Miller's Valley
Anna Quindlen, 2016
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996081
Summary
In a small town on the verge of big change, a young woman unearths deep secrets about her family and unexpected truths about herself.
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller’s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty.
As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love.
Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be “a place where it’s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.”
Miller’s Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, “No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.” Miller’s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.
(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 8, 1952
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column
• Currently—New York, New York
Anna Quindlen could have settled onto a nice, lofty career plateau in the early 1990s, when she had won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column; but she took an unconventional turn, and achieved a richer result.
Quindlen, the third woman to hold a place among the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists, had already published two successful collections of her work when she decided to leave the paper in 1995. But it was the two novels she had produced that led her to seek a future beyond her column.
Quindlen had a warm, if not entirely uncritical, reception as a novelist. Her first book, Object Lessons, focused on an Irish American family in suburban New York in the 1960s. It was a bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1991, but was also criticized for not being as engaging as it could have been. One True Thing, Quindlen's exploration of an ambitious daughter's journey home to take care of her terminally ill mother, was stronger still—a heartbreaker that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. But Quindlen's fiction clearly benefited from her decision to leave the Times. Three years after that controversial departure, she earned her best reviews yet with Black and Blue, a chronicle of escape from domestic abuse.
Quindlen's novels are thoughtful explorations centering on women who may not start out strong, but who ultimately find some core within themselves as a result of what happens in the story. Her nonfiction meditations—particularly A Short Guide to a Happy Life and her collection of "Life in the 30s" columns, Living Out Loud—often encourage this same transition, urging others to look within themselves and not get caught up in what society would plan for them. It's an approach Quindlen herself has obviously had success with.
Extras
• To those who expressed surprise at Quindlen's apparent switch from columnist to novelist, the author points out that her first love was always fiction. She told fans in a Barnes & Noble.com chat, "I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels."
• Quindlen joined Newsweek as a columnist in 1999. She began her career at the New York Post in 1974, jumping to the New York Times in 1977.
• Quindlen's prowess as a columnist and prescriber of advice has made her a popular pick for commencement addresses, a sideline that ultimately inspired her 2000 title A Short Guide to a Happy Life Quindlen's message tends to be a combination of stopping to smell the flowers and being true to yourself. Quindlen told students at Mount Holyoke in 1999, "Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world."
• Studying fiction at Barnard with the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Quindlen's senior thesis was a collection of stories, one of which she sold to Seventeen magazine. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
What does home really mean? Is it the people around you who make a place familiar and loved, or is it the tie to land that’s been in your family for generations? Anna Quindlen’s mesmerizing new novel investigates both,.... What do you do when your way of life is gone? Who do you become? And what do you now consider home? Quindlen makes her characters so richly alive, so believable, that it’s impossible not to feel every doubt and dream they harbor, or share every tragedy that befalls them.
Caroline Leavitt - New York Times Book Review
Memories flow like fast-moving water in Miller's Valley, Anna Quindlen's new family novel, a coming-of-age story that reminds us that the past continues to wash over us even as we move away from the places and events that formed us.... [T]he Millers and their neighbors... maintain an uncanny resemblance to our own friends and families.... Quindlen's provocative novel will have you flipping through the pages of your own family history and memories even as you can't stop reading about the Millers.
Carol Memmott - Chicago Tribune
[A] moving exploration of family and notions of home.... Though the pacing is somewhat uneven, Quindlen’s prose is crisp and her insights resonant. This coming-of-age story is driven as much by the fully realized characters as it is by the astute ideas about progress and place.
Publishers Weekly
[A young girl] comes to terms with life as it should be versus life as it is. This is vintage Quindlen,...a compelling family tale rich in recognizable characters, resplendent storytelling, and reflective observations. It is also an affectionate and appreciative portrait of a disappearing way of life. —Carol Haggass
Booklist
[A] young woman buffeted by upheavals in her personal life.... Perhaps there is a bit too much summing up in the book’s final chapter, but it still manages to be quite stirring.... [F]amliar elements in this story...are synthesized in a fresh way in this keenly observed, quietly powerful novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions when they become available from the publisher. In the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Miller's Valley...then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Mimi as the book opens, and how does she change over the course of the novel? What does she come to learn, as she matures, about place and home?
