Nineteen: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Model
D.L. Janney, 2016
E F Lee Publishing
390 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780997467802
Summary
Depressed, broke, and suffering the effects of a brutal childhood; our hero heads to New York City. He leaves behind college life in a small midwestern town to earn a living in one of the most competitive fields in the world.
Pushing aside his overwhelming self-doubt and insecurities, he arrives in New York City with only a bag filled with clothes.
Nineteen is his story. Enter his world and walk beside him as D.L. paints a portrait of his life as an outsider in the 1980s fashion world. Without help or any contacts, our protagonist attempts to make enough money to go to a good university and change his life forever.
Embark on this intimate journey into a world remembered and created from the troubled, yet determined mind of a nineteen year old boy. His pragmatic mind coupled with a tortured soul will lead the way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—21, 1962
• Where—Moorestown, New Jersey, USA
• Raised—state of Illinois
• Education— B.A., Boston University
• Currently—lives in the state of Connecticut
D.L. Janney is a married writer and father of seven children. He currently lives in Connecticut. Born in Moorestown, New Jersey he moved with his family to Illinois when he was three years old.
At 17 D.L. left home to attend Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, but left college in the fall of his sophomore year and headed to New York City. After two years working as a professional model he returned to school at Boston University and obtained a degree in English literature with Distinction.
D.L. has worked as a carpenter and contractor for the past 25 years. He spends his time with his beautiful wife watching his children grow up (much too fast!). He spends his remaining time writing, reading and sleeping. He is currently writing a sequel to Nineteen, as well as a book of short stories.
When modeling, D.L. was featured in GQ, British Vogue, Italian Vogue, Mademoiselle, Lei, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire. He also did campaigns for Christian Dior, Wrangler, Daniel Hechter, Perry Ellis, and Panchetti. He worked with many of the top photographers in the early 80’s, including Fabrizio Gianni, Bruce Weber, Arthur Elgort, Knut Bry, Steven Meisel, Richard Avedon, Hans Fuerer, Francois De Connick, Ken Haak, Michel Momy, Alain Larue, Rico Puhlman, and Neil Kirk. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow D.L. on Facebook . . . and on Twitter.
Book Reviews
Nineteen by D.L. Janney is the gritty story of a vulnerable but spike-tough young man determined to make a better life for himself. He has a “look,” and this will catapult him into the glam-fashion model world of the 80’s. You live Daryl’s story by his side as he barely survives in a grubby postage-stamp room outside NYC, to an equally depressing prostitute-ridden boarding house in Milan, and finally on to exotic locales only the rich and famous may ever see.
Daryl’s journey invites us into the mind of a young man who, when he was small, was repeatedly nearly drowned by his father in the public swimming pool of his mid-western town. A young person who saw little love and even less encouragement growing up. A young person of rare physical attraction and toughness and decency, but drained of self-confidence and wracked by painful and persistent self-doubt. There is no fairy tale ending for this young man...but there is hope.
J Bean Palmer, Author, Massachusetts
Nineteen is everything you expect from a novel about the modeling biz, and less: sure, the glamour and high drama are there, but the story conventions are overshadowed by a little something extra: the naked truth.
Ron Skla - Modern Magazine
Discussion Questions
1. How do Macklevane’s principles conflict with the world of modeling?
2. If you were in Macklevane’s shoes, what would you do differently in the 1982 world of fashion?
3. How is Macklevane similar to a classic hero? How does Macklevane differ to a classic hero?
4. How would you characterize Macklevane’s childhood? Do you think Macklevane’s childhood has a significant impact on his perceptions of the world and the way that he fits into that world?
5. If Macklevane were to marry one female in Nineteen, who would he choose and why?
6. After reading Nineteen, would you want to be a model. Why or why not?
7. Would you be friends with someone like Macklevane? Why or why not?
8. Do you find the way in which Macklevane behaves to be admirable, or self-serving?
9. Do you find the attitude which Macklevane brings to his own life inspirational. If so, why?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare Series)
Anne Tyler, 2016
Crown/Archetype
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804141260
Summary
Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler brings us an inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies.
Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny?
Plus, she’s always in trouble at work—her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.
Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.
When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying—as usual—on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around? (From the publisher.)
* The Hogarth Shakespeare project publishes Shakespeare works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today. Launched in 2015, the series is to be published in 20 countries. Click here for the list of authors who've signed up for Shakespeare redux.
Author Bio
• Birth—October 25, 1941
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Duke University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize (see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Anne Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published 20 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the third won it.
She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" (New York Times), and her "rigorous and artful style" and "astute and open language" (also, New York Times). While many of her characters have been described as quirky or eccentric, she has managed to make them seem real through skillfully fleshing out their inner lives in great depth.
