The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage, and a Girl Saved by Bees
Meredith May, 2019
Park Row Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778307785
Summary
An extraordinary story of a young girl who finds solace in one of nature’s most mysterious and beguiling creatures: the honeybee.
Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm.
She was five years old, her parents had recently split and suddenly she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard.
That first close encounter with a bee was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May, and in that moment she discovered that everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes, in the secret world of bees.
May was drawn to the art of beekeeping as an escape from her troubled reality.
Her mother had receded into a volatile cycle of madness and despair and spent most days locked away in the bedroom. It was during this pivotal time in May’s childhood that she learned to take care of herself, forged an unbreakable bond with her grandfather and opened her eyes to the magic and wisdom of nature.
The bees became a guiding force in May’s life, teaching her about family and community, loyalty and survival and the unequivocal relationship between a mother and her child.
Part memoir, part beekeeping odyssey, The Honey Bus is an remarkable story about finding home in the most unusual of places, and how a tiny, little-understood insect could save a life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Meredith May spent sixteen years at the San Francisco Chronicle, where her narrative reporting won the PEN USA Literary Award for Journalism and was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. The Honey Bus (2019) is May's first solo book. She also coauthored I, Who Did Not Die (2017), the true story of a 13-year-old Iranian child soldier who saved an enemy combatant's life during the Iran-Iraq War.
A former professor of journalism and podcasting at Mills College in Oakland, California, May lives in San Francisco, where she rows on the Bay. She is a fifth-generation beekeeper and keeps several hives in a community garden. (Adapted from the publisher and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A] powerful account of growing up in 1970s California.… May learned that, unlike her mother, she needed to look at what she had… rather than what was missing. May’s chronicle of overcoming obstacles and forging ahead is moving and thoughtful.
Publishers Weekly
Award-winning journalist May worked at the San Francisco Chronicle for many years, but she's also a fifth-generation beekeeper, the real thrust of this memoir.… Lots of in-house love for this one
Library Journal
A] sharply visceral memoir.
Booklist
While [May's] subject may be honeybees, they serve as a launching point for a tale of self-discovery…. A fascinating and hopeful book of family, bees, and how "even when [children] are overwhelmed with despair, nature has special ways to keep them safe."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Honey Bus begins with a swarm-catching expedition gone wrong, and Grandpa has to rescue Meredith from stinging honey bees. Why do you think the book begins with this scene? How are the themes it sets up explored later in the story?
2. A major thread in The Honey Bus is the notion of biological versus chosen family. What kind of role do Grandpa and the bees play in Meredith’s life, and how do they shape the person she becomes? Is there someone in your own life who had a similar impact on you?
3. Meredith’s mother rarely leaves the bedroom and her mood sways between fragile and frantic. Grandpa, by contrast, is a soft-spoken Big Sur mountain man who loves the outdoors. How do these different personalities affect the way Meredith sees the world? How do they dictate family dynamics?
4. One way Meredith clings to the memory of her father is by listening to The Beatles, even though the music makes her cry. Does this resonate with your sense of music and visceral memory? Do you have songs that transport you back in time or make you feel strong emotions?
5. Reflecting on her childhood, Meredith writes:
I gravitated toward bees because I sensed that the hive held ancient wisdom to teach me the things that my parents could not. It is from the honeybee, a species that has been surviving for the last100 million years, that I learned how to persevere.
What honeybee behavior does Meredith witness that informs her understanding of human nature and her own relationships? Has nature ever taught you something about yourself?
6. What was your comfort level with honeybees at the start of the book? Did it change by the end? How?
7. The Honey Bus title was taken from a hollowed-out ramshackle army bus in the backyard where Grandpa bottled honey. When Grandpa teaches Meredith how to harvest for the first time, she writes, "The honey glowed in my hands, like a living, breathing thing. It was warm, and I loved it because it made sense when nothing else did." Throughout the story Meredith and Grandpa keep retreating to the honey bus. What role does this space play in both of their lives?
