Never Have I Ever
Joshilyn Jackson, 2019
HarperCollins
352pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062855312
Summary
A twisting novel of domestic suspense in which a group of women play a harmless drinking game that escalates into a war of dark pasts.
In this game, even winning can be deadly…
Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it—teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club.
Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte.
But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night.
Sultry and magnetic, Roux beguiles the group with her feral charm. She keeps the wine flowing and lures them into a game of spilling secrets. Everyone thinks it’s naughty, harmless fun. Only Amy knows better.
Something wicked has come her way—a she-devil in a pricey red sports car who seems to know the terrible truth about who she is and what she once did.
When they’re alone, Roux tells her that if she doesn’t give her what she asks for, what she deserves, she’s going to make Amy pay for her sins. One way or another.
To protect herself and her family and save the life she’s built, Amy must beat the devil at her own clever game, matching wits with Roux in an escalating war of hidden pasts and unearthed secrets. Amy knows the consequences if she can’t beat Roux.
What terrifies her is everything she could lose if she wins.
A diabolically entertaining tale of betrayal, deception, temptation, and love filled with dark twists leavened by Joshilyn Jackson’s trademark humor, Never Have I Ever explores what happens when the transgressions of our past come back with a vengeance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Several plot twists are surprising and effective, and there are gripping sequences involving Amy’s work as a deep-sea diver woven logically into the narrative…. Perfect beach read.
Wall Street Journal
Best-selling author Jackson packs in dramatic reveals about the women’s complex histories.
Time Magazine
A] nail-biter…. Winner takes all in this addictive, heart-thumping read.
Family Circle Magazine
[An] epic duel between two flawed women—it’s the perfect thriller to round out your summer.
People
[E]ntertaining, if flawed…. Well-developed, memorable characters and an action-packed plot compensate only in part for some farfetched twists and an unconvincing ending. Hopefully, Jackson will do better next time.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Jackson successfully trades her usual quirky Southern lit for darker psychological suspense in this latest highly recommended novel. Her prowess at writing affecting, character-driven fiction is on full display, and readers will devour the twisty, consuming story. —Melissa DeWild, Comstock Park, MI
Library Journal
(Starred review) Nail-biting suspense.… Jackson builds on her talent for creating imperfect, capable, and multi-layered characters to write smart suspense, driven by the intelligence and determination of the instigator and her prey…. Never Have I Ever marks a new high in Jackson’s career.
Booklist
Jackson's novel is chock-full of dramatic reveals and twisty turns, but she paces them out well, dropping them like regularly spaced bombshells.… It's skillfully done. Amy herself is an openly flawed and relatable character…. Be warned: It's a stay-up-all-night kind of book. Compulsively readable.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Never Have I Ever is told through Amy’s eyes, but she doesn’t always tell the reader all the facts. Would you consider Amy an unreliable narrator? How do you think the story might have differed from another perspective, particularly Roux’s?
2. Amy describes diving as a solace because it reminds her how large the world is. Why is this idea a comfort to Amy? Do you have anything that offers you peace in the same way?
3. No one is all bad or all good. Should a person be defined by their worst actions or their best? Can anything eventually be forgiven?
4. Roux is an elusive character who Amy has many theories about as the story progresses. Who did you think Roux was? How did your theories change as you read?
5. Amy has a tendency to mother everyone around her: her child and step-child, her friend Char, Luca, and even her husband to some extent. Jackson has been quoted as saying that the most dangerous animal is “a mother anything.” How does Amy’s motherhood influence her moral choices and the risks she is willing to take?
6. Tig says, “You know what’s weird? It’s easier to forgive you than myself.” Why do you think this is? Do you think we tend to blame ourselves more or less than we deserve?
7. Do you think it is possible to fully escape the past, or do our histories define us? Do you think it’s ever possible to start over?
8. How did your impression of Amy and Charlotte’s friendship change over the course of the book? Do you think Amy’s methods of protecting Charlotte are right?
9. What are the differences in Amy’s relationship with Davis versus Tig? Who do you think is her better match? Do you think, if the accident hadn’t occurred, Amy’s relationship with Tig might have gone differently?
10. What do you make of Roux’s relationship with Luca? How do their lies throughout Never Have I Ever inform what you know about them now? Do you think the action Amy took was justifiable?
11. Never Have I Ever explores the idea of choosing the kind of person we want to be in life. Do you think Amy is a good person? How about Roux?
12. Following that, in what ways are Amy and Roux similar? Different? What do they begrudgingly respect about one another?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Winter (Seasonal Quartet)
Ali Smith, 2017 (2018, U.S.)
