Chasing Windmills 
Catherine Ryan Hyde, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307472434


Summary
Letting go becomes the purest expression of love in this extraordinary novel by the bestselling author of Pay It Forward, Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Both Sebastian and Maria live in a world ruled by fear. Sebastian, a lonely seventeen-year-old, is suffocating under his dominant father’s control. In the ten years since his mother passed away, his father has kept him “safe” by barely allowing him out of their apartment. Sebastian’s secret late-night subway rides are rare acts of rebellion. another is a concealed friendship with his neighbor Delilah, who encourages him to question his father’s version of reality. Soon it becomes unclear whether even his mother’s death was a lie.

Maria, a young mother of two, is trying to keep peace at home despite her boyfriend’s abuse. When she loses her job, she avoids telling him by riding the subways during her usual late-night shift. She knows her sister, Stella, is right: She needs to “live in the truth” and let the chips fall where they may. But she still hasn’t been able to bringherself to do it. And soon he will expect her paycheck to arrive.

When Sebastian and Maria wind up on the same train, their eyes meet across the subway car, and these two strangers find a connection that neither can explain or ignore. Together they dream of a new future, agreeing to run away and find Sebastian’s grandmother in the Mojave Desert. But Maria doesn’t know Sebastian is only seventeen. And Sebastian doesn’t know Maria has children until the moment they leave. Ultimately, Maria brings one child, her daughter. Can she really leave her little boy behind? And, if not, what will it cost her to face her furious jilted abuser?

In this tremendously moving novel, Catherine Ryan Hyde shows us how two people trapped by life’s circumstances can break free and find a place in the world where love is genuine and selfless. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Buffalo, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Cambria, California


Catherine Ryan Hyde is an American novelist and short story writer, with more recent forays and notable success in transitioning from traditional publication towards the world of eBook publication. Her novels have enjoyed bestseller status in both the U.S. and U.K., and her short stories have won many awards and honors. Her book Pay It Forward was adapted into a top-of-the-charts movie, starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt.

Ryan-Hyde's literary works are generally optimistic explorations of ordinary people, characters who are troubled or down-on-their-luck or recovering from past difficulties or abuse. Many feature journeys that parallel some of Catherine's own travels, life in New York City, small towns, and 'cross country' travels and explore settings often in those areas and the American West and Southwest. Ryan-Hyde's Young writings and activities deal issues such as alcoholism, (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, TransGender) concerns, social service difficulties, etc. Catherine is also an avid hiker, kayaker, photographer, and is well known for being a very active blogger and interview-accessible author.

Early life

Catherine was born in a family of writers, and lived during her early life in the Buffalo, New York area, and briefly lived in New York City, an influence which has often recurs in her writing in the form of being a setting for part of or the whole story arc. She attributes her changeover from "the last kid picked" on the team towards becoming a writer to a favorite teacher, Lenny Horowitz, who later died of liver cancer.[1] After an accelerated graduation from high school at the age of 17, Catherine worked many jobs such as being a dog trainer, a tour guide at Hearst Castle, and working in a bakery prior to dedicating herself to become a full-time writer in the early 1980s.

After relocating cross country to the Los Angeles area, she currently lives and writes and blogs from her home and areas around Cambria, California.[2]
Early writing career: short stories and novels

Early successes came from writing short stories, at one point racking up more than 122 rejections before being first published,[3] and since then a total of more than 1500 rejections resulting in about 50 published stories.

During this time, Catherine also wrote her first novel(s) Walter's Purple Heart, her first published Novel Funeral for Horses, and an anthology of 18 short stories, Earthquake Weather . A self-described literary writer, her breakthrough novel Pay It Forward (novel) was released in 1999 (Pocket Books) and quickly became a national bestseller, and was later adapted into the film Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers), which was released in 2000.
Pay It Forward

According to published interviews,[4] the genesis of the idea for the novel came when Catherine's car caught fire in what she described as the "bad neighborhood" in which she lived, and two total strangers came to her assistance, then left before she could even thank them.

Since then Pay It Forward, has been translated into twenty languages for publication in more than thirty countries, and was chosen among the Best Books for Young Adults in 2001 by the American Library Association and continues to be among her most popular and requested works. The movie Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers) was released theatrically in 2000, and starred Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.

