Sisters & Husbands
Connie Briscoe, 2009
Grand Central Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446534895
Summary
Ten years have passed since Sisters and Lovers, and Beverly, now 39, is engaged to Julian, a man her family and friends agree is the epitome of a great catch: he's gorgeous, loyal, trustworthy, successful, and very much in love with her. Since this is Beverly's third engagement in the past five years, after breaking off the previous two at the last moment, everyone's happy that she's finally settling down.
For Beverly and Julian, nothing could be better than being in love and planning their wedding. That is until Beverly's oldest sister's marriage falls apart and dampens the mood of what should have been the happiest time in Beverly's life. Now, second-guessing her impending nuptials, Beverly is forced to wonder if marriage really works.
Will she stick it out? Or will her fears cloud her judgment once again? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 31, 1952
• Where—Washington, DC, USA
• Education—B.A. Hampton University; M.A., American
University
• Currently—lives in Maryland, USA
Connie Briscoe has been a full-time published author for more than ten years. Born with a hearing impairment, Connie never allowed that to stop her from pursuing her dreams—writing. Since she left the world of editing to become a writer, Connie has hit the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. (From the publisher.)
More
Her own words:
When I wrote Sisters and Lovers, the prequel to Sisters and Husbands, I had recently entered my 40s. I was single after a divorce many years earlier, and most of my girlfriends were also single. I remember thinking how different life was for me and many of my girlfriends than it had been for my parents' generation. Back then, most women were married with children in college by age 40. Yet, women in my generation were less inclined to even marry before reaching their 30s. Many of us, whether single by choice or chance, had to learn to accept living much of our lives without a permanent mate. That's how Beverly was born. When Sisters and Lovers opens, she's 39, still single and struggling with her situation.
Flash forward. In Sisters and Husbands it's 10 years later and Beverly is engaged to be married. After a string of lovers, she's about to take a husband, or so it seems. By this time, though, Beverly has learned to accept life as a single woman and even to embrace it. She questions the necessity of marriage, especially since she's nearly past childbearing age. Plus, over the years she's seen the marriages of her sisters and girlfriends all fall apart, whether married 2 years or 20. Beverly's fiancé is the man of her dreams, but she's not convinced they need to marry. When Sisters and Husbands opens, she's got cold feet.
I went through a similar phase. I first got married in my twenties. It lasted less than a year. He wasn't the right man for me, and I got out. I couldn't understand how I could have been so mistaken about a man, and the experience soured me on marriage for years. But I've always liked the idea of marriage—companionship for life, a sex partner for life, raising children and growing old together. My parents had that. So 15 years later I decided to give marriage another try, and my husband and I are going on 10 years of marriage now.
With age, wisdom and experience maybe you can succeed where before you failed. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Sisters & Lovers [sold] 750,000 copies. [Now comes] the long-awaited sequel, Sisters & Husbands, with high hopes it will become a fixture in beach bags this summer. It's not all happily ever after for Briscoe's three fictional sisters, who live and love and bicker in the affluent, integrated suburbs of Washington, D.C., terrain the Washington native knows firsthand. There is Beverly, a journalist and serial runaway bride; unlucky-in-love Charmaine; and the seemingly perfect Evelyn, a married psychologist. In Husbands, the trio copes with cares and woes more commonly found on Wisteria Lane than in the housing projects of The Wire. Lawyer-husbands having midlife crises. Sassy spoiled stepdaughters. Ticking biological clocks. Sibling rivalry over $500 Prada handbags. The big theme in Sisters & Husbands is marriage, or "how do you keep it alive and fresh?"
USA Today
What I appreciated most about the book was the practicality of the issues at hand. Briscoe considers real-life situations, like blended families, mid-life crisis, and the pre-wedding jitters that many people experience prior to their first marriage. Nothing seems far-fetched or unrealistic. Nonetheless, I did find the characters to be kind of on the mawkish side. Sometimes their emotional reactions to situations made them seem silly, almost corny and difficult to believe. However, the page-turning drama and the situations in the novel make this an easy, fun read. I did find myself pondering the idea and the institution of marriage. Buried in the drama and the sex and the fighting and the emotions of this novel are several questions: Are all people capable of cheating? Is being in love enough? What makes a marriage last? Although Briscoe doesn't exactly provide the answers to these questions, she certainly provides an interesting springboard for discussion in Sisters and Husbands, which is sure to be a summertime hit.
Alysa Hyman - African American Literature Book Club (aalbc.com)
Discussion Questions
1. For those who have read Sisters & Lovers, how have Beverly, Charmaine, and Evelyn grown or changed over the past ten years?
2. Which of the three sisters has grown the most? Which has grown the least?
3. Did Beverly make the right decision about whether or not to marry Julian? If so, why? If not, why not?
4. Do too many American women have unrealistic expectations of marriage? Do they expect marriage to be a perfect life, or like a fairy tale?
