Less
Andrew Sean Greer, 2017
Little, Brown and Co.
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316316125
Summary
Winner, 2018 Pulitzer Prize
Who says you can't run away from your problems?
You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else.
You can't say yes — it would be too awkward — and you can't say no — it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.
QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?
ANSWER: You accept them all.
What would possibly go wrong?
Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face.
Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.
A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author the New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 21, 1970
• Where—Washington, DC, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., University of Montana
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Andrew Sean Greer is an American novelist and short story writer. Born in Washington D.C., he is the son, and identical twin, of two scientists. He attended Brown University, where he was the commencement speaker at his own graduation, with his off-the-cuff remarks criticizing Brown's admissions policies setting off a near riot.
Following graduation Greer lived in New York, working in various jobs — as a chauffeur, theater tech, television extra — to support his habit as an unsuccessful writer. After several years, he headed to graduate school at the University of Montana in Missoula where he received an M.F.A. From Missoula, he moved to Seattle and two years later to San Francisco where he now lives.
Writing
While in San Francisco, Greer began publishing his short fiction in magazines; over the years his stories have appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, New Yorker, among others, and they have been anthologized in The Book of Other People, and The PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009. His collection of stories, How It Was for Me, was released in 2000.
He published his first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, in 2001 and since then has had a string of generally well-regarded, if not always top-selling books: The Confessions of Max Tivoli (2003), perhaps his best-known; The Story of a Marriage (2008), The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (2013); and Less (2017). (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/12/2013.)
Book Reviews
Less is the funniest, smartest and most humane novel I've read since Tom Rachman's 2010 debut, The Imperfectionists.… Greer writes sentences of arresting lyricism and beauty. His metaphors come at you like fireflies.… Like Arthur, Andrew Sean Greer's Less is excellent company. It's no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful.
Chrstopher Buckley - New York Times Book Review
Greer is an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy.… Brilliantly funny.… Greer's narration, so elegantly laced with wit, cradles the story of a man who loses everything: his lover, his suitcase, his beard, his dignity.
Ron Charles, Washington Post
Greer's novel is philosophical, poignant, funny and wise, filled with unexpected turns.… Although Greer is gifted and subtle in comic moments, he's just as adept at ruminating on the deeper stuff. His protagonist grapples with aging, loneliness, creativity, grief, self-pity and more.
San Francisco Chronicle
Greer, the author of wonderful, heartfelt novels including The Confessions of Max Tivoli, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells and The Story of a Marriage, shows he has another powerful weapon in his arsenal: comedy. And who doesn't need a laugh right about now?
Miami Herald
Greer elevates Less' picaresque journey into a wise and witty novel. This is no Eat, Pray Love story of touristic uplift, but rather a grand travelogue of foibles, humiliations and self-deprecation, ending in joy, and a dollop of self-knowledge.
National Book Review
(Starred review.) Greer … writes beautifully, but his occasionally Faulknerian sentences are unnecessary. He is entirely successful, though, in the authorial sleights of hand that… [ results] at the end in a wonderful surprise.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] hilarious and touching novel.… Greer is both clever and compassionate…and while the book focuses on gay men and their relationships, the search for love and meaning is universal. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal
Dressed in his trademark blue suit, Less…discovers something new and fragile about the passing of time, about the coming and going of love, and what it means to be the fool of your own narrative. It's nothing less than wonderful.
BookPage
(Starred review.) Less is perhaps Greer's finest yet.… A comic yet moving picture of an American abroad.… Less is a wondrous achievement, deserving an even larger audience than Greer's bestselling The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Booklist
Facing his erstwhile boyfriend's wedding to another man, his 50th birthday, and his publisher's rejection of his latest manuscript, a miserable midlist novelist heads for the airport.… Nonstop puns on the character's surname aside, this is a very funny and occasionally wise book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Less … then take off on your own:
1. Have you ever had days, weeks, years, like what Arthur Less is feeling — times when nothing, absolutely nothing, seems to be going your way? What's your solution?
