Redhead by the Side of the Road
Anne Tyler, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525658412
Summary
A sparkling new novel about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection.
Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit.
A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life.
But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son.
These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.
An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 25, 1941
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Duke University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize (see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Anne Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published more than 20 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the third won it.
She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" (New York Times), and her "rigorous and artful style" and "astute and open language" (also, New York Times). While many of her characters have been described as quirky or eccentric, she has managed to make them seem real through skillfully fleshing out their inner lives in great depth.
Her subject in all her novels has been the American family and marriage: the boredom and exasperating irritants endured by partners, children, siblings, parents; the desire for freedom pulling against the tethers of attachments and conflicted love; the evolution over time of familial love and sense of duty. Tyler celebrates unremarkable Americans and the ordinary details of their everyday lives. Because of her style and subject matter, she has been compared to John Updike, Jane Austen, and Eudora Welty, among others.
Childhood
The eldest of four children, she was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father, Lloyd Parry Tyler, was an industrial chemist and her mother, Phyllis Mahon Tyler, a social worker. Both her parents were Quakers who were very active with social causes in the Midwest and the South. Her family lived in a succession of Quaker communities in the South until they settled in 1948 in a Quaker commune in Celo, in the mountains of North Carolina near Burnsville.
The Celo Community settlement was founded by conscientious objectors and members of the liberal Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, with community labor needs shared by the residents. Tyler lived there from age 7 through 11 and helped her parents and others with caring for livestock and organic farming. While she did not attend formal public school in Celo, lessons were taught in art, carpentry, and cooking in homes and in other subjects in a tiny school house. Her early informal training was supplemented by correspondence school.
Her first memory of her own creative story-telling was of crawling under the bed covers at age 3 and "telling myself stories in order to get to sleep at night." Her first book at age 7 was a collection of drawings and stories about "lucky girls...who got to go west in covered wagons." Her favorite book as a child was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. Tyler acknowledges that this book, which she read many times during this period of limited access to books, had a profound influence on her, showing how the years flowed by, people altered, and nothing could ever stay the same."
This early perception of changes over time is a theme that reappears in many of her novels decades later, just as The Little House itself appears in her novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Tyler also describes reading Little Women 22 times as a child. When the Tyler family left Celo after four years to move to Raleigh, NC, 11-year-old Anne had never attended public school and never used a telephone. This unorthodox upbringing enabled her to view "the normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise."
Raleigh, North Carolina
It also meant that Tyler felt herself to be an outsider in the public schools she attended in Raleigh, a feeling that has followed her most of her life. She believes that this sense of being an outsider has contributed to her becoming a writer:
I believe that any kind of setting-apart situation will do [to become a writer]. In my case, it was emerging from the commune…and trying to fit into the outside world.
Despite her lack of public schooling prior to age 11, Anne entered school academically well ahead of most of her classmates in Raleigh. With access now to libraries, she discovered Eudora Welty, Gabriel García Márquez, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. Welty remains one of her favorite writers, and she credits Welty with showing her that books could be about the everyday details of life, not just about major events.
During her years at N. B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, she was inspired and encouraged by a remarkable English teacher, Phyllis Peacock. Peacock had previously taught the writer Reynolds Price, under whom Tyler would later study at Duke University. She would also later teach the writer Armistead Maupin. Seven years after high school, Tyler would dedicate her first published novel to "Mrs. Peacock, for everything you’ve done."
Education
Tyler won a full scholarship to Duke University, which her parents urged her to go accept it because they also needed money for the education of her three younger brothers. At Duke, Tyler enrolled in Reynolds Price's first creative writing class, which also included a future poet, Fred Chappell. Price was most impressed with the sixteen-year-old Tyler, describing her as "frighteningly mature for 16," "wide-eyed," and "an outsider." Years later Price would describe Tyler as "one of the best novelists alive in the world,… who was almost as good a writer at 16 as she is now."
While an undergraduate, Tyler published her short story "Laura" in the Duke literary journal Archive, for which she won the newly created Anne Flexner award for creative writing. She wrote many short stories, one of which impressed Reynolds Price so that he later stated that it was the "most finished, most accomplished short story I have ever received from an undergraduate in my thirty years of teaching." "The Saints in Caesar’s Household" was published in Archive also and won her a second Anne Flexner award. This short story led to her meeting Diarmuid Russell, to whom Price had sent it with kudos. Russell, who was an agent for both Reynolds Price and for Tyler’s "crowning influence" Eudora Welty, later became Tyler’s agent.