Her subject in all her novels has been the American family and marriage: the boredom and exasperating irritants endured by partners, children, siblings, parents; the desire for freedom pulling against the tethers of attachments and conflicted love; the evolution over time of familial love and sense of duty. Tyler celebrates unremarkable Americans and the ordinary details of their everyday lives. Because of her style and subject matter, she has been compared to John Updike, Jane Austen, and Eudora Welty, among others.
Childhood
The eldest of four children, she was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father, Lloyd Parry Tyler, was an industrial chemist and her mother, Phyllis Mahon Tyler, a social worker. Both her parents were Quakers who were very active with social causes in the Midwest and the South. Her family lived in a succession of Quaker communities in the South until they settled in 1948 in a Quaker commune in Celo, in the mountains of North Carolina near Burnsville.
The Celo Community settlement was founded by conscientious objectors and members of the liberal Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, with community labor needs shared by the residents. Tyler lived there from age 7 through 11 and helped her parents and others with caring for livestock and organic farming. While she did not attend formal public school in Celo, lessons were taught in art, carpentry, and cooking in homes and in other subjects in a tiny school house. Her early informal training was supplemented by correspondence school.
Her first memory of her own creative story-telling was of crawling under the bed covers at age 3 and "telling myself stories in order to get to sleep at night." Her first book at age 7 was a collection of drawings and stories about "lucky girls...who got to go west in covered wagons." Her favorite book as a child was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. Tyler acknowledges that this book, which she read many times during this period of limited access to books, had a profound influence on her, showing how the years flowed by, people altered, and nothing could ever stay the same."
This early perception of changes over time is a theme that reappears in many of her novels decades later, just as The Little House itself appears in her novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Tyler also describes reading Little Women 22 times as a child. When the Tyler family left Celo after four years to move to Raleigh, NC, 11-year-old Anne had never attended public school and never used a telephone. This unorthodox upbringing enabled her to view "the normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise."
Raleigh, North Carolina
It also meant that Tyler felt herself to be an outsider in the public schools she attended in Raleigh, a feeling that has followed her most of her life. She believes that this sense of being an outsider has contributed to her becoming a writer:
I believe that any kind of setting-apart situation will do [to become a writer]. In my case, it was emerging from the commune…and trying to fit into the outside world.
Despite her lack of public schooling prior to age 11, Anne entered school academically well ahead of most of her classmates in Raleigh. With access now to libraries, she discovered Eudora Welty, Gabriel García Márquez, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. Welty remains one of her favorite writers, and she credits Welty with showing her that books could be about the everyday details of life, not just about major events.
During her years at N. B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, she was inspired and encouraged by a remarkable English teacher, Phyllis Peacock. Peacock had previously taught the writer Reynolds Price, under whom Tyler would later study at Duke University. She would also later teach the writer Armistead Maupin. Seven years after high school, Tyler would dedicate her first published novel to "Mrs. Peacock, for everything you’ve done."
Education
Tyler won a full scholarship to Duke University, which her parents urged her to go accept it because they also needed money for the education of her three younger brothers. At Duke, Tyler enrolled in Reynolds Price's first creative writing class, which also included a future poet, Fred Chappell. Price was most impressed with the sixteen-year-old Tyler, describing her as "frighteningly mature for 16," "wide-eyed," and "an outsider." Years later Price would describe Tyler as "one of the best novelists alive in the world,… who was almost as good a writer at 16 as she is now."
While an undergraduate, Tyler published her short story "Laura" in the Duke literary journal Archive, for which she won the newly created Anne Flexner award for creative writing. She wrote many short stories, one of which impressed Reynolds Price so that he later stated that it was the "most finished, most accomplished short story I have ever received from an undergraduate in my thirty years of teaching." "The Saints in Caesar’s Household" was published in Archive also and won her a second Anne Flexner award. This short story led to her meeting Diarmuid Russell, to whom Price had sent it with kudos. Russell, who was an agent for both Reynolds Price and for Tyler’s "crowning influence" Eudora Welty, later became Tyler’s agent.
Tyler majored in Russian Literature at Duke—not English—and graduated in 1961, at age 19, having been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. With her Russian Literature background she received a fellowship to graduate school in Slavic Studies at Columbia University although she left after a year without her master's degree. She returned to Duke where she got a job in the library as a Russian bibliographer. It was there that she met Taghi Modarressi, a resident in child psychiatry in Duke Medical School and a writer himself, and they were married a year later (1963).
Early writing
While working at the Duke library—before and after marrying Modarressi—Tyler continued to write short stories, which appeared in The New Yoker, Saturday Evening Post, and Harpers. She also started work on her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, eventually published 1964, followed by The Tin Can Tree in 1965. Years later she disowned both of these novels, as well as many of the short stories she wrote during this period, going so far as to say she "would like to burn them." She feels that most of this early work suffers from the lack of thorough character development and her failure to rework material repeatedly.
