The Widower's Tale 
Julia Glass, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307377920


Summary 
In a historic farmhouse outside Boston, seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. His routines are disrupted, however, when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. No longer can he remain aloof from his community, his two grown daughters, or, to his shock, the precarious joy of falling in love.
 
One relationship Percy treasures is the bond with his oldest grandchild, Robert, a premed student at Harvard. Robert has long assumed he will follow in the footsteps of his mother, a prominent physician, but he begins to question his ambitions when confronted by a charismatic roommate who preaches—and begins to practice—an extreme form of ecological activism, targeting Boston’s most affluent suburbs.
 
Meanwhile, two other men become fatefully involved with Percy and Robert: Ira, a gay teacher at the preschool, and Celestino, a Guatemalan gardener who works for Percy’s neighbor, each one striving to overcome a sense of personal exile. Choices made by all four men, as well as by the women around them, collide forcefully on one lovely spring evening, upending everyone’s lives, but none more radically than Percy’s.
 
With equal parts affection and satire, Julia Glass spins a captivating tale about the loyalties, rivalries, and secrets of a very particular family. Yet again, she plumbs the human heart brilliantly, dramatically, and movingly. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—March 23, 1956
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale College
• Awards—Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, 1999; Nelson Algren
   Fiction Awards, 1993, 1996, 2000; National Book Award for
   Fiction, 2002
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Julia Glass is an artist of many talents. After graduating from Yale University with an art degree, she received a fellowship to study figurative painting in Paris. Upon her return, she moved to New York City. She became involved in the city's energetic art scene, showing her works in group installations around town. Glass had a day job as a copy editor, and she wrote the occasional column for magazines. She had always been a good writer, but was initially focused on the possibility of a career in the visual arts. Eventually, the pull to write would become too strong. Glass put down the paint brush and picked up the pen.

One of her first short stories, never published, was titled Souvenirs. Its main character was a young art student touring Greece. It was based on her real-life experiences in Greece, yet another event from Glass' trip was to be the turning point in her career, although she couldn't have known it at the time. She met an older gentleman while on a tour, and in their brief conversation, the man mentioned that his wife had recently passed away... but what Glass remembered most was the mournful expression on his face and the stark, white, Grecian architecture.

Writing was a kind of therapy for Glass. While working on Souvenirs, she endured previously unimaginable tragedies. Her marriage ended, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her older sister passed away. The memory of the sad widower in Greece took on much deeper meaning, and she decided to rewrite the story from his point of view. This rewrite eventually becomes Collies, which won the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society medal for novellas.

At her editor's urging, Glass continued writing the story, and Collies became the first part of her stunning debut novel, Three Junes.

It's rare that a first novel is widely considered to be brilliant, but brilliance is what you'll find in Three Junes. Her training as an artist is evident in each sentence where even the smallest moment —a gesture or an object—is labored over and paid the attention it deserves. And like the visual arts, in Three Junes even the slightest elements are suggestive of its whole.

The father and eldest son of the McLeod family live on opposite sides of the Atlantic and lead very different lives as they both deal with similar losses and passions. The first part of the novel takes place in June of 1989. Paul, the patriarch of the family, lives in Scotland. He visits Greece while still grieving for the loss of his wife and meets Fern, a young art student also on the tour. His brief time with Fern allows him a chance at passion when he least expected it.

The second part of the novel is told from another voice. Fenno, Paul's oldest son, is central to the story as a whole, and his presence connects his family's past to its future. In June of 1995, Fenno is a loveable, slightly repressed gay man who has moved to New York City and opened a bookstore. Glass captures the cosmopolitan West Village, setting the scene for Fenno to open his heart to love and face the rest of his family upon Paul's death.

The final story in the novel is the chance meeting between Fenno and Fern in June of 1999. Like his father before him, Fenno captivates Fern. All of their loves and losses over the past decade begin to be reconciled over one magical night's dinner. The web of people attached to their lives is revealed, surprising them at how a previous generation's choices have become their obstacles. In the end, though, their wounds are deep, but they're not paralyzing.

The book won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction. It is praised for its perfect pacing, attention to the slightest degrees of human behavior, and the gentle humor we must all have when dealing with the ones we love. It's an extraordinary first novel.

Extras
Glass's first published writing was a regular column on pets called "Animal Love" that ran in Glamour magazine for two years in the late eighties. Says Glass, "I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always horses, dogs, and cats, as well as a revolving infirmary of injured wildlife being nursed by my sister the aspiring vet. Currently, I have no pets, yet inescapably, without any conscious intention on my part, animals come to play a significant role in my fiction: in Three Junes, a parrot and a pack of collies; in my new novel, a bulldog named The Bruce. To dog lovers, by the way, I recommend My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley — by far the best 'animal book' I've ever read."

She is an avid rug-hooker in her free time. She explains that "unlike the more restrictive needlepoint, this medium permits me to work with yarn in a fluid, painterly fashion." In November 2002, several of her rugs will be reproduced in a book called Punch Needle Rug Hooking, by Amy Oxford (Schiffer Books).

Glass considers herself a "confirmed, unrepentant late bloomer." She explains, "I talked late, swam late, did not learn to ride a bike until college—and might never have walked or learned to drive a car if my parents hadn't overruled my lack of motivation and virtually forced me to embrace both forms of transportation. I suspect I was happy to sit in a corner with a book. Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do." (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews 
Among the many astute touches in The Widower's Tale is the fact that the action takes place within the orbit of two educational institutions looming large in the minds of today's affluent, consumerist parents: an exclusive "progressive" preschool and Harvard. If we can somehow shepherd our children through the first and then into the other, the communal fantasy goes, they'll land safely in some dreamy sphere of the elite, where there's no suffering, no strife, no failure, where the workers are invisible and all the real estate is light-filled. This energized, good-humored novel…smashes through that illusion, beginning as satire, becoming stealthily suspenseful and ending up with a satisfyingly cleareyed and compassionate view of American entitlement and its fallout.
Maria Russo - New York Times Book Review

Each strand of this narrative macramé is surprisingly supple, offering a convincing illusion of lives roundly lived. The effect is one of remarkable expansiveness, in which a rather modest small-town story is able to incorporate all kinds of contemporary social issues, including illegal immigration, eco-terrorism, health-care coverage, divorce and gay marriage…Glass propels her characters through a world that is sometimes dire but also sweetly normal and often joyful. It's the Glass-half-full version of Lorrie Moore's grief-stricken novel A Gate at the Stairs.
Donna Rifkind - Washington Post

