Separation Anxiety
Laura Zigman, 2020
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062909077
Summary
A hilarious novel about a wife and mother whose life is unraveling and the well-intentioned but increasingly disastrous steps she takes to course-correct her relationships, her career, and her belief in herself…
Judy never intended to start wearing the dog.
But when she stumbled across her son Teddy’s old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she’s repeated the process every day since.
Life hasn’t gone according to Judy’s plan.
Her career as a children’s book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy, now a teenager, treats her with some combination of mortification and indifference. Her best friend is dying. And her husband, Gary, has become a pot-addled professional "snackologist" who she can’t afford to divorce.
On top of it all, she has a painfully ironic job writing articles for a self-help website—a poor fit for someone seemingly incapable of helping herself.
Wickedly funny and surprisingly tender, Separation Anxiety offers a frank portrait of middle-aged limbo, examining the ebb and flow of life’s most important relationships.
Tapping into the insecurities and anxieties that most of us keep under wraps, and with a voice that is at once gleefully irreverent and genuinely touching, Laura Zigman has crafted a new classic for anyone taking fumbling steps toward happiness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bi.o
• Birth—ca. 1962
• Raised—Newton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Massachusetts-Amherst
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Laura Zigman is the author of several novels, including her well-known debut, Animal Husbandry (1998), which was made into the movie, Someone Like You (2001, with Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd). Zigman's other books include Dating Big Bird (2000), Her (2003), A Piece of Work (2006), and Separation Anxiety (2020). She is also co-author, with professional matchmaker Patti Novak, of the self-help book, Get Over Yourself: How to Get Real, Get Serious, and Get Ready to Find True Love (2008).
Zigman grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She worked for ten years as a publicist for Times Books, Vintage Books, Turtle Bay Books, Atlantic Monthly Press, and Alfred A. Knopf, before moving to Washington, D.C., where she began her career as a writer.
Zigman has been a contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, and Huffington Post, produced a popular online series of animated videos, "Annoying Conversations," and was the recipient of a Yaddo residency. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, son, and deeply human Sheltie. (Adapted from the publisher and from Wikidedia. Retrieved 3/4/2020.)
Book Reviews
What is the name of the emotion that mixes exasperation with sympathy? This was the question going through my head as I read Separation Anxiety, Laura Zigman’s wistful and somewhat erratic fifth novel. The story of Judy Vogel, a middle-aged writer, mother and wife consumed with loneliness as her husband and son drift away, it is a tale that elicits a curious combination of those feelings.… It is unclear why otherwise passive people have decided to get divorced since they seem to like each other and are kind. This dynamic, at least, is fresh; you root for Zigman’s decent and vulnerable characters even while wanting to give them a good shake.… Zigman has brought her ur-self firmly into middle age—and while she is a familiar, self-deprecating, likable protagonist with self-esteem issues, one does find oneself wondering why, with the supposed vantage point of some years, she hasn’t yet gotten out from under the weight of her own judgment.
Janice Y.K. Lee - New York Times Book Review
Judy [is] a 50-year-old mother going through some serious changes.… Readers who enjoyed Maria Semple's far superior Where'd You Go, Bernadette… may enjoy this, but it is not Zigman's best effort. She is a popular writer, though, so buy for demand only. —Stacy Alesi, Eugene M. & Christine E. Lynn Lib., Lynn Univ., Boca Raton, FL
Library Journal
A world where motherhood, wifely duties, and career aspirations take hard twists and turns. With plenty of snark and a dash of humor, [Zigman] shows just how real the struggle bus is, perfect for readers who like a heroine with a messy life.
Booklist
[A] bit unsettling.… [Judy] almost doesn't seem to care about [the dog]… [and when] a group of people at the dog park… charge her with animal abuse, you wonder whose side you're on. The author gamely combines characters and caricatures, real pain and farce.
Kirkus Reviews
Every middle-aged woman who has ever felt invisible, lost or depressed will connect with some aspect of Judy’s life…. Unpredictable and delightfully original. For those seeking a good laugh and a good cry, look no further than Separation Anxiety.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Golden House
Salman Rushdie, 2017
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399592805
Summary
A modern American epic set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture—a hurtling, page-turning mystery that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities
On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village.
