The Need
Helen Phillips, 2019
Simon & Schuster
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982113162
Summary
The Need, which finds a mother of two young children grappling with the dualities of motherhood after confronting a masked intruder in her home, is "like nothing you’ve ever read before… in a good way" (People).
When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows.
But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement.
Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty.
Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion.
In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. The novel is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Wjere—state of Colorado, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., Brooklyn College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Helen Phillips is the author of the novels, Beautiful Bureaucrat (2015) and The Need (2019) . She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and the Italo Calvino Prize, among others. Her collection, And Yet They Were Happy, was also a finalist for the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns Prize, and her work has been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts and appeared in Tin House, Electric Literature, Slice, BOMB, Mississippi Review, and PEN America.
Phillips has been an assistant professor of creative writing at Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Motherhood is a monstrosity in this engrossing novel, which opens with a mother clutching her children, fearful she hears an intruder. She doubts herself—not only about whether she’s imagined the break-in, but about how to exist as a mother. The story is maddening, panicky and full of black humor, much like parenthood itself.
New York Times
Phillips, as careful with language as she is bold with structure, captures many small sharp truths…. Everyday life, here, is both tedious and fascinating, grotesque and lovely, familiar and tremendously strange. Molly—worrying about the person she is becoming… is finally alive to it all, to its terrors but also, on those rare occasions when everyone is happy (or asleep), to its incandescent joys.
New York Times Book Review
Mothers will recognize so much in this fresh novel—but they aren’t the only ones who should read it. Phillips has found a way to make these experiences universal, acknowledging the importance of the other—the creature without whom none of us would exist.
Washington Post
Thrillingly disturbing, frighteningly insightful about motherhood and love, and spilling over with offhand invention, The Need is one of this year’s most necessary novels.
Guardian (UK)
What begins as a hyperventilating domestic noir morphs into elegant speculative fiction, and then into a grand hymn to motherhood.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
A taut thriller...Between chills, readers will notice the pleasures of Phillips’s prose. Her style combines the sensibility of a poet with the forward drive of a thriller.… Phillips’s crystalline style vividly evokes her characters. She draws them so precisely that before we know it, we’re deep inside their lives.… [A] bewitching, fiercely original novel.
Boston Globe
An elegant dread slips through this elusive novel like wisteria on a crumbling wall...Many books claim to be domestic thrillers. The Need is the mother of them all.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Hypnotically eerie…. Phillips structures her astonishing fifth book in edge-of-your-seat mini-chapters that infuse domesticity with a horror-movie level of foreboding, reminding us that the maternal instinct is indeed a primal one.
O Magazine
Helen Phillips is best known for her delirious and philosophical short stories, and in her second novel, she combines her impeccable brevity with plot that unfolds like a paper snowflake.
Vanity Fair
This fever dream of a novel starts like a thriller (someone’s in the living room), morphs into speculative sci-fi… and ends up like nothing you’ve ever read before. In a good way.
People
What Helen Phillips builds from the first paragraphs is too clever, and moves too quickly, to be easily ground down in a review.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review) An unforgettable tour de force that melds nonstop suspense, intriguing speculation, and perfectly crafted prose.… With its crossover appeal to lovers of thriller, science fiction, and literary fiction, this story showcases an extraordinary writer at her electrifying best.
Publishers Weekly
[G]ripping, shape-shifting … Is this literary work a story of magical realism, a straight-up horror novel…, or a product of Molly's exhausted imagination? Of course, it's all of the above and makes for an unforgettable—and polarizing—reading experience. —Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
Library Journal
A skillfully crafted, thought provoking domestic thriller.
Booklist
(Starred review) Phillips' fuguelike novel, in which the protagonist's tormentor may be either other or self, is a parable of parenting …. It is also a superbly engaging read—quirky, perceptive, and gently provocative. Molly may be losing her marbles, but we can't help rooting for her to find herself.
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.)
Force of Nature
Jane Harper, 2018
Flatiron Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250105639
Summary
Five women go on a hike. Only four return. Jane Harper, the New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, asks: How well do you really know the people you work with?
When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path.
But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened.
Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1979-80
• Where—Manchester, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Kent (Canterbury, England)
• Currently—lives in St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia
Jane Harper is an Englisn-born, partially Australian-raised writer, now living in Australia. She is the author of The Dry (2016/2017), Force of Nature (2018), and The Lost Man (2019)—all crime novels set in Australia.
