Parakeet
Marie-Helene Bertino, 2020
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374229450
Summary
A darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.
The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet?
Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.
In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.
A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions.
How do our memories make, cage, and free us?
How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves?
Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change?
Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland.
Her work has received The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Mississippi Review Story Prize, fellowships from MacDowell, Sewannee, and NYC's The Center for Fiction, and has twice been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts.
Formerly the associate editor of One Story and Catapult, she now teaches at NYU, The New School, and Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
What is Parakeet about? It’s about an ambivalent bride. It’s about PTSD, grief, forgiveness, bad mothers, womanhood, monogamy and the nature of time itself. It’s about being a woman trapped by her subconscious and social conventions. It's a Homeric quest to reclaim control over the heroine's own life and sanity…. Deeply funny… disquieting and darkly comic and vulnerable and true…. Bertino's writing is lyrical and sharp.
Bess Kalb - New York Times Book Review
[A] dreamlike, sardonic novel about a woman questioning her impending marriage…. The bride’s conflicted emotions come to a head as the novel builds to a satisfying end. Fans of Rivka Galchen will delight in Bertino’s subtly fantastical tale.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Bertino skillfully weaves together reality and flights of fancy as she tackles a wide variety of issues women face and the different ways to navigate these issues. An amusing yet instructive work about how personal perspective can change everything; highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Brilliant, chaotic, and fantastically untethered from humdrum reality . . . Bertino playfully, precisely builds a big world in these pages, somehow making the case that there's too much love, pain, and magic to ever fit in one story, and fitting it in all the same.
Booklist
(Starred review) Self-assured, strange, and winning…. The book’s linguistic pyrotechnics and the shimmering, miragelike nature of Bertino’s images demand a lot of the reader…. A vivid book about lives visited by violent strangeness but lived with authentic humor and hope.
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 PARAKEET … then take off on your own:
1. In an angry exchange with a man she describes as having "frat boy resting face," The Bride thinks to herself, "I am a bird trapped inside another person’s life, sensing its mistake and trying to exit against relentless glass.” In what way does that passage encapsulate the narrator's struggle throughout this novel? How else might you describe The Bride's confusion?
2. Talk about The Bride's post-traumatic stress, the fall-out from the violent terrorist attack she suffered when she was 10 years old. Is PTSD the sum total of her confusion and lack of stability?
3. Why does her grandmother try to persuade The Bride not to go through with the marriage?
4. Talk about the novel's other characters: Tom, the narrator's brother; Rose, her maid of honor; and The Bride's mother.
5. The Bride observes, "I get the sense that the number of people who are married is not equal to the number of people that give the institution much thought." Care to unpack that statement? What does she mean? Do you think she's correct?
6. As you were reading, what did you want The Bride to do: marry or not marry?
7. Is the ending a satisfying one?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Catherine House
Elisabeth Thomas, 2020
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062905659
Summary
A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students … and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.
Trust us, you belong here.
Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents.
For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price.
Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.
Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktoria, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine.
For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison.
And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.
Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Elisabeth Thomas grew up in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, where she still lives and now writes. She graduated from Yale University and currently works as an archivist for a modern art museum. Catherine House is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] delicious literary Gothic debut, Ines Murillo, a self-described ghost, is accepted into the mysterious, exclusive Catherine House, …so exclusive, and so romantic, that Ines just might be able to stop running from her dark past. When Ines discovers the truth about Catherine House, she must grapple with what she has long avoided: who she is and who she might become.
New York Times Book Review
At times, the narrative stretches a bit thin, repeating certain motifs as the characters roam the halls, entering one mysterious room after another. But the novel compensates for redundancy with some wonderfully horrific and truly shocking discoveries within these locked antechambers. There are shades of Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock as suspense builds in the winding corridors of the house and the twisting turns of the psyche. Moody and evocative as a fever dream, Catherine House is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step.
