The Cradle
Patrick Somerville, 2009
Little, Brown & Co.
204 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316036115


Summary 
Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again.

Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know—does not want to know—where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister near by and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner.

Only as Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known.

Elegant and astonishing, Patrick Somerville tells the story of one man's journey into the heart of marriage, parenthood, and what it means to be a family. Confirming the arrival of an exuberantly talented new writer, The Cradle is an uniquely imaginative debut novel that radiates with wisdom and wonder. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—University of Wisconsin, Madison; M.F.A., Cornell    University
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois

Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He is the author of the story collection Trouble (Vintage, 2006), and his writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007.

He lives with his wife in Chicago, and is currently the Blattner Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University. This is his first novel. (From the publisher.)

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Book Reviews
[M]magical…Mr. Somerville has the chops to keep this story from softening into the generic mush suggested by his premise…In a streamlined 200-page book that works as a fully conceived novel, he tells an endearing story full of genuinely surprising turns.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

One gets the sense that somewhere, near Patrick Somerville's writing desk, hundreds of unpublished pages of his first novel, The Cradle, litter the floor. The scope of the story indicates that many hours of imaginative sweat went into the production of this lean, moving tale. Happily, The Cradle emerges swift and cinematic, an epic story told in a series of artfully curated, wonderfully rendered scenes.
Dean Bakopoulosis - New York Times Book Review

Somerville builds a road narrative that gradually accumulates the mythic echoes and dreamlike inevitability of allegory…What gives The Cradle its potent emotional resonance, however, is the way Somerville's prose calmly, relentlessly pulls at the Gothic skein of family tragedies that lurks behind the peeling paint and sagging porches, where a sense of inherited sin settles like a thick fog.
Michael Lindgren - Washington Post

A lovely, finely wrought tale of unlikely redemption. In prose that floats so lightly as to seem effortless, Somerville takes the reader on unlikely journeys that results in unexpected consequences.... The Cradle is a slim volume, with prose that slides down easily—so easily that the emotions it explores can sneak up on the reader...The final pages of the novel are surprisingly satisfying and right. Somerville has many gifts, not the least of which is the ability to sketch his characters with firm strokes that leave no doubt as to their distinct and varied humanity. The resulting work is nothing short of a surprising treat.
Robin Vidimos - Denver Post

An elusive heirloom cradle symbolizes childhood's pains and possibilities in Somerville's spare, elegant first novel (after a story collection, Trouble ). Marissa, pregnant with her first child, becomes obsessed with tracking down the antique cradle her mother took when she abandoned the family a decade earlier. Marissa's husband, Matt, is sure he's been dispatched on a fool's errand, but his journey soon connects him to Marissa's family and his own history of abandonment, neglect and abuse amid a string of foster homes and orphanages. Matt's quest through four states is interwoven with another drama that takes place 11 years later, in 2008, in which poet and children's author Renee Owen is haunted by memories of war and a lost love as she prepares to send her son off to fight in Iraq. Again, long-buried secrets come to the surface, one of which poignantly links the two story lines. Though the connection will not shock, Somerville's themes of a broader sense of interconnectivity and the resultant miracles of everyday existence retain their strength and affirm the value of forming and keeping families.
Publishers Weekly

It's 1997, and 25-year-old Marissa Bishop could be a bit crazy, or perhaps it's just pregnancy that makes her send her adoring husband, Matt, on an impossible quest: find her own childhood cradle, which was removed from her home ten years earlier when her mother left Marissa and her dad. To appease the woman he loves, Matt leaves their Wisconsin home to traverse the Midwest on a journey that might leave the geographically challenged running for an atlas. In 2008 Chicago, children's book author and sometime poet Renee Owen is dealing with her 19-year-old son's enlistment in the military, with the likelihood of his shipping out to Iraq. The stories alternate chapters and eventually come together in this satisfyingly sweet tale of love, commitment, and self-discovery. First novelist Somerville keeps us engaged in this slim novel from the outset. Though readers might guess the connections, they will want to see how the author provides the perfect denouement. Highly recommended for public libraries.
Bette-Lee Fox Library Journal

With highly charged lyricism and dramatic concision, Somerville gracefully illuminates what children need, all that war demands, and how amends are made and sorrows are woven into the intricate tapestry of life.
Booklist