8. When Meredith’s brother Matthew is ten, he’s given his own bedroom—in a camping trailer in the yard. Meredith envies his freedom, yet Matthew remembers shivering in the winters and feeling ostracized, sequestered outside until he eventually left for college. What do you make of this living arrangement, and how did it create different family experiences for the two siblings? If Matthew wrote a memoir, how do you imagine it would differ from his sister’s?
9. In the epilogue, Meredith relocates Grandpa’s last remaining beehive to San Francisco to start an apiary of her own in a community garden. A little boy visiting on a school trip tells her with pride that his grandfather keeps bees. Meredith tells him that he’s "the luckiest boy in the world." What do you make of this final scene?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Sycamore
Bryn Chancellor, 2017
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062661098
Summary
A mesmerizing page-turner in the spirit of Everything I Never Told You and Olive Kitteridge.
Out for a hike one scorching afternoon in Sycamore, Arizona, a newcomer to town stumbles across what appear to be human remains embedded in the wall of a dry desert ravine.
As news of the discovery makes its way around town, Sycamore’s longtime residents fear the bones may belong to Jess Winters, the teenage girl who disappeared suddenly some eighteen years earlier, an unsolved mystery that has soaked into the porous rock of the town and haunted it ever since.
In the days it takes the authorities to make an identification, the residents rekindle stories, rumors, and recollections both painful and poignant as they revisit Jess’s troubled history. In resurrecting the past, the people of Sycamore will find clarity, unexpected possibility, and a way forward for their lives.
Skillfully interweaving multiple points of view, Bryn Chancellor knowingly maps the bloodlines of a community and the indelible characters at its heart—most notably Jess Winters, a thoughtful, promising adolescent poised on the threshold of adulthood.
Evocative and atmospheric, Sycamore is a coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a moving exploration of the elemental forces that drive human nature—desire, loneliness, grief, love, forgiveness, and hope—as witnessed through the inhabitants of one small Arizona town. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Raised—Sedona, Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., Northern Arizona University; M.A., Arizona State University; M.F.A., Vanderbilt University
• Awards—Prairie Schooner Book Prize
• Currently—lives in Charlotte, North Carolina
Bryn Chancellor, English professor and author, was born in California and raised in Arizona. She earned her B.A from Northern Arizona and her M.A. Arizona State, both in English. She received an M.F.A. in fiction from Vanderbilt University..
Chancellor's debut novel Sycamore was published in 2017, and her story collection When Are You Coming Home? in 2014. Other short fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Phoebe, and elsewhere.
In 2014 Chancellor won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize for her story collection. Additional honors include the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in fiction, as well as literary fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
Currently she is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. She is married to artist Timothy Winkler. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
I cannot even begin to detail all the Sycamore folks I came to know in this rather literary thriller. There were a lot of lost souls and people starting over, which some readers might find a bit maudlin. But I loved every minute I spent with this book. Most every character was revealed in such an intimate way that I did not want to say goodbye, unusual in a thriller. I admired the closure that the author achieved, wrapping up so very many loose ends and difficult predicaments by book’s end. I even found comfort in a beautifully written scene describing the last minutes of Jess’s life. This is Chancellor's first novel …I sure hope she has more to come. READ MORE …
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers
Chancellor…deftly dissects the lives of more than a dozen characters who come into contact with Jess during the 12 months she lives in Sycamore. With a few opening words in each chapter, we’re immersed in their worlds and the hefty burdens of their years-long emotional struggle.… Chancellor creates suspense and tension in quiet, insular moments—family members brooding at the dinner table, lustful gazes, the rolled eyes of hormonal teenagers in the hallways of the local high school.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The novel glimmers with its author’s keen understanding of lives at all ages and stages. Which she achieves with deft characterization; few of her creations can be called minor, and all are drawn with care and compassion. At once haunting and hopeful, Sycamore displays Chancellor’s talent across all of fiction’s realms and showcases her generosity of spirit.… Powerful and moving.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
This hypnotic debut probes the disappearance of 17-year-old Jess.… Chancellor shifts nimbly between past and present and from character to character, cutting away the net of riddles that ensnares Sycamore’s residents.
