To the End of the Land 
David Grossman (trans., Jessica Cohen), 2010
Knopf Doubleday
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307592972


Summary
From one of Israel’s most acclaimed writers comes a novel of extraordinary power about family life—the greatest human drama—and the cost of war.

Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer’s release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, she sets out for a hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the “notifiers” who might darken her door with the worst possible news. Recently estranged from her husband, Ilan, she drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, once a brilliant artistic spirit.

Avram served in the army alongside Ilan when they were young, but their lives were forever changed one weekend when the two jokingly had Ora draw lots to see which of them would get the few days’ leave being offered by their commander—a chance act that sent Avram into Egpyt and the Yom Kippur War, where he was brutally tortured as POW. In the aftermath, a virtual hermit, he refused to keep in touch with the family and has never met the boy.

Now, as Ora and Avram sleep out in the hills, ford rivers, and cross valleys, avoiding all news from the front, she gives him the gift of Ofer, word by word; she supplies the whole story of her motherhood, a retelling that keeps Ofer very much alive for Ora and for the reader, and opens Avram to human bonds undreamed of in his broken world. Their walk has a “war and peace” rhythm, as their conversation places the most hideous trials of war next to the joys and anguish of raising children.

Never have we seen so clearly the reality and surreality of daily life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, and the burdens that fall on each generation anew.

Grossman’s rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time. (From the publisher.)

---

---

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 25, 1954 
• Where—Jerusalem (Israel)
• Education—University of Jerusalem
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives on the outskirts of Jerusalem

David Grossman is an Israeli author whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages and won numerous prizes. He is also a noted activist and critic of Israeli policy towards Palestinians. The Yellow Wind, his nonfiction study of the life of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip met with acclaim abroad but sparked controversy at home.

He addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his 2010 novel, The End of the Land. Since that book's publication he has written a children's book, an opera for children and several poems.

Background
David Grossman was born in Jerusalem. He is the eldest of two brothers. His mother, Michaella, was born in Palestine; his father, Yitzhak, emigrated from Poland with his widowed mother at the age of nine. His mother's side of the family were Zionist and poor, his grandfather having paved roads in the Galilee and supplementing his income by buying and selling rugs. His grandmother was a manicurist.

On his father's side was his grandmother who had left Poland after being harassed by police, never before having left the region where she'd been born. Along with her son and daughter she travelled to Palestine where she became a cleaner in wealthy neighbourhoods. Grossman's father was first a bus driver, then a librarian, and it was through him that David—"a reading child"—was able to build up an interest in literature which would later become his career. Grossman recalled: "He gave me many things, but what he mostly gave me was Sholem Aleichem." Aleichem, who was born in Ukraine, is one of the greatest writers in Yiddish, though he is now best known as the man whose stories were the inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof. (See LitLovers Reading Guide for Tevye, the Dairyman.)

In 1971, Grossman began his national service working in military intelligence. Although he was in the army when the Yom Kippur war broke out in 1973, he saw no action.

Grossman studied philosophy and theater at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After university, Grossman began working in radio, where he'd once been a child actor, eventually becoming an anchor on Kol Yisrael, Israel's national broadcasting service. In 1988, however, he was sacked for refusing to downplay the news that the Palestinian leadership had declared its own state and, for the first time, conceded Israel's right to exist.

Grossman lives in Mevasseret Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He is married to Michal Grossman, a child psychologist and the mother of his three children, Jonathan, 28, Ruth, 18, and the late Uri.

Politics and activism
Grossman is an outspoken peace activist who is politically left wing.

Initially supportive of Israel's action during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict on the grounds of self defence, on August 10, 2006, he and fellow authors Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua held a press conference at which they strongly urged the government to agree to a ceasefire that would create the basis for a negotiated solution saying:

We had a right to go to war. But things got complicated... I believe that there is more than one course of action available.

Two days later, his 20-year-old son Uri, a staff sergeant in an armoured unit, was killed by an anti-tank missile during an IDF operation in southern Lebanon shortly before the ceasefire. However, Grossman explained that the death of his son did not change his opposition to Israel's policy towards the Palestinians. Although Grossman had carefully avoided writing about politics, in his stories, if not his journalism, the death of his son prompted him to deal with the Israeli-Palestintian conflict in greater detail. This appeared in his latest book To The End of the Land.

Four months after his son's death, Grossman addressed a crowd of 100,000 Israelis who had gathered to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. He denounced Ehud Olmert's government for a failure of leadership and he argued that reaching out to the Palestinians was the best hope for progress in the region.

