The Secret Between Us
Barbara Delinsky, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616839451
Summary
Nothing will break this mother-daughter bond. Not even the truth.
Deborah Monroe and her daughter, Grace, are driving home from a party when their car hits a man running in the dark. Grace was at the wheel, but Deborah sends her home before the police arrive, determined to shoulder the blame for the accident. Her decision then turns into a deception that takes on a life of its own and threatens the special bond between mother and daughter.
The Secret Between Us is an unforgettable story about making bad choices for the right reasons and the terrible consequences of a lie gone wrong. Once again, Barbara Delinksy has delivered a riveting study of family and a superbly crafted novel, perfectly targeted to reading groups and fans of provocative fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Ruth Greenberg, Billie Douglass, Bonnie Drake
• Birth—August 9, 1945
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Tufts University; M.A., Boston College
• Awards—Romantic Times Magazine: Special Achievement
(twice), Reviewer's Choice, and Best Contemporary
Romance Awards; from Romance Writers of America:
Golden Medallion and Golden Leaf Awards.
• Currently—lives in Newton, Massachusetts
Barbara Delinsky (born as Barbara Ruth Greenberg) is an American writer of twenty New York Times bestsellers. She has also been published under the pen names Bonnie Drake and Billie Douglass.
Delinsky was born near Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother died when she was only eight, which she describes on her website as the "defining event in a childhood that was otherwise ordinary."
In 1963, she graduated from Newton High School, in Newton, Massachusetts. She then went on to earn a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University and an M.A. in Sociology at Boston College.
Delinsky married Steve Delinsky, a law student, when she was very young. During the first years of her marriage, she worked for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. After the birth of her first child, she took a job as a photographer and reporter for the Belmont Herald newspaper. She also filled her time doing volunteer work at hospitals, and serving on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and their Women's Cancer Advisory Board.
In 1980, after having twins, Delinsky read an article about three female writers, and decided to try putting her imagination on paper. After three months of researching, plotting, and writing, she sold her first book. She began publishing for Dell Publishing Company as Billie Douglass, for Silhouette Books as Billie Douglass, and for Harlequin Enterprises as Barbara Delinsky. Now, she only uses her married name Barbara Delinsky, and some of her novels published under the other pseudonyms, are being published under this name. Since then, over 30 million copies of her books are in print, and they have been published in 25 languages. One of her novels, A Woman's Place, was made into a Lifetime movie starring Lorraine Bracco. Her latest work, Sweet Salt Air, is published by St. Martin's Press.
In 2001, Delinsky branched out into nonfiction with the book Uplift: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors. A breast cancer survivor herself, Barbara donates the proceeds of that book and her second nonfiction work to charity. With those funds she has been able to fund an oncology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital that trains breast surgeons.
The Delinsky family resides in Newton, Massachusetts. Steve Delinsky has become a reputed lawyer of the city, while she writes daily in her office above the garage at her home. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2013.)
Visit Barbara Delinsky's website.
Book Reviews
One of her best.... Delinsky is a first-rate storyteller who creates believeable, sympathetic characters who seem as familiar as your neighbors.
Boston Globe
Delinsky may be as adept at chronicling contemporary life in New England as any writer this side of John Updike.
Albany Times Union
Delinsky is out there with the Anita Shreves and Elizabeth Bergs, perpetually bestselling authors who wrestle with bigger themes.
Lexington Herald-Ledger
Provocative.... Delinsky is interested in how the lies we tell for love can destroy us instead—and she lays out this particular deception so painstakingly that even the most honest reader will sympathize.
People
(Starred review.) Relationships are brought to the limit in Delinsky's splendid latest exploration of family dynamics. On a rainy night, Deborah Monroe and her teenage daughter, Grace, are driving home when their car hits a man. The victim, who turns out to be Grace's history teacher, is unconscious but alive. Although Grace was driving, Deborah sends her home and takes responsibility for the accident when the cops show up. Deborah is juggling a lot: as a family doctor, she is in private practice with her über-demanding widower father, who is trying to hide a drinking problem; her son, Dylan, is vision impaired; her mother's death continues to affect the family; Deborah is still dealing with her ex-husband's new, separate life; and her unmarried sister, Jill, has just announced she's pregnant. Grace's guilt about not taking responsibility for the accident makes her withdraw from friends and family, and the accident victim turns out to have a more complex private life than anyone imagined. The author seamlessly resolves relationship issues without sentiment, throws in a promising romance for Deborah and offers a redemptive scene between Grace and her grandfather. Delinsky combines her understanding of human nature with absorbing, unpredictable storytelling—a winning combination.
Publishers Weekly
Small-town physician Deborah Monroe has a plethora of family problems on her plate. Her husband has left, her teenage daughter Grace is angry, her young son Dylan has eye problems, her mother passed away, and her father drinks and passes judgment. Things get decidedly worse one rainy night when a man runs in front of her car, and Deborah makes a decision that has serious and rippling effects on herself and her family. So begins best-selling author Delinsky's (Family Tree) latest page-turner, which deftly and realistically addresses family issues like parental expectations and disapproval, divorce and secrets, as well as small-town issues like preferential treatment and gossip. The concept of lying is also explored from multiple angles. In addition to being immensely readable, Delinsky's latest is thought-provoking; readers will inevitably pause to consider what they would do if they found themselves in Deborah's situation. Highly recommended for public libraries.
Samantha J. Gust - Library Journal
(Adult/High School.) Secrets, responsibilities, truths, lies, and justice are some of the issues woven into this story, which begins with Deborah Monroe and her daughter, Grace, driving home in the rain. They are arguing and Grace is at the wheel when out of nowhere a man appears and she hits him. Deborah immediately decides to take responsibility for the accident and sends Grace running home. Being a doctor, she quickly checks for vitals and waits for the police and EMTs. When they arrive, Dr. Monroe answers all their questions and, although she never really lies, she does neglect to tell the sheriff that it was Grace who was driving. Her lies continue as she lets the entire close-knit community and her family believe that she was responsible for the accident. Grace suffers for her mother's well-intended lie, and circumstances become more complicated when the victim is identified as her history teacher. As the investigation gets underway, it is discovered that Mr. McKenna's life wasn't all it appeared to be. As the story continues, readers meet more people whose lives and secrets are exposed. This novel will have teens considering their own moral compass and asking just how honest, dishonest, and secretive anyone can be. —Joanne Ligamari, Rio Linda School District, Sacramento, CA
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What did the scenes depicting the accident reveal about the family dynamics between Deborah and Grace? How would you or your parents have reacted in a similar situation?