Washington Post
The strength of this debut novel relies on its refusal to adhere to any sort of genre conventions . . . The book’s setting provides just as much fodder for thought and discussion as do its characters or plot. . . . While the book is easy to read—Thomas’s smart prose ensures that—the echoes of discomfort linger long after the last pages are turned.
Boston Globe
Thomas’s debut novel is a dark, delicious gothic read that hits all the right spots in the best way. If you want a book you can’t put down for even a second, this is it (10 Most Anticipated Books Of 2020).
Forbes
Elisabeth Thomas’s debut novel weaves a thrilling, compact story that builds dread slowly. . . . Thomas incorporates elements of science fiction as she begins to reveal the darkness at work on campus, but not before readers are eased in with some classic hallmarks of prep-school fiction.
Atlantic
Calling all The Secret History fans! This debut novel is set within the walls of an exclusive private college, but with a twist: Students seclude themselves for three years, completely removed from their previous lives.
Entertainment Weekly
[S]pellbinding…. Surreal imagery, spare characterization, and artful, hypnotic prose lend Thomas’s tale a delirious air, but at the book’s core lies a profound portrait of depression and adolescent turmoil. Fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History will devour this philosophical fever dream.
Publishers Weekly
[T]the tone of the story is dark and discomforting.… Readers looking for a strong atmospheric setting in the gothic style will be drawn in by this psychological thriller. Less satisfying are the interesting if underdeveloped characters. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal
(Starred review) For fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a haunting, atmospheric reflection on the discovery of self and others. At times terrifying, always gorgeously captivating, Thomas’ debut is one not to be missed, and perhaps to be revisited frequently.
Booklist
[T]he reader only learns as much as Ines herself can see and process. In the end, we're shut out of the mysteries of Catherine House, too. A promising but uneven debut that walks the line between speculative fiction and ghost story.
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 CATHERINE HOUSE … then take off on your own:
1. What do you think of Ines Murillo when we first meet her, primarily during the first third of the book? Ines views Catherine House with a certain disdain. Why? And why is she there?
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) What is the past Ines is running from? How has that past shaped her? Does Ines change by the novel's end?
3. Institutions are not always what they seem. What were your first impressions of Catherine House—meant to be an exclusive school that has graduated some of the best and the brightest minds in the arts, sciences, and politics? When does your perspective begin to shift: at what point did you begin to suspect that the school is something other than what it claims to be?
4. How does Ines view the school—along with its demand that students are to give it their all. What does she observe about Catherine House that makes her skeptical?
5 Describe the strange rituals and traditions at Catherine House? Are they cult-like, benign, or something else? Why does the school choose the particular students it does? What do they want out of their students?
6. In the latter half of the book, we learn that the school is engaged in research into a substance called "plasma." What is plasma? The novel is rather vague about plasma, but discuss its nature and its effects as best you can? How would you describe Ines's first encounter with plasma?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Most Fun We Ever Had
Claire Lombardo, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385544252
Summary
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that awaits them.
By 2016, their four radically different daughters are in a state of unrest.
Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men;
Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt;
Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves;
Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects.
With the arrival of Jonah Bendt—a child placed for adoption by one of the daughters fifteen years before—the Sorensons will be forced to reckon with the rich and varied tapestry of their past: years marred by adolescent angst, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile. (From the publisher.)
The book is being adapted for an HBO series.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Illinois, Chicago; M.S.W., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois
Claire Lombardo earned her MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Prior to writing The Most Fun We Ever Had, she spent several years doing social work in Chicago. She was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A rich, engrossing family saga, spiked with sisterly malice… [rendered] with such skill and finely tuned interest that it feels like a quiet subversion of the traditional family saga.
New York Times Book Review
Ambitious and brilliantly written.
Jane Smiley - Washington Post
If ever there were to be a literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler, then Claire Lombardo’s outstanding debut, which ranges from ebullience to despair by way of caustic but intense familial bonds, would be a worthy offspring…. This is a novel epic in scope—emotionally, psychologically and narratively. Combining a broad thematic canvas with impressive emotional nuance, it’s an assured and highly enjoyable debut.
