The Last Letter from Your Lover
Jojo Moyes, 2011
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670022809
Summary
A sophisticated, page-turning double love story spanning forty years—an unforgettable Brief Encounter for our times.
It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband.
Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance.
A spellbinding, intoxicating love story with a knockout ending, The Last Letter from Your Lover will appeal to the readers who have made One Day and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society bestsellers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., London University
• Awards—Romantic Novel of the year (twice)
• Currently—lives in Essex, England
Jojo Moyes is a British journalist and the author of 10 novels published from 2002 to the present. She studied at Royal Holloway, University of London and Bedford New College, London University.
In 1992 she won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University, London. She subsequently worked for The Independent for the next 10 years (except for one year, when she worked in Hong Kong for the Sunday Morning Post) in various roles, becoming Assistant News Editor in 1988. In 2002 she became the newspaper's Arts and Media Correspondent.
Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her first book Sheltering Rain was published. She is most well known for her later novels, The Last Letter From Your Lover (2010), Me Before You (2012), and The Girl You Left Behind ( 2013), all of which were received with wide critical accalim.
She is one of only a few authors to have won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award twice—in 2004 for Foreign Fruit and in 2011 for The Last Letter From Your Lover. She continues to write articles for The Daily Telegraph.
Moyes lives on a farm in Saffron Walden, Essex with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Elegiac yet emotionally ablaze, what could have been merely another love story is instead a graceful examination of grand events. In 1960s England, 27-year-old Jennifer Stirling awakens in the hospital after a terrible accident, suffering acute memory loss. As the past makes its too-slow return, Jennifer employs the skillful deception of an actress in order to cope, but soon realizes that she doesn't love her husband, a man of great wealth from mining operations in the Congo. Stumbling across a haunting love letter sent to her by a man identified only as "B," Jennifer tries to reconcile what is clearly a great passion with the crippling social mores of her day and class. As she examines her heart and mind, the story skips from London to the French Riviera and the Congo in the midst of an anticolonial war. In 2003, English journalist Ellie Haworth stumbles across one of B's letters to Jennifer while researching a story, dragging her into ancient passions and sparking her to examine her own heart. With poetic prose and affecting characters, Moyes's (Night Music) genuinely captivating tale resonates deeply in today's fast-paced, less gracious world.
Publishers Weekly
Jennifer Stirling, recovering from a car crash that almost killed her, suffers from amnesia. Nothing feels familiar, her friends seem like strangers, and as she begins to suspect that her marriage is a sham, she discovers a mysterious letter from a lover whose identity she can't remember. She knows him only as "B." What follows is an engrossing saga of love found then lost, crossed paths, and missed opportunities. This romantic tale bounces between the present and the past, examining the depths of love and the decisions made while in its throes. Although portions of the plot are somewhat predictable (the loyal secretary secretly in love with her boss) and the premise a tad unlikely, none of this matters because the reader will be drawn in by the characters, the time period (the early 1960s), and the multilayered story. Verdict: British journalist/novelist Moyes's (Horsedancer) latest book is the perfect read for those who enjoy a more serious romance as well as a British turn of phrase ("darling, be a dear and fetch me another drink"). Reminiscent of Janice Y.K. Lee's The Piano Teacher (but with more likable characters) or Jamie Ford's The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, it will appeal to fans of those titles. —Julie K. Pierce, Ft. Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., FL
Library Journal
A prize-winning, cross-generational love story of missed connections and delayed gratification hits a seam of pure romantic gold. Star-crossed is an understatement for the ill-fated love between trophy wife Jennifer Stirling and hard-drinking journalist Anthony O'Hare in British writer Moyes' cleverly constructed, cliffhanger-strewn tale of heartache in two strikingly different eras. Jennifer and Anthony meet in the South of France in that strait-laced time just before the 1960s blew social conventions apart. Jennifer, married to a powerful businessman whose fortunes derive from asbestos, is a Grace Kelly look-alike, beautiful and seemingly blessed with a perfect life. But as the story opens with her attempts to reconstruct her existence after post–traffic-accident amnesia it becomes apparent that her marriage has a cold heart compared to recently experienced passion. Held back by convention and fear, she hesitates to grasp her first chance at happiness. Later, other and larger impediments stand between the two lovers whose commitment finds expression in letters which come to light again 40 years later in the library of a relocated newspaper. Journalist Ellie Haworth, involved with a married man, is moved by the words and starts to piece the story together, in the process coming to a different understanding of what love really means. A nicely judged sense of period and the author's full-blooded commitment lend heartfelt emotion to simple characters in a tour de force of its kind.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What similarities are there between Ellie and Jennifer? How do their experiences reflect their respective eras? Of the two women, with whom do you empathize or identify the most?
