If the Creek Don't Rise
Leah Weiss, 2017
Sourcebooks
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781492647454
Summary
He's gonna be sorry he ever messed with me and Loretta Lynn
Sadie Blue has been a wife for fifteen days. That's long enough to know she should have never hitched herself to Roy Tupkin, even with the baby.
Sadie is desperate to make her own mark on the world, but in remote Appalachia, a ticket out of town is hard to come by, and hope often gets stomped out.
When a stranger sweeps into Baines Creek and knocks things off kilter, Sadie finds herself with an unexpected lifeline …if she can just figure out how to use it.
This intimate insight into a fiercely proud, tenacious community unfolds through the voices of the forgotten folks of Baines Creek. With a colorful cast of characters that each contribute a new perspective, If the Creek Don't Rise is a debut novel bursting with heart, honesty, and homegrown grit. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1947-48
• Raised—Lynchburg, Virginia, USA
• Education—Dunbarton College; Kent State University
• Currently—lives in Lynchburg, Virginia
Leah Weiss is an American author, whose debut novel, If the Creek Don’t Rise, was published in 2017. She was born in North Carolina, not far from the tobacco farm where her mother was raised; when she was 10, her family moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Both places played a role in Weiss's development. As she told the Lynchburg News & Advance:
My mother’s simple upbringing on a farm and her ability to see "rich" where others saw "poor" influenced me. My dad’s people in Virginia were the artists, a granddad who was a violinist, my namesake Leah who designed her clothes and thought nothing of laying a brick patio by herself.
An avid Nancy Drew reader when young, and member of the debating team in high school, Weiss also studied piano, a talent which won her a scholarship to Dunbarton College in Washington, D.C. She also attended Kent State University.
Weiss married after graduation, gave birth to a son, and spent the next 20 years teaching music and penning freelance articles. In 1991 she took a job with the Virginia Episcopal School (VES) as the executive assistant to the school's headmaster.
During her 24 years at VES, Weiss worked to hone her writing, attending workshops and writing conferences in her spare time. If the Creek Don't Rise grew out of a short story she submitted to a 2011 contest — and won. Four years later, Weiss retired from VES, now with a book under her belt. It was 2015, the same year she landed a literary agent. (Adapted from The News & Advance.)
Three Things About Elsie
Joanna Cannon, 2018
Scribner
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501187384
Summary
There are three things you should know about Elsie. The first thing is that she’s my best friend. The second is that she always knows what to say to make me feel better. And the third thing…might take a bit more explaining.
Eighty-four-year-old Florence has fallen in her flat at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly.
As she waits to be rescued, she thinks about her friend Elsie and wonders if a terrible secret from their past is about to come to light.
If the charming new resident is who he claims to be, why does he look exactly like a man who died sixty years ago?
From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, Three Things About Elsie is a story about forever friends on the twisting path of life. As we uncover their buried secrets, we learn how the fine threads of humanity connect us all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Age—40s
• Raised—Derbyshire, England, UK
• Education—Denstone College, Uttoxeter; M.D., University of Leicester Medical School
• Currently—lives in Ashbourne, Derbershire, England
Joanna Cannon is a psychiatrist and a novelist. She grew up in Derbyshire, England, as the only child of a plumber and a giftshop owner. Although she left school at 15 with one O-level, she returned in her 30s to take her A-levels. She was spurred by her resolve to become a doctor and qualified in her early 40s..
Today, Cannon lives in England’s Peak District with her family and her dog. She is the author of Three Things About Elsie (2018) and The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (2015). (From the publisher.)
Read this Guardian article about the author.
Book Reviews
While readers are likely to guess the mysterious "third thing" about Elsie early on, and the book… depend[s on] coincidences, Cannon makes her protagonist sympathetic.… Readers may come for the mystery, but they’ll stay to spend time with Florence.