Guardian (UK)
An assured first novel…. The fun—well, that’s in the reading of the novel, which nicely blends comedy with pathos and the sharp- with the soft-edged.
Wall Street Journal
[A] remarkable first-time novel offering such an intimate picture of people’s interior lives I feel as if every one of these characters is now a close friend. Lombardo has the remarkable ability to delve into people’s minds so deeply that the most quotidian moments become utterly fascinating.
Ruth Reichl - Los Angeles Times
A wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels…A deliciously absorbing novel with—brace yourself—a tender and satisfyingly positive take on family.
NPR
The big family saga of the summer, unfurling the fallout of a long-buried secret and persisting rivalries between four sisters across 50 transformative years.
Entertainment Weekly
This juicy saga spans more than four decades…You’ll be glad this loopy family isn’t yours, but reading about them is a treat.
People
[I]mpressive…. Lombardo captures the complexity of a large family with characters who light up the page with their competition, secrets, and worries. Despite its length and number of plotlines, the momentum never flags, making for a rich and rewarding family saga.
Publishers Weekly
Unfortunately, the author's attempt to flesh out these tropes makes the story bloated and overstuffed. [Although] the novel would have benefited from fewer characters and a tighter plot, readers of women's fiction… may delight in the episodic approach. —Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD
Library Journal
A family epic…. It resembles other sprawling midwestern family dramas, like Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (2001)…The result is an affectionate, sharp, and eminently readable exploration of the challenges of love in its many forms.
Booklist
Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale…. Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Gingko leaves and trees show up many times during the course of the novel—during the opening scene and when David and Marilyn first fall in love, just to name a couple. How do gingkoes function as a symbol in the book? What do they represent?
2. Who is your favorite character in the novel? Who are you most similar to?
3. By the end of The Most Fun We Ever Had, we’ve seen decades of David and Marilyn’s marriage unfold through many ups and downs. What do you see as the key to their successful and enduring marriage?
4. Do you think the way Wendy surprised Violet with Jonah was ethical? Do you think Violet’s reaction was warranted?
5. Were you surprised by Violet’s secret that gets revealed toward the end of the novel? How would you react if you were Wendy?
6. Many readers share that reading The Most Fun We Ever Had was an emotional experience. What was the most emotional scene for you to read? Why?
7. The narration switches between the perspective of each family member throughout the course of the book. What did this style add to the novel as a whole? How would the book be different if the author only focused on one character?
8. The book starts and ends with Marilyn’s perspective. Why do you think the author made this choice?
9. In what ways is the Sorenson family like your own family?
10. What did you think about the book’s ending? What do you think will happen to the Sorenson family after the book ends?
11. What other books, movies, and TV shows does this novel remind you of?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel)
Suzanne Collins, 2020
Scholastic Press
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781338635171
Summary
Revisiting the world of Panem sixty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the reaping of the Tenth Hunger Games.
—Ambition will fuel him.
—Competition will drive him.
—But power has its price.
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games.
The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.
The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined—every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin.
Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute—and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 10, 1962
• Where—Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Indiana University; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Connecticut
Collins's career began in 1991 as a writer for children's television shows. She worked on several television shows for Nickelodeon, including Clarissa Explains It All, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, Little Bear, and Oswald. She was also the head writer for Scholastic Entertainment's Clifford's Puppy Days. She received a Writers Guild of America nomination in animation for co-writing the critically acclaimed Christmas special, Santa, Baby!
After meeting children's author James Proimos while working on the Kids' WB show Generation O!, Collins was inspired to write children's books herself. Her inspiration for Gregor the Overlander, the first book of the best selling series "The Underland Chronicles," came from Alice in Wonderland, when she was thinking about how one was more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole, and would find something other than a tea party.
