We Could Be Beautiful
Swan Huntley, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385540599
Summary
A spellbinding psychological debut novel, Swan Huntley's debut is the story of a wealthy woman who has everything—and yet can trust no one.
Catherine West has spent her entire life surrounded by beautiful things. She owns an immaculate Manhattan apartment, she collects fine art, she buys exquisite handbags and clothing, and she constantly redecorates her home.
And yet, despite all this, she still feels empty.
She sees her personal trainer, she gets weekly massages, and occasionally she visits her mother and sister on the Upper East Side, but after two broken engagements and boyfriends who wanted only her money, she is haunted by the fear that she'll never have a family of her own.
One night, at an art opening, Catherine meets William Stockton, a handsome man who shares her impeccable taste and love of beauty. He is educated, elegant, and even has a personal connection—his parents and Catherine's parents were friends years ago. But as he and Catherine grow closer, she begins to encounter strange signs, and her mother, Elizabeth (now suffering from Alzheimer's), seems to have only bad memories of William as a boy.
In Elizabeth's old diary she finds an unnerving letter from a former nanny that cryptically reads: "We cannot trust anyone...." Is William lying about his past? And if so, is Catherine willing to sacrifice their beautiful life in order to find the truth?
Featuring a fascinating heroine who longs for answers but is blinded by her own privilege, We Could Be Beautiful is a glittering, seductive, utterly surprising story of love, money, greed, and family.
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984
• Raised—La Jolla, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Eckerd College; M.F.A. Columbia University
• Currently—lives in northern California and Hawaii
Swan Huntley's debut novel, We Could Be Beautiful, came out in 2006. She wrote the book while living in a commune in Brooklyn (New York City) and working as a nanny for a well-off couple in SoHo. Huntley grew up in La Jolla, California, and attended Eckerd College in Florida, which also happens to be Dennis Lehane's alma mater. From there she headed to New York, where she attained an M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia University.
Huntley knew she wanted to be a writer from a very young age:
One important moment that happened in my childhood was when I was in the fourth grade at Bird Rock (elementary school). I was very preoccupied about the state of the environment at the time, and I had written something about the rain forest. The teacher said, “You’re going to be a writer” or “You are a good writer.” I’m not sure which. But what I do remember is he said it with such feeling. And I heard him.
(Author bio adapted from The San Diego Tribune.)
Book Reviews
Catherine's hyperactive self-awareness serves multiple functions throughout We Could Be Beautiful. With her privilege pre-emptively critiqued, readers don't have to worry about doing it for her; instead, we can relax into the pleasures of gawking at, envying and deriding her 1 percent lifestyle, which is almost as much fun. Catherine's acknowledgment of her own absurdities, as well as her perilous proximity to stereotype, is also a source of much of the book's humor.… Huntley writes with wit and verve, excelling at economically hilarious descriptions….The book's strengths lie…in the zippy social satire, in the portrait of a dysfunctional family…and, most of all, in Catherine's voice—strange and funny and engaging to the very end.
Jennifer Dubois - New York Tiimes Book Review
Quite the psychological thriller that keeps readers on edge wondering how far Catherine will go and how much she'll sacrifice for the truth.… Brilliantly exposes the life of an affluent family and what greed, lies and wealth can do to them.
New York Daily News
Here's a thriller we can sink into. Deeply psychological and nuanced, Huntley's We Could Be Beautiful follows one wealthy Manhattan woman who has nearly everything. The one thing she lacks, however, is a relationship. That is, until her white knight comes along one evening. But it never quite works out that way, does it? (Not in a book like this, certainly.) Huntley's novel is a twisting, turning, secret-filled story that's worthy of your precious summer reading time.
Meredith Turits - Elle
A novel that is deeper than its heiress-meets-man-of-her-dreams setup. The reason: Huntley’s uncanny ability to detect the fault lines in Manhattan’s glitterati as if flaws in a precious diamond—and make us laugh about them.
O Magazine
A riveting psychological thriller, Huntley’s debut takes you inside the world of Manhattan’s elite—and keeps you on tenterhooks (Book of the Week).
People
A sparkling dark romance… Huntley strings you blissfully along (like a great con man)…right up until that epic twist.