2. Mimi's mother Miriam feels trapped in Miller Valley, yet her husband Bud is tied to the land. How do their positions reflect their individual personalities...and affect their relationship as a couple. In other words, describe Miriam and Bud and their marriage. With whom do your sympathies lie—with one more than another, or with both equally?
3. Why is Mimi so tied the valley? "I knew there was a world outside," she says, "I just had a hard time imagining it." When her mother tells Mimi that her grades in school mean a "road to something better than this," Mimi balks. Is her reluctance merely a childish fear to move beyond a familiar world? Or is it something else? If you were Mimi's mother, or an elderly friend, would you urge her to move on?
4. Mimi says she "felt lost most of the time," as if there was a "big rattly empty space between her stomach and heart." She wonders "whether other people felt the same way without showing it." What does she mean? Is she speaking of basic loneliness, or something else? Has she expressed a feeling common to many (most) of us?
5. Talk about Ruth and her agoraphobia. Why does she inspire bitterness on the part of her sister Miriam? Did you sense what Ruth's secret was, or were you surprised once it was revealed?
6. The book asks an important question about how closely our identities are tied to our origins, both place and family. Do we change when we adapt to new experiences and when we lose what we treasure? Do we ever really leave the past behind us?
7. The book takes place in the 1960s. If you were alive at that time, how well does Quindlen bring the era to life? Was it a different time from now—culturally or sociologically?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Opening Belle
Maureen Sherry, 2016
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501110627
Summary
Getting rich on Wall Street would be a lot more fun if the men would keep their hands off her assets.
A whip-smart and funny novel told by a former Wall Street insider who reveals what it’s like for a working woman to balance love, ambition, and family in a world of glamorous excess, outrageous risk-taking, and jaw-dropping sexism.
In 2008, Isabelle—a self-made, thirty-something Wall Street star—appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband, and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else.
Her trading desk work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls in Belle’s already full lap.
Enter Henry, the former college fiance she never quite got over; now a hedge fund mogul. He becomes her largest client, and Belle gets to see the life she might have had with him. While Henry campaigns to win Belle back, the sexually harassed women in her office take action to improve their working conditions, and recruit a wary Belle into a secret “glass ceiling club” whose goal is to mellow the cowboy banking culture and get equal pay for their work.
All along, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give—and when it does, everything is going to change: her marriage, her career, her world, and her need to keep her colleagues’ hands to themselves.
From Maureen Sherry, a prize winning writer, a former Managing Director on Wall Street (who never signed a nondisclosure agreement when she left), Opening Belle takes readers into the adrenaline-fueled chaos of a Wall Street trading desk, the lavish parties, the lunch-time rendezvous, and ultimately into the heart of a woman who finds it easier to cook up millions at work than dinner at home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1963-64
• Raised—Rockland County, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Life is surely ironic for Maureen Sherry. Her father was an Irish immigrant, who worked in his younger days as a porter in the same Fifth Avenue apartment building where her eventual boss from Bear Stearns once lived. Years later, Maureen became the youngest managing director at Bear Stearns. Her 2016 novel, Opening Belle, is an semi-autobiographical, even farcical, take on her years spent in the world of finance.
Maureen grew up in Rockland County, New York State's southernmost county on the West side of the Hudson River. She earned her Bachelor's degree at Cornell University and spent 12 years on Wall Street. In 2000, however, she left, switching gears to earn her M.F.A. at Columbia University. She spent her time raising her four children, writing, and tutoring at inner city schools.
Her first book, Walls Within Walls (2010)—a mystery for middle schoolers—was awarded curriculum prizes by the states of Texas and Connecticut, and she was named one of the Best New Voices by the American Library Association. She has also written for the New York Times Op-Ed page. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Sherry’s novel is a breezy comedy in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary.... Like her heroine, Ms. Sherry worked on the Bear Stearns trading floor, then a notoriously rowdy place. She said she took the frat-boy antics in stride.
