Waiting to Exhale
Terry McMillan, 1992
Penguin Publishing
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451233424
Summary
Four African-American women console and support one another in a complex friendship that helps each of them face the middle of her life as a single woman.
A wise, earthy story of a friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while “waiting to exhale”: waiting for that man who will take their breath away. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 18, 1951
• Where—Port Huron, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley
• Awards— Essence Award for Excellence in Literature
• Currently—lives in northern California
Terry McMillan is an American author. Her interest in books comes from working at a library when she was sixteen. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 at University of California, Berkeley. Her work is characterized by relatable female protagonists.
Her first book, Mama, was published in 1987. She achieved national attention in 1992 with her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for many months. In 1995, Forest Whitaker turned it into a film starring Whitney Houston.
Another of McMillan's novels, her 1998 novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was also made into a movie. Disappearing Acts (2012) was subsequently produced as a direct-to-cable feature, starring Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan.
McMillan also published the best seller A Day Late and a Dollar Short in 2002 and The Interruption of Everything in 2005. Getting to Happy, the long-awaited sequel to Waiting to Exhale, was published in 2010. In 2013, she published Who Asked You?, an intimate look at the burdens and blessings of family, and in 2016, I Almost Forgot About You, a look at mid-life crises.
Personal
McMillan married Jamaican Jonathan Plummer in 1998; she was in her late 40s and he in his early 20s. He was the inspiration for the love interest of the main character in her novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Her life did not follow the movie when, in December 2004, Plummer told McMillan that he was gay; in March 2005, she filed for divorce. The divorce was settled for an undisclosed amount. In March 2007, McMillan sued Plummer and his lawyer for $40 million, citing an intentional strategy to embarrass and humiliate her during the divorce proceedings; McMillan eventually won a judgment of intentional infliction of emotional distress, but had withdrawn the suit before the case went to trial; Plummer was never ordered to pay the intended amount. On September 27, 2010, the two sat together with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to discuss their post-divorce relationship and partial reconciliation; both acknowledged that he fulfilled the role of boyfriend and husband before his coming-out, although McMillan stated that "he's not my BFF." McMillan has a son Solomon and lives outside San Francisco, California. (From Wikiipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
[R]acy, zesty, irreverent and absorbing.... McMillan keeps us constantly guessing about which members of her lively quartet will be...rewarded. There's nothing stereotyped in her work here: it is fresh and engaging.
Publishers Weekly
.
[P]redictable plot, prose that often falls flat, and a narrative that lacks depth. [What's] stronger is the author's sharp, often humorous depiction of the strong bonds among the four friends. —Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia
Library Journal
[McMillan's] bawdy, vibrant, deliciously readable third novel is the story of four black women friends and their frequently disastrous encounters with black men.... [T]hey are as timeless as Molly Bloom or the Wife of Bath in their robust sensuality. A novel that...has heart and pizzazz.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Terry McMillan, 1996
Penguin Publishing
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451209146
Summary
Stella Payne is forty-two, divorced, a high-powered investment analyst, mother of eleven-year-old Quincy—and she does it all.
In fact, if she doesn't do it, it doesn't get done, from Little League carpool duty to analyzing portfolios to folding the laundry and bringing home the bacon. She does it all well, too, if her chic house, personal trainer, BMW, and her loving son are any indication.
So what if there's been no one to share her bed with lately, let alone rock her world? Stella doesn't mind it too much; she probably wouldn't have the energy for love—and all of love's nasty fallout—anyway.
But when Stella takes a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Jamaica, her world gets rocked to the core—not just by the relaxing effects of the sun and sea and an island full of attractive men, but by one man in particular. He's tall, lean, soft-spoken, Jamaican, smells of citrus and the ocean—and is half her age.
The tropics have cast their spell and Stella soon realizes she has come to a cataclysmic juncture: not only must she confront her hopes and fears about love, she must question all of her expectations, passions, and ideas about life and the way she has lived it.
