When Madeline Was Young
Jane Hamilton, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400096992
Summary
Jane Hamilton, award-winning author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, is back in top form with a richly textured novel about a tragic accident and its effects on two generations of a family.
When Aaron Maciver’s beautiful young wife, Madeline, suffers brain damage in a bike accident, she is left with the intellectual powers of a six-year-old. In the years that follow, Aaron and his second wife care for Madeline with deep tenderness and devotion as they raise two children of their own.
Narrated by Aaron's son, Mac, When Madeline Was Young chronicles the Maciver family through the decades, from Mac’s childhood growing up with Madeline and his cousin Buddy in Wisconsin through the Vietnam War, through Mac’s years as a husband with children of his own, and through Buddy’s involvement with the subsequent Gulf Wars.
Jane Hamilton, with her usual humor and keen observations of human relationships, deftly explores the Maciver's unusual situation and examines notions of childhood (through Mac and Buddy’s actual youth as well as Madeline’s infantilization) and a rivalry between Buddy’s and Mac’s families that spans decades and various wars. She captures the pleasures and frustrations of marriage and family, and she exposes the role that past relationships, rivalries, and regrets inevitably play in the lives of adults.
Inspired in part by Elizabeth Spencer’s Light in the Piazza, Hamilton offers an honest and exquisite portrait of how a family tragedy forever shapes and alters the boundaries of love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 13, 1957
• Reared—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.B., Carleton College
• Awards—Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, 1988
• Currently—lives in Rochester, Wisconsin
Her first published works were short stories, "My Own Earth" and "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending", both published in Harper's Magazine in 1983. "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending" later appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1984.
Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, was published in 1988 and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award in 1989. The Book of Ruth was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1996, and it was the basis for a 2004 television film of the same title.
In 1994, she published A Map of the World, which was adapted for a film in 1999 and, the same year, was also an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her third novel, The Short History of a Prince, published in 1998, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998. This book was also shortlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize. In 2000, Hamilton was named a Notable Wisconsin Author by the Wisconsin Library Association.
All of her books are set, at least in part, in Wisconsin.
In an interview with the Journal Times in Racine, Wisconsin, in November 2006, Hamilton talked about her early inspiration for writing novels. As a student at Carleton College, she overheard a professor say she would write a novel one day. Hamilton had written only two short stories for the professor's class. Overhearing the conversation gave her confidence. "It had a lot more potency, the fact that I overheard it, rather than his telling me directly," she said. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
An unusual menage poses moral questions in this fifth novel (after Disobedience) from Hamilton, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for The Book of Ruth. Aaron and Julia Maciver are living in a 1950s Chicago suburb with their two children and with Aaron's first wife, Madeline. Aaron has insisted on caring for Madeline after she suffered a brain injury soon after their wedding, leaving her with the mental capacity of a seven-year-old. Refusing to consider this arrangement inconvenient, Julia treats the often-demanding Madeline like a beloved daughter, even letting her snuggle in bed with Aaron and herself when Madeline becomes distraught at night. Decades later, the Macivers' son, Mac, now a middle-aged family practitioner with a wife and teenage daughters, prepares to attend the funeral of his estranged cousin's son, killed in Iraq, and muses about the meaning, and the emotional costs, of the liberal values of his parents. Hamilton brings characteristic empathy to the complex issues at the core of this patiently built novel, but the narrative doesn't take any clear direction. Though Mac suggests there are "gothic possibilities" in his parents' story (partly inspired, Hamilton says, by Elizabeth Spencer's The Light in the Piazza), the Macivers' passions remain tepid and unresolved, and Julia remains an enigma to her son.
Publishers Weekly
As in her previous novels (e.g., A Map of the World), Hamilton sets her latest work in her native Midwest. Pragmatic, smart, and sensitive Timothy "Mac" Maciver, a married physician with three daughters, tells the story of his family and upbringing in suburban Chicago and how a tragedy that disrupted his father's first marriage impacted all their lives. Mac's first-person narrative moves back and forth in time and highlights his parents' relationship as well as his own relationship with Madeline, the woman known as his much older "sister," whose life was derailed at the age of 25. Mac focuses with refreshing candor on his shifting responsibilities concerning Madeline as well as on what it was like to be a young man witnessing the escalating Vietnam War and its triggering of family debates and tension. Hamilton draws a parallel between the Vietnam conflict and the current war in Iraq (Mac's cousin, a career military man, has a son who enlists to fight in Iraq). While Hamilton gives the political climate of the Sixties considerable attention, her story is more about how people, by bonding together, can transcend tragedy and loss with love, tolerance, and humor. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L.