Critics uniformly praised Somerville’s moving debut about the meaning of family and its power to heal. Somerville’s spare but buoyant prose strikes the right emotional balance, expressive without being sentimental.
Bookmarks Magazine

In this first novel by the author of the story collection Trouble (2006), a young man and, separately, a middle-aged woman test their capacity to love and be loved. As a favor to his pregnant wife, Matt takes a few days off from the plant where he works to try to find the cradle Marissa had as a baby. She wants it for their son. The cradle dates back to the Civil War, and it was stolen when Marissa was 15, around the same time Marissa's mother walked out. Neither has been seen since. With a relative's former address as his only clue, Matt sets off, traveling through towns large and small, from Green Bay, Wis., to Walton, Minn., to Rensselaer, Ind., with a brief detour (via Internet video hook-up) to Antarctica. Along the way, Matt finds much more than he anticipated, including how his own childhood—18 years of foster homes and state agencies—shaped his feelings about family. Ten years later, in a well-heeled neighborhood of Chicago, Renee and her husband Bill prepare to say goodbye to their only son Adam, a Marine who is leaving for Iraq in a matter of days. Affable and bright, Adam believes he has a duty to serve his country—a position not shared by Renee, a children's-book author turned poet who passionately protested the Vietnam War when she was in college. As the family works to keep their last days together normal—they go out for donuts; watch a football game on television-Renee's feelings about Adam's impending departure threaten to tear from her lips a long-buried secret. One not even her husband knows. Somerville's two story lines unfold and ultimately dovetail with a quiet confidence. This meditative novel dignifies small gestures, which bring to life the compelling characters. A bonus is the fresh regional sensibility the author brings to Matt's road trip through the Northern Middle West states. Fresh turf for American fiction from a talented young writer.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. What does Matt mean when he tells Joe, "You’re free," as they eat breakfast in the diner?

2. In your opinion, what is the significance of the cradle?

3. Renee’s story occurs more than a decade after Matt’s, and in many ways the two characters exist in different worlds. How are their respective quests similar? How are their journeys different?

4. Why does Marissa cry on her wedding day?

5. Why do you think Matt rips the showerhead out of the wall?

6. In the novel’s first chapter, Marissa claims, "There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who understand that everything matters  and people who don’t understand that everything matters" (page 6). What does she mean by this? Is she serious? Use her statement as a way to think about the various characters in the book.

7. How is writing poetry different for Renee than her work writing children’s books? Why do you think she struggles so much with the former, and how  does that struggle change in the course of the novel? How does Renee’s understanding of Walt Whitman’s work play a role?

8. Matt comes to the realization that "the world never just happened but rather was made by people, each and every aspect of it" (page 157). How does this realization affect his sense of personal responsibility?

9. Who was the character you most identified with at the beginning of the novel? Did that change by the conclusion of the story?

10. Why do you think that, following Matt’s return, Marissa never again asked about the cradle?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Summary  |  Author  |  Book Reviews  |  Discussion Questions

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The Inn at Lake Devine
Elinor Lipman, 1999
Knopf Doubleday
pp. 272
ISBN-13: 9780375704857

In Brief  
It's 1962 and all across America barriers are collapsing. But when Natalie Marx's mother inquires about summer accommodations in Vermont, she gets the following reply: "The Inn at Lake Devine is a family-owned resort, which has been in continuous operation since 1922. Our guests who feel most comfortable here, and return year after year, are Gentiles." For twelve-year-old Natalie, who has a stubborn sense of justice, the words are not a rebuff but an infuriating, irresistible challenge.

In this beguiling novel, Elinor Lipman charts her heroine's fixation with a small bastion of genteel anti-Semitism, a fixation that will have wildly unexpected consequences on her romantic life. As Natalie tries to enter the world that has excluded her—and succeeds through the sheerest of accidents—The Inn at Lake Devine becomes a delightful and provocative romantic comedy full of sparkling social mischief. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author
• Birth—October 16, 1950
• Where—Lowell, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—A.B. Simmons College
• Awards—New England Books Award For Fiction
• Currently—lives in North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York, New York


Elinor Lipman is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, known for her humor and societal observations. In his review of her 2019 novel, Good Riddance, Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Lipman "has long been one of our wittiest chroniclers of modern-day romance."

