We the Animals
Justin Torres
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
144 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547576725
Summary
Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.
Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.
Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures. An exquisite, blistering debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Justin Torres was raised in upstate New York. His work has appeared in Granta, Tin House, and Glimmer Train. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he was the recipient of a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists and is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Among many other things, he has worked as a farmhand, a dog walker, a creative writing teacher, and a bookseller. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A sensitive, carefully wrought autobiographical first novel…of emotional maturing and sexual awakening that is in many ways familiar…but is freshened by the ethnicity of the characters and their background, and the blunt economy of Mr. Torres's writing, lit up by sudden flashes of pained insight.
Charles Isherwood - New York Times
It's rare to come across a young writer with a voice whose uniqueness, power and resonance are evident from the very first page, or even the very first paragraph. It does happen every once in a while, though. And it's happened again, just now, with the publication of We the Animals, a slender, tightly wound debut novel by a remarkable young talent named Justin Torres...whose highly personal voice should excite us in much the same way that Raymond Carver's or Jeffrey Eugenides's voice did when we first heard it.
Jeff Turrentine - Washington Post
Three brothers and a dueling husband and wife are bound by poverty and love in this debut novel from Stegner Fellow Torres. Manny, Joel, and the unnamed youngest, who narrates, are rambunctious and casually violent. Their petite "white" mother, with her night-shift job and unstable marriage to the boys' impulsive Puerto Rican father, is left suspended in an abusive yet still often joyous home. Nothing seems to turn out right, whether it's Paps getting fired for bringing the boys to work or Ma loading them in the truck and fleeing into the woods. The short tales that make up this novel are intriguing and beautifully written, but take too long to reach the story's heart, the narrator's struggle to come of age and discover his sexuality in a hostile environment. When the narrator's father catches him dancing like a girl, he remarks: "Goddamn, I got me a pretty one." From this point the story picks up momentum, ending on a powerful note, as Torres ratchets up the consequences of being different.
Publishers Weekly
In punchy, energized language, the narrator of this dark and affecting little book relates life with his two brothers and their too young, just-making-it parents. The boys play and fight, with the first sometimes blending into the second, and though the parents can be loving with each other and with their sons, there's often trouble. Ma stops going to work when Paps briefly takes up with another woman, for instance, and becomes spiteful when he brings home a new truck with no seat belts or even backseats. The narrative moves in a straight line but is not straightforward, with the story and the texture of this family's life disclosed through a string of telling incidents. The narrator reports it all in a dispassionate, almost starry-eyed youngster's sort of way, frequently in the first person plural—"we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful—little animals, clawing at what we need"—but a creeping tension is in the air. When real anguish bursts forth at the end, you almost think it comes undeserved—and then you applaud first novelist Torres's genius ability to twist around and punch you in the gut. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
An exquisitely crafted debut novel—subtle, shimmering and emotionally devastating.... Upon finishing, readers might be tempted to start again, not wanting to let it go.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does the opening chapter, “We Wanted More,” serve to introduce the rest of the novel? What do you learn about the narrator and his brothers?
2. Now look at the brothers individually—who is Manny, Joel, the youngest brother? What sets them apart? At what point do you begin to see them separate? What separates them? Why doesn’t the youngest have a name?
3. Look at the three brothers as whole—the “we” of the title. What characterizes them as a whole? How do they operate as one unit? Why is it important that there are three?
4. What exactly is the animalistic nature of boys in general, and of these boys in particular? What are the different ways throughout the book that Torres compares the boys to animals? Are the other characters in the book—their mother and father—likened to animals, too? In what ways? Are we all animals?
5. Look at all the different names for the boys—from the ones they give themselves, “Muskateers,” “monsters,” “the magic of God” (p. 24-25), to the ones others give them, “invaders, marauders, scavengers...hideaways, fugitives, punks, cityslickers, bastards... sweets, babies, innocents...Animals” (p. 35, 37)—and discuss the truth of these definitions, what words mean to these boys, how they come to discover who they are.
6. Look at the chapter “Never-Never Time.” Do you see a connection to Never-Never Land in Peter Pan? Compare the brothers in We the Animals to the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. What other elements and characters of the Peter Pan story are here?
7. “That’s how it sometimes was with Ma; I needed to press myself against something cold and hard, or I’d get dizzy” (p. 13). Discuss the mother’s role in the story. What effect does she have on the men in her life? How does she operate as the lone female? What is her power? How and when does she choose to use or not use it?
8. “Never-Never Time” and “The Lake” both end with the celebration of life. Are the lives in We the Animals joyful? Precarious? What makes life precious to them? In what ways are the characters living in extremes and what are those extremes?
9. Hunger is a theme throughout the novel. What are the different characters hungry for?
10. In what ways does violence appear and do work in the novel? How is violence related to the human and the animal? How is it tied to love? And does sex enter into these relationships as well? How are sex and violence intertwined?
11. How do the members of this family love each other? What is at stake in their loving and how do they show their affection and connection?
12. What separates the family from the rest of the community they live in? What prejudices do they experience?
13. “I used to believe we could escape,” (p. 84) Manny says in “Trash Kites.” Paps had resigned himself to the same in “Night Watch” (p. 60), saying: “We’re never gonna escape this.” What do they want to escape, exactly? And who else wants to escape? Why? And which, if any of them, can actually do it? What other books can you think of that deal with this kind of struggle?
