An Anonymous Girl
Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen, 2019
St. Martin's Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250133731
Summary
Looking to earn some easy cash, Jessica Farris agrees to be a test subject in a psychological study about ethics and morality. But as the study moves from the exam room to the real world, the line between what is real and what is one of Dr. Shields’s experiments blurs.
Dr. Shields seems to know what Jess is thinking… and what she’s hiding.
Jessica’s behavior will not only be monitored, but manipulated.
Caught in a web of attraction, deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.
From the authors of the blockbuster bestseller The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl will keep you riveted through the last shocking twist (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Greer Hendricks
• Birth—ca. 1968
• Raised—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Connecticut College; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Greer Hendricks spent over two decades as an editor at Simon & Schuster. Prior to her tenure in publishing, she worked at Allure magazine and obtained her Master's in journalism from Columbia University.
Greer's writing has been published in The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. The Wife Between Us is her first novel (From the publisher.)
According to Publishers Weekly, Hendricks worked with Sarah Pekkanen on Pekkanen's 2010 debut novel, The Opposite of Me. The two formed a close friendship and went on to publishd six more of Pekkanen's novels.
When Greer left publishing in 2014, Pekkanen was one of the few who knew of Hendrick's desire to write. Co-authoring a book with Hendricks, Pekkanen believed, would up her own game. So began their collaboration on The Wife Between Us (2018), followed up with An Anonymous Girl (2019).
Sarah Pekkanen
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Bethesda, Maryland
• Education—University of Wisconsin; University of Maryland
• Currently—lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland
Sarah Pekkanen was born in New York City, arriving so quickly that doctors had no time to give her mother painkillers. This was the last time Sarah ever arrived for anything earlier than expected. Her mother still harbors a slight grudge.
Sarah’s family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, where Sarah, along with a co-author, wrote a book entitled "Miscellaneous Tales and Poems." Shockingly, publishers did not leap upon this literary masterpiece. Sarah sent a sternly-worded letter to publishers asking them to respond to her manuscript. Sarah no longer favors Raggedy Ann stationery, although she is sure it impressed top New York publishers.
Sarah’s parents were hauled into her elementary school to see first-hand the shocking condition of her desk. Sarah’s parents stared, open-mouthed, at the crumpled pieces of paper, broken pencils, and old notebooks crowding Sarah’s desk. Sarah’s organization skills have since improved. Slightly.
After college, Sarah began work as a journalist, covering Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, Sarah could not understand the thick drawls of the U.S. Senators from Alabama, resulting in many unintentional misquotes. Sarah was groped by one octogenarian politician, sumo-bumped off a subway car by Ted Kennedy, and unsuccessfully sued by the chief of staff to a corrupt U.S. Congresswoman. Sarah also worked briefly as an on-air correspondent for e! Entertainment Network, until the e! producers realized that Capitol Hill wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what one might call sexy.
Sarah married Glenn Reynolds, completing her rebellion against her father, who told her never to become a writer or marry a lawyer.
Sarah took a job at Gannett New Service/USAToday, covering Capitol Hill. Sarah was assigned to cover the White House Correspondents Dinner and rode in the Presidential motorcade to the dinner. Sarah convinced a White House aide to let her stick her head out of the limousine moon-roof during the ride and wave to onlookers. Later, her triumph was tempered by the fact that bouncers would not allow her into the Vanity Fair after-party. Sarah attempted entry three times in case the bouncers were just kidding.
Sarah took a job writing features for the Baltimore Sun, and interviewed the actor who played Greg Brady. She refrained from asking if he really made out with Marcia, but just barely.
Sarah and Glenn’s son Jackson was born. He arrived too quickly for Sarah to receive painkillers, and Sarah was pretty sure she saw her mother smirking. When Glenn put a loving hand on Sarah’s shoulder during the throes of labor, Sarah decided the most expedient way to get Glenn to remove his hand was to bite it, hard. She was proved right.
Twenty months later, Sarah and Glenn’s son Will was born. Three weeks later, Sarah and Glenn moved into a new home and renovated the kitchen. Two weeks later, Glenn caught pneumonia and simultaneously started a new job. Ten days after the kitchen renovation was complete, the kitchen caught on fire, and Sarah, Glenn and family moved to a hotel while renovation began anew. Sarah and Glenn decided to work on their "timing" issues.