Told in Stella's own exuberant, dead-on, dead honest voice, How Stella Got Her Groove Back is full of Terry McMillan's signature humor, heart, and insight. More than a love story, it is ultimately a novel about how a woman saves her own life—and what she must risk to do it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 18, 1951
• Where—Port Huron, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley
• Awards— Essence Award for Excellence in Literature
• Currently—lives in northern California
Terry McMillan is an American author. Her interest in books comes from working at a library when she was sixteen. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 at University of California, Berkeley. Her work is characterized by relatable female protagonists.
Her first book, Mama, was published in 1987. She achieved national attention in 1992 with her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for many months. In 1995, Forest Whitaker turned it into a film starring Whitney Houston.
Another of McMillan's novels, her 1998 novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was also made into a movie. Disappearing Acts (2012) was subsequently produced as a direct-to-cable feature, starring Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan.
McMillan also published the best seller A Day Late and a Dollar Short in 2002 and The Interruption of Everything in 2005. Getting to Happy, the long-awaited sequel to Waiting to Exhale, was published in 2010. In 2013, she published Who Asked You?, an intimate look at the burdens and blessings of family, and in 2016, I Almost Forgot About You, a look at mid-life crises.
Personal
McMillan married Jamaican Jonathan Plummer in 1998; she was in her late 40s and he in his early 20s. He was the inspiration for the love interest of the main character in her novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Her life did not follow the movie when, in December 2004, Plummer told McMillan that he was gay; in March 2005, she filed for divorce. The divorce was settled for an undisclosed amount. In March 2007, McMillan sued Plummer and his lawyer for $40 million, citing an intentional strategy to embarrass and humiliate her during the divorce proceedings; McMillan eventually won a judgment of intentional infliction of emotional distress, but had withdrawn the suit before the case went to trial; Plummer was never ordered to pay the intended amount. On September 27, 2010, the two sat together with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to discuss their post-divorce relationship and partial reconciliation; both acknowledged that he fulfilled the role of boyfriend and husband before his coming-out, although McMillan stated that "he's not my BFF." McMillan has a son Solomon and lives outside San Francisco, California. (From Wikiipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
Terry McMillan is the only novelist I have ever read...who makes me glad to be a woman.... Fans of McMillan's previous novels, the hugely popular Waiting to Exhale and the more critically esteemed Disappearing Acts and Mama, will recognize McMillan's authentic, unpretentious voice in every page of How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It is the voice of the kind of woman all of us know and all of us need; the warm, strong, bossy mother/sister/best friend.
Liesl Schillinger - Washington Post Book World
So much fun in so many ways...a down-and-dirty, romantic and brave story told to you by this smart, good-hearted woman as if she were your best friend or your sister.
New York Newsday
A confessional, sister-can-you-understand-this open diary....I laughed out loud.
Boston Globe
The novel sparkles.
Chicago Sun-Times
A riotous, sexy book...told in the inimitable voice of Stella, who will charm the reader from the first page.... Fans and first-time readers will be hooked.
Richmond Times Dispatch
A liberating love story...tells women it's okay to let go, follow your heart, take a chance and fall in love, even if that love comes from a place you'd least expect.
Orlando Sentinel
[A] a fairy tale.... [R]eaders who have been yearning for a Judith Krantz of the black bourgeoisie—albeit one with a dirty mouth and a more ebullient spirit—will be pleased with this fantasy of sexual fulfillment.
Publishers Weekly
.
[A] tossed-together tale.... The love story provides a suitable frame for the author's trademark charm and credible sense of black middle-class values, but sloppy prose and a single, rather solitary protagonist fail to give readers the synergistic magic of the earlier book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
I Almost Forgot About You
Terry McMillan, 2016
Crown/Archetype
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101902578
Summary
The inspiring story of a woman who shakes things up in her life to find greater meaning.
In I Almost Forgot About You, Dr. Georgia Young's wonderful life—great friends, family, and successful career—aren't enough to keep her from feeling stuck and restless.
When she decides to make some major changes in her life, including quitting her job as an optometrist and moving house, she finds herself on a wild journey that may or may not include a second chance at love. Georgia’s bravery reminds us that it’s never too late to become the person you want to be, and that taking chances, with your life and your heart, are always worthwhile.