14. How does We the Animals both resemble and defy the classic coming-of-age novel?
15. Were you surprised by the ending? What do you think is happening in the last chapter? What does it mean that the other animals “crown me prince of their rank jungles” (p. 125)?
(Questions written by Hannah Harlow for the publisher.)
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Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod
Gary Paulsen, 1994
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156001458
Summary
Fueled by a passion for running dogs, Gary Paulsen entered the Iditarod—the 1,180 sled-dog race through the Alaskan wilderness—in dangerous ignorance and with a fierce determination. For 17 days, he and his team of 15 dogs endured blinding wind, snowstorms, frostbite, dogfights, moose attacks, sleeplessness, hallucinations—and the relentless push to go on.
They crossed the barren, moonlike landscape of the Alaskan interior and witnessed sunrises that cast a golden blaze over the vast waters of the Bering Sea. They crossed the finish line, but it wasn't enough: Paulsen was obsessed and wanted to race again.
Though the dangers of the Iditarod were legion, more frightening still was the knowledge that he could not stop racing dogs of his own free will. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 17, 1939
• Where—Minnesota, USA
• Education—
• Awards—3-time Newbery Honor winner (for Hatchet,
Dogsong, The Winter Room); Golden Spurs Award of
Western Writers of America
• Currently—lives in La Luz, New Mexico
Gary Paulsen writes many young adult coming of age stories about the wilderness. He is the author of more than 200 books (many of which are out of print), 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for young adults.
Born in Minnesota in 1939, he was raised by his grandmother and aunts. Paulsen used his work as a magazine proofreader to learn the craft of writing. In 1966, his first book was published under the title The Special War. Using his varied life experiences, especially those of an outdoorsman (a hunter, trapper, and three-time competitor in the 1,150 mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race), Paulsen writes about what he knows best.
Much of Paulsen's work features the outdoors and highlights the importance of nature. He often uses "coming of age" themes in his novels, where a character masters the art of survival in isolation as a rite of passage to manhood and maturity. He is critical of technology and has been called a Luddite.
Some of Paulsen's most well-known books are the "Hatchet" series, although he has published many other popular novels including Dogsong, Harris and Me, and The Winter Room, which won the Newbery Honor. Woodsong and Winterdance are among the most popular books about the Iditarod.
Paulsen competed in the 1983 and 1985 Iditarods. In 1990, due to heart problems, he gave up dog sledding, which he has described as the most difficult decision he has ever made. After more than a decade spent sailing all over the Pacific, Paulsen got back into dog sledding in 2003. In 2005, he was scheduled to compete in the 2005 Iditarod after a 20-year absence, but withdrew shortly before the start of the race. He participated in the 2006 Iditarod, but scratched after two days.
Paulsen lives in La Luz, New Mexico with his wife, Ruth Wright Paulsen, an artist who has illustrated several of his books. He also maintains a 40-acre spread north of Willow, Alaska where he breeds and trains sled dogs for the Iditarod. (From Wikipedia).
Book Reviews
Thhre are only a handful of indispensable dog books.... Winterdance belongs among [those] classics.... It's hard to find a page in this laconic book without an insight, hard to find a word that could be cut without loss.... Winterdance is beautiful and it is very funny and it is about men and dogs and their souls.
Donald McCaig - Washington Post
Winterdance will be around long after most outdoor adventure book shave been forgotten. What could have been an ordinry journal becomes instead a revelation.
Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune
A breathtaking, heart stopping, roller-coaster ride that depicts the brutal reality of the Iditarod, the magnificent beauty of Alaska, and the unique, if not surreal, relationship that develops between man and dog.
Nevada Weekly
Paulsen's survival adventure is in the tradition of Jack London: one man and his dog team together against the Arctic wilderness. With everything stripped down to the barest essentials, Paulsen finds elemental connection with a world beyond cities, family, and work. His prose is spare and physical; at its best, it has the fluid simplicity of Hemingway.
Hazel Rochman - Booklist
The Alaskan Iditarod is an annual 1180-mile dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome that generally takes two to three weeks to complete. Paulsen, a popular YA writer, ran the race in 1983 and 1985 and was again in training when a heart condition forced him to retire. This book is primarily an account of Paulsen's first Iditarod and its frequent life-threatening disasters, including wind so strong it blew his eyelids open and blinded his eyes with snow, cold so deep matches would not strike, and packages of lotions kept next to his skin that froze solid. However, the book is more than a tabulation of tribulations; it is a meditation on the extraordinary attraction this race holds for some men and women. In a style reminiscent of fellow nature writer Farley Mowat, Paulsen deftly examines careening on a precarious edge. Highly recommended for all libraries. — John Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Camden, NJ
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Winterdance:
1. Given the inhuman conditions and hardships, what is behind Paulsen's obsessive drive to complete the Iditarod? In light of his inexperience, do you find his ambition admirable, selfish, mad ... or what?
2. What lessons does Paulsen's self-training episodes teach him? How well do those lessons work during the actual race?
3. To what extent is the race about the dogs, as Paulsen says, or about human skill in running them?
4. What knowledge does Paulsen gain during the race—about the race, the dogs, the Alaskan wilderness, and most of all about himself?