The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family. Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons:
… Petya, agoraphobic, alcoholic, and a brilliant recluse with a tortured mind;
… Apu, the flamboyant artist, sexually and spiritually omnivorous, famous on twenty blocks;
… D, at twenty-two the baby of the family, harboring an explosive secret even from himself.
There is no mother, no wife; at least not until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian expat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king—a queen in want of an heir.
Our guide to the Goldens’ world is their neighbor Rene, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household. Seduced by their mystique, he is inevitably implicated in their quarrels, their infidelities, and, indeed, their crimes.
Meanwhile, like a bad joke, a certain comic-book villain embarks upon a crass presidential run that turns New York upside-down.
Set against the strange and exuberant backdrop of current American culture and politics, The Golden House also marks Salman Rushdie’s triumphant and exciting return to realism. The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention—a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 19, 1947
• Where—Bombay, Maharashtra, India
• Education—M.A., King's College, Cambridge, UK
• Awards—Booker Prize, 1981; Best of the Bookers, 1993 (the best novel to win the Booker
Prize in its first twenty-five years); Whitbread Prize, 1988 and 1995
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on February 14, 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at the Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the Satanic Verses controversy.
Career
Rushdie's first career was as a copywriter, working for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for Aero and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker, for whom he wrote the memorable line "That'll do nicely" for American Express. It was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnight's Children, before becoming a full-time writer. John Hegarty of Bartle Bogle Hegarty has criticised Rushdie for not referring to his copywriting past frequently enough, although conceding: "He did write crap ads...admittedly."
His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, catapulted him to literary notability. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie. However, the author has refuted the idea of having written any of his characters as autobiographical, stating...
People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character.
After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame, in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Indian diaspora.
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in 1987 called The Jaguar Smile. This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.
His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist. He also wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990.
Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection Burning your Boats.
Other Activities
Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general. He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honours. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006 and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival.
He opposed the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers.
In 2007 he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives.
In May 2008 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he later realised in his frequent cameo appearances).
Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes.
On May 12, 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation of Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher.
Rushdie is currently collaborating on the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children with director Deepa Mehta. The film will be released in October, 2012.
Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation which provides daily meals to students of township schools in Soweto of South Africa. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Satanic Verses and the fatwa
The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.
On February 14, 1989, a fatwa requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam." A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for several years. On March 7, 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
The publication of the book and the fatwa sparked violence around the world, with bookstores firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies, burning copies of the book. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked and even killed.
On September 24, 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."
Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa was reaffirmed by Iran's current spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, and the person who issued it – Ayatollah Khomeini – has been dead since 1989.
Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
A memoir of his years of hiding, Joseph Anton, was published in 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias.
In 2012, following uprisings over an anonymously posted YouTube video denigrating Muslims, a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million dollars. Their stated reason: "If the [1989] fatwa had been carried out, later insults in the form of caricature, articles and films that have continued would have not happened."
Knighthood
Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on June 16, 2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way." In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims expressed disappointment at Rushdie's knighthood, claiming that the writer did not merit such an honour and there were several other writers who deserved the knighthood more than Rushdie.
Al-Qaeda has condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."
Religious Beliefs
Rushdie came from a Muslim family though he is an atheist now. In 1990, in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him," he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. However, Rushdie later said that he was only "pretending".
Personal Life
Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar (born 1980). His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan (born 1999). In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and model Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show Top Chef. The marriage ended on July 2, 2007, with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage.
In 1999 Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a tendon condition that causes drooping eyelids and that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.
Since 2000, Rushdie has "lived mostly near Union Square" in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2012.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Ambitious and rewarding.… [A] distinctively rich epic of the immigrant experience in modern America, where no amount of money or self-abnegation can truly free a family from the sins of the past.
Publishers Weekly
This latest from "Booker of Bookers" prize winner Rushdie chronicles a young American filmmaker's involvement with a real estate tycoon while plumbing American culture and politics since the inauguration of Barack Obama.… One can almost hear Rushdie sharpening his knives.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A ravishingly well-told, deeply knowledgeable, magnificently insightful, and righteously outraged epic which poses timeless questions about the human condition. Can a person be both good and evil? Is family destiny? Does the past always catch up to us?
