Things in Jars
Jess Kidd, 2020
Atria Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982121280
Summary
In the dark underbelly of Victorian London, a formidable female sleuth is pulled into the macabre world of fanatical anatomists and crooked surgeons while investigating the kidnapping of an extraordinary child in this gothic mystery—perfect for fans of The Essex Serpent as well as The Book of Speculation.
Bridie Devine—female detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick.
Christabel is the secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors trading curiosities in this age of discovery.
Winding her way through the labyrinthine, sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing a past that she’d rather keep buried.
Luckily, Birdie's search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where spectacle is king and nothing is quite what it seems.
Blending darkness and light, history and folklore, Things in Jars is a spellbinding Gothic mystery that collapses the boundary between fact and fairy tale to stunning effect and explores what it means to be human in inhumane times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—London, England, UK
• Education—Ph.D., St. Mary's (London)
• Awards—Costa Short Story Award
• Currently—lives in London
Jess Kidd is the award-winning author of Himself (2016), Mr. Flood’s Last Resort (2017), and Things in Jars (2020). She has a PhD in creative writing from St. Mary’s University in London. She grew up as part of a large family from Ireland’s County Mayo and now lives in London with her daughter. Her first book, Himself, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This unusual Victorian detective tale is hugely satisfying and beautifully written…. Kidd gives the world what is instantly one of fiction's great spectral double acts.
London Times (UK)
This pacy piece of Victorian crime fiction delivers chills galore…done one with panache…. Her imagination runs wild, in tightly controlled prose. Her concision makes the book feel like a high-pressure jar.
Guardian (UK)
A twisting, precis-defying plot…. Arresting, funny and well-written.
Sunday Times (UK)
Kidd has fashioned enjoyable, indelible characters and a plot that keeps readers guessing, smiling and maybe even flinching.
Minneaolis Star Tribune
An enchanting mix of fact and fairytale for those looking for an out of the ordinary mystery.
Huffington Post
Set in 1863 London…. Vividly sketched, larger-than-life characters…compensate for the glacial pace and the underdeveloped plot. Penny-dreadful fans will delight in this stylish tale, but readers seeking a satisfying puzzle should look elsewhere.
Publishers Weekly
Kidd's prose is a river of detail, metaphor, and jarringly apt turns of phrase, bringing to life all too vividly the grotesque maze of human wickedness that Bridie threads…. Fans of the macabre will be mesmerized by this horrific gothic tale, but some may be disturbed by the overt, grisly details. —Sara Scoggan, Fishkill, NY
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] captivating cast of characters and delivers a richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history. The atmosphere is thick with myriad unpleasant smells on offer, and readers may find themselves wrinkling their noses, but they will keep turning the pages.
Booklist
(Starred review) Kidd is an expert at setting a supernatural mood…. With so much detail and so many clever, Dickensian characters, readers might petition Kidd to give Bridie her own series. Creepy, violent, and propulsive; a standout gothic mystery.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Jess Kidd evokes Victorian London through all five senses. What descriptions brought the city alive for you? Were there any parts of Kidd’s London that felt familiar, or some that felt new?
2. Gan Murphy advised Bridie, “When in doubt, take it apart, girl” (page 80). How does Bridie “take things apart” in Things in Jars?
3. The detective is a familiar figure in Victorian-era fiction. Discuss how Kidd subverted your expectations of a traditional detective—or did she?
4. How would you describe Mrs. Bibby? What defines her as a character?
5. In addition to the merrow, there are many references to mythology from various cultures, including character names like Euryale (one of the Greek Gorgons and a sister of Medusa), Father Thames, and Herne the Hunter, and creatures such as the kraken and the raven. How do these uses of mythology influence the tone and spirit of the novel?
6. Bridie has two love interests in the novel: Ruby Doyle, and Valentine Rose of Scotland Yard. What do the two men have in common? How are they different?
7. Were you surprised to learn who attacked Eliza? How does the revelation affect Bridie?
8. Storytelling is woven into Things in Jars in various ways, including through folklore and family histories. What do you think the author is trying to achieve with these layers of storytelling?
9. How do the worlds of magical realism and science complement each other in this novel? Do you think the author blends them together successfully?
10. There are many writers, poets, and works of literature mentioned by Kidd, including Charles Dickens. In what ways do you see a Dickensian influence in Things in Jars? What elements of plot, characterization, and setting remind you of his novels?
