Class Mom
Laurie Gelman, 2017
Henry Holt & Co.
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250124692
Summary
Laurie Gelman’s clever debut novel about a year in the life of a kindergarten class mom—a brilliant send-up of the petty and surprisingly cutthroat terrain of parent politics.
Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom—or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it’s her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max — this time with a husband and father by her side.
Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the “wisest” candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.
From recording parents’ response times to her emails about helping in the classroom, to requesting contributions of “special” brownies for curriculum night, not all of Jen’s methods win approval from the other moms.
Throw in an old flame from Jen’s past, a hyper-sensitive "allergy mom," a surprisingly sexy kindergarten teacher, and an impossible-to-please Real Housewife-wannabe, causing problems at every turn, and the job really becomes much more than she signed up for.
Relatable, irreverent, and hilarious in the spirit of Maria Semple, Class Mom is a fresh, welcome voice in fiction—the kind of novel that real moms clamor for, and a vicarious thrill-read for all mothers, who will be laughing as they are liberated by Gelman’s acerbic truths.(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 4, 1964
• Where—Canada
• Education—B.S., Ryerson University (Toronto)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA
Laurie Hibberd Gelman is a Canadian television personality and entertainment news reporter. Her debut novel, Class Mom, was published in 2017. Gelman is married to Michael Gelman (executive producer of Live with Kelly and Ryan); they have two children.
Gelman graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto with a bachelor's degree in journalism. Her first job in broadcasting, from 1987-1992, was as a traffic reporter, news writer, entertainment reporter and host on CKFM in Toronto. During that time, (the late 80s and early 90s), she also served as a host on YTV for Rocks and Rock'n'Talk.
Then, from 1992-1994, she became an entertainment reporter for WSVN-TV in Miami, Florida. For the next two years, from 1994-1996, she co-hosted, along with Tom Bergeron, the FX cable network's morning show, Breakfast Time.
Later, in 2007, Gelman worked on two Canadian-based talk shows, The Mom Show and Doctor in the House. She has also appeared on Good Morning America and Good Morning America Sunday. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/10/2017.)
Book Reviews
Class Mom exposes the underside of room parenting…. [But] Gelman's novel gives readers a lot to laugh about, including some very, very funny emails.… In the end, it's impossible not to root for Jen as a fellow foot soldier in the guerrilla war against so-called perfect mothers.
Katherine Heiny - New York Times Book Review
Irreverent and hilarious.
New York Post
Jen Dixon, a mom with two college-age daughters (been there, done that) brings zest, impatience and irreverence to her role as kindergarten mom for her 5-year-old son.
Columbus Dispatch
Don’t miss this hilarious send-up of parental politics (a Best New Books).
People
[A] funny, charming debut novel.… With its appealing tone and a sweet mystery at its core, Class Mom offers up refreshingly likable characters in relatably goofy situations.
Good Housekeeping
Jen's first-person narration is sassy yet vulnerable as she faces motherhood with panache and her midlife crisis with uncertainty. Her e-mails to the other parents will elicit cackles of glee. Class Mom provides mom-raderie to those who still feel 20 but aren't.
Shelf Awareness
Class Mom is wicked fun. I will forever have a secret smile at school drop off having read this book. Thank you, Laurie Gelman, for this well-written, deviously funny viewpoint on motherhood today.
Katie Brown - Lifestyle TV
In Class Mom, Laurie Gelman's titular character is the perfect class mom's alter ego, with wit and just enough snark to make it a really fun read.
Victoria Rose, Publisher - Us Weekly
Warning: Do not read Class Mom in the quiet car on the train because you will LOL! (Sorry, not sorry, fellow commuters.) Laurie Gelman’s HI-larious debut novel is a must-read for anyone with small people at home!
Meaghan Murphy, Executive Editor - Good Housekeeping
When Jen Dixon is asked by her best friend…to be kindergarten class mom…, she begrudgingly agrees. With her first email, full of snark, wit, and charm, Jen sets the stage for how things will be in Miss Ward's class. Moms, trying to hold back tears of laughter, will relate.