5. What are Beverly’s greatest strengths and weaknesses?
6. What are Charmaine’s greatest strengths and weaknesses?
7. What are Evelyn’s greatest strengths and weaknesses?
8. Which sister is your favorite and why?
9. Which sister is you least favorite and why?
10. Was Charmaine right to go to bat for her son Kenny, even at the risk of destroying her marriage?
11. Do you think that Beverly and Julian will last?
12. Do you think that Charmaine and Tyrone will last?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Roses
Leila Meacham, 2010
Grand Central Publishing
609 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446550000
Summary
Spanning the 20th century, the story of Roses takes place in a small East Texas town against the backdrop of the powerful timber and cotton industries, industries controlled by the scions of the town's founding families.
Cotton tycoon Mary Toliver and timber magnate Percy Warwick should have married but unwisely did not, and now must deal with the deceit, secrets, and tragedies of their choice and the loss of what might have been—not just for themselves but for their children, and children's children.
With expert, unabashed, big-canvas storytelling, Roses covers a hundred years, three generations of Texans and the explosive combination of passion for work and longing for love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1938 or 1939
• Where—Minden, Louisiana, USA
• Raised—Texas
• Education—B.A., North Texas State University
• Currently—lives in San Antonio, Texas
Beginning in the 1960s, Ms. Meacham taught English to high school students in a handful of cities in Texas. She published three romance novels in the mid-1980s with Walker & Company, but she mostly found the process burdensome. “I didn’t like the isolation,” she said. “I didn’t like the discipline required. I didn’t like the deadlines. So I put away my pen. The romance novel was not my calling.”
Ms. Meacham was a decade into her retirement, growing increasingly bored...when she returned to Roses, a manuscript that she had started in the 1980s. When she completed the novel, one of her friends made a call to a niece, who just happened to be married to David McCormick, a literary agent in New York. Mr. McCormick agreed to take on the book and later sold it to Grand Central, which published it in January 2010. Reviewers compared it to those door-stopper-size, soap operatic novels by the likes of Belva Plain and Barbara Taylor Bradford that were popular in the late 1970s and ‘80s. [She is currently working a a sequel to Roses.]....
Tumbleweeds [2012], which takes place between 1979 and 2008, begins in a small West Texas town and revolves around two star high school football players who fall for the same girl. Yet other than the contemporary setting, it is very much of a piece with Roses, with twists piled atop twists, and well-intentioned characters who seem to make a wreck of things. (Adapted from the New York Times "Texas Weekly.")
Critics Say . . .
This enthralling stunner, a good old-fashioned read, may herald the overdue return of those delicious doorstop epics from such writers as Barbara Taylor Bradford and Colleen McCullough. Meacham's multigenerational family saga, set in East Texas circa 1914–1985, charts the transformation of Mary Toliver, a wide-eyed 16-year-old heiress, into a calculating cotton plantation queen as hardheaded as Scarlett O'Hara. Her brother, Miles, goes off to WWI, returns home, but then goes back to France to marry Marietta, a French Communist, leaving Mary to deal with their plantation, Somerset, and Darla, their alcoholic mother (who later hangs herself ). Many years later, Mary, now an elderly, terminally ill widow, resolves to defeat the “Toliver Curse” and regrets “selling her soul for Somerset” and giving up her true love, Percy Warwick, the father of their secret child, to marry their friend Ollie DuMont, who helped her save Somerset when Percy refused. Meacham uses three well-balanced viewpoints: Mary's, Percy's and Rachel's, Mary's great-niece, who must confront Percy when she discovers some disquieting family information after Mary dies. A refreshingly nostalgic bouquet of family angst, undying love and “if onlys.”