Library Journal
The narrator of Jane Hamilton's fifth novel (Disobedience, 2000, etc.) is Timothy "Mac" Maciver, a brilliant, scientifically minded fellow growing up in a big Midwestern family, whom we follow from his boyhood in the 1950s to his middle age in the present day. Mac gradually becomes aware that his beautiful blonde adult "sister" is in fact his father's first wife, Madeline, impaired after a head injury, and lovingly cared for by his father's second wife, Mac's mother, Julia. Mac's dad is a curator at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History; Julia—faintly reminiscent of Eleanor Roosevelt—is homely, principled and awkward, a promoter of social good. One summer her household includes her own brilliant children: Mac, busily dissecting a chimpanzee brought home by his father; his sister Lu, a dedicated cellist; two black teenagers Julia "rescued" from the ghetto, ill-at-ease and bored stiff in the suburbs; and Madeline. Stirred into this mix is Mac's slightly older and much admired cousin Buddy—a catalyst, hero and beloved black sheep. Physically and socially adept in a way that Mac envies, Buddy immediately puts the family's African-American houseguests at ease. And he not only breaks the nose of a neighbor kid who cruelly takes advantage of Madeline and tries to make a sexual show of her, he conceals the reason for the fight to protect her, and takes the blame. The narrative does not progress rapidly or linearly—it radiates in all directions like a spider's web. The web of connection is perhaps strongest at the most painful moments. Hamilton is exquisitely observant and unfailingly generous to the characters she creates: every life has weight and dignity.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What aspects of youth are expressed in the novel’s title? Was it wrong, as Figgy believes, to give Madeline the trappings of a little girl?
2. How did Figgy and Julia each define the ideal mother, the ideal wife, and the ideal life in general?
3. How would you describe the narrator’s tone as he guides us through his unusual family history? How does Mac (Timothy) resolve the knowledge that Madeline’s accident made it possible for him to be born?
4. Mac shares many nostalgic memories of his neighborhood, alongside wry observations about contemporary youth who spout pop psychology. How does Mac’s life as a husband and father compare to the family in which he was raised? What has been gained and lost in his family through these three generations?
5. What accounts for Julia’s tireless patience with Madeline? Would Madeline have done the same for Julia if the circumstances had been reversed? What drew Timothy’s father to two such seemingly different women?
6. We know from the beginning that the Macivers are wealthy (“We were all proud to have an estate...the fruit of our dead grandfather’s labor,” Mac says in the novel’s second paragraph). How does Mac feel about money? What does When Madeline Was Young illustrate about the concept of charity?
7. What does Mac tell us, particularly during his tour of Russia’s world after her husband’s murder, about his opinions regarding poverty and race and class? Is his sister correct in viewing Russia as a slave? Was his mother unrealistic? What did he learn from the summer with Cleveland and his sister?
8. Near the end of chapter six, Mac repeats lines from William Wordsworth while watching Madeline poolside. “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” ends with these lines: “She lived unknown, and few could know/When Lucy ceased to be;/But she is in her grave, and, oh/The difference to me!” Does this poem capture the essence of Madeline’s interactions with men, or is the poem an ironic choice?
9. Should Mikey and Madeline have been allowed to marry? Which are the most and least genuine relationships described in the novel?
10. The Civil Rights Movement and the war in Vietnam form the historical backdrop for much of the novel. What tone is set as Mac weaves Madeline’s story with his recollections of this turbulent time period? What was different about the undercurrent of war when the family gathered for the funeral of Buddy’s son, Kyle?
11. Mac shares his father’s enthusiasm for natural history. How does Mac’s fascination with the natural world and anatomy shape his understanding of Madeline’s injuries? Is his approach to life clinical?
12. How did your impressions of Buddy shift throughout the novel? Did Buddy “rescue” Madeline from Jerry in chapter ten? Why does Mac not see him as heroic, contrary to Russia’s point of view?
13. In chapter fifteen, why does Mac so badly want Madeline to remember the boy she encountered when she was in Italy years ago?
14. What did Buddy and Mac resolve during their brawl in the novel’s final chapter?
15. Jane Hamilton credits Elizabeth Spencer’s novella The Light in the Piazza for partially inspiring When Madeline Was Young. If you have read the novella, or seen its 1962 film version (starring Olivia de Havilland), or been in the audience for the award-winning musical, share your experience with the other members of your book group. What might Madeline and Clara have thought of each other? What extreme differences exist between the matriarchs? In what way do the authors portray opposite forms of love?
16. The epigraph emphasizes physical beauty as they key to being captivating. Is Madeline empowered by looks that match conventional definitions of beauty, or does her beauty make her a victim? What might her fate have been had she looked more like Julia (without the girdle)?
17. What unusual tales distinguish your family history? Do you have a relative who, as Madeline did for Mac, played an unconventional role in your development?
18. Each of Jane Hamilton’s novels is unique; this originality is itself her hallmark.
Discuss her previous works in the context of When Madeline Was Young. What are the conflicts and intensities that drive her diverse cast of characters?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Shopgirl
Steve Martin, 2000
Hyperion
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781401308278
Summary
From the comic genius of Steve Martin comes a contemporary fable of life an love from the point of view of a shopgirl behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus.
