The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
C.W. Gortner, 2010
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345501868
Summary
The truth is, none of us are innocent. We all have sins to confess.
So reveals Catherine de Medici in this brilliantly imagined novel about one of history’s most powerful and controversial women. To some she was the ruthless queen who led France into an era of savage violence. To others she was the passionate savior of the French monarchy. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter into the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power.
The last legitimate descendant of the illustrious Medici line, Catherine suffers the expulsion of her family from her native Florence and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an enraged mob. While still a teenager, she is betrothed to Henri, son of François I of France, and sent from Italy to an unfamiliar realm where she is overshadowed and humiliated by her husband’s lifelong mistress. Ever resilient, Catherine strives to create a role for herself through her patronage of the famous clairvoyant Nostradamus and her own innate gift as a seer. But in her fortieth year, Catherine is widowed, left alone with six young children as regent of a kingdom torn apart by religious discord and the ambitions of a treacherous nobility.
Relying on her tenacity, wit, and uncanny gift for compromise, Catherine seizes power, intent on securing the throne for her sons. She allies herself with the enigmatic Protestant leader Coligny, with whom she shares an intimate secret, and implacably carves a path toward peace, unaware that her own dark fate looms before her—a fate that, if she is to save France, will demand the sacrifice of her ideals, her reputation, and the passion of her embattled heart.
From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—southern Spain
• Education—M.F.A., (university unknown)
• Currently—lives in northern California, USA
Half-Spanish by birth, C.W. Gortner was raised in southern Spain, where he developed a lifelong fascination with history. After holding various jobs in the fashion industry, he earned a MFA in Writing with an emphasis in Renaissance Studies. He has taught university seminars on the 16th century and women in history, as well as workshops on writing, historical research, and marketing.
Acclaimed for his insight into his characters, he travels extensively to research his books. He has slept in a medieval Spanish castle, danced in a Tudor great hall, and explored library archives all over Europe.
His debut historical novel The Last Queen gained international praise and has been sold in ten countries to date. His new novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, his second, was published in 2010. He is currently at work on The Princess Isabella, his third historical novel, and The Tudor Secret, the first book in his new Tudor suspense series, The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles.
C.W. lives with his partner in northern California. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Catherine de Medici uses her natural and supernatural gifts to protect the French throne in Gortner's (The Last Queen) portrait of a queen willing to sacrifice happiness and reputation to fulfill her family's royal destiny. Orphan Catherine has her first vision at age 10, and three years later is betrothed to Henri d'Orleans, brother of the sickly heir to the French throne. She heads to France with a vial of poison hidden among her possessions, and after negotiating an uneasy truce with her husband's mistress, she matures into a powerful court presence, though power, she learns, comes at a price. Three of her sons become king in succession as the widow Catherine wields ever-increasing influence to keep the ambitious de Guise clan at bay and religious adversaries from murdering each other. Gortner's is not the first fictional reinterpretation of a historical villainess—Catherine's role in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, for instance, is recounted in a way sympathetic to her—but hers is remarkably thoughtful in its insight into an unapologetically ruthless queen.
Publishers Weekly
History has depicted Catherine de Medici (1519–89), wife of one king and mother of three, as a grotesque monster, poisoning and murdering to gain and maintain control over the French throne. After the death of Henri II, she began the struggle of her life—keeping one son after the other on the throne through the religious wars that threatened to tear France apart. In this meticulously researched novel, Gortner (The Last Queen) gives us a Catherine who is passionate yet sometimes naive. Most of her decisions following her husband's death are made to keep peace in France or safeguard her children. Yet she is still held responsible for the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in which thousands of French Protestants were slaughtered. Verdict: While the Catherine depicted here is in some ways similar to Jeanne Kalodigris's protagonist in The Devil's Queen, Gortner breathes more life into his queen. Historical fiction fans will appreciate the vivid details of Renaissance France.—Pamela O'Sullivan, Coll. of Brockport Lib., SUNY
Library Journal
Gortner...fleshes out the notorious Catherine de Medici centuries after her death. Was she a victim of historical, political, and social circumstances or merely a ruthlessly ambitious power seeker? ... Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory fans will devour this smashing fictonal biography of a complex woman whose legend has withstood the test of time. —Margaret Flanagan
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 The Confessions of Catherine de Medici:
1. In Confessions, C.W. Gortner is determined to present a sympathetic picture of Catherine de Medici, a figure much maligned in history. His goal is to flesh her out as a complex and multi-faceted human being—one who will gain readers' sympathy. Does he succeed?
