Meet Me at the Museum
Anne Youngson, 2018
Flatiron Books
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250295163
Summary
In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn’t remember choosing. Both believe their love stories are over.
Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney’s famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another.
And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms.
But then Tina’s letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1947
• Where—England, UK
• Education—B.A., Brimingham University; Ph.D., Oxford Brookes (in progress)
• Currently—lives in Oxfordshire, England
Anne Youngson worked for 30 years at major car company, the one that produced Austin, Morris, and Land Rover vehicles. She entered industry after studying English at the University of Birmingham: although she hoped one day to become a writer, she turned to industry first because that was where the jobs were. Working in product development—where the next line-up of vehicles was shaped—she quickly attained management level, running teams of engineers and designers.
In the early 1980s, Youngson was one of the first women in management to take maternity leave (Britain had just passed statutory maternity legislation). She gave birth to a daughter and later a son.
Then at 56 she took retirement—starting life anew. She enrolled in a two-year undergraduate diploma in creative writing at Oxford University, trying out a wide range of genres: from poems to plays and short fiction.
She followed this with a Ph.D. at Oxford Brookes, which is where she began work on Meet Me at the Museum, at first a short story. After expanding it—by then, to 10,000 words—her tutor introduced her to an agent. In what is every writer's dream come true, a large publisher snapped up the rights within 48 hours of receiving the manuscript.
She has supported many charities in governance roles, including Chair of the Writers in Prison Network, which provided residencies in prisons for writers. She lives in Oxfordshire and is married with two adult children and three grandchildren to date. Meet Me at the Museum, her debut, has been published around the world. (Adapted from various sources on the web.)
Book Reviews
The charmer of the summer.… A touching, hopeful story about figuring out what matters and mustering the courage to make necessary changes.
NPR
How subtle. How perceptive…Meet Me at the Museum is gently provoking, delving into how we interact with our children, our spouses, our communities, but mostly with ourselves.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
A farmer’s wife and a museum curator begin a life-changing correspondence in this lovely book by Anne Youngson, a first-time novelist at age 70 (Editor’s Choice).
Woman’s Day
Beautifully written and deeply moving, Meet Me at the Museum is a superb—and tenderhearted—debut that will interest anyone who's ever questioned how they became the person they are today.
Shelf Awareness
A thoughtful meditation on buried passions, regrets, love, grief, and loneliness. But Youngson’s debut offers hope for change in its tender exploration of what it means to have experienced a life well-lived.
Guardian (UK)
Already being hailed as a classic.… Absolutely beautiful, about loss and the life choices we make.
Daily Mail
A debut novel that tells the unlikely story of an English farm wife and a Danish museum curator through their spirited correspondence. Loneliness draws them together.… Though well-crafted, this genteel novel never quite achieves liftoff.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Meet Me at the Museum is an epistolary novel, meaning it is written entirely in letters. How is reading an epistolary novel different than reading more traditional first-person narration? What is lost and gained in this form?
2. Is there anyone in your life with whom you regularly correspond, rather than meeting in person or talking on the phone? Discuss the differences between those types of interactions.
3. In her first letter, Tina writes, "I am writing to you to see if you can help me make sense of some of the thoughts that occur to me. Or maybe I am hoping that just writing will make sense of them." Later, she tells Anders, "I have become clearer to myself as I made myself clear to you." How does writing to one another change the way the characters approach their lives and identities?
4. Tina and her best friend, Bella, always planned to go to Denmark together to visit the Tollund Man, but they never made it. Is there something you’ve always meant to do yet keep putting off? What has stopped you?
5. The Tollund Man provides the initial reason for Tina and Anders’ correspondence, and he frequently comes up in their letters. What does he represent for Tina? For Anders?
6. Anders tells Tina about a debate he has at work about making up names for the bog people in the museum(i.e.,naming the Tollund Man "Knut"): "To give them names, said the marketing people, would make them seem more human. But, I said (and not only me, fortunately), to give them names would make them only human, rob them of their mystery." What do you think he means? Do you agree? Have you had a particularly memorable, powerful experience at a natural history or archaeology museum?