Of course I am grieving, but my pain is greater than my anger. I am in pain for this country and for what you [Olmert] and your friends are doing to it. About his personal link to the war, Grossman said:

There were people who stereotyped me, who considered me this naive leftist who would never send his own children into the army, who didn't know what life was made of. I think those people were forced to realise that you can be very critical of Israel and yet still be an integral part of it; I speak as a reservist in the Israeli army myself.

Opposition to Israeli Settlements
In 2010 Grossman, his wife, and her family attended demonstrations against the spread of Israeli Settlements. While attending weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah [in east Jerusalem] against Jewish settlers taking over houses in Palestinian neighbourhoods he was assaulted by police. About the incident Grossman said, "we were beaten by the police." When asked by a reporter for the Guardian newspaper about how a renowned writer could be beaten he replied, "I don't know if they know me at all."

Awards and honours
1984—Prime Minister's Prize for Creative Work
2004—Premio Flaiano (Italian)
2004—Bialik Prize for literature (co-recipient)
2007—Emet Prize
2008—Geschwister-Scholl-Preis
2010—Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

On February 2, 2007, Grossman was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. (From Wikipedia.)

---

---

Book Reviews
[Grossman] weaves the essences of private life into the tapestry of history with deliberate and delicate skill; he has created a panorama of breathtaking emotional force, a masterpiece of pacing, of dedicated storytelling, with characters whose lives are etched with extraordinary, vivid detail. While his novel has the vast sweep of pure tragedy, it is also at times playful, and utterly engrossing.... This is one of those few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.
Colm Toibin - New York Times Book Review

Israeli novelist Grossman returns with an epic yet intimate story of an Israeli family and the shadow of war that haunts it. A love triangle between Ora, Avram, and Ilan ends when Avram returns to war, and Ora settles down with Ilan to raise two sons. But when her youngest is called to duty, Ora flees for Galilee, dragging with her Avram, who, deeply scared by his experience as a POW during the Yom Kippur War, has refused contact with her for years. Their shared history poignantly reveals the way conflict, war, and the loss of humanity have traumatized generations of people living in this region. Grossman, whose own soldier son was killed during the writing of this novel, connects a wide-reaching canvas of battles and bombings to the intimate realities of the relationships among family and friends. Although the atmosphere of paranoia and the flood of details can overwhelm, they also connect the reader to the characters so hypnotically that this nearly 600-page literary novel reads like a thriller.
Publishers Weekly

Ora, who has eagerly awaited her son Ofer's release from the Israeli army, is devastated when he voluntarily extends his service; she has a premonition that he will not return alive. To escape what she feels is the inevitable official notification of his death, she decides to undertake a journey planned for the two of them, an adventurous hike in Galilee, a remote mountainous region in northern Israel, telling no one how to contact her. She enlists the company of an old friend and lover, Avram, himself an open war wound, still suffering the ill effects of captivity in a prisoner-of-war camp 20 years earlier. Convinced that talking about Ofer will keep him alive, Ora fills Avram in on her life since Avram's captivity, detailing her relationship with her now-estranged husband, Ilan, the third person in their once three musketeer-like friendship, as well as her childhood and her experience as a mother. Verdict: Glimmers of humanity, life, and hope counterbalance the sense of despair, foreboding, and sadness that permeate this detailed and beautiful chronicle of Ora's, Ofer's, and Avram's lives. A final heartbreaking note from the author makes the story all the more poignant. Highly recommended. —Sarah Conrad Weisman, Corning Community Coll., NY
Library Journal

(Starred review.) [A] powerful meditation on war, friendship, and family. Instead of celebrating her son Ofer’s discharge from the Israeli Army, Ora finds her life turned upside down and inside out when he reenlists and is sent back to the front for a major offensive. ... [T]he toll exacted by living in a land and among a people constantly at war is excruciatingly evident. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist

---

---

Discussion Questions 
1. What one word would you use to describe the central theme of this novel? Is it a political novel?

2. In an interview, Grossman said about grief, “The first feeling you have is one of exile. You are being exiled from everything you know.” How do both grief and exile figure into this story?

3. Throughout the novel is the notion of tapestry, of threads being woven. What does that tapestry signify?

4. What do you think was Grossman’s intent with the prologue? What did this opening lead you to expect from the rest of the novel? Was it significant to you as a reader, later in the story, to have known these characters as teenagers?

5. On page 21, Ora says, “I’m no good at saving people.” Why does she say this? Is it true?

6. What function does Sami serve in the novel? What do we learn about Ora through her interactions with him?

7. Why does Ora consider Ofer’s reenlistment to be a betrayal? Why do his whispered, on-camera instructions affect her so strongly?

