Something Borrowed
Emily Giffin, 2004
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312321192
Summary
Rachel has always been a good girl—until her thirtieth birthday, when her best friend Darcy throws her a party.
That night, after too many drinks, Rachel ends up in bed with Darcy's fiancé Dex. Rachel is horrified to discover that she has genuine feelings for Dex.
She prays for fate to intervene, but when she makes a choice she discovers that the lines between right and wrong are blurry, endings aren't always neat, and you have to risk all to win true happiness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1979
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Raised—Naperville, Illinois
• Education—B.A., Wake Forest University; J.D., University of Virginia
• Currenbtly—lives in Atlanta, Georgia
Emily Giffin is the bestselling American author of eight novels commonly categorized as "chick lit." More specifically, Giffin writes stories about relationships and the full array of emotions experienced within them.
Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she also served as manager of the basketball team, the Demon Deacons. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. But Giffin soon determined to seriously pursue her writing.
In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers, but Giffin was undaunted. She began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.
2002 was a big year for Emily Giffin. She married, found an agent, and signed a two-book deal with St. Martin's Press. While doing revisions on Something Borrowed, she found the inspiration for a sequel, Something Blue.
In 2003, Giffin and her husband left England for Atlanta, Georgia. A few months later, on New Year's Eve, she gave birth to identical twin boys, Edward and George.
Something Borrowed was released spring 2004. It received unanimously positive reviews and made the extended New York Times bestsellers list. Something Blue followed in 2005, and in 2006, her third, Baby Proof, made its debut. No new hardcover accompanied the paperback release of in 2007. Instead, Giffin spent the year finishing her fourth novel and enlarging her family. Her daughter, Harriet, was born May 24, 2007.
More novels:
2008 - Love the One You're With
2010 - Heart of the Matter
2012 - Where We Belong
2014 - The One & Only
2016 - First Comes Love
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Emily on Twitter.
Book Reviews
Giffin depicts the complex, shifting relationship of Rachel and Darcy, friends since grade school, into the five months between Darcy’s engagement and her wedding date. A thrill to read.
Washington Post
One of the hottest books of the summer...Giffin avoids what could have been a cliché-ridden tale by skillfully developing Rachel and her best friend Darcy into three-dimensional characters.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Something Borrowed captures what it’s like to be thirty and single in the city, when your life pretty much revolves around friendships and love and their attendant complexities.
San Francisco Chronicle
Giffin, a former lawyer turned debut novelist, infuses this romance with dead-on dialogue, real-life complexity, and genuine warmth.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Both hilarious and thoughtfully written, resisting the frequent tendency of first-time novelists to make their characters and situations a little too black-and-white. You may never think of friendships—their duties, the oblique dances of power and their give-and-take—quite the same way again.
Seattle Times
It's a gamble to cast her heroine in a potentially unsympa-thetic light, but Giffin manages to create empathy for her likable characters without cheapening the complexity of their situation, making for a genuinely winning tale. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
An unexpected love affair threatens a long-lived friendship in this soap opera-like debut from Atlanta ex-lawyer Giffin. Since elementary school, Rachel and Darcy have been best friends, with Darcy always outshining Rachel. While single Rachel is the self-confessed good girl, an attorney trapped at a suffocating New York law firm, Darcy is the complete opposite, a stereotypical outgoing publicist, planning a wedding with the handsome Dex. After Rachel's 30th birthday party, she knocks back one drink too many and winds up in bed with Dex. Instead of feeling guilty about sleeping with her best friend's fiancé, Rachel realizes that Dex is the only man she's really loved, and that she's always resented manipulative Darcy. Rachel and Dex spend a few weekends in the city together "working" while Darcy's off with friends at a Hamptons beach share, but finally Rachel realizes she'll have to give Dex an ultimatum. The flip job Giffin pulls off—here it's the cheaters who're sympathetic (more or less)—gives Dex and Rachel's otherwise ordinary affair extra edge. Rachel would be a more appealing heroine if she were less whiny about her job and her romantic prospects, and rambling dialogue slows the story's pace, but this is an enjoyable beach read—one that'll make readers cast a suspicious eye on best friends and boyfriends who seem to get along just a little too well.
