The Mother-in-Law
Sally Hepworth, 2019
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250120922
Summary
A twisty, compelling new novel about one woman's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law that ends in death.
From the moment Lucy met her husband’s mother, she knew she wasn’t the wife Diana had envisioned for her perfect son.
Exquisitely polite, friendly, and always generous, Diana nonetheless kept Lucy at arm’s length despite her desperate attempts to win her over. And as a pillar in the community, an advocate for female refugees, and a woman happily married for decades, no one had a bad word to say about Diana…except Lucy.
That was five years ago.
Now, Diana is dead, a suicide note found near her body claiming that she longer wanted to live because of the cancer wreaking havoc inside her body.
But the autopsy finds no cancer.
It does find traces of poison, and evidence of suffocation.
Who could possibly want Diana dead? Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her children, and their spouses? And what does it mean that Lucy isn’t exactly sad she’s gone?
Fractured relationships and deep family secrets grow more compelling with every page in this twisty, captivating new novel from Sally Hepworth. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 10, 1980
• Where—Australia
• Education—Monash University
• Currently—lives in Melbourne, Australia
Sally Hepworth is a former Event Planner and HR professional. A graduate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, she started writing novels after the birth of her first child.
She is the author of Love Like The French (2014, published in Germany). The Secret of Midwives (2015), The Things We Keep (2016), and The Family Next Door (2018).
Sally has lived around the world, spending extended periods in Singapore, the U.K., and Canada, and she now writes full-time from her home in Melbourne, Australia, where she lives with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Deliciously entertaining, packed with wit and suspense, and also delivers sharp insights about family dynamics and love.
People
Behold: the book that'll make your subway ride an actual enjoyable experience! This suspenseful thriller is impossible to put down.
Cosmo
We devoured it in just one sitting. Bet you will too!
Woman's Day
At last, sticky in-law tension gets the chilly thriller treatment. In Hepworth’s anticipated new page-turner, one woman’s complex relationship with her mother-in-law ends in death.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] suspenseful ride as a family copes with the suspicious suicide of its matriarch.… Hepworth’s short, punchy chapters keep the pages quickly turning while effortlessly deepening her characters. Readers will race to the end of this clever novel to find the truth.
Publishers Weekly
Infertility issues play a large role in this Australian story and add to the tiptoeing around and agonizing that Hepworth illustrates so well; the conversations among characters are another high point.… [A]bsorbing, cleverly written. —Henrietta Verma, Credo Reference, NY
Library Journal
(Starred review) A masterful depiction of how much is said in the silences.… [A] winner for fans of Liane Moriarty and Megan Abbott.
Booklist
When Diana, the matriarch of the Goodwin family, unexpectedly dies… circumstances… quickly point to homicide, and too many family members seem to have motives.… A mesmerizing domestic mystery.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the opening chapter of the novel, Lucy describes feeling a "little niggle" in the pit of her stomach when the police showed up—a warning of oncoming danger. Are you familiar with the feeling she’s describing? When have you felt it? How do you think this ominous tone serves to set up the rest of the book?
2. The Mother-in-Law is told in dual timelines and dual narratives—Lucy and her mother-in-law, Diana. How does this structure affect your reading experience? Did you feel more sympathetic towards one narrator or the other?
3. What was your initial impression of Diana, both through the lens of Lucy and through hearing Diana’s own voice? How did your understanding of her and her motivations evolve throughout the book?
4. Diana and Lucy have very different definitions of what makes a "good" mother-in-law. What you you think makes for a good mother-in-law? How universal do you think your opinion is, or how personal? How do you think you would react in Lucy’s position?
5. What did you think when you first learned about Diana’s Orchard House past? Did it make sense to you, or come totally out of the blue? How do you think it fits into Diana’s character and explains why she acts the way she does in the present timeline?
6. Before you learned about what happened on Thanksgiving,what did you think the "incident" was? What were the clues throughout the frst half of the novel that make you think that way?
7. On page 133, Diana thinks, "When left to their own devices, bitter people can do bad things." Do you think she’s right to asses Hakem this way? Where are the other place in the narrative where you think that this same quote applies?
8. Tom and Diana have very different philosophies about giving their children money. Is either of them correct? Or is there more of a middle ground that neither of them have considered? Do you think it’s cruel for them to let Nettie suffer when they could help pay for her treatments?