8. Discuss Adam’s assertion that Ora is “an unnatural mother” (page 98). What do you think he means by that? What does Ora take it to mean?

9. On page 134, Ora tells Sami to drive “to where the country ends.” His reply: “For me it ended a long time ago.” What does he mean by that? How does this change your interpretation of the novel’s title?

10. What is the significance of Ofer’s film, in which there are no physical beings, only their shadows?

11. In both Adam and Ofer, the influence of nature vs. nurture seems quite fluid. How is each like his biological father, and how does each resemble the man to whom he is not related by blood?

12. What role does food play in the novel? What does vegetarianism, especially, signify?

13. On pages 284–85, Ora says to Avram, “Just remember that sometimes bad news is actually good news that you didn’t understand. Remember that what might have been bad news can turn into good news over time, perhaps the best news you need.” What is she hoping for here? Does her advice turn out to be accurate?

14. Why does Ora refuse to go back for her notebook? As a reader, could you identify with Ora’s actions? What about elsewhere in the novel?

15. What do we learn about Ora, Ilan, and Ofer through the story of Adam’s compulsive behavior? What is “the force of no” (page 398)?

16. Discuss the significance of whose name Ora draws from the hat. Did she choose that person intentionally? How might the lives of Ora, Ilan, and Avram have been different if the other name were drawn?

17. Why does Ora react so strongly to what happened with Ofer in Hebron? How does it relate to what happened to Avram as a POW? Why does her reaction lead to the implosion of her family?

18. When Ora says to Avram, “Maybe you’ll even have a girl” (page 572), what is she really saying?

19. Discuss the final scene of the novel. What does Avram’s vision signify? Was Ora’s motivation for the hike wrong, as she fears?

20. How did Grossman’s personal note at the end change your experience of the novel? What seems possible for Ora and Avram, and the other characters in the book, at the end of the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

top of page (summary)

 

---

Summary  |  Author  |  Book Reviews  |  Discussion Questions

---

I'd Know You Anywhere 
Laura Lippman, 2010
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062070753

In Brief 
There was your photo, in a magazine. Of course, you are older now. Still, I'd know you anywhere.

Suburban wife and mother Eliza Benedict's peaceful world falls off its axis when a letter arrives from Walter Bowman. In the summer of 1985, when Eliza was fifteen, she was kidnapped by this man and held hostage for almost six weeks. Now he's on death row in Virginia for the rape and murder of his final victim, and Eliza wants nothing to do with him. Walter, however, is unpredictable when ignored—as Eliza knows only too well—and to shelter her children from the nightmare of her past, she'll see him one last time.

But Walter is after something more than forgiveness: He wants Eliza to save his life . . . and he wants her to remember the truth about that long-ago summer and release the terrible secret she's keeping buried inside. (From the publisher.)

top of page

---

About the Author 
• Birth—January 31, 1959
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.S., Northwestern University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland


Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a well known and respected writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team.

Lippman is a former reporter for the (now defunct) San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter (like Lippman herself) turned private investigator.

Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. Her 2007 release, What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York Times bestseller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which has been optioned for the movies by Academy Award–winning actor Frances McDormand.

Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. In January, 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College.

Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.

Awards
2015 Anthony Award-Best Novel (After I'm Gone)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Short Story ("Hardly Knew Her")
2008 Barry Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Macavity Award-Best Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2007 Anthony Award-Best Novel (No Good Deeds)
2007 Quill Award-Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2006 Gumshow Award-Best Novel (To the Power of the Three)
2004 Barry Award-Best Novel (Every Secret Thing)
2001 Nero Award (Sugar House)
2000 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
2000 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
1999 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (Butchers Hill)
1998 Agatha Award-Best Novel (Butchers Hill)
1998 Edgar Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
1998 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
top of page

---

Critics Say . . . 
I've read hundreds of thrillers in the past 10 years, and some have been excellent, but only a handful—thanks to their insights, their characterizations and the quality of their writing—could equal the best of today's literary fiction. Those few certainly include What the Dead Know and I'd Know You Anywhere. In both cases, Lippman began with a real crime and then used the magic of her imagination to produce novels that are not only hypnotic reading but serious meditations on the sorrows and dangers of this world. Some people would segregate Lippman as a crime or thriller writer. That's a shame. She's one of the best novelists around, period.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post


I’d Know You Anywhere continues Laura Lippman’s extraordinary run of stand-alone novels (alternating with her lighter books about private eye Tess Monaghan). From its unsettling opening to its breathtaking conclusion, “Anywhere” exemplifies Lippman’s strengths: compassion, intense prose and deep empathy for the snares of ambiguous emotions.
Seattle Times