2. Some historians believe that France would have toppled into revolution 200 years earlier than it did—had Catherine not been at the helm. In what ways was she instrumental in preserving the Valois line and the stability of her country?
3. How do you see Catherine: as a murderess, victim, opportunist, or savior? Would you consider her means of survival ruthless...or pragmatic?
4. Talk about Catherine's early life in Florence, her imprisonment, and rescue. What must it have felt like to be a prisoner, then find yourself bride of a prince of France, Europe's most powerful state?
5. What about Catherine's arrival in France? What kind of reception does she receive? What are her expectations...and what does she find? What kind of prejudice does she face as an Italian in France?
6. Say, what about that mistress? How would you describe Diane de Poitiers, her hold over Henri, her status at court, and her position vis-a-vis Catherine? In what way does that change?
7. Discuss the religious strife that infected most of Europe. What would it have been like to live through such violent turmoil? (Any parallels we can draw today?) Talk about the ways in which Catherine seeks to keep peace between the Catholics and Huguenots?
8. How does Gortner present the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre—events leading up to it, misjudgments and missteps, provocations, the spark that set it off...and Catherine's role?
9. Discuss Catherine's relationship with Coligny. What brought them together...and what led them to the final tragic moment between them? Was that moment inevitable?
10. How does Gortner treat Catherine's belief in the occult? How strong an influence is it on her? What do you feel about her visions?
11. Talk about Catherine's children. Are any of them worthy of her devotion? Are any admirable...likeable?
12. Is there regret in Catherine's account for the actions she's taken....the sacrifices she's made?
13. How do you account for Catherine's bad reputation in history?
14. Catherine's life was not her own. Talk about the role throughout history of young high-born women—who were used as pawns in male games of power. Catherine is only one in a long line of pubescent girls married off to seal the deal, either geopolitical or financial...can you think of others?
15. Having finished, what part of this book most surprised you? Which part most engaged you...or did you find most interesting? What have you learned from reading The Confessions...about the 16th century, the religious wars, French monarchy, about Catherine herself? Do you feel smarter?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
Jim Fergus and J. Will Dodd (Intro), 1998
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312199432
Summary
Based on actual historical events, One Thousand White Women is the poignant story of May Dodd's journey west.
Committed to an insane asylum by her blueblood family for an affair with a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope of freedom is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from the "civilized" world become the brides of Cheyenne warriors.
She soon falls in love with John Bourke, a gallant young army captain, even though she is married to the great chief Little Wolf. Caught between two worlds and two men, Dodd is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever. (From the publisher.)
Read the novel's 2017 sequel: The Mothers of Vengenace.
Author Bio
• Birth—1950
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—Colorado College
• Awards—Mountains & Plains Booksellers Assn. - Fiction of the Year Award
• Currently—divides his time between Arizona, Colorado, and France
Jim Fergus is an American born author, best know for his 1998 novel Ten Thousand White Woman. Fergus was born in Chicago; his mother was French mother and father American. He attended high school in Massachusetts and headed out West to study English at Colorado College.
After working as a tennis pro for 10 years, in 1980 he moved to Rand, Colorado, with its 13 residents. There he began freelance writing full time, publishing 100s of articles, essays, and interviews for various national publications.
A devoted traveler, Fergus published his first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, in 1992. The LA Times called it "an absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."
Fergus’s first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd came out in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association and has since sold over a million copies in the U.S. and France.
In 1999, Fergus published The Sporting Road, a collection of outdoor articles and essays. That book was followed in 2005 with his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, historical fiction set in the 1930’s in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico.
Marie-Blanche, which he published in France in 2011, is historical fiction set in France and based on his own family — the complex and ultimately fatal relationship between Fergus’s French mother and grandmother.
In 2013, Fergus published another novel, first in France as Chrysis: Portrait de l’Amour, later that year in the U.S. as The Memory of Love. Set in the 1920s, the novel is a love story based on the life of a true life woman painter, Chrysis Jungbluth.
