The Girl Before
J.P. Delaney, 2017
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425285046
Summary
An enthralling psychological thriller that spins one woman’s seemingly good fortune, and another woman’s mysterious fate, through a kaleidoscope of duplicity, death, and deception.
Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.
The request seems odd, even intrusive—and for the two women who answer, the consequences are devastating.
EMMA
Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street.
The house is an architectural masterpiece: a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings. But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control: no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform its occupant—and it does.
JANE
After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space—and to its aloof but seductive creator.
Moving in, Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home’s previous tenant, a woman similar to Jane in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror, as the girl before.. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
The Girl Before is the first psychological thriller from JP Delaney, a pseudonym for a writer who has previously written bestselling fiction under other names. It is being published in thirty-five countries. A film version is being brought to the screen by Academy Award–winning director Ron Howard. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The stars of The Girl Before are an architect, two women and a high-tech house so sadistic that it practically spanks them.... [The novel] generates a fast pace with frequent cuts between chapters labeled “Then: Emma” and “Now: Jane.” And it milks suspense from matching scenes in which Emma and Jane do exactly the same things with Edward, who consciously sets up these parallels. That’s the good news. The downside is the author’s clumsy trickery. No spoilers here, but the novel’s denouement is improbable enough to have flown in from outer space.
Janet Maslin - New York Tims
[A] riveting psychological thriller.... Writing with precision and grace, Delaney strips away the characters’ secrets until the raw truth of each is revealed. That Emma and Jane act in often foolhardy ways hasn’t prevented rights sales in...30 markets and movie rights to...Ron Howard.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A masterfully crafted spellbinder...guaranteed to astonish.
Booklist
Little...can be said without destroying what little suspense Delaney has managed.... [I]t all seems so obvious. But wait—there's a twist!... [H]opelessly fake characters and...red herrings and reversals, 1 Folgate St. is a house...collapsing under the weight of its own materials.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. As you were reading, did you engage with the survey questions alongside Jane and Emma? How would your answers differ from theirs? Were there any questions in particular that stood out to you? Did you surprise yourself with any of your responses?
2. Emma and Jane have a lot in common, but there are also striking differences between the two women. Compare and contrast these two characters, and discuss some of the ways in which their differences and similarities influenced their relationships.
3. How does living at One Folgate Street impact each of the women? In what ways do our environments shape our experiences? If you could make one change to your current living environment that would have an impact on your behavior, what would it be?
4. Describe your personal style when it comes to home décor and architecture. How does that style shape or reflect your personality? Would you want to live in a minimalist space like One Folgate Street?
5. On page 235, Jane finds Edward’s discarded sketch—the pentimento image with two overlaid versions of her face. What did you make of that moment? What do you think the image meant to Edward?
6. Discuss Emma’s relationship with Saul. What do you think really happened there?
7. Could you forgive Jane’s deceptiveness, as revealed at the end of the novel? Were you surprised by her confession?
8. What do you think of Edward’s dream to create a community of homes like One Folgate Street? Could such a project ever really work successfully? Why or why not?
9. Which character did you relate to the most in this novel? Why?
10. Describe Simon’s relationship with each of the women.
11. Emma inspires passion and obsession in many of the men who fall into her orbit. What quality or qualities make her so compelling? Have you ever known someone like Emma?
12. Make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Caroline: Little House, Revisited
Sarah Miller, 2017
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062685346
Summary
In this novel authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust, Sarah Miller vividly recreates the beauty, hardship, and joys of the frontier in a dazzling work of historical fiction, a captivating story that illuminates one courageous, resilient, and loving pioneer woman as never before — Caroline Ingalls, "Ma" in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books.
In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family, for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory.
Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril.
The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone, sickness tended without the aid of doctors, and babies birthed without the accustomed hands of mothers or sisters.
But Caroline’s new world is also full of tender joys. In adapting to this strange new place and transforming a rough log house built by Charles’ hands into a home, Caroline must draw on untapped wells of strength she does not know she possesses.
