The Glass Hotel
Emily St. John Mandel, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525521143
Summary
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: "Why don't you swallow broken glass."
High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients' accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives.
Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison.
Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Where—Comox, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—Toronto Dance Theater.
• Awards—Prix Mystere de la Critique (France)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA
"St. John's my middle name. The books go under M."
Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.
Mandel's latest novel, The Glass Hotel, was released in 2020 to high praise and numerousf starred reviews. Her fourth novel, Station Eleven, published in 2014 was long listed for the National Book Award. All three of her previous novels—Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet—were Indie Next Picks, and The Singer's Gun was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France.
Mandel's short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She lives in New York City with her husband. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The question of what is real—be it love, money, place or memory—has always been at the heart of Ms. Mandel’s fiction... her narratives snake their way across treacherous, shifting terrain. Certainties are blurred, truth becomes malleable, and in The Glass Hotel the con man thrives…. Ms. Mandel invites us to observe her characters from a distance even as we enter their lives, a feat she achieves with remarkable skill. And if the result is a sense not only of detachment but also of desolation, then maybe that’s the point.
Anna Mundow - Wall Street Journal
The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker…. Freshly mysterious…. Mandel is a consummate, almost profligate world builder. One superbly developed setting gives way to the next, as her attention winds from character to character, resting long enough to explore the peculiar mechanics of each life before slipping over to the next…. That Mandel manages to cover so much, so deeply is the abiding mystery of this book. The 300 pages of The Glass Hotel work harder than most 600-page novels…. The disappointment of leaving one story is immediately quelled by our fascination in the next…. The complex, troubled people who inhabit Mandel’s novel are vexed and haunted by their failings, driven to create ever more pleasant reflections of themselves in the glass.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
[E]erie, compelling…. The ghosts in The Glass Hotel are directly connected to its secrets and scandals, which mirror those of our time…. Like all Mandel’s novels, The Glass Hotel is flawlessly constructed…. The Glass Hotel declares the world to be as bleak as it is beautiful, just like this novel.
Rebecca Steinitz - Boston Globe
Mandel’s prose is such a pleasure to read… [I] gave way to real delight in the skill with which Mandel brings together themes that have occupied previous sections of the novel, revisiting earlier characters and incidents from surprising new perspectives in a narrative sleight of hand…. Mandel’s conclusion is dazzling.
Chris Hewitt - Minneapolis Star Tribune
An ephemeral quality permeates the novel…. It’s a thrill when the puzzle pieces start to fit together…. The final chapter is haunting, taking readers full circle…. It’s a sense readers will enjoy as well when they lose themselves in Mandel’s novel.
Associated Press
[S]triking… and timely…. In Vincent and Paul, Mandel has created two of the most memorable characters in recent American fiction…. Mandel's writing shines throughout the book, just as it did in Station Eleven. She's not a showy writer, but an unerringly graceful one, and she treats her characters with compassion but not pity. The Glass Hotel is a masterpiece… a stunning look at how people react to disasters, both small and large, and the temptation that some have to give up when faced with tragedy.
Michael Shaub - NPR
One effect of Mandel’s book is to underscore the seemingly infinite paths a person might travel…. There is a suggestion, toward the end of The Glass Hotel, that frequent commerce with the dead (or the imaginary) might reconnect us to the living…. Perhaps it is with this in mind that Mandel has constructed a fantasy for our temporary habitation. Her story offers escape, but the kind that depends on and is inseparable from the world beyond it.
Katy Waldman - New Yorker
Mandel... specializes in fiction that weaves together seemingly unrelated people, places and things. The Glass Hotel... is no exception... Kaleidoscopic... Mandel dissects the surreal division between those who are conscious of ongoing crimes, and those who are unwittingly brought into them... The Glass Hotel... examine[s] how we respond to chaos after catastrophe.
