Russian Winter;
Daphne Kalotay, 2010
HarperCollins
463 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061962165
Summary
A mysterious jewel holds the key to a life-changing secret, in this breathtaking tale of love and art, betrayal and redemption.
When she decides to auction her remarkable jewelry collection, Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi Ballet, believes she has finally drawn a curtain on her past. Instead, the former ballerina finds herself overwhelmed by memories of her homeland and of the events, both glorious and heartbreaking, that changed the course of her life half a century ago.
It was in Russia that she discovered the magic of the theater; that she fell in love with the poet Viktor Elsin; that she and her dearest companions—Gersh, a brilliant composer, and the exquisite Vera, Nina’s closest friend—became victims of Stalinist aggression. And it was in Russia that a terrible discovery incited a deadly act of betrayal—and an ingenious escape that led Nina to the West and eventually to Boston.
Nina has kept her secrets for half a lifetime. But two people will not let the past rest: Drew Brooks, an inquisitive young associate at a Boston auction house, and Grigori Solodin, a professor of Russian who believes that a unique set of jewels may hold the key to his own ambiguous past. Together these unlikely partners begin to unravel a mystery surrounding a love letter, a poem, and a necklace of unknown provenance, setting in motion a series of revelations that will have life-altering consequences for them all.
Interweaving past and present, Moscow and New England, the backstage tumult of the dance world and the transformative power of art, Daphne Kalotay’s luminous first novel—a literary page-turner of the highest order—captures the uncertainty and terror of individuals powerless to withstand the forces of history, while affirming that even in times of great strife, the human spirit reaches for beauty and grace, forgiveness and transcendence. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Vassar; Boston University, Ph.D
• Awards—Florence Randall Award; Henfield Founda-
tion's Transatlantic Review Award
• Currently—lives in Brookline, Massachusetts
Daphne Kalotay grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Vassar College before moving to Massachusetts, in 1993, to attend Boston University's Creative Writing Program. There her stories went on to win the school's Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize and a Transatlantic Review Award from The Henfield Foundation.
She remained at BU to complete a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Literature, writing her doctoral dissertation on the works of Mavis Gallant. (Her interviews with Mavis Gallant can be read in The Paris Review's Writers-At-Work series.)
Daphne has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the La Napoule Foundation, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and is a grateful recipient of the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts from Vassar College.
She has taught creative writing at Boston University, Middlebury College and Skidmore College and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her first novel, Russian Winter, published in 2010, was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] magnificent tale of love, loss, betrayal and redemption…Characters appear like an endless stacking nest of Matryoshka dolls, one more fascinating and intriguing than the next…The complex story is multi-layered and labyrinthine so that the reader, just like these characters, does not know whom to believe or distrust…Toward the end, with many unanswered questions swirling, the author lets the truth ebb and flow until a final riptide of revelations leaves the reader profoundly moved.
Eugenia Zuckerman - Washington Post
With sure and suspenseful artistry, Daphne Kalotay intersperses the unfortunate and tortuous histories of Nina, Elsin, and their artist friends with new discoveries and disclosures. The several stories draw together in a conclusion that is surprising, fitting, and satisfying.
Boston Globe
An exceptional debut novel.... Delving into Nina’s life with the Bolshoi Ballet, her life among the Soviet Union’s artist community and her escape from the Stalinist regime add glamour and historical flavor to this novel of secrets, intrigue and wonderfully described priceless gems.
USA Today
Kalotay makes a powerful debut with a novel about a Soviet-era prima ballerina, now retired and living in Boston, who confronts her past as she puts up for auction the jewelry she took with her when she left her husband and defected. Nina "The Butterfly" Revskaya, 79, reveals little about the past to curious auction house representative Drew Brooks as he peruses her cache of exquisite jewelry. Nina likewise rebuffs inquiries from foreign language professor Grigori Solodin, who has translated the works of Nina's poet husband and who offers an additional item for auction: the amber necklace he inherited from the parents he never knew. In extended flashbacks, Nina recalls intimate moments and misunderstandings with her husband, happy and disturbing times with his Jewish composer best friend, and encounters with her own childhood friend. Meanwhile, Drew and Grigori delve into the jewelry's provenance, hoping to learn as much about the jewels as their own pasts. While the Soviet-era romance can lean too much on melodrama, Kalotay turns out a mostly entrancing story thanks to a skillful depiction of artistic life behind the Iron Curtain and intriguing glimpses into auction house operations.