For more than eighty years, generations of readers have been enchanted by the adventures of the American frontier’s most famous child, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House books. Now, that familiar story is retold in this captivating tale of family, fidelity, hardship, love, and survival that vividly reimagines our past. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Sarah Miller began writing her first novel at 10 years old, and has spent half her life working in libraries and bookstores. She is the author of Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller, which was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and nominated for numerous state award lists. Sarah lives in Michigan with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Through assured prose, Miller puts us in those conversations, showing us the fear and uncertainty behind Wilder’s implacable, unflappable "Ma," but also her strength and devotion to her husband and children.… [T]his is a stunning novel. Miller’s research is impeccable and her writing exquisite.
Historical Novels Review
Now, Miller draws [Caroline Ingalls] onto center stage, gifting readers with a beautiful portrait of a remarkable, true pioneer. This is a beautiful tribute to a mother and a family who followed their dreams and a tale that is as uplifting and real as the original Little House books.
RT Book Reviews
A stunning and sentimental novel brimming with historical detail, Caroline grants readers a chance at a new experience with an old familiar story.
Bustle
This character-driven narrative balances a submissive and dutiful wife with a passionate young woman who openly and tenderly admires her husband and relishes their lovemaking. Verdict: Not to be missed by Wilder's grown-up fans. —Wendy W. Paige, Shelby Cty. P.L. Morristown.
Library Journal
Readers who grew up cherishing the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder will find much to savor in Caroline.… Full of lyrical descriptions of the wild beauty of the Kansas countryside, Caroline is a well-researched and thoughtful look at the inner life of one of America’s most famous frontier women.
BookPage
Caroline is compellingly mindful, particularly when she studies the effects of a tightly knit family life on her daughters and of relentless, brutal work on her husband, herself, and her far-flung neighbors in Indian territory. Beguiling, pulse-pounding historical fiction.
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 Caroline: Little House, Revisited … then take off on your own:
1. If you have been a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series, how well does Sarah Miller adhere to the basic story, especially her characterization of "Ma"?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: How would you describe Caroline? Talk about the ways in which Miller explores the emotional as well as the geographical terrain of a life lived on the edge of civilization, especially as it applies to Ma.
3. Follow-up to Question 2: What does Caroline observe about the effects of prairie life — and a tight-knit family — on her husband and daughters.
4. Does Miller's book include any surprises — new details or altered events — that are not found in Wilder's original telling? (Consider, for instance, Carrie's birth.)
5. How does this new book handle the treatment of the Osage Indians? Does Miller's treatment differ from Wilder's? In what way are Caroline's attitudes at variance with her husband's. Would you say either of their views reflect those of the era's culture?
6. Discuss the pioneer life, its hardships and perils. Talk especially about the difficulties for women and the myriad responsibilities that normally fall under their purview: tending to illness, giving birth, keeping house. How might you have fared, making your way across the frontier in a wagon or living in a rough-hewn log cabin? What inner strengths would you have had to tap into?
7. Do visit the author's webpage where she lays out all the sources she has based her novel on. Does undertanding the degree of Miller's research make a difference in how you view her novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis
Patti Callahan, 2018
Thomas Nelson, Inc.
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780785224501
Summary
In a most improbable friendship, she found love. In a world where women were silenced, she found her voice: An exquisite novel of Joy Davidman, the woman C. S. Lewis called "my whole world."
When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage.
Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters.
Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy.
In this masterful exploration of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had.
At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story—a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—R.N., Auburn University; M.C.H., Georgia State
• Currently—lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama
New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry has published nine novels: Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks, Between the Tides, The Art of Keeping Secrets, Driftwood Summer, The Perfect Love Song, Coming up for Air, and And Then I Found You—her most recent. Hailed as a fresh new voice in southern fiction, Henry has been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and nominated four different times for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Novel of the Year. Her work is published in five languages and in audiobook by Brilliance Audio.
Henry has appeared in numerous magazines including Good Housekeeping, skirt!, South, and Southern Living. Two of her novels were Okra Picks and Coming up For Air was selected for the August 2011 Indie Next List. She is a frequent speaker at fundraisers, library events and book festivals. A full time writer, wife, and mother of three—Henry lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Patti Callahan Henry grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of an Irish minister, and moved south with her family when she was 12 years old. With the idea that being a novelist was “unrealistic,” she set her sights on becoming a pediatric nurse, graduating from Auburn University with a degree in nursing, and from Georgia State with a Master’s degree in Child Health.
