Off Season
Anne Rivers Siddons
Grand Central Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446698290
Summary
For as long as she can remember, they were Cam and Lilly—happily married, totally in love with each other, parents of a beautiful family, and partners in life.
Then, after decades of marriage, it ended as every great love story does...in loss. After Cam's death, Lilly takes a lone road trip to her and Cam's favorite spot on the remote coast of Maine, the place where they fell in love over and over again, where their ghosts still dance. There, she looks hard to her past—to a first love that ended in tragedy; to falling in love with Cam; to a marriage filled with exuberance, sheer life, and safety—to try to figure out her future.
It is a journey begun with tender memories and culminating in a revelation that will make Lilly re-evaluate everything she thought was true about her husband and her marriage. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1936
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., Auburn University; Atlanta School of Art
• Currently—lives in Charleston, South Carolina and Maine
Born in 1936 in a small town near Atlanta, Anne Rivers Siddons was raised to be a dutiful daughter of the South — popular, well-mannered, studious, and observant of all the cultural mores of time and place. She attended Alabama's Auburn University in the mid-1950s, just as the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam. Siddons worked on the staff of Auburn's student newspaper and wrote an editorial in favor of integration. When the administration asked her to pull the piece, she refused. The column ran with an official disclaimer from the university, attracting national attention and giving young Siddons her first taste of the power of the written word.
After a brief stint in the advertising department of a bank, Siddons took a position with the up and coming regional magazine Atlanta, where she worked her way up to senior editor. Impressed by her writing ability, an editor at Doubleday offered her a two-book contract. She debuted in 1975 with a collection of nonfiction essays; the following year, she published Heartbreak Hotel, a semi-autobiographical novel about a privileged Southern coed who comes of age during the summer of 1956.
With the notable exception of 1978's The House Next Door, a chilling contemporary gothic compared by Stephen King to Shirley Jackson's classic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House, Siddons has produced a string of well-written, imaginative, and emotionally resonant stories of love and loss —all firmly rooted in the culture of the modern South. Her books are consistent bestsellers, with 1988's Peachtree Road (1988) arguably her biggest commercial success. Described by her friend and peer, Pat Conroy, as "the Southern novel for our generation," the book sheds illuminating light on the changing landscape of mid-20th-century Atlanta society.
Although her status as a "regional" writer accounts partially for Siddons' appeal, ultimately fans love her books because they portray with compassion and truth the real lives of women who transcend the difficulties of love and marriage, family, friendship, and growing up.
Extras
• Although she is often compared with another Atlanta author, Margaret Mitchel, Siddons insists that the South she writes about is not the romanticized version found in Gone With the Wind. Instead, her relationship with the region is loving, but realistic. "It's like an old marriage or a long marriage. The commitment is absolute, but the romance has long since worn off...I want to write about it as it really is: I don't want to romanticize it."
• Siddons' debut novel Heartberak Hotel was turned into the 1989 movie Heart of Dixie, starry Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen, and Phoebe Cates. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
(Audio version.) In Siddons's stirring novel, the recently widowed Lily Constable returns to her childhood summer home in Maine to sift through formative memories of her parents and her first love. It's difficult to imagine a more marvelous performance than Jane Alexander's. Alexander captures the strength and vulnerability of Lily from childhood to late middle age, and perfectly renders the physical weight of Lily's grief at her losses. She skillfully navigates the novel's cast of characters, from the slow, deep and thoughtful drawl of Lily's father to the high-pitched, false charm of the vicious young neighbor whose poison darts put tragic events in motion. Alexander also brings to life the great unnamed character in the book—the natural world, giving voice to birds and even a talking cat, and intuitively understanding the life-giving power of the sea. This is an example of how a good novel can become magnificent when it is beautifully told.
Publishers Weekly
Returning to her beloved Maine home to scatter her husband's ashes, Lilly reconstructs her past and makes peace with her future. Fourtime OscarA Award nominee Jane Alexander uses her acting chops to keep New York Times bestselling author Siddons's sweetly sentimental story from toppling into sappiness. She imbues Lilly's childhood voice with selfabsorbed innocence, gradually morphing it into that of an adult. When Lilly's husband arrives, her father's importance dwindles-a good thing, since their voices were indistinguishable. While this isn't Siddons's best, her descriptions will have listeners hearing the birds and smelling the ocean.
