Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525657606
Summary
England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.
A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman.
Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people.
Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Coleraine, Northern Ireland, UK
• Raised—Wales and Scotland, UK
• Education—Cambridge University
• Awards—Costa Award; Betty Trask Award; Somerset Maugham Award
• Currently—lives in London, England
Maggie O'Farrell is a British author of contemporary fiction, who was once featured in Waterstones' 25 Authors for the Future. It is possible to identify several common themes in her novels—the relationship between sisters is one, another is loss and the psychological impact of those losses on the lives of her characters.
The Vanishing Act Esme Lennox was published in 2007. In 2010 O'Farrell won the Costa novel award for The Hand That First Held Mine. Her 2013 novel, Instructions for a Heatwave, also received wide acclaim.
Maggie was born in Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland. At the age of eight she missed a year of school due to a viral infection, an event that is echoed in The Distance Between Us. Maggie worked as a journalist, both in Hong Kong and as the Deputy Literary Editor of The Independent on Sunday. She has also taught creative writing.
She is married to the novelist William Sutcliffe, whom she met at Cambridge. They live in Hampstead Heath, London, with their two children. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Hamnet is an exploration of marriage and grief written… of a life that is at once extremely famous and profoundly obscure.… It is O'Farrell's extended speculation on how Hamnet's death might have fueled the creation of one of his father's greatest plays…. [O'Farrell] has a melodic relationship to language. There is a poetic cadence to her writing and a lushness in her descriptions of the natural world.
Geraldine Brooks - New York Times Book Review
Miraculous… brilliant.… A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse…. [T]hrough the alchemy of her own vision, [O'Farrell] has created a moving story about the way loss viciously recalibrates a marriage.… A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Magnificent and searing…. A family saga… bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection.…[H]ere is a novel that matches him with a woman overwhelmingly more than worthy.… I nearly drowned at the end of this book…. It would be wise to keep some tissues handy…. So gorgeously written that it transports you from our own plague time right into another and makes you glad to be there.
Boston Globe
All too timely…inspired…. [An] exceptional historical novel.
New Yorker
A tour de force…. Although more than 400 years have unspooled since Hamnet Shakespeare's death, the story O'Farrell weaves in this moving novel is timeless and ever-relevant.… O'Farrell brilliantly turns to historical fiction to confront a parent's worst nightmare: the death of a child.… Fierce emotions and lyrical prose are what we've come to expect of O'Farrell. But with this historical novel she has expanded her repertoire….
NPR
(Starred review) [A]n outstanding masterpiece…. The book is filled with astonishing, timely passages, such as the plague’s journey to Stratford via a monkey’s flea from Alexandria. This is historical fiction at its best.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) This striking, painfully lovely novel captures the very nature of grief.
Booklist
(Starred review) [O'Farrell's] gifts for full-bodied characterization and sensitive rendering of intricate family bonds are on full display.… A gripping drama of the conflict between love and destiny.
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 HAMNET ... then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the way in which Maggie O'Farrell's novel speculates that 11-year-old Hamnet's death may have sparked the creation of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.
2. How would you describe Agnes—what kind of a character is she? To the towns people she is almost a celebrity, a creature of near myth. In what way?
3. How does the author imagine Agnes and Will coming together, first as lovers, then as husband and wife? Consider Shakespeare's first view of Agnes. How would you describe their marriage?
4. Agnes is the novel's center. Why do you think Shakespeare goes unnamed, referred to instead as "her husband," "the father," and the "Latin tutor."
5. In what ways is this novel about grief, our all too human responses to it, the damages it causes, and the long arm of its persistence. O'Farrell writes at the onset of her novel, "This moment is the absent mother's: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry.… It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life."
6. (Follow-up to Question 5) Talk about the way Agnes responds when she sees the version of her son's name on the Hamlet London playbill. Consider, too, Agnes's thoughts when, as an audience member, she sees her husband play the role of the ghost: It is, she thinks, "what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child’s suffering for his own."
7. O'Farrell gives us detailed, lyrical depictions of everyday life in Warwickshire. What struck you most about her portrayal of Elizabethan English life? Were the descriptions overlong, or did you feel they breathed life into the novel?
8. In The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It, Shakespeare plays with gender-fluidity, showing a close affinity between males and females. How does O'Farrell incorporate that tendency in her novel Hamnet, especially between the twins and even Shakespeare's first sight of Agnes?
