Backseat Saints
Joshilyn Jackson, 2010
Grand Central Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446582377
Summary
Rose Mae Lolley's mother disappeared when she was eight, leaving Rose with a heap of old novels and a taste for dangerous men. Now, as demure Mrs. Ro Grandee, she's living the very life her mother abandoned.
She's all but forgotten the girl she used to be-teenaged spitfire, Alabama heartbreaker, and a crack shot with a pistol-until an airport gypsy warns Rose it's time to find her way back to that brave, tough girl...or else.
Armed with only her wit, her pawpy's ancient .45, and her dog Fat Gretel, Rose Mae hightails it out of Texas, running from a man who will never let her go, on a mission to find the mother who did.
Starring a minor character from her bestselling Gods in Alabama, Jackson's Backseat Saints will dazzle readers with its stunning portrayal of the measures a mother will take to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will travel to satisfy the demands of forgiveness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The subject of Joshilyn Jackson's powerful new novel is wife-beating. The beatings are rendered so graphically and mercilessly that you can't help being both sickened and mesmerized, and the story line is set up so that either the husband or the wife will have to die if their awful conflict is to end. This isn't a Gothic tale, but an ultra-realistic domestic drama narrated by a Southern housewife who spends her time between beatings making meatloaf and sweet tea…[Jackson] is an expert at manipulating intricacies of plot.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
Readers willing to stick through a slow beginning will be rewarded in Jackson's eventually riveting fourth novel (after The Girl Who Stopped Swimming). When abused Rose Grandee isn't getting up the nerve to do something about her violent husband, Thom, she reminisces about high school sweetheart Jim Beverly, who once promised to kill Rose's alcoholic father. Rose is also consumed with memories of her mother, who abandoned her when she was a little girl. During what seems like a chance meeting, Rose receives a tarot card reading and is told she'll have to choose between her husband's life and her own, though Rose later realizes, conveniently for the plot, that the card reader is her estranged mother. Egged on by the prophecy, Rose searches out Jim and plans on manipulating him into killing Thom, leading to a tense final section that crescendos with an ending appropriate for a woman with so much fight in her. Though Jackson does a good job conveying Rose's uncertainty and ambivalence, the initial sounding of these themes comes off as redundant and overly long; later, Jackson's writing becomes kinetic, reflecting her heroine's metamorphosis.
Publishers Weekly
On the surface, she's Ro Grandee, dutiful wife of a handsome Texan with ready fists. But underneath her flowery skirts and painful bruises lurks Rose Mae, a fierce Southern spitfire who's already escaped an abusive father. These days Rose seems resigned to taking punches, working in the Grandee family gun shop, and waltzing with the vacuum cleaner until an oddly familiar airport gypsy foretells a fortune that is murder—literally. Rose's husband is going to kill her, unless she manages to kill him first. Rose takes her dog, Gretel, and her Pawpy's old gun and runs for her life, blazing a harrowing trail from Texas to Alabama and on to California and exhuming a heap of family skeletons along the way. Verdict: Jackson has resurrected a character from her best-selling gods in Alabama and crafted a riveting read that simply flies off the page with prose as luscious as sweet tea and spicy as Texas chili. Fans of Southern fare as varied as Sue Monk Kidd, Dorothy Allison, and Michael Lee West are sure to love it. —Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Jackson’s absorbing and rewarding fourth novel spotlights Rose Mae Lolly, a minor character from her popular debut, Gods in Alabama (2005). Rose is now living under the thumb of her abusive husband and his domineering father.... Jackson peels back Rose’s hard edges and resignation to reveal a smart, earnest, brave, and surprisingly hopeful young woman who yearns to make a better life for herself. Rose’s salvation, when it comes, is positively breathtaking. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
An oddly cheerful story about two generations of battered wives who eventually fight back. Jackson (The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, 2008, etc.) briefly introduced Rose Mae Lolley in her first novel Gods of Alabama when she came to Chicago looking for a high-school sweetheart ten years after he disappeared. Here Rose Mae takes center stage. Having run away from Alabama as a teen to escape her abusive father, she has ended up in Texas as Ro, married to equally abusive husband Thom Grandee. Given Ro's spunk and charisma, her elderly neighbor finds Ro's reluctance to leave Thom frustrating, but Jackson doesn't shy from showing Ro's attraction to Thom as well as her drift toward complicity in their troubled relationship. One day Ro drives her neighbor to the airport, where a "gypsy" warns her to kill Thom before he kills her. As Ro recognizes, the "gypsy" is actually her mother Claire, who long ago ran away from her own abusive marriage, though it meant leaving behind her child. Now called Mirabelle (dual names are standard in Jackson's work), Claire lives in San Francisco, where she runs a halfway house for battered wives. Prodded by her mother's warning, Ro soon reverts to her old Rose Mae identity and plans her escape from Thom. After her previously mentioned visit to Chicago and a trip back to Alabama to see her now pathetic father, she heads to California. Mother and daughter warily reunite. Rose Mae moves into the bedroom Claire has been keeping at the ready. While the women's interactions prickle with resentment and guilt, mild romantic interest crops up for Rose in the person of Claire's wispy landlord. When news comes that Thom is heading toward San Francisco, readers can assume that brutal justice is at hand. Jackson's sprightly prose and charismatic characters offer readers a rollicking good time along with the typical bromides about domestic abuses.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the first chapter of the book, Ro says about Rose Mae that she was “a girl I buried years ago.” How distinct are these two facets of Ro’s persona? Is it helpful or harmful for her to try to keep her two—and later, three—“identities” separate?