2. Everyone points to the books laugh-out-loud humor. What do you find particularly funny — dialogue, Arthur's haplessness and pratfalls, random observations, the entire tone of the book?
3. How would you describe Arthur? Are you sympathetic to him, or is he primarily a self-pitying guy in midlife crisis? Does he exhibit any humanity or is he too self-indulgent to connect with others? Or do you find yourself falling and rooting for him? Does your attitude toward him change during the course of the novel?
4. Talk about the writing seminar Arthur gives in Berlin — his inventiveness in attempting to get students to fall in love with literature.
5. What do you think of the consolation his former lover/mentor offers him during the phone call from Japan? Is turning 50 all that bad (for those who've been there, done that)?
6. So at the end of his peregrinations, what has Arthur Less come to understand about his life and life in general?
7. Finally, were you surprised by the big reveal at the end?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
You Think It, I'll Say It: Stories
Curtis Sittenfeld, 2018
Random House
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399592867
Summary
A suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie.
A high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school.
A shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life.
Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before.
Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided.
With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life.
Indeed, she writes what we’re all thinking—if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 23, 1975
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in St. Louis, Missouri
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld is an American writer, the author of several novels and a collection of short stories.
Sittenfeld was the second of four children (three girls and a boy) of Paul G. Sittenfeld, an investment adviser, and Elizabeth (Curtis) Sittenfeld, an art history teacher and librarian at Seven Hills School, a private school in Cincinnati.
She attended Seven Hills School through the eighth grade, then attended high school at Groton School, a boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1993. In 1992, the summer before her senior year, she won Seventeen magazine's fiction contest.
She attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At Stanford, she studied Creative Writing, wrote articles for the college newspaper, and edited that paper's weekly arts magazine. At the time, she was also chosen as one of Glamour magazine's College Women of the Year. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Novels
• Prep
Her first novel Prep (2005) deals with coming of age, self-identity, and class distinctions in the preppy and competitive atmosphere of a private school.
• The Man of My Dreams
Sittenfeld's second novel, The Man of My Dreams (2006), follows a girl named Hannah from the end of her 8th grade year through her college years at Tufts and into her late twenties.
• American Wife
Sittenfeld's third novel, American Wife (2008), is the tale of Alice Blackwell, a fictional character who shares many similarities with former First Lady Laura Bush.
• Sisterland
Her fourth novel, Sisterland (2013), concerns a set of identical twins who have psychic powers, one of whom hides her strange gift while the other has become a professional psychic.
• Eligible
A 21st-century retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Eligible was released in 2016. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/12/2013.)
Book Reviews
In the lives of Sittenfeld's characters, the lusts and disappointments of youth loom large well into middle age…. Their trials, in the grand scheme of things, are manageable enough that they allow easily for comedy, which Sittenfeld is a pro at delivering in the details.… But Sittenfeld doesn't shy away from poking at the soft spots of a person's psyche, the painful longings for something exquisite to cut through the ennui of even the most comfortable lives.… The women of You Think It, I'll Say It are, as a group, a demanding breed. They often assume the worst in their imagined adversaries. Sometimes they are wrong, but they are right about just enough (and funny enough) that we forgive them. And, because they know they need absolution for their own worst motives, we forgive those, too.
Susan Dominus - New York Times Book Review
Sittenfeld makes writing lively and diverting fiction look easy, though each deceptively simple and breezy story is masterfully paced and crafted. . . . Witty and buoyant, Sittenfeld delivers her characters to her audience with bemused perspicacity and above all affection. . . . Sittenfeld proves adept at quickly establishing characters in whom the reader feels inclined to invest immediately.
Chicago Tribune
Razor-sharp, often hilarious.… [Sittenfeld] is a sharp observer of human nature and human relationships.… A witty, breezy, zeitgeist-y collection.