Mirabelle, a semi-glamourous young woman who is making her way through the romantic jungles of Beverly Hills/Los Angeles, is an aspiring artist who prides herself on her clothing aesthetic. Unfortunately, she doesn't always have the best taste in men. When she meets a young Turk named Jeremy, whose idea of a great second date is a visit to the Laundromat, she sees him through a haze of prozac and other anti-depressants, and through the prism of her own poor self-esteem.
But then she meets Ray Porter and thinks he could be her Knight in Shining Armor. In fact, he does turn out to be a worldly, rich gentleman who is a kindly and even exciting lover, but he never really takes Mirabelle seriously. T
ogether, Mirabelle, Ray, Jeremy, and a few other suporting characters populate this insightful piece that is sometimes quirky, sometimes comic, and sometimes languid as a summer day. (From the publisher.)
The 2005 film, adapted from the novella, stars Steve Martin, Clare Danes, and Jason Schwartzman.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 14, 1945
• Where—Waco, Texas USA
• Raised—Orange County, California
• Education—B.A., University of California, L.A.
• Awards—2 Emmy Awards; 2 Grammy Awards;
Life Time Achievement–American Comedy Awards
• Currently—lives in Beverly Hills, California
"If Woody Allen is the archetypal East Coast neurotic, Steve Martin is the ultimate West Coast wacko," Maureen Orth wrote for Newsweekin 1977. At the time, Martin was a star on the standup comedy circuit, known for his nose glasses, bunny ears and sudden attacks of "happy feet." More than 20 years later, the idea that the two are counterparts still seems apt: Like Woody Allen, Steve Martin has gone from comedy writer and performer to scriptwriter, director, playwright and book author. But while Woody Allen's transformation from angst-ridden intellectual into Bergman-inspired auteur was something fans might have anticipated, who would have guessed that the wild and crazy guy with the arrow through his head harbored a passion for philosophy, art and literature?
Early years
Growing up in Orange County, California, Martin worked afternoons, weekends and summers at Disneyland, where he learned to do magic tricks, make balloon animals and perform vaudeville routines. By the time he was 18, he was performing at Knott's Berry Farm while attending junior college. He was a bright but unenthusiastic student until a girlfriend (and her loan of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge) inspired him to transfer to Long Beach State and major in philosophy. There, he delved into metaphysics, semantics and logic before concluding that he was meant for the arts. He transferred again, to the theater department at UCLA, and started performing comedy in local clubs. Truth in art, he later said, "can't be measured. You don't have to explain why, or justify anything. If it works, it works. As a performer, non sequiturs make sense, nonsense is real." (Aha -- there was a philosophical impulse behind those bunny ears.)
Career
After a string of successful T.V. comedy-writing gigs, Martin got back into performing, and a few years later, he was landing spots on "The Tonight Show" and guest-hosting "Saturday Night Live," where he performed his famous King Tut routine. His first album, Let's Get Small, won a Grammy and was the best-selling comedy album of 1977. His first book, Cruel Shoes, was a collection of comic vignettes with titles like "How to Fold Soup" and "The Vengeful Curtain Rod." And his starring role in The Jerk kicked off a highly successful film career that includes more than 20 hit movies, including Roxanne and L.A. Story, both of which Martin wrote and directed.
Early on, critics classed Steve Martin with comedians like Martin Mull and Chevy Chase—goofy white guys whose slapstick comedy had no overt political message, though it might have a postmodern touch of self-critique. But Martin kept scaling the heights of absurdity until he'd reached an altitude all his own. Beginning in 1994, he took two years off from movie acting to concentrate on his writing. The result was Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a surreal comedy about Picasso and Einstein that won critical and popular acclaim: "More laughs, more fun and more delight than anything currently on the New York stage," raved The New York Observer.
Though Martin went back to the movies, he also kept on writing, turning out several more plays and a series of ingeniously demented essays for The New Yorker and The New York Times, many of which are collected in book form in Pure Drivel. Then, in 2000, he surprised readers with his bestselling book Shopgirl, a tender, insightful novella about a Neiman Marcus clerk and her two suitors. These days, Martin is recognized as a "gorgeous writer capable of being at once melancholy and tart, achingly innocent and astonishingly ironic" (Elle). He's also been tapped to host ceremonies for the prestigious National Book Awards. It seems the man who once defined comedy as "acting stupid so other people can laugh" is in fact one of the smartest guys ever to emerge from L.A.
Extras
• As a stand-up comedian on "The Tonight Show", Martin was demoted to guest-host nights for a while because Johnny Carson didn't think his act — which could include reading from the phone book or telling jokes to four dogs onstage — was funny.