Booklist
(Starred review.) Where Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities sent up the go-go, me-me Reagan/Bush era, Rushdie’s latest novel captures the existential uncertainties of the anxious Obama years.… A sort of Great Gatsby for our time: everyone is implicated, no one is innocent, and no one comes out unscathed.
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 The Golden House … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about Rene, the narrator of The Golden House, and compare him to Nick Carraway, narrator of The Great Gatsby. How are they similar in their observations of both the family "next door" and America as a country?
2. What prompts Rene to say, "I've come to believe in the total mutability of the self"? What is he referring to…or what does he mean? Do you agree?
3. How does The Golden House reflect the current socio-political environment in America? How accurate, or overblown, is Rushdie's portrait of the country?
4. In what way does the Golden family serve as symbols for the country's current identity crisis?
5. What is the tragedy in India that drove Nero and his sons to America and that continues to haunt them?
6. How would you describe Nero Golden?
7. Discuss the characters of each of the three sons, the place each occupies in New York society, and the secrets each harbors. In what way are all, including their father, pretending to be something they're not?
8. What do you think of Vasilisa? Does Nero "acquire" her (as a wife) or does she "acquire" him?
9. The joker. Any comments?
10. Consider this condemnation of America: a country "torn in half, its defining myth of city-on-a-hill exceptionalism lying trampled in the gutters of bigotry and racial and male supremacism, Americans’ masks ripped off to reveal the Joker faces beneath." Do you accept or reject that vision?
11. Rushdie poses big questions in The Golden Hill: can good and evil coexist in the same person; are people truly capable of change; and, as Rene contemplates, is there such thing as as the "supposed innate ability of the human mind to realize the basic principles of ethics and morals”? Where does the novel fall on those issues … and where do you?
12. Consider the final image of the swirling camera circling survivors. What does it suggest metaphorically? Why might the author have chosen that last image?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Dear Mrs. Bird
A.J. Pearce, 2018
Scribner
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501170065
Summary
An irresistible debut set in London during World War II about an adventurous young woman who becomes a secret advice columnist— a warm, funny, and enormously moving story for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Lilac Girls.
London, 1940.
Emmeline Lake is Doing Her Bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent suddenly seem achievable.
But the job turns out to be working as a typist for the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down.
Mrs. Bird is very clear: letters containing any Unpleasantness must go straight in the bin.
But when Emmy reads poignant notes from women who may have Gone Too Far with the wrong men, or who can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she is unable to resist responding.
As the German planes make their nightly raids, and London picks up the smoldering pieces each morning, Emmy secretly begins to write back to the readers who have poured out their troubles.
Prepare to fall head over heels for Emmy and her best friend, Bunty, who are gutsy and spirited, even in the face of a terrible blow. The irrepressible Emmy keeps writing letters in this hilarious and enormously moving tale of friendship, the kindness of strangers, and ordinary people in extraordinary times.
Show More (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Hampshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Sussex
• Currently—lives in the south of England
AJ Pearce grew up in Hampshire, England. She graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in American Studies—and spent her junior year in the U.S., at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Back in the U.K., following a career marketing, Pearce came upon an issue of Woman's Own, a 1939 women's magazine—it was a chance discovery that became the impetus for collecting vintage magazines and … the inspiration for her first novel, Dear Mrs. Bird. She lives in the south of England. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Charming and funny.
New York Post
Pearce’s clever debut follows a plucky Londoner during the Blitz who dreams about becoming a war correspondent. … The novel has a wonderfully droll tone.… Headlined by its winning lead character, who always keeps carrying on, Pearce’s novel is a delight.
Publishers Weekly
Fans of Jojo Moyes will enjoy Pearce’s debut, with its plucky female characters and fresh portrait of women’s lives in wartime Britain.
Library Journal
Set against a backdrop of war-torn London, this is a charming and heartfelt novel. Pearce brings to life a tale of true friendship, and how love will outlast even the most challenging times.
Booklist
Pearce's novel lays a light, charming surface over a graver underbelly.… Although the jauntiness and feel-good tone can grate on occasion, especially during the farcical wrap-up, this is a readable, well-intentioned, very English tribute to the women of the homefront.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. "There’s nothing that can’t be sorted with common sense and a strong will," (page 36) begins the description of Mrs. Bird’s column, Henrietta Helps. In theory, that’s not such a bad approach, but how does it fall short of addressing her readers’ concerns?