2. Rose Mae’s mother has been flying to Amarillo and stalking Rose for years before Rose finally catches her at it in the airport. Do you think Claire allows herself to be seen, or is it an accident?
3. Ro feels she is complicit in the violence Thom subjects her to. Is this possible? What role do you think her father’s actions against her—and her mother—play in her current marital situation?
4. Think about Rose Mae’s houses throughout the book: Thom Grandee’s house in Texas, Gene Lolley’s house in Alabama, her mother’s house in California. Does Rose consider any of these places home? What would it take for Rose to be truly at home, and do you think she finds one, or ever will?
5. Ro discovers her mother has changed her name just as she herself has. What does a name change really do to each woman’s identity? What does Mirabelle’s refusal to call her daughter Ivy mean? Are their intentions in shedding their old identities the same, and are either successful in accomplishing this? What do you think Jackson is saying about names and identities in this book?
6. What is the significance of the “backseat saints”? How do you explain or discount their existence here?
7. What does it say about Mirabelle that she reads people’s futures for a living? Why do you think she chose this line of work? How does she reconcile this talent for foretelling with her past? Does Rose believe in the tarot cards? Do you? Why or why not?
8. When Rose Mae comes up with the idea that Jim Beverly will save her, do you believe that he can? Do you think she could have left Thom without the potential of Jim’s saving her? What do you think the inability to find Jim did to alter her perspective?
9. A haircut is a powerful tool for change—what did it signify for Rose? Does an external change often bring about internal change? Have you ever wished for—or had—such a transformation? What were the effects?
10. Mrs. Fancy and Ro have a unique bond that deepens as they find out more about each others’ lives. Do you think Mrs. Fancy was drawn to Ro as a way to make up for her daughter’s troubles? Do you think Ro was actively seeking a mother figure in Mrs. Fancy? How has their relationship helped and hindered each woman?
11. One of the novel’s central themes is forgiveness. Who has the most difficulty forgiving, and is this legitimate? Who in this book most deserves forgiveness, in your opinion, and why?
12. Rose Mae brings only her trusted dog, Gretel, with her from Texas on her travels. She also meets and befriends Parker’s dogs in California. What is the significance of the company of animals here? What role do Parker’s dogs have in allowing her to trust their owner?
13. When Rose is first interested in Parker, she reverts to the only mode of male interaction she knows—flirtation. Why is this such a dangerous instinct for her? Do you think she is able to break herself of this habit in the end?
14. Many characters in this book are overly attached to, or “stuck” in the past. Consider Rose Mae’s unchanged childhood room in Gene’s second house, and in her mother’s house in California, for example. What do you think this says about the Lolley family, or about Southern culture? Of what in your life have you had difficulty letting go?
15. What do you think of the manner in which Mirabelle went about saving Rose Mae? Do you think she had a choice in killing Thom? Was she wrong or right to do so, and why? Is her punishment justified?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Michael Chabon, 1988
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060790592
Summary
The enthralling debut from bestselling novelist Michael Chabon is a penetrating narrative of complex friendships, father-son conflicts, and the awakening of a young man’s sexual identity.
Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield and The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh incontrovertibly established Chabon as a powerful force in contemporary fiction, even before his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay set the literary world spinning.
An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in the movement of American fiction, from a novelist who has since become one of the most important and enduring voices of this generation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 24, 1963
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.F.A., University of California-Irvine
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon) is an American novelist and short story writer. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1988 when he was still a graduate student. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that New York Times's John Leonard, once referred to as Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. All told, Chabon has published nearly 10 novels, including a Young Adult novel, a children's book, two collection of short stories, and two collections of essays.
