What We Were Promised
Lucy Tan, 2018
Little, Brown & Company
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316437189
Summary
Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises.
After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China.
Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city.
One morning, in the eighth tower of Lanson Suites, Lina discovers that a treasured ivory bracelet has gone missing. This incident sets off a wave of unease that ripples throughout the Zhen household. Wei, a marketing strategist, bows under the guilt of not having engaged in nobler work.
Meanwhile, Lina, lonely in her new life of leisure, assumes the modern moniker taitai—a housewife who does no housework at all. She is haunted by the circumstances surrounding her arranged marriage to Wei and her lingering feelings for his brother, Qiang.
Sunny, the family's housekeeper, is a keen but silent observer of these tensions. An unmarried woman trying to carve a place for herself in society, she understands the power of well-kept secrets.
When Qiang reappears in Shanghai after decades on the run with a local gang, the family must finally come to terms with the past and its indelible mark on their futures.
From a silk-producing village in rural China, up the corporate ladder in suburban America, and back again to the post-Maoist nouveaux riches of modern Shanghai, What We Were Promised explores the question of what we owe to our country, our families, and ourselves. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987
• Raised—Livingston, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., New York University; M.F.A., University of Wisconsin
• Awards—August Derleth Prize
• Currently—living in Madison, Wisconsin
Lucy Tan grew up in New Jersey and has spent much of her adult life in New York and Shanghai. She received her B.A. from New York University and her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was awarded the 2016 August Derleth Prize.
Her fiction has been published in journals such as Asia Literary Review and Ploughshares, where she was winner of the 2015 Emerging Writer's Contest. This is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A]n elegant debut novel
Newark Star Ledger
The magnificence and splendor of modern Shanghai come to life in Lucy Tan's debut novel.
Palm Beach Post
[A] solid debut…. Sunny and Wei’s stories are arresting, but Qiang and Lina come off as entitled in spite of the author’s efforts to make them sympathetic. Despite this, the novel presents an intriguing portrait of class, duty, and family.
Publishers Weekly
Tan's talent as a storyteller clearly shines through her strong plot lines and characterization; readers will want to know more about each well-crafted player.… [A] surprising and down-to-earth tale and entertaining read. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal
Like the Emerald City in Oz… Shanghai provides the backdrop for an examination of the clash between old and new lifestyles and values…. Tan examines the tension behind the facade of the moneyed …where everyone seems to be an expat in their own country.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What promises—spoken and unspoken—have these characters made to one another, to themselves, and to the countries they feel allegiance to?
2. How do these self-expectations drive or limit their actions?
3. What is the significance of this story being set in Shanghai? How does the physical, cultural landscape serve as context for these characters’ lives?
4. How do Lina and Wei’s relationships to China and America change throughout time?
5. What is Sunny’s relationship with her hometown, and how does it evolve throughout the novel?
6. What are the ways in which the characters in this novel each assume the role of a caretaker? Do these different roles and responsibilities shift throughout the novel?
7. Lina feels that she may have limited herself in her youth by choosing between the Zhen brothers rather than pursuing a post-college plan of her own devising. Do you think she regrets her decision?
8. What do you think Lina and Wei’s hopes are for Karen’s future?
9. How has Sunny’s perception of her own identity and abilities evolved by the end of the novel?
10. "There’s a reason you’re drawn to whatever it is, or whoever it is, you’re falling for," says Qiang on page 187. "They have something you’re missing." Lina believes he is talking about her here. Do you agree?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Olive Again
Elizabeth Strout, 2019
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996548
Summary
The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout "animates the ordinary with an astonishing force."
She has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine.
Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us and to move us.
In Strout’s words, Olive will inspire us "to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1956
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., Bates College; J.D. and Certificate of Gerontology, Syracuse University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, and in Maine.
Elizabeth Strout is an American writer of fiction. She was born in Portland, Maine, and raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. Her father was a science professor, and her mother taught high school.
After graduating from Bates College, Strout spent a year in Oxford, England, followed by studies at law school for another year. In 1982 she graduated with honors, and received both a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law and a Certificate of Gerontology from the Syracuse School of Social Work. That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.
Strout moved to New York City, and continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen. It took her six or seven years to write Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. The novel was made into a television movie starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.
During the fall semsester of 2007, Strout was a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) professor at Colgate University, where she taught creative writing at both the introductory and advanced level. She was also on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge (2008), a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine. In 2010, Italian booksellers voted Olive Kitteridge and Strout as the winner of the Premio Bancarella award in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy. Her new book, The Burgess Boys, was published in 2013.