11. What aspect of Christabel/Sibeal most intrigued you? Although this character does not speak, what are you able to learn about her personality? What do you think she and Bridie might have in common?
12. How did you react after learning the truth about Ruby Doyle? Discuss your impression of Bridie and Ruby’s relationship from start to finish.
13. Transformation is at the center of Things in Jars: a child transforms into a mermaid; Bridie remakes herself in childhood and dons disguises throughout her investigation; Cora’s life is changed by a new love; characters live, die, and even return as ghosts. In your opinion, which character undergoes the greatest transformation, and why?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Mrs. Fletcher
Tom Perrotta, 2017
Scribner
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501144028
Summary
A penetrating and hilarious new novel about sex, love, and identity on the frontlines of America’s culture wars.
Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message.
Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, "U R my MILF!" Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve.
While leading her all-too-placid life—serving as Executive Director of the local senior center by day and taking a community college course on Gender and Society at night—Eve can’t curtail her own interest in a porn website called MILFateria.com, which features the erotic exploits of ordinary, middle-aged women like herself.
Before long, Eve’s online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence.
Meanwhile, miles away at the state college, Eve’s son Brendan—a jock and aspiring frat boy—discovers that his new campus isn’t nearly as welcoming to his hard-partying lifestyle as he had imagined. Only a few weeks into his freshman year, Brendan is floundering in a college environment that challenges his white-dude privilege and shames him for his outmoded, chauvinistic ideas of sex.
As the New England autumn turns cold, both mother and son find themselves enmeshed in morally fraught situations that come to a head on one fateful November night.
Sharp, witty, and provocative, Mrs. Fletcher is a timeless examination of sexuality, identity, parenthood, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure of who they are or where they belong. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 13, 1961
• Where—Summit, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Syracuse University
• Awards—Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference
• Currently—Belmont, Massachusetts
Tom Perrotta is the author of several works of fiction, including Joe College, Election, Little Children and The Leftovers. Both Election and Little Children were adapted to film: Election, in 1999, starred Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick; Little Children, in 2006, starred Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly
Perrotta has taught expository writing at Yale and Harvard University and has been called "one of our true genius satirists" by Mystic River author, Dennis LeHane. Newsweek hailed him as "one of America's best-kept literary secrets...like an American Nick Hornby." Perrotta lives with this wife and two children in Belmont, Massachusetts. (Adapted from the publisher.)
More
That Tom Perrotta struggled into his early 30s to find success should come as no surprise to fans of his work. A Yale grad, Perrotta studied writing under Thomas Berger and Tobias Wolff before moving on to teach creative writing at Yale and Harvard. It was during this period that he began work on the stories that would comprise his first release, Bad Haircut. He had finished two more novels (including Election, which would prove to be his breakthrough book) before Bad Haircut was finally picked up by a publisher in 1994.
It wasn't until a chance introduction with a screenwriter that Perrotta finally moved into the public eye. The result of that encounter was the publication of Election (1998), which was made into the much-beloved film starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. At last, Perrotta was able to call himself a working novelist.
The theme of ordinary people trapped in lives they never imagined runs throughout Perrotta's novels. Success for his characters is always just out of reach, and the world is always just outside of their control. Characters that seem destined for success serve as foils to the true protagonists, constant reminders of the unfairness of life.
Which is not to say that Perrotta's novels are depressing. On the contrary, his razor-sharp observations of the human condition are often side-splittingly funny, and the compassion he exhibits in his writing makes even the most ostensibly unlikable characters sympathetic. Perotta does not create caricatures; his novels work because he has a basic understanding that life is complex, and everyone has a story if you take the time to listen.
Extras
When asked in a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview what book most influenced his career as a writer, here's his response:
I read The Great Gatsby in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love. I've reread it several times since then and have discovered lots of other layers—Nick's idolization of Gatsby, the perverse Horatio Alger narrative of Gatsby's rise in the world, Fitzgerald's keen eye for the hard realities of social class in America—and I still maintain that even if there's no such thing as a perfect novel, Gatsby'
Book Reviews
Mrs. Fletcher…succeeds in ways that will be pleasingly familiar to his admirers. It uses a…propulsive plot, a humane vision and clean, non-ostentatious (if occasionally uninspired) prose to explore a fraught cultural topic.… Mrs. Fletcher is the sweetest and most charming novel about pornography addiction and the harrowing issues of sexual consent that you will probably ever read.