Fergus published a follow-up in 2017 to his widely known One Thousand White Women. The sequel, The Mothers of Vengeance, follows white women married to Cheyennes who seek vengeance after their husbands and children were killed during a raid by U.S. troops.
Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France, (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The best writing transports readers to another time and place, so that when they reluctantly close the book, they are astonished to find themselves returned to their everyday lives. One Thousand White Women is such a book. Jim Fergus so skillfully envelops us in the heart and mind of his main character, May Dodd, that we weep when she mourns, we shake our fist at anyone who tries to sway her course, and our hearts pound when she is in danger.
Colorado Springs Gazette
An imaginative fictional account of the participation of May Dodd and others in the controversial "Brides for Indians" program, a clandestine U.S. government-sponsored program.… This book is artistically rendered with meticulous attention to small details that bring to life the daily concerns of a group of hardy souls at a pivotal time in U.S. history. —Grace Fill
Booklist
Long, brisk, charming…. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding…. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. One Thousand White Women was written by a man, but in a woman's point of view. Did you find this convincing?
2. In 1875, rebellious or unorthodox women were sometimes considered "hysterical" or insane. Is this still true in some circumstances today?
3. Does May Dodd remind you of a modern-day woman?
4. What would be today's equivalent of traveling west to an unknown part of the country with a group of strangers?
5. Did you feel the Native Americans were accurately portrayed in the novel?
6. If the "Brides for Indians" program were actually put into effect in 1875, do you feel it would have been effective?
7. What circumstances would prompt you to undergo a journey like the one May Dodd took?
8. Do you consider One Thousand White Women a tragic story? If so, why? If not, why not?
9. Of the supporting female characters, who did you find the most likeable?
10. Were any of May Dodd's actions unsympathetic? Would you find it difficult to leave your children behind in order to escape a horrendous situation?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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So Long a Letter
Mariama Ba, (trans., Modupe Bode-Thomas) 1987
Heinemann Publishing
96 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780435913526
Summary
So Long a Letter is a sequence of reminiscences recounted by the (fictional) recently widowed Sengalese school teacher Ramatoulaye. It is a record of Ramatoulaye's emotional struggle for survival after her husband's abrupt decision to take a second wife.
The novel is a perceptive testimony to the plight of thoes articulate women who live in a social milieux dominated by attitudes and values that deny them their proper place.
So Long a Letter won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, and was recognised as one of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century in an initiative organised by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1929
• Where—Dakar, Senegal, Africa
• Died—1981
• Education—Ecole Normale, Senegal
• Awards—The first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa, 1980
Mariama Ba was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to criticise what she perceived as inequalities between the sexes of the African and Islamic traditions.
Her frustration with the fate of African women is expressed in her first novel, So Long a Letter. In it she depicts the sorrow and resignation of a woman who must share the mourning for her late husband with his second and younger wife. Abiola Irele called it "the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction." This short book was awarded the first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa in 1980.
Ba died a year later, in 1981, after a protracted illness before publishing her second novel, Scarlet Song. That novel describes the hardships a woman faces when her husband abandons her for a younger woman.
In addition to her career as a writer, Ba was also a teacher and feminist. She was among the first to illustrate the disadvantaged position of women in African society, focusing on the importance of the grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, cousin and friend—how each deserves the title, “mother of Africa.” Her source of determination and commitment to the feminist cause stemmed from her background, her parent’s life and her schooling.
Ba was born in Dakar Senegal in 1929, into an educated and well-to-do Senegalese family. Her father was a career civil servant who became Minister of Health in 1956 (one of the first ministers of state). One of her grandfathers served as an interpreter in the French occupation regime.
After her mother’s death, Ba was raised largely in the traditional manner by her maternal grandparents. Altough she received an early education in French, and attended a Koranic school, her grandparents had no plans to educate her beyond primary school. It was ony at her father's insistence that she continued her studies, eventually entering the Ecole Normale, where she prepared for a career as a school teacher. Ba taught from 1947 to 1959, before transferring to the Regional Inspectorate of Teaching as an educational inspector. She also married a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obeye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children.