5. What about those who cheat...especially the one who has pizza delivered by a friend on a snowmobile?
6.The Iditarod has generated controversy regarding the sometimes maltreatment of the sled dogs. Although no fingers are pointed at Paulsen, who clearly treats his dogs with love and respect, The Sled Dog Action Coalition* has raised disturbing issues about abuse in general. You might do a little research and decide for yourself where you stand.
(Questions by LiLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
* In June, 2012, a LitLovers reader emailed the following:
The Sled Dog Action Coalition is known to be negative, untruthful, and has no known positive support for sled dogs other than a vicious internet campaign attacking people and schools. I suggest you consider removing reference to the group (although the thought behind the question itself is certainly fair). For more information, please see: http://blog.nj.com/skiing/2010/01/and_another_side_to_the_iditar.html
The Man from Beijing
Henning Mankell, 2007 (trans., Laurie Thompson, 2010)
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307472847
Summary
The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, writing at the height of his powers, now gives us an electrifying stand-alone global thriller.
January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjovallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene.
Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andren ancestor—a gang master on the American transcontinental railway—that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjovallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth.
The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years into the depths of the slave trade between China and the United States—a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjovallen murders. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 3, 1948
• Where—Stockholm, Sweden
• Education—Hogre Allmana Laroverket, Boras
• Awards—Swedish Crime Writers' Academy-Best Swedish Crime Novel Award (twice);
Nils Holgersson Prize; Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel; Deutscher
Jugendliteraturpreis; Crime Writers' Assn.-Gold Dagger; Gumshow Award for
Best European Crime Novel
• Currently—lives in Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique
Best known for his series of police procedurals featuring the adventures of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander—selling over 10 million copies worldwide—Henning Mankell has become a mystery master garnering critical acclaim in both the U.K. and U.S. (From the publisher.)
More
Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up in Sveg (Harjedalen) and Boras (Vastergotland). Mankell's father, Ivar, was a judge and his grandfather, also called Henning Mankell (1868–1930), was a composer. At the age of 20 he already started a career as author and assistant director at the Riks Theater in Stockholm. In the following years he collaborated with several theaters in Sweden.
In his youth Mankell was a left-wing political activist and a strong opponent of the Vietnam War, South African apartheid and Portugal's colonial war in Mozambique. In the 1970s Mankell moved from Sweden to Norway and lived with a Norwegian woman who was a member of the Maoist Communist Labor Party of Norway. Mankell took part in the party's activities but never himself joined the party.
After living in Zambia and other African countries, Henning Mankell was invited to become the artistic director of Teatro Avenida in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. He now spends at least half the year in Maputo working with the theatre and writing. Recently he built up his own publishing house (Leopard Förlag) in order to support young talents from Africa and Sweden.
He is married to Eva Bergman, daughter of Ingmar Bergman. On 12 June 2008 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Mankell recently donated 15 million Swedish kronor to SOS Children's Villages for a village for homeless children in Mozambique. Mankell has said he's giving away half of his income to charitable causes.
Books, plays, screenplays
Mankell has written 10 crime novels with Kurt Wallender, his fictional police inspector who lives and works in Ystad, Sweden. The novels center on an underlying question: "What went wrong with Swedish society?" The series has won numerous awards (see above). The ninth book, The Pyramid, is a prequel: a collection of four novellas about Wallander's past, the last one ending just before the start of Faceless Killers. Ten years after The Pyramid, Mankell published another Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, which he said would definitely be the last in the series.
The Wallender series has been adapted into television mini-series in Sweden and the UK's BBC.
In addition to the Wallender series, Mankell has written more than 15 works of fiction, including, four other crime novels. He has also written works for children, including two series—the Sofia books and the Joel Gustafsson series.
Mankell is also a prolific playwright and screen writer with 40 some plays to his name (20 of which have been released) and four screenplays, which include three tv mini-series.
Global politics
Mankell participated in the Protests of 1968 in Sweden, protesting against, among other things, the Vietnam War, the Portuguese Colonial War and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Furthermore, he got involved with the society Folket i Bild/Kulturfront which focused on cultural policy studies. During his stay in Norway, he got in contact with the Norwegian Workers' Communist Party and took an active part in their actions.
In 2009, Mankell was a guest at a Palestinian literary conference. Thereafter, he claimed to have seen "repetition of the despicable Apartheid system that once treated Africans and coloured as second-class citizens in their own country". He also found a resemblance between the Israeli West Bank barrier and the Berlin Wall. Considering the environment the Palestinian people live in, he continued, it is not astonishing that "some decide to become suicide bombers....it is strange that there are not more of them". "The Israelis" would "destroy lives" and the Israeli State is not to have a future in its current form, as a two-state solution would not reverse the "historical occupation". He claimed not to have encountered antisemitism during his journey, just "hatred against the occupants that is completely normal and understandable".
In 2008, speaking about nationalism and Norway (a country formerly forced into a Union with Sweden), he stated that "Nationalism is almost spiteful in nature. It can sometimes be glimpsed as something brown behind the waving Norwegian flags." (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
If a Raymond Chandler effect is the goal, the humdrum plot interferes.... The intrigue surrounding the murders dissipates. Detectives fade to distant bystanders.... Mankell’s fierce instinct for social criticism is admirable. If only it didn’t sabotage the opportunity for old-fashioned whodunit delight.