Publishers Weekly
In this debut novel—a bit of bridal lit just in time for the wedding season-good girl Rachel finally breaks the rules in a big way when she sleeps with best friend Darcy's fianc . Rachel knew Dex first (they met in law school), but she introduced him to Darcy, whose friendship has conditioned Rachel to accept being second best. Rachel and Dex's affair continues even as the wedding draws near, and it becomes clear that Dex is going to go through with the nuptials, leaving Rachel to suffer through the day as maid of honor. Things aren't all bad, though: Rachel begins to see Darcy for the superficial manipulator that she is, and when Rachel confronts Dex, she starts to realize what she's been missing by not going for what she wants in life. A surprise twist at the end seamlessly wraps up this fast-paced, enjoyable read. Recommended for most popular fiction collections. —Karen Core, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore, MD
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think was the real impetus behind Rachel's decision to sleep with Dex after her birthday party? Was it about her desire to break out of her good girl persona? Was it about a long standing resentment toward Darcy? Or was it both?
2. How do you view Dex? How would you describe Dex and Rachel's relationship? What drew them together? Did you root for them to be together? Do you think they have true love?
3. Is anything about Rachel and Darcy's friendship genuine? Do you believe it has changed over time? Why does Rachel defend Darcy against attacks from Ethan and Hillary? Compare and contrast Rachel's friendship with Hillary and Ethan to her friendship with Darcy.
4. Do you think Dex and Darcy would have married if it weren't for Dex's affair with Rachel? Why did he stay with Darcy for so long?
5. How did Rachel's flawed self-image contribute to the dilemma that she faces? What do you see as her greatest weakness? Does she care too much about what people think of her?
6. Was Rachel's moral dilemma made easier because of Darcy's personality? Would she have acted on her attraction to Dex if Darcy were a different kind of person and friend? If Rachel had fallen in love with Julian, would she have pursued the same course of action? How does Rachel rationalize her affair with Dex?
7. What is the significance of the dice? What risks does Rachel take when she pursues her relationship with Dex? What is the biggest moment of risk for her? How does Rachel grow and change in the novel?
8. Disloyalty is a major theme in this novel. How differently do men and women view cheating on a friend? Why is Darcy so indignant when she catches Dex and Rachel together when she has been having an affair of her own?
9. Under what circumstances is it justified to choose love over friendship? How important is it for women to stick together? Have you ever been in a friendship like Darcy and Rachel's? Should you ever jettison a friendship that isn't working anymore?
10. This novel is told from Rachel's perspective. How do you think Darcy would tell the same story? How do you think she would describe Rachel? How do you think she views their friendship?
11. This book ends at a crossroads for all the characters. What do you see happening? Will Rachel's relationship last with Dex? Do you think Darcy got what she deserved in the end or do you feel sorry for her? Do you think she's capable of true love? Will Rachel and Darcy ever salvage their friendship? Do you think the ending of Something Borrowed is a happy one?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Marrying Mozart
Stephanie Cowell, 2004
Penguin Group USA
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143034575
Summary
Mannheim, 1777. The four Weber sisters, daughters of a musical family, share a crowded, artistic life in a ramshackle house. Their father scrapes by as a music copyist; their mother keeps a book of prospective suitors hidden in the kitchen. The sisters struggle with these marriage prospects as well as their musical futures—until one evening at their home, when 21-year-old Wolfgang Mozart walks into their lives.
No longer a prodigy and struggling to find his own place in the music world, Mozart is enthralled with the Weber sisters: Aloysia's beauty and talent captivates him; Josefa's rich voice inspires him; Sophie becomes his confidante; and Constanze comes to play a surprising role in his life.
Eighteenth-century Europe comes alive with unforgiving winters and yawning princes; scheming parents and the enduring passions of young talent. Set in Mannheim, Munich, Salzburg and Vienna, Marrying Mozart is the richly textured love story of a remarkable historical figure—and four young women who engaged his passion, his music, and his heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—American Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York City
In her words
I was born in New York City to a family of artists and fell in love with Mozart, Shakespeare and historical fiction at an early age. I began printing stories in a black and white school notebook at about nine years old and in my teens wrote several short novels which remain in a dark box. I learned something though, because by twenty, I had twice won prizes in a national story contest.
Then I left writing for classical singing. I sang in many operas and appeared as an international balladeer; I formed a singing ensemble, a chamber opera company, and so on. The translation of a late Mozart opera returned me to writing once more and I now mostly sing while washing the dishes!
My first published novel was Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest. That work was followed by two other Elizabethan 17th-century novels: The Physician of London (American Book Award 1996) and The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare. In 2004, I returned to my musical background and wrote Marrying Mozart; it has been translated into seven languages and optioned for a movie.