Publishers Weekly
It's been almost 30 years since the heyday of giant epics in the grand tradition of Edna Ferber and Barbara Taylor Bradford, but Meacham's debut might bring them back. This story of two founding families in a small East Texas town spans the 20th century. When Mary Toliver inherits her family's cotton plantation, Somerset, in 1916, it tears apart her family; her mother turns to alcohol, and her brother leaves. Mary's obsession with Somerset even causes her to lose the love of her life, timber magnate Percy Warwick. By the time she's 85, Mary is determined that the family curse will not continue and, despite her grandniece's love of Somerset, plans for the plantation to be sold after her death. Mary Toliver and Percy Warwick can't share anything more than friendship, but Mary's actions might allow Rachel to see past Somerset to the man who loves her. Verdict: Readers who like an old-fashioned saga will devour this sprawling novel of passion and revenge. Highly recommended. —Lesa Holstine, Glendale P.L., AZ
Library Journal
First-time novelist Meacham’s sweeping, century-encompassing, multigenerational epic is reminiscent of the film Giant, and as large, romantic, and American a tale as Texas itself. —Hilary Hatton
Booklist
The Wars of the Roses relocate to America as a struggle between the Toliver and Warwick families, descended respectively from the houses of Lancaster and York. Emigrating to South Carolina in 1670, these proud clans provided a youngest son each to the 1836 Revolution in Texas, where generations of their offspring have been scrapping ever since. It had to happen that one of the Tolivers would start a-smooching with one of the Warwicks, and so Mary Toliver and Percy Warwick find themselves here in bodice-ripping contortions and secret pacts. Do such stories ever end happily? Meacham begins her saga in recent times, when elderly Mary decides to act on long-hidden feelings by tweaking the noses of her assembled heirs, who patiently await their cut of fortune and a big, beautiful estate in the piney woods, part of a genteel town that Mary has pretty well single-handedly put in the pages of Southern Living and Texas Monthly, which "extolled its Greek Revivalist charm, regional cuisine, and clean restrooms." There are worse places on earth, and worse people than the feuding Texans, though as dark secrets go, Mary and Percy's is less dark than most gothic-romance readers are used to. Still, there are plenty of broken hearts (and at least one broken organ). As San Antonio novelist Meacham (Crowning Design, 1984, etc.) writes of one such instance, "He would never lack for her affection, commitment, and respect, but she felt the part of her that had loved and been loved by the only man she could ever care for curl up in some remote, hidden corner of her being like an animal whose time has come to die." Cue the violins and tears, as Meacham's saga winds slowly to a foreseeable but satisfying conclusion. A suitably long and intermittently engaging descendant of such Southern-fried epics as Gone with the Wind and Giant—just the thing for genre fans with time to spare.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Early in the story, an elderly Mary Toliver contemplates the changes that have taken place in the community she’s lived in all her life: Sassie now refers to “dinner” as “lunch” (37), the Toliver mansion has been outfitted with modern conveniences. Yet “the antebellum grace of the avenue remained the same, a small part of the South not yet gone with the wind” (38). How do these surface observations set the tone for the deep traditions and powerful changes that are described throughout the story? What things in your home (or community or family) have changed over time, and what has stayed the same?
2. When a desperate young Mary tries to find solace in the mother who has seemingly turned her back on both her daughter and her late husband, Darla replies, “You ask me what else he could have done.... He could have loved me more than he loved his land. That’s what he could have done” (55). This is the first of many times that we see bitterness over a loved one choosing Somerset above all else. What do you think it was about the land that was worth so much for so long, until Mary’s death?
3. From a young age, Mary is stubborn and headstrong, believing that she knows without a shadow of a doubt what is best for herself, her family, and Somerset. In a heated argument with Percy Warwick, she declares, “What none of you can see is that I am honor bound to carry out my father’s wishes.... I would never marry a man who didn’t understand and support my feelings for Somerset” (60). What is it besides the confidence of youth that gives Mary such conviction? Have you ever been similarly completely sure of something, only to realize later that you were wrong?
4. Amos Hines (and many others over the years) is shocked and skeptical when he reads of the Toliver curse: that any owner of Somerset will never have more than one heir. Mary was convinced of the curse’s reality by the end of her life, but what are other, more credible downsides to owning this particular piece of land? Is the curse truly specific to Tolivers?
5. Mary is positive that Lucy Gentry, despite her devotion to him, could never be the kind of woman that Percy could care for, yet Mary is truly taken by surprise when Percy tells her he plans to marry no one but her. How is it possible that she could have been so perceptive of his desires (and her own) on one count, yet completely blind on another?
6. Lucy insists to her roommate that she can be with Percy, saying, “My love for him will blind him” (90). Later she pushes herself into the Warwick household, determined to spend as much time with Percy as possible. Can such relentlessness and aggression work in the realm of love (keep in mind that Percy uses a similar tactic when he bargains with Mary to test whether they can live without one another)? How would you have dealt with such an unwanted visitor in your home if you were Percy’s mother?
7. Percy admits to Mary, “I want to marry you because I love you. I’ve loved you all your life, ever since you smiled at me through your cradle bars. I’ve never considered marrying anyone else (115). He’s taken the concept of love at first sight to a new level—is it really possible to love someone the way he has, for your entire life?
8. Think about how promises play out in the novel: Rachel’s promise to her late father to care for Somerset, Ollie’s promise to Mary that he’ll protect Percy, and Percy’s being left with a commission from Mary to keep Somerset out of Rachel’s hands are just a few of the pledges that are key to the story. What others are there? When were they beneficial, and when are they destructive?
9. When Mary complains that Miles has abandoned the Toliver family for Paris, Percy points out that “Miles has the same right to his choices as you to do yours” (148). At what point (if ever?) does individual happiness come before family obligation? How would Mary (at a young age and at an older age), Percy, Miles, and Rachel each answer that question?