7. Anders argues: "Superstition is such a scornful word, applied by rational people to anything that appears not to be a rational belief, not seeing there is beauty and meaning and purpose in putting aside everything that can be explained and imagining something quite miraculous in, for example, an unfurling fern frond." Do you agree? Discuss the importance of superstition, myth, and ritual in this novel. How does the natural world (i.e.,a fern) play into that?
8. Tina describes a main difference between her lifestyle and Anders’ as "mine in the midst of the landscape and change, yours caught up with objects fixed by time. "How does that difference affect their outlooks? Which is more similar to your own lifestyle?
9.Tina tells Anders:
Whenever I pick raspberries, I go as carefully as possible down the row, looking for every ripe fruit. But however careful I am, when I turn round to go back the other way, I find fruit I had not seen approaching the plants from the opposite direction. Another life, I thought, might be like a second pass down the row of raspberry canes; there would be good things I had not come across in my first life, but I suspect I would find much of the fruit was already in my basket.
What does she mean? How does this analogy resonate throughout the novel? What are the metaphorical raspberries in your own life that you would like to pick on a second pass?
10. Anders and Tina often discuss their adult children.
Anders writes: "I am ashamed to say I don’t remember ever having understood it was my job to make my children happy."
Tina agrees, and takes it further: "We should look inside ourselves for fulfillment. It is not fair to burden children or grandchildren with the obligation to make us whole. Our obligation to them is to make them safe and provide them with an education."
Do you agree with this approach to parenting? Why or why not?
11. We aren’t told how old Anders and Tina are, but they are both grandparents. Anders tells Tina:
Our letters have meant so much to us because we have both arrived at the same point in our lives. More behind us than ahead of us. Paths chosen that define us. Enough time left to change.
How does age affect the way these characters approach their relationship? How would their story differ if they were in their twenties, for instance? Discuss the ways in which Anders and Tina change over the course of the novel.
12. Discuss Anders and Tina’s first marriages. Why do they stay with their spouses, when Birgitt was so difficult to live with and Edward has so little in common with Tina? Was staying the right thing to do?
13. Do you think there is any similarity between Tina’s friendship with Anders and her husband Edward’s affair with Daphne Trigg? Why or why not? Did you feel any sympathy for Edward or Daphne?
14. The ending of the novel is left ambiguous: we never see Tina and Anders actually meet. Do you believe they will? What do you imagine their lives looking like in a year? In five years?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Greenwood
Michael Christie, 2020
Random House
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984822000
Summary
A magnificent generational saga that charts a family’s rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, from one of Canada’s most acclaimed novelists.
It’s 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world’s last remaining forests.
It’s 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.
It’s 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father’s once vast and violent timber empire.
It’s 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple-syrup camp squat, when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime, secrets, and betrayal that will cling to his family for decades.
And throughout, there are trees: a steady, silent pulse thrumming beneath Christie’s effortless sentences, working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.
A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood, and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976
• Where—Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
• Education—Simon Fraser University
• Awards—
• Currently—lives in Victoria and on Galiano Island, British Columbia
Michael Christie is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. He was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario, later moving to San Francisco and traveling the world as a professional skateboarder. Eventually, Christie landed in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he studied psychology at Simon Fraser University. After earning his degree, he spent several years working in social services.
In 2008 Christie enrolled in the University of British Columbia's creative writing program. Less than years later, in early 2011, Christie published his first story collection, The Beggar's Garden, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize.
Christie's first novel, If I Fall, If I Die, came out 2015, and Greenwood, his second, came out in 2019 it. Both novels received nominations for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Today, Christie divides his time between Victoria, BC's capital, located on Vancouver Island, and Galiano Island, some two hours north, where he lives with his wife and two sons in a timber-frame house he built himself. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher. Retrieved 3/1/2020.)