After the birth of two children (1965 and 1967), followed by a move from Montreal, Canada, to Baltimore in the U.S., Tyler had little time or energy for writing. She published nothing from 1965 to 1970. By 1970, however, she began writing again and published three more novels by 1974—A Slipping-Down Life, The Clock Winder, and Celestial Navigation. In her own opinion, her writing improved considerably during this period; with her children entering school, she was able to devote more time—and focus more intensely—than at any time since her undergraduate days.
National recognition
With Celestial Navigation, Tyler began to get wider recognition. Morgan's Passing (1980) won her the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction and was nominated for both the American Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
With her next novel (her ninth), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Tyler truly arrived as a recognized artist in the literary world. (She considers Homesick her best work.) Her tenth novel, The Accidental Tourist, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1985. It was also made into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. The popularity of this well-received film further increased the growing public awareness of her work. Her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989 and was Time magazine’s "Book of the Year." It was adapted into a 1994 TV movie, as eventually were four other of her novels.
Since her Pulitzer Prize with Breathing Lessons, Tyler has written 9 more novels, all of favorably reviewed, many Book of the Month Club Main Selections and New York Times Bestsellers.
Analysis
In Tyler’s own words, the characters are the driving forces behind the stories and the starting point for her writing:
I do make a point of writing down every imaginable facet of my characters before I begin a book, trying to get to know them so I can figure out how they’ll react in any situation…..My reason for writing now is to live lives other than my own, and I do that by burrowing deeper and deeper….till I reach the center of those lives.
The magic of her novels starts with her ability to create those characters in the reader’s mind through the use of remarkably realistic details. The late Canadian author Carol Shields, writing about Tyler's characters, observes:
Tyler has always put her characters to work. Their often humble or eccentric occupations, carefully observed and threaded with humor, are tightly sewn to the other parts of their lives, offering them the mixed benefit of tedium and consolation, as well as a lighted stage for the unfolding of their dramatic selves. She also allows her men and women an opportunity for redemption.
Tyler has clearly spelled out the importance of her characters to her stories: "As far as I’m concerned, character is everything. I never did see why I have to throw in a plot, too."
Stylistically, Tyler's writing is difficult to categorize or label. Novelist Cathleen Schine describes how her "style without a style" manages to pull the reader into the story:
So rigorous and artful is the style without a style, so measured and delicate is each observation, so complex is the structure and so astute and open the language, that the reader can relax, feel secure in the narrative and experience the work as something real and natural.
The San Francisco Chronicle made a similar point: "One does not so much read a Tyler novel as visit it.
While Tyler herself does not like to think of her novels in terms of themes, numerous reviewers and scholars have noted the importance of family and marriage relationships to her characters and stories. Reviewing Noah's Compass, New York Times' Mitchiko Kakutani noted that
The central concern of most of this author’s characters has always been their need to define themselves in terms of family—the degree to which they see themselves as creatures shaped by genetics, childhood memories and parental and spousal expectations, and the degree to which they are driven to embrace independent identities of their own.
Tyler is not without her critics. The most common criticism is that her works are "sentimental," "sweet," and "charming and cosy." Even Kakutani has also occasionally bemoaned a "cloying cuteness," noting that "her novels—with their eccentric heroes, their homespun details, their improbable, often heartwarming plots—have often flirted with cuteness." In her own defense, Tyler has said,
For one thing I think it is sort of true. I would say piss and vinegar for [Philip] Roth and for me milk and cookies. I can’t deny it…. [However] there’s more edge under some of my soft language than people realize.
Also, because almost all of Tyler’s work covers the same territory—family and marriage relationships—and are located in the same setting, she has come under criticism for being repetitive and formulaic.
Tyler’s advice to beginning writers:
They should run out and buy the works of Erving Goffman, the sociologist who studied the meaning of gesture in personal interactions. I have cause to think about Erving Goffman nearly every day of my life, every time I see people do something unconscious that reveals more than they’ll ever know about their interiors. Aren’t human beings intriguing? I could go on writing about them forever."
Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/2015.)
Book Reviews
Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, set in Baltimore, not far from Johns Hopkins. It is full of Tyler’s signature virtues—domestic details, familial conflict, emotional ambivalence, a sharp sense of place..... Tyler works around the arranged-marriage setup brilliantly by making the suitor formerly known as Petruchio a Russian research assistant on a special visa for people with "extraordinary ability," who is working for Kate’s father. He needs to marry to stay in the country, and the obvious choice is not Bunny, who is only 15, but the difficult, plain, hopeless one, Kate.... Vinegar Girl is...lively and thoughtful.
Jane Smiley - New York Times Book Review
An effective retelling, while nodding to the original text, stands on its own as a story in the way Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince responds to Hamlet and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World plays with The Tempest. Tyler succeeds in creating a world we believe in...Charming...Clever
Boston Globe
This modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew is vintage Tyler—crisp and funny, with quirky but believable characters…set, of course, in Tyler’s beloved Baltimore.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Family drama meets rom-com in a modern version of The Taming of the Shrew. Pushy dad plus entitled little sister, cute but clueless suitor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author equals must-read.