2. How does Deborah reconcile her role as a mother with her role as a daughter? What aspects of her upbringing does she try to avoid repeating? How did your perception of her family shift throughout the novel?
3. Do Jill and Deborah remember their mother the same way? How is their family affected by her absence? What accounts for the distinctions between Jill’s and Deborah’s paths in life?
4. Discuss the power and lack of power created by the many secrets woven throughout the novel. Which deceptions (including self-deceptions) harm the characters the most? Which deceptions are unavoidable?
5. Compare Grace and Dylan. How do they cope with their vulnerabilities? Do they respond to their parents’ divorce in essentially the same way, or are their temperaments distinct?
6. Why was Calvin so secretive during his lifetime? What do his brother’s observations about their childhood tell us about Calvin’s outlook on life? How did your initial theories compare to the truth of Calvin’s death?
7. Why was it difficult for Karen to realize the truth about Hal’s infidelity? What sustains marriages such as theirs?
8. In what way do Deborah and her father view their role as physicians differently? How do they define the keys to healing?
9. What does it take for Deborah to trust Tom? How might their relationship have unfolded without the tension of a possible lawsuit on the part of Calvin’s widow? In Tom’s case, did the law help or hinderhis quest for the truth?
10. Is Grace’s wish to take responsibility for the accident related to her feelings about her parents’ divorce? Or is she simply an honest young woman who wants to do the right thing? Does Greg respond appropriately to her self–destructive behavior?
11. What was Greg looking for when he married Rebecca? How was his perception of himself and his family transformed in the novel’s closing chapters?
12. Why does Grace give Danielle the cold shoulder when she so badly needs someone to talk to? What do their fathers have in common?
13. What is it like to live in a close-knit community such as Leyland? On what basis do the residents judge one another? Who determines who the power brokers will be? How would Deborah and Grace’s situation have changed if the accident had taken place in a large city?
14. In the end, was justice served by John’s decision? What was his share of the responsibility in perpetuating the secret?
15. What makes the rain an appropriate sign for representing transformations, both when Deborah is with Tom and in the final images of Grace?
16. In what way does The Secret Between Us underscore dilemmas of truth and dishonesty explored in Barbara Delinsky’s previous works? What distinguishes this novel from the other Delinsky fiction you have read?
17. What is the most significant secret you have ever tried to keep? What led you to reveal the truth?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Minding Frankie
Maeve Binchy, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307273567
Summary
Maeve Binchy is back with a tale of joy, heartbreak and hope, about a motherless girl collectively raised by a close-knit Dublin community.
When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he agrees to take guardianship of the baby girl once she’s born. But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can’t do it alone.
Fortunately, he has a competent, caring network of friends, family and neighbors: Lisa, his unlucky-in-love classmate, who moves in with him to help him care for little Frankie around the clock; his American cousin, Emily, always there with a pep talk; the newly retired Dr. Hat, with more time on his hands than he knows what to do with; Dr. Declan and Fiona and their baby son, Frankie’s first friend; and many eager babysitters, including old friends Signora and Aidan and Frankie’s doting grandparents, Josie and Charles.
But not everyone is pleased with the unconventional arrangement, especially a nosy social worker, Moira, who is convinced that Frankie would be better off in a foster home. Now it’s up to Noel to persuade her that everyone in town has something special to offer when it comes to minding Frankie. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 28, 1940
• Where—Dalkey (outside Dublin), Ireland
• Death—July 30, 2012
• Where—Dalkey, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College, Dublin
• Awards—see below
Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. She is best known for her humorous take on small-town life in Ireland, her descriptive characters, her interest in human nature and her often clever surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the passing of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writer.
Her books have outsold those of other Irish writers such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien and Roddy Doyle. She cracked the U.S. market, featuring on the New York Times best-seller list and in Oprah's Book Club. Recognised for her "total absence of malice" and generosity to other writers, she finished ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Stephen King in a 2000 poll for World Book Day.
Early life
Binchy was born in Dalkey, County Dublin (modern-day Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown), Ireland, the oldest child of four. Her siblings include one brother, William Binchy, Regius Professor of Laws at Trinity College, Dublin, and two sisters: Renie (who predeceased Binchy) and Joan Ryan. Her uncle was the historian D. A. Binchy (1899–1989). Educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history), she worked as a teacher of French, Latin, and history at various girls' schools, then a journalist at the Irish Times, and later became a writer of novels, short stories, and dramatic works.
In 1968, her mother died of cancer aged 57. After Binchy's father died in 1971, she sold the family house and moved to a bedsit in Dublin.
Israel
Her parents were Catholics and Binchy attended a convent school.[12] However, a trip to Israel profoundly affected both her career and her faith. As she confided in a Q&A with Vulture:
In 1963, I worked in a Jewish school in Dublin, teaching French with an Irish accent to kids, primarily Lithuanians. The parents there gave me a trip to Israel as a present. I had no money, so I went and worked in a kibbutz — plucking chickens, picking oranges. My parents were very nervous; here I was going out to the Middle East by myself. I wrote to them regularly, telling them about the kibbutz. My father and mother sent my letters to a newspaper, which published them. So I thought, It’s not so hard to be a writer. Just write a letter home. After that, I started writing other travel articles.
Additionally, one Sunday, attempting to locate where the Last Supper is supposed to have occurred, she climbed a mountainside to a cavern guarded by a Brooklyn-born Israeli soldier. She wept with despair. The soldier asked, “What’ya expect, ma’am—a Renaissance table set for 13?” She replied, “Yes! That’s just what I did expect.” Binchy was no longer a Catholic.
