In the Miso Soup
Ryu Murakami, 1997 (Eng. trans., 2003)
Penguin Group USA
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143035695


Summary
Another roller-coaster ride from a master of the psycho-thriller!

It looked as though Maki had another mouth below her jaw. Oozing from this second, smiling mouth was a thick, dark liquid, like coal tar. Her throat had been slit literally from ear to ear and more than halfway through, so that it looked as if her head might fall right off. And yet, incredibly, Maki was still on her feet and still alive, her eyeballs swiveling wildly and her lips quivering as she wheezed foam-flecked blood from the wound in her throat. She seemed to be trying to say something...

It is just before New Year's. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Frank's behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isn't until the second night, however, in a scene that will shock you and make you laugh and make you hate yourself for laughing, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life.

Kenji's intimate knowledge of Tokyo's sex industry, his thoughtful observations and wisecracks about the emptiness and hypocrisy of contemporary Japan, and his insights into the shockingly widespread phenomena of "compensated dating" and "selling it" among Japanese schoolgirls, give us plenty to think about on every page. Kenji is our likable, if far from innocent, guide to the inferno of violence and evil into which he unwillingly descends-and from which only Jun, his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, can possibly save him. (From the publisher.)

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Author Biography
• Birth—February 19, 1952
• Reared—Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan
• Education—Musashino Art University
• Awards—Noma Liberal Arts New Member Prize;
  Hirabayashitai Children’s Literary Prize; Yomiuri
  Literature Prize 
• Currently—lives in Japan


Ryunosuke Murakami is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is colloquially referred to as the "Maradona of Japanese literature. (His name Ryunosuke was taken from the main character in Daibosatsutoge a fiction by Nakazato Kaizan, 1885–1944).

Murakami attended primary, middle and senior high school in Sasebo. While a student in senior high, Murakami helped form a rock band, in which he was the drummer. After the band’s breakup, he went on to join the rugby club, which he found especially grueling. He soon left the rugby club and transferred to the school’s newspaper department. In the summer of his third year in senior high, Murakami and his colleagues barricaded the rooftop of his high school and he was placed under house arrest for three months. During this time, he had an encounter with the hippie culture which influenced him greatly.

Murakami graduated from high school in 1970, around which time he went on to form yet another rock band and produce 8-millimeter indie films.

Murakami went to Tokyo and enrolled in the silkscreen department in Gendaishichosha school of art, but dropped out halfway through the year. In October 1972, he moved to Fussa near the base of the U.S. army and was accepted into the Musashino Art University in the sculpture program.

More
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student of Musashino Art University, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.

In 1980, Murakami received the 3rd Noma Liberal Arts New Member prize for his novel Coin Locker Babies. Afterward he wrote an autobiographical work, 69. His next work, Ai to Genzou no Fascism (1987), revolves around the struggle reforming Japan’s Survival of the Fittest model of society, by a secret society, the "Hunting Society". His work in 1988, Topaz, is about a SM Girl’s radical expression of her sex

Murakami’s story The World in Five Minutes From Now (1994) is written as a point of view in a parallel universe version of Japan, which got him nominated for the 30th Tanizaki Junichiro prize. In 1996 he continued his autobiography 69, and released the Murakami Ryu Movie and Novel Collection. He also won the Hirabayashitai Children’s literary prize. The same year, he wrote the novel Topaz II about a female high school student engaged in compensated dating activities, which later was adapted as a live action film Love and Pop by Anime director Hideaki Anno.

In 1998 he wrote the Psycho-horror styled story In the Miso Soup which won him the Yomiuri Literature Prize. In 1999 he became in the Editor in Chief of mail magazine JMM which discusses the "bubble" economy of Japan. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews 
It is a testament to the strengths of Ryu Murakami's novel that it is ultimately defined not by its explicit depictions of violence and sex but instead by its misfit characters. In this skillful translation by Ralph McCarthy, Kenji is an appealing narrator, observant without being judgmental and nervous without being melodramatic; even the intensely creepy Frank is not entirely unsympathetic.
Curtis Sittenfeld - New York Times


In the unlikely event that you think wandering through the sex clubs of Tokyo in the company of a psycho killer might be a warm and fuzzy experience, In the Miso Soup will disabuse you of the notion. Ironically, the obligatory gore scene — cartoony and cold like something out of Quentin Tarantino — is less disturbing than Ryu Murakami's meditations on urban loneliness and disconnection, Japanese — and American — style.
Elizabeth Gold - Washington Post


Beyond one terribly shocking scene, Miso is a thoughtful novel about loneliness, lack of identity and cultural and moral corruption. Through simple yet chilling language, Murakami doesn't condemn his characters. Instead he takes aim at rampant consumerism and the dumbing-down of Japanese and American culture. No one, Murakami seems to say, is completely guilty because we are shaped by the world around us.
Christopher Theokas - USA Today


A compelling nightmare for...the reader [in which] everyone remains in evil's thrall until it's too late. A wicked meditation on the worst traits of American and Japanese society, this is a creepy culture clash indeed. — Frank Sennett
Booklist


Hipster Murakami follows a sex tour guide through the sleazy demimonde of Tokyo's worst streets during three nights on the town with a serial killer.... A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs. Shocking but gripping.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club 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 In the Miso Soup:

1. Talk about Frank. What is it — initially — that disturbs Kenji about him? Did you suspect him in the beginning — or consider him a red-herring (a false lead)?