The author was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston where she studied journalism. While at Simon, Lipman began her writing career, working as a college intern with the Lowell Sun. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, she wrote press releases for WGBH, Boston's public radio station.

Writing
Lipman turned to writing fiction in 1979; her first short story, "Catering," was published in Yankee Magazine. In 1987 she published a volume of stories, Into Love and Out Again, and in 1990 she came out with her first novel, Then She Found Me. Her second novel, The Inn at Lake Devine, appeared in 1998, earning Lipman the 2001 New England Book Award three years later.

Lipman's first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a 2008 feature film—directed by and starring Helen Hunt, along with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick.

In addition to her fiction, Lipman released a 2012 book of rhyming political tweets, Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. Two other books—a 10th novel, The View from Penthouse B, and a collection of essays, I Can't Complain: (all too) Personal Essays—were both published in 2013. The latter deals in part with the death of her husband at age 60. A knitting devotee, Lipman's poem, "I Bought This Pattern Book Last Spring," was included in the 2013 anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting.

Lipman was the Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College from 2011-12, and she continues to write the column, "I Might Complain," for Parade.com. Smith spends her time between North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.

Works
1988 - Into Love and Out Again: Stories
1990 - Then She Found Me
1992 - The Way Men Act
1995 - Isabel's Bed
1998 - The Inn at Lake Devine
1999 - The Ladies' Man
2001 - The Dearly Departed
2003 - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
2006 - My Latest Grievance
2009 - The Family Man
2012 - Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus
2013 - I Can't Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays
2013 - The View From Penthouse B
2017 - On Turpentine Lane
2019 - Good Riddance
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/27/2019.)

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Critics Say . . . 
Lipman waltzes fearlessly through a minefield of loaded subjects—AntiSemitism, intermarriage, ethnic cuisine and Anne Frank—in this witty romantic comedy.
New York Times

A punchy little comedy of manners.... Think Jane Austen in the Catskills.
Chicago Tribune

A funny, knowing novel about how love really does conquer all.... Thanks to Lipman's deft touch, the novel...rivals her own best work for its understanding of the way smart, opinionated people stumble toward happiness.
Glamour

A story of Jews and Gentiles, this very funny novel begins with a segregated inn in Vermont and ends with all the characters getting their comeuppance. In its skewering of assimilation and cultural diversity, it is reminiscent of Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land, only here Lipman uses Christians, not Chinese, to tweak social consciousness. Natalie Marx is shocked when, in response to an inquiry, her mother receives a note from the proprietor of the Inn at Lake Devine baldly stating that the guests who feel most comfortable there are Gentiles. Natalie inveigles an invitation from a friend to go to the inn and thereby sets off a lifelong fascination with breaking the rules. Both entertaining and thought-provoking, this delightful new work is highly recommended for all fiction collections. —Molly Abramovitz, Silver Spring, MD
Library Journal

Natalie Marx is the Jewish narrator of this good-humored tale of lovers of different faiths, who find happiness and even manage to be accepted by their initially not-so-happy parents. Natalie's family, who live in Massachusetts, summered each year in the 1960s either at the beach or on the lakes; one summer, in response to an inquiry her mother addressed to the Inn at Lake Devine in Vermont, a letter came from the proprietor, Ingrid Berry, saying that their guests were all Gentiles. Young Natalie was both angry and intrigued. She finessed a summer in her teens at the Inn by befriending WASP Robin Fife, whom she met at a summer camp, and then found both the Fife family and the Inn bland and boring. Now in 1970s Boston, Natalie, training to be a chef after college, runs into Robin, who asks her to come to her wedding at the Inn: She's marrying Nelson Berry, Ingrid's eldest son. Natalie goes, and cooks up a storm as the families grieve after Robin is killed on her way to Vermont, then falls for Kris, the younger Berry son. Neither the Marxes nor the Berrys are pleased. But their biases are nicely balanced when Linette Feldman, whose family owns a kosher hotel in the Catskills, falls for Nelson Berry, and her parents have also to be brought round. Love wins out, of course, thanks to perseverance and good sense. An upbeat and amusing romp through what is usually a minefield, by a writer who deftly makes her points but never preaches.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions 

1. What fascinates Natalie most about the offensive note from Mrs. Berry is its "marriage of good manners and anti-Semitism" [p. 4]. Does Natalie show, later in the novel, what truly having "good manners" might mean?

