Swing Time
Zadie Smith, 2016
Penguin Publishing
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594203985
Summary
An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from northwest London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty.
Two brown girls dream of being dancers—but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, about what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free.
It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.
Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and stubborn roots, about how we are shaped by these things and how we can survive them. Moving from northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 27, 1975
• Where—Hampstead, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, and London, England
Early Life
Zadie Smith was born as Sadie Smith in the northwest London borough of Brent—a largely working-class area—to a Jamaican mother, Yvonne Bailey, and a British father, Harvey Smith. Her mother had grown up in Jamaica and emigrated to Britain in 1969. Zadie has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers, one of whom is the rapper and stand-up comedian Doc Brown and the other is rapper Luc Skyz. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager.
As a child Smith was fond of tap dancing and as a teenager considered a musical theater career. When she was 14, she changed her name to "Zadie."
Education
Smith attended Cambridge University where she earned money as a jazz singer and, at first, wanted to become a journalist. Despite those earlier ambitions, literature emerged as her principal interest. While an undergrad, she published a number of short stories in a collection of new student writing called The Mays Anthology. These attracted the attention of a publisher, who offered her a contract for her first novel. Smith decided to contact a literary agent and was taken on by A.P. Watt.
Career
White Teeth was introduced to the publishing world in 1997—long before completion. The partial manuscript fueled an auction among different houses for the publishing rights, but it wasn't until her final year at Cambridge that she finished the novel. When published in 2000, White Teeth became an immediate bestseller, praised internationally and pocketing a number of awards. In 2002, Channel 4 adapted the novel for television.
In interviews Smith reported that the hype surrounding her first novel had caused her to suffer a short spell of writer's block. Nevertheless, her second novel, The Autograph Man, came out in 2002. It, too, achieved commercial success although the critical response was not as positive as it had been to White Teeth.
Following publication of The Autograph Man, Smith visited the United States as a 2002–2003 a Fellow at Harvard University. While there, she started work on a book of essays, some portions of which are included in a later essay collection titled Changing My Mind, published in 2009.
Her third novel, On Beauty came out in 2005. Set largely in and around Greater Boston, it attracted acclaim and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It won the 2006 Orange Prize.
Following a brief spell teaching fiction at Columbia University, Smith joined New York University as a tenured professor of fiction in 2010. That same year, The UK's Guardian newspaper asked Smith for her "10 rules for writing fiction." Among them, she offered up this:
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand—but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
During 2011, Smith served as the New Books editor at Harper's magazine, and in 2012, she published NW, her fourth novel, this one set in the Kilburn area of north-west London (the title refers to the area's postal code, NW6). NW was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Swing Time, Smith's fifth novel, was released in 2016, again to solid acclaim. The novel, a coming-of-age story, follows the fate of two girls of color who became fast friends through their mutual love of dance.
Personal Life
Smith met Nick Laird at Cambridge University, and the couple married in 2004. They have two children, Kathrine and Harvey, and are based in New York City and Queen's Park, London.
Awards and recognition
♦ White Teeth (2000): Whitbread First Novel Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award.
♦ The Autograph Man (2002): Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize
♦ On Beauty (2005): Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award, Orange Prize
♦ NW (2012): shortlisted for Ondaatje Prize and Women's Prize for Fiction
♦ General: Granta′s Best of Young British Novelists, 2003, 2013; Welt-Literaturpreis, 2016.
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/31/2016.)
Book Reviews
Every once in a while, a novel reminds us of why we still need them. Building upon the promise of White Teeth, written almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith’s Swing Time boldly reimagines the classically English preoccupation with class and status for a new era—in which race, gender, and the strange distortions of contemporary celebrity meet on a global stage…No detail feels extraneous, least of all the book’s resonant motif, the sankofa bird, with its backward-arching neck—suggestive less of a dancer than of an author, looking to her origins to understand the path ahead.
Megan O’Grady, Vogue
Smith delivers a page-turner that’s also beautifully written (a rare combo), but best of all, she doesn’t sidestep the painful stuff.
Glamour
A sweeping meditation on art, race, and identity that may be [Smith’s] most ambitious work yet.