Redbook
In her meditative psychological debut, Huntley explores the effect of the lies we hear from others and the ones we tell ourselves. The buildup is nicely done, but the emotional payoff doesn't live up to expectations. —Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Posh Manhattanite Catherine West has everything but the family she's always wanted. But when she falls for the man of her supposed dreams, she unravels a web of deception that upends life as she knows it.... An intoxicating escape; as smart as it is fun.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How do you feel about Catherine as a character? Do these feelings change as the book progresses? If so, how?
2. Catherine says that people don’t feel sorry for you if you have money. Did you feel sorry for Catherine when she starts to lose hers?
3. Money defines Catherine’s life in obvious external ways. How does it define the way in which she sees herself on an internal level?
4. How does Catherine begin to see herself differently through her relationship with Susan? Why does Catherine question this friendship?
5. Catherine is very concerned with the idea of being a good person. Do you think she’s a good person?
6. Are Catherine and her mother similar? If so, in what ways?
7. What is it about Dan that Catherine finds so appealing?
8. Why does Catherine ignore William’s odd behavior? Why does she ignore her mother’s negative reaction when William’s name is mentioned?
9. In what ways has Catherine changed by the end of the novel?
10. What do you think is the meaning of the title “We Could Be Beautiful”?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Grief is the Thing with Feathers
Max Porter, 2016
Greywolf Press
128 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781555977412
Summary
Winner, 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize
Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar—a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death.
And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised.
In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow—antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter. This self-described "sentimental bird," at once wild and tender, who "finds humans dull except in grief," threatens to stay with the wounded family until they no longer need him.
As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss lessens with the balm of memories, Crow's efforts are rewarded and the little unit of three begins to recover: Dad resumes his book about the poet Ted Hughes; the boys get on with it, grow up.
Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect. Full of angular wit and profound truths, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a startlingly original and haunting debut by a significant new talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
• Education—M.A., University of London–Courtauld Institute of Art
• Awards—International Dylan Thomas Prize
• Currently—lives in South London, England
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Book Reviews
Although charged throughout with high emotion, the novel is rarely sentimental. Porter resists the static register of the maudlin, creating instead a fabric of constant shifts and calibrations in voice, moving from rage to madness to profanity and humor. He has an excellent ear for the flexibility of language and tone, juxtaposing colloquialisms against poetic images and metaphors. The result is a book that has the living, breathing quality of the title's "thing with feathers."
Katie Kitamura - New York Times Book Review
Like a book of hours for the bereaved.... Mr. Porter gives expression to grief in all its emotional manifestations.... Unpredictably playful, [filled] with sarcasm, absurdity and black-winged humor.
Wall Street Journal
As resonant, elliptical and distilled as a poem, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers is one of the most moving, wildly inventive first novels you're likely to encounter this year. It's funny ― in a jet-black way yet also fiercely emotional, capturing the painful sucker-punch of loss with a fresh immediacy that rivals Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.... Like C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, Julian Barnes' Levels of Life, Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk...Porter's unusual novel puts grief in its place not by dismissing it, but by confronting it dead-on as a painful but inescapable part of life. Grief is the Thing With Feathers is a wondrous, supremely literary, ultimately hopeful little book.
NPR.org
[A] bizarre and brilliant debut.... What keeps the story from being excessively familiar is Porter's sense of detail...as well as his imaginative and elegant approaches to structure and style.... Simultaneously straightforward and mysterious, the book illustrates the need for and calls into question moving on, as a concept.
Chicago Tribune
Grief Is the Thing With Feathers argues that books, literature and poetry can help save us. This book is a sublime and painful conjuring of a family’s grief and the misfit creature with the power to both haunt and help them. It is a complex story, not simply-told or sparse: Nothing is missing. Let it be a call for more great books of this length to be recognized for what they are―whole. Extraordinary is a book with feathers.
Los Angeles Times
A powerful, surreal novella-poem of grief and healing. Devastated by the loss of his wife, Dad struggles to take care of his boys, himself, and finish his book on the poetry of Ted Hughes. Crow (a man-size black bird) moves in, taking the role of wild but tender shepherd to the family.