Tremendously engaging.... It's a large, endearing cast, bursting with emotional and social issues, and Glass slips effortlessly between their individual and enmeshed dramas. As she well proved in her National Book Award-winning Three Junes, Glass crafts dense and absorbing reads that are as charming as they are provocative.
Karen Valby - Entertainment Weekly

Glass effortlessly ping-pongs between three dramas to show how everyday love and lies can make—or completely destroy—a life. This one’s perfect for when you’ve got the night all to yourself and want to keep thinking long after the last page is turned.
Redbook

(Starred review.) Percy Darling, 70, the narrator of Glass's fourth novel, takes comfort in certitudes: he will never leave his historic suburban Boston house, he is done with love (still guilty about his wife's death 30 years ago), and his beloved grandson Robert, a Harvard senior, will do credit to the family name. But Glass (Three Junes) spins a beautifully paced, keenly observed story in which certainties give way to surprising reversals of fortune. Percy is an opinionated, cantankerous, newly retired Harvard librarian and nobody's "darling," who decides to lease his barn to a local preschool, mainly to give his daughter Clover, who has abandoned her husband and children in New York, a job. Percy's other daughter is a workaholic oncologist in Boston who becomes important to a young mother at the school with whom Percy, to his vast surprise, establishes a romantic relationship. Meanwhile, Percy's grandson, Robert, falls in with an ecoterrorist group. Glass handles the coalescing plot elements with astute insights into the complexity of family relationships, the gulf between social classes, and our modern culture of excess to create a dramatic, thought-provoking, and immensely satisfying novel
Publishers Weekly

At 70, retired Harvard librarian Percy Darling has turned into a bit of a crank. The gentrification of his quaint New England village and the technological shift in libraries are among his many gripes. The latest assault on Percy's peace and contentment is the presence of a day care he has allowed his daughter to build on his historic property. Multistranded plotlines intersect and connect the others who orbit Percy's world: single mother Sarah, with whom Percy forms an attachment after years of self-imposed monkhood; Percy's daughters Trudy, a renowned breast cancer consultant, and Clover, suffering through a messy custody dispute; his grandson, Robert, whose friends are involved in underground environmental activism; Celestino, a Guatemalan gardener with immigration problems; and Ira, a gay day care worker who had been falsely accused of improper conduct at his previous school. VERDICT As she has done so compellingly in earlier novels (e.g., Three Junes), Glass brings together familiar themes, sympathetic characters, and multiple story lines in a harmonious mashup that is sure to enchant her many fans. —Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal

(Starred review.) Elaborately plotted and luxuriously paced, Glass’s inquisitive, compassionate, funny, and suspenseful saga addresses significant and thorny social issues with emotional veracity, artistic nuance, and a profound perception of the grand interconnectivity of life.
Booklist

(Starred review.) Glass’s perfect plot gives each character his or her due, in an irresistible pastoral tragicomedy that showcases the warmth and wisdom of one of America’s finest novelists, approaching if not already arrived at her peak.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. From the stories that the characters remember and tell, what kind of mother (and wife) was Poppy Darling? How would you explain the very different kinds of mothers her two daughters, Trudy and Clover, have become? Discuss the choices these two women have made and how they affect their relationships with their children. And how about Sarah? What kind of mother is she? Does being a mother define any or all of these women?

2. How do Percy's age, background, and profession shape the way he thinks about the world around him? How does the way he sees himself differ from the way other characters see him? How has being a single father and now an involved grandfather defined him? How do you think he would have been a different father and man had Poppy lived?

3. By the end of the novel, how has Percy changed/evolved?

4. Why do you think Percy chose to avoid romantic or sexual involvement for so many years after Poppy's death? Is it habit and routine, nostalgia and commitment to his wife, or guilt over her death; or a combination of all three? Why do you think he falls so suddenly for Sarah after all that time alone? Why now?

5. The novel takes place over the course of a year, with chapters varying from Percy's point of view (looking back from the end of that year) to those of Celestino, Robert, and Ira. Why do you think Julia Glass chose to narrate only Percy's chapters in a first-person voice, the rest in the third person? (Does this make you think of the way she handled voice in her previous books?) And why do you think, when there are so many important female characters in this novel, that she chose to tell the story only through the eyes of men?

6. What do you think of the allusion in this book s title to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

7. This is a novel about family, the intricacies of the intertwining relationships among parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, siblings and cousins, in-laws and girlfriends. Discuss and compare some of the central familial relationships here (particularly those between Percy and the various members of his extended clan). Do any of these relationships ring particularly true to your own family experiences? Which ones fascinate or move you the most?

8. Celestino is an outsider and a loner in the eyes of the law, an illegal alien who was brought to the United States by a stroke of good fortune, only to lose his favored status and end up in a precarious situation with little money and no close friends. Discuss the circumstances that bring him into Percy's circle and the way in which he becomes so important in Robert's and Percy's lives? What destiny do you imagine for him beyond the end of the novel?

9. Discuss Celestino and Isabelle's teenage relationship as compared with the way they view each other once they are reunited as adults. Do you think that it would have worked out differently under other circumstances, or do culture and class sometimes present insurmountable obstacles? Compare Celestino and Isabelle's youthful relationship with the one between Robert and Clara.

10. What do you think of Robert's relationship with his mother? Talk about the way he sees her in the college essay he wrote versus the way he sees her after the argument they have in the car the night before Thanksgiving and Robert finds out about the sibling he almost had. How is Robert's intimate view of Trudy, as her son and only child, different from Percy's fatherly view of Trudy as one of two daughters? Compare Robert's and Percy's different visions of her professional life: Robert's summer working in the chemo clinic versus Percy's first visit to the hospital when he seeks Trudy's advice about Sarah. Is there a generational difference to the way they encounter the world of modern medicine?

11. What about Percy' s relationship with Clover? What do you think about his sacrifice of the barn to help her out? Is it entirely altruistic? What are the unintended consequences to their love for each other? Why does Clover resent her father and betray both him and her nephew, Robert, at the end of the novel?

12. Why does Robert, the good student and good son, allow himself to become involved in Arturo's missions ? Discuss Robert's friendship with Arturo and why Arturo is so appealing to Robert. What do you think of the observation that Turo is of everywhere and nowhere?