She left nursing to raise her first child, Meagan, and not long after having her third child, Rusk, she began writing down the stories that had always been in her head. Henry wrote early in the mornings, before her children woke for the day, but it wasn’t until Meagan, then six, told her mother that she wanted “to be a writer of books” when she grew up, that Henry realized that writing was her own dream as well. She began taking writing classes at Emory University, attending weekend writers’ conferences, and educating herself about the publishing industry, rising at 4:30 AM to write. Her first book, Losing the Moon, was published in 2004. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Patti Callahan took a character on the periphery, one who has historically taken a back seat to her male counterpart, and given her a fierce, passionate voice. For those fans of Lewis curious about the woman who inspired A Grief Observed this book offers a convincing, fascinating glimpse into the private lives of two very remarkable individuals.
New York Journal of Books
Callahan vividly enters the life of a woman searching for both God and romantic love in this pleasing historical novel…. Making full use of historical documentation, Callahan has created an incredible portrait of a complex woman.
Publishers Weekly
[W]ill not disappoint.… Callahan's writing is riveting and her characters spring to life to create a magical and literary experience that won't be soon forgotten. —Christine Sharbrough, Industry, TX
Library Journal
Readers…of C.S. Lewis will relish learning about the woman who inspired some of his most famous books. Others will find the slow burn of the romance between the two mesmerizing [and] …will appreciate reading about this vibrant and intelligent woman.
Booklist
[H]ypnotic.… Spanning more than a decade, this slow-burning love story will be especially satisfying to writers and C.S. Lewis fans, as there are many references to his literary canon and his famous stories of Narnia. Callahan's prose is heartfelt and full of grace.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. Joy’s early life was fraught with sickness and rigid family expectations. How did these years shape her love life moving forward? How did these early years influence her newfound friendship with Jack? How did she overcome them to love?
2. When Joy’s cousin, Renee moved into the house with her two young children, things began to change. Have you sheltered family members in a time of need, and how did that change your family dynamics? What were your first reactions to Renee moving in?
3. Joy’s heartbreak at Bill’s announcement that he and Renee were in love was painful. Do you believe it was because she loved Bill? Felt betrayed? That Renee was the "comparison" used all of her life and now that memory surged forward from childhood? Have you ever been in a similar circumstance where old heartbreak was relived in a new form?
4. Joy expressed distress about how some of Jack’s friends didn’t approve of her or appear to like her. Why do you think this was true? How did this affect their friendship?
5. Many of Jack and Joy’s friends talk about their intellectual compatibility, of Joy’s ability to keep up with Jack and how they both had incredible photographic memories. Did this bring them together? Did this help love grow? How?
6. Joy made tough decisions about moving to England and taking her sons from their father. How did this affect Davy and Douglas? What do you believe she could she have done differently?
7. Bill fought to have his sons return to America as Joy appeared to be on her deathbed. Jack wrote a scathing letter and forbid it. How did this change the boys’ lives from that point on?
8. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the novel is when Joy discovers she has terminal cancer at the same time that Jack admits his true love and desire to marry her. How does this affect her recovery? How does this eros change what happens next?
9. Joy wonders about Jack’s relationship with both Janie Moore and Ruth Pitter. How did his relationships with these women affect his heart and love for Joy? Was Joy jealous or curious? How did it affect her view of him and their relationship?
10. What part of this story touched you the most? What part of this story changed you the most?
(Questions issued by the publisher. See the Book Club Kit for more info on the novel.)
Code Name Helene
Ariel Lawhon, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385544689
Summary
Based on the thrilling real-life story of Socialite spy Nancy Wake, comes the newest feat of historical fiction from the author of I Was Anastasia, featuring the astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII.
Told in interweaving timelines organized around the four code names Nancy used during the war, Code Name Helene is a spellbinding and moving story of enduring love, remarkable sacrifice and unfaltering resolve that chronicles the true exploits of a woman who deserves to be a household name.
It is 1936 when Nancy Wake, an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper, meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca.
No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name.
As LUCIENNE CARLIER Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border and earns a new nickname from the Gestapo for her remarkable ability to evade capture: THE WHITE MOUSE.
With a five million franc bounty on her head, Nancy is forced to escape France and leave Henri behind. When she enters training with the Special Operations Executives in Britain, she is told to use the name HELENE with her comrades.
