The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey, 1989
Simon & Schuster
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743269513
Summary
Using a balance of theory and practical examples, Stephen R. Covey's incredibly successful book offers a pathway to wisdom and power.
Covey's guide (for both personal and professional life) describes seven principles of life management. It offers a revolutionary program for breaking the patterns of self-defeating behavior that keep us from achieving our goals and reaching our fullest potential. It describes how to replace the old patterns with a principle-focused approach to problem-solving.
The book presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity—principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 24, 1932
• Where—Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Education—B.S., University of Utah; M.B.A., Harvard; Ph.D.,
Brigham Young University
• Awards—International Entrepreneur of the Year Award,
Sikh's International Man of Peace Award,
• Currently—lives in Provo, Utah
Stephen R. Covey writes in his blockbuster self-improvement tome, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, about the "social band-aid" effect of much recent success literature, the tendency to create personality-based solutions to problems that go deeper. "Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction," he wrote. Covey acknowledges the importance of the "personality ethic," but he sought to go deeper and emphasize the "character ethic," something Covey saw as a fading concept. He went back further and found inspiration in figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thoreau, and Emerson.
Indeed, everything old is new again in Covey's works. The author himself would admit that nothing he is saying is terribly new; but Covey's synthesis of years and years of thinking about effectiveness resulted in a smash personal growth title —one that continues to be a top seller nearly 15 years after its first publication. The title, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, makes it sounds like a quick-fix path to power, but Covey's philosophy is rooted in exactly the opposite notion: There are no quick fixes, no shortcuts. He is writing about habits, after all, which can be as tough to institute as they can be to break. His list: Be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think win-win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; synergize; sharpen the saw.
Covey's subsequent titles are based in some way or another on this seminal book. First Things First offers a time-management strategy and a new way of looking at priorities. Principle-Centered Leadership is an examination of character traits and an "inside-out" way of improving organizational leadership. Covey, a Mormon, also wrote two religious contemplations of human effectiveness and interaction, The Spiritual Roots of Human Relations and The Divine Center. These were Covey's first two titles; his esteem for spirituality is not absent from subsequent work but appears as just one more tool that can be applied in self-improvement.
Like Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese?, 7 Habits has been able to achieve astonishing sales success by espousing ideas applicable beyond an office setting. Covey's books are about self-improvement more than they are about corporate management, which has enabled him to create a successful version of the philosophy for families (entitled, of course, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families) in addition to attracting people who just want to be more efficient in their lives, or bolster that diet.
Most attractive about Covey is his versatility in conveying his ideas. His books are structured in appealing, number-oriented groupings ("Three Resolutions," "Thirty Methods of Influence," four quadrants of importance in time management) and big umbrellas of ideas, but within these pockets Covey draws from a wide range of resources: anecdotes, business school exercises, historical wisdom, and diverse metaphors. Sometimes, Covey uses himself as an example. He knows as well as anyone that practicing what he preaches is tough; but he keeps trying, which makes him an inspiring testimonial for his own books
Extras
• Covey is married to Sandra Merrill Covey. They have nine children.
• Covey is co-chair of FranklinCovey, a management resources firm based in Provo, Utah. He has also been a business professor at Brigham Young University, where he earned his doctorate.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has sold more than 12 million copies in 33 languages and 75 countries throughout the world. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People played a major role in the development of Saturn's operating systems and philosophy. Our commitment to quality and to our customers has its roots in The 7 Habits.
Skip LeFauve
Stephen Covey has written a remarkable book about the human condition, so elegantly written, so understanding of our embedded concerns, so useful for our organizational and personal lives, that it's going to be my gift to everyone I know.
Warren Bennis
I've never known any teacher or mentor on improving personal effectiveness to generate such an overwhelmingly positive reaction....This book captures beautifully Stephen's philosophy of principles. I think anyone reading it will quickly understand the enormous reaction I and others have had to Dr. Covey's teachings.
John Pepper
Picture someone going through the best experience they've ever had in terms of training—that's what they say. People credit The 7 Habits with changing their lives, with getting back on track personally and professionally.
Ken M. Radziwanowski
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:
1. Talk about the difference, as Stephen Covey describes it, between Personality and Character ethics. Does that distinction have relevance to your life? According to Covey, what is the disadvantage of relying solely on the Personality ethic?
2. Discuss the "absolute" principles that Covey believes exist in all human beings, those basic assumptions underlying the Character Ethic.
3. What does the experiment using drawings of a younger and older woman tell us about individual perception? Talk about how personal conditioning colors perspective in your own experiences. How difficult is it to achieve objectivity—in life generally...and in your own life?
4. What is Covey's "inside-out" approach to effectiveness?
5. Discuss Covey's definition of "habits" and the role they play in our lives. What are habits, as Covey defines them?
6. Talk about the stages that habits help us move through—Dependence...Independence...Interdependence. Why is Independence not the optimal model to follow in personal or professional environments?
Now move on to the 7 specific habits:
7. Be Proactive: What does it mean to be proactive? What qualities are needed to be proactive? Can you discern in your own life the difference between what you can influence and what you cannot? How proactive are you in your job...in your daily life?
8. Begin With the End In Mind: How do you define your own personal principles? Have you established a mission statement? What would (or does) it consist of? If you haven't already, develop your personal mission statement.
9. Put Things First: What are the key roles you take on in life? How can you integrate those into your mission statement?
