The Book of Two Ways
Jodi Picoult, 2020
Random House
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984818355
Summary
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a riveting novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives.
Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein.
She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong.
Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients.
But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.
After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family.
The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife.
As the story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices … or do our choices make us?
And who would you be if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Where—Nesconset (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.Ed., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Hanover, New Hampshire
Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has approximately 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.
Early life and education
Picoult was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island in New York State; when she was 13, her family moved to New Hampshire. Even as a child, Picoult had a penchant for writing stories: she wrote her first story— "The Lobster Which Misunderstood"—when she was five.
While still in college—she studied writing at Princeton University—Picoult published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. To pay the bills, after graduation she worked at a variety of jobs, including copy writing and editing textbooks; she even taught eighth-grade English and attained a Masters in Education from Harvard University.
In 1989, Picoult married Timothy Warren Van Leer, whom she met in college, and while pregnant with their first child, wrote her first book. Song of the Humpbacked Whale, her literary debut, came out in 1992. Two more children followed, as did a string of bestseller novels. All told, Picoult has more than 20 books to her name.
Writing
At an earlier time in her life, Picoult believed the tranquility of family life in small-town New England offered little fodder for writing; the truly interesting stuff of fiction happened elsewhere. Ironically, it is small-town life that has ended up providing the settings for Picoult's novels. Within the cozy surroundings of family and friends, Picoult weaves complex webs of relationships that strain, even tear apart, under stress. She excels at portraying ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Disoriented by some accident of chance, they stumble, whirl, and attempt to regain a footing in what was once their calm, ordered world.
Nor has Picoult ever shied from tackling difficult, controversial issues: school shooting, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teen suicide, and racism. She approaches painful topics with sympathy—and her characters with respect—while shining a light on individual struggles. Her legions of readers have loved and rewarded her for that compassion—and her novels have been consistent bestsellers.
Personal life
Picoult and her husband Timothy live in Hanover, New Hampshire. They have three children and a handful of pets. (Adapted from a 2003 Barnes and Noble interview and from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)
Book Reviews
Picoult is a master of the craft of storytelling.
Associated Press
Jodi Picoult [is] the prime provider of literary soul food.
Redbook
It’s hard to exaggerate how well Picoult writes.
Financial Times
Picoult explores age-old questions about a possible parallel universe in this shrewd tale.… Picoult’s fans will appreciate this multifaceted, high-concept work.
Publishers Weekly
Picoult’s obsession here is the power of choices and what can happen when they are made under pressure.… Picoult’s erudition overload far exceeds the interests of verisimilitude or theme.… A midlife crisis story stifled by enough material for several TED talks.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book asks: "Who would you be, if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now?" If you had to pinpoint the one person or thing you left behind, what or who would it be? Do you wonder: What if? How might your life be different if you had taken that different route?
2. Had you ever heard of a death doula before reading The Book of Two Ways? What did you think of this care practice and the way it is incorporated in the novel?
3. Both Egyptian mythology and quantum physics are explored in the book, and they are often presented as two opposites in Dawn’s life. Do you think they’re are as different as Dawn perceives them to be, or are there ways in which they actually overlap?
4. In what ways do Dawn’s two potential careers mirror each other?
5. Do you think Dawn’s decision not to return to Egypt after her mother passes away is ultimately a selfish or a selfless choice?
6. Dawn and her daughter, Meret, have a close but challenging relationship. What do you think causes them to clash so often? What do they learn from one another by the end of the book?
7. Picoult plays with the idea of parallel universes and alternate timelines as we see Dawn’s narrative unravel in both Boston and in Egypt. Were you surprised when it became clear which timeline Dawn truly exists in?
8. What responsibility do you think Brian and Wyatt each hold for how Dawn’s path in life progressed?
9. Do you think it’s possible to experience multiple loves, as Dawn and Win both describe?
10. What did you think of Dawn’s decision to deliver Win’s painting to Thane Bernard?
11. The novel also explores the concept of fate versus free will. Do you think we determine our own destiny through our choices, or are we always heading toward the same fate no matter which path we take to get there (as The Book of Two Ways suggests)?
12. If you were in Dawn’s shoes, would you choose to stay with Brian or to pursue a life with Wyatt? Or is there another path you would take instead?
13. What do you think makes for a good legacy? Are certain things—like one’s career, contributions to science or culture, or family—weighed more heavily than others when considering what constitutes a "good life"?