• After he became nationally famous as a comedian, Martin joked that his new wealth had allowed him to buy "some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks, got a fur sink ... let's see ... an electric dog-polisher, a gasoline-powered turtleneck sweater ... and of course I bought some dumb stuff, too." Actually, Martin is a serious art collector whose purchases include paintings and drawings by Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and David Hockney.
• Martin's marriage to the actress Victoria Tennant ended in 1994. But it was his subsequent breakup with actress Anne Heche that really broke his heart, he hinted in an Esquire interview. "I spent about a year recovering, and searching out myself and asking why things happened the way they did. I wrote a play about it, Patter for the Floating Lady. Oh, I shouldn't have told you that. I should have said I made it up." (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Shopgirl, Martin's elegant, bleak, desolatingly sad first novella, is in every sense his most serious work to date.... Martin's humor has always been about people who do not realize they are absurd. In 'Shopgirl that sense of absurdity is larger and more encompassing—something closer to an existentialist idea of the absurd, of life as defined by a tragicomic absence of purpose.... The novella has an edge to it, and a deep, unassuageable loneliness. Steve Martin's most achieved work to date may well have the strange effect of making people glad not to be Steve Martin.
John Lanchanster - New York Times Book Review
His writing has sometimes been sweet, sometimes biting, occasionally intellectually boastful- but it has always been funny.
Wall Street Journal
Shopgirlreads as smoothly and pleasurably as the novels of the late W.M. Spackman, whose An Armful of Warm Girl easily won the prize 25 years ago for best title of a novel about foolish 50 year-old men.
Los Angeles Times
Steve Martin, who over the years has bravely transformed himself before the public eye from brilliant stand-up comedian to genial actor to writer... [has written] a hilarious but intense first novella...which is all about happiness and how to get there... One of the nicest things about this novel is the way it effortlessly bridges generations.
Vogue
Who'd have thought Martin, known (aside from his acting) for his smart, snarky New Yorker pieces, would pen a tender love story?...Martin's shift from public follies to private frailties registers as courageous and convincing.
Entertainment Weekly
Movie star Martin shone in the comic essays of last year's Pure Drivel, but can he write serious fiction? His debut novella gives fans a chance to find out. Shy, depressed, young, lonely and usually broke, Vermont-bred Mirabelle Butterfield sells gloves at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus (nobody ever buys); at night, she watches TV with her two cats. Martin's slight plot follows Mirabelle's search for "at least romance and companionship" with middle-aged Ray Porter, a womanizing Seattle millionaire who may, or may not, have hidden redeeming qualities. Also in and out of Mirabelle's life are a handful of supporting characters, all of them lonely and alienated, too. There's her father, a dysfunctional Vietnam vet; the laconic, unambitious Jeremy; and Mirabelle's promiscuous, body-obsessed co-worker Lisa. Detractors may call Martin's plot predictable, his characters stereotypes. Admirers may answer that...these aren't stereotypes but modern archetypes, whose lives must be streamlined if they are to represent ours. Except for its love-hate relations with L.A., little about this book sounds much like Martin; its anxious, sometimes flat prose style can be affecting or disorienting, and belongs somewhere between Douglas Coupland and literary chroniclers of depression like Lydia Davis. Martin's first novel is finally neither a triumph nor a disaster: it's yet another of this intelligent performer's attempts to expand his range, and those who will buy it for the name on the cover could do a lot worse.
Publishers Weekly
The action moves quickly, yet the narrative takes its time to develop, which is a very skillful bit of writing business. Martin's literary fable of a novella is disarming, particularly for those who come to it expecting the biting, zany humor of Pure Drivel (1998), but it may mark a new direction in a noteworthy writer's career. —Bonnie Smothers
Booklist
Martin was wise to make the book little more than one hundred pages. His brevity saves Shopgirlfrom becoming tedious, and his deft styling and nice descriptions keep the story flowing along.... [like] a shallow hypnotic dream that pulls you through to the end without leaving you feeling ripped off for the few hours invested. It's a quick and harmless read that shows the potential of a writer who shouldn't be satisfied spooning out irony for the New Yorker set.
Steve Wilson - Book Magazine
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 Shopgirl:
1. How would you describe Mirabelle? What is she like? At what stage is she in her life? How is her job, selling gloves—"things that nobody buys anymore"—suitably ironic for her?
2. What is Jeremy like? How would you describe him? Were you rooting for him (or not) as a potential boyfriend?
3. What draws Mirabella and Jeremy together if, as the narrator says, "at this stage of their lives, in true and total fact, they only thing they have in common is a Laundromat"?
4. Is Ray Porter a good man...or not? How would you describe him?
5. Ray is honest about what he wants—that "he can have [Mirabelle] without obligation." Ray believes that "they will both see the benefits they are receiving" from one another. Can a good relationship be built on such an understanding?
6. Mirabelle and Ray have The Conversation; afterwards both take away different versions—he believes Mirabelle understands his intent of seeing other women; she believes Ray "is bordering on falling in love with her." How does that difference in understanding occur? Has it ever happened to you?