Finally, with mission in hand, Nancy is air-dropped back into France as the deadly MADAM ANDREE, where she claims her place as one of the most powerful leaders in the French Resistance. She becomes known for her ferocious wit, her signature red lipstick, and her ability to summon weapons straight from the Allied Forces.
But no one can protect Nancy if the enemy finds out these four women are one and the same, and the closer to liberation France gets, the more exposed she—and the people she loves—will become. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Ariel Lawhon is co-founder of the popular online book club, She Reads, a novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus).
Lawhon's first novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014) is centered around the still-unsolved disappearance of New York State Supreme Court Judge, Joseph Crater. Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
Her second novel, Flight of Dreams (2016) is a fictional exploration of the mystery behind the the 1937 Hindenberg blimp explosion. I Was Anastasia (2018), Lawhon's third novel, follows Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia Romonov, the lone survivor of the execution of the Czar of Russia and his family. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Lawhon’s vivid, fast-paced narrative will keep readers turning the pages, and a detailed afterword makes plain how much of the account is factual. This entertaining tale does justice to Lawhon’s larger-than-life subject.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Wake's heroism, alongside the bravery and sacrifice of all who fought, [give] hope that even in the darkest times there are real-life heroes. Readers will be transfixed by this story of a woman who should be a household name. —Susan Santa, Shelter Rock P. L., Albertson, NY
Library Journal
(Starred review) Magnificent…. Lawhon carries us into the heart of the French resistance [and] into the mind of a badass heroine with uncanny instincts…. Even long after the last page is turned, this astonishing story of Wake’s accomplishments will hold readers in its grip.
Booklist
(Starred review) [P]lenty of fireworks and heroism as they converge to explain all. The author begs forgiveness in an informative afterword for all the drinking and swearing. Hey! No apologies necessary! [C]ompulsively readable… Lawhon's best book to date.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review) A spellbinding work of historical fiction… [and] one of the most sensual romance novels you’ve ever read.… She is real, this really did happen is the mantra you may find yourself repeating, in awe of every page.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. Nancy’s argument with her Hearst editor takes place in 1936, but is probably not all that different from challenges that face women in the workforce today. We later learn that Nancy agreed was told that her work for Hearst would be published without not carry a byline … unless she took a male pen name, which she refused to do. What would you have done?
2. "Men don’t know what to do with a woman who can clip her own cigar." What are the implications of Stephanie’s statement? And does it still hold true today?
3. Nancy is accused of using "profanity as a weapon" to gain her male colleagues’ respect. Do you think this is true?
4. What are your thoughts regarding the shift of perspective from first person to third person? Did it result in a more multi-dimensional portrait of Nancy?
5. Discuss the shift back and forth in time between Nancy’s life before and during the war. Did it give you a different view at the ways in which war alters lives, both great and small?
6. "The thing about lipstick, the reason it’s so powerful, is that it is distracting." Nancy’s beloved red lipstick also gives her confidence. Is there a product or accessory that does something similar for you?
7. Had you heard of Nancy Wake prior to reading Code Name Helene? Did the novel inspire you to learn more about her?
8. Did the dynamic of Nancy and Henri’s relationship surprise you? In what ways does it differ from other stories of love in wartime that you have read before?
9. The consequences of Marceline’s betrayal are staggering. Do you think her obsession with Henri is the only reason for her choices? Or is her decision deeper and more complex?
10. Nancy’s trek across the Pyrenees and her 72-hour bike ride are harrowing. Her grit and stamina are awe-inspiring. Do you think you could endure the physical and mental stress of such a journey?
11. What is the one thing about Nancy that you found the most surprising
12. If Code Name Helene were made into a movie, who would you like to see cast in the roles of Nancy and Henri?
13. Did you read the Author’s Note before or after finishing the novel? How did it change your feelings about the novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Sleepwalker
Chris Bohjalian, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804170994
Summary
A spine-tingling novel of lies, loss, and buried desire—the mesmerizing story of a wife and mother who vanishes from her bed late one night.
When Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, her children fear the worst.
Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction manifests in ways both bizarre and devastating. Once, she merely destroyed the hydrangeas in front of her Vermont home. More terrifying was the night her older daughter, Lianna, pulled her back from the precipice of the Gale River bridge.