San Francisco Chronicle
Piercing the wordplay and abstractions and flights of fancy are the sharp specifics that make the family's loss clear and their grief that much more real... . [Grief Is the Thing with Feathers transforms] the indescribable absence that is grief into palpable, undeniable life.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
A heartbreaking and life-affirming meditation on the dislocating power of grief.... Porter’s characters express their feelings through observations that are profound and simply phrased....The powerful emotions evoked in this novel will resonate with anyone who has experienced love, loss, and mourning.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.)[R]emarkable....a man grief-stricken by his wife's sudden death.... Like a prose poem in its splendid language but with its own swift flow, this is highly recommended for ambitious readers.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Porter delivers a staggering tale of a father grappling with the sudden loss of his wife in this sharply poetic and darkly stunning debut novel.... A truly exceptional work of fiction.... Readers will not soon forget Porter’s distinct style.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Porter’s daringly strange story skirts disbelief to speak, engagingly and effectively, of the pain this world inflicts, of where the ghosts go, and of how we are left to press on and endure it all. Elegant, imaginative, and perfectly paced. A contribution to the literature of grief and to literature in general.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Last Days of Night
Graham Moore, 2016
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812988901
Summary
A thrilling novel based on actual events, about the nature of genius, the cost of ambition, and the battle to electrify America—from the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and bestselling author of The Sherlockian.
New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history—and a vast fortune.
A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the light bulb and holds the right to power the country?
The case affords Paul entry to the heady world of high society—the glittering parties in Gramercy Park mansions, and the more insidious dealings done behind closed doors. The task facing him is beyond daunting. Edison is a wily, dangerous opponent with vast resources at his disposal—private spies, newspapers in his pocket, and the backing of J. P. Morgan himself. Yet this unknown lawyer shares with his famous adversary a compulsion to win at all costs. How will he do it?
In obsessive pursuit of victory, Paul crosses paths with Nikola Tesla, an eccentric, brilliant inventor who may hold the key to defeating Edison, and with Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer who proves to be a flawless performer on stage and off.
As Paul takes greater and greater risks, he’ll find that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite who they seem. (From the publisher.)
Watch for the 2017 film adaptation with Eddie Redmayne.
Author Bio
• Birth—October 18, 1981
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Academy Award-Best Adapted Screenplay
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Graham Moore is an American screenwriter and author known for his 2010 novel The Sherlockian, as well as his screenplay for the historical film The Imitation Game. (Alan Turing had been Moore's childhood hero since he was 14.)
A second book, The Last Days of Night, was published in 2016. Set in 1888 New York City, the novel focuses on the heated rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse during the advent of electricity and is told through the eyes of Westinghouse’s attorney, Paul Cravath. Moore himself wrote the screenplay for the film.
Background
Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised on the city's north side—"the son of two lawyers who divorced and then married two other lawyers." His mother was formerly the City of Chicago's chief lawyer and First Lady Michelle Obama's chief of staff.
While he was learning to read, Moore developed a love of mystery stories; he later came to believe he'd have a career in music. Nonetheless, he received his B.A. in religious history from Columbia University.
At Columbia, unsure about a writing career, Moore took the advice of a professor to dedicate five years to any profession he pursued, "because it takes that long to get halfway decent at anything." After graduating in 2003, Moore stayed in New York, playing in a number of rock bands, creating a music studio in the basement of a heavy metal art gallery on Rivington Street, working as a sound engineer, and collecting sound equipment.
It was during those years he began to write. For several years, he wrote scripts by day and did studio work by night. He woke up in his New York apartment, dressed in a coat and tie, and sat down to write. "I told myself writing was my job and I was getting dressed for work—which was like telling myself, dress for the job you want."
Eventually, Moore moved to Hollywood, California, where one of his earliest jobs was on the writing staff of the television series 10 Things I Hate About You. In 2010 he published his first book,The Sherlockian, which made it to the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks.
His adapted screenplay for the 2014 film The Imitation Game, based on Andrew Hodges' biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, earned Moore numerous nominations, including the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, and ultimately won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards (held in 2015).
Moore lives in Los Angeles, California. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/25/2016.)