Pay It Forward, Young Reader's Edition was released on August 19, 2014. The new version tells the same story but was extensively revised to be more complimentary to lesson plans, summer reading lists, etc. for students at a middle school grade level, that is, for students at approximately the same age and maturity level as the novel's main protagonist, Trevor McKinney.
Other short stories and writings

Her work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ploughshares,[5] and Glimmer Train. Two of her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. She received second place in the 1998 Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Nearly a dozen of her stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Award, and The Pushcart Prize.
Online works

    Five Singing Gardeners and One Dead Stranger, nominated for Pushcart Prize
    "Hurricane Laura", Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 2000, pp.721-735

One of the more humorous things Ryan Hyde does involves is The Bet which is a yearly for-fun wager on the Kentucky Derby with other authors. Winners get to pick a creative but odd title for 2nd place, 2nd picks third, etc. through however many authors are entered. Some of these stories are published on Catherine and the other authors' blogs etc. This year Catherine chose California Chrome, who won, so she "escaped" having to write a story this year.
Current writing career

Since the success of Pay It Forward (novel), Catherine has gone on to publish a total of more than 24 novels, and many more short stories, including major YA works such as The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance, Becoming Chloe, and an LGBT /YA Novel Jumpstart the World, which garnered several nominations "shortlist" mentions for awards such as the "Best Read of the Year award at the British Book Awards and as a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2011.
Photography

Catherine has been posting digital versions of wildlife in and around Cambria and on many of her travels for many years, including some of her own "pay it forward" style activities. Featured subjects include wildlife, wildflowers, sunsets, and photographs of interesting cloud formations that she refers to as "done by the Cloud Painter". Many of her best photographs are included in a special "coffee table" book of photographs called 365 Days of Gratitude. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014. ASIN B00JPSS208.
Notable activities

She has served on the 1998 fiction fellowship panel of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and on the editorial staff of the Santa Barbara Review and Central Coast Magazine. She teaches workshops at the Santa Barbara,[6] La Jolla, and Central Coast Writers Conferences.

She is founder and past president of the Pay It Forward Foundation.[7] As a professional public speaker she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University,[8] met with Americorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.[9]

Catherine has also given many interviews regarding success as a writer on blogs, radio stations, including short videos online about what it takes to succeed in becoming a published author. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
In the simple and captivating latest from Pay It Forward author Hyde, a chance encounter proves life-changing for two lonely New York City subway riders. Four months shy of 18, Sebastian Mundt has been held a virtual prisoner by his father since his mother died: his father home-schools him and doesn't let him have outside relationships. One night, with his father heavily sedated by his sleeping pill, Sebastian sneaks out to ride the subway and locks eyes with Maria Arquette, a young mother who is caught in an abusive marriage. The two share an instant connection and take to meeting on the subway almost nightly and tentatively planning a future in the California desert town that Sebastian remembers from childhood, where thousands of windmills stretch out across the horizon. Hyde gracefully alternates between Sebastian's and Maria's perspectives with gentle nods to this New York love story's precursors (Maria obsessively watches West Side Story). It is their voices—at once utterly credible and heartbreakingly naïve—that make the book, and while this is being billed as an adult novel, its closest stylistic relative is S.E. Hinton's YA classic The Outsiders.
Publishers Weekly


Seventeen-year-old Sebastian Mundt is homeschooled by his father in New York City. He hadn't seen his mother, now dead, since he was seven. When his father goes to sleep, Sebastian rides the subways, just to get out of the house. On one of his nocturnal subterranean journeys, he encounters 22-year-old Maria Arquette, who takes her own late-night rides to escape her abusive boyfriend, Carl, the father of her two children. A fan of the movie West Side Story (she was named for the lead character), Maria wishes her life could be as romantic. She calls Sebastian Tony, the movie's hero, and imagines a scenario where they run away together. Sebastian wants to get away from his domineering father, perhaps to the windmills he recalls from his brief stay as a child with his grandmother in the California desert. It does sound romantic, but how will Sebastian react to Maria's children? And how will she prevent Carl from finding her? Hyde (Love in the Present Tense ) presents two damaged people who are too young to have withstood all they have yet strong enough to take that first step to something, "somewhere" better. Readers will dream right along with them while realizing that real life (even as portrayed in novels) isn't like the movies. Recommended for public library collections. — Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal


(Adult/High School) Hyde's coming-of-age novel is a reimagining of the classic tale of star-crossed lovers-intentionally reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, but fresh and new as well. Sebastian, 17, and Maria, 24, meet while riding New York's subway trains until the wee hours of the morning. He's a sheltered homeschooler who sneaks out of the apartment after his controlling father takes his nightly sleeping pill. She's a mother of two who's afraid to tell her abusive husband that she's lost her night-shift job. There's also a fairy godmother-Delilah is a wise old woman who introduces Sebastian to the delights of pizza and DVDs and counsels him on love and the ways of the world. Sebastian and Maria alternate as narrators; short chapters make for a page-turning read and the distinct voices are sweet, soul-baring, and honest. Hyde writes evocatively of the visceral nature of first love. Her characters are well developed, and she describes settings (New York City, a cross-country bus trip, the Mojave Desert) economically but effectively. The ending is realistic and satisfying. Chasing Windmills will appeal to teens who enjoy realistic fiction and a good story about relationships. —Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH
School Library Journal