Library Journal
Her family’s cottage on the coast of Maine is haunted, and that suits Lilly Constable just fine. Returning to Edgewater after the death of her beloved husband, Cam, Lilly takes comfort in carrying on detailed conversations with the spirit that she feels pervades the site of so much joy, and yet so much tragedy, in her life. Revisiting the happy times of her marriage and their unconventional courtship also propels Lilly further down memory lane, however, forcing her to recall the years spent living in isolation with her widowed father after her mother’s death from breast cancer, and the summer she turned 11 and her first love, Jon, died in a tragic boating accident. As Lilly works through her grief for her husband, mother, and old friend, she uncovers startling revelations about the very people she thought she knew best. With a powerhouse ending dazzling in its stealth and ambiguity, master storyteller Siddons delivers a dramatically evocative tale that magically summons a bygone time of innocence and intrigue. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
A widow returns to her family cottage in Maine, her late husband's ashes and ornery cat in tow, and ponders her first experience of love and loss. Siddons frames the story around the sudden death of Cam McCall, Virginia architect, while at his wife Lilly's Maine seashore cottage, Edgewater. Though portrayed as eminently trustworthy, Cam has, unbeknownst to Lilly, visited the unheated cottage many times during the Off Season while supposedly traveling elsewhere on business. After wrangling about the disposition of Cam's cremains with her spoiled yuppie daughters, Lilly heads north with Silas, Cam's cranky, subliminally conversational cat, and the urn. In her cottage, Lilly revisits the pivotal summer of 1962, when, a wiry 11-year-old tomboy, she led a gang of other kids on a spate of mostly wholesome outdoor activities, occasionally ruffling feathers in this WASP-ruled vacation enclave. Lilly's preadolescence is thorny. She's overshadowed by her charismatic painter mother, who yearns to enter Jackie Kennedy's social circle, and her father, a professor at George Washington University, is too supportive to rebel against. On a lonely ramble to a nearby cliff, Lilly encounters a boy named Jon and is immediately smitten. The two are inseparable until a prissy, meddlesome neighbor child, Peaches, exposes the fact that Jon's father is Jewish, a secret his father had kept from him and his mother. Shocked by the deception, Jon sails into a fog in Lilly's sailboat, and drowns. Lilly retreats into a cocoon of denial and becomes obsessed with underwater swimming. Her isolation is exacerbated when her mother dies of breast cancer and her father keeps her cloistered in benevolent but stifling domesticity as the turbulent '60s unfold. In contrast to Siddons's usual heroine, who struggles to achieve self-sufficiency, Lilly is overcome by passivity, which deepens as she's repeatedly blindsided by loss. The inadequately foreshadowed surprise ending involves an ultimate betrayal that will dismay readers almost as much as it does Lilly.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is your first impression of Elizabeth, Lilly’s mother? Does your opinion of her change throughout the course of the novel? How so? Discuss how Lilly’s discovery of her mother and Brooks Burns during the summer of 1962 changes Lilly’s view of her mother? How does it change Lilly?
2. The epigraph that opens the book quotes Dylan Thomas: “After the first death, there is no other.” How do you understand this quote? Does this quote apply in any way to your own life?
3. Lilly narrates the book as an adult, looking back at her life. The novel is, in part, about adolescence and the ways in which that period of our lives is so defining. How does Lily change and grow as a character throughout the book? How does she stay the same?
4. Siddons writes, “It was the full flowering of Camelot, the New Frontier, and the glamour and rigor of the young Kennedy administration brought with it strong feelings...It was, too, a time of exploration and flaming new cultural concepts, and the sound of tumbling mores was loud in the land.” How does the historical and social context manifest itself throughout the novel? Is it meaningful that Siddons chose to set this book during the 1960s? Why or why not?
5. Lilly’s mother believes that “magic is just as necessary for human beings as food and shelter, but most of us have forgotten it.” It can be said that there are moments of magic in this book, and Edgewater, in particular, seems to be a magical place for many of the characters. Do you agree that magic is a ‘necessary’ part of life? What do you think Siddons means by this?
6. Midway through the novel Lilly says, “Never think that the very young cannot love. Never think that. They love with a fierce, direct love.” Jon and Lilly have a very mature relationship for such young people. Do you think it’s possible for the ‘very young’ to experience mature and enduring love?
7. What do you make of Peaches? Is Lilly too hard on her when they are younger?
8. It can be said that Edgewater is its own "character" in Off Season and early in the novel Lilly tells Cam that she was a different person at Edgewater, “a creature of water and wind and tides and rock.” What role does Edgewater play in Lilly’s life? Do you agree with Lilly that certain places have the power to completely change a person?