Book Reviews
How America got the electric light bulb—a battle between intellectual giants—is the subject of Graham Moore’s fine new novel. Drawing on historical sources, Moore has created characters of equal parts charm and villainy—complicated men who grapple with opposite poles of their nature: all-out ambition versus belief in the greater good. A triangle of brilliant men is at the heart of this tale. Thomas Edison, the great man himself, is perhaps not the hero we’ve always thought… READ MORE.
P.J. Adler - LitLovers
A fascinating portrait of American inventoion...Moore crafts a compelling narrative out of [Paul] Cravath’s cunning legal maneuvers and [Nikola] Tesla’s world-changing tinkering, while a story line on opera singer Agnes Huntington has the mysterious glamour of The Great Gatsby.... Moore weaves a complex web..... He conjures Gilded Age New York City so vividly, it feels like only yesterday.
Entertainment Weekly
[T]hrilling.... While the plot starts off slowly, the tempo picks up as events within the court begin to unfold. Moore’s extensive research is apparent, and readers are likely to walk away from the book feeling as informed as they are entertained.
Publishers Weekly
The great tech innovators of...the 1890s posture, plot, and even plan murder in this business book–turned–costume drama.... The real-life events of the War of the Currents are exciting enough without embroidery. Still, readers who care more about atmosphere than accuracy will enjoy this breezy melodrama.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Last Days of Night…then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the role of the lightbulb, that small pear-shaped device, in changing the face of civilization. Can you imagine life without it?
2. What do you think about the two great giants of American science and manufacturing: Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse? Are you surprised at the manner in which Moore portrays Edison, an American icon? How do the two men differ?
3. Can you explain the legal suit that Edison initiated against Westinghouse? In what way did Westinghouse's bulb differ from Edison's?
4. Does Graham Moore do a credible job in breaking down the science of electricity, especially the differences between AC and DC current?
5. How did Nikola Tesla revolutionize AC current? Do you think it possible/probable in real life that Edison might have made an attempt on Tesla's life? Or did Graham add that plot point to build fictional suspense?
6. How was Nikola Tesla different from the two rivals at the heart of this story? In what way was his "genius" different from that of Edison or Westinghouse? What drove Tesla, as opposed to the other two men?
7. Talk about the role of J.P. Morgan and his insistence that the two men settle their differences. Was his "coup" of Edison's General Electric fair?
8. In the end, is it possible to actually say who invented the light bulb? What role did each of the three men—Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse—play in its development? Consider this passage from the book:
For Edison who loved the audience it was the performance. Westinghouse was different as he loved the products themselves and he made them better than anyone else. Westinghouse did not want to sell the most but wanted to make the best. Tesla, the third leg, only cared for the ideas themselves. Once he had an idea, he was done, he knew he had solved the problem and moved on.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Heroes of the Frontier
Dave Eggers, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101974636
Summary
A captivating, often hilarious novel of family, loss, wilderness, and the curse of a violent America from the bestselling author of The Circle, this is a powerful examination of our contemporary life and a rousing story of adventure.
Josie and her children’s father have split up, she’s been sued by a former patient and lost her dental practice, and she’s grieving the death of a young man senselessly killed.
When her ex asks to take the children to meet his new fiancée’s family, Josie makes a run for it, figuring Alaska is about as far as she can get without a passport. Josie and her kids, Paul and Ana, rent a rattling old RV named the Chateau, and at first their trip feels like a vacation: They see bears and bison, they eat hot dogs cooked on a bonfire, and they spend nights parked along icy cold rivers in dark forests.
But as they drive, pushed north by the ubiquitous wildfires, Josie is chased by enemies both real and imagined, past mistakes pursuing her tiny family, even to the very edge of civilization.
A tremendous new novel from the best-selling author of The Circle, Heroes of the Frontier is the darkly comic story of a mother and her two young children on a journey through an Alaskan wilderness plagued by wildfires and a uniquely American madness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 12, 1970
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Raised—Lake Forest, Illinois
• Education—University of Illinois (no degree)
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a novelist and screenwriter.
He is also the founder of McSweeney's, the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His works have appeared in several magazines, most notably The New Yorker. His works have received a significant amount of critical acclaim.