(Questions from the author's website.)
Transcendent Kingdom
Yaa Gyasi, 2020
Knopf Doubleday Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525658184
Summary
Yaa Gyasí's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction.
Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed.
Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasís phenomenal debut. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1989-1990
• Where—Ghana
• Raised—Huntsville, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Award—National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. She lives in Berkeley, California. Her debut novel, Homegoing, was published to wide acclaim in 2016, as was her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom in 2020. (From the publisher.)
Read Slate's interview with Yaa Gyasi. It's far more encompassing than we can do here!
Book Reviews
[T]he African immigrants in this novel exist at a certain remove from American racism, victims but also outsiders, marveling at the peculiar blindnesses of the locals.… [B]rilliant.… Transcendent Kingdom trades the blazing brilliance of Homegoing for another type of glory, more granular and difficult to name.
Nell Freudenberger - New York Times Book Review
Laser-like.… A powerful, wholly unsentimental novel about family love, loss, belonging and belief that is more focused but just as daring as its predecessor, and to my mind even more successful…. [Transcendent Kingdom] is burningly dedicated to the question of meaning…. The pressure created gives her novel a hard, beautiful, diamantine luster.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
A book of blazing brilliance… of profound scientific and spiritual reflection that recalls the works of Richard Powers and Marilynne Robinson…. A double helix of wisdom and rage twists through the quiet lines.…Thank God, we have this remarkable novel.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
A stealthily devastating novel of family, faith and identity that’s as philosophical as it is personal.… It’s bravura storytelling by Gyasi, so different in scope, tone and style from her 2016 debut Homegoing. That, too, was brilliant literature, as expansive as Transcendent Kingdom is interior…. The range Gyasi displays in just two books is staggering.
USA Today
(Starred review) [M]eticulous, psychologically complex…. Gyasi’s constraint renders the emotional impact of the novel all the more powerful…. At once a vivid evocation of the immigrant experience and a sharp delineation of an individual’s inner struggle, the novel brilliantly succeeds on both counts.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Though it's a departure from her gorgeous historical debut, Homegoing, Gyasi's contemporary novel of a woman's struggle for connection in a place where science and faith are at odds is a piercingly beautiful tale of love and forgiveness. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review) Despite compounding challenges and tragedies, Gyasi never allows Gifty to devolve into paralyzing self-absorption and malaise. With deft agility and undeniable artistry, Gyasi’s latest is an eloquent examination of resilient survival.
Booklist
(Starred review) Gyasi’s wise second novel pivots toward intimacy.…Nowhere does Gyasi take a cheap shot. Instead, she writes a final chapter that gives readers a taste of hard-won deliverance. In a quietly poignant story, a lonely woman finds a way to be less alone
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How do Gifty and her mother use prayer differently throughout their lives, and especially after Nana’s death? What variations of prayer do the two women discover in the novel?
2. How does Gifty approach the moral predicament of running her science experiments on mice? What elements of her faith and sense of connection to God’s creations are evident in how she treats the mice?
3. Consider the stigmas surrounding addiction, especially opioid addiction, the rates of which are exploding in today’s society. What other stigmas and expectations was Nana responding to by not asking for help to deal with his addiction, and others not doing more to help?
4. In what ways does Gifty take on the role of caretaker for those in her life? Who, if anyone, takes care of Gifty?
5. Gifty admits that she values both God and sciences as lenses through which to see the world that both "failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning" (198). Why does she have to lead with the caveat that she "would never say [this] in a lecture or a presentation or, God forbid, a paper"? How does the extreme belief in science mimic the faith of the religious zealots she turned away from?
6. What messages do Gifty and Nana hear about the intersection of race and poverty in their youth church meetings? How do the siblings respond to the conflation of the two—and what does the assumption that African countries are impoverished or need saving by missionaries suggest about the colonial power dynamic engrained in our society?
7. Gifty refers to her relationship with her mother as an "experiment." Are there similarities in the way Gifty approaches her work and her relationship with her mother? How did the separate events of losing the Chin Chin Man and Nana’s death affect their relationship? Throughout the course of their lives, how does Gifty determine whether or not her and her mother are "going to be ok" (33)?
8. Throughout the book, Gifty struggles to find a sense of community in places where people traditionally find it (school, work, family, church, etc.). What life experiences shape her understanding of community? In what ways does this affect her ability to build relationships with the people in her life (Anna, Raymond, Katherine, Han)?