Publishers Weekly
Older characters are beginning to get their own literature, and Cannon's title is a positive addition that should resonate with elderly citizens and their caretakers everywhere. —Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago
Library Journal
[T]ender and charismatic…. Cannon effortlessly captures the home’s slow routines, along with the ways that staff and residents coexist but often know little about each other…. This heartfelt tale of friendship and aging explores letting go of the past in order to live fully in the present.
Booklist
(Starred review) Breathes with suspense, providing along the way piercing, poetic descriptions, countless tiny mysteries, and breathtaking little reveals.… [A] rich portrait of old age and friendship stretched over a fascinating frame.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think author Joanna Cannon decided to set the novel in a nursing home?
2. On page 63, Florence says, "I needed someone to hold my worrying for me." How does Elsie play this role for her?
3. The act of naming and renaming things is a recurring theme in the novel. Why do you think this is significant?
4. Did Florence’s failing memory change your understanding of events at Cherry Tree? Does it make her a less reliable narrator? Why or why not?
5. "Simon wondered where his life ended and their life began, and how we could all be stitched so tightly together, yet the threads between everybody still go unnoticed" (page 124). How does this idea of the bonds between humanity play out throughout the novel?
6. "‘You’ve got to find forgiveness, Florence,’ said Elsie. ‘You find it so easily in other people, why do you struggle so much to find it in yourself?’" (page 334). Why do you think Florence struggles to forgive herself for the past?
7. Consider the role of time in novel, especially Florence’s idea of a "long second"—when time seems to hesitate just long enough to give you a chance to make the right decision. Have you experienced any "long seconds" in your life?
8. Florence and Simon both repeat throughout the novel that they have lived very ordinary lives. Do you think this is the case? How do you think ordinary versus extraordinary is measured?
9. "Sometimes, a name is the only thing we can leave behind," Florence says on page 103. Do you think this is true? What else do you think Florence will leave behind?
10. Did the third thing about Elsie come as a surprise to you? Why or why not?
11. What do you think makes Florence ultimately realize that she has lived an extraordinary life, in the end?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich, 2020
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062671189
Summary
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C.
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota.
He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress.
It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Since graduating from high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother.
Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis.
Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.
Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.
In The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature.
Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 7, 1954
• Where—Little Falls, Minnesota, USA
• Education—A.B., Dartmouth College; M.A., Johns Hopkins
• Awards—National Book Award; National Book Critics Circle Awards (2); Nelson Algren Prize
• Currently—lives in Minnesota
Karen Louise Erdrich is an author of some 20 novels, as well as poetry, short stories, and children's books. She has some Native American ancestry and is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
In 1984, Erdrich won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her debut novel, Love Medicine. In 2009, her novel The Plague of Doves was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and three years later, in 2012, she won the National Book Award for Round House.
Erdrich is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The eldest of seven children, Erdrich was born to Ralph and Rita Erdrich in Little Falls, Minnesota. Her father was German-American while her mother was French and Anishinaabe (Ojibwa). Her grandfather Patrick Gourneau served as a tribal chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school.
She attended Dartmouth College in 1972-1976, earning an AB degree and meeting her future husband, the Modoc anthropologist and writer Michael Dorris. He was then director of the college’s Native American Studies program. Subsequently, Erdrich worked in a wide variety of jobs, including as a lifeguard, waitress, poetry teacher at prisons, and construction flag signaler. She also became an editor for The Circle, a newspaper produced by and for the urban Native population in Boston. Erdrich graduated with a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979.
In the period 1978-1982, Erdrich published many poems and short stories. It was also during this period that she began collaborating with Dorris, initially working through the mail while Dorris was working in New Zealand. The relationship progressed, and the two were married in 1981. During this time, Erdrich assembled the material that would eventually be published as the poetry collection Jacklight.
In 1982, Erdrich's story "The World’s Greatest Fisherman" was awarded the $5,000 Nelson Algren Prize for short fiction. This convinced Erdrich and Dorris, who continued to work collaboratively, that they should embark on writing a novel.