Library Journal
Gelman’s debut draws a delightfully snarky character in Jen Dixon, kindergarten-class mom and purveyor of jaw-dropping but spot-on class updates.… Snappy dialogue and quick pacing make this a fast and fun read…fans of Jen Lancaster and Maria Semple will love meeting Jen Dixon.
Booklist
Miss Ward's Kansas City kindergarten class has a room parent with major attitude.… Gelman's debut is a literary stand-up routine, and you might as well just give in: this woman is going to get a laugh out of you.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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)
(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)
Vox
Christina Dalcher, 2018
Penguin Publishing
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440000785
Summary
Set in a United States in which half the population has been silenced, Vox is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.
On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than one hundred words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.
This is just the beginning…
Soon women are not permitted to hold jobs. Girls are not taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words each day, but now women have only one hundred to make themselves heard.
…not the end.
For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specializes in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and has taught at several universities.
Her short stories and flash fiction appear in more than one hundred journals worldwide. Recognition includes the Bath Flash Award short list, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple other awards. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with her husband. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Christina Dalcher’s debut novel, set in a recognizable near future and sure to beg comparisons to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale, asks: if the number of words you could speak each day was suddenly and severely limited, what would you do to be heard?… Considering the threat of a society in which children like the protagonist’s six-year-old daughter are deprived of language, Vox highlights the urgency of movements like #MeToo, but also of the basic importance of language.
Vanity Fair
The females in Dalcher’s electrifying debut are permitted to speak just 100 words a day—and that’s especially difficult for the novel’s protagonist, Jean, a neurolinguist. A futurist thriller that feels uncomfortably plausible.
Oprah Magazine
In Christina Dalcher’s Vox, women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day. Sounds pretty sci-fi, but the real-life parallels will make you shiver.
Cosmpolitan
Vox is a real page-turner that will appeal to people with big imaginations.
Refinery29
[P]rovocative…. [M]ost chilling is the specter of young girls being starved of language and, consequently, the capacity to think critically.… [A] muddled climax and implausible denouement fail to live up to its intriguing premise. Nevertheless,…a powerful message.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Jean is multilayered, [whose] definite faults …enrich rather than detract from the story…. Verdict: Dalcher reflects current politics in a… page-turning first novel that is perfect for fans of speculative fiction [and book clubs]. —Charli Osborne, Oak Park P.L., MI
Library Journal
[C]hilling…. With its focus on the vitality of communication and human interactions, Dalcher’s tale is a fresh and terrifying contribution to the burgeoning subgenre about women-focused dystopias spearheaded by… The Handmaid’s Tale.
Booklist
The ending of the novel, while surprising, is rushed, unearned, and the least convincing part of a story that continually challenges the reader's suspension of disbelief.… Dalcher's premise is tantalizing, but the execution… quickly devolves into the stuff of workaday thrillers.
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.)
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward, 2017
Scribner
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501126062
Summary
Winner, 2017 National Book Award
Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.
Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man.
When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1977
• Where—DeLisle, Mississippi, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Awards—2 National Book Awards (others below)
• Currently—lives in Mississippi; commutes to Mobile, Alabama
Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and two-time National Book Award winner for fiction. Salvage the Bones won in 2011 (it also won a 2012 Alex Award), and Sing, the Unburied, Sing, won in 2017. Her other two books include her first novel, Where the Line Bleeds (2008) and a memoir, The Men We Reaped (2013), about the deaths of her brother and other young male friends.
Early years
Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, a small rural community in Mississippi. She developed a love-hate relationship with her hometown after having been bullied at public school by black classmates and, subsequently, by white students while attending a private school paid for by her mother’s employer.
Ward received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, choosing to become a writer upon graduation in order to honor the memory of her younger brother killed by a drunk driver earlier that year. Ward went on to earn an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan in 2005. At U of M she won five Hopwood Awards for essays, drama, and fiction.
Shortly afterwards, she and her family became victims of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. With their house in De Lisle flooding rapidly, the Ward family set out in their car to get to a local church, but ended up stranded in a field full of tractors. When the white owners of the land eventually checked on their possessions, they refused to invite the Wards into their home, claiming they were overcrowded. Tired and traumatized, the refugees were eventually given shelter by another white family down the road.
