Modern Girls
Jennifer S. Brown, 2016
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451477125
Summary
How was it that out of all the girls in the office, I was the one to find myself in this situation? This didn’t happen to nice Jewish girls.
In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions.
Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate: unwed, unsure, and running out of options.
After the birth of five children—and twenty years as a housewife—Dottie’s immigrant mother, Rose, is itching to return to the social activism she embraced as a young woman. With strikes and breadlines at home and National Socialism rising in Europe, there is much more important work to do than cooking and cleaning.
So when she realizes that she, too, is pregnant, she struggles to reconcile her longings with her faith.
As mother and daughter wrestle with unthinkable choices, they are forced to confront their beliefs, the changing world, and the fact that their lives will never again be the same. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Miami Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.F.A., New York University; M.F.A., University of Washington
• Currently—lives near Boston, Massachusetts
Jennifer S. Brown has published fiction and creative nonfiction in Fiction Southeast, The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Southeast Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and Bellevue Literary Review, among other places. Her essay “The Codeine of Jordan” was selected as a notable essay in The Best American Travel Writing in 2012. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Washington. (From the publisher and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
I enjoyed Jennifer S. Brown’s Modern Girls from the first page, but at the halfway point I became a reader obsessed. This 1920s historical novel explores the give and take of motherhood, women’s rights, and the weight of family traditions. When a single careless night leaves Dottie pregnant by a man other than her boyfriend she wrestles to find an outcome that will maintain her reputation without affronting her faith.… Brown writes with a smart yet intimate tone. One of many gems I highlighted reads, “It was possible, I found, to both mourn a loss and yet be grateful it happened.” READ MORE …
Abby Fabiaschi - LitLovers
The novel is not only a nostalgic portrait of an earlier era but a feminist reminder of how limited and circumscribed were women’s opportunities and choices just a few generations ago.… Satisfying both emotionally and narratively.… Its suspenseful plot and warm emotional tone should appeal to a wide audience.
New York Journal of Books
With its compelling storyline, a well-researched historical setting, protagonists who are authentic and strong, and beautifully written prose, Modern Girls is, without a doubt, one of my favorite books of 2016 to date. The story drew me in from the very opening pages, and I was reluctant to let go of the characters once I finished the book. I predict it has a bright future as a book club favorite.
Historical Novels Review
A moving debut, portraying the sacrifices a mother and daughter make in order to save face for their family.
Booklist
In 1935, as women in America strive for the rights to work, to vote, and to lead independent lives, a Jewish mother and daughter face unwanted pregnancies.… A cleareyed view of the sharp, difficult choices facing women on the cusp of equality.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Modern Girls focuses on a Jewish immigrant family during the Depression. Do you think that Rose and Dottie could as easily have been Irish or Italian or another immigrant ethnicity? Why or why not? If the story were set today, with a modern-day immigrant family, might the story be different?
2. Dottie’s friends have different ideas on what marriage should be. What did marriage mean in 1935? How has the definition of marriage changed?
3. Traditions—keeping kosher, lighting Shabbes candles, having a chuppah at her wedding—are important to Dottie, and she can’t imagine her life without them. What traditions would you have a hard time breaking? Do you believe in the values behind those traditions or do you maintain them simply because that’s what your family has always done?
4. Both Rose and Dottie have definitive ideas about what makes them modern women. Do you identify with their conceptions of the modern? Does holding on to tradition and “old-world” ideas make them less modern in your eyes?
5. Rose thinks Willie is a fool for wanting to travel to Europe at such a dangerous time; Edith admires him for his commitment to journalism and politics. What do you think of his decision? If you were Dottie, would you have gone with him?
6. Eugene spent a year and a half of his life with his aunt, and Rose feels that Eugene is a stranger to her. With Dottie gone, how do you think Rose and Eugene will fare? What do you see for Eugene’s future?
7. Many themes are touched on in this novel: motherhood, family, assimilation, immigration, the rights of women and workers. Which most resonated with you?