The morning of Annalee's disappearance, a search party combs the nearby woods. Annalee's husband, Warren, flies home from a business trip. Lianna is questioned by a young, hazel-eyed detective. And her little sister, Paige, takes to swimming the Gale to look for clues.
When the police discover a small swatch of fabric, a nightshirt, ripped and hanging from a tree branch, it seems certain Annalee is dead, but Gavin Rikert, the hazel-eyed detective, continues to call, continues to stop by the Ahlbergs' Victorian home.
As Lianna peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Annalee's disappearance, she finds herself drawn to Gavin, but she must ask herself: Why does the detective know so much about her mother? Why did Annalee leave her bed only when her father was away? And if she really died while sleepwalking, where was the body?
Conjuring the strange and mysterious world of parasomnia, a place somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, The Sleepwalker is a masterful novel from one of our most treasured storytellers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—White Plains, New York, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Anahid Literary Award, 2000; New England Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Lincoln, Vermont
Christopher Aram Bohjalian, who goes by the pen name Chris Bohjalian, is an American novelist. Bohjalian is the author of nearly 20 novels, including New York Times bestsellers Midwives, Secrets of Eden, The Law of Similars, Before You Know Kindness, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and The Night Strangers.
Bohjalian is the son of Aram Bohjalian, who was a senior vice president of the New York advertising agency Romann & Tannenholz. Chris Bohjalian graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an account representative for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York.
He and his wife lived in a co-op in Brooklyn until March 1986, when the two were riding in a taxicab in which the driver refused to let them out of the car for 45 minutes, ignoring all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight, the driver dropped them off at a near-deserted street in front of a crack house, where the police were conducting a raid and Bohjalian and his wife were forced to drop to the ground for their protection. The incident prompted the couple to move from Brooklyn; Bohjalian said, "After it was all over, we just thought, "Why do we live here?" A few days later, the couple read an ad in The New York Times referencing the "People's Republic of Vermont," and in 1987 the couple moved to Lincoln, Vermont.
Early career
After buying their house, Bohjalian began writing weekly columns for local newspaper and magazine about living in the small town, which had a population of about 975 residents. The Concord Monitor said of Bohjalian during this period, "his immersion in community life and family, Vermont-style, has allowed him to develop into a novelist with an ear and empathy for the common man." Bohjalian continued the column for about 12 years, writing about such topics as his own daily life, fatherhood and the transformation of America. The column has run in the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Bohjalian has also written for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Bohjalian's first novel, A Killing in the Real World, was released in 1988. Almost two decades after it was released, Bohjalian said of the book, "It was a train wreck. I hadn't figured things out yet." His third novel, Past the Bleachers, was released in 1992 and adapted as a Hallmark Channel television movie in 1995.
In 1998, Bohjalian wrote his fifth book, Midwives, a novel focusing on rural Vermont midwife Sibyl Danforth, who becomes embroiled in a legal battle after one of her patients died following an emergency Caesarean section.
The novel was critically acclaimed and was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the October 1998 selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which helped push the book to great financial success. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Victoria Blewer has often described her husband as having "a crush" on the Sybil Danforth character. In 2001, the novel was adapted into a Lifetime Movie Network television film starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Spacek said the Danforth character appealed to her because "the heart of the story is my character's inner struggle with self-doubt, the solo road you travel when you have a secret."
Later career
Bohjalian followed Midwives with the 1999 novel The Law of Similars, about a widower attorney suffering from nameless anxieties who starts dating a woman who practices alternative medicine. The novel was inspired by Bohjalian's real-life visit to a homeopath in an attempt to cure frequent colds he was catching from his daughter's day care center. Bohjalian said of the visit, "I don't think I imagined there was a novel in homeopathy, however, until I met the homeopath and she explained to me the protocols of healing. There was a poetry to the language that a patient doesn't hear when visiting a conventional doctor."
The protagonist, a father, is based in part on Bohjalian himself, and his four-year-old daughter is based largely on Bohjalian's daughter, who was three when he was writing the book., Liz Rosenberg of The New York Times said the novel shared many similarities with Midwives but that it paled in comparison; Rosenberg said, "Unlike its predecessor, it fails to take advantage of Bohjalian's great gift for creating thoughtful fiction featuring characters in whom the reader sustains a lively interest." Megan Harlan of The Boston Phoenix described it as "formulaic fiction" and said Bohjalian focused too much on creating a complex plot and not enough of complex characterizations. The Law of Similars, like Midwives, made the New York Times bestsellers list.
