Grist Mill Road
Christopher J. Yates, 2018
Picador
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250150288
Summary
26 years ago Hannah had her eye shot out. Now she wants justice. But is she blind to the truth?
Christopher J. Yates’s cult hit Black Chalk introduced that rare writerly talent: a literary writer who could write a plot with the intricacy of a brilliant mental puzzle, and with characters so absorbing that readers are immediately gripped.
Yates’s new book does not disappoint.
Grist Mill Road is a dark, twisted, and expertly plotted Rashomon-style tale.
The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends—Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah—are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime.
Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again—with even more devastating results. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Raised—Kent, England, UK
• Education—J.D., Oxford University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA
Christopher J. Yates was born and raised in Kent, England, and studied law at Oxford University before working as a puzzle editor in London. He now lives in New York City with his wife and dog. His first book, Black Chalk, was an NPR "Best of the Year" selection. (From the publisher.)
Read article on the author in Literary Hub.
Book Reviews
[A] whydunnit that delves deep into the secrets linking the main characters.… Yates's previous book, Black Chalk, had a delicious premise: an escalating game of dare over the years among friends who meet at Oxford.… [Grist Mill Road] is more sophisticated, starting from the fully realized stories the characters are awarded in the service of an elegant narrative…You have to work hard to follow the winding road Yates sends us down, and the drive is full of pleasantly unpleasant surprises.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times
(Starred review.) [A]n edgy, intelligent thriller…. The reader’s sympathies shift as each character brings a different perspective to the events that shaped them. Unexpected twists keep the tension high.
Publishers Weekly
[A] fun-house mirror of a single, horrific incident that defines three lives.… This fast-paced, suspenseful journey through the minds of these characters will fascinate … readers who enjoy twisty, intellectual thrillers and unreliable narration. —Charli Osborne, Oak Park P. L., MI
Library Journal
The intensity of the storytelling is exhilarating and unsettling. — Don Crinklaw
Booklist
(Starred review.) Yates…drives home the messages that…true, compassionate love is always redemptive.… Mesmerizing and impossible to put down, this novel demands full attention…; in return it offers poignant insight into human fragility and resilience.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the novel, Patch poses the following questions: "What does it mean to watch? When a crime takes place in front of you, what is watching? Is it a failure to act or is it simply keeping your eyes open?” How would you answer these questions? In what ways does the conclusion of the novel influence your answers?
2. The narration of the novel toggles between first person and third person, allowing Hannah, Patch, and Matthew to speak, as well as an omniscient narrator. Why do you think the author may have chosen to alternate vantage points in this way? How does this style of narration affect your interpretation of the novel?
3. In many ways, the town of Roseborn and its surrounding landscape comes alive as a character in and of itself. How would you describe the nature of this place? In what ways do you see this town’s particularities impact Patch, Hannah, and Matthew in their adult lives?
4. Stalking pervades the novel, from Patch’s following of Trevino and Matthew’s shadowing of Patch to a particularly grisly crime that Hannah covers. But it also transcends such physical action; past memories and traumas stalk the present-day lives of the characters in dreams, journal entries, fantasies, and everyday thoughts. Why do you think there’s such a thematic preoccupation with stalking in the novel?
5. We find out about the secret in Patch and Hannah’s marriage, that Hannah doesn’t know Patch was there when Matthew shot her, about midway through the novel. Hannah, in fact, tells Jen that, "He actually saved me.” To what extent do you agree or disagree with Hannah that Patch saved her? Do you think Patch was culpable in the crime perpetrated against Hannah? In what ways might he have played both roles?
6. At the beginning of Matthew’s section, he writes, "Truth is seldom a lens, truth is a kaleidoscope.” How do you interpret this statement? How do you see this idea play out thematically across the novel?
7. We don’t hear directly from Matthew until over halfway through the novel. In what ways does getting the story from his perspective shift your view of his character?
8. Patch fails to tell Hannah that he was present for part of Matthew’s shooting spree. Do you think that means their marriage was based on a lie? Why or why not?
9. Hannah, Patch, and Matthew all have complex relationships with their fathers. Discuss the ways in which their fathers shape each of these characters.