USA Today
Perfectly paced, witty and laced with unexpected twists: Every story here sticks its landing.… Whatever [Sittenfeld] writes, we’ll read it.
People
Sittenfeld’s new story collection is brutally, beautifully human.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review) In her thoroughly satisfying first collection, Sittenfeld spins magic out of the short story form.… As in her novels, Sittenfeld’s characters are funny and insightful. Reading these consistently engrossing stories is a pleasure.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) In crisp, surprising language, these ten stories …put couples' foibles under the spotlight …to show how the slog of daily living knocks idealized romance out of its misleading No. 1 spot as the goal of pairing up. —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
(Starred review) [E]ntertaininge.… Masterfully plotted and often further gilded with mirthful twists, Sittenfeld’s short-form works (half of which are published here for the first time) are every bit as smart, sensitive, funny, and genuine as her phenomenally popular novels.
Booklist
[T]he fissures beneath the surfaces of comfortable lives.… . Sittenfeld's own perspective throughout is compassionate without being sentimental, hopeful without being naïve. The way we live now, assessed with rue and grace.
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, even short stories:
• 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.)
Apeirogon
Colum McCann, 2020
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400069606
Summary
An epic novel rooted in the unlikely real-life friendship between two fathers.
Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on to the schools their children attend to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate.
But their lives, however circumscribed, are upended one after the other: first, Rami’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Smadar, becomes the victim of suicide bombers; a decade later, Bassam’s ten-year-old daughter, Abir, is killed by a rubber bullet.
Rami and Bassam had been raised to hate one another. And yet, when they learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them. Together they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace—and with their one small act, start to permeate what has for generations seemed an impermeable conflict.
This extraordinary novel is the fruit of a seed planted when the novelist Colum McCann met the real Bassam and Rami on a trip with the non-profit organization Narrative 4. McCann was moved by their willingness to share their stories with the world, by their hope that if they could see themselves in one another, perhaps others could too.
With their blessing, and unprecedented access to their families, lives, and personal recollections, McCann began to craft Apeirogon, which uses their real-life stories to begin another—one that crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful.
The result is an ambitious novel, crafted out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material, with these fathers’ moving story at its heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Dublin Institute of Technology
• Awards—U.S. National Book Award (more below)
• Currently—lives in New York City
Colum McCann is an Irish author of several novels including, Let the Great World Spin (2009), which was the winner of the U.S.'s National Book Award, as well as the International Dublin Literary Prize. For his body of work—novels and short stories over some two dozen years—he has been the recipient of numerous awards.
McCann was born in Dublin in 1965 and studied journalism in the former College of Commerce in Rathmines, now the Dublin Institute of Technology. He became a reporter for The Irish Press Group, and by the age of 21 had his own column in the Evening Press. McCann says that his work as a journalist gave him an excellent platform for launching a career in fiction.
In 1986 McCann moved to the U.S., working for a short period in Hyannis, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Between 1986 and 1988 he took a cross-country bike trip, traveling nearly 7,500 miles (12,000 km) in order to experience "a true democracy of voices." In 1988 he moved to the state of Texas where he became a wilderness educator with juvenile delinquents.
He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he began writing the stories that he later included in his his first collection, Fishing the Sloe-Black River (1993).
For 18 months, between 1993-94, McCann and his wife Allison lived in Japan, teaching English as a foreign language. It was during his time that he finished his work on Sloe Black River. In 1994 he and his wife moved to New York, where they now live with their three children.
Novels and story collections
1993 - Fishing the Sloe Black River (Stories)
1995 - Songdogs
1998 - This Side of Brightness
2000 - Everything in this Country Must (Stories)
2003 - Dancer
2006 - Zoli
2009 - Let the Great World Spin
2013 - TransAtlantic
2015 - Thirteen Ways of Looking (Stories)
2020 - Apeirogon
Awards and Honors
In addition to the U.S.'s National Book Award (2009) and the International Dublin Literary Prize (2011) for Let the Great World Spin, McCann has also received the following recognition over the years:
Pushcart Prize, Rooney Prize, Irish Novel of the Year Award, Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award, Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame, Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, Deauville Festival Literary Prize (the Ambassador Award), Medici Book Club Prize, Grinzane Award in Italy, Guggenheim Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, International Dublin Literary Award finalist.