I am married to poet and reiki practitioner Russell Clay and have two grown sons (one in computer systems design and one a filmmaker). I was born in New York City and am still living here, a short walk away from all the impressionist paintings at the Metropolitan Museum. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[Cowell's] Mozart tale is a perfect harmony of fact, fiction. [It is] a charming novel, so much so that one would enjoy it even if the gentleman involved in these girls' lives were not one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music.
Los Angeles Times
Former opera singer Cowell, whose previous novel (1997's The Players) explored the apprenticeship years of a callow Shakespeare, turns her eye to the women in the life of a young Mozart in her fourth graceful and entertaining historical. Music copyist Fridolin Weber and his socially ambitious wife, Marie Caecilia, have four daughters-bookish and devout Sophie; quiet Constanze; beautiful, silver-voiced Aloysia; and headstrong Josefa-whom they struggle to keep in hats and hose. Though the freethinking girls may wonder about the benefits of marrying well vs. marrying for love, Caecilia, whose family once had money, is terrified of growing old a pauper. Pinning her hopes on her prettiest daughter, 16-year-old Aloysia, Caecilia aims for a Swedish baron as suitor (though she keeps a list of backups in a notebook). Aloysia falls in love with the young Mozart, however, who happily returns her affections, though he, too, wonders about marrying better to support his father and beloved mother. But when the Webers move to Munich from Mannheim, Caecilia's hopes for good matches begin to dim, as Josefa takes a married lover and a pregnant Aloysia runs away with a painter who, along with Mozart, had been boarding with the family. As Mozart progresses in his career, he has relationships with the other Weber sisters, too, and falls alternately in and out of favor with their bitter old mother. Told through the recollections of an aging Sophie, the tale is as rich and unhurried as 18th-century court life.
Publishers Weekly
Long before Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married Constanze Weber, his musical and personal life was intertwined with her family. In Cowell's fourth historical novel (after Nicholas Cooke, The Players, and The Physician of London), Sophie, the youngest of the four Weber sisters, shares the story with an English biographer visiting Austria. As she recalls events from 60 years earlier that reveal how the sisters influenced Mozart's music, readers are drawn into a world rich in music but poor in material goods. Herr Weber ekes out a living by giving music lessons and performances; his weekly gatherings assemble famous and aspiring musicians, including Mozart. While the elder daughters, Josefa and Aloysia, both possess wonderful singing voices, it is Aloysia, with her remarkable beauty, who wins the public's adoration (not to mention Josefa's jealousy). After Herr Weber's early death, Frau Weber schemes to marry her daughters into wealth, but her harsh demands drive the family apart. Because Mozart's family depends on his earnings, his father blocks early marriage, a delay that costs Mozart Aloysia and haunts the composer for years. Cowell vividly brings to life not only the Webers and the Mozarts but also dozens of minor characters and their era. Fans of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring will relish this exploration of family demands and the creative drive. Recommended for all public libraries. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Library Journal
A fourth outing by New York soprano and novelist Cowell (The Players, 1997, etc.) re-creates the situation that led up to Mozart's marriage. Based on true events, this is the story of the prodigy who, at 21, is just beginning to make a name for himself as a serious composer. Unhappily engaged as a court composer for the Archbishop-Prince of Salzburg, Mozart leaves the bishop's employ in 1777 and begins to travel throughout Europe with his beloved, ambitious mother. In Mannheim, the two visit the home of Fridolin Weber, an impoverished musician whose four daughters (Josefa, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie) are as renowned for their musical talents as for their beauty. Mozart eventually becomes a lodger in the Weber home and a fixture in that family's life. Fridolin's wife Maria, a shabby-genteel sort who nurses memories of her fine upbringing and dreams of recovering her lost position in society, wastes no time in sizing up the young Mozart as a good prospect for a son-in-law-although not in the same league with the Swedish count they're also trying to reel in. Before long, Mozart is engaged to Aloysia, but this ends unhappily when it turns out the young lady is pregnant by another boarder (a painter). The brokenhearted Mozart leaves Mannheim and throws himself into his work, but he has a change of heart in the end and returns to the Weber house to marry Constanze and live out the rest of his life with her—fairly happily, too. Cowell frames the story by relating much of it as a memoir, recalled by Sophie in 1842 at the behest of Mozart's English biographer Vincent Novello. With its frequent changes in locale and abrupt switches in the objects of affection, the tale is reminiscent of nothing so much as an opera—appropriately enough. A delight, at once fanciful and erudite: should be richly satisfying to Mozart buffs and fascinating to those in the outer circle as well.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does the Mozart of this novel compare to your previous idea of him?