Alessandra Stanley - New York Times
Funny, relevant and often shocking.... Even if your own life is far from a fairy tale, Opening Belle will allow you to laugh, learn and maybe even lean in—to hug your own family a little closer.
Washington Post
Maureen Sherry’s comic novel unspools like a movie.... several [scenes] seem written for Hollywood, possibly for fun, but they read like they’re more for profit. Not that there’s anything wrong with a woman making a living, of course.
Dallas Morning News
[C]haracters' choices are framed as bold, empowering, and optimistic decisions—opportunities for women to excel professionally and make a unique mark on their industries while thriving in work environments that they build themselves. Yet for the reader, they can also feel otherwise, provoking emotions of both sadness and anger; it’s a shame that these industries are so inhospitable to women that their best, and ultimately, only choice is to leave. In the end, though these characters "succeed," they really didn’t have much of a choice at all.
Atlantic Monthly
Compulsively readable…a cheeky—and at times, romantic—battle-cry for any woman who’s ever strived to have it all and been told by a man that she couldn’t.
Entertainment Weekly
This workplace novel that takes a fun look at Wall Street and the Park Avenue set is filled with humor and heart.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] laugh a minute...in this delightful comic novel, at least.... While she's making you laugh, Sherry does an excellent job of explaining what exactly happened in the financial crisis and gives a rare picture of the wide range of ways women in the workplace deal with chauvinism, some as heroes, some as victims, and some as opportunists
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime use our talking points to help start a discussion for Belle Opening...then take off on your own):
1. Describe the world of a Wall Street financial firm: the boys club vs. the glass ceiling club. Consider both the chauvinism and greed. Are you surprised...amused...disturbed by the environment Maureen Sherry portrays?
2. When one of her male colleagues has his hand down her skirt, Belle thinks, "I’m disgusted at myself for not walking away, for putting up with this stuff just to talk business." Why doesn't she walk away?
3. Maureen Sherry said, in an interview with New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley, that she wanted to write about the mortgage crisis in an engaging way that ordinary readers would understand. Do you think she succeeded?
4. Have you read other books on the 2008 financial crash...or have you seen the films Margin Call (2011) with Kevin Spacy or The Big Short (2015, based on Michael Lewis's book) with Steve Carell? If so, how does Opening Belle compare? If not, consider reading The Big Short or watching either or both films.
5. Describe the relationship Belle has with her husband Bruce. What attracted her to him originally, and how has he changed? Also, talk about the rarified life-style Belle and Bruce live, including (or especially) the children's preschool.
6. The end of the novel—did you see it coming?
7. Now that you've read Opening Belle, what do you think of Wall Street? Suspicions confirmed? Or better than you expected?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Lilac Girls
Martha Hall Kelly, 2016
Random House
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101883075
Summary
For readers of The Nightingale and Sarah’s Key, inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this powerful debut novel reveals an incredible story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades.
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon.
But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.
An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.
For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.
The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.
In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, freedom, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website for background on LiLac Girls.
Author Bio
Martha Hall Kelly is a native New Englander who splits her time between Atlanta, Georgia; New York City; and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. She spent a number of years in the advertising world as a copy writer before turning to writing historical fiction. Lilac Girls, her bestselling debut was published in 2016, which was followed in 2019 with that novel's prequel, Lost Roses.
She has three (mostly grown) children. (Adapted from Atlanta History Center.)
Book Reviews
Kelly’s compelling first novel follows three women through the course of World War II and beyond.... Despite some horrific scenes, this is a page-turner demonstrating the tests and triumphs civilians faced during war, complemented by Kelly’s vivid depiction of history and excellent characters.
Publishers Weekly
Kelly’s three narrators are based on actual people whose destinies converged in or around Ravensbruck, Hitler’s concentration camp for women.... Kelly vividly re-creates the world of Ravensbruck but is less successful integrating the wartime experience of Caroline, whose involvement with the surviving Rabbits comes very late.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our talking points to help start a discussion for Lilac Girls...then take off on your own:
1. What role did—could—compassion play in the horrific conditions of Nazified Europe? What were the dangers to those who attempted to act compassionately? How might you have chosen if faced with such a dire dilemma: compassion vs. risk?
