Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
The Ice Princess
Camilla Lackberg, 2003 (U.S. printing, 2011)
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451621747
In Brief
In this electrifying tale of suspense from an international crime-writing sensation, a grisly death exposes the dark heart of a Scandinavian seaside village.
Erica Falck returns to her tiny, remote hometown of Fjällbacka, Sweden, after her parents’ deaths only to encounter another tragedy: the suicide of her childhood best friend, Alex. It’s Erica herself who finds Alex’s body—suspended in a bathtub of frozen water, her wrists slashed. Erica is bewildered: Why would a beautiful woman who had it all take her own life? Teaming up with police detective Patrik Hedström, Erica begins to uncover shocking events from Alex’s childhood.
As one horrifying fact after another comes to light, Erica and Patrik’s curiosity gives way to obsession—and their flirtation grows into uncontrollable attraction. But it’s not long before one thing becomes very clear: a deadly secret is at stake, and there’s someone out there who will do anything—even commit murder—to protect it.
Fans of Scandinavian greats Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell will devour Camilla Lackberg’s penetrating portrait of human nature at its darkest. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—August 30, 1974
• Where—Fjallbacka, Sweden
• Education—Goteberg University
• Awards—Folket Prize (Sweden)
• Currently—lives in Stockholm, Sweden
Camilla Lackberg worked as an economist in Stockholm until a course in creative writing triggered a drastic career change. Her novels have all been # 1 bestsellers in Sweden and she is the most profitable native author in Swedish history. Camilla's books have been published in thirty-five countries. She lives in Stockholm. (From the pubisher.)
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Camilla was 29 when she published her first novel, The Ice Princess, in 2003. Three years later, her prize-winning books were topping the Swedish bestseller lists. It might seem that everything’s gone smoothly for her. But Camilla actually began her professional life as an economist, the world of the novelist seeming light years away...
Camilla Lackberg was born in 1974, and grew up in Fjällbacka on the west coast of Sweden, just by the Norwegian bite. As a girl, she was always telling stories and drawing little tales that she’d put together into books. The first such book, called Tomten (The Goblin), which she wrote when she was only four or five years old, was a gory, hair-raising four-pager. Her fascination for murder mysteries has always been there – perhaps as a contrast to the idyllic tracts of her childhood home.
But writing remained merely a dream for Camilla, who went on to study economics at the School of Economics and Commercial Law at Göteborg University. After graduating, she moved to Stockholm, where she spent a couple of years working as an economist. Unhappy years, that is, with her dream of being a novelist still holding her in its thrall. She was finally given a course for Christmas by her husband, mother and brother. It was a crime-writing course organised by writers’ association Ordfront, and as she studied, she began the story that came to be her debut novel: The Ice Princess. Her tutor advised her to set the plot in a place she knew well, and where better than her childhood home?
The Ice Princess was accepted in the same week as Camilla gave birth to her son, Wille, and was published in 2003. Her second book, The Preacher, was released in 2004, followed by The Stonecutter in 2005 and The Jynx in 2006. In April 2007 it was time for her fifth novel The German Child. May 2008 saw two new books reach the shelves, one of which was a complete departure from the crime genre. The first of these was The Mermaid, the sixth book in the series about Fjällbacka residents Patrik and Erika; the second was a cookery book, which she put together with celebrity chef and childhood friend Christian Hellberg. Smakerfran Fjallbacka (The taste of Fjällbacka) is a culinary celebration of Fjällbacka and the food that Camilla and Christian associate with life on the west coast. The latest book to be published in Sweden is the seventh book about Patrik and Erika: The Lighthouse Keeper.
Camilla’s novels have enjoyed critical acclaim and her popularity has grown steadily. She is Sweden’s top-selling author, and to date she has sold over 5 million books. She won the Folket literary prize in 2006, and in the autumn of the following year found another of her dreams fulfilled when her first two books were dramatised and shown on national television. (From the author's website.)
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Critics Say . . .
A top-class Scandinavian writer.
London Times
At the start of Lackberg's haunting U.S. debut, the first of her seven novels set in the Swedish coastal town of Fjallbacka, biographer Erica Falck returns home to sort through her deceased parents' belongings and work on her next book. But this is not the same hometown she grew up in. Summer tourists are turning the former fishing village into a thriving resort, and Erica's controlling brother-in-law is pressuring her to cash in by selling the family home. The apparent suicide of childhood friend Alexandra Wijkner contributes to Erica's grief. Once inseparable, they drifted apart before Alex's family abruptly moved away, and Erica feels compelled to write a novel about why the beautiful Alex would kill herself. Läckberg skillfully details how horrific secrets are never completely buried and how silence can kill the soul. A parallel between the town's downward spiral and the fate of one of Fjällbacka's wealthiest families adds texture.