Ward went on to work at the University of New Orleans, where her daily commute took her through neighborhoods ravaged by the hurricane. Empathizing with the struggle of the survivors and coming to terms with her own experience during the storm, Ward was unable to write creatively for three years—the time it took her to find a publisher for her first novel, Where the Line Bleeds.
In 2008 she returned to Stanford as a Stegner Fellow—one of the most prestigious awards available to emerging American writers.
Literary career
Earlier in 2008, just as Ward was deciding to give up writing and enroll in a nursing program, Where the Line Bleeds was accepted by Doug Seibold at Agate Publishing. Starting on the day twin protagonists Joshua and Christophe DeLisle graduate from high school, Where the Line Bleeds follows the brothers as their choices pull them in opposite directions. Unwilling to leave the small rural town on the Gulf Coast where they were raised by their loving grandmother, the twins struggle to find work, with Joshua eventually becoming a dock hand and Christophe joining his drug-dealing cousin.
In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called Ward "a fresh new voice in American literature" who "unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope." The novel was picked as a Book Club Selection by Essence and received a Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) Honor Award in 2009. It was shortlisted for the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.
Her second novel Salvage the Bones (2011) homes in once more on the visceral bond between poor black siblings growing up on the Gulf Coast. Chronicling the lives of pregnant teenager Esch Batiste, her three brothers, and their father during the 10 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, the day of the cyclone, and the day after, Ward uses a vibrant language steeped in metaphors to illuminate the fundamental aspects of love, friendship, passion, and tenderness.
Explaining her main character's fascination with the Greek mythological figure of Medea, Ward told Elizabeth Hoover of the Paris Review
It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as "other." I wanted to align Esch with that classic text, with the universal figure of Medea, the antihero, to claim that tradition as part of my Western literary heritage. The stories I write are particular to my community and my people, which means the details are particular to our circumstances, but the larger story of the survivor, the savage, is essentially a universal, human one.
In 2011, Ward won the National Book Award in the Fiction category for Salvage the Bones. Interviewed by CNN’s Ed Lavandera, she said that both her nomination and her victory had come as a surprise, given that the novel had been largely ignored by mainstream reviewers. In a television interview with Anna Bressanin of BBC News on (December 22, 2011), Ward said...
When I hear people talking about the fact that they think we live in a post-racial America, … it blows my mind, because I don’t know that place. I’ve never lived there. … If one day, … they’re able to pick up my work and read it and see … the characters in my books as human beings and feel for them, then I think that that is a political act.
Jesmyn Ward received an Alex Award for Salvage the Bones in 2012. The Alex Awards are given out each year by the Young Adult Library Services Association to ten books written for adults that resonate strongly with young people aged 12 through 18. Commenting on the winning books in School Library Journal, former Alex Award committee chair, Angela Carstensen described Salvage the Bones as a novel with "a small but intense following—each reader has passed the book to a friend."
In 2013, Ward published her memoir Men We Reaped. She announced on her blog two years earlier that she had finished the book's first draft, calling it the hardest thing she had ever written. The memoir explores the lives of her brother and four other young black men who lost their lives in her hometown. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2013.)
Book Reviews
[Ward's] books reach for the sweep, force and sense of inevitability of the Greek myths, but as translated to the small, mostly poor, mostly black town in Mississippi where she grew up and where she still lives…[Sing, Unburied, Sing] is Ward's most unsparing book…With the supernatural cast to the story, everything feels heightened. The clearest influence is Toni Morrison's Beloved—the child returning from the dead, bitter and wronged and full of questions. The echoes in the language feel like deliberate homage.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times Book Review
The novel is built around an arduous car trip: A black woman and her two children drive to a prison to pick up their white father. Ward cleverly uses that itinerant structure to move this family across the land while keeping them pressed together, hot and irritated. As soon as they leave the relative safety of their backwoods farm, the snares and temptations of the outside world crowd in, threatening to derail their trip or cast them into some fresh ordeal.… The plight of this one family is now tied to intersecting crimes and failings that stretch over decades. Looking out to the yard, Jojo thinks, "The branches are full. They are full with ghosts, two or three, all the way up to the top, to the feathered leaves." Such is the tree of liberty in this haunted nation.