8. Rose changed her name and her age as she shed her past life to become an American. If you could start anew, what would you change?
9. How much does the place you live affect how you think of yourself? Are place and identity linked?
10. Dottie’s future is uncertain when the story concludes. What do you think will come of her marriage? What will her future bring?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525521198
Summary
A mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself—shadowed and luminous at once—we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel.
In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth.
They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel.
But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing?
A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey—through facts, recollection, and imagination—that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 12, 1943
• Where—Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Education—B.A. University of Toronto; M.A., Queens University (Canada)
• Awards—Man Booker Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada
Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, novelist, editor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards, including the Booker Prize. Ondaatje is also an Officer of the Order of Canada, recognizing him as one of Canada's most renowned living authors. He is perhaps best known for his internationally successful novel The English Patient (1992).
Early life and education
Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), and is of Dutch, Sinhalese, and Tamil ancestry. His parents separated when he was an infant, and he lived with relatives until 1954 when he joined his mother in England.
After completing his secondary education at Dulwich College, Ondaatje emigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1962. There he studied at Bishop's University, switching to the University of Toronto in his final year where he received a BA degree in 1965. Two years later, he received an MA from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.
After his formal schooling, Ondaatje began teaching English at the University of Western Ontario. In 1971, reluctant to get his Ph.D, he left his position at Western Ontario and went on to teach English literature at Glendon College, York University.
Writing
Ondaatje's work includes fiction, autobiography, poetry and film. His literary career began with poetry in 1967 and since then has published 13 books of poetry, two of which won Canada's Governor General's Award—The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 (1979).
The author's first novel, Coming Through the Slaughter, debuted in 1976 and was followed over the years by seven others, including a partially fictionalized memoir (Running in the Family). Three of his works (Billy the Kid collection, Coming Through the Slaughter, and Divisadero) were adapted to the stage, and The English Patient became an internationally acclaimed film in 1996, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as for other categories.
In addition to his literary writing, Ondaatje has been an important force in helping to foster Canadian writing with two decades commitment to Coach House Press (around 1970-90), and his editorial credits on Canadian literary projects like the journal Brick, and the Long Poem Anthology (1979), among others. He has also served on the board of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry since 2000.
Public stand
In April 2015, Ondaatje was one of several members of PEN American Center who withdrew as literary host when the organization gave its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. The award came in the wake of the shooting attack on the magazine's Paris offices in January, 2015. Ondaatje and several other hosts felt that while the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo was reprehensible, the magazine's history of deliberately anti-Islam provocation was not worthy of being honored.
Honors
♦ Divisadero (2007) - Governor General's Award.
♦ Anil's Ghost (2000) - Giller Prize, Prix Medicis, Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Irish Times International Fiction Prize, Governor General's Award.
♦ The English Patient (1992) - Booker Prize, Canada Australia Prize, Governor General's Award.
♦ In the Skin of a Lion (1987) - City of Toronto Book Award, the first "Canada Reads" competition, and Ritz Paris Hemingway Award (a finalist)
♦ Coming Through Slaughter (1976) - Books in Canada-First Novel Award
In 1988, Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC). In 2000 he became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Sri Lanka honored Ondaatje in 2005 with its highest award for a foreign national. In 2016 a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, discovered in Sri Lanka, was named after him.
Personal
Ondaatje has two children with his first wife, Canadian artist Kim Ondaatje. His brother Christopher Ondaatje is a philanthropist, businessman and author. Ondaatje's nephew David Ondaatje is a film director and screenwriter, who made the 2009 film The Lodger. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/17/2018.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [H]aunting, brilliant.… Mesmerizing from the first sentence, rife with poignant insights and satisfying subplots, this novel about secrets and loss may be Ondaatje's best work yet.