He won the New England Book Award in 2002, and in 2007 released "The Double Bind," a novel based on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
In 2008, Bohjalian released Skeletons at the Feast, a love story set in the last six months of World War II in Poland and Germany. The novel was inspired by an unpublished diary written by German citizen Eva Henatsch from 1920 to 1945. The diary was given to Bohjalian in 1998 by Henatsch's grandson Gerd Krahn, a friend of Bohjalian, who had a daughter in the same kindergarten class as Bohjalian's daughter. Bohjalian was particularly fascinated by Henatsch's account of her family's trek west ahead of the Soviet Army, but he was not inspired to write a novel from it until 2006, when he read Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, Max Hastings' history of the final years of World War II. Bohjalian was struck not only by how often Henatsch's story mirrored real-life experiences, but also the common "moments of idiosyncratic human connection" found in both. Skeletons of the Feast was considered a departure for Bohjalian because it was not only set outside of Vermont, but set in a particular historical moment.
His 2010 novel, Secrets of Eden, was also a critical success, receiving starred reviews from three of the four trade journals (Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly), as well as many newspapers and magazines. It debuted at # 6 on The New York Times bestseller list.
His next novel, The Night Strangers, published in 2011, represents yet another departure for Bohjalian. The is both a gothic ghost story and a taut psychological thriller.
He has written a weekly column for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since February 1992 called "Idyll Banter." His 1,000th column appeared in May 2011.
Personal comments
In a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview, Bohjalian offered up these personal comments:
I was the heaviest child, by far, in my second-grade class. My mother had to buy my pants for me at a store called the "Husky Boys Shop," and still she had to hem the cuffs up around my knees. I hope this experience, traumatizing as it was, made me at least marginally more sensitive to people around me.
I have a friend with Down syndrome, a teenage boy who is capable of remembering the librettos from entire musicals the first or second time he hears them. The two of us belt them out together whenever we're driving anywhere in a car.I am a pretty avid bicyclist. The other day I was biking alone on a thin path in the woods near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, and suddenly before me I saw three bears. At first I saw only two, and initially I thought they were cats.
Then I thought they were dogs. Finally, just as I was approaching them and they started to scurry off the path and into the thick brush, I understood they were bears. Bear cubs, to be precise. Which is exactly when their mother, no more than five or six feet to my left, reared up on her hind legs, her very furry paws and very sharp claws raised above her head in a gesture that an optimist might consider a wave and guy on a bike might consider something a tad more threatening. Because she was standing on a slight incline, I was eye level with her stomach—an eventual destination that seemed frighteningly plausible. I have never biked so fast in my life in the woods. I may never have biked so fast in my life on a paved road.
I do have hobbies—I garden and bike, for example—but there's nothing in the world that gives me even a fraction of the pleasure that I derive from hanging around with my wife and daughter.
He lives with his wife and daughter in Lincoln, Vermont, where he is active in the local church and the Vermont theater community—always off-stage, never on.
Writing style
Bohjalian novels often focus on a specific issue, such as homelessness, animal rights and environmentalism, and tend to be character-driven, revolving around complex and flawed protagonists and secondary characters.
Bohjalian uses characteristics from his real life in his writings; in particular, many of his novels take place in fictional Vermont towns, and the names of real New Hampshire towns are often used throughout his stories. Bohjalian said, "Writers can talk with agonizing hubris about finding their voices, but for me, it was in Vermont that I discovered issues, things that matter to me."
His novels also tend to center around ordinary people facing extraordinarily difficult situations resulting from unforeseen circumstances, often triggered by other parties. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Sex, secrets and the mysteries of sleep: These are the provocative ingredients in Chris Bohjalian’s spooky thriller The Sleepwalker. It’s a dark, Hitchcockian novel… Trust me, you will not be able to stop thinking about it days after you finish reading this book.
Carol Memmott - Washington Post
Great mystery writers, like great magicians, have the ability to hide the truth that’s right before your eyes. Best-selling novelist Chris Bohjalian is at the full power of his literary legerdemain in his newest book, The Sleepwalker…. Bohjalian teases and tantalizes the reader…. Masterful plotting evokes a magician who distracts his audience to look this way, not that way. The ending will have the reader rereading for missed clues. The Sleepwalker is Bohjalian at his best: a creepily compelling topic and an illusionist’s skill at tightening the tension. This is a novel worth losing sleep over.