2. As the story progresses, Kenji becomes increasingly troubled by Frank and complains about him to his girl friend. Why, then, does he continue to escort Frank around Tokyo? What is about Frank that draws Kenji to him?

3. Several vignettes build tension and dread...and portray Japan's dismal sex trade. Talk about those episodes and what they reveal about Japanese culture.

4. What about some the prostitutes: the one, for instance, who claims she won't fly economy...or the one who is disappointed to learn about Hilton hotels? Do you find their snobbery comical...or offensive...or...?

5. Kenji says he comes to see the victims as "filled with sawdust and scraps of vinyl, like stuffed animals, rather than flesh and blood." What does he mean here? Why is it hard for him to view the victims as flesh and blood human beings?

6. Why does Kenji decide not to report Frank to the police? What is the significance of Frank's parting gift to Kenji — a swan feather?

7. Ryu Murakami uses his narrator, Kenji, as a window through which readers observe Japanese society. What do you see that surprises you? Are there similarities between the Japanese and Western cultures?

8. Is this novel sleazy sensationalism? Or is it social commentary? If so, on what is Murakami commenting...and does he succeed in his attempts?

9. Murakami paints a sort of dystopia in which prostitutes are truthful, our so-called "sane" society has descended into a kind of madness, and Frank becomes heroic in his resistance to its pull. Do you agree with that interpretation?

10 Kenji and Frank discuss parallels between Japan and the U.S. — that neither country has had to adapt its culture to another, for example. Do you think their assessment are accurate?

11. What was your experience reading this book — were you filled with tension and anxiety? Were you offended by the violence? Were you interested in the characters? Did the ideas strike you as insightful?

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

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New England White
Stephen L. Carter, 2007
Knopf Doubleday
640 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375712913

Summary
Lemaster Carlyle, the president of the country's most prestigious university, and his wife, Julie, the divinity school's deputy dean, are America's most prominent and powerful African American couple. Driving home through a swirling blizzard late one night, the couple skids off the road. Near the sight of their accident they discover a dead body.

To her horror, Julia recognizes the body as a prominent academic and one of her former lovers. In the wake of the death, the icy veneer of their town Elm Harbor, a place Julie calls "the heart of whiteness," begins to crack, having devastating consequences for a prominent local family and sending shock waves all the way to the White House. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—October 26, 1954
• Where—Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—B.A. Stanford University; J.D., Yale Law School
• Currently—New Haven, Connecticut

Stephen L. Carter has helped shape the national debate on issues ranging from the role of religion in American political culture to the impact of integrity and civility on our daily lives. The New York Times has called him one of the nation's leading public intellectuals.

Born in Washington, D.C., Stephen L. Carter studied law at Yale University and went on to serve as a law clerk, first on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and later for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In 1982 he joined the faculty at Yale, where he is now William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law. His critically acclaimed nonfiction books on subjects including affirmative action, the judicial confirmation process, and the place of religion in our legal and political cultures have earned Carter fans among luminaries as diverse as William F. Buckley, Anna Quindlen, and former President Bill Clinton.

Carter's first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, draws heavily on the author's familiarity with the law and the world of highly placed judges, but he didn't begin by attempting to write a "judicial" thriller— Carter earlier tried the character of Judge Garland out as a White House aide, and also as a professor like himself. He has said that in the end "only the judicial role really fit."

With Emperor Carter has moved (for the moment) from writing nonfiction to fiction—a shift which he downplays by noting "I have always viewed writing as a craft." But, while he has also indicated that another novel like this one is in the works, he sees himself as "principally a legal scholar and law professor" and plans to continue publishing nonfiction as well.

New England White, Carter's second novel, published in 2008, takes up the story of two secondary characters from The Emperor of Ocean Park, LeMaster and Julia Carlyle.

Extras
From a Barnes & Noble interview:

• An avid chess player, Stephen L. Carter is a life member of the United States Chess Federation. Although he says he plays less now than he once did, he still plays online through the Internet Chess Club. For The Emperor of Ocean Park, Professor Carter says he had to learn about "the world of the chess problemist, where composers work for months or years to set up challenging positions for others to solve."

• Carter lives with his wife, Enola Aird, and their two children, near New Haven, Connecticut.

• When asked what books most influenced his career as a writer or scholar, her is what he said:

I would have to say the Bible, especially as I began to read theology and philosophy in a serious way. The Bible has changed my life.

• Other favorite books include:

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, for the sheer beauty of the prose and the seamless integration of metaphor into the story. Rarely have I encountered such remarkable characterizations and settings. And, oh, how deft her touch with dialogue!

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Simply put, one of the greatest novels ever written in English. Bringing an era to life and offering a withering critique without preaching at us. Marvelous characters, engaging story, and in so small a package.

James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. A novel of immense passion and power, taking seriously the Christianity of its characters but presenting them as complex and flawed as he cuts back and forth across their stories. Just stunning. I am not sure I have read a finer inter-generational story.