Marriage
Binchy, described as "six feet tall, rather stout, and garrulous", confided to Gay Byrne of the Late Late Show that, growing up in Dalkey, she never felt herself to be attractive; "as a plump girl I didn't start on an even footing to everyone else", she shared. After her mother's death, she expected to a lead a life of spinsterhood, or as she expressed: "I expected I would live at home, as I always did." She continued, "I felt very lonely, the others all had a love waiting for them and I didn't."
She ultimately encountered the love of her life, however; when recording a piece for Woman's Hour in London, she met children's author Gordon Snell, then a freelance producer with the BBC. Their friendship blossomed into a cross-border romance, with her in Ireland and him in London, until she eventually secured a job in London through the Irish Times. She and Snell married in 1977 and after living in London for a time, moved to Ireland. They lived together in Dalkey, not far from where she had grown up, until Binchy's death. She told the Irish Times:
[A] writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers.
Ill health...and death
In 2002, Binchy "suffered a health crisis related to a heart condition", which inspired her to write Heart and Soul. The book about (what Binchy terms) "a heart failure clinic" in Dublin and the people involved with it, reflects many of her own experiences and observations in the hospital.
Towards the end of her life, Binchy had the following message on her official website: "My health isn't so good these days and I can't travel around to meet people the way I used to. But I'm always delighted to hear from readers, even if it takes me a while to reply."
She suffered with severe arthritis, which left her in constant pain. As a result of the arthritis she had a hip operation.
Binchy died on 30 July 2012 after a short illness. She was 72.] Gordon was by her side when she died in a Dublin hospital. Immediate media reports described Binchy as "beloved", "Ireland's most well-known novelist" and the "best-loved writer of her generation". Fellow writers mourned their loss, including Ian Rankin, Jilly Cooper, Anne Rice, and Jeffrey Archer. Politicians also paid tribute. President Michael D. Higgins stated: "Our country mourns." Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, “Today we have lost a national treasure.” Minister of State for Disability, Equality and Mental Health Kathleen Lynch, appearing as a guest on Tonight with Vincent Browne, said Binchy was, for her money, as worthy an Irish writer as James Joyce or Oscar Wilde, and praised her for selling so many more books than they managed.
In the days after her death tributes were published from such writers as John Banville, Roddy Doyle, and Colm Tóibín. Banville contrasted Binchy with Gore Vidal, who died the day after her, observing that Vidal "used to say that it was not enough for him to succeed, but others must fail. Maeve wanted everyone to be a success." Numerous tributes appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Guardian and CBC News.
Shortly before her death, Binchy told the Irish Times:
I don't have any regrets about any roads I didn't take. Everything went well, and I think that's been a help because I can look back, and I do get great pleasure out of looking back ... I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.
Just before dying, she read her latest short story at the Dalkey Book Festival.
She once said she would like to die "... on my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain." She was cremated that Friday in Mount Jerome. It was a simple ceremony, as she had requested.
Journalism
The New York Times reports: Binchy's "writing career began by accident in the early 1960s, after she spent time on a kibbutz in Israel. Her father was so taken with her letters home that "he cut off the ‘Dear Daddy’ bits,” Ms. Binchy later recounted, and sent them to an Irish newspaper, which published them." Donal Lynch observed of her first paying journalism role: the Irish Independent "was impressed enough to commission her, paying her £16, which was then a week-and-a-half's salary for her."
In 1968, Binchy joined the staff at the Irish Times, and worked there as a writer, columnist, the first Women's Page editor then the London editor, later reporting for the paper from London before returning to Ireland.
Binchy's first published book is a compilation of her newspaper articles titled My First Book. Published in 1970, it is now out of print. As Binchy's bio posted at Read Ireland describes: "The Dublin section of the book contains insightful case histories that prefigure her novelist's interest in character. The rest of the book is mainly humorous, and particularly droll is her account of a skiing holiday, 'I Was a Winter Sport.'"
Literary works
In all, Binchy published 16 novels, four short-story collections, a play and a novella. Her literary career began with two books of short stories: Central Line (1978) and Victoria Line (1980). She published her debut novel Light a Penny Candle in 1982. In 1983, it sold for the largest sum ever paid for a first novel: £52,000. The timing was fortuitous, as Binchy and her husband were two months behind with the mortgage at the time. However, the prolific Binchy—who joked that she could write as fast as she could talk—ultimately became one of Ireland's richest women.
Her first book was rejected five times. She would later describe these rejections as "a slap in the face [...] It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either".
Most of Binchy's stories are set in Ireland, dealing with the tensions between urban and rural life, the contrasts between England and Ireland, and the dramatic changes in Ireland between World War II and the present day. Her books were translated into 37 languages.
While some of Binchy's novels are complete stories (Circle of Friends, Light a Penny Candle), many others revolve around a cast of interrelated characters (The Copper Beech, Silver Wedding, The Lilac Bus, Evening Class, and Heart and Soul). Her later novels, Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road, feature a cast of recurring characters.
Binchy announced in 2000 that she would not tour any more of her novels, but would instead be devoting her time to other activities and to her husband, Gordon Snell. Five further novels were published before her death—Quentins (2002), Nights of Rain and Stars (2004), Whitethorn Woods (2006), Heart and Soul (2008), and Minding Frankie (2010). Her final work, A Week in Winter, was published posthumously in 2012.
Binchy wrote several dramas specifically for radio and the silver screen. Additionally, several of her novels and short stories were adapted for radio, film, and television.
Awards and honours
- In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer.
- A 1993 photograph of her by Richard Whitehead belongs to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (London) and a painting of her by Maeve McCarthy, commissioned in 2005, is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland.
- In 1999, she received the British Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.
- In 2000, she received a People of the Year Award.
- In 2001, Scarlet Feather won the W H Smith Book Award for Fiction, defeating works by Joanna Trollope and then reigning Booker winner Margaret Atwood, amongst other contenders.
- In 2007, she received the Irish PEN Award, joining such luminaries as John B. Keane, Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern and Seamus Heaney.
- In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.
- In 2012, she received an Irish Book Award in the "Irish Popular Fiction Book" category for A Week in Winter.