9. Hamnet was published in 2020, a year of global pandemic. In the middle of her novel, O'Farrell transports us to the Mediterranean Sea, where readers are given a horrific lesson in 16th-century epidemiology. How does the spread of the Bubonic Plague 400 years earlier parallel our own recent experiences with Covid-19?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Exciting Times
Naoise Dolan, 2020
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062968746
Summary
An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer.
Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children.
Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than "I like you a great deal."
Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her.
And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong…. Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?
Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love.
In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer born in Dublin. She studied English literature at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford University. Exciting Times is her first novel, an excerpt from which was published in The Stinging Fly by Sally Rooney. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] wry and bracing tale of class and privilege…. Ava is hyper-verbal and exacting, and… [her] written correspondences—social media posts and emails she labors over, analyzes, doesn't send or sends by accident—become increasingly vulnerable in their disclosures…. They form a digital counterbalance to Ava's aloof and guarded in-person presence, and capture perfectly the nauseating insecurity of growing up today.
New York Times Book Review
In fewer than 250 pages, [Dolan] has captured the touchstone millennial tension between sardonicism and sincerity—the electric ambivalence of figuring out how to be a person in these times.… Exciting Times is a funny novel (both haha and weird), resisting the pull of melodrama in favor of a sharp point of view and… engaged with the ways class, inequality and politics manifest in social life.
Los Angeles Times
The prevailing experience of [Dolan’s] endeavor is one of invigoration. Exciting Times is… edifying, funny, tender, plangent and rich with the sensibility of an individual who, condemned to conditions that are not of her making, finds the space that she needs to take flight, and who proceeds as the person she was.
Seattle Times
I wouldn’t be surprised if it emerges as the book of the summer.… A rich, sharply witty story made out of the frictions and complexities of young love…. Kept me rapt until the final page.
The Times (UK)
A funny, smart, contemporary love story.
Sunday Times (UK)
A dazzling debut.… Dolan’s writing is precise, acerbic and enviably good, and her characters are perfectly drawn.
Evening Standard (UK)
Whipsmart…. A modern love story…. Exciting Times is an impressive, cerebral debut written with brio and humour… The observations are keen, heartfelt and delivered in a brutally nonchalant style…. Heralding for sure a new star in Irish writing.
Irish Times
A wonderfully sharp, comic writer, adept at making wisecracks in the caustic, knock-em-off, knock-em-down tradition of Dorothy Parker, Joan Rivers and Nora Ephron.… [Ava] is Bridget Jones’s sour sister, or Bridget Jones marinaded in vinegar…. I found myself purring with pleasure. I loved Exciting Times’s snap and its bite.… This is comic writing at the highest level.
Daily Mail (UK)
A love triangle like you've never seen it before.… Wry and sardonic, Dolan relentlessly examines untold truths about love, classicism, and ambition.
Marie Claire
Wry, stylish…. In this witty satire of the haves and have nots, Dolan explores tender, insightful truths about the vagaries of modern love.
Esquire
In Dolan’s wry, tender debut, a young Dubliner navigates her love life and sexuality.… Dolan’s smart, brisk debut works as charming comedy of manners, though it packs less of a punch when it comes to class consciousness.
Publishers Weekly
This delightfully sardonic, insightful debut picks apart life at the whims of the economy, love, and self-sabotage.… Overall, this surprising novel is believable and piercingly written —Henrietta Verma, Credo Reference, New York, NY
Library Journal
Volleying dialogue, rich interiority, and perceptive writing on money, politics, and class…. A clever and deep novel of sex, connection, and the complexities of self expression.
Booklist
A young millennial finds herself in a love triangle with a man and woman.… Dolan’s preoccupation with power is often couched in humor but always expertly observed. Her elegantly simple writing allows her ideas and musings to shine. A refreshingly wry and insightful debut.
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 EXCITING TIMES … then take off on our own:
1. Do you find Ava a sympathetic character? At the beginning… by the end?
2. Author Naoise Dolan said in an NPR interview that Ava is a "somewhat repressed," young woman, who uses "dark humor as a coping device." What are some of the examples of her humor? Are there other coping mechanisms she uses?
3. In the same NPR interview, Dolan also says that Ava is much better at thinking analytically about "things" than she is at understanding her own, or others', emotions. Talk about how this tendency makes Ava an unreliable narrator.
4. How would you describe Ava and Julian's relationship? What, for instance, does Julian mean by this passage: "To be clear Ava: we're both dead behind the eyes, at least I can pay rent." And Ava thinks about Julian: "He doesn't want anyone to like him just for him" because he "wouldn't know what to do with the information." What do these statements and others reveal about the two of them—individually and as a couple?