2. Have you ever written or received a love letter? Have you ever sent a romantic e-mail or text? Do you think electronic communication has changed the nature of expression? How does the emotional weight of a love letter compare with that of spoken words?
3. Does Laurence love Jennifer? Imagine yourself in his position. What were his motives in lying to Jennifer about O'Hare's death?
4. How did your opinion of O'Hare develop over the course of the novel? Is he a traditional romantic hero?
5. If Jennifer and O'Hare had run away together, what would their lives have been like?
6. Jennifer's friends and her mother are reluctant to tell her much about her life before the accident, urging her to focus on the future. Why? Do you believe they knew about her affair?
7. Why does Yvonne react the way she does to Jennifer's decision to leave Laurence?
8. Think of Jennifer's many roles as mother, daughter, wife, lover, and friend. Is it possible to fill all those roles at once? Should any one role be a priority and, if so, which one? With this in mind, did Jennifer make the right choice in pursuing O'Hare?
9. Examine the female friendships in the novel, particularly the interactions between Ellie and her girlfriends. Had you been friends with Ellie, what advice would you have given her about John? What would you say to John?
10. Rory argues that being in love doesn't excuse someone from being responsible for their actions, that "everyone makes a choice" to do either the right or the wrong thing (p. 332). Ellie disagrees, believing that people can be swept away by emotion. What do you think?
11. Did you find the ending satisfactory? What happens next for Jennifer and Ellie?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Moloka'i
Alan Brennert, 2003
St. Martin's Press
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781429902281
Summary
This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end—but instead she discovers it is only just beginning.
With a vibrant cast of vividly realized characters, Moloka'i is the true-to-life chronicle of a people who embraced life in the face of death. Such is the warmth, humor, and compassion of this novel that readers will be changed forever by Rachel's story (From the publisher
Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• Where—Englewood, New Jersey, USA
• Education—University of California, Los Angeles
• Awards—Nebula Award for Best Short Story; Emmy Award
(for L.A. Law)
• Currently—lives in Southern California
Alan Brennert is a United States television producer and screenwriter who has lived in Southern California since 1973 and completed graduate work in screenwriting at the University of California Los Angeles. His earliest television work was in 1978 when he penned several scripts for Wonder Woman. He was story editor for the NBC series Buck Rogers and wrote seven scripts for that series.
He won an Emmy Award as a producer and writer for L.A. Law in 1991. For science and fantasy readers, he might be best known as a writer for The New Twilight Zone and the revival of The Outer Limits. One of his best regarded episodes was for The New Twilight Zone, an adaptation of his own story Her Pilgrim Soul, which became a play.
Since 2001 he has written episodes of the television series Stargate Atlantis and Star Trek Enterprise (as Michael Bryant).
He also writes books and stories, the majority of which are science fiction or fantasy. His first story was published in 1973 and in 1975 he was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction. He also won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1991 and had stories in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best volumes.
His 2003 historical novel, Moloka'i, focuses on life in Honolulu in the early 1900s and the leper colony at Kalaupapa in Hawaii, made famous by Father Damien, Mother Marianne Cope and Lawrence M. Judd, historical people who appear in the novel.