7. What was your feeling when Mirabelle became involved with Ray? If she had asked your advice, what would you have said?
8. Does Mirabelle love Ray? Or does she love the idea of Ray—his wealth, his paternal protection?
9. How does Ray feel toward Mirabelle? Do his feelings ever change?
10. This is a classic love triangle: older man, younger woman, and younger man. Yet Martin presents something different. Can you put your finger on what it is?
11. When you first read the book, were you surprised or disappointed that it wasn't funnier? Were you expecting a humorous book from a former stand-up comic?
12. Follow-up to Question 10: Even though this isn't an uproariously funny book, there is still a good deal of humor. Find a few of your favorite lines and read them out loud.
13. Lisa is one of the funniest characters in the book. Do you find her so? Why does she set up the competition with Mirabelle?
14. Was Jeremy's transformation believable? Do your feelings about Jeremy change?
15. How does Martin paint the L.A. scene—the things people are looking for, aspiring to? In what way might the novella be described as a gentle satire?
16. Is the ending satisfying? Or were you hoping for another outcome?
17. Watch the movie. How do film and book compare? Which do you prefer?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Genesis Secret
Tom Knox, 2008
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616885809
Summary
A remarkable discovery has been made in the far reaches of Kurdistan. A Western archaeological team has unearthed the oldest human civilization-older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Sent to cover the story is war reporter Rob Luttrell. He's just survived a Baghdad suicide bombing and wants only to return home to his child. What began as a fascinating assignment quickly turns dangerous as the site is sabotaged and someone is murdered.
Meanwhile, a Scotland Yard detective is fast on the trail of a series of grisly killings in the British Isles. As he attempts to unravel these elaborate acts of violence, he discovers there may be a link to the site in Kurdistan. The secret to both is an origin and a bloodline that will challenge everything the modern world knows about the origins of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
A debut thriller of spectacular sweep and brilliant turns, The Genesis Secret is sure to keep fans of Douglas Preston, Kate Mosse, and Raymond Khoury reading through the night. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Sean Thomas
• Birth—1963
• Where—England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Bad Sex Award (UK-see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England
Tom Knox is the pseudonym of British journalist and writer Sean Thomas. When he writes under the name of Tom Knox, he specialises in archaeological thrillers.
His first thriller, The Genesis Secret (2008), focuses on the region known as Gobekli Tepe, and features Biblical mysteries and cutting edge science. Noteworthy for several exceptionally gruesome episodes, it was an international bestseller.
His second novel, The Marks of Cain was published in 2010. Centring on the little-known Cagot community who lived in the Basque Country, it too was an international bestseller.
A third book, titled Bible of the Dead was published in 2011 in the UK (as The Lost Goddess in the US in 2012). The novel focuses on the Khmer Rouge, while taking in the cave paintings of France, the dark history of human-animal hybridization and modern Chinese Communism.
Sean Thomas lives in London. Most famous for "Millions Of Women Are Waiting To Meet You," Sean Thomas also won the Bad Sex award in 2006 for his novel Kissing England. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Knox's well-paced debut offers some new wrinkles on the theme of the archeological discovery that will change the course of human history. British reporter Rob Luttrell, who barely survived a suicide bomber's attack in Iraq, is hoping to take things easy, but his new assignment, to cover a dig in Turkish Kurdistan, proves anything but routine. German archeologist Franz Breitner has found evidence of buildings at the site known as Gobekli Tepe that appear to be 10,000 to 11,000 years old, 5,000 years earlier than any similar structure. The excavation has aroused the ire of the locals, who place an ancient Aramaic curse on those working there. It may be no accident when Breitner is impaled on a pole. Luttrell teams with an attractive biological anthropologist, Christine Meyer, to solve the mystery of the site, which may be where the Garden of Eden was located. Readers will hope to see more such offbeat thrillers from Knox, the pseudonym of London journalist Sean Thomas.
Publishers Weekly
Readers who enjoy the suspense novels of Raymond Khoury and Julia Navarro may think this is one stamped from that die; they will probably be disappointed. Knox (the pseudonym of British author Sean Thomas) introduces us to war reporter Rob Luttrell, a bit shell-shocked from his eyewitness coverage of suicide bombings in Baghdad. To help him recover, his editor sends Rob to write a relaxing National Geographic-like spread on an archaeological dig in Kurdistan. How much trouble can Rob get into? Plenty! He stumbles upon practitioners of an ancient quasi-demonic religion protecting the site and a wealthy, insane British schoolboy whose family legacy charges him with the protection of certain buried "secrets." This lunatic and his cadre wreak havoc in England and abroad, perpetrating heinous, grisly, and rather literary murders that scream horror, not suspense/thriller. The body count is high, and characters to whom we warmed are brutalized. Religion, too, is debunked. The titular "secret" is overplayed all the way to the tidy, happy ending. Recommended for large popular fiction collections with generous budgets.