13. What do you think about Turo's activist group, the DOGS, and their acts of eco-vandalism? Do you agree with Turo that conservation efforts like recycling and organic lawn care aren't dramatic enough to make a dent (p. 148) in society s lazy, consumerist ways that true change will come about only through extremism?

14. Discuss the importance of the tree house in the novel. What does it represent, if anything, to each of the four main characters?

15. What do you think of Ira and his relationship with Anthony? How have Ira s fears influenced his relationships in general? How do you imagine the crisis at the end of the book has changed him, if at all?

16. Homes often seem like characters in Julia Glass novels; compare Percy's house with key houses in her other novels, if you ve read them (e.g., Tealing, Fenno McLeod's childhood house in Three Junes; Uncle Marsden's run-down seaside mansion in The Whole World Over). Describe Percy's house and its significance to various members of the Darling family. Discuss its tie to the neighboring house and the revelation at the end about the two brothers who built the houses. Why is this important?

17. How have libraries changed over the course of Percy's working life, through his youth, his daughters youth, and now Robert's youth? Percy doesn t seem to approve of the direction libraries are going and the way in which society regards books. Do you?

18. "Daughters. This word meant everything to me in that moment: sun, moon, stars, blood, water (oh curse the water!), meat, potatoes, wine, shoes, books, the floor beneath my feet, the roof over my head" (p. 108). Compare and contrast Percy's two daughters.

19. Why is Sarah so evasive and even hostile when Percy confronts her about the lump in her breast and even after she starts cancer treatment with Trudy? What do you think about her decision to marry her ex-boyfriend when he offers her the lifeline of his health insurance and to keep this a secret from Percy? What does it say about Sarah and her feelings for Percy? Do you think the relationship, at the end of the book, is salvageable in any form?

20. While visiting a museum, Percy's friend Norval asks, So what sort of landscape are you? Percy replies, A field. Overgrown and weedy. Norval then suggests, Or a very large, gnarled tree (p. 278). How would you describe Percy? How about yourself; what sort of landscape are you?

21. How is The Widower's Tale both a tale of our time and a story specific to its place, to New England?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Summary  |  Author  |  Book Reviews  |  Discussion Questions

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Good Things I Wish You
A. Manette Ansay, 2009
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061239953

In Brief 
Battling feelings of loss and apathy in the wake of a painful divorce, novelist Jeanette struggles to complete a book about the long-term relationship between Clara Schumann, a celebrated pianist and the wife of the composer Robert Schumann, and her husband's protege, the handsome young composer Johannes Brahms.

Although this legendary love triangle has been studied exhaustively, Jeanette—herself a gifted pianist—wonders about the enduring nature of Clara and Johannes's lifelong attachment. Were they just "best friends," as both steadfastly claimed? Or was the relationship complicated by desires that may or may not have been consummated?

Through a chance encounter, Jeanette meets Hart, a mysterious, worldly entrepreneur who is a native of Clara's birthplace, Leipzig, Germany. Hart's casual help with translations quickly blossoms into something more. There are things about men and women, he insists, that do not change. The two embark on a whirlwind emotional journey that leads Jeanette across Germany and Switzerland to a crossroads similar to that faced by Clara Schumann—also a mother, also an artist—more than a century earlier.

Accompanied by photographs, sketches, and notes from past and present, A. Manette Ansay's original blend of fiction and history captures the timeless nature of love and friendship between women and men. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author 

• Birth—1964
• Where—Lapeer, Michigan, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Cornell University
• Awards—Nelson Algren Prize, 1992; Pushcart Prize, 1994;
   Friends of American Writers Prize, 1995
• Currently—Port Washington, Wisconsin; New York City


A. Manette Ansay’s first novel, Vinegar Hill, established the writer as a novelist who could tell a difficult story with great grace. Born in Michigan in 1964 and raised in Port Washington, Wisconsin among a huge Roman Catholic extended family, Ansay infuses her fiction with the reality of Midwestern farm life, the constraints of Roman Catholicism, and the toll the combination can take on women and men alike.

Philosophical and cerebral, with a gift for identifying the telling domestic detail and conveying it in a fresh way, Ansay incorporates the rhythm of rural Midwestern life—the polka dance at a wedding reception, the bowling alley, community suppers, gossip, passion, and betrayal—into novels that illuminate the most difficult aspects of maintaining any close relationship, whether it be familial or not. In Vinegar Hill, Ansay examines the forces that hold a Catholic woman in the 1970s hostage to her emotionally abusive marriage. In Midnight Champagne, set at a wedding, she focuses her lens on the institution of marriage itself; the story is told through the shifting points of view of the couples who attend the event.

Readers and critics alike have testified to her talents: The New Yorker said of Vinegar Hill, “This world is lit by the measured beauty of her prose, and the final line is worth the pain it takes to get there.” The novel was selected for Oprah’s Book Club in 1999; Ansay’s following book, Midnight Champagne, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Like Flannery O’Connor, whom Ansay cites as an influence, Ansay is concerned with moments of grace in which the truth suddenly manifests itself with life-changing intensity. In the wrong hands, her material could be the stuff of soap operas. But Ansay strives for emotional complexity rather than mere bathos, and addresses both suffering and joy with intelligence and sensitivity.

Ansay’s life has been as complex and fascinating as the dramas that unfold in her novels. A gifted pianist as a child, she studied at the University of Wisconsin while still a high school student. Later, while a student at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, she was afflicted by a disease that devastated her neurological system, cutting short her dreams of becoming a concert pianist, and leaving her confined for years to a wheelchair. She had never written fiction before, but turned her disciplined ear and mind to writing, promising herself to write two hours a day, three days a week, the same sort of disciplined schedule she had imposed on herself as a student musician.

Limbo, Ansay’s story of her struggle with illness, is as evocatively written as her novels. Ansay never descends into sentimentality, but instead confronts her medical problems – and the limitations they impose—unflinchingly, describing both the indignities that disabled people face daily, as well as how her own illness has become a personal test of faith.

Extras
From a 2001 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Ansay was still looking for the appropriate title for her first novel when, on the way to a meeting with her MFA advisor near Cornell University, Ansay spotted a street sign with the answer. "I happened to glance up and see a street sign that said "Vinegar Hill." It was perfect," Ansay writes on her web site. "I had never turned onto that street before, and I made a point never to do so afterwards. I wanted it to belong solely to my characters. And it does."