2. Why does the memory of her friend Kitty’s experience affect Emmy so strongly? How does it inform her actions?
3. Author AJ Pearce incorporates charmingly old-fashioned expressions to help convey a sense of the time period. What were some of your favorite terms? Did the language help your understanding of the era and the characters’ personalities?
4. Mr. Collins advises Emmy, "Find out what you’re good at…and then get even better. That’s the key," (page 54). Is this good advice for Emmy? Does she follow it?
5. Why does Emmy hesitate to tell Bunty about writing to Mrs. Bird’s readers? Is she only worried about Bunty’s disapproval, or is it more than that? How do secrets affect their friendship throughout the novel?
6. Do you think Emmy was right to confront William after he rescued the two children? Was his reaction warranted? Why do you think they took such different views of the event?
7. One of the major themes of the novel is friendship. Discuss Emmy and Bunty’s relationship, and all the ways they support and encourage each other over the course of the novel.
8. After the bombing at Café de Paris, Bunty is distraught and angry, but is some of her critique of Emmy fair? Does Emmy interfere too much?
9. Whether it’s readers writing in to Mrs. Bird, Charles writing to Emmy, or Emmy writing to Bunty, letters are of great importance throughout Dear Mrs. Bird. How does letter-writing shape the narrative?
10. The letter from Anxious on page 239 strikes a chord with Emmy. She thinks, "How often did we say well done to our readers? How often did anyone ever tell women they were doing a good job? That they didn’t need to be made of steel all the time? That it was all right to feel a bit down?" (page 243). How did the book make you think differently about women’s experiences in wartime?
11. Emmy’s mother says to her, "Once this silly business is all sorted, you and Bunty and all your friends will be able to get on and achieve whatever you want" (page 86). How much do you think expectations have changed for young women since World War II? What careers do you think Emmy and Bunty would aspire to if they were young now?
12. In the Author’s Note (page 277), AJ Pearce describes how reading advice columns in vintage magazines inspired her to write Dear Mrs. Bird. She says, "I found them thought-provoking, moving, and inspirational, and my admiration for the women of that time never stops growing.… It is a privilege to look into their world and remember what incredible women and girls they all were" (page 278). Discuss how magazines, then and now, provide a unique window into people’s lives.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Eight Perfect Murders
Peter Swanson, 2008
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062838209
Summary
A chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.
Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders,”
The titles were chosen from among the best of the best—including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne's Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's A Secret History.
But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list.
And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. There is killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.
To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects … and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake.
Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 11, 1964
• Where—Carlisle, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity College; M.A., University of Massachusetts-Amherst; M.F.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Somerville, Massachusetts
Peter Swanson is the author of several novels: The Girl with a Clock for a Heart (2014) The Kind Worth Killing (2015), Her Every Fear (2016), and Before She Knew Him (2019). Eight Perfect Murders (2020) is his most recent.
Swanson's poems, stories and reviews have appeared in such journals as The Atlantic, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Epoch, Measure, Notre Dame Review, Soundings East, and The Vocabula Review. He has won awards in poetry from The Lyric and Yankee Magazine, and is currently completing a sonnet sequence on all 53 of Alfred Hitchcock’s films.
Swanson has degrees in creative writing, education, and literature from Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College. He lives with his wife and cat in Somerville, Massachusetts. (From the publisher and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[E]ngagingly original.… [A] multilayered mystery that brims with duplicity, betrayal and revenge—all bubbling slowly to the surface in increasingly bloody pages.… Fans won’t be disappointed.… Swanson plants clues and misdirections throughout. Not only does he make many literary references, he analyzes the perfect murders’ storylines. While he’s spinning this compelling murder story that will keep you on edge and guessing, he’s also spoiling those eight classics for anyone who hasn’t read them. Swanson warns readers up front.… Some mystery lovers will savor how slow the suspense builds with Mal’s no-hurry, low-adrenaline narrative. Others, not so much. This is a cerebral mystery, more dialogue than action. Although the twisted finale isn’t all that unexpected or climactic, when it comes to perfect murders, it’s the process that matters, not so much the end, right?