2. Discuss how each of the Weber sisters in turn affects Mozart and his music. How does Mozart, his choices, and his passions change over the course of the novel?
3. Of the four Weber sisters—Josefa, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie—who do you think would have ultimately made the best wife for Mozart? Are you content with the choice he made?
4. Much of the story rests on the fact that women were wholly dependent on their fathers and husbands for financial security. The fact that the two oldest daughters, Josefa and Aloysia, are able to earn their own incomes as singers made them more independent and rebellious than the two younger sisters. How do you think each of the sisters would have been different had they lived in modern times?
5. Josefa and Aloysia are rendered as complete opposites from one another, and also from their younger siblings. Constanze is also depicted as quiet and reserved whereas Sophie is fearless and outgoing. Discuss the many differences between the girls, and the surprising similarities.
6. What effect do Fridolin and Maria Caecilia Weber have on each of their daughters, for better or worse?
7. Both the Weber girls and Mozart are expected to make advantageous marriages to help support their parents. Yet they are each desperate to make their own way in the world on their own terms. Discuss the role of duty between parents and children of the time.
8. Discuss the rebellious nature of Mozart's choices. In leaving the security of the Archbishop and marrying for love instead of money, he makes risky and potentially disastrous gambles.
9. How is different is Sophie (our narrator) as a young girl and as an elderly woman? What do you imagine her life was like?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Ordinary People
Judith Guest, 1976
Penguin Group USA
263 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140065176
Summary
The novel begins as life is seemingly returning to normal for the Jarretts of Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1975. It is slightly more than a year since the elder of their two teenaged sons, Jordan (nicknamed "Buck"), was killed when a sudden storm came up while he and his younger brother Conrad were sailing on Lake Michigan.
Six months later, a severely depressed Conrad attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor in the bathroom. His parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital from which he has only recently returned. He is attending school and trying to resume his life, but knows he still has unresolved issues, particularly with his mother, Beth, who has never really recovered from Jordan's death and keeps an almost maniacally perfect household and family.
His father, a successful tax attorney, gently leans on him to make appointments to see a local psychiatrist, Dr. Tyrone Berger. Initially resistant, he slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger and comes to terms with the root cause of his depression ... his identity crisis and survivor's guilt over having survived when Buck did not. Also helping is a relationship with a new girlfriend, Jeannine Pratt.
Calvin, too, sees Dr. Berger as the events of the recent past have caused him to begin to doubt many things he once took for granted, leading to a midlife crisis. This leads to strain in the marriage as he finds Beth increasingly cold and distant, while she in turn believes he is overly concerned about Conrad to the point of being manipulated.
Spoiler
Finally the friction becomes enough that Beth decides to leave him at the novel's climax. Father and son, however, have closed the gap between them. (Summary from Wikipedia.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1936
• Where—Detroit, Michingan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Awards—Janet Heidegger Kafka Prize, 1976
• Currently—Minneapolis, Minnesota; Harrisville, Michigan
Judith Guest won the Janet Heidegger Kafka Prize for her first novel, Ordinary People, which was made into the Academy Award-winning 1980 film of the same name. Her other novels are The Tarnished Eye, Second Heaven, Killing Time in St. Cloud (with Rebecca Hill), and Errands. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Harrisville, Michigan. (From the publisher.)
More
Her own words:
I was born in 1936 in Detroit, Michigan and grew up there, attending Mumford High School in my freshman year and graduating from Royal Oak Dondero High school in 1954. I studied English and psychology at the University of Michigan and graduated with a BA in Education in 1958, whereupon I promptly...
a) got married to my college sweetheart,
b) got a job teaching first grade in Garden City, Michigan
c) got pregnant and had a baby boy—all inside 14 months.
I have been writing all of my life—since I was about ten years old, actually—in the closet, to the emotional moment, sticking reams of paper in drawers, never finishing anything. I taught more school, had two more sons and then in 1970 I wrote a short story and sent it to a national contest, where I won 60th prize out of 100. It was a book by Richard Perry entitled One Way to Write Your Novel. I read it from cover to cover and decided I already knew all this stuff, so why didn’t I just write a novel myself? It took me three years, during which time I decided to quit teaching and concentrate on finishing something. In retrospect, it was the most important decision I’ve made to date about my writing.