- There have been posthumous proposals to name a new Liffey crossing Binchy Bridge in memory of the writer Other writers to have Dublin bridges named after them include Beckett, Joyce and O'Casey.
- In 2012 a new garden behind the Dalkey Library in County Dublin was dedicated in memory of Binchy. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Bestseller Binchy is a national treasure in her homeland of Ireland, and her latest novel is a perfect illustration of why. Old-fashioned and newfangled are totally compatible in contemporary Dublin, where lonely, hard-drinking slacker Noel Lynch discovers he's about to be a single dad now that the one-night-stand/mother of his child, Stella, is dying. Suddenly, the salt-of-the-earth residents of St. Jarlath's Crescent and Noel's resourceful American cousin, Emily, spring into action to keep Noel sober, fire up his ambitions, appease militant social worker Moira, and help raise baby Frankie. It's a hair-raising, heartwarming juggling act for Noel, his quirky roommate Lisa, do-gooder Emily, and a neighborhood crowded with eccentric characters and adorable pooches—including one with a handsome inheritance. Binchy (Heart and Soul) straddles improbable and possible in her touching saga, and if your mind can't quite wrap itself around St. Jarlath's Crescent, your heart will have no trouble recognizing the landscape.
Publishers Weekly
Fans of Irish author Binchy will welcome the return of some familiar faces (from Quentins; Heart and Soul; Scarlet Feather) and also enjoy meeting new characters in her latest. Frankie is a little girl born as her mother Stella is dying of cancer. During the last stages of her life, Stella contacts Noel, a one-night stand whom she claims is the father. Noel has a host of his own problems but decides to pull things together for the child. Friends and family help out, but the social worker assigned to the case cannot accept the arrangements. Having never dealt with her own troubled childhood, she works to find proof that Frankie would be better off in foster care. The brief appearances of so many characters from previous works might be annoying, but the stories of Noel, his cousin Emily, and his friend Lisa, along with the social worker who wants to pull them apart and the little girl who pulls them together, make this novel fresh and appealing. Verdict: An enjoyable novel about life, love, and second chances. —Beth Blakesley, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal
A Dublin neighborhood full of many of the characters who frequently pass through Binchy's Irish novels (Heart and Soul, 2009, etc.) bands together to help a young single father raise his daughter. Aware she will not survive her baby's birth, fatally ill Stella tells alcoholic loner Noel that he is the father. He doesn't remember having actual sex with Stella and is far from certain he wants or can handle the responsibility. But with the help and encouragement of his cousin Emily, in Dublin on an extended visit from New York, Noel stops drinking and takes custody of baby Frankie after Stella's death at St. Brigid's Hospital. His transformation from loser to responsible, loving father and his struggle to convince his uptight social worker that he is fit to raise Frankie forms the central plot. But once Noel's in AA and night school, he pales as a character. After so many novels, Binchy's recurring characters have become so numerous that even devotees may have trouble keeping track. Here, hospital administrator Frank Ennis is the one to watch as he reaches out to the grown son he never knew he had. As usual, Binchy's supporting characters steal the show. Social worker Moira seems like the stereotypical uptight bureaucrat at first, but her loneliness and painful self-awareness of her failure to connect to others become increasingly heart-wrenching. Moira has to overcome an unhappy family situation, as does Lisa, a graphic artist who moves in as Noel's platonic housemate to escape her parents' sham marriage, although she's in her own sham love affair with a flashy restaurateur. Circling everywhere, boringly perfect Emily has an uncanny ability to ask the right question and solve problems—everyone in Noel's life has a story. A dram of sorrow leavens the predictably happy ending. Binchy remains the queen of spiritual comfort, but this time round she's stretched interest thin with ups and downs too many and too mild.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Have you read any of Maeve Binchy's other novels? How does this one compare?
2. If you've read other Binchy books, which characters did you recognize? Are there any you'd like to see in a future novel?
3. There are many parents in the book. Who would you say does the best job, and why?
4. There are a number of recent retirees, voluntary and otherwise, who become an important part of Frankie's life. What kind of roles do her grandparents, Josie and Charles, take on? What about Dr. Hat and Muttie? More generally, what do the very young and the very mature have to offer each other? Which generation do you think needs the other more?
5. Emily told herself that she must not try to change the world. But there were some irresistible forces that could never be fought with logic and practicality. Emily Lynch knew this for certain (page 22). What irresistible forces does she mean? How does she fight them?
6. It's clear what Noel gets from his relationship with Emily, but what does she get? How does the effect of alcoholism bond them?
7. Discuss Lisa's relationship with Anton. Why is she so oblivious to his less attractive qualities? What is her turning point?
8. Why is Moira so obsessed with Frankie's fate? Is it just fear, or is there something more going on?
9. How does Moira define family ? How does Emily?
10. Lisa says to Moira, "I have a lot of worries and considerations in my life, but minding Frankie sort of grounds me. It gives it all some purpose, if you know what I mean" (page 239). Among Frankie's caretakers, who else might say this?
11. Discuss the ethics of Moira's dealings with Eddie Kennedy. Should she have told him about her father?
12. Anton says to Lisa, "I'm not the villain here, you know," and Lisa responds, "I know. That's why I'm angry. I got it so wrong" (page 314). What does she mean?
13. What did you think of Di Kelly's reason for staying with her husband? What would you have done?
14. What is your opinion of Noel's decision to get a DNA test? How would you have handled the results he received?
15. Many of the characters go through major upheavals in their lives. Who responds best, and why? Whose attitude changes the most?
16. What did you think of Stella's letter to Frankie? What did we learn from it?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Morality Tale
Sylvia Brownrigg, 2008
Counterpoint Press
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781458771964
Summary
Morality Tale is a novel about the triangular complications in a modern marriage, and the comedy that flows from them.
When this novel's unnamed narrator meets the elusive but exciting Richard (an envelope salesman with a nice layman's line in Zen philosophies), he offers her a friendly escape from her dreary domestic life.