Publishers Weekly
Through archival recordings and interviews with the eccentric characters from his childhood, a mosaic slowly emerges that illuminates not only his mother's story but the forgotten lives buried under the history of war. —Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Ondaatje’s gorgeous, spellbinding prose is precise and lustrous, witty, and tender.… [His] drolly charming, stealthily sorrowful tale casts subtle light on secret skirmishes and wounds sustained as war is slowly forged into peace.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] lyrical mystery that plays out in the shadow of World War II.… Ondaatje's shrewd character study plays out in a smart, sophisticated drama, one worth the long wait for fans of wartime intrigue.
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 WARLIGHT … then take off on your own:
1. One of the quandaries at the heart of Michael Ondaatje's novel is reconciling Rose Williams's bravery, indeed her patriotic heroism, and her treatment of Nathaniel and Rachel. How do readers, and especially her (fictional) children, wrap their heads around this inconsistency? How are we to consider Rose?
2. What do you make of Moth and Darter? As Nathaniel, in the opening lines, puts it, "our parents left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals."
3. Consider this passage from the novel and how it might be said to sum up one of the story's central concerns:
We never know more than the surface of any relationship after a certain stage, just as those layers of chalk, built from the efforts of infinitesimal creatures, work in almost limitless time.
4. Warlight's structure is anything but linear as it shifts back and forth in time and point of view. Is it confusing? Might the structure be a reflection of Nathaniel's own confusion: his sense of being able to see reality only dimly—as if through "warlight"?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: What are your thoughts on the second section of the novel with its sudden switch from to the third-person perspective? Did you find it difficult to integrate this outside voice into the overall narration?
6. "The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out," Nathaniel tells us. How has that "lost sequence" of Nathaniel's life shaped who he is? When he and Rachel discover that the reason their mother gave for leaving them was not the true reason, how did her lie make them feel? What lasting repercussions does her untruthfulness leave?
7. What does Nathaniel resolve within himself by the novel's end—what understanding has he come to? Or are things left unresolved for him—and for us? Is there a satisfactory resolution at the conclusion?
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Queeie
Candice Carty-Williams, 2019
Gallery/Scout Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501196010
Summary
Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers.
After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places… including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, "What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?"—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
With "fresh and honest" (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1989
• Where—South London, England, UK
• Education—University of Sussex
• Currently—lives in London
Candice Carty-Williams was born in London to a Jamaican-Indian hospital receptionist and a Jamaican taxicab driver. When she was two weeks old, her father came to visit. By his side (surprise!) was his pregnant wife and three children. It was the last she saw him.
Carty-Williams grew up as a lonely and unsure child, moving with her mother from place to place, all in South London, eventually living with her grandmother. It was a "really shitty" childhood, she told Fiona Sturges of the UK Guardian. Often overlooked by her elders—and compared to a more beautiful, older cousin—Carty-Williams she felt that she "would never be able to achieve anything."
But then, like so many shy children, Carty-Williams found refuge books, spending hours and days in the public library. Much later, in her early 20s, she discovered Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah: "I thought, Wow, someone gets it! The hair stuff!"
The idea of writing was a revelation, yet working full-time and in debt, Carty-Williams never believed she would be able to write a book. In recognition of that uphill battle—for untested and underrepresented writers—in 2016 she created and launched the Guardian and 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize to champion and celebrate their talents.
Later the same year, she saw that JoJo Myers (of Me Before You fame) was offering a week-long writing workshop at her home in Suffolk. Carty-Williams applied and was accepted into the program. That week she began writing … and writing … and writing. By the end of the week she had piled up 40,000 words—for what would become her first book. "It felt a bit like an outpouring. I think Queenie had been brewing for a very long time," she told the Guardian.
Three years later, in 2019, her novel Queenie was published, garnering solid reviews. Still, despite all the attention Queenie sent her way, Carty-Williams has kept her day job: working as a senior marketing executive at Vintage.
She has also contributed regularly to i-D, Refinery29, BEAT Magazine, and more, and her pieces, especially those about blackness, sex, and identity, have been shared globally. (Adapted from the publisher and The Guardian.)