9. On page 219, Ghezala says to Lucy, "Maybe [Diana] was so busy looking at the problems in the world, she forgot to give chances to those right under her nose." What do you think about that statement? Do you think she’s correct, or is there something more at play?
10. Before you learned the truth of Diana’s death, did you have a suspect in mind? Who and why?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Last
Hanna Jameson, 2019
Atria Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501198823
Summary
A breathtaking dystopian psychological thriller follows an American academic stranded at a Swiss hotel as the world descends into nuclear war—along with twenty other survivors—who becomes obsessed with identifying a murderer in their midst after the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks.
Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you.
But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic conference, still mulling over how to respond to his wife, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications.
Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, then New York, then London, and finally Berlin. That’s all he knows before news outlets and social media goes black—and before the clouds on the horizon turn orange.
Now, two months later, there are twenty survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Those who can’t bear to stay commit suicide or wander off into the woods.
Jon and the others try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when the water pressure disappears, and Jon and a crew of survivors investigate the hotel’s water tanks, they are shocked to discover the body of a young girl.
As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with investigating the death of the little girl as a way to cling to his own humanity. Yet the real question remains: can he afford to lose his mind in this hotel, or should he take his chances in the outside world? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1990
• Where—Winchester, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Sussex
• Currently—lives in London, England
Hanna Jameson is a British author, perhaps best known for her London Underground mystery series. She was born in Winchester and earned her B.A. in American History at the University of Sussex. Having traveled around the world—in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, it was her experiences in the U.S. that inspired her to pursue her Bachelor's in American History.
Jameson's debut novel, Something You Are, the first of her Underground books, was published in 2012 when she was still in college—she was 22 (and was only 17 when she started it). That debut was nominated for a CWA Dagger Award. Two other books followed in the series: Girl Seven (2014), shortlisted for Crime Thriller Awards Best New Writer Award, and the third book Road Kill (2017).
In 2019 Jameson published her first stand-alone novel, a dystopian thriller, The Last.
In addition to writing and traveling, Jameson has worked for Britain's Nation Health Service. She lives in London. (Adapted from various online sources.)
Book Reviews
[E]ngrossing postapocalyptic psychological thriller…. Jameson asks powerful questions about fear, community, and self-interest…. She succeeds in evoking a palpable, immanent sense of tension in a story that’s equal parts drama and locked-room murder mystery.
Publishers Weekly
Jameson's postapocalyptic tale presents some interesting moral/ethical quandaries, though a lack of specificity and detail occasionally undercut its authenticity. More likely to appeal to readers of the author's previous works of suspense. —Karin Thogersen, Huntley Area P.L., IL
Library Journal
This genre-bending novel neatly embraces dystopian fiction and murder mystery, with the Omega Man starkness of the former and the requisite twists and turns of the latter (Top Pick).
BookPage
Jameson delivers an eerie and unsettling tale…. It makes for propulsive reading, but readers… will find themselves scratching their heads when all is finally revealed in a rather rushed finale. A thoughtful, page turning post-apocalyptic tale marred by a disjointed conclusion.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Consider the epigraph from Hans Keilson’s The Death of the Adversary. Why do you think the author chose this excerpt to open the novel?
2. Examine the structure and point of view of the novel. How would the story be different if Jon wasn’t the only narrator? Whose point of view would you want to explore? How does Jon’s occupation as a historian affect your reading of his chronicle? Do you think he’s an unreliable narrator? Why or why not?
3. On the rooftop with Jon, Dylan tells stories about L’Hotel Sixieme’s past (pp. 67–71). How does the author’s choice of setting enhance the stories?
4. Jon observes:
Everything that had happened before—our past lives—barely mattered. We lived day to day and could no longer remember all the people we hated, the things that upset us, made us angry online, Facebook statuses that made us roll our eyes, cute animal videos that made us cry, vendettas against journalists, news anchors, politicians, celebrities, relatives… all gone (p. 54).
How do you feel about Jon’s statement? Is the way he describes modern life too reductive, or is it an accurate portrait of what we value?
5. What role does technology play in the novel and in the characters’ survival?
6. How do the survivors react after discovering the girl’s body, and what do you think about their reactions? How do the stakes shift when a murder occurs at the end of the world?
7. Tomi is noticeably different from the other survivors. What pulls Jon toward her? At the same time, what about Tomi repels him? How do you feel about her?
8. The survivors share their personal histories during Jon’s investigation into the girl’s death: Adam talks about the ghost boy, and Nathan shares that his search for his stepfather led him to the hotel. Why do you think the author includes these stories?