Read a more indepth (and much more interesting!) bio in the Quill & Quire.
Book Reviews
(Starred review) A rugged, riveting novel.… This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers’s The Overstory while offering a convincing vision of potential ecological destruction.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Celebrated Canadian author Christie dazzles with this richly woven historical tracking five generations of the "trouble-plagued" Greenwood clan and the environmental devastation wrought by its lucrative timber empire. —Annalisa Pesek
Library Journal
(Starred review) Christie takes us to the end of the world and shows how we got there. … [The author] skillfully teases out the details in a page-turner…. Beguilingly structured, elegantly written: eco-apocalyptic but with hope that somehow we’ll make it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Greenwood is part of a new genre of novels known as CliFi (climate fiction). What makes it fall under that category? Do any of the novel’s environmental themes resonate with you?
2. At its heart, Greenwood is a family saga. How did the boyhoods of brothers Everett and Harris make them into the men they became? How do you think Willow’s nomadic life affected her son Liam? How did Jake’s orphaning influence the person she became?
3. The Great Withering began with the trees—“the wave of fungal blights and insect infestations, to which old growth was particularly defenseless.” What environmental stresses do you see in your life today? How do you personally address these issues?
4. “The best sacrifices, Willow knows, are always made in solitude, with not a camera in sight.” Characters make many sacrifices in Greenwood—Everett for his brother during the war, Temple for the downtrodden, Feeney out of love for his principles. What other sacrifices did you notice in the novel? Which character’s sacrifice moved you most and why?
5. How did you feel about Meena’s reaction to Liam’s painstakingly created gift, a homemade viola that replicated the Stradivarius Meena so loved? Were her actions necessary? Cruel? What did her reaction say about their relationship?
6. The word “roots” has many meanings in Greenwood—a tree’s stability, a family’s ancestry, a person’s connection to place. Which meaning resonated most with you and why?
7. “Time, Liam has learned, is not an arrow.” Greenwood travels back and forth through time—deepening characters and their backstories, connecting characters in unforeseen ways, twisting the plot like roots. In fact, the book’s timeline, starting and ending with the most recent years, and with the earliest events tucked into the middle, is structured like the rings of a tree. How did this structure affect your reading experience? How would the reading experience have changed if the story was told linearly?
8. Why do you think author Michael Christie chose to write the center section—1908—in the voice of a Greek chorus of townspeople? How does this perspective enhance our understanding of the Greenwood boys’ upbringing?
9. Christie writes that nature has taught Temple “things she’d never speak in polite conversation. Like the fact that Mother Nature’s true aim is to convert us people back into the dust we came from, just as quick as possible.” Like Temple, people tend to view Mother Nature as either the great destroyer (earthquakes, floods, the Dust Bowl), or the great nurturer (providing food, shelter, oxygen, and more). Which view did each character take? Which do you lean toward? Do you think both can be true? Why or why not?
10. What do you think of Jake’s final actions at the end of the book? Did she make the right decisions? How would you have handled the revelations?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Burning Girl
Claire Messud, 2017
W.W. Norton
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393635027
Summary
A bracing, hypnotic coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor’s Children.
Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts.
But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship.
The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality—crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence.
Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships?
Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1966
• Where—Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
• Education—BA, Yale University; M.A. Cambridge University
• Awards—Addison Metcalf Award and Strauss Living Award,
both from the American Academy of Arts & Letters
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Claire Messud is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the 2006 novel The Emperor's Children. She lives with her husband and family in Cambridge, Massachuesetts.
Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, Messud grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada, returning to the US as a teenager. Messud's mother is Canadian, and her father is French from French Algeria (Algeria was a French colony until 1962). She was educated at Milton Academy, Yale University, and Cambridge University, where she met her spouse, the British literary critic James Wood. Messud also briefly attended the MFA program at Syracuse University.