Annabel Gutterman - Time
Deeply imagined, philosophically profound…. The Glass Hotel moves forward propulsively, its characters continually on the run…. Richly satisfying… [and] ultimately as immersive a reading experience as its predecessor [Station Eleven], finding all the necessary imaginative depth within the more realistic confines of its world…. Revolutionary.
Ruth Franklin - Atlantic
(Starred review) [W]onderful…. [A] brother and sister… navigate heartache, loneliness, wealth, corruption, drugs, ghosts, and guilt.… This ingenious, enthralling novel probes the tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Highly recommended; with superb writing and an intricately connected plot that ticks along like clockwork, Mandel offers an unnerving critique of the twinned modern plagues of income inequality and cynical opportunism
Library Journal
(Starred review) Another tale of wanderers whose fates are interconnected.… [With] nail-biting tension… Mandel weaves an intricate spider web of a story.… A gorgeously rendered tragedy.
Booklist
(Starred review) Long-anticipated.… [A] ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical.… In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences… . A strange, subtle, and haunting novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Never Coming Back
Alison McGhee, 2017
Houghlin MIfflin Harcourt
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328767561
Summary
When Clara Winter left her rural Adirondacks town for college, she never looked back. Her mother, Tamar, a loving but fiercely independent woman who raised Clara on her own, all but pushed her out the door, and so Clara built a new life for herself, far from her roots and the world she had always known.
Now more than a decade has passed, and Clara, a successful writer, has been summoned home. Tamar has become increasingly forgetful, and can no longer live on her own. But just as her mother’s memory is declining, Clara’s questions are building. Why was Tamar so insistent that Clara leave, all those years ago? Just what secrets was she hiding?
The surprising answers Clara uncovers are rooted in her mother’s love for her, and the sacrifices Tamar made to protect her. And in being released from her past—though now surrounded by friends from it—Clara can finally look forward to the future.
Never Coming Back is a brilliant and piercing story of a young woman finding her way in life, determined to know her mother — and by extension herself — before it's too late. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 8, 1960
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—Middlebury College
• Awards—Great Lakes College Association National Fiction Award
• Currently—lives in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Alison McGhee is an American author, who has published several picture books, books for children's books, and adult novels, the most recent of which is Never Coming Home (2017). She is a New York Times bestselling author, the winner of numerous awards. Her most recent adult novel is Never Coming Back (2017).
McGhee's first novel, Rainlight (1998), follows the characters left behind after the sudden and accidental death of Starr Williams. It received positive reviews and won both the Great Lakes College Association National Fiction Award and the Minnesota Book Award in 1999.
Her second adult book, Shadow Baby (2000), is witnessed through the eyes of a young girl who befriends an old man as part of a school project. It was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. McGhee continued her adult themes with Was It Beautiful?
McGhee then began publishing children's picture books. Countdown to Kindergarten (2002) and Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teeth (2004), both share the same main character who begins the first story as she enters kindergarten and is in first grade by the second book.
Turning her hand to young adult novels, McGhee introduced Snap (2004) and All Rivers Flow to the Sea (2005)
Poetry came next. In Only a Witch Can Fly McGhee a little girl dreams about flying on her broom. The book is a "story-poem," written in sestina form — six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line stanza at the end.
All told, McGhee has published more than 20 books in five different genres: adult, children's prose, children's poetry, children's picture, and young adult books. McGhee is also a professor of creative writing at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota and is the mother of three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/25/2017.)
Book Reviews
This sensitive novel…offers readers an intimate and painfully aware portrait of the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's on its victims as well as the people who must watch their tormented loved ones tumble into the disease's terrible abyss … Never Coming Back [is] a novel about profound sadness, insurmountable loss and the possibility of allowing new people into your life.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] poignant meditation on the relationship between a mother and daughter…. Though this well-written story will appeal to a broad range of readers for its rich characterization, mothers and daughters will especially find Clara’s and Tamar’s story moving and memorable.