Personal life
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father was John K. Eggers (1936–1991), an attorney. His mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers (1940–1992), was a school teacher. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to the upscale suburb of Lake Forest, near Chicago. He attended high school there and was a classmate of the actor Vince Vaughn. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, intending to get a degree in journalism, but his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both of his parents in 1991–1992—his father in 1991 from brain and lung cancer, and his mother in January 1992 from stomach cancer. Both were in their 50s.
These events were chronicled in his first book, the fictionalized A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At the time, Eggers was 21, and his younger brother, Christopher ("Toph"), was 8 years old. The two eldest siblings, Bill and Beth, were unable to commit to care for Toph; his older brother had a full-time job and his sister was enrolled in law school. As a result, Dave Eggers took the responsibility.
He left the University of Illinois and moved to Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend Kirsten and his brother. They initially moved in with Eggers's sister, Beth, and her roommate, but eventually found a place in another part of town, which they paid for with money left to them by their parents. Toph attended a small private school, and Eggers did temp work and freelance graphic design for a local newspaper. Eventually, with his friend David Moodie, he took over a local free newspaper called Cups. This gradually evolved into the satirical magazine Might.
Eggers lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is married to Vendela Vida, also a writer. They have two children.
He was one of three 2008 TED Prize recipients. His TED Prize wish was for community members to personally engage with local public schools The same year, Utne Reader named him one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World."
In 2005, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Brown University. He delivered the baccalaureate address at the school in 2008.
Literary work
• Egger's first book was a memoir (with fictional elements), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), which focused on the author's struggle to raise his younger brother in San Francisco following the deaths of both of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
• In 2002, Eggers published his first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, a story about a frustrating attempt to give away money to deserving people while haphazardly traveling the globe. He has also published a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry, and three politically themed serials for Salon.com.
• In 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, a book of interviews with former prisoners sentenced to death and later exonerated. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, "a physician specializing in the aftermath of large-scale human rights abuses" and "a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies and a practicing clinician." Lawyer novelist Scott Turow wrote the introduction to Surviving Justice.
• Eggers' 2006 novel What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Eggers also edits the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics.
• In 2009, he published Zeitoun and, as a result, was presented with the Courage in Media Award by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Zeitoun is the account of a Syrian immigrant, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, in New Orleans who was helping neighbors after Hurricane Katrina when he was arrested, imprisoned and suffered abuse. The book has been optioned by Jonathan Demme, who is working on a screenplay for an animated film-rendition of the work. To Demme, it "felt like the first in-depth immersion I’d ever had through literature or film into the Muslim-American family.... The moral was that they are like people of any other faith."
• Eggers published A Hologram for the King in July 2012, which became a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel is the story of one man's struggle to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the new realities of a global economy.
• In 2013, he released The Circle, a satirical novel about the internet's subversive power over citizen privacy. The Circle is a combination of Facebook, Google, Twitter and more, as seen through the eyes of Mae Holland, a new hire who starts in customer service.
McSweeney's
In 1998, Eggers founded McSweeney's, an independent publishing house, which takes his mother's maiden name. Apart from its book list, McSweeney's also publishes the quarterly literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the daily-updated literature and humor site McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the monthly magazine The Believer, the quarterly food journal Lucky Peach, the sports journal Grantland Quarterly (in association with sports and pop culture website Grantland), and the quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin. The publishing house also runs three additional imprints: Believer Books; McSweeney's McMullens, a children's book department; and the Collins Library.
826 National
In 2002, Eggers and educator Nínive Clements Calegari co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids ages 6–18 in San Francisco. It has since grown into seven chapters across the United States: Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Boston, and Washington, D.C., all under the auspices of the nonprofit organization 826 National.
In 2006, Eggers appeared at a series of fund-raising events, dubbed "Revenge of the Book–Eaters Tour," to support his educational programs. The Chicago show featured Death Cab for Cutie front man Ben Gibbard. Other performers on the tour included Sufjan Stevens, Jon Stewart, Davy Rothbart, and David Byrne.