Having left her journalism job to chase around the ever-active Jack and Will, Sarah started writing a column for Bethesda Magazine and began work on a novel. She did not write it on Raggedy Ann stationery.
Her first book, The Opposite of Me, came out in 2010 and her second, Skiping, a Beat in 2011. Those were followed by These Girls in 2012, The Best of Me in 2013, and Catching Air in 2014.
Sarah gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Dylan, and gets a little weepy every time she contemplates her good luck. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Psychological suspense is a genre that needs to be handled with kid gloves. Too much reality—or too much foolishness—and the pact made with the reader to believe in the unbelievable is broken. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seem to have mastered the formula in An Anonymous Girl, a creepy-crawly tale about putting your trust in a stranger; specifically, in a strange psychologist.… The authors know exactly how to play on their characters' love of danger to bring them to the brink of disaster—and dare them to jump off.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review) The page-turner’s second half whizzes along at a furious pace, exploiting the dual perspectives for maximum tension. Though some of the gasp-worthy final twists require substantial character flip-flops, it’s a… minor sacrifice for major league suspense.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) For those who relished the creepy stalking in Hendricks and Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us, this unnerving tale will have them rethinking what secrets are safe to share and if moral and ethics really matter when protecting the ones you love.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Masterfully escalates the suspense… keep[s] the reader guessing until the end. A great follow-up
Booklist
Almost nothing about this story or its characters is believable or makes much sense…. Leave that aside, though, and you can still have a bit of fun watching their game of cat and mouse play out. A harmless page-turner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. If you were in Jess’s shoes, would you have snuck into Dr. Shields’s morality and ethics survey? Why or why not? After the questions started to become more invasive, do you think you would have continued answering them, or looked for a way out?
2. What did you think of the authors’ decision to use the second person "you" in Dr. Shields’s chapters? How did it affect your experience of reading the novel? Did it change your perception of any of the characters, especially Dr. Shields?
3. Early in the novel, Jess thinks, "Sometimes an impulsive decision can change the course of your life. "Do you agree? Have you ever made any impulsive decisions that dramatically affected your life? What were they?
4. On page 202, Jess asks, "How do you know if you can really trust someone?" What do you think—how do you know? Can you ever know? What about someone makes them seem "trustworthy" to you?
5. Do you think Dr. Shields truly had a good marriage, or was it doomed from the beginning? Why do you believe this, and what about Dr. Shields informs your thoughts?
6. Did you have an idea of what had happened to Subject 5, or were you surprised? If you did suspect what occurred, can you point out what kind of foreshadowing or clues led you to this conclusion?
7. What did you think of Dr. Shields’s morality and ethics questions? Did you find yourself answering them? Which question did you find the most challenging?
8. An Anonymous Girl explores the lies that link people together and the damage these deceptions can cause. Is it ever okay to tell a lie? When does a secret become a deception?
9. How much of a motivating factor was money for Jess? In your opinion, was the money Jess earned worth what she endured? Can trust ever really be bought?
10. At the start of the novel, one of Dr. Shields’s questions to Jess was, "Do victims have a right to take retribution into their own hands?" How would Jess and Dr. Shields answer this question at the end of the book? How would you answer it?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Other Woman
Sandie Jones, 2019
Minatour Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250192004
Summary
HE LOVES YOU: Adam adores Emily. Emily thinks Adam’s perfect, the man she thought she’d never meet.
BUT SHE LOVES YOU NOT: Lurking in the shadows is a rival, a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.
AND SHE'LL STOP AT NOTHING: Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother Pammie. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants: Emily gone forever.
The Other Woman will have you questioning her on every page, in Sandie Jones' chilling psychological suspense about a man, his new girlfriend, and the mother who will not let him go. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Sandie Jones is a British journalist and author of the 2019 debut thriller, The Other Woman. For the past 20 years, she has worked mainly as a freelance writer for national newspapers and magazines, the Sunday Times, Woman’s Weekly and the Daily Mail. Sandie lives in South London with her husband and three children. (Adapted from the agent's website.)