After I finished Ordinary People, I sent it to a publisher, who turned it down flat. The second sent a rejection letter that read in part: “While the book has some satiric bite, overall the level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it.” (I know this letter by heart—didn’t even have to look it up.) The third publisher, Viking Press, hung onto it for 8 months before they decided to publish it. They published my second novel (Second Heaven), turned down my third (Killing Time in St. Cloud), so I went to Delacorte. Delacorte turned down my fourth (Errands), so I went to Ballantine (which had turned down my first one). Ballantine turned down my fifth (The Tarnished Eye) so I went to Scribner. This is the book business in a nutshell. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
My private life is a bit more varied and exciting. I have a husband and three sons and seven grandchildren who all live here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We see them often, summer together, and do an assortment of family things. They are my real life—my obsession and my best material.
I think I should also say that I am the great-niece of Edgar A. Guest, who was at one time the Poet Laureate of Michigan and who wrote a poem a day for the Detroit Free Press for forty years. Which is where I get my endurance from. I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
(Pre-internet works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Eight months before the opening of this novel, Conrad Jarrett has attempted suicide.... What Ms. Guest's novel focuses on is Conrad's attempts to knit himself back into the fabric of suburban middle-American life.... It is with admirable skill that the author has made us experience Con's emergence from isolation.... But what is most touching about Ordinary People is the subtle degrees by which Conrad recovers his emotional elquibrium....What we experience in the process is not so much the relief of sudden revelation as the anxiety, despair, and joy of healing that is common to every human experience of suffering and growth.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
It is difficult to realize that this is a first novel, because it is written with the simplicity of total authority.... I am particularly grateful to Ms. Guest for emphasizing the human need for open grieving…(She) is one of the few writers who has dared depict this aspect of affluent suburbia.
Madeleine L’Engle (author, A Wrinkle in Time)
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 Ordinary People:
1. Why the title? Clearly, it has thematic significance. I think a good discussion can be had by asking what Guest meant by her use of "ordinary." Is it ironic...or sincere. In other words are the Jarretts an ordinary family? How so...or how not so?
2. In the introduction above , Guest says she "wanted to explore the anatomy of depression." Does she do a good job? How realistic is her portrayal of what has become a much discussed mental health issue.
3. You might also trace Conrad's path to health, which is the crux of the story. What are the steps in his process of recovery.
4. Obviously, you'll want to discuss Beth Jarrette—on the surface an unsympathetic character. But Guest's characters are complex, rich in their emotional and psychological make-ups. Try to ascertain Beth's underlying motivations.
5. As Conrad's health improves, Calvin's relationship with Beth deteriorates. Are those two events related? What's going on, or not going on, in that marriage.
6. Watch selected clips from the superb 1980 movie with Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Southerland, and Timothy Hutton as Conrad. Directed by Robert Redford, it swept up the major film awards.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Something Blue
Emily Giffin, 2005
St. Martin's Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312323868
Summary
Darcy Rhone thought she had it all figured out: the more beautiful the girl, the more charmed her life. Never mind substance. Never mind playing by the rules. Never mind karma.
But Darcy’s neat, perfect world turns upside down when her best friend, Rachel White, the plain-Jane “good girl,” steals her fiancé, while Darcy finds herself completely alone for the first time in her life…with a baby on the way.
Darcy tries to recover, fleeing to her childhood friend living in London and resorting to her tried-and-true methods for getting what she wants. But as she attempts to recreate her glamorous life on a new continent, Darcy finds that her rules no longer apply. It is only then that Darcy can begin her journey toward self-awareness, forgiveness, and motherhood.
Something Blue is a novel about one woman’s surprising discoveries about the true meaning of friendship, love, and happily-ever-after. It’s a novel for anyone who has ever, even secretly, wondered if the last thing you want is really the one thing you need. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1979
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Raised—Naperville, Illinois
• Education—B.A., Wake Forest University; J.D., University of Virginia
• Currenbtly—lives in Atlanta, Georgia
Emily Giffin is the bestselling American author of eight novels commonly categorized as "chick lit." More specifically, Giffin writes stories about relationships and the full array of emotions experienced within them.
Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she also served as manager of the basketball team, the Demon Deacons. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. But Giffin soon determined to seriously pursue her writing.
In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers, but Giffin was undaunted. She began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.
2002 was a big year for Emily Giffin. She married, found an agent, and signed a two-book deal with St. Martin's Press. While doing revisions on Something Borrowed, she found the inspiration for a sequel, Something Blue.