9. Describe Jon’s first expedition outside the hotel. How do the events in the store affect him?
10. Tensions rise and blame gets lobbed around when the survivors discuss the recent election. Later, Tomi says to Jon, “The world didn’t go to shit because I voted for it. The world had long gone to shit; it took years. We all watched it happen” (p. 154). Do you think politics matter in their current situation? Whose side are you on? Discuss.
11. Discuss the group’s judgment of Nicholas van Schaik after his attempted assault on Mia (pp. 195–200). What were the arguments for and against his punishment, and do you believe the final choice fit the crime? Why or why not? Explain what you would do in this situation.
12. Early in the story, Jon tells Tania about his home life before he left for the conference. What do we learn about him? How does this revelation make you feel about Jon and about his actions so far?
13. What do Jon and Rob discover during their last trip outside? How do you feel about what they find?
14. Consider the ending. Why does the author end the novel in this way? Discuss what might happen to Jon, Tomi, and the other survivors.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Guest Book
Sarah Blake, 2019
Flatiron Books
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250244239
Summary
A novel about past mistakes and betrayals that ripple throughout generations, The Guest Book examines not just a privileged American family, but a privileged America. It is a literary triumph.
The Guest Book follows three generations of a powerful American family, a family that “used to run the world.”
And when the novel begins in 1935, they still do. Kitty and Ogden Milton appear to have everything—perfect children, good looks, a love everyone envies.
But after a tragedy befalls them, Ogden tries to bring Kitty back to life by purchasing an island in Maine. That island, and its house, come to define and burnish the Milton family, year after year after year. And it is there that Kitty issues a refusal that will haunt her till the day she dies.
In 1959 a young Jewish man, Len Levy, will get a job in Ogden’s bank and earn the admiration of Ogden and one of his daughters, but the scorn of everyone else. Len’s best friend, Reg Pauling, has always been the only black man in the room—at Harvard, at work, and finally at the Miltons’ island in Maine.
An island that, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this last generation doesn’t have the money to keep.
When Kitty’s granddaughter hears that she and her cousins might be forced to sell it, and when her husband brings back disturbing evidence about her grandfather’s past, she realizes she is on the verge of finally understanding the silences that seemed to hover just below the surface of her family all her life.
An ambitious novel that weaves the American past with its present, Sarah Blake's The Guest Book looks at the racism and power that has been systemically embedded in the U.S. for generations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 10, 1960
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., San Francisco State University; Ph.D., New York University
• Currently—lives in Washington, DC
Born in New York City, Sarah Blake has a BA from Yale University and a PhD in English and American Literature from New York University. She is the author of a chapbook of poems, Full Turn (Pennywhistle Press, 1989); an artist book, Runaway Girls (Hand Made Press, 1997) in collaboration with the artist, Robin Kahn; and two novels. Her first novel, Grange House, (Picador, 2000) was named a "New and Noteworthy" paperback in August, 2001 by the New York Times. Her second novel, The Postmistress, was by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam in February 2010. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Good Housekeeping, US News and World Reports, the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere.
Sarah taught high school and college English for many years in Colorado and New York. She has taught fiction workshops at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA, The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD, the University of Maryland, and George Washington University. She lives in Washington, DC.
Extras
From a 2009 Barnes & Noble interview:
• In the three summers while I was in college, I tried out three different lives in my summer jobs—full immersion: intern at an Art Auction house in NYC; kitchen girl at a dude ranch in Montana; jewelry store clerk in a tiny shop on an island off the coast of Sicily. I took the immersion a little too close to heart for my mother—after the second summer, in my incarnation as a cowgirl, I announced I was thinking about quitting college, marrying the cowboy I was dating there, and becoming a rancher. How could I not? The cowboy left me love letters hidden in the horn of my saddle.
• I am a big gardener and re-arranger of furniture. The two are inextricably related, in my mind, to my writing. When I can't figure out a scene, or when I'm stumped as to why a character makes a certain choice—I go out and dig, and plot and plan and rearrange. In the winter, handily, there are similar chances to plot and plan and rearrange inside the house. When I get an idea in my head about how a room might look, I am completely obsessed with trying it out, right then and there. One night I was certain that the problem with our living room was the rug and that the answer to the problem lay upstairs on the third floor in my son's bedroom. Never mind that it was eleven o'clock and he was fast asleep, and the bed he slept in lay squarely on top of the rug. I jimmied and lifted and snatched the rug out from under the sleeping child, hauled it down the three flights, and then lifted and lowered and hauled the furniture around down in the living room. By the time my husband came home at midnight, I had just finished rolling the rug out in the living room. We both stared at it. It was completely and totally wrong.