In 2009, Brennert returned to Hawai'i with another historical novel, Honolulu, centering on a Korean picture bride in the early 1900s.
Brennert's 2013 novel, Palisades Park goes stateside, all the way east to the author's home state of New Jersey and its once famous amusement park. The book follows a family from the depression era, through World War II, and up to 1971.
Brennert contributed many acclaimed DC Comics stories for Detective Comics, The Brave and The Bold, Batman: Holy Terror and Secret Origins in the 1980s and 1990s. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/16/2014.)
Book Reviews
Jin's story is prototypical, the bildungsroman of an aspiring woman, yearning for a life beyond the one society has prescribed. (Jin Eyre, anyone?) But in mooring this familiar character to the unique history of early-20th-century Hawaii, Brennert portrays the Aloha State's history as complicated and dynamic—not simply a melting pot, but a Hawaiian-style "mixed plate" in which, as Jin sagely notes, "many different tastes share the plate, but none of them loses its individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely 'local' cuisine."
Krista Walton - Washington Post
Alan Brennert draws on historical accounts of Kalaupapa and weaves in traditional Hawaiian stories and customs.... Moloka'i is the story of people who had much taken from them but also gained an unexpected new family and community in the process.
Chicago Tribune
An absorbing novel...Brennert evokes the evolution of—and hardships on—Moloka'i in engaging prose that conveys a strong sense of place.
National Geographic Traveler
Brennert's compassion makes Rachel a memorable character, and his smooth storytelling vividly brings early 20th-century Hawaii to life. Leprosy may seem a macabre subject, but Brennert transforms the material into a touching, lovely account of a woman's journey as she rises above the limitations of a devastating illness.
Publishers Weekly
A gritty story of love and survival in a Hawaiian leper colony: more a portrait of old Hawaii than a compelling narrative. The chronicle of leprosy-infected Rachel Kalama begins in 1891 in Honolulu and ends in the late 1960s on isolated Moloka’i, site of the Kalaupapa Leprosy settlement.... Not a comfortable read, but certainly instructive.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book's opening paragraph likens Hawai'i in the 19th century to a garden. In what ways is Hawai'i comparable to another, Biblical, garden?
2. Given what was known at the time of the causes and contagion of leprosy, was the Hawaiian government's isolation of patients on Moloka'i justified or not?
3. How is Hawai'i's treatment of leprosy patients similar to today's treatment of SARS and AIDS patients? How is it different?
4. What does 'ohana mean? How does it manifest itself throughout Rachel's life?
5. What does surfing represent to Rachel?
6. Rachel's mother Dorothy embraced Christianity; her adopted auntie, Haleola, is a believer in the old Hawaiian religion. What does Rachel believe in?
7. There are many men in Rachel's life—her father Henry, her Uncle Pono, her first lover Nahoa, her would-be lover Jake, her husband Kenji. What do they have in common? What don't they?
8. Rachel's full name is Rachel Aouli Kalama Utagawa. What does each of her names represent?
9. Did you as a reader regard Leilani as a man or a woman?
10. Discuss the parallels and inversions between the tale of heroic mythology Rachel relates on pages 296-298, and what happens to Kenji later in this chapter.
11. Imagine yourself in the place of Rachel’s mother, Dorothy Kalama. How would you have handled the situation?
12. The novel tells us a little, but not all, of what Sarah Kalama feels after her accidental betrayal of her sister Rachel. Imagine what kind of feelings, and personal growth, she might have gone through in the decades following this incident.
13. In what ways is Ruth like her biological mother? How do you envision her relationship with Rachel evolving and maturing in the twenty years between 1948 and 1970?
