How to Be an American Housewife
Margaret Dilloway, 2011
Penguin Group USA
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425241295
Summary
A mother-daughter story about the strong pull of tradition, and the lure and cost of breaking free of it.
When Shoko decided to marry an American GI and leave Japan, she had her parents' blessing, her brother's scorn, and a gift from her husband—a book on how to be a proper American housewife.
As she crossed the ocean to America, Shoko also brought with her a secret she would need to keep her entire life...
Half a century later, Shoko's plans to finally return to Japan and reconcile with her brother are derailed by illness. In her place, she sends her grown American daughter, Sue, a divorced single mother whose own life isn't what she hoped for. As Sue takes in Japan, with all its beauty and contradictions, she discovers another side to her mother and returns to America unexpectedly changed and irrevocably touched. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—San Diego, California, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in San Diego, California
Margaret Dilloway grew up in San Diego, California, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father (of Irish-Welsh origin, if you must know). A writer since she could wield a pencil and make coherent words, Margaret dabbled in other art forms, including a major in Studio Art at Scripps College. After college, she worked as Contributing Editor for two weekly newspapers; wrote and sold Bluetooth For Dummies (canceled, but used the money for LASIK so it wasn’t a total loss); and did a lot of random online writing and mystery shopping to bring in income while she watched over her three kids and improved her fiction writing.
She lives in San Diego with her children and husband, a former Army Ranger (known as Cadillac on this blog). Cadillac is rather like Mr. Darcy, because he appears very stern but he’s sweet inside (well, really only to his wife. Who I am, though I’m writing about myself in third person).
Check out 20 Random Things to learn other fun facts about Margaret. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A strong-willed Japanese war bride, Shoko Morgan tries to run the perfect American household but only alienates her native-born children. Not until Shoko s life is fading does her grown daughter Sue travel to Japan and learn who her mother really was. This radiant debut pays moving tribute to the power of forgiveness.
People
How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway Nope, this novel s not a Mad Men style throwback but a nuanced debut about what happens when expectations and cultures collide in a family. Shoko is a Japanese immigrant who spent her adult life trying to be the perfect American wife. When her grown daughter, Sue, gets a divorce, Shoko feels that Sue has thrown away the American dream. Does she have a point? And what is the American dream anyway? Put on the snacks and the shiraz and get ready for this novel to spark a late-into-the-night book-club gabfest.
Redbook
In this enchanting first novel, Dilloway mines her own family's history to produce the story of Japanese war bride Shoko, her American daughter, Sue, and their challenging relationship. Following the end of WWII, Japanese shop girl Shoko realizes that her best chance for a future is with an American husband, a decision that causes a decades-long rift with her only brother, Taro. While Shoko blossoms in America with her Mormon husband, GI Charlie Morgan, and their two children, she's constantly reminded that she's an outsider—reinforced by passages from the fictional handbook How to Be an American Housewife. Shoko's attempts to become the perfect American wife hide a secret regarding her son, Mike, and lead her to impossible expectations for Sue. The strained mother-daughter bond begins to shift, however, when a now-grown Sue and her teenage daughter agree to go to Japan in place of Shoko, recently fallen ill, to reunite with Taro. Dilloway splits her narrative gracefully between mother and daughter (giving Shoko the first half, Sue the second), making a beautifully realized whole.
Publishers Weekly
Dilloway narrates from both women’s perspectives, sensitively dramatizing the difficulties and struggles Shoko and Sue faced in being Japanese, American, and housewives. —Carolyn Kubisz
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. How to Be an American Housewife is partially based on the author and her mother’s personal experiences. As a reader, do you find it more interesting when you know that there is a nonfiction element to the story?
2. Did you sympathize with Shoko’s decision not to marry Ronin? Do you think she could have—or should have—accepted his proposal?
3. Shoko marries Charlie in order to leave Japan and live a more comfortable life in America. She thinks Charlie will make a good husband, but she doesn’t yet love him. Does she turn out to be wrong, or right? Would she have been better off staying in Japan, and marrying a Japanese man?
4. A recurrent theme in the novel is how mothers and daughters communicate (for better and worse). In what ways did you feel that the difficulties between Shoko and Sue were universal to mothers and daughters, and in what ways were they cultural? How is this borne out in Sue’s relationship with Helena?
5. Shoko and Sue represent very different models and standards of motherhood, caretaking, and housekeeping. What do you consider their strengths and weaknesses, and what would you consider the most essential qualities?