In 2007, the Heinz Family Foundation awarded Eggers a $250,000 Heinz Award (given to recognize "extraordinary achievements by individuals"). In accordance with Eggers' wishes, the award money was given to 826 National and The Teacher Salary Project. In April 2010, under the umbrella of 826 National, Eggers launched ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization that connects donors with students to make college more affordable. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2013.)
Book Reviews
[A] picaresque adventure and spiritual coming-of-age tale—On the Road crossed with Henderson the Rain King with some nods to National Lampoon's Vacation along the way…. Mr. Eggers has so mastered the art of old-fashioned, straight-ahead storytelling here that the reader quickly becomes immersed in Josie's funny-sad tale…. What injects Josie's story with heartfelt emotion is her relationship with Paul and Ana…. Mr. Eggers's cleareyed portraits of these children remind us of the indelible portrait he created in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius of his 8-year-old brother, Toph, whom he brought up after their parents died within weeks of each other….That bone-deep knowledge of a child's relationship with a parent informs Mr. Eggers's portraits of Paul and Ana, and their love for and dependence upon Josie—by far the strongest and most deeply affecting parts of this absorbing…novel.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
The common writerly mistake is to slight child characters for lack of a formed intelligence. But by around age 6, the psychologists tell us, we already have the I.Q. and most of the personality we're ever going to get. It's a rich combination—personhood unconstrained by the acquired prejudices of culture—and [Eggers] taps it here with impressive results. He likewise nails single parenthood in all its crowded loneliness and moral angst…Heroes of the Frontier…offers complex, believable characters…The heroes of this frontier are Ana and Paul, a dynamic duo who command us to pay attention to the objects we find in our path, and stop pretending we already know the drill.
Barbara Kingsolver - New York Times Book Review
Among his bestselling literary fiction peers, Dave Eggers alone is engaged in a sustained effort to write about contemporary America. He’s been going at it so regularly, and so swiftly, that he’s keeping pace with the times, if not getting a half-step ahead…. When Eggers draws the present into his fiction, it’s there not just as window dressing or setting; it tells us something about ourselves… Heroes gives us a woman who’s at the end of her rope, in a place of salvation without the wherewithal to seek it, as its promise goes up in flames.”
Carolyn Kellogg - Los Angeles Times
This is a novel about America, about what forces people to leave ‘the lower 48’ to seek refuge in a forbidding, unpeopled landscape… Eggers renders it with such passion and good humour, and describes the ‘land of mountains and light’ in such stirring, lustrous prose… There is a feeling of utopianism about the novel, a sense that, in Alaska, some original American dream slumbers just beneath the ice… Heroes of the Frontier acts on the reader like a breath of Alaskan air, cleansing the spirit and lifting the heart.”
Alex Preston - Guardian (UK)
The frontier in Eggers’s appealing and affecting new novel is Alaska, but also, arguably, the adventures of its heroine, Josie.... Eggers’s shaggy plot may not be to all tastes, but his writing is fresh and full of empathy, his observations on modern society apt and insightful.
Publishers Weekly
Eggers, writing with exuberant imagination, incandescent precision, and breathless propulsion, casts divining light on human folly and generosity and the glories and terror of nature. This uproarious quest...is fueled by uncanny insight, revolutionary humor, and profound pleasure in the absurd and the sublime. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
[Josie] is an archetypal figure, representative of how modern living corrodes our psyches.... But...the overall baggy and rambling nature of the story...doesn't meaningfully develop Josie's character.... An ungainly, overlong merger of an adventure tale and social critique.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Heroes of the Frontier...then take off on your own :
1. Describe Josie. Is she merely hapless, unusually prone to trouble and mistakes. Or is she simply beset by pressures common to many of us? She seems restless yet weary of life, impatient yet self-doubting. What else is she? Consider, also, her childhood and the way it has shaped her life.
2. What kind of a mother is Josie? She dreams of a new beginning for Paul and Ana, how all three might reinvent themselves in the frontier of Alaska. Is it right of her to deprive the children of what order and ritual they have in their lives? Is it fair to subject them to the uncertainty of her own rather amorphous dreams?
3. To what degree, if any is Josie responsible for Jeremy's death? Was she wrong to tell him to follow his dream, a dream that would place him directly in harm's way?