Washington Post
Staggering…even more expansive and layered [than Salvage the Bones]. A furious brew with hints of Toni Morrison and Homer’s The Odyssey, Ward’s novel hits full stride when Leonie takes her childfren and a friend and hits the road to pick up her children’s father, Michael, from prison. On a real and metaphorical road of secrets and sorrows, the story shifts narrators — from Jojo to Leonie to Richie, a doomed boy from his grandfather’s fractured past — as they crash into both the ghosts that stalk them, as well as the disquieting ways these characters haunt themselves.
Boston Globe
As long as America has novelists such as Jesmyn Ward, it will not lose its soul. Sing, Unburied, Sing, the story of a few days in the lives of a tumultuous Mississippi Gulf Coast family and the histories and ghosts that haunt it, is nothing short of magnificent. Combining stark circumstances with magical realism, it illuminates America’s love-hate tug between the races in a way that we seem incapable of doing anywhere else but in occasional blessed works of art.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Ward unearths layers of history in gorgeous textured language, ending with an unearthly chord.
BBC
Ward's execution is anything but [familiar]; her first foray into magical realism is downright luminous.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) [B]eautifully crafted…. When the dead…make their appearances…their stories are deeply affecting, in no small part because of Ward’s brilliant writing and compassionate eye.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Lyrical yet tough, Ward’s distilled language effectively captures the hard lives, fraught relationships, and spiritual depth of her characters.
Library Journal
In her first novel since the National Book Award–winning Salvage the Bones (2011), Ward renders richly drawn characters, a strong sense of place, and a distinctive style that is at once down-to-earth and magical.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] bold, bright, and sharp-eyed road novel.… As with the best and most meaningful American fiction these days, old truths are recast here in new realities rife with both peril and promise.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel begins with Jojo’s thoughts, "I like to think I know what death is" and "I want Pop to know I can get bloody" (page 1). How do these thoughts set the stage for Jojo’s birthday and what follows?
2. How does Given’s death shape Leonie, Pop, and Mam? How does it change how they relate to each other?
3. Why does Given begin appearing to Leonie after Michael goes to jail, whenever she gets high? Why doesn’t Leonie tell anyone about seeing Given?
4. Leonie says from the first moment she saw Michael, he "saw me.… Saw the walking wound I was and came to be my balm" (page 54). Discuss how guilt, desire, taboo, defiance, and grief are at work in Michael and Leonie’s connection to each other.
5. What does Leonie get out of her friendship with Misty? What does Jojo see in the dynamics at play between Misty and Leonie?
6. Discuss the gris-gris bag from Pop that Jojo finds hidden in his clothes (page 63). What does each item signify? Why must Jojo hide it from Leonie?
7. Why can Pop only tell Richie’s story to Jojo in pieces (page 70)? What do you think Pop wants or needs Jojo to understand?
8. As Leonie looks at Jojo and Kayla in the back seat on their way to pick up Michael, she thinks, "Sometimes, when Jojo’s playing with Kayla or sitting in Mama’s room rubbing her hands or helping her turn over in the bed, I look at him and see a hungry girl" (page 95). Why does Leonie see this "hungry girl" in Jojo?
9. Why is Jojo convinced that "Leonie kill things" (page 108)? Why are Leonie and Jojo always in conflict, especially concerning how to take care of Kayla?
10. When Richie joins Jojo at Parchman, is it a surprise? Why is Richie tied to Parchman? And to River?
11. Why does Michael brawl with Big Joseph and ultimately choose to leave with Leonie rather than stay with his parents (page 208)?
12. When Mam insists that Leonie help her die, to "Let me leave with something of myself" (page 216), what makes Leonie hesitate? Why does she wish for Given to be there in that moment?
13. What does Richie mean when he tells Jojo, "I can’t. Come inside. I tried. Yesterday. There has to be some need, some lack. Like a keyhole. Makes it so I can come in. But after all that — your mam, your uncle. Your mama. I can’t. You’ve…changed. Ain’t no need. Or at least, ain’t no need big enough for a key"? (page 281)
14. Water plays an important role throughout the novel. Pop’s name is River. Mam is known as the "saltwater woman." The town and prison where Pop and Michael are incarcerated are named for the "parched man." Jojo wonders who the parched man is, if he looked like Pop, Jojo, or Michael. Which characters seem to need water? Which are of the water?