Early Novels
In 1984, Erdrich published the novel Love Medicine. Made up of a disjointed but interconnected series of short narratives, each told from the perspective of a different character, and moving backwards and forward in time through every decade between the 1930s and the present day, the book told the stories of several families living near each other on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation.
The innovative techniques of the book, which owed a great deal to the works of William Faulkner but have little precedent in Native-authored fiction, allowed Erdrich to build up a picture of a community in a way entirely suited to the reservation setting. She received immediate praise from author/critics such as N. Scott Momaday and Gerald Vizenor, and the book was awarded the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award. It has never subsequently been out of print.
Erdrich followed Love Medicine with The Beet Queen, which continued her technique of using multiple narrators, but surprised many critics by expanding the fictional reservation universe of Love Medicine to include the nearby town of Argus, North Dakota. Native characters are very much kept in the background in this novel, while Erdrich concentrates on the German-American community. The action of the novel takes place mostly before World War II.
The Beet Queen was subject to a bitter attack from Native novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, who accused Erdrich of being more concerned with postmodern technique than with the political struggles of Native peoples.
Erdrich and Dorris’ collaborations continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s, always occupying the same fictional universe.
Tracks goes back to the early 20th century at the formation of the reservation and introduces the trickster figure of Nanapush, who owes a clear debt to Nanabozho. Erdrich’s novel most rooted in Anishinaabe culture (at least until Four Souls), it shows early clashes between traditional ways and the Roman Catholic Church.
The Bingo Palace updates but does not resolve various conflicts from Love Medicine: set in the 1980s, it shows the effects both good and bad of a casino and a factory being set up among the reservation community. Finally, Tales of Burning Love finishes the story of Sister Leopolda, a recurring character from all the former books, and introduces a new set of white people to the reservation universe.
Erdrich and Dorris wrote The Crown of Columbus, the only novel to which both writers put their names, and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, credited to Dorris. Both of these were set away from the Argus reservation.
Domestic Life
The couple had six children, three of them adopted. Dorris had adopted the children when he was single. After their marriage, Erdrich also adopted them, and the couple had three daughters together. Some of the children had difficulties.
In 1989 Dorris published The Broken Cord, a book about fetal alcohol syndrome, from which their adopted son Reynold Abel suffered. Dorris had found it was a widespread and until then relatively undiagnosed problem among Native American children because of mothers' alcohol issues. In 1991, Reynold Abel was hit by a car and killed at age 23.
In 1995 their son Jeffrey Sava accused them both of child abuse. Dorris and Erdrich unsuccessfully pursued an extortion case against him. Shortly afterward, Dorris and Erdrich separated and began divorce proceedings. Erdrich claimed that Dorris had been depressed since the second year of their marriage.
On April 11, 1997, Michael Dorris committed suicide in Concord, New Hampshire.
Later Writings
Erdrich’s first novel after divorce, The Antelope Wife, was the first to be set outside the continuity of the previous books. She has subsequently returned to the reservation and nearby towns, and has produced five novels since 1998 dealing with events in that fictional area. Among these are The Master Butchers Singing Club, a macabre mystery which again draws on Erdrich's Native American and German-American heritage, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. Both have geographic and character connections with The Beet Queen.
Together with several of her previous works, these have drawn comparisons with William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels. The successive novels have created multiple narratives in the same fictional area and combined the tapestry of local history with current themes and modern consciousness.
In The Plague of Doves, Erdrich has continued the multi-ethnic dimension of her writing, weaving together the layered relationships among residents of farms, towns and reservations; their shared histories, secrets, relationships and antipathies; and the complexities for later generations of re-imagining their ancestors' overlapping pasts. The novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
Erdrich's 2010 book, Shadow Tag, was a departure for her, as she focuses on a failed marriage.
Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Ojibwa and Chippewa). Erdrich also has German, French and American ancestry. One sister, Heidi, publishes under the name Heid E. Erdrich; she is a poet who also resides in Minnesota. Another sister, Lise Erdrich, has written children's books and collections of fiction and essays. For the past few years, the three Erdrich sisters have hosted annual writers workshops on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
The award-winning photographer Ronald W. Erdrich is one of their cousins. He lives and works in Abilene, Texas. He was named "Star Photojournalist of the Year" in 2004 by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors association. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Erdrich’s reverence for her heroic grandfather and her moral passion about the mistreatment of her people irradiate the magisterial, beautiful, important fiction she creates here…. Thomas is our literal night watchman, and Patrice must also watch out for her father’s lurking presence, but Erdrich beautifully evokes and explores the many figurative implications and resonances of both words…. Some readers may find the novel’s kaleidoscope of perspectives confusing or its ambling pace too slow. But those who can surrender to Erdrich’s intricate tapestry of a vision, who appreciate her remarkable ability to veer from humor to pathos in a pithy phrase and, as one character says of another, to 'make life’s bitterness into comedy,' who admire her luminous empathy, will place The Night Watchman alongside the best of her remarkable fiction.
Boston Globe
That a family history forms the novel’s skeleton is fitting, because it is a sense of family that holds the whole story together ... What is most beautiful about the book is how this family feeling manifests itself in the way the people of The Night Watchman see the world, their fierce attachment to each other, however close or distant, living or dead ... [there is a] dark strand running though the book, and through the American story—one that, for all its chauvinism, Erdrich frames with remarkable care.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Night Watchman is above all a story of resilience…It is a story in which magic and harsh realities collide in a breathtaking, but ultimately satisfying way. Like those ancestors who linger in the shadows of the pages, the characters Erdrich has created will remain with the reader long after the book is closed.
New York Journal of Books
[The] stirring tale of a young Chippewa woman and her uncle’s effort to halt the Termination Act of 1953.… Erdrich’s inspired portrait of her own tribe’s resilient heritage masterfully encompasses an array of characters and historical events. Erdrich remains an essential voice.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) In Erdrich's hand, daily life on the reservation comes alive…. Erdrich once again calls upon her considerable storytelling skills to elucidate the struggles of generations of Native people to retain their cultural identity and their connection to the land. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review) [S]spellbinding, reverent, and resplendent…. Through the personalities and predicaments of her many charismatic characters,… Erdrich traces the indelible traumas of racism and sexual violence and celebrates the vitality and depth of Chippewa life…. Erdrich at her radiant best.
Booklist
(Starred review) In this unhurried, kaleidoscopic story, the efforts of Native Americans to save their lands from …the U.S. government in the early 1950s come intimately, vividly to life.… A knowing, loving evocation of people trying to survive with their personalities and traditions intact.
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.)
Young Jane Young
Gabrielle Zevin, 2017
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616205041
Summary
From the author of the international bestseller The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry comes another novel that will have everyone talking.
Aviva Grossman, an ambitious congressional intern in Florida, makes the mistake of having an affair with her boss — and blogging about it. When the affair comes to light, the beloved congressman doesn’t take the fall.
But Aviva does, and her life is over before it hardly begins: slut-shamed, she becomes a late-night talk show punch line, anathema to politics.
She sees no way out but to change her name and move to a remote town in Maine. This time, she tries to be smarter about her life and strives to raise her daughter, Ruby, to be strong and confident.
But when, at the urging of others, Aviva decides to run for public office herself, that long-ago mistake trails her via the Internet and catches up — an inescapable scarlet A. In the digital age, the past is never, ever, truly past.
And it’s only a matter of time until Ruby finds out who her mother was and is forced to reconcile that person with the one she knows.
Young Jane Young is a smart, funny, and moving novel about what it means to be a woman of any age, and captures not just the mood of our recent highly charged political season, but also the double standards alive and well in every aspect of life for women. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 24, 1977
• Where— New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California
Gabrielle Zevin is an American author and screenwriter. Her novels include The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (2014) and Young Jane Young (2017). She graduated from Harvard in 2000 with a degree in English & American Literature and lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.