Hyde chronicles two New Yorkers' efforts to escape their different but equally constricting lives in a sweet tale openly modeled on West Side Story. Alternating chapters between the two main characters, the author begins with Sebastian, a naive 17-year-old who chafes under the domination of his strange, obsessive father. Home schooling prevents him from making friends his own age, and he's almost completely isolated until a doctor's orders give him a chance to escape his stifling apartment for a few hours each day to get fresh air and exercise. Sebastian spends most of his free time with his only friend, Delilah, an older black woman who has rented an apartment to be near her new grandchild. Delilah doesn't just provide companionship, she also gives him permission to start living for himself. Aimlessly riding the subway late at night just to get out of the house, Sebastian sees a young woman who, like him, goes to the end of the line and back. The two feel an instantaneous spark and, despite several miscues, finally manage to connect. Her name is Maria, and she's riding the Lexington Avenue line during the hours she'd normally be working to keep her abusive boyfriend Carl, father of her two children, from discovering that she's lost her job. When she and Sebastian find themselves falling in love, they see a chance to escape from their individual traps. She nicknames him "Tony," so they'll be Tony and Maria, just like in West Side Story. While the two plan, motherless Sebastian makes a devastating discovery that sends him to California to see his grandmother. That journey takes both him and Maria to the edge of a life-changing decision. A gentle tale centering on how people come to grip with their pasts.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. Do you think it is a coincidence or a pattern that Maria, who had an abusive father, then found a man who abused her?

2. This leads us to consider the next generation: might Natalie's life turn out differently through having known Sebastian?

3. Do you think Maria could have found her way out of her abusive relationship without the support of her sister? Does breaking free from abusive control rely heavily on the support of others, and from having someone mirror back a different reality?

4. Similarly, how differently do you think Sebastian's life would have turned out without the support of Delilah?

5. Do you understand the decisions Sebastian's mother made when he was young? Do you forgive her for her actions?

6. In what ways do the themes of this novel match those of West Side Story? Did the novel's nod to this famous story effect your reading of it, and if so, how?

7. In your experience, is there a fine line between love and possession? Can the two be easily confused? What different kinds of love are illustrated in the novel?

8. How are Sebastian and Maria alike and how are they different? If they had met under happier circumstances, do you think they would still have fallen in love?

9. How important are your childhood memories to you? Is there a single memory you feel defines who you are?

10. How did you feel about the way the novel ended? Was it as you expected? Would you have preferred a different outcome?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Only Time Will Tell (Clifton Chronicles Series 1)
Jeffrey Archer, 2011
St. Martin's Press
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312539566

Summary
The first novel in the Clifton Chronicles, an ambitious new series that tells the story of a family across generations and oceans, from heartbreak to triumph.

The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father and expects to continue on at the shipyard, until a remarkable gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again...

As Harry enters into adulthood, he finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question: Was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?

From the ravages of the Great War and the docks of working-class England to the streets of 1940 New York City and the outbreak of the Second World War, this is a powerful journey that will bring to life one hundred years of history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—April 15, 1940
• Where—London; raised in Somerset, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University; Oxford Institute
• Currently—lives in London and the Old Vicarage,
   Grantchester

Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare is a best-selling English author and former politician whose political career ended with his conviction and subsequent imprisonment (2001–03) for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Alongside his literary work, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–74), deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–86) and was made a life peer in 1992.

Early years
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital. He was two weeks old when his family moved to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he spent most of his early life. He has an older brother born out of wedlock, also originally called Jeffrey, who was put up for adoption at an early age. The brother assumed the name David Brown and only discovered his relationship to Archer in 1980.

In 1951 Archer won a scholarship to Wellington School, in Somerset (not to be confused with the public school Wellington College). At this time his mother, Lola, contributed a column "Over the Teacups" to the local press in Weston-super-Mare and wrote about the adventures of her son 'Tuppence'; this caused Archer to be the victim of bullying while at Wellington School.

After Archer left school passing O-levels in English Literature, Art, and History, he worked in a number of jobs, including training with the army and for the police. This lasted only for a few months, but he fared better as a Physical Education teacher; first at Vicar's Hill, a Prep School in Hampshire where he taught fencing amongst other sports, later at the more prestigious independent school Dover College in Kent. As a teacher he was popular with pupils and was reported by some to have had good motivational skills, helping to instil personal confidence in the less confident.

Archer studied for three years, gaining an academic qualification in teaching awarded by the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. The course was based at Brasenose College, Oxford, although Archer was never registered as an undergraduate student of the College.

He raised money for the charity Oxfam, obtaining the support of The Beatles in a charity fundraising drive. The band accepted his invitation to visit the senior common room of Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college, although they did not play there.