Strout is married to former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, who currently serves as the Director of the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School. She divides her time between New York and Maine. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:
• My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it. I would be so bored scrubbing at some kitchen tile, that my mind would finally float all over the place, to the beach, to a friend's house...all this happened in my mind as I scrubbed those tiles, so it was certainly good for my imagination. But I did hate it."
• Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it. I would listen, as a child, when some friend of hers came to visit, and they would gossip about the different people they knew. My mother had the most fascinating stories about people's families, murderers, mental illnesses, babies abandoned, and she delivered it all in a matter-of-fact way that was terribly compelling. It made me believe that there was nothing more interesting than the lives of people, their real hidden lives, and this of course can lead one down the path of becoming a fiction writer.
• Later, in college, one of my favorite things was to go into town and sit at the counter at Woolworth's (so tragic to have them gone!) and listen to people talking; the waitresses and the customers — I loved it. I still love to eavesdrop, but mostly I like the idea of being around people who are right in the middle of their lives, revealing certain details to each other — leaving the rest for me to make up.
• I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being. There is something about the actual relationship that is going on between the audience and the actors that I just love. I love seeing the sets and costumes, the decisions that have been made about the staging...it's a place for the eye and the ear to be fully involved. I have always loved theater."
• I also like cell phones. What I mean by that is I hear many people complain about cell phones; they can't go anywhere without hearing someone on a cell phone, etc. But I love that chance to hear half a conversation, even if the person is just saying, ‘Hi honey, I'll be home in ten minutes, do you want me to bring some milk?' And I'm also grateful to have a cell phone, just to know it's there if I need it when I'm out and about. So I'm a cell phone fan.
• I don't especially like to travel, not the way many people do. I know many people that love to go to far-off and different places, and I've never been like that. I seem to get homesick as quickly as a child. I may like being in some new place for a few days, but then I want to go home and return to my routine and my familiar corner stores. I am a real creature of habit, without a doubt.
• When asked what book most inluenced her life as a writer, she answered:
Perhaps the book that had the greatest influence on my career as a writer was The Journals of John Cheever. Of course many, many books had influenced me before I read that, but there was something about the honesty found in Cheever's journals that gave me courage as a writer. And his ability to turn a phrase, to describe in a breath the beauty of a rainstorm or the fog rising off the river... all this arrived in my life as a writer at a time when I seemed ready to absorb his examples of what a sentence can do when written with the integrity of emotion and felicity of language.
Book Reviews
In the first chapter of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again… the man who will become Olive’s second husband writes, "Dear Olive Kitteridge, I have missed you and if you would see fit to call me or email me or see me, I would like that very much." Jack Kennison might be speaking for fans of Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge, which inspired an Emmy-winning HBO mini-series and now this sequel. However, like its iconic heroine, this book is capable of standing alone.… [Olive] is as indelible as the ink on Jack Kennison’s paper. If you know Olive, you know how she would respond to the hoopla: with an eye roll and an "Oh Godfrey." It’s good to have her back.
Elisabeth Egan - New York Times Book Review
Strout dwells with uncanny immediacy inside the minds and hearts of a dazzling range of ages: the young (with their confusion, wonder, awakening sexuality), the middle-aged (envy, striving, compromise), the old (failing bodies, societal shunning, late revelations).… I have long and deeply admired all of Strout’s work, but Olive, Again transcends and triumphs. The naked pain, dignity, wit and courage these stories consistently embody fill us with a steady, wrought comfort.
Washington Post
Olive is a brilliant creation not only because of her eternal cantankerousness but because she’s as brutally candid with herself about her shortcomings as she is with others. Her honesty makes people strangely willing to confide in her, and the raw power of Ms. Strout’s writing comes from these unvarnished exchanges, in which characters reveal themselves in all of their sadness and badness and confusion.… The great, terrible mess of living is spilled out across the pages of this moving book. Ms. Strout may not have any answers for it, but she isn’t afraid of it either.
Wall Street Journal
A magnificent achievement on its own terms…. We see Olive acquiring a view of herself, and coming to recognize as valuable the other people who grant that vision. In the process, she shares in the alchemy that she continues to perform for us and elicits our unexpected, abiding love.
Boston Globe
In thirteen poignant interconnected stories, Strout follows the cantankerous, truth-telling Mainer as she ages, experiencing a joyful second marriage and the evolution of her difficult relationship with her son. In her blunt yet compassionate way, Olive grapples with loneliness, infidelity, mortality and the question of whether we can ever really know someone—ourselves included.