• I come from a big family of singers—around the campfire, in a cappella groups in school, in the back of the car—and I love to sing, love to hear singing. Similarly, I grew up listening to grown ups talking at dinner, extending dinner late into the night, all of us ranged around a big table in the house my grandparents bought in the "30s in Maine. My idea of happiness is just that: many faces, many generations, much discussion, candles and talk while the dishes shift in the sink.
• I love fog. I love rain. I love the moment right after a play ends—the second of pure silence when everyone in the theatre, actors and audience, are joined—before the clapping starts and the actors bow and we pick up our lives again.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is her response:
There are all the books I read curled up on a couch in summer childhood—all the "Little House" books, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, A Wrinkle in Time—that gave me worlds right there where I sat, while the hot wind of New Haven drifted over the window sill. That feeling of reading worlds, of diving down below the surface of my own life made me a reader, an irredeemable bookworm.
But it was To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf that made me want to become a writer. I read her sentences—all the beauty and the longing in them—and I simply wanted to write them myself. The way her characters thought and moved, the light and sound she captured of a summer day—all this I wanted to make mine. She showed me how to capture what she calls "moments of being"—clear, resonant times in our lives of pure beauty, caught just as they vanish.
(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Blake can write with the dramatic heft of Arthur Miller…The Guest Book is monumental in a way that few novels dare attempt.
Washington Post
There are glimmers of To the Lighthouse in Blake’s lyrical and questing new novel.
BBC
An American epic in the truest sense…Blake humanely but grippingly explores the heart of a country whose past is based in prejudice.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] powerful family saga… Blake has a particular knack for dialogue; she knows exactly how to reveal the hidden depths of the characters both through what is said and what is unsaid. The result is potent and mesmerizing.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Breathtaking…Blake saturates each scene with sensuous and emotional vibrancy while astutely illuminating sensitive moral quandaries. Blake deftly interrogates the many shades of prejudice and ‘the ordinary, everyday wickedness of turning away.’ Blake’s brilliant and ravishing novel promises to hit big.
Booklist
(Starred review) The story of the Miltons engages not just with history and politics, but with the poetry of the physical world. This novel sets out to be more than a juicy family saga―it aims to depict the moral evolution of a part of American society. Its convincing characters and muscular narrative succeed on both counts.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Evie teaches her students that…
[H]istory is sometimes made by heroes, but it is also always made by us. We, the people, who stumble around, who block or help the hero out of loyalty, stubbornness, faith, or fear. Those who wall up—and those who break through walls. The people at the edge of the photographs. The people watching—the crowd. You.
Do you agree with her? How do the characters in this novel shape history? And whose history do they shape?
2. Central to Paul’s academic work is the idea that "there is the crime and there is the silence." How does that statement echo throughout the novel, specifically in his and Evie’s conversations about the stumble stones in Germany? How is that silence a kind of willed forgetting? Do you think Ogden was right to not divest from Nazi Germany and try to work within the regime? Was this a version of silence that Paul is criticizing? What kinds of silences do we reproduce in our lives in this country now?
3. Evie reflects at one point:
The jobs had been gotten, the beds made, the dishes washed, the children sprouted. The wheel had stopped and now what? Where, for instance, was the story of a middle-aged orphan with the gray streak in her hair, the historian who had rustled thirteenth-century women’s lives out of fugitive pages who believed more than most that there was no such thing as the certainty of a plot in the story of a life, in fact who taught this to students year in and year out, and yet who found herself lately longing above all else for just that? Longing, against reason, for some kind of clear direction, for the promise of a pattern. For the relief, she pulled against the shoulder strap of her satchel, the unbearable relief of an omniscient narrator.
What does she mean? What is the significance of the author’s choice to make Evie middle-aged?
4. During her trip to America, Elsa tells Mrs. Lowell:
Forgive me… but it is a mistake to think news happens somewhere else. To others. The news is always about you. You must simply fit yourself in it. You must see how—you must be vigilant.
Do you agree? How does her warning resonate for each generation of Miltons? Do you think the author is consciously echoing Evie with what she tells her students (question #1) in referencing "you"? And if so,what does the author suggest about collective responsibility?