Book Reviews
Whiplash-inducing final pages.
New York Times Book Review
Excellent.… [Jones] delves into the motives of a homegrown monster… deliver[ing] a tightly coiled story in The Other Woman and fills it with believable characters.
Associated Press
Such fun you'll cheer [Emily's] chutzpah.
People Magazine
Monster-in-law! The love triangle in this twisted psychological thriller is between Emily, her new boyfriend Adam and Adam’s mother, Pammie, who refuses to let her son go and wants Emily out of his life!
In Touch Weekly - Book Report
It's a page turner like no other, and the ending will knock your socks off,
Hello Giggles
Begs to be devoured in one sitting… deliciously dramatic and sinister.… If you're in the market for a lighter suspense read with a genuinely jaw-dropping finale, Sandie Jones' debut belongs on your TBR.
Crime by the Book
For anyone who's dealt with an unsavory in-law, this thriller will hit close to home.
Refinery29
This book will have you cheering its spunky heroine one minute and gasping from shock the next.
PopSugar
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 THE OTHER WOMAN… 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.)
Who is Rich?
Matthew Klam, 2017
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812997989
Summary
Every summer, a once-sort-of-famous cartoonist named Rich Fischer leaves his wife and two kids behind to teach a class at a weeklong arts conference in a charming New England beachside town.
It’s a place where, every year, students—nature poets and driftwood sculptors, widowed seniors, teenagers away from home for the first time—show up to study with an esteemed faculty made up of prizewinning playwrights, actors, and historians; drunkards and perverts; members of the cultural elite; unknown nobodies, midlist somebodies, and legitimate stars—a place where drum circles happen on the beach at midnight, clothing optional.
Once more, Rich finds himself, in this seaside paradise, worrying about his family’s nights without him and trying not to think about his book, now out of print, or his future as an illustrator at a glossy magazine about to go under, or his back taxes, or the shameless shenanigans of his colleagues at this summer make-out festival. He can’t decide whether his own very real desire for love and human contact is going to rescue or destroy him.
A warped and exhilarating tale of love and lust, Who Is Rich? goes far beyond to address deeper questions: of family, monogamy, the intoxicating beauty of children, and the challenging interdependence of two soulful, sensitive creatures in a confusing domestic alliance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A, Hollins College, M.A., University of New Hampshire
• Awards—Whiting Writer’s Award; O Henry Award
• Currently—lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C.
Matthew Klam was named one of the 20 best fiction writers in America under 40 by The New Yorker. He’s a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Bingham/PEN Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and an O Henry Award.
His first book, Sam The Cat and Other Stories, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year in the category of first fiction, was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, Esquire Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Kansas City Star, and by the Borders for their New Voices series.
His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, GQ Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and Hollins College, and has taught creative writing in many places including Johns Hopkins University (where he currently teaches), St. Albans School, American University, and Stockholm University in Sweden. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
As a literary theme, [aged men and their cheating hearts] is about as played out as a dog barking in the distance on a stormy night, but sometimes, miraculously, a writer manages to breath some new life into the subject, even if it takes some hard-core CPR to do it. Matthew Klam…turns out to be one of those writers.… Who Is Rich? is funny, maddening and, despite the well-worn subject matter, defiantly original.
Matthew Schaub - New York Times Book Review
This is an irresistible comic novel that pumps blood back into the anemic tales of middle-aged white guys. Klam may be working in a well-established tradition, but he’s sexier than Richard Russo and more fun than John Updike, whose Protestant angst was always trying to transubstantiate some man’s horniness into a spiritual crisis.… In paragraphs that flow like conversation with a witty, troubled friend, Klam captures Rich’s squirrelly consciousness, swinging from lust to despair, turning his comic eye on others and then on himself.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Klam explores excess and penury, conspicuous consumption and tortured artistic production, as well as monogamy and its discontents in an acidly funny portrait of a has-been cartoonist..… [A] worthy addition to American literature’s distinguished line of hapless antiheroes.