Publishers Weekly
Kalotay has created appealing, well-rounded characters in well-researched settings.... Although the book’s heft and jacket illustration suggest a tome, this is a briskly paced, fresh, and engaging first novel dealing with the pain of loss and the power of love. —Michael Leber
Booklist
A complex story that, in the end, boils down to the simplest of elements: love, fear, disappointment and loss. An auspicious first novel, elegantly written and without a false note.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How would you describe Nina Revskaya? What kind a person was she? Do you sympathize with the way events shaped the woman she became? And how would you compare her with Vera Borodina? What exactly was the nature of their friendship? What held them back from sharing their deepest secrets?
2. How does living in a repressive society like Stalin's Soviet Union affect human relationships? Can real trust ever be formed between friends, spouses, colleagues? What risks do people face in revealing their true nature?
3. Each piece of Nina's jewelry denotes a particular memory. Why do you think she waited so long to finally part with her jewels? Are there memories we have that are too painful to face, yet too dear to let go of? Do any of your possessions hold a special memory for you?
4. In your opinion, did Viktor Elsin truly love Nina? Did she love him? What about Gersh and Vera? What sacrifices were each willing to make for love?
5. After she defected, Nina believed she had shed the first third of her life. To what extent was this true? Can we ever truly rid ourselves of parts of our lives—or ourselves—that we don't like? What is the price of forgetting?
6. Nina cherished the solitude of her later years. "She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth of space and freedom, much of an entire day hers alone. Her early life of always sharing, never a private moment or corner or closet shelf of her own, had left her hungry for this." Was her solitude a release, or was it a fortress she used to keep others—and the past—away?
7. Was Nina a victim of the society in which she was raised—or a perpetrator of its worst abuses? Would her ambitions have eventually led her to behave the way her jealousy ultimately caused her to act? Was Nina's jealousy justified? Did Viktor, Gershstein, and Vera have a hand in their own demise? Are the choices Nina made forgivable?
8. Themes of art, politics, and love are intertwined throughout the novel. How do art and politics influence each other? Can art be a release from political oppression? In what ways can it be oppression's tool?
9. Can art flourish in a repressive state? How does repression influence the creation and expression of art? In a repressive state like the Soviet Union, must artistic success be accompanied by compromise? Compare the choices that Viktor, Nina, Gersh, and Vera made.
10. Were Gersh, Viktor and Vera radicals? What makes someone a dissident? Why do nations like the former Soviet Union insist on silencing all criticism?
11. What did art—the ballet—mean to Nina? Did she have to make a choice between dance and love? Could she have balanced both? What about women today? Have choices become easier or more difficult as opportunities for women have expanded?
12. Zoltan, also a refugee from the Iron Curtain, tells Grigori, "I remember before I left Hungary understanding completely that literature could save me as much as it could get me killed. Of course it's not like that here. But isn't it funny, that in some ways the price one pays for freedom of speech is...a kind of indifference." What does he mean by this? What do you think of his viewpoint? Must an artist suffer in some way to produce art?
13. After Nina defected to the West, she found she could not enjoy all of its freedoms. "Even when she tried to will it open, Nina's heart would not budge." Why couldn't she open herself up to new love and new friends? What held her back—habit, or guilt?
14. What do you think of Drew Brooks? Do you see similarities between her and Nina? What are your impressions of Grigori Solodin? How are he and Nina alike?
15. What did Drew and Grigori offer each other that others could not? Do you think their personalities and experiences made them more attuned to Nina's unconscious longings and regrets?
16. Why did Nina refuse to see Grigori on the occasions he tried to contact her? How were their assumptions about each other wrong?
17. On their third anniversary, Viktor tells Nina, "love is all we have." But for Nina, it is dance and love. And years later, Grigori's colleague and friend Zoltan remarks, "There are only two things that really matter in life. Literature and love." Can art change the world—change who we are? Can love? Has love or a passion transformed you or someone you know?
18. Have you ever met anyone who has lived under repressive circumstances? How did discovering their story affect you or your outlook?
19. Did Grigori ultimately have a better life—though it was fraught with uncertainty—because of Nina's selfishness? How might his experience have been different if he'd grown up in the Soviet Union rather than Europe and eventually America?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Cider House Rules
John Irving, 1985
Random House
640 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345417947
Summary
The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel.
Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch—saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist.
It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. (From the publisher.)
The 1999 film version stars Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron.
Author Bio
• Birth—March 2, 1942
• Where—Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
• Education—B.A., University of New Hampshire; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—American Book Award (Garp); Academy Award; Best Screenplay (Cider House)
• Currently—lives in Vermont
John Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim in 1978 after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. A number of of his novels, such as The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), and A Widow for One Year (1998), have been bestsellers. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1999 for his script The Cider House Rules.