5. On the porch later that evening, after Kitty says no to Elsa, Kitty is maddened by Elsa’s reading of her refusal. "For god’s sake," she says, "it’s not so simple." And Elsa replies, "But it is. It’s very simple. It always is." Is Kitty’s refusal simple? How might Neddy’s death have shaped her thoughts? Does it let her off the hook in terms of Elsa’s request?
6. Evie says of her parents’ generation that they seem to have "inherited their days rather than chosen them, made do with what they had, and so they peopled the rooms rather than lived in them, ghosting their own lives." Is that a fair assessment? Discuss the similarities and differences between the various generations of Miltons in this novel in relation to what they have been given.
7. At Evelyn’s engagement, Ogden toasts:
Behind every successful man is a good woman… Or so the saying goes. But I suggest a good woman is the reason men put up walls and gardens, churches. The reason men build at all. At the center of every successful man is a good woman.
How do you read this in light of Evie’s thesis about the anchoress? Discuss the gender dynamics at play in the different marriages in this novel.
8. Watching Moss on the night of the party, Reg thinks:
Moss sang his heart on his sleeve, as if all the gates of the world would open with him, believing that they could, with all his heart. But here on the island, the care with which Reg was being handled, the pronounced attention was merely the opposite face of the face that gave the hard stare, or the push between the ribs, or the whip. Both faces turned to the black man as though to a wall that had to be climbed or knocked down—and always with the infinitesimal moment of wariness that slid immediately into anger or polite regard.
How does Reg’s point of view here counter and complicate Moss’s optimistic belief that he can write a song that unites all Americans? What is Reg seeing? Do you think the Miltons ever come to see what he sees?
9. Moss describes to Reg the experience of seeing A Raisin in the Sun: "It was the first time I’d ever seen my own story on the stage… To see something, to want it that bad. To want and want and know that it’s impossible—it’s impossible." What do you think about Moss, a privileged white man, making a claim like that regarding a seminal play about the experience of African Americans?
10. Paul tells Evie, "There is no story until we’re dead, and then our children tell it. We are just living. Your mother was living. Stop looking for what’s not there. Nothing happened—life happened. Reality is not a story." Do you agree? What does Paul’s view suggest about how much we can ever truly know our family members? How does Paul’s statement complicate Evie’s view of history? Given that we know there was a story beneath the story of Joan’s life, a story that Evie couldn’t see, what does this suggest about the relation between truth and reality? What does that suggest about the act of novel writing?
11. What does Crockett’s Island represent for each generation of Miltons? Discuss the pros and cons of Evie’s generation fighting to keep the island or let it go. In what ways can a place both bind and define us? And how does the story we tell about ourselves connect to that place? Does your family have a place with a similar kind of significance?
12. At the end of the novel, before he says goodbye, Reg asks Evie what she will do with the island now that she knows its more complicated truths, and when she says, "I don’t know," he answers, "That’s a start." What do you think he means by that? What has started? What is the novel asking about the relation between knowledge of the past and responsibility to one another in the present? How does Reg’s response ask us to think about what we do once we see the full story (or history) of a place? In light of Elsa’s words in the beginning (question#4), perhaps it’s not so simple, but is it hopeful?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Ask Again, Yes
Mary Beth Keane, 2019
Scribner
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982106980
Summary
A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, and the power of forgiveness.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren’t close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city.
What goes on behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come.
Ask Again, Yes by award-winning author Mary Beth Keane, is a beautifully moving exploration of the friendship and love that blossoms between Francis’s youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian’s son, Peter, who are born six months apart.
In the spring of Kate and Peter’s eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact.
But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past.
Ask Again, Yes reveals how the events of childhood look different when reexamined from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so.
Kate and Peter’s love story is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 3, 1977
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—Rockland County, New York
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives in Pearl River, New York
Mary Beth Keane was born in the Bronx to Irish parents and grew up in Rockland County, New York. She attended Barnard College and the University of Virginia, where she received an MFA in Fiction.
In 2011, Keane was named one of the National Book Foundation’s "5 under 35," and in 2015 she was awarded a John S. Guggenheim fellowship for fiction writing.
Keane currently lives in Pearl River, New York, with her husband and their two sons. She is the author of The Walking People (2009), Fever (2013), and Ask Again, Yes (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[T]houghtful, compassionate…. Keane’s novel… illustrates the mutability of memory and the softening effects of time. "We repeat what we don’t repair," Keane writes, and Kate and Peter’s story poignantly demonstrates how grace can emerge from forgiveness, no matter how hard-won.