Jane was born in Manchester, England, but her family moved to a subrub of Melbourne, Australia, where she lived till she was six. The family then returned to England, and Jane attended the University of Kent where she earned her B.A., in History and English.
Her first job out of school was as a journalist (yes, she actually had to pass a qualifying exam). She first worked for the Darlington & Stockton Times and, later, as senior news editor for the Hull Daily Mail, both papers in Yorkshire, England.
But Australia beckoned, and in 2008 Jane returned to her early childhood stromping grounds, again working in journalism—first for the Geelong Advertiser, then in 2011 for the Herald Sun in Melbourne.
After she had a short story accepted for inclusion in the annual Fiction Edition of The Big Issue (Melbourne), Jane turned to fiction writing in a serious way. In 2014, she signed up for a 12-week online creative writing course. The story she submitted for acceptance into the program turned out to be the beginning of her novel, The Dry. By the end of the three months, Jane had her first draft of the novel.
Making this almost a fairytale come true, Jane felt confident enough to enter the novel's third draft in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. It won the $15,000 prize in May, 2015, and Pan Macmillan paid a non-specified “six-figure” sum for a three-book deal.
Jane and her husband live in St. Kilda, outside of Melbourne, with their daughter. Jane now writes fiction full time. (Adapted from the author's website and news.com.au.)
Book Reviews
A gripping tale of an elemental battle for survival.… Harper once again shows herself to be a storytelling force to be reckoned with.
Publishers Weekly
[A]n intriguing crime that might not actually exist and potential suspects with realistically complex personalities and possible motives. The two story lines, past and present, collide with a satisfying yet not gratuitous conclusion.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Riveting, tension-driven thriller.… Perfect for fans of Tana French and readers who enjoy literary page-turners.
Booklist
[C]rackerjack plotting propels the story.… Harper layers her story with hidden depths, expertly mining the distrust between Alice and her four colleagues, and the secrets that simmer under the surface.… A spooky, compelling read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for Force of Nature … then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Home for Unwanted Girls
Joanna Goodman, 2018
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062684226
Summary
Philomena meets Orphan Train in this suspenseful, provocative novel filled with love, secrets, and deceit—the story of a young unwed mother who is forcibly separated from her daughter at birth and the lengths to which they go to find each other.
In 1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious civility—much like Maggie Hughes' parents. Maggie’s English-speaking father has ambitions for his daughter that don’t include marriage to the poor French boy on the next farm over.
But Maggie’s heart is captured by Gabriel Phenix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents force her to give baby Elodie up for adoption and get her life "back on track."
Elodie is raised in Quebec’s impoverished orphanage system. It’s a precarious enough existence that takes a tragic turn when Elodie, along with thousands of other orphans in Quebec, is declared mentally ill as the result of a new law that provides more funding to psychiatric hospitals than to orphanages.
Bright and determined, Elodie withstands abysmal treatment at the nuns' hands, finally earning her freedom at seventeen, when she is thrust into an alien, often unnerving world.
Maggie, married to a businessman eager to start a family, cannot forget the daughter she was forced to abandon, and a chance reconnection with Gabriel spurs a wrenching choice.
As time passes, the stories of Maggie and Elodie intertwine but never touch, until Maggie realizes she must take what she wants from life and go in search of her long-lost daughter, finally reclaiming the truth that has been denied them both. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Joanna Goodman is the author of the bestselling novels The Finishing School (2017) and The Home for Unwanted Girls (2018). Although fictional, the latter book, set in Quebec, Ontario, during the 1950s, was inspired in part by her mother's experiences.
Originally from Montreal, Joanna now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] moving if at times predictable.… While the third-person perspective works well for Maggie’s character, it comes off as unrealistic and forced in chapters about the younger Elodie …. Still, Goodman writes with passion about a dark episode in Quebec’s recent past.
Publishers Weekly
Goodman was inspired in part by her mother's story for this novel set in 1950s Quebec.… [Her] solid historical novel highlights social conditions in Quebec… with complex characters and the conflict between the French and English handled realistically. —Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
A study of how love persists through the most trying of circumstances. Deep and meaningful, this novel captures the reader’s attention until they’re rewarded with a happy ending.
Booklist
[L]ittle-known injustices… [but] also a very personal story.… Characters who could have easily come across as types or cliches take on a great emotional depth.…The ending hits a perfect emotional note: bittersweet and honest, comforting and regretful.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does the prologue (or poem at the start of the book) frame the rest of the novel? How does it relate to the book's themes?
