Hag-Seed (Hogarth Shakespeare Series)
Margaret Atwood, 2016
Crown/Archetype
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804141291
Summary
William Shakespeare's The Tempest retold as Hag-Seed
Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds.
Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge.
After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?
Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 18, 1939
• Where—Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto; M.A. Radcliffe; Ph.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Governor General's Award; Booker Prize; Giller Award
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history.
She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice. She is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.
Early life
Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Atwood is the second of three children of Margaret Dorothy (nee Killam), a former dietitian and nutritionist, and Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist. Due to her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and traveling back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was in grade 8. She became a voracious reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957.
Atwood began writing at the age of six and realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary journal. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) and a minor in philosophy and French.
In late 1961, after winning the E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University for two years but did not finish her dissertation, "The English Metaphysical Romance." She has taught at the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967–68), the University of Alberta (1969–70), York University in Toronto (1971–72), the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (1985), where she was visiting M.F.A. Chair, and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English.
Personal life
In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk; they were divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship with fellow novelist Graeme Gibson soon after and moved to a farm near Alliston, Ontario, north of Toronto, where their daughter was born in 1976. The family returned to Toronto in 1980.
Other genres
While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen books of poetry. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.
Atwood has also produced several children's books, including Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995) and Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes (2003)—delicious alliterative delights that introduce a wealth of new vocabulary to young readers
Speculative fiction vs. sci-fic
The Handmaid's Tale received the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. The award is given for the best science fiction novel that was first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, and the 1987 Prometheus Award, both science fiction awards.
Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to the UK's Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." She told the Book of the Month Club: "Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians."
She clarified her meaning on the difference between speculative and science fiction, admitting that others use the terms interchangeably: "For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... [S]peculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth." She said that science fiction narratives give a writer the ability to explore themes in ways that realistic fiction cannot.
Environmentalism
Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being left-wing, she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a Red Tory in the historical sense of the term. Atwood, along with her partner Graeme Gibson, is a member of the Green Party of Canada (GPC) and has strong views on environmental issues. She and Gibson are the joint honorary presidents of the Rare Bird Club within BirdLife International. She has been chair of the Writers' Union of Canada and president of PEN Canada, and is currently a vice president of PEN International. In a Globe and Mail editorial, she urged Canadians to vote for any other party to stop a Conservative majority.
During the debate in 1987 over a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, Atwood spoke out against the deal, and wrote an essay opposing the agreement.
Atwood celebrated her 70th birthday at a gala dinner at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, marking the final stop of her international tour to promote The Year of the Flood. She stated that she had chosen to attend the event because the city has been home to one of Canada's most ambitious environmental reclamation programs: "When people ask if there's hope (for the environment), I say, if Sudbury can do it, so can you. Having been a symbol of desolation, it's become a symbol of hope." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2013.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Atwood’s canny remix offers multiple pleasures: seeing the inmates’ takes on their characters, watching Felix make use of the limited resources the prison affords..., and marveling at the ways she changes, updates, and parallels the play’s magic, grief, vengeance, and showmanship.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Among the offerings so far in the "Hogarth Shakespeare" series, modern retellings of the plays, Atwood's is distinctive for integrating a juicily conceived rehearsal and performance of the work in question, The Tempest.... [I]nventive, heartfelt.... Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
[D]espite [a] clever construction and a few genuinely moving moments...the bulk of the novel can feel like...a high school English class. The inmate-actors seem more like puppets than people;...this novel rarely pulls off true theater’s magic of transforming glitter confetti into fairy dust.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Hag-Seed...then take off on your own:
1. First things first: read the Bard's original play, The Tempest, so you can identify the numerous parallels that Margaret Atwood builds into her homage.
2. In the original Tempest, Prospero was a magician, and a stage impresario of sorts: he "directs" a storm to strand his rivals on the island. He also stages artifice by arranging a play within a play and manipulating Ferdinand to fall in love with Miranda. In Atwood's version, how does Felix parallel the "role" of Prospero? How is he, as an impresario, similar to Prospero? How does he differ?
3. What is the root cause of Felix's almost maniacal revenge?
4. How do Felix and his inmate-actors work together to shap the play and further Felix's plot? Talk about the way in which the director and cast make use of the scant resources offered by the prison.