Publishers Weekly
McGhee’s latest novel… not only tackles the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship and the unresolved conflicts that can have lasting effects on both women, it also informs readers about how Alzheimer’s can quickly and cruelly ravage a person.
Library Journal
[A] quietly powerful novel…. [Readers] will appreciate McGhee’s magnetic prose and her ability to pack a richly detailed story into a slim novel. Atmospheric and introspective.
Booklist
“A luminous novel…. [T]he author’s gift for subtly poetic language and her believable dialogue make Clara’s journey worth following. McGhee has an almost musical ability to repeat the themes of her novel with enough variation to keep them fresh.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Never Coming Back … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Clara's childhood? What kind of mother was Tamara, and how would you describe the relationship of mother and daughter? (Have you read Alison McGhee's 2000 novel, Shadow Baby, which recounts Clara's early years?)
2. Follow-up to Question 1: The relationship between Clara and her mother lies at the crux of the novel. How does Clara's relationship to Tamara change during the course of the story? Also, talk about the contradictory nature of Clara's feelings.
3. Are there any parallels in this book for your life in coming to know a parent as both an individual and mother or father?
4. Clara poses an interesting question in the novel's opening lines when wondering when her mother began the fall into the rabbit hole of Alzheimer's. "Did something insider her change in a single moment? Quit working? Decide enough was enough?" What is your understanding of the disease process — how and when it begins to alter the mind/brain? To what extent is the individual aware of the altered mind?
5. Talk about the irony of Clara's profession as a writer — putting into words what is difficult for people to express on their own.
6. What is the significance of the novel's title "never coming back"? To whom does it apply?
7. Were you surprised by the secret Clara uncovers at the end of the book? Or did you see it coming?
8. What do you think of the author's use of the game show Jeopardy as a device to frame questions that Clara wants answers to? Clever? Hokey? Funny? Distracting?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Sadie
Courtney Summers, 2018
Wednesday Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250105714
Summary
A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial-like podcast which follows the clues she's left behind. And an ending you won't be able to stop talking about.
Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.
But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him.
When West McCray—a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America—overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late.
Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1986
• Where—Belleville, Ontario, Canada
• Education—self-directed
• Awards—Cybils Award
• Currently—lives near Belleville, Ontario
Courtney Summers is a Canadian writer of young adult fiction. Her best known works are Cracked Up to Be, This is Not a Test, and All the Rage.
Career
In 2008, when she was 22, Summers published her first novel, Cracked Up to Be. The debut won the 2009 Cybils Award for YA Fiction. Her second novel, Some Girls Are, came out 2010 and received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal and was a 2010 Goodreads Choice Nominee in the YA Fiction category. Both novels were repackaged in 2013 as a 2-in-1 edition titled What Goes Around.
Summers' third novel, Fall for Anything, was released in 2010, receiving starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist.
Up to this point, Summers' novels were all contemporary and realistic. But her 2002 novel, This is Not a Test, is set during a zombie apocalypse. It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was optioned for television by Sony. In 2015, Summers released Please Remain Calm, an e-novella sequel to This is Not a Test.
Summers' fifth novel, All the Rage, was her hardcover debut. Released in 2015, it was chosen as the sixth official selection of Tumblr's Reblog Book Club and received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal. It was also named a Spring 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection.
On April 14, 2015, to mark the release of All the Rage, Summers launched the hashtag campaign #ToTheGirls, encouraging people to send messages of support and positivity to girls across social media. #ToTheGirls trended worldwide on Twitter. Notable press coverage included The Today Show. It was named one of the most important feminist hashtags of 2015 by Mic News.
Sadie came out in 2018. Like her other books, it too received stars from the four major book reviewers, ths time from all four: Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly.
Summers has also contributed short stories to the anthologies Defy the Dark and Violent Ends. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/5/2018.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [A] taut, suspenseful book about abuse and power that feels personal, as if Summers …can’t take one more dead or abused girl. Readers may well feel similarly (Ages 13–up).