Between 2003 and 2007 she wrote the five books of the "Underland Chronicles": Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret, and Gregor and the Code of Claw. During that time, Collins also wrote a rhyming picture book illustrated by Mike Lester entitled When Charlie McButton Lost Power (2005).
In September 2008 Scholastic Press released the The Hunger Games, the first book of a new trilogy by Collins. The Hunger Games was partly inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Another inspiration was her father's career in the Air Force, which allowed her to better understand poverty, starvation, and the effects of war.
This was followed by the novel's 2009 sequel, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay in 2010. In just 14 months, 1.5 million copies of the first two "Hunger Games" books have been printed in North America alone. The Hunger Games has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks in a row. Collins was named one of Time magazine's most influential people of 2010.
Collins earned her M.F.A. from New York University in Dramatic Writing. She now lives in Connecticut with her husband, their two children, and 2 adopted feral kittens. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
As much as this is Coriolanus's origin story, it is an origin story for the Games themselves, an answer to the question… posed by Katniss in Mockingjay…: "Did a group of people sit around and cast their votes on initiating the Hunger Games?"… People who love finding out the back stories in fictional universes—why Sherlock Holmes wears a deerstalker hat… will relish the chance to learn these details.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times
Readers who loved the moral ambiguity, crisp writing and ruthless pacing of the first three books might be less interested in an overworked parable about the value of Enlightenment thinking.… It's the sheer obviousness that drags, the way that we know what the right answer is supposed to be.
NPR
For true fans of The Hunger Games, Collins shines most as she weaves in tantalizing details that lend depth to the gruesome world she created in the original series and Coriolanus’s place in its history.
Time
The prequel is stranger than its predecessors, and funnier, overlong, dangerously goofy.… The storytelling itself trends desperate at times. Chapters close on violent cliffhangers that edge into parody…. Collins still has a gift for horrorshow scene-setting…. [A] major work with major flaws, but it sure gives you a lot to chew on.
Entainment Weekly
[An] unflinching exploration of power and morality…. A gripping mix of whipsaw plot twists and propulsive writing make this story's complex issues—vulnerability and abuse, personal responsibility, and institutionalized power dynamics—vivid and personal.
Publishers Weekly
Collins humanizes [Coriolanus Snow] as superficially heroic and emotionally relatable… resulting in both a tense, character-driven piece and a cautionary tale.… The twists and heartbreaks captivate despite tragic inevitabilities.
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.)
Light from Other Stars
Erika Swyler, 2019
Bloomsbury
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781635573169
Summary
From the author of national bestseller The Book of Speculation, a poignant, fantastical novel about the electric combination of ambition and wonder that keeps us reaching toward the heavens.
Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach—if she can just grow up fast enough.
Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer.
The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.
Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she's never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else.
Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her.
Light from Other Stars is about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the cost of meaningful work. It questions how our lives have changed, what progress looks like, and what it really means to sacrifice for the greater good. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—on Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., New York University
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York
Erika Swyler is a graduate of New York University. Her short fiction has appeared in WomenArts Quarterly Journal, Litro, Anderbo.com, and elsewhere. Her writing is featured in the anthology Colonial Comics, and her work as a playwright has received note from the Jane Chambers Award.
Born and raised on Long Island's North Shore, Erika learned to swim before she could walk, and happily spent all her money at traveling carnivals. She blogs and has a baking Tumblr with a following of 60,000. Erika recently moved from Brooklyn back to her hometown, which inspired the setting of the book. The Book of Speculation is her 2015 debut novel. Light from Other Stars, her second, was published in 2019. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In Erika Swyler’s glittering novel Light from Other Stars, Nedda has sky-high dreams of following in Judith Resnik’s footsteps but finds herself subject to the reckless whims of others.… Both external and internal landscapes—including Florida orange groves in sweltering demise, the constrictions of womanhood, and deep space—are rendered with precision.… [E]licits wonder and sadness in turn.
Foreword Reviews
A tender and ambitious journey through space and time, Light From Other Stars contains stunning twists and turns along the way from Nedda’s childhood to her later life aboard a spacecraft on a mission bound for Mars.