9. Is Lilly’s father too protective of Lilly after her mother dies? Do you think he is a good parent to Lilly? How does Lilly’s relationship with her father affect her relationship with Cam?
10. Lilly falls in love with Cam instantly. Is their love believable? Do you believe that love at first sight is possible?
11. Why doesn’t Lilly tell Cam about Jon? Why doesn’t Cam tell Lilly about his sister? Do you think it’s sometimes necessary keep childhood secrets even from those closest to you in adulthood?
12. The characters in this novel love very deeply. What price do they pay for this love? Does the novel suggest that it is important to love this deeply despite the risks involved in doing so?
13. When Lilly begins dating Cam she thinks, “Love and safety. Love and safety forever. I had never dreamed I could find both outside [my father’s] house.” What role does ‘safety’ play in Lilly’s marriage to Cam? Why does Lilly place so much value on safety?
14. The novel has a surprising ending. Discuss what happens in the final chapters and what the ending means for Lilly, her life, and her marriage.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Sisters & Lovers
Connie Briscoe, 1994
Random House
409 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804113342
Summary
Beverly, Charmaine, and Evelyn are three sisters living in the same city, but in very different worlds. They have at least one thing in common though: in their own corners of Washington, D.C., they are reaching their personal breaking points. Beverly, twenty-nine, is successful, reluctantly single, and perennially disappointed. Evelyn, thirty-seven, is educated and ambitious, with a husband, two great kids, and a house in the suburbs; but the secure world she has built for herself is quite possibly about to crumble. And Charmaine, thirty-five, struggles to support her son as well as her useless husband, all the while wondering what either of her sisters has to complain about.
As this frank and funny novel unfolds, Beverly will find and lose more men than she'd like to admit, Charmaine will kick her husband out and let him back in more times than she'd like her sisters to know about, and Evelyn will try to keep it a secret that her husband isn't Mr. Perfect after all. But what these three women discover is that having a sister gives you one of the few things you can really rely on.
In Sisters & Lovers, debut novelist Connie Briscoe has drawn a vivid and dramatic portrait that will make readers laugh out loud and nod their heads in recognition. It is a novel that announces the welcome arrival of a truly fresh new voice? (From the publisher.)
Also, see the novel's sequel, Sisters and Husbands, which was published in 2009.
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
Although Briscoe lapses into soap opera at times, on the whole, she does a good job of dealing with her characters' sociocultural differences while telling a convincing, passionate contemporary tale. Briscoe knows her D.C. setting well, from her position as managing editor of "American Annals of the Deaf" at Gallaudet University.
Booklist
Set in and around Washington, D.C., Briscoe's earnest debut novel centers on three sisters attempting to balance their needs for love and their self-respect in a male-defined society. Beverly, Charmaine and Evelyn each represent stereotypical "successful" African American women, forced to compromise their desires in order to hold on to their male partners. Charmaine, 35, is a secretary, mother of one and pregnant; she struggles to cope financially and emotionally with her immature, underachieving husband as he weaves bold-faced lies about work, drugs and money. Evelyn, a 37-year-old psychologist and mother of two, resists her lawyer husband's desire to start his own firm, fearing that their standard of living will suffer. Magazine editor Beverly, perhaps the most interesting of the trio, is single, "picky" and reluctantly watching her biological clock tick its way to 30. Determined to move on after her boyfriend takes up with another woman, Beverly finds herself resorting to blind dates, considering artificial insemination and dating white men. Briscoe's writing lacks the energy and sass that Terry McMillan (Waiting to Exhale) brought to the same theme, and her passages of introspection can be awkward and heavy-handed. The audience for this book will find it enjoyable but not memorable.