E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime. Whether you think it is just a good read or, as some think, a novel-length metaphor for the '60s, a wonderfully evocative tale of a hundred years back, set in a time of great social flux, told in a prose so compelling that it is difficult to find a place to stop for breath.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. I read this in college, before it became a standard text for high schoolers, and its power nearly wore me out. No finer story, in my experience, of the conflict between traditional society and the modern world, with the possible exceptions of two others I rather like: Death and the King’s Horseman, by Wole Soyinka, and, more recently, The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

George Orwell's 1984. I have never read another novel that provides more food for thought, or more text for discussion. And as scary as they come.

Stephen King's Christine. Few people would probably rank this as King’s best, but I think that it creates as fully realized an adolescent world as one is likely to find in popular fiction. One of the few contemporary novels I find worth going back to again and again to learn more.

John le Carré's Smiley’s People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—the two modern masterpieces of the espionage genre. I suppose I could add some mystery writers, such as Sue Grafton and Agatha Christie.

(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
In the 500-plus pages of New England White, [Carter is] up to more than suspense and the gothic apparatus—including coded anagrams and cracked mirrors—he wields with considerable aplomb. For one thing, he has spiked his thriller with wryly affectionate campus satire, somewhat in the vein of Randall Jarrell's Pictures From an Institution.... The plot of New England White is also sufficiently expansive to allow room for some serious thinking about the progress of "the darker nation" at a time when neither political party has much time for the intractable challenges of race and poverty, and when "as far as white America knew, nobody black ever had money or education before, say, affirmative action."
Christopher Benfey - New York Times

Carter's third-person narration does no favors for his pacing, and we can't help missing Talcott Garland, the earnest protagonist of The Emperor of Ocean Park. Sure, he was prone to pontificating, but he made up for it with his pitiable self-deprecations and fumbling attempts at love that indicated, in the end, he knew about as much as the rest of us. Which is to say, hardly anything. How did Talcott put it? "I have the sense that everybody else shares some crucial bit of knowledge that I have been denied." Don't we all. But let's be honest: No one should read a Carter novel for the mystery. We know by now that the author is only partly concerned with whodunit; he'd rather ponder why any of us does the things we do—especially the bad things. For instance, we know it's wrong to cheat, lie, steal or wound, and yet hardly a day passes in which most of us don't commit at least one of these transgressions on some scale. Human weakness is troubling, fascinating stuff, and Carter has spent much of his career plumbing its depths. He is, after all, an accomplished legal philosopher who has written persuasively about such cherished virtues as civility, integrity and faith. It's perversely pleasurable, then, to find that his fictional creations are reliably rude, dishonest and deliciously sinful.
Jabari Asim - Washington Post

(Starred Review.) Two lesser characters from Yale law professor Carter's bestselling first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002)—husband and wife Lemaster and Julia Carlyle—take center stage in his second, a compelling, literate page-turner that effortlessly blends a gripping whodunit with complex discussions of politics and race in contemporary America. Lemaster, one of the country's most influential African-Americans, has recently begun his tenure as president of a prestigious New England university. As he and Julia, who serves as a dean in the university's divinity school, drive home one snowy night, they happen upon the corpse of Professor Kellen Zant, a brilliant economist as well as Julia's former lover. The murder threatens to shatter not only the Carlyles' marriage but also the fragile psyche of their precocious but troubled daughter, Vanessa—and may affect the upcoming, bitterly contested race for the White House. Julia proves an unlikely but dogged investigator, who looks beyond the official verdict that Zant was killed in a chance encounter with a robber. In the richness of his characters, both major and minor, and the intelligence of his writing, Carter rivals Scott Turow.
Publishers Weekly

When Kellen Zant, a brilliant black economist on the faculty of a New England college, is murdered in an apparent robbery attempt, the entire town of Elm Harbor is thrown into a stir.... Carter follows his highly-acclaimed Emperor of Ocean Park (2002) with another sharp, absorbing look at the black elite, academia, and power politics. Absolutely riveting. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

A high-profile murder unsettles a New England college town in this eventful second novel from Carter. Economics professor and tireless lothario Kellen Zant, a charismatic black academic celebrity whose romantic conquests acknowledge no limits, is found dead on a remote back road. Suspicion falls among Zant's former lovers and their mates, his colleagues and the wealthy clients who shelled out big bucks for his advice—and even the (unnamed) college's president Lemaster Carlyle and his wife Julia (herself one of Zant's former paramours). The Carlyles were minor figures in Carter's debut novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park , but they occupy center stage in this beefy, neatly constructed melodrama, which distributes clues and juggles suspects with Grisham-like energy and efficiency. We're briskly introduced to the insular little world of the campus, a racially and ethnically mixed utopia whose sleek occupants nevertheless have secrets aplenty to conceal. And Carter expands the novel's scope with impressive assurance, as Zant's murder is connected to another (ostensibly accidental) death; the surpassingly odd behavior of the Carlyles' teenaged daughter Vanessa (who torches her dad's Mercedes for no discernible reason); and the 30-year-old murder of a white woman student (with which Vanessa has become obsessed), shock waves from which may reach as far as the White House—presently occupied by Lemaster's former college roommate. The embattled Julia Carlyle, a busy mother of four who's also dean of the college's divinity school, is obliged to perform some fairly intricate detective work of her own, as persons of interest and their histories glimpsedin old mirrors (a crucial clue) prove to be nearer than they appear. An overload of exposition and a truckload of involved characters aside, this is a virtually irresistible-and highly intelligent-thriller. Carter strikes again.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. What does the portrayal of the Carlyle family reveal about the complexities of the African-American community? In what ways does their life represent the historical divide between the entrenched upper class and immigrants and other strivers in American society? What do the beliefs and attitudes Julia grew up with reflect about the specific history and traditions of wealthy, successful blacks? Do they differ from the attitudes of upper-class whites? If so, why do you think this is the case?