Mike Peed - New York Times
It may not be flawless, but Henning Mankell's The Man From Beijing is a great mystery that belongs in the company of other knockout masterpieces of moral complexity and atmosphere like Dorothy Sayers's The Nine Tailors, Robert Goddard's Beyond Recall, Barbara Vine's A Dark-Adapted Eye and Mankell's own brilliant 2002 gloomfest, One Step Behind. The new novel's ambitious plotting alone should be dissected and taught in MFA programs...a brilliant tale of suspense and substance that dedicated mystery readers will want to savor.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
Mankell succeeds in transfixing the reader with a masterly balance of character sketches and pell-mell storytelling. He is entirely convincing in his depiction of ordinary people becoming enmeshed in geopolitical intrigue.
Wall Street Journal
The book cements Mankell’s reputation as Sweden’s greatest living mystery writer.... Roslin is a sort of Nordic Miss Marple.
Los Angeles Times
Mankell’s new book is an original but still chock-a-block with gory crime combined with hints of the late Stieg Larsson’s social concern and John le Carré’s international intrigue.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Over the past decade or so, Henning Mankell has built a large audience that, even now, in the (mostly) snowless U.S., can’t wait to find copies of his new snowbound work of mystery. The Man from Beijing more than repays such patience. It’s a terrific police procedural.... Despite the broad reach of the plot, the book never puts the reader in danger of losing interest.
Alan Cheuse - Dallas Morning News
A massacre in the remote Swedish village of Hesjövallen propels this complex, if diffuse, stand-alone thriller from Mankell (The Pyramid). Judge Birgitta Roslin, whose mother grew up in the village, comes across diaries from the house of one of the 19 mostly elderly victims kept by Jan Andrén, an immigrant ancestor of Roslin's. The diaries cover Andrén's time as a foreman on the building of the transcontinental railroad in the United States. An extended flashback charts the journey of a railroad worker, San, who was kidnapped in China and shipped to America in 1863. After finding evidence linking a mysterious Chinese man to the Hesjövallen murders, Roslin travels to Beijing, suspecting that the motive for the horrific crime is rooted in the past. While each section, ranging in setting from the bleak frozen landscape of northern Sweden to modern-day China bursting onto the global playing field, compels, the parts don't add up to a fully satisfying whole.
Publishers Weekly
A 2006 massacre in Sweden reverberates back to 19th-century China and America in this stand-alone by the author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries. When 19 of the 22 residents of a Swedish hamlet are brutally murdered, Judge Brigitta Roslin discovers that the victims include her late mother's foster parents, so she looks into the case, offering a theory counter to that of local authorities. Even after the arrest of a local man who confesses and then commits suicide, Roslin continues probing in a quest that eventually takes her to China and puts her in mortal danger. And she finds that revenge—whether sweet or best served cold—is a powerful motivator even after a century and a half. Verdict: Most compelling at the beginning and end, this sprawling novel becomes a leisurely examination of history's injustices and consequences as well as an intriguing postulation of how China might meet its most pressing societal problem. Mankell humanizes the earnest, even meddlesome Roslin, so that the reader can't help but wish her well. Already an international best seller, this seems destined for success here, too. —Michele Leber, Arlington, VA
Library Journal
The opening set piece, in which the murders are discovered, is a stunner, and the finale, in a London restaurant, is equally gripping. Yes, Mankell overextends himself here, but he also shows why he remains a must-read for anyone interested in the international crime novel. —Bill Ott
Booklist
A sweepingly ambitious tale of corruption, injustice and revenge that ranges over three continents and 140 years, from the creator of Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander (The Pyramid, 2008, etc.). The first person to discover the massacre at Hesjovallen is so horrified that he suffers a fatal heart attack and is hit by a truck. The stabbing and hacking of 19 neighbors and their pets in ten houses has decimated the village. Duty officer Vivi Sundberg, called to the scene, swiftly realizes that all the victims except for one unidentified boy share one of three last names—Andersson, Andren or Magnusson—and theorizes that in a community likely to be marked by inbreeding, they may all be members of a single family. Birgitta Roslin, a judge in Helsingborg whose mother's foster parents were among the victims, connects the horror to a smaller-scale but equally brutal murder spree: the slaughter of Jack Andren and his wife and children in Reno, Nev. A long flashback to the shameful treatment of Chinese slave laborers on the American transcontinental railroad in the 1860s supplies further hints as to the motive. But it's not until Birgitta travels to Beijing to accompany a friend on a business trip—and to gather information about a mysterious Chinese man who booked a hotel room near Hesjovallen the week of the crime—that a clear portrait of the killer begins to emerge. The improbable but touching friendship Birgitta strikes up with Hong Qui, the sister of a powerful player in the high-stakes game of Beijing construction, serves as the nerve center of Mankell's sprawling tale, even though it reveals more information to the reader than to Birgitta. Another long detour, this one to contemporary Zimbabwe, adds new resonance to the massacre back in Sweden before [Mankell] brings down the curtain in London's Chinatown. Breathtakingly bold in its scope. If Mankell never links his far-flung, multigenerational horrors closely together, that's an important part of his point.
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 Man from Beijing:
1. The first so-called character introduced in The Man from Beijingis an animal—a wolf. Why might author Henning Mankell have chosen to open his work with a such a creature?