Laura Lippman is one of those uncommonly talented authors whose work continues to get better in every book she writes. I’d Know You Anywhere is a riveting psychological suspense novel.
Toronto Globe and Mail


I’d Know You Anywhere is a crime story, but it’s not a whodunit. Rather, it’s an exquisitely sensitive story about the psychological impact of crime on its victims. It’s a story about shame, about anger, about survivor’s guilt.
Fort Worth Star Telegram


This is a story that grips you not with suspense but with its acute psychological autopsy of a survivor. Lippman’s knack for elucidating the horrors humans can inflict on one another through violence and manipulation—while telling a compelling story—is disarming and fascinating.
USA Today


Near the start of this outstanding novel of psychological suspense from Edgar-winner Lippman (Life Sentences), Eliza Benedict, a 38-year-old married mother of two living in suburban Maryland, receives a letter from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her the summer she was 15 and is now on death row. The narrative shifts between the present and that long ago summer, when Eliza involuntarily became a part of Walter's endless road trip, including the fateful night when he picked up another teenage girl, Holly Tackett. Soon after Walter killed Holly, Eliza was rescued and taken home. Eliza must now balance a need for closure with a desire to protect herself emotionally. Walter wants something specific from her, but she has no idea what, and she's not sure that she wants to know. All the relationships, from the sometimes contentious one between Eliza and her sister, Vonnie, to the significantly stranger one between Walter and Barbara LaFortuny, an advocate for prisoners, provide depth and breadth to this absorbing story.
Publishers Weekly


Eliza Benedict believed she'd put her adolescence behind her, especially the time she'd spent as a captive of Walter Bowman, until he contacts her from death row. Struggling in her relationship with her own teenage daughter and wrestling with memories of Holly Tackett, the girl who didn't get away from Walter, Eliza finds herself repeatedly coming back to the events of the last night of Holly's life. While she may no longer be his captive, Eliza is clearly anything but free. The mystery in Lippman's latest stand-alone, while still a strong element, takes a backseat to Eliza's story, set against the impending execution of Walter. The fast-paced narrative, with dynamic supporting characters and subplots that feel underused, races to a satisfying if somewhat abrupt conclusion. Verdict: Echoing Lippman's previous stand-alones, What the Dead Know and Life Sentences, this is a solid choice for mystery fans who enjoy a broader view of crime and its aftermath. —Amy Brozio-Andrews, Albany P.L., NY
Library Journal

top of page

---

Book Club Discussion Questions 

1. Describe Eliza as an adult and as a teenager. How has she changed? What of her personality is the same? How did the trauma of her kidnapping impact her relationship with her parents, her sister, her husband, her children?

2. What did Eliza have in common with Walter's other victims? How was she different? Why didn't Walter kill her too?

3. When she visits the parents of Walter's last victim, Eliza cant help but think of their daughter and her role—or lack of it—in her death. "She hadn't killed Holly, but she hadn't saved her, either. Was that the same thing? She had resolved to live. Was her decision to live the same as willing Holly to die? She had chosen to live, which she believed meant doing whatever Walter said. Holly was the one who had fought and run." Discuss the questions Eliza raises about her own culpability. Does Eliza share any blame for Holly's death?

4. How would you characterize the relationship between Walter and the teenage Elizabeth? What about his relationship with the adult Eliza?

5. How did knowing Walter as intimately as she did save Eliza's life? Which person knew the other better? Did she owe Walter his life—or anything at all—since ultimately, he spared hers? Did he know her as well as he thought? Was he surprised by the outcome when she finally visited? Were you?

6. What does Walter want from Eliza? Why does she agree to see him? What does she want from him?

7. Walter mused about the trial that convicted him. "Shouldn't his victims have the final say? But there was Elizabeth. He hadn't been lying when he said he felt the greatest guilt toward her. What he did to her—that was a betrayal. The others, he didn't know them, they weren't real to him. But Elizabeth had been his co-pilot, his running buddy. His Charley to his Steinbeck." Why did Walter feel guilty about Elizabeth? How did he betray her?

8. Eliza had felt protected by the invisibility with which she cloaked herself, taking her husband's name, moving abroad for several years. Can we ever truly hide from those who want to find us? What is the emotional cost if we try? What was the cost for Eliza?