6. The chapters are introduced with snippets from Shoko’s “How to Be an American Housewife” guidebook. How did you respond to that book’s advice? Did it surprise you to learn that the author’s mother had a very similar book, and that many women like Shoko were expected to follow its advice?
7. Shoko’s guidebook advises women to raise their sons differently from their daughters. Do you think boys and girls are raised differently in all cultures, including your own, and what impact does this have on all of us?
8. Prejudice and stereotypes are prevalent themes in the novel. The “How to Be an American Housewife” guidebook that Shoko is given by Charlie is largely based on stereotypes of Japanese and American cultures. It seems that all the characters feel or experience prejudice to some degree or another. Discuss the various forms of prejudice and stereotype in the novel, and their impact on the characters. Have you experienced similar sorts of prejudice in your own life?
9. The author took a risk by having two different narrators, both of whom have strengths and flaws. Are you more drawn to Sue or to Shoko? Do you think the story would have been stronger or weaker with one narrator?
10. Sue’s life and her sense of herself and her options are quite narrow and confined at the beginning of the novel. Her world expands dramatically by the novel’s end. How do the outer circumstances of Sue’s life change how she views herself on the inside? Do you think it’s significant that she finds herself in Japan?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott
Kelly O'Connor McNees, 2010
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399156526
Summary
In her debut novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Kelly O’Connor McNees deftly mixes fact and fiction as she imagines a summer lost to history, carefully purged from Louisa’s letters and journals, a summer that would change the course of Louisa’s writing career—and inspire the story of love and heartbreak between Jo and Laurie, Jo’s kindred spirit.
In the summer of 1855, Walt Whitman’s controversial Leaves of Grass has just been released, and the notion of making a living as a writer is still a far-off dream for Louisa. She is twenty-two years old, vivacious, and bursting with a desire to be free of her family and societal constraints so she can do what she loves the most—write. The Alcott family, destitute as usual, moves to a generous uncle’s empty house in Walpole, New Hampshire, for the summer. Here, a striking but pensive Louisa meets the fictional Joseph Singer. Louisa is initially unimpressed by Joseph’s charms. But just as she begins to open her heart, she discovers that Joseph may not be free to give his away. Their newfound love carries a steep price, and Louisa fears she may pay with the independence she has fought so hard to protect.
Because Little Women borrows stories from Louisa’s own childhood, the real-life Alcott sisters depicted in The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott will feel like familiar old friends. But readers will learn how the Alcotts’ real life differed from the fictional March family. While Transcendentalist friends like Thoreau and Emerson were fixtures of Louisa’s youth, Bronson Alcott’s philosophical pursuits left the family finances in shambles. Unlike the wise and placid “Marmee,” Louisa’s mother, Abba, was often depressed and overwhelmed by poverty and disappointment.
The historical facts throughout Kelly O’Connor McNees’s debut will be a delicacy to Alcott fans, but first and foremost, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott is a universal story of love and how it changes us in ways we could never imagine. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kelly O'Connor McNees is a former editorial assistant and English teacher. Originally from Michigan, she now resides with her husband in Chicago, Illinois, USA. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
McNees gets the period details just right: the crinolines and carriages; the spare, aesthetic plainness of 19th-century New England. And although the love affair with Joseph is invented, she remains faithful to the broad outlines of Alcott's biography. In fact, The Lost Summer is the kind of romantic tale to which Alcott herself was partial, one in which love is important but not a solution to life's difficulties. Devotees of Little Women will flock to this story with pleasure.
Carrie Brown - Washington Post
McNees lightly imagines the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose Little Women has enjoyed generations-long success. The story begins with a 20-year-old Louisa unhappily moving with her family from Boston to Walpole, N.H., where her Transcendentalist philosopher father pursues a life sans material pleasure. Louisa, meanwhile, plans on saving enough money to return to Boston and pursue a career as a writer. Then she meets the handsome and charming Joseph Singer, who stirs up strong emotions in Louisa. Not wanting to admit that she is attracted to him, Louisa responds to Joseph with defensiveness and anger until, of course, she can no longer deny her feelings and becomes torn between her desires and her dreams. While certainly charming, the simply told, straightforward narrative reads like Young Adult fiction. It'll do the trick as a pleasant diversion for readers with fond memories of Alcott's work, but the lack of gravity prevents it from becoming anything greater.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he infusion of issue-driven material involving women’s rights lends a somewhat didactic air to a work that is, after all, romantic fiction. To her credit, McNees does a good job of re-creating the nineteenth-century milieu, and her readers will doubtless be inspired to read more—about and by—Alcott. Little Women, anyone? —Michael Cart
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Have you ever read a poem or book that profoundly challenged or changed your worldview? How might the events of the novel have differed if Walt Whitman had not published Leaves of Grass in the summer of 1855?