2. When the police question him, Lemaster says that although he had berated Kellen for spending more time consulting with private corporations than on serious scholarship, reports of a feud between them "was media silliness, hunting for stories to make African Americans look bad" (p. 21). Do you think this is a fair claim about the media? If you are familiar with the much-examined controversy between the noted African-American writer and critic Cornel West and Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, discuss the parallels between the two situations. Can you think of other examples of the media's tendency to focus on the racial aspects of events they are covering?

3. Boris Gibbs remarks to Julia "the racism your people have to face these days is depressing" (p. 25), and her best friend Tessa forgives her own ex-husband's unfaithfulness by saying it was "simply a need all black males possessed, born of centuries of racial oppression, to liberate themselves from the repressive strictures of bourgeois sexual custom" (p. 55). What do these "sympathetic" statements show about the assumptions made by whites? Do you agree that many white intellectuals are guilty of "quick, sloppy racial judgment" (p. 56)?

4. Mona disdains both Kellen and Lemaster because "neither of them [is] really quite one of us" and also objects to Julia's raising her kids in an all-white suburb (p. 31). Is her criticism hypocritical, given the choices she has made in her own life?

5. How would you describe the Carlyles' marriage? What is the significance of Julia's explanation of their relationship—"He forced me to fall in love with him.... I didn't have a choice" (p. 15)? Based on their conversations, as well as the descriptions of life in their household, is Julia justified in "wondering if her husband even liked her, or viewed their marriage, as he did most of life, through the stultifying lens of duty" (p. 87)?

6. Despite her assertion that Kellen "had no right to drag her back into his life, even by dying and leaving a puzzle behind" (p. 59), Julia is soon caught up in the mystery. What particular people or which events convince to pursue her own investigation? Discuss the cumulative effects of her conversations with Mary Mallard (pp. 40–42, pp. 102–4), Seth Zant (p. 50–53), Frank Carrington (p. 73), Tony Tice (pp. 128–30), Cameron Knowland (pp. 203–5), and Senator Whisted and his wife (pp. 274–76).

7. What elements of a traditional mystery novel help drive New England White? Consider Carter's use of such conventions as cleverly coded messages, misleading statements by witnesses or suspects, and false conclusions about the motives and interests of various characters.

8. Compare and contrast the way Julia and Bruce Vallely conduct their investigations. What advantages does each one have in gathering information and putting the pieces of the puzzle together? Why is Julia reluctant to share her findings and feelings with Bruce? Could either of them have solved the case alone?

9. How valid is Lemaster's perception that "both parties have moved...far from any real interest in the future of African America" (p. 105)? What was your reaction to his saying, "You know what the trouble is? The Caucasians aren't afraid of us any more" (p. 106)? Compare this to Astrid's argument that "the best of our people reach a certain level of success, and they decide that they have moved beyond politics" (p. 91). Which statements most accurately reflect your own impressions or opinions?

10. Is Carter's portrait of a top-notch university realistic? How does he use humor and satire to bring various aspects of the academic community to life? Discuss, for example, Bruce's meetings with Trevor Land and his interview with Arthur Lewin (pp. 159–72), as well as Julia's encounters with her dean and other colleagues at the divinity school.

11. In addition to her obsession with Gina Joule, what role does Vanessa play in the novel? How and why does her relationship with Julia change over the course of the book? What insights do her attitudes and behavior provide, either implicitly or explicitly, into the confusion and ambiguities that upper-class African Americans face in white America? What do the portraits of Preston and Jeannie reflect about the same issues?

12. Mitch Huebner says, "You look at any town in New England, Mrs. Carlyle, and you'll find a line down the middle. On one side are the people who don't know the secrets. On the other are the people who've always been there, who hold on to the town's history like the roots that keep the trees standing" (pp. 313–14). Discuss how the division between those who know the secrets and those who don't applies not just to the events in Tyler's Landing, but to the novel as a whole.

13. Byron Dennison is proud that he taught Lemaster and other protégés "about power. How to use it. When" (p. 343), and goes on to say that power should not be used in pursuit of justice. Do the events in the novel support his point of view? Are there instances that contradict it? In light of both historical and contemporary race relations in this country, is the way the Empyreals use their power understandable? Is it ethical or is it a corruption of the values, however elusive, that define a civilized society?