Ba saw the failure of African liberation struggles, and her earliest works call for a rejection of the “French assimilationist policy.” She also advocated a reconsideration and reinvigor-ation of African life—criticizing the unequal balance of power between men and married women, in particular. Ba became active in women’s associations, defending women’s rights and promoting female education through speeches and articles in local newspapers. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
So Long a Letter is a landmark book—a sensation in its own country and an education for outsiders. Mariama Ba, a longtime women's activist, set out to write a book that exposed the double standard between men and women in Africa. The result, So Long a Letter, eventually won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. The book itself takes the form of a long letter written by a widow, Ramatoulaye, to her friend, over the mandatory forty-day mourning period following the death of a husband. Both women had married for love and had happy, productive marriages; both were educated, had work they loved and were intellectually alive. During their lives, both of these women's husbands chose to take a second wife—and each woman then made a different choice. Ramatoulaye decided to stay married, although it meant rarely seeing her husband and knowing that he was squandering money on a young girl, a friend of her own daughter. Ramatoulaye's friend divorced her husband and eventually left the country, settling in the United States. In her letter, Ramatoulaye examines her life and that of other women of Senegal—their upbringing and training and the cultural restrictions placed upon them. It is a devastating attack, made all the more powerful because of the intelligence and maturity of the narrator and the ability of Mariama Ba to honor two very different choices within one framework.
Erica Bauermeister - 500 Great Books by Women
It is not only the fact that this is the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction that gives distinction to this novel, but also its undoubted literary qualities, which seem to place it among the best novels that have come out of our continent.
West Africa
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 So Long a Letter:
1. Talk about the treatment of women—in terms of upbringing, training, and cultural restrictions—in Senegal.
2. How does Ramatoulaye's life in Africa and Aissatou's life in the United States differ? How do their view of men and marriage differ? Why does Ramatoulaye decide to stay married to her husband, while her friend divorces hers. Which woman's decision to you agree with...or were both decisions the correct one for each woman?
3. What, if anything, does Ramatoulaye learn from her correspondence with her girlhood friend?
4. How does Ramatoulaye rationalize the differences between men and women? Do you agree...or disagree with her views?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Ape House
Sara Gruen, 2010
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385523226
Summary
Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani, and Makena are no ordinary apes. These bonobos, like others of their species, are capable of reason and carrying on deep relationships—but unlike most bonobos, they also know American Sign Language.
Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn’t understand people, but animals she gets—especially the bonobos. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than she’s ever felt among humans...until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the ever-present animal rights protesters outside the lab to see what’s really going on inside.
When an explosion rocks the lab, severely injuring Isabel and “liberating” the apes, John’s human interest piece turns into the story of a lifetime, one he’ll risk his career and his marriage to follow. Then a reality TV show featuring the missing apes debuts under mysterious circumstances, and it immediately becomes the biggest—and unlikeliest—phenomenon in the history of modern media.
Millions of fans are glued to their screens watching the apes order greasy take-out, have generous amounts of sex, and sign for Isabel to come get them. Now, to save her family of apes from this parody of human life, Isabel must connect with her own kind, including John, a green-haired vegan, and a retired porn star with her own agenda.
Ape House delivers great entertainment, but it also opens the animal world to us in ways few novels have done, securing Sara Gruen’s place as a master storyteller who allows us to see ourselves as we never have before. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Vancouver, Canada
• Raised—London, Ontario
• Education—Carleton University (Ottawa)
• Currently—lives in western North Carolina
Sara Gruen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Water for Elephants and Riding Lessons. She lives in western North Carolina with her husband, three sons, and a menagerie of rescued animals. (From the publisher.)
More
Sara Gruen is a Canadian-born author, whose books deal greatly with animals; she is a supporter of numerous charitable organizations that support animals and wildlife.
Gruen moved to the U.S. from Canada in 1999 for a technical writing job. When she was laid off two years later, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction. A devoted animal lover, her first novel, Riding Lessons (2004), explored the intimate and often healing spaces between people and animals and was a USA Today bestseller. She wrote a second novel, Flying Changes (2005), also about horses.
Although her first two novels sold several hundred thousands of copies—and Riding Lessons was a best seller—her third release, Water for Elephants, was initially turned down by her publisher at the time, forcing Gruen to find another publisher. That book, of course, went on to become one of the top-selling novels of our time. Readers fell in love with its story of Jacob, the young man tossed by fate onto a rickety circus train that was home to Rosie, the untrainable elephant. This #1 New York Times bestseller has been printed in 44 languages and the movie version (2011) stars Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz, and Robert Pattinson.