(Author Bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/28/2002.)
Book Reviews
[McCann's] analysis of the predicaments that face the Middle East is not raw or original or sophisticated. His message is optimistic and banal. Apeirogon is like a political memoir that bangs on about the importance of bipartisanship as if the senator had, just this morning, arrived at the idea.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
[A] powerful and prismatic new novel.… This novel, divided into 1,001 fragmentary chapters…reflects the infinite complications that underlie the girls’ deaths, and the unending grief that follows…. [T]hese fathers’ grief-stricken voices are already part of the public consciousness…. They’re also the most intimate pages of the book, and the most difficult to read.… [T]he novel succeeds brilliantly at its larger project… [so that] reading Apeirogon we move beyond an understanding of Rami and Bassam’s grief from the outside; we begin to share it…. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener…, an exceedingly important [novel]. It does far more than make an argument for peace; it is, itself, an agent of change.
Julie Orringer - New York Times Book Review
[T]he desperation of the [Mideast] situation has brought forth a work of art whose beauty, intelligence and compassion may go some way to changing things. Is it absurd to suggest that a novel might succeed where generations of politicians have failed? Perhaps, but then Apeirogon is the kind of book that comes along only once in a generation.… You don’t read Apeirogon so much as feel it, as the particular tragedies of Bassam and Rami are lived out in an ever-present moment of loss ... For all its grief, Apeirogon is a novel that buoys the heart. The friendship of Bassam and Rami is a thing of great and sustaining beauty ... This, the novel suggests, is the solution to the conflict: something as simple and easy as friendship, as the acknowledgement of a shared experience, as love.
Alex Preston - Guardian (UK)
McCann…examines with skill and empathy the characters’ private agonies as they play out against the backdrop of war; his virtuosic storytelling conjures the confounding realities of the Israeli occupation…. Throughout, there’s a rich tension between the factual and the imagined, and in the way particular tribulations are part of a universal experience…. Apeirogon reminds us that such incandescent art evokes humility and light in the face of oppression and loss.
Oprah Magazine
[A] kaleidoscopic, wildly ambitious hybrid of fact and fiction…. McCann’s storytelling radiates outward to include everything from meditations on Middle Eastern geography and the history of birds to the last meal of a French president and the lost operas of the Holocaust…. [H]e’s also woven something tensile and beautiful out of terrible pain.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review) [M]asterful.… [T]wo real men working together toward Middle Eastern peace.… Balancing its dazzling intellectual breadth with moments of searing intimacy, this is a transformative vision of a historic conflict and a triumph of the novelist’s art.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [B]eautifully re-creates Rami and Bassam's real-life relationship while offering a sweeping range of counterbalancing narratives, ultimately conveying the profound essentiality of their friendship. An important book. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal
(Starred review) [T]ragic and transporting…. McCann meshes the actual and the imagined… 1,000 passages… in homage to the Arabian Nights.…[W]riting with stunning lyricism…he traces the ripple effects of violence and grief,… and the miraculous power of friendship and love, valor and truth.
Booklist
(Starred review) [A] soaring, ambitious triumph…. McCann wheels outward in a widening circuit, not unlike the birds that form a central metaphor that recurs throughout the book.… [R]emarkable…. Imperfect but ultimately triumphant, McCann's latest might be his finest yet.
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.)
See What I Have Done
Sarah Schmidt, 2017
Grove Atlantic
324 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802126597
Summary
Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Or did she?
In this riveting debut novel, See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt recasts one of the most fascinating murder cases of all time into an intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love.
On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions.