Early years
Michael Chabon was born in Washington, DC to Robert Chabon, a physician and lawyer, and Sharon Chabon, a lawyer. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment. When the story received an A, Chabon recalls, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do.... And I never had any second thoughts or doubts."
His parents divorced when Chabon was 11, and he lived in Columbia, Maryland, with his mother nine months of the year and with his father in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the summertime. He has written of his mother's marijuana use, recalling her "sometime around 1977 or so, sitting in the front seat of her friend Kathy's car, passing a little metal pipe back and forth before we went in to see a movie." He grew up hearing Yiddish spoken by his mother's parents and siblings.
Chabon attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied under Chuck Kinder and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then went to graduate school at the University of California-Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.
Initial success
While he was at UC, his Master's thesis was published as a novel. Unbeknownst to Chabon, his professor sent it to a literary agent—the result was a publishing contract for The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and an impressive $155,000 advance. Mysteries appeared in 1988, becoming a bestseller and catapulting Chabon to literary stardom.
Chabon was ambivalent about his new-found fame. He turned down offers to appear in a Gap ad and to be featured as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People." Years later, he reflected on the success of his first novel:
The upside was that I was published and I got a readership.... [The] downside...was that, emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, "Wait a minute, is my thesis done yet?" It took me a few years to catch up.
Personal
His success had other adverse affects: it caused an imbalance between his and his wife's careers. He was married at the time to poet Lollie Groth, and they ended up divorcing in 1991. Two years later he married the writer Ayelet Waldman; the couple lives in Berkeley, California, with their four children.
Chabon has said that the "creative free-flow" he has with Waldman inspired the relationship between Sammy Clay and Rosa Saks in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Entertainment Weekly declared the couple "a famous—and famously in love—writing pair, like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze."
In a 2012 NPR interview, Chabon told Guy Raz that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He attempts 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said,
There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them.... The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life.
Novels
1988 - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
1995 - The Wonder Boys
2000 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2002 - Summerland (Young Adult)
2004 - The Final Solution
2007 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union
2007 - Gentlemen of the Road
2012 - Telegraph Avenue
2016 - Moonglow
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/2/2016.)
Book Reviews
Here is a first novel by a talented young writer that is full of all the delights, and not a few of the disappointments, inherent in any early work of serious fiction. There is the pleasure of a fresh voice and a keen eye, of watching a writer clearly in love with language and literature, youth and wit, expound and embellish upon the world as he sees it, balanced by a scarcity of well-developed characters and a voice so willing to please that it seldom goes beyond the story's surface. As is the case in so many first novels, 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is a coming-of-age story, the chronicle of a single summer in which a young man confronts both his family and his sexuality and thus finds them forever changed.
Alice McDermott - New York Times
First-novelist Chabon, with...distinctive vision...an elegiac, graceful style, spins a story about alienated youth that, while serving up some familiar details of sex, alcohol and drugs,... fully engages the reader in the lives of an appealing cast of characters.
Publishers Weekly
Heavy pre-pub hype...ill serves the modest achievement of this competent first novel about the difficulties of being a mobster's son.... While the gangster's giddy child dithers through his soap-operatic dilemma...his father reveals his true mobster ways, with tragic results. Broadly-drawn characters, patches of careless writing, and improbable plot twists should make for a fine film.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Arthur Lecomte and Art share the same name. What is the significance of this?
2. As their friendship blossoms, Art even begins to "affect an over grammatical, precious manner toward people,"(page 57) following Arthur's example. Does Art want to be Arthur? Why?
3. "I had the impression that as far as Arthur and Jane were concerned, Cleveland flew, or had flown, as far above their twin blond heads as I saw them flying above me–but he had fallen, or was falling, or they were all on their way down." (Page 38-39). Art meets up with his newfound friends at the end of college. What draws them all together?
4. Do Jane, Arthur, and Art unrealistically idolize Cleveland? What does Cleveland represent to the three friends? Is his death the inevitable severing of their fragile friendships?
5. Describe Art's relationship with his father. Does he resent his father more for his mob connection or for the death of his mother?
6. Art's mother's death is a mystery up until Art blurts out in the hospital, "Ever since what, Lenny? They killed my mother instead of him?" (Page 290). How does that explain Art's uncertainty throughout the story, his childlike behavior around his father, his reluctance to talk about his mother to Phlox, and/or his insecurity about his masculinity?
7. After Art introduces Cleveland to his father, Art realizes he has lost any remaining respect his father may have had for him. What makes Art turn to Arthur for solace?