Oprah magazine
[An] emotional and addicting debut…[and] unforgettable page‐turner.
RT Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [R]iveting…a movingly written, multivoiced novel examining how one tragic circumstance can sow doubt about fundamental things; as one character succinctly asks, "Do we really know anyone?"… [A] transporting vision of community, connection, and forgiveness.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Chancellor's absorbing first novel begins quietly, quickly gains momentum, and ends explosively.… Shifting deftly between 1991 and 2009, Chancellor spins multiple threads of Jess's story as it affects everyone, especially Maud.… [G]ripping. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
A meaty, suspenseful debut.
Booklist
Though the author builds a fair amount of whodunit suspense, she clearly means for this to be a serious novel about loss, grieving, and forgiveness. Unfortunately, her writing—effortful and straining too hard for effect—often gets in the way…. [The] deft, plausible resolution…[is] not enough.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Sycamore … then take off on your own:
1. In the opening chapter, Jessica Winters is new to Sycamore and having trouble adjusting to both her new home and her parents' divorce. Does author Bryn Chancellor portray teenage angst and anger convincingly? What do you think of her friendship with Dani? And Dani's father? Would his "interest" in Dani have been handled differently today?
2. What do you think of Maud as a mother? As a person? How do you consider the relationship between mother and daughter?
3. Another newcomer to Sycamore is Laura Drennan, also coming out of a failed marriage. She, of course, is the one who finds the remains, which sets the story in motion. Laura views her move to Sycamore as "an entire split from the past." She would be happy to "burn the whole f***ing thing down and to see if she could rise from the ashes." What do you think of her?
4. Consider the town locals, some of them generations deep. What are their dreams and disappointments? Each of them — Iris Overton, Stevie Prentiss, Adam Newell, and Esther Genoways — is alone. How do they cope with the challenges in front of them? Do you find one character more engaging than others, perhaps?
5. (Follow-up to Question 4) What effect does/did Jessica Winter's disappearance have on the town? How has the mystery haunted the residents over nearly two decades? How does the possibility of finding her remains open up new wounds?
6. The author uses her individual characters to reveal different facets of Jessica and the mystery of her disappearance. How and what do we learn from each of the different characters?
7. Comparisons are being made of this book to Olive Kitteridge. Have you read Elizabeth Strout's book? Do you see any resemblances, if so what?
8. (Follow-up to Question 7) Did you enjoy the author's use of shifting perspectives? Or did you find the numerous characters hard to keep track of? What might be the advantage of incorporating different points of view in telling a story? What, on the other hand, might be the advantage of using a single narrative voice?
9. In what way does Sycamore, the town itself, function as a character? How does the author make use of the area's landscape and atmospherics to highlight the mystery at the heart of the novel?
10. Talk about the way the author ratchets up suspense. Were you surprised by the ending? Is the ending satisfying?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Parisian
Isabella Hammad, 2019
Grove/Atlantic
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802129437
Summary
A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
Midhat Kamal is the son of a wealthy textile merchant from Nablus, a town in Ottoman Palestine. A dreamer, a romantic, an aesthete, in 1914 he leaves to study medicine in France, and falls in love.
When Midhat returns to Nablus to find it under British rule, and the entire region erupting with nationalist fervor, he must find a way to cope with his conflicting loyalties and the expectations of his community.
The story of Midhat’s life develops alongside the idea of a nation, as he and those close to him confront what it means to strive for independence in a world that seems on the verge of falling apart.
Against a landscape of political change that continues to define the Middle East, The Parisian explores questions of power and identity, enduring love, and the uncanny ability of the past to disrupt the present.
Lush and immersive, and devastating in its power, The Parisian is an elegant, richly-imagined debut from a dazzling new voice in fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1991-92
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University; M.F.A., New York University
• Awards—Plimpton Prize
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Isabella Hammad was born in London, and she obtained her undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford University. In 2012 she was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard, and in 2013 she received the Harper Wood Creative Writing Studentship from Cambridge University.