Zevin's first writing job was as a teen music critic for her local newspaper. Her first novel Elsewhere was published in 2005. It was nominated for a 2006 Quill award, won the Borders Original Voices Award, and was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Book Club. It also made the Carnegie long list. The book has been translated into over twenty languages.
In 2007 Zevin was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for Conversations with Other Women which starred Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart and was also directed by Hans Canosa. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/10/2014.)
Book Reviews
Maybe with enough determination and love and support, women can choose their own adventures. They can start, like Aviva, by choosing not to be ashamed. In this life-affirming novel, Zevin doesn’t make that look easy, but she makes it look possible.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
It’s brilliant and hilarious, and it makes you wince in recognition — for the double-standard that relegates scandalized women to a life of shame even as their married lovers continue with their careers (and often their marriages), for the insatiable appetite we have for every last detail, for the ease and speed with which we stop seeing people as multilayered humans. It’s the sort of book that invites us to examine our long-held beliefs and perceptions.… It has a heart. And a spine. It’s exactly, I would argue, what we need more of right now.
Chicago Tribune
Another charming and funny winner by the author of the 2014 best seller The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, about a woman at midlife confronting, along with her mom and daughter, a sex scandal from her youth.
AARP
[A] satisfying and entertaining story of reinvention and second chances.… Jane’s story is in the end less about political scandal and more about gaining strength and moving on from youthful missteps.
Publishers Weekly
Presenting a sharp send-up of our culture's obsession with scandal and blame, this novel pulls at the seams of misogyny from all angles, some of them sure to be uncomfortable for readers. Likely to be a popular book club pick. —Julie Kane, Washington & Lee Lib., Lexington, VA
Library Journal
Splendid.… A witty, strongly drawn group of female voices tells Aviva’s story.… [Zevin] has created a fun and frank tale. Her vibrant and playful writing… bring the story a zestful energy, even while exploring dark themes of secrecy and betrayal.
Booklist
[The] novel reinvents the familiar story more cleverly and warmly than one would have thought possible.… This book will not only thoroughly entertain…; it is the most immaculate takedown of slut-shaming…anywhere. Cheers, and gratitude, to the author.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll include publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider using our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Young Jane Young … then take off on your own:
1. Young Jane Young, of course, is inspired by the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal. How much do you remember about that ordeal — if you lived through it as an adult. If you were too young, what have you gleaned about it over the years, what has been passed down to you? You might start off your discussion by watching the Monica Lewinsky TED talk.
2. Follow-up to Question 1: What are the parallels between this novel and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal?
3. How much does the power factor play into the Aviva/Levin: an older, more experienced male and a younger woman who is his subordinate? Should that be a consideration in blaming or absolving Aviva?
4. How would you describe the scandal that follows Aviva's affair with Levin? Why is the fallout always much greater for the woman than for the man, even though, in this case (as in so many), he's the married party? What does the unequal treatment suggest about society's mores?
5. Of the four women's sections, which do you engage with the most? Talk about how each section twists and turns the event, viewing it from a different angle. Consider Aviva's mother and, especially the Congressman's wife. How does each woman see the affaur?
6. What do you make of Ruby? Do you find her reaction to her mother's past understandable …or unbelievable?
7. What do you make of the "choose you own adventure" section?
8. Can a woman choose not to be shamed by all the "slut-shaming"
9. Does the digital age make public outrage more vitriolic today than it did back, say, 20-30 years ago? Consider that the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio created a media frenzy absent Twitter, smart phones, and Facebook.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Cherry
Nico Walker, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525520139
Summary
A breakneck-paced debut novel about love, war, bank robberies, and heroin
Cleveland, 2003.
A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and Ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love.
But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York and he flunks out of school and joins the Army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq.
But as an Army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die.
He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at--robbing banks.