• One scene in Midnight Champagne, the air-hockey table encounter, was written for a friend of Ansay's. She writes, "A friend of mine had been musing about sex and literature, and she said, 'Why is it that we so seldom read about the kind of sex we want to be having?' I said, 'What kind of sex is that?' She said, 'Fun sex.' I said, 'I'm writing a scene just for you."'

Her own words:

In my early 20s, my health rapidly deteriorated for reasons that are still unclear. At 19, I was a piano performance major at a nationally renowned conservatory; by 21, I was so weak I couldn't stand up long enough to take a shower. After spending a year under my parents' care, visiting specialist after specialist, my health improved to the point where I could return to my life—though a different one—with the help of a power wheelchair. Limbo is the story of learning to live within the physical and emotional limbo of an undiagnosed illness, an uncertain prognosis, an uncertain future. It is also the story of how the unraveling of one life can plant the seeds for another, and the ways in which illness has challenged—in ways not necessarily bad—my most fundamental assumptions about life and faith.

Growing up in rural Wisconsin, I was formed by a place where the roads met at right angles, a landscape in which cause and effect were visible for miles. I was raised to believe that every question had its single, uniform answer, and that that answer was inevitably God's will. But the human body, like the life it leads, is ultimately a mystery, and to live my life without restraint, to keep moving forward instead of looking back, I have had to let go of the need to understand why what has happened has happened. It is not that I believe the things that happen to us happen for a reason. I certainly don't believe that "things have a way of working out for the best," something I've been told countless times by well-meaning doctors, family members, and friends. But I do believe that we each have the ability to decide how we'll react to the random circumstances of our lives, and that our reactions can shape future circumstances, affect opportunities, open doors.

The writer Ann Patchett talks about awakening in the hospital after a terrible car wreck at the age of eight, and thinking, with absolute clarity: Now I can be anything, and I want to be a writer. I started writing on January 1, 1988, shortly after I began to realize that this new, altered body was mine to keep. Thirteen years and five books later, I continue to write as a way of making sense of a world that doesn't. I write to create the kind of closure that rarely exists in life. The best advice on writing I've ever heard is this: Try to write the kind of story you yourself most want to read. Limbo is that story." (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Critics Say . . . 
A poignant and arresting duet of the historic and the contemporary.... Ansay sprinkles bits of letters, photographs and drawings throughout the novel, a deft touch that adds to the book’s evocative moods of past and present.
Miami Herald

Ansay’s novel addresses the important question of what role art plays in life.... The photos convey a more intimate account of history, as if the reader were flipping through a personal scrapbook belonging to Clara’s or Robert’s descendants.
Minneapolis Star Tribune

In this pleasure of a book, two love stories are entwined.... Photos, scraps from letters and diaries, make this book a fascination. The questions posed by Hart and Jeannette are timeless, as Ansay has them debate the true nature of the Clara-Johannes relationship.
Providence Journal-Bulletin

In Ansay's slight new novel, Jeanette Hochmann is a recently divorced mother writing a novel based on the 40-year relationship between 19th-century German pianist Clara Schumann and her husband's protege, composer Johannes Brahms. Through a dating service, Jeanette meets a German entrepreneur, Hart, and while they appear to have little in common, Hart's 16-year-old daughter—like Jeannette in her youth—is a budding musical prodigy, who lives in Leipzig near the former residence of the subject of Jeanette's book. Although Jeanette and Hart attempt to have a platonic friendship, it quickly (and predictably) evolves into more, and their lives begin to overlap with the characters of Jeanette's novel. The story is most compelling when examining the fascinating bond between the 19th-century musicians. Less compelling are the pages devoted to navigating the more mundane contemporary world of dating and Starbucks coffee runs. While the photographs, sketches and letters interspersed throughout the book provide interest and help to elevate the material, in the end, Ansay's novel feels piddling and ordinary. We know exactly where Hart and Jeanette's relationship is going, and as a result, it's a strain to get there.
Publishers Weekly


Critics were intrigued by Ansay's premise—a comparison of two superficially connected women and their relationships—but most found Clara's story to be far more interesting than that of her contemporary counterpart.
Bookmarks Magazine

Intriguingly accompanied by reproductions of Schumann-Brahms ephemera, Ansay’s inventive exploration of this eternal romantic conundrum is equally paradoxical in its execution. Spare yet sumptuous, precise yet lavish, Ansay nimbly sifts historical fact through an admittedly autobiographical filter to deliver a richly textured study.
Booklist

From novelist and former concert pianist Ansay (Blue Water, 2006, etc.), metafiction about a novelist writing about pianist Clara Schumann. Clara is a fascinating subject. The greatest pianist of her day-think Britney Spears and Meryl Streep combined-she defies her father to marry composer Robert Schumann and largely gives up her career to be a mother and wife, devoted to Robert even when he goes mad. Along comes young Johannes Brahms. Clearly in love with Clara, he cares devotedly for Robert and the kids. Meanwhile Clara begins jumping at every chance to leave her family to go on tour. While Robert is in a sanitarium, Clara and Johannes travel together, apparently platonically, and exchange passionate letters, but once Robert conveniently dies, so does their passion. What remains is a mysterious, if abiding friendship. Unfortunately, fictional character Jeanette Hochmann, who is writing a novelized account of the musician's life, is less riveting. A divorced college professor and successful novelist devoted to her small daughter, Jeanette yearns for a man in her life as well as more free time to finish her book. Through a dating service she meets Hart, a divorced German doctor/entrepreneur. Coincidentally, they have planned trips to Leipzig at the same time, Jeanette to research Clara, Hart to visit his adolescent daughter, a musical prodigy he rarely gets to see since a nasty custody battle with his ex-wife. Jeanette writes her affair with Hart into her novel without telling him as their irritatingly ambiguous relationship evolves. Even when he proposes marriage to Jeanette, Hart cannot pretend to have the passionate kind of love he felt for his ex. That's what Jeanette claims she wants, but although she identifies with Clara's conflicting creative and emotional needs, what she really wants remains murky. An ambitious attempt to combine intellectual concepts with the emotional energy of fiction, but in this case thought overpowers feeling.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions 

1. What meaning does the title Good Things I Wish You hold for the two main couples in the book?

2. Throughout the novel there is much speculation about the relationship between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Do you think they consummated their relationship? Why or why not? Could they have just been good friends? What do you think accounted for their break?