During her MFA in Fiction at New York University she was a Stein Fellow, and she was the 2016-2017 Axinn Foundation NYU Writer-in-Residence.
Her writing has been published in Conjunctions 66: Affinity (2016) and The Paris Review (2018), for which her short story "Mr Can’aan" won the 2018 Plimpton Prize. The Parisian her first novel was published in 2019. (From the author's literary agency.)
Book Reviews
A hugely accomplished historical sweep of a book… a novel of immense skill and confidence.
Guardian (UK)
Reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, 27-year-old Isabella Hammad’s epic debut novel surpasses both in its scope.
New York
Stunning…a lush rendering of Palestinian life a century ago under the British mandate and a sumptuous epic about the enduring nature of love.
Vogue
(Starred review) In her exceptional debut, Hammad taps into the satisfying slow-burn style of classic literature with a storyline that captures both the heart and the mind.… This is an immensely rewarding novel that readers will sink into and savor.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Against a backdrop of Arab nationalism and unrest caused by shifting political control of the region and waves of Jewish immigration, this finely plotted, big-hearted novel explores the origin of Mideast tensions that continue to this day. A compelling first novel. —Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
(Starred review) An assured debut…. Hammad sometimes drifts into the didactic in outlining an exceedingly complex history, but she does so with a poet's eye for detail…. Closely observed and elegantly written: an overstuffed story that embraces decades and a large cast of characters without longueurs.
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.)
The Only Story
Julian Barnes, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
252 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525521211
Summary
From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a novel about a young man on the cusp of adulthood and a woman who has long been there, a love story shot through with sheer beauty, profound sadness, and deep truth.
Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.
One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, Paul comes home from university, aged nineteen, and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club.
In the mixed-doubles tournament he's partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who's forty-eight, confident, ironic, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is also a warm companion, their bond immediate.
And they soon, inevitably, are lovers. Clinging to each other as though their lives depend on it, they then set up house in London to escape his parents and the abusive Mr. Mcleod.
Decades later, Paul looks back at how they fell in love, how he freed Susan from a sterile marriage, and how—gradually, relentlessly—everything fell apart, and he found himself struggling to understand the intricacy and depth of the human heart.
The Only Story is a piercing account of helpless devotion, and of how memory can confound us and fail us and surprise us (sometimes all at once), of how, as Paul puts it, "first love fixes a life forever." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Dan Kavanaugh
• Birth—January 19, 1946
• Where—Leicester, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford Uiversity
• Awards—Man Booker Prize; Gutenberg prize;
E.M. Forster Award; Geoffrey Faber Memorial
Prize; Prix Medicis; Prix Femina.
• Currently—lives in London, England
Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending. Three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005).
Barnes has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. Barnes is one of the best-loved English writers in France, where he has won several literary prizes, including the Prix Medicis for Flaubert’s Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over. He is an officer of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Although Barnes was born in Leicester, his family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks later. Both of his parents were teachers of French. He has said that his support for Leicester City Football Club was, aged four or five, "a sentimental way of hanging on" to his home city. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964. At the age of 10, Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination." As an adolescent he lived in Northwood, Middlesex, the "Metroland" of which he named his first novel.
Education and early career
Barnes attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. He then worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review. During his time at the New Statesman, Barnes suffered from debilitating shyness, saying: "When there were weekly meetings I would be paralysed into silence, and was thought of as the mute member of staff." From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesman and then for The Observer.
Books
His first novel, Metroland (1980), is a short, semi-autobiographical story of Christopher, a young man from the London suburbs who travels to Paris as a student, finally returning to London. It deals with themes of idealism, sexual fidelity and has the three-part structure that is a common theme in Barnes' work. After reading the novel, Barnes' mother complained about the book's "bombardment" of filth. In 1983, his second novel Before She Met Me features a darker narrative, a story of revenge by a jealous historian who becomes obsessed by his second wife's past.