People
The lovable, irascible Olive Kitteridge is back…. In this novel—set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Maine, ravaged by opioid addiction and economic neglect—Strout wields great pathos out of life and all its attendant tragedies.
BuzzFeed
Strout aims the spotlight on her wry heroine and the characters of Crosby, Maine, in another book that’s sure to have you flipping pages long into the night.
Bustle
(Starred review) As direct, funny, sad, and human as its heroine,… [this is a] welcome follow-up to Olive Kitteridge.… Strout again demonstrates her gift for zeroing in on ordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people to highlight their extraordinary resilience.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Olive may offer blunt honesty that defies societal norms, but her clarity is refreshing and never cruel.… Strout wrote that Olive… demanded [she] write these new stories. Of course Olive did that: it’s so…Olive. Thank goodness Olive prevailed. Exquisite.
Library Journal
Love, loss, regret, the complexities of marriage, the passing of time, and the astonishing beauty of the natural world are abiding themes, along with "the essential loneliness of people' and the choices they make 'to keep themselves from that gaping darkness." Unmissable.
Booklist
(Starred review) The thorny matriarch of Crosby, Maine, makes a welcome return.… Beautifully written and alive with compassion, at times almost unbearably poignant. A thrilling book in every way.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Olive Kitteridge is a fascinating character. Some readers might see her as abrasive and unlikeable; others might see her as honest and sympathetic. How do you characterize Olive? What do you appreciate about her? What irks you about her? Is she someone you’d like to meet in real life?
2. If you read Olive Kitteridge, do you feel Olive has changed in Olive, Again? If so, in what ways? If not, what about her has stayed the same?
3. During a fight with her son, Christopher, Olive realizes "that she had been frightened of her son for years." How does she come to this realization? How does it influence how Olive thinks of herself as a mother?
4. Watching Ann yell at Christopher, Olive realizes she had yelled at her late husband, Henry, in much the same way. What does she come to accept about herself as a person? How does she ask for forgiveness?
5. In today’s climate of increased awareness about sexual harassment, how did you feel reading "Cleaning," the chapter about Kayley and Mr. Ringrose? Would you qualify it as a type of harassment, or did you feel Kayley was empowered and exploring her sexuality? Does the fact that Mr. Ringrose left Kayley money complicate any of your feelings?
6. Consider this passage: "These were openings into the darkness of a relationship one saw by mistake, as if inside a dark barn, the door had been momentarily blown off and one saw things not meant to be seen." Do you think all relationships have a secret darkness that outsiders don’t see, or do only troubled relationships have this?
7. Strout writes that there were a few nights during Jack’s marriage to Olive where "he had sat on the front porch and had—half drunk—wept, because he wanted to be with Betsy instead." How did you interpret this? Did it feel like a betrayal (even involuntarily) to you, or simply a fact of life?
8. Bernie and Suzanne have an interesting relationship. What are the different secrets and experiences that bond them together? How did they both help each other? Do you think it’s rare to see an emotionally—but not physically—intimate relationship like theirs in fiction? What about in real life?
9. Bernie tells Suzanne she doesn’t need to tell her husband about her affair. She clearly believes it’s a mistake and isn’t planning to repeat it. Do you agree with Bernie’s advice? Is it ever smarter to keep a secret like that, or do you believe one must always tell the truth?
10. Olive and Cindy, who might be terminally ill, have an interesting conversation about death. They both admit to being afraid of it, but Olive—in her special way—comforts Cindy by reminding her, "The truth is—we’re all just a few steps behind you. Twenty minutes behind you, and that’s the truth." Was this notion a comfort to you? What do you think would happen if people, even those who aren’t terminally ill, started speaking more openly about death?
11. When Olive is talking about her marriage to Jack with Cindy, she says, "Imagine at my age, starting over again." Then she adds, "But it’s never starting over, Cindy, it’s just continuing on." Why do you think she corrects herself in this way? What different connotations do those two phrases—starting over and continuing on—hold?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
South Pole Station
Ashley Shelby, 2017
Picador : Macmillan
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250112828
Summary
DO YOU HAVE DIGESTION PROBLEMS DUE TO STRESS?
DO YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH AUTHORITY?
HOW MANY ALCOHOLIC DRINKS DO YOU CONSUME A WEEK?
WOULD YOU RATHER BE A FLORIST OR A TRUCK DRIVER?
These are some of the questions that determine if you have what it takes to survive at South Pole Station, a place with an average temperature of -54°F and no sunlight for six months a year.
Cooper Gosling has just answered five hundred of them. Her results indicate she is abnormal enough for Polar life. Cooper’s not sure if this is an achievement, but she knows she has nothing to lose.
Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, she’s adrift at thirty and—despite her early promise as a painter—on the verge of sinking her career. So she accepts her place in the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers Program and flees to Antarctica, where she encounters a group of misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own.
The only thing the Polies have in common is the conviction that they don’t belong anywhere else.
Then a fringe scientist arrives, claiming climate change is a hoax. His presence will rattle this already-imbalanced community, bringing Cooper and the Polies to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.
A warmhearted comedy of errors set in the world’s harshest place, Ashley Shelby's South Pole Station is a wry and witty debut novel about the courage it takes to band together when everything around you falls apart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1977
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Third Coast Fiction Prize; William Faulkner Award-Short Fiction
• Currently—lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Ashley Shelby is a former editor at Penguin Books, prize-winning writer/journalist, and author of both fiction and nonfiction.
Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Shelby received her MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City (2003), a narrative nonfiction account of the record-breaking flood that, in 1997, devastated Grand Forks, North Dakota.
The short story that became the basis for her debut novel, South Pole Station (2017) is a winner of the Third Coast Fiction Prize.
Her work has been published widely, including in the Seattle Review, Post Road, Sonora Review, Portland Review, J Journal: New Writings on Social Justice, Sierra, Full Circle Journal, Babble, Gastronomica, Carve, and Southeast Review.
She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
For those who like stories that “turn up the heat” on off-beat personalities trapped in tight quarters, South Pole Station is super cool. It’s a worthy debut and a sign of a smart new novelist arriving on the scene. (By the way, be sure to take note of Cooper’s last name.) READ MORE …
P.J. Adler - LitLovers
Entertaining.… The mechanics of the central plot — …astrophysicists squabbling over the Big Bang Theory… — are best not inspected too closely, although they do yield some nicely rebellious behavior …and a satisfying …nerd romance.… More appealing …are the back stories and posturings of the ensemble cast, whose day-to-day dramas provide a vivid notion of what it's like to live in a frigid landscape that's dark for six months of the year.
Alida Becker - New York Times Book Review
[An] enjoyable first novel.… Shelby is very good on social interactions at the end of the earth, and South Pole Station crackles with energy whenever science takes center stage
Dennis Drabelle - Washington Post
If you like literature that transports you to exotic locales beyond the reach of commercial airlines and enables you to view hot topics from cool new angles, South Pole Station is just the ticket.… Shelby's writing is pithy and funny …[and] in this unusual, entertaining first novel, [she] combines science with literature to make a clever case for scientists' and artists' shared conviction that "the world could become known if only you looked hard enough."
Heller McAlpin - NPR
Most associate [climate fiction] with 'sci-fi' and therefore sci-fi's most recognizable tropes.… But what if we expand the genre's definition to works that address issues of climate change in the here-and-now, in worlds that aren’t speculative or futuristic at all, but rather, unnervingly familiar? What we would find are some of the most urgent, funny, and beautifully written works in contemporary fiction. Case in point: Ashley Shelby’s South Pole Station.
Chicago Review of Books
Set in the vast yet claustrophobic reality of Antarctica, the novel's first delight is in its vivid depiction of sub-zero life.…The second delight is the clear message that science is not belief. It's science.… Shelby keeps more than a few story lines thrumming here, yet a keen eye for character and a sharp ear for smartass dialogue keeps the strands straight.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
This is a fascinating novel, loaded with interesting history of Antarctic exploration, current scientific operations, and the living and working conditions of those folks brave enough to endure six months of darkness and six months of daylight.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Shelby's first novel, based on a short story that won the Third Coast Fiction Prize, skillfully weaves science, climate change, politics, sociology, and art.… All readers of fiction, particularly those interested in life in extreme climates, will find [South Pole Station] appealing. —Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Library Journal
[Shelby] eschews easy choices and treats interpersonal relations, grief, science, art, and political controversy with the same deft, humorous hand. Readers will find characters to love, suspect, and identify with…. [F]or readers …who enjoy stories about quirky individuals and …armchair travelers.
Booklist
Throughout witty, often hilarious scenarios, Shelby expertly weaves in the legitimate political and environmental concerns…. Shelby's exploration of the human spirit continuously digs deeper, ever in search of answers to all of life's important questions—scientific and otherwise.
BookPage
In the messy human petri dish at the South Pole, a comic novel brews.… [S]mart and inventive…. Jokes lubricate a moving and occasionally preposterous story of love and death in the Antarctic cold.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In her interview, Tucker prods Cooper for her motivation for going to the South Pole. She’s hesitant to say she desires "to be somewhere else" because that sounds like she’s "running from something." But Tucker responds that it’s not "running from something.… It’s turning aside.… Looking askance." Do you agree with Tucker’s assessment? Does this hold true for Cooper? For the other Polies?