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101870754
Summary
WINTER. Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. And now Art’s mother is seeing things.
Come to think of it, Art’s seeing things himself.
When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?
Winter. It makes things visible. In Ali Smith’s Winter, life-force matches up to the toughest of the seasons.
In this second novel in her Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith’s shape-shifting novel casts a warm, wise, merry and uncompromising eye over a post-truth era in a story rooted in history and memory and with a taproot deep in the evergreens, art and love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—Inverness, Scotland, UK
• Education—University of Abderdeen; Cambridge University
• Awards—Whitbread Award
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, England
Ali Smith is a Scottish writer who won the Whitbread Award in 2005 for her novel, The Accidental. To date, she has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times and the Orange Prize twice.
She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that she never finished.
She worked as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde until she fell ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She then became a full-time writer and now writes for The Guardian, Scotsman, and Times Literary Supplement. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner filmmaker Sarah Wood.
Works
Smith is the author of several works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World (2001), which was short-listed for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize in 2001. She won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002. ♦ The Accidental (2007) won the Whitbread Award and was also short-listed for both the Man Booker and Orange Prize. ♦ Her 2011 novel, There But For The, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and named as a Best Book of the Year by both the Washington Post and Boston Globe. ♦ How to Be Both (2014) was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Her story collections include Free Love, which won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award, and The Whole Story and Other Stories.
In 2007 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
In 2009, she donated the short story "Last" (previously published in the Manchester Review Online) to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Fire" collection. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/20/2014.)
Book Reviews
All multibook "projects" have a kind of ambition and grand vision, but they must also function close up, book by book, chapter by chapter. That is true of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s work. (He is writing his own seasonal quartet, having just published Winter.) While Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels, looked at in the aggregate, are a way to understand family trauma, Smith seems to be using her cycle as a way to process the larger trauma of our breaking, swirling world — over time, over human moments, over seasons. Each novel will give her a new chance to inspect her preoccupations in a different light. In Winter, the light inside this great novelist’s gorgeous snow globe is utterly original, and it definitely illuminates.
Meg Wolitzer - New York Times Book Review
A capacious, generous shapeshifter of a novel.… [A] book with Christmas at its heart, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and out of time, like the festival itself (The Best Fiction of 2017).
Guardian (UK)
[There are] glimmers of life, laughter and love.… Smith threads passages of delicately observed natural beauty throughout the ephemera. She often lets the language itself lead her (hence her love of puns), and the intricate narrative rolls back and forth smoothly in time.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Smith’s deceptively unshowy writing evokes every shade of emotion.… Themes and experiences entangle, making Winter a dense, satisfying read.… It’s to Smith’s credit that Winter works on a number of levels, from a straightforward, quotidian tale about a fractured family to a deeper story packed with symbolism and highbrow literary references: a subtle meditation on loneliness, loss and aging in uncertain times.
Irish Independent
One of Britain’s most important novelists.… Winter is narrated with Smith’s customary stylistic brio … punctuated with clever word play.… Heartwarming.
Irish Times
The novel is lucid and tightly constructed.… [I]ts disparate strands converge tautly to convey and deepen Smith’s powerful political message.… This wintry spirit of benevolence animates Smith’s vision of a world where empathy overrides divisions and where animosity can melt like snow.… Smith’s voice, so wise and joyful, is the perfect antidote to troubled times: raw and bitter in the face of injustice, yet always alive to hope.
New Statesman (UK)
Smith combines her state-of-the-moment themes with a preoccupation for how to behave in a meaningful way in an increasingly technocratic world—and she does so with an effervescent seriousness none of her peers can match.
Daily Mail (UK)
A novel of great ferocity, tenderness, righteous anger and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised.… Winter is at its most luminously beautiful when the news fades and merges with recent and ancient history, a reminder that everything is cyclical. There is forgiveness here, and song, and comic resolution of sorts, but the abiding image is of the tenacity of nature and light.
Observer (UK)
Smith has both a telescopic and a microscopic eye.… Her many-layered artistry softens rage or sorrow.… If Ali Smith’s four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of artistic responses to "this mad and bitter mess" of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker midwinter than people often fear.
Financial Times (UK)
Smith’s prose—that trademark mischievous wit and wordplay, a joyful reminder of the most basic, elemental delights of reading—makes us see things differently.… The entire book is testament to the miraculous powers of the creative arts.… Winter firmly acknowledges the power of stories. Infused with some much needed humour, happiness and hope.