Esquire
Transfixing, wide-ranging (from continents to emotions to footwork.)
Marie Claire
A thoughtful tale of two childhood BFFs whose shared passion for dance takes them on wildly divergent life paths.
Cosmopolitan
(Starred review.) [P]overty is a daily struggle and the juxtaposition makes for poignant parallels and contrasts. Though some of the later chapters seem unnecessarily protracted, the story is rich and absorbing, especially when it highlights Smith's ever-brilliant perspective on pop culture.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The remarkable Smith again does what she does best, packing a personal story...into a larger understanding of how we humans form tribes.... The narrative moves deftly and absorbingly.... A rich and sensitive drama...for all readers. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.)Agile and discerning…. With homage to dance as a unifying force, arresting observations…exceptionally diverse and magnetizing characters, and lashing satire, Swing Time is an acidly funny, fluently global, and head-spinning novel about the quest for meaning, exaltation, and love.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A keen, controlled novel.... [Smith] crafts quicksilver fiction around intense friendship, race, and class.... Moving, funny, and grave, this novel parses race and global politics with Fred Astaire’s or Michael Jackson's grace.
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)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Hell, Heaven & In-between: One Woman's Journey to Finding Love
Kathryn Hurn, 2016
Mattsamkat Publishing
604 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780692773802
Summary
HELL IS THE WASTELAND. The point when you have stopped being yourself…
This is the personal history, the loves and losses of Lucy Bell, whose life as a young woman was blown off course and her attempts to right her way seemed a labyrinth of griefs and disappointments. But life isn’t just what happens to you. And heaven is there in the blue sky for all to see.
"For most people, their wedding day seemed like heaven on earth, to me it was hell, H, E, double toothpicks."
Darkly funny and uncommonly frank, Lucy recounts an unforgettable emotional and spiritual journey from darkness and error to light and knowledge, her sense of isolation, unfulfilled longing and struggle for personal fulfillment, to finally arrive at love’s threshold feeling the joy and peace of having discovered her proper place in the world.
"…marrying a man whose one-dimensional, good-ole-boy persona couldn’t possibly guess the depths of my raging passions nor ever wish to know of their existence."
Healing, like the gaining of wisdom, is not a power outside your self. A young woman breaks up her sham of a marriage to a husband whose less-than-honest dealings do more harm than he will ever admit, embarks on a journey to independence and authenticity, then in a poetic vision falls madly in love with an erudite mountaineer who proposes from the top of a 8,000-meter peak only to disappear in the glint of an ice storm. Between the explained and the unexplained a mystery lies.
"Leaving for Annapurna on 4/5, Snow Leopard baby…I love you in so many ways…"
Author Bio
• Birth—May 9, 1960
• Where—Tucson, Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Texas
• Currently—lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
Kathryn Hurn is an American writer, best known as the creator of the fictional character Lucy Bell, a semi-autobiographical story chronicling her life from a twenty-something retailer married to the wrong man, to a thirty-something single mother vying for independence, authenticity, passion and love and finally at fifty wins the man worthy of her love.
Born into a middle-class military family, Kathryn is the eldest of Mary Catherine and Lt. Col. William P. Hurn’s five children. She credits both her parents for exemplifying and encouraging lifelong learning, creativity and fearless pursuit of dreams. She spent her early life following her father’s Air Force transfers from one end of the United States to the other. Girls Scouts and family trips to Yosemite sparked a romance with Nature and mountains that continues to this day. Educated in parochial schools in California and Nebraska until attending high school in Limestone, Maine, (where she was Maine's Junior Miss), Kathryn went on to study Fashion Marketing at the Universities of Maine and North Texas.
An avid traveler, backpacker, artist and literary enthusiast, Kathryn is also a 30-plus-year fitness professional and yoga teacher. She has two grown sons and lives in Salt Lake City where they have the world’s best snow. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Discussion Questions
1. How does the title set up readers’ expectations of the main themes the author intends to explore? What symbols reinforce those themes?
2. How do the chapter headings help structure the novel?
3. Volume One shifts back and forth in time from the present to the past allowing Lucy to tell of her early childhood and then skips to the time when she is in high school. Why tell of her childhood at all? Why not just begin with her marriage to John?