Big-hearted, genuine, and very universal, I Almost Forgot About You shows what can happen when you face your fears, take a chance, and open yourself up to life, love, and the possibility of a new direction. It’s everything you’ve always loved about Terry McMillan. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 18, 1951
• Where—Port Huron, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley
• Awards— Essence Award for Excellence in Literature
• Currently—lives in northern California
Terry McMillan is an American author. Her interest in books comes from working at a library when she was sixteen. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 at University of California, Berkeley. Her work is characterized by relatable female protagonists.
Her first book, Mama, was published in 1987. She achieved national attention in 1992 with her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for many months. In 1995, Forest Whitaker turned it into a film starring Whitney Houston.
Another of McMillan's novels, her 1998 novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was also made into a movie. Disappearing Acts (2012) was subsequently produced as a direct-to-cable feature, starring Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan.
McMillan also published the best seller A Day Late and a Dollar Short in 2002 and The Interruption of Everything in 2005. Getting to Happy, the long-awaited sequel to Waiting to Exhale, was published in 2010. In 2013, she published Who Asked You?, an intimate look at the burdens and blessings of family, and in 2016, I Almost Forgot About You, a look at mid-life crises.
Personal
McMillan married Jamaican Jonathan Plummer in 1998; she was in her late 40s and he in his early 20s. He was the inspiration for the love interest of the main character in her novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Her life did not follow the movie when, in December 2004, Plummer told McMillan that he was gay; in March 2005, she filed for divorce. The divorce was settled for an undisclosed amount. In March 2007, McMillan sued Plummer and his lawyer for $40 million, citing an intentional strategy to embarrass and humiliate her during the divorce proceedings; McMillan eventually won a judgment of intentional infliction of emotional distress, but had withdrawn the suit before the case went to trial; Plummer was never ordered to pay the intended amount. On September 27, 2010, the two sat together with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to discuss their post-divorce relationship and partial reconciliation; both acknowledged that he fulfilled the role of boyfriend and husband before his coming-out, although McMillan stated that "he's not my BFF." McMillan has a son Solomon and lives outside San Francisco, California. (Adapted from Wikiipedia. Retrieved 6/12/2016)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
After almost three decades of success and celebrity, McMillan still knows how to please…. Self-discovery, second chances and the importance of family are thematic hallmarks of McMillan’s novels, as is the rich and colorful dialogue that make her books so much fun to read. I Almost Forgot About You checks all the boxes.... By novel’s end, you’ll realize what a clever title McMillan has chosen. Georgia’s choices will have readers of a certain age looking at their own lives and agreeing with her that sometimes you know in your heart it’s time for a change.
Washington Post
McMillan is funny and frank about men, women and sex. Her summaries of Georgia’s marriages and major love connections—"this is what he gave me"—are powerful and poetic.
USA Today
McMillan paints relationships in joyous primary colors; her novel brims with sexy repartee, caustic humor, and a fluent, assured prose that shines a bright light on her memorable characters. Her very best since Waiting to Exhale.
O Magazine
Reading a Terry McMillan book feels like catching up with an old friend... Displaying a range of emotions, I Almost Forgot About You is a book that is important for readers of every age. Before reading this novel, the "you" in the title may be up for discussion, but in the end, it’s clear McMillan wants readers to look within to find the answers they needed all along.
Ebony
[A] rambunctious showcase of the bestselling author’s keen ear for language, clear eye for the give-and-take of sex, love, and commitment, and heartfelt faith in happy endings.... There’s no better guide than McMillan for this excursion through early-, middle-, and old-age crises.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) McMillan has written an engaging novel with an appealing cast of women.... This near-perfect choice for women’s book club discussions will prompt arguments of what makes a guy too good to be true.
Library Journal
In her signature mode, McMillan has a casual, conversational style that makes her determined female lead warmly engaging and relatable. With humor and a feel-good tone, McMillan reminds readers that it is never too late for love or new possibilities.
Booklist
The reader finds herself torn between gritting her teeth at how right McMillan gets the relationships between best friends, ex-spouses, ex-lovers, parents and children and putting the book down to laugh out loud. Run, don't walk and pick up this exuberant summer read.