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) —[C]ompelling.… It's impossible to not be drawn into this haunting thriller of a book. A heartrending must-have (Gr 9-up). —Amanda Mastrull
School Library Journal
(Starred review) Though Sadie’s story is occasionally a bit overwrought, her hunt for Mattie’s killer is captivating, and Summers excels at slowly unspooling both Sadie’s and West’s investigations at a measured, tantalizing pace. —Sarah Hunter
Booklist
(Starred review) Sadie is seeking her sister's killer; months later, podcast producer West McCray seeks to learn why Sadie abandoned her car and vanished.… [C]hild sexual abuse permeates the novel…. A riveting tour de force (Ages14-18).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In what ways does the dual narrative structure of Sadie add to the reading experience?
2. In the first episode of The Girls, how does the way West describes the town of Cold Creek set up the tone for the rest of the story?
3. What role do the towns Sadie passes through (Cold Creek, Montgomery, Langford, and Farfield) play in this story? Each town has a distinct description; what do these settings tell you?
4. How does the podcast element add to the overall story of Sadie?
5. Why do you think podcasts have taken listeners by storm? What do you think it is about them that appeals to listeners?
6. What forces are working against Sadie? What obstacles has she had to overcome in order to survive?
7. Out of all the people who Sadie comes across in her journey, which person (or people) do you think has the most effect on her? And who do you think Sadie affected the most; why?
8. What effect do you think the postcard from L.A. was supposed to have versus the actual effect it had on Sadie and Mattie? Do you think that the sender regretted sending the postcard?
9. What do you think Sadie would say to West if they ever met in person? Do you think she’d like him? Would she trust him with her story?
10. At the end of the book, what do you think happened to Sadie?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
top of page (summary)
The World That We Knew
Alice Hoffman, 2019
Simon & Schuster
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501137570
Summary
This stirring tale takes place in 1941, during humanity’s darkest hour, and follows three unforgettable young women who must act with courage and love to survive.
In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime.
She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea.
Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.
Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.
What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love?
In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1952
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Adelphi University; M.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Alice Hoffman was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing. She currently lives in Boston ,Massachusetts.
Beginnings
Hoffman’s first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. She credits her mentor, professor and writer Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, the writer Maclin Bocock Guerard, for helping her to publish her first short story in the magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff then contacted her to ask if she had a novel, at which point she quickly began to write what was to become Property Of, a section of which was published in Mr. Solotaroff’s magazine, American Review.
Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published a total of twenty-three novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.
Highlights
♦ Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights.
♦ Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
♦ Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools.
♦ Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.
♦ Blackbird House is a book of stories centering around an old farm on Cape Cod.
♦ Hoffman’s recent books include Aquamarine and Indigo, novels for pre-teens, and the New York Times bestsellers The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, and The Ice Queen.
♦ Green Angel, a post-apocalyptic fairy tale about loss and love, was published by Scholastic and The Foretelling, a book about an Amazon girl in the Bronze Age, was published by Little Brown. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year.
♦ More recent novels include The Third Angel, The Story Sisters, the teen novel, Green Witch, a sequel to her popular post-apocalyptic fairy tale, Green Angel.
♦ The Red Garden, published in 2011, is a collection of linked fictions about a small town in Massachusetts where a garden holds the secrets of many lives.
Recognition
Hoffman’s work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People magazine. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.
She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay "Independence Day," a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts.
In 2011 Alice published The Dovekeepers, which Toni Morrison calls "... a major contribution to twenty-first century literature" for the past five years. The story of the survivors of Masada is considered by many to be Hoffman’s masterpiece. The New York Times bestselling novel is slated for 2015 miniseries, produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, starring Cote de Pablo of NCIS fame.