Publishers Weekly
Erica Falck returns to her hometown of Fjallbacka, Sweden, now a budding resort town, to wrap up her late parents' estate and is devastated to learn of the suspicious death of her childhood friend, Alex. Writing a thinly disguised novel based on Alex's life, she becomes romantically involved with the detective on the case. Through the lives of the suspects, Läckberg reveals the sordidness of the town's wealthy families and the resounding effects of child abuse. Though this first entry in a new seven-book series, the author's U.S. debut, has been highly acclaimed on the European continent, North American audiences wanting to immerse themselves in the Swedish setting may find that narrator David Thorn's British pronunciations and dialect make for a disjointed listening experience. Recommended only where Scandinavian crime fiction does well. —Sandy Glover, Camas P.L., WA
Library Journal
This excellent thriller is a must-read for fans of Scandinavian crime literature and will especially appeal to those who enjoy Asa Larsson’s Rebecka Martinsson novels.
Booklist
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Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Erica's initial involvement in the mystery of Alex's death is purely coincidental, but as time goes on she becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about her childhood friend's past. What do you think motivates Erica to pursue this case so relentlessly?
2. Both a gifted painter and Fjallbacka's neighborhood drunk, Anders Nilsson lives a contradictory existence. As LAckberg writes, "he was born with an insatiable need for beauty at the same time that he was condemned to a life of filth and squalor" (page 142). What is your impression of Anders and how did it change as the novel progressed?
3. Alex and Anders form a close bond based on the shared trauma of their pasts, a relationship that is truly loving but also profoundly marked by sorrow. Reread Anders' description of Alex on page 191. What do you make of their relationship?
4. Erica continues to write her book about Alex's life despite having many reservations. Lackberg writes, "For the first time an idea for a book had really filled her with enthusiasm. There were so many other ideas that hadn't panned out and that she'd rejected over the years; she couldn't afford to lose this one." (page 261). Do you think the project is exploitative, or even selfish, or will Erica offer a respectful, balanced account that humanizes her subject? Do you think Erica has the right to publish this book?
5. Anna and Erica's strained relationship improves markedly after Anna leaves her abusive husband. How do both women begin to view each other differently once Lucas is out of the picture? What do you think they will resolve to do with their parents' house?
6. How do Anders's italicized passages contribute to the narrative as a whole? When did you discover the identity of the man in these scenes and what was it that tipped you off?
7. Karl-Erik and Birgit's decision to raise Julia leaves Alex with a constant reminder of the trauma of her childhood. But as Lackberg writes, "The sad thing was that—even if it was true that they had looked at Julia many times and were reminded of the horror of the past—she would never realize how much they loved her" (page 335). Do you think that Karl-Erik and Birgit were well-intentioned in their decision or were they simply trying to sweep the tragedy under the rug?
8. The Ice Princess is rife with examples of dysfunctional and adulterous relationships—from Alex and Henrik, to Dan and Pernilla, to Anna and Lucas. Do you think Lackberg intentionally paints a bleak portrait of marriage in general? Will Erica and Patrik fare any better as a couple?
9. Despite the quaint and scenic backdrop that Fjallbacka provides, the town has a dark and disturbing past. Discuss how the setting of this book influences the story. How does the uncovering of Fjallbacka's secrets parallel the demise of some of its most prominent residents?
10. The difficulty of parent/child relationships is a recurring theme in The Ice Princess, from Erica's frustration with her cold and distant mother, to Vera's fierce protectiveness of Anders, to Julia's deep-seated bitterness toward Karl-Erik and Birgit. How are the characters in this book influenced by their relationships with their parents?
11. Vera Nilsson's motive for murder stems from a desperate need to salvage her son's reputation: "'Everyone would have pointed at him and talked to him,'" she says. "'I did what I thought was right'" (page 372). Do you think Vera is at all sympathetic? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Mountain Between Us
Charles Martin, 2010
Broadway Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780739377697
Summary
On a stormy winter night, two strangers wait for a flight at the Salt Lake City airport. Ashley Knox is an attractive, successful writer, who is flying East for her much anticipated wedding. Dr. Ben Payne has just wrapped up a medical conference and is also eager to get back East for a slate of surgeries he has scheduled for the following day.
When the last outgoing flight is cancelled due to a broken de-icer and a forthcoming storm, Ben finds a charter plane that can take him around the storm and drop him in Denver to catch a connection. And when the pilot says the single engine prop plane can fit one more, if barely, Ben offers the seat to Ashley knowing that she needs to get back just as urgently. And then the unthinkable happens. The pilot has a heart attack mid-flight and the plane crashes into the High Uintas Wilderness—one of the largest stretches of harsh and remote land in the United States.
Ben, who has broken ribs and Ashley, who suffers a terrible leg fracture, along with the pilot's dog, are faced with an incredibly harrowing battle to survive. Fortunately, Ben is a medical professional and avid climber (and in a lucky break, has his gear from a climb earlier in the week). With little hope for rescue, he must nurse Ashley back to health and figure out how they are going to get off the mountain, where the temperature hovers in the teens
Meanwhile, Ashley soon realizes that the very private Ben has some serious emotional wounds to heal as well. He explains to Ashley that he is separated from his beloved wife, but in a long standing tradition, he faithfully records messages for her on his voice recorder reflecting on their love affair. As Ashley eavesdrops on Ben's tender words to his estranged wife she comes to fear that when it comes to her own love story, she's just settling. And what's more: she begins to realize that the man she is really attracted to, the man she may love, is Ben.