2. The central investigators in this story are Detective Vivi Sundberg, along with her police team, and Judge Birgitta Roslin, an "informal" investigator with a personal interest in solving the crime. How do the two women differ from one another? How would you describe Sundberg? What were your expectations for her...that she was the heroine?
3. What kind of character is Birgitta Roslin? Some reviewers find her an engaging heroine, others a hapless bore. What's your take? Do you see her as a fully developed, complex being...or is she one-dimensional, an "action figure" whom Mankell simply uses to move the plot forward?
4. Why does Sundberg ignore the evidence that Roslin finds so convincing? And why does Roslin reject the confession that the police have in hand in favor of a seemingly far-fetched theory?
5. How does Roslin solve the book's mystery—through logical reasoning based on empirical evidence (like Sherlock Holmes)...or through feelings and intuition? Is one method more legitimate than the other...or are both equally valid?
6. Comment on Roslin's marriage? Why is it an unsatisfying relationship? What else, other than her marriage, seems to have atrophied in her middle-age?
7. Talk about Birgitta's query about herself—whether she's "a servant of the law, or of indifference?" What does she mean...and why does ask herself that question of herself?
8. What role does Sweden's climate play in his novel—in terms of setting the mood and operating symbolically?
9. One of Henning Mankell's concerns in this novel is the way in which ordinary people, "absorbed in their own thoughts, their own fate," are caught up by global forces far beyond the scope of their everyday lives. How does this idea play out in his novel? Does Mankell's vision have relevance to your own life?
10. The book contains three distinct parts. Did you find the shifting venues, both time and place, distracting...or engaging? Does the book hold together for you as a taut, suspenseful mystery and political thriller? Or is it overly discursive, going off in too many directions to maintain the tautness established on page one?
11. Follow-up to Question 10: Do you think the book's social criticism enhances or detracts from its whodunit plotline? Would you say, for instance, that Mankell's emphasis on global politics adds moral depth to the story...or slows its pacing?
12. How would you describe the political stance of the book with regards to the world economic order?
13. Were you shocked to learn of the treatment of the Chinese workers brought to the U.S., often by force, to build the transcontinental railroad? Or were you aware of the slave-like conditions?
14. Does the plot's dependence on coincidence, especially during the China section, bother you? Do the coincidences undermne the book's believability factor for you...or do you accept coincidence as a strange, inexplicable, yet very real part of life?
15. Talk about Ya Ru and his global ambitions for China, including the colonization of Africa. When did you make the connection between Ya Ru the murdered Swedes?
16. What draws Roslin into a friendship with Ya Ru's sister? In what ways does Hong Qui differ from her brother?
17. How is contemporary China depicted in this novel, vis-a-vis both it's own past and its current role in the global economy?
18. What was your reaction to the 10-page speech about China's communist past and present day aspirations? Did you read it or skip parts of it...or all of it?
19. One of Roslin's colleagues says, "I didn’t think it was possible to give democracy a monetary value. If you don’t have a state functioning on the basis of law, you don’t have democracy." Does this statement have truth? Does it have wider implications...around the globe? Or is this comment off the mark, simply too broad an assertion to have relevance? Care to comment?
20. Do you buy Mankell's take on Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe?
21. How would you describe this book? Is it a mystery? A detective procedural? An international thriller? A family epic? A discourse on global politics? An historical novel? A revenge novel?
22. Have you read other books by Henning Mankell—particularly his Kurt Wallender series? If so, how does this compare with that popular series? If not, does this book inspire you to read other Mankell works?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution
Michelle Moran, 2011
Crown Publishing Group
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307588661
Summary
The world knows Madame Tussaud as a wax artist extraordinaire.... but who was this woman who became one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous and amazing story comes to life as only Michelle Moran can tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin.
Smart and ambitious, Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire. From her popular model of the American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie’s museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, and even politics.
Her customers hail from every walk of life, yet her greatest dream is to attract the attention of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI; their stamp of approval on her work could catapult her and her museum to the fame and riches she desires. After months of anticipation, Marie learns that the royal family is willing to come and see their likenesses. When they finally arrive, the king’s sister is so impressed that she requests Marie’s presence at Versailles as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. It is a request Marie knows she cannot refuse—even if it means time away from her beloved Salon and her increasingly dear friend, Henri Charles.
As Marie gets to know her pupil, Princesse Élisabeth, she also becomes acquainted with the king and queen, who introduce her to the glamorous life at court. From lavish parties with more delicacies than she’s ever seen to rooms filled with candles lit only once before being discarded, Marie steps into a world entirely different from her home on the Boulevard du Temple, where people are selling their teeth in order to put food on the table.
Meanwhile, many resent the vast separation between rich and poor. In salons and cafés across Paris, people like Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre are lashing out against the monarchy. Soon, there’s whispered talk of revolution.... Will Marie be able to hold on to both the love of her life and her friendship with the royal family as France approaches civil war? And more important, will she be able to fulfill the demands of powerful revolutionaries who ask that she make the death masks of beheaded aristocrats, some of whom she knows?
Spanning five years, from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 11, 1980
• Where—San Fernando Valley of California, USA
• Education—B.A., Pomona College; M.A., Claremont Graduate University
• Currently—lives in southern California
Michelle Moran, an American novelist, was born in California's San Fernando Valley. She took an interest in writing from an early age, purchasing Writer's Market and submitting her stories and novellas to publishers from the time she was twelve. She majored in literature at Pomona College. Following a summer in Israel where she worked as a volunteer archaeologist, she earned an MA from the Claremont Graduate University.