Gruen sold her fourth novel, Ape House (2010), on the basis of a 12-page summary to Random House, which won that and another of her novels in a bidding war with 8 other publishers. Ape House features the amazing Bonobo ape. When a number of apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA.
Gruen has had a life-long fascination with human-ape discourse, with a particular interest in Bonobo apes. She has studied linguistics and a system of lexigrams in order to communicate with apes, and is one of the few visitors who has been allowed access to the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where the apes have come to love her. In bringing her experience and research to bear on her fourth novel, she opens the animal world to us as few novelists have done.
Sara Gruen’s awards include the 2007 Book Sense Book of the Year Award, the Cosmo Fun Fearless Fiction Award, the Bookbrowse Diamond Award for Most Popular Book, the Friends of American Literature Adult Fiction Award and the ALA/Alex Award 2007. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Gruen is clearly enjoying herself here…And [Ape House] is fun, in an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink way: headlong and over-the-top. Much of the humor amounts to sight gags and saw-it-coming punch lines. But the conceit of a household of language-endowed apes as the ne plus ultra of reality TV—leering humans greedy for profits and naughty thrills (bonobos have frequent sexual interactions with both opposite- and same-sex partners), apes who are at once innocent and more compassionate and dignified than the producers and the viewers—is terrific: an incisive piece of social commentary.
Leah Hager Cohen - New York Times
Gruen has a knack for pacing and for creating distinctive animal characters. Scenes involving the bonobos are winsome without being sappy, and the reader comes to share Isabel’s concern for the animals.
Boston Globe
[Ape House] hums along with a pop-culture plot full of slick profiteers, sleazy pornographers, idiotic reality TV and gossip rags—with botox and ape sex thrown in for entertaining reading.
Des Moines Register
Animal lovers, gather ‘round...[Ape House] is much better [than Water for Elephants]—funny because of some weird characters and circumstances that make life difficult for our intrepid reporter, and at the same time, compelling because those apes put to shame our beloved Homo sapiens.
Newark Star Ledger
Part expose, part thriller, part gothic romance and part comedy and farce.... Gruen is a master at the popular novel plot.
Asheville Citizen Times
Gruen enjoys minimal luck in trying to recapture the magic of her enormously successful Water for Elephants in this clumsy outing that begins with the bombing of the Great Ape Language Lab, a university research center dedicated to the study of the communicative behavior of bonobo apes. The blast, which terrorizes the apes and severely injures scientist Isabel Duncan, occurs one day after Philadelphia Inquirer reporter John Thigpen visits the lab and speaks to the bonobos, who answer his questions in sign language. After a series of personal setbacks, Thigpen pursues the story of the apes and the explosions for a Los Angeles tabloid, encountering green-haired vegan protesters and taking in a burned-out meth lab's guard dog. Meanwhile, as Isabel recovers from her injuries, the bonobos are sold and moved to New Mexico, where they become a media sensation as the stars of a reality TV show. Unfortunately, the best characters in this overwrought novel don't have the power of speech, and while Thigpen is mildly amusing, Isabel is mostly inert. In Elephants, Gruen used the human-animal connection to conjure bigger themes; this is essentially an overblown story about people and animals, with explosions added for effect.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The result of extensive research at the Great Ape Trust research facility in Des Moines, this fourth novel from Gruen (following the phenomenal Water for Elephants) has the dramatic tension of a crime thriller. Isabel Duncan is both scientist and den mother to six bonobos, outgoing, intelligent, and mischievous great apes who use American Sign Language and graphic symbols to communicate. Without warning, an explosion shatters their orderly existence. Were the animal rights protesters, an annoying presence outside the lab, behind this vicious act? Isabel spends weeks in the hospital and then can barely function when she learns that her six much loved bonobos have been stolen. With the help of lab intern Celia and two computer hacker friends, a sympathetic tabloid reporter, and an unforgettable Russian prostitute, Isabel wins out over a porn producer with the hottest reality show idea ever. Twists and turns, lies, and treachery abound in this funny, clever, and perceptive story. Verdict: Although the book is somewhat flawed by an abundance of stock characters, Gruen's achievement is nevertheless significant not only in illuminating the darkest corners of animal research but also in showing the depth of human-animal relationships. This will draw both confirmed and new devotees of Gruen's fiction. A perfectly plotted good read. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Gruen’s astute, wildly entertaining tale of interspecies connection is a novel of verve and conscience.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. What does the success of the show "Ape House" reveal about human society? Why do you think its audience finds it especially compelling? How does it compare to the other types of media discussed in the novel?