2. What does Natalie mean when she mentions the "Gentile ambitions" [p. 65] that led her into a friendship with Robin Fife?

3. Although Eddie and Audrey Marx are both Jewish, they were originally drawn together because of their differences. For the spritelike Audrey, "there was something...about Eddie's jumbo presence, something like a bodyguard's or a football player's, that was normally off limits to a Jewish girl" [p. 19]. They were forced to marry when Audrey became pregnant at nineteen. Given the circumstances of their own history together, are Natalie's parents hypocritical in trying to stop Natalie from seeing Kris Berry?

4. Natalie says that her sister, Pamela, in marrying a Catholic (in a Catholic mass, no less), "used up our family's mixed-marriage chit, even our liberal-dating chit. It was up to me to bring home the perfect Jewish son-in-law" [p. 144]. Are Jewish parents more insistent than others about keeping their children from marrying outside their faith? If so, why?

5. The Inn at Lake Devine might be called a "revenge comedy." At the end the Berrys lose the Inn, and both of their sons take up with Jewish women. Is this a fitting comic closure for Ingrid Berry? What about the feckless but kind Mr. Berry, who loses his business because of carelessness in mushroom hunting? Should he have been more active in preventing his wife's exclusion of Jews from the hotel?

6. What are the social and class markers that Lipman uses to create a sense of realism at the Halseeyon and at the Inn at Lake Devine? How well do Kris and Nelson Berry respond to their weekend immersion in Jewish culture when they visit the Halseeyon with Natalie?

7. What role does food play in this novel? How do the significance and style of dining differ among social groups at Lake Devine and at the Halseeyon? Does food have more meaning for the Jews in the Catskills than it does for the WASPs in New England? What does the desire to be a chef reveal about Natalie's character?

8. At camp, Natalie first befriends Robin Fife in the hope of being invited by her family to the Inn at Lake Devine, but she is bored by the dull-witted Robin who, she notes, "couldn't take, make, or get a joke of any kind" [p. 41]. Her relationship with Robin at fourteen could be seen as mere opportunism; how does this change when they meet again ten years later?

9. Why do you suppose Elinor Lipman has chosen to leave out any details of Natalie's college years, including her experience of dating and sex?

10. The novel of the Jewish person coming of age in modern America—the most famous examples are Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz—is usually told from a young man's perspective. How does the shift to a female narrator in The Inn at Lake Devine challenge and transform this tradition?

11. Do some of the characters come across as more true to life than others? Which of the three families—Marx, Fife, or Berry—seems most realistically depicted? Does the role of surprise in the novel feel realistic? Does the unexpected always work? Does it add or detract from your enjoyment of the story?

12. This novel is based upon the reality of intermarriage and assimilation in American life, issues that are especially painful among the more observant Jewish communities. Lipman expertly draws the difference between the habits of Natalie's Reform family and those of her Orthodox friend Linette Feldman. Is it easier to feel good about the pairing of Natalie and Kris than that of Linette and Nelson? Do you feel that love rightly triumphs over religion in this novel?

13. One reviewer of this novel wrote, "Prejudice, in all its many disguises, is an unusually worthy but often ponderous subject; its very weightiness...often threatens to sink otherwise well-written and well-meaning tales."1 What aspects of Lipman's style allow her to avoid this pitfall?

14. What do you find most satisfying about the way that Lipman brings her plot to closure?

15. In a recent interview Elinor Lipman said, "I like novels that are funny, quirky, intelligent, and humane." How well, for you, does The Inn at Lake Devine fit this description?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Story Sisters
Alice Hoffman, 2009
Crown Publishing
325 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307405968

Summary
Alice Hoffman's new novel, The Story Sisters, charts the lives of three sisters—Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination.

Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.

What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1952
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Adelphi Univ.; M.A., Stanford Univ.
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts

Born in the 1950s to college-educated parents who divorced when she was young, Alice Hoffman was raised by her single, working mother in a blue-collar Long Island neighborhood. Although she felt like an outsider growing up, she discovered that these feelings of not quite belonging positioned her uniquely to observe people from a distance. Later, she would hone this viewpoint in stories that captured the full intensity of the human experience.