10. Think Win/Win: What is win/win, and why does Covey believe it is important? Give an example from your own experience where you achieved (or not) a win/win situation?
11. Understand/Understood: why does Covey consider this principle so important? What does he mean by it...and how is it relevant to your life?
12. Synergize: What does synergy mean and how does it apply to personal effectiveness? How does it differ from the Win/Win principle? Can you think of how synergy might work in your own life—personal or professional?
13. Sharpen the Saw: How does this habit relate to personal renewal? What does Covey mean by achieving "balance"? How does one maximize producing vs. the capacity to produce? Can you apply this principle to your own situation?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Whistling Season
Ivan Doig, 2006
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156031646
Summary
"Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909.
And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch—a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom.
When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"—none of them of the textbook variety—Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse.
A paean to a vanished way of life and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it fertile, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best. (From the publisher.)
The Whistling Season is the first novel in a trilogy—followed by Work Song (2010) and ending with Sweet Thunder (2012).
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1939
• Where—White Sulphur Springs, Montana, USA
• Death—April 9, 2015
• Where—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D., University of Washington
Ivan Doig was born in Montana to a family of home-steaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain front.
After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He now lives with his wife Carol Doig, nee Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.
Before he became a novelist, Doig wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service. He has also published two memoirs—This House of Sky (1979) and Heart Earth (1993).
Much of his fiction (more than 10 novels) is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
His own words:
• Taking apart a career in such summary sentences always seems to me like dissecting a frog—some of the life inevitably goes out of it—and so I think the more pertinent Ivan Doig for you, Reader, is the red-headed only child, son of ranch hand Charlie Doig and ranch cook Berneta Ringer Doig (who died of her lifelong asthma on my sixth birthday), who in his junior year of high school (Valier, Montana; my class of 1957 had 21 members) made up his mind to be a writer of some kind.
• No one is likely to confuse my writing style with that of Charlotte Bronte, but when that impassioned parson’s daughter lifted her pen from Jane Eyre and bequeathed us the most intriguing of plot summaries—"Reader, I married him"—she also was subliminally saying what any novelist ... must croon to those of you with your eyes on our pages: "Reader, my story is flirting with you; please love it back."
• One last word about the setting of my work, the American West. I don’t think of myself as a "Western" writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate "region," the true home, for a writer. Specific geographies, but galaxies of imaginative expression —we’ve seen them both exist in William Faulkner’s postage stamp-size Yoknapatawpha County, and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s nowhere village of Macondo, dreaming in its hundred years of solitude. If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it’d be this belief of mine that writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Doig's writerly ambition is less in plotting than evoking, and it is his obvious pleasure to recreate from the ground up—or the sky down—a prior world, a prior way of being. The land and its people—the family, the neighbors—are laid out before us with a fresh, natural openness. We get uncluttered space, the no-nonsense solidity of things, a close-up registering of weather and the movement of the sun (and, under Morris's tutelage, the stars in the night sky and the once-in-a-lifetime coming of Halley's comet). Studying his surroundings, Paul notices the "smooth-buttered plain leading to Westwater," and, nearer, the "round rims of shadow on the patch of prairie where the horses we rode to school had eaten the grass down in circles around their picket stakes." Earth-seeking writers like Willa Cather and Norman Maclean come to mind.... The Whistling Season is quiet and unassuming throughout.... [T]his is a deeply meditated and achieved art.
Sven Birkerts - New York Times Book Review
Doig has been at this for a long time; he's 67 and the author of eight previous novels and three works of nonfiction, including the memoir This House of Sky. You can see the evidence of that experience in his new novel: its gentle pace, its persistent warmth, its complete freedom from cynicism—and the confidence to take those risks without winking or apologizing. When a voice as pleasurable as his evokes a lost era, somehow it doesn't seem so lost after all.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Any writer's work should be judged solely on its own merits, yet in this fine novel by Ivan Doig, one may be forgiven for marveling at the creation of such a work at an advanced stage of this writer's illustrious career. (Wallace Stegner—to whom, as with Doig, landscape was character and event in any story, and particularly Western landscapes—comes to mind with his classic Crossing to Safety.) Like many of Doig's earlier novels, The Whistling Season is set in the past in rural eastern Montana-and addresses that time and place in distinct, uncluttered prose that carries the full enthusiasm of affection and even love—for the landscape, the characters, and the events of the story—without being sentimental or elegiac. The novel is narrated by an aging Montana state superintendent of schools, Paul Milliron, who is charged with deciding the fate of the state's last scattered rural schools, and who, in the hours preceding his meeting to determine those schools' fate, recalls the autumn of 1909, when he was 13 and attending his own one-room school in Marias Coulee. Recently widowed, Paul's father, overwhelmed by the child-rearing duties presented by his three sons, in addition to his challenging farming duties, hires a housekeeper, sight unseen, from a newspaper ad. The housekeeper, Rose, proclaims that she "can't cook but doesn't bite." She turns out to be a beguiling character, and she brings with her a surprise guest—her brother, the scholarly Morris, who, though one of the most bookish characters in recent times, also carries brass knuckles and—not to give away too much plot—somehow knows how to use them. The schoolteacher in Marias Coulee runs away to get married, leaving Morris to step up and take over her job. The verve and inspiration that he, an utter novice to the West, to children and to teaching children, brings to the task is told brilliantly and passionately, and is the core of the book's narrative, with its themes of all the different ways of knowing and learning, at any age. Doig's strengths in this novel are character and language—the latter manifesting itself at a level of old-fashioned high-octane grandeur not seen previously in Doig's novels, and few others': the sheer joy of word choices, phrases, sentences, situations, and character bubbling up and out, as fecund and nurturing as the dryland farmscape the story inhabits is sere and arid. The Whistling Season is a book to pass on to your favorite readers: a story of lives of active choice, lived actively.