3. At the beginning of the story, Jeannette reveals that she has had two rushes of déjà vu in her life. What were they? She describes it as the "steep inevitability one feels at the start of a steep accidental fall." Is this an apt description for the events she describes? Have you ever felt déjà vu? What was your experience like?

4. Clara Schumann was an extraordinarily accomplished artist. "My Clara wasn't raised to waste her life on domestic bliss," her father, Friedrich Wieck, proclaimed. Yet her life—and her father's ambition for her—was overshadowed when she met Robert Schumann. Why do you think she chose love over her artistry?

5. Describe Clara's relationship with Schumann and Brahms. How did each man view her? What was her significance to each and to their music?

6. Over the course of the novel, we learn of three men in Jeannette's life: her piano teacher when she was a teenager, her husband Cal, and the elusive doctor, Hart. Compare and contrast the men and the relationship they shared with Jeannette. How do they compare to Clara's relationships with her husband and her friend, Brahms?

7. Why do you think Jeannette's piano teacher told her about Clara Schumann? For her sixteenth birthday he gave her a portrait of Clara at 35, telling her, "it would help her understand things about men and women most people don't figure out until after it's too late." What advice was the piano teacher trying to convey to Jeannette?

8. Neither Jeannette nor Hart believe in coincidences. Do you? Why or why not?

9. Hart tells Jeannette that there are things about men and women that do not change and that men and women can never be friends. Why does Hart tell her this? Yet another man who loves Jeannette—L___— agrees with her that true friendship is not only possible, but necessary. Examine the issue from both sides. How is each man's position supported and belied by his bond with Jeannette? What elements can forge a platonic relationship? Which character do you sympathize with more in terms of the question, Hart or L___.

10. In a diary written for her children, Clara admonished them not to "heed those small and envious souls who make light of my love and friendship, trying to bring up for question our beautiful relationship which they do not understand nor ever could." Why do you think she felt that so few could understand her "beautiful relationship"? Why do so many people have difficulty with the subtleties that infuse a relationship such as that which she shared with Brahms?

11. Passion versus rationality and freedom versus the bonds of commitment are two of the novel's themes. Discuss how each is manifested in the story. Speaking of passion, how important is it to romantic love? Does one sex have a monopoly on passion—feel deeper or more sincerely—than the other? What about romanticism? Would you call Brahms and Hart romantics in the classical sense? What about Clara and Jeannette? HOw would you describe them?

12. Ansay also touches on the themes of art and desire. How does desire fuel creativity throughout the book? Does contentedness stifle creativity? What did Clara desire? Brahms? Hart? Jeannette?

13. In the novel, the author imagines that Clara and Brahms consummate their love, an action that leads to their separation. Why do some people, like the character portrayed by Brahms, seem to prefer the chase to the prize? Have you known anyone like this?

14. Jeannette's young daughter draws a picture of her mother. "Why is your mother frowning? The teacher asked her. "Because she is lonely. My mommy likes to be lonely." Does this capture Jeannette's personality? Heidi also uses the word "lonely" to mean "different." Are the two words interchangeable? How so?

15. Why do you think the author chose to include photos and excerpts from Clara and Brahms's letters? Did the photos and excerpts add to your reading experience? How might the novel have been different without them?

16. What role does Jeannette's friend Ellen play in the story? When they discuss prospective love interests they are quick to dismiss for a variety of reasons. Do you think they are too picky? Are people too demanding when it comes to love?

17. Ellen pushes Jeannette to define her relationship with Hart. Should relationships always be defined? Can't they just be enjoyed for the moment's sake? How does the act of defining impact a relationship?

18. Talk about Hart and Jeannette. What kind of couple do they make? Were you surprised at the turns their relationship takes? What attracts them to each other? Are they good together? Could marriage ever work between them?

19. Where you satisfied by the novel's ending? Can work and art sustain us through our loneliness? Does it offer and solace and hope—fill a void? How so—and for how long?

20. While writing her book, Jeannette asks herself, "What could I take from the life of Clara Schumann as a working artist, living in the world today? As a mother? As somebody's former wife? As somebody standing on the edge of what must be a whole new life?" How would you answer these questions? What lessons did you take from Clara's life? What about Jeannette's?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Copper Beech 
Maeve Binchy, 2007
Random House
391 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440213291


Summary
n the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young people carve their initials-and those of their loves—into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.

Unexpected passions and fear are bringing together the lives of so many, such as the sensitive new priest and Miss Ross, the slight, beautiful schoolteacher... Leonora, the privileged daughter of the town's richest family and Foxy Dunne, whose father did time in jail...and Nessa Ryan, whose parents run Ryan's Hotel, and two very different young men.

For now the secrets in Shancarrig's shadows are starting to be revealed, from innocent vanities and hidden loves to crimes of the heart...and even to murder. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—May 28, 1940
• Where—Dalkey (outside Dublin), Ireland
• Death—July 30, 2012
• Where—Dalkey, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College, Dublin
• Awards—see below

Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. She is best known for her humorous take on small-town life in Ireland, her descriptive characters, her interest in human nature and her often clever surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the passing of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writer.

Her books have outsold those of other Irish writers such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien and Roddy Doyle. She cracked the U.S. market, featuring on the New York Times best-seller list and in Oprah's Book Club. Recognised for her "total absence of malice" and generosity to other writers, she finished ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Stephen King in a 2000 poll for World Book Day.

Early life
Binchy was born in Dalkey, County Dublin (modern-day Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown), Ireland, the oldest child of four. Her siblings include one brother, William Binchy, Regius Professor of Laws at Trinity College, Dublin, and two sisters: Renie (who predeceased Binchy) and Joan Ryan. Her uncle was the historian D. A. Binchy (1899–1989). Educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history), she worked as a teacher of French, Latin, and history at various girls' schools, then a journalist at the Irish Times, and later became a writer of novels, short stories, and dramatic works.

In 1968, her mother died of cancer aged 57. After Binchy's father died in 1971, she sold the family house and moved to a bedsit in Dublin.

Israel
Her parents were Catholics and Binchy attended a convent school.[12] However, a trip to Israel profoundly affected both her career and her faith. As she confided in a Q&A with Vulture:

In 1963, I worked in a Jewish school in Dublin, teaching French with an Irish accent to kids, primarily Lithuanians. The parents there gave me a trip to Israel as a present. I had no money, so I went and worked in a kibbutz — plucking chickens, picking oranges. My parents were very nervous; here I was going out to the Middle East by myself. I wrote to them regularly, telling them about the kibbutz. My father and mother sent my letters to a newspaper, which published them. So I thought, It’s not so hard to be a writer. Just write a letter home. After that, I started writing other travel articles.