10. Why do you think Matthew is so resistant to labels? In what ways do labels complicate his life?
(Questions written by Laura Chasen and issued by the publisher.)
The Red Lotus
Chris Bohjalian, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385544801
Summary
A twisting story of love and deceit: an American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam and his girlfriend, an emergency room doctor trained to ask questions, follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met.
The first time Alexis saw Austin, it was a Saturday night. Not in a bar, but in the emergency room where Alexis sutured a bullet wound in his arm.
Six months later, on the brink of falling in love, they travel to Vietnam on a bike tour so that Austin can show her his passion for cycling and he can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war.
But as Alexis sips white wine and waits at the hotel for him to return from his solo ride, two men emerge from the tall grass and Austin vanishes into thin air. The only clue he leaves behind is a bright yellow energy gel dropped on the road.
As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, navigating the FBI, Austin's prickly family, and her colleagues at the hospital, Alexis uncovers a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in?
Set amidst the adrenaline-fueled world of the emergency room, The Red Lotus is a global thriller about those who dedicate their lives to saving people, and those who peddle death to the highest bidder. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—White Plains, New York, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Anahid Literary Award, 2000; New England Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Lincoln, Vermont
Christopher Aram Bohjalian, who goes by the pen name Chris Bohjalian, is an American novelist. Bohjalian is the author of nearly 20 novels, including New York Times bestsellers Midwives, Secrets of Eden, The Law of Similars, Before You Know Kindness, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and The Night Strangers.
Bohjalian is the son of Aram Bohjalian, who was a senior vice president of the New York advertising agency Romann & Tannenholz. Chris Bohjalian graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an account representative for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York.
He and his wife lived in a co-op in Brooklyn until March 1986, when the two were riding in a taxicab in which the driver refused to let them out of the car for 45 minutes, ignoring all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight, the driver dropped them off at a near-deserted street in front of a crack house, where the police were conducting a raid and Bohjalian and his wife were forced to drop to the ground for their protection. The incident prompted the couple to move from Brooklyn; Bohjalian said, "After it was all over, we just thought, "Why do we live here?" A few days later, the couple read an ad in The New York Times referencing the "People's Republic of Vermont," and in 1987 the couple moved to Lincoln, Vermont.
Early career
After buying their house, Bohjalian began writing weekly columns for local newspaper and magazine about living in the small town, which had a population of about 975 residents. The Concord Monitor said of Bohjalian during this period, "his immersion in community life and family, Vermont-style, has allowed him to develop into a novelist with an ear and empathy for the common man." Bohjalian continued the column for about 12 years, writing about such topics as his own daily life, fatherhood and the transformation of America. The column has run in the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Bohjalian has also written for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Bohjalian's first novel, A Killing in the Real World, was released in 1988. Almost two decades after it was released, Bohjalian said of the book, "It was a train wreck. I hadn't figured things out yet." His third novel, Past the Bleachers, was released in 1992 and adapted as a Hallmark Channel television movie in 1995.
In 1998, Bohjalian wrote his fifth book, Midwives, a novel focusing on rural Vermont midwife Sibyl Danforth, who becomes embroiled in a legal battle after one of her patients died following an emergency Caesarean section.
The novel was critically acclaimed and was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the October 1998 selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which helped push the book to great financial success. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Victoria Blewer has often described her husband as having "a crush" on the Sybil Danforth character. In 2001, the novel was adapted into a Lifetime Movie Network television film starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Spacek said the Danforth character appealed to her because "the heart of the story is my character's inner struggle with self-doubt, the solo road you travel when you have a secret."
Later career
Bohjalian followed Midwives with the 1999 novel The Law of Similars, about a widower attorney suffering from nameless anxieties who starts dating a woman who practices alternative medicine. The novel was inspired by Bohjalian's real-life visit to a homeopath in an attempt to cure frequent colds he was catching from his daughter's day care center. Bohjalian said of the visit, "I don't think I imagined there was a novel in homeopathy, however, until I met the homeopath and she explained to me the protocols of healing. There was a poetry to the language that a patient doesn't hear when visiting a conventional doctor."