Chris Bachelder - New York Times Book Review
[Y]ou’re not likely to find a more pleasant story about pornography.… Which raises the question of when it’s bad to be good. Perrotta is an affectionate comic writer, but to his own detriment, he has mastered the art of suburban titillation—and he rests on it. Although lusty subjects thrum through this novel … despite its sultry promise to examine the varieties of sexual experience, Mrs. Fletcher is a tightly corseted story.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Mrs. Fletcher is a less complex novel, "current" in the glib fashion of Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher. At the same time it's satisfying, wise and deeply appealing.… That's the paradox of Perrotta's work. When he's most eager to tell us who we are, he occasionally falters, whereas in his more realistic, less topical moods, he stands on a par with our finest writers of popular literary fiction, like Meg Wolitzer and Richard Russo.
Charles Finch - Chicago Tribune
Perrotta covers the gamut of sexual issues in this made-for-TV comedy of errors.… Every character here exists in a state of sexual arousal, and the happy ending finds each of them in a satisfying relationship.
Publishers Weekly
Perrotta captures the confusion and mental gymnastics of a change in family life. He nails the difficulties associated with discarding long-standing habits and seeking out new ways of making life meaningful. —Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Library Journal
Perrotta invites us to appreciate the slow growth of Brendan's awareness…in tandem with Eve's pleasant discovery of her unexpected sexual appeal…. [R]azor-sharp … spot-on satire…from a uniquely gifted writer.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens with Eve privately lamenting that "big days" (page 3) are never as special as they should be. Are there other "big days," beyond dropping Brendan off at college, that fail to go the way she hopes?
2. Receiving that fateful, inappropriate text message—"U r my MILF!" (page 40)—has a profound effect on Eve, plunging her into the world of MILF porn and ongoing sexual fantasies about other women. Why do you think the text impacts Eve so deeply? How relevant do you think it is that her sexual exploration begins because someone else sees her as desirable, rather than emerging from solely internal motivation?
3. How are the dynamics of Eve and Amanda’s "date" influenced by Eve’s consumption of porn? Do you see her porn use as compulsive? Empowering? Something else?
4. At their dinner out, Eve and Amanda invent names for their alter egos: Ursula and Juniper. Does Eve’s engagement with Amanda, taking a Gender and Society class, and sexual acting out feel like an embrace of this alter ego? Do you think Eve is trying to "find herself," or is she trying to become someone else?
5. Brendan occupies a position of privilege in the world and on his college campus, yet he can’t seem to adjust to his new environment. Why do you think that is? Is it related to his sense of privilege, or does his discomfort come from elsewhere?
6. How would you describe the relationship between Brendan and Zack at first? What changes? Why do you think Zack distances himself from the friendship?
7. Brendan and Julian are both young, straight, white cisgender men taking college classes, yet they occupy their positions of privilege in very dissimilar ways. What do they have in common, and how are they different?
8. Despite herself, Eve is attracted to Julian and Amanda—both generationally younger and more progressive than she is. What do you think she finds appealing about each of them?
10. Amber uses the Autism Awareness Network to bond with Brendan and to try to engage him politically. What are her plans for him? On page 126, she says, "That’s how we change the world. One person at a time." Is Amanda trying to "change" Brendan, and if so, does she succeed?
11. Brendan is jealous of his dad’s relationship with Jon-Jon, his autistic half-brother, even though Jon-Jon is fairly low-functioning. When he has a temper tantrum on Parents Weekend, Brendan thinks about "how unfair it was that [his] father loved him so much and held him so tight—way tighter than he’d ever held [Brendan]—and wouldn’t let him go no matter what" (page 137). Can you empathize with Brendan’s pain, or do you think he is just being selfish?
12. When Amber and Brendan hook up, they have a sexual miscommunication that leads her to regard him as a "huge disappointment" (page 207). What’s Brendan’s role in the situation? What’s Amber’s?
13. By the time Eve, Amanda, and Julian have sex together, each has been fantasizing about the others for weeks or months. When their private fantasies enter the public sphere, what changes?
14. Eve texts Julian a picture of herself, but she won’t go over to his parents’ house to have sex with him. Why does she draw the line there? Do you think her reluctance to fully engage with Julian is about their age difference, or morality, or self-respect, or fear, or something else entirely? As a reader, does their age difference matter to you? And does it involve a different ethical calculation than it would if she were an older man and he a younger woman?