Writing
Messud's debut novel, When The World Was Steady (1995), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 1999, she published her second book, The Last Life, about three generations of a French-Algerian family. Her 2001 work, The Hunters, consists of two novellas.
Her 2006 novel, The Emperor’s Children, was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Messud wrote the novel while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005. The Woman Upstairs came out in 2014 and her most recent, The Burning Girl, in 2017.
Teaching
Messud has taught creative writing at Kenyon College, University of Maryland, Amherst College, in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in North Carolina, and in the Graduate Writing program at The Johns Hopkins University. Messud also taught at the Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Each spring semester, beginning 2009, Messud teaches a literary traditions course as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.
She is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College. She has contributed articles to publications such as The New York Review of Books.
Honors
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has recognized Messud's talent with both an Addison Metcalf Award and a Strauss Living Award. She was considered for the 2003 Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, although none of the three passports she holds is British. As of 2010–2011, she is a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute of Advanced Study. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Messud writes with insight about how female friendships dissolve, and about things like how terrifying certain stray fThe Burning Girl is an oddly distant novel. Its tone is formal and ultimtel unconvincing.… This is the first of Messud's novels that didn't, on a regular basis, flood my veins with leawsure. Its the first Messud novel I might have, if I could have, put down before the end.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Julia voices the novel’s leitmotif: that everyone’s life is essentially a mysterious story, distorted by myths. Although it reverberates with astute insights, in some ways this simple tale is less ambitious but more heartfelt than Messud’s previous work.… [H]aunting and emotionally gripping.
Publishers Weekly
In giving the sole narration to Julia, Messud somewhat paints herself into a corner, as the accounts of Cassie's experiences told to Julia through Peter include a level of observational detail that defies plausibility.… [B]road appeal for teens and adults alike. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Messud’s entrancing, gorgeously incisive coming-of-age drama astutely tracks the sharpening perceptions of an exceptionally eloquent young woman navigating heartbreak and regret and realizing that one can never fathom "the wild, unknowable interior lives" of others, not even someone you love.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Messud…suggests that we never truly know another, not even those we love best. That stark worldview…seems more overwrought than events call for…but by the novel's closing pages it packs an emotional wallop. Emotionally intense and quietly haunting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider using our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Burning Girl … then take off on your own:
1. Start a discussion by parsing the personalities and characters of the two girls in this story, Julia and Cassie. How are the two similar and how are they dissimilar?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Consider also the status cues between the two households which delineate socio/economic class.
3. Trace the steps which begin to undo the girls' friendship, starting with Cassie's mother's move-in boyfriend. How does it unravel? Does the split seem inevitable to you?
4. Julia's mother tries to console her daughter by telling her that "Everyone loses a best friend at some point." Is that true? Is it true in your life?
5. What does the statement mean that "being a girl is learning to be afraid? Do you agree?
6. Ultimately, the novel poses the perennial question: can we ever truly know someone, even those who are close to us? Is there a satisfactory answer to that question?
7. How does Elizabeth Bishop's epigraph on the opening pages relate to the novel? You might consider, for starters, the burning deck as the friendship between Julia and Cassie … also, that the boy seems powerless: he stammers.
(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens, 2018
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735219090
Summary
How long can you protect your heart?
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl.
But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.
Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.
Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder.
Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa—Cry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant, and Secrets of the Savanna.
She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and International Wildlife, among many others. She currently lives in Idaho, where she continues her support for the people and wildlife of Zambia. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature…. Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child. And in her isolation that child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonders—and dangers—of her private world.
New York Times Book Review
In Owens’s evocative debut…Kya makes for an unforgettable heroine. Owens memorably depicts the small-town drama and courtroom theatrics, but perhaps best of all is her vivid portrayal of the singular North Carolina setting.
Publishers Weekly
Lyrical.… Its appeal ris[es] from Kya’s deep connection to the place where makes her home, and to all of its creatures.