14. Considering the United States' role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, was the American response adequate or not? In recent years a "Hawaiian sovereignty" movement has gathered momentum in the islands—do you feel they have a moral and/or legal case?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Wonder Boys
Michael Chabon, 1995
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812979213
Summary
Michael Chabon's Grady Tripp is one messed up college writing professor—his marriage is breaking up, his girlfriend (wife of the dean) is pregnant, his marijuana habit is taking over and his editor is just about out of a job.
Tripp has published a few moderately successful novels but is strangling his creativity with introspection and marijuana—never finishing a 2,000-plus-page novel called Wonder Boys.
When his editor and best friend, Terry Crabtree, comes to town and spreads chaos, Tripp goes along for the ride. Farcical misadventures dominate, from a picked-up transvestite to a wild ride in a stolen car that contains a tuba and the corpses of a dog and a boa constrictor.
Chabon writes with a wry, vulnerable wit that cleaves open the minds of his wonderful characters while his clean prose keeps the madcap story going so well that you'll want it to never end. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 24, 1963
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.F.A., University of California-Irvine
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon) is an American novelist and short story writer. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1988 when he was still a graduate student. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that New York Times's John Leonard, once referred to as Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. All told, Chabon has published nearly 10 novels, including a Young Adult novel, a children's book, two collection of short stories, and two collections of essays.
Early years
Michael Chabon was born in Washington, DC to Robert Chabon, a physician and lawyer, and Sharon Chabon, a lawyer. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment. When the story received an A, Chabon recalls, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do.... And I never had any second thoughts or doubts."
His parents divorced when Chabon was 11, and he lived in Columbia, Maryland, with his mother nine months of the year and with his father in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the summertime. He has written of his mother's marijuana use, recalling her "sometime around 1977 or so, sitting in the front seat of her friend Kathy's car, passing a little metal pipe back and forth before we went in to see a movie." He grew up hearing Yiddish spoken by his mother's parents and siblings.
Chabon attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied under Chuck Kinder and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then went to graduate school at the University of California-Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.
Initial success
While he was at UC, his Master's thesis was published as a novel. Unbeknownst to Chabon, his professor sent it to a literary agent—the result was a publishing contract for The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and an impressive $155,000 advance. Mysteries appeared in 1988, becoming a bestseller and catapulting Chabon to literary stardom.
Chabon was ambivalent about his new-found fame. He turned down offers to appear in a Gap ad and to be featured as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People." Years later, he reflected on the success of his first novel:
The upside was that I was published and I got a readership.... [The] downside...was that, emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, "Wait a minute, is my thesis done yet?" It took me a few years to catch up.
Personal
His success had other adverse affects: it caused an imbalance between his and his wife's careers. He was married at the time to poet Lollie Groth, and they ended up divorcing in 1991. Two years later he married the writer Ayelet Waldman; the couple lives in Berkeley, California, with their four children.
Chabon has said that the "creative free-flow" he has with Waldman inspired the relationship between Sammy Clay and Rosa Saks in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Entertainment Weekly declared the couple "a famous—and famously in love—writing pair, like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze."
In a 2012 NPR interview, Chabon told Guy Raz that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He attempts 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said,
There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them.... The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life.
Novels
1988 - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
1995 - The Wonder Boys
2000 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2002 - Summerland (Young Adult)
2004 - The Final Solution
2007 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union
2007 - Gentlemen of the Road
2012 - Telegraph Avenue
2016 - Moonglow
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/2/2016.)
Book Reviews
The young star of American letters…a writer not only of rare skill and wit but a self—evident and immensely appealing generosity.
Jonathan Yardley - The Washington Post Book Review
[A] wise, wildly funny story…Chabon is a flat—out wonderful writer—evocative and inventive, pointed and poignant.
Shelby Hearon - Chicago Tribune
A beguiling and wickedly smart novel....There is first-rate satirical farce in Chabon's novel but essentially it is something rarer: satirical comedy.