5. Critics have long referred to The Tempest as "self-referential," that within the play Shakespeare sometimes winks at the audience. He revels in the power of the playwright and actors to create a false reality that reflects and enlarges the true reality of his audience. In what way is Hag-Seed self-referential?
6. What do you think of the ending? Some find it a little too neat and others over-the-top. What do yo think?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Vanishing Year
Kate Moretti, 2016
Atria Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501118432
Summary
Zoe Whittaker is living a charmed life.
She is the beautiful young wife to handsome, charming Wall Street tycoon Henry Whittaker. She is a member of Manhattan’s social elite. She is on the board of one of the city’s most prestigious philanthropic organizations. She has a perfect Tribeca penthouse in the city and a gorgeous lake house in the country. The finest wine, the most up-to-date fashion, and the most luxurious vacations are all at her fingertips.
What no one knows is that five years ago, Zoe’s life was in danger. Back then, Zoe wasn’t Zoe at all. Now her secrets are coming back to haunt her.
As the past and present collide, Zoe must decide who she can trust before she—whoever she is—vanishes completely.
A "dark, twisty, edge-of-your-seat suspense" (Karen Robards), The Vanishing Year is told from the point-of-view of a heroine who is as relatable as she is enigmatic, The Vanishing Year is an unforgettable new novel by a rising star of the genre. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978
• Raised—Easton, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Shippensburg University
• Currently—lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Kate McInerney Moretti is an American author. She was raised in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, graduating from Easton Area High School in 1996 and from Shippensburg University, where she received her B.A.
Writing, which started out as a hobby, eventually morphed into a passion for Moretti. A mother of two, she worked for 10 years as a scientist at a pharmaceutical company near Philadelphia—yet she somehow managed to find time to write.
Her first book, I Thought I Knew You came out in 2012 and was a surprise hit, racking up enough reviews and sales to push it onto the bestseller charts. Moretti's second book, Binds that Tie, was released in 2014; her third, While You Were Gone, came out in 2015. All three books were issued digitally by an independent online publisher, Red Adept.
Her 2016 book, however, represented a major transition for Moretti—a move nearly every indie author dreams about. The Vanishing Year was picked up Simon & Schuster, a major New York publishing house. The book, a fast-paced thriller, became an instant bestseller.
Moretti and her husband, Chip, live in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with their two daughters. (Adapted from, among other sources, Lehigh Valley Live.)
Book Reviews
This psychological thriller evolves into sheer terror…the outcome will amaze readers.
Romance Times
Readers will wonder who is good, evil, or simply the victim of misguided thinking as they devour bestselling author Kate Moretti’s latest book, full of expertly placed screens and revelations.
BookPage
Some of the most suspenseful writing in the genre…adroitly written.
Crime Time Magazine
Zoe’s blend of disloyalty to friends...renders her unsympathetic at times. An implausible plot and chronological inconsistencies may also trouble some readers, but Moretti maintains a fast pace and creates a chillingly satisfying villain.
Publishers Weekly
Readers will wonder who is good, evil, or simply the victim of misguided thinking as they devour bestselling author Kate Moretti’s latest book, full of expertly placed screens and revelations.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] shocking mystery that will keep readers turning the pages. Parts of the ending may seem a little too coincidental, but the conclusion is explosive and satisfying enough that it doesn’t really matter. Great pacing and true surprises...[with] complex female characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena, 2016
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735221086
Summary
It all started at a dinner party. . .
A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors—a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora.
But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.
Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.
What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family—a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Before turning to writing fiction, Shari Lapena worked as a lawyer and as an English teacher. She has written two award-winning literary comedies: Things Go Flying (2008) and Economic Happiness (2011). Tired of comedy, she decided to try her hand at writing a thriller, and in 2016 she published The Couple Next Door. The book became an immediate bestseller. Lapena lives in Toronto, Canada. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The tale of a child stolen from its cot is full of suspense but promises more than it delivers.... [T]he set-up is fantastic – it’s just when Lapena has to deliver on the answers that the novel starts to slip. Without giving anything away, the big reveal feels like a bit of a letdown. Although I continued at a breakneck pace to the end, keen to see if Lapena would recover the tension she’d built up so well, it never quite recovered.