Tyler majored in Russian Literature at Duke—not English—and graduated in 1961, at age 19, having been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. With her Russian Literature background she received a fellowship to graduate school in Slavic Studies at Columbia University although she left after a year without her master's degree. She returned to Duke where she got a job in the library as a Russian bibliographer. It was there that she met Taghi Modarressi, a resident in child psychiatry in Duke Medical School and a writer himself, and they were married a year later (1963).
Early writing
While working at the Duke library—before and after marrying Modarressi—Tyler continued to write short stories, which appeared in The New Yoker, Saturday Evening Post, and Harpers. She also started work on her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, eventually published 1964, followed by The Tin Can Tree in 1965. Years later she disowned both of these novels, as well as many of the short stories she wrote during this period, going so far as to say she "would like to burn them." She feels that most of this early work suffers from the lack of thorough character development and her failure to rework material repeatedly.
After the birth of two children (1965 and 1967), followed by a move from Montreal, Canada, to Baltimore in the U.S., Tyler had little time or energy for writing. She published nothing from 1965 to 1970. By 1970, however, she began writing again and published three more novels by 1974—A Slipping-Down Life, The Clock Winder, and Celestial Navigation. In her own opinion, her writing improved considerably during this period; with her children entering school, she was able to devote more time—and focus more intensely—than at any time since her undergraduate days.
National recognition
With Celestial Navigation, Tyler began to get wider recognition. Morgan's Passing (1980) won her the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction and was nominated for both the American Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
With her next novel (her ninth), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Tyler truly arrived as a recognized artist in the literary world. (She considers Homesick her best work.) Her tenth novel, The Accidental Tourist, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1985. It was also made into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. The popularity of this well-received film further increased the growing public awareness of her work. Her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989 and was Time magazine’s "Book of the Year." It was adapted into a 1994 TV movie, as eventually were four other of her novels.
Since her Pulitzer Prize with Breathing Lessons, Tyler has written 9 more novels, all of favorably reviewed, many Book of the Month Club Main Selections and New York Times Bestsellers.
Analysis
In Tyler’s own words, the characters are the driving forces behind the stories and the starting point for her writing:
I do make a point of writing down every imaginable facet of my characters before I begin a book, trying to get to know them so I can figure out how they’ll react in any situation…..My reason for writing now is to live lives other than my own, and I do that by burrowing deeper and deeper….till I reach the center of those lives.
The magic of her novels starts with her ability to create those characters in the reader’s mind through the use of remarkably realistic details. The late Canadian author Carol Shields, writing about Tyler's characters, observes:
Tyler has always put her characters to work. Their often humble or eccentric occupations, carefully observed and threaded with humor, are tightly sewn to the other parts of their lives, offering them the mixed benefit of tedium and consolation, as well as a lighted stage for the unfolding of their dramatic selves. She also allows her men and women an opportunity for redemption.
Tyler has clearly spelled out the importance of her characters to her stories: "As far as I’m concerned, character is everything. I never did see why I have to throw in a plot, too."
Stylistically, Tyler's writing is difficult to categorize or label. Novelist Cathleen Schine describes how her "style without a style" manages to pull the reader into the story:
So rigorous and artful is the style without a style, so measured and delicate is each observation, so complex is the structure and so astute and open the language, that the reader can relax, feel secure in the narrative and experience the work as something real and natural.
The San Francisco Chronicle made a similar point: "One does not so much read a Tyler novel as visit it.
While Tyler herself does not like to think of her novels in terms of themes, numerous reviewers and scholars have noted the importance of family and marriage relationships to her characters and stories. Reviewing Noah's Compass, New York Times' Mitchiko Kakutani noted that
The central concern of most of this author’s characters has always been their need to define themselves in terms of family—the degree to which they see themselves as creatures shaped by genetics, childhood memories and parental and spousal expectations, and the degree to which they are driven to embrace independent identities of their own.
Tyler is not without her critics. The most common criticism is that her works are "sentimental," "sweet," and "charming and cosy." Even Kakutani has also occasionally bemoaned a "cloying cuteness," noting that "her novels—with their eccentric heroes, their homespun details, their improbable, often heartwarming plots—have often flirted with cuteness." In her own defense, Tyler has said,
For one thing I think it is sort of true. I would say piss and vinegar for [Philip] Roth and for me milk and cookies. I can’t deny it…. [However] there’s more edge under some of my soft language than people realize.
Also, because almost all of Tyler’s work covers the same territory—family and marriage relationships—and are located in the same setting, she has come under criticism for being repetitive and formulaic.
