Quichotte
Salman Rushdie, 2019
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780593132982
Summary
A dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age—a tour de force that is as much an homage to an immortal work of literature as it is to the quest for love and family, by Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star.
Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where "Anything-Can-Happen."
Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse.
And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 19, 1947
• Where—Bombay, Maharashtra, India
• Education—M.A., King's College, Cambridge, UK
• Awards—Booker Prize, 1981; Best of the Bookers, 1993 (the best novel to win the Booker
Prize in its first twenty-five years); Whitbread Prize, 1988 and 1995
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on February 14, 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at the Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the Satanic Verses controversy.
Career
Rushdie's first career was as a copywriter, working for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for Aero and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker, for whom he wrote the memorable line "That'll do nicely" for American Express. It was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnight's Children, before becoming a full-time writer. John Hegarty of Bartle Bogle Hegarty has criticised Rushdie for not referring to his copywriting past frequently enough, although conceding: "He did write crap ads...admittedly."
His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, catapulted him to literary notability. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie. However, the author has refuted the idea of having written any of his characters as autobiographical, stating...
People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character.
After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame, in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Indian diaspora.
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in 1987 called The Jaguar Smile. This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.
His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist. He also wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990.
Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection Burning your Boats.
Other Activities
Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general. He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honours. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006 and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival.
He opposed the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers.
In 2007 he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives.
In May 2008 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he later realised in his frequent cameo appearances).
Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes.
On May 12, 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation of Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher.
Rushdie is currently collaborating on the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children with director Deepa Mehta. The film will be released in October, 2012.
Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation which provides daily meals to students of township schools in Soweto of South Africa. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Satanic Verses and the fatwa
The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.
On February 14, 1989, a fatwa requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam." A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for several years. On March 7, 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
The publication of the book and the fatwa sparked violence around the world, with bookstores firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies, burning copies of the book. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked and even killed.
On September 24, 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."
Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa was reaffirmed by Iran's current spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, and the person who issued it – Ayatollah Khomeini – has been dead since 1989.
Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
A memoir of his years of hiding, Joseph Anton, was published in 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias.
In 2012, following uprisings over an anonymously posted YouTube video denigrating Muslims, a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million dollars. Their stated reason: "If the [1989] fatwa had been carried out, later insults in the form of caricature, articles and films that have continued would have not happened."
Knighthood
Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on June 16, 2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way." In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims expressed disappointment at Rushdie's knighthood, claiming that the writer did not merit such an honour and there were several other writers who deserved the knighthood more than Rushdie.
Al-Qaeda has condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."
Religious Beliefs
Rushdie came from a Muslim family though he is an atheist now. In 1990, in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him," he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. However, Rushdie later said that he was only "pretending".
Personal Life
Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar (born 1980). His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan (born 1999). In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and model Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show Top Chef. The marriage ended on July 2, 2007, with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage.
In 1999 Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a tendon condition that causes drooping eyelids and that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.
Since 2000, Rushdie has "lived mostly near Union Square" in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2012.)
Book Reviews
The novels [of Rushdie] are imaginative as ever, but they are also increasingly wobbly, bloated and mannered. He is a writer in free fall…. Rushdie’s narrative impulses… lie in tossing in celebrity cameos and literary allusions, in sending new plots into orbit in the hope they might lend glitter and ballast to a work sorely in need of both.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
Say his name like this: Key-shot. His quest is a long shot, and there’s a gun involved. (Trigger warning: The gun talks.)…. How we see the world—and how the world sees us—are the big themes of Cervantes’s epic. Rushdie’s version holds true to that tale.… Rushdie has always written as though the impossible and the actual have the same right to exist…. [With a] lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming ending.
New York Times Book Review
It is a novel of magical realism that bends the notions of "magical" and "realism" so far…. A fantasy missing all the signifiers of fantasy. A comedy where every single joke fails to land completely. It's got so much music in the words it almost demands to be read aloud. Its so inconstant you'd need one of those serial-killer boards made of index cards and string just to unpack the plot.
NPR
Quichotte, Rushdie’s Trump-era reworking of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, is a frantically inventive take on "the Age of Anything-Can-Happen"… a concoction of narratives within narratives that blends the latest news headlines with apocalyptic flights of fancy.… Rushdie doesn’t offer much hope for our dispiriting times. But in a frayed and feverish way, he captures their flavor exactly.