Publishers Weekly
Doig, a native of Montana, has been celebrating the natural beauty of his state and depicting the pleasures and challenges of frontier life for many years now in books like This House of Sky and English Creek. Here he returns to Montana to deal with these signature themes once again, with very satisfying results. Set in the early 1900s, this novel is a nostalgic, bittersweet story about a widower, his three sons, and the year these boys spend in a one-room country schoolhouse. The novel begins with the father, Oliver, hiring a widowed housekeeper named Rose from Minneapolis (her advertisement reads "Can't Cook but Doesn't Bite"). She arrives with her unconventional brother, Morrie, in tow. Morrie is something of a scholar, and he soon finds himself pressed into service as a replacement teacher. During the course of the novel, these intriguing and unpredictable characters come together in surprising and uplifting ways. This is an affectionate, heartwarming tale that also celebrates a vanished way of life and laments its passing. Recommended for all libraries. —Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Com. Coll., CT
Library Journal
Scenes from an early-20th-century Montana childhood, from this veteran Western author (Prairie Nocturne, 2003, etc.). Lured by the government promise of free land for homesteaders, Oliver Milliron forsook his Wisconsin drayage business and brought his family to Montana. Now it's 1909, and Oliver has been able to make ends meet as a dryland farmer, weathering the death of his wife from a burst appendix. He is struggling to raise his three boys single-handedly (13-year-old Paul, the narrator, and kid brothers Damon and Toby) when he spots an ad for a housekeeper. Rose Llewellyn doesn't come cheap; she wants her fare paid from Minneapolis, plus three months wages in advance. Oliver submits, not expecting that pretty, petite Rose will have her brother Morrie in tow. Conveniently, the teacher from the one-room schoolhouse absconds, and dapper, erudite Morrie steps into the breach. Doig's story centers on the impact of these unconventional siblings on simple rural lives. While Rose gets the farmhouse shipshape, Morrie proves a surprisingly successful novice teacher. Overall, it's a sunny tale. The boys ride horseback to school. A dispute between Paul and an older bully is settled with a race, riders facing backwards. The novel is also an elegy for the "central power" of the country school as a much older Paul, in 1957 the state superintendent of schools, is charged, to his dismay, with their abolition. In 1910, the school passes its inspection with flying colors, as Halley's comet streaks across the sky and the schoolkids greet it with harmonicas. Paul hasn't developed an interest in girls yet, but he will have a man-size decision to make. Oliver has fallen for Rose and they are set to marry when Paul discovers that Rose and Morrie are on the run from a scandal. Should he tell his dad? The melodrama is a weak ending for a novel that had so far avoided it. Minor work, carried along by homespun charm.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Does the life of a homesteader in 1907 Montana, as it is portrayed in the novel, appeal to you? What is appealing about it? Would you trade the comforts and the disconnection of modern life for the simplicity and the hardships of these characters’ lives?
2. How does Doig foreshadow and hint at the novel’s plot twists? For example, when did you first realize that Rose and Morrie might not be who they claim to be? Did you have a theory about their true identities? How does this kind of foreshadowing contribute to the novel’s effect on you?
3. Do Paul’s dreams ring true to you? Why or why not? Does Doig do a good job of capturing the feeling and content of a vivid dream? What do Paul’s dreams say about him?
4. What is the significance of the verse that Aunt Eunice quotes on page 22: “Yet, Experience spake / the old ways are best; / steadfast for steadfast’s sake, / passing the eons’ test”? Do you think the adult Paul would agree with the gist of this verse? In trying to save the schoolhouses, is he being “steadfast for steadfast’s sake”? Is this novel an argument that “the old ways are best,” or is it simply an elegy to those old ways?
5. Compare the students’excitement over the arrival of Halley’s Comet with the panic over Sputnik and the quality of American education that has led to the adult Paul’s being ordered to close the schoolhouses. Why do you think Doig frames the novel with these two events?
6. What do you think of the education that the children of Marias Coulee receive? How does it differ from your own education or the education of children today? What are the advantages and disadvantages of today’s educational system relative to that of the one-room schoolhouse?
7. Was there one teacher whose effect on you was like the effect Morrie had on Paul? What makes Morrie a good teacher? Discuss the great teachers you have had, and what qualities they shared with Morrie.
8. In his review of The Whistling Season in the New York Times Book Review, Sven Birkerts wrote that Doig’s writing answered the question, “Is there any way to write nowadays...that can escape the taint of knowingness, of wised-up cynicism?” How would you describe Doig’s style of writing? Do you agree with Birkerts? Did you find the (mostly good and decent) characters believable? Compare this novel to other contemporary novels you have read recently. Are there any other contemporary writers to whom you would compare Doig?
9. Discuss the character of Brose Turley. What does he represent, and what purpose does he serve in the novel? Is it significant that he is the only character whom we see at a church service, in the revival meeting? What is the significance of his coming to Morrie when he is frightened by the signs of drought and the appearance of the comet?