While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell — of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence.
As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now?
Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
After completing a bachelor of arts (professional writing/editing), a master of arts (creative writing), and a graduate diploma of information management, Sarah Schmidt currently works as a reading and literacy coordinator (read: a fancy librarian) at a regional public library. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and daughter. (From the publisher .)
Book Reviews
Sarah Schmidt has created a lurid and original work of horror. It's a pity that some of its force has been dissipated by its disorganized and overlong second half. As a result, the novel lacks the ever-tightening narrative torque that might more effectively have delivered the lovely shocker on the last page.
Patrick McGrath - New York Times Book Review
A gripping and still puzzling story… [and] credible imagining of a bizarre episode.
Wall Street Journal
We get only glimpses into the particular hell of the Borden household; the fact that we can fill in the blanks from our own darkest places draws us closer, more uncomfortably, in. Schmidt’s unusual combination of narrative suppression and splurge makes for a surprising, nastily effective debut. Neighbours, doctor, police: visitors to the Borden house in the aftermath of the murders react with incredulity. “I don’t think I believe it myself,” says Lizzie.
Justine Jordan - Guardian (UK)
A bloody good read.… A taut, lyrical account of the destruction of the Borden family, both through ax murder and subtler means.… Schmidt inhabits each of her narrators with great skill, channeling their anxieties, their viciousness, with what comes across as (frighteningly) intuitive ease. Everything about Schmidt’s novel is hauntingly, beautifully off. It’s a creepy and penetrating work, even for a book about Lizzie Borden.
USA Today
Debut novelist Sarah Schmidt tackles the murk and silence in this old tale, imagining the cruel secrets of a respected family.
Elle
[The] novel is compelling, scary—and gruesomely visceral.
Entertainment Weekly
This palpable imagining of what led to the murder of Lizzie Borden’s parents will stay with you for as long as this historical mystery has enthralled pop culture.
Redbook
(Starred review.) [U]nforgettable…compelling.… [T]he book honors known facts yet fearlessly claims its own striking vision. Even before the murders, the Bordens' cruel, claustrophobic lives are not easy to visit, but from them Schmidt has crafted a profoundly vivid and convincing fictional world.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The heated narrative contributes to the sense of simmering craziness permeating the Borden household. A historical time line of actual events is appended. What better subject for a psychological thriller than one of the most notorious murders in U.S. history. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Heralds the arrival of a major new talent.… Nail-biting horror mixes with a quiet, unforgettable power to create a novel readers will stay up all night finishing.
Booklist
This fictional retelling of the Lizzie Borden murders is a domestic nightmare … [with] staggeringly gorgeous, feverish prose and the thrill of deep, dark, gruesome detail. (Six of the Brightest New Names in Fiction).
BookPage
(Starred review.) Schmidt creates…a palpable sense of unease.… There are books about murder and there are books about imploding families; this is the rare novel that seamlessly weaves the two together, asking as many questions as it answers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for See What I Have Done … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Lizzie?
2. What was the family dynamic (or dynamite?) of the Borden household? Talk especially about Andrew Borden and his treatment of his daughters. Consider the sisters' strained relationship with their stepmother. How would you describe the relationship between Lizzie and Emma? What about Lizzie's remark that "None of this would have had happened if she [Emma] hadn't left me in the house." What do you think she meant?
3. What were Lizzie's particular resentments regarding her father? Is there one that might have set her off?
4. Talk about Bridget's position in the house.
5. Schmidt blurs the voices and perceptions of characters. Did you find this confusing? Did it detract from your reading experience? Or is the blurring part and parcel of the emotional intensity that propels the novel?
6. Sarah Schmidt writes with an almost sickening physicality — of odors, vomiting, dirty under garments, or bladders full to bursting. Why might she have chosen to employ such vivid descriptions? What effect does it have on the novel's atmosphere and/or tone?