Independent (UK)
A novel which, in its very inclusiveness, associative joy, and unrestricted movement, proposes other kinds of vision.… [A]stonishingly fertile and free.… [Smith] finds life stubbornly shining in the evergreens.… [T]old in a voice that is Dickensian in its fluency and mobile empathy.… Leaping, laughing, sad, generous and winter-wise, this is a thing of grace.
Guardian (UK)
Combines comedy with social criticism, playfulness with political indictmen.… Structurally, the book is intricate: a collage of flashbacks, flash-forwards and interior monologues.… Smith is a self-consciously aesthetic writer who also has strong political convictions.
Sunday Times (UK)
Refracted through the lens of a broken family in a broken home, Smith’s vision is almost without redemption, but not quite; beneath the frozen ground, some hope exists.
Times (UK)
[A] novel of great ferocity, tenderness, righteous anger and generosity of spirit.… Winter is at its most luminously beautiful when the news fades and merges with recent and ancient history, a reminder that everything is cyclical. There is forgiveness here, and song, and comic resolution of sorts, but the abiding image is of the tenacity of nature and light.
Observer (UK)
[Smith] is cresting across the contemporary in a manner few novelists can manage.… Winter is a novel in which the cold also reveals clarity. Things crystallize. They become piercing and numbing at the same time. It is a book about being wintry in the sense of supercilious and hibernal, in its sense of wanting to shut the world out. The characters have to deal with both impulses, and deal with them in different ways. But the end result is a book that makes one think, and thinky books are rare as hen’s teeth these days.
Scotsman
Like Autumn, the novel employs a scattered, evocative plot and prose style, reflecting the fractured emotional, intellectual, and political states occupied by its contemporary characters. Though [it] misses more than it hits this time out, it’s still…engaging.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This second installment in Smith’s seasonal quartet combines captivating storytelling with a timely focus on social issues. Enthusiastically recommended; we’re now eagerly awaiting Spring.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Stunning prose.… [O]ften funny, sometimes wistful, suggesting a garrulous old friend riffing on a gripe or sharing an anecdote. Smith knits together the present-time narrative and many flashbacks to reveal secrets, ironies, old loves, and the unfolding lives enriched by them. A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time.
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 Winter … then take off on your own:
1. In what way might Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol be the model for Ali Smith's Winter? For starters, consider Sophie Cleves and her stinginess. How else would you describe Sophie? Does she become more sympathetic during the course of the novel … or not?
2. Who or what are the disembodied heads that appear before Sophie? If you are unfamiliar with the various myths concerning the Green Man, find out a little about him, who he is and what he represents. What might it say, in terms of symbolic significance, that he appears to Sophie as one of the heads.
3. Compare Sophia to Iris: the conventional vs. the activist. How do the two sisters differ from one another? How would you describe their relationship? Frosty … or icy, perhaps? Iris lives a courageous life of protest on behalf of others. Is she the book's hero?
4. And Arthur — not much of a king for Camelot, is he? How would you describe him?
5. "Art is seeing things" — which Iris says is the perfect description of the importance of art. "Where would we be, without our ability to see beyond what it is we're supposed to be seeing?" she asks. How does that remark apply to the characters of the book ... in fact, to the thematic concerns of the novel as a whole? How does it apply in real life?
6. What role does Lux play in the novel? Consider the myth of the Stranger who comes into a village and functions as an agent of change, exposing shortcomings and wrongdoings. (Smith has used the stranger before: young Amber in her 2005 novel, The Accidental.)
7. Lux talks about Shakespeare's Cymbeline because, "it's like the people in the play are living in the same world but separately from each other, like their worlds have somehow become disjointed or broken off each other's worlds." How does that observation related to Sophia's family? And...to Britain as a whole?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: Winter, like Autumn before it, is written after Britain's Brexit vote. How does the symbolic shadow of Brexit fall over the novel? How does it affect the storyline, atmosphere, and characters?
9. Consider that winter encapsulates the dying of light, death within the natural world, Christmas and gift-giving, crystalline clarity of vision, and new beginnings. How might any or all of those notions, or other concepts of winter, play out in Ali Smith's novel?
10. Consider Smith's playful use of names: Sophia is derived from the Greek word for wisdom and knowledge; Iris was the goddess of the rainbow (hope) and in the novel is nicknamed "Ire"; Arthur was the legendary king of Camelot, evoked in the novel's opening lines about the death of romance and chivalry (Arthur is called "Art"); and Lux means light. How do these characters represent their names — or ironically misrepresent them?