As the days on the mountains become weeks, their survival become increasingly perilous. How will they make it out of the wilderness and if they do, how will this experience change them forever? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 3, 1969
• Education—B.A., Florida State University; M.A., Ph.D.,
Regent University
• Currently—Jacksonville, Florida, USA
Charles Martin is the author of six books—Where the River Ends, Chasing Fireflies, Maggie, When Crickets Cry, Wrapped in Rain, The Dead Don't Dance, and The Mountain Between Us.
He earned his B.A. in English from Florida State University, and his M.A. in Journalism and Ph.D. in Communication from Regent University. He served one year at Hampton University as an adjunct professor in the English department and as a doctoral fellow at Regent. In 1999, he left a career in business to pursue his writing. He and his wife, Christy, live a stone's throw from the St. John's River in Jacksonville, Florida, with their three boys: Charlie, John T. and Rives. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Neither the mainstream press nor publishing trade press seems to have reviewed this book. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
Discussion Questions
1. The Mountain Between Us is an adventure story, a story of survivial, but and above all a love story. By the end of the novel, what do we learn about the author’s views of love? Is there such a thing as a perfect marriage? What do Ben and Ashley learn from the pilot, Grover, about the nature of enduring love? Is that a lesson that stays with them throughout the book? In your experience, does marriage get better? What makes a great marriage?
2. After the crash, Ben and Ashley are stranded at 11,500 feet, fifty miles from any kind of civilization with no hope of rescue, she with a broken leg, he with three busted ribs and a possible collapsed lung, and minimal supplies...yet they survived for more than four weeks in these extreme conditions. What skills and character traits do you think helped ensure their survival? Did you find the story credible?
3. Was Ben to blame at any point for what happened? Should he have hired the charter plane to take them out in the coming storm? During their time on the mountain, what choices did Ben make? Do you believe he made the right choices? What would you have done in his place?
4. We learn about Ben’s wife mostly through the recordings she made on Ben’s dictaphone. Is she a strong presence in the book? What kind of person was she? What made her so special to Ben?
5. Ben refers to himself as “a bit of an emotional blockhead” (page 119). Why do you think he finds it so difficult to come to terms with his “separation” from his wife, Rachel? What part did his childhood experiences play in his emotional development?
6. In the most difficult times on the mountain, when Ashley and Ben are losing hope of survival, how do they keep themselves going? What was the most difficult part of their ordeal? If you were in their position, what would you have done? Do you think you would have made it back home alive?
7. How does Ben and Ashley’s time in isolation on the mountain change their perspective on life? Does it make them see any more clearly? Are their lives irrevocably changed by the experience? In what ways?
8. Were you surprised by the revelation about Ben’s family life at the end of the book? How did the discovery make you feel? Looking back through the book, did the author lay any clues for the reader along the way?
9. Ben uses his dictaphone to communicate with his wife. What do you learn about Rachel from his recordings? Do you think this technique works as a narrative device? What does it say about the way we communicate with our loved ones today? Why did Ben throw the dictaphone into the ocean at the end of the book?
10. What is the significance of the title? What is “the mountain between us”?
11. In the author’s note, Charles references one of the most beautiful Bible verses: I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come.... What part does religious faith play in this novel? Do you think the author’s own optimism is derived from his faith in God?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, 1)
Amitav Ghosh, 2008
Macmillan Picador
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312428594
Summary
Turning his eye to the nineteenth-century opium trade, the acclaimed author Amitav Ghosh has crafted a novel that is by turns witty and provocative, while delivering a magnificent historical adventure. An intricate saga, Sea of Poppies brings together a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts, who have embarked on a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Opium Wars between Britain and China.
This panorama of characters, including a mulatto freedman from America, a bankrupt raja, a beautiful, free-spirited French orphan, a widowed tribeswoman, and other disparate members of society, brings to life a period of colonial upheaval that caused seismic cultural shifts throughout the globe.
The events transpiring aboard the Ibis (a former slave ship) provide a rich tapestry of a time when the world stood poised to witness some of the most profound destruction—and most sweeping liberation—in the history of humanity. From the lush poppy fields of the Ganges to the crowded backstreets of Canton, across a rolling high sea that beckons throughout the narrative, this is a portrait of fateful events you will not soon forget. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Where—Kolkata, India
• Education—St. Stephen's College, Deli; Delhi University;
Ph.D., Oxford University.
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in New York City; Kolkata and Goa, India
Amitv Ghosh is the internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Glass Palace, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Ghosh divides his time between Kolkata and Goa, India, and Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)
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Ghosh was born in Kolkata (Calcutta) and was educated at The Doon School; St. Stephen's College, Delhi; Delhi University; and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology.
Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan.
He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh has recently purchased a property in Goa and is returning to India.
Sea of Poppies (2008), the first installment of a planned trilogy, is an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. The second in the trilogy, River of Smoke, was published in 2011.
His previous novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), In an Antique Land (1992), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). Ghosh's fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with postcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements into more serious themes.
In addition to his novels, Ghosh has written The Imam and the Indian (2002), a large collection of essays on different themes such as fundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature).
In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.