Burdened by her husband's ongoing negotiations with his angry ex-wife, the strains of looking after two stepchildren, and the lingering ghost of her own past betrayals, she finds that the life of a “second marryer” leaves much to be desired. As their friendship develops, so grows the shadow cast over her marriage, and when they make a late, illicit bay crossing on a ferryboat, the story gathers momentum under California's Mount Tamalpais.
There, in the fabled Golden State, Sylvia Brownrigg shows how even a layman's Zen can lead to some important revelations about the need to look forward, not back. Bristling with honesty and wit, Morality Tale explores the triangular complications that can befall a modern marriage and the tragicomic forces that surround them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Raised—Los Altos, California, USA
• Education—Yale University, Johns Hopkins Uiversity
• Awards—Lamda Award for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, CA
Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction: four novels, Morality Tale, The Delivery Room, Pages for You, and The Metaphysical Touch, and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World.
Sylvia's works have been included in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions and have been translated into several languages, and she has won a Lambda award for fiction.
Her short stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, the art journal Frieze, and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as several anthologies. "The Bird Chick" was read on BBC Radio 4 and "Amazon" was one of NPR's Selected Shorts. In addition to writing fiction, Sylvia Brownrigg has also taught at the American University in Paris and been widely published as a reviewer and critic. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
"Isn't attraction mysterious?" asks the narrator of Morality Tale, Sylvia Brownrigg's divinely deadpan fourth novel, about an undernourished marriage and a love affair of the unconsummated kind.... Brownrigg's writing will remind readers of Carol Shields, whose quirky adjectives gave texture to her writing in a way that seemed effortlessly engaging and astute. Brownrigg describes an oversize diamond as "garish and nervous" and reduces a man's lost love to "'an overwhelming sense memory of the taste of her pound cake." Breathes there a more or less happily domesticated man or woman who hasn't experienced an extramarital crush? How interesting then, and how brave to tell a quiet, patient, witty tale in which "the 3 a.m. fantasies of our bodies together, Richard's and mine, were going to remain in their packaging, unopened, untested."
Elinor Lipman - New York Times Book Review
Brownrigg's quirky style makes every line count; she employs a kind of lively writing which recalls the work of Laurie Colvin. In fact, her narrative is punctuated with such concentrated wit that by this point in the story, more than halfway through the book, one may have forgotten its title and intent. Yet for all its crazy humour and diverting jumble of events, it is a morality tale. Good must be rewarded and the wicked punished, although there is nothing predictable about the route to this almost-happy ending.
Times Literary Supplement (London)
A tragicomic tale of woe told in chirpy tones.... Pan is spirited, with a talent for caricature. She sharply dissects the plight of a second wife. Surely, the moral she draws from her story—that husbands and wives need to treat each other with regard—is a worthy lesson.
Los Angeles Times
A witty parable, a slight but subtle dissection of modern marriage, its ideals and banalities, ghosts and bit-part players.... Illuminated by its sympathy toward its oddly innocent cast of characters, it presents the dilemmas of daily commitment and redemption in a form even burnt-out cynics might find palatable.
San Francisco Chronicle
Pan, the curiously nicknamed narrator of Brownrigg's trim latest novel, has come to realize the truth in the old saying, "What goes around comes around." It's been five years since her husband, Alan, left his wife for her, and she's disenchanted that their married lovemaking isn't as passionate as their adulterous action was. Plus, Alan barely helps around the house, Pan's not exactly enamored of her stepsons, and Alan is still hopelessly entangled with his combative ex, Theresa. So when Richard, a kindhearted envelope salesman, walks into the stationery store where Pan clerks, a harmless one-sided romance blooms in the form of letters Richard leaves for her. Of course, when Alan finds Richard's letters, he's less than understanding. The early charms of this novel, including an absorbing rendering of a suffocating and dreary marriage, soon wear thin: Pan becomes increasingly precious as an episode from her past is clumsily offered as an explanation for her disaffection, and her obtuseness about her meanness toward Theresa is frustrating. The setup is there, but the follow-through doesn't deliver.
Publishers Weekly
Emma Bovary wannabe ponders an alternative to her mundane domestic lifestyle in this dreamlike but grating modern fable. The unnamed narrator of Brownrigg's fifth work of fiction has grown tired of the life that her husband Alan has constructed for them, seemingly with little input from her. She quietly passes her days working in a stationary store; she puts up with Alan's constant contact with his ex-wife Theresa; and she reluctantly though tenderly helps him raise his two sons, Alan and Ryan. While she doesn't like admitting that anything is wrong with her marriage, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to Richard, a burly envelope salesman who visits her at work and initiates a series of weekly lunch dates at a nearby falafel stand. The two grow increasingly attached, though they don't act on any physical impulses, and the narrator is hard pressed to understand her attraction to Richard or his place in her life. Things unravel when Alan catches them holding hands in a park, then finds a pile of affectionate notes from Richard in her purse. His jealousy leads to a spiral of squabbles, spying and joint therapy sessions. But just when the narrator seems ready to rebel and run, a trip to her childhood home with Richard and the news that he is moving back to Chicago makes her understand that her life with Alan hasn't ended, that it just needs work. Because Brownrigg seems so dedicated to pinpointing the minute details often to blame for the downfall of a marriage, the melodramatic climax and optimistic ending seem inconsistent and a bit contrived. Her ability to lend an otherworldly feel to such a contemporary story, however, is commendable. Slow plotting and an exhaustingly cerebral narrator muffle the impact of the author's interesting experiments with tone.
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 Morality Tale:
1. What's wrong—or what does Pan find wrong—with her marriage? Why has she become dissatisfied? Is her dissatisfaction well-grounded?
2. Pan doesn't seem capable of understanding why she's attracted to Richard. Why is she?
3. Although drawn to one another, Pan and Richard restrain their physical involvement. Does that make any difference in terms of whether they are committing adultery? Are their luncheons, letter exchanges, etc. immoral?
4. Do you find Pan a sympathetic character. How would you describe her—is she funny, wise, witty, mean-spirted, irritating or tiresome?