9. Eliza wished her son could stay young and innocent for years. "But she knew there was no spell, no magic, that could keep a child a child, or shield a child from the world at large. In fact, that was where the trouble almost always began, with a parent trying to out-think fate. Stay on the path. Don't touch the spindle. Don't speak to strangers. Don't pick the rose." Why does Eliza think this way? What does she mean by "that was where the trouble almost always began"? Do you agree with her assessment? Are we overprotective of our children? How can we gird them for the perils the world offers?

10. When she was asked if Walter deserved to die, Eliza responds, "It doesn't matter what I think. He was sentenced for the murder of Holly Tackett, and her parents made it clear that they approved of the death penalty. I wasn't consulted." Do you think Walter deserved to die? Why is it so difficult for Eliza to offer her opinion? Do you think she feels guilty for surviving?

11. Eliza's sister Vonnie accuses her of "existing.... You let life happen to you. You live the most reactive life of anyone I know. If there's one thing I would have learned from your experience, I think it would be to never let anyone else take control of my life." Is Vonnie correct in her assessment? Has Eliza learned this lesson?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

top of page

 

The Conjurer (A Martha Beale Mystery)
Cordelia Frances Biddle, 2007
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312383381


Summary
Intrigue, passion and murder surround the suspicious disappearance of Philadelphia financier, Lemuel Beale, in the winter of 1842.

A victim of accidental drowning, according to the local constabulary, Beale's legacy is a sinister web of political and financial machinations, and a troubling relationship with his daughter, his only child. Unmarried at twenty-six in an era when women were expected to become brides before turning twenty, Martha Beale's conflicted search for her father eventually emboldens and frees her, bringing her love in the person of Thomas Kelman, an assistant to Philadelphia's mayor—and a man whose business is homicide investigation.

The inquiry into Beale's disappearance uncovers connections between the city's most affluent and its most destitute: an escaped inmate from the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary; the freed African-American prisoner, Ruth; the ritual slayings of several young girl prostitutes; and Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and necromancer who claims to communicate with the dead. (From the publisher.)

---

---

Author Bio
• Other name—Nero Blanc (with her husband Steve Zettler)
   —pseudonym for the Crossword Mystery series
• Birth—outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Miss Porters; Vassar College
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia


Her own words:
I grew up in the nearby suburbs, a member of the branch of the Biddle family that historians refer to as “The Romantics”. The term denotes a predilection for spectacular, if chancy, careers. The other side is known as “The Solids”. Enough said.

The earliest “Romantic” of note was Nicholas, a captain in the fledgling American navy; he was killed when his frigate exploded during an engagement with a British warship. Nicholas was twenty-eight; the battle made him the country’s first naval hero. Until fairly recently, the United States Navy maintained a guided missile destroyer named in his honor. Nicholas’s brother, Charles, served as Vice President of the State of Pennsylvania when his friend, Benjamin Franklin, was President; a nephew, James, became a hero of the War of 1812, and later negotiated the first commercial treaty with the Chinese Empire.

The next “Romantic” Biddle to gain nationwide attention was another Nicholas, a brother of James. He edited The Journals of Lewis and Clark, and later became president of the Second Bank of the United States. The church Nicholas attended and where he’s buried is St. Peter’s Episcopal Church where I serve on the vestry. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

The other half of my Philadelphia ancestry are Drexels. My great-great grandfather, Anthony Drexel, established Drexel University; his niece, Katharine Drexel, was made a saint in the Roman Catholic Church for her humanitarian efforts in establishing schools for the poorest of the poor. Inspiring models, but difficult to follow

My career path first took me first to New York where I acted on stage and tv, playing a small recurring role in the daytime drama, One Life to Live, and being fortunate to be cast in Gemini, a play directed by award-winning Jerry Zaks.

Drama remains with me in my writing. I inhabit my characters when working; I see the settings I describe in cinematic terms. I hear the sounds of the street, touch the fabrics, smell and taste the food prepared in either spacious or cramped kitchens. Yes, I love existing in the past. My first novel, Beneath the Wind (Simon & Schuster) was inspired by a Drexel “grand tour” aboard a family yacht in 1903. I added an illicit romance and murder to spice things up, and named the heroine after my Biddle grandmother because she hadn’t led the exotic life she wished.

The Conjurer grew out of my love of Philadelphia. Some of the novel was inspired by family lore; the rest was assiduously researched. When I write about poverty during the 1840’s, I’m often envisioning current volunteer work I do with Episcopal Community Services (ECS).

I feel I’m straddling two worlds: one in the twenty-first century section of the city known as Society Hill where I live with my husband and sometime co-author, Steve Zettler, and our curly gray bundle of canine energy named Gabby; the other an era of carriages and gas lamps when Philadelphia was at once intensely crowded with humanity and rimmed with bucolic fields and virgin woods. My title character isn’t the only conjurer of spirits." (From the author's website.)