Additionally, one Sunday, attempting to locate where the Last Supper is supposed to have occurred, she climbed a mountainside to a cavern guarded by a Brooklyn-born Israeli soldier. She wept with despair. The soldier asked, “What’ya expect, ma’am—a Renaissance table set for 13?” She replied, “Yes! That’s just what I did expect.” Binchy was no longer a Catholic.

Marriage
Binchy, described as "six feet tall, rather stout, and garrulous", confided to Gay Byrne of the Late Late Show that, growing up in Dalkey, she never felt herself to be attractive; "as a plump girl I didn't start on an even footing to everyone else", she shared. After her mother's death, she expected to a lead a life of spinsterhood, or as she expressed: "I expected I would live at home, as I always did." She continued, "I felt very lonely, the others all had a love waiting for them and I didn't."

She ultimately encountered the love of her life, however; when recording a piece for Woman's Hour in London, she met children's author Gordon Snell, then a freelance producer with the BBC. Their friendship blossomed into a cross-border romance, with her in Ireland and him in London, until she eventually secured a job in London through the Irish Times. She and Snell married in 1977 and after living in London for a time, moved to Ireland. They lived together in Dalkey, not far from where she had grown up, until Binchy's death. She told the Irish Times:

[A] writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers.

Ill health...and death
In 2002, Binchy "suffered a health crisis related to a heart condition", which inspired her to write Heart and Soul. The book about (what Binchy terms) "a heart failure clinic" in Dublin and the people involved with it, reflects many of her own experiences and observations in the hospital.

Towards the end of her life, Binchy had the following message on her official website: "My health isn't so good these days and I can't travel around to meet people the way I used to. But I'm always delighted to hear from readers, even if it takes me a while to reply."

She suffered with severe arthritis, which left her in constant pain. As a result of the arthritis she had a hip operation.

Binchy died on 30 July 2012 after a short illness. She was 72.] Gordon was by her side when she died in a Dublin hospital. Immediate media reports described Binchy as "beloved", "Ireland's most well-known novelist" and the "best-loved writer of her generation". Fellow writers mourned their loss, including Ian Rankin, Jilly Cooper, Anne Rice, and Jeffrey Archer. Politicians also paid tribute. President Michael D. Higgins stated: "Our country mourns." Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, “Today we have lost a national treasure.” Minister of State for Disability, Equality and Mental Health Kathleen Lynch, appearing as a guest on Tonight with Vincent Browne, said Binchy was, for her money, as worthy an Irish writer as James Joyce or Oscar Wilde, and praised her for selling so many more books than they managed.

In the days after her death tributes were published from such writers as John Banville, Roddy Doyle, and Colm Tóibín. Banville contrasted Binchy with Gore Vidal, who died the day after her, observing that Vidal "used to say that it was not enough for him to succeed, but others must fail. Maeve wanted everyone to be a success." Numerous tributes appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Guardian and CBC News.

Shortly before her death, Binchy told the Irish Times:

I don't have any regrets about any roads I didn't take. Everything went well, and I think that's been a help because I can look back, and I do get great pleasure out of looking back ... I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

Just before dying, she read her latest short story at the Dalkey Book Festival.

She once said she would like to die "... on my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain." She was cremated that Friday in Mount Jerome. It was a simple ceremony, as she had requested.

Journalism
The New York Times reports: Binchy's "writing career began by accident in the early 1960s, after she spent time on a kibbutz in Israel. Her father was so taken with her letters home that "he cut off the ‘Dear Daddy’ bits,” Ms. Binchy later recounted, and sent them to an Irish newspaper, which published them." Donal Lynch observed of her first paying journalism role: the Irish Independent "was impressed enough to commission her, paying her £16, which was then a week-and-a-half's salary for her."

In 1968, Binchy joined the staff at the Irish Times, and worked there as a writer, columnist, the first Women's Page editor then the London editor, later reporting for the paper from London before returning to Ireland.

Binchy's first published book is a compilation of her newspaper articles titled My First Book. Published in 1970, it is now out of print. As Binchy's bio posted at Read Ireland describes: "The Dublin section of the book contains insightful case histories that prefigure her novelist's interest in character. The rest of the book is mainly humorous, and particularly droll is her account of a skiing holiday, 'I Was a Winter Sport.'"

Literary works
In all, Binchy published 16 novels, four short-story collections, a play and a novella. Her literary career began with two books of short stories: Central Line (1978) and Victoria Line (1980). She published her debut novel Light a Penny Candle in 1982. In 1983, it sold for the largest sum ever paid for a first novel: £52,000. The timing was fortuitous, as Binchy and her husband were two months behind with the mortgage at the time. However, the prolific Binchy—who joked that she could write as fast as she could talk—ultimately became one of Ireland's richest women.

Her first book was rejected five times. She would later describe these rejections as "a slap in the face [...] It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either".

Most of Binchy's stories are set in Ireland, dealing with the tensions between urban and rural life, the contrasts between England and Ireland, and the dramatic changes in Ireland between World War II and the present day. Her books were translated into 37 languages.

While some of Binchy's novels are complete stories (Circle of Friends, Light a Penny Candle), many others revolve around a cast of interrelated characters (The Copper Beech, Silver Wedding, The Lilac Bus, Evening Class, and Heart and Soul). Her later novels, Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road, feature a cast of recurring characters.

Binchy announced in 2000 that she would not tour any more of her novels, but would instead be devoting her time to other activities and to her husband, Gordon Snell. Five further novels were published before her death—Quentins (2002), Nights of Rain and Stars (2004), Whitethorn Woods (2006), Heart and Soul (2008), and Minding Frankie (2010). Her final work, A Week in Winter, was published posthumously in 2012.

Binchy wrote several dramas specifically for radio and the silver screen. Additionally, several of her novels and short stories were adapted for radio, film, and television.