5. What does Pan come to realize on the trip to Chicago...and why?
6. Do you like the book's ending. Is it convincing...or do you find it a bit manipulative and, perhaps, too pat?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd, 2002
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142001745
Summary
Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory - the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her "stand-in mother."
When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina—a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother.
There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 12, 1948
• Where—Sylvester, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.S., Texas Christian University
• Awards—Poets and Writers Award; Katherine Anne Porter
Award
• Currently—lives in Charleston, South Carolina
Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than four million copies, and was chosen as the 2004 Book Sense Paperback Book of the Year and Good Morning America's "Read This!" Book Club pick. She is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Poets & Writers award. She lives near Charleston, South Carolina.
More
Sue Monk Kidd first made her mark on the literary circuit with a pair of highly acclaimed, well-loved memoirs detailing her personal spiritual development. However, it was a work of fiction, The Secret Life of Bees, that truly solidified her place among contemporary writers. Although Kidd is no longer writing memoirs, her fiction is still playing an important role in her on-going journey of spiritual self-discovery.
Despite the fact that Kidd's first published books were nonfiction works, her infatuation with writing grew out of old-fashioned, Southern-yarn spinning. As a little girl in the little town of Sylvester, Georgia, Kidd thrilled to listen to her father tell stories about "mules who went through cafeteria lines and a petulant boy named Chewing Gum Bum," as she says on her web site. Inspired by her dad's tall tales, Kidd began keeping a journal that chronicled her everyday experiences.
Such self-scrutiny surely gave her the tools she needed to pen such keenly insightful memoirs as When the Hearts Waits and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, both tracking her development as both a Christian and a woman. "I think when you have an impulse to write memoir you are having an opportunity to create meaning of your life," she told Barnes & Noble.com, "to articulate your experience; to understand it in deeper ways... And after a while, it does free you from yourself, of having to write about yourself, which it eventually did for me."
Once Kidd had worked the need to write about herself out of her system, she decided to get back to the kind of storytelling that inspired her to become a writer in the first place. Her debut novel The Secret Life of Bees showed just how powerfully the gift of storytelling charges through Kidd's veins. The novel has sold more than 4.5 million copies, been published in over twenty languages, and spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list.
Even as Kidd has shifted her focus from autobiography to fiction, she still uses her writing as a means of self-discovery. This is especially evident in her latest novel The Mermaid Chair, which tells the story of a woman named Jessie who lives a rather ordinary life with her husband Hugh until she meets a man about to take his final vows at a Benedictine monastery. Her budding infatuation with Brother Thomas leads Jessie to take stock of her life and resolve an increasingly intense personal tug-of-war between marital fidelity and desire.
Kidd feels that through telling Jessie's story, she is also continuing her own journey of self-discovery, which she began when writing her first books. "I think there is some part of that journey towards one's self that I did experience. I told that particular story in my book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and it is the story of a woman's very-fierce longing for herself. The character in The Mermaid Chair Jessie has this need to come home to herself in a much deeper way," Kidd said, "to define herself, and I certainly know that longing."
Extras
Kidd lives beside a salt marsh near Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Sandy, a marriage and individual counselor in private practice. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Lily, in finding herself, finds the divine archetypal feminine, the great universal mother who resides within and empowers each of us. The book is replete with metaphors: the beehive, honey, and queen bee stand in for concepts of home, love, and the uber-feminine.
A LitLovers LitPick (March '07)
Like Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and Kent Haruf's Plainsong, this book is about family and caretaking and blurring social lines, about eccentric kindness, swollen hearts and the artifacts of love. It is about the South in 1964, about a child named Lily whose world is irrevocably transformed when her mother dies one tragic afternoon. It is not just the mother's absence that haunts Lily as she grows up; it is the fuzzy memory of the circumstances of her mother's death that makes Lily secretly wonder if she is forgivable, lovable, good. Goodness—what it is, what it looks like, who bestows it—is the frame within which this book is masterfully hung, the organizing principle behind this intimate, unpretentious and unsentimental work....
In the company of the beekeepers and their extraordinary female friends, Lily slowly learns to live with her own past, to trust the beekeepers with her secrets and to navigate the pressing prejudices of the South. She learns what goodness is and how it finally survives. She earns the respect of the company she keeps and becomes a better version of herself.
Maybe it is true that there are no perfect books, but I closed this one believing that I had found perfection. The language is never anything short of crystalline and inspired. The plotting is subtle and careful and exquisitely executed, enabling Kidd not just to make her points about race and religion, but to tell a memorable story while she does. The characters are lovable and deep-hearted, fully dimensional, never pat. The story endures long after the book is slipped back onto the shelf.
Beth Kephart - Book Magazine
Honey-sweet but never cloying, this debut by nonfiction author Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter) features a hive's worth of appealing female characters, an offbeat plot and a lovely style. It's 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, in Sylvan, S.C. Fourteen-year-old Lily is on the lam with motherly servant Rosaleen, fleeing both Lily's abusive father T. Ray and the police who battered Rosaleen for defending her new right to vote. Lily is also fleeing memories, particularly her jumbled recollection of how, as a frightened four-year-old, she accidentally shot and killed her mother during a fight with T. Ray. Among her mother's possessions, Lily finds a picture of a black Virgin Mary with "Tiburon, S.C." on the back so, blindly, she and Rosaleen head there. It turns out that the town is headquarters of Black Madonna Honey, produced by three middle-aged black sisters, August, June and May Boatwright. The "Calendar sisters" take in the fugitives, putting Lily to work in the honey house, where for the first time in years she's happy. But August, clearly the queen bee of the Boatwrights, keeps asking Lily searching questions. Faced with so ideally maternal a figure as August, most girls would babble uncontrollably. But Lily is a budding writer, desperate to connect yet fiercely protective of her secret interior life. Kidd's success at capturing the moody adolescent girl's voice makes her ambivalence comprehensible and charming. And it's deeply satisfying when August teaches Lily to "find the mother in (herself)" a soothing lesson that should charm female readers of all ages.
