You Me Everything
Catherine Isaac, 2018
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735224537
Summary
Set in the French countryside on an idyllic summer vacation, a delicious, tender novel about finding joy and love even in the most unexpected places.
Jess and her ten-year-old son William set off to spend the summer at Chateau de Roussignol, deep in the rich, sunlit hills of the Dordogne.
There, Jess’s ex-boyfriend—and William’s father—Adam, runs a beautiful hotel in a restored castle. Lush gardens, a gorgeous pool, delectable French food, and a seemingly never-ending wine list—what’s not to like?
Jess is bowled over by what Adam has accomplished, but she’s in France for a much more urgent reason: to make Adam fall in love with his own son.
But Adam has other ideas, and another girlfriend—and he doesn’t seem inclined to change the habits of a lifetime just because Jess and William have appeared on the scene. Jess isn’t surprised, yet William—who has quickly come to idolize his father—wants nothing more than to spend time with him.
But Jess can’t allow Adam to let their son down—because she is tormented by a secret of her own, one that nobody—especially William—must discover.
By turns heartwrenching and hopeful, You Me Everything is a novel about one woman's fierce determination to grab hold of the family she has and never let go, and a romantic story as heady as a crisp Sancerre on a summer day. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Jane Costello
• Birth—1974
• Where—Liverpool, England, UK
• Education—University of Liverpool; Glasgow Caledonian University
• Currently—lives in Liverpool, England
Catherine Isaac (a pseudonym for Jane Costello, which is also a pseudonym) is a British novelist born in Liverpool, England. Isaac/Costello studied History at the University of Liverpool and Journalism at Glasgow Caledonian University. She began her journalism career as trainee reporter at the Liverpool Echo, eventually rising to position of editor at the Liverpool Daily Post.
As Jane Costello, she wrote and published her first book, Bridesmaids, while on maternity leave in 2008. That novel and the next nine were all written as Jane Costello, and all became Sunday Times best-sellers in the UK.
You Me Everything, published in 2018, is her first book writing as Catherine Isaac, a pseudonym comprised of her middle name and her son Isaac's name. She explains the new pseudonym on her website:
It immediately felt different from my previous books and dealt with a subject that was bigger and more important than anything I'd tackled before.
Costello lives in Liverpool with her husband Mark and three sons. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Equal parts wry comedy and touching family drama, it’s ultimately a heartbreaker that’ll stay with you long after you’re done.
Marie Claire
Heart-wrenching and romantic… draws comparisons to Lisa Genova’s Inside the O’Briens.… [A] solid choice for book groups that appreciate stories of everyday people with ordinary failings who overcome adversity.
Library Journal
A moving and surprising novel about love and parenthood, anxiety and hope. Readers who loved Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You will be swept up by Jess and Adam’s story.
Booklist
Isaac…skillfully captures Jess' oscillating emotions. Determined to make Adam love William,… [she] has a much more important motive for finding Adam—one that may spell life or death. A witty, light romance from a welcome new voice.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Catherine Isaac has described You Me Everything as a “love story in the widest definition of the term.” The novel explores the relationships between two lovers who went their separate ways, a mother and her ten-year-old, a distant father and the son he hardly knows, and a sick mother and her grown-up daughter. Which of these relationships did you feel were portrayed most effectively? Which did you enjoy reading about most?
2. We learn halfway through You Me Everything that Jess had a major choice to make in her life: whether or not to take a genetic test that would determine her own future. Would you have taken the test? Or could you have lived without knowing?
3. The novel is filled with lavish descriptions of the Dordogne, of the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a glorious French summer. Was this an aspect of the book that you enjoyed? Did the author successfully transport you to France as you were reading?
4. Isaac has said she hopes the book will raise awareness of Huntington’s disease, the condition Jess’s mother is living with. Had you known much, if anything, about the disease before reading this book? What do you think of how the author handled this difficult subject?
5. Near the end of the book, there is a new revelation about the night of William’s birth. Did you work out what had happened before Jess did?
6. “Sometimes it takes darkness to see how we shine.” Do you think it’s true that challenges in life can make a person stronger?
7. One of the themes explored in the novel is the idea of living life in the moment, not dwelling on fears about the future. Why do you think so many of us find that difficult to do?