Alison Flood - Guardian (UK)
The twists come as fast [as] you can turn the pages.
People
[S]uspenseful, heart-wrenching.... Could the couple be covering up a kidnapping? Rasbach and Jennings suspect that they’re withholding something.... After numerous twists and turns, just when everything appears to be resolved, Lapena delivers one final, deftly crafted surprise.
Publishers Weekly
Brisk prose style and character development are almost beside the point in Lapena’s suspense-fiction debut; this is a plot-driven page-turner, and even the most character-focused readers will find it hard to put down.
Booklist
[A] paint-by-numbers police investigation, led by the personality-free Detective Rasbach, who seems to cycle through potential theories...the same way Lapena must have in her early plotting stages, except it all ended up on the page. When it's clear, or at least partially clear, what happened...any remaining tension hisses out like a pricked balloon.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Imagine yourself in Anne’s position—would you have left your infant at home while going next door for dinner? Do you believe Anne is a good mother? How do you define that?
2. Why does Anne stay with Marco, even after everything she’s learned? Would you? Is it possible to build trust again after that type of betrayal?
3. Marco and Richard hate each other. How would each describe the other? Thinking about the way the story ends, how accurate are their opinions?
4. Rasbach says "It’s much easier to make money if you don’t care who you hurt. If you have scruples, it’s much harder to get rich" (p.284). Do you agree?
5. The press hound Anne and Marco, camping outside their door and assaulting them with questions. Do you think these kinds of media circuses are justified in the name of "news"?
6. At one point, Anne thinks that she killed her own child. Why? Do you believe she’s capable of that?
7. What was your reaction to the last line of the novel? What did Anne do? What will happen next for Anne and Marco?
8. What is the title of the novel meant to suggest?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
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Michael Chabon, 2016
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062225559
Summary
A novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us.
In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother's home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather.
Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon's grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon.
Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather."
It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies.
It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination.
From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York's Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the "American Century," the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week.
A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive. (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
[C]harming and elegantly structured novel.... [Parts] sometimes feel forced. What seduces the reader is Chabon’s language, which reinvents the world, joyously, on almost every page.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.)Luminous.... The story builds to core revelations of wartime horror and postwar heartbreak as powerful as they come.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) His most beautifully realized novel to date .... a masterful and resounding novel of the dark and blazing forces that forged our tumultuous, confounding, and precious world.
Booklist
Chabon is an inveterate overwriter who dilutes his best storytelling with...ponderous digressions.... He’s captured a fine story about the poignancy of two souls’ survival but...[in the end] a heartfelt but sodden family saga.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Fortunes
Peter Ho Davies, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544263703
Summary
Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and reimagines the multigenerational novel through the fractures of immigrant family experience.
Inhabiting four lives—a railroad baron’s valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption—this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive—as much through love as blood.
Building fact into fiction, spinning fiction around fact, Davies uses each of these stories—three inspired by real historical characters—to examine the process of becoming not only Chinese American, but American.(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 30, 1966
• Where—Coventry, England, UK
• Education—B.A. Cambridge University; M.A. Boston University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Peter Ho Davies is an author and professor of creative writing. He was born in Coventry, England, to a Welsh father and Chinese mother. He has lived more than half his life in the United States. He is perhaps best known for his novels, The Welsh Girl (2007) and The Fortunes (2016), although his two earlier collections of short fiction are highly regarded.
Davies started out studying physics at Manchester University but later switched to English at Cambridge University. In 1992 he moved to the US to study in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University, where he received his M.A. Since then he has taught at the University of Oregon, Emory University, and is currently a Professor in the graduate program for Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Works and awards
His debut collection, The Ugliest House in the World (1997), won the John Llewellyn Rhys and PEN/Macmillan awards in Britain. His second collection, Equal Love (2000), was hailed by the New York Times Book Review for its “stories as deep and clear as myth.” The collection was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Notable Book.
Davies is also a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is a winner of the PEN/Malamud Award.
