Behind Closed Doors
B.A. Paris, 2016
St. Martin's Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250121004
Summary
The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie? The debut psychological thriller you can’t miss!
Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You might not want to like them, but you do.
You’d like to get to know Grace better. But it’s difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart.
Some might call this true love. Others might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work.
How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
B. A. Paris grew up in England but has spent most of her adult life in France. She has worked both in finance and as a teacher and has five daughters. Behind Closed Doors is her first novel. Like her first, her second, The Breakdown, is also a thriller and came out in 2017.
In an online interview, Paris said her life-long love of books began when she was bedridden as a child with chicken pox. She was given The Mountain of Adventure by Enid Blyton and, after finishing it, "got [her] hands on every book that [Blyton] had written and then went on to C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen...and Leon Uris."
When asked about how she developed her characters from Behind Closed Doors, Paris admitted that she was "proud of having created Grace and Millie" but was "a little appalled" that she could create "someone as horrible as Jack." She didn't set out to make him such a villain, but "he just seemed to take over." (Adapted from the publisher and from Books, Chocolate and Wine.)
Book Reviews
The title says it all: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS—the perfect marriage or the perfect lie? Author B.A. Paris does her readers a favor. Her cover design and title assuredly relay, "You’ll be reading a psychological thriller."” Thank you. It’s information most readers want at the onset—the need to know what we’re getting into.… By the time we figure out what we’re dealing with, we are hooked. READ MORE …
Kathy Aspden, AUTHOR - LitLovers
A gripping domestic thriller…the sense of believably and terror that engulfs Behind Closed Doors doesn't waver.
Associated Press
Behind Closed Doors takes a classic tale to a whole new level….This was one of the best and [most] terrifying psychological thrillers I have ever read…. [E]ach chapter brings you further in, to the point where you feel how Grace must feel. The desperation, the feeling that no one will believe you and yet still wanting to fight because someone you care deeply about will get hurt.
San Francisco Book Review
A frighteningly cool portrait of a serious sadist, Behind Closed Doors is a gripping, claustrophobia-inducing thriller... Read at the risk of running from every handsome British lawyer who crosses your path.
Romantic Times
This book proves that looks are most definitely deceiving.... Disturbing, to say the least, readers will definitely be shaken as the story commences and they become immediately absorbed. The writing was incredible, and the pace is quick, offering up too many chills to count.... Behind Closed Doors screams: "Stay single!"
Suspense Magazine
Jack’s mustache-twirling monologues occasionally sap the story of tension and believability, but Grace’s terror is contagious, and Millie’s impending peril creates a ticking clock that propels this claustrophobic cat-and-mouse tale toward its grisly, gratifying conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Debut-novelist Paris adroitly toggles between the recent past and the present in building the suspense of Grace’s increasingly unbearable situation, as time becomes critical and her possible solutions narrow. This is one readers won’t be able to put down.
Booklist
Paris undercuts her own suspense by allowing Jack to...recount his coming-to-villainy back story. Grace schemes a way to escape Jack's clutches and save Millie from the same fate, but the tension sags. An at times tense debut with a clever heroine caught in an overladen plot.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Behold the Dreamers
Imbolo Mbue, 2016
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812998481
Summary
A debut novel about an immigrant couple striving to get ahead as the Great Recession hits home. With profound empathy, keen insight, and sly wit, Imbolo Mbue has written a compulsively readable story about marriage, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream.
Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son.
In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty—and Jende is eager to please. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at their summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future.
However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers’ facades.
Then the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Desperate to keep Jende’s job, which grows more tenuous by the day, the Jongas try to protect the Edwardses from certain truths, even as their own marriage threatens to fall apart.
As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Limbe, Cameroon
• Education—B.S.,Rutgers University; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA
Imbolo Mbue is a native of Limbe, Cameroon, who came to U.S. to attend college. She attained her B.S. from Rutgers University, and later her M.A. from Columbia University.