2. Many of the Polies take issue with calling Pavano a "climate skeptic" because, as Sal says, "All scientists are born skeptics. Pavano is not a practicing scientist." Do you agree with Sal? Why or why not?
3. Though it’s eventually disproved, Sal poses a compelling theory about the origins of the universe, a "cyclic model" in which "every trillion or so years, the universe remakes itself as an echo of its previous form.… Every corner of space makes galaxies, stars, planets, and presumably life, over and over again." This model, he says, "has an explanation for 'what happened before the Big Bang.'" He proposes, "Instead of a single 'bang,' it was engaged in an endless cycle with endless variations." Cooper, however, poses the question of how this cycle begins, of what happens "before." What do you think of Sal’s theory? In what ways do you find it believable? How might you contest it?
4. Cooper spends much time trying to come to grips with David’s suicide. How do you see her working through his death throughout the novel? In what ways do you think she makes peace with his choice?
5. What do you think of Pearl’s ambitions in the kitchen? Did you root for her? Think she was manipulative? Both?
6. South Pole Station unfolds through various narrative perspectives — Cooper, Pearl, Tucker, Bozer, Pavano, even emails, and official government documents. How does having these multiple vantage points shape your sense of the community? In what ways would the story be different if we were only privy to Cooper’s perspective?
7. Congressman Bayless gives a speech in which he purports, "Dissent is the healthiest state of affairs in any democracy … democracy is under attack. That in a bastion of free thought, the covenant of free thought has been broken.… Dr. Pavano has been the victim of a systematic and sustained pattern of harassment based solely on his research." Sal’s rebuttal is that "in the scientific community, there’s virtually unanimous consensus that the earth is warming … instead of fearing this new knowledge … accept it, and leave science to science." How would you respond to both of these statements?
8. As an artist, Cooper’s role at the station is more nebulous than that of some of the other characters. Right before the standoff, Denise tells Cooper that her "paintings will remind the people here that they are not just cogs of the machine." How do you interpret Denise’s statement?
9. What did you think of Cooper’s reaction to her injury? How might you have reacted in her position?
10. Climate change is the subject of much debate in our society; it’s a complicated issue. What did you take away from South Pole Station about the interplay of science, politics, religion, and economics in the climate change debate? Did the novel shift your perspective at all? How so?
11. We aren’t privy to Pavano’s perspective until the end of the novel when we learn of his ascendance as a "climate change skeptic." In what ways did his backstory align with your expectations? What elements surprised you?
(Guide written by Laura Chasen and issued by the publisher.)
Us Against You
Fredrik Backman, 2018
Atria Books
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501160790
Summary
A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is home to tough, hardworking people who don’t expect life to be easy or fair.
No matter how difficult times get, they’ve always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it’s a cruel blow when they hear that their town’s ice hockey club might soon be disbanded.
What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in the neighboring town of Hed, take in that fact.
But the arrival of a newcomer gives Beartown hockey a chance at a comeback.
Soon a team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; always dutiful and eager-to-please Bobo; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker.
But bringing this team together proves to be a huge challenge, especially as the town’s enmity with Hed grows more and more acute as the big game approaches.
By the time the last goal is scored, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after everything, the game they love can ever return to something as simple and innocent as a field of ice, two nets, and two teams. Us against you.
Here is a declaration of love for all the big and small, bright and dark stories that give form and color to our communities. With immense compassion and insight, Fredrik Backman reveals how loyalty, friendship, and kindness can carry a town through its most challenging days. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1981
• Raised—Helsingborg, Sweden
• Education—no degree
• Currently—Stockholm
Fredrik Backman, Swedish author, journalist, and blogger, was voted Sweden's most successful author in 2013.
Backman grew up in Helsingborg, studied comparative religion but dropped out and became a truck driver instead. When the free newspaper Xtra was launched in 2006, the owner reached out to Backman, then still a truck driver, to write for the paper. After a test article, he continued to write columns for Xtra
In spring 2007, he began writing for Moore Magazine in Stockholm, a year-and-a-half later he began freelancing, and in 2012 he became a writer for the Metro. About his move to writing, Backman said...
I write things. Before I did that I had a real job, but then I happened to come across some information saying there were people out there willing to pay people just to write things about other people, and I thought "surely this must be better than working." And it was, it really was. Not to mention the fact that I can sit down for a living now, which has been great for my major interest in cheese-eating. (From his literary agent's website.)