Cosmopolitan
A quirky tale that transports Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew to Tyler's modern-day Baltimore, where a father's attempt to shoehorn his daughter into a green-card marriage has, of course, an unintentionally happy ending.
W Magazine
Tyler’s smooth prose makes Vinegar Girl, one of a series of renowned authors' Shakespearean updates, a light, summer read.
Baltimore Magazine
Ultimately, the tale succeeds as the kind of love story in which the most surprised people are the protagonists—which, arguably, could be said of the original as well—but Shakespeare’s powerful emotions are absent here. It is not the shrew who is tamed, but the tale itself.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The Taming of the Shrew meets Green Card in this delightful reinvention that owes as much to Tyler's quirky sensibilities as it does to its literary forebear. Come for the Shakespeare, stay for the wonderful Tyler. —Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Resplendent storyteller Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015) is perfectly paired with The Taming of the Shrew…Deeply and pleasurably inspired by her source, Tyler is marvelously nimble and effervescent in this charming, hilarious, and wickedly shrewd tale of reversal and revelation.
Booklist
[F]unny, fun-loving and uplifting. Those who know the original well will be intrigued by Tyler's riffs: Is the new Kate less shrewish, or simply better characterized.... In either case, the surprising ending...makes for a heartwarming conclusion to a quirky, timeless tale.
Shelf Awareness
Tyler can't help but invest this mishmash with a good deal of her own rueful humor..., but her special qualities as a writer don't make a very good fit with the original. Neither a faithful retelling nor a trenchant countertale, though agreeable enough as an afternoon's entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points for Vinegar Girl...then take off on your own:
1. Of course, the best place to start is to read Shakespeare's original The Taming of the Shrew and compare it with Anne Tyler's updated version, Vinegar Girl.
2. How do the two Kate's—Anne Tyler's and Shakespeare's—differ in temperament? Both women are sharp-tongued, but what are there nuances which distinguish one from the other? Do you prefer one Kate over the other? If you haven't (yet) read Shakespeare, then just talk about the modern Kate. Do you find her grumpy and unpleasant...or sympathetic? Does your view of her change during the course of the novel?
3. In what way might it be said that the modern-day Kate brings about her own taming?
4. What about the other characters: fathers and eventual husbands? Talk, especially, about the differences between Petruchio and Pytor.
5. Is the arranged marriage in Tyler's version of Taming of the Shrew plausible? Does Tyler pull it off? (Hints of Green Card?)
6. Critics, for years have been divided over the meaning of Shakespeare Kate's speech in which she submits to her husband. Is it done with a wink (ironic) or spoken in earnest? What about Tyler's Kate? How do the emphases of the two final speeches differ?
7.. Finally, of course, which version do you prefer? Does Tyler's have the fireworks and passion of the original? Or does it strive for a different aesthetic?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
They May Not Mean To, But They Do
Catherine Schine, 2016
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374280130
Summary
From one of America’s greatest comic novelists, a hilarious new novel about aging, family, loneliness, and love
The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don’t just grow, they grow old, and the clan’s matriarch, Joy, is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would have wished.
When Joy’s beloved husband dies, Molly and Daniel have no shortage of solutions for their mother’s loneliness and despair, but there is one challenge they did not count on: the reappearance of an ardent suitor from Joy’s college days. And they didn’t count on Joy herself, a mother suddenly as willful and rebellious as their own kids.
Cathleen Schine has been called "full of invention, wit, and wisdom that can bear comparison to [ Jane] Austen’s own" (The New York Review of Books), and she is at her best in this intensely human, profound, and honest novel about the intrusion of old age into the relationships of one loving but complicated family.
They May Not Mean To, But They Do is a radiantly compassionate look at three generations, all coming of age together. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Where—Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Currently—lives in New York City and Venice, California
In her own words:
I tried to be a medieval historian, but I have no memory for facts, dates, or abstract ideas, so that was a bust. When I came back to New York, I tried to be a buyer at Bloomingdale's because I loved shopping. I had an interview, but they never called me back. I really had no choice. I had to be a writer. I could not get a job.
After doing some bits of freelance journalism at the Village Voice, I did finally get a job as a copy editor at Newsweek. My grammar was good, but I can't spell, so it was a challenge. My boss was very nice and indulgent, though, and I wrote Alice in Bed on scraps of paper during slow hours. I didn't have a regular job again until I wrote The Love Letter.
The Love Letter was about a bookseller, so I worked in a bookstore in an attempt to understand the art of bookselling. I discovered that selling books is an interdisciplinary activity, the disciplines being: literary critic, psychologist, and stevedore. I was fired immediately for total incompetence and chaos and told to sit in the back and observe, no talking, no touching.