Richard Eder - Lost Angeles Times Book Reveiw
Mixing comic—even slapstick—events with the serious theme of bright promise gone awry, Chabon has produced an impeccably constructed novel that sparkles with inventiveness and wit neatly permeated with rue. The once-promising eponymous "wonder boys'' are Grady Tripp and Terry Crabtree, friends since college, where they both determined to make their mark in literature. Now they are self-destructive adults whose rare meetings occasion an eruption of zany events. Narrator Grady, a professor/novelist whose unfinished work-in-progress, "Wonder Boys," stands at 2000-plus endlessly revised pages, has destroyed three marriages through compulsive philandering and a marijuana habit. Terry is a devil-may-care, sexually predatory editor who has patiently endured Grady's writing block but who tells Grady, when he arrives at the annual literary conference at Grady's small Pittsburgh college, that he expects to be fired momentarily from his job. Grady and Terry, later joined by the campus's newest potential "wonder boy,'' a talented but mendacious student named James Leer, set in motion a series of darkly funny misadventures. Farcical scenes arise credibly out of multiplying contretemps, culminating in a stoned Grady's wild ride in a stolen car in whose trunk rest a tuba and the corpses of a blind dog and a boa constrictor. All of this affords Chabon a solid platform for some freewheeling satire about the yearnings, delusions and foibles of writers and other folk. Throughout, his elegant prose, breathtaking imagery and wickedly on-target dialogue precisely illuminate his characters' gentle absurdities. The pace of this vastly entertaining novel never abates for a second, as we watch Grady slide inexorably into emotional and professional chaos. Above all, though, this is a feast for lovers of writing and books, with the author's fierce understanding of what Grady calls "the midnight disease," the irresistible, destructive urge of a writer to experience his characters' fates.
Publishers Weekly
Chabon himself is something of a wonder boy; his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, presided on the New York Times Best Sellers list for 12 weeks. Here, his eponymous heroes are Grady, an aging author attempting to write his chef-d'oeuvre, and his randy editor, Tripp.
Library Journal
This is a genuinely funny, laugh-out-loud novel, a sort of "Fear and Loathing in Academia" if you will, but infused with tenderness and a bracing skepticism about our worship of literature. Chabon is known for his glisteningly precise and graceful prose, but he is also blessed with a wickedly imaginative and energetic sense of humor. His second novel takes place during the course of one extraordinarily hectic weekend during which his crazy hero, Professor Grady Tripp, manages to ruin two marriages, cause the death of a boa constrictor and a dog, save a student's life, attend a disastrous seder and a chaotic writers' conference, and lose the only copy of his manuscript. Now don't groan when I tell you that "Wonder Boys" is also the title of the novel Tripp has wasted seven years of his disorderly life on, because this is not your typical, bloodless novel-within-a-novel. It is, instead, a simultaneously hilarious and insightful tale about the Faustian bargains writers make, the fissures the act of writing rends in the wall between fact and fantasy, and, for good measure, the basic absurdity of human endeavors. It's also an uproarious portrait of the artist as self-indulgent fool. Tripp's "wonder boys" are, like Chabon, young writers who achieve instant success. The trick, then, is to maintain it. Whereas his endearingly addled and irresistible hero fails, Chabon, for all his musing on the dark side of the writer's life, is succeeding brilliantly.
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
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The Weird Sisters
Eleanor Brown, 2011
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13:
Summary
There is no problem that a library card can't solve. The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women.
When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—ca. 1973
• Where—outside Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—M.A., in literature (incl. a year at Oxford University)
• Currently—lives outside Denver, Colorado
Eleanor Brown is the author of two novels: The Light of Paris (2016) and The Weird Sisters (2011), which became a New York Times bestseller, receiving both popular and critical praise. Her writing has also appeared in anthologies, magazines, and journals.