8. What does the Cloud Factory represent to these characters?
9. Is Cleveland a genuine friend of Art's, or an opportunist?
10. Aside from Art's troubled relationship with his father, explain Jane's, Cleveland's, and Arthur's relationships with their parents, and how these relationships shaped the characters.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Descendants
Kaui Hart Hemmings, 2007
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812977820
Summary
Fortunes have changed for the King family, descendants of Hawaiian royalty and one of the state’s largest landowners.
Matthew King’s daughters—Scottie, a feisty ten-year-old, and Alex, a seventeen-year-old recovering drug addict—are out of control, and their charismatic, thrill-seeking mother, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident. She will soon be taken off life support.
As Matt gathers his wife’s friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation is made worse by the sudden discovery that there’s one person who hasn’t been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair.
Forced to examine what they owe not only to the living but to the dead, Matt, Scottie, and Alex take to the road to find Joanie’s lover, on a memorable journey that leads to unforeseen humor, growth, and profound revelations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.A., Colordo College; Sarah Lawrence
• Currently—lives in San Fransisco, California
Kaui Hart was born and raised in Hawaii. She attended Colorado College, earning a B.A., and later, Sarah Lawrence College. She was also awarded a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.
Hemmings first novel, The Descendants, released in 2007, was an expanded version of a story from her 2005 collection, House of Thieves. The novel became a New York Times bestseller, was published in twenty-two other countries and adapted in 2011 as an Oscar-winning film, starring George Clooney.
Her second novel, Possibilities came out in 2014. Her third, the young adult novel Juniors, was published in 2015 and her fourth (adult) novel, How to Party with an Infant, in 2016. Hemmings lives in San Francisco, California. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The narrator of this audaciously comic debut novel, the scion of the last Hawaiian landowning clan, has floated through his privileged life: marriage to a model given to "speedboats, motorcycles, alcoholism"; children getting into trouble (cocaine, bullying) at elite schools; membership at a century-old beach club that rejects those with "unfavorable pedigrees." But when a catamaran accident leaves his wife in a coma he must wake from his own "prolonged unconsciousness," reacquaint himself with his neglected daughters, and track down his wife’s lover. Meanwhile, his cousins are urging him to sell the family’s vast landholdings for development—to relinquish, in his eyes, the final vestige of their native Hawaiian ancestry. Hemmings channels the voice of her befuddled middle-aged hero with virtuosity, as he teeters between acerbic and sentimental, scoffing at himself even as he grasps for redemption.
The New Yorker
[B]ittersweet.... Matt's journey with his girls forms the emotional core of this sharply observed, frequently hilarious and intermittently heartbreaking look at a well-meaning but confused father trying to hold together his unconventional family.
Publishers Weekly
As smart, perceptive, and evocative as Hemmings' premiere literary offering was, (the superlative short story collection House of Thieves, 2005), her irresistible debut novel is light years beyond.... Evincing a sublimely mature style and beguiling command of theme and setting, Hemmings' virtuoso performance offers a piquantly tender and winsomely comic portrait of a singular family's revealing response to tragedy. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Hemming's first novel expands on a short story...about a self-consciously privileged Hawaiian family in crisis.... Hemmings pulls off a remarkable feat in making the Kings' sense of loss all the more wrenching for being directed at a woman who was neither a good wife nor a good mother.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think of Joanie? Is she a harmless thrill-seeker or a well-meaning but self-absorbed mother?
2. At first Matt struggles to engage his daughters in a meaningful way; the family’s shared tragedy eventually brings him closer. How are father-daughter relationships different than those between mothers and daughters?
3. What role does Sid play in this novel? Do you think he impedes or facilitates Matt King’s renewed relationship with his daughters?
4. What do you think of Scottie’s journal? How can you analyze her strange behavior—why do you think she acts out the ways she does?
5. How would you describe Matt as a father? Do you think it’s irresponsible of him to include his kids on the journey to find the man that his wife was having an affair with? How does he evolve over the course of The Descendants?
6. In what ways is the depiction of Alex realistic in terms of the ways teenagers cope with crisis? Were you surprised she was aware of her mother’s infidelity? Do you think young adults more aware of the adult world around them than we give them credit for?
7. Who is at fault for Joanie and Matt’s marriage falling apart?
8. What was unique about the Hawaiian setting of the book and how did it enhance or take away from the story?
9. What specific themes did the author emphasize throughout the novel? What do you think she is trying to get across to the reader?
10. Do the characters seem real and believable to you? Can you relate to their predicaments?
11. Do you believe the Kings will have a better life without Joanie? How do you feel about the ending of this book? How do you picture the family’s future?
12. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way? Did this lead to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of your life you might not have thought about before?
13. In what ways is The Descendants a survival story? A love story? An adventure story?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)