9. Explore the idea of humans as the only animal "who believed he had transcended his Kingdom" (21). How does this idea influence Gifty’s relationship with science? With religion?
10. Describe the difference between Gifty’s connection to Ghana and her connection to Alabama. In what ways does she feel connected to her Ghanaian ancestry?
11. How does Gifty feel when she overhears congregants gossiping about her family? How does this experience influence her relationship with the church? With her family? With God?
12. Gifty privately considers her work in the lab as holy—"if not holy, then at least sacrosanct (p. 92)." Explain her reasoning, and why she chooses not to discuss this feeling with anyone.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman, 2020
Atria Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501160837
Summary
From the author of A Man Called Ove comes a poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage.
The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage.
There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place.
Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom ...
... and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.
Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue.
As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.
Rich with Fredrik Backman’s "pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature" (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1981
• Raised—Helsingborg, Sweden
• Education—no degree
• Currently—Stockholm
Fredrik Backman, Swedish author, journalist, and blogger, was voted Sweden's most successful author in 2013.
Backman grew up in Helsingborg, studied comparative religion but dropped out and became a truck driver instead. When the free newspaper Xtra was launched in 2006, the owner reached out to Backman, then still a truck driver, to write for the paper. After a test article, he continued to write columns for Xtra
In spring 2007, he began writing for Moore Magazine in Stockholm, a year-and-a-half later he began freelancing, and in 2012 he became a writer for the Metro. About his move to writing, Backman said...
I write things. Before I did that I had a real job, but then I happened to come across some information saying there were people out there willing to pay people just to write things about other people, and I thought "surely this must be better than working." And it was, it really was. Not to mention the fact that I can sit down for a living now, which has been great for my major interest in cheese-eating. (From his literary agent's website.)
Backman married in 2009 and became a father the following year. He blogged about preparations for his wedding in "The Wedding Blog" and about becoming a father on "Someone's Dad" blog. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, he wrote the Olympic blog for the Magazine Cafe website and has continued as a permanent blogger for the site.
In 2012, Backman debuted as an author, publishing two books on the same day: a novel, A Man Called Ove (U.S. release in 2014), and a work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World. His second novel, My Grandmother Sent Me to Tell You She's Sorry, came out in 2013 (U.S. release in 2015). (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher. Retrieved 7/23/2014.)
Book Reviews
[A] witty, lighthearted romp…. While the prose is chockablock with odd metaphors… and a plot twist leans on societal assumptions, Backman charms…. This amusing send-up of contemporary Swedish society is worth a look.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] tight-knit, surprise-filled narrative… [wth] brisk, absorbing action…. Comedy, drama, mystery, and social study, this novel is undefinable except for the sheer reading pleasure it delivers. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
A deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together. Backman reveals each character’s many imperfections with tremendous empathy, reminding us that people are always more than the sum of their flaws.
BookPage
Backman’s latest novel focuses on how a shared event can change the course of multiple people’s lives even in times of deep and ongoing anxiousness. A story with both comedy and heartbreak sure to please Backman fans.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for ANXIOUS PEOPLE … then take off on your own:
1. Why are these people anxious? About what?
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) In what way is Anxious People really about relationships rather than a hostage crisis? Talk about the many human connections in this book—those that existed before the story began and those that developed during the course of the novel. Which were most surprising, or perhaps most improbable?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) Why is everyone at the open-house in the first place? What is everyone's overt reason for attending (house-flipping, for example), and what is the underlying (i.e., psychological or emotional) reason?
4. What makes these people "the worst group of hostages in the world"? Of all the characters, including the father and son police duo, whom did you most connect with?
5. Backman's novel is a comedy but also a commentary of societal issues such as global capitalism, parenting, and marriage. How are those issues explored?
6. How would you describe Anxious People—mystery, comedy, drama, social commentary? All of the above … or something else?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Exiles
Christina Baker Kline, 2020
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062356345
Summary
The author of the bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in nineteenth-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society.
Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison.
After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon.
Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel—a skilled midwife and herbalist—is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors.
Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance.
By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna.
While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom.
Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, The Exiles is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Raised—in Maine and Tennessee, USA, and the UK
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.B., Cambridge University; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives in Montclair, New Jersey
Christina Baker Kline is a novelist, nonfiction writer, and editor. She is perhaps best known for her most recent novels, The Exiles (2020) A Piece of the World (2017) and Orphan Train (2013).