10. On page 294, the adult Paul reflects that closing the one room schoolhouses will “slowly kill those rural neighborhoods.... No schoolhouse to send their children to. No schoolhouse for a Saturday night dance. No schoolhouse for election day; for the Grange meeting; for the 4-H club; for the quilting bee; for the pinochle tournament; for the reading group; for any of the gatherings that are the bloodstream of community.” Today, fifty years after the time when Paul is reflecting, do you think other gathering places have replaced the schoolhouses? What have contemporary American communities lost or gained since the days of close-knit rural neighborhoods like Marias Coulee?
11. Do you blame Morrie and Rose for keeping their identities secret from the Milliron family? Does Paul do the right thing in keeping their secret from his father? How does his decision to do so relate to the closing passage of the novel, in which the adult Paul decides to mislead the appropriations committee in an effort to save the schoolhouses?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Sing You Home
Jodi Picoult, 2011
Simon & Schuster
466 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439102725
Summary
Every life has a soundtrack. All you have to do is listen.
Music has set the tone for most of Zoe Baxter’s life. There’s the melody that reminds her of the summer she spent rubbing baby oil on her stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. A dance beat that makes her think of using a fake ID to slip into a nightclub. A dirge that marked the years she spent trying to get pregnant.
For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.
In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people—even those she loves and trusts most—don’t want that to happen.
Sing You Home is about identity, love, marriage, and parenthood. It’s about people wanting to do the right thing for the greater good, even as they work to fulfill their own personal desires and dreams. And it’s about what happens when the outside world brutally calls into question the very thing closest to our hearts: family. (From the publisher.)
The book comes with a CD of original songs by Jodi Picoult (lyrics), performed by Ellen Wilber (music).
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1966
• Where—Nesconset (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.Ed., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Hanover, New Hampshire
Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has approximately 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.
Early life and education
Picoult was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island in New York State; when she was 13, her family moved to New Hampshire. Even as a child, Picoult had a penchant for writing stories: she wrote her first story— "The Lobster Which Misunderstood"—when she was five.
While still in college—she studied writing at Princeton University—Picoult published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. To pay the bills, after graduation she worked at a variety of jobs, including copy writing and editing textbooks; she even taught eighth-grade English and attained a Masters in Education from Harvard University.
In 1989, Picoult married Timothy Warren Van Leer, whom she met in college, and while pregnant with their first child, wrote her first book. Song of the Humpbacked Whale, her literary debut, came out in 1992. Two more children followed, as did a string of bestseller novels. All told, Picoult has more than 20 books to her name.
Writing
At an earlier time in her life, Picoult believed the tranquility of family life in small-town New England offered little fodder for writing; the truly interesting stuff of fiction happened elsewhere. Ironically, it is small-town life that has ended up providing the settings for Picoult's novels. Within the cozy surroundings of family and friends, Picoult weaves complex webs of relationships that strain, even tear apart, under stress. She excels at portraying ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Disoriented by some accident of chance, they stumble, whirl, and attempt to regain a footing in what was once their calm, ordered world.
Nor has Picoult ever shied from tackling difficult, controversial issues: school shooting, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teen suicide, and racism. She approaches painful topics with sympathy—and her characters with respect—while shining a light on individual struggles. Her legions of readers have loved and rewarded her for that compassion—and her novels have been consistent bestsellers.
Personal life
Picoult and her husband Timothy live in Hanover, New Hampshire. They have three children and a handful of pets. (Adapted from a 2003 Barnes and Noble interview and from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)
Book Reviews
Picoult's overstuffed latest is stretched just to the breaking point.... Picoult abandons her usual efforts to present an equal view of both sides of an issue...but her devoted fans will nevertheless find everything they expect: big emotion, diligent research, legal conflict, and a few twists at the end.
Publishers Weekly
Never one to shy away from controversial issues, this time Picoult...forces us to consider both sides of these hot topics with her trademark impeccable research, family dynamics, and courtroom drama. Sure to be a hit with her myriad fans and keep the book clubs buzzing. —Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
Library Journal
Told from the perspectives of all three major characters, Picoult’s gripping novel explores all sides of the hot-button issue and offers a CD of folk songs that reflect Zoe’s feelings throughout the novel. —Kristine Huntley
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. An original, accompanying soundtrack is available for Sing You Home. Listen to the soundtrack with your book club members and discuss how the song choices reinforce or affect your reading. In what way did having a soundtrack enhance your understanding of Zoe's "voice"? If you had to create a soundtrack for this book, what songs would you include? Explain your choices.
2. Zoe also claims that "music is the language of memory" and has the power to reach through even the darkest corners of dementia and awaken long-forgotten memories. Are there any songs or albums that remind you of a certain time or place in your life? Do you think it's a blessing or a curse to be reminded of such memories through music?
3. Sing You Home is narrated by three different protagonists, each with their own unique voice and personality. Did this narrative device work for you as a reader? Do you think Zoe's story would've been portrayed differently if there had only been one narrator? Why or why not?
4. Change and metamorphosis are reoccurring ideas in Sing You Home. In your opinion, which characters changed the most? Which characters remained the same?
5. On page 75, Max reflects on the nature of change: "Actually, when you turn into someone you don't recognize, you feel nothing at all." Do you think this is true in all instances? How would you describe periods of self-discovery and metamorphosis like those Zoe experiences?