After high school, Hoffman went to work for the Doubleday factory in Garden City. But the eight-hour, supervised workday was not for her, and she quit before lunch on her first day! She enrolled in night school at Adelphi University, graduating in 1971 with a degree in English. She went on to attend Stanford University's Creative Writing Center on a Mirrellees Fellowship. Her mentor at Stanford, the great teacher and novelist Albert Guerard, helped to get her first story published in the literary magazine Fiction. The story attracted the attention of legendary editor Ted Solotaroff, who asked if she had written any longer fiction. She hadn't — but immediately set to work. In 1977, when Hoffman was 25, her first novel, Property Of, was published to great fanfare.

Since that remarkable debut, Hoffman has carved herself a unique niche in American fiction. A favorite with teens as well as adults, she renders life's deepest mysteries immediately understandable in stories suffused with magic realism and a dreamy, fairy-tale sensibility. (In a 1994 article for the New York Times, interviewer Ruth Reichl described the magic in Hoffman's books as a casual, regular occurrence — "...so offhand that even the most skeptical reader can accept it.") Her characters' lives are transformed by uncontrollable forces — love and loss, sorrow and bliss, danger and death.

Hoffman's 1997 novel Here on Earth was selected as an Oprah Book Club pick, but even without Winfrey's powerful endorsement, her books have become huge bestsellers — including three that have been adapted for the movies: Practical Magic (1995), The River King (2000), and her YA fable Aquamarine (2001).

Hoffman is a breast cancer survivor; and like many people who consider themselves blessed with luck, she believes strongly in giving back. For this reason, she donated her advance from her 1999 short story collection Local Girls to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Hoffman has written a number of children's books, including Fireflies: A Winter's Tale (1999), Horsefly (2000), and Moondog (2004).

• Aquamarine was written for Hoffman's best friend, Jo Ann, who dreamed of the freedom of mermaids as she battled brain cancer.

• Here on Earth is a modern version of Hoffman's favorite novel, Wuthering Heights.

• Hoffman has been honored with the Massachusetts Book Award for her teen novel Incantation.

• When asked what books most influenced her life or career, here's what she said:

Edward Eager's brilliant series of suburban magic: Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, Magic or Not, Knight's Castle, The Time Garden, Seven-Day Magic, The Well Wishers. Anything by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, J. D. Salinger, Grace Paley. My favorite book: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
Hoffman has a child's dreamy eye, in the best possible sense. To her, the stuff grown-ups don't see anymore looms huge and important—insects banging on windowpanes, thunderstorms, a chestnut tree with a door to the "otherworld." She invents a realm where that sense of the fictive doesn't go away, where imagination and reality bleed together.... In the end, The Story Sisters, for all its magic realism, is about a family navigating through motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood. It's Little Women on mushrooms.
Chelsea Cain - New York Times Book Review

It's a rare year that doesn't bring a novel from Alice Hoffman, and those who follow this maddeningly uneven writer have learned to cast a wary eye on each new offering. Will it be Good Alice, poser of uncomfortable moral dilemmas and marvelously rich portraitist of family life (Blue Diary, Skylight Confessions)? Or will it be Bad Alice, blatantly careless plotter and outrageous overdoer of the magic-beneath-the-surface-of-our-lives shtick (The Probable Future, The Third Angel)? The Story Sisters, actually, is In-Between Alice: excessive and over-determined but ultimately so moving that it overwhelms these faults.... [A] radiant finale reminds us what a satisfying novelist Alice Hoffman can be, when she feels like it.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post Book World

At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, The Story Sisters sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them. It confirms Alice Hoffman’s reputation as "a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled.
Chicago Tribune

(Starred review.) The always dazzling Hoffman has outdone herself in this bewitching weave of psychologically astute fantasy and shattering realism, encompassing rape, drug addiction, disease, and fatal accidents. Her alluring characters are soulful, their suffering mythic, and though the sorrows are many and the body count high, this is an entrancing and romantic drama shot through with radiant beauty and belief in human resilience and transformation. —Donna Seaman
Booklist 