Publishers Weekly
This sweeping debut novel, excerpts of which have appeared in Best American Short Stories, tells the tale of a 14-year-old white girl named Lily Owen who is raised by the elderly African American Rosaleen after the accidental death of Lily's mother. Following a racial brawl in 1960s Tiburon, SC, Lily and Rosaleen find shelter in a distant town with three black bee-keeping sisters. The sisters and their close-knit community of women live within the confines of racial and gender bondage and yet have an unmistakable strength and serenity associated with the worship of a black Madonna and the healing power of honey. In a series of unforgettable events, Lily discovers the truth about her mother's past and the certainty that "the hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters." The stunning metaphors and realistic characters are so poignant that they will bring tears to your eyes. —David A. Berone, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
Library Journal
A wonderfully written debut that rather scants its subject of loss and discovery-a young girl searching for the truth about her dead mother-in favor of a feminist fable celebrating the company of women and the ties between that mothers and daughters. The prose is lapidary, the characters diverse, and the story unusual as it crosses the color line, details worship of a black Virgin Mary, and extensively describes the lives and keeping of bees. But despite these accomplishments, the fabulist elements (bees as harbingers of death, a statue with healing powers) seem more whimsical than credible and ultimately detract from the story itself. Lily Owens, just about to turn 14, narrates this tale set in South Carolina during July 1964. Since her mother died when she was four, Lily has been raised by African-American Rosaleen and by her sadistic father T. Ray Owens, a peach farmer who keeps reminding Lily that she killed her mother. When Rosaleen is arrested and beaten for trying to vote, Lily springs her from the hospital, and they head to the town of Tiburon because its name is on the back of a cross that belonged to Lily's mother. On the front is a picture of a black Madonna who can also be seen on the labels of jars of honey produced in Tiburon by local beekeeper Augusta Boatwright. Certain the secret to her mother's past lies in Tiburon, Lily persuades Augusta to take them in. As the days pass she helps with the bees; meets handsome young African-American Zach; becomes convinced her mother knew Augusta; and is introduced to the worship of Our Lady of Chains, a wooden statue of Mary that since slavery has had special powers. By summer's end, Lily knows a great deal of bee lore and also finds the right moment to learn what really happened to her mother. Despite some dark moments, more honey than vinegar.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Were you surprised to learn that T. Ray used to be different, that once he truly loved Deborah? How do you think Deborah's leaving affected him? Did it shed any light on why T. Ray was so cruel and abusive to Lily?
2. Had you ever heard of "kneeling on grits"? What qualities did Lily have that allowed her to survive, endure, and eventually thrive, despite T. Ray?
3. Who is the queen bee in this story?
4. Lily's relationship to her dead mother was complex, ranging from guilt to idealization, to hatred, to acceptance. What happens to a daughter when she discovers her mother once abandoned her? Is Lily right-would people generally rather die than forgive? Was it harder for Lily to forgive her mother or herself?
5. Lily grew up without her mother, but in the end she finds a house full of them. Have you ever had a mother figure in your life who wasn't your true mother? Have you ever had to leave home to find home?
6. What compelled Rosaleen to spit on the three men's shoes? What does it take for a person to stand up with conviction against brutalizing injustice? What did you like best about Rosaleen?
7. Had you ever heard of the Black Madonna? What do you think of the story surrounding the Black Madonna in the novel? How would the story be different if it had been a picture of a white Virgin Mary? Do you know women whose lives have been deepened or enriched by a connection to an empowering Divine Mother?
8. Why is it important that women come together? What did you think of the "Calendar Sisters" and the Daughters of Mary? How did being in the company of this circle of females transform Lily?
9. May built a wailing wall to help her come to terms with the pain she felt. Even though we don't have May's condition, do we also need "rituals," like wailing walls, to help us deal with our grief and suffering?
10. How would you describe Lily and Zach's relationship? What drew them together? Did you root for them to be together?
11. Project into the future. Does Lily ever see her father again? Does she become a beekeeper? A writer? What happens to Rosaleen? What happens to Lily and Zach? Who would Zach be today?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Witch of Portobello
Paulo Coelho, 2006 (trans., Margaret Jull Costa, 2007)
HarperCollins
312 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061338816
Ssummary
How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves—even if we are unsure of whom we are?
That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho's profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well—or hardly at all. Among them:
- Heron Ryan, journalist—People create a reality and then become the victims of that reality. Athena rebelled against that—and paid a high price.
- Andrea McCain, actress—I was used and manipulated by Athena, with no consideration for my feelings. She was my teacher, charged with passing on the sacred mysteries, with awakening the unknown energy we all possess. When we venture into that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do.
- Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda—Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the 22nd-century living in the 21st and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about "what other people might think," always saying, "'I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream," always complaining "that the conditions are never quite right."
Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 24, 1947
• Where—Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Education—Left law school in second year
• Awards—Crystal Award (Switzerland), 1999; Rio Branco
Order (Brazil), 2000; Legion d’Honneur (France), 2001;
Brazilian Academy of Letters (Brazil), 2002
• Currently—lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Paulo Coelho's books have been translated into 56 languages, topped bestseller lists throughout the world, and scored him such celebrity fans as Julia Roberts, Bill Clinton, and Madonna; yet for Brazilian publishing phenom Paulo Colho, the road to success has been strewn with a number of obstacles, many of them rooted in his troubled past.
Personal life
As a youth, Coelho was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father, a professional engineer. When he rebelled, expressing his intentions to become a writer, his parents had him committed to a psychiatric hospital where he was subjected to electro-shock therapy. He left home to join the 1970s countercultural revolution, experimenting with drugs, dabbling in black magic, and getting involved in Brazil's bohemian art and music scene. He teamed with rock musician Raul Seixas for an extremely successful songwriting partnership that changed the face of Brazilian pop—and put a lot of money in Coelho's pockets. He also joined an anti-capitalist organization called the Alternative Society which attracted the attention of Brazil's military dictatorship. Marked down as a subversive, he was imprisoned and tortured.