15. Kayla is central to the final scene of the novel, with the "tree of ghosts." Jojo describes her: "Her eyes Michael’s, her nose Leonie’s, the set of her shoulders Pop’s, and the way she looks upward, like she is measuring the tree, all Mam. But something about the way she stands, the way she takes all the pieces of everybody and holds them together, is all her. Kayla" (page 284). How is it fitting that Kayla closes the story, telling the ghosts to "Go home" and singing to them and to Jojo?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Bookshop of Yesterdays
Amy Meyerson, 2018
Park Row Publishers
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778319849
Summary
A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading.
Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her.
But on Miranda’s twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt.
When Miranda returns home to Los Angeles and to Prospero Books—now as its owner—she finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store’s shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself.
Miranda becomes determined to save Prospero Books and to solve Billy’s last scavenger hunt. She soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy’s past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda’s mother has kept hidden—and the terrible secret that tore her family apart.
Bighearted and trenchantly observant, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a love letter to reading and bookstores, and a testament to the healing power of community and how our histories shape who we become. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Wesleyan University; M.F.A., University of Southern California
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Amy Meyerson teaches in the writing department at the University of Southern California, where she completed her graduate work in creative writing.
She has been published in Reed Magazine, The Manhattanville Review, The Bloomsbury Review, The Fanzine and Obit Magazine, and was a finalist in Open City's RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest and in Summer Literary Seminars's Unified Literary Contest.
She currently lives in Los Angeles. The Bookshop of Yesterdays is her first novel. (From .)
Book Reviews
In her heartfelt debut, Meyerson brings readers on a scavenger hunt full of literary clues and family secrets…. Filled with quotes from and allusions to The Tempest, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Jane Eyre, Meyerson’s evocative novel is a fun homage to book lovers and the eclectic spirit of L.A.
Publishers Weekly
Meyerson's debut is a sweet read filled with family, love, and healing. Readers who enjoy Robyn Carr and Debbie Macomber will be charmed by this tale of self-discovery and new beginnings.
Library Journal
Meyerson writes beautifully, with lush descriptions of LA and believable interactions between characters. Prospero Books is warm, inviting, and populated with lovably quirky employees readers will want to get to know. A lovely look at loss, family, and the comfort found in a good bookstore.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Miranda is forced to face some pretty shocking truths about her family. Were you surprised? What did you think Billy and Susan’s secret was? When did you discover the truth? When do you think Miranda realized the truth?
2. Miranda’s curiosity is piqued when she discovers that Evelyn died of a massive seizure. Did this strike you as suspicious? Does your family have any stories that you’ve always found suspicious?
3. Before Susan tells Miranda the truth of her past, Miranda realizes that no one else from Billy’s journey knows why Billy and Susan fought. Why does Billy let Susan’s version of their estrangement be the only version Miranda and the reader learn? How does Susan allow us to see the fight from both of their perspectives? Who do you sympathize with? Do you have any estrangements in your family?
4. Throughout the novel, Miranda meets several individuals from Billy’s past. Who is your favorite? Why?
5. We get different perspectives on Billy through the people Miranda meets. What do these versions of Billy have in common? How do they differ? How do they change Miranda’s memory of Billy? What do you think of Billy in response?
6. What impression do you have of Evelyn? How does her untimely death affect the way people remember her?
7. In the novel, Miranda has two love interests, Jay and Malcolm. How are they different? Who do you think is a better fit for her? Do you think she made the right decision?
8. What do you think the fate of Prospero Books is at the end of the novel? What statement does the novel make about independent bookstores? Is there a bookstore that you love?
9. The novel is full of literary references. Which clues are your favorites? Are there any books that you plan to read after reading this novel?
10. In Billy’s last clue from The Tempest, he highlights: The Rarer action is/In virtue than in vengeance. Miranda also tells her mother that The Tempest is ultimately a play about forgiveness. How is this a novel about forgiveness?
(Questions found on author's website.)
The Life She Was Given
Ellen Marie Wiseman, 2017
Kensington Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781617734496
Summary
A vivid, daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets—beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s.