Publishers Weekly
Remarkable.
Booklist
(Starred review) Keane's story embraces family lives in all their muted, ordinary, yet seismic shades… [and] offers empathy and the long view.… Tender and patient, the novel avoids excessive sweetness while planting itself deep in the soil of commitment and attachment. Graceful and mature. A solidly satisfying, immersive read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Ask Again, Yes grapples with the idea of learning from the past. What lessons do Kate and Peter learn from their parents’ experiences? What mistakes did they repeat?
2. Do Francis Gleeson and Anne Stanhope—both Irish immigrants—experience things differently than their American-born spouses? Do you think this contributes to tensions within the couples, and between the two families?
3. Ask Again, Yes is set over the course of four decades. How do attitudes toward mental health and addiction change over that time? How do these changes affect the characters? For example, how do Brian and George Stanhope differ in their attitudes toward drinking?
4. Francis marvels at how many pieces had to come together for a woman like Lena to exist and for him to have met her (page 7). What role do you think fate plays in this novel? Do the characters have free will to make their own choices? Why or why not?
5. When Kate learns about the episode at Food King, she momentarily thinks that it couldn’t have been as dramatic as Peter was making it out to be. Then she realizes that it was, in fact, the opposite, "that it was such a big deal that the adults had been careful not to talk about it in front of the kids" (page 85). What role does keeping secrets—from children, parents, partners—play throughout the novel? Do you think certain events could have been avoided if the characters had been more open with each other?
6. The idea of inherited traits and characteristics appears frequently in the novel. Trauma is another thing that is passed down from generation to generation. Do Kate and Peter address the legacy of trauma they’ve inherited from their parents?
7. Redemption is an important theme throughout Ask Again, Yes. Discuss the many ways in which the characters forgive each other.
8. The novel is divided into four parts. Discuss the significance of each of the part titles—"Gillam," "Queens," "Two by Two," and "Muster." Why do you think Mary Beth Keane chose to structure the story this way?
9. At the end of the book, Francis thinks, "It was always the same. People didn’t change" (page 385). Do you think he really believes this?
10. What does the book’s title, "Ask Again, Yes," mean to you?
11. This novel is specific to these two families, yet it also feels universal in its themes. Do you see echoes of your family’s history in the Gleesons or the Stanhopes?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Night Tiger
Yangsze Choo, 2019
Flatiron
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250175458
Summary
An utterly transporting novel set in 1930s colonial Malaysia, perfect for fans of Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee
Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts.
But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for.
Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.
As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths racks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren’s increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.
Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love.
But anchoring this dazzling, propulsive novel is the intimate coming-of-age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972-73
• Raised—Malaysia
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area
Yangsze Choo is a fourth-generation Malaysian of Chinese descent. Choo grew up in Malaysia but, accompanying her diplomat father, spent her childhood in various countries. As a result, she says that she can eavesdrop (badly) in several languages.
After graduating from Harvard University, Choo worked as a management consultant and at a startup before writing her first novel. The Ghost Bride (2013), set in colonial Malaya and the elaborate Chinese world of the afterlife, is about a peculiar historic custom called a spirit marriage. The novel is a soon-to-be-aired Netflix series!
The Night Tiger (2019) is Yangzse's second novel.
Choo lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California, with her husband, two children, and a potential rabbit. She loves to eat and read, and often does both at the same time. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This is the kind of book that when you read it, you really are transported back to that time and place…. [Choo has] captured, in a very atmospheric way, the time period and the superstitions [of colonial Malaysia in the 1930s]. It’s a pretty wonderful book.
Nancy Pearl - NPR
A mesmerizing tale of murder, romance, and superstition…. So vividly told, you can practically smell the oleander blossoms outside Acton’s house. The Night Tiger is worth a prowl.
USA Today
A book for fans of Isabel Allende and for those who love a murder mystery with a beautiful backdrop.
Glamour
Fans of Isabel Allende will likely soar through Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger at a breakneck pace, so you might want to clear your schedule before sitting down to read it.
PopSugar
So engrossing you could spend a day reading this lush historical novel without staring at your phone once…. A sweeping novel with something for everyone—and incredible writing.
Refinery29
(Starred review) [R]iveting…. Mythical creatures, conversations with the dead, lucky numbers, Confucian virtues, and forbidden love provide the backdrop for Choo’s superb murder mystery.… Choo wonderfully combines a Holmes-esque plot with Chinese lore.