After losing her job during the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis, Mbue had to start over from scratch—and that led to her sitting down to write her debut novel. A resident of the United States for over a decade, she lives in New York City with her husband and children. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In the near decade since the onset of the Great Recession, few works of fiction have examined what those years felt like for everyday people, how so many continued to hope and plan and love amid pervasive uncertainty. Enter Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, a Cameroonian American who situates her characters of US shores just as prosperity is beginning to seem like a thing of the past.... Behold the Dreamers challenges us all to consider what it takes to make us genuinely content, and how long is too long to live with our dreams deferred.
O Magazine
A revelation.... Mbue has written a clever morality tale that never preaches but instead teaches us the power of integrity.
Essence
Gripping and beautifully told.
Good Housekeeping
Imbolo Mbue’s masterful debut about an immigrant family struggling to obtain the elusive American Dream in Harlem will have you feeling for each character from the moment you crack it open.
In Style
This story is one that needs to be told.
Bust
[T]he book’s unexpected ending—and its sharp-eyed focus on issues of immigration, race, and class—speak to a sad truth in today’s cutthroat world: the American dream isn’t what it seems.
Publishers Weekly
Impeccably written, socially informed, in development by Sony Pictures, and an exemplar of the tremendous new writing emerging from Africa, Cameroon-born Mbue's big debut opens in 2007 New York.
Library Journal
At once a sad indictment of the American dream and a gorgeous testament to the enduring bonds of family, Mbue’s powerful first novel will grip and move you right up to its heartfelt ending.
Shelf Awareness
(Starred review.) The American dream is put to the test by the economic disaster of 2007.... [T]he magnitude of the catastrophe makes itself clear only slowly.... Realistic, tragic, and still remarkably kind to all its characters, this is a special book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Behold the Dreamers...then take off on your own:
1. Describe Jende and Neni Jonga as we first meet them. Talk about their naivete, as well as their perseverance—the lengths, for instance, the couple goes to prepare Jende for his interview. Trace how they change during the course of the novel.
2. As Jende drives Clark and Cindy Edwards about New York, what do we learn about them and their way of life? Is it as glamorous as one would expect? What does Neni learn when she stands in as nanny for their son in Southampton? Are the Edwards good people?
3. At one point, Jende and Neni wonder how people who are as wealthy as the Edwards are could "have so much happiness and unhappiness skillfully wrapped up together." What is the answer to that?
4. What do Jende and Neni love about the U.S? Has reading their story enabled you to see American life with a fresh perspective?
5. Talk about the immigration and legal bureaucracy that is designed to discourage, if not outright prohibit, immigrants from fully achieving the American Dream.
6. And speaking of the American Dream, is the title of Mbue's book ironic...or not? Are the Jongas the only ones in the book who seek the dream?
7. Mbue writes about Jende: "He was an honest man, a very honest man." How does his attempts to live in American change him? Is it worth securing a life in the United States if doing so destroys who he is?
8. How does Mbue portray the 2008 economic collapse and its effect on both the top and the bottom socio-economic levels of society?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off with attribution. Thanks.)
A Place in the Sun
Kola King, 2016
Verity Publishers
249 pp.
ISBN-13:
Summary
This is a tale of friendship, love and tragedy set against the mystery and magic realism of colonial Africa. In this epic tale, love is set to clash with tradition.
Zakka, the lead character falls in love with Matta, but the lovebirds cannot consumate their love on account of the fact that Matta's family is still beholden to her estranged husband, Gora. By tradition, dowry paid on Matta's head is expected to be returned to the husband when the marriage breaks up; but this was not done.
In the eyes of tradition, Matta is still Gora's wife. What's more, Gora still nurses the hope of reclaiming her hand in marriage. but in the end, love triumphs over tradition. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 3, 1958
• Where—Ibadan, Nigeria
• Education—B.S. University of Lagos
• Currently—lives in Ibadan
Kola King writes short stories, novels and essays. He obtained a degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos in 1981. He served as the Editor, Epic Newspaper and Managing Editor, Greenbough Communications Limited, Lagos.