10. Emmitt Waithe is disturbed by Mary’s desire to expand her farm with Fair Acres, saying, “This is not about vision. This is about blind desire that falls short of greed only because you love the land.... It’s your pride pushing you to buy Fair Acres” (170). Is he correct? What distinction, if any, is there between Mary’s desire to do right by her family and her desire to find satisfaction for herself?
11. “Apprehension and fatigue were her constant companions. Worry went to bed with her at night and awoke with her in the morning” (180). Why does Mary keep at this unrelenting, thankless farm work, particularly as Percy spends time with other women? What are her drives, and what are his?
12. Compounding the horror of Darla's suicide are the pink ribbons she left behind, the memory of which “writhed between [Mary and Percy] like a poisonous snake” (197). Roses and the colors pink, red, and white all have major significance in the story. What kind of symbolism to we ascribe to objects and their colors today? Why do you think that those objects that represent emotions are so important and powerful?
13. Throughout the ups and downs of their relationship, Percy is steadfast in his knowledge that they are meant to be together, while Mary—just as certain at every moment—
wavers: “It was inevitable that she and Percy would clash...steel against steel” (207); “This was love, she thought.... They would work out their differences. They needed each other” (213); “I am Somerset....To separate me from the plantation is to have half of me. I would not be the same. I’m convinced of that now” (236). Why is it so difficult for Mary to understand what she “knows,” only to realize, in the end, that she has made a mistake?
14. Had Mary and Percy married after all, do you think that their relationship would have worked out in the end?
15. Percy marries Lucy after he accepts that Mary is gone, but the new husband and wife realize they have made a grave misstep. “He’d married her knowing it was the idol she loved and not the man” (296). When have you gotten what you most wanted, only to realize that it wasn’t at all what you’d expected?
16. Wyatt’s teacher realizes that the boy picks on Matthew because he is lonely. Later, when Lucy realizes that Matthew is Percy’s son, she realizes that all this time, her husband has been lonely. Why were father and son, both such lonely figures, unable to find a bond until the end of Matthew’s life? How does this relationship compare to the other parent/child connections (or lack of) in the story?
17. So many of the conflicts in Roses arise from traditions: keeping Somerset in the Toliver family above all else leads to a host of problems, the impossibility of financial aid among the Toliver, Warwick, and DuMont families drives Mary and Percy to commit fraud, and everything repeats itself again with Rachel and Matt’s generation until Mary’s codicil ends the lock on Somerset. What place do traditions have in your life, and how do they help or hinder you in your endeavors?
18. Discussing all the troubles that have arisen from their decisions, Mary and Percy are distraught about what they are responsible for until Percy suggests, “Maybe we should begin by forgiving ourselves for the pain we’ve caused” (363). At what point does one have to shift from atoning for the past, and look to moving into the future with a clear conscience?
19. Both Mary’s mother Darla and Rachel’s mother Alice have rifts between themselves and their daughters caused by Somerset. How are the two mothers the same, and how are they different? What were the two daughters’ reactions to their distant mothers?
20. “So the difference, Rachel, is that your father would look upon the proceeds of the sale of Aunt Mary’s property as compensation. He’d consider it charity to share in the profits of what he ran away from” (429). Is this legitimate reasoning? Do you think that William would agree with his wife’s assertions about his perceptions?
21. Should Mary have revealed the necessary fraud she had to undertake to the nephew that she inadvertently insulted? Should she have warned Rachel of the power of Somerset before cultivating her grand-niece’s passion for farming? What knowledge does the older generation owe its heirs, and when should that knowledge be passed down?
22. Did Mary really “save” Rachel, as she told Amos at the beginning of the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Caleb's Crossing
Geraldine Brooks, 2011
Penguin Group USA
318 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143121077
Summary
Once again, Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life.
In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, Brooks has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure.
The narrator of Caleb's Crossing is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants.
At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's minister father tries to convert the Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the tribe's shaman, against whose magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later, Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. There, Bethia finds herself reluctantly indentured as a housekeeper and can closely observe Caleb's crossing of cultures.
Like Brooks's beloved narrator Anna in Year of Wonders, Bethia proves an emotionally irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha's Vineyard and the intimate spaces of the human heart. Evocative and utterly absorbing, Caleb's Crossing further establishes Brooks's place as one of our most acclaimed novelists. (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
Geraldine Brooks, once a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and more recently a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist…writes about early America the same way she wrote about Sarajevo and the Middle East, which is to say very well…[Bethia's] a fabulously engaging narrator.
Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks (for March) delivers a splendid historical inspired by Caleb Cheeshahteaumauck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. Brooks brings the 1660s to life with evocative period detail, intriguing characters, and a compelling story narrated.