Publishers Weekly
Rich once had a modest career as a cartoonist, Amy studies narrative painting, and they so enjoyed their fling that they returned the following year to see whether sparks would fly again. They do, setting off a conflagration that burns down their lives.
Library Journal
There are a few too many scenes of Rich's maudlin musings and philanderer's rationalizations, but when Klam sustains a satirical mode…the novel sings, making Rich a fascinating figure despite his flaws.… A tale of middle-aged ennui that gets sharper as it gets funnier.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider using our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Who Is Rich? ... then take off on your own:
1. Start your discussion with Rich Fischer. Describe the state of his life—his career, marriage, finances—that make him particularly susceptible to Amy? Pay due diligence to his relationship with his wife: what are his feelings toward her and their marriage?
2. What do you think of Rich? Are you sympathetic toward him in spite of his infidelity and the draining of his family savings?
3. Rich has come to see "the lonely existence of fatherhood and monogamy as submission and defeat." Is that how you would describe modern family life? Does his perception of fatherhood echo some women's complaints about the drudgery of housework and raising young children? Do Rich's feelings of defeat give him an excuse for adultery…or perhaps make it understandable?
4. When Rich hooks up with Amy, how does her privileged lifestyle make him feel?
5. Do you enjoy the drawings by John Cuneo? Do they enhance the narrative…or are they distracting?
6. In what way is the novel a reflection on its title? How does Rich view himself? Does he have any illusions about this own value?
7. Talk about the way Rich mines his own life—his experience, wife's stories, and his friends' confidences. How else does a creative person create art (including fiction)?
8. Overall, what do you think of the book? Do you find it funny, frustrating, sad, thought-provoking? Are you satisfied with the way the novel ended?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Mama Day
Gloria Naylor, 1985
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679721819
Summary
On Willow Springs the presiding presence is Mama Day, nearly one hundred years old and still going strong.
Mama Day knows herbal cures and can summon lightning with her walking stick. She knows the true story of "the great, grand Mother" Sapphira Wade, who in 1823 persuaded her master to deed the island to his slaves, "bore him seven sons in just a thousand days" (p. 3), and killed him before she vanished in a burst of flame. Most of all, Mama Day knows that her world—any world—runs on the magic of belief.
These are the truths she will try to impart to her great-niece, Cocoa, a woman almost as formidable as Mama Day herself, and more important, to Cocoa’s New York–bred husband, George.
When George accompanies his wife on a fateful visit to Willow Springs, Naylor’s two worlds—and seemingly opposing realities—are brought together. As Cocoa falls victim to the island’s darker forces, this meticulously rational and self-reliant man discovers that the only way he can save her is by casting reason and self-reliance aside and by submitting to the wisdom of Mama Day, a woman he strongly suspects is crazy.
Mama Day affords the pleasures of both the "classical" novel—an intricately structured plot replete with doublings and foreshadowings—and the folk tale, with its oral rhythms and supernatural events. Unlike much contemporary fiction, it also imparts lessons about how we should live. Students who read this book will come away bearing some of the wisdom of Mama Day herself, perhaps most of all the understanding that "everybody wants to be right in a world where there ain’t no right or wrong to be found" (230). (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 25, 1950
• Born—New York, New York, USA
• Died—September 28, 2016
• Where—Christiansted, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
• Education—B.A., Brooklyn College; M.A. Yale University
• Awards—National Book Award
Gloria Naylor was was an American novelist, known for novels including The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985) and Mama Day (1988). She was born in New York, the oldest child of Roosevelt Naylor and Alberta McAlpin.
Background and early years
The Naylors, who had been sharecroppers in Robinsonville, Mississippi, had migrated to Harlem to escape life in the segregated South and seek new opportunities in New York City. Her father became a transit worker; her mother, a telephone operator. Even though Naylor's mother had little education, she loved to read, and encouraged her daughter to read and keep a journal. Before her teen years, Gloria began writing prodigiously, filling many notebooks with observations, poems, and short stories.
In 1963, Naylor's family moved to Queens and her mother joined the Jehovah's Witnesses. An outstanding student who read voraciously, Naylor was placed into advanced classes in high school, where she immersed herself in the work of nineteenth century British novelists.