2. What is Louisa’s relationship like with each of her sisters? Do any of these relationships change throughout the novel? If so, how? Do you think Louisa’s identity was defined by her sisters?
3. Abba says that men and women experience love differently: “For a man, love is just a season. For a woman it is the whole of the year.” Is that true in The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott? Is it true in your own personal experience?
4. Bronson Alcott was a truly unusual father and man. What is your impression of him? How do you think he affected his daughters, and did he affect each one differently?
5. Describe Bronson and Abba’s marriage. Do you think it influenced Louisa’s view of matrimony? If so, in what way?
6. Was Louisa right not to go with Joseph Singer to New York? Why or why not? What would you have done?
7. Why was Louisa so protective of her independence? Considering the greater opportunities available to women now, but also the frenetic pace of their lives and, in some ways, more complex obligations, do you think she would be as protective of her independence if she lived today?
8. At one point Abba tells Louisa, “We must never give if we are hoping for something in return.” Why does she say that? Do you think what she says is true?
9. At the end of the novel we learn that Louisa is taking care of her niece Lulu. What kind of parent do you think Louisa would be, and why?
10. Louisa tells Joseph, “My life is no longer my own.” And yet she chose to base Little Women, her most successful novel, on herself and her sisters. If writers use their own experiences as inspiration, are they inviting fans to pry into their personal lives? Or should their work be taken at face value?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Very Valentine (Valentine Trilogy, 1)
Adriana Trigiani, 2009
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061257063
Summary
Meet the Roncalli and Angelini families, a vibrant cast of colorful characters who navigate tricky family dynamics with hilarity and brio, from magical Manhattan to the picturesque hills of bella Italia. Very Valentine is the first novel in a trilogy and is sure to be the new favorite of Trigiani's millions of fans around the world.
In this luscious, contemporary family saga, the Angelini Shoe Company, makers of exquisite wedding shoes since 1903, is one of the last family-owned businesses in Greenwich Village. The company is on the verge of financial collapse. It falls to thirty-three-year-old Valentine Roncalli, the talented and determined apprentice to her grandmother, the master artisan Teodora Angelini, to bring the family's old-world craftsmanship into the twenty-first century and save the company from ruin.
While juggling a budding romance with dashing chef Roman Falconi, her duty to her family, and a design challenge presented by a prestigious department store, Valentine returns to Italy with her grandmother to learn new techniques and seek one-of-a-kind materials for building a pair of glorious shoes to beat their rivals. There, in Tuscany, Naples, and on the Isle of Capri, a family secret is revealed as Valentine discovers her artistic voice and much more, turning her life and the family business upside down in ways she never expected. Very Valentine is a sumptuous treat, a journey of dreams fulfilled, a celebration of love and loss filled with Trigiani's trademark heart and humor. (From the publisher.)
This is the first book in the Valentine Trilogy. The second is Brava Valentine; the third The Supreme Macaroni Company.
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Big Stone Gap, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., St. Mary’s College, Indiana, USA
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
As her squadrons of fans already know, Adriana Trigiani grew up in Big Stone Gap, a coal-mining town in southwest Virginia that became the setting for her first three novels. The "Big Stone Gap" books feature Southern storytelling with a twist: a heroine of Italian descent, like Trigiani, who attended St. Mary's College of Notre Dame, like Trigiani. But the series isn't autobiographical—the narrator, Ave Maria Mulligan, is a generation older than Trigiani and, as the first book opens, has settled into small-town spinsterhood as the local pharmacist.
The author, by contrast, has lived most of her adult life in New York City. After graduating from college with a theater degree, she moved to the city and began writing and directing plays (her day jobs included cook, nanny, house cleaner and office temp). In 1988, she was tapped to write for the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World, and spent the following decade working in television and film. When she presented her friend and agent Suzanne Gluck with a screenplay about Big Stone Gap, Gluck suggested she turn it into a novel.
The result was an instant bestseller that won praise from fellow writers along with kudos from celebrities (Whoopi Goldberg is a fan). It was followed by Big Cherry Holler and Milk Glass Moon, which chronicle the further adventures of Ave Maria through marriage and motherhood. People magazine called them "Delightfully quirky... chock full of engaging, oddball characters and unexpected plot twists."