5. What is your opinion of Edith? Were you frustrated by Ava's inability to commit?
6. The title of the book comes from Ava, who says, "We agree it was an exciting time to be alive." Is Ava being sarcastic? What is behind that comment, and why might Dolan have chosen it for the novel's title?
7. Talk about the role of class in this story. How do wealth and privilege, or their lack, evidence themselves?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Lost and Found Bookshop
Susan Wiggs, 2020
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062914095
Summary
In this thought-provoking, wise and emotionally rich novel, bestselling author Susan Wiggs explores the meaning of happiness, trust, and faith in oneself as she asks the question, "If you had to start over, what would you do and who would you be?"
There is a book for everything…
Somewhere in the vast Library of the Universe, as Natalie thought of it, there was a book that embodied exactly the things she was worrying about.
In the wake of a shocking tragedy, Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s charming but financially strapped bookshop in San Francisco. She also becomes caretaker for her ailing grandfather Andrew, her only living relative—not counting her scoundrel father.
But the gruff, deeply kind Andrew has begun displaying signs of decline. Natalie thinks it’s best to move him to an assisted living facility to ensure the care he needs. To pay for it, she plans to close the bookstore and sell the derelict but valuable building on historic Perdita Street, which is in need of constant fixing.
There’s only one problem–Grandpa Andrew owns the building and refuses to sell. Natalie adores her grandfather; she’ll do whatever it takes to make his final years happy. Besides, she loves the store and its books provide welcome solace for her overwhelming grief.
After she moves into the small studio apartment above the shop, Natalie carries out her grandfather’s request and hires contractor Peach Gallagher to do the necessary and ongoing repairs. His young daughter, Dorothy, also becomes a regular at the store, and she and Natalie begin reading together while Peach works.
To Natalie’s surprise, her sorrow begins to dissipate as her life becomes an unexpected journey of new connections, discoveries and revelations, from unearthing artifacts hidden in the bookshop’s walls, to discovering the truth about her family, her future, and her own heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 17, 1958
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Awards—4 RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America: for Best Romance, Favorite Book of the Year, and twice for Best Short Historical; Holt Medallion; Career Achievement Award from Romance Times (twice)
• Currently—lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA
Susan Wiggs is an American author of historical and contemporary romance novels. She began writing as a child, finishing her first novel, A Book About Some Bad Kids, when she was eight. She temporarily abandoned her dream of being a novelist after graduating from Harvard University, becoming a math teacher instead . She continued to read, especially reveling in romance novels.
Writing
After running out of reading material one evening in 1983, Wiggs began writing again, using the working title A Book About Some Bad Adults. For three years Wiggs continued to write, and in 1987 Zebra Books published her first novel, a Western historical romance named Texas Wildflower. Her subsequent historical and contemporary romances have been set in a wide range of settings and time periods. Many of her novels are set in areas where she's lived or visited. She gave up teaching in 1992 to write full-time, and has since completed an average of two books per year.
In 2000, Wiggs began writing single-title women's fiction stories in addition to historical romance novels. The first, The You I Never Knew, was published in 2001. After writing mass-market original novels for several years, Wiggs made her hardcover debut in 2003 with Home Before Dark.
Many of her novels are connected, allowing Wiggs to revisit established characters. Her books have been published in many languages, including French, German, Dutch, Latvian, Japanese, Hungarian and Russian.
Recognition
Wiggs's books are frequently named finalists for the RITA Award, the highest honor given in the romance genre. She received the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Romance of the year in 1993 for Lord of the Night. She won a second RITA in 2000 when The Charm School was named "Favorite Book of the Year."
She has also won the RITA in 2001 for Best Short Historical for The Mistress and, again, in 2006 for Lakeside Cottage. She has also been the recipient of the Holt Medallion, the Colorado Award of Excellnce, and the Peninsula Romance Writer's of America Blue Boa Award. Romantic Times has twice named her a Career Achievement Award winner.[4]
Personal
Wiggs lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her family. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/9/2012.)
Book Reviews
An unputdownable, true book lover's book that fans of women's fiction, slow-burning romance, and the novels of Nora Roberts and Kristin Hannah will love. —Debbie Haupt, St. Charles City-Cty. Lib. Dist., St. Peters, MO
Library Journal
A gentle love story perfect for anyone looking for love amid personal, family, and financial crises.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. After her mother dies, Natalie reflects: "No one knew what to say to people facing a grief so big and shocking. Natalie wouldn’t know, either." Is there a right thing to say in these moments? What would you do if Natalie were your friend?