2. Talk about the different backgrounds of Caroline, Kasia, and Herta, and how their lives are shaped by their upbringing.
3. Both Caroline and Kasia make foolish mistakes. Does that affect your ability to elicit sympathy for the two characters?
4. "Man's inhumanity to man" is one of the main concerns of LiLac Girls. Talk about the "slippery slope" on which Herta finds herself. How did she end up in the untenable situation in which she finds herself? How culpable is she?
5. Were parts of this book too difficult to read? Is there a need to continue writing about these experiments?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Year of the Runaways
Sunjeev Sahota, 2015 (2016, U.S.)
Knopf Doubleday
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101946107
Summary
Shortlisted, 2015 Man Booker Prize
From one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists—a sweeping, urgent contemporary epic, astonishing for its richness and texture and scope, and for the utter immersiveness of its reading experience.
Three young men, and one unforgettable woman, come together in a journey from India to England, where they hope to begin something new—to support their families; to build their futures; to show their worth; to escape the past.
They have almost no idea what awaits them.
In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield, Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his life in Bihar. Avtar and Randeep are middle-class boys whose families are slowly sinking into financial ruin, bound together by Avtar’s secret. Randeep, in turn, has a visa wife across town, whose cupboards are full of her husband’s clothes in case the immigration agents surprise her with a visit.
She is Narinder, and her story is the most surprising of them all.
The Year of the Runaways unfolds over the course of one shattering year in which the destinies of these four characters become irreversibly entwined, a year in which they are forced to rely on one another in ways they never could have foreseen, and in which their hopes of breaking free of the past are decimated by the punishing realities of immigrant life.
A novel of extraordinary ambition and authority, about what it means and what it costs to make a new life—about the capaciousness of the human spirit, and the resurrection of tenderness and humanity in the face of unspeakable suffering. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—Derby, England, UK
• Education—Imperial College, London
• Currently—lives in Sheffield, England
Sunjeev Sahota is a British novelist whose first novel, Ours Are the Streets, was published in 2011 and whose second novel, The Year of the Runaways, was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Background
Sahota's paternal grandparents emigrated to Britain from the Punjab in 1966. Sahota was born fifteen years later, in 1981, in Derby, England. When he was seven, the family moved to Chesterfield. After finishing school, Sahota studied mathematics at Imperial College London. As of January 2011, he was working in marketing for the insurance company Aviva. He lives with his wife and children in Sheffield, England.
Surprisingly, Sahota never read a novel until he was 18 years old. Although he studied English literature at GCSE level—reading poetry and full-length plays (including Shakespeare)—students were not required to read a full-length novel.
Then, the summer before starting college, Sahota wandered into an airport bookstore while waiting for a flight to visit his relatives in India. He picked up Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Captivated, he went on to read The God of Small Things, A Suitable Boy, and The Remains of the Day.
In a January, 2011, Yorkshire Post interview, Sahota spoke of that sudden devotion to reading:
It was like I was making up for lost time—not that I had to catch up, but it was as though I couldn't quite believe this world of storytelling I had found and I wanted to get as much of it down me as I possibly could.
Works
Sahota's first novel, Ours are the Streets, was written in the evenings and on weekends, his free time from his day job. The novel tells the story of a British Pakistani youth who becomes a suicide bomber. Sahota was prompted to start writing the book by the July, 2005, London bombings.
His second novel, The Year of the Runaways, about the experience of illegal immigrants in Britain, was published in 2015 (2016, U.S.).
Recognition
In 2013 Sahota was included in a Granta list of 20 best young writers. His second novel, The Year of the Runaways, was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/30/2016.)
Book Reviews
[P]owerful.... Mr. Sahota creates an ensemble portrait of young immigrants struggling to find work, to sort out their love lives, to come to terms with duty and tradition and their own confused ambitions.... Mr. Sahota…has an instinctive sense of storytelling, immersing us in the dilemmas of his characters.... Writing with unsentimental candor, Mr. Sahota has created a cast of characters whose lives are so richly imagined that this deeply affecting novel calls out for a sequel or follow-up that might recount the next installment of their lives…At the same time, he's written a novel that captures the plight of many immigrants, who count themselves lucky enough to have made it to the land of their dreams, only to worry that those dreams may be slipping out of reach.