Critics sometimes reach for food imagery to describe Trigiani's books, which have been called "mouthwatering as fried chicken and biscuits" (USA Today) and "comforting as a mug of tea on a rainy Sunday" (New York Times Book Review). Food and cooking play a big role in the lives of Trigiani's heroines and their families: Lucia, Lucia, about a seamstress in Greenwich Village in the 1950s, and The Queen of the Big Time, set in an Italian-American community in Pennsylvania, both feature recipes from Trigiani's grandmothers. She and her sisters have even co-written a cookbook called, appropriately enough, Cooking With My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes, from Bari to Big Stone Gap. It's peppered with anecdotes, photos and family history. What it doesn't have: low-carb recipes. "An Italian girl can only go so long without pasta," Trigiani quipped in an interview on GoTriCities.com.
Her heroines are also ardent readers, so it comes as no surprise that book groups love Adriana Trigiani. And she loves them right back. She's chatted with scores of them on the phone, and her Web site includes photos of women gathered together in living rooms and restaurants across the country, waving Italian flags and copies of Lucia, Lucia.
Trigiani, a disciplined writer whose schedule for writing her first novel included stints from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. each morning, is determined not to disappoint her fans. So far, she's produced a new novel each year since the publication of Big Stone Gap.
I don't take any of it for granted, not for one second, because I know how hard this is to catch with your public," she said in an interview with The Independent. "I don't look at my public as a group; I look at them like individuals, so if a reader writes and says, 'I don't like this,' or, 'This bit stinks,' I take it to heart.
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I appeared on the game show Kiddie Kollege on WCYB-TV in Bristol, Virginia, when I was in the third grade. I missed every question. It was humiliating.
• I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. In the writing world, I have been a playwright, television writer/producer, documentary writer/director, and now novelist.
• I love rhinestones, faux jewelry. I bought a pair of pearl studded clip on earrings from a blanket on the street when I first moved to New York for a dollar. They turned out to be a pair designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. Now, they are costume, but they are still Schiaps! Always shop in the street—treasures aplenty.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is what she said:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. When I was a girl growing up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, I was in the middle of a large Italian family, but I related to the lonely orphan girl Jane, who with calm and focus, put one foot in front of the other to make a life for herself after the death of her parents and her terrible tenure with her mean relatives. She survived the horrors of the orphanage Lowood, losing her best friend to consumption, became a teacher and then a nanny. The love story with the complicated Rochester was interesting to me, but what moved me the most was Jane's character, in particular her sterling moral code. Here was a girl who had no reason to do the right thing, she was born poor and had no connections and yet, somehow she was instinctively good and decent. It's a story of personal triumph and the beauty of human strength. I also find the book a total page turner- and it's one of those stories that you become engrossed in, unable to put it down. Imagine the beauty of the line: "I loved and was loved." It doesn't get any better than that! (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
This first-in-a-trilogy is a frilly valentine to Manhattan's picturesque West Village, starring a boisterous and charmingly contentious Italian-American family. Valentine Roncalli, adrift after a failed relationship and an aborted teaching career, becomes an apprentice to her 80-year-old grandmother, Teodora Angelini, at the tiny family shoe business. While Valentine struggles to come up with a financial plan-and shoe design-to bring the Old World operation into the 21st century, her brother, Alfred, is pushing Gram to retire and sell her building for $6 million. It's not all business for Valentine, of course: handsome and sophisticated Roman Falconi, owner and chef at a posh restaurant, is vying for her heart. Bestselling Trigiani channels ambition and girl-power, but is surprisingly reserved-and retro-when it comes to romance: "[O]ur relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead," thinks Valentine. Still, this genteel and lush tale of soles and souls has loads of charm and will leave readers eager for the sequel.
Publishers Weekly
In Trigiani's (Big Stone Gap) launch of a new trilogy, 33-year-old Valentine attempts to save her family's custom shoe business while dealing with family and relationship dramas set against the backdrop of New York City and Italy. If she's going to realize her dream of becoming a master shoemaker, Valentine must come up with a plan to rescue the financially troubled family wedding shoe business and prevent her brother from selling the building (located in Greenwich Village and worth millions) for a quick profit. In addition, Valentine has a new man in her life, sexy restaurateur Roman, who is just as dedicated to his business as Valentine is to hers-leaving little time for romance. In the midst of it all, Valentine travels to Italy with her grandmother Theodora to buy supplies and later rendezvous with Roman for her birthday. Things go well for Valentine professionally, but her personal life is more up in the air. This, as well as the many entertaining characters introduced, leaves plenty of material for the two books to come. Nicely written with vivid images of high fashion, New York City, and traditional Italy, Trigiani's latest is sure to be eagerly anticipated by her many fans and attract some new readers. Recommended for all public libraries.