BookPage
Here is McMillan's trademark style in full, feisty effect: strong, complicated female characters, energetic prose, and an entertaining, seductive narrative. A heartwarming story that reminds us of the pure joy of believing in love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Before the Fall
Noah Hawley, 2016
Grand Central Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455561780
Summary
Winner, 2017 Edgar Award
On a foggy summer night, eleven people—ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter—depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean.
The only survivors are Scott Burroughs—the painter—and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.
With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members—including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot—the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens.
As the passengers' intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work?
Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.
Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawence College
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles, California
Noah Hawley is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, composer, and novelist, known for creating and writing the FX anthology television series Fargo.
Early life
Hawley was born and raised in New York City, New York. His mother, Louise Armstrong, was a non-fiction writer and activist, and his maternal grandmother was a playwright. His father, Tom Hawley, was a businessman. He has a twin brother, Alexi, who is a writer for the television show The Following and the creator of State of Affairs.
Hawley graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in political science in 1989. He worked for Legal Aid Society in New York City, dealing with cases involving child abuse and neglect. He later moved to San Francisco and did computer programming work at law firms and worked as a paralegal.
Books, TV and film
His novels include Before the Fall (2016), The Good Father (2012) The Punch (2008), Other People's Weddings (2004), and A Conspiracy of Tall Men (1998). Sony Pictures has acquired the rights to Before the Fall, and Hawly has been tapped to write the screenplay.
Hawley is the creator and showrunner for the television series Fargo (2014), based on the Coen brothers' 1996 film of the same name. Fargo won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries in 2014, along with 17 additional nominations. In total, the series has been nominated for 113 awards since its premiere, winning 32 of them.
Hawley resides in Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, with his wife Kyle Hawley and their two children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/9/2016.)
Book Reviews
Very often, we see what we want to see. As a young boy, painter Scott Burroughs was inspired to swim when he watched celebrity athlete Jack LaLanne stroke from Alcatraz Island to the shore, his wrists chained to a 1,000-pound boat. Sadly, Scott’s youth of championship swimming eventually gave way to an adulthood of alcoholism, failed relationships, and an art career that never quite got off of the ground. READ MORE.
John Michael De Marco, author Book Club Widowerers - LitLovers
[I]ngeniously nerve-racking…If you didn't already know that Mr. Hawley is a celebrated storyteller, you'll know it before you finish the first page of [Before the Fall]…This is one of the year's best suspense novels, a mesmerizing, surprise-jammed mystery that works purely on its own, character-driven terms…Mr. Hawley does a beautiful job of turning his book into an extended tease, with separate chapters about each passenger and revelations about why each could have been a target…Mr. Hawley has made it very, very easy to race through his book in a state of breathless suspense.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Hype and advertising and celebrity can certainly get a reader to pick up a novel and read the first few pages. After that, it's all about the words and the characters, the heart and soul of the story. I had no doubt that Hawley could write, that he could create amazing characters, that he had an ear for dialogue and a unique point of view—but could he write a successful novel? The answer, as readers of his four earlier books probably know already, is a resounding yes…Noah Hawley really knows how to keep a reader turning the pages, but there's more to the novel than suspense. On one hand, Before the Fall is a complex, compulsively readable thrill ride of a novel. On the other, it is an exploration of the human condition, a meditation on the vagaries of human nature, the dark side of celebrity, the nature of art, the power of hope and the danger of an unchecked media. The combination is a potent, gritty thriller that exposes the high cost of news as entertainment and the randomness of fate.
Kristin Hannah - New York Times Book Review
[A] terrific thriller...an irresistible mystery...a tale that's both an intriguing puzzle and a painful story of human loss.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post
At first blush, Before the Fall appears to be on track to be a typical action-packed thriller.... But author Noah Hawley soon veers his highly entertaining novel into an insightful look at families, revenge and media intrusion by delving deeply into each character’s story. Hawley invests the same care with a soupcon of dark humor into Before the Fall as he does on the TV series Fargo, of which he is executive producer, writer and showrunner.