Backman married in 2009 and became a father the following year. He blogged about preparations for his wedding in "The Wedding Blog" and about becoming a father on "Someone's Dad" blog. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, he wrote the Olympic blog for the Magazine Cafe website and has continued as a permanent blogger for the site.
In 2012, Backman debuted as an author, publishing two books on the same day: a novel, A Man Called Ove (U.S. release in 2014), and a work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World. His second novel, My Grandmother Sent Me to Tell You She's Sorry, came out in 2013 (U.S. release in 2015). (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher. Retrieved 7/23/2014.)
Book Reviews
If Alexander McCall Smith’s and Maeve Binchy’s novels had a love child, the result would be the work of Swedish writer Fredrik Backman.… With his wry acceptance of foible and failure, Backman combines a singular style with a large and compassionate perspective for his characters.… [His] novels have wide appeal, and for good reason. Us Against You takes a lyrical look at how a community heals, how families recover and how individuals grow.
Washington Post
What you get in a Fredrik Backman work is wonderful writing and brilliant insights into things that truly matter—right vs. wrong, fear vs. courage, love vs. hate, the importance and limits of friendship and loyalty, and more. Fredrik Backman is one of the world’s best and most interesting novelists. He is a giant among the world’s great novelists—and this literary giant is still growing.
Washington Times
[Backman] creates an astute emotional world much bigger than a small Swedish town.… A novel you can sink into.
Chicago Tribune
Deftly explores recovery and rebirth.
US Weekly
[E]ngrossing.… Backman’s excellent novel has an atmosphere of both Scandinavian folktale and Greek tragedy. Darkness and grit exist alongside tenderness and levity, creating a blunt realism that brings the setting’s small-town atmosphere to vivid life.
Publishers Weekly
There is even more potential for book group discussion here as Backman explores violence, political maneuvering, communities, feminism, sexuality, criminality, the role of sports in society, and what makes us all tick. —Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago
Library Journal
[E]vident in all [Backman's] novels is an apparent ability to state a truth about humanity with breathtaking elegance.… Backman plays [his] story for both cynicism and hope, and his skill makes both hard, but not impossible, to resist.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Backman describes the struggle between Beartown and Hed as one between the Bear and the Bull. What does this metaphor represent besides two fearsome animals fighting each other? What do these symbols say about the character of each town?
2. Early in the book, Maya and Ana retreat to a special place far from the rest of Beartown. Read Maya’s song, "The Island" on pp. 59–60. What do you think this little piece of land means to both of them?
3. Kira makes sacrifices so that Peter can be manager of Beartown hockey. Does Peter make sacrifices for his family, too? Discuss the way their relationship changes over the course of the book.
4. Peter tells Ann-Katrin: "I’m afraid the club might demand more from your sons than it can give back to them" (page 155). Bobo, Benji, and Amat must take their place in the world of men when they join the A-team. How does this change force them to grow up? In what ways does it expose their immaturities? What are the different ways each boy tries to fit in with and be accepted by the older players? In the end, are Peter’s fears of what the club will demand of the players justified?
5. People from Hed burn a Beartown Jersey in their town square. This event doesn’t hurt anyone physically, but would you still consider it an act of violence? How does this small symbolic act become amplified and have the power to do so much relational damage?
6. What special challenges do Maya and Ana face as they near adulthood? Do you think two such different girls will be able to maintain their friendship as they head down separate paths?
7. "When we describe how the violence between these two towns started, most of us will no longer remember what came first" (page 46). What do you think the tipping point was? What do you think the novel says about human beings’ innate tendency toward violence?
8. A theme in Us Against You is tribalism versus community. Both dynamics are grounded in a sense of loyalty formed around a shared identity, but what makes them different? How can a strong community become insular and intolerant?
9. Two outsiders come to town, Elisabeth Zackell and Richard Theo. How does each person understand the culture in Beartown, and how do they use that understanding to their individual advantage?
10. "People’s reactions to leadership are always the same: if your decisions benefit me, you’re fair, and if the same decision harms me, you’re a tyrant" (page 197). Are there any characters in Beartown who act against their own self-interest? What do you think are their reasons for doing so?
11. When Ana breaks Benji’s trust and reveals his secret, do you understand her action? Is what she does to Benji made more forgivable because of the circumstances?
12. Retaliation is a constant theme throughout the book. Are there any characters who try to break this cycle of violence? What do you think it takes for this pattern to be broken?
13. Richard Theo says to Peter: "They rule with the help of violence. A democracy can’t allow that. Anyone who becomes powerful because they’ve physically fought their way to the top needs to be opposed" (page 271). Do you agree with Theo? Does Theo rule with the help of violence?