Publishers Weekly
[L]uscious fiction in the capable hands of Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks (March).... Brooks offers a lyric and elevated narrative that effectively replicates the language of the era; she takes on the obvious issues of white arrogance, cultural difference, and the debased role of women without settling into jeremiad. The result is sweet and aching. —Barbara Hoffert.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. In discussing the purchase of the island from the Wampanoag, Bethia's father says, "some now say that [the sonquem] did not fully understand that we meant to keep the land from them forever. Be that as it may, what's done is done and it was done lawfully" (p. 9). Do you agree with his opinion?
2. With that in mind, examine Caleb's view of the settlers on p. 143 – 144. Why does he say that the sound of their "boots, boots, and more boots" (p. 143) moved him to cross cultures and adopt Christianity? Contrast this with Tequamuck's reaction to the settlers' arrival (p. 295). Placed in their situation, what would you have felt?
3. Look at Bethia's discussion of the question "Who are we?" at the top of p. 57. Of the options that she offers, which seems most true to you? Are there other options you would add to her list?
4. On p. 285, Joseph Dudley discusses the philosophical question of the Golden Mean, which suggests that the ideal behavior is the middle point between extremes. But he then goes on to argue against this belief, stating that, in fact, there is no middle point between extremes such as "good and evil, truth and falsehood." Which perspective do you agree with?
5. Compared with those in her community, Bethia is remarkably unprejudiced in her view of the Wampanoag. Did you grow up surrounded by prejudices you disagreed with? How did this affect you? Conversely, did you have prejudices in your youth that you've since overcome?
6. Bethia sees her mother's silence as a great strength and tool in dealing with society, particularly as a woman in a male-dominated culture. However, while Bethia repeatedly tries to emulate this behavior, she's often overcome by her own passionate opinions. Find an example where Bethia's boldness in stating her mind is a good thing, and an example where it brings her trouble. Have you ever wished you had spoken when instead you stayed quiet—or wished you had stayed quiet instead of having spoken your mind?
7. The Wampanoag and the Puritans have very different views on raising children. Describe the differences you see between the two and which method you believe is healthier. Are Caleb and Bethia the typical product of their respective societies?
8. Bethia acknowledges that her own religion could seem as crazy to Caleb as his does to her: "Of course, I thought it all outlandish. But… it came to me that our story of a burning bush and a parted sea might also seem fabulous, to one not raised up knowing it was true" (p. 35). In the end, Caleb does come to accept Bethia's religion, and she develops a kinder attitude toward him. Have you or anyone you know ever converted religions? Have you grown interested in or accepting of religions or practices that initially struck you as strange or foreign?
9. When visiting Italy, Bethia writes of feeling overwhelmed by how different it was from her own home. Have you ever had a similar experience when traveling somewhere new? Did your travels make you see your own home in a new light? Does Bethia's visit to Italy change her beliefs or behavior?
10. Unlike Bethia, her son has no interest in traveling to older countries like Italy, saying that "everything there is done and built and finished. I like it here, where we can make and do for ourselves" (p. 274). Is this sense of independence and potential still true of the United States today?
11. Both Bethia and Caleb struggle against the limits and expectations placed on them by society. How are their experiences similar? How are they different? Who faces the greater challenge?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Object Lessons
Anna Quindlen, 1997
Random House
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449001011
Summary
It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City. Maggie and her family, are in the thrall of her powerful grandfather Jack Scanlan. In the summer of her twelfth year, Maggie is despertately trying to master the object lessons her grandfather fills her head with. But there is too much going on to concentrate. Everything at home is in upheaval, her grandfather is changing, and Maggie is unsure if what she wants is worth having. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 8, 1952
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column
• Currently—New York, New York
Anna Quindlen could have settled onto a nice, lofty career plateau in the early 1990s, when she had won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column; but she took an unconventional turn, and achieved a richer result.
Quindlen, the third woman to hold a place among the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists, had already published two successful collections of her work when she decided to leave the paper in 1995. But it was the two novels she had produced that led her to seek a future beyond her column.
Quindlen had a warm, if not entirely uncritical, reception as a novelist. Her first book, Object Lessons, focused on an Irish American family in suburban New York in the 1960s. It was a bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1991, but was also criticized for not being as engaging as it could have been. One True Thing, Quindlen's exploration of an ambitious daughter's journey home to take care of her terminally ill mother, was stronger still—a heartbreaker that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. But Quindlen's fiction clearly benefited from her decision to leave the Times. Three years after that controversial departure, she earned her best reviews yet with Black and Blue, a chronicle of escape from domestic abuse.
Quindlen's novels are thoughtful explorations centering on women who may not start out strong, but who ultimately find some core within themselves as a result of what happens in the story. Her nonfiction meditations—particularly A Short Guide to a Happy Life and her collection of "Life in the 30s" columns, Living Out Loud—often encourage this same transition, urging others to look within themselves and not get caught up in what society would plan for them. It's an approach Quindlen herself has obviously had success with.