She was born in the Washington D.C. area, one of three sisters. She taught middle school for seven years, earned an M.A. in literature, and now teaches writing workshops in the Denver, Colorado, area. She lives with thriller writer J.C. Hutchins. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A family drama, gracefully costumed in academic garb and lit with warm comedy, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished…if you know a Stratfordian who's always quoting the Bard, get thee to a bookstore…Brown is such a clever writer, and she's written such an endearing story about sisterly affection and the possibilities of redemption, that it's easy to recommend The Weird Sisters.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
You don't have to have a sister or be a fan of the Bard to love Brown's bright, literate debut, but it wouldn't hurt. Sisters Rose (Rosalind; As You Like It), Bean (Bianca; The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia; King Lear)—the book-loving, Shakespeare-quoting, and wonderfully screwed-up spawn of Bard scholar Dr. James Andreas—end up under one roof again in Barnwell, Ohio, the college town where they were raised, to help their breast cancer stricken mom. The real reasons they've trudged home, however, are far less straightforward: vagabond and youngest sib Cordy is pregnant with nowhere to go; man-eater Bean ran into big trouble in New York for embezzlement, and eldest sister Rose can't venture beyond the "mental circle with Barnwell at the center of it." For these pains-in-the-soul, the sisters have to learn to trust love--of themselves, of each other--to find their way home again. The supporting cast--removed, erudite dad; ailing mom; a crew of locals; Rose's long-suffering fiancé--is a punchy delight, but the stage clearly belongs to the sisters; Macbeth's witches would be proud of the toil and trouble they stir up.
Publishers Weekly
This lovely debut novel is a tale of three sisters: Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia. Named by their father, a famous Shakespeare professor who communicates primarily in Shakespearean verse, they grew up surrounded by books near the campus of a small Midwestern college. Rose, the oldest, stays close to home and follows her father into academia. Bean, the middle child, leaves home for an exciting life in New York City. Cordy, the youngest, drifts aimlessly across the country. Life isn't turning out to be what the sisters expected, so each decides separately to return home to care for their sick mother. The sisters are less than thrilled when they learn all three have run home. Unfortunately, the key to starting the next chapters of their lives isn't hiding between the pages of one of their beloved books. Verdict: This novel should appeal to Shakespeare lovers, bibliophiles, fans of novels in academic settings, and stories of sisterhood. The narration is a creative and original blending of the three "Weird Sisters" as one. —Shaunna Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll., VA
Library Journal
There are no false steps in this debut novel: the humor, lyricism, and realism characterizing this lovely book will appeal to fans of good modern fiction as well as stories of family and of the Midwest. —Ellen Loughran
Booklist
In a debut about growing up, secrets and failures are predictably resolved when a family crisis reunites three bright but unhappy siblings. As the daughters of a Shakespeare scholar, the Andreas girls are no strangers to the Bard. Oldest Rosalind (known as Rose) is named after the heroine of As You Like It, Bianca (Bean) has the name of the tamed shrew's sister and daddy's girl Cordelia (Cordy) bears the name of King Lear's devoted youngest. Their "weird"ness refers to Macbeth, although the three are far from witch-like, just averagely bookish women grappling with their unusual upbringing and some dubious adult choices. Drawn home to Barnwell, Ohio, because of their mother's breast cancer, the sisters reassemble uneasily in their parents' house—footloose Cordy, now pregnant; self-hating, morally dubious Bean, sacked after embezzling from her New York employers; and overly dutiful Rose. Quirky and perky, Brown's narrative uses light comedy to balance the serious life issues. The family's habit of quoting Shakespeare at every turn is less amusing, and there's also the curious plural narrative voice—"our sister," "our parents,"—seemingly the collective point of view of all three daughters. The story itself is a lengthy account of the women facing their demons, assisted by saintly parents, friends and neighbors who offer jobs, reassurance and romance. All's well that ends well. Readable, upmarket, non-mold-breaking escapism.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1.The Andreas family is dedicated to books, particularly Shakespeare. Would the family be different if their father were an expert on a different writer? Edgar Allan Poe, let's say, or Mark Twain? What if they were a family of musicians or athletes, rather than readers? How might that change their dynamic? Is there an interest that unites your family in the same way that reading unites the Andreas family?