Early years and career
Irving was born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. in Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of Helen Frances (nee Winslow) and John Wallace Blunt, Sr., a writer and executive recruiter. The couple parted during pregnancy, and Irving grew as the stepson of a Phillips Exeter Academy faculty member, Colin Franklin Newell Irving (as well as the nephew of another faculty member, H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell). Irving attended Phillips Exeter and participated in school wrestling program, both as a student athlete and as assistant coach. Wrestling features prominently in his books, stories, and life.
Irving's biological father, a World War II pilot, was shot down over Burma in 1943, although he survived. Irving learned of his father's heroism only in 1981 and incorporated the incident into The Cider House Rules. He never met has father, however, even though on occasion Blunt attended his son's wrestling competitions.
Irving's published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears (1968) when he was only 26. The book was reasonably well reviewed but failed to gain a large readership. In the late 1960s, he studied with Kurt Vonnegut at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. His second and third novels, The Water-Method Man (1972) and The 158-Pound Marriage (1974), were similarly received. In 1975, Irving accepted a position as assistant professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.
World According to Garp
Frustrated at the lack of promotion his novels were receiving from Random House, his first publisher, Irving moved to Dutton. Dutton made a strong commitment to his new novel—The World According to Garp (1978), and the book became an international bestseller and cultural phenomenon. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979 but won the award the following year when the paperback edition was issued.
The film version of Garp came out in 1982 with Robin Williams in the title role and Glenn Close as his mother; it garnered several Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Close and John Lithgow. Irving makes a brief cameo in the film as an official in one of Garp's high school wrestling matches.
After Garp
Garp transformed Irving from an obscure, academic literary writer to a household name, and his subsequent books were bestsellers. The next was The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), which sold well despite mixed reviews from critics. It, too, was adapted to film, starring Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, and Beau Bridges. Irving also received the 1981 O. Henry Award for "Interior Space," a short story published in Fiction magazine in 1980.
In 1985, Irving published The Cider House Rules. An epic set in a Maine orphanage, the novel's central topic is abortion. Many drew parallels between the novel and Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838). It took Irving nearly 10 years to develop the screenplay for Cider House, and the film—starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, and Charlize Theron—was released in 1998. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Irving an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In 1989, four years after publishing Cider House, Irving came out with A Prayer for Owen Meany, also set in a New England boarding school (and Toronto). The novel was influenced by Gunter Grass's 1959 The Tin Drum, and contains allusions to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and works of Dickens. Owen Meany was Irving's best selling book since Garp and, today, remains on many high school reading lists.
That book, too, was later adapted to film: the 1998 Simon Birch. Irving insisted that the title and character names be changed because the screenplay was "markedly different" from the novel. He is on record, however, as having enjoyed the film.
Other works
In addition to his novels, he has also published nonfiction: The Imaginary Girlfriend (1995), a short memoir focusing on writing and wrestling; Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1996), a collection of his writings, which includes a brief memoir and short stories; and My Movie Business (1999), an account of the protracted process of bringing The Cider House Rules to the big screen,
In 2004 he published a children's picture book, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, illustrated by Tatjana Hauptmann. It had originally been included in his 1998 novel A Widow for One Year.
Life
Since the publication of Garp, which made him independently wealthy, Irving has been able to concentrate solely on fiction writing as a vocation, sporadically accepting short-term teaching positions —including one at his alma mater, the Iowa Writers' Workshop—and serving as an assistant coach on his sons' high school wrestling teams. (Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992 as an "Outstanding American.")
Irving's four most highly regarded novels—The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and the 1998 A Widow for One Year—have been published in Modern Library editions. In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger.
On June 28, 2005, the New York Times published an article revealing that Until I Find You (2005) contains two elements about his personal life that he had never before discussed publicly: his sexual abuse at age 11 by an older woman, and the recent entrance in his life of his biological father's family.
Works
1968 - Setting Free the Bears
1972 - The Water-Method Man
1974 - The 158-Pound Marriage
1978 - The World According to Garp
1981 - The Hotel New Hampshire
1985 - The Cider House Rules
1989 - A Prayer for Owen Meany
1994 - A Son of the Circus
1995 - The Imaginary Girlfriend (non-fiction)
1996 - Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (collection)
1998 - A Widow for One Year
1999 - My Movie Business (non-fiction)
1999 - The Cider House Rules: A Screenplay
2001 - The Fourth Hand
2004 - A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound (Children's book)
2005 - Until I Find You
2009 - Last Night in Twisted River
2012 - In One Person
2015- Avenue of Mysteries
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/12/2015.)