Extras
• To those who expressed surprise at Quindlen's apparent switch from columnist to novelist, the author points out that her first love was always fiction. She told fans in a Barnes & Noble.com chat, "I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels."
• Quindlen joined Newsweek as a columnist in 1999. She began her career at the New York Post in 1974, jumping to the New York Times in 1977.
• Quindlen's prowess as a columnist and prescriber of advice has made her a popular pick for commencement addresses, a sideline that ultimately inspired her 2000 title A Short Guide to a Happy Life Quindlen's message tends to be a combination of stopping to smell the flowers and being true to yourself. Quindlen told students at Mount Holyoke in 1999, "Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world."
• Studying fiction at Barnard with the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Quindlen's senior thesis was a collection of stories, one of which she sold to Seventeen magazine. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
(Notable Book of the Year) This engaging, entertaining first novel concerns a huge Irish Catholic family; its focus is the coming of age of Maggie Scanlan, age 13.
New York Times
Anna Quindlen's first novel is about an experience that is the same for everyone and different for us all: the time when we suddenly see our family with an outsider's eye and begin the separation that marks our growing up.... Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family.
Washington Post Book World
Readers of her "Life in the 30s" column in the New York Times (collected in Living Out Loud ) know Quindlen as an astute observer of family relationships. Her first novel is solid proof that she is equally discerning and skillful as a writer of fiction. To sensitive Maggie Scanlan, the summer when she turns 13 is "the time when her whole life changed." Aware that her father, Tommy, had outraged the wealthy Scanlan clan by marrying the daughter of an Italian cemetery caretaker, Maggie is a bridge between her "outcast" mother and her grandfather, whose favorite she is. Domineering, irascible, intolerant John Scanlan looks down on both Pope John XXII and President Kennedy for deviating from traditional Catholic doctrine. His iron hand crushes his wife and grown children, and when he decides that Maggie's parents and their soon-to-be-five offspring should move from their slightly shabby Irish Catholic Bronx suburb to a large house in Westchester which he has purchased for them, tension between her parents escalates and Maggie's loyalties are tested. But other unexpected events—her grandfather's stroke, her mother's attraction to a man of her own background, her best friend's defection, her first boyfriend—serve both to unsettle Maggie and to propel her across the threshold to adulthood. Quindlen's social antennae are acute: she conveys the fierce ethnic pride that distinguishes Irish and Italian communities, their rivalry and mutual disdain. Her character portrayal is empathetic and beautifully dimensional, not only of Maggie but of her mother, who experiences her own wrenching rite of passage. This absorbing coming-of-age novel will draw comparisons with the works of Mary Gordon, but Quindlen is a writer with her own voice and finely honed perceptions.
Publishers Weekly
This first novel by former New York Times columnist, and now syndicated columnist, Quindlen is a well-written but not particularly engaging reflection on growing up. Maggie Scanlan, product of an Irish father and an Italian mother, lives in a New York City suburb in the 1960s. We follow her through her 12th summer, as she endures the trials and tribulations of the transition to adolescence. Maggie is not particularly insightful, though, and none of the other characters give her much insight into growing up. The characters themselves are not as lively as they might be, and the plot is standard: marriage problems, family quarrels, a problem pregnancy. —Gwen Gregory, U.S. Courts Lib., Phoenix, AZ
Library Journal
This first novel is an insightful family chronicle, an informed commentary on the '60s, and the coming-of-age depiction of a mother and daughter. As 13-year-old Maggie struggles with her identity within the boisterous Scanlan clan, her mother also finds her own place within the patriarchal family that has never accepted her. Both women experience rites of passage during the fateful summer that a housing development is being built behind their home, infringing on their emotional and physical spaces. A fast-paced plot involves small fires set in the development by Maggie's friends and romantic tension between her mother and a man from her past. Readers will appreciate Maggie's dilemmas as she grapples with peer pressure and sexual bewilderment, and as she begins to understand her mother, whose discontent oddly parallels her own. —Jackie Gropman, Richard Byrd Library, Springfield, VA
School Library Journal
An affecting, if slightly predictable, first novel about a young girl's coming of age from popular New York Times columnist Quindlen (the nonfiction collection Living Out Loud, 1988). The time is a summer in the early 1960's, and the place is Kenwood, a small town just outside of the Bronx. For Maggie Scanlan, it is the summer of big changes—the fields behind her house are chopped up to make way for a subdivision; her powerful grandfather, John Scanlan, has a stroke and is hospitalized; her mother, Connie, gets pregnant again and learns to drive a car; and, finally, Maggie herself changes. She celebrates her 13th birthday, officially becoming a teen-ager. But, as it turns out, these are only the obvious changes. What really stirs Maggie are the things nobody talks about: the shifting of power in the Scanlan family, her mother's preoccupation with another man, her cousin Monica's pregnancy, and the example and advice of a neighbor, Helen Malone. All of this seems inextricably linked, somehow, to the building going on behind Maggie's house, so that even years later, whenever she smells "the peculiar odor of new construction, of pine planking and plastic plumbing pipes," she is taken back to this troubling, mystifying and, ultimately, liberating summer. The Scanlan family is a richly complicated group—from grandpa, who had made a fortune manufacturing religious paraphernalia, to Maggie's father, the black sheep of the family, stubbornly independent. Quindlen never lets these characters sink into stereotype, and while her writing here seems somewhat less charged than in her columns, her talent for revealing the small, hard truths of family life is plenty apparent. Not a new recipe, but the best kind of home cooking, simply served, with plenty to chew on.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Object Lessons unfolds mostly through the eyes of twelve-year-old Maggie. In which ways is Maggie older and more perceptive than her age would suggest? How is she naive? How do you envision Maggie’s evolution as she grows older and away from her family?