Karen Core - Library Journal
Trigiani’s closing is satisfying, even as it paves the way for the lovable heroine to reappear in a planned sequel. —Annie McCormick
Booklist
Food, shoes and romance feature prominently in this zesty novel of an Italian-American family, the first in a planned trilogy following the life of Valentine Roncalli. A few years ago Valentine left teaching for something entirely different: She moved in with her grandmother Teodora and became an apprentice cobbler. Angelini Shoe Company, a longtime fixture in Greenwich Village, is an old-world establishment that provides custom-made wedding shoes. Valentine learns from 80-year-old Teodora, whom she calls "Gram," the skills of shoemaking and running a business, but she eventually discovers that Gram doesn't have a head for numbers. Their beautiful building (the shop and showroom is downstairs, their apartment occupies the upper floors) has been borrowed against over the years, and now they can't possibly make enough shoes to cover the new mortgage. Brother Alfred wants the building sold (it's worth millions) and Gram put in a retirement community, but Valentine and Gram cling to the hope that the family company can prosper in the next century. While Valentine tries to save the company (it may all depend on winning a shoe competition at Bergdorf's) she meets sexy Roman Falconi, chef extrodinaire. The two have lots of heat and lots of issues—between the demands of his restaurant and her shoe shop, they rarely see each other. After months of a simmering relationship, Roman promises he'll meet Valentine on Capri, at the tail end of the buying trip she's making with Gram. Italy is an eye-opening experience—the hills of Tuscany, the wine, the leather and the big surprise, Gram's longtime lover Dominic. His romantic son Gianluca is also a bit of an eye-opener for Valentine—if she's so in love with Roman, then why does Gianluca look so damn good? Rich descriptions of beautiful things—a Greenwich Village rooftop garden, the Blue Grotto of Capri, a bounty of well-made meals, sexy men in sweaters—create a (not quite) fairy tale of guilty pleasures. Things may not work out perfectly for Valentine in this first installment, but Trigiani (Home to Big Stone Gap, 2006, etc.) offers plenty of reasons to stick around for part two.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Valentine Roncalli begins her tale with the words, "I am not the pretty sister. I'm not the smart sister either. I am the funny one." How does her outlook color her actions? What do you think of Valentine? Do you agree with her assessment or do you think she might be selling herself short?
2. One of the major themes of Very Valentine is family. Describe the Roncalli family. How does their bond enrich Valentine's life? How might it affect her adversely, both in her romantic and professional endeavors? Offer some examples from the novel.
3. What defines family for the Roncallis? How would you fit into Valentine's family? What defines family for you? What is your family life like now and what were your experiences growing up?
4. Compare Valentine with her mother, Michelina ("Mike"), and her grandmother, Teodora. What elements of her personality does Valentine get from both women? Does she take after one more than the other?
5. Valentine's sister-in-law, Pam, has a difficult time fitting into the Roncalli family. How much of this is the result of her own actions? Are the Roncalli sisters responsible as well?
6. Tradition is another them of Very Valentine. Her sister Tess calls Valentine traditional, yet Valentine disagrees. "I guess I appear to be one of my tribe, but the truth is, whenever I have the opportunity to walk the hard line of tradition, I balk." Is Tess right, does Valentine represent tradition? How does she balk at it, as she claims? Which sister has the more realistic view?
7. Valentine ponders the question: "How do we survive in a contemporary world without losing everything my great-grandfather built?" Is there a role for tradition and traditional craftsmen and artisans in our technologically dependent modern world?
8. What does tradition mean for your life? Are there any you particularly cherish that have been handed down through past generations? How do you keep traditions alive? How can you start new ones?
9. Romantic love and the yearning for it infuse the novel. Valentine is a single woman in a world seemingly defined by marriage. Can a woman be fulfilled and yet remain single? Can she be happy without a man?
10. Describe Valentine's love interests, Roman and Gianluca. What does each man provide that the other doesn't? Did you prefer one to the other? Do you think she could be happy with either of them—or someone like either of them?