Tyler’s advice to beginning writers:
They should run out and buy the works of Erving Goffman, the sociologist who studied the meaning of gesture in personal interactions. I have cause to think about Erving Goffman nearly every day of my life, every time I see people do something unconscious that reveals more than they’ll ever know about their interiors. Aren’t human beings intriguing? I could go on writing about them forever."
Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/2015.)
Book Reviews
Tyler wastes neither sentence nor scene…. [E]every quirky character… is a vintage Tyler portrait, fully drawn…. [with] an ending both nuanced and satisfying. A master at the small domestic moments that stand in for large and universal truths, Tyler never disappoints. This is a wonderful novel.
Boston Globe
Tyler’s brief novel covers just a few weeks in Micah’s life and it moves so quickly and seamlessly you might think it slight. You would be wrong. As in a short story, each observation, each detail, carries meaning… like so many Anne Tyler characters over the years, Micah Mortimer has trouble seeing what is right in front of his eyes. His inability to do so suffuses this poignant book with almost unbearable loneliness.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[R]eading this enjoyable novel—her 23rd—it struck me that there can’t be a writer, of either gender, who creates more engaging or multi-dimensional men…. Tyler rarely disappoints, but this is her best novel in some time—slender, unassuming, almost cautious in places, yet so very finely and energetically tuned, so apparently relaxed, almost flippantly so, but actually supremely sophisticated.… Tyler’s ability to make you care about her characters is amazing, and never more so than here.
Guardian (UK)
it’s the wealth of brilliantly caught characters that’s her book’s greatest appeal…. Bursting with vitality and variety, it’s a tour de force display —funny, sharply aler of Tyler’s acute enthralment with social interactions and idiosyncratic personalities.… [The]novel fizzes with the qualities—characters who almost leap off the page with authenticity, speech and body language wonderfully caught—that, for more than half a century, have won her such admiration and affection.
Times (UK)
A compassionate, perceptive novel…. While Micah’s cool indifference occasionally feels like a symptom of Tyler’s spare, detached style, his moments of growth bring satisfaction. This quotidian tale of a late bloomer goes down easy.
Publishers Weekly
[W]armly comedic…. Radiantly polished and emotionally intricate…. Tyler’s perfectly modulated, instantly enmeshing, heartrending, funny, and redemptive tale sweetly dramatizes the absurdities of flawed perception and the risks of rigidity.
Booklist
A man straitjacketed in routine blinks when his emotional blinders are removed in Tyler's characteristically tender and rueful latest….Tyler is too warmhearted an artist not to give her sad-sack hero at least the possibility of a happy ending… very moving.
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.)
A Dog's Purpose
W. Bruce Cameron, 2010
Tom Dougherty Assoc.
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780765388117
Summary
Heartwarming, insightful, and often laugh-out-loud funny, A Dog's Purpose is not only the emotional and hilarious story of a dog's many lives, but also a dog's-eye commentary on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between man and man's best friend.
This moving and beautifully crafted story teaches us that love never dies, that our true friends are always with us, and that every creature on earth is born with a purpose.
Bailey's story continues in A Dog's Journey, the charming New York Times and USA Today bestselling direct sequel to A Dog's Purpose. (From the publisher.)
Don't miss the 2017 movie version with Dennis Quaid. Be sure to take a hanky—that goes for guys, too!
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Petosky, Michigan, USA
• Education—West Minster College
• Awards—(for journalism: see below)
• Currently—lives in California
William Bruce Cameron is an American author, columnist, and humorist. He is most famous for his novel A Dog's Purpose (2010) which spent 52 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and is the first book in a two book series that concludes with A Dog's Journey.
A Dog's Purpose, both hard- and soft-cover, spent a year on the New York Times Bestseller list. It became the basis for the 2017 film with Dennis Quaid, Britt Robertson, Peggy Lipton, K.J. Apa, Juilet Rylance, Luke Kirby, John Ortiz and Pooch Hall.
Cameron is also the author of the best-selling self-improvement book, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (2011) which was later adapted into the ABC sitcom of the same name that aired between 2002 and 2005. His book, 8 Simple Rules for Marrying My Daughter, released in 2008, already had a Hollywood movie deal before its publication, with 89 Films and Wendy Finerman, producer of The Devil Wears Prada.
Cameron is the author of How to Remodel a Man (2004), which was excerpted (before publication) in the August 2005 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, and was the subject of the November 1, 2005 Oprah Show.