Barnes's breakthrough novel Flaubert's Parrot broke with the traditional linear structure of his previous novels and featured a fragmentary biographical style story of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert. The novel was published to great acclaim, especially in France, and it established Barnes as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation. Staring at the Sun followed in 1986, another ambitious novel about a woman growing to maturity in post-war England who deals with issues of love, truth and mortality. In 1989 Barnes published A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, which was also a non-linear novel, which uses a variety of writing styles to call into question the perceived notions of human history and knowledge itself.
In 1991, he published Talking it Over, a contemporary love triangle, in which the three characters take turns to talk to the reader, reflecting over common events. This was followed ten years later by a sequel, Love, etc., which revisited the characters ten years on.
Barnes is a keen Francophile, and his 1996 book Cross Channel, is a collection of 10 stories charting Britain's relationship with France. He also returned to the topic of France in Something to Declare, a collection of essays on French subjects.
In 2003, Barnes appeared as the voice of Georges Simenon in a BBC Radio 4 series of adaptations of Inspector Maigret stories. Other works include England, England, a satire on Britishness and the culture of tourism; and Arthur & George, a detailed story based on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his involvement in the Great Wyrley Outrages. His 1992 book, The Porcupine, deals with the trial of a fictional former Communist dictator.
Barnes' eleventh novel, The Sense of an Ending, published in 2011, was awarded the Man Booker Prize. The judges took 31 minutes to decide the winner, calling it a "beautifully written book," which "spoke to humankind in the 21st Century." Salman Rushdie tweeted Barnes his congratulations.
In 2013 Barnes published a "memoir" Levels of Life, about the death of his wife, which is "part history, part meditative essay and part fictionalized biography. The pieces combine to form a fascinating discourse on love and sorrow" (New York Times).
Personal life
His wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, died of a brain tumour on 20 October 2008. He lives in London. His brother, Jonathan Barnes, is a philosopher specialised in Ancient Philosophy. He is the patron of human rights organisation Freedom from Torture. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Consistently surprising.… It shows a novelist at the height of his powers [and is] a book that quietly sinks its hooks into the reader and refuses to let go.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst - Times (UK)
Often playful and always elegant, [it] propels us forward, first into joy, and then into despair, and there is no escape from the central story as it becomes bleaker. This intense, taut, sad and often beautiful tale may well be Barnes's best.
Lara Feigel - Spectator (UK)
One to savour.… Emotionally acute, profoundly beautiful, as droll as it is deep.”
Hephzibah Anderson - Mail on Sunday (UK)
Gentle, bleak, and brilliant.… His themes are the big, unfashionable universals—ageing, memory, above all love.
Jon Day - Financial Times (UK)
Barnes’s deeply touching novel is a study of heartbreak.… By revisiting the flow and ebb of one man’s passion, Barnes eloquently illuminates the connection between an old man and his younger self.
Publishers Weekly
Barnes skillfully plays with narrative form, turning the novel into something of a metafiction without making it ponderous or difficult to read.… Absorbing enough to polish off over a weekend, this novel has a place in popular and literary collections. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Mesmeric.… The reader drifts along on Barnes’ gorgeous, undulating prose. Focusing on love, memory, nostalgia, and how contemporary Britain came to be, Barnes’ latest will enrapture readers from beginning to end. —Alexander Moran
Booklist
(Starred review.) [Paul is]…narcissistic, and his rhetoric … often takes on a needy, pleading tone.… But that's by Barnes' design, and it's consistently clear that Paul was in love.… A somber but well-conceived character study suffused with themes of loss and self-delusion.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The opening line reads, "Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?" Which would you pick? Do you agree with Paul that this isn’t a fair questions because "we don’t have the choice"?
2. Susan and Paul have a quarter-century age difference, yet he repeatedly insists throughout the novel that neither one of them was taking advantage of the other. Do you agree, or do you think there is an inherent power imbalance between them due to that gap?