2. "There was a book for everything. Somewhere in the vast Library of the Universe, as Natalie thought of it, her mom could find a book that embodied exactly the things Natalie was worrying about." Which books have helped you overcome difficult moments, or been a cure for your worries or caused a revelation in your life? How do books help the different characters in this novel?
3. At Blythe’s funeral her friend Frieda reads a passage from the children’s book Charlotte’s Web. If you could have any book be part of your memorial service, what would it be?
4. Natalie tells her mother that her schoolmates’ reaction to her non-traditional family—a single mother, grandfather, and grandfather’s Chinese girlfriend—make her feel like a"freak." How did growing up in this non-traditional family shape Natalie? How did being raised by a single father shape her mother Blythe’s life? What about Peach and Dorothy?
5. When Natalie finds out that her mother had taken a DNA test she thinks to herself: "Who were her ancestors? Oftentimes throughout her life, she’d felt like a stranger to herself.Was that the reason?" Does learning more about her family history—though the DNA test and other ways—help Natalie, or Grandy Andrew? Do you know anyone who has had a similar experience uncovering their family history, either by DNA tests or more traditional methods?
6. Blythe finds running the bookstore "a grand adventure" but Natalie’s corporate work at the winery: "…was the opposite of a grand adventure. But then she would remind herself about the steady salary, the benefits and pension plan, and decide it was all worthwhile.Stability had its price." Are you more of a Blythe or a Natalie in your approach to work?Does Natalie ultimately change her mind and come to accept the "grand adventure" of being a bookstore owner?
7. "Your mother used to say you’ll never be happy with what you want until you can be happy with what you’ve got," Cleo tells Natalie. Do you agree? What does Susan Wiggs say about happiness throughout this novel? What does it mean that Grandy Andrew’s book about his life is called "A Brief History of Happiness?"
8. When they find the military medal hidden in the store’s walls, Grandy insists that they return it to the owner’s heirs despite their shaky financial situation: "After learning of its value, Andrew had toyed for the briefest of moments with the notion of selling it. But there was no profit in keeping something that rightfully belonged to someone else."Would you have done the same?
9. When Trevor confesses the truth about his background to Natalie, admitting that he’s a"fraud" and a "hoax," she tells him "For what it’s worth, it wouldn’t have mattered…I love what you’ve done with your life. You turned it into something really beautiful." Would you have responded the same way? What did you think about Trevor once his deceptions had been revealed?
10. At the end of the novel, Susan Wiggs gives us an update on the characters’ lives. What do you think the future holds for Natalie and Peach? For Grandy Andrew? For the Lost and Found Bookstore itself?
11. Do you have a favorite local bookstore? What do you love about it?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
12. WHAT IS IT ABOUT BOOKSTORES? Why do you think so many authors use them as settings for their novels? This is the 11th such book on LITLOVERS; here are the others:
Ghosts of Harvard
Francesca Serritella, 2020
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525510369
Summary
A Harvard freshman becomes obsessed with her schizophrenic brother’s suicide. Then she starts hearing voices.
Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard’s campus desperate to understand why her brother, Eric, a genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia took his own life there the year before.
Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady’s life, and while her decision to follow in her brother’s footsteps threatens to break her family apart, she is haunted by questions of what she might have missed. And there’s only one place to find answers.
As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions, and illusory enemies—but what tipped him over the edge?
Voices fill her head, seemingly belonging to three ghosts who passed through the university in life, or death, and whose voices, dreams, and terrors still echo the halls. Among them is a person whose name has been buried for centuries, and another whose name mankind will never forget.
Does she share Eric’s illness, or is she tapping into something else?
Cady doesn’t know how or why these ghosts are contacting her, but as she is drawn deeper into their worlds, she believes they’re moving her closer to the truth about Eric, even as keeping them secret isolates her further.