8. You Me Everything handles some serious topics, but has moments of humor, too. What made you laugh in the book? How did you think this was balanced by other, more serious, aspects of the story?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Days Without End
Sebastian Barry, 2017
Penguin Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525427360
Summary
Winner, 2017 Costa Book of the Year Award
From the two-time Man Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry, “a master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal), comes a powerful new novel of duty and family set against the American Indian and Civil Wars
Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War.
Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1955
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Catholic University School and Trinity College
• Awards—Costa Book of the Year; James Tait Black Memorial Prize;
Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE (France); Walter Scott Prize
• Currently—lives in Wicklow, Ireland
Sebastian Barry, an Irish playwright, novelist and poet is considered one of his country's finest writers, noted for his dense literary writing style. Born in Dublin, his mother was the late Irish actress Joan O'Hara. He attended Catholic University School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Latin.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side (2011) was longlisted for the Booker, and his most recent novel was published in 2014, The Temporary Gentleman.
Novels and plays
Barry started his literary career with the novel Macker's Garden in 1982. This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987 before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in 1988 at the Abbey theatre, Boss Grady's Boys.
Barry's maternal great-grandfather, James Dunne, provided the inspiration for the main character in his most internationally known play, The Steward of Christendom (1995). The main character, named Thomas Dunne in the play, was the chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police from 1913–1922. He oversaw the area surrounding Dublin Castle until the Irish Free State takeover on 16 January 1922. One of his grandfathers belonged to the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers.
Both the play The Steward of Christendom (1995) and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The title character of the latter work is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish War.
He also wrote the satirical Hinterland (2002), based loosely on former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey, the performance of which caused a minor controversy in Dublin. The Sunday Times, called it "feeble, puerile, trite, shallow, exploitative and gratuitously offensive", while The Telegraph called it “as exciting as a lukewarm Spud-U-Like covered in rancid marge and greasy baked beans.”
Barry's work in fiction came to the fore during the 1990s. His novel A Long Long Way (2005) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was selected for Dublin's 2007 One city one book event. The novel tells the story of Willie Dunne, a young recruit to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. It brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt at the time following the Easter Rising in 1916. (Willie Dunne, son of the fictional Thomas Dunne, first appears as a minor but important character in his 1995 play The Steward of Christendom.)
His novel The Secret Scripture (2008) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (the oldest such award in the UK), the Costa Book of the Year; the French translation Le testament cache won the 2010 Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE. It was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.
Barry's most recent play is Andersen's English (2010), inspired by children's writer Hans Christian Andersen coming to stay with Charles Dickens and his family in the Kent marshes.
On Canaan's Side (2011), Barry's fifth novel, concerns Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from (the 2005 novel) A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from (the 1995 play) The Steward of Christendom, who emigrates to the US. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.
His most recent novel, The Temporary Gentleman (2014), tells the story of Jack McNulty—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency.
Academia
Barry's academic posts have included Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984), Villanova University (2006) and Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995–1996).
Personal
Barry lives in County Wicklow with his wife, actress Alison Deegan, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retreived 5/8/2014.)
Book Reviews
A haunting archeology of youth.… Barry introduces a narrator who speaks with an intoxicating blend of wit and wide-eyed awe, his unsettlingly lovely prose unspooling with an immigrant’s peculiar lilt and a proud boy’s humor. But in this country’s adolescence he also finds our essential human paradox, our heartbreak: that love and fear are equally ineradicable.
Katy Simpson Smith - New York Times Book Review
Mr. Barry’s frontier saga is a vertiginous pile-up of inhumanity and stolen love: gore-soaked and romantic, murderous and musical.… The rough-hewn yet hypnotic voice that Mr. Barry has fashioned carries the novel from the staccato chaos of battle to wistful hymns to youth.… [A]n absorbing story that sets the horrors of history against the consolations of hearth and home.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
Alternately brutal and folksy.… Barry’s prose can take brilliant turns without sounding implausible coming out of Thomas’s mouth. A mordant vein of comedy runs through the book.… [T]he "wilderness of furious death" his characters inhabit has a gut-punching credibility.
Michael Upchurch - Washington Post
The novel comes close to being a modern masterpiece. Written in a style that is as delicate and economical as a spider’s web, it builds to a climax that is as brutally effective as a punch to the gut.
Times (UK)
Days Without End is a work of staggering openness; its startlingly beautiful sentences are so capacious that they are hard to leave behind, its narrative so propulsive that you must move on. In its pages, Barry conjures a world in miniature, inward, quiet, sacred; and a world of spaces and borders so distant they can barely be imagined. Taken as a whole, his McNulty adventure is experimental, self-renewing, breathtakingly exciting. It is probably not ended yet.