4. All through her child and girlhood Lucy felt what D. H. Lawrence called, "a oneness with the infinite." What evidence is there for this? What caused her to lose that connection? In what ways does she regain it?
5. What for Lucy represented the Dark Wood?
6. What symbols foreshadow Lucy’s doomed marriage?
7. What do the funny and fanciful dreams and imaginings tell us about Lucy?
8. Why does Lucy seem easily manipulated by people in authority?
9. What does it mean to be true to your self?
10. How did the Teenage Miss pageant damage Lucy?
11. Beauty contests claim to have changed in response to the growing role of feminism in America. For example, contestants are not called beauty queens but scholars. But contestants still epitomize the roles women are forced to play and reinforce the standard that men are judged by their actions, women by their appearance. Do you believe beauty contests are an affront to women and men who care about women?
12. How does Lucy decide to think about physical beauty and its importance to her happiness? Is this significant in her attraction for Ralph and his attraction for her?
13. As far as women may have come, in what ways did Lucy suffer from conventional ideas about the place and nature of women?
14. From the bra-burning emergence of women’s liberation in the 1960s to the selfie-obsessed narcissism of today, do you believe women find it easier or harder to be true to their own vision of their lives?
15. Lucy was conflicted about having had sex before marriage as prescribed by the Catholic Church and her desire to experience love and passion. Bad girls are sexual and good girls are virgins. What do you think about women’s split identity as Naomi Wolf calls it, "virgin and whore"?
16. Society approves of a man who has sex calling him: a ladies’ man, player, stud, Casanova, Romeo. His behavior is usually met with a smile and a pat on the back. It is acceptable for women to have sex within the confines of marriage or a monogamous commitment otherwise a sexually active woman may be called a slut, a whore, dirty. Can you think of any positive terms to describe a normal, healthy, sexually-active, independent woman?
17. Lucy sees her sexless marriage as poetic justice for having pre-marital sex and experiences guilt caused by the conflict between what most religions teach young girls: to be good, chaste and obedient, and what’s seen as the darker biological, sensual pressures of love and the body and what women, just like men, want. For those of us who want neither to be a saint or a demon, how do we reintegrate the light and dark sides of ourselves and lay claim to our rightful humanity, which is sexual and equal?
18. Religion plays a large role in this story. What characterizations and experiences alter Lucy’s feelings about religion? As her story goes on is it religion or virtue that guides her?
- Why doesn’t Lucy just live with John? Should "living in sin" be universally accepted as the best means of establishing compatibility?
- Do you believe Lucy exhibited strength or weakness in leaving her marriage? Or did she get her just desserts for marrying without love?
- How do you forgive yourself for major life mistakes?
- Which kind of love, romantic love or self-love is placed on an equal or higher footing than religion?
19. What was Lucy’s sin?
20. Do you mark Lucy’s struggles and triumphs as conventional or heroic? She makes some mistakes. Her refusal to lead a false life is noble, but should she be let off the hook for her sin? What would you have done in her situation?
21. What importance does eye contact or lack thereof mean in the novel?
22. What significance does money have on Lucy’s relationships? In what ways do the main characters’ financial security shape their personal freedom?
23. Though possessing an inner strength that sustains her during the most difficult times, what means does Lucy turn to for wisdom and support, intellectual stimulation and inspiration?
24. On the quest toward full womanhood, Naomi Wolf in her book, Fire With Fire calls the monsters that must be slain "the Dragons of Niceness." Lucy calls her ailment "the Nice Lady Syndrome." What does she mean?
25. Lucy describes dissatisfaction with her career. Is it simply another manifestation of her original sin and Nice Lady Syndrome or is it something more?
26. Describe Lucy’s views of marriage, using as evidence all the marriages that are described even briefly in the story. (There are at least 15 to consider.)
27. Do you feel any sympathy for Lucy’s husband, John?
28. The French writer Albert Camus began his philosophical essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" with the famous line "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide." Is suicide a crime, a sin or an act of heroic proportions?