11. When Roman tells her that he will be few days late meeting her in Capri, what do you think about her reaction to his news? What about when he cancels on her?
12. What role did the trip to Capri play in Valentine and Roman's relationship?
13. The Roncalli family offers numerous insights, both profound and humorous for Valentine. Her mother tells, "You see, that's when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you—without you asking." What do you think of this view of love?
14. Mike also advises her daughter, "I believe in setting goals that one can achieve. Low expectations make for a happy life." Can not expecting much make you happy? How? What would happen to Valentine if she followed this advice?
15. When talking to her father, Valentine discovers that he has a spiritual philosophy: "What about me is eternal?" How would you answer this question? Besides children, what might you leave to future generations?
16. Throughout the novel, Valentine works hard to save the Angelini Shoe Company. If she is successful, she gains stability. What do you think will happen if she fails?
17. Valentine describes the art of making shoes: "My grandmother has taught me that the palette for leather and suede is limitless, like musical notes." What do our shoes say about ourselves? How is Valentine's passion, making shoes, a metaphor for her life?
18. In Adriana Trigiani's vivid prose, New York City and Italy are like "characters" in the book. Describe Valentine's New York. How does "her" city compare to the New York you might know of—or have imagined? What is Italy like through her eyes? What does each place offer Valentine?
19. What does Valentine learn about herself in Italy? How do those lessons affect her?
20. What do you think of Teodora's news? Why do you think she kept her relationship a secret all those years?
21. At the end of the novel, Valentine turns away from both Roman and Gianluca. "In this moment, I choose art." Is this the right choice for her? What might it mean for her and for the Angelini Shoe Company? Does she have to choose love and career?
23. What did you learn from Valentine's experiences? What advice would you give her about her love life and her career?
(Questions isssued by publisher.)
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A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens, 1859
400-500 pp. (varies by publisher)
Summary
A Tale of Two Cities begins on a muddy English road in an atmosphere charged with mystery and drama, and it ends in the Paris of the French Revolution with one of the most famous acts of self-sacrifice in literature. In between lies one of Charles Dickens’s most exciting books—a historical novel that, generation after generation, has given readers access to the profound human dramas that lie behind cataclysmic social and political events.
Famous for the character of Sydney Carton, who sacrifices himself upon the guillotine—“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”—the novel is also a powerful study of crowd psychology and the dark emotions aroused by the Revolution, and is illuminated by Dickens’s lively comedy. (From Doubleday Knopf.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 7, 1812
• Where—Portsmouth, England, UK
• Education—Home and private schooling
• Died—June 9, 1870
• Where—Kent, England
Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens was the second of eight children in a family burdened with financial troubles. Despite difficult early years, he became the most successful British writer of the Victorian age.
In 1824, young Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work at a boot-blacking factory when his improvident father, accompanied by his mother and siblings, was sentenced to three months in a debtor's prison. Once they were released, Charles attended a private school for three years. The young man then became a solicitor's clerk, mastered shorthand, and before long was employed as a Parliamentary reporter. When he was in his early twenties, Dickens began to publish stories and sketches of London life in a variety of periodicals.
It was the publication of Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) that catapulted the twenty-five-year-old author to national renown. Dickens wrote with unequaled speed and often worked on several novels at a time, publishing them first in monthly installments and then as books. His early novels Oliver Twist (1837-1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and A Christmas Carol (1843) solidified his enormous, ongoing popularity. As Dickens matured, his social criticism became increasingly biting, his humor dark, and his view of poverty darker still. David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) are the great works of his masterful and prolific period.
In 1858 Dickens's twenty-three-year marriage to Catherine Hogarth dissolved when he fell in love with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. The last years of his life were filled with intense activity: writing, managing amateur theatricals, and undertaking several reading tours that reinforced the public's favorable view of his work but took an enormous toll on his health. Working feverishly to the last, Dickens collapsed and died on June 8, 1870, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood uncompleted. (From Barnes & Noble Classics.)
Book Reviews
Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
Discussion Questions
1. A Tale of Two Cities opens with a passage that has become one of English literature's best known: "It was the best of times…" It is a passage well worth parsing. What does Dickens mean by setting the stage with such polarities? For whom was it the best and the worst of times? Dickens also mentions that the era about which he writes was very much "like the present period," which when he was writing meant the late 1850s. Why does this passage continue to be quoted today? In what ways does our own present period merit such an assessment?