2.The narration is omniscient first person plural ("we" rather than "I"). Why do you think the author chose to write the novel in this way? Did you like it?
3.Which sister is your favorite? Why? Which sister do you most identify with? Are they the same character?
4.Do you have any siblings? If so, in what way is your relationship with them similar to the relationship among the Andreas sisters? In what way is it different?
5.Each of the sisters has a feeling of failure about where she is in her life and an uncertainty about her position as a grown-up. Are there certain markers that make you an adult, and if so, what are they?
6.In what ways are the sisters' problems of their own making? Does this make them more or less sympathetic?
7.The narrator says that God was always there if the family needed him, "kind of like an extra tube of toothpaste under the sink." Is that true, or does the family's religion have a larger effect on the sisters than they claim? How does your own family's faith, or lack thereof, influence you?
8.In many ways, the Andreas sisters' personalities align with proposed birth-order roles: Rose, the driven caregiver; Bean, the rebellious pragmatist; and Cordy, the free-spirited performer. How important do you think birth order is? Do you see those traits in your own family or in people you know?
9.Father Aidan tells Bean, "Your story, Bean, is the story of your sisters. And it is past time, I think, for you to stop telling that particular story, and tell the story of yourself. Stop defining yourself in terms of them. You don't just have to exist in the empty spaces they leave." Do you agree with Father Aidan? Is it possible to identify one's self not in relationship to one's siblings or family?
10.Is it irresponsible of Cordy to keep her baby?
11.How does the Andreas family deal with the mother's illness? How would your family have coped differently?
12.The sisters say that "We have always wondered why there is not more research done on the children of happy marriages." How does their parents' love story affect the sisters? How did your own parents' relationship affect you?
13.What do you think of the sisters' father, James? Is he a good parent? What about their mother?
14.Why do you think the mother is never given a name?
15.The narrators' mother admits that she ended up with the girls' father because she was scared to venture out into the world. Yet she doesn't seem to have any regrets. Do you think there are people who are just not meant to leave home or their comfort zone?
16.Bean and Cordy initially want to leave Barnwell behind, yet they remain, while Rose is the one off living in Europe. Do you think people sometimes become constrained by childhood perceptions of themselves and how their lives will be? How is your own life different from the way you thought it would turn out?
17.When you first saw the title, The Weird Sisters, what did you think the book would be about? What do you think the title really means?
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The Family Fang
Kevin Wilson, 2011
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061579059
Summary
Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief.
Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces.
But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.
When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performancetheir magnum opuswhether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.
Filled with Kevin Wilson’s endless creativity, vibrant prose, sharp humor, and keen sense of the complex performances that unfold in the relationships of people who love one another, The Family Fang is a masterfully executed tale that is as bizarre as it is touching. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Winchester, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., Vanderbilt University; M.F.A., University of Florida
• Awards—Shirley Jackson Award
• Currently—lives in Swanee, Tennessee
Kevin Wilson is the author of the novels Family Fang (2011) and Perfect Little World (2017). His short story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (2009), received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award.
Wilson's fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and has appeared in four volumes of the New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best anthology as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Rivendell, and the KHN Center for the Arts.
Born and raised in Winchester, Tennessee, Wilson attended Vanderbilt University and received his M.F.A. at the University of Florida. He returned to Tennessee, where he now lives in Sewanee with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch. He is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Sewanee: The University of the South. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Family Fang...in less adroit hands might have been a string of twee, deadpan moments and not much more. But Mr. Wilson, though he writes wittily about various outre Fang performance pieces, resists putting too much emphasis on the family gimmick. These events have names...and dates and artistic goals. But they also have consequences. That's what makes this novel so much more than a joke...Mr. Wilson…has created a memorable shorthand for describing parent-child deceptions and for ways in which creative art and destructive behavior intersect.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
a delightfully odd story about the adult children of a pair of avant-garde performance artists…Wilson has an infectious fondness for the ridiculous and a good ear for muffled exasperation.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Irresistible.... This strange novel deserves to be very successful.... Wilson’s trim and intriguing narrative [captures] the selling out of one’s life and children for the sake of notoriety.... I’d love to be able to see Annie’s movies and read Buster’s books, but I’ll settle for being Wilson’s fan instead.