In 2003, Giffin and her husband left England for Atlanta, Georgia. A few months later, on New Year's Eve, she gave birth to identical twin boys, Edward and George.
Something Borrowed was released spring 2004. It received unanimously positive reviews and made the extended New York Times bestsellers list. Something Blue followed in 2005, and in 2006, her third, Baby Proof, made its debut. No new hardcover accompanied the paperback release of in 2007. Instead, Giffin spent the year finishing her fourth novel and enlarging her family. Her daughter, Harriet, was born May 24, 2007.
More novels:
2008 - Love the One You're With
2010 - Heart of the Matter
2012 - Where We Belong
2014 - The One & Only
2016 - First Comes Love
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Emily on Twitter.
Book Reviews
Highly entertaining.... Despite a happy ending, Giffin raises thorny questions. A long friendship can (like marriage) turn claustrophobic or abusive. Is infidelity the solution? And why are pretty girls so easily taken in by scheming Plain Janes?
Boston Globe
Giffin’s plotting and prose are so engaging that she quickly becomes a fun, friendly presence in your reading life.
Chicago Sun-Times
Witty and compelling, Something Blue reaffirms a lesson we all should have learned long ago: Love doesn’t need a fairy tale, fancy wrapping or a big price tag. Often, it’s better without.
Charlotte Observer
Darcy is Scarlett O’Hara set in modern [day].... Giffin orchestrates her gradual change ingeniously and successfully answers any Gone With the Wind fan who wondered if, after Rhett Butler decided he didn’t give a damn, Scarlett ever morphed into someone softer.
Newark Star-Ledger
Giffin's writing is warm and engaging; readers will find themselves cheering for Darcy as she proves people can change in this captivating tale. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Giffin's sophomore effort—which tells the story that her bestselling Something Borrowed did from a different character's point of view—stars such an unsympathetic narrator that it's a little like reading a Cinderella story featuring one of the wicked stepsisters. Perhaps beautiful Darcy Rhone isn't really wicked, but she is one of the most shallow, materialistic, self-centered and naïve 29-year-olds around. Ostensibly a high-powered PR person in Manhattan (though she never seems to work), Darcy spends most of her time shopping, partying and getting ready for her wedding to perfect guy Dex. But an alcohol-fueled Hamptons fling with one of Dex's pals, Marcus, starts to break Darcy's perfect life down; and discovering Dex hiding in her best friend Rachel's closet really shatters it. Pregnant with Marcus's baby, Darcy decamps for London, where she crashes in high school pal Ethan's flat and annoys the heck out of him with her endless shopping and complete disregard for her impending mother-hood. But after a good lecture from Ethan, whom Darcy has started to fall for a little, Darcy embarks on a self-improvement plan, thereby demonstrating she can think about someone besides herself. And if readers don't mind the first 200 pages in which she doesn't, they'll enjoy her happy ending and the few surprises along the way. Fans of Something Borrowed, too, may relish the "she said, she said" fun.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Many readers of Something Borrowed expressed doubts at being able to read and enjoy a book from Darcy’s point of view. Were you reluctant to read her story? Did your feelings about her ever change? If so, at what point in the story?
2. What do you view as Darcy’s greatest weakness? Could this also be considered her greatest strength? If so, how?
3. What do you think caused Darcy’s breakup with Marcus? Do you think Marcus was more or less responsible for it than Darcy?
4. In many ways this is a story about personal growth and transformation. Do you think people can fundamentally change? How difficult did it seem for Darcy to change? What role did Ethan play in those changes? What role did her pregnancy play?
5. What do you think would have become of Darcy if she had not become pregnant? If she hadn’t gone to London? What do you think some of the key differences in living life in London as opposed to New York? Do you think some of these differences helped Darcy evolve?
6. How do you think Darcy’s relationship with her mother played a role in the person she was?
7. In what ways are Dex, Marcus, and Ethan different? In what ways are they similar? Do you think their similarities are true of men in general?
8. Where do you see Darcy and Rachel in five years? Ten?
9. If you were Darcy, would you have been able to forgive Rachel? Would you have invited her to your wedding? Do you feel there is a line that can be crossed in friendship, where forgiveness isn't possible?