Amitav Ghosh's literary awards include:
• Prix Medicis Etranger (French; for Circle of Reason)
• Sahitya Akademic and Ananda Pursaskar Awards (Indian;
for The Shadow Lines)
• Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK; for The Calcutta Chromosome)
• Grand Prize-Fiction, Frankfurt International e-Book Awards
(for The Glass Palace)
• Hutch Crossword Book Prize (Indian; for The Hungry Tide)
• Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italian)
• Shortlisted for Man Booker (UK; for Sea of Poppies)
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
During the course of this novel, the first installment in his projected "Ibis Trilogy," Mr. Ghosh turns the ship into something robustly, bawdily and indelibly real…home to Mr. Ghosh's sparkling array of eccentrics, blowhards, runaway lovers and people seeking new leases on life.... Sea of Poppies works well as a free-standing novel. But it also lays the groundwork for Mr. Ghosh's larger project. By the time this book ends, the reader has been caught up in a plot of Dickensian intricacy, the Ibis readied for whatever its mission may be, and the characters firmly enveloped in new, self-created identities.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
One does not need the impressive bibliography of sources at the end to be struck by the wealth of period detail the author commands. His descriptions bring a lost world to life, from the evocatively imagined opium factory, the intricacies of women's costumes and the lovingly enumerated fare on the opulent dining tables of the era, to the richly detailed descriptions of the Ibis and its journey. At times, Sea of Poppies reads like a cross between an Indian Gone with the Wind and a Victorian novel of manners. And yet Ghosh has managed a sharp reversal of perspective. His ship, with the author's fine feel for nautical niceties, sails in Joseph Conrad territory, through waters since romanticized by the likes of James Clavell. But whereas those writers and so many others placed the white man at the center of their narratives, Ghosh relegates his British colonists to the margins of his story, giving pride of place to the neglected subjects of the imperial enterprise: colonialism's impoverished, and usually colored, victims…his novel is also a delight. I can't wait to see what happens to these laborers and seamen, the defrocked raja and the transgendered mystic in the next volume.
Shashi Tharoor - Washington Post
Rich and panoramic, Amitav Ghosh's latest novel—the first of a promised trilogy—sees this Indian author on masterly form.... Sea of Poppies is a sprawling adventure with a cast of hundreds and numerous intricate stories encompassing poverty and riches, despair and hope, and the long-fingered reach of the opium trade.... Lustrous.
The Economist
India in the 1830s is wonderfully evoked—the smells, rituals and squalor.... Coarseness and violence, cruelty and fatalism, are relieved with flashes of emotion and kindness. This is no anti-colonial rant or didactic tableau but the story of men and women of all races and castes, cooped up on a voyage across the 'Black Water' that strips them of dignity and ends in storm, neither in despair nor resolution. It is profoundly moving.
Michael Binyon - Times (London)
Ghosh's best and most ambitious work yet is an adventure story set in nineteenth-century Calcutta against the backdrop of the Opium Wars. On the Ibis, a ship engaged in transporting opium across the Bay of Bengal, varied life stories converge. A fallen raja, a half-Chinese convict, a plucky American sailor, a widowed opium farmer, a transgendered religious visionary are all united by the "smoky paradise" of the opium seed. Ghosh writes with impeccable control, and with a vivid and sometimes surprising imagination: a woman's tooth protrudes "like a tilted gravestone"; an opium addict's writhing spasms are akin to "looking at a pack of rats squirming in a sack"; the body of a young man is "a smoking crater that had just risen from the ocean and was still waiting to be explored."
The New Yorker
(Starred review.) Diaspora, myth and a fascinating language mashup propel the Rubik's cube of plots in Ghosh's picaresque epic of the voyage of the Ibis, a ship transporting Indian girmitiyas (coolies) to Mauritius in 1838. The first two-thirds of the book chronicles how the crew and the human cargo come to the vessel, now owned by rising opium merchant Benjamin Burnham. Mulatto second mate Zachary Reid, a 20-year-old of Lord Jim–like innocence, is passing for white and doesn't realize his secret is known to the gomusta (overseer) of the coolies, Baboo Nob Kissin, an educated Falstaffian figure who believes Zachary is the key to realizing his lifelong mission. Among the human cargo, there are three fugitives in disguise, two on the run from a vengeful family and one hoping to escape from Benjamin. Also on board is a formerly high caste raj who was brought down by Benjamin and is now on his way to a penal colony. The cast is marvelous and the plot majestically serpentine, but the real hero is the English language, which has rarely felt so alive and vibrant.
Publishers Weekly
Deeti has a vision of the former slave ship long before she spies its sails billowing up the Ganges, intuiting that her fate will inexplicably be tied to this vessel. In fact, the Ibis represents a microcosm of the Middle East during the 19th century, carrying a crew of displaced pilgrims to resettlement in Mauritius, where their lives may no longer be circumscribed by caste, religion, or ancestry. Learning how these disparate characters—a Bengali widow, a French orphan, a deposed rajah, and an American freedman among them—come to be on the Ibis will require some fortitude from readers, who may be distracted by the author's fascination with word origins and liberal use of colloquial forms of speech. A prolific author, anthropologist, and past recipient of an ALA Notable Book Award, Ghosh (The Hungry Tide) offers history buffs a devastating and well-researched look at the business of opium manufacturing, along with the politics that led to the Opium Wars between China and Great Britain. Unfortunately, this first entry in a proposed trilogy is uneven, trying to combine historical fiction with a comedy of manners, a maritime adventure, and a treatise on class/gender discrimination and ending abruptly with no resolution for those who may not want to wait for the sequel. For larger public library collections.