It was during this period that Archer met his wife, Mary Weeden, at that time studying chemistry at St Anne's College, Oxford. They married in July 1966. Mary went on to specialise in solar power.

Early career
After leaving Oxford, he continued as a charity fundraiser, working for the National Birthday Trust, a medical charity. He also began a career in politics, serving as a Conservative councillor on the Greater London Council during 1967–70.

One organization Archer worked for, the United Nations Association, alleged discrepancies in his claims for expenses, and details appeared in the press in a scrambled form. Archer brought a defamation action against the former Conservative member of parliament Humphry Berkeley, chairman of the UNA, as the source of the allegations. The case was settled out of court after three years. Berkeley tried to persuade Conservative Central Office that Archer was unsuitable as a parliamentary candidate, but a selection meeting at Louth disregarded any doubts.

Archer set up his own fund-raising company, Arrow Enterprises, in 1969. That same year he opened an art gallery, the Archer Gallery, in Mayfair. The gallery specialised in modern art, including pieces by the acclaimed sculptor and painter Leon Underwood. The gallery ultimately lost money, however, and Archer sold it two years later.

Writing career
His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976. The book was an instant success, with BBC Television adapting the book in 1990, following a BBC radio adaptation in the early 1980s.

Kane and Abel proved to be his best-selling works, reaching number one on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was made into a television mini-series by CBS in 1985, starring Peter Strauss and Sam Neill. The following year, Granada TV screened a ten-part adaptation of another Archer bestseller, First Among Equals, which told the story of four men and their quest to become Prime Minister.

In 2011, Archer published Only Time Will Tell, the first of what will be five books in The Clifton Chronicles, which follow the life of Harry Clifton from his birth in 1920, through to the finale in 2020.

Political career
In 1969 at the age of 29, Archer was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election on 4 December 1969. Archer won over a substantial proportion of younger members at the selection meeting.

In Parliament, Archer was on the left of the Conservative Party, rebelling against some of his party's policies. He urged free TV licences for the elderly and was against museum charges. Archer voted against restoring capital punishment, saying it was barbaric and obscene.

In 1974, he was a casualty of a fraudulent investment scheme involving Aquablast, a Canadian company, a debacle which lost Archer his first fortune. Fearing imminent bankruptcy, he stood down as an MP at the October 1974 general election. By this time the Archers were living in a large five-bedroom house in The Boltons, an exclusive street in South Kensington. As a result of the Aquablast affair, they were forced to sell the house and move into more modest accommodation for a while.

Archer's political career was revived again in 1985 once he became known for his novel. He was a popular speaker among the Conservative grassroots and made deputy chairman of the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher in September 1985.

During his tenure as deputy chairman, Archer was responsible for a number of embarrassing moments, including his statement, made during a live radio interview, that many young, unemployed people were simply unwilling to find work. At the time of Archer's comment, unemployment in the UK stood at a record 3.4 million. Archer was later forced to apologise for the remark, suggesting that his words had been "taken out of context."

Scandals and trials
In 1986 Archer was the subject of an article in The News of the World, "Tory boss Archer pays vice-girl." The story claimed Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 through an intermediary at Victoria Station to go abroad.

When the Daily Star also alleged Archer had paid for sex with Coghlan, he responded by suing that paper. The case came to court in July 1987. Explaining the payment to Coghlan as the action of a philanthropist rather than that of a guilty man, Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages. Archer stated he would donate the money to charity. This case would ultimately result in Archer's final exit from front-line politics some years later.

Archer lost a libel case after accusations in his book Twist in the Tale, portraying Major General James Oluleye to be a thief. (Oluleye is the author of Architecturing a Destiny and Military Leadership in Nigeria.)

In 1994, Mary Archer, then a director of Anglia Television, attended a directors' meeting at which an impending takeover of Anglia Television by MAI, which owned Meridian Broadcasting, was discussed. The following day, Jeffrey Archer bought 50,000 shares in Anglia Television, acting on behalf of a friend, Broosk Saib. Shortly after this, it was announced publicly that Anglia Television would be taken over by MAI. As a result the shares jumped in value, whereupon Archer sold them on behalf of his friend for a profit of £77,219. The arrangements he made with the stockbrokers meant he did not have to pay at the time of buying the shares.

An inquiry was launched by the Stock Exchange into possible insider trading. The Department of Trade and Industry, however, announced that Archer would not be prosecuted due to lack of sufficient evidence.

In 1999, Archer had been selected by the Conservative Party as candidate for the 2000 London mayoral election. But when the News of the World published allegations that he had committed perjury in his 1987 libel case (see above), Archer withdrew his candidacy. In July, 2001, Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at the 1987 trial. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, though released after two.

After the perjury allegations broke, Archer was disowned by his party. Conservative leader William Hague explained: "This is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party." In 2000 Archer was expelled from the party for five years.