2. The bonobos in Ape House are described as matriarchal, with Bonzi acting as the nurturing and intelligent “undisputed leader” (p. 6) of the group. Discuss how Bonzi’s relationship with her family compares or contrasts with the various human characters’ relationships with their own mothers. Consider Amanda’s desire—and Ivanka’s—to have children in your discussion.
3. Why is Isabel so attached to the bonobos? What does she enjoy about their company (and that of Stuart, her late fish) that other people do not offer her? What prevents her from connecting at the beginning, and how does that change by the end?
4. Isabel says “[the bonobos] know they’re bonobos and they know we’re human, but it doesn’t imply mastery, or superiority” (p. 10). The bonobos are clearly sentient animals, demonstrating the use of both language and tools, two criteria often cited as proof of the separation between humans and other primates. What, then, actually separates us from them?
5. “At this moment, the story in his head was perfect. [John] also knew from experience that it would degenerate the second he started typing, because such was the nature of writing” (p. 215). John and Amanda are both writers who struggle to maintain integrity while making a living. Discuss the importance of writing, language, and creativity in the novel, as well as the compromises the characters are forced to accept.
6. In Ape House, Sara Gruen uses humor to reveal the many flaws of human society. Is this device effective for revealing human foibles? Did you identify with her portrayal of human behavior?
7. Which of the human characters in Ape House is most like a bonobo?
8. Contrast the physical and emotional transformations of Isabel and Amanda. What are the reasons for their change? How does it affect both of them and their relationships with the other characters?
9. Do you think the use of animals for research, even when it does not physically or emotionally harm them, is an inherent infringement upon the animal’s free will, as the ELL would argue? Or is there a way for animal-related research to be beneficial to human society while also protecting and respecting the animals’ rights? Discuss how Ape House explores the different sides of this issue.
10. Over the course of the novel, John grows increasingly concerned about the possibility of having fathered a child with Ginette Pinegar, while Isabel doesn’t understand why a biological link to the boy should make a difference. For the bonobos, on the other hand, the concept of paternity is irrelevant. Discuss the way Ape House deals with family structures.
11. Compare the bonobos’ behavior with that of the humans in the novel. Do you think of human behavior differently after reading the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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One True Thing
Anna Quindlen, 1994
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812976182
Summary
A young woman returns home from New York to care for her dying mother. In the process she comes to appreciate the choices her mother made in her own life. (From the publisher.)
The book was adapted to film in 1999 with Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger.
Author
• 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
Provocative...We leave One True Thing stimulated and challenged, more thoughtful than when we began.
Los Angeles Times
Fiercely compassionate and frank...conveys a world so out of kilter and so like ours that its readers are likely to feel both exhilarated and unnerved by its accuracy.
Elle
Quindlen gets in some good jabs at the media for its feverish appetite for easy scandal and its irrelevance to the truth manifest in genuine tragedies.