He was Editor, Nigerian Book of Great People (Who’s Who). He was at one-time Part-Time lecturer at the International Institute of Journalism, Abuja. He later founded Newscomm magazine in 2011 and served as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. The magazine is temporarily rested.
His writings have also appeared in international literary journals such as Kalahari Review, The Missing Slate Journal, Litro Magazine and The New Black Magazine. His works are also forthcoming from Mosaic Literary Magazine. He writes and lives in Ibadan. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Reviewed in
Peoples Daily Newspaper Nigeria
Blueprint Newspaper Nigeria
A Place in the Sun is a racy novel; rich in history and suspense. Written by Kola King, who is a veteran journalist, it is a love story based in the fictional country of Songha, which in reality looks like life in the early days of colonial conquest in Northern Nigeria where the author hails from.
A Place in the Sun stands out of the crowd not only because it is a beautifully crafted work of art, mixed with history and culture. The intriguing thing about it is the ability of the author to hold the reader spellbound and to educate him until he gets to the very last page.
The New Black Magazine (UK)
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think of Berber. Is it possible to feel sympathy for her when her husband marries another wife. In what way might you say she is a product of her time?
When Shingu decides to take another wife Berber is confronted with the stark reality of tradition, since that is the norm in the society. A prosperous farmer is expected to take more wives. Being single-minded and a successful farmer in her own right Berber resists this move by her husband. But she fights a battle she cannot win. When the deed is done, Berber acquices so that peace will reign in her home. Generally women were reared to believe that it was a form of entitlement for a man to marry more wives. Even though reared along this line, still Berber resisted the move by her husband to take another wife.
2. Consider Gora. Yes, he is the village drunk. But later he came clean with alcohol. How does Gora represent a tragic hero?
Gora is the tragic hero in this story. A notorious village drunk. He impregnates one of his pupils, Matta. But he shows no interest in marrying her. Meanwhile Matta has been expelled from school because of her pregnancy. She faces shame and disgrace because the society frowns at this type of thing. Girls were considered priceless pearls and they were expected to enter into matrimony with dignity and respect, not through the backdoor and by accident. Later Gora takes up his responsibility and asks for Matta's hand in marriage. He stays clean. But Matta has a stillbirth and the marriage eventually breaks up. Gora returns to his old ways. He is dismissed from the school. Thereafter he leaves the village and seeks his fortune in the township. While in the township he gets a job in the railways.Meanwhile Matta has returned to school. She falls in love with Zakka. But they cannot consumate their love because Matta's family has not returned Gora's dowry. In the eyes of tradition, Matta is still Gora's wife. Therefore once Gora settles down to work he decides to make up with Matta. While on his way to the village to seek Matta's hand in marriage he dies in a canoe mishap. Now the coast is clear for Matta and Zakka to marry.
3.How does World War1 impact Zakka?
Although far from the theatre of war, British colonial possessions like Songha were in the thick of the war effort. While a student at the Teacher's College some of Zakka's mates had joined the Songha Frontier Force, the colonial army and were mobilised for the war. Zakka had toyed with the idea of joining the army, but his Principal, Mr Wood had counselled him against joining the army, saying as a brilliant student he should concentrate his effort on his job, because he was of the impression that the likes of Zakka were likely to form the cream of indigenous leaders in the near future.
4.What do Matta and Zakka see in one another?
Both Matta and Zakka are young. They belong to the same milieu. As they were coming up great changes had occured in their society with the British invasion of Songha. Besides they form the first set of Songhans to seek Western education. Their parents even though not educated want their children to seek the white man's ways. Again both of them are ambitious. Besides they have both given up their traditional religion and embraced the new-fangled religion, that is, Christianity brought by the white man. They are both soldier and Amazon for Christ. Thus they share many things in common.
5.Describe the era itself in which King sets his story.