Laura A.B. Cifelli -Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. For two thirds of the novel, the narrative moves back and forth between the point of view of Rob Luttrell and the perspective of Detective Chief Inspector Forrester. Discuss this way of telling a story and if you think it was effective. For instance, how did switching between the two points of view contribute to the suspense of the novel?
2. Not only are the events of the narrative conveyed through Rob and DCI Forrester’s points of view, but their characters parallel one another in several ways. Compare and contrast how these two men act as fathers and professionals, and discuss the ways in which the author deliberately contrasts them with the fathers of previous generations, from the men of the Irish Hellfire Club to the male hominids of Gobekli Tepe.
3. Similarly, consider DIC Forrester’s inner torment over his daughter’s murder, and how it shapes his actions and his perspective through the book. Discuss, too, the way his work on the case proves cathartic, and how, by the end of the novel, it appears that he might be beginning to heal.
4. The torture scenarios in the book become more extreme, and more graphic, as the novel progresses. Discuss this progression and how the tone of the novel changes once the reader becomes an audience to the sacrifices as they are happening. Compare the torture of Hugo De Savary with that of Isobel Previn—which is more terrifying? (Additionally, discuss whether you were surprised when Rob discovered Christine alive in Ireland—were you prepared for that plot twist?)
5. Discuss the progression of Rob’s relationship with Christine as it develops slowly over the course of the book. What makes their relationship interesting and keeps it from being overly sentimental? Compare their relationship with that of Rob’s relationship with his ex-wife, Sally, and discuss how even his relationship with Sally grows over the course of the novel.
6. Similarly, discuss Christine’s instant bond with Sally, and Sally’s approval of Christine as a partner for Rob. What kind of comment does their relationship make about women in general? Do you think men would be able to act in a similar way towards a romantic rival/ex?
7. Discuss the Turkish police officer Kiribali—did you, like Rob, suspect him of being more sinister than he appeared? How startled were you to see him at the book’s climax, when he shot off Cloncurry’s hand and arm? What other characters in the book surprised you in this way?
8. What did you think of Jamie Cloncurry? Was his character well-developed? What made him a particularly frightening antagonist? Discuss his email to Rob and his speeches over the web cam, and evaluate the way they demonstrated his evil and psychotic nature.
9. Also, compare the relationship of DCI Forrester and Boijer to that of other fictional detective partnerships—most notably that of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. What about their dynamic did you find engaging and likable? In what ways did they make a good team?
10. In the novel, the characters discuss the various symbols of different religions and how those symbols hold significance for the human race. Similarly, the author uses symbolism at various points in the novel to either foreshadow events or to emphasize meaning in the story: For instance, James Cloncurry has the same initials as Jesus Christ, and eventually he reveals to Rob that he considers himself a kind of perverse savior of mankind. Find similar instances in the book and discuss their significance.
11. Consider Rob’s explanation of the Genesis Secret to Kiribali at the end of the novel. Did the entire explanation sound feasible to you, and like a good conspiracy theory? What about the Genesis Secret and its implications did you find most interesting and intriguing? Also, discuss Rob’s revelation that he knew he was related to Jamie Cloncurry.
12. Was the end of the novel—Rob and Christine’s wedding—satisfactory and realistic? Did it tie things up too neatly, or were there any parts of the novel that you felt were still left to be explained?
13. Compare this novel with mysteries based on historical fact and/or conspiracy theories. What sets the book apart from the others?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Map of the World
Jane Hamilton, 1994
Knopf Doubleday
390 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385720106
Summary
The Goodwins, Howard, Alice, and their little girls, Emma and Claire, live on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Although suspiciously regarded by their neighbors as "that hippie couple" because of their well-educated, urban background, Howard and Alice believe they have found a source of emotional strength in the farm, he tending the barn while Alice works as a nurse in the local elementary school.
But their peaceful life is shattered one day when a neighbor's two-year-old daughter drowns in the Goodwins' pond while under Alice's care. Tormented by the accident, Alice descends even further into darkness when she is accused of sexually abusing a student at the elementary school. Soon, Alice is arrested, incarcerated, and as good as convicted in the eyes of a suspicious community. As a child, Alice designed her own map of the world to find her bearings. Now, as an adult, she must find her way again, through a maze of lies, doubt and ill will.
A vivid human drama of guilt and betrayal, A Map of the World chronicles the intricate geographies of the human heart and all its mysterious, uncharted terrain. The result is a piercing drama about family bonds and a disappearing rural American life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 13, 1957
• Reared—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.B., Carleton College
• Awards—Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, 1988
• Currently—lives in Rochester, Wisconsin
Her first published works were short stories, "My Own Earth" and "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending", both published in Harper's Magazine in 1983. "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending" later appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1984.
Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, was published in 1988 and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award in 1989. The Book of Ruth was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1996, and it was the basis for a 2004 television film of the same title.
In 1994, she published A Map of the World, which was adapted for a film in 1999 and, the same year, was also an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her third novel, The Short History of a Prince, published in 1998, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998. This book was also shortlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize. In 2000, Hamilton was named a Notable Wisconsin Author by the Wisconsin Library Association.
All of her books are set, at least in part, in Wisconsin.
In an interview with the Journal Times in Racine, Wisconsin, in November 2006, Hamilton talked about her early inspiration for writing novels. As a student at Carleton College, she overheard a professor say she would write a novel one day. Hamilton had written only two short stories for the professor's class. Overhearing the conversation gave her confidence. "It had a lot more potency, the fact that I overheard it, rather than his telling me directly," she said. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Some older books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. Check Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
This new novel by Jane Hamilton aspires to combine a melodramatic soap-opera plot with highly tuned literary writing.... The results are something of a mixed bag: bizarrely clumsy and contrived scenes combined with highly moving moments of exceptional emotional clarity, and a motley cast of characters, ranging from the stereotyped to the dexterously well drawn.... These difficulties are, to some degree, offset by the strengths of Ms. Hamilton's writing: her eye for the emotional detail, her expert manipulation of point of view, her ability to show us Alice's fears and delusions, her need for penance and her yearning for redemption."
Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times
Discussion Questions
1. In the opening pages of the novel, Alice says about her situation, "Now, in my more charitable moods, I wonder if our hardworking community members punished us for something as intangible as whimsy. We would not have felt eccentric in a northern city, but in Prairie Center we were perhaps outside the bounds of the collective imagination." (p. 4) How does the idea of alienation figure into the novel? Why do Dan and Theresa belong to Prairie Center? Does Howard belong? Feeling that she doesn't belong, could Alice have done anything to make herself less vulnerable to public censure?
2. Compare the different ways the characters grieve: Are there parallels in the husbandwife relationships within the couples—Alice and Howard, Theresa and Dan—and how each spouse expresses, or fails to express, his or her own grief? Do the characters' respective genders play a role in the way they deal with grief? What role does grief play in Howard's relationship with Theresa?
3. What is the function of Howard's narration? Does his perspective change your feelings about Alice and what happens to her? Is it clear why he doubts her?
4. Does Alice's sense of her own inadequacy contribute to how she is viewed by the people of Prairie Center? Does it contribute to Howard's feelings towards her?
5. At the outset of the novel, Alice says, "I had always suspected that Howard was able to slip into a phone booth, shed his rubber overalls right down to a blue body suit, and then take off into the sky, scooping up the children with one strong arm.... He has always been capable." (p. 9) What are some of Howard and Alice's respective strengths and weaknesses? Is eitherone stronger than the other in any way?
6. At the point of the novel when Alice is arrested, she is still completely overwhelmed and incapacitated by Lizzy's death and her role in it. How do the accusations against Alice and her time in prison change her and help her to deal with what happened to Lizzy?
7. What is revealed about Alice through her interaction with other prisoners? Does her sense of belonging shift while in prison? What new perspectives does she gain?
8. While in the jail hospital, Alice reflects on her marriage, "Lying in the hospital bed I thought to myself that my passion for Howard had soon been replaced by something that was stronger than respect, or habit, or maybe even need.... "I wasn't certain the group of feelings wouldn't cancel each other out, if any of them could possibly be powerful enough to carry me along by his side, shoulder to shoulder." (p. 298) What binds Alice and Howard? Do the events of the novel change the essence of those ties?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Roger's Version
John Updike, 1986
Knopf Doubleday
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449912188
Summary
A born-again computer whiz kid bent on proving the existence of God on his computer meets a middle-aged divinity professor, Roger Lambert, who'd just as soon leave faith a mystery.
Soon the computer hacker begins an affair with professor Lambert's wife — and Roger finds himself experiencing deep longings for a trashy teenage girl. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1932
• Where—Reading, Pennsylvania, USA
• Death—January 27, 2009
• Where—Danvers, Massachusetts
• Education—A.B., Harvard University; also studied at the
Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England
• Awards—National Book Award for The Centaur, 1964;
Pulitzer Prizer, National Book Critics Circle Award, and
National Book Award for Rabbit Is Rich, 1982; Pulitzer Prize
and National Book Critics Circle Award for Rabbit at Rest,
1990
With an uncommonly varied oeuvre that includes poetry, criticism, essays, short stories, and novels, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike has helped to change the face of late-20th-century American literature.
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Updike graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1954. Following a year of study in England, he joined the staff of The New Yorker, establishing a relationship with the magazine that continues to this day. Since 1957, he has lived in two small towns in Massachusetts that have inspired the settings for several of his stories.