---

---

Book Review
The inquiry into Beale's disappearance uncovers connections between the city's most affluent and its most destitute: an escaped inmate from the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary; the freed African-American prisoner, Ruth; the ritual slayings of several young girl prostitutes; and Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and necromancer who claims to communicate with the dead. Biddle knows her manners and her city, and shows both to great advantage. The reader, as in all good historical mysteries, learns as much about a time and place as about the crime, and Biddle's characters are fresh and believable. I hope she continues the series.
Cleveland Plain Dealer


Biddle successfully uses 19th-century Philadelphia, mining the landscape for the kinds of jewels that illuminate a good mystery, and shaping characters that ring true to the elements of their creation. The Conjurer is a worthy inclusion in the genre, and I hope there are many more Martha Beale mysteries to come.
Philadelphia Inquirer


Sordid secrets of the rich and powerful drive the plot of Biddle's unconvincing Philadelphia historical, the first of a new series. One morning in 1842, Main Line financier Lemuel Beale fails to return from a routine hunting trip; his capable but coddled daughter, Martha, and Thomas Kelman, assistant to the mayor of Philadelphia, set out to track him down. At the same time, a brutal serial killer of young prostitutes is stalking the inner-city slums, and traveling mesmerist Eusapio Paladino is chilling aristocratic audiences with performances in which the dead appear to be calling out through his trances. These disparate yet interrelated story threads combine in an intricately orchestrated narrative that implicates the Brahmin class and the corruption that comes with their absolute power. Biddle wonderfully evokes the color and culture of the time, but her overstocked tale ends hastily and unbelievably. Biddle is the coauthor with her husband, Steve Zettel, of Death on the Diagonal and other Nero Blanc crossword puzzle mysteries.
Publishers Weekly


When wealthy financier Lemuel Beale vanishes from his country estate while hunting, his daughter Martha, now exceedingly rich but alone in the world, joins with Thomas Kelman, a special investigator for the mayor of Philadelphia, in probing his disappearance. At the same time, a killer of young girls is prowling the City of Brotherly Love. One possible suspect is Eusapio Paladino, a famous clairvoyant and conjurer. Set in 1842 Philadelphia and juggling multiple plot lines and narrators, this debut entry in a new historical crime series by the coauthor of 11 Nero Blanc crossword puzzle mysteries is a feast for those fans who enjoy engaging characters and historical periods that have not been done to death. This may also attract readers who loved Caleb Carr's attention to detail in The Alienist and Jacqueline Winspeare's appealing sleuth, Maisie Dobbs.
Library Journal


As a serial killer stalks child prostitutes, a wealthy financier vanishes in 1842 Philadelphia. Martha Beale is a cosseted spinster, subservient first to her financier father, and then, when he's presumed drowned, to Owen Simms, his secretary. Beneath her quiet exterior, however, are ripples of defiance ready to break through. Soon enough, she's drawn to Thomas Kelman, an assistant to the mayor of Philadelphia, who's unwilling to write off her father's death as an accident. In his investigations of the Beale disappearance and the child murders, he discovers some disturbing connections to a woman in an insane asylum who was repeatedly raped by the brother who visits her under a false name. Meanwhile, Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and clairvoyant, has been appearing at private parties delivering scandalous utterances about the crimes. Society beauty Emily Durand, who falls under his spell, is ruined when her husband is shot and Paladino is arrested. Learning that the late Durand was bankrupt, Emily rescues Martha from a drugged stupor brought on by Simms, who wants to marry her but can control her only with opium. Not till the end will defiant Martha and patient Kelman solve the sordid crimes hidden by the wealth and patina of high society. Biddle's debut offers some appealing characters, but a wealth of intriguing period detail ultimately overwhelms the mystery.
Kirkus Reviews

---

---

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

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

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Conjurer:

1. Consider the difference between societal codes today vs. the mid-1800's—women, economic class, prostitution.

2. What do you know...and when do you know it? Mystery/ thriller stories create suspense by withholding information (see LitCourse 6) then letting it out at the right time. Along the way, the author usually drops subtle clues so the ending doesn't pop out of nowhere. A skillful writer does this deftly—without a heavy, controlling hand. How does Biddle deal with revelation and suspense?

3. What type of mystery is The Conjurer? Classic mysteries depend on a world in which reason and logic uncover truth. (See LitCourse 2). In this story, when Martha is informed that her father is missing, she utters, "there must be a logical explanation." To what extent does this story stay within the bounds of the rational world? Are there other ways, less rational, of uncovering truth?