Her experiences at archaeological sites were what inspired her to write historical fiction. A public high school teacher for six years, Moran is currently a full-time writer living in California
Novels
Moran's novels have been published in both the UK and the US, and have been translated and sold in more than 20 countries, including France, Bulgaria, Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Poland, Russia, China, and Taiwan.
2016 - Mata Hari's Last Dance
2015 - Rebel Queen
2012 - The Second Empress
2011 - Madame Tussaud
2009 - Cleopatra's Daughter
2008 - The Heretic Queen
2007 - Nefertiti
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/18/2016.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Michelle's on History Buff.
Book Reviews
[A] historical novel of fierce polarities.... This is an unusually moving portrayal.... Marie Antoinette in particular becomes a surprisingly dimensional figure rather than the fashionplate, spendthrift caricature depicted in the pamphlets of her times.
Publishers Weekly
[T]his superbly written and plotted work is a welcome addition to historical fiction collections. The shocking actions and behavior required of Tussaud to survive the revolution make the novel a true page-turner and a perfect reading group choice. —Audrey M. Johnson, Arlington, VA
Library Journal
Moran takes liberties with the facts, as any historical novelist has a right to do; but some of her inventions tend to clutter up a story that is already fascinating on its own. Still, readers will be intrigued by Madame Tussaud, and by witnessing a tumultuous era through her eyes. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
Well-plotted if sometimes slow-moving novel of the French Revolution and one now-famous survivor of that heady (or, perhaps, be-heady) time.... Mannered and elegant; reminiscent in many ways of novels of days long past, particularly the Baroness Orczy's swifter-paced Scarlet Pimpernel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How do you think Marie’s life differed from most other women of her time? Where would you say she placed her emphasis?
2. When Marie visited the Marquis de Sade in the Bastille, she was surprised by the conditions she found there. Were you surprised as well? If so, in what way did those conditions surpass or fall short of your expectations?
3. What was the comparison Marie made between the Bastille and Versailles? How would you describe the organization, operations, scent and reality of daily life in each location?
4. Who was the Duc D’Orleans and what type of role would you say he played regarding the French revolution? What role would you say he played in the common people’s belief regarding the king?
5. When the Royal family tried to economize their personal lifestyle and the kingdom’s expenses, how did the other nobles respond and why?
6. At one point, Marie told her neighbor, and later fiancé, Henri, she didn’t agree with Rousseau’s philosophy regarding the goodness of man. In what way would you say Marie’s philosophy regarding people differed from Rousseau?
7. How would you describe the Royal family’s knowledge of the way the populace felt about them? Why was this so? What role do you think this knowledge, or lack thereof, played as a catalyst for the revolution?
8. How would you describe the king’s style of ruling? What factor do you think this played in the people revolting against him? If he’d been a harsher ruler do you think the people would have been more or less likely to revolt and why? By the same token, if he had been a more lenient ruler do you think this would have increased or diminished the likelihood of the revolution?
9. hat do you think was the king’s greatest virtue as a ruler? What was his greatest vice? Which characteristic of his do you think played the greatest role in his ultimately losing his throne and his life?
10. What events in Madame Tussaud would you describe as ironic? Can you think of similar things or events that have occurred during your lifetime, whether in this country or elsewhere? If so, how are they similar?
11. Marie’s brother, Edmund, accused Marie of making matters worse for the Royal family by portraying them through her wax figures in a misleading or lurid way. Do you agree? How did the Salon De Cire’s exhibits mirror or differ from the way the French newspapers described the Royal family?
12. Would you describe Marie as a Royalist or a revolutionary? Why? If she’d had the ability to do so, at the end of her life what specific things do you think she would have gone back and rectified or done differently?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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More Than You Know
Beth Gutcheon, 2000
HarperCollins
269 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060959357
Summary
More Than You Know is a haunting novel that bridges two centuries, two mother-daughter relationships, and two tragic love stories. In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story by saying "Somebody said 'true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, and few have seen.' I've seen both, and I don't know how to tell you which is worse."
Hannah has a passionate and painful story of true love and loss: the story of a ghost that appeared in her life, and in the life of Conary Crocker, the wild and appealing boy who loved her.
Interwoven with their love story is a story of a marriage that took place in Dundee a hundred years earlier. As the parallels and differences between the two families are revealed, the reader comes to understand that someone in the nineteenth-century story has become the very unquiet soul haunting the twentieth. But not until the end do we learn (as Hannah never can) what force of mischance and personality has led to so much damage, and no one knows if such damage is ever at an end. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1945
• Where—Sewickley, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—New York, NY
Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She attended the Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Harvard College, where she took an honors B.A. in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine.
In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living as a full-time storyteller (novels and occasional screenplays) since then. Gutcheon's novels have been translated into 14 languages (if you count the pirated Chinese edition of Still Missing), plus large-print and audio formats. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace and was also published in a Reader's Digest Condensed version, which particularly pleased the author's mother. (From the author's website.)