14. Miss Terry represents a part of the African-American community far removed from the world Julia knows. Do her attitudes and opinions (pp. 383–86) express a reality the majority of African Americans—including those who have "made it"—experience? If, as Miss Terry maintains, "the white folks get to set the rules," does the responsibility for changing this lie within the African-American community? Talk about the different ways prominent public figures, both black and white, have approached this issue and how they relate to questions raised in New England White.

15. A variety of mirrors turn up as clues during Julia's investigation. Using Mona's argument that "the people in the mirror aren't free at all.... They just do what the people on this side of the mirror let them do" (p. 443) as a starting point, why is the mirror an appropriate symbol for the themes the novel explores?

16. Julia ultimately recognizes that Lemaster's "politics were the politics of pure and perfect righteousness" (p. 549). What do Julia's decisions regarding her future reveal about what she has learned of the ways in which power, idealism, and purely practical considerations affect both personal lives and politics realities?

17. In addition to racism, both blatant and subtle, what other biases do the characters confront? What light does the novel shed on how gender, economic status, and professional stature distort our perceptions of ourselves and others?

18. In his widely discussed nonfiction book, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Carter addressed the impact of programs designed to promote racial equality in this country, including the pressure on black professionals to behave in a "politically correct" manner. In what ways is this thesis revisited in New England White? Do you think fiction is an effective tool to explore—and help clarify—real-life issues?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Stones from the River 
Ursula Hegi, 1994
Simon & Schuster
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684844770


Summary
Stones from the River is a daring, dramatic and complex novel of life in Germany. It is set in Burgdorf, a small fictional German town, between 1915 and 1951. The protagonist is Trudi Montag, a Zwerg—the German word for dwarf woman.

As a dwarf she is set apart, the outsider whose physical "otherness" has a corollary in her refusal to be a part of Burgdorf's silent complicity during and after World War II. Trudi establishes her status and power, not through beauty, marriage, or motherhood, but rather as the town's librarian and relentless collector of stories. 

Through Trudi's unblinking eyes, we witness the growing impact of Nazism on the ordinary townsfolk of Burgdorf as they are thrust on to a larger moral stage and forced to make choices that will forever mark their lives. Stones from the River is a story of secrets, parceled out masterfully by Trudi—and by Ursula Hegi—as they reveal the truth about living through unspeakable times. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—May 23 1946
• Where—Germany
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of New Hampshire
• Awards—NEA Fellowship; 5 PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards
• Currently—Upstate New York, USA

Multiple award winner Ursul Hegi moved from West Germany to the U.S. in 1964. She has lived on both coasts, in the states of Washington and New York.

Hegi's first two books had American settings; but when she was in her 40s, she began investigating her cultural heritage in stories about life in Germany. Her critically acclaimed 1994 novel Stones from the River gathered further momentum when it was selected in 1999 as an Oprah's Book Club pick.

Among numerous honors and awards, Hegi has received an NEA Fellowship, several PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards, and a book award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) in 1991 for Floating in My Mother's Palm. She has taught creative writing and has written many reviews for acclaimed publications like The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.

Extras
• Hegi immigrated to the U.S. in 1964, at the age of 18.

• After it was rejected by several publishers, Hegi destroyed the manuscript of her first novel. She explains herself in this way:

[The novel] was called Judged, and I wrote it between 1970 and 1972. When Intrusions—my first novel brought into print—was accepted for publication, I was a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, and one of the other students said it would be interesting to write a thesis on my two unpublished novels. By then I knew that I didn't want to publish Judged. It just wasn't very good, and I knew I didn't want to revise it. But I had learned a lot from writing it -- especially how not to write a novel. I went home, made paper airplanes with my children from the manuscript, and landed them in the wood stove.

My second unpublished manuscript, written in the mid-1970s, was The Woman Who Would Not Speak. It was set in Germany, and I used quite a bit of the material, in very different form, for two later novels, Floating in My Mother's Palm and Stones in the River. I always felt that I wanted go further with those characters. When I began Floating, it helped a lot to have descriptions that I'd written not too long after leaving Germany. Floating contains one chapter, called "The Woman Who Would Not Speak," which gives you an idea of the storyline and characters in the book. I revise my work between 50 and 100 times, going deeper each time. But part of revision is also knowing what to abandon. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
Rich and lively...This moving, elegiac novel commands our compassion and respect for the wisdom and courage to be found in unlikely places, in unlikely times.
Suzanne Ruta - The New York Times Book Review

What a novel is supposed to be: epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a definging and mesmerizing vision...It is in a word, remarkable.
Michael Dorris - Los Angeles Times