Peerage
When Saddam Hussein suppressed Kurdish uprisings in 1991, Archer, with the Red Cross, set up the charity Simple Truth, a fundraising campaign on behalf of the Kurds.  In 1992 Archer was made a life peer, as Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, of Mark in the County of Somerset. Prime minister John Major recommended him largely because of his role in aid to the Kurds. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
[A]page-turning, heart-stopping saga, with delightful twists, and a surprise ending.... [R]eaders will surely wait for the next [installment] with bated breath.
Publishers Weekly


Internationally best-selling British storyteller Archer launches his most daunting literary project—a five-volume, semiautobiographical, multigenerational epic.... [Readers] will enjoy this unforgettable tale, which abounds with cliff-hangers that propel its intriguing and intricate plot. —Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA
Library Journal


What appears at the outset to be a straightforward coming-of-age tale becomes, by the end, a saga of power, betrayal, and bitter hatred. The novel ends on a deliberately dark note, setting the stage for the sequel.... An outstanding effort from a reliable veteran.
Booklist

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Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Time Will Tell...then take off on your own:

1. What's the significance of the novel's title, "Only Time Will Tell"? How does it apply to events in the story?

2. What do you think of young Harry Clifton? How would you describe his character?

3. In what way is Harry influenced by his uncle?

4. Did you have an idea as to Harry's paternity? Or were you taken by surprise?

5. Talk about Maisie, Harry's mother. Would you have made the sacrifice that she made for her son? Does her wish for him to have a good life justify her choices?

6. What about young Harry's experiences at boarding school? How does class hierarchy and social snobbery make itself felt at the school?

7. A fun thought experiment: what do you think of Harry's essay on Jane Austen, which purports that...

If Miss Austen had been able to go to university, she might never have written a novel, and even if she had, her work probably wouldn’t have been so insightful.

When challenged by his housemaster, Harry replies that "sometimes it's an advantage to be disadvantaged."

Two questions: 1) what do you think of Harry's statement regarding Austen; 2) what about Harry's response that being disadvantaged can be positive?

8. In what way does Archer draw Harry as a young hero with an almost a mythical quest? What is Harry's quest? And what role, for instance, does Old Jack Tar play in his quest? What about Captain Tarrant?

9. Why might Archer have used different voices to tell his story? What advantages does it offer a writer? Do you find the shifting perspectives illuminating...or distracting? Do you prefer some voices over others? Roger Allam, perhaps, or Emelia Fox?

10. Does the fact that the book ends with a cliff-hanger make you eager for the next installment in the series? Or do you wish this book's ending had offered more closure...a gentler "angel of repose"?

11. A number of readers and critics feel the plot is predictable. Do you agree or disagree? How did you experience the book—with excitement and suspense? Or were you turning pages because ... well, just because pages are meant to be turned?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Chatham School Affair 
Thomas H. Cook, 1996
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553571936


Summary
Winner, Mystery Writers of America Edgard Award

Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy.

Layer by layer, in The Chatham School Affair, Cook paints a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible...and inevitable.

"Thomas Cook's night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting," raved the New York Times Book Review, and The Chatham School Affair will cement this superb writer's position as one of crime fiction's most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected end. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—September 19, 1947
• Where—Fort Payne, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State College; M.A., Hunter 
   College; MPhil., Columbia University
• Awards—Edgar Award, Barry Award; Martin Beck Award
• Currently—lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and New York,
   New York


Thomas H. Cook is an American author, whose 1996 novel The Chatham School Affair received an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America. He has written at least 25 novels.

Cook was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, and holds a bachelors degree from Georgia State College, and a masters degree in American history from Hunter College in 1972, and in 1976 earned a M.Phil degree from Columbia University.

From 1978 to 1981, Cook taught English and History at Dekalb (GA) Community College, and served as a book review editor for Atlanta magazine from 1978 to 1982, when he took up writing full time.

Cook began his first novel, Blood Innocents, while he was still in graduate school. It was published in 1980, and he has published steadily since then. A movie version of one of his books, Evidence of Blood, was released in 1997. Cook lives with his family in Cape Cod and New York City.