Book Reviews
The point [of the novel] which is driven home with the sledgehammer effect that John Irving usually uses—is that there are always multiple sets of rules for a given society.... Actually, this is a sharper point than Mr. Irving has made in any of his previous five novels.... [Cider House Rules is] funny and absorbing, and it makes clever use of the plot's seeming predictability.
New York Times
An old-fashioned, big-hearted novel...with its epic yearning caught in the 19th century, somewhere between Trollope and Twain.... The rich detail makes for vintage Irving.
Boston Sunday Globe
The Cider House Rules is filled with people to love and to feel for.... The characters in John Irving's novel break all the rules, and yet they remain noble and free-spirited. Victims of tragedy, violence, and injustice, their lives seem more interesting and full of thought-provoking dilemmas than the lives of many real people.
Houston Post
John Irving's sixth and best novel.... He is among the very best storytellers at work today. At the base of Irving's own moral concerns is a rare and lasting regard for human kindness.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Entertaining and affecting . . . ...John Irving is the most relentlessly inventive writer around. He proliferates colorful incidents and crotchets of character.... A truly astounding amount of artistry and ingenuity."
San Diego Union
Discussion Questions
1. The rules posted on the cider house wall aren't read or understood by anyone living there except Mr. Rose, who makes—and breaks—his own set of rules. What point is John Irving making with the unread rules?
2. What rules, both written and unwritten, do other characters follow in the novel? Did most characters violate their own rules? Who stays the most true to his or her rules?
3. Dr. Larch makes the interesting statement that because women don't legally have the right to choose, Homer Wells does not have a moral claim in choosing not to perform abortions. Do you find Larch's argument compelling? Do you think Homer was ultimately convinced or that he needed an escape from Ocean View?
4. In order to set future events on what he believes to be the correct path, Larch alters the history of the orphanage to create a false heart murmur for Homer and changes various school transcripts to create Dr. Fuzzy Stone. What other doctoring of history does Larch do? Do you think Homer, as Dr. Fuzzy Stone, will continue the tradition?
5. St. Cloud's setting is grim, unadorned, and unhealthy, while Ocean View is healthy, wide open, and full of opportunities. In what ways do the settings of the orphanage and the orchards belie their effect on their residents? What did you make of Homer bringing the apple trees to St. Cloud's?
6. As you were reading, what did you expect Melony to do to Homer when she finally found him? Though Homer forgets about Melony for many years, do you think she had more of an impact on his future than Candy did?
7. Larch's introduction to sex comes through a prostitute and her daughter, and his introduction to abortion is given by thesame women. Sex with Melony, the picture of the pony, and abortions performed by Larch introduces Homer to the same issues, yet Homer doesn't maintain sexual abstinence as Larch does. Why do you think this is? Do you think Larch substitutes ether for sex?
8. Violence against women forms a thread throughout the novel; Melony fights off apple pickers, Grace receives constant beatings from her husband, and Rose Rose suffers incest. Does the author seem to be making a connection between violence and sex? How do the women's individual responses to violence reflect their personalities?
9. The issues of fatherhood are complex—as seen in Larch's relation-ship with Homer, and Homer's relationship with Angel—but being a good father or good parent is stressed throughout. According to the novel, what are some of the ingredients that make a good father? Is truthfulness one of them?
10. Candy's "wait and see" philosophy contrasts with Larch's constant tinkering with the future to suit his desires. Based on his personality, is Homer better suited to waiting or to working?
11. Herb Fowler's sabotaged condoms are one example of how people and rules in Ocean View are actually the opposite of what they seem. What other examples can you recall?
12. 12. Near the end, Homer's meeting with Melony is a turning point, spurring him to reveal the truth about Angel's parentage and to return to St. Cloud's, where he can be "of use." While reading, did you want to learn more about Melony's adventures during the intervening years or less? Which character do you think drove the novel's momentum?
13. If you saw the film adaptation of The Cider House Rules, discuss the aspects of the story that you think were stronger in the novel, and the portions of the film that were especially potent. What are your feelings about film adaptations of novels in general, and about the adaptation of this novel in particular?
14. What did you find to be particularly effective or well done in Irving's writing? If you've read other Irving novels, name some of the themes that he carries over from novel to novel.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Husband and Wife
Leah Stewart, 2011
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061774478
Summary
In this new novel by the celebrated author of The Myth of You and Me, a young mother discovers that her husband's novel about infidelity might be drawn from real life.