Returning to Burgdorf, the small German community she memorably depicted in Floating in My Mother's Palm , Hegi captures the events and atmosphere in the country prior, during and after WW II. Again she has produced a powerful novel whose chilling candor and resonant moral vision serve a dramatic story. With a sure hand, Hegi evokes the patterns of small-town life, individualized here in dozens of ordinary people who display the German passion for order, obedience and conformity, enforced for centuries by rigid class differences and the strictures of the Catholic church. The protagonist is Trudi Montag, the Zwerg (dwarf) who becomes the town's librarian; (she and most of the other characters figured in the earlier book). A perennial outsider because of her deformity, Trudi exploits her gift for eliciting peoples' secrets--and often maliciously reveals them in suspenseful gossip. But when Hitler ascends to power, she protects those who have been kind to her, including two Jewish families who, despite the efforts of Trudi, her father and a few others, are fated to perish in the Holocaust. Trudi is a complex character, as damaged by her mother's madness and early death as she is by the later circumstances of her life, and she is sometimes cruel, vindictive and vengeful. It is fascinating to watch her mature, as she experiences love and loss and finds wisdom, eventually learning to live with the vast amnesia that grips formerly ardent Nazis after the war. One hopes that Hegi will continue to depict the residents of Burgdorf—Germany in microcosm—thus deepening our understanding of a time and place.
Publishers Weekly

At the beginning of World War I, Trudi Montag, a dwarf, is born to an unstable mother and a gentle father in a small Rheinish town. Through the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich into the era following World War II she first struggles with—and later draws strength and wisdom from—her inability to fit into a conformist and repressive society. As the town's librarian and historian, Trudi keeps track of many secrets, revealing the universality of her experience. While Hegi's (Floating in My Mother's Palm) treatment of history and politics is engaging, her novel's appeal lies in the humanity of its characters. Particularly strong is her portrayal of, and insight into, the community of women and children as they react to changing conditions in the town. A sensitive and rewarding book. —Michael T. O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., MD
Library Journal

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Discussion Questions
1. Why did Hegi choose a dwarf as her protagonist? How do the other characters respond to Trudi's "otherness"? How do you?

2. What compels Trudi to unearth people's secrets? She uses these stories as a means of exchange and a tool for bartering, disclosing some secrets while holding back others, enhancing where she sees fit. What drives her to repeat and embellish the stories she hears? What need in her does it fulfill? Why, in contrast, does Trudi keep her own secrets hidden? How does her desire to possess secrets and her urge to tell stories change as the story progresses?

3. Hegi portrays Trudi as a woman capable of both enormous rage and great compassion. The same woman who takes Max Rudnick a note which reads "I have seen you, and I find you too pitiful to consider," risks her life when she hides Jews in her cellar. How does Hegi reconcile these differences in her main character?

4. When Trudi is fourteen years old, four schoolboys drag her into a barn and molest her. Trudi is profoundly affected -- in what ways does this immediately change her? How does it continue to shape her in the coming years? Is Trudi ever able to overcome it? How?

5. During the war, Trudi risks her life and her father's by hiding Jews in their cellar. How does this forever transform her relationship to people? What impact do her actions have on the town, and how does it change her standing in Burgdorf?

6. How does Hegi develop the character of Leo? He is a constant support beam to the townspeople and to Trudi -- how does he tie the story together? How are Leo and Trudi different from each other, and in what ways are they similar?

7. As Nazism encroaches on Burgdorf, Hegi's characters areconfronted with moral dilemmas that go far beyond their ordinary experience. What are the different ways in which the townspeople react? What reasons does Hegi suggest for their varying emotions and actions? What do you think you might have done differently in their place?

8. After Michael Abramowitz is taken away and beaten by Nazis, his wife has a thought that she never voices: "Given a choice, she would rather be the one who was persecuted than the one who did the persecuting." Do you think this is a feeling shared by other Jews during the war? By ordinary Germans? How would you choose?

9. We do not learn until late in the story that Emil Hesping is the unknown benefactor. We discover that all the years he has been giving gifts to the people of Burgdorf, he has been embezzling money from the gymnasium. How do you feel when he is killed for removing Hitler's unwelcome statue from the town square? The unknown benefactor symbolically counteracts some of the pain Hitler's tyranny has caused. What is Hegi saying about the relation of good deeds to justice?

10. After the war, many of Burgdorf's townspeople refuse to speak of the war years, pretending that they took no part in the war's evils. What compels them to participate in this complicity of silence? What do you believe can happen to a people when they collectively bury a memory? What purpose does it serve to bring out the truth and to never forget it?

11. What is the significance of making Trudi and her father the town librarians? Why do you think Hegi uses a library as her novel's principal setting?

12. How are Burgdorf's women affected by their country's history? Think of Renate Eberhardt, who is turned in by her Nazi son; Ingrid, the young woman searching for divinity; Jutta, the strong and beautiful wife of Klaus Malteri Hanna, the—baby Trudi loves too much; Eva Sturm, who was not protected by her husband, Alexander. What pain and atrocities are visited on the women specifically?

13. What vision of human nature does Stones from the River express? Does Hegi perceive human beings as fundamentally good, evil, or indifferent? As immutable or capable of transformation?

14. In Stones from the River, Hegi uses both stones and the river symbolically. What significance does the phrase "stones from the river" acquire in the course of the novel, both for Trudi and the reader? How does Trudi use the stones as a means of self expression? What does the river mean to Trudi, and how does Hegi develop it as a metaphor?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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By Nightfall 
Michael Cunningham, 2010
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374299088


Summary
Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy.

Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three-year-old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career—the entire world he has so carefully constructed.

Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—November 06, 1952
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award; Whiting
   Writers Award
• Currently—New York City

Michael Cunningham's novel A Home at the End of the World was published to acclaim in 1990; an excerpt, entitled "White Angel " and published in The New Yorker, was chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989. His novel Flesh and Blood was published in 1995, and that year he won a Whiting Writer's Award. The Hours, Cunningham's third novel, received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

More
By the time he finished Virginia Woolf's classic Mrs. Dalloway at the age of fifteen to impress a crush who tauntingly suggested he "try and be less stupid" and do so, Michael Cunningham knew that he was destined to become a writer. While his debut novel wouldn't come until decades later, he would win the Pulitzer for Fiction with his third—fittingly, an homage to the very book that launched both his love of literature and his life's work.

After growing up Cincinnati, Ohio, Cunningham fled to the west coast to study literature at Stanford University, but later returned to the heartland, where he received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1980. A writer recognized early on for his promising talent, Cunningham was awarded several grants toward his work, including a Michener Fellowship from the University of Iowa in 1982, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1988.

In 1984, Cunningham's debut novel, Golden States, was published. While generally well-received by the critics, the book—a narrative chronicling a few weeks in the life of a 12-year-old-boy—is often dismissed by Cunningham. In an interview with Other Voices, he explains: "I'm so much more interested in some kind of grand ambitious failure than I am in someone's modest little success that achieves its modest little aims. I felt that I had written a book like that, and I wasn't happy about it. My publisher very generously allowed me to turn down a paperback offer and it has really gone away."

With a new decade came Cunningham's stirring novel, A Home at the End of the World, in 1990. The story of a heartbreakingly lopsided love triangle between two gay men and their mutual female friend, the novel was a groundbreaking take on the ‘90s phenomenon of the nontraditional family. While not exactly released with fanfare, the work drew impressive reviews that instantly recognized Cunningham's gift for using language to define his characters' voices and outline their motives. David Kaufman of The Nation noted Cunningham's "exquisite way with words and...his uncanny felicity in conveying both his characters and their story," and remarked that "this is quite simply one of those rare novel imbued with graceful insights on every page."

The critical acclaim of A Home at the End of the World no doubt helped Cunningham win the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993—and two years later, his domestic epic Flesh and Blood was released. Chronicling the dysfunctional Stassos family from their suburban present back through to the parents' roots and looking toward the children's uncertain futures, the sprawling saga was praised for its complexity and heart. The New York Times Book Review noted that "Mr. Cunningham gets all the little things right.... Mr. Cunningham gets the big stuff right, too. For the heart of the story lies not in the nostalgic references but in the complex relationships between parents and children, between siblings, friends and lovers."

While the new decade ushered in his impressive debut, the close of the decade brought with it Cunningham's inarguable opus, The Hours (1998). A tribute to that seminal work that was the author's first inspiration—Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway—the book reworks the events and ideas of the classic and sets them alternately in 1980s Greenwich Village, 1940s Los Angeles, and Woolf's London. Of Cunningham's ambitious project, USA Today raved, "The Hours is that rare combination: a smashing literary tour-de-force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and literature in new ways, check to see if you have a pulse." The Hours won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was adapted into a major motion picture starring the powerhouse trio of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman in December 2002.

To come down from the frenetic success of The Hours, Cunningham took on a quieter project, 2002's tribute/travelogue Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown. The first installment in Crown's new "Crown Journeys" series, the book is a loving tour through the eccentric little town at the tip of Cape Cod beloved by so many artists and authors, Cunningham included. A haven for literary legends from Eugene O'Neill to Norman Mailer, Cunningham is—rightfully— at home there.

Extras
Cunningham's short story "White Angel" was chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989—the year before his acclaimed novel A Home at the End of the World was published.

When asked about any other names he goes by, Cunningham's list included the monikers Bree Daniels, Mickey Fingers, Jethro, Old Yeller, Gaucho, Cowboy Ed, Tim-Bob, Mister Lies, Erin The Red, Miss Kitty, and Squeegee. (From Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
Cunningham has taken on the classic plot of the uninvited or unexpected stranger or guest whose arrival brings chaos, self-knowledge, tragedy, the ruin of one kind of life that may or may not lead to something better.... Cunningham is drawn to simple, potent plots...saving his energy for the hearts and minds, the groins and guts, of his characters. Yet he makes you turn the pages. He tells a story here, but not too much of a story. You aren't deadened by detail; you're eager to know what happens next. Cunningham writes so well, and with such an economy of language, that he can call up the poet's exact match. His dialogue is deft and fast. The pace of the writing is skilled—stretched or contracted at just the right time.
Jeannette Winterson - New York Times

There are flashier, more pyrotechnic stylists, but for pure, elegant, efficient beauty, Cunningham is astounding. He's developed this captivating narrative voice that mingles his own sharp commentary with Peter's mock-heroic despair. Half Henry James, half James Joyce, but all Cunningham, it's an irresistible performance, cerebral and campy, marked by stabbing moments of self-doubt immediately undercut by theatrical asides and humorous quips.
Ron Charles - Washington Post