Hammered out on a typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—
• Where—
• Education—
• Awards—
• Currently—
Nico Walker is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. He served as a medic on more than 250 missions in Iraq. Currently he has two more years of an eleven-year sentence for bank robbery. Cherry is his debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
You won't hear Nico Walker on a book tour anytime soon because he’s serving two more years in prison for bank robbery. But don’t wait to pick up his lacerating new novel about the horrors of war and addiction. Cherry is a miracle of literary serendipity, a triumph born of gore and suffering that reads as if it’s been scratched out with a dirty needle across the tender skin of a man’s forearm.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
The rare work of literary fiction by a young American that carries with it nothing of the scent of an MFA program.… The voice Walker has fashioned has a lot in common with the one Denis Johnson conjured for his masterpiece Jesus’ Son.… A novel of searing beauty.
Vulture
One of the summer’s most exciting literary breakthroughs, Cherry is a profane, raw, and harrowingly timely account of the effects of war and the perils of addiction.
Entertainment Weekly
Some readers may find the innumerable descriptions of… [addiction] suitably transgressive. For everyone else, …the novel [may] feel like it’s willing to describe the catastrophe of its narrator’s life, but not truly examine it.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] sad love story and a raw tale of a young man's downfall owing to war and its aftermath.… A raging, agonized scream of a novel and a tremendously powerful debut. —Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA
Library Journal
(Starred review) Unsparingly raw and utterly gripping. This is an astonishingly good novel, written by someone who clearly has a gift for storytelling. Walker’s characters, even minor players and walk-ons, are beautifully drawn. His dialogue rings achingly true.… A masterpiece.
Booklist
(Starred review) [U]nsettling debut [of] a young man raised in the middle-class comforts of America encounters war, love, and drug addiction.… A bleak tale told bluntly with an abundance of profanity but also of insight into two kinds of living hell.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for CHERRY … then take off on your own:
1. The novel poses (and tries to answer) this question—"How do you become a scumbag?" In the arc of this story, how does one, or at least the book's narrator, become a scumbag? In other words, trace the trajectory of the narrator's downfall: from his first days in college, through his war experiences, and then back home with Emily. Was there one particular tipping point, was it his basic personality, or simply the totality of his experiences?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Consider the inverse path this novel follows. In many war novels, joining the military and heading to war is a crucible that forges the hero/heroine's maturity. In this case, the narrator's battle experiences transform him into an antihero, with, as the New York Times review puts it, "no sliver of redemption." Is that how you see storyline? Or do you see it differently?
3. We meet the narrator in 2003 when he tells us...
I sold drugs but it wasn’t like I was bad or anything. I wasn’t bothering anybody; I didn’t even eat meat. I had a job at the shoe store. Another mistake I made. No interest whatsoever in shoes. I was marked for failure.
What do make of his self-assessment? What does that passage reveal about the kind of man he is?
4. Why does the narrator fall for Emily? How would you describe her? When they decide to get married, why does Emily say, "But we're gonna get divorced"?
5. How culpable is Emily for the narrator's drug addiction? What role does she play in his deterioration?
6. What prompts the narrator to enlist in the Army? What is his attitude during training?
7. How well is he (or any of the soldiers) prepared for the war he encounters in Iraq? Talk about the narrator's tone of voice as he describes his time overseas. Is his tone angry, cynical, morose, hopeless, perhaps even flippant?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: What were your feelings as you read about the Iraq experience? What surprised you, shocked you, angered you, or confirmed your suspicions about the conduct (on all sides) of the war?
9. Talk about how the war affected the narrator? What role did it play in his downward slide into addiction? Given the media focus on veterans' mental health issues, would you say the narrator's experience is typical?
10. What do you know about addiction: the chemistry involved, its effect on the brain's physiology, the availability and protocols for treatment, and especially the success/failure rates of treatment?
11. In one of the few negative reviews for the book, Publishers Weekly writes, "it feels like [the novel is] willing to describe the catastrophe of its narrator’s life, but not truly examine it." What do you think? Do you agree or not and why (or why not)?
12. Overall, how did you experience the book? Does knowing that Cherry is autobiographical and that its author, Nico Walker, is serving time in jail have any impact on how you read his novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)