Lyrical but atypically monotonous, bestseller Hoffman's (The Third Angel) latest follows the dark family saga of Elv, Megan and Claire Story, sisters plagued by uncommon sadness. As a child, Elv spun fairy tales of a magical world for her sisters, but a period of savage sexual abuse-information about which slowly leaks out—sends her spiraling into years of drug addiction and painful self-abuse. Elv's story is unrelentingly grim, and without Hoffman's characteristic magic realism, its simple downward spiral becomes exhausting. Tragedy after tragedy befalls the family—Elv's commitment to a juvenile rehab facility, a deadly accident, a fatal illness and betrayal after betrayal. When the last third of the book turns to focus on Claire, who has been so damaged by the family crises that she refuses to speak, the slight glimmers of hope and goodness are too little, too late. Hoffman's prose is as lovely as ever: the imagined and real worlds of the Story sisters are rich and clear, but Elv's troubles and the Story family's nonstop catastrophes are wearying.
Publishers Weekly

Once upon a time on Long Island, there were three Story sisters: Elv, Meg, and Claire. Aged 12 to 15, they were all beautiful and well behaved, with long, dark hair and pale eyes. They lived in magical harmony, speaking a private, shared language. Their parents were divorced, and the sisters visited their grandparents in Paris every spring. But their mother, Annie, feels increasingly left out of her daughters' lives. Indeed, darkness is soon to fall. Elv's belief in a secret underworld spins out of control, and she begins using drugs and stealing. Sent away to reform school, she falls in love with a man who is a heroin addict. There are betrayals and accidents, Annie falls ill, and the Story family disintegrates before our eyes. This is one of Hoffman's darkest novels yet, and some of Hoffman's readers may find it too dark. But name recognition advises purchase of multiple copies for libraries, and hope for the family's healing keeps readers, heartbroken yet spellbound, turning the pages.
Library Journal

An act of child abuse has lasting consequences in Hoffman's painfully moving novel (The Third Angel, 2008, etc.). The summer Claire Story was 8 and her sister Elv was 11, a man tried to abduct Claire in his car; Elv jumped in, told Claire to jump out, and it was hours before she returned. They never told their mother Annie or middle sister Meg-their father walked out that same summer-and neither girl was ever the same. As the main narrative opens, when Elv is 15, she's becoming an out-of-control adolescent increasingly at odds with careful, rule-following Meg. Racked with guilt over the unknown horrors her sister endured in her place, Claire tries to be loyal, but as Elv's drug use and promiscuity escalate, she backs away. The desperate Annie finally takes Elv to a rehab facility, enlisting the reluctant support of her selfish ex-husband, who insists it's all her fault. At the facility, Elv meets Lorry, a thief and addict who introduces her to heroin, but who also really loves her. The chronology speeds up after Elv comes home and a dreadful accident seals her alienation from her family. Hoffman paints wrenching scenes of tentative efforts at reconciliation that just barely fail, as Elv becomes pregnant and cleans up, but loses Lorry to his "fatal flaw." A kindly detective brings late-life happiness to Annie and metes out delayed justice to Elv's abuser, but the disasters keep coming. Two sisters grow into adulthood, dreadfully damaged by the losses they've endured and their punishing self-blame for the mistakes they made. Hoffman's habitual allusions to mysterious supernatural forces are very jarring in this context, as is the endless interpolation of memories from the terrible abduction; she could have trusted her readers to get the point with out constant prodding. A radiant denouement shows love redeeming the surviving sisters, and there are beautiful moments throughout, but they don't entirely compensate for Hoffman's excesses of plot and tone. A near-miss from this uneven but always compelling writer.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. When Elv and Claire set out to rescue the horse at the beginning of the novel, what do you learn about the family dynamics and the personalities of the three sisters? How do they relate to one another and to their mother, Annie? Which sister is most like Annie? What does Annie mean when she says,“People who said daughters were easy had never had girls of their own” [p. 4]?

2. The importance of storytelling is a central theme of this novel. What purpose do stories serve—for the individual and for society? Do you see any parallels between the Story sisters and other literary sisters, such as the Brontë sisters or the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women? Can imagined worlds be both positive and destructive? What is the thin line between storytelling and deception/ denial, and how does it come into play in the novel?