11. Smith's signature wordplay is prevalent in more than her use of names. What are some other examples?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Inland
Tea Obreht, 2019
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812992861
Summary
The bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife returns with a stunning tale of perseverance—an epic journey across an unforgettable landscape of magic and myth.
In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives collide.
Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life—her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons, who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home.
Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees lost souls who want something from him, and he finds reprieve from their longing in an unexpected relationship that inspires a momentous expedition across the West.
The way in which Nora’s and Lurie’s stories intertwine is the surprise and suspense of this brilliant novel.
Mythical, lyrical, and sweeping in scope, Inland is grounded in true but little-known history.
It showcases all of Téa Obreht’s talents as a writer, as she subverts and reimagines the myths of the American West, making them entirely—and unforgettably—her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 20, 1985
• Where—Belgrade, Yugoslavia
• Raised—Cyprus; Egypt; Georgia, & California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.A., Cornell University
• Currently—lives in Ithica, New York
Tea Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997.
Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. The Tiger’s Wife (2011), is her first novel.
She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Tea Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York.
Among many influences, Obreht has mentioned in press interviews the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Yugoslav Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric, Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Isak Dinesen, and the children's writer Roald Dahl. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[S]entimental and meandering…. Let me pause to say: Obreht has real gifts as a storyteller… [but] all the drama feels fake, as if someone is backstage shaking a thunder sheet…. More common are observations and dialogue that are as softly didactic as refrigerator magnet slogans…. I realize I am being terribly hard on Obreht’s novel, but… [t]he many readers who will enjoy Inland and put it on best-seller lists can send an old curse in my direction.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
[T]he landscape of the West itself is a character, thrillingly rendered throughout…. Obreht's simple but rich prose captures and luxuriates in the West's beauty and sudden menace.… Obreht also has a poetic touch for writing intricate and precise character descriptions…. In Obreht's hands, this is an era that overflows with what the dead want, and with wants that lead to death.
Chanelle Benz - New York Times Book Review
[Inland] unfolds like a dream… a smoky borderland between…reality and fantasy, the living and the dead, textbook history and fairy tales. Ms. Obreht has the extraordinary ability to… [create] a fully immersive imaginary world governed by its own logic…. The bedtime-story elements can become twee and caricatured…. And the novel feels sanitized… [yet] when you’re under its spell the objections seem beside the point…. Inland is a place of killers, camels, families and phantoms. Reading it, you may feel as Lurie does: "I had somehow wanted my way into a marvel that had never before befallen this world."
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
It’s a voyage of hilarious and harrowing adventures, told in the irresistible voice of a restless, superstitious man determined to live right but tormented by his past. At times, it feels as though Obreht has managed to track down Huck Finn years after he lit out for the Territory and found him riding a camel.… The unsettling haze between fact and fantasy in Inland is not just a literary effect of Obreht’s gorgeous prose: it’s an uncanny representation of the indeterminate nature of life in this place of brutal geography.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Inland is a classic story, told in a classic way—and yet it feels wholly and unmistakably new.… At once a new Western myth and a far realer story than many we have previously received—and that’s even with all the ghosts.
NPR
Tea Obreht’s M.O. is clear: She’s determined to unsettle our most familiar, cliche-soaked genres.… Inland can feel like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian turned inside out: contemplative rather than rollicking, ghostly rather than blood-soaked.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
With Inland, Obreht makes a renewed case for the sustained, international appeal of the American West, based on a set of myths that have been continually shaped and refracted through outside lenses.
New Yorker
Obreht is the kind of writer who can forever change the way you think about a thing, just through her powers of description…. Inland is an ambitious and beautiful work about many things: immigration, the afterlife, responsibility, guilt, marriage, parenthood, revenge, all the roads and waterways that led to America. Miraculously, it’s also a page-turner and a mystery, as well as a love letter to a camel… splendid.
Oprah Magazine
What Obreht pulls off here is pure poetry. It doesn’t feel written so much as extracted from the mind in its purest, clearest, truest form.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review) [A] mesmerizing historical novel spun from two primary narrative threads.… Obreht paints a colorful portrait of the Western landscape, populated by a rogue’s gallery of memorable characters… . [She] knocks it out of the park in her second novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) At 37, Nora Lark feels she's become a hard woman from the impossible challenges over the last 20 years…. [P]arallel to Nora's story is one of the Balkans-born outlaw Lurie Mattie…. How he ends up in Nora's yard roped to a camel is a most unusual, absorbing tale. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
(Starred review) [E]xtraordinarily intricate worldview, psychological and social acuity, descriptive artistry, and shrewd, witty, and zestful storytelling…. As her protagonists’ lives converge, Obreht inventively and scathingly dramatizes the delirium of the West—its myths, hardships, greed, racism, sexism, and violence.