2. Does the book have the elements of a traditional coming-of-age novel? If so, what are they? Do you agree with Connie’s assessment at the end of the book that her daughter has become a woman? In what ways is Maggie still a little girl?
3. What does the development being built near Tommy and Connie’s house represent to the various Scanlans? To the neighborhood kids, including Maggie, Debbie, Bruce, and Richard? To the town of Kenwood as a whole? How does it represent a larger theme or symbol in the novel?
4. How do Maggie and Connie have a typical mother-daughter rapport? An atypical one? How is Connie’s attitude toward Maggie influenced by the attitudes of her parents toward her?
5. What factors motivated Tommy and Connie to marry? What initially draws one to the other? How are they well-matched? What causes their marriage to flounder?
6. Why is it significant that Joey Martinelli appears on Connie’s doorstep when he does? How has she become a different person from the girl he once knew? What attributes would she like to bring to the surface once again?
7. When he learns of Connie’s driving lessons, Tommy thinks that he “could take her anywhere she needed to go.” Why does he view her learning to drive as a betrayal? Are Connie’s driving lessons symbolic? If so, how?
8. What role does the Roman Catholic Church play in Object Lessons? How does the Church and its rituals represent a spiritual force for the characters? In which ways is it a business entity?
9. At the beginning of Object Lessons, John Scanlan rules over the family as an indomitable patriarch. What about his personality is so arresting, both to those within the family and outside of it? How does he inspire emotion—whether it’s fear, respect, or loathing? Why do he and Maggie get along so well? How do you see the family evolving as they adjust to his death?
10. Whom does Maggie look up to as a role model, both within her family and outside of it? What attributes do these people have in common? Why does she so dislike her cousin Monica?
11. The friendship between Maggie and Debbie Malone evaporates during the course of the book. Why do you think that Debbie turns on Maggie? How is their friendship different from the relationship Connie has with Celeste?
12. What does the Malone family represent to Maggie? Why does Debbie’s sister, Helen, take a liking to Maggie?
13. After his stroke, John Scanlan says, “It’s not the dying I mind, it’s the changing.” How is this statement typical of his character? Which members of his family would agree with him; who in this novel would disagree?
14. How do Maggie’s two grandfathers compare and contrast with each other? Which attributes from each does Maggie seem to have? To which one does she seem most similar? Why?
15. Debbie decries always being known as “Helen Malone’s sister”; Maggie counters that she’s always “John Scanlan’s granddaughter.” How do the two girls grapple with the idea of identity, especially as it relates to their relationship to other family members? How does each girl try to form her own individuality? How do names and nicknames play a part in identity in Object Lessons?
16. “Until this horrible sweaty summer, lines had been drawn,” Maggie recalls sadly. What connections and boundaries are erased from Maggie’s life during the course of the book? Which fissures are the most apparent? How does Maggie handle the disintegration of these connections?
17. In your opinion, why do the kids begin setting fires in the development? Why does Maggie initially participate? At the last fire, are Maggie’s actions heroic or cowardly, or a combination of the two? Why? Do you think that her behavior hastens the end of her friendship with Debbie?
18. In which ways does John’s death free Mary Frances? Why is she consumed by the memory of her dead daughter, and why does she want to be buried with her? Why does Mary Frances prefer Connie and Tommy living with her to her other children?
19. At the beginning of Object Lessons, Maggie “listens too much”; by the end of the novel, she’s found her voice. Why did it take so long for her true self to emerge? How do you think she’ll merge her newfound consciousness with the competing voices of her past influences?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
Mitchell Zuckoff, 2011
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061988349
Summary
In 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and women boarded a plane to see “Shangri-La,” a beautiful valley deep within Dutch New Guinea. But when the plane crashed, only three pulled through to battle for survival.
Emotionally devastated and badly injured, the trio faced certain death. Caught between spear-carrying tribesmen and enemy Japanese, they trekked down the jungle-covered mountainside and straight into superstitious natives rumored to be cannibals.