Publishers Weekly
In this well-paced first novel by journalist Briscoe, three middle-class African American sisters living in the Washington, D.C., area face love, choices, and crises as they journey through life. Beverly, Charmaine, and Evelyn are quite different, yet the bonds of sisterly love remain strong. Briscoe's finely crafted novel is slightly reminiscent of Terri McMillan's Waiting To Exhale and will attract many of the same readers. It is at once humorous, poignant, realistic, and romantic and skillfully uses witty but realistic dialog to keep the story moving along. Because the lives of African Americans are so varied, it is refreshing to read fiction portraying black women in a positive light. Destined to become a keeper , this is recommended for all fiction collections and for libraries supporting African American collections, which far too often simply mirror the interests of "mainstream" America. — Angela Washington-Blair, Dallas
Library Journal
Imagine Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale without the sex, the sizzle, and the funky humor and you have a fair idea of Briscoe's first novel about three black sisters and their problems with their menfolk. Evelyn, Charmaine, and Beverly live in and around Washington, DC. Smart, materialistic Evelyn has it all: a super husband (lawyer Kevin), two great kids, an upscale suburban home, and work she enjoys as a psychologist. Charmaine, a secretary, has her own home, a young son by an ex-boyfriend, and a sexy but shiftless husband, Clarence. Magazine editor Beverly, the baby at 29, is still single and lives alone. Briscoe gives each sister a problem to chew on—nothing wrong with that, except the laborious chewing lasts all novel long. Evelyn's Kevin wants to leave his prestigious law firm and start his own: Will Evelyn's resistance endanger their marriage? Clarence's lies and debts are driving Charmaine crazy: Should she throw the bum out? Beverly has just ditched boyfriend Vernon for apparently two-timing her: Can she relax her high standards and forgive him? Beverly's dilemma leads to a more general complaint: "What's the matter with these black men?'' Her two post-Vernon dates are such dogs that she has a fling with a white guy who turns out to be an anal-retentive nut. The sisters support one another to a point, but sibling rivalries ensure that their relationships stay sweet and sour and add to the novel's most lasting impression, that of a peevish calling to account. Smoothly readable, but flat and uninventive.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Sisters & Lovers:
1. Talk about the differences between the three sisters. What are each of their strengths and weaknesses? Do you have a favorite sister...if so, who and why?
2. What views or expectations does each sister have of marriage? Realistic or not?
3. By the end, what have the three women learned—about themselves, each other, their husbands, and the institution of marriage? How have they changed if, in fact, they have? Has one of the sisters had more to learn than the others?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Caught
Harlan Coben, 2010
Penguin Group USA
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451232700
Summary
From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a fast-paced, emotion-packed novel about guilt, grief, and our capacity to forgive.
Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.
Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate-and nationally televised-sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target.
Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.
In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben's trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can't trust her own instincts about this story—or the motives of the people around her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 4, 1962
• Raised—Livingston, New Jersey, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards
• Currently—lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey
Harlan Coben is an American author of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past (such as murders, fatal accidents, etc.) and often have multiple plot twists. Both series of Coben's books are set in and around New York and New Jersey, and some of the supporting characters in the two series have appeared in both.
Coben was born to a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, but was raised and schooled in Livingston, New Jersey with childhood friend and future politician Chris Christie at Livingston High School. While studying political science at Amherst College, he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity with author Dan Brown. After Amherst, Coben worked in the travel industry, in a company owned by his grandfather. He now lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.
Career
Coben was in his senior year at college when he realized he wanted to write. His first book was accepted when he was twenty-six but after publishing two stand-alone thrillers in his twenties (Play Dead in 1990 and Miracle Cure in 1991) he decided on a change of direction and began a series of thrillers featuring his character Myron Bolitar. The novels of the popular series follow the tales of a former basketball player turned sports agent (Bolitar), who often finds himself investigating murders involving his clients.
Coben has won an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award a Smelly Award (for writing about New Jersey) and an Anthony Award, and is the first writer to have received all three. He is also the first writer in more than a decade to be invited to write fiction for the New York Times op-ed page. He wrote a short story entitled "The Key to my Father," which appeared June 15, 2003.
In 2001 he released his first stand-alone thriller since the creation of the Myron Bolitar series in 1995, Tell No One, which went on to be his best selling novel to date. Film director Guillaume Canet made the book into a French thriller, Ne le dis à personne in 2006. Coben followed Tell No One with six more stand-alone novels. His 2008 novel Hold Tight became his first book to debut at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Although this is another stand-alone novel, Coben commented on his official website that certain key characters from The Woods will make brief appearances. His 2009 novel, Long Lost, featured a return of Myron Bolitar and also debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Caught, also a stand-alone thriller was published in 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Early in Caught, Harlan Coben’s crazily hyperactive new thriller, a wholesome teenage girl named Haley McWaid disappears from her happy New Jersey home.... Mr. Coben has the edge when it comes to popcorn pacing. His once-enveloping stories now move at a breakneck clip not unlike James Patterson’s, though at least Mr. Coben still writes chapters longer than three pages. Since anything and everything can happen in the berserk world of Caught, none of the suspense carries much weight, and no character has time to become particularly sympathetic.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
It may already be too late for this review to be written. I finished "Caught," the new thriller by that galloping bestseller-machine Harlan Coben, only 24 hours before sitting down at my computer, but already some details of its intricate plot are eluding my grasp. No doubt that's mostly my fault, but it may also have something to do with the brain-taxing plethora of secrets held and coverups performed by inhabitants of the New Jersey town where the action takes place.