Alex Clark - Guardian (UK)
A crowning achievement.
Justine Jordan - Guardian (UK)
Some novels sing from the first line, with every word carrying the score to a searing climax, and Days Without End is such a book. It has the majestic inevitability of the best fiction, at once historical but also contemporary in its concerns.… Days Without End is pitch-perfect, the outstanding novel of the year so far.
Observer (UK)
For its exhilarating use of language alone, Sebastian Barry's Days Without End stood out among the year's novels. Epic in conception but comparatively brief in its extent, this brutal, beautiful book also features the year's most beguiling narrator.… A great American novel which happens to have been written by an Irishman.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
A lyrical, violent, touching book that is a war story, and a surprising love story.… Barry, the Irish author, presents his tale in language that recalls great American writers, from Walt Whitman to Stephen Crane to Cormac McCarthy.… Barry’s lyrical prose is full of fire and tenderness, violence and compassion, providing a sweeping and intimate vision of America’s conquest and its continuing search for identity.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Days Without End is suffused with joy and good spirit.… Through Barry, the frontiersman has a poet’s sense of language.… If you underlined every sentence in Days Without End that has a rustic beauty to it, you’d end up with a mighty stripy book.
Sarah Begley - Time
An absorbing novel.… By making all of his characters rounded, full-blooded human beings, [Barry] has accomplished that thing—inclusion, I think we call it now—that art, particularly fiction, does best.… The writing is unflaggingly vital; sentence after sentence fragment leaps out with surprises.
Bay Area Reporter
Despite moments of humor and colorful metaphors, Thomas’s inconsistent, occasionally unconvincing narrative voice wavers between lyricism and earthiness. Thomas’s trail of woe, though historically accurate, makes for onerous reading.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) An unlikely love story … set on the American frontier in the mid 1800s, and its depth and beauty bring to mind the great prairie novels of Willa Cather..… A beautifully realized historical novel. —Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A tour de force of style and atmosphere.… Evocative of Cormac McCarthy and Charles Portis, Days Without End is a timeless work of historical fiction.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A lively, richly detailed story of one slice of the Irish immigrant experience in America.… Barry writes with a gloomy gloriousness: everyone that crosses his pages is in mortal danger, but there's an elegant beauty even in the most fraught moments.
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.)
How It Happened
Michael Koryta, 2018
Little, Brown and Co.
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316293938
Summary
And that is how it happened. Can we stop now?
Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives.
So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story.
Not Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator and interrogator specializing in telling a true confession from a falsehood. He's been circling Kimberly and her conspirators for months, waiting for the right avenue to the truth, and has finally found it.
He knows, as strongly as he's known anything, that Kimberly's story-a grisly, harrowing story of a hit and run fueled by dope and cheap beer that becomes a brutal stabbing in cold blood-is how it happened.
But one thing remains elusive: where are Jackie and Ian's bodies?
After Barrett stakes his name and reputation on the truth of Kimberly's confession, only to have the bodies turn up 200 miles from where she said they'd be, shot in the back and covered in a different suspect's DNA, the case is quickly closed and Barrett forcibly reassigned.
But for Howard Pelletier, the tragedy of his daughter's murder cannot be so tidily swept away. And for Barrett, whose career may already be over, the chance to help a grieving father may be the only one he has left.
How It Happened is a frightening, tension-filled ride into the dark heart of rural American from a writer Stephen King has called "a master" and the New York Times has deemed "impossible to resist." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 20, 1982
• Raised—Bloomington, Indiana, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Indiana
• Currently—lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and Camden, Maine
Michael Koryta (Ko ree tah) is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen suspense novels. He was raised in Bloomington, Indiana, where he graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. in criminal justice.
Koryta began writing at a very young age. As an eight-year-old boy, he began writing to his favorite writers and by 16 had decided he wanted to become a crime novelist. Four years later when he was only 20 (and still a student at IU), his first novel, Tonight I Said Goodbye, was accepted for publication and later nominated for an Edgar Award. In fact, he wrote his first two published novels—and was published in nearly 10 languages—all before he fulfilled the "writing requirement" classes required for his diploma.
Before turning to writing full-time, Koryta worked as a private investigator, a newspaper reporter, and taught at the Indiana University School of Journalism.