Six of his novels have been nominated for awards, including Red Leaves in 2006, which was also shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger and the Anthony Award, and went on to win the Barry Award and The Martin Beck Award. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
A seductive book ... the key to this mystery lies in the mind of the narrator. The pleasure is finding a new perspective to read that mind.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review


Like the best of his crime-writing colleagues, Cook uses the genre to open a window onto the human condition. In this literate, compelling novel, he observes the lives of people doomed to fates beyond their control and imagination. One character here comments: "If you look back on your life and ask, What did I do?, then it means that you didn't do anything." Elizabeth Channing is trying to change the path of her life as, in 1926, she arrives to teach art at a small boys' school located in the Cape Cod village of Chatham. Believing that "life is best lived at the edge of folly," she immediately enthralls the novel's narrator, Henry, the headmaster's son. But Elizabeth is drawn to a fellow teacher, Leland Reed, a freethinker who is unhappily married and has begun to have serious doubts about his life. The inevitable tragedy and its aftermath is narrated by a mature, melancholy Henry looking back at the strange, bleak fates of those involved. Cook is a marvelous stylist, gracing his prose with splendid observations about people and the lush, potentially lethal landscape surrounding them. Events accelerate with increasing force, but few readers will be prepared for the surprise that awaits at novel's end. Literary boundaries mean little to Cook; crime fiction is much the better for that.
Publishers Weekly


The destruction that passion can wreak is well demonstrated in this austere new novel by the author of Breakheart Hill. From the August day in 1926 that Elizabeth Channing comes to teach art at a private school outside Boston, Henry Griswald, son of the headmaster, finds himself a willing accomplice in the love affair between Channing and Leland Reed, a World War I veteran and fellow teacher. Now a bachelor in his seventies, Griswald looks back over a year in his adolescence that culminated in violent death and the destruction of innocent lives, a year that taught him the dangers of strong emotions. Although none of the characters except Henry is well developed, it's particularly difficult to understand what attraction the lovers have for each another. Cook effectively builds the tension through the use of foreshadowing. This well-written, genre-stretching mystery starts slowly and delivers a powerful ending. Appropriate for public libraries of all sizes. —Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Library Journal


This is a powerful, engaging, and deeply moving novel, highly recommended for all who enjoy well-crafted, genre-bending crime fiction. —George Needham
Booklist


From a celestial-seeming distance, Henry Griswald looks back on 1926-27, the year disaster overtook the Chatham School, where his mild, proper father served as headmaster until the events precipitated by the fatal arrival of art teacher Elizabeth Channing and English teacher Leland Reed. Henry remembers how he accepted Miss Channing's tutelage in drawing and helped Reed work on the boat he was building to sail away from Massachusetts, ignoring his family's orphaned boarder Sarah Doyle to fantasize instead about the free-spirited couple, and deploring the resistance of Reed's inconvenient wife and daughter. Pausing in his leisurely narrative to throw out hints of an impending calamity at Black Pond, recall his own testimony at Miss Channing's trial for murder, and observe the principals staggering under the weight of their past and future, Henry evokes by turns the lovers' stifled passion, his unreasoning hatred of his father and his determination to avoid growing up to be like him, and his crushing retrospective guilt at whatever it is that he has become. Readers who aren't exasperated by the glacial pace will find themselves entranced. Though Cook's story this time is less rich and resonant than Breakheart Hill (1995), reading it is like watching another avalanche in agonizing, exquisite slow-motion.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Chatham School Affair:

1. What is it about Elizabeth Channing that makes her so attractive to men, young and mature? Is she intentionally provocative? What is the ethos by which she lives her life?

2. Why is Leland Reed dissatisfied with his life? What does he long for? What is the attraction between Elizabeth and him? Does their romance feel real to you?

3. Describe the town of Chatham, Massachusetts, and its people? Why does young Henry Griswald perceive it as repressive? Is he correct?

4. Do you feel the characters "deserve" the ending they get at the book's conclusion?

5. Then there's Henry Griswald. How do the events of the story affect or change him? What is his secret and why has he kept it all these years? Why did Henry return to Chatham given the tragedy that took place there and the fact that he had resented the town as a child?

6. What about the pace of the story? Some reviewers felt it was maddeningly slow; others were captivated, driven to continue reading. How did the pace strike you?

7. Cook uses "foreshadowing"—a writer's technique in which authors give hints, sometimes through parallel occurrences, of events that will happen later. Can you point to any of the foreshadowing Cook uses?

8. What emotions did you experience while reading The Chatham School Affair? Were you unsettled, anxious ... or not? Some critics spoke of an impending sense of doom? If you felt it also, how does Cook create that atmosphere, or mood?

9. Were you intrigued by the twists and turns the plot took? Were you surprised by the ending ... or did you find it predictable? In all, does the book deliver?

10. Would you classify this as a standard mystery novel? Or is it something else? How does it compare to other crime/ detective stories you've read?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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A House for Mr. Biswis
V.S. Naipaul, 1961
Knopf Doubleday
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375707162


Summary 
The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels.

The book that first brought Naipaul worldwide acclaim, this richly comic novel tells the moving story of a man without a single asset who enters a life devoid of opportunity, and whose tumble-down house becomes a potent symbol of the search for identity in a postcolonial world

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous—and endless—struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—August 17, 1932
• Where—Chaguanas, Trinidad
• Education—Queen's Royal College, Trinidad; B.A., University
  College, Oxford
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 2001; Booker Prize, 1971; knighted by
  Queen Elizabeth II, 1990
• Currently—Wiltshire, England, UK  

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, better known as V. S. Naipaul, is a Trinidadian-born British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent, currently resident in Wiltshire. Naipaul was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.