10. What are your views regarding the closing sentences of the book: “Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them"?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Where the God of Love Hangs Out
Amy Bloom, 2010
Random House
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812977806
Summary
Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through this collection by Amy Bloom, the New York Times bestselling author of Away. Bloom's astonishing and astute new work of interconnected stories illuminates the mysteries of passion, family, and friendship.
Propelled by Bloom's dazzling prose, unmistakable voice, and generous wit, Where the God of Love Hangs Out takes us to the margins and the centers of real people's lives, exploring the changes that love and loss create. A young woman is haunted by her roommate's murder; a man and his daughter-in-law confess their sins in the unlikeliest of places. In one quartet of interlocking stories, two middle-aged friends, married to others, find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other, risking all while never underestimating the cost. In another linked set of stories, we follow mother and son for thirty years as their small and uncertain family becomes an irresistible tribe.
Insightful, sensuous, and heartbreaking, these stories of passion and disappointment, life and death, capture deep human truths. As The New Yorker has said, "Amy Bloom gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books.". (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Education—B.A. Weslyan University; M.S.W. Smith College
• Awards—Costa Award
• Currently—lives in Connecticut, USA
Amy Bloom is the author of Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Love Invents Us; and Normal. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Short Stories, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, and many other anthologies here and abroad.
She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon, among other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University.
Bloom pubished her first novel, Away, in 2008. Another collection of stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, was published in 2010. (From the publisher.)
More
Trained as a social worker, Bloom has practiced psychotherapy and is currently a part-time lecturer of Creative Writing at the department of English at Yale University. Although not a psychologist, her involvement with psychotherapy played a role in writing the Lifetime Television network TV show, State of Mind, which takes a look at the professional lives of psychiatrists. Bloom is listed as one of the writers for the series and a co-executive producer.
Bloom received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, and a M.S.W. (Masters of Social Work) from Smith College. Bloom is divorced and has two daughters and a son. She resides in Connecticut. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Given the range of both narratives, this work of extravagantly fine fiction cannot really be called a short-story collection. It's more of a reunion, or a set of successfully completed jigsaw puzzles. Each of the two quartets has been pieced together into a time-traveling novella filled with hindsight and passion and ever-evolving emotions. This book also includes four free-standing stories that have nothing to do with one another. But even if its format were more commonplace, Where the God of Love Hangs Out would still be something special. Ms. Bloom's characters are uncommonly fully formed, seldom young, some of them well into old age. Yet they sustain the ability to surprise one another—and themselves.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Bloom...vividly chronicles the inner lives of people caught in emotional and physical constraints—illnesses they are striving to survive, regrets they are trying to allay, desires they often dare not fulfill. She writes in beautifully wrought prose, with spunky humor and a flair for delectably eccentric details. Her narrative talents include a fine touch with flashbacks, which she handles as suavely as any writer I can think of. Her gift for dialogue is equally terrific.... Brava, Ms. Bloom. Send us an equally sly, dashing book very soon, please.
Francine du Plessix Gray - New York Times Book Review
An antidote to the testosterone-laced worldview. These are quiet, well-executed tales of love, loss and family.
Sarah L. Courteau - Washington Post
Bloom's latest collection (after novel Away) looks at love in many forms through a keenly perceptive lens. Two sets of stories that read much like novellas form the book's soul; the first of which revolves around two couples—William and Isabel, Clare and Charles—and begins with Clare and William falling into an affair that endures divorces, remarriage and illness. Bloom has an unsettling insight into her character's minds: Clare's self-disgust is often reflected in her thoughts about William, demonstrating the complexity of their attraction as their comfort with each other grows, until she finally accepts the beauty of what they have—albeit too late. The second set of stories, featuring Lionel and Julia, is more complicated; the death of Lionel's father propels Lionel and Julia together in a night of grief, remarkable (and icky) mostly because Julia is Lionel's stepmother and his father's widow. As years go by, it is unclear whether Lionel's difficulties are due to that indiscretion, but watching Bloom work Lionel, Julia and her son through the rocky aftermath is a delight. The four stand-alone stories, while nice, have a hard time measuring up against the more immersive interlinked material, which, really, is quite sublimey.