Booklist
A wild child's isolated, dirt-poor upbringing in a Southern coastal wilderness fails to shield her from heartbreak or an accusation of murder.… Despite some distractions, there's an irresistible charm to Owens' first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The North Carolina marsh where Kya lives has long been a sanctuary for outsiders. How does this setting shape the novel? How does growing up in this isolation affect Kya? In what ways does her status as an "outsider" change how others see her?
2. Why does Kya choose not to go back to school? Do you think she makes the wrong decision? How does Kya’s lack of formal education shape her vision of the world? Would her character be different if she had gone to school?
3. After Jodie and Pa leave Kya alone, she becomes close to Jumpin’ and Mabel. Why are these two adults drawn to Kya? What do they teach her about the world? Do you agree with Jumpin’s decision to protect Kya from social services (p. 110) and to encourage her to live alone in the marsh? Why or why not?
4. Why do you think Kya’s mother leaves in the beginning? Do you agree with her decision?
5. Kya often watches the other young people from town—she even nicknames them "Tallskinnyblonde, Ponytailfreckleface, Shortblackhair, Alwayswearspearls, and Roundchubbycheeks" (p. 80). What does Kya learn from observing these girls? Why do you think she keeps her watching secret? Do you agree with Kya’s secrecy?
6. How is womanhood explored throughout the novel? What does being a woman mean to Kya? How does she relate to the other women in Barkley Cove?
7. Discuss Kya’s relationship with Tate. How does Tate’s understanding of Kya change over time? Is Tate a good partner for Kya? Why or why not?
8. Tate’s father tells him that poems are important because "they make ya feel something" (p. 48). What does poetry mean to Tate? What does it mean to Kya? How does poetry help Kya throughout the novel?
9. On page 142, Kya watches the fireflies near her shack, and notices that the females can change their flashes to signal different things. What does this realization mean to Kya? What does it teach her about relationships? How does this lesson influence Kya’s decisions in the second half of the novel?
10. Discuss how Kya’s observations of nature shape her vision of the world. Do you think these lessons adequately prepare her for life in Barkley Cove? Do you think human society follows the same rules as the natural world? Should it? Why or why not?
11. Is Chase a different kind of man than Tate? How are they different? Is one man better? Do you think that their differences are biological or learned? How does Kya see each man?
12. By the end of the novel, Kya has come to realize…
Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core (p. 363).
What does she mean? Do you agree with her philosophy? What do you think it means to be a good person? Do you think Kya is a good person? Why or why not?
13. Were you surprised by the verdict in the Chase’s murder trial? What about by the ending of the novel? Do you agree with Tate’s final decision? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Girl with the Louding Voice
Abi Daré, 2020
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524746025
Summary
A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to fight for her dreams and choose her own future.
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a "louding voice"—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future.
But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.
When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing.
But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it.
And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, for the ones who came before her and were lost, and for the next girls, who will inevitably follow; she finds the resolve to speak, however she can—in a whisper, in song, in broken English—until she is heard. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Lagos, Nigeria
• Education—J.D., University of Wolverhampton; M.Sc, Glasgow Caledonian University; M.A., University of London
• Currently—lives in Essex, England
Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years.
She studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and has an MSc in International Project Management from Glasgow Caledonian University, as well as an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.
The Girl with the Louding Voice won the Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was also selected as a finalist in the 2018 Literary Consultancy Pen Factor competition.
Abi lives in Essex with her husband and two daughters, who inspired her to write her debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Desperate for an education, which is the only way to get the "louding" voice that will let her speak for herself, 14-year-old Nigerian Adunni is instead sold by her father to a local man looking for a male heir. Running away to the city, she… never gives up her dream.
Library Journal
Captivating… Daré's arresting prose provides a window into the lives of Nigerians of all socioeconomic levels and shows readers the beauty and humor that may be found even in the midst of harrowing experiences.