Awards and honours

• In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer.
• A 1993 photograph of her by Richard Whitehead belongs to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (London) and a painting of her by Maeve McCarthy, commissioned in 2005, is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland.
• In 1999, she received the British Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.
• In 2000, she received a People of the Year Award.
• In 2001, Scarlet Feather won the W H Smith Book Award for Fiction, defeating works by Joanna Trollope and then reigning Booker winner Margaret Atwood, amongst other contenders.
• In 2007, she received the Irish PEN Award, joining such luminaries as John B. Keane, Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern and Seamus Heaney.
• In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.
• In 2012, she received an Irish Book Award in the "Irish Popular Fiction Book" category for A Week in Winter.
• There have been posthumous proposals to name a new Liffey crossing Binchy Bridge in memory of the writer Other writers to have Dublin bridges named after them include Beckett, Joyce and O'Casey.
• In 2012 a new garden behind the Dalkey Library in County Dublin was dedicated in memory of Binchy. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews 
Ms. Binchy writes with a journalist's disciplined simplicity, strong narrative drive and knowledge of human behavior. She tells the sort of tale that's almost impossible to abandon. Even if you guess what will happen next, you keep right on reading to make sure....The Copper Beech is an airport book with a difference: you read it for pleasure, but you probably will not leave it in your seat. Instead, you'll take it home to lend to your best friend. And what best friend wouldn't welcome the new Maeve Binchy, knowing it will never disappoint?
Anna Tolstoi Wallach - New York Times

Binchy makes you laugh, cry, and care. Her warmth and sympathy render the daily struggles of ordinary people heroic and turn storytelling into art.
San Francisco Chronicle

Binchy (Circle of Friends; The Lilac Bus) is a consummate storyteller with a unique ability to draw readers into her tales of Irish life. Here again she mines sources rich in plot and character to produce a captivating narrative. The eponymous copper beech is a huge tree that shades the tiny schoolhouse in the village of Shancarrig. For generations, graduating pupils have carved their initials on the massive trunk, and the book examines what has become of some of them. Though each of the 10 chapters offers the perspective of a single character, Binchy adroitly indicates the ways in which their lives intersect. Thus, the allegedly stolen jewels that are discovered and stolen again in one early chapter become significant in later chapters. Long after two adulterous characters sneak into a Dublin hotel, it emerges that they were spotted by a small soul from Shancarrig, who passes on the information—with unforeseen consequences. A priest's dalliance with the sweet young schoolteacher is shown to have been been suspected by others in the village. The result is a charming and compelling series of interlocking stories about ordinary people who are given dimension through Binchy's empathetic insight. While this book is more fragmentary in structure than some of her previous novels, it should leave Binchy's fans wholly satisfied.
Publishers Weekly

So familiar is the style of this tale, it could be called another trip on The Lilac Bus, Binchy's last collection of interrelated stories set in Ireland, except that the townsfolk stay home this time.... Binchy's characters are fresh and their fates intriguing in this episodic tale.
Booklist

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

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

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Copper Beech:

1. Start with the beech tree, the central image of the book. How might the tree serve as a symbol for Shancarrig? Think how branches, trunk and deep roots suggest people and their lives. And how might the structure of the book itself (a series of connected stories) mimic a tree?

2. Binchy's book depicts characters who attempt to "carve" lives out of difficult situations. Whose story or stories among the 12 do you find most compelling or engaging—Maura's, Maddy's, Dr. Jims and Declan's...? Whose story is most sympathetic?

3. Point to some of the book's comedy. For instance, to what or whom does the tree carving "Gloria in Escelsis" refer to? What does its carver eventually consider adding to it?

4. Which characters find themseles altered—either in life circumstance...or in their inner emotional/psychological core? In what ways, for instance, do Foxy Dunne and Richard Hayes change?

5. Binchy uses a narrative technique called "suspended revelation," as a way to withhold and later reveal information. It allows writers to create a sense of mystery and suspense. When and why does Binchy hold back...then release information from the reader?

6. Given our degree of unknowingness created by suspended revelation (see question #5), what does it suggest about our ability, in real life, to fully know an individual and his/her motivations. In what way might this make it more difficult to form judgments about people?

7. Does Binchy wrap-up loose ends by the end? Are questions answered...the jewel theft and murder?

8. Binchy presents us with individual stories. In all, however, do you come away from this work feeling you know the essence of Shancarrig and its villagers as a whole? How would you describe the village?

9. If you've read other Binchy books, how does this one compare to, say, Quentins and The Lilac Bus...or to Heart and Soul, Circle of Friends, Tara Road, or Glass Lake?

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

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Juliet 
Anne Fortier, 2010
Random House
447 pp.
ISBN-13: 139780345516107


Summary
A young woman who discovers that her family’s origins reach all the way back to literature’s greatest star-crossed lovers...

Twenty-five-year-old Julie Jacobs is heartbroken over the death of her beloved aunt Rose. But the shock goes even deeper when she learns that the woman who has been like a mother to her has left her entire estate to Julie’s twin sister. The only thing Julie receives is a key—one carried by her mother on the day she herself died—to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy.

This key sends Julie on a journey that will change her life forever—a journey into the troubled past of her ancestor Giulietta Tolomei. In 1340, still reeling from the slaughter of her parents, Giulietta was smuggled into Siena, where she met a young man named Romeo. Their ill-fated love turned medieval Siena upside-down and went on to inspire generations of poets and artists, the story reaching its pinnacle in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

But six centuries have a way of catching up to the present, and Julie gradually begins to discover that here, in this ancient city, the past and present are hard to tell apart. The deeper she delves into the history of Romeo and Giulietta, and the closer she gets to the treasure they allegedly left behind, the greater the danger surrounding her—superstitions, ancient hostilities, and personal vendettas.

As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud, she begins to fear that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”—is still at work, and that she is destined to be its next target. Only someone like Romeo, it seems, could save her from this dreaded fate, but his story ended long ago. Or did it?

From Anne Fortier comes a sweeping, beautifully written novel of intrigue and identity, of love and legacy, as a young woman discovers that her own fate is irrevocably tied—for better or worse—to literature’s greatest star-crossed lovers. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—November 10, 1971
• Where— Holstebro, Denmark
• Education—Ph.D., Aarhus University (Denmark)
• Currently—lives in Canada


My story began a few decades ago on the Danish North-Sea coast. I spent most of my childhood curled up in an armchair, reading and writing, hiding from the west wind. Encouraged by my wonderful mother, I managed to turn everything into a writing opportunity; no one escaped my party songs, theatre plays, and school magazines, try as they might. Believe me, I wore out several inherited typewriters before I left for college.