Associated Press - Oline H. Cogdill
(Starred review.) [T]elevision producer and screenwriter Hawley’s fifth novel is a masterly blend of mystery, suspense, tragedy, and shameful media hype.... This is a gritty tale of a man overwhelmed by unwelcome notoriety, with a stunning, thoroughly satisfying conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
[A] struggling artist becomes a hero twice—first by saving a young boy's life, then by outsmarting the anchor of a Fox-like conservative TV network.... Hawley piles on enough intrigues and plot complications to keep you hooked even if you can spot most of them a sea mile away.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The questions below have been graciously submitted to LitLovers by Linda at Anaheim Hills Page Turners. Many thanks, Linda.
1. "Everyone has their path. The choices they’ve made. How any 2 people end up in the same place at the same time is a mystery." Or "everyone is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways." Do you believe it is circumstance or fate or small decisions and chance encounters which have brought these people together ?
2. Jack LaLanne figures incidentally in this novel. Do you remember him from your youth? How do his philosophy and actions figure into the plot of this story?
3. The beginning of Chapter 3 begins with the plane in the Atlantic, after the crash. Were you surprised to have missed the crash? Why would the author handle this incident in such a sudden and unexplained way?
4. Scott Burroughs, our reluctant protagonist, saves himself and 4 year old. What motivated him to such a heroic act? Do you agree, "Once you become a hero, you lose your privacy"?
5. The first indication for Scott that his heroism was going to be a "messy situation" was his meeting with Gus Franklin of the NTSB, who asked him, "Were you sleeping with Mrs. Bateman?" What would have been your reaction if you were Scott? And how did his artwork figure into this story?
6. David Bateman’s philosophy of a news network was, "All other networks react to the news. We’re going to Make the News." He meant their network would "shape the events of the day to fit the message of their network." Do you think this is true of news stations today? What effect has it had on our culture?
7. Why did the Batemans have 24/7 security guards? Who was Gil Baruch and what was his story?
8. Bill Cunningham is a reporter-commentator on ALC. How does he impact the news and the story line? Was he "the raging voice of common sense, the sane man in an insane world?" Do you believe it is possible to be an impartial newsperson? And what did Cunningham do to collect news that was illegal? Does this remind you of any real news story?
9. What kind of business was Ben Kipling involved in? How might this have affected the future of the flight?
10. What theories were developed about the cause of the crash?
11. Finally we learn about Charlie Busch. What motivated him in his murderous actions? Is there any way to protect ourselves from people like this?
12. What tips the NTSB and the FBI that the plane had suffered neither mechanical nor pilot error?
13. How has experiencing the crash and subsequent investigations changed or altered Scott? What do you imagine or hope for Scott’s future?
14. What different meanings could the title BEFORE THE FALL signify?
15. Noah Hawley is well-known for his work in film and television. (Bones, Fargo, Legion, etc.) Did his style of writing help you, confuse you, or add to the tension of the mystery? Why did he use the flashback style of writing?
16. Did you enjoy reading this book? Did it keep you involved in the mystery? Did it challenge any of your ideas?
(Questions submitted to LitLovers by Linda of Anaheim Hills Page Turners. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Barkskins
Annie Proulx, 2016
Scribner
736 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743288781
Summary
Annie Proulx's new masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.
In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a "seigneur," for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins.
Rene suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures.
But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business.
Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.
Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid—in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope—that we follow them with fierce attention.
Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination. (From the publisher.)
Keep your eye out for the National Geographic channel's adaptation of Barkskins, currently under development (as of mid-2016).
Author Bio
• Birth—August 22, 1935
• Where—Norwich, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Vermont; M.A., Sir George Williams University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, 1994; PEN/Faulkner, 1993
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx did not set out to be a writer. She studied history in school, acquiring both her bachelor's and her master's degrees and abandoning her doctorate only in the face of a pessimistic job market. Something of a free spirit, she married and divorced three times and ended up raising three sons and a daughter single-handedly. She settled in rural Vermont, living in a succession of small towns where she worked as a freelance journalist and spent her free time in the great outdoors, hunting, fishing, and canoeing.
Although she wrote prolifically, most of Proulx's early work was nonfiction. She penned articles on weather, farming, and construction, and contracted for a series of rural "how tos" for magazines like Yankee and Organic Gardening. She also founded the Vershire Behind the Times, a monthly newspaper filled with colorful features and vignettes of small-town Vermont life. All this left little time for fiction, but she averaged a couple of stories a year, nearly all of which were accepted for publication.