Education
Naylor's educational aspirations were delayed by the shock of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in her senior year. She decided to postpone her college education, becoming a missionary for the Jehovah's Witnesses in New York, North Carolina, and Florida instead. She left seven years later as "things weren't getting better, but worse."
From 1975 to 1981 Naylor attended Medgar Evers College and then Brooklyn College while working as a telephone operator, majoring in nursing before switching to English.
It was at that time that she read Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, which was a pivotal experience for her. She began to avidly read the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and other black women novelists, none of which she had been exposed to previously. She went on to earn an M.A. in African-American studies at Yale University; her thesis eventually became her second published novel, Linden Hills.
Career
Naylor's debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place, was published in 1982 and won the 1983 National Book Award in the category First Novel. It was adapted as a 1989 television miniseries of the same name by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.
Naylor went on to publish Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1987), and Bailey's Cafe (1992). Each of these novels garnered much attention for their exploration of the modern black American experience.
Naylor's work is featured in such anthologies as Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction (1990), Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African-American Short Stories (1992) and Daughters of Africa (1992).
During her career as a professor, Naylor taught writing and literature at several universities, including George Washington University, New York University, Boston University, and Cornell University.
Death
Naylor died of a heart attack on September 28, 2016, while visiting St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands. She was 66. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/8/2018.)
Book Reviews
Resonates with genuine excitement.… [A] big, strong admirable novel.
New York Times Book Review
This is a wonderful novel, full of spirit and sass and wisdom, and completely realized.
Washington Post
Naylor has a dazzling sense of humour, rich comic observation and that indefinable quality we call "art."
Rita Mae Brown - Los Angeles Times
The beauty of Naylor's prose is its plainness, and the secret power of her third novel is that she does not simply tell a story but brings you face to face with human beings living through the complexity, pain and mystery of real life.
Publishers Weekly
[Mama Day] showcases Naylor's talent for descriptive prose. Though the novel as a whole fairly breathes with life, it is marred by the unintentionally comic death of a major character, who is attacked by a vicious chicken. This farm boy was not convinced. —Laurence Hull, Cannon Memorial Lib., Concord, N.C.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. On page 10 we are told that people on Willow Springs know the story of Sapphira Wade "without a single living soul really telling a word." How can a community know its history if that history remains untold? What distinction does this book make between spoken and unspoken truth? Which kind of wisdom does it value more highly?
2. In what way is Mama Day a book about people’s perceptions and misperceptions—not only of each other, but of reality itself?
3. Mama Day possesses a number of powers that might be called supernatural: she knows the secrets of people she sees on television; she can turn flowers into butterflies and cure a woman’s infertility by magic. Yet she also describes what she does as "mother-wit disguised with hocus pocus" (97) and maintains that "she ain’t never tried to get over nature" (262). How can both of these things be true? How does Mama Day view her powers? Compare her "magic" to the magic practiced by Ruby and Dr. Buzzard.
4. On page 61 George observes, "My city was a network of small towns." What does he mean by this? How does George’s New York compare to Willow Springs? In what ways is Mama Day a book about small towns and their inhabitants and histories?
5. The sections of Mama Day that are set in Willow Springs contain a great deal of gossip. What sorts of information does the gossip of Willow Springs impart? What does gossip tell us about the community in which it circulates? In what ways is Mama Day a book about "the oral tradition"—about the kind of knowledge that is not imparted by books but by people’s gossip, stories, and folklore?
6. George and Cocoa fall in love reluctantly. And, even after they fall in love, they often seem to punish each other for it. Contrast their fear of emotional connection with the attitudes of Miranda and Abigail, who, like George and Cocoa, have suffered because of love. In addition, the two sisters know a secret that George and Cocoa do not: that each of the preceding Day women has broken the heart of the man who loved her. How does Naylor develop the theme of love—between man and woman, mother and child, grandmother and granddaughter, and sister and sister—in this book? What connections does she draw between love and heartbreak?
BEYOND THE BOOK
1. In describing the peculiar logic that prevails on Willow Springs, Naylor’s narrator says: "Being we was brought here as slaves, we had no choice but to look at everything upside-down" (8). In what ways do people on Willow Springs see things "upside-down"? In what ways is Willow Springs an upside-down or mirror image of New York? What other reversals and inversions occur in this book?