2. What would Elodie's life have been like if she hadn't been given up?
3. What would Maggie's life have been like if she hadn't had Elodie?
4. If you were presented with the same choice as Maggie, would you do the same?
5. Are Maggie's father's actions justified? Do you forgive him?
6. What draws Maggie to her first husband? What does her marriage to her first husband say about her relationship to her family and heritage?
7. What does "The Home for Unwanted Girls" mean? What does it mean for a child to be"unwanted" in this context?
8. How do Maggie's and Elodie's abusers justify their actions? How has this shaped both women?
9. What do you think of Gabriel? Do you understand his perspective? Is he a healthy partner for Maggie?
10. What are your thoughts on Maggie's mother? Is she another abuser, or a devoted mother who has made mistakes?
11. How does Maggie change from the start of the novel? From a teenager to an adult? Do you admire her at the end of the book?
12. The book shifts between mother and daughter. How does this change your understanding of the book? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story in this way?
13. How do you feel about the nun who kept Maggie and Elodie apart? How do Maggie, Elodie, and Gabriel cope with her cruelty?
14. What do you think of the ending? Do you feel optimistic about their future?
15. How do Elodie, Maggie, and Maggie's mother approach motherhood? How does motherhood change how they think of themselves?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Reservoir 13
Jon McGregor, 2017
Catapult
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936787708
Summary
Midwinter in an English village. A teenage girl has gone missing.
Everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace.
Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.
As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together and those who break apart.
There are births and deaths; secrets kept and exposed; livelihoods made and lost; small kindnesses and unanticipated betrayals.
An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a tragedy refuse to subside. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Where—Bermuda
• Raised—Norfolk, England, UK
• Education—Bradford University
• Awards—Betty Trask Prize; Somerset Maugham Award; International Dublin Literary Award
• Currently—lives in Norwich, UK
Jon McGregor, a British novelist and short story writer, was born in Bermuda and raised in Norwich and Thetford, Norfolk, in the U.K. He studied for a degree in Media Technology and Production at Bradford University.
After moving to Nottingham (where he still lives), McGregor wrote his first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, while living on a narrowboat. The novel won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. It was also nominated for the 2002 Booker Prize — he was only 26 at the time.
McGregor's second and fourth novels were longlisted for the Booker Prize (2006 and 2017), and his third won the International Dublin Literary Award (2012) — the same year The New York Times labeled him a "wicked British writer."
Currently, McGregor is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, England, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2010.
Works
2002 - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
2006 - So Many Ways to Begin
2010 - Even the Dog
2012 - This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (Stories)
2017 - Reservoir 13
2017 - The Reservoir Tapes (Stories)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/18/2017.)
Book Reviews
Jon McGregor has revolutionized that most hallowed of mystery plots: the one where some foul deed takes place in a tranquil English village that, by the close of the case, doesn’t feel so tranquil anymore.… McGregor’s writing style is ingenious.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
Disturbing, one-of-a-kind.… Most books involving crime and foul play provide the consolation of some sort of resolution. But Mr. McGregor's novel, which was long-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize, shows how life, however unsettlingly, continues in the absence of such explanation.
Tom Nolan - Wall Street Journal
Jon McGregor has been quietly building a reputation as one of the outstanding writers of his generation since 2002, when he became the youngest writer to be longlisted for the Booker prize.… Reservoir 13 is an extraordinary achievement; a portrait of a community that leaves the reader with an abiding affection for its characters, because we recognise their follies and frailties and the small acts of kindness and courage that bind them together.
Observer (UK)
He excels at charting how, over the years, relationships fray, snap or twine together.… There are images Seamus Heaney might have coveted.… Making clarity gleam with poetry, McGregor again highlights the remarkable in the everyday.
Sunday Times (UK)
Even by the standards of his mature work, McGregor’s latest novel is a remarkable achievement.… Fluid and fastidious, its sparing loveliness feels deeply true to its subject. There are moments, as in life, of miraculous grace, but no more than that.… [A] humane and tender masterpiece.
Irish Times
Award-winning Jon McGregor defies expectations with this superbly crafted and mesmerizingly atmospheric portrait of an unnamed village.… Unsentimental and occasionally very funny, this is a haunting, beautiful book.