More
From a 2005 Barnes and Noble interview:
"When my second novel was in manuscript, a subsidiary rights guy at my publisher secretly sent a copy of it to a friend who was working in Hollywood with the producer Stanley Jaffe, who had made Goodbye Columbus, The Bad News Bears, and Kramer v. Kramer, run Paramount Pictures before he was 30, and met the queen of England. My agent had an auction set up for the film rights of Still Missing for the following Friday, with some very heavy-hitter producers and such, which was exciting enough. Two days before the auction, Stanley Jaffe walked into my agent's office in New York and said,
"I want to make a pre-emptive bid for Beth Gutcheon's novel."
"But you haven't read it," says Wendy.
"Nevertheless," says Stanley.
"There's an auction set up. It'll cost a lot to call it off," says Wendy.
"I understand that," says Stanley.
Wendy named a number.
Stanley said, "Done," or words to that effect.
To this day, remembering Wendy's next phone call to me causes me something resembling a heart attack. When, several weeks later, Stanley called and asked me if I had an interest in writing the screenplay of the movie that became Without a Trace, I said, ‘No.' He quite rightly hung up on me.
I then spent twenty minutes in a quiet room wondering what I had done. A man with a shelf full of Oscars, on cozy terms with Lizzie Windsor, had just offered me film school for one, all expenses paid by Twentieth Century Fox. He knew I didn't know how to write screenplays. He wasn't offering to hire me because he wanted to see me fail. Who cares that all I ever wanted to see on my tombstone was ‘She Wrote a Good Book?' The chance to learn something new that was both hard and really interesting was not resistible. I spent the rest of the weekend tracking him from airport to airport until I could get him back on the phone. (This was before we all had cell phones.)
I was sitting in my bleak office on a wet gray day, on which my newly teenaged son had shaved his head and I had just realized I'd lost my American Express card, when the phone rang. "Is this Beth Gutcheon?" asked a voice that made my hair stand on end. I said it was. ‘This is Paul Newman,' said the voice.
It was, too. The fine Italian hand of Stanley Jaffe again, he'd recommended me to work on a script Paul was developing. Paul invited me to dinner to talk about it. My son said, "For heaven's sake, Mother, don't be early and don't be tall." I was both. We did end up writing a script together; it was eventually made for television with Christine Lahti, and fabulous Terry O'Quinn in the Paul Newman part, called The Good Fight."
Extras
• I read all the time. My husband claims I take baths instead of showers because I can't figure out how to read in the shower, and he's right.
• I started buying poetry for the first time since college after 9/11, but wasn't reading it until a friend mentioned that she and her husband read poetry in the morning before they have breakfast. She is right — a pot of tea and a quiet table in morning sunlight is exactly the right time for poetry. I read the New York Times Book Review in the bath and on subways because it is light and foldable. I listen to audiobooks through earphones while I take my constitutionals or do housework. I read physical books for a couple of hours every night after everyone else is in bed—usually two books alternately, one novel and one biography or book of letters.
• I have a dog named Daisy Buchanan. She ran for president last fall; her slogan was ‘No Wavering, No Flip-flopping, No pants.' She doesn't know yet that she didn't win, so if you meet her, please don't tell her.
• When I was in high school I invented, by knitting one, a double-wide sweater with two turtlenecks for my brother and his girlfriend. It was called a Tweter and was even manufactured in college colors for a year or two. There was a double-paged color spread in Life magazine of models wearing Tweters and posing with the Jets football team. My proudest moment was the Charles Addams cartoon that ran in The New Yorker that year. It showed a Tweter in a store window, while outside, gazing at it in wonder, was a man with two heads.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is her answer:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Dickens often manages to be both dramatic and funny, while telling a thundering great story, but in Great Expectations, in spite of the unforgettable gargoyles like Miss Havisham and charming Wemmick with his Aged P, it's a very human story about the difference between how things look and how they really are. When Pip recognizes how he has fooled himself, and what he must accept about reality, you see that while Dickens has been amusing you with any number of major and minor melody lines that all seemed to be tripping along by themselves, he has in fact been in perfect control, building up to a major chord, every note right and every instrument contributing at just the right moment. I understood that to make a novel pay off like that, you have to know from the get-go what story you are telling, how it ends, what it means, and exactly what you want the reader to feel and know when it's over. It was the book that made me start thinking like a writer, not just as a passionate reader, about how stories are made.
(Author bio and interview from Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
While Gutcheon cannily evokes the ephemerality of passion, she also evinces, with stark and elemental resonance, the way love and hatred shape lives.
Megan Harlan - New York Times
Even without the supernatural element, this is a haunting novel.... Shattering and harrowing.