Will listening to these voices lead her to the one voice she craves—her brother’s—or will she follow them down a path to her own destruction? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Phildelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard Univeesity
• Awards—Thomas T. Hoopes Prize
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Francesca Serritella is the New York Times bestselling author of a nine-book series of essay collections co-written with her mother, bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, and based on "Chick Wit," their Sunday column in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Serittella graduated cum laude from Harvard University, where she won multiple awards for her fiction, including the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize. Ghosts of Harvard is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[S]weeping and beguiling…. [A] rich, intricately plotted thriller that gathers suspense velocity as Cady runs through the mazelike halls of academe and the winding streets of Cambridge, chasing after clues to the more sinister circumstances of Eric’s death. It’s a testament to Serritella’s sure touch that when Cady’s ghostly companions ultimately make their final departures, Harvard seems duller.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
[B]risk, entertaining…. Serritella has a wonderful touch for her secondary characters… and Cady herself has a great voice. Readers of campus mysteries will love this surprising and intricate bildungsroman.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) The book begins as a thriller and ends as a story of personal growth and redemption. The writing is vivid and engaging, and it works for adults as well as for mature young adult readers.
Library Journal
[M]any-faceted… busily plotted, emotionally astute, thoughtfully paranormal, witty, and suspenseful drama…. Serritella has also created a sensitive and searching tale about… a smart young woman in mourning and in peril. Cady is a compelling narrator.
Booklist
Serritella is on shaky ground once the story veers into the supernatural. Cady’s conversations with the ghosts are tiresome and ultimately don’t add much to the narrative. In fact, they detract from what could have been a solid psychological thriller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. College is often called "the happiest time" in a person’s life, but it can also be a stressful period of transition and pressure. In what ways are the anxieties Cady has going into college unique, and in what ways are they typical? What kinds of pressures are on young people today? Which were unique to you or your generation? Did anything about Serritella’s description of life at Harvard surprise you? Would you want to attend Harvard or send your child there?
2. In the book, Cady is haunted by Harvard’s past inhabitants, literally and figuratively, and burdened by the expectations of the future. Is there any time or place in your life where you felt the weight of history? What about a time in your life where you felt the pressure of high expectations? Did you feel motivated to rise to the occasion, or paralyzed by fear of failure?
3. Potential is a theme in this novel: the potential of genius, the pressure to live up to that potential, the potential of a predisposition to mental illness, the potential thwarted by slavery, discrimination, and war. In our culture, we love prodigies, wunderkind, and rising stars. Why is potential so fascinating and prized in our culture? Is it over-valued? Psychologists say it is generally easier to imagine positive outcomes rather than negative ones. Is that true for you?
4. At the outset of the novel, Cady’s identity has been shaken by the illness and loss of her brother, her hero. Her role in her family has also changed; once in the background, she is now the focus of her parents’ attention and concern. Do you think people get assigned roles in their family? Did that happen to you or your children? How do the stories families tell, and the stories we tell ourselves, shape our identity and expectations? Have you ever had to challenge those personal narratives or family myths?
5. Cady believes the voices she’s hearing are ghosts. On the other hand, she’s a lonely girl under acute emotional distress from a family with a history of mental illness. Do you think the ghosts are real, or is Cady suffering from auditory hallucinations? Why do you think so?
6. Cady likens the nature of the ghosts to visiting her childhood home years later, where "she could hear Eric’s little-boy voice echoing around the stairwell. Her family’s past selves were captured between those walls, preserved in memory, like an insect in amber." Later, Cady co-opts a theoretical physics concept about hidden dimensions in which space-time "folds over" to explain it. Do you believe in ghosts, or have you ever had a paranormal experience? If so, what is your "theory" of ghosts, what they’re like, and how they reach us? Do you agree with Whit that "ghosts don’t haunt the living. We haunt them?"
7. Cady regrets her role in what she believes was the turning point in Eric’s life that set him on a course of self-destruction. Although in reality, his life story wasn’t as simple a narrative as she thought. In what ways are the three ghosts at turning points in their own lives and at turning points in American history? How are they examples of potential thwarted? In retrospect, what was a turning point in your life?
8. Cady is haunted by those what-if scenarios: what if she could have said or done something different with her brother, could his death have been prevented? She carries those alternate realities in her mind and tortures herself with what could have been. She longs to rewrite history, and the ghosts initially seem to offer that chance—but it can never be done. Do you have any what-if parallel universes in your mind? Life with an ex-partner, a different career, a different life choice? Have you ever compared yourself or your choices to a hypothetical alternative? Is that fair to do?
9. As the novel states, "history is never as simple a narrative as we write in books." With controversies over Confederate monuments, Christopher Columbus, and the slave-holding history of lauded figures and institutions, we’re in a cultural moment where we’re challenging long-held histories. Is this upheaval necessary? Why is it painful to let go of idealized versions of historical figures or places? Did learning that Harvard’s leadership once participated in slavery change your perspective on the school? Which is more powerful, fact or fiction? Is a comforting lie ever preferable to a brutal truth?