He is the son, older brother, uncle, and cousin of published authors Seepersad Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul, Neil Bissoondath, and Vahni Capildeo, respectively. His current wife is Nadira Naipaul, a former journalist.

In 1971, Naipaul became the first person of Indian origin to win a Booker Prize for his book In a Free State. In awarding him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the Swedish Academy praised his work...

for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.... Naipaul is a modern philosophe carrying on the tradition that started originally with Lettres persanes and Candide. In a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony.

The Committee also noted Naipaul's affinity with the Polish author of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad:

Naipaul is Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of thevanquished.

His fiction and especially his travel writing have been criticised for their allegedly unsympathetic portrayal of the Third World. Ideologue Edward Said, for example, has argued that he "allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution", promoting "colonial mythologies about wogs and darkies". This perspective is most salient in The Middle Passage, which Naipaul composed after returning to the Caribbean after ten years of self-exile in England, and An Area of Darkness, an arguably stark condemnation on his ancestral homeland of India.

His works have become required reading in many schools within the developing World. Among English-speaking countries, Naipaul's following is notably stronger in the United Kingdom than it is in the United States.

Though a regular visitor to India since the 1960s, he has arguably "analysed" India from an arms-length distance, in some cases initially with considerable distaste (as in An Area of Darkness), and later with 'grudging affection' (as in A Million Mutinies Now), and of late perhaps even with 'ungrudging affection' (most manifestly in his view that the rise of Hindutva embodies the welcome, broader civilisational resurgence of India). He has also made attempts over the decades to identify his ancestral village in India, believed to be near Gorakhpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh from where his grandfather had migrated to Trinidad as an indentured labourer. The mention of this is found in his work An Area of Darkness.

More
Writing in the New York Review of Books about Naipaul, Joan Didion said:

The actual world has for Naipaul a radiance that diminishes all ideas of it. The pink haze of the bauxite dust on the first page of Guerrillas tells us what we need to know about the history and social organization of the unnamed island on which the action takes place, tells us in one image who runs the island and for whose profit the island is run and at what cost to the life of the island this profit has historically been obtained, but all of this implicit information pales in the presence of the physical fact, the dust itself... The world Naipaul sees is of course no void at all: it is a world dense with physical and social phenomena, brutally alive with the complications and contradictions of actual human endeavor... This world of Naipaul's is in fact charged with what can only be described as a romantic view of reality, an almost unbearable tension between the idea and the physical fact...

In several of his books Naipaul has observed Islam, and he has been criticised for dwelling on negative aspects, e.g. nihilism among fundamentalists. Naipaul's support for Hindutva has also been controversial. He has been quoted describing the destruction of the Babri Mosque as a "creative passion", and the invasion of Babur in the 16th century as a "mortal wound." He views Vijayanagar, which fell in 1565, as the last bastion of native Hindu civilisation. He remains a somewhat reviled figure in Pakistan, which he bitingly condemned in Among the Believers.

In 1998 a controversial memoir by Naipaul's sometime protégé Paul Theroux was published. The book provides a personal, though occasionally caustic portrait of Naipaul. The memoir, entitled Sir Vidia's Shadow, was precipitated by a falling-out between the two men a few years earlier.

In early 2007, V.S Naipaul made a long-awaited return to his homeland of Trinidad. He urged citizens to shrug off the notions of "Indian" and "African" and to concentrate on being "Trinidadian". He was warmly received by students and intellectuals alike and it seems, finally, that he has come to some form of closure with Trinidad.

Naipaul is married to Nadira Naipaul. She was born Nadira Khannum Alvi in Kenya and married in Pakistan. She worked as a journalist for the Pakistani newspaper, The Nation, for ten years before meeting Naipaul. They married in 1996, two months after the death of Naipaul's first wife, Patricia Hale. Nadira had been divorced twice before her marriage to Naipaul. She has two children from a previous marriage, Maliha and Nadir. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
(Some older works have few mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Arguably Mr. Naipaul's finest novel, A House for Mr. Biswas...created a bittersweet fictional portrait of his father, a struggling Trinidadian journalist trying to support his large family while holding onto his own dreams.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times (from a 2000 review of Naipaul's Between Father and Son)

Naipaul has constructed a marvelous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power.
Newsweek

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Discussion Questions
1. A House for Mr. Biswas is a largely autobiographical novel about V.S. Naipaul's own family. Mr. Biswas is based on Naipaul's father and the character of Anand on Naipaul himself. What specific experiences described in the novel, and especially the relationship between father and son, lead Anand to become a writer? What advantages will he have that Mr. Biswas did not? What conclusions can you draw about Naipaul's life based on the book?