2. Each of the major characters in Mama Day has a key phrase that sums up his character and world-view:
- Cocoa: "Nothing stays put" (63);
- George: "Only the present has potential" (23);
- Mama Day’s: "Folks see what they want to see. And for them to see what’s really happening… they gotta be ready to believe" (97).
Talk about how these phrases reflect Cocoa, George, and Mama Day? How do these people’s characters and beliefs clash in the course of the book? How do they change?
3. Mama Day is full of aphorisms that tell large truths about the world inside and outside the book. Discuss some of the following, what they mean and what role they might play in the book as a whole:
- "I had what I could see" (27)
- "The only miracle is life itself" (43)
- "Every blessing hides a curse, and every curse a blessing" (78)
- "Lead on with light" (110)
- "A man dies from a broken heart" (118)
- "I was losing you because of my fear of losing you" (129)
- "Ain’t no hoodoo anywhere as powerful as hate" (157)
- ."It’s all happened before, and it’ll happen again with a different set of faces" (163)
- "A woman shouldn’t have to fight her man to be what she [is]; he should be fighting that battle for her" ( 203)
- "You were entering a part of my existence that you were powerless in. Your maps were no good here." (177)
- "I can tell you the truth, which you won’t believe, or I can invent a lie, which you would" (266)
- "There’s only the sense of being. Daughter" (283) m."She needs his hand in hers—his very hand—so she can connect it up with all the believing that had gone before" (285).
4. Discuss the legend of Sapphira Wade—"the great, grand Mother" who began the Day lineage. What role does this myth play in Willow Springs? How is Sapphira’s half-remembered story echoed by the stories of her female descendants? What role, in general, do mothers play in Willow Springs and in Mama Day?
5. One of the techniques that Gloria Naylor uses to great effect in this novel is foreshadowing—hinting at themes and events that will gradually become more explicit and meaningful in her story. Discuss how Naylor uses foreshadowing to develop one of the following:
- the theme of the mother
- men with broken hearts
- mistrust and belief
- "the other place"
- magic, good and evil, true and false
- the storm
- G. the relationship between Abigail and Miranda Day,
- the theme of the sacrificed child.
6. In the fictional Willow Springs, Gloria Naylor has constructed an alternate world, populated exclusively by African-Americans and exempt from many of the crueler turns of America’s racial history: for example, Willow Springs may be the only place in the American South where blacks have been able to vote uninterruptedly since the nineteenth century.
Yet Willow Springs also embodies—and in some ways magnifies—the history of black Americans, beginning with the fact of slavery itself. In what ways does Naylor use her invented world to comment on America’s racial history? What does she accomplish by creating a world in which the races are wholly separate?
7. Mama Day makes use of many traditional African-American customs and beliefs, like Candle Walk, conjure women, working roots, and the use of brooms as symbolic barriers. Find out about a tradition in your own family, community, or ethnic group, perhaps by consulting grandparents or other older relatives. What are the origins of this tradition? How has it changed over the generations? How is it observed today?
8. Mama Day’s given name is Miranda and Cocoa’s is Ophelia. Both of these names appear in Shakespeare’s plays; Miranda in The Tempest and Ophelia in Hamlet. Do a little research into the two plays and then discuss how Shakespeare's heroines compare with their namesakes in this novel. Why might Gloria Naylor have chosen these names for her characters?
9. Gloria Naylor has written other novels set in self-contained communities: the inner-city of The Women of Brewster Place and the mythical diner of Bailey’s Cafe. Talk about the worlds of these books and Mama Day. Why do you think she has chosen to set these books in such highly compressed "universes"?
10. Mama Day employs the literary technique called "magical realism," in which elements of dreams, fairy-tales, and mythology are combined with recognizable everyday reality. Which characters, settings, or events in this novel are "realistic"? Which ones are "magical"? What role does magic play on Willow Springs?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Mrs. Everything
Jennifer Weiner, 2019
Atria Books
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501133480
Summary
A smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places—and be true to themselves—in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history—and herstory—as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives.