3. After her abduction, Elv begins to invent the world of Arnelle. It’s a way for her to escape reality, but her fairy-tale world becomes a trap of its own. Discuss the otherworld that Elv creates and how it functions. What are the rules of Arnelle and how do they relate to Elv’s abduction? Why does Elv later decide to change the story by “going over to the other side” [p. 69] and joining with the “demon world”? Can you understand and have compassion for her when she turns her back on the “human world”?

4. Fairy tales typically include common mythic elements, including the battle between good and evil, the idea of “the quest,” and the notion that sacrifices must be made in order for an individual to earn wisdom and faith. How are the qualities of fairy tales incorporated into the novel?

5. Each chapter begins with a “fairy tale” from Elv’s Black Book of Fairy Tales, the stories she tells to her sisters. If you read them in order, what do they tell you about Elv’s inner life? Are fairy tales often a psychological map, a way to get to truth via mythic and symbolic references? If so, how?

6. On the day of Elv’s abduction Meg is reading the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. Why is this significant? Meg also reads Oliver Twist and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Why might these novels appeal to her? Which author does Claire read in Paris, and why do you think this novelist would appeal to her considering her unique vision of the world? Are there novels that you feel affected you greatly at certain points in your life? If so, which ones and why?

7. Why does Elv keep her abduction a secret? Whom is she trying to protect? Why does Claire go along with her decision? Is keeping another person’s secret a sign of loyalty or does it—as Meg asserts—make you an accomplice? How did your vision of Elv change as you learned more details about her abduction?

8. When Elv’s family brings her to Westfield, she feels betrayed. Why does Elv place such a high premium on loyalty, and how do you think she defines it? How does each family member react to the intervention? Are there situations where it’s necessary to deceive loved ones in order to save them? Have you ever faced such a situation with a loved one?

9. First at the Westfield School and later in prison, Elv strongly identifies with Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. What parallels do you see between Elv and Hester? In what ways does Elv imagine herself to be “marked” and set apart from others? Have you known people who have made a youthful mistake that has haunted them?

10. What stories does Lorry tell Elv about his past, and how do they mirror her own tales of Arnelle? Why doesn’t she feel betrayed when she learns that Lorry’s “true-life” stories about living below Penn Station with the mole people are in fact fiction? What is the distinction between a story and a lie? Do you think Lorry gave Elv what she wanted or needed? How do you view the love they had for each other?

11. When Annie hires Pete to track down Elv, the two strike up a friendship that leads to romance. What do you make of Pete’s decision to stay with Annie and pursue a relationship with her even though he knows he doesn’t have much time left with her? What does that decision say about his character?

12. After Meg dies, her sisters are emotionally lost, shattered by the tragic circumstance of her death. Elv disappears and Claire withdraws deep inside herself, refusing to speak or relate to others. Why does Elv run away from the scene of the accident? Does she want to be found? Who does Claire blame for Meg’s death and why? Why does it take an outsider such as Pete to understand and try to assuage the sisters’ guilt?

13. While in prison, Elv works with abused and abandoned dogs and later takes a job with an animal shelter. After Meg dies, Claire’s constant companion is her dog, Shiloh. Lorry’s stories revolve around a heroic dog as well. How does the relationship between human and dog relate to the theme of loyalty? What impact do the dogs have on the sisters and why?

14. As a detective, Pete is in the business of uncovering secrets. But he is also a keeper of secrets when he feels it’s necessary to protect those he loves. Why does he pose as an author when he visits the man who abused Elv? Is this man correct when he says people are unknowable and that “everyone has their secrets” [p. 286)? Do you feel Pete has made a moral decision when he frames the man who is responsible for so much of the damage in the Story sisters’ lives?

15. In Paris, Claire leads a solitary life and speaks only when necessary. She avoids love and relationships and suffers from intense guilt. What does Claire mean when she says that “she and Elv were two of a kind” [p. 227]? Do you see the similarities between the sisters, even though their lives take such different arcs? What role does art play in reconnecting Claire to the world?