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

top of page (summary)

 

Netherland
Joseph O'Neill, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307388773

Summary
In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans—a banker originally from the Netherlands—finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country.

Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an “other” New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Hans is alternately seduced and instructed by Chuck’s particular brand of naivete and chutzpah—by his ability to a hold fast to a sense of American and human possibility in which Hans has come to lose faith.

Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man—of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O’Neill’s prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life. (From the publisher.)

---

---

Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Cork, Ireland
• Raised—primarily in Holland
• Awards—PEN/Faulkner Award
• Education—LL. B., Cambridge University
• Currently—New York, New York, USA


Joseph O'Neill is an Irish novelist and non-fiction writer. His 2008 novel Netherland was awarded the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and The Dog, published in 2014, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Early life
O'Neill was born in Cork Ireland, in 1964. He is of half-Irish and half-Assyrian (his mother's family belonged to the Syrian Catholic Church in Mersin) ancestry. His parents moved around much in O'Neill's youth: he spent time in Mozambique as a toddler and in Turkey until the age of four, and he also lived in Iran. From the age of six, O'Neill lived in The Netherlands, where he attended the Lycee francais de La Haye and the British School in the Netherlands.

He read law at Girton College, Cambridge, preferring it over English because "literature was too precious" and he wanted it to remain a hobby. O'Neill started off his literary career in poetry but had turned away from it by the age of 24. After a year off to write his first novel, O'Neill became a barrister at the English Bar, where he practiced for ten years at a barristers chambers in the Temple, principally in the field of business law. Since 1998 he has lived in New York City. He teaches at Bard College.

Writing
O'Neill is the author of four novels, including This Is the Life (1991), The Breezes (1996), Netherland (2008), and The Dog (2014).

His 2008 Netherland was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was called "the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell." It was also included in the New York Times list of the 10 Best Books of 2008.

His fourth novel The Dog, published in 2014, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

In addition to fiction, he is also the author of a non-fiction book, Blood-Dark Track: A Family History, which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a book of the year for the Economist and the Irish Times.

Additionally, O'Neill writes literary and cultural criticism, most regularly for the Atlantic Monthly. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/16/2014.)

---

---

Book Reviews
Joseph O'Neill's stunning new novel, Netherland, provides a resonant meditation on the American Dream…[he] does a magical job of conjuring up the many New Yorks Hans gets to know. He captures the city's myriad moods, its anomalous neighborhoods jostling up against one another, its cacophony and stillness, its strivers, seekers, scam artists and scoundrels.... Most memorably, he gives us New York as a place where the unlikeliest of people can become friends and change one another's lives, a place where immigrants like Chuck can nurture—and potentially lose—their dreams, and where others like Hans can find the promise of renewal.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times

Here's what Netherland surely is: the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell. On a micro level, it's about a couple and their young son living in Lower Manhattan when the planes hit, and about the event's rippling emotional aftermath in their lives. On a macro level, it's about nearly everything: family, politics, identity. I devoured it in three thirsty gulps, gulps that satisfied a craving I didn't know I had.... [O'Neill] seems incapable of composing a boring sentence or thinking an uninteresting thought.
Dwight Garner - New York Times Book Review

Netherland doesn't turn on plot. In both form and content, it questions the idea that a life can be told as a coherent story. It is organized not chronologically but as a series of memories linked by associations…At times, the novel's exacting descriptions felt less like a man's memory than a tour of his consciousness, and I wondered why a particular scene merited such detail, but Hans is a person who has lost his bearings after a shock and his myriad perceptions bear the stamp of this estrangement. Always sensitive and intelligent, Netherland tells the fragmented story of a man in exile—from home, family and, most poignantly, from himself.
Siri Hustvedt - Washington Post

Hans van den Broek, the main character in this ruminative third novel (and fourth book) by Irish/Turkish/English author O'Neill (Blood-Dark Track), is a Dutch-transplanted Londoner working in New York City at the start of the 21st century. Though a successful equities analyst, Hans is given more to reverie than to action. When his wife announces she is taking their young son back to London, Hans, stunned, remains in New York. He gets drawn into a friendship of sorts with Trinidadian entrepreneur Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreams of making cricket a great American sport, and who-Hans hears later-is eventually found dead in a canal. Hans's meandering, somewhat old-fashioned narrative takes a patient reader in and out of past and present: from his cricket-playing, fatherless childhood through his distant relationship with his mother, rocky marriage, and his own fatherhood, gradually revealing the appeal of the slowly unfolding game of cricket and fast-talking Chuck Ramkissoon to a man in his early thirties finding his way in a post-9/11 world. Recommended for literary fiction collections.
Laurie A. Cavanaugh - Library Journal