Library Journal
A historical novel crammed almost to the bursting point with incidents and characters, but Ghosh (The Hungry Tide, 2005, etc.) deftly keeps everything under control. It's 1838, and Britain is set on maintaining the opium trade between India and China as a buttress of its economic, political and cultural power. Ghosh orchestrates his polyphonic saga with a composer's fine touch. He lays out multiple narrative lines, initially separate, that eventually conjoin on the Ibis, a schooner bound from Calcutta to China across the much-feared "Black Water." Neel, the sophisticated raja of Raskhali, is convicted of a trumped-up forgery charge. Kalua, a prodigiously strong member of the lower caste, rescues the higher-caste Deeti from ritual burning on the death of her egregious husband. Paulette, a feisty French orphan, stows away on the Ibis to escape the restricted life of a white woman in India. It also might have something to do with the attractions of Zachary Reid, the ship's mixed-race second mate from Baltimore. He's commanded by brutal first mate Jack Crowle, who has no sympathy for anyone of any color, and by Captain Chillingworth, who warns passengers and crew, "at sea there is another law, and...on this vessel I am its sole maker." Ghosh could be accused of using coincidence a bit too freely, but a more charitable view will judge the inevitability of these characters' intertwinings as karma—and part of the pleasure of reading the novel. The density of settings, from rural India to teeming Calcutta to the Sudder Opium Factory, is historically convincing, and the author pays close attention to variations in speech, from the clipped formality of the educated class to a patois ("the kubber is that his cuzzanah is running out") that definitely requires the glossary that Ghosh provides. Planned as the first of a trilogy, this astonishing, mesmerizing launch will be hard to top.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss how the relationships between the various classes of people aboard the Ibis change throughout the novel. To what extent does the caste system affect these relationships? Which characters undergo the most significant changes?
2. How are women's roles different from men's in Sea of Poppies? What common ground do Deeti, Paulette, and Munia share?
3. What does the Ibis represent to Zachary at various points in the novel? How does his perception of the ship change as his perception of himself changes?
4. Many of the lives Ghosh depicts are shaped by social and political forces beyond their control. What are some of these forces? Describe some of the individual acts of bravery, defiance, or deception that enable his characters to break free from what they see as their fate.
5. How do those involved in the opium trade, from British factory owners to frontline harvesters, justify their work in Sea of Poppies? How does their industry compare to modern-day drug trafficking versus the pharmaceutical industry?
6. When Mr. Burnham gives religious instruction to Paulette, what does he reveal about his mindset in general? How does he balance his shame with his attitudes toward suffering, including his notion that slavery somehow yields freedom?
7. Discuss the power of love as it motivates the characters. Does obsession strengthen or weaken Baboo Nob Kissin? What kind of love is illustrated when Deeti gives up her child? What kinds of love does Neel experience in the presence of his loyal wife and his fickle mistress?
8. What gives Neel the ability to endure Alipore Jail and his subsequent voyage? Does he feel genuine compassion for his cell mate, or is he simply trying to make conditions more livable for himself? Ultimately, who is to blame for Neel's conviction?
9. How did Paulette's free-spirited upbringing serve her later in life? What advantages and disadvantages did she have?
10. What does Zachary teach Jodu about loyalty and survival? How is trust formed among the suspicious Ibis crew?
11. To what degree is Mr. Crowle powerless? What does the future hold for those who defied him?
12. Which historical aspects of the Opium Wars surprised you the most? What did you discover about colonial India by reading Sea of Poppies?
13. Sea of Poppies makes rich use of Asian-influenced English. Some of the words, such as bandanna, loot, and dinghy, are still used frequently, but many others, like bankshall, wanderoo, and chawbuck, are now rare, although they were once common and are included in The Oxford English Dictionary. Discuss the "Ibis Chrestomathy," which appears at the end of the book. What do Neel's observations suggest about language and culture? Why do you think some words disappear from usage, while others endure? Can a culture's vitality be measured by how eagerly its language absorbs outside influences?
14. In an interview with TheBookseller.com, Ghosh stated that "oil is the opium of today." Do you agree or disagree?
15. How does Sea of Poppies reflect themes you have observed in Amitav Ghosh's previous works? What new issues does he explore in this novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Last Man in Tower
Aravind Adiga, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307594099
Summary
Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens his canvas to give us a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai.
At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the city’s most elite addresses. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighbors—the residents of Vishram Society’s Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah’s luxury high-rise would be built—a generous buyout. They can’t believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday.
Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore—and expose—it. Vivid, visceral, told with both humor and poignancy, Last Man in Tower is his most stunning work yet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 23, 1974
• Where—Madras (now Chennai), India
• Education—B.A., Columbia University (US); Oxford
University (UK)
• Awards—Man Booker Prize, 2008
• Currently—lives in Mumbai, India
Aravind Adiga is a journalist and author, who holds dual Indian and Australian citizenship. His debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. In 2011 he published Last Man in Tower.