Koryta's novels in include How It Happened, Rise the Dark, Last Words, Those Who Wish Me Dead, The Prophet, The Ridge, and So Cold The River. His books have won or been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edgar Award, Shamus Award, Barry Award, Quill Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the Golden Dagger.
Koryta and his wife, Christine, divide their time between Bloomington, Indiana, and Camden, Maine, with a cranky cat named Marlowe, an emotionally disturbed cat named John Pryor (after the gravestone on which he was found as an abandoned kitten), and a dog of unknown heritage named Lola. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/17/2018.)
Book Reviews
Ingenious.… Koryta' s plotting is sure-footed, and the secrets he discloses, one by one, at the novel's end are both surprising and plausible.… How It Happened [is] a book the reader won't soon forget.
Washington Post
(Starred review) With this searing look at an investigator’s obsessive efforts to close a case that has reawakened childhood demons, bestseller Koryta has produced his most powerful novel in years.…Koryta, when he’s at the top of his game, has few peers.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) As with many of Koryta's recent novels, his main characters are men with hidden rage they've been struggling with since their childhoods.… [D]devotees of murder mysteries will enjoy this enthralling tale. —Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI
Library Journal
(Starred review) Is Koryta capable of telling a less-than-gripping tale? This book may not be as ambitious as his best efforts (including Rise the Dark, 2016), but it is flawless, unpredictable storytelling streaked with his usual dark undercurrents.Crime fiction doesn't get any more enjoyable.
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 HOW IT HAPPENED … 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.)
Made for Love
Alissa Nutting, 2017
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062280558
Summary
From the exciting and provocative writer of Tampa, a poignant, riotously funny story of how far some will go for love—and how far some will go to escape it.
Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane—his extremely lifelike sex doll—as her roommates. Life with Hazel’s father is strained at best, but her only alternative seems even bleaker.
She’s just run out on her marriage to Byron Gogol, CEO and founder of Gogol Industries, a monolithic corporation hell-bent on making its products and technologies indispensable in daily life. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked.
But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human “mind-meld,” Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. The world she escapes into is a far cry from the dry and clinical bubble she’s been living in, a world populated with a whole host of deviant oddballs.
As Hazel tries to carve out a new life for herself in this uncharted territory, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. His threats become more and more sinister, and Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches once and for all.
Perceptive and compulsively readable, Made for Love is at once an absurd, raunchy comedy and a dazzling, profound meditation marriage, monogamy, and family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Raised—Valrico, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida, M.F.A., University of Alabama
Ph.D., University of Nevada-Las Vegas
• Awards—Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction
• Currently—lives in Grinnell, Iowa
Alissa Nutting is an American author and creative writing professor. She graduated from high school in Valrico, Florida, (about an hour from Tampa, which became the title of her debut novel). She received her B.A. from the University of Florida, her M.F.A. from the University of Alabama, and her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. She has taught creative writing at John Caroll University in Ohio and the University of Nevada. She is currently assistant professor at Grinnell College in Iowa.
Writing
Nutting is author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010). The book was selected by judge Ben Marcus as winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction and was a finalist for a ForeWord Book of the Year.
Her first novel, Tampa, published in 2013, is based on a real-life story about a middle school teacher in Tampa who, in 2005, had sex with her students. Tampa is not far from where Nutting was raised—and the teacher in question was a classmate of Nutting. The novel is overtly sexual and was banned in some bookstores although Nutting says neither her publisher nor editors asked her to tone it down, They understood that the content needed to be explicit.
Nutting released her second novel, Made for Love, in 2017. It is an absurd take on the impact of modern technology on human intimacy. One character, the heroine's father, is in love with an inflatable sex doll, and another character in love with a dolphin.
In addition to her books, Nutting's writing has appeared in Tin House, Fence, BOMB, Oprah Magazine, and the fairy tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.
Personal
Nutting lives in Iowa with her daughter and her second husband, fellow Grinnell professor Dean Bakopoulos. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/3/2017.)
Book Reviews
[Hazel] is the rare literary heroine in whose company it would be a pleasure to absolutely wreck my life.… The book is a total joyride, dizzying and surprising, like a state-fair roller coaster that makes you queasy for a moment but leaves you euphoric in the end.
New Yorker
Bizarre and brutally funny… relentlessly entertaining… Made for Love is a whip-smart critique of our relationship with technology and the ways we connect to other humans.