This is the advent of colonial rule in Africa. European powers had parcelled out different parts of Africa as their spheres of influence. Thus Songhaland was now within the ambit of British colonial rule. Having defeated the many kingdoms and empires that make up Songhaland, the British later established their power, authority and control over Songhaland. Being a commercial colony the British were busy expropiating and exploiting both its natural and mineral resources.
6. Why does King keep the reader guessing until the end of the story?
King has applied the technique of suspense and drama, drawing the reader into the story with several detours and twists and turns, keeping the meat of the story till the tail end as the reader gasps with baited breath turning every page until the last page of the story which ends in tragedy. In the end love triumphs over tradition, aided by the hand of Providence.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Bright, Precious Days
Jay McInerney, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101948002
Summary
A sexy, vibrant, cross-generational New York story—a literary and commercial read of the highest order.
Russell and Corrine Calloway seem to be living the New York dream: book parties one night and high-society charity events the next; jobs they care about (and actually enjoy); twin children, a boy and a girl whose birth was truly miraculous; a loft in TriBeCa and summers in the Hamptons.
But all of this comes at a high cost. Russell, an independent publisher, has cultural clout but minimal cash; as he navigates an industry that requires, beyond astute literary taste, constant financial improvisation, he encounters an audacious, expensive and potentially ruinous opportunity.
Meanwhile, instead of seeking personal profit in this incredibly wealthy city, Corrine is devoted to feeding its hungry poor, and they soon discover they're being priced out of their now fashionable neighborhood.
Then Corrine's world is turned upside down when the man with whom she'd had an ill-fated affair in the wake of 9/11 suddenly reappears. As the novel unfolds across a period of stupendous change—including Obama's historic election and the global economic collapse he inherited—the Calloways will find themselves and their marriage tested more severely than they ever could have anticipated. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 13, 1955
• Where—Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Williams College; M.A. Syracuse University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
John Barrett "Jay" McInerney, Jr., is an American novelist, whose 1984 debut novel Bright Lights, Big City, placed him in the literary spotlight as a young author to watch. Since then, McInerney has published numerous other novels, two short story collections, and three collections of essays on wine.
McInerney was born in 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Marilyn Jean (Murphy) and John Barrett McInerney, Sr., a corporate executive. He graduated from Williams College in 1976 and earned an M.A. in English Writing from Syracuse University, where he studied with Raymond Carver.
After working as a fact-checker at The New Yorker, McInerney achieved fame in 1984 with his first published novel, Bright Lights, Big City, a depiction of New York City's cocaine culture. The novel, whose title is from a 1961 Jimmy Reed blues song, was thought unique for its second-person narrative. After its release, McInerney was heralded, along with Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz, as one of the new faces of literature: young, iconoclastic and fresh. A 1987 Village Voice article dubbed the trio—McInerney, Easton, and Janowitz—the Literary Brat Pack (the group was sometimes expanded to include Donna Tartt and Susan Minot.)
Fiction
1984 - Bright Lights, Big City
1985 - Ransom
1988 - Story of My Life
1992 - Brightness Falls
1997 - The Last of the Savages
1998 - Model Behavior
2006 - The Good Life
2009 - How It Ended (short story collection)
2009 - The Last Bachelor (short story collection)
2016 - Bright, Precious Days
McInerney also wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film version of Bright Lights, Big City and co-wrote the screenplay for the television film Gia, which starred Angelina Jolie. He has been a wine columnist for both House & Garden and The Wall Street Journal, and his essays on wine have been collected in Bacchus & Me (2000), A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006), and Juice (2012).
Trading places
Bret Easton Ellis used McInerney's character Alison Poole, from Story of My Life, in two of his novels—American Psycho and Glamorama. Poole's character, which McInerney has described as "cocaine addled" and "sexually voracious," was based upon a former girlfriend, Rielle Hunter, then known as Lisa Druck. Story of My Life offers a prescient glimpse into the notorious horse murders scandal, which became known only in 1992, when Sports Illustrated published a confession from the man who had murdered Lisa Druck's horse at the request of her father, who wanted to claim the insurance.