3. Games and sports feature prominently throughout the story, whether tennis, golf, or crossword puzzles. How do each of these activities, and the attitudes the characters have toward them, illuminate and illustrate the nature of love as they interpret it?
4. Discuss the character of Joan and her role as Paul’s only true confidant when it comes to his relationship with Susan.
5. Point of view consistently changes throughout the novel, with part one being in first person, part two in second person, and part three in third, second, and first. Why do you think Barnes chose to do this? How did the different perspectives impact the reading experience and influence how you understand Paul?
6. On pages 115–116, Paul presents his theory that memory is like a "log-splitter." How is the nature of memory demonstrated throughout the novel, and do you agree with Paul when he says, "Life is a cross section, memory is a split down the grain, and memory follows it all the way to the end"?
7. As Susan’s alcoholism progresses, she tells Paul she has "a moral disease" caused by her being from "a played-out generation" (page 169). What do you think is the impetus for her drinking, and how do you interpret her repeated insistence that her generation is "played out"?
8. A subsequent girlfriend of Paul’s calls Susan a "madwoman" in an attic (page 186), a reference to not only Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre but also the groundbreaking 1979 work of feminist literary criticism of that title by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. How does Susan fit into the broader tradition of literary housewives? Is she a transgressive feminist, a beleaguered relic of pre–sexual revolution England, or something else entirely?
9. Do you think Paul was right to "hand back" Susan to her daughters, or do you think he abandoned her? How did his decision color your opinion of him?
10. As we see throughout the novel, and as is explicitly discussed in part three, Paul is obsessed with defining love. Discuss what it means when, on page 246, he posits, "Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story."
11. How is marriage represented in the novel, and how important is it that Paul himself never marries?
12. Gordon Macleod is an extremely complex man—something Paul comes to realize only later in life. Discuss the evolution of their relationship, and Gordon’s significance as a man who subscribes to traditional British masculinity.
13. Paul and Susan’s final encounter is, on the surface, anticlimactic, but at its core imbued with deep significance. How did you interpret it?
14. After their first match, when Paul apologizes for causing them to lose, Susan says, "The most vulnerable spot in doubles is always down the middle" (page 9). How does this idea reemerge throughout the novel—that our weakest spot is the space between us and someone else?
15. What is your only story?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
After Anna
Lisa Scottoline, 2018
St. Martin Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250185235
Summary
A fast-paced, thrilling new novel full of suspense and emotional justice.
Noah Alderman, widower and single father, has remarried a wonderful woman, Maggie, and for the first time in a long time he and his son are happy.
But their lives are turned upside down when Maggie’s daughter moves in with them. Anna is a drop-dead gorgeous sixteen-year-old with a secret dark side. Unbeknownst to everyone, Anna is not simply a selfish beauty, but a dangerously disturbed sociopath.
Anna sets out to systematically destroy the new life Noah has built, and when she turns up dead, Noah is at the top of the suspect list. Noah begins his own investigation in order to clear his name and save his family, and what he discovers is darker than he could have ever imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 1, 1955
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling author and Edgar award-winning author of some two dozen novels and several nonfiction books. She also writes a weekly column with her daughter Francesca Serritella for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled "Chick Wit" which is a witty and fun take on life from a woman's perspective.
These stories, along with many other never-before-published stories, have been collected in four books including their most recent, Have a Nice Guilt Trip, and the earlier, Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim, Best Friends, Occasional Enemies, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, which has been optioned for TV, and My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space.
Lisa reviews popular fiction and non-fiction, and her reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. Lisa has served as President of Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, "Justice and Fiction" at The University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater.
Lisa is a regular and much sought after speaker at library and corporate events. Lisa has over 30 million copies of her books in print and is published in over 35 countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Lisa's books have landed on all the major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and Look Again was named "One of the Best Novels of the Year" by the Washington Post, and one of the best books in the world as part of World Book Night 2013.