In 1958, Updike's first collection of poetry was published. A year later, he made his fiction debut with The Poorhouse Fair. But it was his second novel, 1960's Rabbit, Run, that forged his reputation and introduced one of the most memorable characters in American fiction. Former small-town basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom struck a responsive chord with readers and critics alike and catapulted Updike into the literary stratosphere.
Updike would revisit Angstrom in 1971, 1981, and 1990, chronicling his hapless protagonist's jittery journey into undistinguished middle age in three melancholy bestsellers: Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest. A concluding novella, "Rabbit Remembered," appears in the 2001 story collection Licks of Love.
Although autobiographical elements appear in the Rabbit books, Updike's true literary alter ego is not Harry Angstrom but Harry Bech, a famously unproductive Jewish-American writer who stars in his own story cycle. In between—indeed, far beyond—his successful series, Updike has gone on to produce an astonishingly diverse string of novels. In addition, his criticism and short fiction remain popular staples of distinguished literary publications.
Extras
• Updike first became entranced by reading when he was a young boy growing up on an isolated farm in Pennsylvania. Afflicted with psoriasis and a stammer, he escaped from his into mystery novels.
• He decided to attend Harvard University because he was a big fan of the school's humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon.
• Updike has basically won every major literary prize in America, including the Guggenheim Fellow, the Rosenthal Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the O. Henry Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award, the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and the National Medal of the Arts. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
[Discussions of God's existence] might at first sound like alien territory for Mr. Updike, and yet ... it provides him with a comfortable armature on which to drape some of his favorite preoccupations. Questions of faith and existential doubt, after all, hover along the margins of many of his novels—surfacing ... most recently in The Witches of Eastwick, which featured the Devil in a starring role—and his heroes, over the years, have all suffered from ''the tension and guilt of being human.'' Torn between ... spiritual yearnings and ... self-fulfillment, they hunger for salvation even as they submit to the demands of the flesh .... [In this novel, Updike's] unpleasant characters might make for rather grim reading, but by presenting them through the scrim of his narrator, Mr. Updike diffuses some of their vitriol. Further, his command of narrative techniques—his orchestration of emotional and physical details, his modulation of voice, his quick, lyric facility with language—is so assured in this novel, so fluent, that even the most hesistant reader is soon drawn irresistibly into Roger's fictional world.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Sex and its combinations and permutations apart, two of Updike's commanding, long-standing interests in theology and various kinds of science come together to form the matrix of his new novel. The conflicting ideas are as ancient as time: reason versus faith; science versus religion; belief versus any of the forms of unbelief. The contestants representing the fundamental opposition are the narrator, Roger Lambert, 52, a former minister, now a professor of divinity at a New England university, theologically a (Karl) "Barthian all the way" with a civilized tolerance for heretics and the steadfast conviction that God must be taken on faith; and Dale Kohler, 28, a computer scientist fixed in the belief that at the base of all science "God is showing through,'' now working on a definitive demonstration by computer technology of God's existence. That would keep anyone busy, but Dale finds a few hours a week for an affair with Roger's angry, unhappy wife, and Roger's version of belief does not prevent him from having a brief fling with his half-sister's daughter, herself an unmarried mother. For all Updike's finesse and dexterity in the deployment of ideas, there is more arcane computerology here than readers, including his most devoted, can digest by force-feeding, and probably more theology as well. Most readers will also think the characters contrived, mouthpieces for the perspectives they espouse.
Publishers Weekly
Updike's 12th novel continues his portrayal of middle America in all its social, religious, and cultural ramifications. Divinity professor Roger Lambert is visited by Dale Kohler, an earnest young student who wants a grant to prove the existence of God by computer. The visit disrupts Roger's ordinary existence, bringing him into contact with the wild and sexy Verna (his half-sister's daughter), and leading to his wife's affair with Dale. Updike spends a great deal of time in this novel discussing religion, sex, and computers, not always to the advantage of the characters. There are some fine Updike touches—just the right phrase or detail—but it still adds up to a rather lifeless work (perhaps intentionally so). Roger's is an unattractive character with whom we only occasionally become truly involved. Roger's Version is more Marry Me than Rabbit Is Rich. —Thomas Lavoie, formerly with English Dept., Syracuse Univ., N.Y.
Library Journal
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 Roger's Version:
1. The subject of Roger's Version is the age-old argument between faith and science—and how one can know the existence of God. Talk about the ways in which Updike uses his novel to portray this philosophical debate?
2. Do you find the discussions between Roger and Dale intriguing and enlightening? Or do you find them a heavy-handed drag on the flow of the novel? In other words, were you interested or bored with this book?
3. How does Esther's pregnancy reflect, in a very human way, the theological questions that Kohler and Lambert ponder?
4. Consider the parallels of this novel with Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850): the names Roger (Chillingworth), (Dimmes)Dale and (H)Esther (Prynne) are clues.
5. Is Roger's "version" the only version in this story? Could there be other versions as well? Can Roger be trusted as a reliable narrator?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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