2. Mr. Biswas enters into the world "six-fingered and born in the wrong way" [p. 15], and a life of bad luck is presaged for him. In what ways does this prophecy seem to come true?

3. Early in the novel, Mr. Biswas, a sign-painter and later a journalist, writes a love letter to Shama. What are the immediate consequences of this letter? What are its long-term effects? Is it ironic that writing plays such an important role in determining Mr. Biswas's fate?

4. At various points the narrative jumps ahead, describing an experience or situation years from the fictional present. When Mr. Biswas is cowed by the Tulsi family into marrying Shama, the narrator reflects, "How often, in the years to come, at Hanuman House or in the house at Shorthills or in the house in Port of Spain, living in one room, with some of his children sleeping on the next bed . . . how often did Mr. Biswas regret his weakness, his inarticulateness, that evening" [p. 87]! How does knowing the novel's fictional future affect the way we read what is happening in its present? For example, does Mr. Biswas' death, discussed in the prologue and therefore known throughout the novel, give a poignancy to his struggles?

5. Why do the characters in A House for Mr. Biswas switch between Hindi and broken English? What does this suggest about the hybrid nature of Trinidadian society and its colonial history?

6. Throughout the novel Mr. Biswas battles the Tulsi family, engaging in one quarrel after another. Why does he find living with them so distasteful, so humiliating? Why do the Tulsis, in turn, find Mr. Biswas unbearable? What kinds of things do they argue about? Are the subjects of these arguments inherently important or do mask more serious differences?

7. When Mr. Biswas moves his family to The Chase, he is puzzled by his wife's nagging: "Living in a wife-beating society, he couldn't understand why women were even allowed to nag or how nagging could have any effect" [p. 14]. And when Govind beats his wife Chinta, we're told that "her beatings gave Chinta a matriarchal dignity and, curiously, gained her a respect she had never had before" [p. 443]. Why would Chinta's status improve because of her beatings? How is flogging used throughout the novel? What does it suggest about power relations between men and women and between parents and children?

8. Why does Mr. Biswas feel trapped by his wife and family? Why does he regard Shama and the children as "alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear" [p. 461]? What kind of life does he feel his family keeps him from living?

9. Why does Mr. Biswas become a journalist? What aspects of his temperament and experience enable him to excel at the kind of writing the Sentinel initially demands? How does his success at the paper change his status within the Tulsi family? 10. Mr. Biswas tells his son Anand, "Remember Galilyo. Always stick up for yourself" [p. 267]. In what ways is Mr. Biswas himself a rebel? On what occasions does he defy others and stand up for himself?

11. Mr. Biswas is highly critical of Hinduism—and indeed of all religions—for most of the novel. He chides Owad for worshiping idols and blames the failure of his shop at The Chase on Hari's ritual blessing. What does the novel as a whole seem to be saying about the role of religion in Trinidadian society? How does religion affect the ways the characters in the novel treat each other?

12. When Owad returns from his medical studies at Cambridge, he is filled with opinions about writers and artists such as T. S. Eliot and Pablo Picasso, both of whom he loathes. He also considers himself a communist. After a bitter quarrel, Mr. Biswas suggests, "communism, like charity, should begin at home" [p. 533]. What does Naipaul appear to be saying, through the character of Owad and the quality of life at the Tulsi house, about the value of communal living?

13. Naipaul has often been praised for his comic gifts. Which scenes or situations in A House for Mr. Biswas give rise to comedy? In what ways does Mr. Biswas display his own comic and satiric sensibility?

14. In a letter he once wrote to his father, Naipaul explains that literature boils down to "writing from the belly rather than from the cheek. Most people write from the cheek. If the semi-illiterate criminal wrote a long letter ordinarily to his sweetheart, it would be what most letters of such people generally are. If the criminal wrote this letter last thing before his execution, it would be literature; it would be poetry." In what ways does Naipaul himself write from the belly rather than the cheek?

15. A House for Mr. Biswas tells the story of an ordinary man with modest ambitions whose life is not marked by dramatic events. How does Naipaul imbue his story with the pathos and significance that have won the book worldwide acclaim since its initial publication? Does Mr. Biswas achieve a kind of victory at the end?

16. In what ways does Mr. Biswas's longing for a house of his own parallel Trinidad's struggle for national independence? What is it that fuels his longing? What does owning a house represent for him? In what ways is the Tulsi family like ruling colonial power? At the end of the novel, Mr. Biswas is finally able to realize his dream of owning a house, but the experience is not what he anticipated. How is his experience symbolic of Trinidad's own situation after the end of colonial rule?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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