Dennis Drabelle - Washington Post
It is possible for a life to go so badly wrong that it can never be right again?... The opening chapter of this excellent thriller is a salutary warning of how fragile civilised life can seem.... Coben resolves all this with twists and turns of plot that he has carefully prepared, but in the end what we take away from this book is less his ingenuity than his wisdom.
Roz Kaveney - Independent (UK)
Bestseller Coben (Hold Tight) has a knack for taking everyday nightmares and playing with life’s endless “what ifs,” as shown in this stand-alone thriller, a tightly choreographed dance of guilt and innocence, forgiveness and retribution. Frank Tremont, a world-weary, near-retirement investigator for New Jersey’s Essex County, has to face his failure to solve his last case—the disappearance of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, Dan Mercer stands accused of being a sexual predator thanks to the ambush journalism of Wendy Tynes, a tabloid TV reporter, who must cope with her husband’s death caused by a drunken driver as well as reckon with the possibility of Mercer’s innocence. When Tynes finds a link between a father of one of Mercer’s alleged victims and others felled by scandal, she could become a killer’s next victim. If the wealth of characters dilutes the suspense, Coben gives readers lots to think about when judging rights and wrongs.
Publishers Weekly
Teenager Haley McWaid doesn't come home one night, and when months go by without a word her parents assume the worst. Reporter Wendy Tynes conducts a sexual predator sting, working with the local police to capture men on camera and later televising the footage. Her latest suspect is community social worker Dan Mercer, and those who know him can't believe he's guilty. Tynes begins to question her instincts, but she carries on with her investigation, which reveals a shocking link between Mercer and the missing Haley, with aftershocks that will destroy a community. Verdict: Coben is in top form exposing the dark underside of modern suburbia. The story will chill readers, especially parents of teenagers. Complex and intricate, this is his best book since Promise Me. Don't escape, get Caught.
Library Journal
Along with his Myron Bolitar series, Coben's stand-alone novels have cemented his reputation as a solid writer and a relentless plotter of high-octane entertainment.... With his latest effort—though, admittedly, a generally slower-paced effort with weaker characterization than in other novels—Coben delivers solid entertainment. Again.
Booklist
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 Caught:
1. Is Harlan Coben able to juggle all the balls he's thrown into the air in this novel? Some critics have suggested there are there simply too many characters and mysteries to keep track of...or to cohere into a taut thriller. Do you agree or disagree? Were you able to follow all the twists and turns and stay on top of the storyline?
2. Talk about the way in which Coben juxtaposes ordinary, cozy domestic details with forces of evil in the larger society. Why? What might be his purpose as an author in using this narrative technique (which he does in many of his thrillers)?
3. Of the main characters, whom do you find most sympathetic—and why? Is it Wendy Tynes, Dan Mercer, Marcia McWaid...or others?
4. What do you think about Wendy's tactics of entrapment? Is she complicit in what happens to Dan—even if what happens is for a good cause?
5. What kind of pressures does Wendy, as a female, face at the TV station? How did you feel when she was fired from her job?
6. Talk about Wendy's coming to terms with the woman driver who killed her husband? What does she come to understand?
7. The book examines the role of TV, the Internet, and social media in creating public perception. What does the book suggest is the impact of all this high-speed communication on our lives, our identities, or the truth?
8. Of all the various plot strands and mysteries—a pedophile, an embezzling scheme, a college boys’ conspiracy, a missing girl, and a dead hooker—which was most intriguing or compelling? Were you ahead of the curve in figuring out how they all came together?
9. What about Jenna and her husband? What other course of action could they/should they have taken? What would have been the consequences?
10. Does this novel deliver? Does it offer a suspenseful plot and engaging characters? Was the ending a surprise...or predictable? Were all the loose ends tied up satisfactorily? Have you read other Coben books...if so, how does this one compare?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Skinny Legs and All
Tom Robbins, 1990
Random House
422 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553377880
Summary
An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations....
It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which spins this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine—while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils.
Skinny Legs and All deals with today's most sensitive issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves lyrically through what some call the "end days" of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat.