Booklist
(Starred review) A frontier tale dazzles with camels and wolves and two characters who never quite meet.… Meanwhile, there are head lice, marvelous, dueling newspaper editorials, and a mute granny with her part to play. The final, luminous chapter is six pages that will take your breath away.
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.)
Elmet
Fiona Mozley, 2017
Algonquin Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616208424
Summary
The family thought the little house they had made themselves in Elmet, a corner of Yorkshire, was theirs, that their peaceful, self-sufficient life was safe.
Cathy and Daniel roamed the woods freely, occasionally visiting a local woman for some schooling, living outside all conventions. Their father built things and hunted, working with his hands; sometimes he would disappear, forced to do secret, brutal work for money, but to them he was a gentle protector.
Narrated by Daniel after a catastrophic event has occurred, Elmet mesmerizes even as it becomes clear the family's solitary idyll will not last.
When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, their innocence lost. Daddy and Cathy, both of them fierce, strong, and unyielding, set out to protect themselves and their neighbors, putting into motion a chain of events that can only end in violence.
As rich, wild, dark, and beautiful as its Yorkshire setting, Elmet is a gripping debut about life on the margins and the power—and limits—of family loyalty. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987-88
• Where—York, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—shortlist, Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in York, England
Fiona Mozley grew up in York, England, and studied at Cambridge. After briefly working at a literary agency in London, she moved back to York to complete a Ph.D, in Medieval Studies. She also has a weekend job at the Little Apple Bookshop in York. Elmet is her first novel and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] lyrical and mythic work…[Mozley's] story is rooted, actually and tonally, in ancient soil. The mentions, early on, of cars and television sets are surprising, some of the first indicators that we're anywhere north of, say, the 12th century. The successful execution of this bold strategy, to voice a story set in the present day as if it could be happening nearly any time in human history, is just one indicator of Mozley's skill and ambition.… In its signposting and pacing, Elmet promises a reckoning, and we get one. The climactic scene is full of bedlam. It is also cartoonish. One might balk at its outlandishness, or squirm at its vivid, protracted violence, but it keeps your attention and doesn't leave any fireworks unpopped.… Despite the book's frequent attention to realistic details, it is securely situated in fable territory, and Mozley's sheer storytelling confidence sends the reader sailing past almost every speed bump.
John Williams - New York Times Book Review
Thrums with all the energy and life of the forests that surround the family.… Rhythmic and lilting, the writing is dreamily poetic.… Elmet is a rich and earthy tale of family life, sibling relationships, identity, how we define community.
Financial Times (UK)
An impressive slice of contemporary noir steeped in Yorkshire legend.… Elmet possesses a rich and unfussy lyricism.
Guardian (UK)
A stunning debut.… A wonder to behold. An utterly arresting novel about family, home, rural exploitation, violence and, most of all, the loyalty and love of children under siege.
Evening Standard (UK)
[A] magical debut novel. Set in modern-day Yorkshire, this dazzling debut feels steeped in a more primitive, violent past. Teenagers Cathy and Daniel are living self-sufficiently in the woods with their father—until their peaceful existence is threatened by a wealthy landowner. Narrated by 14-year-old Daniel in seductively poetic prose, the book shines a light on the toll of power wielded cruelly, as well as on a countering force: the extraordinary sustenance family devotion can provide.
People
Lushly written, yet perfectly understated.… What makes this novel stand out … is its dense palette of language, layer upon layer of image and visual description that transports the reader into an almost dreamlike world.
New York Journal of Books
[A] rugged, potent work whose concentrated mixture of lyricism and violence recalls Cormac McCarthy.… [O]verheated scenes of gore and overlong speeches … dissipate the novel’s power.… Mozley is best when describing the tight-knit family in its isolated splendor.
Publishers Weekly
One of the surprises on Britain’s Man Booker Prize shortlist…. American readers now have the chance to experience the novel’s atmospheric writing and its vivid portrait of a family struggling to outrun its past.… Elmet paints a memorable picture of fraught familial relationships and the perils of revenge.