Do we change or does the world change us?
Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise.
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect "Dick and Jane" house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.
But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies.
As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women’s lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture and is up for anything (except settling down).
Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, nor has a life that feels authentic or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?
In her most ambitious novel yet, Jennifer Weiner tells a story of two sisters who, with their different dreams and different paths, offer answers to the question: How should a woman be in the world?
(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 28, 1970
• Where—De Ridder, Louisiana, USA
• Raised—Simsbury, Connecticut
• Education—B.A., Princeton University
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jennifer Weiner is an American writer, television producer, and former journalist. She is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Background
Weiner was born in DeRidder, Louisiana, where her father was stationed as an army physician. The next year, her family (including a younger sister and two brothers) moved to Simsbury, Connecticut, where Weiner spent her childhood.
Weiner's parents divorced when she was 16, and her mother came out as a lesbian at age 55. Weiner has said that she was "one of only nine Jewish kids in her high school class of 400" at Simsbury High School. She entered Princeton University at the age of 17 and received her bachelor of arts summa cum laude in English in 1991, having studied with J. D. McClatchy, Ann Lauterbach, John McPhee, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates. Her first published story, "Tour of Duty," appeared in Seventeen magazine in 1992.
After graduating from college, Weiner joined the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania, where she managed the education beat and wrote a regular column called "Generation XIII" (referring to the 13th generation following the American Revolution), aka "Generation X." From there, she moved on to Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader, still penning her "Generation XIII" column, before finding a job with the Philadelphia Inquirer as a features reporter.
Novels and TV
Weiner continued to write for the Inquirer, freelancing on the side for Mademoiselle, Seventeen, and other publications, until after her first novel, Good in Bed, was published in 2001.
In 2005, her second novel, In Her Shoes (2002), was made into a feature film starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine by 20th Century Fox. Her sixth novel, Best Friends Forever, was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and made Publishers Weekly's list of the longest-running bestsellers of the year. To date, she is the author of 10 bestselling books, including nine novels and a collection of short stories, with a reported 11 million copies in print in 36 countries.
In addition to writing fiction, Weiner is a co-creator and executive producer of the (now-cancelled) ABC Family sitcom State of Georgia, and she is known for "live-tweeting" episodes of the reality dating shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. In 2011, Time magazine named her to its list of the Top 140 Twitter Feeds "shaping the conversation." She is a self-described feminist.
Personal
Weiner married attorney Adam Bonin in October of 2001. They have two children and separated amicably in 2010. As of 2014 she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with her partner Bill Syken.
Gender bias in the media
Weiner has been a vocal critic of what she sees as the male bias in the publishing industry and the media, alleging that books by male authors are better received than those written by women, that is, reviewed more often and more highly praised by critics. In 2010, she told Huffington Post,
I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book—in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.... I think it's irrefutable that when it comes to picking favorites—those lucky few writers who get the double reviews AND the fawning magazine profile AND the back-page essay space AND the op-ed...the Times tends to pick white guys.
In a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy, she said, "There are gatekeepers who say chick lit doesn’t deserve attention but then they review Stephen King." When Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom was published in 2010 to critical acclaim and extensive media coverage (including a cover story in Time), Weiner criticized what she saw as the ensuing "overcoverage," igniting a debate over whether the media's adulation of Franzen was an example of entrenched sexism within the literary establishment.
Though Weiner received some backlash from other female writers for her criticisms, a 2011 study by the organization VIDA bore out many of her claims, and Franzen himself, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, agreed with her:
To a considerable extent, I agree. When a male writer simply writes adequately about family, his book gets reviewed seriously, because: "Wow, a man has actually taken some interest in the emotional texture of daily life," whereas with a woman it’s liable to be labelled chick-lit. There is a long-standing gender imbalance in what goes into the canon, however you want to define the canon.
As for the label "chick lit", Weiner has expressed ambivalence towards it, embracing the genre it stands for while criticizing its use as a pejorative term for commercial women's fiction.