McInerney also has a cameo role in Ellis's Lunar Park, attending the Halloween party Bret hosts at his house. Apparently, however, McInerney was displeased with how he was portrayed in the novel.
Personal
Ellis has been married four times. His first wife was fashion model Linda Rossiter. His second wife was writer Merry Reymond. For four years he lived with fashion model Marla Hanson. His third marriage to Helen Bransford, with whom he had fraternal twin children, John Barrett McInerney III and Maisie Bransford McInerney, lasted nine years. In 2006, he married Anne Hearst. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
McInerney's multivolume, not-so-distant historical fiction can't help recalling John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom books or Philip Roth's second Zuckerman trilogy...the Calloway books share strengths with all those works, as well as an underlying generosity of spirit that is McInerney's own. The moral arc of his universe bends toward forgiveness.... But compassion and empathy don't dull a wicked sense of humor.... What [McInerney] has given us, after three books and across nearly 1,000 pages, is a portrait of a marriage in full, its strengths and weaknesses, its betrayals and compromises as vivid as you'll find in any medium. If a few of the plot threads tie up a bit too neatly, Russell and Corrine crawl their way to the final pages believably chastened, credibly wiser, still conflicted, like all of us. Endurance, in the end, is McInerney's theme, for both marriage and city. Battered, bruised, we're still here, catching our breaths, holding on.
Bruce Handy - New York Times Book Review
McInerney has long been a distinctly New York novelist, but Bright, Precious Days looks downright myopic in its focus on the rarefied concerns of a certain class of New Yorkers, their aspirations, their prep schools, their struggles to attend $1,000-a-plate charity banquets.... In one of the story’s most tragic—and apparently unironic—moments, Russell laments that he can’t even buy a $6 million house. (This humiliation adds "to his sense that the world as he knew it was crumbling around him.").... Still, as a social satirist, McInerney can be so spot-on that you want to call your housekeeper upstairs and read her some of the funny bits.... But despite the dazzlingly smart style of McInerney’s prose, there’s a wavering tone in this novel, a sense that the author is still lusting after the very things he’s mocking.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Replete with the trappings that privileged New Yorkers, in particular, would expect and receive with self-satisfied smirks, it’s all book parties, gallery openings, tasting menus, prime real estate and summers in the Hamptons with a heavy pour of oenology.... It’s familiar territory for McInerney (in real and imagined life), a high priest of Brat Pack lit, whose Bright Lights, Big City debut in 1984 secured his place as a voice of his generation. And McInerney certainly hasn’t lost his impressive ability to tell a story, though the novel does get a little doughy around the middle. But despite his talent, the nagging feeling persists throughout that...deep down most of these characters are narcissistic, empty vessels. And, cultural sightseeing aside, that means we have no real reason to care.
James Endrst - USA Today
[The] brittle and evanescent lives of New York’s elite.... A highfalutin beach read, Mr. McInerney’s first novel in 10 years tracks Russell and Corrine Calloway as they struggle with the demands of family and business. He’s an independent publisher; she’s a screenwriter manque. They have two young children. They have affairs.... There’s rich material, but too often, Mr. McInerney defaults to style. Yet he does write fluidly and rhythmically, piquing our curiosity with his inside dope.
Carolo Wolff - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[A] portrait of middle-aged malaise.... hat an author famous for slick, stylish evocation of drug-addled youth has evolved into a restrained, almost sombre chronicler of professional-class ennui may seem surprising. "Bright, Precious Days" is a far cry from "Bright Lights, Big City," the novel that made McInerney an instant celebrity in 1984, at the age of twenty-nine. But, underneath the glamour and flash of his subject matter, he has always been a more committed psychological novelist than his reputation suggests.
The New Yorker
McInerney’s tale is an astute examination of the ebbs and flows of a marriage in tumultuous times—coming to terms with unfinished relationships, the struggle to stay sane during chaotic events, and the strength to rebuild in a city ravaged by drugs, terrorism, and economic depression.