Book Reviews
An irresistible portrait of a young Jamaican-British woman living in London that grows deeper as it goes.
Entertainment Weekly
Meet Queenie Jenkins, a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman who works for a London newspaper, is struggling to fit in, is dealing with a breakup, and is making all kinds of questionable decisions. In other words, she's highly relatable. A must read for 2019.
Woman's Day
They say Queenie is Black Bridget Jones meets Americanah. But she stands in her own right—nothing can and will compare. I can't articulate how completely and utterly blown away I am.
Black Girls Book Club
You'll likely feel seen while reading this (yes, it's that relatable), an example of what happens when you go looking for love and find something else instead.
PopSugar
You’ll read Queenie, a novel about a young Jamaican British woman trying to find her place in London, in one day. It’s that good.
Hello Giggles
(Starred review) [S]mart, fearless…. Carty-Williams doesn’t shy from the messiness of sexual relationships, racial justice…and the narrative is all the more effective for its boldness. This is an essential depiction of life as a black woman… told in a way that makes Queenie dynamic and memorable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Carty-Williams creates an utterly knowable character in Queenie, who's as dimensional and relatable as they come as she tries to balance her own desires with what everyone else seems to want for her... This smart, funny, and tender debut embraces a modern woman's messiness.
Booklist
(Starred review) The life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, troubled 25-year-old Jamaican Brit who is not having a very good year. Why she ever fell for that drip Tom… [is] never at all clear, but perhaps that's how these things go. A black Bridget Jones, perfectly of the moment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What were your first impressions of Queenie? Did you like her? Were you surprised to hear the story behind Queenie’s name? How does hearing the story from Sylvie affect Queenie? Do you think that Sylvie chose a fitting name for Queenie? Explain your answer.
2. Queenie tells Tom, "Well, your family; it’s what a family should be" (p. 293). Discuss her statement. What is it about Tom’s family that Queenie finds so appealing? Compare her family to Tom’s. Did you find Queenie’s family to be supportive? Why or why not?
3. Describe the structure of Queenie. What’s the effect of the shifting time frame? How do the flashbacks help you better understand Queenie and her relationship with Tom? Do the texts and emails that are included also help you better understand what Queenie is thinking? If so, how?
4. When Cassandra says that Kyazike’s name is "like Jessica without the ‘ic’ in the middle," Kyazike corrects her, saying, "No. Like my own name. Not some… Western name. Chess. Keh" (p. 170). Explain her reaction. Why is it important for Kyazike to correct Cassandra’s assertion? Why does hearing Kyazike’s name impress Queenie when they first meet?
5. After Queenie pitches an article designed to shine a light on the Black Lives Matter movement, one of her colleagues responds by saying, "All that Black Lives Matter nonsense.… All lives matter" (p. 376). Discuss Queenie’s reaction to this assertion. What’s her counterargument? Why is it so important for her to cover the movement?
6. Gina tells Queenie, "Whenever I’ve had a huge upheaval, my mother has always said, 'Keep one foot on the ground when two are in the air'" (p. 224). Why does she offer Queenie this advice? Were you surprised by the kindness that she shows Queenie? Do you think Gina is a good boss? Would you want to work for her? Why or why not?
7. After a conversation with Darcy, Queenie thinks, "I wished that well-meaning white liberals would think before they said things that they thought were perfectly innocent" (p. 178). What does Darcy say that leads to Queenie’s reaction? Think about the comment. Why is it so charged? How does Darcy’s comment highlight the differences between Queenie’s and Darcy’s experiences?
8. What did you think of Guy? Why does Queenie spend time with him? How does she describe their interactions to her friends? Contrast the reality of their interactions to what Queenie tells her friends. Why do you think that Queenie romanticizes the details?
9. According to Queenie, Darcy, Cassandra, and Kyazike "all represented a different part of my life, had all come to me at different times; why they’d all stuck with me I was constantly trying to work out" (p. 174). What part of Queenie’s life does each woman represent? Describe their friendships. What does each woman bring to Queenie’s life? Do you think that they’re good friends to her? Why or why not?