2. The novel takes place, per its title, in two cities: London and Paris. What are some of the differences between these two cities? Between their denizens? What about characters who travel—or move residence—from one to another? What about each of the cities themselves: how are they divided in two?
3. Why does Dickens describe Madame Defarge, several times in her early scenes, as seeing nothing? Why does this depiction of her change?
4. Why was Charles Darnay able to see the unfairness of the class structure that privileged him and to extricate himself from it? Are there other characters as capable of seeing beyond their own circumstances?
5. Dickens seems to have great sympathy for the poor, the sick, the powerless, but not all such characters are portrayed sympathetically. What does that say about his sympathies? Where does he intend our—the readers'—sympathies to lie?
6. The news that Doctor Manette, while imprisoned, denounced all the descendents of the Evrémondes comes as a shock. Given that he saw young Charles and spoke with his beleaguered, compassionate mother—that he, in effect, had reason to have compassion toward them despite the evils of the family—why would he have made such a declaration? What can we make of his repeated claim in the letter read aloud during Darnay's retrial that he was in his right mind? How does he really feel about Darnay and his marriage to Lucie?
7. What is Defarge's motive in betraying Doctor Manette, endangering his daughter and grandchild, and framing Darnay? How might the relationship between Madame and Monsieur be described?
8. Carton's background is alluded to, though we never quite learn the source(s) of his disappointment and degeneracy. What might have happened in his past?
9. Late in the novel, Carton is described as showing both pity and pride. "Pride" is a word we have not heretofore seen associated with Carton, who is full of mostly suppressed regret and anguish over his wasted life. What is Carton proud of, and do others see it? Does Dickens intend to convey that others see his pride?
10. Carton has clearly misused his youthful promise and believes himself to be unredeemable. Does this view of himself actually change, and if so, how? Is Carton a man of faith? Does he become one?
11. Lucie finds "faith" in Carton, described as a "lost man," after he confides in her. Does Lucie come to understand Carton? How? Does she believe that he can be saved from himself?
12. Dickens prefaces the final paragraphs of the novel, which are in Carton's voice, by noting that "if he had given any utterance to his athoughts], and they were prophetic, they would have been these." How might we read the vision expressed in these words? Are we meant to take these thoughts as prophetic—that is, as a portrayal of what actually came after the end of the novel, in both France and in England? Among the beloved friends he has left behind?
13. The vision expressed in Carton's supposed final words includes one for the country and its people after the newest "oppressors" are themselves put to death. What would such a post-Revolution world be like, and how could it be achieved?
14. The French Revolution was of great interest to Americans in the early days of their own republic. Given today's polarities of extreme wealth and poverty and strongly expressed patriotism, as well as the interest in early America, what parallels might we draw between our own time in early twenty-first-century America and what happens in A Tale of Two Cities? What lessons?
(Questions issued by Penguin Group USA-Oprah's Book Club edition.)
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Lost Hearts in Italy
Andrea Lee, 2006
Random House
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812971132
Summary
The Italian phrase Mai due senza tre–“never two without three”–forms the basis of Andrea Lee’s spellbinding novel of betrayal. Sophisticated and richly told, Lost Hearts in Italy reveals a trio caught in the grip of desire, deception, and remorse.
When Mira Ward, an American, relocates to Rome with her husband, Nick, she looks forward to a time of exploration and awakening. Young, beautiful, and in love, Mira is on the verge of a writing career, and giddy with the prospect of living abroad.
On the trip over, Mira meets Zenin, an older Italian billionaire, who intrigues Mira with his coolness and worldly mystique. A few weeks later, feeling idle and adrift in her new life, Mira agrees to a seemingly innocent lunch with Zenin and is soon catapulted into an intense affair, which moves beyond her control more quickly than she intends.
Her job as a travel writer allows clandestine trysts and opulent getaways with Zenin to Paris, Monte Carlo, London, and Venice, and over the next few years, now the mother of a baby daughter, she struggles between resisting and relenting to this man who has such a hold on her. As her marriage erodes, so too does Mira’s sense of self, until she no longer resembles the free spirit she was on her arrival in the Eternal City.
Years later, Mira and Nick, now divorced and remarried to others, look back in an attempt to understand their history, while a detached Zenin assesses his own life and his role in the unlikely love triangle. Each recounts the past, aided by those witness to their failure and fallout.
An elegant, raw, and emotionally charged read, Lost Hearts in Italy is a classic coming-of-age story in which cultures collide, innocence dissolves, and those we know most intimately remain foreign to us. (From the publisher.