Boston Sunday Globe
Few literary fiction writers do justice to Edgar Allen Poe, but Beth Gutcheon writes one scary haunting.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
It's a rare author who can combine a humdinger of a ghost tale with a haunting story of young love, and do so with literary grace and finesse. Gutcheon does just that and she acquits herself beautifully in this poignant novel. What's more, she adroitly manages alternating narratives, set a century apart, raising the level of suspense as the characters in each period approach the cusp on which a life turns, in parallel events that will irrevocably define the future for all of them. The novel is essentially two stories of doomed love and its consequences for future generations. Narrator Hannah Gray is an elderly widow when she relates the circumstances of the summer when she fell in love with Conary Crocker, a charming young man from a poor family in Dundee on the coast of Maine. Brought to Dundee from Boston during the Depression by her abusive stepmother, Hannah learns about the fate of distant ancestral relatives of hers and Conary's, who lived on now-deserted Beal Island in the mid 1800s. The reader learns the horrifying details in the same small increments that Hannah does, via the alternating point of view of Claris Osgood, who in 1858 defies her parents and marries taciturn Danial Haskell, moving with him to the island where, too late, she discovers her new husband's narrow-minded religious fundamentalism and corrosively mean personality. The union, which produces two children, becomes increasingly rancorous and will end in murder. Meanwhile, in her own time, Hannah is terrified by the appearances of a wildly sobbing ghost with "gruesome burning eyes," who exudes almost palpable hatred. Tantalizing clues about the identity of the macabre specter, and the eventual tragedy it causes, hum through the narrative like a racing pulse. Gutcheon adds depth and texture through lovely descriptions of the Maine coast and the authentic vernacular of its residents, whom she depicts with real knowledge of life in a seacoast community. Her sophisticated prose and narrative skill mark this novel, her sixth (after Five Fortunes), as a breakthrough to a wide readership.
Publishers Weekly
As an old woman, Hannah Gray looks deep into her past at the great and tragic love of her life with the wild and handsome Conary Crocker. Drawn together by a frightening apparition from the previous century and by their mutually miserable family lives, the young lovers make an urgent bid to outrun fate and solve a murder from their own ancestral gene pools. In 1886 someone planted an ax in the head of Daniel Haskell, kin to Conary. The likeliest suspects were his wife Claris or his daughter Sallie—both relatives of Hannah. Gutcheon traces the wrenching unraveling of Claris and Daniel's love, done in by the cruel and twisted ways of a marriage run dreadfully amok. Gutcheon, author of five previous novels (including Domestic Pleasure and Five Fortunes), uses her incandescent storytelling gifts to ignite the parallel tales of Hannah and Conary's and Claris and Daniel's love—ruined beyond repair by circumstance, hatred, and a desperate angry ghost. It is the rare writer indeed who can end every single chapter with deliciously suspenseful foreboding. Highly recommended. —Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
Gutcheon expertly manages both joy and horror; her touches of the supernatural seem rooted naturally in their Maine location like ancient trees. Unputdownable. —GraceAnne A. DeCandido.
Booklist
Elderly Hannah Gray narrates this enthralling tale of events that occurred in her 17th summer when she accompanied her grim stepmother to a small village on the Maine coast. Their rented cottage was a converted schoolhouse that had been brought to the mainland from a nearby island. Hannah sees visions of a tormented, ghostlike figure in the house and she hears mysterious sounds emanating from the upper-floor rooms. She learns that a young woman was accused, tried, and acquitted of killing her father there 75 years earlier. Alternating chapters tell the sad story of Claris Osgood, the lonely daughter of a happy, talented, and prosperous family in the village in the 1800s. In search of independence, she insists on marrying a quiet, brooding man, and they move out to the island. Misfortune strikes Claris's family as they struggle in silent combat among themselves. While Hannah is trying to avoid spending time with her dour, disapproving stepmother, she roams the village and becomes friendly with a young man whose family has deep roots in the area. They visit the now-uninhabited island where they come face to face with the past. Teens will enjoy these parallel stories of love between people from different backgrounds and be saddened by the dual tragedies that strike them. Suspense keeps the plot moving at a rapid clip. —Penny Stevens, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax, VA
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What does the title mean? To whom, other than the "boy of my heart" (p. 229), does it refer?
2. Hannah begins the story by writing "Some-body said 'True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, and few have seen.' I've seen both, and I don't know how to tell you which is worse" (p. 1). What does this mean? Why doesn't Hannah know how to tell which is worse? What prevents her?
3. Both Amos and Conary die tragically at young ages. What are the similarities and differences between the two deaths?
4. Much of the tension in More Than You Know derives from knowledge and mystery. What do characters' relationships to the search for truth and truth itself reveal about each character? What is your relationship to the truth in this nove?
5. Misunderstandings and arguments between Edith and her stepdaughter leave Hannah feeling utterly alone and desperate to get out of the house. What is Sallie's relationship with her mother? What role do Hannah's and Sallie's rather detached fathers play in their daughters' lives?
6. Hooks probes the gap between the values many people "claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and action, theory and practice" (p. 90). How does our culture reward those who nurture this gap? What changes would we have to make in society to nurture and inspire the closing of this gap?
7. Why does the ghost serve as the catalyst for Conary's death just as he's chosen to return to Dundee with Hannah?
8. If Hannah is the narrator of her own story, and if Mercy takes over the telling of the Haskell family story with excerpts taken from her manuscript, who is the narrator from whom Mercy's manuscript takes over? Who is telling that story? What is the effect of switching perspectives?
9. Discuss the way in which Beth Gutcheon uses music in this novel.
10. Hannah, Claris, and Sallie struggle with their families and feel hemmed in by parental strictures. How do their familial relationships prepare them for love? Is romantic love any less true if it serves as the vehicle for escape from troubles at home?
11. What binds the two stories together? Is it an accident of geography, or is there a greater force at work?
12. "I know there are feelings that survive death, but can they all? What if only the bitterest and most selfish are strong enough?" (p. 266) are Hannah's final questions. Does the novel provide answers?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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