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Granta magazine tapped Sunjeev Sahota as one of the 20 best young writers of the decade, and his new novel, The Year of the Runaways, was shortlisted for last year's Booker Prize, and yet it's only now reaching the United States. That seems like an intolerable delay for such a celebrated book, but America's fresh spasm of xenophobia makes this devastating story about the plight of immigrants all the more relevant now...Relentless.... Absorbing.... The great marvel of this book is its absolute refusal to grasp at anything larger than the hopes and humiliations of these few marginal people.... The story's momentum feels absolutely overwhelming.... Read this novel.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
A brilliant political novel, deeply felt, told in the most intimate of ways...Sahota knows how to turn a phrase, how to light up a scene, how to make you stay up late to learn what happens next. This is a novel that takes on the largest questions and still shines in its smallest details...a brilliant and beautiful novel.
Kamila Shamsie - Guardian
A novel of great moral intelligence...deeply impressive.
Claire Lowdon - Sunday Times
Sahota proves a wonderfully evocative storyteller...fascinating...the real thing.
Mihir Bose - Independent
Should be compulsory reading. A magnificent achievement.
John Harding - Daily Mail
The best novel of the year....judges of forthcoming literary prizes need look no further.
Cressida Connolly - Spectator
A rich, intricate, beautifully written novel, bursting and seething with energy.
Kate Saunders - London Times
Nothing short of an asteroid impact would have made me put the book down.
Irish Times
(Starred review.) Lyrical and incisive...a considerable achievement: [an]...exploration of the lives of three young Indian men, and one British-Indian woman, as their paths converge in Sheffield, England.... Sahota’s characters are wonderfully drawn, and imbued with depth and feeling. Their struggles to survive will remain vividly imprinted on the reader’s mind.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This intense and dramatically realistic novel...delves into the illegal immigrant situation in contemporary England.... Sahota depicts the culture, language, and mentality of Britain's Indian immigrant community from deep within. A harrowing and moving drama of life on the edge. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal
[A]s Sahota demonstrates...every immigrant story is wholly individual, no matter how familiar it feels.... [His] observations of our broken social system are razor-sharp. When the place you've left is burning and the one you're in doesn't want you, how do you find your way home?
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Woven throughout the narrative of The Year of the Runaways is a complex exploration of class and economics. Discuss the rigidity of the class system in India. How does social class prohibit or grant economic opportunities for the characters in the novel? Does social class carry the same significance in England as it does in India?
2. What role does the gurdwara play in the community? Does it have different functions in India than it does in England? Which characters rely on it most heavily?
3. A sense of anxiety pervades throughout The Year of the Runaways, particularly regarding the prospect of raids. Discuss how this anxiety manifests for various characters. Who is most cautious in their day-to-day life?
4. Discuss Narinder’s personal evolution over the course of the novel. What is the catalyst for her rebellion? Which characters help to challenge her ideas about the roles that women can fulfill?
5. Of the three male protagonists, Randeep’s entrée into England is seemingly the least dangerous method. Discuss his experience getting to England, and his expectations for his relationship with Narinder. What hopes does he have for their marriage?
6. When Randeep and Avtar arrive in England, they initially stay in Randeep’s aunt’s home. Discuss the interaction between Avtar and Randeep’s cousin Aki on page 196. What does their conversation reveal about biases held towards immigrants? About family structure in Indian communities? Gender roles?
7. Discuss Avtar’s relationship with Dr. Cheema over the course of the novel. How does their first meeting set the tone for the rest of their interactions? How does Cheema’s own search for identity coincide with Avtar’s journey towards citizenship?
8. Tochi’s class, or caste, identity as a chamaar follows him throughout the novel. How are chamaars discussed by other characters in the novel? How is Tochi’s careful crafting of an ambiguous "immigrant identity" a means of survival? Discuss the incident with the matchmaking aunty. What does this assert about the ugly and pervasive face of classism?