Sarah Price is thirty-five years old. She doesn't feel as though she's getting older, but there are some noticeable changes: a hangover after two beers, the stray gray hair, and, most of all, she's called “Mom” by two small children. Always responsible, Sarah traded her MFA for a steady job, which allows her husband, Nathan, to write fiction. But Sarah is happy and she believes Nathan is too, until a truth is revealed: Nathan's upcoming novel, Infidelity, is based in fact.
Suddenly Sarah's world is turned upside down. Adding to her confusion, Nathan abdicates responsibility for the fate of their relationship and of his novel's publication—a financial lifesaver they have been depending upon—leaving both in Sarah's hands. Reeling from his betrayal, she is plagued by dark questions. How well does she really know Nathan? And, more important, how well does she know herself?
For answers, Sarah looks back to her artistic twenty-something self to try to understand what happened to her dreams. When did it all seem to change? Pushed from her complacent plateau, Sarah begins to act—for the first time not so responsibly—on all the things she has let go of for so long: her blank computer screen; her best friend, Helen; the volumes of Proust on her bookshelf. And then there is that e-mail in her inbox: a note from Rajiv, a beautiful man from her past who once tempted her to stray. The struggle to find which version of herself is the essential one—artist, wife, or mother—takes Sarah hundreds of miles away from her marriage on a surprising journey.
Wise, funny, and sharply drawn, Leah Stewart's Husband and Wife probes our deepest relationships, the promises we make and break, and the consequences they hold for our lives, revealing that it's never too late to step back and start over perfect place to raise children: it has the proverbial good schools, solid values and a healthy real estate market. It’s the kind of place where parents are involved in their children’s lives–coaching sports. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, USA
• Raised—Virginia, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico (USA); England, UK
• Education—B.A., Vanderbilt University; M.F.A., University of
Michigan
• Awards—National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Cincinnati, Ohio
Leah Stewart was born in 1973 at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, where her father was stationed. As a child, she lived in Virginia, Idaho, England, Kansas, and Virginia again. She went to high school in Clovis, New Mexico, a town featured in her second novel, The Myth of You and Me. She always wanted to be a writer, as evidenced by her college application essay.
At Vanderbilt University Leah was the editor of the student newspaper, the Vanderbilt Hustler, and spent summers interning for the Tennessean in Nashville and the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. The latter experience inspired her first novel, Body of a Girl. After college, Leah went to the MFA program at the University of Michigan, and then moved to Boston, where she put her master’s degree to work by taking a job as a secretary for the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She had an office with a door, and she wrote most of her first novel there.
Since then, Leah has worked as a secretary at Duke, a cataloguer in a used bookstore, a magazine editor, a copyeditor, and a staff member at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She has been a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, Sewanee, and Murray State University. The recipient of a 2010 NEA Literature Fellowship, Leah teaches in the University of Cincinnati’s creative writing program, and lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Some confessions are better left unuttered, as Sarah Price learns in Stewart's (The Myth of You and Me) solid latest. When novelist Nathan Bennett confesses to his wife, Sarah, right before a friend's wedding that he slept with another woman (his novel is titled Infidelity), Sarah's concerns shift from whether the dress she plans to wear to the wedding makes her look fat to what she will do about her future and that of their two young children, Mattie and Binx. What follows is an unflinching look at what happens when one's identity is shattered, and “what-ifs” and past choices come back to haunt the present. Chief among these what-ifs: Rajiv, an old friend nursing a long-unrequited crush on Sarah, and Sarah's longing to be seen once again as a poet. Stewart's graceful prose and easy storytelling pull the reader into caring about what happens to the struggling heroine while exploring the many gray areas of life and marriage. The conclusion, while true to Sarah, is surprising but not unrealistic.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Stewart (The Myth of You and Me) creates a crisis of faith where adult reality collides with youthful dreams, “the people we were and the people…we always thought we should be.” The writing is tactile, elemental, even comical, providing readers with a situation that could so easily be their own. Highly recommended. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
Heartbreaking and darkly humorous.... [Stewart] is an acute social observer..
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the title—what does it mean to be a "husband and wife?" How do we reconcile our romantic ideals about marriage with the mundane realities of sorting socks, changing dirty diapers, cooking dinner?
2. Describe Sarah and Nathan's marriage. Is this husband and wife a good fit? How did marriage change them from when they first met? Does marriage have to transform us as individuals? How do we retain who we once were—and the promise of the dreams we once had—as the years pass? Should we even want to?
3. Infidelity is the catalyst for the events that unfold in Husband and Wife. How do you define infidelity? It is commonly accepted that having sex with another person beside your mate is cheating. But is harboring romantic feelings for someone other than your partner infidelity as well? How would you compare the two?