In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are characters, phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 22, 1932
• Where—Bowling Rock, North Carolina, USA
• Reared—near Richmond, Virginia
• Education—attended Washington and Lee University;
Virginia Commonwealth University; University of
Washington, for a Masters degree.
• Currently—lives in La Conner, Washington
So much mythology swirls around Pacific Northwest novelist Tom Robbins that sorting fact from fiction is a daunting challenge. Born Thomas Eugene Robbins in 1936 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, he was raised from age 11 on in a suburb near Richmond, Virginia. He attended Washington and Lee University but did not graduate. Instead, he quit college and spent a year hitchhiking, settling for a while in New York City.
Robbins enlisted in the Air Force in 1957, just one step ahead of the draft, and served three years in Korea. Upon discharge, he moved back to Virginia to attend art school at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University), graduating in 1961. During this time he worked as a copy editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
According to Robbins, the South's hidebound racism— perfectly mirrored in the newspaper's policy—prompted him to move as far away from Richmond as possible "while still remaining in the continental United States." He ended up in Seattle in the early 1960s, enrolled in the University of Washington to pursue his Masters, and went to work for the Seattle Times. If we are to believe the story, it was around this time that he first sampled LSD (not yet an illegal substance). Blown away by the experience, he chucked both grad school and his job at the paper and spent the rest of the decade bouncing between the East and West Coasts—writing, working as a DJ in alternative radio, and partaking liberally of the countercultural smorgasbord of the day.
Towards the end of the '60s, Robbins began working seriously at his writing, culminating in 1971 with the publication of his first novel, the comic absurdist tale, Another Roadside Attraction. A failure in hardcover, it nevertheless sold well as a paperback, prompting publishers to release his next book—1976's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues—in both formats simultaneously. Although he has not been a hit with most mainstream critics, Robbins has achieved rarified cult status with successive generations of 20-somethings who adore his goofy, upbeat satirical fiction. He claims to never read reviews but is pleased to have enjoyed a steady string of bestsellers starting with Still Life with Woodpecker in 1980. In 2005, he produced Wild Ducks Flying Backward, a volume of shorter works, including poems, stories, essays, articles, and reviews.
Rumor has it that Robbins polishes each sentence to perfection before moving on to the next. Whether or not that's true, he does admit to being a slow writer—and to needing a long period of rest and recuperation (usually involving travel to some exotic place) in between books. All of which explains why his output is surprisingly slender, especially for a writer who inspires such passionate, fanatical devotion!
Extras
• An accomplished artist, Robbins is one of only a handful of writers to have cover design built into their book contracts.
• When Elvis Presley died of an overdose in his bathroom on August 16, 1977, there was rumored to be a copy of Another Roadside Attraction on the floor beside him.
• While working as a journalist and DJ in Washington state, Robbins attended a 1967 Doors concert in Seattle. He claims that the origins of his unique writing style can be found in that piece.
• Robbins has enjoyed friendships with a group of widely people, from '60s countercultural icons like Alan Ginsberg and Timothy Leary to mythologist Joseph Campbell (with whom he once traveled to South America).
• Robbins has appeared in several films, including Made in Heaven; Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle; Breakfast of Champions, and Gus Van Sant's 1993 adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Robbins possesses magnet-like power.
USA Today
In a phantasmagorical, politically charged tale you wish would never end, Robbins holds forth—through a variety of ingenious, off-beat mouthpieces—on art (with and without caps), the Middle East, religious fanaticism of many stripes, and the seven veils of self-deception. Salome, skinny legs and all, belly-dances rapturously at Isaac & Ishmael's, a much-molested restaurant located across the street from the U.N., founded by an Arab and a Jew as an example of happy, peaceful and mutually beneficial coexistence. Ellen Cherry Charles, artist and waitress, heir to the most positive legacy of Jezebel, works at the same joint, nursing a broken heart inflicted by Boomer Petway, redneck welder/bemused darling of the New York art scene. Meanwhile, Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell traverse half the world on a hejira to Jerusalem—where Conch and Painted Stick will resume religious duties in the Third Temple, dedicated (of course) to Astarte. Unless, mind you, Ellen Cherry's boil-encrusted uncle Buddy, a radio evangelist who gets turned on by Tammy Faye Bakker, manages to start WW III first.... Robbins's lust for laughs is undiminished; this prescription for sanity couldn't be better.