10. Queenie’s grandmother tells her, "If you are sad, you have to try not to be," causing Queenie to muse that "all of my grandmother’s responses come with a Caribbean frame of reference that forces me to accept that my problems are trivial" (p. 46). How does Queenie’s grandmother deal with problems? How does she react when Queenie broaches the subject of getting counseling, and why?
11. Janet asks Queenie "what do you see, when you look in the mirror, when you think about yourself as a person" (p. 510)? Why is this such a difficult question for Queenie to answer? How would you describe her? If someone posed this question to you, how would you answer it?
12. What did you think of Queenie’s lists? Are they effective in helping her navigate stressful situations? What’s the effect of including them in the novel? How do the lists help propel the story forward? Did you learn anything interesting about Queenie from her list of New Year’s Resolutions? If so, why?
13. Sylvie feels that she "let [Queenie] down, I should have been better to her, that way she might have been better herself" (p. 315). Why did Sylvie leave? How did her departure affect Queenie? Describe their relationship. How does it evolve throughout the novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays
Samantha Irby, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101912195
Summary
Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire.
With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, “bitches gotta eat” blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form.
Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets, explaining …
- why she should be the new Bachelorette — she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"
- detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes
- sharing awkward sexual encounters
- dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot
… she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976-77
• Where—Evanston, Illinois, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—Kalamazoo, Michigan
Samantha "Sam" Irby is the writer behind the popular blog, Bitches Gotta Eat. She is also the author of two collections of memoir/essays, We Are Never Going to Meet in Real Life (2017) and Meaty (2013).
As if that's not enough to keep her busy, Irby co-hosts Guts & Glory, a reading series featuring essayists. She has performed all over Chicago, opening for Baratunde Thurston during his "How to Be Black" tour. She has been profiled in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, as well as in TimeOut Chicago. Her work has appeared on the websites, The Rumpus and Jezebel.
Personal
Irby was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois, to parents who were older (37 and 45) and in ill-health. Her mother had MS and her father was an alcoholic. As Irby put it: “We were crazy poor — Section 8, food stamps, Social Security, disability." But she was still able to attend Evanston High School, an experience for which is ever grateful.
A chunky, kind of outcast black girl could be there and be really into Dave Matthews, but also into Cypress Hill. I had a lot of black friends, but also a lot of white, lacrosse-playing friends.
Since then both her parents have died.
Irby started Bitches Gotta Eat to impress a guy. It began as a personal page on MySpace written during her off hours as a receptionist at an animal hospital in Evanston. The guy became her boyfriend, but even though they parted Irby kept writing. In 2009, she turned the personal page into a blog.
It was just this thing that I could point people to if in real life — if I couldn’t prove to them that I was worth their attention. That’s, like, the saddest shit ever, but it’s real. A lot of good things have come out of my work, but I am not noble.
Writing is a form of catharsis for Irby. As she told, Chicago Magazine, "It's not brave at all; it's freeing." Irby finally left Evanston and moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to live with her wife Kirsten Jennings, whom she refers to as "Mavis" in her essays. (Adapted from various online sources including Chicago Magazine.)
Book Reviews
The second book of essays from this frank and madly funny blogger.… A sidesplitting polemicist for the most awful situations.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Essayist Samantha Irby is my very favorite sort of writer: stunningly direct, wildly hilarious, breathtakingly honest and, best of all, imminently relatable
Heidi Stevens - Chicago Tribune
Turn off the TV, let the dishes pile up, pull on your most comfy pair of sweats and settle into your reading chair. You’re going to be there awhile.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
A memoir of the life of a sardonic, at times awkward, at times depressed black woman with Crohn’s (an inflammatory-bowel disease) and degenerative arthritis.… Her acerbic, raw honesty on the page — often punctuated with all-caps comic parenthetical asides — unflinchingly recounts experiences such as the humiliating intrusion of explosive diarrhea on romantic and borderline-romantic interludes.