Lisa's novels are known for their emotionality and their warm and down-to-earth characters, which resonate with readers and reviewers long after they have finished the books. When writing about Lisa’s Rosato & Associates series, Janet Maslin of the New York Times applauds Lisa's books as "punchy, wisecracking thrillers" whose "characters are earthy, fun and self-deprecating" and distinguishes her as having "one of the best-branded franchise styles in current crime writing."
Recognition
Lisa's contributions through her writing has been recognized by organizations throughout the country. She is the recipient of the Edgar Award, the Mystery Writer's of America most prestigious honor, the Fun, Fearless, Fiction Award by Cosmopolitan Magazine, and named a PW Innovator by Publisher's Weekly.
Lisa was honored with AudioFile's Earphones Award and named Voice of the Year for her recording of her non-fiction book, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. The follow up collection, My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space has garnered both Lisa and her daughter, Francesca, an Earphones Award as well. In addition, she has been honored with a Distinguished Author Award from Scranton University, and a "Paving the Way" award from the University of Pennsylvania, Women in Business.
Personal
Lisa's accomplishments all pale in comparison to what she considers her greatest achievement, raising, as a single mom, her beautiful (a completely unbiased opinion) daughter, an honors graduate of Harvard, author, and columnist, who is currently working on her first novel.
Lisa believes in writing what you know, and she puts so much of herself into her books. What you may or may not learn about Lisa from her books is that...
♦ she is an incredibly generous person
♦ an engaging and entertaining speaker
♦ a die-hard Eagles fan
♦ a good cook.
♦ She loves the color pink, her Ipod has everything from U2 to Sinatra to 50 Cent, she is proud to be an American, and nothing makes her happier than spending time with her daughter.
Dogs
Lisa is also a softie when it comes to her furry family. Nothing can turn Lisa from a professional, career-minded author, to a mushy, sweet-talking, ball-throwing woman like her beloved dogs. Although she has owned and loves various dog breeds, including her amazing goldens, she has gone crazy for her collection of King Charles Spaniels.
Lisa first fell in love with the breed when Francesca added her Blehneim Cavalier, Pip, to the mix. This prompted Lisa to get her own, and she started with the adorable, if not anatomically correct (Lisa wrote a "Chick Wit" column about this), Little Tony, her first male dog. Little Tony is a black and tan Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
But Lisa couldn't stop at just one and soon added her little Peach, a Blehneim King Charles Cavalier. Lisa is now beyond thrilled to be raising Peach’s puppies, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson, and for daily puppy pictures, be sure to follow Lisa on Facebook or Twitter. Herding together the entire pack is Lisa’s spunky spit-fire of a Corgi named Ruby. The solitude of writing isn't very quiet with her furry family, but she wouldn't have it any other way.
Cats
Not to be outshined by their canine counterparts, Lisa's cats, Vivi and Mimi, are the princesses of the house, and have no problem keeping the rest of the brood in line. Vivi is a grey and white beauty and is more aloof than her cuddly, black and white partner, Mimi.
When Lisa’s friend and neighbor passed, Lisa adopted his beloved cat, Spunky, a content and beautiful ball of fur.
Chickens
Lisa loves the coziness of her farmhouse, and no farm is complete without chickens. Lisa has recently added a chicken coop and has populated it with chicks of different types, and is overjoyed with each and every colorful egg they produce. Watching over Lisa's chicks are her horses, which gladly welcomed the chicks and all the new excitement they bring. (Author bio adapted from the author's website.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Lisa on Facebook.
Book Reviews
[A] nail-biting domestic thriller…. Filled with plenty of twists and complex characters, this entertaining story builds to a satisfying conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
Scottoline, a master at crafting intense family dramas, expertly twists Maggie’s reality with a page-turning mix of guilt, self-delusion, and manipulation.
Booklist
The result is a nail-biting thriller but a terrible mystery, … running amok as [it spins] out a series of improbable complications, a barrage of shameless cliffhangers, and a culprit ex machina before the absurdly happy ending.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for AFTER ANNA … then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)