Kline also commissioned and edited two widely praised collections of original essays on the first year of parenthood and raising young children, Child of Mine and Room to Grow. She coauthored a book on feminist mothers and daughters, The Conversation Begins, with her mother, Christina L. Baker, and she coedited About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror with Anne Burt.
Kline grew up in Maine, England, and Tennessee, and has spent a lot of time in Minnesota and North Dakota, where here husband grew up. She is a graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing.
She has taught creative writing and literature at Fordham and Yale, among other places, and is a recent recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation fellowship. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her family. (From the pubisher.)
Book Reviews
[G]ripping…. The women, brought to their new lives against their wills, become a lens through which to see the development of colonial Australia.… [S]urprising twists, empathetic prose, and revealing historical details, [make a] resonant, powerful story.
Publishers Weekly
Evangeline… survives the journey [to Australia] with the help of gifted midwife and herbalist Hazel. Once they arrive, Mathinna, orphaned daughter of a Lowreenne chief… adds her voice to this chorus celebrating female friendship in adversity.
Library Journal
Kline deftly balances tragedy and pathos, making happy endings hard-earned and satisfying…. Book groups will find much to discuss, such as the uses of education, both formal and informal, in this moving work.
Booklist
[Monumental]…. This episode in history gets a top-notch treatment by Kline, one of our foremost historical novelists. This fascinating 19th-century take on Orange Is the New Black is subtle, intelligent, and thrillingly melodramatic.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE EXILES … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the reasons Evangeline is first sent to prison and then to the penal colony of Australia. How does her treatment reflect the stature of women in the 1840s—in what was then (along with France) the most civilized country in the world?
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) For fun, consider the disparity between the worlds of The Exiles and, say, Jane Austen's novels, which took place a couple of decades decades before the setting of this novel. Consider, also, that Austen, like Evangeline, was herself the daughter of a clergyman. Would her life have been as precarious as Evangeline's?
3. Describe the conditions—the hardships—Evangelina experienced both in Newgate Prison and on the months-long journey to Australia.
4. In light of the questions above, apply the same topics to Hazel, whom Evangeline meets on the ship. What is Hazel's background and the reason she is sent to Australia?
5. In an outward show of grace and charity, Lady Franklin has adopted Mathinna, a young Aboriginal girl. What is Lady Franklin's actual purpose in bringing Mathinna into her household? What are her true feelings toward Australia's indigenous peoples?
6. Considering the cruelty, hardships, and death in this novel, did you find sections difficult to read at times? If you made it through to the end, why did you persist? What drove you to overcome those painful parts to reach the novel's conclusion? And if you reached the end, was it satisfying?
7. All good historical fiction engages us with real history: it brings the past alive and puts it in the context of living (albeit fictional) human beings—and so we learn. What did you learn about the settlement of Australia that you hadn't known previously?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Squeeze Me
Carl Hiaasen, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524733452
Summary
A hilarious new novel of social and political intrigue, set against the glittering backdrop of Florida's gold coast.
It's the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there's a reason for the local luminaries to eat (minimally), drink (maximally), and be seen.
But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swank gala, and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt.
Kiki Pew was notable not just for her wealth and her jewels—she was an ardent fan of the Winter White House resident just down the road, and a founding member of the POTUSSIES, a group of women dedicated to supporting their President.
Never one to miss an opportunity to play to his base, the President immediately declares that Kiki was the victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, it turns out, is far from the truth.
The truth might just lie in the middle of the highway, where a bizarre discovery brings the First Lady's motorcade to a grinding halt (followed by some grinding between the First Lady and a love-struck Secret Service agent).
Enter Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, who arrives at her own conclusions after she is summoned to the posh island to deal with a mysterious and impolite influx of huge, hungry pythons. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 12, 1953
• Where—Plantation, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida
• Awards—Newbery Honor Award
• Currently—lives in Tavernier, Florida
When one thinks of the classics of pulp fiction, certain things—gruff, amoral antiheroes, unflinching nihilism, and a certain melodramatic self-seriousness—inevitably come to mind. However, the novels of Carl Hiaasen completely challenge these pulpy conventions. While the pulp of yesteryear seems forever chiseled in an almost quaint black and white world, Hiaasen's books vibrate with vivid color. They are veritable playgrounds for wild characters that flout clichés: a roadkill-eating ex-governor, a bouncer/assassin who takes care of business with a Weed Wacker, a failed alligator wrestler named Sammy Tigertail. Furthermore, Hiaasen infuses his absurdist stories with a powerful dose of social and political awareness, focusing on his home turf of South Florida with an unflinching keenness.