Time
Kevin Wilson asks big questions with subtle humor and deep tenderness.
National Public Radio
Wilson's bizarre, mirthful debut novel (after his collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth) traces the genesis of the Fang family, art world darlings who make "strange and memorable things." That is, they instigate and record public chaos. In one piece, "The Portrait of a Lady, 1988," fragile nine-year-old Buster Fang dons a wig and sequined gown to undermine the Little Miss Crimson Clover beauty pageant, though he secretly desires the crown himself. In "A Modest Proposal, July 1988," Buster and his older sister, Annie, watch their father, Caleb, propose to mother, Camille, over an airliner's intercom and get turned down ("plane crash would have been welcomed to avoid the embarrassment of what had happened"). Over the years, more projects consume Child A and Child B—what art lovers (and their parents) call the children—but it is not until the parents disappear from an interstate rest stop that the lines separating art and life dissolve. Though leavened with humor, the closing chapters still face hard truths about family relationships, which often leave us, like the grown-up Buster and Annie, wondering if we are constructing our own lives, or merely taking part in others.
Publishers Weekly
Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists who set up unsettling situations in public places. Their two children, Annie and Buster, have been trained from birth to participate in these events. As they mature the children realize that their lives are not exactly normal. Their attempts to break away from their parents are unsuccessful until their parents disappear. Is it a stunt or a tragic accident? Even Annie and Buster can't say for sure. Verdict: Wilson, who won the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for his story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, tells his madcap story with straight-faced aplomb, highlighting the tricky intersection of family life and artistic endeavor. All fiction readers will enjoy this comic/tragic look at domesticity. Recommended.—Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Kingston
Library Journal
The grown children of a couple infamous for their ostentatious performance art are forced to examine their own creativity and flaws in the shadow of their unusual upbringing.... A fantastic first novel that asks if the kids are alright, finding answers in the most unexpected places.
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 Family Fang:
1. Are these parents cruel...or clueless...or what? How would you describe them and their style of parenting? Do you find the two amusing?
2. What is "performance art"? Is it art? What, in general, do its creators attempt to reveal through their art form? Have you ever witnessed performance art?
3. Follow-up to Question # 2: Metaphrically speaking, what is the significance of Caleb and Camille as "performance artists" in terms of Wilson's overall theme? What does it suggest about parenting...or being a child...or being part of family...or about life in general? What are the broader strokes Wilson is painting here?
4. Talk about the consequences of Caleb and Camille's artistry—the ways in which their work affects Buster and Annie, both in the short-term, as children, and in the longer-term as young adults?
5. How might you have survived in the Fang Family?
6. What, to your mind, was the most bizarre—or perhaps the funniest—stunt the parents pulled off?
7. What is the significance of the family's name? Why would Wilson have chosen it—and why would he have inverted the family for his title (i.e., from the Fang Family to the Family Fang)?
8. When Buster and Annie return home, the parents congratulate the wo on their ability to subvert conventional ideas of violence and exploitation. Are the children to be congratulated? What do Buster or Annie think?
9. Follow-up to Question # 8: What do Buster and Annie come to understand about their parents and their upbringing? What makes them begin to question the things their parents once told them?
10. At some point in all of our lives, we come to see our parents, not as demi-gods, but as human beings. When did that occur to you...and what precipitated the insight? Does the new understanding of one's parents lead to (or come from) maturity or disillusionment...or both?
11. Is this book funny?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks)
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