He is also a columnist for Hawaii's MidWeek Newspaper, with his "8 Simple Rules" column named after his bestselling, a humorous cautionary tales and memories of his life.
Awards
2006 - Robert Benchley Society Award for Humor
2006 - National Society of Newspaper Columnists Award for Best Humor
2011 - Columnist of the Year National Society of Newspaper Columnists. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/1/2017.)
Book Reviews
This is an exquisite, magical, fantastic book. I devoured it in a, "I-resent-anything-that-prevents-me-from-getting-back-to-the-book-why-do-I-have-to-work-my-kid-is-almost-six-can't-he-drive-himself-to-school?" way. I adored Bailey, the dog narrator, and though I got teary, I absolutely loved this book. You should quickly fetch "A Dog's Purpose," an exemplar of the literary canine canon.
Duncan Strauss - NPR, Talking Animals
A tail-wagging three hanky boo-hooe...fiction debut.... Cameron also successfully captures the essence of a dog's amazing capacity to love and protect. And happily, unlike Marley, this dog stays around for the long haul.
Publishers Weekly
Through his many lives, Bailey searches for his purpose, his reason for living and living again. Bailey's courage and determination are tested as he travels towards his goal. Verdict: By turns funny, heartwarming, and touching without being overly sentimental.
Library Journal
Through all [his] lives, Bailey contemplates his purpose in a voice full of curiosity and humor. He ruminates on the usefulness of cats (“none”) and the strange natures of humans (“Am I a good dog or a bad dog? They can’t decide”). This quickly paced, touching novel will charm all animal fans. —Kaite Mediatore Stover
Booklist
[T]he spiritual journey of a dog through four incarnations.... Toby-who understands human language as soon as he hears it-is immediately drawn to the human kindness.... Marley and Me combined with Tuesdays with Morrie.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for A Dog's Purpose...then take off on your own:
1. Talk about how Bruce Cameron uses point of view to find both humor and pathos in his novel.
2. Follow-up to Question 1: How well does the author do in his ability (or not) to mimic what a dog might (might!) be thinking? Is there a certain credibility, or not, to the novel's premise—a thinking dog?
3. Talk about Bailey's feelings toward the cat Smokey. Agree...disagree? In other words are you a cat or a dog person. Or maybe you're both.
4. What is the problem with Todd, and why does his sister save Bailey? Why did Todd take Bailey in Chapter 9?
5. What gives humans purpose in life...and what ultimately does Bailey come to see as his purpose? Is it any different than what our purpose in life might be?
6. Are you a proponent of reincarnation? For humans...or pets?
7. Talk about sociopaths and their treatment of animals. Do some research and talk about the disorder and its diagnoses. Is Todd a sociopath?
8. Do dogs dream?
9. At one point, Bailey is reborn as a working dog. How do they, perhaps, differ from a normal pet, especially in terms of temperament and intelligence?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Marsh King's Daughter
Karen Dionne, 2017
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735213005
Summary
The mesmerizing tale of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future: her father.
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction.
Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too … until she learned precisely how savage he could be.
More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh.
The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King — because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Where—Akron, Ohio, USA
• Raised—Grosse Pointe, Michigan
• Education—University of Michigan
• Currently—lives outside Detroit, Michigan
Karen Dionne was born in 1953 in Akron, Ohio, and moved to the Detroit area with her family at the age of eight. She graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School in 1971 and attended the University of Michigan.
Dionne is the cofounder of the online writers community Backspace, the organizer of the Salt Cay Writers Retreat, and a member of the International Thriller Writers, where she served on the board of directors. She has been named a Humanities Scholar by the Michigan Humanities Council.
Her works include the novels Freezing Point (2008), Boiling Point (2011), The Killing: Uncommon Denominator (2014), and The Marsh King's Daughter (2017). Her short story "Calling the Shots" was published in the anthology, First Thrills: High-Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors (2010). The Killing: Uncommon Denominator was based on the AMC series and nominated for the 2015 SCRIBE Award from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
Dionne's articles and essays have appeared in Writer's Digest Magazine, RT Book Reviews, and Writer's Digest Books. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[S]ubtle, brilliant and mature.… In its balance of emotional patience and chapter-by-chapter suspense, The Marsh King's Daughter is about as good as a thriller can be.
Charles Finch - New York Times Book Review
Dionne’s breathtaking psychological thriller is a fairy tale writ large.… [T]he suspense in the plotting and the cold distance Helena’s voice projects [hold readers] entranced until the stunning climax.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
(Starred review.) [An] exceptional … psychological thriller.… Helena’s conflicting emotions about her father and her own identity elevate this powerful story.