Drawn from interviews, Army documents, photos, diaries, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the trio traversed the jungle; how brave Filipino-American paratroopers risked their lives to save the survivors; how a native leader protected the Americans; and how a cowboy colonel attempted an untried rescue mission to get them out.
A riveting work of nonfiction that brings to life an odyssey at times terrifying, enlightening, and comic, Lost in Shangri-La is a thrill ride from beginning to end. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—N/A
• Education—M.A., University of Missouri
• Awards—Distinguished Writing Award from the American
Society of Newspaper Editors; Livingston Award for
International Reporting; Heywood Broun Award; Public
Service Award from the AP Managing Editors
• Currently—lives in Newton, Massachusetts, USA
Mitchell Zuckoff is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is the author of Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (2011); Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (2009); Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend (2005) and Choosing Naia: A Family's Journey (2002); He is co-author with Dick Lehr of Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (2003).
His magazine work has appeared in The New Yorker, Fortune and elsewhere. As a reporter at the Boston Globe, Zuckoff was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting. He received the Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Livingston Award for International Reporting, the Heywood Broun Award, and the Associated Press Managing Editors' Public Service Award.
Zuckoff received a master’s degree from the University of Missouri and was a Batten Fellow at the Darden School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Zuckoff (Ponzi's Scheme) skillfully narrates the story of a plane crash and rescue mission in an uncharted region of New Guinea near the end of WWII. Of the 24 American soldiers who flew from their base on a sightseeing tour to a remote valley, only three survived the disaster, including one WAC. As the three waited for help, they faced death from untreated injuries and warlike local tribesmen who had never seen white people before and believed them to be dangerous spirits. Even after a company of paratroopers arrived, the survivors still faced a dangerous escape from the valley via "glider snatch." Zuckoff transforms impressive research into a deft narrative that brings the saga of the survivors to life. His access to journal accounts, letters, photos, military records, and interviews with the eyewitnesses allows for an almost hour-by-hour account of the crash and rescue, along with vivid portraits of his main subjects. Zuckoff also delves into the Stone Age culture of the New Guinea tribesmen and the often humorous misapprehensions the Americans and natives have about each other. In our contemporary world of eco-tourism and rain-forest destruction, Zuckoff's book gives a window on a more romantic, and naïve, era.
Publishers Weekly
Zuckoff presents an engaging story about the survival and ultimate rescue of three American service people who crashed in the dense jungles of New Guinea toward the end of World War II. While that is exciting enough in its own right, what makes Zuckoff's story an essential read is the interaction between these survivors and the indigenous tribe they encountered after crashing. Humorous and at times dangerous misunderstandings arose between the Americans and the indigenous people during the 46-day ordeal in the jungle. The tribe had never encountered white people before and assumed their "guests," including a young female WAC corporal, were spirits whose arrival fulfilled a prophecy of the end of the world. In a sense, this prophecy was true as after the rescue and the war, the Americans, Europeans, and Indonesians returned and changed the way of life that these tribes had followed for centuries. Verdict: This excellent book will be enjoyed by anyone who loves true adventure stories of disaster and rescue such as Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. —Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary Lib., Oviedo, FL
Library Journal
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 Lost in Shangri-la:
1. What would it feel like to be dropped, literally, from the mid-20th century into the stone age? How would you cope? Had you survived the crash of the Gremlin, what would be most difficult for you—pain, lack of food and water, personal hygiene, fear, waiting...and waiting for rescue?
2. Do the Americans find Eden when they crash into the jungle of New Guinea? What role does war play in the Dani tribal culture? If you've ever read The Lord of the Flies, is there a strange parallel here?
3. What are the attitudes of the Dani islanders and Americans toward one another? In what way do those attitudes change...or do they? Discuss what happens when the paratroopers arrive to set up camp.
4. The Dani had a myth that one day pale spirits would descend from the sky...and nothing would ever be the same. Were the natives better off after their brush with the modern world...or not?
5. Author Zuckoff traces the lives of the crash survivors in later years. How were their lives affected by their month in the jungle?
6. Zuckoff provides a great deal of historical exposition—on military gliders, the WACs in World War II, and the native islanders' customs and warfare? Was the background material interesting? If so, what did you find most enlightening? Or is it "information overload," a distraction from what might have been a more dramatic, sharply focused narrative?
7. Trapped in such an isolated location, waiting for a way out, there is little to keep the survivors occupied. Many spend their time wishing they were somewhere else. Yet, later, one of the survivors said the experience was one of the highlights of his life. How might you have felt? How difficult would it be for you to pass the time?
8. Question #7 brings up the age old query: if you were shipwrecked on a desert (or jungle) island what would you wish to have with you (aside from the basic necessities of life)?
9. Who among the victims, survivors, native hosts, rescuers do you admire? Or find most interesting?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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