I dislike humidity and vomit, I guess. My interests and hobbies are too expensive or too physically taxing to actually pursue. I like to take naps. I go shopping to unwind. I love to shop. Even if it's for Q-Tips or Post-Its.
When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
When I left graduate school after a gruesome attempt to become a medieval historian, I crawled into bed and read Our Mutual Friend. It was, unbelievably, the first Dickens I had ever read, the first novel I'd read in years, and one of the first books not in or translated from Latin I'd read in years. It was a startling, liberating, exhilarating moment that reminded me what English can be, what characters can be, what humor can be. I of course read all of Dickens after that and then started on Trollope, who taught me the invaluable lesson that character is fate, and that fate is not always a neat narrative arc.
But I always hesitate to claim the influence of any author: It seems presumptuous. I want to be influenced by Dickens and Trollope. I long to be influenced by Jane Austen, too, and Barbara Pym and Alice Munro. I aspire to be influenced by Randall Jarrell's brilliant novel, Pictures from an Institution. And I read Muriel Spark when I feel myself becoming soft and sentimental, as a kind of tonic. (From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview.)
Book Reviews
…combines black comedy with shrewd observation of family dynamics…Joy is a persuasive character, intelligent, independent, with a flair for witty responses and wry thoughts, though in fact everyone in Schine's narrative is given to sharp comment and occasionally manic behavior. Despite its subject matter, They May Not Mean To, but They Do is a very funny novel…Cathleen Schine writes with economy and style—saying most by saying least, employing brief staccato sentences, with much of the action unfolding by way of dialogue. Some readers might feel that too much levity surrounds some disturbing matters…But others will see this as a proper form of defiance, the best way to face down the most disagreeable of circumstances. This is a novel in which serious subjects are treated with a deliberately light touch, a tactic that doesn't imply insensitivity or lack of empathy but simply accepts the fact that humor may be the best way of dealing with the unavoidable.
Penelope Lively - New York Times Book Review
Cathleen Schine [is] one of our most realistically imaginative, dependably readable novelists.... [H]er ten books comprise a sly, illuminating corpus that seems more related to the English comic novel than to most contemporary American fiction. [S]hapely and precisely structured... ruefully satiric... buoyant... sharply observant.... Her tenth and newest novel... cuts deeper, feels fuller and more ambitious, and seems to me her best.
Phillip Lopate - New York Review of Books
A seamless blend of humor and heartbreak
Miami Herald
Schine has a gift for transforming the pathos and comedy of everyday life into luminous fiction.
Entertainment Weekly
With its unexpected moments of profundity and laugh-aloud humor, Cathleen Schine’s novel movingly demonstrates how parents and children may not mean to but they do, ultimately, strain yet sustain one another.
Lilith Magazine
Schine’s latest novel combines the dark, pithy humor of a Lorrie Moore short story with quieter insights into aging, death, and the love, loneliness, and incomprehension that gets passed back and forth between generations.
Tablet
[A]droit observations about family, loss, and aging....showcasing Schine’s intuitive empathy, and any adult with an aged parent will recognize [Joy's] children’s well-meaning concern. Unfortunately, the ending peters out without a real conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
Schine is a master at limning family dynamics in all their messiness.... [T]his could be any reader’s clan. In addition, Schine’s ability to shift seamlessly from one person’s point of view to another’s adds depth and richness. —Andrea Kempf, formerly Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal
A deeply affecting yet very funny intergenerational novel...the novel is as humorous as it is compassionate.... They May Not Mean To, But They Do has an extra layer of depth and dignity, making for a profound but very readable novel that is among her very best.
BookPage
"It's hard to be an old Jew," as one of the characters comments, and it's not so exciting to read about them, either. If this is the beginning of a tsunami of books about aging by baby-boomer authors, let's hope things pick up.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How do the aging parents described in the novel compare to your relatives? Who will your longterm caregivers be when you’re not able to care for yourself?
2. Aaron is "sentimental and unreliable and brimming with love and obvious charm," while Joy is"distracted, forgetful, thoughtful, brimming with love, too." How were Molly and Daniel affected by having lovebirds for parents? In their own marriages, and as parents themselves, are Molly and Daniel very different from their parents?
3. As Aaron and Duncan lose their grip on reality, which one fares better?
4. What is the ultimate role of Walter, Wanda, and Elvira? How does Joy navigate the fact that they are paid workers, yet they are performing deeply personal work for a family that has become attached to them?
5. Cathleen Schine is a master of tragicomedy. Which scenes made you laugh out loud, inappropriately?
6. Where should Freddie and Coco fit into the decision-making for their in-laws? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being on the fringes of a family in crisis?
7. Is "selling Upstate" the best solution to Joy’s financial conundrum? Should children help pay for their parents' retirement?
8. How does Joy’s life as a museum conservator reflect her perception of the past?
9. Chapter 41 is just two sentences long: "Daniel asked his mother if she was depressed. She said, 'Naturally.' " What do these seemingly simple sentences say about the nature of grief?