29. Which of the book’s themes is held up as more important: self-love or romantic love? Can romantic love exist outside the framework of self-love?
30. Bell, of course, is Lucy’s last name, but it’s more than that. What significance do you attribute to the author’s use of bells?
Literary Echoes
MADAME BOVARY
31. In Volume One what comparisons can you make between Lucy and Emma Bovary? Between John and Charles Bovary?
THE DIVINE COMEDY
32. Like Dante in The Divine Comedy, Lucy makes herself the heroine and commentator of her story. He was condemned to perpetual exile from his home Florence. Is Lucy’s story also one of exile? From what? Would she have written her story if she hadn’t believed herself in exile?
33. Lucy attempts to recover from her mistakes, what circle of Hell would she have been sent if she had died unrepentant?
34. In The Divine Comedy, sinners’ punishments either resemble or contrast their sin. For instance, the Lustful in Circle Two are perpetually blown about by a violent storm, they can never rest, mirroring life when one acts purely from emotions: aimless and fruitless. How do you see sins punished in HHIB? Who seems to suffer most?
35. Is making yourself the center of the universe a sin?
36. What is the author saying by not providing Lucy a pagan or otherwise guide to help her navigate the physical and spiritual landscape of Hell and Purgatory?
37. Like Dante, Lucy encounters three animal vehicles, who were they, what sins do they represent and how do they impede Lucy’s progress?
38. What does Lucy have to abandon in order to advance? Talk about a time when you faced difficulties and how you overcame them.
39. After returning from Pakistan, Ralph says he feels like he’s on the Seven-Storey Mountain. Can climbing Everest and the Gasherbrum parallel climbing Mount Purgatory? What accounts for the sense of powerlessness that fuels Ralph’s desperation and spurs his restless travels?
40. In Purgatory souls who were used to acting independently must learn how to work together, do you believe Ralph and Lucy can reconcile and enter into the happiness of heaven?
41. Lucy discovers that life can change on a dime for the worse but also for the better if she chooses what?
JANE EYRE
42. Do you see any parallels and contrasts with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre?
Supernatural events?
Doubles?
Name play?
Tone?
Themes?
Plot?
43. How do you perceive Ralph’s secret? Do you see his near maiming as punishment for his attempted bigamy? Does his shroud of mystery make him even more attractive to Lucy? Is his dishonesty justifiable? Forgivable? What role does forgiveness play in HHIB?
44. Do the novel’s main characters: Lucy, John, and Ralph grow over the course of the novel? And if so, how?
45. One aspect of the novel is its insistence on uncertainty and suspense and the primacy of suffering. People die, commit crimes, and don’t love you when you need their love most. What is the novel saying?
46. What kind of love did Lucy find in the end?
47. Why is the end the end? Are you happy with the ending? Would you have preferred it end differently?
Like Jane Eyre, Lucy comes to the self-knowledge:
I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstance require me so to do… I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Do you think Lucy will marry Ralph?
After coming into her newfound power, do you think she’ll be happier with Ralph or on her own?
48. What choice would you have made in Lucy’s place? Would that choice have been difficult? Why?
49. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Has this novel changed you?
50. What is the novel’s goal? How well did HHIB achieve its goal?
(Questions courtesy of the publisher.)
The Collection (The DeWitt Agency Files, 1)
Lance Charnes, 2016
Wombat Media Group
ISBN-13: B01LXEL3PW (Kindle); 2940156957736 (Nook)
Summary
Four years ago, what Matt Friedrich learned at work put him in prison. Yesterday, it earned him a job. Tomorrow, it may kill him.
Matt learned all the angles at his old Los Angeles gallery: how to sell stolen art, how to "enhance" a painting’s history, how to help buyers hide their purchases from their spouses or the IRS. He made a load of money doing it—money he poured into the lawyer who worked a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney.
Matt’s out on parole and hopelessly in debt with no way out... until a shadowy woman from his past recruits him to find a cache of stolen art that could be worth millions.
Now Matt’s in Milan, impersonating a rich collector looking for deals. He has twenty days to track down something that may not exist for a boss who knows a lot more than she’s telling. He’s saddled with a tough-talking partner who may be out to screw him and up against a shady gallerist whom Matt tried to send to prison.