Publishers Weekly
Echoing Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same title, Dionne's latest is a well-crafted, eerie, and unnerving psychological thriller.… [A] strong setting and swift pacing —Emily Hamstra, Seattle
Library Journal
[W]ill keep readers gripped until the end.… For fans of Emma Donoghue’s Room and of novels with strong female leads.
Booklist
Helena becomes a trusted narrator as readers follow her dawning realization that her father is a madman…and her inner struggles keep apprehension high.… [A] thriller with gripping suspense (Age 17-adult). —Judith A. Hayn.
VOYA
Helena's…conflicted feelings about Jacob ring true, but they also undercut tension, throttle pace, and de-fang the book's boogeyman.… Dionne tries to strike a balance between psychological thriller and coming-of-age tale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why hasn’t Helena told Stephen about her past? Is she wrong to have kept it from him? Has she endangered her family by keeping it a secret?
2. Is Helena a good wife?
3. Why do you think the author sets Helena’s story alongside the fable of The Marsh King’s Daughter? In what ways are these two stories similar? How does the fable shape your understanding of Helena’s character?
4. Does Jacob love Helena? Does he deserve her love? If The Hunter's appearance hadn't revealed Jacob's dark side, would Helena ever have broken with her father?
5. In the end, Helena thinks, "I am no longer my father’s shadow" (p. 302). What does she mean by this? How has her idea of her father changed?
6. Was Helena’s mother wrong for not saving her? Does Helena do enough to help her mother? How does Helena’s relationship with her mother change over time? Is Helena a good daughter?
7. While it’s clear Helena loves her two daughters, is she a good mother? In what ways does her own upbringing affect the way she raises Mari and Iris?
8. Is Helena better for being part of society? Is she truly healthier at the story’s end? Will she ever be okay?
9. Does Helena see her responsibilities within her own family differently at the end of the novel?
10. What does Helena mean at the end when she calls it "our story" (p. 291)? How has her life changed during the course of the novel?
11. How does Helena’s relationship with nature shape her view of the world, and does this relationship change once she leaves the cabin? How do the beliefs of the Ojibwa people shape Helena’s values? In what ways do these values suit Helena in the world she discovers outside of the marsh, and in what ways do they hinder her?
12. How does place inform this story? What would the story lose if the setting were changed? Might another setting suit the book, even if it were to change it?
13. Why are we fascinated by stories about survivors of abduction like Helena, whether in fiction or nonfiction?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
The Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385541213
Summary
From the author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks.
As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood.
Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.
What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.
Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction.
Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Marshfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—lives Massachusetts
Erin Morgenstern is a writer and artist. Most of her writings and paintings are fairy tales, in one way or another. She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
In her words
I’m a Cancerian with a Leo Moon and Taurus rising and, yes, I know what all of that means.
I studied theatre & studio art at Smith College.
I grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Steve Carrell now owns the store where I bought penny candy and blue raspberry Slush Puppies as a child. This both amuses and disturbs me.
I was reading Stephen King at age 12 and J.K. Rowling at age 21. This likely speaks volumes about my literary development.
I currently live in Salem, Massachusetts & will be relocating to Boston in the foreseeable future. Kittens are looking forward to the impending influx of cardboard boxes. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A]n abstruse series of fragmented fables... [and] the Starless Sea, a labyrinthine underground repository of stories embedded in paper, ribbons, skin, funeral shrouds and candies…. Sound thrilling? It certainly might be, but it isn’t.... [It] is strangely devoid of tension…. We flit from story to story… never knowing where we might land, or who will turn out to really be who, or if the pirate is a real pirate or a metaphor, or whether any of it has a point.
New York Times Book Review
[M]ythical… a story about stories, all essentially relating to Fate and Time.… The Starless Sea is the kind of book that could spawn a Harry Potter-esque cult. I can imagine fan sites devoted to mapping, analyzing and connecting the dots among its fantastical intricacies. I predict readers for whom it will become a holy of holies, one of their most treasured books of all time. It’s that kind of book.
Long Island Newsday
The most joyous reading experience I’ve had in recent memory.… It is, not to put too fine a point on it, wonderful… a master-class in plotting and prestidigitation… unabashedly romantic… [and] a warm, honeyed bath of words and ideas
Toronto Star
Assuredly beautiful…. The novel reads like panel after panel of mythic illustrations…. It demands that its readers interpret it in an older way; the way we read The Faerie Queene…. Well-written…. the novel’s scope and ambition are undeniable.