Publishers Weekly
A painter's struggle with her art, a restaurant opened as an experiment in brotherhood, the journey of several inanimate objects to Jerusalem, a preacher's scheme to hasten Armageddon, and a performance of a legendary dance: these are the diverse elements around which Robbins has built this wild, controversial novel. Ellen Cherry Charles, one of the "Daughters of the Daily Special" from Robbin's previous Jitterbug Perfume, takes center stage. She has married Boomer Petway and moved to New York, hoping to make it as a painter. Instead, she winds up a waitress at the Isaac and Ishmael, a restaurant co-owned by an Arab and a Jew. Robbins's primary concern is Middle Eastern politics, supplemented along the way with observations on art, religion, sex, and money. Few contemporary novelists mix tomfoolery and philosophy so well. This is Robbins at his best.
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 Skinny Legs and All:
1. Robbins uses the Dance of the Seven Veils as the structure of his novel. Identify and talk about the seven self-deceptions that he sees humans living under.
2. In what way is the biblical Jezebel significant to Ellen Cherry Charles?
3. What is true art? How does the New York art scene misrepresent the artistic ideal? Who represents the ideal in this novel and in what way? Consider this quotation: "In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak." Who says it and what does it mean?
4. Why would Robbins's use inanimate objects, like a can of beans, a sock, and a stick?
5. How does this story comment on the state of human affairs—what is Robbins overall view of our ability to solve our political and religious differences? Consider Issac and Ishmael, the two men who own the cafe in New York.
6. Who or what does Buddy represent?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Christmas List
Richard Paul Evans, 2009
Simon & Schuster
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439150009
Summary
Dear Reader,
When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave our class the intriguing (if somewhat macabre) assignment of writing our own obituaries. Oddly, I don't remember much of what I wrote about my life, but I do remember how I died: in first place on the final lap of the Daytona 500. At the time, I hadn't considered writing as an occupation, a field with a remarkably low on-the-job casualty rate.
What intrigues me most about Mrs. Johnson's assignment is the opportunity she gave us to confront our own legacy. How do we want to be remembered? That question has motivated our species since the beginning of time: from building pyramids to putting our names on skyscrapers.
As I began to write this book, I had two objectives: First, I wanted to explore what could happen if someone read their obituary before they died and saw, firsthand, what the world really thought of them. Their legacy.
Second, I wanted to write a Christmas story of true redemption. One of my family's holiday traditions is to see a local production of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. I don't know how many times I've seen it (perhaps a dozen), but it still thrills me to see the change that comes over Ebenezer Scrooge as he transforms from a dull, tight-fisted miser into a penitent, "giddy-as-aschoolboy" man with love in his heart. I always leave the show with a smile on my face and a resolve to be a better person. That's what I wanted to share with you, my dear readers, this Christmas—a holiday tale to warm your season, your homes, and your hearts.
Merry Christmas. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 11, 1962
• Where—Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Utah
• Awards—American Mother Book Award; two Story Telling
World Awards (2000, 2001)
• Currently—lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
The story of Richard Paul Evans's massive success is so miraculous that it could have been the subject of one of his inspirational stories if it hadn't been true. He'd written his very first book The Christmas Box as a holiday gift for his daughters in 1993. As he saw it, this story of a widow and the young family that moves into her home was a tangible, timeless expression of his fatherly love. So, Evans produced twenty copies of the novella, which he then handed out to a select group of friends and family as Christmas gifts.
Incredibly, those mere twenty books began to circulate. And circulate. And circulate. By the following month, copies of The Christmas Box had passed through no less than 160 pairs of hands, some of which belonged to people who were rather influential. Amazingly, book stores began calling Evans at home, asking for copies of his little homemade opus.
The story of The Christmas Box does not end there. This moving tale about the meaning of Christmas was soon picked up by Simon & Schuster and went on to make publishing history when it simultaneously became both the bestselling hardcover and the bestselling paperback book in America. Suddenly, former advertising executive and clay animator Evans was a bestselling writer with a whole new career ahead of him.
Evans followed up The Christmas Box with a prequel titled Timepiece in 1996. Timepiece was another major hit with readers, as was The Letter, the final installment in the Christmas Box trilogy. From there, Evans expanded his repertoire while continuing to focus on the themes dearest to him: faith, family, forgiveness, love, and loyalty. He published The Christmas Candle, his first book for kids.
His work also often became subject to small-screen adaptations. In fact, a 1995 production of The Christmas Box starring Maureen O'Hara and Richard Thomas snared an Emmy for best costuming in a miniseries or special. The following year, a version of Timepiece featured an early appearance by future superstar Naomi Watts, not to mention choice performances by James Earl Jones and Ellen Burstyn, as well as an associate producer credit for the author, himself.