10. How do you predict Ben, Cora, and Ruby will treat their aging parents?
11. Would you have said yes to Karl’s proposition, even if it meant giving up a rent-controlled apartment?
12. In the closing scene, as Joy helps Ben with a legal situation, why does she finally feel at home? What does she want her purpose in life to be?
13. In the last paragraph of chapter 20, Joy turns the Philip Larkin lines cited in the epigraph on their head; in her version, "they" refers to the children, not the parents. What do her children mean to do, and why do they create such havoc for her?
14. In each of her novels, which portraits of companionship and solitude does Cathleen Schine create? How do her characters tolerate loneliness, and each other?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Girls in the Garden
Lisa Jewell, 2015 (2016, U.S.)
Atria Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476792217
Summary
Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses. You’ve known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly.
You think your children are safe. But are they really?
On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her thirteen-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden.
What really happened to her? And who is responsible?
Dark secrets, a devastating mystery, and the games both children and adults play all swirl together in this gripping novel, packed with utterly believable characters and page-turning suspense. Fans of Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes will be captivated by The Girls in the Garden. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 19, 1968
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Epsom School of Art & Design
• Awards—Melissa Nathan Award For Comedy Romance
• Currently—lives in London, England
Lisa Jewell is a British author of popular fiction. Her books number some 15, including most recently The House We Grew Up In (2013), The Third Wife (2014), The Girls in the Garden (U.S. title of 2016), I found You (2016), and Watching You (2018).
She was educated at St. Michael's Catholic Grammar School in Finchley, north London, leaving school after one day in the sixth form to do an art foundation course at Barnet College followed by a diploma in fashion illustration at Epsom School of Art & Design.
She worked in fashion retail for several years, namely Warehouse and Thomas Pink.
After being made redundant, Jewell accepted a challenge from her friend to write three chapters of a novel in exchange for dinner at her favourite restaurant. Those three chapters were eventually developed into Jewell's debut novel Ralph's Party, which then became the UK's bestselling debut novel in 1999.
Jewell is one of the most popular authors writing in the UK today, and in 2008 was awarded the Melissa Nathan Award For Comedy Romance for her novel 31 Dream Street.
She currently lives in Swiss Cottage, London with her husband Jascha and two daughters. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/22/2016.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
Jewell expertly mines the relationships of her compelling, multilayered characters for a perfect pack-for-vacation read.
Fort-Worth Star Telegram
Another winner. Beautiful writing, believable characters, a pacy narrative and dark secrets combine to make this a gripping read.
London Daily Mail
Jewell expertly builds suspense by piling up domestic misunderstandings and more plot twists than an SVU episode. It’s a page-turner for readers who like beach reads on the dark side.
People
An intoxicating, spellbinding read that will make readers entranced with Lisa Jewell’s wicked and gorgeous prose…raw, intense, gritty, dark and suspenseful. If you are looking for a looking for a psychological thriller that will unfold secrets and truths in a shocking manner, this book is for you.
Manhattan Book Review
Jewell pens a psychological thriller that leaves readers wondering if they really know all the answers. Children can be more frightening than adults, as she demonstrates in her brilliant portrayal of youthful deceit and jealousy. Each individual is vividly described and counterbalanced by their strengths and weaknesses.
Romance Times Magazine
A suspenseful mystery.
Womans Day
(Starred review.) Rich characterization and intricate plot development are combined with mid-chapter cliffhangers...resulting in a riveting pace. Vivid descriptions of the bucolic park contrast with [lurking] evil...a pervasive atmosphere of unease in this well-spun narrative.
Publishers Weekly
[A] page-turner that keeps the suspense flowing.... Jewell sharply evades the truth while bouncing the story among multiple character.... The book's conclusion will leave readers saying, "Of course that's whodunit" after ricocheting about with uncertainty. —Jennifer M. Schlau, Elgin Community Coll., IL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Full of suspense yet emotionally grounded…Fans of Liane Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Carla Buckley will adore this peek inside a gated community that truly takes care of its own, no matter the consequences.
Booklist
Jewell...ultimately fails to develop a climax that would bring together the several dramatic tropes at work.... [The author] offers an intriguing premise and characters but has difficulty maintaining plot momentum and creating depth of character.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Who did you first suspect of attacking Grace? Did your suspicions change over the course of the book? Were there clues that pointed you toward the perpetrator? What were some of the red herrings that misdirected your attention?
2. Adele has a very lenient, alternative parenting style, homeschooling and preferring to let her children make their own choices, whatever they are. She repeatedly suggests that she feels judged by others for her lifestyle. How did you feel about how she is raising her children? Were there points in the book you felt supportive or critical of her maternal choices?
3. The police suggest that Grace is "mature for her age" (page 206). Do you agree that Grace is (or is acting) more mature than her age? If so, how? How do Grace’s or Pip’s experiences compare with your own experience of being twelve and thirteen?