4. In Alaska, Josie expects to find "a plain-spoken and linear existence centered around work and trees and sky." What kind of life—and people—does she find instead?
5. Think of Josie's road trip, like all mythical journeys, as a journey to self-discovery. What does Josie learn about herself in the course of the novel? How does she grow?
6. What do her children learn on the trip? How do they change?
7. In what way does this novel comment on the American way of life? What are its observations about what Americans value as a society and how we live our lives?
8. What is the symbolic significance of the novel's title: Heroes of the Frontier? Obviously, one frontier is Alaska, but what other kind of frontier is being explored? Who are the heroes of the book?
m. Explore the idea that the ramshackle R.V. Jose and kids travel and live in is a stand-in for civilization...and that wilderness with its forest fires represents a sort of dystopia. What might the book be commenting on?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Good Morning, Midnight
Lily Brooks-Dalton, 2016
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812998894
Summary
For readers of Station Eleven and The Snow Child, Lily Brooks-Dalton’s haunting debut is the unforgettable story of two outsiders—a lonely scientist in the Arctic and an astronaut trying to return to Earth—as they grapple with love, regret, and survival in a world transformed.
Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, is consumed by the stars. For years he has lived in remote outposts, studying the sky for evidence of how the universe began.
At his latest posting, in a research center in the Arctic, news of a catastrophic event arrives. The scientists are forced to evacuate, but Augustine stubbornly refuses to abandon his work. Shortly after the others have gone, Augustine discovers a mysterious child, Iris, and realizes that the airwaves have gone silent.
They are alone.
At the same time, Mission Specialist Sullivan is aboard the Aether on its return flight from Jupiter. The astronauts are the first human beings to delve this deep into space, and Sully has made peace with the sacrifices required of her: a daughter left behind, a marriage ended.
So far the journey has been a success. But when Mission Control falls inexplicably silent, Sully and her crewmates are forced to wonder if they will ever get home.
As Augustine and Sully each face an uncertain future against forbidding yet beautiful landscapes, their stories gradually intertwine in a profound and unexpected conclusion. In crystalline prose, Good Morning, Midnight poses the most important questions: What endures at the end of the world? How do we make sense of our lives?
Lily Brooks-Dalton’s captivating debut is a meditation on the power of love and the bravery of the human heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987-88
• Where—Halifax, Vermont, USA
• Education—A.D., Greenfield Community College
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Lily Brooks-Dalton is the author of Motorcycles I've Loved: A Memoir (2015), and a novel, Good Morning, Midnight (2016), a sci-fi, survival-adventure story...sort of (2016). Growing up in Halifax, Vermont, Brooks-Dalton attended a boarding school but dropped out at 17. She got her Associates Degree from a local community college, saved some money, then took off to see the world.
After more than three years of traveling—from Ireland to India to Thailand and Australia—she returned home. By then she was 21 and at a loss for how to proceed with her life. A friend encouraged her to look into motorcycles, and soon enough, after buying a Rebel 250, Brooks-Dalton immersed herself in the world of gearheads, helmets, speed, and power. In the meantime, she discovered her own inner momentum: six years later out came her memoir. One year after that, she released Good Morning, Midnight. Lily currently lives in Portland, Oregon. (Based on Amy Poehler's Smart Girls.)
Book Reviews
[A] beautifully written, sparse post-apocalyptic novel that explores memory, loss and identity. The narrative moves seamlessly between Augustine (Augie), a 78-year-old scientist at an observatory at the top of the Arctic archipelago, and Sullivan (Sully), a mission specialist on a deep space flight to Jupiter.
Nancy Hightower - Washington Post
Brooks-Dalton’s prose lights up the page in great swathes, her dialogue sharp and insightful, and the high-concept plot drives a story of place, elusive love, and the inexorable yearning for human contact.... [M]emorable characters explore complex questions that resonate with the urgency of a glimpse into the void.
Publishers Weekly
Two scientists in remote locations must navigate the sudden loss of human life on Earth.... Brooks-Dalton is...at her best when writing about the epic settings that anchor the book.... However, both the plot and the writing itself frequently fall into...an apocalyptic soap opera set in vividly imagined environments.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)