Meanwhile, Evans continued penning and publishing heart-warming mega-sellers like The Locket, The Looking Glass, and The Carousel. In 2001, he took some time to reflect on his stunning success in The Christmas Box Miracle, which recounted his most unusual journey to the top of the bestseller list.
Another string of crowd pleasers followed, including the romantic The Last Promise, A Perfect Day, and The Sunflower, a critically acclaimed account of blossoming love at a humanitarian mission in Peru. Now, Evans is back with Finding Noel, the story of Mark Smart, whose pained life is completely turned around after a chance encounter in a coffee shop. Fans of Evans—and there are legions of them—will no doubt be delighted and deeply touched by his latest work.
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Evans is one of the few writers in history to place on both the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists.
• When Evans is not writing bestsellers, he often makes public appearances as a motivational speaker. He has shared the stage with such notable people as director Ron Howard, writer Deepak Chopra, humorist Steven Allen, and both George Bush senior and George W. Bush.
• In 1997, Evans founded The Christmas Box House International, a foundation responsible for building shelters for abused, neglected, and homeless children throughout the world. More than 16,000 kids have found homes in one of Evans's shelters.
• Evans is the father of five children, who take up most of his time.
• He is the founder of The Christmas Box House International, which builds shelter assessment facilities for abused children. According to Evans, "The most interesting trip I have been on lately was in the jungles of Peru, where we hunted crocodiles in leaky canoes at midnight. I have lived in both China and Italy, which is why I often have characters from those lands."
• Evans loves playing the game Risk. Also Paintball. He says, "When possible, I round up my friends and go down to our ranch in southern Utah, where we play weekend soldiers."
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is his response:
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I was 20 years old when I read it. I was visiting my brother in Monterey, California, where the book takes place, and I became so enraptured by Steinbeck's writing that I decided then that I wanted to write a book someday. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
(This book has few mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
It's possible that Santa just won't come if there isn't a new Evans (A Christmas Box) holiday tale in his bag. This year, it's the story of real-estate mogul James Kier, who gets the chance to read his obituary—before he dies. What he discovers unnerves him as the death notice portrays a ruthless, friendless man. James decides to make amends to the many people he's hurt over the years. Sure to be a best seller, so buy accordingly.
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 The Christmas List:
1. Talk about James Kier—the kind of character he is at the beginning of this book. What are the numerous ways he has damaged peoples' lives and poisoned his relationships? Is there anything in his character that can be admired?
2. What is the irony behind the alleged "heart attack"?
3. Kier wants to make amends, but he depends on his secretary to draw up the list of those he has hurt. Why, if his desire for redemption is genuine, doesn't he create the list for himself? Shouldn't he have been the one to make it?
4. Why are there only five on the list? What makes them most significant offenses in Linda's eyes?
5. Of all the characters, which one moved you the most in this book? What about Sara, for instance? How would you characterize her love? Anyone else?
6. Much is made of this book in comparison to Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Have you read Dickens's book, and if so, what similarities do you find?
7. The healing power of forgiveness is one of the strongest themes in the novel. Forgiveness is a mysterious force: how does it do its work in this book? Who is forgiven and who is healed? In your own life, how difficult/easy is it to forgive?
8. Does this book inspire you to take a deeper look at your own life—to give yourself a long look in the mirror? Have you ever considered writing your own obituary? What do you think others might say about you after you're gone?
9. In The Christmas List, Evans raises the issue of second chances in life. Absent a return from the grave or a bizarre chance occurrence like Kier has, are second chances possible in life? What would you do over again...or make amends for?
10. Were you surprised and engaged by the many twists and turns in story line—or did you find the plot contrived or predictable? What about the ending—does it satisfy and, if so, why? Or do you wish for a different outcome? If so, what?
11. In what way is James Kier transformed by the end of the book? Go back to the Kier at the beginning of the book—what deep down in his personality enabled the transformation to take hold in the first place? What do you foresee for him in the future?
12. Over all, what do you consider as the authentic Christmas message (or messages) found in Evans's book?
13. Have you read Evans's trilogy—The Christmas Box, The Timepiece, and The Letter? If so, how does this one compare with the others? Does List fit in, thematically, with the trilogy (creating a quartet)? Or is it a distinct stand-alone? If you have not read any of Paul Richard Evans books, does this one make you want to read his others?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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