Harper's Bazaar
Provocative and irreverent, Made for Love is an absurdly hilarious musing on love and marriage.
W Magazine
Made for Love has a deviant instinct that make it initially captivating — but it doesn't do the necessary other work of a good novel. For all the ostensible unexpectedness (again, dolphins), it rarely surprises. And, for all that it plays on the idea of intimacy, the book gives us little sense of why we might want it, if people are just screens for mishap and absurdist sex
NPR.org
Made for Love will be one of the funniest, most absurd books you’ll read this summer.… Hilarious, clever, and strikingly original, Made for Love speaks to the absurdity of our societal obsessions with technology and wealth.
Buzzfeed
Nutting’s uniquely hilarious voice is the perfect guide to this darkly surreal, extremely relatable universe, in which the absurd becomes expected and our own personal hells feel like they’ve been perversely rendered in neon, airbrushed paint.
Nylon Magazine
Hilarious… Nutting’s smart, ribald, and hugely entertaining new novel provokes many chuckles. Occasionally, she reaches higher, and grants the reader flashes of something truly great: a striking view of the pathetic, that Gogolian, absurdist sublime.
Rumpus.com
Nutting deftly exploits the comic potential of perverse attachments, here to sex dolls, aquatic mammals, and technological devices.… Hazel’s story and touches on relevant themes of anonymity and objectification, [but] it never fully works. Nonetheless, the novel charms in its witty portrait of a woman desperate to reconnect with her humanity.
Publishers Weekly
A sly satire of our tech- and prosperity-obsessed society.
Booklist
[D]istinctive…and…darkly absurd …. But character-building is not among [the author's] strengths.… While Nutting borrows plot elements from thrillers, narrative momentum is constantly undercut by back story and scenes that are odd and amusing but not entirely necessary. An uneven effort from a terrific writer.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; meanwhile, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Made for Love … then take off on your own:
1. Absurd is a word frequently used to describe Alissa Nutting's novel. Talk about the plot or character elements you find absurd. Consider the difference between the absurd and general humor. Why might a author turn to absurdity? For laughs? Anything else?
2. Okay… Jason's sex doll—what about it? How does the doll fit, say, thematically, into a novel concerned with the impact of high technology on life? (Btw, have you ever seen Ryan Gossling's 2007 film, Lars and the Real Girl. If so how does this compare?)
3. Describe Hazel. Is she a typical modern day heroine (accomplished, independent) …or sort of a parody of one. Talk about her upbringing (including the dreams about one of her teacher's tirades). Do you root for Hazel …or become impatient with her? Or what?
4. Then there is Byron Gogol. First of all, consider his last name and how the author might be having fun with us. Talk also about Gogol Industries and what it represents for society.
5. Is Jasper a feminist? Discuss!
6. Rachel compares love with starving: "when people are really hungry they will be driven to eat the inedible." Same with love. Do you agree with her assessment?
7. Follow-up to Question XX: consider that in Nutting's world, people would actually prefer the "non-edible" or non-lovable. They use stand-ins for human lovers: sex dolls, flamingos, dolphins. Why?
8. As Hazel and Byron's courtship plays out, do you see parallels with Fifty Shades of Grey? What is the author mocking?
9. Mrs. Cheese tells Hazel toward the end of the book, "I hope you win your soul back in a bet or something." Why does she say this? By the end, is there any redemption, especially for Hazel?
10. How did you experience the book? Did you find it funny, hilarious...or not? Did you have affection for the characters and their many foibles...or not? Were you satisfied with the outcome...or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Winter Sisters
Robin Oliveira, 2018
Penguin Publishing
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399564253
Summary
From the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter comes a rich and compelling historical novel about the disappearance of two young girls after a cataclysmic blizzard, and what happens when their fate is discovered.
New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, New York,
Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Mary’s mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls’ disappearance—but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing to reveal.
Despite resistance from the community, who believe the girls to be dead, the family persists in their efforts to find the two sisters. When what happened to them is revealed, the uproar that ensues tears apart families, reputations, and even the social fabric of the city, exposing dark secrets about some of the most powerful of its citizens, and putting fragile loves and lives at great risk.
Winter Sisters is a propulsive new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• Raised—Loudonville, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Universityof Montana; M.F.A., Vermont College
• Awards—Michael Shaara Prize; James Jones First Novel Award
• Currently—lives outside Seattle, Washington
Robin Oliveira is an American author, former literary editor, and nurse, who is known for her 2010 debut novel, My Name is Mary Sutter. Her second novel is I Always Loved You was issued in 2014.