6. How do Zoe's struggles as a music therapist to Lucy give you insight into her character?
7. Whether it's an expert witness discussing the scientific proof of physiological differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals or Vanessa talking about experiences unique to the gay dating world, great attention is paid to the differences between gay and straight relationships throughout the novel. Do you think the story features any universal dating realities and relationship experiences that transcend different sexual orientations? Explain your answer.
8. Vanessa's mother and Zoe's mother have very different reactions when her daughter says, "I'm gay." Are both mothers justified in their reactions? Discuss.
9. During the trial, Max's attorney brings in expert psychologist Dr. Newkirk to discuss the detriment of same-sex parent households on children. Dr. Newkirk's argument is that a child needs the influence of both genders to ensure healthy development. Do you agree with her? Why or why not? Do you think the family structure ultimately created by Zoe, Vanessa, and Max is a healthy one?
10. When Zoe has doubts about being able to raise a son, her mom tells her, "'It's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.'" (p. 374) Do you agree with her? Explain your answer.
11. During his sermon, Pastor Clive argues against homosexuality by saying, "After all, I like swimming . . . but that doesn't make me a fish." (p. 399) Do you think his fish analogy is relevant? Do you find his interpretation of sexuality more or less accurate than Vanessa's assertion that "we're all just wired differently." (p. 111)
12. When Max says to Zoe, "'God forgives you,'" she replies, "'God should know there's nothing to forgive.'" (p. 406) Their statements are diametrically opposite, and they spend almost the entire novel arguing their beliefs to each other. Do you think both sides' arguments were equally represented in the novel? Which points from either side did you find most compelling or convincing? Which points did you find most difficult to hear?
13. When Max seeks guidance from Pastor Clive as to how he should react to Zoe's new relationship with Vanessa, Pastor Clive tells him a story about Pastor Wallace, who allowed homosexuals into his congregation. Pastor Clive believes that Pastor Wallace is a model for tolerance and that, while homosexuality shouldn't be accepted, gay members of the church should be tolerated. Do you believe Pastor Clive practices what he preaches in the novel? What about when he says that the Eternal Glory Church isn't "anti-gay" but rather "pro-Christ"? (p. 219) Is tolerance even possible without acceptance? Explain.
14. Despite being about a very specific relationship and a unique court case, Sing You Home addresses universal themes and ideas regarding family, love, and acceptance. Do you think this story reaches a wide audience, despite its unique specificities? Did you connect with the characters? Why or why not?
15. Several different story lines are left unresolved, such as Lucy's story and why she made allegations against Zoe, and how Max and Liddy eventually get married. Are there any subplots you wish the author had resolved or delved into more thoroughly? Are there any that you would've resolved differently?
(Questions by publisher.)
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Skippy Dies
Paul Murray, 2010
Faber & Faber
672 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780865478619
Summary
As promised, 14-year-old Daniel “Skippy” Juster dies in the opening scene of Paul Murray’s tragicomic masterwork. But much remains to be seen in the ensuing chapters. Who is responsible for his demise? And why does he die such a weird death, gasping for air on the floor of a doughnut shop without having eaten any doughnuts? And what are we to make of his final message, written on the floor in syrupy raspberry filling: “TELL LORI”?
Set in Dublin at the Seabrook College for boys, Skippy Dies combines the visceral power of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest with the raw anxieties of life in the 21st century. The result is a dazzling and uproarious novel in which nearly all the characters are at odds with one another (and with themselves) as they walk the line between fantasy and reality, spectacular deception and jaw-dropping revelation.
While a ruthless Acting Principal (“the Automator”) tries to dissolve the school’s affiliation with the Holy Paraclete Fathers, faculty and students alike revel in unholy obsessions. For the teenage drug dealer Carl, it’s porn, laced with his borderline psychotic fantasies. For the pudgy young genius Ruprecht, it’s a quest to open a portal to a parallel universe. Unable to get his students to understand the magnitude of the Great War, the history teacher Howard Fallon spends equal time trying to get it on with his sexy colleague Aurelie. For Eoin “MC Sexecutioner” Flynn, life is an endless hip-hop soundtrack.
As for Skippy, with a distracted father and a cancer-stricken mother, he simply dreams of a day when no one harasses him anymore. There’s not enough Ritalin in the world to bring normalcy to Seabrook, but then again, normalcy is all relative within those historic walls.
Hailed by The New Yorker as an author who “gets away with just about everything,” Paul Murray reinvents adolescence, adulthood, and storytelling itself in Skippy Dies. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., Trinity College, Dublin; M.A.,
University of East Agnlia.
• Currently—lives in
Murray was born in Dublin in 1975, the son of a professor of Anglo-Irish Drama in UCD and a teacher mother. Murray attended Blackrock College in south Dublin, an experience that would later provide the basis for the school in Skippy Dies. He studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently completed his Masters in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He also spent time in Barcelona as an English teacher, a time he did not enjoy, describing it as "a brief and unhappy stint teaching English to a Catalan businessman, who pointed out many faults in my grammar I had not known about hitherto". He describes Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as a very influential book to him.