Aravind Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennaii) in 1974 to K. Madhava and Usha Adiga, Kannadiga parents hailing from Mangalore, Karnataka. He grew up in Mangalore and studied at Canara High School, then at St. Aloysius High School, where he completed his Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) in 1990. He secured first rank in the state in SSLC. After emigrating to Sydney, Australia, with his family, he studied at James Ruse Agricultural High School. He studied English literature at Columbia College, Columbia University in New York, where he studied with Simon Schama and graduated as salutatorian in 1997. He also studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where one of his tutors was Hermione Lee.
Adiga began his journalistic career as a financial journalist, interning at the Financial Times. With pieces published in the Financial Times, Money and the Wall Street Journal, he covered the stock market and investment, interviewing, among others, Donald Trump. His review of previous Booker Prize winner Peter Carey's book, Oscar and Lucinda, appeared in The Second Circle, an online literary review. He was subsequently hired by Time, where he remained a South Asia correspondent for three years before going freelance. During his freelance period, he wrote The White Tiger. He currently lives in Mumbai, India.
Aravind Adiga's debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Booker Prize. He is the fourth Indian-born author to win the prize, after Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai (V. S. Naipaul is of Indian ancestry, but is not India-born). The five other authors on the shortlist included one other Indian writer (Amitav Ghosh) and another first-time writer (Steve Toltz). The novel studies the contrast between India's rise as a modern global economy and the lead character, Balram, who comes from crushing rural poverty.
At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society (Indian). That's what I'm trying to do—it's not an attack on the country, it's about the greater process of self-examination.
He explained that the criticism by writers like Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens of the 19th century helped England and France become better societies. Shortly after winning the prize it was claimed that Adiga had sacked the agent who helped him to victory—and to reach a deal with Atlantic Books at the 2007 London Book Fair. However, it later emerged that these stories were factually incorrect: Adiga had fired his agent almost a year before, in November 2007. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Funny, provocative and decadent: Aravind Adiga's Last Man in Tower is the kind of novel that's so richly insightful about business and character that it's hard to know where to begin singing its praises…Vain, shrewd and stubborn, [Masterji] is one of the most delightfully contradictory characters to appear in recent fiction.
Marcela Valdes - Washington Post
When Mr. Adiga's energetic first novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Booker Prize, the judges praised the Indian-born author for undertaking ‘the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader's sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain.’ Last Man in Tower is set in a crumbling apartment building in Mumbai, which a real-estate developer wants to clear out and transform into a luxury high-rise. Many of the residents happily agree to take the handsome payoff and leave; others dig in their heels, spurning the developer's bribes and threats. Adiga populates his fiction with characters from all parts of India's contemporary social spectrum, and the intensity of his anger at aspects of modern India is modulated by his impish wit.
Cynthia Crossen - The Wall Street Journal
Aravind Adiga, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The White Tiger, brings readers another look at an India at once simple and complex, as old as time and brand new.... Adiga has written the story of a New India; one rife with greed and opportunism, underpinned by the daily struggle of millions in the lower classes. This funny and poignant story is multidimensional, layered with many engaging stories and characters, with Masterji as the hero. He is neither Gandhi nor Christ but an unmistakable, irresistible symbol of integrity and quiet perseverance.
Valerie Ryan - Seattle Times
It sounds far too clinical to say that Aravind Adiga writes about the human condition. He does, but, like any good novelist, Adiga’s story lingers because it nestles in the heart and the head. In Last Man in Tower, his new novel about the perils of gentrification in a Mumbai neighborhood, the plot turns on a developer’s generous offer to convince apartment residents to leave their building so that he can build a luxury tower in its place. The book mines the tricky terrain of the bittersweet and black humor, always teasing out just enough goodness to allow readers a glimmer of hope for humanity. Adiga won the Booker for his debut, The White Tiger, and his new novel shows no signs of a sophomore slump. Last Man in Tower glides along with a sprawling cast of characters, including the teeming city of Mumbai itself.... With wit and observation, Adiga gives readers a well-rounded portrait of Mumbai in all of its teeming, bleating, inefficient glory. In one delightful aside, Adiga notes the transition beyond middle age with a zinger of a question: "What would he do with his remaining time—the cigarette stub of years left to a man already in his 60s?" ... Adiga never settles for the grand epiphany or the tidy conclusion. In a line worthy of John Irving, Adiga writes: "A man’s past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop."
Erik Spanberg - Christian Science Monitor
First-rate. If you loved the movie Slumdog Millionaire, you will inhale the novel Last Man in Tower. Adiga’s second novel is even better than the superb White Tiger. You simply do not realize how anemic most contemporary fiction is until you read Adiga's muscular prose. His plots don't unwind, they surge. [Last Man] tells the story of a small apartment building and its owner occupants, a collection of middle-class Indians—Hindu, Muslim, Catholic. There is love, dislike, bickering, resentment. Most of all, there are genuine human connections. Trouble begins when a real estate mogul decides to build a luxury high-rise where the building currently stands, offer[ing] residents 250 times what their dinky little apartments are worth. The result is chaos.... life-long friends turn on each other. Money—even the possibility of it—changes everything. What makes [Last Man in Tower] so superb is the way Adiga balances the micro plot—will Masterji agree to sell?—with the macro: How Mumbai is changing in profound, often disturbing ways. Most of all, Last Man in Tower asks the eternal questions: What is right, what is wrong, what do we owe each other, what do we owe ourselves? Just brilliant.