15. Professor Fairchild is an example of a character who, unlike Eve, has undergone a significant and permanent transformation. What do you make of their friendship? What does Eve hope to get from Margo, and Margo from Eve?
16. At the end of the novel, Eve settles back into conventionality, embracing a heterosexual relationship with someone her own age. At their wedding, however, Eve has a moment of doubt: she wonders if it was George, her soon-to-be husband, who sent her the MILF text message all those months ago. Who do you think it was? So much of Mrs. Fletcher is about characters’ hidden fantasies, unknown to all but the reader—except when those fantasies break through into real life, as they do with Eve, Julian, and Amanda. Do you think the characters we know less about have secret selves, secret "Ursulas," too? Does everyone?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
Angela Garbes, 2018
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062662941
Summary
A candid, feminist, and personal deep dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and motherhood.
Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant.
What exactly is a placenta and how does it function? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? Is wine totally off-limits?
But as she soon discovered, it’s not easy to find satisfying answers. Your obstetrician will cautiously quote statistics; online sources will scare you with conflicting and often inaccurate data; and even the most trusted books will offer information with a heavy dose of judgment.
To educate herself, the food and culture writer embarked on an intensive journey of exploration, diving into the scientific mysteries and cultural attitudes that surround motherhood to find answers to questions that had only previously been given in the form of advice about what women ought to do—rather than allowing them the freedom to choose the right path for themselves.
In Like a Mother, Garbes offers a rigorously researched and compelling look at the physiology, biology, and psychology of pregnancy and motherhood, informed by in-depth reportage and personal experience.
With the curiosity of a journalist, the perspective of a feminist, and the intimacy and urgency of a mother, she explores the emerging science behind the pressing questions women have about everything from miscarriage to complicated labors to postpartum changes.
The result is a visceral, full-frontal look at what’s really happening during those nine life-altering months, and why women deserve access to better care, support, and information.
Infused with humor and born out of awe, appreciation, and understanding of the female body and its strength, Like a Mother debunks common myths and dated assumptions, offering guidance and camaraderie to women navigating one of the biggest and most profound changes in their lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977
• Raised—in the state of Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Barnard College
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Angela Garbes (GARB-es) is a Seattle-based writer specializing in food, bodies, women’s health, and issues of racial equity and diversity. Garbes began writing for Seattle's newsweekly, The Stranger, in 2006, and became a staff writer in 2014.
Her piece “The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am” is the publication’s most-read piece in its twenty-four-year history, and the inspiration for this book.
Garbes is an experienced public speaker, frequent radio and podcast guest, and event moderator. She grew up in a food-obsessed, immigrant Filipino household iin a small town in Pennsylvania and now lives in Seattle with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
An empowering resource…Garbes shares up-to-date, well-substantiated information about women’s physical and mental health, aiming to help readers reduce their anxiety and make truly informed choices.
Publishers Weekly
In spite of how long women have been giving birth, there is a lot of misinformation out there about pregnancy and motherhood. Angela Garbes seeks to get it straight in Like a Mother. She not only corrects misinformation but offers advice and support.
Bustle
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 LIKE A MOTHER … then take off on your own:
1. What did you learn about pregnancy, giving birth, and being a new mother that you were unaware of before reading Angela Garbes's Like A Mother?
2. Talk about the remarkable abilities of both the placenta and beast milk. What surprised you most about the way each functions?
3. If you have given birth, talk about your own experiences compared to the author's. If you have yet to give birth but hope to, does Like a Mother put you at ease by providing needed information … or does it increase your anxiety by providing too much information?
4. Do you agree with Garbes that women deserve more information, compassion, and support surrounding child birth?
5. How, specifically, does Garbes fault postpartum care and treatment for mothers? What is missing?
6. Garbes also believes that woman should be given more autonomy. What does she mean? Do you agree?
7. How would you describe current American attitudes toward pregnancy and motherhood? In what way are we more enlightened than we were in previous generations? Where is there room for improvement in Garbes's eyes?
8. On page 230 Garbes writes about pregnancy as akin to opening an intricately folded piece of paper. Do you like her imagery? Can you think of other metaphors that apply?
9. How familiar were you with the role of doulas in childbirth?
10. Garbes writes with a fair amount of humor: what are some of the passages that made you laugh out loud?
11. Is this a book you wish you had read when you were pregnant?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
A Long Petal of the Sea
Isabel Allende, 2020
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984820150
Summary
Allende's epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.