I’m not crazy about the label because I think it comes with a built-in assumption that you’ve written nothing more meaningful or substantial than a mouthful of cotton candy. As a result, critics react a certain way without ever reading the books.
In 2008, Weiner published a critique on her blog of a review by Curtis Sittenfeld of a Melissa Bank novel. Weiner deconstructs Sittenfeld's review, writing,
The more I think about the review, the more I think about the increasingly angry divide between ladies who write literature and chicks who write chick lit, the more it seems like a grown-up version of the smart versus pretty games of years ago; like so much jockeying for position in the cafeteria and mocking the girls who are nerdier/sluttier/stupider than you to make yourself feel more secure about your own place in the pecking order.
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2014.)
Book Reviews
Her most sprawling and intensely personal novel to date.
Entertainment Weekly
A topical novel about sisterhood, heartache, hope, and womanhood that takes readers through the "herstory" of the second half of the 20th century.
Bustle
Jennifer Weiner is the master of richly told page-turners about complicated and likable women.
Refinery 29
Simply unputdownable.
Good Housekeeping
(Starred review) [A] heartwrenching multigenerational tale of love, loss, and family, which is partly inspired by Little Women.… Weiner’s talent for characterization, tight pacing, and detail will thrill her fans and easily draw new ones into her orbit.
Publishers Weekly
From the 1950s to the present, two sisters push against the limits of their world, shifting and changing even as America changes with them. From No. 1 New York Times best-selling author Weiner.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Readers will flock to this ambitious, nearly flawless novel.… Weiner asks big questions about how society treats women in this slyly funny, absolutely engrossing novel that is simultaneously epic and intimate.
Booklist
A sprawling story about two sisters growing up, apart, and back together.… A poignant reminder… [and] ambitious look at how women's roles have changed—and stayed the same—over the last 70 years.
Kirkus Reviews
[A] novel for the ages… as impressive as it is ambitious.… Weiner shows that big, expansive social novels are not only still possible in our fragmented society but perhaps necessary. Mrs. Everything is a great American novel, full of heart and hope.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
1. Jo and Bethie are very different people. But in what ways do you find them similar? Do their similarities outweigh their differences? How do their similarities cause problems in their relationship?
2. Forgiveness, of others and of the characters’ own selves, is an important theme in the novel. Discuss how the characters work through their conflicts and how they do or do not resolve the issues.
3. Compare and contrast how Jo and Bethie are influenced by their mother. Is there a defining element of their relationship with their mother? How does it weave its way into the sisters’ lives?
4. Mrs. Everything spans half of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first. What period details make you feel immersed in each decade? Were there any details that you remembered from your own past? Were there details about life in earlier decades that surprised you? What effect did this have on your reading experience?
5. In Mrs. Everything, Jennifer Weiner has created many memorable secondary characters, from Mrs. Kaufman to Lila to Jo’s and Bethie’s partners and beyond. Did you have a favorite? What qualities made them come alive for you?
6. Were you ever frustrated by the choices Jo and Bethie made? Did you empathize with their choices, despite feeling frustrated?
7. Literature is full of sisters with complex relationships. Do Jo and Bethie remind you of other favorite sister duos? What is it about the sister relationship that captivates us as readers?
8. What draws Jo and Shelley together? After they’ve reunited, what keeps them together?
9. What do Bethie and Harold learn from each other throughout their relationship?
10. Because Mrs. Everything takes places over several decades, it touches on many political and social movements. Did you learn anything about American history while reading? Was there a cause or issue that particularly interested you?
11. When Lila visits Bethie for the summer, they have a heart-to-heart about the pressure Lila feels from her mother to be special and achieve great things. Bethie tells Lila that it comes from the lack of options the sisters had growing up in a different era:
Some girls did grow up and became doctors and lawyers and school principals.… A few girls did grow up and do things, and got those jobs, but for the rest of us, we were told that the most important thing was to be married, and be a mother.… She just doesn’t want that to be the only choice you have (page 392).
Though Lila does have more opportunities available to her than her mother and aunt did, she (and her generation) faces new challenges. Did you relate to Lila’s concerns?
12. How does faith—both religious and in a more general sense—inform Jo and Bethie? What does faith mean to the sisters?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)