14. Sports has the power to divide and the power to unite. On balance, do you think Beartown would be better off with or without its hockey club?
15. "We will say ‘things like this are no one’s fault,’ but of course they are. Deep down we will know the truth. It’s plenty of people’s fault. Ours" (page 293). Do you agree with this statement, or are their forces outside of the Beartown citizens’ control that are, in part, responsible for the violence?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
A Legacy of Spies (George Smiley Series)
John le Carre, 2017
Penguin Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735225114
Summary
The undisputed master returns with a riveting new book—his first Smiley novel in more than twenty-five years
Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London.
The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him.
Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications.
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carre has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carre and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1931
• Where—Dorset, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Somerset Maugham Award
• Currently—lives in St Buryan, Cornwall. England
David John Moore Cornwell was born to Richard Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75) and Olive (Glassy) Cornwell, in Poole, Dorset, England. He was the second son to the marriage, the first his brother Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive; his younger half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwell; and Rupert Cornwell, a former Independent newspaper Washington bureau chief, is a younger half-brother.
John le Carre said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old. His relationship with his father was difficult, given that the man had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins (among the foremost criminals in London) and was continually in debt. A 2009 UK Guardian-Observer profile recounts:
The family swung between great affluence and bankruptcy. The boys were often called upon to help their father evade creditors during an upbringing that le Carre has referred to as "clandestine survival." He and his brother, he has said, "were conspirators from quite an early age...."
His troubled relationships with each of his parents proved instrumental in shaping his fiction. Duplicitous father figures crop up regularly in his work and, more obviously, the question of trust is at the centre of le Carre's fictional world.
The character Rick Pym, the scheming con-man father of protagonist Magnus Pym in his later novel A Perfect Spy (1986), was based on Ronnie. When Ronnie died in 1975, le Carre paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend.
Education
Cornwell's formal schooling began at St Andrew's Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, then continued at Sherborne School; he proved unhappy with the typically harsh English public school regime of the time and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster so withdrew.
From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950 he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying upon far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents.
When Ronnie declared bankruptcy in 1954, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at a boys' preparatory school; however, a year later, he returned to Oxford and graduated, in 1956, with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts degree.
Intelligence work
He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, afterwards becoming an MI5 officer in 1958; he ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines, and effected break-ins. Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as"John Bingham"), and while an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing Call for the Dead (1961), his first novel. Lord Clanmorris was the inspiration behind spymaster George Smiley.
In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked as a Second Secretary cover in the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective story A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), as "John le Carre" (i,e., John the Square, in French), a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.
Cornwell left the service in 1964 to work full-time as a novelist, as his intelligence officer career was ended by the betrayal to the KGB of numberous British agents and their covers by Kim Philby, a British double agent (of the Cambridge Five). Le Carre depicts and analyses Philby as the upper-class traitor, code-named Gerald by the KGB, the mole George Smiley hunts in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974). Credited by his pen name, Cornwell appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party seen in several flashback scenes.
In 1964 le Carre won the Somerset Maugham Award, established to enable British writers younger than thirty-five to enrich their writing by spending time abroad.
Personal life and recognition
In 1954, Cornwell married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons—Simon, Stephen and Timothy. The couple was divorced in 1971. The following year, Cornwell married Valerie Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton. They have one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway. Le Carre has resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, UK, for more than forty years where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End.
In 1998, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa by the University of Oxford.
Writing style
Stylistically, the first two novels—Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962)—are mystery fiction in which the hero George Smiley (of the SIS, the "Circus") resolves the riddles of the deaths investigated; the motives are more personal than political.
The spy novel œuvre of John le Carre stands in contrast to the physical action and moral certainty of the James Bond thriller established by Ian Fleming in the mid- nineteen-fifties; the le Carre Cold War features unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work, and engaged in psychological more than physical drama. They experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers, and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict they are involved in is internal, rather than external and visible.
Unlike the moral certainty of Fleming's British Secret Service adventures, le Carre's Circus spy stories are morally complex, and inform the reader of the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of East-West moral equivalence.
A Perfect Spy (1986), chronicling the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym, as it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographic espionage novel—especially the boy's very close relationship with his con man father. Biographer Lynndianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Richard Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values"; le Carre reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised."
Most of le Carre's novels are spy stories set amidst the Cold War (1945–91); a notable exception is The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), an autobiographical, stylistically uneven, mainstream novel of a man's post-marital existential crisis. Another exception from the East-West conflict is The Little Drummer Girl that uses the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carre's œuvre shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. For example The Night Manager, his first completely post-Cold-War novel, deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin America drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and look-the-other-way western officials.