4. A major issue in this book is that of growing up. What growth do you see in Pip from the beginning to the end of The Girls in the Garden? Compare and contrast Pip’s development with the ways in which Grace matures.
5. Do you think Clare made the right decision in keeping Pip and Grace’s father’s release from the hospital a secret? Why or why not?
6. Adele asserts that "with parenting there’s a long game and a short game. The aim of the short game is to make your children bearable to live with. Easy to transport. Well behaved in public place . . . But the aim of the long game is to produce a good human being" (page 150). Do you agree with her belief that you can "skip" the short game? Is there a middle ground between her viewpoint and Gordon’s discipline-focused approach?
7. What draws Clare to Leo? Is her attraction to him based more on her own circumstances or something about him?
8. Why do you think Lisa Jewell wrote primarily from Pip, Clare, and Adele’s perspectives? What do these narrators have in common? What is unique about their different standpoints, and how does this affect the story?
9. Did you relate to any of the girls or parents more than the others? In what ways?
10. Do you think you would enjoy living in a home with a communal garden like the one described? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks?
11. What drives Catkin and Fern to follow Tyler’s lead? What do you think were their motivations for taking the actions they took?
12. Why does Adele ultimately look after Tyler? Are her motives purely selfless?
13. Do you think Adele does the right thing by keeping quiet after she discovers what happened to Grace? What would you have done in her position?
14. All of the girls go through both traumatic and formative experiences during the course of the book. What do you think the various girls will be like when they are grown up?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Airframe
Michael Crichton, 1996
Ballantine Books
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345526779
Summary
Three passengers are dead. Fifty-six are injured. The interior cabin virtually destroyed. But the pilot manages to land the plane. . . .
At a moment when the issue of safety and death in the skies is paramount in the public mind, a lethal midair disaster aboard a commercial twin-jet airliner bound from Hong Kong to Denver triggers a pressured and frantic investigation.
Airframe is nonstop listening: the extraordinary mixture of super suspense and authentic information on a subject of compelling interest that has been a Crichton landmark since The Andromeda Strain. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 23, 1942
• Raised—Roslyn (Long Island), New York, USA
• Death—November 4, 2008
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—A.B., M.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Edgar Award for Best Novel (1969)
John Michael Crichton—the American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter—is best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at #1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively).
Crichton's literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. He was the author of, among others, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next (the final book published before his death), Pirate Latitudes (published November 24, 2009), and a final unfinished techno-thriller, Micro, which was published in November 2011
Background
John Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, but raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York. He showed a keen interest in writing from a young age and at the age of 14 had a column related to travel published in The New York Times. Crichton had always planned on becoming a writer and began his studies at Harvard College in 1960. During his undergraduate study in literature, he conducted an experiment to expose a professor whom he believed to be giving him abnormally low marks and criticizing his literary style. Informing another professor of his suspicions, Crichton plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. The paper was returned by his unwitting professor with a mark of B-minus.
His issues with the English department led Crichton to switch his concentration to biological anthropology as an undergraduate, obtaining his A.B. summa cum laude in 1964. He was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the UK in 1965.
Crichton later enrolled at Harvard Medical School, when he began publishing work. By this time he had become exceptionally tall. By his own account, he was approximately 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m) tall in 1997. In reference to his height, while in medical school, he began writing novels under the pen names "John Lange" and "Jeffrey Hudson" ("Lange" is a surname in Germany, meaning "long", and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th-century dwarf in the court of Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of England). In Travels, he recalls overhearing doctors who were unaware that he was the author of The Andromeda Strain, discussing the flaws in his book. A Case of Need, written under the Hudson pseudonym, won him his first Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1969. He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name "Michael Douglas." The back cover of that book carried a picture, taken by their mother, of Michael and Douglas when very young.
During his clinical rotations at the Boston City Hospital, Crichton grew disenchanted with the culture there, which appeared to emphasize the interests and reputations of doctors over the interests of patients. Crichton graduated from Harvard, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. He never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his writing career instead.
Reflecting on his career in medicine years later, Crichton concluded that patients too often shunned responsibility for their own health, relying on doctors as miracle workers rather than advisors. He experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, coming to believe that these included real phenomena that scientists had too eagerly dismissed as paranormal.
In 1988, Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Personal life
Crichton was a diest.
As an adolescent Crichton felt isolated because of his height (at 6'9"). As an adult he was acutely aware of his intellect, which often left him feeling alienated from the people around him. During the 1970s and 1980s he consulted psychics and enlightenment gurus to make him feel more socially acceptable and to improve his karma. As a result of these experiences, Crichton practiced meditation throughout much of his life.
Crichton was a workaholic. When drafting a novel, which would typically take him six or seven weeks, he withdrew completely to follow what he called "a structured approach" of ritualistic self-denial. As he neared writing the end of each book, he would rise increasingly early each day, meaning that he would sleep for less than four hours by going to bed at 10 pm and waking at 2 am. In 1992, Crichton was ranked among People magazine's 50 most beautiful people.