Deirdre Donahue - USA Today
When Mumbai was still Bombay, the apartment building became the new village, inhabitants growing up and old together, intertwined in one another's rhythms and needs. Tower A of the Vishram Society is one such building—both a character and the setting in this highly allegorical yet riveting novel, Adiga's first since winning the Man Booker Prize for The White Tiger. Here, Hindus, Christians, Muslims and Communists have lived together for decades, finding recent common ground in their suspicions about the new "modern" single girl in 3B. But when a developer offers each resident an astronomical sum to move out so that he might build a luxury condo, greed threatens to destroy the community. But one holdout, the teacher Mr. Masterji, is determined that knowledge and principle will protect him. Though occasionally overwritten ("The hypodermic needle of the outside world had bent at his epidermis and never penetrated"), Adiga is a master of pacing. The momentum builds as Masterji's neighbors become consumed by money, allowing Adiga to show his characters grappling with circumstances, and enduring difficult changes of heart. Adiga takes a harsh look at Mumbai's new wealth, but his characters are more than archetypes. Though the allure of capitalism has won them over, the inhabitants of Tower A are at the mercy of the rich as much as their neighbor, the teacher, is at the mercy of them.
Publishers Weekly
Adiga, author of the highly acclaimed White Tiger, returns with this morality tale about events at a respectable, solidly middle-class building in Mumbai. The veneer of respectability and hard-earned bonhomie falls away after the residents—Hindu, Christian, and Muslim—are offered a windfall by an unscrupulous real estate developer who wants them to move. It is a credit to the author that the reader manages to keep straight the large cast of unforgettable and all-too-believable characters.... In the end, there are no heroes in this viper’s nest of competing desires and petty jealousies, as the residents’ uglier natures are gradually revealed in the face of their greed and disappointment. The swarming oceanfront metropolis of Mumbai, in various stages of development and decay, functions as a character in its own right. You won’t be able to look away as the novel hurtles toward its inevitable train wreck of a conclusion in this stunner from Adiga. —Lauren Gilbert
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What are some of the major themes of the novel? How does Adiga set them forth even in the first pages through his description of Vishram Society? What do you think the banyan tree symbolizes?
2. The novel begins, “If you are inquiring about Vishram Society, you will be told right away that it is pucca—absolutely, unimpeachably pucca.” What does the word pucca mean? Why is this fact about Vishram important to the story?
3. How does Adiga use humor as social commentary?
4. On page 7, there is a quote adapted from the Bhagavad Gita: “I was never born and I will never die; I do not hurt and cannot be hurt; I am invincible, immortal, indestructible.” Which characters in the novel seem to feel this way?
5. Why is Masterji so respected at the beginning of the novel? How would he be treated in the United States?
6. According to Masterji, his wife’s favorite saying was “ ‘Man is like a goat tied to a pole.’ Meaning, all of us have some free will but not too much” (page 41). Does this prove true for him?
7. There are dozens of scenes that revolve around food. What do the characters’ eating habits tell us about them?
8. Is Dharmen Shah a villain? What are his intentions? Who else might be considered a villain in the story?
9. Discuss Masterji’s friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Pinto. Does envy come into play? How does the offer change their relationship?
10. What is the symbolism behind Mr. Kothari’s flamingos? What are some of the other characters’ influential memories?
11. There are several instances of betrayal in the novel. Whose struck you as most shocking?
12. The offer brings out many different emotions and reactions from the residents of Vishram. In general, how is the reaction of the women different from that of the men in the building?
13. Several of the characters have children, Masterji included. How does their role as parents influence their decision-making? How does parenting in the novel’s modern-day India compare to parenting in the United States?
14. After reading the sign his neighbors have posted criticizing him, Masterji thinks, “A man is what his neighbours say he is” (page 196). Is this true in the novel? How does that notion affect Masterji? Do you think the neighbors’ opinions were entirely new or had just lain dormant until he refused the offer?
15. What role does class play in the story? How does the neighbors’ treatment of Mary and Ram Khare reflect their attitudes in general?
16. Why do you think Mr. Pinto changes his mind about accepting the offer? Is it only about the money or are there other reasons as well?
17. When Shah hears the news about Masterji, he says, “ ‘I thought it would be a push down the stairs, or a beating at night. That’s all…I forgot we were dealing with good people’” (pages 358–359). What does he mean?
18. Why does Ajwani refuse to sign?
19. The last line of the novel is, “Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free.” What is this referring to?
20. Why doesn’t Masterji just agree to sell? What would you have done?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Winner
David Baldacci, 1997
Grand Central Publishing
524 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446522595
Summary
When the enigmatic Mr. Jackson approaches LuAnn Tyler, a young, indigent mother of one, and guarantees her the $100 million national lottery prize, all of her prayers, or possibly all of her fears, become reality. (From the publisher.)