Author Bio
• Birth— N/A
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Turin, Italy
Andrea Lee was born in Philadelphia and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University. She is a former staff writer for The New Yorker, and her fiction and nonfiction writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine and New York Times Book Review. She is the author of Russian Journal, the novel Sarah Phillips, and the short story collection Interesting Women. She lives with her husband and two children in Turin, Italy. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The fall from innocence of Americans abroad is a Jamesian theme, but here the Grand Tour has been replaced by international finance and the naïfs are married Harvard grads, posted to Rome. The husband, the scion of a shabby but genteel New England clan, disdains his Wasp heritage and worships his black wife; she is drawn to a predatory Italian, a “peasant” who has bullied his way to the helm of a corporate empire. The adultery plays out in first-class airport lounges and ornate hotel rooms, and Rome reprises its traditional role as the city of dissolution, “rich and coarse at the same time, like a mixture of sackcloth and brocade.” In chillingly urbane prose, Lee takes the full measure of her characters’ folly, as they prove faithless not only to each other but to themselves.
The New Yorker
Two handsome young Americans marry, move to Rome, and pursue interesting careers while having a daughter. The wife, Mira, also pursues an enigmatic affair with coarse and calculating upstart Zenin, a toy-manufacturing billionaire. As readers know from page one, the marriage has failed painfully, with Mira having gone on to marry an Italian named Vanni and given birth to two sons. Meanwhile, embittered ex-husband Nick lives in London with his new wife and their two daughters. Because Mira is African American and Nick old-line (if not rich) New England, the failure of their relationship also seems like a failure of ideals. The novel treads between the 1980s and the mid-2000s, as Mira and Nick's daughter heads to Harvard, alma mater of her parents. The portraits are incisive, the cultural insights fresh, and the deliquescent prose a pleasure to read, yet the novel can seem static. With so much foretold, there's little sense of revelation, and though one can applaud Lee (Russian Journal) for her restrained approach, what reasons seem to surface for Mira's deserting Nick just don't add up for this reviewer. One can't turn down Lee's first novel in 20 years, but if delicious it's still a puzzle. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Andrea Lee has created complex characters who have multifaceted emotions and motives–Zenin shows both coldness and tenderness, Nick is caring and bitter, Mira both loves and betrays. Which character do you identify most with, and which do you find most and least sympathetic?
2. When Zenin invites Mira on his yacht, she surprises herself and Zenin with her sudden forward behavior. Lee describes the moment as Mira “struggling not against him but against something in herself” (40). What motivation lies behind her action, and what effect does it have on both of them? What emotions are Mira grappling with?
3. When Zenin invites Mira on his yacht, she surprises herself and Zenin with her sudden forward behavior. Lee describes the moment as Mira “struggling not against him but against something in herself” (40). What motivation lies behind her action, and what effect does it have on both of them? What emotions are Mira grappling with?
4. How would you characterize the bond between Mira and Zenin? Is it mainly comprised of physical attraction, or is it a power struggle? Do you believe they love each other? Discuss how their relationship progresses over the course of the novel.
5. Discuss the theme of displacement—geographical, racial, and romantic—in Lost Hearts in Italy. Explore the ways Mira, Zenin, Nick, and other characters are foreigners.
6. Zenin is a character who doesn’t lack material goods, women, family, or career success, yet he lives in “a dark world of things lacking.” What is missing in his life? Do you think it is possible for Zenin to ever be content?
7. Dreams make frequent appearances throughout Lost Hearts in Italy. What is their purpose, and what insight do they shed?
8. The second time Mira goes to meet Zenin, she “feels as if she has come to the center of her life, to the center of a wood in which all the leaves on the trees are eyes. Or to the hidden center, the secret heart she has been searching for in the labyrinth of Rome” (116). What is Mira’s epiphany here?
9. When Nick finds out about Mira’s infidelity, he states that she’s lost her country now. What does his statement mean? What do you think is the point when Mira has gone too far for her marriage to remain salvageable?
10. What is the significance of the Bangladesh woman, Roushana, in Chapter 27? Compare and contrast her with the other women in the novel.
11. Nick has a theory that the more foreign places you live in, the less you absorb. Do you agree with this opinion? What have your traveling experiences been in relation to his statement?
12. How have Mira, Zenin, and Nick changed by the end of Lost Hearts in Italy, besides losing their naivete? In which ways are they more content, and how do they remain unfulfilled?
(Questions issued by publisher.)