Guardian (UK)
A mystical adventure in an enchanted universe.… The novel is not simply a quest narrative—it’s also a meta-examination of stories that demands the reader’s patience—and then rewards it…. Morgenstern’s elegant, poetic prose keeps the pages turning as she begins to draw connections within a web of tales…. For Zachary, that pleasure outweighs any temptation he might have to return to school and his regular life. It leads, instead, to a journey of sacrifice and self-discovery as he unearths his own place in the puzzling book’s narrative. For everyone else, the thrill comes from watching him on the ride.
Time
Erin Morgenstern has magic to make… [in] a new fantastical fairy-tale for grown-ups…. The Starless Sea poses big questions about stories—the ones we read, the ones we live, and the ones we tell ourselves. And at the heart of her work lies the themes that have provoked those comparisons: redemption, sacrifice, fate, time, reincarnation.… The Starless Sea is a door to another world—one just waiting for readers to open it.
Entertainment Weekly
A richly imaginative ode to books and storytelling…. [T]his fantasy-filled novel entwines a mysterious underground world with the story of a grad student on a quest to understand his past.
People
(Starred review) Built from fables, myths, and fairy tales, Morgenstern’s long-awaited second fantastical novel delves into a vast subterranean library… This love letter to bibliophiles is dreamlike and uncanny, grounded in deeply felt emotion, and absolutely thrilling.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] grad student discovers a mysterious book in his university library stacks…. What results is a magnificent quest,unfolding adventure and danger, gold-wrought fantasy, and endless provocation on what storytelling really means. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Morgenstern's new fantasy epic is a puzzlebox of a book…, the very concept of what we expect and want from our stories…. She [gives] the book a mythic quality that will stick with readers long after they put it down. [R]eaders will be clamoring to recapture the magic of [her debut].
Booklist
(Starred review) A withdrawn graduate student embarks on an epic quest to restore balance to the world in this long-anticipated follow-up to The Night Circus.… This novel is a love letter to readers,… an ambitious and bewitching gem of a book with mystery and passion inscribed on every page.
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 THE STARLESS SEA … and then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the underground realm of the Starless Sea. How would you describe the library to someone who has never read the book?
2. Three of the book's most prominent symbols, in a book full of them, are a sword, a key, and a bee. What is the role each symbol plays in the book and what does each signify, or represent?
3. One of the novel's central ideas is that we are our stories. How does this theme unfold during the course of the story?
4. (Follow-up to Question 3) In what way is this book about Zachary's life story—that as a child he made a choice not to open a magical door? What does he learn throughout this book about how that decision altered his life? What about turning points in your own life. Do you think back on some of them and wonder how a different decision might have led you on a completely different path?
5. (Follow-up to Question 4) The novel asks the question, if a single decision can alter the direction of our lives, to what degree are we in charge of our own stories/lives? Are our lives subject to fate, or destiny?
6. In what way is The Starless Sea also about how stories take over our lives? Zachary, for instance is presented with "a labyrinthine of tunnels and rooms filled with stories." How can he (or we) not be drawn in?
7. Morgenstern has packed her novel with literary allusions. Even Zachary's own name contains three of them. Can you unpack others: consider works by Lewis Carroll, Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling. J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Jules Verne. Can you identify others? Are the literary references clever "affectations," or do they actually affect the plot of the novel?
8. Which of the mysterious characters were you most puzzled by… intrigued by… or drawn to? Take any one of the following, for instance: Rhyme, the Keeper, Mirabel (is she Fate…or is she the Moon?), Allegra, Eleanor, and Simon. Any others?
9. Zachary observes at one point that reading a novel is like "playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game." Care to comment on that statement?
10. What was your experience reading The Starless Sea? Was it what you had hoped for? More than you'd hoped for? Less? Did you find yourself entering a world of enchantment… or a cluttered, confusing world? In other words, were you pleased or disappointed? How would you compare this book to Morgenstern's first, The Night Circus?
(Question by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness
Lolly Daskal, 2017
Portfolio
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101981351
Summary
When successful people begin to feel uncertain or challenged at work, the one thing they want to know most is why things are going wrong after they have gone right for so long.
In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal reveals the consequences highly driven, overachieving leaders face when they continue to rely on a skill set that has always worked for them, even when it is no longer effective. Over decades of advising and inspiring the most prominent chief executives in the world, Daskal has discerned that leaders fall into one of seven categories — The Rebel, The Explorer, The Truth Teller, The Hero, The Inventor, The Navigator, and The Knight — and have risen to their position relying on a specific set of values and traits. However, every leader reaches a point when their effectiveness is compromised by the gap hidden in those traits -- intuition becomes manipulation, for instance, or integrity becomes corruption.