9. Early in the novel, out of obligation to Randeep, Avtar chooses Avtar chooses to turn down the position that Dr. Cheema secured for him. Discuss the concept of familial obligation over personal freedom. How does this echo throughout the novel? Which characters feel that most acutely?
10. How does food serve as a form of comfort throughout The Year of the Runaways? Discuss how Tochi and Narinder’s relationship is deepened through the act of cooking.
11. On page 289, Narinder asks: "Did these women not understand that duty, that obligation, could be a form of love?" Discuss how Narinder’s understanding of her duties and obligations changes over the course of the novel. How does her faith cause familial tension? How does her relationship with Savraj expand her worldview?
12. How would you characterize Avtar and Randeep’s relationship? How much of their bond is attributed to Avtar’s obligation to Randeep’s sister? Discuss the scene wherein Avtar takes a job, leaving Randeep behind. How does the desperation for jobs strain their relationship? Other relationships in the novel?
13. Narinder and Tochi slowly forge a bond out of mutual respect and trust, and eventually realize that these feelings are that of love. Given the depth of their feelings for each other, why do you think she turns him down? Is it out of guilt? Obligation?
14. The Year of the Runaways is a novel that celebrates the incredible tenacity of the human spirit. Where does each character find hope in the most dire circumstances? What comforts them, if anything?
15. Discuss the epilogue of the novel. How would you describe the fate of each character? Which character, if any, has found happiness?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Lightkeepers
Abby Geni, 2016
Counterpoint Press
340 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781619026001
Summary
A luminous debut novel from a talented and provocative new writer.
In The Lightkeepers, we follow Miranda, a nature photographer who travels to the Farallon Islands, an exotic and dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one-year residency capturing the landscape.
Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions; they document the fish populations around the island, the bold trio of sharks called the Sisters that hunt the surrounding waters, and the overwhelming bird population who, at times, create the need to wear hard hats as protection from their attacks.
Shortly after her arrival, Miranda is assaulted by one of the inhabitants of the islands. A few days later, her assailant is found dead, perhaps the result of an accident.
As the novel unfolds, Miranda gives witness to the natural wonders of this special place as she grapples with what has happened to her and deepens her connection (and her suspicions) to her companions, while falling under the thrall of the legends of the place nicknamed “the Islands of the Dead.” And when more violence occurs, each member of this strange community falls under suspicion.
The Lightkeepers upends the traditional structure of a mystery novel—an isolated environment, a limited group of characters who might not be trustworthy, a death that may or may not have been accidental, a balance of discovery and action—while also exploring wider themes of the natural world, the power of loss, and the nature of recovery. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Friends of American Writers Literary Award
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois
Abby Geni is a graduate of Oberlin University and the Iowa Writers Workshop as well as the recipient of an Iowa Fellowship. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and was listed in The Best American Stories 2010. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. (From the publisher.)
Read author interview with Midwestern Gothic.
Book Reviews
Readers [...] will find themselves carried along by a sturdy, rather old-fashioned thriller ramped up by some modern, ecologically themed plot twists.... The plot is structured like that of a horror film, moving from one alarming event to another, and in between, maintaining a tension around the question of how much worse the situation will get... [a] peculiar, atmospheric novel.... It's become customary—the fallback consolation of the book reviewer—to say that one is eager to see what a writer will do next. But in fact that is the case here. Ultimately, what engages us in The Lightkeepers, beyond its energetic plot, is the sense of watching its author discover her ability to construct a suspenseful narrative. And we finish this novel curious to find out what sorts of stories Abby Geni will choose to tell.
Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review
With The Lightkeepers, Geni joins the ranks of Barbara Kingsolver and Annie Proulx—novelists for whom nature is a driving narrative force instead of a backdrop. However, Geni’s debut is a few shades darker than Prodigal Summer or Close Range, and instead of Kingsolver and Proulx’s architectural prose, Geni writes in small, perfect sentences stripped of ornamentation, often single clauses. It’s a beautiful effect; pages pass quickly and effortlessly. By the novel’s end, you’ll crave another journey with Geni to some other wild, forgotten corner of the globe.