Kera Bolonik - New York Magazine
Irby…is so authentic, entertaining, and fearless, funny seems too concise a word to describe stepping inside her thoughts for a couple hundred pages. Her writing is both confident and self-deprecating and will strike readers in that perfectly relatable space between glorious confidence and average self-doubt. Essays about how much she despises her cat and an ill-timed gastronomical adventure are mind-blowingly hilarious, as are her musings on the great outdoors, her hypothetical Bachelor application, and Zumba. Other pieces, especially those involving her mostly-absent alcoholic father and her mother’s battle with multiple sclerosis are so vulnerable and fearless that they’ll stop you in your tracks. Irby doesn’t shy away from anything, and her brand of honesty is the kind that can inspire new writers and attract legions of loyal readers dying to meet her in real life.
Molly Labell - BUST
From the blogger behind Bitches Gotta Eat comes a seriocomic essay collection that will have you crying from laughter and then just crying. A boisterous medley of awkward sex, pop culture obsession and coming-of-age.
Oprah.com
Besides having one of the season's best covers…Irby's new collection of essays is an often riotously funny, unflinching, and never not provocative look into her life. Irby tackles difficult topics, like her estrangement from her father and how growing up in poverty has lifelong repercussions, including making it impossible to understand how to do things like "save for a rainy day." … Irby writes about the ways in which our society is so focused on aspirational living, that it neglects the people who are just trying to survive. But the book is never preachy, rather it is skillful in its ability to reveal the essential realities of how so many of us live and dream and hope and fail, in ways that are inimitably our own.
NYLON
A blogger (Bitches Gotta Eat) has to laugh to keep from crying—or maybe killing somebody—in this collection of essays from the black, full-figured female perspective.… Personal embarrassment provides plenty of material for in-print or online entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)
Love and Ruin
Paula McLain, 2018
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101967386
Summary
The bestselling author of The Paris Wife returns to the subject of Ernest Hemingway in a novel about his passionate, stormy marriage to Martha Gellhorn—a fiercely independent, ambitious young woman who would become one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century.
In 1937, twenty-eight-year-old Martha Gellhorn travels alone to Madrid to report on the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War and becomes drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught in the devastating conflict.
It’s the adventure she’s been looking for and her chance to prove herself a worthy journalist in a field dominated by men. But she also finds herself unexpectedly—and uncontrollably—falling in love with Hemingway, a man on his way to becoming a legend.
In the shadow of the impending Second World War, and set against the turbulent backdrops of Madrid and Cuba, Martha and Ernest’s relationship and their professional careers ignite.
But when Ernest publishes the biggest literary success of his career, For Whom the Bell Tolls, they are no longer equals, and Martha must make a choice: surrender to the confining demands of being a famous man’s wife or risk losing Ernest by forging a path as her own woman and writer.
It is a dilemma that could force her to break his heart, and hers.
Heralded by Ann Patchett as "the new star of historical fiction," Paula McLain brings Gellhorn’s story richly to life and captures her as a heroine for the ages: a woman who will risk absolutely everything to find her own voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where— Fresno, California, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Ohio
Paula McLain is an American author best known for her novel, The Paris Wife, a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage. That work became a long-time New York Times bestseller. Her 2015 novel centering on female aviator Beryl Markham was released to excellent reviews in 2015.
McLain has also published two collections of poetry in 1999 and 2005, a memoir about growing up in the foster system in 2003, and the novel A Ticket to Ride in 2008.
McLain was born in Fresno, California. Her mother vanished when she was four, and her father was in and out of jail, leaving McLain and her two sisters (one older, one younger) to move in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. It was an ordeal described in her memoir, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses.
When she aged out of the system, McLain supported herself by working in various jobs before discovering she could write. Eventually, she received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as the recipient of fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
She lives in Cleveland with her family. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/19/2015.)