Armed with that brand-new contraption called a computer, I embarked upon a degree in the History of Ideas—a field perfectly suited for wannabe writers. My studies took me to many different places; Paris, Norway, Oklahoma, and Oxford to name a few, and after completing my Ph.D. I decided to immigrate to the United States. This was where I co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Fire and Ice: The Winter War of Finland and Russia.

In 2005 my first novel was published in Denmark, with the title Hyrder paa Bjerget, which means "Shepherds on the Mountain." It is a Gothic comedy about the battle between science and religion, in which a group of mad scientists ensnare a young woman, Marie, in their wicked scheme to bring about a second Flood.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of lecturing at a number of universities in Europe and North America, addressing a variety of subjects in Classical literature, European history, and creative writing. In 2007 I joined Institute for Humane Studies in Washington D.C., and although I have now turned to full-time writing, I am still a strong supporter of IHS and its mission.

My latest book, Juliet, was bought by Ballantine/Random House in 2008 and has since been sold for publication to more than thirty countries worldwide. You can read much more about the book, the writing process, and the collaboration with my mother by visiting the official Random House book site www.julietbook.com. (From the author's website.)

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Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [A] high-flying debut in which American Julie Jacobs travels to Siena in search of her Italian heritage...to discover she is descended from 14th-century Giulietta Tomei, whose love for Romeo defied their feuding families and inspired Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.... [W]ritten in the language of modern romance and enlivened by brisk storytelling[,] Fortier navigates around false clues and twists, resulting in a dense, heavily plotted love story.
Publishers Weekly


Most readers are familiar with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but not everyone knows that the Bard based his play on an old Italian tale in which the doomed lovers meet and die in the medieval city of Siena. Drawing on this tale, Fortier's historical debut features a plot as complicated as a Shakespearean play.... [T]his entertaining historical thriller is more in line with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (but much better written!). —Jamie Kallio, Thomas Ford Memorial Lib., Western Springs, IL.
Library Journal


Fortier’s debut offers a beguiling mix of romance, intrigue, history, and Shakespeare.... Lovers of adventurous fiction will lose themselves in Fortier’s exciting, intricately woven tale. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist

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Book Club Discussion Questions
1. In Anne Fortier's novel Juliet, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet casts a long shadow over the lives of the main characters, past and present. Looking at the "original" story of Romeo and Giulietta set in 1340, consider in what ways Fortier uses Shakespeare's great tragedy as a model for her own work, and in what ways she departs from it.

2. Discuss the ways in which the bonds of sisterhood—for good and for ill—are central to the novel. Why do you think Fortier introduces this element into her story?

3. Although there are surprising revelations about all the characters in the novel, perhaps the most shocking has to do with Umberto, Aunt Rose's faithful butler. Did you find Umberto to be a sympathetic character? Why or why not?

4. Very early in the novel, we are introduced to Julie's recurring dream—a dream that seems to foretell her own fate and to recapitulate the fate of Romeo and Guilietta centuries earlier. Is there a rational explanation for this dream, or is it a supernatural occurrence? And what about the other seemingly supernatural events or objects in the novel, such as the divine intervention of the Virgin Mary on Giulietta's wedding night with Messer Salimbeni, or the destructive powers of Romeo's signet ring; can these events be explained rationally?

5. How does the relationship of Janice and Julie evolve over the course of the novel? What are the major turning points? Did you find these changes believable? Why or why not?

6. Why does Friar Lorenzo champion the young lovers, risking his life on their behalf? Do you think he is justified in placing a curse on both the Tolomei and the Salimbeni houses?

7. Juliet is in many ways a novel about families and the secrets and obligations that hold them together...and sometimes force them apart. Consider the bonds of family, love and duty in the three families we meet in the 1340 storyline, beginning with the relationship between fathers and their children. In what ways are they different? How are they the same? And what about the present-day narrative...has anything changed?

8. Maestro Lippi occupies the studio of Maestro Ambrogio, and, like Ambrogio, he, too, has a dog named Dante. Is the author trying to suggest that Lippi is some kind of reincarnation of Ambrogio? What is the relationship between these two characters, separated by centuries?

9. What about Julie and Alessandro: are they reincarnations of Giulietta and Romeo, forced to repeat the actions of their ancestors by the terms of an ancient curse, or by some genetic inheritance? In what ways do the lives of the two sets of characters parallel or echo each other? In what ways are they different?

10. Compare the ways that the characters from 1340 think and act to the ways the present-day characters think and act. Are they more or less impulsive? More or less rational? Does love mean the same thing to them? How, for example, is the love that develops between Julie and Alessandro different from that of Romeo and Giulietta? What accounts for these differences?

11. Compare the banter between Romeo and Giulietta at their first meetings with the corresponding text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, especially in Act I, Scene V, and Act II, Scene II. Note where Fortier follows Shakespeare and where she goes her own way. Why do you think she makes those choices? How do those choices distinguish her versions of Romeo and Juliet from their more famous antecedents?

12. At one point, Alessandro tells Julie: "In my opinion, your story—and Romeo and Juliet as well—is not about love. It's about politics...." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why? What do you think the author's opinion is?

13. Themes of guilt, redemption, and second chances course through the novel, especially in the present-day narrative, impelling many of the characters and their actions. Consider which characters embrace the opportunity of a second chance, and which don't.

14. Another prevalent theme is that of twins and twinning. Not only are some characters born as twins, but others seem to be mirrored across the centuries. At one point in the novel, Julie sits on the front steps of the Siena Cathedral, thinking about the myth behind the black-and-white Siena coat-of-arms, the Balzana, which involves a pair of twins fleeing from their evil uncle on a black and a white horse. Why do you think Fortier has woven these threads—twinning and black-and-white—so strongly into her fictional tapestry?

15. Why does Alessandro keep his true identity a secret from Julie for so long? Is he right to do so?

16. Does Julie trust Alessandro too easily? Why does she wait so long to confront him with what she knows about his actions and his identity?

17. At the end of the novel, Julie muses: "Who knows, maybe there never was a curse. Maybe it was just us—all of us—thinking that we deserved one." Do you think there was a curse, or not?

18. Flash forward five years past the end of the novel. What has happened to Julie and Janice? What about Umberto? If there was going to be a sequel to this novel, told from Janice's point of view, what questions would you like to have answered, and what themes would you like so see further explored?

(Questions courtesy of Random House Juliet website. Visit this site for background on the book, videos, photos, and an interactive map.)

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