In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain.
When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border.
Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires.
Together with two thousand other refugees, they embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.” As unlikely partners, they embrace exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war.
Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning, and over the course of their lives, they will face trial after trial. But they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they will be exiles no more.
Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.
A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 2, 1942
• Where—Lima, Peru
• Education—private schools in Bolivia and Lebanon
• Awards—Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, 1998; Sara Lee Foundation Award, 1998; WILLA
Literary Award, 2000
• Currently—lives in San Rafael, California, USA
Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition. Author of more than 20 books—essay collections, memoirs, and novels, she is perhaps best known for her novels The House of the Spirits (1982), Daughter of Fortune (1999), and Ines of My Soul (2006). She has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." All told her novels have been translated from Spanish into over 30 languages and have sold more than 55 million copies.
Her novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Early background
Allende was born Isabel Allende Llona in Lima, Peru, the daughter of Francisca Llona Barros and Tomas Allende, who was at the time the Chilean ambassador to Peru. Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973, making Salvador her first cousin once removed (not her uncle as he is sometimes referred to).
In 1945, after her father had disappeared, Isabel's mother relocated with her three children to Santiago, Chile, where they lived until 1953. Allende's mother married diplomat Ramon Huidobro, and from 1953-1958 the family moved often, including to Bolivia and Beirut. In Bolivia, Allende attended a North American private school; in Beirut, she attended an English private school. The family returned to Chile in 1958, where Allende was briefly home-schooled. In her youth, she read widely, particularly the works of William Shakespeare.
From 1959 to 1965, while living in Chile, Allende finished her secondary studies. She married Miguel Frias in 1962; the couple's daughter Paula was born in 1963 and their son Nicholas in 1966. During that time Allende worked with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Santiago, Chile, then in Brussels, Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe.
Returning to Chile in 1996, Allende translated romance novels (including those of Barbara Cartland) from English to Spanish but was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue in order to make the heriones sound more intelligent. She also altered the Cinderella endings, letting the heroines find more independence.
In 1967 Allende joined the editorial staff for Paula magazine and in 1969 the children's magazine Mampato, where she later became editor. She published two children's stories, Grandmother Panchita and Lauchas y Lauchones, as well as a collection of articles, Civilice a Su Troglodita.
She also worked in Chilean television from 1970-1974. As a journalist, she interviewed famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda told Allende that she had too much imagination to be a journalist and that she should become a novelist. He also advised her to compile her satirical columns in book form—which she did and which became her first published book. In 1973, Allende's play El Embajador played in Santiago, a few months before she was forced to flee the country due to the coup.
The military coup in September 1973 brought Augusto Pinochet to power and changed everything for Allende. Her mother and diplotmat stepfather narrowly escaped assassination, and she herself began receiving death threats. In 1973 Allende fled to Venezuela.
Life after Chile
Allende remained in exile in Venezuela for 13 years, working as a columnist for El Nacional, a major newspaper. On a 1988 visit to California, she met her second husband, attorney Willie Gordon, with whom she now lives in San Rafael, California. Her son Nicolas and his children live nearby.
In 1992 Allende's daughter Paula died at the age of 28, the result of an error in medication while hospitalized for porphyria (a rarely fatal metabolic disease). To honor her daughter, Allenda started the Isabel Allende Foundation in 1996. The foundation is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected."
In 1994, Allende was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit—the first woman to receive this honor.
She was granted U.S. citizenship in 2003 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She was one of the eight flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
In 2008 Allende received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University for her "distinguished contributions as a literary artist and humanitarian." In 2010 she received Chile's National Literature Prize.
Writing
In 1981, during her exile, Allende received a phone call that her 99-year-old grandfather was near death. She sat down to write him a letter wishing to "keep him alive, at least in spirit." Her letter evolved into The House of the Spirits—the intent of which was to exorcise the ghosts of the Pinochet dictatorship. Although rejected by numerous Latin American publishers, the novel was finally published in Spain, running more than two dozen editions in Spanish and a score of translations. It was an immense success.
Allende has since become known for her vivid storytelling. As a writer, she holds to a methodical literary routine, working Monday through Saturday, 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. "I always start on 8 January,"Allende once said, a tradition that began with the letter to her dying grandfather.