Daily Mail (UK)
McGregor's book achieves a visionary power.… [H]e has written a novel with a quiet but insistently demanding, even experimental form. The word "collage" implies something static and finally fixed, but the beauty of Reservoir 13 is in fact rhythmic, musical, ceaselessly contrapuntal.… A remarkable achievement [and a] subtle unraveling of what we think of as the conventional project of the novel.
James Wood - The New Yorker
This is above all a work of intense, forensic noticing: an unobtrusively experimental, thickly atmospheric portrait of the life of a village which, for its mixture of truthfulness and potency, deserves to be set alongside the works of such varied brilliance as Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield, Jim Crace’s Harvest, and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Reservoir 13 leaves the reader feeling mesmerised, disconcerted and with senses oddly heightened, as if something had walked over their own grave.
Australian
(Starred review.) [U]nforgettable.… McGregor portrays individuals and the community as a whole, across seasons, in mundane scenes and moments of heartbreak, cruelty, and guilt.… This is an ambitious tour de force … a singular and haunting story.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [E]xtraordinary, and while the narrative technique is initially wearing in the way village life can be—the monotony, the knowledge of everybody's business—it coheres remarkably into a knowable, comforting, ultimately compelling world. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) McGregor masterfully employs a free, indirect style that… seamlessly blends narrative, dialogue, and wonderfully observant, poetic musings.… [The] novel’s subtly devastating impact … imparts wisdom about the tenuous and priceless gift of life.
Booklist
(Starred review.) In simple, quiet, and deliberate prose, McGregor describes the passing months. The seasons change…. "It went on like this. This was how it went on."… A stunningly good, understated novel told in a mesmerizing voice (A best book of the year).
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 Reservoir 13 … then take off on your own:
SPOILER ALERT: Proceed at your own risk if you've not finished the book!
1. The Guardian (in the UK) asks a question in the opening of its Reservoir 13 review, which is this: "Why is it always a girl who's missing?" Care to talk about that? Would the loss of a boy have the same attavistic tug that a girl engenders?
2. What were your expectations at the onset of the book? Were you certain that Rebecca would be found?
3. How does author Jon McGregor raise our expectations and build suspense? Someone cuts away the river weeds. Children ask about a boarded up old led mine. A school boiler house is destroyed. What were your feelings as each these events was underway?
4. Whom did you suspect?
5. What about all the villagers who lives are glimpsed at — Geoff the potter, Sally and her marriage and dangerous brother, Irene and her special needs son, Jackson the farmer? Do you get to truly know any of them? Or does the author keep us at a distance, like a distant hawk circling above? Do you find any one of the characters particularly sympathetic? As the years passed, were you caught up in their stories?
6. Is this novel a murder mystery at all? What is it? By it's end, does the book shed any light on the first question posed in this set of discussion questions: why is it always a little girl who goes missing?
7. How does Rebecca's disappearance affect the villagers? How does its impact change over time?
8. Were you engaged by Reservoir 13 … or bored? Were you impatient ... or irritated? Is there a payoff in the end? What was your experience while reading the novel, and how did you feel at its end? Would you recommend the book to others?
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
No One Is Coming to Save Us
Stephanie Powell Watts, 2017
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062472984
Summary
The Great Gatsby brilliantly recast in the contemporary South: a powerful first novel about an extended African-American family and their colliding visions of the American Dream
JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina to build his dream home and to woo his high school sweetheart, Ava. But he finds that the people he once knew and loved have changed, just as he has.
Ava is now married, and wants a baby more than anything. The decline of the town’s once-thriving furniture industry has made Ava’s husband Henry grow distant and frustrated.
Ava’s mother Sylvia has put her own life on hold as she caters to and meddles with those around her, trying to fill the void left by her absent son. And Don, Sylvia’s undeserving but charming husband, just won’t stop hanging around.
JJ’s newfound wealth forces everyone to consider what more they want and deserve from life than what they already have—and how they might go about getting it. Can they shape their lives to align with their wishes rather than their realities? Or are they resigned to the rhythms of the particular lives they lead? No One Is Coming to Save Us is a revelatory debut from an insightful voice that combines a universally resonant story with an intimate glimpse into the hearts of one family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—North Carolina
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; Ph.D., University of Missouri
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; Whiting Award; Ernest J. Gaines Award
• Currently—lives in Pennsylvania
Stephanie Powell Watts is an American author, who first novel, No One Is Coming to Save Us, was published in 2017. Watts, born in the foothills of North Carolina, received her BA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and her PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She now lives with her husband and son in Pennsylvania where she is an associate professor of English at Lehigh University.
atts won a Whiting Award in 2013 and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence in 2012] for her short story collection We are Taking Only what We Need, a book of 11 stories chronicling the lives of African-Americans in North Carolina. Her short fiction has been included in two volumes of the Best New Stories from the South anthology and honored with a Pushcart Prize.