In 2003 Davies was named among the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta. The Welsh Girl, his first novel, was published in 2007 and his second, The Fortunes, in 2016. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)
Book Reviews
Emily Dickinson’s dictum, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” the opening epigraph in The Fortunes, could easily serve as its title. The characters in this astute, beautifully written, and often funny novel are searching for truth—of who they are and where they belong. But truth comes at them sideways, never straight on. The novel is actually four novellas, linked only by the fact that the main characters are Chinese or Chinese-Americans living in the U.S. Each section is set in a different era, which together span some 150 years, beginning with construction of the transcontinental railroad and ending in the present time. READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
[A] rewarding, unorthodox novel.
Wall Street Journal
Vividly detailed novellas whose rich language and engaging characters not only bring history alive but also address contemporary issues of race and belonging with heartache, fire and empathy.... The Fortunes is an important novel that attempts to give voice to Chinese-American characters who have been silenced in the past. Ho Davies' perspective is a welcome addition in the ongoing discussion of race in American society.
Dallas Morning News
The book is more than the sum of its parts, and Davies (the son of Welsh and Chinese parents) achieves an extraordinary novelistic intimacy against backdrops of historical vibrancy. Moreover, he considers what it means to be identified with, but not now belong to, an ancestral culture one can’t escape or fully embrace—in an immigrant society that promises but doesn’t deliver full racial inclusion.
Seattle Times
Davies writes with a rare emotional resonance and a deft sense of structure; it's hard not to be in awe of the way he's composed this complex, beautiful novel. The Fortunes is a stunning look at what it means to be Chinese, what it means to be American, and what it means to be a person navigating the strands of identity, the things that made us who we are, whoever that is.
NPR
Davies distills 150 years of Chinese-American history in his timely and eloquent new novel. In Gold, the first of its four sections, Ah Ling, 14, the son of a Hong Kong prostitute, seeks his fortune in California. He works as valet to Charles Crocker, who hires thousands of Chinese to expand his transcontinental railroad. Silver portrays the 30-year career of the LA-born actress Anna May Wong, who co-stars with Douglas Fairbanks at 19. Davies also writes of Vincent Chin, beaten to death in Detroit in 1982 by two auto workers who mistake him for Japanese, and of a half-Chinese writer visiting China to adopt a baby daughter, thinking of how to prepare her to answer the question he’s heard all his life: where are you from?
BBC.com
Davies, a master storyteller, blends fact with fiction in this saga of immigration, acclimation, and Chinese culture, which he tells through the experiences of Chinese-Americans at different points in history.
Entertainment Weekly
The Fortunes crafts four tales that speak of the broader history of Chinese immigrants in the United States, from the hardworking valet who serves a white railroad mogul to Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star. Through these elegant, deeply embodied stories, Davies portrays the uneasy relationship between these people and their new country.
Elle
The Fortunes is the kind of book that raises far more questions than it resolves. Not only does it present a vast swathe of often-ignored history, in deftly fictionalized form, it’s an empathetic book, not just to its protagonists but to its secondary and tertiary characters and even, often, to its villains. It questions motivations, feelings, intentions, rarely certain despite the author’s fictional imperative. Sometimes I found myself wondering―why is Vincent Chin’s friend curious at all about the kind of father-stepson relationship Chin’s killers had? Why should I care? But The Fortunes isn’t out to convince you that you should care about that, or anything in particular. Instead, it’s doing what a great novel should do: revealing what there is to care about and to think about. Even better, it’s revealing those questions about a slice of history that America needs to be dealing with. The Bottom Line: In a thought-provoking, sharply written, four-part novelistic chronicle of Chinese-American life, The Fortunes proves uneven at times but the powerful prose and themes shine through.
Huffington Post
(Starred review.) The book’s scope is impressive, but what’s even more staggering is the utter intimacy and honesty of each character’s introspection. More extraordinary still is the depth and the texture created by the juxtaposition of different eras.... Davies has created a brilliant, absorbing masterpiece.