Boston Globe
Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte is a behemoth of a novel, and with reason. A postmodern dystopian tale, it tackles everything from global warming to the rise of white supremacism to the opioid crisis—which is to say, most of the ills of contemporary society… . There’s much that feels absorbing and true in Rushdie’s latest work.
Christian Science Monitor
Rushdie weaves together all of his subjects, sharply observed, with extraordinary elegance and wit…. At least here’s something worth reading as civilization crumbles around us, before we succumb to our fates. Right?
Entertainment Weekly
A fantastical dream within a dream… a brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder…. As [Rushdie] weaves the journeys of the two men nearer and nearer, sweeping up a full accounting of all the tragicomic horrors of modern American life in the process, these energies begin to collapse beautifully inward, like a dying star. His readers realize that they would happily follow Rushdie to the end of the world.
Time
[A] modern Don Quixote…. Rushdie has created something that feels wholly original.… Lucky for us, there are true storytellers and Rushdie is near the top of that list. If you haven’t read him before, this is a good book to start with—it’s fabulist and funny while revealing an awful lot about the world we live in today.
Associated Press
Rushdie’s Booker-longlisted fourteenth novel is certainly the work of a frisky imagination.… You can’t help being charmed by Rushdie’s largesse.
Guardian (UK)
(Starred review) [R]ambunctious…. Rushdie’s uproarious comedy, which talks to itself while packing a good deal of historical and political freight, is a brilliant rendition of the cheesy, sleazy, scary pandemonium of life in modern times.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [N]othing but extraordinary.…This incisively outlandish but lyrical meditation on intolerance, TV addiction, and the opioid crisis operates on multiple planes, with razor-sharp topicality and humor. Highly recommended. —Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] splendid mess that, in the end, becomes a meditation on storytelling, memory, truth, and other hallmarks of a disappearing civilization…. Humane and humorous. Rushdie is in top form, serving up a fine piece of literary satire.
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.)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Olga Tokarczuk, 2019
Penguin Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525541332
Summary
Winner, 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents.
Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans.
Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind …
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 29, 1962
• Where—Sulechow, Poland
• Education—University of Warsaw
• Awards—Nobel Prize for Literature; Man Booker International Prize
• Currently—lives in Krajanow, Poland
Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual, who has been described in Poland as one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful authors of her generation. All told, she has published a collection of poems, several novels, as well as other books with shorter prose works.
Noted for the mythical tone of her writing, Tokarczuk won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature for her "narrative imagination that, with encyclopedic passion, represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life." In 2018 she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel, Flights.
Tokarczuk was born in Sulechow, in western Poland (0ne of her grandmothers was from Ukraine). She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw and, during her studies, volunteered in an asylum for adolescents with behavioural problems.
After graduation in 1985, Tokarczuk moved first to Wrocław and later to Wałbrzych, where she practiced as a therapist. Tokarczuk considers herself a disciple of Carl Jung and cites his psychology as an inspiration for her literary work. Since 1998, Tokarczuk has lived in a small village Krajanow near Nowa Ruda, from where she also manages her private publishing company Ruta.
A leftist, a vegetarian, and feminist, Tokarczuk has been criticized by some Polish groups as unpatriotic, anti-Christian, and a promoter of eco-terrorism. Denying the allegations and describing herself as a "true patriot," she turned the tables on her critics, labeling them as xenophobes who are damaging Poland's international reputation. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/13/2019 .)
Book Reviews
A marvelously weird and fablelike mystery.… Tokarczuk masters… pacing and suspense. But even as Tokarczuk sticks landing after landing,… this book is not a mere whodunit: It’s a philosophical fairy tale about life and death that’s been trying to spill its secrets. Secrets that, if you’ve kept your ear to the ground, you knew in your bones all along.
New York Times Book Review
While it adopts the straightforward structure of a murder mystery, [the book features] macabre humor and morbid philosophical interludes [that] are distinctive to its author… [and an] excellent payoff at the finale.… As for Ms. Tokarczuk, there’s no doubt: She’s a gifted, original writer, and the appearance of her novels in English is a welcome development.