Her 1995 book Paula recalls Allende's own childhood in Santiago, Chile, and the following years she spent in exile. It is written as an anguished letter to her daughter. The memoir is as much a celebration of Allende's turbulent life as it is the chronicle of Paula's death.
Her 2008 memoir The Sum of Our Days centers on her recent life with her immediate family—her son, second husband, and grandchildren. The Island Beneath the Sea, set in New Orleans, was published in 2010. Maya's Notebook, a novel alternating between Berkeley, California, and Chiloe, an island in Chile, was published in 2011 (2013 in the U.S.). Three movies have been based on her novels—Aphrodite, Eva Luna, and Gift for a Sweetheart. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/23/2013.)
Book Reviews
Allende… has deftly woven fact and fiction, history and memory, to create one of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in her long career.
Paula McClain - New York Times Book Review
Less interested in scene than in sweep, Allende nonetheless describes her characters' emotions with great detail,… but I didn’t, at any point, forget that these characters were fictional.… [T]heir interiority felt forced…. A Long Petal of the Sea… [needed] a rigorous editorial process to support Allende’s noblesse oblige.
Kristen Millares Young - Washington Post
Allende’s latest… marks a return to the time and setting of the book that jump-started her literary career, The House of the Spirits, but with far less supernatural elements and a more expansive engagement of revolution, exile and the determination of the human spirit.… A page-turning story rich with history and surprising subplots that keep the novel unpredictable to the end.
Rigoberto Gonzalez - Los Angeles Times
Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea gets to the heart of immigrant struggle… [It] begins, as it ends, with the heart… Victor and Roser’s story is compelling.… Allende’s prose is both commanding and comforting. The author writes eloquently on the struggle of letting go of one culture to embrace a new one and shows that one’s origin story is not the whole story.… While debate and policy surround the issues of refugees and immigration, Allende reminds us that these issues, at their core, are made up of individuals and their love stories.
USA Today
[A] sweeping saga.… Allende aims to explore something deeper about love than free and raw passion, though Petal has plenty of spicy pages and couples who yearn for each other.… At present, our culture seems to cherish stories that examine the cyclical rise of our darkest impulses.… Isabel Allende makes a similar point in a real-world way.… For while A Long Petal of the Sea is a historical love story penned in the lush and propulsive prose familiar to Allende’s millions of fans worldwide, it is also suffused with an additional noble and philosophical consciousness that feels excitingly new.
San Fracisco Chronicle
Isabel Allende has time and again proven herself a master of magical realism. Her latest novel… serves as a paean to human love and endurance.
Elle
Allende fans have been waiting with bated breath for her latest novel, and A Long Petal of the Sea doesn’t disappoint.
Marie Claire
(Starred review) Majestic… both timeless and perfectly timed for today.… Allende’s assured prose vividly evokes her fictional characters [and] historical figures… seamlessly juxtaposing exile with homecoming, otherness with belonging, and tyranny with freedom.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) A tale that is seductively intimate and strategically charming… a virtuoso of lucidly well-told, utterly enrapturing fiction.… Allende deftly addresses war, displacement, violence, and loss in a novel of survival and love under siege. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Two refugees from the Spanish Civil War…. Allende tends to describe emotions and events rather than delve into them,… but she is an engaging storyteller.… A trifle facile, but this decades-spanning drama is readable and engrossing throughout.
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 Locals
Jonathan Dee, 2017
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812993226
Summary
A rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times—fiction in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan.
Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by.
After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife, Karen, and their young daughter, Haley? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter.
Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11 he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round "secure location" from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people’s money.
The collision of these two men’s very different worlds—rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy—is the engine of Jonathan Dee’s powerful new novel.
Inspired by Hadi, Mark looks around for a surefire investment: the mid-decade housing boom. Over Karen’s objections, and teaming up with his troubled brother, Gerry, Mark starts buying up local property with cheap debt.
Then the town’s first selectman dies suddenly, and Hadi volunteers for office. He soon begins subtly transforming Howland in his image—with unexpected results for Mark and his extended family.
Here are the dramas of twenty-first-century America—rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism—played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1962
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Prix Fitzgerald Prize
• Currently—lives in Syracuse, New York
Jonathan Dee, an American novelist and non-fiction writer, was born in New York City. He graduated from Yale University, where he studied fiction writing with John Hersey.