Most recent
The Museum of Extraordinary Things was released in 2014 and was an immediate bestseller, the New York Times Book Review noting, "A lavish tale about strange yet sympathetic people, haunted by the past and living in bizarre circumstances… Imaginative…"
Nightbird, a Middle Reader, was released in March of 2015. In August of 2015, The Marriage Opposites, Alice’s latest novel, was an immediate New York Times bestseller. "Hoffman is the prolific Boston-based magical realist, whose stories fittingly play to the notion that love—both romantic and platonic—represents a mystical meeting of perfectly paired souls," said Vogue magazine. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A] hymn to the power of resistance, perseverance and enduring love in dark times…. [G]ravely beautiful…. Hoffman the storyteller continues to dazzle.
New York Times
[A] bittersweet parable about the costs of survival and the behaviors that define humanity. [Hoffman] makes the reader care… about the fates of all of the characters. [She] offers a sober appraisal of the Holocaust and the tragedies and triumphs of those who endured its atrocities.
Publishers Weekly
One of America’s most brilliant novelists…. Hoffman uses her signature element of magical realism to tackle an intolerably painful chapter in history. Readers know going in that their hearts will be broken, but they will be unable to let go until the last page. —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
An exceptionally voiced tale of deepest love and loss...one of [Hoffman’s] finest. WWII fiction has glutted the market, but Hoffman’s unique brand of magical realism and the beautiful, tender yet devastating way she explores her subject make this a standout.
Booklist
Hoffman employs her signature lyricism to express the agony of the Holocaust with a depth seldom equaled in more seemingly realistic accounts.…Ava the golem is the heart of the book.… A spellbinding portrait of what it means to be human in an inhuman world.
Kirkus Reviews
[A] breathtaking, deeply emotional odyssey through the shadows of a dimming world while never failing to convince us that there is light somewhere at the end of it all. This book feels destined to become a high point in an already stellar career.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. This novel is both historical fiction and magical realism. How does Alice Hoffman achieve her unique writing style? What details does she use from each genre? What do each add to the emotional content of the story?
2. After reading the novel, re-examine the title. Consider who "we" refers to in relation to the story and to your own life.
3. How do you feel about Ava’s relationship with the heron? Has an animal ever affected your spiritual life? Are emotions bound to human experience?
4. In one of the darkest periods of human history, why do the characters still yearn to live even as the world is falling apart? What makes life precious? Is it love, family, memory, hope?
5. In fairy tales, beasts are often humane, and humans are often cruel. In The World That We Knew the same is true. Discuss this theme in the novel and in your favorite fairy tales.
6. Julien and Victor Lévi are brothers with very different paths. How does each handle their wartime experience? What do they share despite their differences, and what aspects of their past influences them most?
7. Marianne initially leaves her father’s farm “to find something that belonged to her and her alone” (99), which leads her to Paris. Despite ending up where she began, do you think she has achieved this goal? Why or why not? Did her love story surprise you? What do you think the future holds for her?
8. We learn halfway through the book that Hanni instructed her daughter to destroy Ava once Lea is brought to safety. Why do you think Lea defies her mother? Do you think she made the right decision? What may have changed her mind?
9. The book begins with Hanni making a great sacrifice to save her daughter and ends with Ava doing the same. What do these women share? Is it possible to love someone else’s children as if they were your own?
10. Ava is a golem, a mysterious creature of Jewish legend, controlled by her maker and created to do another’s bidding, but something changes. She longs for free will. Do you think she finds it?
11. Ettie yearns to be a scholar and a rabbi, but because she’s female these goals are unavailable to her. How does she create her own fate, and what leads her to rebel against the constraints of gender and history? Does war create opportunities for women to act outside of conventional roles?
12. Lea’s mother’s voice is heard throughout the novel in the italicized sections. The loss of a mother and the loss of a child is central to the story. How are the long-lasting effects of loss woven through the novel?
13. Can Ava posses a soul due to her ability to love? How does love change a world of hate, and how does it affect the characters in the novel?