His parole officer doesn’t know he’s left the U.S. Worse yet, what Matt’s looking for may belong to the local branch of the Calabrian mafia.
Matt’s always been good at being bad. If he’s good enough now, he gets a big payday with the promise of more to come. But one slip in his cover, one wrong word from any of the sketchy characters surrounding him, could hand Matt a return trip to jail...or a long sleep in a shallow grave. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A. University of California, Berkeley; M.S.,California State University, Long Beach
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California
Lance Charnes has been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer and Jeopardy! contestant, and is now an emergency management specialist. He’s had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. His Facebook author page features spies, archaeology and art crime.
Lance is the author of the international thriller DOHA 12, the near-future thriller SOUTH, and the DEWITT AGENCY FILES series of international art-crime novels. All are available in trade paperback and digital editions. He's also a frequent contributor to Macmillan's Criminal Element website. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Lance on Facebook.
Discussion Questions
1. Matt is a cheat and liar. On the other hand, so were many of his gallery clients, except what they did was (usually) legal. Matt only conned people he thought could easily afford it. Discuss Matt’s past and present actions in relation to the hierarchy of criminal behavior. How bad do you think he is?
2. Matt stayed with and tried to care for his severely bipolar wife even as it caused him to slowly destroy his own life. Have you ever had to care for an incurably ill loved one? What sacrifices did you have to make? How far would you go morally or legally in order to keep a sick loved one safe and his/her condition stable? At what point do you say "enough"?
3. How does the depiction of art-related crime in The Collection square with what you’ve seen on television and in films? The use of stolen art as collateral for drug deals is a real phenomenon. What other uses do you think criminals have for stolen or looted artworks?
4. Who was your favorite character, and why? Who was your least-favorite character, and why? Who was the strongest character, and what made him/her seem that way to you?
5. Is Carson’s brusque, profane manner a defensive front or a moral defect? Why do you think she’s this way? Use examples from the text to support your conclusion.
6. In their first dinner in Milan, Matt says to Carson, "I’ve never been around a woman like you. You don’t know how to talk to me? I don’t know how to talk to you either" (p. 83 of the print edition). How much do cultural norms and expectations color your interactions with other people? Think back to the last time you met or worked with someone who, like Matt and Carson, didn’t fit his/her gender stereotypes. How did it affect your interaction with him/her?
7. What do you think really happened to Belknap? Why?
8. Matt accepts Allyson’s job offer because the high pay can help him get rid of his massive debts. However, the work’s potentially dangerous, and he’ll be helping people he finds distasteful or holds in contempt. Have you ever had to make that kind of personal or professional tradeoff—payoff vs. risk or conscience? Was it worth it? What would you have done in Matt’s place?
9. Is Gianna a victim or opportunist (or both)? Why? Whose side do you think she’s really on? Do you agree with Matt that "Gianna’s the nearest thing we’ve got to an innocent in this story" (p. 265 in the print edition)?
10. With which character do you identify with most closely? Why?
11. Would you have a relationship with someone like Matt or Carson? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Fill the Sky
Katherine A. Sherbrooke, 2016
SixOneSeven Books
245 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780984824533
Summary
Biotech entrepreneur Tess Whitford has built her life around the certainty of logic and thrives on solving problems.
But when one of her dearest friends exhausts the reaches of medicine while fighting cancer and grabs onto the hope that traditional healers in Ecuador might save her, Tess has to let go of everything she knows—and every instinct she has. Unable to deny Ellie a request that might be her last, Tess flies to Ecuador to help.
Together with Joline, another close college friend whose spiritual work inspired the trip, they travel to the small mountain village of Otavalo. Immersed in nature and introduced to strange ancient ceremonies, the three friends are pushed to recognize that good health is not only physical.
Tess grapples with her inability to trust; Ellie struggles with a painful secret; and Joline worries about the contract she made with an aggressive businessman whose ambitions could destroy the delicate fabric of the local community.