Dee's first job out of college was at The Paris Review, as an Associate Editor and personal assistant to George Plimpton. Early in his tenure with Plimpton, Dee helped pull off the popular April Fool's joke about Sidd Finch, a fictitious baseball pitcher Plimpton wrote about for Sports Illustrated.
Writing
Dee has published several novels, including most recently The Privileges (2010), A Thousand Pardons (2013), and The Locals (2017).
He is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and contributor to Harper's. In 2008 Dee collaborated on the oral biography of Plimpton, "George, Being George." He interviewed Hersey and co-interviewed Grace Paley for The Paris Review's The Art of Fiction series.
Recognition
Dee was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2010 for criticism in Harper's. His 2010 novel, The Privileges, won the 2011 Prix Fitzgerald prize and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
He was the second winner of the St. Francis College Literary Prize.
He has also been the recipient of two fellowships: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Currently, Dee serves as a professor in the graduate writing program at Syracuse University, where he lives. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/4/2017.)
Book Reviews
This novel is a big machine, and Dee drives it calmly … perhaps too calmly. He has the intelligence to pull off a novel of this size but lacks, somehow, the killer instinct — the ability to move in for intensities of feeling and thought and action.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
As the tension builds, protests are planned. Yet for all that the book gestures at a kind of political allegory, it shies away from the capital-S Scene it seems to promise and tapers away into anticlimax.… Still, The Locals is a quietly engrossing narrative that dishes out its food for thought in sly, quotable lines.… [M]y favorite: "Tough times brought out the bad side of people … and this internet was like some giant bathroom wall where you could just scrawl whatever hate you liked."
Lucinda Rosenfeld - New York Times Book Review
[Dee's] sensitivity has never been more unnerving than in his new novel, The Locals … [which] feels attuned to the broader currents of our culture, particularly the renewed tension between competing ideals of community and self-reliance.… With this little town, this idyllic-looking version of America, Dee has constructed a world — harrowing but instructive — where no one feels content.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
(Starred review.) Engrossing.… His blue-collar characters … are vividly developed, and his insights into how they think about the government (ineffective and corrupt) and their rights as citizens (ignored, trampled) are timely.… [Dee] handles the plot with admirable skill … and strikes the perfect ending note
Publishers Weekly
Dee taps into the zeitgeist with a novel about a rural, working-class New England town that elects a New York hedge fund billionaire as its mayor.… [C]ulture and class clash are inevitable.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Good old social novels are hard to come by these days, great ones harder still. Leave it to [Jonathan] Dee to fill the void with a book that’s not only great but so frighteningly timely that the reader will be forced to wonder how he managed to compose it before the last election cycle
Booklist
(Starred review.) The residents of a small town in the Berkshires have their world overturned by a billionaire in their midst.… [The Locals] plays both as political allegory and kaleidoscopic character study. An absorbing panorama of small-town life and a study of democracy in miniature.
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 your discussion for The Locals … then take off on your own:
1. The novel opens in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Talk about the ways that tragedy affected even those who weren't directly involved, people like Phil Hadi.
2. Hadi moves his family to Howland in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts and eventually wins a seat on the town's board of selectmen. How did you feel, initially, about his offer to forgo a salary, donate his recent tax break, and carry some of the town's expenses?
3. Hadi says, "Democracy doesn't really work anymore." What is his reasoning? Do you agree with his observation?
4. Talk about the changes Hadi makes to the town. Do you find any parallels to today, say, in terms of the growing use of surveillance technology?
5. How do the local residents come to view Hadi's wealth? How does it affect their perception of community and/or themselves?
6. Mark Firth is one of the more central characters within the novel. How would you describe him? What about his wife Karen and the couple's marriage? How do you feel about Phil Hadi's influence on Mark, especially when Mark begins to flip houses?
7. In addition to Mark Firth, Jonathan Dee populates his novels with a number of other townspeople. Do you find some more sympathetic than others? Overall, are Dee's characters well drawn—do they come alive, have depth?
8. Mark confesses he feels "like something is lacking in me," and when Phil Hadi attempts to console him, Mark responds that in America, "you're supposed to better yourself …to think big. Right?" Is he right?
9. There is an obvious class division within the pages of this novel. How does Dee portray those divisions, and at the same time offer up satire? Consider, for instance, his take on the tony new restaurant in town.
10. What do the citizens of Howland come to understand by the end of the novel?
m. Inequality has become a major social-politial issue in America. Does this book illuminate or muddy the issue?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)