Wall Street Journal
Sometimes the opening sentence of a first-person narrative can so vividly capture the personality of its speaker that you immediately want to spend all the time you can in their company. That’s the case with… Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead…, [a] barbed and subversive tale about what it takes to challenge the complacency of the powers that be.
Boston Globe
A brilliant literary murder mystery.
Chicago Tribune
Bewitching…. Serious crosscurrents… explore everything from animal rights to predetermination to the way society stigmatizes and marginalizes those it considers mad, strange or simply different.… Tokarczuk is capable of miracles and ensures that this extraordinary novel soars.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Drive Your Plow is exhilarating in a way that feels fierce and private, almost inarticulable; it’s one of the most existentially refreshing novels I’ve read in a long time.
New Yorker
A winding, imaginative, genre-defying story. Part murder mystery, part fairy tale, Drive Your Plow is a thrilling philosophical examination of the ways in which some living creatures are privileged above others.
Time
(Starred review) [A]n astounding mystical detective novel.… Tokarczuk’s novel succeeds as both a suspenseful murder mystery and a powerful and profound meditation on human existence and how a life fits into the world around it. Novels this thrilling don’t come along very often.
Publishers Weekly
More than an offbeat and dark detective work,…Tokarczuk combines ecological and social issues with disturbing images and great characterizations. Fans… will likely be caught off guard when the surprise identity of the murderer is ultimately exposed. —Lawrence Olszewski, North Central State Coll., Mansfield, OH
Library Journal
[C]aptivating…. Mythical and distinctive, Tokarczuk’s translated novel erupts off the page, artfully telling a linear tale while also weaving in the metaphysical, multilayered nuances of Janina’s life.
Booklist
(Starred review) Tokarczuk's novel is a riot of quirkiness and eccentricity, and the mood of the book, which shifts from droll humor to melancholy to gentle vulnerability, is unclassifiable—and just right. Tokarczuk's mercurial prose seems capable of just about anything..
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.)
Wonder Valley
Ivy Pochoda, 2017
HaroerCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062656353
Summary
When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles.
From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row.
During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars. The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls …
♦ There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother.
♦ There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune
where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway
over his disciples.
♦ There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret.
♦ There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner.
♦ And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts.
Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.
Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 22, 1977
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard College; M.F.A. Bennington College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Ivy Pochoda is the American author of four novels: These Women (2020) Wonder Valley (2017), The Visitation (2013) and The Art of Disappearing (2009)
Pochoda grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a house filled with books. She has a BA from Harvard College in English and Classical Greek with a focus on dramatic literature, and an MFA from Bennington College in fiction.
During her college years at Harvard, Pochoda played squash, leading the school to national championships in all four of her years on the team. She was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Player of the Year, and was a four-time All-American and First Team all-Ivy. In May 2013, she was inducted into the Harvard Hall of Fame.
After graduation in 1998, Pochoda played squash professionally, joining The Women's International Squash Players Association full-time. She reached a career-high world ranking of 38th in March 1999 and continued playing professionally until 2007.
In 2009, she published her first novel (The Art of Disappearing) and become the James Merrill House writer-in-residence at Bennington College, where she also obtained her Masters in 2011.
Ivy currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Justin Nowell. (From the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/27/2020.)
Book Reviews
A dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California.… Impossible to put down.… It’s the memorable characters and beautiful prose that make the novel so successful.… Unexpected and pitch-perfect.
Michael Schaub - Los Angeles Times
Enthralling.… A compassionate look at the displaced that treats each with respect and humanity.
Associated Press Staff
Incandescent.… Pochoda keeps you guessing while bringing these lost souls wonderfully, intensely alive.
People
Audacious.… Each character is realized with vivid empathy.… A richly Californian novel, drenched in enough sunlight to illuminate the harshest of truths.
Entertainment Weekly
[A]live with empathy for the dispossessed and detailed descriptions of the California landscape…. But as sympathetic as the characters are, their stories fail to come together as a dramatic whole.
Publishers Weekly
Despite the initial confusion… vivid and sympathetic. Each of the main characters does achieve some sort of peace or resolution by the dark and often violent book's end. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Ambitious, absorbing.… Pochoda paints southern California with a vibrant brush, rendering an evocative landscape on which her desperate characters seek out redemption and rejuvenation.