Book Reviews
McLain strikingly depicts Martha Gellhorn’s burgeoning career as a writer and war correspondent during the years of her affair with and marriage to Ernest Hemingway.… Gellhorn emerges as a fierce trailblazer every bit Hemingway’s equal in this thrilling book.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [The] tempestuous relationship, a ferocious contest between two brilliant, willful, and intrepid writers. McLain’s fast-moving, richly insightful, heart-wrenching, and sumptuously written tale pays exhilarating homage to its truly exceptional and significant inspiration.
Booklist
Martha comes across as one tough cookie, Ernest as a great writer but a small man. This elegant if oddly bloodless narrative is a good introduction for those who know nothing of Gellhorn, but it basically rehashes information and sentiments.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Martha tells us from the outset that, for better or worse, she is a born traveler. What kind of expectation does that set up about her personality and disposition? What character traits might "born travelers" have that others don’t?
2. Just before Martha meets Ernest, her father dies. How might that make her more impressionable or susceptible to Ernest’s influence?
3. How would you describe Martha’s outlook as she heads off to Madrid? What are her reasons for going? What did the war seem to mean to her, and to others who volunteered?
4. When Martha begins to feel Ernest is drawn to her physically, she initially resists, saying he’s "too Hemingway." What does she mean by that? What is she afraid of?
5. Martha tells us that after three weeks in Madrid she felt she never wanted to leave, saying, "It was like living with my heart constantly in my throat." How could that feeling be perceived as positive? What are some of things she loves about Spain? About her circle of friends and colleagues at the Hotel Florida?
6. When Martha finds the house in Cuba, the Finca Vigía, she falls in love with it instantly, even though it’s in ruins. Why? What does she hope to gain by restoring the property and living there with Ernest? What are the risks?
7. When Martha accepts the assignment to travel to Finland for Collier’s, Ernest says teasingly to their group of friends in Sun Valley that she’s abandoning him. Is it really a joke or is there significant tension brewing? What are Martha’s reasons for going? How does she feel about her work in relation to her personal life? Can the two coexist? Can she—or anyone—have everything?
8. Though Martha is the one who chooses the Finca as a "beautiful foxhole" to share with Ernest, the house eventually begins to weigh on her. Why? What is draining to her about domesticity? Does Ernest have the same ambivalence? Why or why not?
9. Although Martha loves Ernest and doesn’t want to give up her life with him, she has a lot of trepidation about marrying him. Why? What factors contribute to her anxiety? What does she stand to lose?
10. When For Whom the Bell Tolls is published in 1940, it’s a runaway success, selling more copies than any American novel before it save Gone with the Wind. How do the book’s success and Ernest’s intensifying fame challenge Martha as his wife? What about as a writer?
11. When Martha and Ernest go off to China, they’re both working as reporters in search of a story. How do their journalistic methods differ? Are they different kinds of travelers, with different worldviews? Would you say they’re compatible? Why or why not?
12. As the world plunges toward war, Martha feels increasingly compelled to go to Europe to try to write about what’s happening, while Ernest becomes obsessed with his sub-hunting "mission." What are the instincts that pull them in opposite directions? Do we understand what drives them? Do they understand and have compassion for each other, or are they spiraling toward an impasse?
13. When Martha is finally convinced she must go to Europe to report on the war if she’s going to live with herself, Ernest feels more and more despondent and abandoned. Finally, he betrays her by taking her correspondent’s credentials from Collier’s, effectively replacing her on the masthead and making a place at the front lines impossible for her. Can we comprehend his actions and find empathy for him? Why or why not?
14. When the marriage disintegrates beyond repair, Ernest almost immediately finds a new love interest in Mary Welsh (who will become Mrs. Hemingway #4), while Martha turns to her work to ease her pain, finding strength in reclaiming her name and her independence. Do you think their contrasting strategies for surviving heartbreak symbolize the essential differences between Martha and Ernest as people? And do you believe that two such very different personalities could ever hope to find lasting happiness together?
(Questions from the author's website.)