4. Why did Nathan cheat? Why did he confess? Was he right to tell Sarah about his infidelity? Are there some secrets partners should keep to themselves?
5. Talk about Sarah's reaction to Nathan's news. Are you sympathetic to her response? She, too, has a secret—one involving feelings for another man—that she has been keeping from her husband for years. What affect does this have on her marriage and the events that unfold? Did Nathan's behavior give her license to act as she did, or do you think she might have turned to Rajiv at some point even if Nathan never cheated?
6. After he confesses the affair, Nathan tells Sarah that their future—the marriage, the publication of his book—is hers to decide. Why did he give her this power? Should he have? Did she want this control?
7. At the beginning of the story, Sarah reveals a little about herself. "Now I'm thirty-five, and these days most people would call me a working mother, a term I don't much like. That I have a job and two small children is a better, if less succinct, way to put it." Having gotten to know her over the course of the novel, why does the term "working mother" bother her? Do you think it's an accurate description? What's the difference between being a working mother and having a job with children?
8. She also shares insights into the path her life has taken and its impact on her relationship. "When we met, I was a poet. When Nathan confessed, I was a mother, a business manager, a wife. I'm not saying I held this against him. I'm saying he held it against me." Do you agree with her assessment?
9. What is your opinion of Sarah? What kind of a wife and mother is she? Why did she stop writing? Does Sarah bear any responsibility for her husband's betrayal? Do we choose our roles—victim, cheater, responsible one, free spirit, artist, employee—or are they thrust upon us?
10. What is Sarah and Nathan's relationship with their elderly neighbors? When she learns they have been married for fifty-three years, Sarah wonders, "Was this a good thing? A bad thing? Just a fact?" How would you answer her? Should marriage last a lifetime?
11. What role do their best friends, Helen and Smith, play in the story? What about the couple they brought together, Alex and Adam? Their neighbors, the Dodsons? What do we learn about Sarah and Nathan through them?
12. Sarah ponders Americans' ambivalence and confusion about growing up. "We say that growing up is all about disappointment, even as we insist to our young that anything is possible. ‘Follow your dreams,' we say, and then we spend our free time making fun of the blinkered contestants on American Idol." Why do we associate adulthood and disappointment? What does it mean to "follow your dream" or to "do what you want"? Should we encourage ourselves to seek fulfillment if it may hurt others?
13. Sarah thinks of herself as a grown up. Is she? What does being an adult mean? How does aging—and the experiences that go with it—color our outlook on life? How do we cope when the realities of middle life don't match up with the dreams of our youth?
14. Husband and Wife also touches on the idea of happiness. What is happiness? Are we too focused as a society on the notion of happiness? Why? Are Sarah and Nathan happy? Were they before Nathan's confession? Is happiness possible after infidelity?
15. Why does Sarah go to Austin? What does Rajiv offer her that Nathan does not? Do you think Sarah treated Rajiv fairly? What about Nathan? Does he deserve fairness or consideration in light of what he's done?
16. What do you think of Nathan? Were you angry with him? Sympathetic? Did you understand his motivations? Do you believe he loves Sarah? Does Sarah love him? Why do we hurt the people we say we love? What are your impressions of Rajiv?
17. Does Sarah ultimately forgive Nathan's transgression—is she capable of forgiveness? How do you think Nathan would react if he knew of Sarah's own betrayal? Why doesn't she tell him? Do you think she may ever confess to him?
18. At the end of the novel, do you think Sarah made the right choice? Should she have left Nathan? Will their relationship last? What lessons did she ultimately learn about herself, her husband, and marriage itself? What did you learn? Do you think Husband and Wife an accurate portrayal of modern relationship?
(Questions by publisher.)
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Silk
Alessandro Baricco, 1997 (trans. by Ann Goldstein, 2007)
Random House
144 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307277978
Summary
This startling, sensual, hypnotically compelling novel tells a story of adventure, sexual enthrallment, and a love so powerful that it unhinges a man's life.
The year is 1861. Hervé Joncour is a French merchant of silkworms, who combs the known world for their gemlike eggs.
Then circumstances compel him to travel farther, beyond the edge of the known, to a country legendary for the quality of its silk and its hostility to foreigners: Japan.
There Joncour meets a woman. They do not touch; they do not even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But in the moment he does, Joncour is possessed. (From the publisher.)
The 2007 film of the same name stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightly.