Chicago Review of Books
[A] dazzlingly unsettling first novel.... The language is as startlingly rich as the terrain, making you look at everything as if you had never seen it before.... Geni expertly propels her story into a breathtakingly shocking climax. The nature she describes has no sense of right or wrong. And what’s more frightening, neither do her characters, and in this stunning debut, both pull you in and hold you like a riptide.
Caroline Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle
Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, part ode to one of the western world's wildest landscapes, this dark, compelling tale is an astonishingly ambitious debut.... Like many literary classics and novels that are destined to be classics, The Lightkeepers raises questions about humanity that are anything but light. Unlike many classics, it's an accessible page-turner whose surprises, both fictional and stylistic, unfold so satisfyingly that the novel is also a pleasure to read.
Meredith Maran - Chicago Tribune
Geni's haunting debut takes place on an island just 30 miles from San Francisco, but it might as well be another planet—killer sharks circle the water, violent birds rip the skin off of seals and peck humans in the head, and the waters are so rough, there isn't even a dock for boats. Miranda, a nature photographer, applies for short-term residence on the island, living in a cabin with a few quirky biologists. But things change when she suffers a violent attack—and then her attacker is mysteriously killed the next day. Geni's writing about the natural world is marvelous and her atmospheric novel is not to be missed.
Entertainment Weekly
[V]iolence in the small community seems to be everywhere, and everyone and everything seems culpable.
Marie Claire
Spending a year documenting the harsh beauty of California’s Farrallon Islands is a dream come true for photographer Miranda—until her idyll turns deadly.
People
(Starred review.) [An] evocative and enchanting debut novel...[set on an] archipelago off the coast of San Francisco.... [Geni] writes with the clear, calm confidence of a master storyteller. This is a haunting and immersive adventure.
Publishers Weekly
A novel filled with wide-open spaces and also a creeping claustrophobia. The setting takes on the role of a character, and the Farallons are masterfully brought to life on the page through Geni’s luminous prose. There is a soothing, hypnotic quality to Geni’s writing—and an unexpected tenderness, too, one that belies the thick sense of malice and increasing sense of dread that swirls about Miranda’s island home…Riveting from beginning to end, The Lightkeepers is unsettling in all the best ways.
Book Page
(Starred review.) Miranda's travelogue [is]at once emotional and dreamy and rendered in crisp, stunning prose.... Geni may be unmatched in her ability to describe nature.... Natural wildness, human unpredictability, and the subtle use of literary devices are woven here into a remarkable, vertiginous web
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)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Light Keepers...then take off on your own:
1. Describe Farallon: the weather, animal populations (birds, sharks, and rodents), its stream, even the granite bed rock. In what way does the archipelago itself become a character rather than simply a setting in the novel? Also, consider Farallon's history, as well as how it got its epithet— "Island of the Dead."
2. Follow up to Question #1: If you are familiar with the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds (based on a Daphne du Maurier short story), what are some of the parallels between the film and The Lightkeepers?
3. How would you describe Miranda? Why, for instance, is the isolation of the Farallon Islands suited to her personality? How does she eventually find her way out of her seclusion? In other words, how does she change by the novel's end?
4. Talk about the letters Miranda writes to her mother. What purpose do they serve in the story, and what do they reveal about Miranda (both the fact that she writes them and the content of the letters themselves)?
5. Miranda's relationship with her fellow housemates has "the dynamic of a family, minus any semblance of warmth." How would you describe the various characters in that "family"—Andrew and Lucy, Galen, Mick, Forest, and Charlene—and their relationships with one another?
6. Miranda finds comfort, even relief, from the others in the natural world of Farallon. What are some of the connections she makes with creatures. How does she come to view the biologists and their relationship to nature? What effect do their studies have on island life?
7. Were you surprised by the novel's climax? Do you find it somewhat implausible? If so, does it detract from your enjoyment of the novel?
8. What is the derivation of the book's title—The Lightkeepers. Who, in the novel, are the eggers and who are the lightkeepers?
9. Is there an underlying message within the book? What major issues are raised?
10. Bonus question: For Shakespeare lovers: Miranda's name?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use these, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)