USA Today
(Starred review) [O]utstanding.… The stakes rise when Kershaw admits he knew one of the victims but chose not to share that with Mulvey. Swanson will keep most readers guessing until the end. Classic whodunit fans will be in heaven.
Publishers Weekly
The wintry New England setting and eerily cool narration, together with trust-no-one twists and garish murders, will satisfy thriller readers…. While you may not warm to Malcolm, you'll stay to the finish of this one. —Liz French
Library Journal
(Starred review) A devilish premise combined with jaw-dropping execution.… Mystery fans will be salivating as the plot unfolds, trying to outsmart the confoundingly unreliable narrative…. Swanson hits every note in this homage to the old-school crime novel, and the turnabout ending will leave readers reeling in delight.
Booklist
(Starred review) [While] a triple helping of cleverness… might seem like a fatal overdose, the pleasures of following, and trying to anticipate, [the] narrator… intense. If the final revelations are anticlimactic, that's only because you wish the mounting complications… could go on forever.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions to help start a discussion for EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS … then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
a. In this book, Eight Perfect Murders, you'll especially want to spend time discussing Malcolm's unreliable narration, his confounding second, even third, guessing, his eerie detachment. How does Malcolm affect you, as reader?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Sweet Little Lies
Caz Frear, 2018
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062823199
Summary
In this gripping debut procedural, a young London policewoman must probe dark secrets buried deep in her own family’s past to solve a murder and a long-ago disappearance.
Your father is a liar.
But is he a killer?
Even liars tell the truth … sometimes.
Twenty-six-year-old Cat Kinsella overcame a troubled childhood to become a Detective Constable with the Metropolitan Police Force, but she’s never been able to banish these ghosts.
When she’s called to the scene of a murder in Islington, not far from the pub her estranged father still runs, she discovers that Alice Lapaine, a young housewife who didn’t get out much, has been found strangled.
Cat and her team immediately suspect Alice’s husband, until she receives a mysterious phone call that links the victim to Maryanne Doyle, a teenage girl who went missing in Ireland eighteen years earlier. The call raises uneasy memories for Cat—her family met Maryanne while on holiday, right before she vanished.
Though she was only a child, Cat knew that her charming but dissolute father wasn’t telling the truth when he denied knowing anything about Maryanne or her disappearance.
Did her father do something to the teenage girl all those years ago? Could he have harmed Alice now? And how can you trust a liar even if he might be telling the truth?
Determined to close the two cases, Cat rushes headlong into the investigation, crossing ethical lines and trampling professional codes. But in looking into the past, she might not like what she finds. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Coventry, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Coventry University
• Awards—Richard & Judy Bestseller Search
• Currently—lives in Coventry, England
Caz Frear grew up in Coventry and spent her teenage years dreaming of moving to London and writing a novel. After fulfilling her first dream, it wasn't until she moved back to Coventry thirteen years later that the writing dream finally came true.
She has a first-class degree in History & Politics from Coventry University, which she's put to enormous use over the years by working as a waitress, shop assistant, retail merchandiser and, for the past twelve years, a headhunter.
When she's not agonizing over snappy dialogue or incisive prose, she can be found shouting at the TV when Arsenal are playing or holding court in the pub on topics she knows nothing about. (From the publisher .)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [T]aut, psychologically twisted…. Readers will root for the spiky Kinsella, with her empathetic center, and hope to see more of her in future books.
Publishers Weekly
In 1998, Maryanne Doyle went missing; 18 years later, Det. Cat Kinsella is still haunted by her own family's possible involvement in the case.… [S]ecrets and lies come back with a vengeance, resulting in an intense page-turner. —Natalie Browning, Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA
Library Journal
Frear has fashioned a remarkably rich and sympathetic character in Cat, and her portrayal of dysfunctional families, especially their mix of world-weary dialogue interspersed with cutting comments, is cringingly realistic…. Impressive.
Booklist
(Starred review) Cat is somewhat prickly, which makes her hard to get to know, but as the investigation and the story wind on, she earns our sympathy and our trust because we can see that, while flawed, she acts for the victims…. A truly satisfying—and gritty—mystery.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for SWEET LITTLE LIES … then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)