Author Bio
• Birth—January 25, 1958
• Where—Turin, Italy
• Education—studied philosophy and piano
• Awards—Prix Medicis Etranger, 1995 (French literary prize
awarded to a non French author); Viareggio and Palazzo al
Bosco—both prestigious Italian literary awards.
• Currently—lives in Turin, Italy
Alessandro Baricco was born in Turin in 1958. He is the author of two previous novels, Castelli di rabbia, which won the Prix Médicis in France and the Selezione Campiello prize in Italy, and Ocean-Sea, which won the Viareggio and Palazzo del Bosco prizes. He has also written essays in the field of musicology. Silk became an immediate bestseller in Italy and has been translated into twenty-seven languages. (From Barnes & Noble.)
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Alessandro Baricco is a popular Italian writer, director, and performer, whose novels have been translated into a wide number of languages.
After receiving degrees in philosophy (under Gianni Vattimo) and piano, he published essays on music criticism: "Il genio in fuga" (1988) on Gioachino Rossini, and "L'anima di Hegel e le mucche del Wisconsin" ("Hegel's Soul and the Cows of Wisconsin", 1992) on the relation between music and modernity. He subsequently worked as musical critic for La Repubblica and La Stampa, and hosted talk shows on Rai Tre.
Baricco debuted as a novelist with Castelli di rabbia (translated as Lands of Glass) in 1991. In 1993 he co-founded a creative writing school in Turin, naming it Scuola Holden after J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield. The Scuola Holden hosts a variety of courses on narrative techniques including screenwriting, journalism, videogames, novels and short stories. In the following years his fame grew enormously throughout Europe, with his works topping the Italian and French best-seller lists. Larger recognition followed the adaptation of his theatrical monologue "Novecento" into the movie The Legend of 1900, directed by Academy Award-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore.
He has also worked with the French band Air, releasing "City Reading", a mix of the band's music with Baricco's reading of his novel City. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Silk has the brilliant colors...and the enchantment of a miniature.... Vividly erotic.
Newsday
A riveting, lyrical love story, an accomplished historical fiction, a compact, condensed...epic about human hearts in crisis.
Alan Cheuse - All Things Considered (National Public Radio)
A heart-breaking love story.... A stylistic tour de force [and] a literary gem of bewitching power.
The Sunday Times
A book with language to savor.... It seems as guileless as a folk tale but propels a reader with real force.
Denver Post
In 1861, after plague has destroyed the silkworms in the Middle East and Africa, French merchant Herve Joncour travels to Japan, a country of which little is known to the French, in search of healthier, better silk. Flouting a Japanese law against exporting silkworms, Joncour leaves his loving wife for what will be the first of many four-month journeys through Europe, Russia and Siberia to Japan, where he befriends a wealthy Japanese trader and falls in love with his beautiful young mistress. With each trip, Joncour's expectations of closer contact with the young woman escalate, as does the danger of his journey. Joncour finally receives a letter from the concubine, which he must take for translation to a Japanese woman living in a neighboring French village The letter encourages Joncour to travel to Japan one last time; what he finds there will change his life forever. Baricco, winner of the Prix Medicis and other awards for his two previous novels, uses the precise, formal language of the 19th-century realists to evoke exotic settings, vivid characters and historical details. Written in 65 spare chapters (some less than a page long, some evolving into verse), Barrico's fairy tale of East and West weaves a fine, tight fabric of recurrent phrases and motifs, a novel as delicate and strong as its subject.
Publishers Weekly
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 Silk:
1. Explore the underlying symbolism of the silkworms and metamorphosis—opening of the eggs, feeding, cocooning, and spinning 1,000 yards of thread.
2. The narrator describes Joncour as a man who witnesses his life rather than lives it. What is meant by that? How will that change during the story? Or will it?
3. Silk ponders the sorrow of finding love in far off places and the difficulty of keeping desire alive in marriage. Talk about how this conflict gets played out in the novella—and in our own lives.
4. The book explores the difference between imaginary life and life lived day-to-day. Which is more real to Joncour?
5. Why does Joncour build the garden? What compensation does it offer him? What might the garden suggest about the larger role of art in our lives?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
Geraldine Brooks, 2002
Knopf Doubleday
308 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142001431
Summary
When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.
As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."
Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.
Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing "an inspiring heroine" (Wall Street Journal), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 14, 1955
• Raised—Ashfield, New South Wales, Australia
• Education—B.A., Sydney University; M.A. Columbia University (USA)
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Virginia, USA
Geraldine Brooks s an Australian American journalist and author whose 2005 novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. While retaining her Australian passport, she became an United States citizen in 2002.