Publishers Weekly
The absence of a contiguous story line may initially alarm, but patient readers will discover how cleverly Davies interweaves fact and fiction to pull the novel together and show how far Chinese Americans have progressed—and how great the journey ahead is. A thought-provoking literary work. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Intertwining fact with fictional license and creative finesse, Davies charts the conflicted, complicated journey of being a minority American through multiple generations. Rich rewards await readers searching for superbly illuminating historical fiction; think Geraldine Brooks’ Caleb’sCrossing (2011) or Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.
Booklist
With the whole country talking about identity politics, racism, and cultural awareness, Peter Ho Davies’ provocative new novel could not be more timely... The scope and research of The Fortunes is impressive, but what makes the novel memorable is the honesty of each narrative voice.... A masterful, perceptive and very modern look at identity, migration and the intertwined histories of the United Stated and China
BookPage
A four-part suite of astute, lyrical, and often poignant stories poses incisive questions about what changes—and what does not—when people from another culture become Americans.... Davies' nuanced contemplation of how America has affected the Chinese (and vice versa) forces the reader to confront...cross-cultural transactions.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Fortunes...then take off on your own:
Gold
1. What does the oft repeated phrase "to see the elephant" mean? How is it used by the various characters? What is the elephant—as a metaphor, what does it represent?
2. SPOILER ALERT: why does Ling decide to quit his comfortable position with Charles Crocker in order to join the railroad workers?
3. Why does he choose to work as a bone collector? What satisfactions does it provide him?
4. How does he finally come to see himself and his place in America?
Silver
5. What are the many indignities Anna Mae Wong faces as the first Asian-American actress in Hollywood?
6. Follow-up to Questions 5: How does Anna Mae respond to the rejections, even from her own father?
7. Describe her feelings when she visits China. Does she find peace, a sense of belonging, or more exclusion and an even greater sense of alienation?
8. How does Anna Mae finally come to see herself and her place in America?
Jade
9. In what ways does the narrator of this section cast doubt on the events of Vincent Chin's murder? What difference does the uncertainty make, if any, in the final out come?
10. Follow-up to Question 9: When listening to members of the America Citizens for Justice refer to Vince's murder, the narrator thinks:
"[A] brutal slaying" wasn't the way you'd talk about it if you were there. That wasn't how I remembered it (p. 190).
What does he mean? Why was his remembrance of the beating different from their imagining? How reliable or faulty is memory? Are we, the reader, to doubt the version of the events that were made public?
11. The narrator questions himself continually: "Vincent was my friend. So how could I leave him?" How blameworthy is he, how at fault? What do you think most of us would do in the same situation? Do you have any idea how you might react?
12. At the end of this story, the narrator visits a strip club. He asks the stripper whether she is Chinese or Japanese (why does he ask her that?), and she retorts, "All-American, Baby. We're all American here." His final thoughts are:
It felt like something to cover ourselves in, that word, its warm anonymity. And I nodded, sank back on my stool, bought her that drink (p. 204).
What does his observation suggest? What emotional response is he expressing? Has he come to some resolution? If so, what?
Pearl
13. It is now the 21st Century. In what way does John feel marginalized by his Chinese heritage: "Growing up he felt burdened." Once he arrives in China, how does he feel?
14. How do the three previous stories come together with John's story in China?
15. Why do John and his wife decide to accept the baby offered them as a replacement for the baby who died? What was going through their minds? What might you have done?
16. In a final reflection on the way home, while thinking of the famous Terra Cotta army figures and the laborers who built them, John wonders,
What else can we represent if not ourselves, however uncertain or contradictory those selves might be. After all, aren't those very contradictions and uncertainties what makes us ourselves (p. 264)
Discuss that statement. Is he correct? Are most of us, especially perhaps immigrants, made of contradictions? How would that belief help John and his new daughter navigate life in America?
General
17. Which story of the four do you find most absorbing and why?
18. Consider the frequent jokes the characters tell, usually directed at themselves. How did you respond when first reading them? Did you laugh? Were you put off? Angered? Why do you think the characters tell such disparaging jokes at their own expense?
19. To what extent is America, hopefully, a more welcoming place than it was when the first two stories took place? Consider, also, that the (very real) events of the third section took place only three decades ago. Also consider the references in two of the stories about Asians taking jobs from Americans. Isn't that issue with us today?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)