn't stop there, however, and the suspense builds as the action goes from Africa back to the States in a desperate chase to save a small boy's life, to protect the miraculous blood, to find a way to live in the world as immortals. Due is a wonderful storyteller. She is a young woman who already has an impressive career as a writer and journalist. As an African American, writing about African Americans, she brings layers of cultural nuance to an already complex story. The living blood obviously has religious significance, and there is much in this story that ties African Americans to African culture and history. One of the Christian churches that traces back to the early centuries of Christianity is the Ethiopian church, an important fact that pulls this story together thematically. Most readers will want to search the Internet or the library for photographs of the underground churches in Ethiopia so vividly described in this thriller. Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. — Claire Rosser
KLIATT
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 Living Blood:
1. Based on the evidence he had, was it cowardly or courageous of Lucas Shepard to leave his dying son to search for the magic blood? Did he truly believe it was real, or was he only fooling himself?
2. In what ways has Jessica changed since My Soul to Keep and in what ways is she still the same?
3. In what ways has David changed since My Soul To Keep and in what ways is he still the same?
4. If you were Jessica—or David—would you be able to forgive your partner for the events of the past? Why/why not?
5. Did you always believe David and Jessica would be reunited? Why/why not?
6. Why does David hesitate to see Jessica in the Life Colony in Lalibela?
7. What parenting mistakes, if any, does Jessica make with her daughter, Fana (Bee-Bee)? What one thing should she have done differently?
8. Do you believe Fana is good, evil or neither?
9. What do you think of Khaldun’s separatist philosophy? Based on the events in this book, do you think he was right or wrong to keep mortals and immortals apart?
10. If you had Living Blood, would you share it with the world? At what price? What precautions would you take?
11. What are the Shadows?
12. Do you believe the Living Blood is really the blood of Christ, or is that a story Khaldun has made up? Why might he lie?
13. What is the role of fate and destiny in this story regarding Lucas? Jessica? Fana?
14. What do you think Fana will be like in the future?
(Questions from www.tananarivedue.com.)
top of page
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848
~800-900 pp. (Varies by publisher.)
Summary
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the social ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of English society in the early 1800s, battles—military and domestic—are fought, fortunes made and lost.
The one steadfast and honorable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin, devoted to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to William Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure. (From Penguin Classics, cover image, top-right.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 18, 1811
• Where—Calcutta, India
• Died—December 24, 1863
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge Univeristy (UK)
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811, but sent to England at the age of six. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1833 he settled in Paris, after a major financial loss, and tried his career as a painter. It was here that he met nineteen-year-old Isabella Shaw, upon whom he based many of his virtuous but weak heroines, and whom he married in 1836.
A year later they settled in London, where Thackeray turned seriously to journalism. His writing for periodicals included Yellowplush Correspondence, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine and then in 1841 in book form. Around this time personal and domestic pressures caused the already helpless Isabella to subside into a state of complete and permanent mental collapse, and the subsequent breakdown of the marriage formed a central part of Thackeray's consciousness.
Thackeray's early work centered around rogues and villains, most famously in The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844; revised as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. in 1856), and in his masterpiece, Vanity Fair, which appeared in monthly parts in 1847-48 and which most clearly reveals his socially satirical edge. The Book of Snobs, which originally appeared as a series in Punch, also attacks Victorian society with vicious wit.
Thackeray's later novels include The History of Pendennis (1848-50), The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), The Newcomes (1852-53), The Virginians (1857-59), which is the sequel to Henry Esmond, and The Adventures of Philip (1861-62).
He also wrote a series of lectures, The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century (1852-53), and numerous reviews, articles, and sketches, usually in the comic vein. From 1860 to 1862, he also edited Cornhill Magazine. Thackeray died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 1863 (From Penguin Classics—cover image, top-right.)
Book Reviews
(Classics have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
A bewitching beauty who bends men to her will using charm, sex, and guile. An awkward man who remains loyal to his friends, even when those friends don't deserve his affection. A mother who cannot get over the loss of her husband and devotes her life to her child. Though written in 1847-48, William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair is peopled by types who remain familiar today. The novel's early nineteenth-century setting immerses us in a strange world of social stratification, moral strictures, and self-conscious sentiment. Yet its characters—from dissolute playboys and self-important heirs to judgmental aunts and finicky gourmands—are instantly recognizable.... Thackeray interweaves the stories of these three main characters into an exuberant narrative that's chockablock with indelible secondary characters and cynical aperçus that illuminate all manner of human folly. His withering gaze lands on both lords and ladies, exposing the mean-spirited pretensions and craving for distinction that permeate the whole social world. By placing the social skirmishes and family clashes of his characters against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair invites us to contemplate the pervasiveness of human strife—and the damage that our egotism and self-delusion do every day.
Penguin Group USA (publishers)
Discussion Questions
1. Becky Sharp is without doubt the novel's most intelligent and interesting character. Yet in frequent asides, the novel's narrator goes out of his way to expose her stratagems and condemn her motives. What do you think of the narrator's constant moralizing—about Becky as well as the novel's other characters?
2. Becky's disgrace occurs after her husband walks in on her intimate dinner with Lord Steyne. Do you think Rawdon's assumption—that Becky and Lord Steyne were lovers—is justified? Or was Becky, as she argues, merely using her charms to advance her husband's career? And why doesn't the usually omniscient narrator let us know conclusively what really happened?
3 Vanity Fair is subtitled "A Novel without a Hero." Yet William Dobbin certainly seems to be a hero, at least when judged against the novel's other principal characters. In what ways does he differ from a conventional romantic hero? Does he, too, display any of the vanity, hypocrisy, and self-deception common to the other characters in the novel?
4. Amelia is lauded by the narrator as a paragon of womanhood, though he admits that some people, especially other women, don't see her charms. Yet Amelia's excessive grief over her scapegrace husband's death, her hapless passivity in the face of poverty, her spoiled son's eager embrace of wealth and position, and her unthinking exploitation of Dobbin's devotion certainly make us wonder about how much good her goodness does in the real world. Are Amelia's sentimental illusions and steadfast virtue in the end preferable to Becky's hard-headed realism and unscrupulous scheming?
5. Near the end of the book, Becky presses Amelia to marry Dobbin by revealing the unsavory truth about Amelia's late husband. How do you explain this uncharacteristic altruism on Becky's part, given the animosity between her and Dobbin?
6. Thackeray peoples his novel with many colorful secondary characters. Were any especially well drawn or true to life? Which did you find most amusing, pathetic, or loathsome?
7. How does the world depicted in Vanity Fair, with its self-conscious morality and well-defined social strata, compare to our world today? What is different, and what remains the same?
8. Thackeray's narrator sprinkles the novel with frequent stinging asides, such as "Did we know what our intimates and dear relations thought of us, we should live in a world that we should be glad to quit," and "What bitter satire is there in those flaunting childish family portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies." What did you think of the sentiments expressed in these remarks and others throughout the novel? Did you find any that were especially on target or out of bounds? What do they add to the novel?
9. What other novels could you compare with Vanity Fair, either for the scope of their social observation, or for their pairing of unattractive "good" and charismatic "bad" female characters?
(Questions issued by Penguin Classics.)
top of page (summary)