On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom.
Lilly isn’t allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She’s never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it’s for Lilly’s own protection, that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night, Lilly is taken outside for the first time — and sold to the circus sideshow.
More than two decades later, nineteen-year-old Julia Blackwood has inherited her parents’ estate and horse farm. For Julia, home was an unhappy place full of strict rules and forbidden rooms, and she hopes that returning might erase those painful memories.
Instead, she becomes immersed in a mystery involving a hidden attic room and photos of circus scenes featuring a striking young girl.
At first, The Barlow Brothers’ Circus is just another prison for Lilly. But in this rag-tag, sometimes brutal world, Lilly discovers strength, friendship, and a rare affinity for animals. Soon, thanks to elephants Pepper and JoJo and their handler, Cole, Lilly is no longer a sideshow spectacle but the circus’s biggest attraction … until tragedy and cruelty collide.
It will fall to Julia to learn the truth about Lilly’s fate and her family’s shocking betrayal, and find a way to make Blackwood Manor into a place of healing at last.
Moving between Julia and Lilly’s stories, Ellen Marie Wiseman portrays two extraordinary, very different women in a novel that, while tender and heartbreaking, offers moments of joy and indomitable hope. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1961-62
• Where—Three Mile Bay, New York, USA
• Education—Lyme Central School
• Currently—lives on Lake Ontario in upstate New York
Ellen Marie Wiseman discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in upper New York State.
Her debut novel The Plum Tree—a WWII story about a young German woman trying to save the love of her life, a Jewish man—was inspired by her mother's childhood in Germany during the Second World War. The book was published in 2013.
Wiseman's second novel, What She Left Behind, published in 2014, centers on the now-shuttered Willard Asylum for the Insane in Ovid, near Seneca Lake, New York, and involves a woman wrongly committed.
Coal River, Wiseman's 2016 novel, revolves around the efforts of a young woman to help at-risk workers in the Pennsylvania col mines.
The Life She Was Given, released in 2017, tells the story of two sisters: Lilly who is sold to the circus in 1931, and the other, years later, who inherits the family farm.
Originally from Three Mile Bay, New York, Wiseman lives on Lake Ontario with her husband. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Wiseman alternates between 1930s and 1950s New York State in this emotional tale of one young girl’s tragedy and another’s coming of age.… Wiseman has created two equally enticing story lines…. This well-crafted novel provides rewards throughout.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Switching back and forth…from Lilly to Julia, Wiseman has crafted a can't-put-it-down novel of family secrets involving two young girls.… Perfect for book clubs and readers who admired Sara Gruen's Like Water for Elephants. —Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. In the beginning of the book, Lilly has never stepped foot outside the attic of Blackwood Manor. Yet she dreams of escaping and exploring the outside world. What effect do you think being locked up for the first ten years of her life had on her? Do you think it’s possible for a child in that situation to develop normally? When Momma finally lets her out, Lilly is frightened and wants to return to the attic. Why do you think she feels that way?
2. Julia was brought up believing bad things would happen if she didn’t behave. What effect do you think that belief had on her relationships with other people? Do you think she was a people pleaser? Why or why not? How do you think she changed over the course of the novel? What were the most important events that facilitated those changes?
3. Momma is strict, cold, and physically abusive. But even after she sells Lilly to the circus sideshow, Lilly still loves and misses her. Do you think that’s realistic? Why or why not?
4. Julia can’t help but study the interactions between mothers and daughters. She is drawn to watching people who clearly love each other, especially parents and their children whose faces light up with affection and recognition of their unconditional love. She wonders what that feels like. How do you think that fascination with parental love effected her decisions concerning the horses at Blackwood Farm? What events revealed how she felt about them?
5. How much of a role do you think religion played in Momma’s decision to keep Lilly locked in the attic? How much of a role do you think shame played? Have you ever heard stories of parents hiding their mentally or physically handicapped children in an attic or back bedroom? Do you think that still happens today?
6. Before she knows the truth, Julia briefly wonders if Lilly would have been better off if she had "gotten help". What do you think would have happened to Lilly if she had been sent away instead of locked in the attic? Considering the time period of the story, would she have been better off or worse? Why?