Booklist
Adunni's dialect will be unfamiliar to some readers, but the rhythm of her language grows easier to follow the more you read, and her courage and determination to make her own way in life despite terrible setbacks are heartbreaking and inspiring.
Kirkus Reviews
[H]eartwarming, enlightening.… [A] skillful examination of the causes and effects of corruption, child labor and child marriage…. The story is told in a distinctive, grammatically imperfect style by an innocent but perceptive main character… [who] brings deep, significant issues into focus.
BookPage
The narrator's attempts to make the unknown familiar often come across like metaphors in poetry. Readers leave Adunni knowing that she has the intellectual resources and the guts to face whatever challenges she must in order to attain her goals.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think Adunni’s comparison of her mother to a rose flower ("a yellow and red and purple rose with shining leafs") symbolizes? She also remembers her mother having a sweet smell like a rosebush. Why do you think she compares her mother to this particular type of flower? And how do you think our five senses play into our memories?
2. Adunni dreads her upcoming marriage to Morufu, but her friend Enitan is genuinely excited for Adunni, believing that her life will be improved after the wedding. Why do you think there is a disconnect between Adunni’s and Enitan’s points of view? Can you draw any comparisons between cultural attitudes toward marriage in America and Nigeria?
3. Compare and contrast Khadija with the glimpses we get of Adunni’s mother. How were their lives similar or different from one another?
4. Why do you think Bamidele doesn’t return for Khadija? What do you think he whispers in her ear before leaving her for the last time?
5. Why do you think Adunni is closer with Kayus than Born-boy? What is it that makes their sibling bond so deep?
6. Why do you think bathing is such an important symbol in Nigerian folklore and in the novel? Discuss the similarities and differences between the bath that Kadija believes will save her and her baby’s life, and the bath that Ms. Tia’s mother-in-law believes will help her get pregnant.
7. Adunni has dreamed of leaving Ikati and seeing "the big, shining city" of Lagos since she was young, though when she actually arrives it’s not under the circumstances she envisioned. How do you think her perception of the city changes once she is there? And how does her experience of Lagos relate to Big Madam’s or Ms. Tia’s? Compare and contrast the ways all three women view the city and experience the opportunities it offers.
8. Though they have dissimilar personalities, are not close in age, and have lived very different lives by the time they meet, Adunni and Ms. Tia have an instant connection that deepens over time. What do you think it is that drew each of them to the other? How do you think their friendship will evolve after the book is over? Will they continue to be friends even though their worlds seem incompatible?
9. What is the significance of the moment when Ms. Tia turns to look at Adunni right after the bath ceremony is over? Why do you think it affects Adunni so strongly?
10. After Ms. Tia’s bath, Adunni wants "to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men?" What specific moments have brought her to this question? What do the events of the book reveal about cultural attitudes toward women?
11. Adunni remembers her mother saying, "Adunni, you must do good for other peoples, even if you are not well, even if the whole world around you is not well." How do you think this factors into the choices she makes and her dreams for the future?
12. The first time Big Madam hears Adunni singing she slaps her and says, "This is not your village. Here we behave like sane people." Later, when Adunni is comforting Big Madam after she has forced Big Daddy out of her house, Big Madam wants Adunni to sing to her. Discuss the significance of that moment. Why do you think Big Madam’s attitude toward Adunni’s singing has changed?
13. At first, knowing and reading English is a source of pride for Adunni. But later, she says, "English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense." What do you think she means by this?
14. How do you feel about the ending? Do you think it is a happy ending for Adunni? Despite the fact that she gets to follow her dream of returning to school, there are bittersweet moments, too—she must contend with the fact that she’s left her family behind, her husband might have stopped supporting her family, and the mystery of what happened to Rebecca remains partially unsolved. How do you think these loose ends will affect Adunni as she grows into adulthood?
15. After embarking on this journey with Adunni, what does a "louding voice" mean to you and how does one achieve it? What sort of future do you imagine for Adunni
(Questions issued by the publisher.)