Early life
A native of Sydney, Geraldine Brooks grew up in its inner-west suburb of Ashfield, where she attended Bethlehem College, a secondary school for girls, and the University of Sydney.
Following graduation, she became a rookie reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and, after winning a Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholarship, moved to New York City in the United States, completing a Master's at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1983. The following year, she married American journalist Tony Horwitz in the Southern France village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup and converted to his religion, Judaism.
Career
As a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, she covered crises in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, with the stories from the Persian Gulf which she and her husband reported in 1990, receiving the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for "Best Newspaper or Wire Service Reporting from Abroad." In 2006, she was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Brooks's first book, Nine Parts of Desire (1994), based on her experiences among Muslim women in the Middle East, was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages. Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over (1997), which won the Nita Kibble Literary Award for women's writing, was a memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them.
Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, became an international bestseller. Set in 1666, the story depicts a young woman's battle to save fellow villagers as well as her own soul when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes her small Derbyshire village of Eyam.
Her next novel, March (2005), was inspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which her mother had given her. To connect that memorable reading experience to her new status in 2002 as an American citizen, she researched the Civil War historical setting of Little Women and decided to create a chronicle of wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls.
Some aspects of this chronicle were informed by the life and philosophical writings of the Alcott family patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott, whom she profiled under the title "Orpheus at the Plow", in the 10 January 2005 issue of The New Yorker, a month before March was published. The parallel novel was generally well received by the critics. It was selected in December 2005 selection by the Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published that year. In April 2006, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In her next novel, People of the Book (2008), Brooks explored a fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This novel was inspired by her reporting (for The New Yorker) of human interest stories emerging in the aftermath of the 1991–95 breakup of Yugoslavia. The novel won both the Australian Book of the Year Award and the Australian Literary Fiction Award in 2008.
Her 2011 novel Caleb's Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag convert to Christianity who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, an achievement of the seventeenth century.
Her next work, The Secret Chord (2015) is a historical novel based on the life of the biblical King David in the period of the Second Iron Age.
Awards
2006 - Pulitzer Prize for March
2008 - Australian Publishers Association's Fiction Book of the Year for People of the Book
2009 - Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
2010 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award
(From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/14/2015.)
Book Reviews
In 1666 the bubonic plague appeared in a small mountain village in England, where it took hold and spread.... The author has captured the various human responses to grief, fear, hopelessness, and exhaustion. Characters are well drawn, showing both the good and evil sides of human nature —Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence
Library Journal
Painstaking re-creation of 17th-century England, swallowed by over-the-top melodramatics: a wildly uneven first novel by an Australian-born journalist.... It's all more than a bit much: Thomas Hardy crossed with Erskine Caldwell, with more than a whiff of Jane Eyre.... In between the more hysterical moments, Brooks writes quite beautifully. But Year of Wonders was a mistake.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. All of the characters in this novel have their failings and as a result they are all fully human. Are you surprised by the secrets Elinor and Michael Mompellion each reveal to Anna about their marriage? How do they change your feelings about each character? Do they make either seem weaker in a way?
2. The Bradford family bears the brunt of Mompellion's rage when they leave town to save themselves. However, weren't they only doing what every other noble family did in those days: run because they had the means to run? Setting aside the events near the end of the novel (which make it clear that one would be hard-pressed to find a redeeming quality in any of them), can you really blame the Bradfords for running?
3. How much of Mompellion's push for the quarantine had to do with the secrets he shared with Elinor? Did his own dark side and self-loathing push him to sacrifice the town or was he really acting out of everyone's best interests?
4, Keeping in mind that this story takes place a good twenty-five years before the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, what is the role of the Gowdie women in the novel? What is it about these women that drives their neighbors to murderous rage? How does their nonconformity lead to their becoming scapegoats?
5. How would you explain Anna's mental and spiritual unraveling? What are the pivotal experiences leading up to her breakdown and her eventual rebirth?
6. Discuss the feminist undertones of the story. How does each female character—Anna, Elinor, the Gowdies, and even Anna's stepmother—exhibit strengths that the male characters do not?
7. In a story where the outcome is already known from the very beginning—most of the villagers will die—discuss the ways in which the author manages to create suspense.
8. The author creates an incredible sense of time and place with richly textured language and thoughtful details—of both the ordinary (everyday life in Eyam) and the extraordinary (the gruesome deaths of the villagers). Discuss some of the most vivid images and their importance to the story and to your own experience reading it.
9. Can we relate the story of this town's extraordinary sacrifice to our own time? Is it unrealistic to expect a village facing a similar threat to make the same decision nowadays? What lessons might we learn from the villagers of Eyam?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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