He married five times; four of the marriages ended in divorce. He was married to Suzanna Childs, Joan Radam (1965–1970), Kathleen St. Johns (1978–1980), and actress Anne-Marie Martin (1987–2003), the mother of his daughter Taylor Anne (born 1989). At the time of his death, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander, who was six months pregnant with their son. John Michael Todd Crichton was born on February 12, 2009.
Death
In accordance with the private way in which Crichton lived his life, his throat cancer was not made public until his death. According to Crichton's brother Douglas, Crichton was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2008. He was undergoing chemotherapy treatment at the time of his death, and Crichton's physicians and family members had been expecting him to make a recovery. He unexpectedly died of the disease on November 4, 2008 at the age of 66.
Michael's talent outscaled even his own dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the earth. In the early days, Michael had just sold The Andromeda Strain to Robert Wise at Universal and I had recently signed on as a contract TV director there. My first assignment was to show Michael Crichton around the Universal lot. We became friends and professionally. Jurassic Park, ER, and Twister followed. Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place. —Steven Spielberg at Michael Crichton's death.
Crichton had an impressive collection of 20th century American art, which was auctioned by Christie's in May 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Dramatically vivid.
New York Times
A one-sitting read that will cause a lifetime of white-nuckled nightmares.
Philadelphia Inquirer
The pacing is fast, the suspense nonstop.
People
[S]light, enjoyable thriller.... [The] suspense rises, peaking high above the earth in an exciting re-creation of the flight. It's possible that Crichton has invented a new subgenre here—the industrial thriller.... [B]estselling, cinema-ready entertainment.
Publishers Weekly
Crichton's talent lies in making arcane sciences fascinating to even the most spirited Luddite, and fans won't be disappointed by his descriptions of the technology employed in the making of passenger planes and, in particular, the precision with which the aircraft's wings are designed. —Mark Annichiarico
Library Journal
[b]illed as a "technical thriller" but the technology seems to outweigh the thrills.... Crichton incorporates enough suspense to keep readers going but a degree in engineering would be helpful in understanding this novel. —Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Middle School, Burke, VA
School Library Journal
Loading it with interesting detail on airliner construction, aerodynamics, the international trade in commercial aircraft, and air safety, Crichton produces a taut, absorbing suspenser. —Ray Olson
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Our thanks to Rena DeBerry of Salem, Virginia, for submitting these terrific discussion questions to LitLovers.
1. Did the book description meet your expectations?
2. Pages 286-291 - The book reveals that television media is not liablefor sharing only parts of truth or responsible for providing fairnessdoctrine when covering new story. In addition, there is no recourse for erroneous view and can only proceed reckless disregard which is very difficult to approve. What is your opinion of the practice?
3. Why is a personal video with a child in it from the airplane to be made a public not a privacy issue? What about the passenger’s rights? Was it violated with the video?
4. Some version of the excuse "you don’t understand" is used by Casey throughout the book. Do you agree or think it is an opt out for responsibility?
5. Let’s discuss Union. Throughout the book there is Union unrest and "accidents". Are they believable? Are they justified? How does this translate to modern times? In real life, do you think the Union Representative would have really warned Casey? Why do you think Don warned Casey?
6. Knowing you were on the Union’s "hitlist" would you have been as reckless as Casey in her search for the truth?
7. Throughout the book "company gossip" was the main form of communication. How have you been affected by company gossip, both true and untrue?
8. Would you have gone on the test flight?
9. Pages 412-417 -Were the "finding of 545" believable? Do you really believe that a major airline (foreign or domestic) would be so irresponsible in letting a noncertified pilot (familial or not) fly the plane?
10. Page 416-417 - Let’s discuss naivety as Casey described. Does it apply to just the pilot and Jennifer or also other characters?
Casey shrugged, "He loves his son. We believe he’s allowed him to fly on other occasions. But there’s a reason why commercial pilots are required to train extensively on specific equipment, to be certified. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he got caught."
Casey closed the door, and thought: And so did you.
11. Did you know Richman and Marder were the saboteurs of Casey’s investigation? If so, what tipped you off?
12.Greed is an underlying them throughout the book. Hal for the China sale. Marder for the Korea sale. How did greed influence the aircraft report? The Union? Media appearance? Was it justified? Was it believable?
13.With all the issues Norton faced, would the deal with China actually have gone through?
14.Because of Marder’s deception, what do you think the downfall of the Korea sale would have been for Norton? Marder?
15.Were you satisfied with the neat tied up endings for everyone? Casey? Norton? Marder? Richman? Malone?
16.On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate Airframe? Would you recommend Airframe? Why or why not?
(Questions courtesy of Rena DeBerry. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution to both LitLovers and Rena. Thanks.)