Hiaasen was born and raised in South Florida. During the 1970s, he got his start as a writer working for Cocoa Today as a public interest columnist. However, it was his gig as an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald that provided him with the fundamentals necessary for a career in fiction. "I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid," Hiaasen told Barnes & Noble.com. "To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills—you learn to listen, you learn to take notes—everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels."
Hiaasen made the transition from journalism to fiction in 1981 with the help of fellow reporter Bill Montalbano. Hiaasen and Montalbano drew upon all they had learned while covering the Miami beat in their debut novel Powder Burn, a sharp thriller about the legendary Miami cocaine trade, which the New York Times declared an "expertly plotted novel." The team followed up their debut with two more collaborative works before Hiaasen ventured out on his own with Tourist Season, an offbeat murder mystery that showcased the author's idiosyncratic sense of humor.
From then on, Hiaasen's sensibility has grown only more comically absurd and more socially pointed, with a particular emphasis on the environmental exploitation of his beloved home state. In addition to his irreverent and howlingly funny thrillers (Double Whammy, Sick Puppy, Nature Girl, etc), he has released collections of his newspaper columns (Kick Ass, Paradise Screwed) and penned children's books (Hoot, Flush). With his unique blend of comedy and righteousness ("I can't be funny without being angry."), the writer continues to view hallowed Florida institutions—from tourism to real estate development—with a decidedly jaundiced eye. As Kirkus Reviews has wryly observed, Hiassen depicts "...the Sunshine State as the weirdest place this side of Oz.
Extras
• Perhaps in keeping with his South Floridian mindset, Hiaasen keeps snakes as housepets. He says on his web site, "They're clean and quiet. You give them rodents and they give you pure, unconditional indifference."
• Hiaasen is also a songwriter: He's co-written two songs, "Seminole Bingo" and "Rottweiler Blues", with Warren Zevon for the album Mutineer. In turn, Zevon recorded a song based on the lyrics Hiaasen had written for a dead rock star character in Basket Case.
• In Hiaasen's novel Nature Girl, he gets the opportunity to deal with a long-held fantasy. "I'd always fantasized about tracking down one of these telemarketing creeps and turning the tables—phoning his house every night at dinner, the way they hassle everybody else," he explains on his web site. "In the novel, my heroine takes it a whole step farther. She actually tricks the guy into signing up for a bogus ‘ecotour' in Florida, and then proceeds to teach him some manners. Or tries. (Bio fom Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
If you could use some wild escapism right now, Hiaasen is your guy. In its themes and its wild imagination, Squeeze Me offers some familiar pleasures, akin to a Greatest Hits collection. Anyone who’s read him will know what a prime recommendation that is…. Angie is a tonic, as Hiaasen’s heroines tend to be.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
By the evidence of the scabrous and unrelentingly hilarious Squeeze Me, the Trump era is truly Carl Hiaasen’s moment.… Just dive in and have a wonderful time.
Washington Post
Squeeze Me is funny, but as with Hiaasen’s best work, it’s grounded in genuine outrage over the corruption that increasingly defines American political and cultural life. And it turns out there’s no better place to invoke that outrage than the wealthy swamps of Florida.
New Republic
Pink pearls, pythons and a philandering president add up to a rather unusual Palm Beach social season in Carl Hiaasen’s riotously funny new novel, Squeeze Me…. [Hiaasen] knows and loves Florida and hates what has been done to it as much as anyone I know of, and those passions shape his razor-sharp satirical fiction.
Tampa Bay Times
Squeeze Me is vintage Hiaasen—wry humor, social commentary and satire akin to Jonathan Swift, and all fun.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
A frothy blend of murder mystery and political satire.… Yes, the humor gets wild and the satire a little outlandish… [but] never loses its buoyancy thanks to Hiaasen’s deftly drawn characters and zingy dialogue. This exuberant elegy for Florida's paved-over paradise performs the near miracle of making us laugh even as we despair.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, 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)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)