Novelist and memoirist O'Neill (Blood-Dark Track: A Family History, 2001, etc.), born in Ireland and raised in Holland, goes for broke in this challenging novel set largely in post-9/11 New York City. Dutch banker Hans, who narrates the story from the perspective of 2006, and his British wife Rachel, a lawyer, get more than they bargain for when they transfer their jobs from London to Manhattan for an American experience. After the World Trade Center bombing, they move out of their Tribeca loft into the Hotel Chelsea, and soon Rachel decamps with their baby son back to London. Hans visits regularly but the marriage flounders. Distraught and lonely, he joins a Cricket league made up mostly of Asian and Caribbean immigrants. Soon he (along with the reader) falls under the sway of Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian umpire. Chuck is a charming entrepreneur who has opened a kosher sushi restaurant; an inspiringly patriotic immigrant with plans to save America with Cricket; and a petty gangster running a numbers game. A classic charismatic rogue, Chuck leads Hans on a "Heart of Darkness" tour of New York's immigrant underbelly. As Hans begins to realize that Chuck might be a dangerous friend to have, Hans and Rachel's marriage disintegrates. At Chuck's recommendation, Hans moves back to England to win her back. Throughout, O'Neill plays with the nature of time and memory: Hans's Dutch childhood with his single mother, for example, still haunts him in New York. The shifting truths of who Chuck has been, who Hans's mother was, who Hans and Rachel are to each other, depend on what O'Neill calls "temporal undercurrents." This love story about a friendship, a place and a marriage is not easy to read, but it's even harder to stop thinking about.
Kirkus Reviews

---

---

Discussion Questions 
1. Describe the structure of Netherland. Why does the author open with Hans moving to New York City and then quickly jump into the future with Chuck's death and then jump back? Do you think these flashbacks and foward leaps relate to the narrative arc of the story? Is this simply how we tell stories? When you tell a story do you tell it chronologically? Why?

2. Childhood often slips into the story—that of both Hans and Chuck. Early on in the novel, Hans mentions that he doesn't connect to himself as a child ("I, however, seem given to self-estrangement"), then proceeds to produce numerous memories of his childhood and of his mother. How is this reconnecting with his heritage and his past important to the story? How is Chuck often the catalyst for these memories?

3. Chuck is more connected to his heritage than Hans. He socializes with others from the West Indies; he's marriees to a woman from his birth country, et cetera. How do flashbacks to his childhood differ from Hans's and how do they affect the novel as a whole?

4. How does nostalgis play into Netherland? Who is nostalgic and for what? Why does O'Neill open the novel with someone being nostalgic for New York City?

5. Discuss the title. What does "netherland" mean and what do you think it refers to?

6. Chuck's motto is "Think fantastic." How does this both help and hinder him? Can you create an appropriate motto for Hans? How about for yourself?

7. What does the United States represent for Hans and Chuck? How are their relationships with their new country similar, and also polar opposites?

8. How are both Han's and Chuck's experiences typical of American dream of immigrant stories? Compare Netherland to other stories of the immigrant experience (The Joy Luck Club, The House on Mango Street, House of Sand and Fog) or to what you imagine immigrating to a new country to be like.

9. Is the American Dream the same after 9/11? How are Americans both united and divided after 9/11? How is the world of Netherland particular to the United States after 9/11?

10. Describe the narrator's voice. Do you trust and like Hans as a narrator? Do you sympatize with him and understand his motives? Do you identify with him?

11. Describe the Chelsea Hotel when Hans lives. How is it a character in the novel? How are the various inhabitants and the oddness of the place appealing and comforting to Hans?

12. What is Han's relationship with his mother? How does the relationship continue to affect him after his mother's death? How does it affect his being a father?

13. Discuss the theme of male friendship in the novel and its connection to sports. Early in the novel, Hans describes playing cricket with Chuck: "The rest of our lives—jobs, children, wives, worries—peeled away, leaving only this fateful sporting fruit." While Hans's friendship with Chuck goes beyond cricket, the sport is what initially brings the two men together. Why do you think cricket is so important to Hans? How does his friendship with Chuck change him?

14. Netherland is also the story of a marriage. Why is Hans and Rachel's marriage falling apart? What brings them together again in the end?

15. Discuss the theme of betrayal and forgiveness in Netherland. How do both Rachel and Hans betray eachother and why? What about Chuck? Do the characters ever lead themselves astray and betray themselves. Does America betray both Chuck and Hans in the end?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

top of page (summary)