Murray has written two novels: his first, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Prize in 2003 and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. His second novel Skippy Dies was longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2010 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It was also #3 on Time magazine's top ten works of fiction from 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Extravagantly entertaining . . . One of the great pleasures of this novel is how confidently [Paul Murray] addresses such disparate topics as quantum physics, video games, early-20th-century mysticism, celebrity infatuation, drug dealing, Irish folklore and pornography . . . Six hundred sixty-one pages may seem like a lot to devote to a bunch of flatulence-obsessed kids, but that daunting length is part and parcel of the cause to which Skippy Dies, in the end, is most devoted. Teenagers, though they may not always act like it, are human beings, and their sadness and loneliness (and their triumphs, no matter how temporary) are as momentous as any adult’s. And novels about them—if they’re as smart and funny and touching as Skippy Dies—can be just as long as they like.
Dan Kois - New York Times
Dazzling.... If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it’s nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this hilarious, moving and wise book.... Murray is an expansive writer, bouncing around in time, tense and point of view. He’s unafraid to tempt sentimentality, to write directly at his deep themes, to employ shameless cliffhangers. And he’s talented enough to get away with most of it.... The mixture of tones is the book’s true triumph, oscillating the banal with the sublime, the silly with the terrifying, the sweet with the tragic. In short, it’s like childhood. In shorter, like life.... Murray makes the right choices, refusing to spare kid and kidult alike the gorgeous harshness of the world, filled as it is with ‘a sadness everyone can recognize, a sadness that is binding and homelike.
Jess Walter - Washington Post Book World
He really does die. It’s in the opening scene. But as Paul Murray’s novel backtracks to explain what brought about his death, Skippy is so desperately, painfully alive that you hope the mere act of reading about him will save him.... Murray balances.... forces in finely tuned chords of pathos and comedy, a virtuosic display you’d expect from a writer with the confidence to kill of his title character in the title.
Radhika Jones - Time
At Dublin's Seabrook College, Skippy survives the daily indignities common to a boarder's life in an elite boys school. Still, something's wrong. Why does he want to quit the swim team? Why are his grades slipping? And who's the dark-haired St. Brigid's girl Skippy is always trying to spy on with his roommate's telescope? Seabrook is the world in miniature, and its gates threaten to burst from the hugger-mugger of cruelty, scandal, and materialism teeming within. It takes Skippy's tragic death and a sequence of events both hilarious and horrifying to recover the consolations provided by sympathy and friendship. Whether these will be enough to redeem Seabrook remains anyone's guess, though Murray suggests that a fleeting sense of grace may be all we can hope for and more than we deserve. Verdict: Murray's second novel (after An Evening of Long Goodbyes) is almost flawless, a gift for fans of character and plot. In addition to his masterly use of James Joyce and Robert Graves throughout, Murray has created a social realism that holds its own with that of Dickens. Skippy Dies deserves to be widely read and loved. —J. Greg Matthews, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman
Library Journal
(Starred review.) An extremely ambitious and complex novel, filled with parallels, with sometimes recondite references to Irish folklore, with quantum physics, and with much more. Hilarious, haunting, and heartbreaking, it is inarguably among the most memorable novels of the year to date. —Michael Cart
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What were your initial theories about why Skippy died?
2. Why can't Howard be happy with Halley? Is his obsession with Aurelie any different from Skippy's obsession with Lori?
3. Who are the heroes and villains in this novel? Is the bad behavior due to bad parenting, high testosterone levels, materialism, lack of belief in a difficult God? Other factors?
4. How does Seabrook compare with your high school? Which characters most closely resemble you and your circle of friends?
5. What do the novel's priests have to say about the nature of the suffering they see at Seabrook? Do they defy or fit the stereotype of prep-school priests?
6. When Carl's parents fight loudly (David versus jealous mother Lucia), what do you think they're teaching him about love? How do they manage to stay so clueless about their son?
7. With his emphasis on marketing, branding, and public relations, does the Automator (Greg Costigan) reflect a typical trend in education today?
8. Would the novel have been as interesting if it had been set at the all-girl's school St. Brigid's? Are teenage girls as destructive as teenage boys?
9. Howard tells the Automator that Skippy earned his nickname because he has buck teeth, which cause him to make a kangaroo-like noise when he speaks. What makes Skippy an easy target? Are those who pick on him (including Father Green, badgering Skippy about obscenity in front of the whole French class) sadistic?
10. Google "M-theory." What do the articles seem to say about the search for order in the universe, even before the Big Bang? Why is it an ideal theory for Ruprecht's obsession, and for this novel?
11. Part I closes with a blend of Professor Tamashi's interview on the eleventh dimension and scenes from Skippy's "seduction" by Lori. What does it take to give and get love in Skippy Dies? What do those scenes say about the reality that love creates? What does the novel say about the reality that drugs create?
12. Lori's father, Gavin Wakeham, is an alumnus of Seabrook, and he is eager to share with Skippy his recollections of the faculty (which included a fondler, alumni who returned to their alma mater to teach when other opportunities didn't work out, and the perennially socially conscious Father Green). What impressions did the school make on Mr. Wakeham? What impressions will it leave on Skippy's class?
13. Discuss Ruprecht's quartet and the musical performance he links to communicating with the dead. Is it a step forward or backward for him, mentally
14. Which came first: Carl's drug use or his obsession with power and violent sex? When he became haunted by Dead Boy, did you think he was seeing a hallucination or a ghost? Reread his explosive closing scene. Is he a Demon, or the victim of one?
15. After Skippy's funeral, his father tells Howard that Skippy's great-grandfather served in Gallipoli. Does Skippy's generation lack valor?