7. Good mysteries depend on suspended revelation, information withheld from readers. What information does Sarah Schmidt withhold? Consider hints at Lizzie's instability. What other hints, for instance, are leveled at Benjamin or Uncle John?
8. Speaking of Uncle John: what is his role in all of this?
9. Schmidt's novel is both a "whodunit" and a "whydunit." What makes Lizzie the prime suspect: Since she was never convicted, however, what are your thoughts on who most likely murdered the Bordens … and why?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Summer Wives
Beatriz Williams, 2018
William Morrow
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062660343
Summary
Beatriz Williams brings us the blockbuster novel of the season—an electrifying postwar fable of love, class, power, and redemption set among the inhabitants of an island off the New England coast…
In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War.
When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister—all long legs and world-weary bravado, engaged to a wealthy Island scion—is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society.
But beneath the island’s patrician surface, there are really two clans: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the summer houses.
Uneasy among Isobel’s privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in the autumn he returns to Brown University, where he’s determined to make something of himself.
Since childhood, Joseph’s enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and as the summer winds to its end, Miranda’s caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the island for nearly two decades.
Now, in the landmark summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, as a renowned Shakespearean actress hiding a terrible heartbreak.
On its surface, the Island remains the same—determined to keep the outside world from its shores, fiercely loyal to those who belong. But the formerly powerful Fisher family is a shadow of itself, and Joseph Vargas has recently escaped the prison where he was incarcerated for the murder of Miranda’s stepfather eighteen years earlier. What’s more, Miranda herself is no longer a naïve teenager, and she begins a fierce, inexorable quest for justice for the man she once loved … even if it means uncovering every last one of the secrets that bind together the families of Winthrop Island. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.B.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Greenwich, Connecticut
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons.
She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Williams transports readers to a time and place replete with glamour, drama and secrets. Delving into the inner sanctum of wealthy families to expose the dark sides of their lives is something Williams excels at.… [T]his a hard-to-put-down read and one you’ll want to savor.
Romance Times
The intricate and complex web of relationships within stated conventions are skillfully created and add depth to the narrative. Longtime Williams fans, readers of historical fiction and mysteries, and anyone seeking engaging plot twists will find satisfaction in these pages. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal
Longtime Williams fans, readers of historical fiction and mysteries, and anyone seeking engaging plot twists will find satisfaction in these pages.
Booklist
Twenty years after a murder at her family's tony Long Island Sound summer enclave, an expatriate actress returns to right a terrible injustice and heal her broken heart.… With just the right touch of bitters… satisfyingly tempestuous—and eminently beachworthy.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for SUMMER WIVES … then take off on your own:
1. How would you compare the different Mirandas of this novel: the younger version of 1951 and the later one of 1969? What has changed?
2. Describe the early relationship between the two step-sisters, Miranda and Isobel. How does their relationship change when Miranda returns nearly 20 years later?
3. What else on the island has changed in Miranda's 20-year absence?
4. As as an author, Beatriz Williams is particularly deft at digging into the interior lives of women; Summer Wives is no exception. On her return to the island, Miranda Schuyler is hiding a bruised eye, indicative of a troubled relationship, a literal wound indicative of an internal one. Yet Miranda bears wounds from her teen-aged years as well. What are the causes of those wounds, and what does Miranda eventually decide to do: endure the pain or push back against it?
5. Talk about the dual world of life on Winthrop Island between the year-round Portuguese community and the wealthy summer folk. Where does the Fisher family fit within this social hierarchy? Why does Isobel tell her father, for instance, that she is pleased with his choice for a new wife?
6. Williams peels back the layers of opulence and social status on Winthrop Island. What does she reveal?
7. What is the relationship between Isobel and Joseph Vargas? Were you able to figure out the real killer of Hugh Fisher, or were you caught by surprise?
8. Were you able to keep track of the many characters and the different timelines, or were you somewhat confused? Is there one era you found more appealing than the others: the 1930's, '50's, or the '60s?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)