Publishers Weekly
In this powerful portrait of a marriage and a city in the shadow of the looming subprime mortgage crisis, McInerney observes the passage of life’s seasons with aching and indelible clarity.
Booklist
After a long, draggy midsection, the end of this novel kicks into high gear, with a torrent of personal crises, the financial crash, and the Obama election....Whether you love him or hate him, this novel is just what you're expecting from McInerney. So he must be doing it on purpose.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Describe the early courtship of Russell and Corrine Calloway. How would you characterize their relationship? How do their personalities shift or change over the course of the novel? What aspect of their marriage is strongest?
2. Marital fidelity, or lack thereof, is central to the plotting in Bright, Precious Days. As the number of affairs mounted throughout the book, how did they shape or complicate your understanding of each character? Which liaison surprised you the most? Consider the letter that Jeff wrote to Corrine, in which courtly love is explored. What does McInerney seem to suggest about the functionality of monogamy?
3. Jeff is introduced to the reader, strikingly, in the present tense. How is his presence felt throughout the book? How would you describe him, based on Russell’s account? Corrine’s? What did his personal letters reveal?
4. Describe the editorial relationship that Russell has with his authors. What is his main objective as an editor? Discuss the idea of ownership in relation to literature that has been touched by an editor’s pen. What does Jack’s letter to Russell imply about Russell’s editorial style?
5. Discuss how New York City functions as a character in Bright, Precious Days. What assertions can be made about New York pre- and post-9/11? What is "authentic" New York? How do Russell’s ideas about what it means to be a New Yorker frustrate Corrine?
6. The scene in which Hilary reveals that she is the biological mother of Russell and Corrine’s children sends shock waves that emanate throughout the novel. What scares Corrine most about her children knowing this information? How would you describe her as a parent?
7. Discuss the role of food and consumption in Bright, Precious Days. How is Russell’s interest in food and culinary culture described over the course of the novel? Why does their daughter’s interest in cooking alarm Corrine? How does class factor into body image concerns in their social circle?
8. Compare the dinner party in chapter 31 with the dinner party where Jack first becomes acquainted with the Calloways. How has his perspective about the Calloway family changed during this time? How has his understanding of New York and its literary scene shifted?
9. Discuss Corrine and Russell’s TriBeCa living situation. Why is Russell so adamant about buying property? What appeals to Corrine about Harlem? How does their struggle to find an affordable neighborhood reflect the tides of gentrification inherent in the rise of urban populaces?
10. Issues of class consciousness run throughout Bright, Precious Days. How do anxieties about money and status plague Corrine and Russell’s relationship? With whom is Corrine most comfortable discussing money? How does the crash of 2008 affect the couple’s social circle?
11. Describe Corrine’s relationship with Luke. What attracted her to Luke initially? How does his personality differ from her husband’s? Were you surprised by her decision to remain with Russell?
12. How does the discovery of Corrine’s affair affect their children? When is Corrine’s guilt about it most apparent? How does her apology following the affair differ from Russell’s behavior after his dalliances?
13. Compare the lives of Jeff and Jack. What parallels can you draw about their ascensions to literary stardom? Their tragic deaths? How did Russell’s editorial input shape their success?
14. As Bright, Precious Days unfolds, instances of deception are untangled and revealed. Who is the most honest character? Which character’s secret was most surprising to you?
15. How do Russell’s ideas about Art and Love versus Power and Money echo throughout Bright, Precious Days? What do they assert about the relationship between art and commerce? How do they reflect the changing nature of New York City? Of Russell’s own ambitions?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Another Brooklyn
Jacqueline Woodson, 2016
HarperCollins
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062359988
Summary
Nominated, 2016 National Book Awards
The acclaimed National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years.
Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t.
For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.
But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.
Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— February 12, 1963
• Where—Columbus, Ohio, USA
• Raised—Geenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York
• Education—B.A., Adelphi University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and teens. She is best known for her 2014 Bown Girl Dreaming, which won the National Book Award and a Newbery Honor. In 2016, she published her first adult novel, Another Brooklyn, and in 2019 she released her second adult novel, Red at the Bone, both to wide praise.
Woodson's youth was split between South Carolina and Brooklyn. In a 2002 interview with Publishers Weekly she recalled:
The South was so lush and so slow-moving and so much about community. The city was thriving and fast-moving and electric. Brooklyn was so much more diverse: on the block where I grew up, there were German people, people from the Dominican Republic, people from Puerto Rico, African-Americans from the South, Caribbean-Americans, Asians.
After college at Adelphi University, Woodson went to work for Kirchoff/Wohlberg, a literary agent for children's authors. She caught the attention of a book agent, and athough the partnership did not work out, it got her first manuscript out of a drawer.
She later enrolled in Bunny Gable's children's book writing class at the New School in New York, where an editor at Delacorte, heard a reading from Last Summer with Maizon and requested the manuscript. Delacorte bought the manuscript and published Woodson's first six books.
Writing
As an author, Woodson is known for the detailed physical landscapes she writes into each of her books. She places boundaries everywhere—social, economic, physical, sexual, racial—then has her characters break through both the physical and psychological boundaries to create a strong and emotional story.
She is also known for her optimism. She has said that she dislikes books that do not offer hope. She has offered William H. Armstrong's 1969 novel Sounder as an example of "bleak" and "hopeless"; on the other hand, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn offers "moments of hope and sheer beauty" despite the family's poverty. She uses this philosophy in her own writing, saying, "If you love the people you create, you can see the hope there."
Woodson has tackled topics such as interracial coupling, teenage pregnancy, and homosexuality—subjects not commonly or openly discussed when her books were published. Overall, she explores issues of class, race, family ties, and history in ground-breaking ways, and she does so by placing sympathetic characters into realistic situations. Many of her characters, who might be considered "invisible" in the eyes of society, engage in a search for self-identity rather than equality or social justice.
Some of the content in Woodson's books, however, has raised flags—homosexuality, child abuse, harsh language, and teen pregnancy have led to threats of censorship. In an NPR interview Woodson said that her books contain few curse words and that the difficulty adults have with her subject matter has more to do with their own discomfort than what young people should be thinking about. She suggests parents and teachers assess the many cultural influences over teens and then make a comparison with how her books treat those same issues.
Honors
Woodson's books have won numerous awards, including four Newbery Honors for Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), After Tupac & D Foster (2008), Feathers (2007), and Show Way (2005). Miracle's Boys (2000) won the Loretta Scott King Award. In 2005 Woodson won the Margaret Edwards Award for her lifetime contribution as a children's writer.
In 2014 Brown Girl Dreaming won the national Book Award for Young People's Literature. That same year she was the U.S. nominee to the international Hans Christian Andersen Awards and became one of the Award's six finalists. In 2015 the Poetry Foundation named Woodson the Young People's Poet Laureate.
Racial joke
When Woodson received her National Book Award in November, 2014, author Daniel Handler, the evening's emcee, made a joke about watermelons. In a New York Times Op-Ed piece, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke," Woodson explained that "in making light of that deep and troubled history," Handler had come from a place of ignorance. She underscored the need for her mission to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past."
Handler, a friend of Woodson, issued multiple apologies and donated $10,000 to We Need Diverse Books, promising to match donations up to $100,000. "It was a disaster of my own making, he said. "[M]any, many people were very upset by it, and rightfully so."
Personal
Woodson is a lesbian with a partner and two children, a daughter named Toshi Georgianna and a son named Jackson-Leroi. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
With Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson has delivered a love letter to loss, girlhood, and home. It is a lyrical, haunting exploration of family, memory, and other ties that bind us to one another and the world.