16. Howard and Father Green are appalled to see the Automator defend Coach Roche. Is Tom worthy of defense?
17. Ultimately, who is to blame for Skippy's death?
18. Discuss part IV, "Afterland." Is Greg's message a victory letter? Did he get everything he wanted?
(Discussion Questions by publisher.)
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My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
Jeffrey Eugenides, Ed., 2008
HarperCollins
608 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061240386
Summary
"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.... It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."—Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.
All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 8, 1960
• Where—Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.A., Stanford
University
• Awards—Whiting Writer's Award; Guggenheim
Fellowship; Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Princeton, New Jersey
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his three acclaimed novels, The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011).
Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, of Greek and Irish descent. He attended Grosse Pointe's private University Liggett School. He took his undergraduate degree at Brown University, graduating in 1983. He later earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University.
In 1986 he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship for his story "Here Comes Winston, Full of the Holy Spirit." His 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, gained mainstream interest with the 1999 film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola. The novel was reissued in 2009.
Eugenides is reluctant to disclose details about his private life, except through Michigan-area book signings in which he details the influence of Detroit and his high-school experiences on his writings. He has said that he has "a perverse love" of his birthplace. "I think most of the major elements of American history are exemplified in Detroit, from the triumph of the automobile and the assembly line to the blight of racism, not to mention the music, Motown, the MC5, house, techno." He also says he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit.
He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Karen Yamauchi, and their daughter, Georgia. In the fall of 2007, Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.
His 2002 novel, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ambassador Book Award. Part of it was set in Berlin, Germany, where Eugenides lived from 1999 to 2004, but it was chiefly concerned with the Greek-American immigrant experience in the United States, against the rise and fall of Detroit. It explores the experience of the intersexed in the USA. Eugenides has also published short stories, primarily in The New Yorker. His 1996 "Baster" became the basis for the 2010 romantic comedy The Switch (with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman).
His third novel, The Marriage Plot (2011), has been called by Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Education" the most entertaining campus novel since Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. The plot is based on graduation day at Brown University in 1982.
Eugenides is the editor of the collection of short stories titled My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. The proceeds of the collection go to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
When it comes to love," writes Jeffrey Eugenides in this wonderful, if upsetting, collection of stories, "there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name".... Though every reader will grouse about overlooked favorites...Eugenides has chosen splendid work.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize winner Eugenides (Middlesex) has assembled something quite extraordinary here: a fascinating, consistently compelling, and superbly edited collection of short stories about romantic love. Part of the collection's appeal is its range and depth: at 600 pages, it offers gems and new discoveries at every turn. Readers move, for example, from Harold Brodkey's bawdy tribute to young love and orgasm in "Innocence" to Alice Munro's sober study of an aging philanderer's late-blooming love for his ailing wife in "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." There are classic love stories, e.g., James Joyce's "The Dead" and Anton Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog," as well as more experimental, contemporary tales, e.g., Lorrie Moore's self-help-styled "How To Be an Other Woman" and George Saunders's dizzying, futuristic A Clockwork Orange-inflected world of trendsetters and tastemakers in "Jon." Some of the best moments come from younger writers, who somehow manage to match the masters here step for step. An essential acquisition.
Patrick Sullivan - Library Journal
The sparrow in the title of this anthology was one prong of an inconvenient love triangle described by the Latin poet Gaius Catullus in 84 B.C. The pet bird belonged to a girl who was loved by the poet and, unfortunately, her own husband. The sparrow takes the brunt of the lover's displaced jealousy, until it dies, taking his girl's happiness along with it. According to author Jeffrey Eugenides, all love stories since have followed the same template: "there is either a sparrow or the sparrow is dead." Frequently in these 26 stories, that sparrow takes the form of an inconvenient spouse, though it becomes apparent that the sparrow's presence is what makes the song so sweet. William Trevor provides a glimpse of the ordinary happiness that eludes a pair of lovers who take the unorthodox path of making a workaday love out of an illicit one, while Lorrie Moore gives a welcome take from the perspective of the mistress herself ("When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet"). The selection is well packed with classics—stories from Faulkner, Chekhov, Joyce, Nabokov, and Carver among them—which speaks for Eugenides' comprehensive scope but may feel remedial to some. Contemporary tales by Deborah Eisenberg, Denis Johnson, Miranda July, and others pack more surprise. Though all the entries illuminate the amatory state, none are much of an advertisement for its wholesome pleasures. Warns Eugenides: "Read these love stories in the safety of your own twin bed. Let everyone else suffer. —Amy Benfer
Barnes & Noble Review
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 My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead:
Start with general questions:
1. Eugenides warns in his introduction that these stories aren't for the faint-of-heart—they end on sad, bittersweet notes. Of those stories you read, did the endings disappoint you? Choose one or two stories and talk about the mood and the endings.
2. Here is Eugenides' definition of love stories, which he has used to select the stories in this volume:
A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.
Is his definition to somber for you, too narrow? Completely wrong?
3. Talk about the title of this collection, "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead," from the Latin Poet Catullus. As Eugenides says, "In each of the twenty-six love stories, either there is a sparrow or the sparrow is dead." Can you identify the sparrow in the stories you've read...and determine whether it's alive or dead?
4. Which stories were your favorites...and why? Which were your least favorites...and why?
5. Don't be afraid to draw some comparisons among stories. For instance:
• "The Lady with the Dog" and "Spring in Fialta."
• Either of the above with "Moonlight in Flight" and "Lovers in Their Time."