Publishers Weekly
Choo presents complex characters and multilayered stories in a vivid setting that coalesce into a richly evocative and mesmerizing tale in which myths and folklore intertwine in daily life. For fans of Kate Mosse or Isabel Allende. —Joy Gunn, Paseo Verde Lib., Henderson, NV
Library Journal
(Starred review) A work of incredible beauty...Astoundingly captivating and striking in its portrayal of love, betrayal, and death, The Night Tiger is a transcendent story of courage and connection.
Booklist
(Starred review) [R]eaders will be so caught up in the natural and supernatural intrigue that the serious themes here… are absorbed with equal delicacy. Choo has written a sumptuous garden maze of a novel that immerses readers in a complex, vanished world.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel’s title evokes the story of the were tiger, "a beast who, when he chooses, puts on a human skin and comes from the jungle into the village to prey on humans." What is the significance of that Malayan folktale in the novel? What does it represent for the different characters?
2. Discuss the structure of the novel, alternating between Ren’s and Ji Lin’s perspectives. How do their narrative styles and worldviews compare? Do you prefer one to the other? How would the novel have been different had it only been from one perspective?
3. Discuss Ren’s relationship with Dr. MacFarlane. Does Ren’s desire to bring the finger to his former master’s grave come from a place of love or fear? How is Ren’s life shaped by the masters for whom he works, and how does he determine his own fate?
4. As a surgeon in Batu Gajah, William Acton straddles two worlds, that of the locals and that of the foreigners. What is his relationship to the local people, specifically the young women he sleeps with? Do you think his impact on the community is ultimately positive or negative? What does this novel have to say about race and class more generally?
5. Ji Lin is a more talented student than her stepbrother, Shin, but because she is a girl, she isn’t allowed to continue on to medical school with him. How does this novel portray gender dynamics in colonial Malaya? How do Ji Lin, Lydia, and the other women in the novel either conform to or rebel against societal expectations? What parallels do you see with today’s world?
6. At the beginning of the novel, Ji Lin leads two different lives—one as a dressmaker’s apprentice and one as "Louise," a dance-hall instructor. What are the pros and cons of each role? Does she find a way to reconcile these two sides of herself by the end of the novel?
7. Ji Lin reflects, "When people talked about being lucky, perhaps they simply wanted to feel powerful, as though they could manipulate fate." Discuss the role of superstition in this novel, in which the supposed luck of certain numbers in Chinese tradition motivates many of the characters. What about in your own life? Do you consider yourself to be superstitious?
8. While speaking with Ji Lin about the other Confucian Virtues, Yi notes, "there’s something a bit wrong with each of us." How do each of these characters—Ji Lin(knowledge), Ren (humanity), Shin (integrity), Yi (righteousness), and William/Lydia (ritual)—stray from their namesake values? At the end of the novel, are they more"right" or "wrong"?
9. In Chinese culture, the five Confucian Virtues are considered a matched set. Ji Lin reflects: "I had the odd fancy that the five of us were yoked by some mysterious fate. Drawn together, yet unable to break free, the tension made a twisted pattern. We must either separate ourselves, or come together." Discuss the tension between independence and dependence for these characters.
10. In his conversations with Ji Lin, Yi hints that the Confucian Virtue Li, meaning order or ritual, has been disrupted. What are some examples from the novel of characters, relationships, and other elements that are seemingly out of order or unconventional?
11. Discuss Ji Lin’s relationships with the men in her life. How do her experiences at the dance hall shape her views of men, in particular Shin? At the end of the novel, she wonders, "Had I managed to catch up to Shin, or had he, by playing a cool and patient game, ensnared me instead?" What does she mean, and what do you think the answer is? Do you think Ji Lin and Shin will ultimately get married?
12. Why do you think Yi disappears from Ji Lin’s and Ren’s lives at the end of the novel? What previously unfinished business does he complete? Discuss how the supernatural twines through this novel. Do you believe that the dead can continue to communicate with the living, as Yi does?
13. Although Lydia is proven to be a murderer, she also works hard to improve the lives of Malayan women. Does her charity work at all redeem her in your eyes? Do you think she is in part a victim of her circumstances?
14. The novel ends with Ji Lin, Shin, Ren, Ah Long, and Rawlings all headed to Singapore. What do you think the future holds for them? Are you glad the ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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