The protagonist, a father, is based in part on Bohjalian himself, and his four-year-old daughter is based largely on Bohjalian's daughter, who was three when he was writing the book., Liz Rosenberg of The New York Times said the novel shared many similarities with Midwives but that it paled in comparison; Rosenberg said, "Unlike its predecessor, it fails to take advantage of Bohjalian's great gift for creating thoughtful fiction featuring characters in whom the reader sustains a lively interest." Megan Harlan of The Boston Phoenix described it as "formulaic fiction" and said Bohjalian focused too much on creating a complex plot and not enough of complex characterizations. The Law of Similars, like Midwives, made the New York Times bestsellers list.
He won the New England Book Award in 2002, and in 2007 released "The Double Bind," a novel based on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
In 2008, Bohjalian released Skeletons at the Feast, a love story set in the last six months of World War II in Poland and Germany. The novel was inspired by an unpublished diary written by German citizen Eva Henatsch from 1920 to 1945. The diary was given to Bohjalian in 1998 by Henatsch's grandson Gerd Krahn, a friend of Bohjalian, who had a daughter in the same kindergarten class as Bohjalian's daughter. Bohjalian was particularly fascinated by Henatsch's account of her family's trek west ahead of the Soviet Army, but he was not inspired to write a novel from it until 2006, when he read Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, Max Hastings' history of the final years of World War II. Bohjalian was struck not only by how often Henatsch's story mirrored real-life experiences, but also the common "moments of idiosyncratic human connection" found in both. Skeletons of the Feast was considered a departure for Bohjalian because it was not only set outside of Vermont, but set in a particular historical moment.
His 2010 novel, Secrets of Eden, was also a critical success, receiving starred reviews from three of the four trade journals (Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly), as well as many newspapers and magazines. It debuted at # 6 on The New York Times bestseller list.
His next novel, The Night Strangers, published in 2011, represents yet another departure for Bohjalian. The is both a gothic ghost story and a taut psychological thriller.
He has written a weekly column for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since February 1992 called "Idyll Banter." His 1,000th column appeared in May 2011.
Personal comments
In a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview, Bohjalian offered up these personal comments:
I was the heaviest child, by far, in my second-grade class. My mother had to buy my pants for me at a store called the "Husky Boys Shop," and still she had to hem the cuffs up around my knees. I hope this experience, traumatizing as it was, made me at least marginally more sensitive to people around me.
I have a friend with Down syndrome, a teenage boy who is capable of remembering the librettos from entire musicals the first or second time he hears them. The two of us belt them out together whenever we're driving anywhere in a car.I am a pretty avid bicyclist. The other day I was biking alone on a thin path in the woods near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, and suddenly before me I saw three bears. At first I saw only two, and initially I thought they were cats.
Then I thought they were dogs. Finally, just as I was approaching them and they started to scurry off the path and into the thick brush, I understood they were bears. Bear cubs, to be precise. Which is exactly when their mother, no more than five or six feet to my left, reared up on her hind legs, her very furry paws and very sharp claws raised above her head in a gesture that an optimist might consider a wave and guy on a bike might consider something a tad more threatening. Because she was standing on a slight incline, I was eye level with her stomach—an eventual destination that seemed frighteningly plausible. I have never biked so fast in my life in the woods. I may never have biked so fast in my life on a paved road.
I do have hobbies—I garden and bike, for example—but there's nothing in the world that gives me even a fraction of the pleasure that I derive from hanging around with my wife and daughter.
He lives with his wife and daughter in Lincoln, Vermont, where he is active in the local church and the Vermont theater community—always off-stage, never on.
Writing style
Bohjalian novels often focus on a specific issue, such as homelessness, animal rights and environmentalism, and tend to be character-driven, revolving around complex and flawed protagonists and secondary characters.
Bohjalian uses characteristics from his real life in his writings; in particular, many of his novels take place in fictional Vermont towns, and the names of real New Hampshire towns are often used throughout his stories. Bohjalian said, "Writers can talk with agonizing hubris about finding their voices, but for me, it was in Vermont that I discovered issues, things that matter to me."