16. How does motherhood change Elv, and what does she discover about the nature of maternal love? Do you think we often understand our parents best only after we ourselves become parents? What stories does Elv pass down to Mimi? How does the telling of family stories help Elv and connect her to the past? What role does Mimi play in bringing Elv and Claire together again? Do you see a future for the Story sisters? If you were to write the next five years in the sisters’ lives, how do you imagine Claire and Elv’s relationship will progress? Would you agree that the major theme of The Story Sisters is the possibility of redemption and forgiveness? (Questions from the author's website.)

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Nine Coaches Waiting
Mary Stewart, 1958
Chicago Review Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781556526183

Summary
A governess in a French chateau encounters an apparent plot against her young charge's life in this unforgettably haunting and beautifully written suspense novel. When lovely Linda Martin first arrives at Chateau Valmy as an English governess to the nine-year-old Count Philippe de Valmy, the opulence and history surrounding her seems like a wondrous, ecstatic dream.

But a palpable terror is crouching in the shadows. Philippe's uncle, Leon de Valmy, is the epitome of charm, yet dynamic and arrogant—his paralysis little hindrance as he moves noiselessly in his wheelchair from room to room. Only his son Raoul, a handsome, sardonic man who drives himself and his car with equally reckless abandon, seems able to stand up to him.

To Linda, Raoul is an enigma—though irresistibly attracted to him, she senses some dark twist in his nature. When an accident deep in the woods nearly kills Linda's innocent charge, she begins to wonder if someone has deadly plans for the young count. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author Bio
• Birth—September 17, 1916
• Where—Durham, England, UK
• Education—Durham University
• Currently—lives in England

Mary Florence Elinor Stewart (nee Rainbow), a popular English novelist, is best known for her series about Merlin, which straddles the boundary between the historical novel and the fantasy genre.

Stewart was born in Sunderland, County Durham, England and graduated from Durham University, from where she received an honorary D.Litt in 2009. She was a lecturer in English Language and Literature there until her marriage in 1945 to Sir Frederick Stewart, former chairman of the Geology Department of Edinburgh University. Sir Frederick died in 2001.

In addition to her five fantasy novels, Stewart is also the author of approximately 20 others: children's books, crime fiction, gothic fiction and romance novels, several of which have been adapted for television and/or film. Several of her books are set in Scotland; others are set in more exotic locations such as Damascus, the Greek islands, Spain, France, or Austria.

She was at the height of her popularity in the 1960s and 1970s when many of her suspense and romantic novels were translated into many languages. Stewart is considered one of the founders of the romantic suspense subgenre, blending romance novels and mystery. Her novels seamlessly combined the two genres, maintaining a full mystery while focusing on the courtship between two people. In her novels, the process of solving the mystery "helps to illuminate" the hero's personality, helping the heroine to fall in love with him (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

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

A delightful concoction. A beautifully written mingling of romance and mystery.
Washington Post

A wonderful hue and cry story.... A Mona Lisa tale that beckons you on while suspense builds up.
Boston Herald

Readers will be glued to the complex story in which no one seems truly trustworthy.
Vive Magazine

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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 Nine Coaches Waiting:

1. What does the title suggest about the kind of story Stewart wants to tell...and the kind of story her readers might expect?

2. What kind of character is Linda Martin? How would you describe her?

3. Why must Linda pretend ignorance of the French language, which she is quite facile at speaking?

3. Talk about young Philippe. How well does Linda relate to him as a charge?

4. What about Uncle Leon as a character? How does he treat his nephew? What might his injury suggest symbolically about him?

5. What makes Linda first suspect that the "accidents" are anything but accidents?

6. What draws Raoul and Linda together? Did you feel their attachment was genuine on both sides?

7. Linda finds herself in the middle of a murder plot and must spirit Philippe away to keep him safe. What will Linda have to sacrifice as she makes her decision? Whom does she suspect ...and whom, at this point, did you suspect?

8. Does this book deliver in terms of its triple objectives: to be a mystery / suspense / and romance in one book? Does Stewart succeed? Did you find yourself quickly turning pages to find out what happens next? Were you surprised by the turn of events, or did you find them predictable? Were you satisfied with the ending of the book? Does it end how you had hoped it would?

9. Loneliness is an underlying theme in this book. How does it evidence itself within the story?

10. Are there other literary heroines of whom Linda reminds you? And if you've read other Mary Stewart works, how does this one compare?

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

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