Booklist
(Starred review.) The gritty lives of Southern California drifters are entwined first by circumstance, then by love and revenge.… Absorbing, finely detailed, nasty California noir.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Wonder Valley … then take off on your own:
1. The novel opens with a naked man jogging through Los Angeles traffic. Other than the simple surprise of it, what does his nudity come to represent for the characters who witness him? How does his nakedness function as a literary symbol?
2. Talk about each of the major characters, starting with Tony. How would you describe him? What has led to his dissatisfaction with life … and why does he get out of his car to chase the jogger?
3. What about Ren, imprisoned since he was 12 years old. How has his time in custody affected him? What has he come to realize about "how breakable people are." What happens when he tracks down his mother on skid row?
4. Then there's Blake: "Sam was fearless. Blake worked hard to be." How does that observation articulate the ways Blake differs from his partner in crime? Is Blake redeemable?
5. What is Britt hoping to find, or escape from, at the commune? In other words, why is she there?
6. Describe Howling Tree Ranch, including its leader Patrick and his followers — who believe everything he does (dragging a stick through the sand) has mystical significance.
7. Why does Owen want to escape from his parents?
8. All the novel's characters exist at the fringes of society. They are in many ways flawed, broken, even violent. Whom do you find most compelling? Are any particularly sympathetic … all of them, in some fashion … none of them?
9. At one point, a character says, "your story is the only thing that belongs to you proper." Why prompts her to say that and what does she mean? How does that remark apply to all the characters within the novel? What about your own "story"? How many different ways can it be told — and who has the right to tell it? Does your story "belong to you proper"?
10. Wonder Valley might be considered a "quest" novel. How so?
11. While not a mystery or crime novel, how does Ivy Podocha manage to build suspense? Talk about the author's use of plot twists to further her story. In the end, does Wonder Valley live up to, exceed, or fall short of your expectations?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Darling Rose Gold
Stephanie Wrobel, 2019
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780593100066
Summary
Mothers never forget. Daughters never forgive.
For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital.
Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.
Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.
After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.
Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling…
And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Stephanie Wrobel grew up in Chicago but has been living in the UK for the last three years with her husband and dog, Moose Barkwinkle. She has an MFA from Emerson College and has had short fiction published in Bellevue Literary Review. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a creative copywriter at various advertising agencies. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Sure to be one of the most unique books of the new year.
Newsweek
Ingenious… a maelstrom of a suspense story.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
[An] excellent debut… briskly moves with surprising twists [and] assured character studies.
Associated Press
Propulsive pacing, a claustrophobic setting, and vividly sketched characters who are equal parts victim and villain conspire to create an anxious, unsettling narrative. Psychological suspense fans will be well satisfied.
Publishers Weekly
It's chilling enough to read about Rose Gold's suffering, but it's just as chilling—and at times uncomfortably satisfying…. Definitely for the thriller crowd, but readers interested in fraught family relationships will want to investigate as well.
Library Journal
Wrobel builds tension by tearing down and knocking away everything the audience believes they know…. This thriller speeds toward its conclusion in true page-turner fashion, without feeling rushed. A taut tale that will keep you guessing until the very end.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Who is the victim? Who is the perpetrator? What does it mean to be a victim in the context of this story?
2. Who did you most empathize with throughout the book? Did your sympathies change chapter to chapter? If so, how?
3. Patty’s actions are attributed to Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental health disorder. Should she have gone to prison if her behavior was caused by an illness beyond her control?
4. Do Patty and Rose Gold love each other? How did your view of their relationship change throughout the book?
5. Toward the end of the book, Rose Gold says, "Nobody wants to hear the truth from a liar." Did you trust either of the narrators? At what points, if any, was that trust shaken?
6. What did you think of Rose Gold’s final decision not to fix her teeth? To shave her head? How do societal beauty standards affect Rose Gold throughout the book?
7. How much of our personalities are shaped by nature vs. nurture? Do you think Rose Gold and Patty would have committed their crimes had their childhoods been different?
8. "Some of us cannot forget and will never forgive." Do you think Rose Gold will ever be free of her mother’s influence? Were Rose Gold’s actions justifiable? What do you imagine her future will hold?