10. Cady is haunted by why Eric killed himself. She goes to Harvard looking for answers, while suffering under the secret belief that it was her fault. By the end of the book, we learn other characters have traced their own lines of responsibility in Eric’s death. Can one simple narrative be accurate? What do you think were contributing factors to Eric’s suicide? Could his death have been prevented? Have you ever made a decision where you were confident of your assessment, only to later learn you didn’t have all the relevant information?
11. Sadly, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people aged 10-24. Why do you think young people today might be at greater risk of suicide than in past decades? Are colleges doing enough to provide adequate mental health services to students? Do the privacy laws excluding parents from the medical care of their children, legally adults, help or hurt students’ well being?
12. Is grieving a suicide more difficult than other types of loss? If so, why? How can we better support those who have lost someone to suicide and dispel the unfair stigma?
13. The phrase Cady hears at the Sever entrance whispering wall, "It takes only an error to father a sin," is a genuine quote from the real Robert Oppenheimer. What do you think it means? Can you see how it applies to Oppenheimer’s life, both in the novel and in history? Do you think it applies to Cady’s story? What about your own? Are we responsible for all the unintended consequences of our actions?
14. Robert tells Cady, "I labor under my awful fact of excellence as if I am bound for extraordinary things. But even if, in the end, I’ve got to satisfy myself with testing toothpaste in a lab, I don’t want to know till it has happened." This snippet of dialogue is a quote from a genuine letter Robert Oppenheimer wrote during his Harvard days. Do you agree with him? If you could know your future, would you want to?
15. At the end of the novel, Cady thinks to herself, "Now she understood that we must love people whom we cannot control, in fact we are lucky to love and be loved by people we cannot control. If we could control the person, love wouldn’t be a gift." What do you think of this observation? Do you think you can control or influence your loved ones? Have you ever been frustrated by a loved one making a choice you didn’t agree with? Do you ever put pressure on yourself and your behavior, as if your actions could influence someone else’s? Does love fever mean letting go of control?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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A Good Marriage
Kimberly McCreight, 2020
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062367686
Summary
A riveting novel from the bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, in which a woman’s brutal murder reveals the perilous compromises some couples make—and the secrets they keep—in order to stay together.
Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call.
Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but they’d be easier to swallow if Lizzie was there voluntarily. Until recently, she’d been a happily underpaid federal prosecutor. That job and her brilliant, devoted husband Sam—she had everything she’d ever wanted.
And then, suddenly, it all fell apart.
No. That’s a lie. It wasn’t sudden, was it? Long ago the cracks in Lizzie’s marriage had started to show. She was just good at averting her eyes.
The last thing Lizzie needs right now is a call from an inmate at Rikers asking for help—even if Zach Grayson is an old friend. But Zach is desperate: his wife, Amanda, has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn brownstone.
And Zach’s the primary suspect.
As Lizzie is drawn into the dark heart of idyllic Park Slope, she learns that Zach and Amanda weren’t what they seemed—and that their friends, a close-knit group of fellow parents at the exclusive Brooklyn Country Day school, might be protecting troubling secrets of their own.
In the end, she’s left wondering not only whether her own marriage can be saved, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kimberly McCreight attended Vassar College and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After several years as a litigation associate at some of New York City’s biggest law firms, she left the practice of law to write full-time.
Her work has appeared in such publications as Antietam Review, Oxford Magazine, Babble, and New York Magazine online. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her husband and two daughters. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The characters look as if their lives are perfect, but their greatest skill is their ability to conceal the adultery, substance abuse and financial ruin percolating underneath…. McCreight is particularly adept at parsing the small but telling details of life among Park Slope’s elite.
New York Times Book Review
A murder mystery filled with dirty secrets and moneyed mayhem.
People
(Starred review) [E]xpertly blends domestic drama with a gripping murder mystery.… McCreight’s page-turner presses readers to question everything they think makes a “good” marriage. This will stay with the reader long after the finish.
Publishers Weekly
[W]ill make you question the very concept of marriage and how even the most insignificant secret could tear down the walls that couples put up to keep their secrets…. [W]hat could have been a standard mystery [is elevated]… to top-notch thriller status.
Bookreporter.com
McCreight expertly weaves multiple plot threads with a few sly red herrings, paving the way to a series of surprising, and satisfying, reveals. A smartly plotted and altogether successful union of legal thriller and domestic suspense.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What makes a good marriage
2. What does being "happily married" mean?
3. Do you believe in white lies?
4. Do you thin you ever completely know a person?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)