Based on a mix of modern philosophy, psychology and her own vast well of business experience, Daskal offers a breakthrough perspective on leadership — a new system for rethinking everything you know to reveal the path to becoming the kind of leader you truly want to be.
In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal not only confirms her stature as an exceptional business mind, but also reveals the insights and observations of one of our most important leadership experts — a businesswoman known for providing trusted advice, actionable solutions, and provocative ideas to the world's top executives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Lolly Daskal is one of the most sought-after executive leadership coaches in the world. Her extensive cross-cultural expertise spans 14 countries, six languages and hundreds of companies.
As founder and CEO of Lead From Within, her proprietary leadership program is engineered to be a catalyst for leaders who want to enhance performance and make a meaningful difference in their companies, their lives, and the world. Based on a mix of modern philosophy, science, and nearly thirty years coaching top executives, Lolly’s perspective on leadership continues to break new ground and produce exceptional results.
Of her many awards and accolades, Lolly was designated a Top-50 Leadership and Management Expert by Inc. magazine. Huffington Post honored Lolly with the title of The Most Inspiring Woman in the World.
Her writing has appeared in HBR, Inc.com, Fast Company (Ask The Expert), Huffington Post, and Psychology Today, and others.
Lolly Daskal was born and lives in New York City. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Lolly Daskal on Twitter.
Book Reviews
Our weaknesses live in the shadows of our strengths, and this book does more than help us spot them—it shows us how to overcome them. Lolly Daskal takes us into the trenches of her executive coaching practice, carefully unpacking the self-awareness gaps that hold leaders back and lighting the path to expanding our comfort zones.
Adam Grant, author of Originals and Give and Take
I've seen talented leaders unwittingly make the biggest mistakes of their careers simply because they don't understand the complexities and pitfalls of their own strengths. The Leadership Gap offers terrific insight and valuable wisdom for high achievers who want to understand the tendencies that stand between them and meaningful success.
Sydney Finkelstein, author of Superbosses and Why Smart Executives Fail
Great leaders understand who they are as leaders and what motivates them to do the things they do. If you want to become one of them, read Lolly Daskal’s deeply insightful book. It has invaluable advice for leaders who want to propel themselves to the next level. It’s essential reading for those who want to be great.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of No One Understands You and What to Do About It
The Leadership Gap is an exciting new contribution to the tired conversation of leadership, and artfully explains why some leaders succeed while others don’t. Lolly Daskal draws on a wealth of expertise as leading global leadership consultant to identify the skills and gaps that exist within all of us.
Cy Wakeman, author of Reality-Based Leadership
As a leader there’s one thing standing between you and your ultimate potential. Once you are aware of it; once you embrace it, and once you know how to close that "gap," you can then become the magnificent leader you are meant to be.
Bob Burg, coauthor of The Go-Giver
There’s no shortage of thinking and writing about leadership, yet there’s a desperate shortage of leaders everywhere we look. That’s what makes Lolly Daskal’s book so powerful. Thoughtful and practical, analytical and personal, it invites leaders to rethink what it takes to be great, and promises to help bridge the “leadership gap” that plagues business and society. I urge you to read it.
William C. Taylor, CoFounder, Fast Company. Author of Simply Brilliant
An insightful new take on the world from one of my favorite leadership experts. 2 Likeable Thumbs up for this MUST READ!
Dave Kerpen, author of The Art of People
In these uncertain times, it’s more important than ever for leaders to be people who are truthful and who we can trust. In her book The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal reveals the qualities of truly great leaders, along with the gaps that stand in the way of their greatness. This book guides you towards your greatness in the quest to become a better and more effective leader.
Lauren Maillian, TV personality, startup investor, and author of The Path Redefined
Lolly Daskal is a keen observer of human behavior in general and leaders in particular. The Leadership Gap does an excellent job of helping aspiring leaders and seasoned professionals alike to find their blind spots and to understand the variety of styles that are required to be a positive influence on the people around them. This book might just be the next-best-thing to having your own personal coach.
Art Markman, PhD, Director of the Program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Smart Thinking, Smart Change, and Brain Briefs
In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal reveals exactly what it is that makes great leaders great, along with the gaps that stand between leaders and their greatness. Every leader will benefit by applying the principles contained in this book, along with their people, their customers, and their companies.