As a journalist, he wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a non-fiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–92), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the USSR from 1962 until 1975. In 2009, he donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam Ox-Tales project.
Political views
In January 2003 The Times (London) published le Carre's article "The United States Has Gone Mad," which condemned the approaching Iraq War. He observed in this essay, "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger, from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history." He contributed the same article to a volume of political essays entitled Not One More Death. The book is highly critical of the war in Iraq. Le Carre's contribution was entitled "Art, truth and politics." Other contributors include Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Michel Faber, Brian Eno, and Haifa Zangana. (Adapted from Wikipedia, retrieved 5/8/2012.)
Book Reviews
If not a capstone to John le Carre’s remarkable career (like Philip Roth, le Carre keeps soldiering on), A Legacy of Spies surely puts a finishing touch to his Soviet era spy vs. spy oeuvre. His new book has the feel of an elegy for that earlier time: rather than triumphal — the West, after all, won the Cold War — Legacy is melancholic. It mourns not the glory days but the ugly choices, the betrayals on all fronts, that resulted in the sacrifice of colleagues. And it asks the imponderable: were those sacrifices worth the price? Does patriotism trump personal loyalty and affection? READ MORE…
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
The good news about A Legacy of Spies is that it delivers a writer in full. Le Carre's prose remains brisk and lapidary. His wit is intact and rolls as if on casters. He is as profitably interested as ever in values, especially the places where loyalty, patriotism and affection rub together and fray. He wears his gravitas lightly…Le Carre is not of my generation but I have read him for long enough to understand how, for many readers, his characters are old friends — part of their mental furniture. There's something moving about seeing him revive them so effortlessly, to see that the old magic still holds. He thinks internationally but feels domestically. In an upside-down time, he appeals to comprehension rather than instinct. I might as well say it: to read this simmering novel is to come in from the cold.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Le Carre is such a gifted storyteller that he interlaces the cards in his deck so they fit not simply with this book, but with the earlier ones as well.
Atlantic
We wish for more complexity and logic in our politics, so we look to make political art that is logical and complex: a genre defined by John le Carre.
New Republic
(Starred review.) George Smiley returns in this stunning spy novel from MWA Grand Master le Carre.… He can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional insight in the smallest phrase—and demolish an ideology in a paragraph.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Le Carre incorporates many layers of meaning and numerous memorable characters into this intense story that pulses with tension, humor, and moral ambivalence. Smiley fans will be lining up for this one. —Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA
Library Journal
Le Carre returns to put yet another spin on the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).… The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for A Legacy of Spies … then take off on your own:
1. At the novel's end, George Smiley, the spymaster observes that "an old spy in his dotage seeks the truth of ages." Leaving the import (or meaning of that statement) for the time being, let's turn to Peter Guillam. How much "in his dotage" is Guillam? Is his memory dulled by age, or is he still as sharp as a knife? How much does he pretend to be struggling to keep up?
2. Guillam, at one point expresses his "outrage at having my past dug up and thrown in my face." What is the past that is being brought to light? (This might be a tougher question than it seems on the surface.) What was Windfall — what happened and what was supposed to happen? Who was responsible for it?
3. In the letter which summons Guillam back to England, A. Butterfield (who later is humorously known as "Bunny"), refers to "a matter in which you appear to have played a significant role some years back." What was Guillam's role in all that transpired, and how "significant" was his involvement?
4. The book's narrative technique includes Guillam's own memories interspersed with the content of old files — documents, memos, and letters, even audio tapes. Did the back and forth between memory and files make it difficult to follow the story?
5. Alec Leamas is the hero of le Carre's famed 1963 book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. How would you describe Alec? Does it help to have read the earlier book to understand his character, or is there enough detail in Legacy to give a full portrait of Alec? What was the relationship between the two men, Alec Leamas and Peter Guillam, both professionally and personally?
6. Smiley says at the end of the novel that his ideal had always been that of "leading Europe out of her darkness toward a new age of reason." Hadn't Europe been led into the age of reason following World War II and the defeat of Nazism? What does Smiley mean and did he succeed?
7. Reverting back to Smiley's statement in Question 1, regarding old spies seeing "the truth of ages," what does Smiley mean? What is the truth of the ages?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: Perhaps the most important question of the book is this one, which Guillam poses to himself after meeting with Smiley: “How much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom … before we cease to feel either human or free?” Did the ends justify the means in Windfall?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)