Publishers Weekly
Bloom's new collection features two sets of connected stories that characterize the far-reaching trajectory of love within memorable groups of characters. In one grouping, William and Clare, literature professors in two parallel marriages, are drawn to each other in middle age after years as highly compatible friends. In the other, Lionel, the adolescent son of a well-known jazz musician, and Julia, recently widowed from that musician, are forced to redefine their relationship in the face of the man's death. In both sequences, realignments between children and adults are unpredictable but deeply felt. Verdict: The characters from the two sets of linked stories are so engaging that the inhabitants of the four strong stand-alone entries feel like mere walk-ons. Readers of Bloom's earlier collections will be happy to reencounter some of the characters they've already met, as two of the stories are from Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. An eminently readable new collection. —Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA
Library Journal
Nine uncollected stories plus three that appeared in earlier collections are interestingly arranged and recombined in this latest from the Manhattan psychotherapist and versatile author (Away, 2008, etc.). The first four chronicle the adulterous relationship, then the sad late-life marriage of 50-somethings Clare and William, who find amorous moments together during shared vacations and visits to and with each other's unsuspecting spouses. Bloom's plainspoken, witty prose is displayed to fine effect in unglamorous snapshot revelations of self-indulgent, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen William and weary, unillusioned Clare (who sardonically asks herself, "What has it ever been between them but the rubbing of two broken wings?"). Four other interrelated stories span years of familial and less conventional love between Julia, a music journalist who becomes a black jazz musician's third wife, then his widow, and his son and namesake Lionel, a biracial heartthrob who is drawn much too closely into intimacy with his grieving stepmother. Except for the last of these four, in which Lionel is both further injured and paradoxically healed by his weakness and guilt, this is an original and moving dramatization of the complex burdens of togetherness and independence, soaring ambition and muted resignation. The remaining unrelated stories-which seem to belong in another book-are a mixed bag. "Permafrost" suggestively links a hospital social worker's compassionate identification with a young girl's sufferings to the former's lifelong fascination with the historic Shackleton Arctic expedition. "Between here and here" and "By-and-By" deal somewhat melodramatically with family-related traumas. But in the wry title story, stoic survival is persuasively incarnated in a saturnine widower who takes botched relationships, failing bodily functions, even "women OD'ing on coke in front of their children" phlegmatically in stride. Not Bloom at her very best, but impressive enough confirmation of this clever writer's ability to challenge the way we see ourselves and to show us as we are.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Bloom chose to tell the stories of Lionel and Julia and William and Clare through a collection of interlocking stories? Does this device allow Bloom to reveal something that a single story or the novel form would not? Can you read the stories individually, or must they be read only as a collection?
2. What do the titles of these stories tell us about what is going on below the surface? For example, what does “The Old Impossible” suggest about William and Clare’s love? Or “Night Vision” about Lionel and Julia’s relationship?
3. In these stories, Bloom explores love in many forms— old friendships, marriage, parenthood. What are some of the other types of love relationships found in these stories? Which ones are unexpected? Which are forbidden or secret?
4. Which characters transgress the boundaries of their relationships with other characters? How do these transgressions change the nature of the relationship? Which actions damage a relationship forever? Which relationships cannot be repaired? What price do they pay for their transgressions?
5. Many of Bloom’s characters play multiple roles—mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover. Do these roles, such as husband or wife, provide safety? If so, what happens when these labels are undermined? Explore the many roles assumed by William and Clare at the beginning of their relationship— not only with each other but also with the other characters. How do these roles change by the end of “Compassion and Mercy”?
6. Does love change over time? What is the nature of love in the second half of life? How does love toward the end change our understanding of its beginning? In “Between Here and Here,” the daughter undergoes a transformation in her understanding of her father as he ages. How do you understand his change in behavior and her feelings toward him? How do Lionel’s feelings about Julia evolve as she ages?
7. Many love stories explore only the mysteries and wonders of love, but Bloom goes further and often writes about love’s darker side. What are some of the casualties of love in these stories? What happens when love ends, either by choice or, which it always does, death?
8. Many of the most important scenes in these stories happen around the dinner table as the characters share a meal or a drink. What role does food play in each of the stories? How do we understand William and Clare sharing nectarines in “The Old Impossible”? Or Lionel teaching Buster to eat a peach in “Fort Useless and Fort Ridiculous”? How does the family Thanksgiving tradition evolve over the Lionel and Julia stories, and what does this reveal about the family?
9. What are some of the secrets kept in these stories? How do secrets affect love? How do they define the love relationships?
10. In the story “Where the God of Love Hangs Out,” Ray and Ellie remind each other that they vowed to love each other “for better or for worse.” Do you agree that love must be able to contain both? What were some of the “for betters” in these stories? What were some of the “for worses”?
11. In Bloom’s stories, it is the small acts of everyday love and intimacy that mean the most between two people. What are some examples from this collection?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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