Boston Globe
In Jacqueline Woodson’s soaring choral poem of a novel…four young friends…navigate the perils of adolescence, mean streets, and haunted memory in 1970s Brooklyn, all while dreaming of escape.
Vanity Fair
[E]ntwined coming-of-age narratives-lost mothers, wounded war vets, nodding junkies, menacing streetscapes-are starkly realistic, yet brim with moments of pure poetry.
Elle
An engrossing novel about friendship, race, the magic of place and the relentlessness of change.
People Magazine
(Stared review.) With dreams as varied as their conflicts, the young women confront dangers lurking on the streets [and] discover first love.... Woodson draws on all the senses to trace the milestones in a woman’s life and how her early experiences shape her identity.
Publishers Weekly
(Stared review.) Woodson seamlessly transitions her characters from childhood to adulthood as August looks back on the events that led her to become silent in her teen years, eventually fleeing Brooklyn and the memories of her former friends. Verdict: An evocative portrayal of friendship, love, and loss that will resonate with anyone creating their own identity. —Stephanie Sendaula
Library Journal
(Stared review.) The novel’s richness defies its slim page count. In her poet’s prose, Woodson not only shows us backward-glancing August attempting to stave off growing up and the pains that betray youth, she also wonders how we dream of a life parallel to the one we’re living
Booklist
(Stared review.) Here is an exploration of family—both the ones we are born into and the ones we make for ourselves—and all the many ways we try to care for these people we love so much, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. A stunning achievement from one of the quietly great masters of our time.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Consider the epigraph from Richard Wright that begins the novel. In what ways are the images and ideas relevant to the story that follows?
2. How are each of the girls—Sylvia, Angela, Gigi, and the narrator August—similar or different?
3. What does it mean that the girls "came together like a jazz improv"? In what ways is jazz music about relationships?
4. When she is 15, August "was barely speaking" anymore. What were the reasons for this? Why might ceasing to speak be a response to difficulty?
5. What did the four girlfriends provide each other at different stages of their lives andstruggles?
6. What is added to our understanding of August’s experience and life in the city by the fact that she went on to study anthropology? What does such a discipline help her understand about her life?
7. While August had her girlfriends, her brother had his faith. How are these two support systems similar or different?
8. What are the many and varied effects on August of her mother’s death?
9. For much of her childhood and adolescence, August believes that her mother will return. Why is this? What does it take and mean to accept such tragedy? Can denial ever be valuable?
10. What’s the effect of Woodson weaving into the novel details of how other cultures throughout history have responded to the death of loved ones? Which of these rituals seems most powerful or effective?
11. In what ways is August’s father helpful or not as she struggles with her mother’s death?
12. Throughout the novel, Woodson writes, "This is memory." What does this mean in the context of the story? What is the nature of memory? In what ways is memory valuable or burdensome?
13. August’s mother had taught her that girls and women do not make good friends. What did she mean by this? How does August’s experience with her girlfriends support or contradict this idea?
14. After moving to the neighborhood, August and her brother could not go outside but watched other children through the window. Why did their father believe the world wasn’t a safe place? In what ways might the image of watching through the window be symbolic?
15. What does it mean for the girls to have shared "the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn?" What were the particular threats or challenges for them growing up in the neighborhood? How did each affect them? How did they respond?
16. August and her brother notice the profound way that many people in the neighborhood try "to dream themselves out…as though there was another Brooklyn." What does this mean? In what ways is dreaming helpful or harmful during difficult or oppressive times?
17. August’s brother comes to love learning math. Why does it appeal to him? What role does education play for each of them as they grow into adulthood? Why didn’t each of the other girls pursue further education?
18. To what extent is Sister Loretta a valuable person for August? What changed for better or worse with "the woman who was not Sister Mama Loretta"?
19. What complex forces drew the four girls apart as they grew older?
20. Eventually August accepts that Brooklyn, not Tennessee where they had all lived with her mother, was home. Why? What qualities determine a place as home? How might a feeling of home exist separate from any particular place?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)