David Baldacci brings us another thriller that grabs hold and doesn't let go. It's the story of a rags-to-riches heroine. LuAnn Tyler is tough and smart, but she's plunged into a realm of corruption that will make readers think twice the next time they buy a lottery ticket. (Also from the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Richmond, Virginia, USA
• Education——B.A., Virginia Commonwealth University; J.D.,
University of Virginia
• Currently—Northern Virginia
David Baldacci's authoritative legal thrillers operate on the irresistible notion that a sinister undercurrent threads through the country's most powerful institutions.
While his stories hinge on the complex machinations behind the presidency, the FBI, the Supreme Court and other spheres of influence, Baldacci (a former Washington, D.C.-based attorney) finds his way into a mystery through the eyes of the innocents. Semi-innocents, at least: small players who often don't realize they're players at all end up hunting down answers, and their hunt becomes the reader's.
According to Baldacci, reading John Irving's The World According to Garp convinced him that he wanted to be a novelist. Absolute Power—in which a thief finds himself accidentally connected to a murder involving the president and the ensuing coverup—was hardly Irvingesque; but it did begin Baldacci's friendly relationship with the bestseller lists, which has continued over his writing career.
Baldacci's style is brief and plot-driven, but he's not afraid to linger on macabre and vivid details, such as a rosary clenched in a plane crash victim's hand, or hard-learned lessons from a sniper's life (pack your food so you can find it at night, by touch). These small but memorable—indeed, almost cinematic—details give his books another layer that distinguishes them from the average potboiler.
Although the author has occasionally departed from his usual fare (examples include the tenderhearted coming-of-age tale Wish You Well and the holiday-themed adventure The Christmas Train), it is high-octane thrillers that are his true stock in trade. Whether it's a taut stand-alone or a new installment in his "Camel Club" series, readers know when they crack the spine of a new Baldacci book, they're in for an action-packed page-turner.
Extras
• Baldacci was a trial lawyer and a corporate lawyer for nine years in Washington, D.C.
• He worked his way through college as a Pinkerton security guard and by washing and detailing 18-wheel trucks.
• Baldacci writes under his own name except when published in Italy, where he uses a pseudonym because it is the homeland of his ancestors.
• Bill Clinton selected The Simple Truth as his favorite novel of 1998, according to Baldacci's web site. (From Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
The heroine of The Winner is LuAnn Tyler, a smart and beautiful young woman from a backwater Georgia town who lives in a trailer with her baby's father, a no-good bum who drinks away his paycheck, fools around with other women and now seems to have picked up a sideline career in drug dealing. LuAnn dreams of leaving Duane whole she's slinging hash at her all-night, truck stop job, but knows realistically she's unlikely to save enough money to make the break. Enter Jackson, a master of multiple disguises with better-than-average talents for acting, investing and fixing lotteries. He's already successfully fixed a bunch of them, making the recipients enormously wealthy, and now he's settled on LuAnn as the winner of his next lottery scam. Though puzzled by Jackson's offer, LuAnn is also enticed—here's her chance to split from Duane and give her child a more promising future. But she's uncomfortable with the scheme, and ultimately decides to decline.
That all changes the morning she's to give Jackson her answer, when she accidentally becomes embroiled in one of Duane's drug deals gone awry. With Jackson's invitation her only shot at avoiding a potential murder conviction, she accepts and she and infant Lisa head for New York City, where the drawing is to take place. Under ordinary circumstances, LuAnn would have accepted the money and gotten her new life under way. But her appearance on TV attracts the interest of the authorities, so Jackson has to spirit her out of the country. She is ordered to make her home in Europe, which she does for 10 years. But she gets weary of being on the run, and wants a more stable life for Lisa, so she sneaks back into the U.S. moving to a home she has bought in Virginia. A substantial portion of the book is devoted to her efforts to evade both the police and Jackson, which is to say the excitement doesn't wane—in fact, it picks up—in the latter half of the book. If you were a bit disappointed with Baldacci's second novel, Total Control, you were justified; it didn't live up to the drama and credibility of Absolute Power. Be assured, however, that The Winner is—well, a winner.
Newark Star Ledger
Baldacci cuts everyone's grass—Grisham's, Ludlum's, even Patricia Cornwell's—and more than gets away with it.
People
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100 million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful.
Kirkus Reviews
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 Winner:
1. This is a plot-driven suspense story. Does it live up to its reputation as a "thriller"? In other words, does the story keep you on the edge of your seat? How so?
2. How would you describe LuAnn—what kind of personality does she have? Why does she eventually accept Jackson's offer?
3. Then there's Jackson—the kind of character you love to hate! How about Uncle Charlie and his softspot for LuAnn and her daughter? Finally, were you rooting, or not, for Matthew Riggs?
4. Does LuAnn's fortune play into your own "sudden-wealth" fantasies? What would you have done in her place—accept the offer from Jackson immediately, never accept it, even after Duane's foul-up? Or do exactly what LuAnn does—accept it under duress? And—big question—how would you spend the money?
5. The story, ultimately, is about the possibility of recreating one's identify, changing one's life, and leaving behind a less-than-happy past. For many, it might be wish fulfillment. Is it for you? If you could make yourself over again, what kind of life would you create? Who would you be, what would you do, where would you live? And what would you be getting away from?
6. The title, "The Winner," has a double significance. It obviously refers to the lottery, but what else?
7. Were you satisfied by the ending? Did it fulfill your hopes? Was it predictable, or were you surprised?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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