Emma Seppälä, Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence, author of The Happiness Track
In The Leadership Gap Lolly Daskal masterfully reframes the conversation about leadership with her discerning and insightful exploration of seven archetypal images that drive and challenge leaders. Drawing from her vast experience coaching senior executives around the world, Lolly paints revealing leadership portraits that expose both darkness and the light in all leaders—and in ourselves. The Leadership Gap is fascinating, provocative, entertaining, and useful—a significant new contribution to how we think and act as leaders, and I highly recommend it.
Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge and the Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
Lolly Daskal takes us on a unique and insightful journey into the 7 archetypes of leadership and shows us what it is that makes some leaders impactful over the long term and others fall miserably short. This book is a powerful tool for growing self-awareness and improving your impact as a leader. The Leadership Gap is destined to become a go-to for anyone who wants to have greater impact in the world!”
Dr Jackie Freiberg, co-author of 7 award-winning books, including CAUSE! A Business Strategy for Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness
I love love love reading Lolly's leadership insights. She inspires me to be a better man, and her writing gives me effective tools to inspire action in the teams I lead.
Adam Kreek, Olympic Gold Medalist and founder KreekSpeak
The Leadership Gap reads like my story—a deep search for ‘who I am being while I am leading.’ If John Grisham wrote a book on leadership, it would be a compelling page-turner like this one. Don’t miss this gift to the leader you can become. I promise you will be inspired, instructed, and invigorated.
Chip R. Bell, Author of Kaleidoscope: Delivering Innovative Service That Sparkles
I love this book. Each page is chock full of wisdom and common sense actionable ideas. Lolly gets to the heart of what keeps us from being great and what we need to do to close the gap to become our best selves. The way she has organized it around archetypes is brilliant. You can go straight to the chapter that speaks to you, pick it up at any time to learn more about yourself and others, and it’s an easy, fascinating read from cover to cover.
Jesse Lyn Stoner, co-author of Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision
In this deeply insightful book, leadership expert Lolly Daskal outlines a series of eye-opening and game-changing ideas, including why embracing weakness is the first step to achieving greatness. If you want instant insight into your clients, your boss, and even yourself, get this book. It will redefine the way you lead.
Ron Friedman Ph.D, author of The Best Place to Work
With expert analysis and soulful compassion, Lolly Daskal provides a fascinating expose on the psychological "gaps" leaders face in realizing their true potential. I’ve seen few other books with such thoughtfulness, practicality, and empathy for the human side of becoming a leader.
Andy Molinsky Ph.D, author of Global Dexterity and Reach
In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal speaks truth to power through her penetrating and practical insights for today and tomorrow’s leaders.”
Bruce Rosenstein, Managing Editor, Leader to Leader. Author of Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way
Great leadership starts with self-knowledge. Lolly Daskal provides a powerful new framework for understanding yourself and rising to become the leader, and person, you want to become.
Dorie Clark, adjunct professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and author of Reinventing You and Stand Out
The Leadership Gap compellingly shows the tension that takes place inside of human beings because, within each of us are two competing sides, but only one leads to greatness. Whether you are a rebel or an explorer, a truth teller or a hero, an inventor, a navigator, or a knight, this book is a valuable resource for anyone who aspires to become a more authentic and complete leader.
Robert Rosales, Founder of Lead Academy, a positive psychology-based leadership development consultancy
There’s no way to read The Leadership Gap and walk away unchanged. Lolly Daskal brilliantly distilled her experience working with world leaders into an immediately actionable book filled with wisdom. I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in becoming a leader worth following.
Skip Prichard, CEO of OCLC, Inc., Author of The Book of Mistakes (coming January 2018)
Filled with smart experience and candor, Daskal's book will help any leader get to the next level - including you.
Damon Brown, author of The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur: 21 Ways to Ignite Your Passion & Pursue Your Side Hustle
Today, leaders can only achieve greatness if they are willing to find and fill their competency-gaps. In this fast moving and highly helpful read, Lolly Daskal will show you the 7 archetypes of leadership as well as the opportunities and pitfalls each one contains. Read it and soar!
Tim Sanders, New York Times bestselling author of Dealstorming and Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends
Riveting from beginning to end, The Leadership Gap pulls back the boardroom curtain to share startling insights from an executive coach who counsels world-class leaders behind the scenes. Here, for the first time in print, Daskal shares her system of the seven leadership archetypes and their “shadows,” along with easy-to-use takeaways on how to identify your own type and traverse your own gap.
Jane Ransom, International Speaker, Success Principles Trainer, Author of Self-Intelligence
top of page (summary)