Amazingly, Coelho survived these horrific experiences. He left the hippie lifestyle behind, went to work in the record industry, and began to write, but without much success. Then, in the mid-1980s, during a trip to Europe, he met a man, an unnamed mentor he refers to only as "J," who inducted him into Regnum Agnus Mundi, a secret society that blends Catholicism with a sort of New Age mysticism. At J's urging, Coelho journeyed across el Camino de Santiago, the legendary Spanish road traversed by pilgrims since the Middle Ages. He chronicled this life-changing, 500-mile journey—the culmination of decades of soul-searching—in The Pilgrimage, published in 1987.
Writings
The following year, Coelho wrote The Alchemist, the inspirational fable for which he is best known. The first edition sold so poorly the publisher decided not to reprint it. Undaunted, Coelho moved to a larger publishing house that seemed more interested in his work. When his third novel, 1990's Brida, proved successful, the resulting media buzz carried The Alchemist all the way to the top of the charts. Released in the U.S. by HarperCollins in 1993, The Alchemist became a word-of-mouth sensation, turning Coelho into a cult hero.
Since then, he has gone on to create his own distinct literary brand—an amalgam of allegory and self-help filled with spiritual themes and symbols. In his novels, memoirs, and aphoristic nonfiction, he returns time and again to the concepts of quest and transformation and has often said that writing has helped connect him to his soul.
While his books have not always been reviewed favorably and have often become the subject of strong cultural and philosophical debate, there is no doubt that this self-described "pilgrim writer" has struck a chord in readers everywhere. In the 2009 edition of the Guiness Book of World Records, Coelho was named the most translated living author—with William Shakespeare the most translated of all time!
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Few writers are able to accomplish what Coelho can in just two to four weeks—which is how long it takes for him to write an entire novel.
• Before become a bestselling novelist, Coelho was a writer of a different sort. He co-wrote more than 60 songs with Brazilian musician Raul Seixas.
• Coelho is the founder of the Paulo Coelho Institute, a non-profit organization funded by his royalties that raises money for underprivileged children and the elderly in his homeland of Brazil.
• Coelho has practiced archery for a long time; a bow and arrow helps him to unwind.
• In writing, Coelho says "I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation."
• Coelho loves almost everything about his work, except conferences. "I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul."
• When asked what book most influenced his life, he answered:
The Bible, which contains all the stories and all the guidance humankind needs. (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Multimillion-seller Coelho returns with another uncanny fusion of philosophy, religious miracle and moral parable. The Portobello of the title is London's Portobello Road, where Sherine Khalil, aka Athena, finds the worship meeting she's leading—where she becomes an omniscient goddess named Hagia Sophia—disrupted by a Protestant protest. Framed as a set of interviews conducted with those who knew Athena, who is dead as the book opens, the story recounts her birth in Transylvania to a Gypsy mother, her adoption by wealthy Lebanese Christians; her short, early marriage to a man she meets at a London college (one of the interviewees); her son Viorel's birth; and her stint selling real estate in Dubai. Back in London in the book's second half, Athena learns to harness the powers that have been present but inchoate within her, and the story picks up as she acquires a "teacher" (Deidre O'Neill, aka Edda, another interviewee), then disciples (also interviewed), and speeds toward a spectacular end. Coelho veers between his signature criticism of modern life and the hydra-headed alternative that Athena taps into. Athena's earliest years don't end up having much plot, but the second half's intrigue sustains the book.
Publishers Weekly
Narrated from multiple points of view, the portrait of Athena that emerges is as provocative and spiritually complex as one would expect from the author of The Alchemist (1993) and The Devil and Miss Prym (2006).
Booklist
Coelho returns to his favored (and incredibly successful) territory of spiritual questing in this tedious account of a young woman's ascendancy as a guru. Athena is dead, and now a kind of hagiography is being pieced together to better understand this young woman of influence and mystery. A number of testimonies comprise the portrait of Athena, from her adoptive mother, to disciples, to the manager at the bank where she once worked. But instead of creating a rich and varied character study, the assorted narrators repeat the same facile analysis of the meaning of life. We learn that Athena was a Romanian orphan, adopted by a wealthy Lebanese couple. The two dote on their daughter, and turn a blind eye to her youthful visions and prophesies. When Beirut becomes uninhabitable, the family moves to London where Athena attends engineering school. Feeling unfulfilled she forces her student boyfriend into marriage so she can have a child to fill up the vast empty space in her soul; she flits from one endeavor to another to try to fill this unnamable void. She and her husband divorce and she takes up a kind of dervish-style dancing (which she shares with her coworkers at the bank, doubling all of their productivity levels), then moves to Dubai and learns calligraphy from a Bedouin, hoping the patience needed will fix her restlessness. When she goes to Romania to find her birth mother (she's sure this will help her gain a truer sense of herself), she meets a Scottish woman who becomes her teacher in the search for the universal Mother, a kind of New Age paganism that promises a healing path out of the chaos of modern living. When Athena moves back to London, her popularity (and skill in prophesy) increases, and she develops a following-as well as detractors: Christians who accuse her of Satanism and being a witch. At turns didactic and colorless, Coelho's narrative captures nothing of the wonder and potential beauty of a life devoted to the spirit-instead, Athena seems little more than a self-indulgent girl. A disappointing rehash of pretty conventional spirituality.
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 Witch of Portobello:
1. Athena was certainly provocative. How do you view her—as an inspiried spiritual teacher or as a manipulative opportunist? Or something else? Do you believe her gifts of sight are genuine?
2. Discuss the world of magic versus the world of science or rationality—especially the belief held by many that, as Heron Ryan puts it, "anything science cannot explain has no right to exist." Where do you stand on this?
3. Has the idea of "witch" changed at all today from when it was used to persecute women during the medieval and up through the early modern ages?
4. What does it mean that we are victims of the realities we create?
5. To what extent did Athena seek out her death?
6. Is the world of sight, sound, and touch—the rational world —sufficient for you? Or do you seek another kind of reality, the one, perhaps, that Athena offered?
7. Of those interviewed for this book, whose voice do you trust the most? Who do you identify with the most? Dislike the most?
8. Would Athena's life have been more meaningful, more useful, if she had, as Andrea McCain suggests, joined a convent and devoted herself to a life of service to the poor?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution Thanks.)
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