BookPage
(Starred review.) [P]reternaturally accomplished … riveting and disquieting.… [A] suspenseful family tragedy stoked by social critique, escalated by men’s violence against women, and darkly veined with elements of country noir.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Part fairy tale, part coming-of-age story, part revenge tragedy with literary connections, Mozley's first novel is a shape-shifting, lyrical, but dark parable of life off the grid in modern Britain. Mozley's instantaneous success . . . is a response to the stylish intensity of her work, which boldly winds multiple genres into a rich spinning top of a tale.
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 Elmet ... then take off your own:
1. John has almost two different representations in the novel: as "Daddy" to Cathy and Daniel and as a physically bare-knuckled gargantuan of a man. How do his children see him … and how do outsiders see him? How do you see him?
2. The novel is set in contemporary times, but Fiona Mozley locates it in a "strange, sylvan otherworld," a fable-like setting, that evokes ancient Celtic Britain. How does she accomplish this? (Try pointing to passages that establish this near mythic quality.) Why might the author wish to create an otherworldly atmosphere?
3. Danny says his father “wanted to strengthen us against the dark things in the world. The more we knew of it, the better we would be prepared. And yet there was nothing of the world in our lives, only stories of it.” Is he in fact preparing his children to face the world or endangering them?
4. How would you describe the two siblings? Start with Cathy, who describes herself as "angry all the time." Why?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: Talk about Danny, who seems almost the opposite of his sister. While Cathy's strength is underestimated by those who provoke her, Danny admits that he "never thought of [himself] as a man." How does Danny think of himself. How do you think of him?
6. "Mentioning her was so rare that we did not know whether to take it as an invitation or a warning." Where is the children's mother?
7. Talk about the economic conditions of Elmet and the tinder box of its inequality.
8. What is the back history of John and Price's relationship?
9. What do you think of Vivien? What is her role vis-a-vis the two children? How does she help Daniel to think of his father's tendency toward violence?
10. What are the signposts Mozley offers of the disaster in waiting?
11. Follow-up to Question 2: Even though the novel is based in realism, in what way can Elmet be thought of as a fable? Fables usually end with a moral: is there a lesson, or overarching theme, say, that the author seems to be reaching for in Elmet?
12. Is the ending too overwrought? Too gory? Or does it serve the expectations of the storyline?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Hollow Kingdom
Kira Jane Buxton, 2019
Grand Central Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781538745823
Summary
S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle's wild crows (i.e. "those idiots"), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos®.
But when Big Jim's eyeball falls out of his head, S.T. starts to think something's not quite right.
Big Jim's tried-and-true remedies—from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of his loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis—fail to cure his debilitating malady.
S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he suddenly discovers that the neighbors are devouring one other. Local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of Seattle's dangerous new predators.
Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a cowardly crow whose only knowledge of the world comes from TV.
What could possibly go wrong? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kira Jane Buxton's writing has appeared in the New York Times, NewYorker.com, McSweeney's, The Rumpus, Huffington Post, and more. She calls the tropical utopia of Seattle, Washington, home and spends her time with three cats, a dog, two crows, a charm of hummingbirds, and a husband. (From the publishers.)
Book Reviews
Buxton takes a joyfully original approach to apocalyptic fiction…. S.T. is a brilliant narrator, partially because he has reverence for human things like Cheetos and baked goods…, but also because he has only half a grasp on what certain human things mean…. But the… deep ache he feels for Big Jim and the life he used to lead read as incredibly sincere…. S.T. ultimately gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, we still have a chance to turn things around before Nature is so fed up that she really does set her sights on destroying us for good.
NPR
Pick up this delightfully weird book for a change from the usual—we promise it's like nothing you've read before.
Good Housekeeping
Literary debuts don't get much more high-concept than this.
Entertainment Weekly
[F]resh, alarming…hilarious… [A]nimals both tame and wild share moving ruminations on the end of humanity… and the masterful blend of humorous and tragic make this novel an eloquent… exploration of survival during an unthinkable cataclysm.
Publishers Weekly
Though some aspects of the plot, including a divinatory octopus, present as colorless, the overall fresh, quirky tone and content will interest animal lovers and fans of… sardonic wit. —Marian Mays, Washington Talking Book & Braille Lib., Seattle
Library Journal
Buxton's quirky ideas and compelling nonhuman characters will satisfy literary fiction and zombie genre enthusiasts alike who are looking for something beguilingly different.
Booklist
In lieu of giving her lively animal characters a rich narrative arc, the author focuses too heavily on not-so-subtle morality tales…. A heavy-handed zombie apocalypse-meets-nature documentary meant to inspire humans to do better, but it loses its way.
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.)