9. What role did the residents of Deadwick play in the story? What characters had the biggest impact on Patty and/or Rose Gold? Why do you think Patty was able to keep her actions hidden for so long?
10. Does Patty know she’s lying or has she convinced herself she’s telling the truth? What makes you think so?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Fatal Fraternity (Dean Warren Mystery, 1)
Linda Owen, 2017
Bookbaby
232 pp.
ISBN: 9781543908183
Summary
Someone is killing alumni of a fraternity — and homicide detective Dean Warren has no idea why. As he unravels the mystery of two murders, and more that follow, his search for a serial killer leads to a long list of suspects and several dead ends. Dean has always captured the killer quickly, so what is different this time?
In the process of solving the mystery, he forges a friendship with Lydia James, the ex-wife of the first victim. It doesn’t take long for him to be distracted from his quest. She is all he can think about.
Dean knows he will capture the murderer eventually, but he wonders how to capture Lydia’s heart. It will be no little feat. Her ex-husband’s chronic infidelity has left mincemeat of her heart. She has to forgive before she can love again.
Will Dean’s love for her continue to hinder his progress? Can he catch the killer before all the Frat Pack die?
***
The main character has had a near death experience that left him committed to catching “the bad guys” so the world will be a better place. He considers it a calling.
The Dean Warren mysteries will be a series of three or more novels. Linda is presently writing the second one. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—San Marcos, Texas, USA
• Education—B.S., Southwest Texas University; M.Div., Perkins School of Theology
• Currently—lives in San Antonio, Texas
Linda Owen has had thousands of articles published. She is a regular writer on faith, retirement, travel, and general interest subjects for a variety of newspapers and magazines, both secular and Christian. She taught high school English for 25 years before going to seminary. She received a Master of Divinity Degree from Perkins School of Theology (SMU) and served briefly as the pastor and a chaplain. Linda has written Bible Study Curriculum for the United Methodist Publishing House. For five years she edited www.saworship.com, a Christian magazine. She is also the author of the suspense novels Lady President and Emergency Care. (From the author .)
Visit the author's website.
See article on Linda.
Discussion Questions
1. How did you feel about Lydia? Is this story a believable portrait of the human struggle between forgiveness and hatred? What makes you say that?
2. Do you think Dean and Lydia make the perfect couple? Why or why not? Do you think their marriage will last?
3. Describe the main characters—personality traits, motivations, inner qualities. Why do the characters do what they do? (Dean, Lydia, Ethan, Mercy, Elda, Chief Douglas).
4. Several characters change or evolve throughout the course of the story. Which one was your favorite? What events trigger the changes?
5. Do you agree with Ethan’s counselor that a trip to the graveyard can be therapeutic? (Chapter 20) Why do you feel that way?
6. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way?
7. Discuss the book’s structure. Does the author use any narrative devices like flashbacks or multiple voices in telling the story?
8. Did the author lead you to a new understanding or awareness of God’s role in your life?
9. Do you believe it is possible to live a life without pain? Do you think the pain makes people closer to God or causes them, like Lydia, to distance themselves from him? What has been the pattern in your life? Do you agree with Dean’s statement that God is a source of strength during our trials (Chapter 4)?
10. Like Lydia, have you ever felt that God didn’t care about you? Why? Have you been mad at God? Has that changed (Chapter 32)?
11. How did you feel about Dean’s near-death experience? Do you know of a similar case when the person came back focused on serving God? What makes you say that?
12. Do you believe in the forgiving love of God? Do you see your own act of forgiveness as a healing act for your spirit? Where have you seen God at work during your spiritual walk?
13. Were you satisfied with the pastor’s explanation that we all have a hard time forgiving those who hurt us (See Chapter 33.)? What else could he have said? Have you seen God working through human beings to accomplish healing? When?
14. Were you satisfied with Toby’s discussion with Ethan about hating his father (Chapter 16)? What else would you have told the boy?
15. What are the Christian themes that thread the plot?
16. What does the storyline reveal about love?
17. Do you think that someone can forgive and forget — or forgive but still never forget?
18. What do you see as the major message of the novel? Would you recommend this book to a friend?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)