7. How long did it take for you to figure out what was "wrong" with Lilly? Were you surprised when you learned the truth? What do you think the real reason was behind Momma’s decision to sell Lilly to the sideshow? Was it money, or something else?
8. When Momma takes Lilly out of the house the first time, she gives her a jacket despite the fact that she’s selling her to the circus and it’s a warm summer night. Why do you think she does it? What do you think it means, if anything? What do you think would have happened to Lilly if she had been able to get away from Momma that night? Would she have survived? How?
9. Why do you think Julia was so determined to take good care of the horses and the farm? Why do you think she wanted to prove herself to Claude?
10. Lilly feels like she has a lot in common with the circus animals. Why do you think that is? What does she have in common with Pepper? What about Jojo? Is there a difference between what she has in common with each of them?
11. Both Momma and Merrick used fear to keep Lilly from trying to escape. In what ways did they use it similarly? In what ways did they use it differently?
12. Claude knew the truth about Lilly all along. Why do you think he kept it a secret? Do you agree with his reasoning? What would you have done if you saw Momma taking Lilly into the woods, then coming back without her? What do you think made Claude change his mind about telling Julia the truth? How did you feel about him in the beginning of the book? How did you feel about him at the end?
13. Lilly goes from being locked in an attic to performing in front of thousands of people. What fears did she need to conquer to make that transition? What other changes did she make to survive in the circus? What aspects of her earlier life do you think were hardest for her to overcome?
14. In the 1870’s, P.T. Barnum was one of the first showmen to take a collection of oddities and human marvels on the road with his circus. Back then, the sideshow created quite a sensation and became a popular form of entertainment. In the heyday of the sideshow, human curiosities were respected as the bread and butter of the circus, and revered all over the world. The freaks were royalty, not victims or monsters. Certainly there was exploitation, as in the case of Daisy and Violet Hilton, Siamese twins who were kept in a cage, beaten, and passed down in their aunt’s estate like a piece of old jewelry. But for the most part, the sideshow provided the opportunity for people who couldn’t make a living in the traditional ways to stand on their own two feet, instead of slowly dying in institutions. Eventually the appeal of sideshows declined due to various factors, including increased medical knowledge, political correctness, and the belief that disease and abnormalities should evoke pity rather than wonder. Have you ever been to a sideshow? How did it make you feel? What do you think of people brave enough to expose their vulnerabilities to the world? If you were born with an anomaly or deformity, would you be willing to let people stare at you to make a living?
15. What did you think of Lilly’s father when you first met him? How did your perception of him change over the course of the book? What could he have done differently? He attends the circus once a year to see Lilly, but she never knows he’s there. How did you feel when he showed up in her tent? Were you surprised by his confession at the end of the story?
16. Pepper is based on a real elephant, Mary, who was hanged by the neck from a railcar- mounted industrial crane in 1916 for killing an inexperienced trainer after he prodded her behind the ear with a hook when she reached down to nibble on a watermelon rind. The first attempt to hang Mary resulted in a snapped chain, causing Mary to fall and break her hip as dozens of children fled in terror. The gravely wounded elephant died during a second attempt at execution and was buried beside the tracks. A veterinarian examined Mary after the hanging and determined she had a severely infected tooth in the precise spot where the trainer had prodded her. When Pepper kills Merrick for trying to take Jojo, Lilly is devastated because she knows Pepper is going to be punished. She hates the fact that people get mad at animals for acting like animals. Her worst fears come true when the crowd wants Pepper killed and Mr. Barlow makes the decision to execute her. Do you think animals should be killed for injuring or killing humans? Does it depend on the circumstance, for instance, if an animal is being caged, forced to perform, or a human threatens the animal’s young or encroaches on its territory? Do you think it’s okay to kill an animal based solely on its potential to be dangerous?
17. What do you think Lilly’s life would have been like if Momma had never sold her to the circus? How long do you think she would have lived in the attic? Do you think she would have eventually escaped? How? What would you have done if you were in that situation?
18. Besides honoring Lilly, why do you think Julia started the horse rescue?? What do you think Julia’s life was like after she discovered the truth about her family?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)