Background
Robin Frazier Oliveira was born in Albany, New York, in 1954 and grew up in nearby Loudonville, graduating from Shaker High School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Russian from the University of Montana in 1976, and continued her study at the Pushkin House Institute of Russian Literature in Moscow. After finding this wasn't a viable career path, she studied nursing, earning a living as registered nurse specializing in critical care and bone marrow transplant, in Seattle.
Writing
Oliveira worked in nursing until the birth of her children, when she left work to stay home with them, but when her youngest son entered kindergarten, she decided to try to write a book instead of returning. She went back to school to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2006. She served as assistant editor at Narrative Magazine and from 2007 through 2011 as fiction editor for the annual literary magazine Upstreet.
In 2002 Oliveira began writing the novel that became My Name is Mary Sutter. It tells the story of an Albany midwife trying to become a surgeon during the American Civil War. At first, Oliveira admits, the writing wasn't very good, and her writing teacher doubted it could succeed. Rewriting took years, including traveling to Washington D.C. for extensive research at the National Archives and the Library of Congress. In 2007, while still in progress, it won the James Jones First Novel Award under the working title The Last Beautiful Day.
My Name is Mary Sutter was finally published in 2010. It was widely reviewed, mostly favorably, with reviewers commenting on the detailed research and the determined heroine. It won an honorable mention for the 2010 Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction and won the 2011 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction.
Her 2013 novel, I Always Loved You imagines a love affair between Mary Cassat and Edgar Degas. Kikus Reviews cited the "accomplished" research, which will enable readers to "gain a better understanding of impressionism."
Personal
Oliveira lives just outside Seattle, Washington, with her husband Andrew. They have a daughter, Noelle, and a son, Miles. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/19/2014.)
Book Reviews
The author’s flair for historical detail and local color deepened my involvement with that basic plot premise. I dare anyone to read Winter Sisters and not want to discuss women’s rights with others—both how far we’ve come and yet, how much further we still have to go. READ MORE…
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers
This stunning mystery is set back in 1879, when New York’s capital city is hit by a blizzard that buries the parents of 10-year-old Emma and 7-year-old Claire and hurls the girls into the streets.… Oliveira writes with feeling about social issues like abortion and prostitution, and her grasp of causes like women’s suffrage is firm.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
[An] engrossing story of unspeakable crime and unbreakable love… propelled by feminist themes that feel utterly timely.
People
The real charm of Winter Sisters is the story of family, love, and perseverance, and the commentary on how women were and still are treated in society.… Populated with strong female characters and an oft-lyrical prose, this is a definite must read.
Historical Novel Review
Oliveira's beautiful, expertly researched novel showcases the lives of women overcoming societal constraints and living fearlessly.
Publishers Weekly
Oliveira blends mystery, historical detail, and courtroom drama in a compelling story that will please most historical fiction fans
Library Journal
[A] multifaceted and affecting portrait of courage.
Booklist
(Starred review) [A] complex, multifaceted historical novel that is both a captivating story and a commentary on the laws that have, for far too long, oppressed and endangered women.… [A] perfect example of a historical novel that also illuminates present-day issues.
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 WINTER SISTERS … then take off on your own:
1. The obvious place to start, or even end, this discussion is to talk about the roles of women in the late 19th century. Consider that New York's age of consent was 10-years and that Dr. Mary Stipp professionalism was disparaged because she treated prostitutes.
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) The next area of discussion is to compare 19th-century women's rights (or lack thereof) with today's standards. How far have we come and how much further do we need to go?
3. Talk about the hypocrisy of many of Albany's "finest" citizens. Again, how does that compare to our own recent scandals?
4. Discuss the irony of Mary Stipp's observation that the freedom women had during the American Civil War vanished. "Therein lay the advantage of wartime. Men were too busy killing one another to take heed of women's activities." Didn't something similar happen with women who "manned" the factories and farm fields during the two world wars of the 20th century?
5. How would you describe Mary Stipp? In what way could you say that Mary is a voice for those who lack their own voices.
6. Have you read My Name is Mary Sutter, a prologue of sorts, which takes place 14 years before the events of Winter Sisters? If so, how well do the two books mesh with one another?
7. Winter Sisters is not for the faint of heart. Was it too painful for you to read?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)