When an ayahuasca ceremony goes awry and an unlikely betrayal suddenly threatens to unravel their decades-long friendship, these three very different women awaken to a shared realization: they each have a deep need for healing.
Fill the Sky captures the challenges of mid-life, the hope we seek when we explore alternative paths, and the profound nature of women’s friendships. It’s a beautifully told and moving story about lifelong friends, the power of the spirit, and the age-old quest to not simply fight death but to shape an authentic life.
Author Bio
• Birth—November, 6, 1967
• Where—Millburn, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmourth College; M.B.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Cohasset, Massachusetts
Katherine A. Sherbrooke received her B.A. from Dartmouth College and M.B.A. from Stanford University. An entrepreneur and writer, she is the author of Finding Home, a family memoir about her parents’ tumultuous and inspiring love affair. Fill the Sky is her first novel.
Katherine wanted to be an author from the time she opened her first book, and lived on books like food and water for a long time. Somewhere along the line, though, she caught the start-up bug and co-founded a Boston based company called Circles. After that wonderful 15 year+ entrepreneurial adventure, she reignited her original dream and finally sat down to write. She credits GrubStreet in Boston with giving her all the tools needed to pursue this dream, including rigorous programming and a supportive community of writers.
An avid supporter of the arts, she was a long-time board member of RAW Art Works in Lynn, MA, and currently serves as Chair of the board of GrubStreet in Boston. She lives outside Boston with her husband, two sons, and black lab. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Katherine on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Three women, each with an important question to answer, travel together into a world richly imagined and beautifully rendered to find unconventional answers. This is a deeply moving novel about love, honesty, respect, the unlikely, and the truly possible.
Anita Shreve, New York Times bestselling author
Fill the Sky takes us to places we seldom dare explore and pushes the boundaries of love, friendship, and healing. Sherbrooke has a deft understanding of human nature and a painter’s eye for place. A journey every woman should take.
Brunonia Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader
Sherbrooke's insight into friendship—all the slights and secrets, yet more importantly all the love that defines it—propels this novel forward to its deeply satisfying conclusion. Fill the Sky is pure heart and a perfect read for a circle of friends.
Lynne Griffin, author of Girl Sent Away and Sea Escape
[E]xamines our relationships with nature, with our bodies and with others, while addressing big-picture questions such as the meaning of a full life.
New Jersey Monthly Magazine
Fill the Sky is beautifully written and thoroughly engaging. The setting of the story is almost a fourth character—Sherbrooke’s own experiences traveling to Ecuador and working with the shamans there allow her to richly and vividly paint the scenery with words and describe the ceremonies such that the reader can almost imagine they are participating themselves.
Sweatpants & Coffee
Discussion Questions
1. Given the state of her health when the novel opens, do you think Ellie is being resourceful or reckless in choosing to go to Ecuador? Do you think Ellie survives?
2. The book opens with the Einstein quote “Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” How did nature help these characters understand themselves better? Were there particular elements of nature that you found particularly significant?
3. What do you think of the method of Parker’s proposal? It is characterized differently by each of the three friends as: “smart,” “bold,” and “cowardly.” What do you think?
4. Before Ellie’s ultimate epiphany, did you think Ellie should tell David about Gavin? Why or why not?
5. Joline is both friend and sister-in-law to Ellie. Which did you think Joline felt the weight of more in dealing with Ellie’s infidelity?
6. How was Chi-Chi important to the story and Tess’s personal journey?
7. In Mama Rosita’s ceremony with Bryce, she uses her foreknowledge of his yellow dock to manipulate the situation. What do you think of that?
8. On their last night in Ecuador, Marco tells Tess that Mama Rosita had a vision of “one more rock” that she worked to dislodge from Ellie’s “river.” What do you think that rock represents?
9. What is the key lesson each woman learns about herself over the course of the week? Who changes the most?
10. All three women are in their mid-forties at the time of the story. Do you think being in their middle years had any particular impact on their experience in Ecuador?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Notes:
1. All titles listed are post-2005 (when Stieg Larsson's series first hit the U.S.); MOST titles are from 2012 on (tied to the Gone Girl phenomenon). |
The Girl Titles |
Girl Categorized Girl from Berlin |