Patty Rhule - USA Today
Literary and compelling, a combination so rare I’m tempted to apply for federal intervention.... I hesitate to say more, because to know too much may spoil the fun of discovery. Rest assured the denouement is perfect. This is Bohjalian at his very best.
Curt Shleier - Seattle Times
A perfectly crafted surprise ending…. Bohjalian succeeds in making us accomplices in a dark world we never knew existed.
Laura Patten - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
After a chronic sleepwalker goes missing, the general consensus is accidental death. But nothing is what it seems in this gripping mystery.
Cosmopolitan
[A] stylish fusion of mystery and domestic thriller.... Powered by brilliantly rendered characters, an intriguing topic (parasomnia), and a darkly lyrical...this novel has only one weak point—its highly improbable conclusion, which may leave readers unsatisfied.
Publishers Weekly
It takes unexpected answers to solve this mystery. Bohjalian’s latest will captivate readers who crave an edge-of-your-seat page-turner they can’t put down. —Susan Carr
Library Journal
Annalee Ahlberg…is never seen again…. Bohjalian raises essential questions of identity and heredity, sexuality and desire, bringing the Ahlberg family conundrum into focus with a didn’t-see-that-one-coming powerhouse ending. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
The problem with the novel is primarily one of shape. The first two-thirds of the book are spent wondering whether Annalee is missing or dead.... [T]he only reason the ending is a surprise is because...[of] red herrings. Sensational subject matter aside, this thriller is a sleeper.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What were your initial theories about Annalee’s disappearance? As the characters reacted to the evidence, what did they reveal about themselves?
2. When you read Annalee’s emails, along with reminiscences of her, what were your impressions? What was it like to get to know her through Lianna’s eyes?
3. Does Warren’s career as a literature professor (specializing in poetry, no less) enhance his ability to cope with his wife’s sleepwalking, or is science the only way to understand it?
4. How does the relationship between Lianna and Paige compare to the relationship between you and your siblings? What determines whether siblings will take care of each other or become rivals?
5. Spoiler alert! Lianna looks like her mother and takes on some of Annalee’s responsibilities even though she is only twenty-one years old. Is it ethical for thirty-three-year-old Gavin to date Lianna, or is he the key to her healing?
6. The author provides detailed images of how a missing person’s body might look after being ravaged by a river. How did this description affect you? Does the physical body or the psyche or the soul play the primary role in making us who we are?
7. The Sleepwalker takes place in the year 2000, just before the dawn of smart phones and the profusion of social media. How does this make for a better storyline?
8. Lianna has a talent for magic. Why is she drawn to creating illusions, and to being in control of the reality behind them?
9. As the Ahlbergs confront the role of genetics in their family tragedy, what issues are raised about the heart of our identities? Are the Ahlberg girls shaped more by nature or nurture?
10. Spoiler alert! How did you react as you read about the court cases of defendants who were sleepwalking (and the sexual assault accusations Gavin faced when he was younger, described on page 177)? Who is responsible for protecting society from the crimes of a sleepwalker?
11. How would you describe the portrait of a marriage that emerges in the novel? How was trust formed and tested between Annalee and Warren? Did secrecy strengthen or weaken their relationship?
12. In the end, when the meaning of the italicized passages became clear, what did you discover about the nature of guilt? Could anything have prevented Annalee’s disappearance?
13. Spoiler alert! What does sexsomnia tell us about the human sex drive? When Lianna has sleep sex with Gavin for the first time, is she having an encounter with his true self?
14. What surprising facts did you learn about sleepwalking, and sleep in general, as you read this novel? If you were a sleepwalker, what would your strongest impulses be?
15. In a review for Library Journal, Barbara Hoffert observed that Chris Bohjalian “never writes the same book twice. From the rural Vermont-set Midwives to the historical The Sandcastle Girls to the close-at-hand dystopia of Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, he charts crucial moments in different settings and with different sensibilities.” Although he is a master of variety, what common strands appear in his depictions of humanity? How did The Sleepwalker enhance your experience of other Bohjalian novels?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)