Booklist
The second novel by this Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist follows the psychological travails of Ellen Gulden, who against all personal inclinations returns home to care for her dying mother, Kate, and eventually finds herself accused of mercy-killing. Ellen, an intelligent though not particularly warm person, has spent her life earning her professor father's approval. After achieving high school valedictorian and Harvard honors, she aspires to advance her New York career. At her father's insistence, however, she leaves her job and takes on the role of nurse and homemaker. Through long hours as companion to Kate, she discovers the real value of her mother's life. As in Object Lessons, Quindlen's gifts for characterization and clear description provide insight into families and the human heart. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Library Journal
If literature were judged solely by its ability to elicit strong emotions, columnist-cum-novelist Quindlen (Object Lessons, 1991) would win another Pulitzer for this wrenching, albeit flawed fiction. After a short prologue about the time she spent in jail, accused of having killed her mother, Katherine, Ellen Gulden quickly skips back to her story's beginning, when the 24-year-old's father guilts her into putting her high-powered New York writing career on hold and moving back to Langhorne, the small college town where she grew up, to care for her mother, who has cancer. Cerebral, high-achieving Ellen has always been more her father's daughter; he is the English department chairman, while Mom is a Martha Stewart-perfect homemaker, the type of woman who canes her own chairs. But she and Ellen begin to influence each other, and it becomes clear that Katherine is attempting to take care of unfinished business in her characteristically graceful way, even as her body rapidly deteriorates. With this relationship Quindlen shines, capturing perfectly the casual intimacy that mothers and daughters share, as well as the friction between women of two very different generations. Male characters are sometimes less successful. Ellen's father is so cold that it's hard to fathom how her gentle mother has stood him for so many years, and Ellen seems a little smart and a little old to still be reeling from the discovery that Dad isn't perfect. Even more unconvincing is Ellen's long-time boyfriend, ruthless and uncaring Jonathan Beltzer. These problems are generally surmounted by Quindlen's practiced storytelling. By the time Katherine's autopsy reveals that she died of a morphine overdose, the jailhouse prologue has almost been forgotten, so the clever mystery ending (complete with satisfying twist) is an added bonus. When Quindlen gets it right—which is often—she places herself in the league of Mary Gordon and Sue Miller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. One True Thing begins with Ellen in jail. What do you think about the book beginning this way? Did it affect the way you read the rest of the story, knowing (to some extent) how it would end? Looking back, do you think that scene in jail ultimately adds or detracts from the mystery of the story? How?
2. What was your first impression of Ellen? What did you think of her when you finished the novel? It’s clear that she changes over the course of her mother’s illness and in the wake of her death, but in what specific ways?
3. Kate Gulden seems to be the archetypal “perfect mother.” Was she? How were her relationships with her sons, Jeff and Brian, different from her relationship with Ellen?
4. What did you think of George Gulden at the beginning of the book? Were you surprised as you learned more about his relationship with his wife and children? How did your opinion of him change, and why?
5. Ellen reflects, “No one knows what goes on inside a marriage. I read that once; the aphorism ended ‘except for the two people who are in it.’ But I suspect that even that is not the truth, that even two people married to each other for many many years may have only passing similarities in their perceptions and their expectations” (p. 106). What do you think of this statement? How does it apply to George and Kate Gulden?
6. Describe Ellen’s relationship with Jonathan. Why does she remain interested in a man who does not treat her well? How does Ellen’s relationship with Jonathan compare and contrast to her relationship with her father? Were you surprised by Jonathan’s betrayal? Why do you think he turned on Ellen?
7. In reference to her father, Ellen says: “He divided women into groups . . . the intellectual twins, the woman of the mind and the one of the heart . . . I had the misfortune to be designated the heartless one, my mother the mindless one. It was a disservice to us both but, on balance, I think she got the better deal” (p. 281). Discuss the meanings, and implications, of these categorizations.
8. Discuss the reactions to Kate’s cancer diagnosis, and the progression of the disease, both within the Gulden family (Kate, Ellen, George, Brian and Jeff) and in their small town (the Minnies, etc). Were you surprised by any of the reactions? How and why?
9. Against Ellen’s wishes, Dr. Cohn sends Nurse Teresa Guerrero to help care for Kate. How does Teresa fit in with the Gulden family? Do you agree with Ellen, when she thinks that Teresa helped her as much, if not more, than she helped Kate? How?
10. When Kate died, what did you think happened? Were you surprised to learn about the morphine overdose? Before you learned the truth, did you think it was Ellen, George, or Kate who had administered the lethal dose? Did you ever think it could have been an accident?
11. Mrs. Forburg, Ellen’s former English teacher, bails Ellen out of jail and lets her stay at her home during the indictment media frenzy. Why does Mrs. Forburg take such a risk?
12. Were you surprised by the grand jury’s decision? If you thought Ellen would or would not be indicted, explain why. Do you think the jury’s decision was realistic?
13. At the end of the novel, Ellen sees her father for the first time in eight years. About the death of her mother, she says, “Someday I will tell my father. Someday soon, I imagine, although there is great temptation to leave the man I once thought the smartest person on earth in utter ignorance” (p. 287). Do you think Ellen will tell her father what happened? Why or why not? Would you, if you were in her shoes?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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