Prominent credits in two editions of Best American Short Stories led to the publication in 1988 of Heart Songs and Other Stories, a first collection of Proulx's short fiction. Set in blue-collar New England, these "perfectly pitched stories of mysterious revenges and satisfactions" (the Guardian) received rapturous reviews.
With the encouragement of her publisher, Proulx released her first novel in 1992. The story of a fractured New England farm family, Postcards went on to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. She scored an even greater success the following year when her darkly comic Newfoundland set piece, The Shipping News, scooped both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. One year before her 60th birthday, Proulx had become an authentic literary celebrity.
Since then, the author has alternated between short and long fiction, garnering numerous accolades and honors along the way. Giving the lie to the literary adage "write what you know," her curiosity has led her into interesting, unfamiliar territory: Before writing The Shipping News, she made more than seven extended trips to Newfoundland, immersing herself in the culture and speech of its inhabitants; similarly, she weaved staggering amounts of musical arcana into her 1996 novel Accordion Crimes. She is known for her keen powers of observation—passed on, she says, from her mother, an artist and avid naturalist—and for her painstaking research, a holdover from her student days.
In 1994, Proulx left Vermont for the wide open spaces of Wyoming—a move that inspired several memorable short stories, including the O. Henry Award winner "Brokeback Mountain." First published in The New Yorker and included in the 1999 collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories, this tale of a doomed love affair between two Wyoming cowboys captured the public imagination when it was turned into an Oscar-winning 2005 film by director Ang Lee.
Lionized by most critics, Proulx is, nevertheless, not without her detractors. Indeed, her terse prose, eccentric characters, startling descriptions, and stylistic idiosyncrasies (run-on sentences followed by sentence fragments) are not the literary purist's cup of tea. But few writers can match her brilliance at manipulating language, evoking place and landscape, or weaving together an utterly mesmerizing story with style and grace.
Extras
• Proulx was the first woman to win the prestigious Pen/Faulkner Award. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Annie Proulx is on the side of the angels. We need more writers like her to hammer home the message that we had better stop mistreating one another and our planet. Unfortunately, hammering is just what she does, as when she annotates a senator's remark that "the Constitution was made by whites for whites." ("After all," she inserts, "who else was there?" Ha, ha.) The whole novel suffers such two-dimensionality.... [Still,] Proulx is particularly effective in conveying the effect of one generation on the next.... The root cause of our self-impoverishment is thoughtfully teased out in Barkskins.
William T. Vollman - New York Times Book Review
Magnificent... Barkskins flies... One of the chief pleasures of Proulx’s prose is that it conveys you to so many vanished wildwoods, where you get to stand ‘tiny and amazed in the kingdom of pines.’ This is also the great sadness of Barkskins. The propulsive tension here is generated not by wondering what will happen to each character, but by knowing that the forests will be leveled one after another... If Barkskins doesn’t bear exquisite witness to our species’s insatiable appetite for consumption, nothing can.
Anthony Doerr - Outside Magazine
(Starred review.) Barkskins is remarkable...for its scope and ambition—it spans more than 300 years and includes a cast of dozens. It’s a monumental achievement, one that will perhaps be remembered as her finest work.... [T]he kind of immersive reading experience that only comes along every few years. —Gabe Habash
Publishers Weekly
Rene Sel and Charles Duquet arrive in New France in the 1600s, penniless woodcutters bound to a seigneur (feudal lord), longing for freedom.... Proulx's intricate, powerful meditation on colonialism is both enthralling and edifying, each chapter building to the moving finale. —Stephanie Sendaula
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] rigorously researched, intrepidly imagined, complexly plotted, and vigorously written multigenerational epic. [With an] extensive and compelling cast, Proulx’s commanding epic about the annihilation of our forests is nothing less than a sylvan Moby-Dick replete..
Booklist
(Starred review.) Proulx moves into Michener territory with a vast multigenerational story of the North Woods.... Proulx's story builds in depth and complication without becoming unduly tangled and is always told with the most beautiful language. Another tremendous book from Proulx.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Barkskins begin with Charles Duquet and Rene Sel? Discuss their similarities and differences. How do these two characters influence not only their descendants but also the three-hundred-year course of the narrative?