• Perhaps the self-sacrifice of "Mouche" and "The Bear Came Over the Mountian."
• Perhaps the accusatory lovers in "The Hitchhiking Game" and "Tonka."
Questions on selected stories:
6. FIRST LOVE AND OTHER SORROWS
a). What is the significance of the story's title—why is "first love" a sorrow?
b). This story pits the head against heart, rationalism against emotion. Which wins out...and for whom? Which is ultimately more important in a relationship?
c) What do you predict for the marriage of the boy's sister and Sonny? Why does the sister agree to marry Sonny? Does she love him?
7. THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG
a) Why does Gurov realize (or decide?) he loves Anna? Does he love her?
b) Given the last line: "the end was still far, far off, and that the most complicated and difficult part was just beginning," what do you predict for Gurov and Anna?
8. LOVE
a) Who is Dotty Wasserman...and what does she have to do with this story? Is she real...or a make-believe character in couple's life?
b) Notice the slippery role time plays in this story: characters recall the past—but there is also a reference to how the future plays out. Why is time so "slippery"...what has time to do with love?
9. A ROSE FOR EMILY
a) To what extent is the "we" of the community responsible for Miss Emily's demise?
b) Why did Emily poison Homer? Was she a cold-blooded murderess...or insane?
c) Talk about Faulkner's unusual timeline. See our LitCourse Study Guide for "Miss Emily."
10. THE DEAD
a) What is the significance of this title? Who/what is dead?
b) How would you describe Gabriel? After Gretta tells him the story of Michael Furey, Gabriel realizes that he "had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love." Is Gabriel capable of any depth of feeling...for his country or for his wife?
11. THE HITCHHIKING GAME
a) Who is the young woman—what is her true personae:: the aggressively flirtatious "hitchhiker" or the shy woman at the beginning and end of the story? What about the young man— what is his real identity: promiscuous or faithful and loving?
12. MOUCHE
a) Is "Mouche," the boaters' name for the young woman, meant to be derogatory or affectionate or playful or...what?
b) N'a Qu-un Oeil, "who perhaps loved her more than any of us" agrees to share Mouche with all the others to give her another baby. All agree and exclaim, "Honest." What do you think of the agreement?
c) Notice that this is a story within a story, in which the narrator, an older man reminiscing, may be pulling the reader's leg. Consider how that might affect the meaning of the story's last word.
13. LOVERS OF THEIR TIME
a) Why does Norman wonder at the beginning of this story whether his and Marie's affair could have happened "at any other time except the 1960's"? What is the significance of that decade?
b) Could he and Marie have had a future...or was their love inevitably doomed—as much, say, as Anna Karenina's?
14. THE MOON IN FLIGHT
a) In what way does the narrator intrude in this story? What tone is used—is it sincere, ironic, sarcastic...? And why might the author have invented such a narrator? The narrator seems to be playing with the entire convention of storytelling: we could do this for the couple...we could do that for them.
b) What is the last line about—"art cannot rescue anybody from anything?" Or is this story just too hard to understand?
15. SPRINGTIME IN FIALTA
a) We learn early on (third page) that this will be the last time the narrator will meet Nina: "for I cannot imagine" fate consenting t "a meeting with her beyond the grave." How does that knowledge color your reading of the entire story?
b) The narrator admits that through his constant meetings with Nina, he "grew more and more apprehensive...because some-thing lovely, delicate, and unrepeatable was being wasted: something which I abused by...neglecting the modest but true core which perhaps it kept offering me in a pitiful whisper." He rationalizes that "any practical chance of life together with Nina.... was absurd" (p. 245). Was Nina, in fact, "offering" something? Was she in love with our narrator?
16. HOW TO BE AN OTHER WOMAN
a) The 2nd-person perspective "you" is quite unusual in fiction. Why does Lorrie Moore use it...what effect is she hoping to achieve...and is she successful?
b) Notice the title: Moore doesn't use the typical "the" other woman...or "another" woman, but "an other" woman. Any ideas?
c) Really, in the end, does the lover's surprise revelation make any difference? He's already proved himself dishonest. Why was that the breaking point?
17. YOURS
a) Why are these two people, of such differing ages, together?
b) What does the "yours" of the title ultimately mean?
18. TONKA
a) Was Tonka not good enough—or too good—for the narrator of this story? Was the baby his...or was Tonka unfaithful?
b) What does the narrator come to learn in the last three paragraphs of the story? What is "the bandage that had blindfolded him" refer to? And how did it make him "better than other people"—that "small warm shadow that had fallen across his brilliant life"?
19. RED ROSE, WHITE ROSE
a) Is there anyone you like in this story?!
b) What is the significance of the yellow slippers at the end? Why does Zhenbao reform? And what does "reform" mean? Does he come to love with Yanli? What is her future?
20. FIREWORKS
a) This story starts and ends with fireworks...of very different kinds. How do they differ...and what is their meaning to the story, especially given the story's title?
b) What is the significance of the collect phone call from Jeff? Later, Starling wishes he had accepted the call. Why...what do you think?
21. WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE
a) Did Terri's first husband "love" her as she insists, even though he tried to kill her? What does it mean to love someone?
b) Is Mel right—that love is absolute? If so, then as Mel wonders, how can you love one person...then come to hate that person...and fall in love with another?
22. THE BEAR CAME OVER THE MOUNTAIN
a) What is the magnificent central irony of this story?
b) What does the title mean in the context of the story?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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