So many of Cunningham's physical descriptions read like confident prose poems, where you imagine what's left between the lines.... As a testament to the richness of the literary imagination, By Nightfall' is a success. You can't read this novel without the sense of how worlds can be found in a drop of water, or in an offhand comment, or in the curve of a vase.... By Nightfall is a meditation on beauty, and it has its own indelible qualities of beauty.
Matthew Gilbert - Boston Globe

Contemplating an affair that never was, SoHo art dealer Peter Harris laments that he "could see it all too clearly." The same holds true for Cunningham's emotionally static and drearily conventional latest (after Specimen Days). Peter and his wife, Rebecca—who edits a mid-level art magazine—have settled into a comfortable life in Manhattan's art world, but their staid existence is disrupted by the arrival of Rebecca's much younger brother, Ethan—known as Mizzy, short for "The Mistake." Family golden child Mizzy is a recovering drug addict whose current whim has landed him in New York where he wants to pursue a career in "the arts." Watching Mizzy—whose resemblance to a younger Rebecca unnerves Peter—coast through life without responsibilities makes Peter question his own choices and wonder if it's more than Mizzy's freedom that he covets. Cunningham's sentences are, individually, something to behold, but they're unfortunately pressed into the service of a dud story about a well-off New Yorker's existential crisis.
Publishers Weekly

"What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?" That jolt, that upending realization that your life is just a stream of small dreams and small mistakes, is a defining theme in Cunningham's coruscatingly excellent fiction (remember The Hours?), expressed here in a way that makes you ache. Peter has had some success as a gallery owner in New York; his wife, Rebecca, is accomplished and seemingly confident if not the sparkler she once was. She's also from a not quite pleasantly nutty family, with one much younger brother, Mizzy (short for the Mistake; he wasn't planned), who's a brilliant, beautiful screwup now heading toward Peter and Rebecca. Rebecca's committed to saving Mizzy, so in he sweeps—"heartless, cynical, despairing youth"—and shows Peter how ordinary his life is: he's an indifferent parent, he sells art but hasn't achieved beauty or grandeur, he's been "banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity"—one of a hundred breath-catching, thought-shaking lines gilding the perfect narrative. Verdict: Mizzy nearly drives Peter and Rebecca to rash acts of their own, but in the end he's no answer, and they find that small might be enough. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal

(Starred review.) [H]is most concentrated novel, a bittersweet paean to human creativity and its particularly showy flourishing in hothouse Manhattan.... The result is an exquisite, slyly witty, warmly philosophical, and urbanely eviscerating tale of the mysteries of beauty and desire, art and delusion, age and love. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

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Discussion Questions
1. What were your first impressions of Peter and Rebecca? What aspects of their marriage were presented in the opening scenes as they observed a traffic accident, attended a party, and went to bed?

2. Ethan's nickname originated as a reference to his parents unplanned parenthood so late in life. Did the label shape his impressions of himself, or were his problems inevitable? Did his parents and his sisters (from eldest to youngest: Rosemary, Julianne, Rebecca) expect too little of him?

3. How did Peter and Rebecca's families influence them well into adulthood? What did Peter and Rebecca offer each other when they were first dating? How did the basis for their attraction change over the years?

4. What is Peter's role in the lives of the artists he represents, beyond securing a high price for their work? What intangible benefits does he sell to his buyers? What makes him good at his job?

5. How does the concept of leverage play out in By Nightfall? Who are the novel's most vulnerable and most powerful characters?

6. How does Uta's philosophy of life different from Peter's? How does she balance the reality of her role as a businesswoman with the intuitive and emotional aspects of her profession? For her, is there any distinction between her profession and her passions?

7. What does By Nightfall say about making art, and marketing it? How does Peter's work compare to Rebecca's in shaping the futures of creative individuals? What new freedoms and challenges does twenty-first-century American culture bring to creative fields, and to our personal lives?

8. Ultimately, what is Bea blaming her father for? Is she right to blame him? What does he teach her to expect from men? When Rebecca worries about her daughter, what fears is she also expressing about her own future?

9. What purposes does sex serve for the novel s primary characters? How did sexuality shape Rebecca's self-esteem before and after she was married? What longings is Peter responding to at the moment of the kiss? For Mizzy, does sex present anything more than an opportunity to be manipulative?

10. How does the purpose of marriage evolve throughout Peter and Rebecca's life together? What reasons do they have for remaining married after Bea has left for college? What identity did marriage create for them in their careers?

11. Michael Cunningham provides us with Peter's thoughts throughout By Nightfall. How would the novel have unfolded if it had been told from Rebecca's point of view instead?

12. Is Mizzy a victim or a victimizer, or both? If he were your little brother, would you respond to him the way Rebecca does?

13. The novel concludes with the beginning of an honest dialogue. How much of Peter and Rebecca's previous talks had been truthful? Had they been honest with themselves? What predictions do you have for the closing line s conversation and its aftermath?

14. Discuss the novel's title: What symbolic nightfall exists in the characters lives? How does it apply to the concept of aging and other transitions that may seem difficult to navigate in the dark?

15. Through his fiction, what has Cunningham shown us about the nature of love and longing? What new facets are revealed in By Nightfall? What role do artists (literary, visual, and otherwise) play in his storylines?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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