Her debut novel, No One Is Coming to Save Us, follows the return of a successful native son to his home in North Carolina and his attempt to join the only family he ever wanted but never had. As Ms. Watts describes it, “Imagine The Great Gatsby set in rural North Carolina, nine decades later, with desperate black people.” (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/12/2018.)
Book Reviews
Watts’s book envisions a backwoods African-American version of The Great Gatsby. The circumstances of her characters are vastly unlike Fitzgerald’s, and those differences are what make this novel so moving. No frivolity or superficiality here.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Stephanie Powell Watts's skillful riff on The Great Gatsby … revolves around a contemporary black family in a declining North Carolina town. Which doesn't mean that No One Is Coming to Save Us is some kind of Jay Z Gatsby fantasy.… Watts writes about ordinary people leading ordinary lives with an extraordinary level of empathy and attention.… Watts is interested in what black people are allowed to want — and allow themselves to want — in 21st-century America, and what it takes to venture a real claim for a place, a home.… The ways in which No One Is Coming to Save Us intersects with and veers away from Fitzgerald's familiar plot can be very rewarding…Every departure can be seen as a sly comment on what it means to be a person of color in today's America.
Jade Chang - New York Times Book Review
Watts is so captivating a writer. She’s unusually deft with dialogue.… [The novel is] conveyed in a prose style that renders the common language of casual speech into natural poetry, blending intimate conversation with the rhythms of gossip, town legend, even song lyrics.… An indelible story.
Washington Post
Watts’ lyrical writing and seamless floating between characters’ viewpoints make for a harmonious narrative chorus. This feels like an important, largely missing part of our ongoing American story. Ultimately, Watts offers a human tale of resilience and the universally understood drive to hang on and do whatever it takes to save oneself.
Chicago Review of Books
Inspired by The Great Gatsby, Watts loosely (masterfully, too) retells the American saga from the present day perspective of a once thriving African American community, breathing fresh life into a classic in a way that feels more essential, more moving than the original.
Marie Claire
A deep, moving read.
Real Simple
In her patient yet rich first novel, a Great Gatsby reboot, Watts … takes a beat too long to find its rhythm, but when it does, it hits home — and hard.… [R]elevant and memorable.
Publishers Weekly
This quiet debut novel takes its time, much like the conversations among the various characters, which meander and loop around before reaching their point. The resolution is believable and gratifying without being pat. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Watts’ lyrical writing and seamless floating between characters’ viewpoints make for a harmonious narrative chorus … an important, largely missing part of our ongoing American story. Ultimately, Watts offers a human tale of resilience and the universally understood drive to hang on and do whatever it takes to save oneself.
Booklist
(Starred review.) The Great Gatsby is revived in an accomplished debut novel.… Watts' gently told story, like Fitzgerald's, is only superficially about money but more acutely about the urgent, inexplicable needs that shape a life.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is this significance of the novel’s allusions to The Great Gatsby? In what way does No One Coming to Save Us both complement and contrast with Fitzgerald’s classic?
2. The novel is written from a number of perspectives: how does that multi-perspective approach help to shape the reading experience?
3. JJ is the lynchpin of the story, but the novel is mostly comprised of female voices. What is the effect of having the central cast made up of mostly women?
4. The mother/daughter relationship between Sylvia and Ava is a fascinating portrayal of intergenerational tension. How is their dynamic presented on the page, and what are the conflicts that threaten their relationship?
5. At the start of the novel, Ava and her husband Henry have been draining their savings trying to conceive for years, and Henry is dealing with cutbacks in his hours at the furniture factory where he works. How do their economic anxieties bleed into their marriage?
6. Sylvia talks to Marcus, a prisoner, after his friends and family have given up on him. Do you think Sylvia is right to have hope for him? Do you think he has a chance at turning his life around?
7. JJ builds an empty dream house, while Sylvia reminisces about the people who once filled her little house. What do houses mean to these characters? What is the difference between a house and a home?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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