2. Monsieur Trepagny says, "Men must change this land in order to live in it," and "To be a man is to clear the forest" (p. 17). Why does he believe this? What does Rene seem to believe about the forest and about being a man?
3. Wuqua’s garden, the Garden of Delightful Confusion, "pulled something inside Duquet as a child pulls a toy with a string" (p. 91) and stirs him "with an indefinable sensation" (p. 92). Why is Duquet, typically jaded and unimpressed, so moved by his experiences in China?
4. After Duquet wounds one of the trespassers, a boy, on his pine property, why do the boy’s cries of "Help. Me." and the gaze of the owl in the trees (p. 137) drive Duquet into a murderous fury? Why do the attempted theft and the boy enrage him so?
5. As Rene’s children Zoë, Noe, Achille, Theotiste and Elphege make their way to Mi’kma’ki, the "journey was rough underfoot and circuitous in their minds" (p. 168). Each hopes for different things and changes in different ways. How is each child affected? Why is Mi’kmaw country so powerful for them?
6. When Achille encounters a whale while fishing with his friends, the whale says to him, in Sosep’s voice, "You are not" (p. 185). After losing his family to the English, Achille claims, "I hunt no more. My life here is finished. I am not" (p. 195). Why does this phrase stay with Achille? What does it mean?
7. When Kuntaw meets Beatrix and she says, "I need you, Indian man. Follow," he feels that he stumbles "out of the knotted forest and onto a shining path" (p. 203). Yet when Beatrix’s health fails, "when she most needed him . . . he veered away from her" (p. 287). Why do they pull away from each other in the end, Beatrix falling in love with the doctor and Kuntaw fixating on the "One Who Would Come"?
8. Beatrix explains to Dr. Mukhtar that she can express affection only by teaching and offering books (p. 294). Where else is this connection between education and affection present in Barkskins? What other characters show their love this way?
9. The day after their wedding, Posey and James Duke discover they may be ill-suited, and James insists, " ‘We must talk all of this out.’ He believed in reason, though it was unreasonable to do so" (p. 372). How does this counterbalance of reason and unreason characterize their relationship?
10. Why, after all the tragedies Jinot endures, is it the women’s rejection of him in the kumara field that makes "the old, smiling, merry Jinot" evaporate, replaced by an "aging man who had known sorrow and difficulty and now, painful rejection" (p. 428)? Why these women and in this place?
11. Posey tells Lavinia that "if you know from experience what others must do to earn a living you will be a better person with a deeper knowledge of others. I have no use for the weak and helpless woman. You may need independence in your life, for women are too often taken advantage of—no one knows this better than I" (p. 491). Later, Lavinia is inspired by Angelique and her hammer and the image of an "army of young women advancing into the forests" (p. 507). How do these influences shape Lavinia and her actions throughout the rest of her life?
12. When Aaron Sel learns of his father Junot’s death in New Zealand, where Aaron refused to go, he feels "an interior ripping as though something was pulling at his lungs" and says, "I was a bad and stupid person before, maybe I still am that person but I think I am different." Peter Sel replies that "A man can get better" (p. 599). How does Aaron make himself better? What does he mean when he says, "I drink the shadow now. I find it good" (p. 601).
13. Throughout Barkskins we see the healing powers of the trees and the forests, from the Mi’kmaq and their medicines to Conrad Duke finding peace in trees after World War II (p. 664) to Afghanistan vet Tom who sees his fallen brothers in larches (p. 710). In what other ways do the forests heal people?
14. How does "runaway Egga, the direct descendant of Charles Duquet and Rene Sel" (p. 622) reflect his forbears? How is he different from them?
15. "In every life there are events that reshape one’s sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed." (p. 49) Discuss moments like this for characters throughout the novel. What are your favorite moments? Which made you laugh? Which were unexpected?
16. Is it fitting that the novel closes with Sapatisia Sel and her forest restoration group? Where is Onehube driving? Why does Sapatisia groan, "Oh God, oh God! Put out the moon!" (p. 713)?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)