(Questions by the pubishers.)
Time's Convert
Deborah Harkness, 2018
Penguin Publishing
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399564512
Summary
A novel about what it takes to become a vampire. Set in contemporary Paris and London, and the American colonies during the upheaval and unrest that exploded into the Revolutionary War, Times Convert tells the sweeping story that braids together the past and present.
On the battlefields of the American Revolution, Matthew de Clermont meets Marcus MacNeil, a young surgeon from Massachusetts, during a moment of political awakening when it seems that the world is on the brink of a brighter future.
When Matthew offers him a chance at immortality and a new life, free from the restraints of his puritanical upbringing, Marcus seizes the opportunity to become a vampire. But his transformation is not an easy one and the ancient traditions and responsibilities of the de Clermont family clash with Marcus's deeply-held beliefs in liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
Fast forward to contemporary London, where Marcus has fallen for Phoebe Taylor, a young employee at Sotheby's.
Phoebe decides to become a vampire, too, and though the process at first seems uncomplicated, the couple discovers that the challenges facing a human who wishes to be a vampire are no less formidable in the modern world than they were in the 18th century. The shadows that Marcus believed he'd escaped centuries ago may return to haunt them both—forever.
A passionate love story and a fascinating exploration of the power of tradition and the possibilities for change, Time's Convert will delight fans of the All Souls trilogy and all readers of magic, the supernatural, and romance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—near Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Mount Holyoke College; M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D., University of California-Davis
• Currently—lives in southern California
Deborah Harkness is a professor of history at the University of Southern California. She has received Fullbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships, and her most recent scholarly work is The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. She also writes an award-winning wine blog, Good Wine Under $20. (From the publisher.)
More
In her own words
I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and have lived in western Massachusetts, the Chicago area, Northern California, upstate New York, and Southern California. In other words, I’ve lived in three out of five time zones in the US! I’ve also lived in the United Kingdom in the cities of Oxford and London.
For the past twenty-eight years I’ve been a student and scholar of history, and received degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis. During that time I researched the history of magic and science in Europe, especially during the period from 1500 to 1700.
The libraries I’ve worked in include Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the All Souls College Library at Oxford, the British Library, London’s Guildhall Library, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Newberry Library—proving that I know my way around a card catalogue or the computerized equivalent. These experiences have given me a deep and abiding love of libraries and a deep respect for librarians. Currently, I teach European history and the history of science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
My previous books include two works of non-fiction: John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (Yale University Press, 2007). It has been my privilege to receive fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. And I was honored to receive accolades for my historical work from the History of Science Society, the North American Conference on British Studies, and the Longman’s/History Today Prize Committee.
In 2006, I took up my keyboard and entered the world of blogging and Twitter. My wine blog, Good Wine Under $20, is an online record of my search for the best, most affordable wines. These efforts have been applauded by the American Wine Blog Awards, Saveur.com, Wine & Spirits magazine, and Food & Wine magazine. My wine writing has also appeared on the website Serious Eats and in Wine & Spirits magazine. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[R]ich but meandering…. The large cast can be daunting, and those not already familiar with the All Souls trilogy may be lost, but returning readers will find this a delightful excursion.
Publishers Weekly
Harkness starts off in Revolutionary America, where young surgeon Marcus MacNeil leaps at Matthew de Clermont's offer to make him a vampire. Marcus's liberty-and-brotherhood ideals sit uneasily with de Clermont's traditionalism, a conflict that resonates all the way to contemporary times.
Library Journal
Effortlessly sweeping across time and continents… Harkness replaces the captivating Matthew and Diana dynamic with a passionate new love story.
Booklist
The book rambles from storyline to storyline …[with] epiphanies that don’t feel entirely supported by what came before.… [The] usual loving attention both to historical detail and romantic/familial angst, but perhaps the author will apply her talents to fresh fictional territory in the future.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)