Vulture
Exquisite prose in an ambitious novel told in two timelines.… It's hard to imagine a sci-fi book so focused on pure, deep emotion while centered on the Earth and the wonders of space. Light from Other Stars hits big issues: loneliness, the bond between parent and child; grief; death and what happens to us after death . . . Plain and simple, I loved this book.
Midwest Book Review
A masterful story that hops through time to tell a tale of love and ambition, grief and resilience.… It is full of joy and wonder, a reminder to never stop looking up into the stars and the infinite spaces in between them.
Nylon
(Starred review) In the dual narratives of Swyler’s poignant latest, a small Florida town falls into a sinkhole in time…. Swyler’s beautiful story, told in eloquent prose, induces shivers of wonder. This meditation on time, loss, and the depth of human connection is both melancholy and astonishing.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [Swyler] offers a moving, often heartrending story with lyrical grace.… Fans of the film Interstellar, Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach" trilogy, and character-driven drama will have a new favorite. Simply gorgeous.
Library Journal
(Starred review) [B]ends genres as it explores how the past intrudes on the present.… Although… plenty of science fiction elements, [the novel is] also a coming-of-age story.… Swyler has set herself an ambitious task. But the novel is well-paced, with a satisfying twist near the end.
BookPage
(Starred review) Love and loss compel a brilliant scientist to defy the laws of physics.… Grand in scope and graceful in execution, Swyler's latest is at once a wistfully nostalgic coming-of-age tale and a profound work of horror-tinged science fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the juxtaposition of science and faith, whether religious or otherwise, as explored in the novel.
2. For readers who are old enough to remember the Challenger disaster, what are your memories of it? How does Nedda’s experience of it compare with your own?
3. What is the significance of setting the novel in a town called Easter?
4. What do Theo and Betheen’s personal passions and career paths reveal about their characters as individuals, as well as their marriage? What role do their scientific pursuits play in their roles as parents?
5. Discuss the similarities and differences between the various parent/child relationships described in the book, particularly Denny and Nedda’s relationship with their parents. What impact do their upbringings have on Denny and Nedda as adults?
6. Do you view Theo’s motivation for building Crucible as altruistic or selfish? Why?
7. Why does Pete tell Betheen to look at the man’s car as it sinks after the accident? How does their interaction after the crash foreshadow their future relationship? How does it compare with Betheen’s instructions to Nedda during the explosion in the lab?
8. Compare and contrast Nedda’s thoughts and feelings while witnessing Denny trapped on the pruner after the explosion with Betheen’s thoughts and feelings upon seeing Theo trapped in his lab. Also, compare and contrast Theo’s experience when he gets “stuck" with Denny’s. Why do you think Swyler describes each experience the way she does?
9. Discuss the ways in which Nedda’s feelings towards each of her parents evolves over the course of the novel. Are there specific moments you can point to when her attitude towards them shift? If so, when and why do these occur?
10. Throughout the novel, there are recurring instances of characters keeping secrets from or lying to other characters in order to protect them. Do you agree with this philosophy? Discuss some of these moments and whether you feel the characters should have behaved differently.
11. Consider the different ways in which characters including Betheen, Theo, Nedda, Evgeni, and Denny grieve. Which character do you identify with the most in this regard, and why?
12. Did you have a sense of when the Chawla/ "present-day" timeline was taking place before it was revealed? Why or why not?
13. Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian origin to go to space, and died along with the rest of her crew in the Columbia disaster of 2003, nearly two decades after the Challenger disaster. What is the significance of naming Nedda’s ship after her?
14. Swyler begins and ends Light From Other Stars by quoting the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, a fighter pilot who was killed during World War II. How does this poem relate to events in the novel? In what ways, if any, do Nedda and the rest of her Chawla crew mates view themselves as soldiers?
15. Why does Nedda finally feel warm after her walk to Amadeus at the end of the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)