His novels also tend to center around ordinary people facing extraordinarily difficult situations resulting from unforeseen circumstances, often triggered by other parties. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[T]errific…. What to withhold, what to reveal, when to dole out information and in what manner—these are among the hardest decisions for an author to make in any thriller, particularly one with this many moving parts. Bohjalian strikes a fine balance between disclosure and secrecy…. [He] is a pleasure to read. He writes muscular, clear, propulsive sentences…. As suspenseful as it is, The Red Lotus is also unexpectedly moving—about friendship, about the connections between people and, most of all, about the love of parents for children and of children for parents. Bohjalian is a writer with a big heart and deep compassion for his characters.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times Book Review
[W]ritten through the alternate perspectives of a number of well-drawn characters…. The… hunches of Alexis and her allies propel her closer to the truth… [but] deductive reasoning can take you only so far in a thriller as full of surprises as this one. Those who… [relish] sudden shocks and well-timed twists… should be well-pleased by his latest book, whose unexpected revelations extend to the final sentence.
Wall Street Joiurnal
[R]eaders who crave suspense will get it, along with a grim chill…. They will get, as well, a resolution that swiftly unsnarls the many narrative threads, metes out punishments to the evil and (mostly) spares the good…. Bohjalian’s focus on current problems in his novels is admirable, and in this case feels prescient; but the villains in The Red Lotus are such sociopaths, and some of the plot twists so farfetched, that the specter of biological warfare begins to feel improbable instead of truly threatening.
Washington Post
[An] intricately plotted thriller…. Each character, including secondary players, is carefully drawn, and Bohjalian keeps the tension high all the way to the surprising finale. Bohjalian’s many fans and newcomers alike will be satisfied.
Publishers Weekly
Bohjalian reinvents himself with each new novel, and… he's at it again. Here, ER doctor Alexis falls for Austin…, and six months later they're taking a bicycle trip through Vietnam.… Then he vanishes, leaving Alexis wondering how much danger she's in.
Library Journal
[A] breathless thriller…. Abetted by shifting points of view, seemingly disparate elements eventually converge to create a burgeoning sense of dread.… [With] tantalizing questions…, Bohjalian manages to keep us guessing and turning pages until the very end
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Alexis’s work as an emergency room doctor has shown her that life is short—and full of unexpected horrors. How do you think the trauma she’s seen in her career affects the choices she makes early in her relationship with Austin?
2. What initially attracts Alexis to Austin? How does their "meet-cute" in the ER set the tone for their relationship even before Austin disappears?
3. The Vietnam that Alexis experiences on the bike trip is full of natural beauty and thriving cities, but references are made often to the destruction that the country faced during the war. How do events of the Vietnam War loom over the action of the book despite it being set in the present? Have you ever traveled somewhere that felt deeply immersed in its past?
4. Rats are a recurring motif throughout the narrative and noted for their ability to survive chemical warfare and wreak havoc by carrying pathogens. They’re also a common—albeit loathed—aspect of life in cities like New York and Ho Chi Minh City. How are rats being used as a metaphor in this story? What "rat-like" qualities do characters like Austin and Douglas possess?
5. Why do you think Alexis insists on investigating Austin’s death when she returns home from Vietnam? What reasons might she have for trying to solve the mystery beyond the fact that the victim was her boyfriend?
6. Ken Sarafian connects personally to different aspects of Austin’s murder: he’s a Vietnam vet, and his daughter was the same age as Alexis. Do you think these personal connections help or hinder him more as he moves through the investigation?
7. Alexis’s relationship with her mother is complicated, but loving. How do you think Alexis grows to understand her mother more after Austin’s death?
8. Taleen Sarafian observes that the “red lotus” plague is named after a beautiful flower that "sinks at night" and "rises again at dawn." Where else in the novel do you see themes of resurrection?
9. Can you think of recent health crises or pandemics that you found particularly frightening? Why do you think stories about biological warfare and "new plagues" are so consistently scary?
10. How did you understand the motivation behind the creation of the "red lotus" pathogen? Do you think it was solely about money, or was there another reason so many doctors and scientists might have collaborated on something so dangerous?
11. The Red Lotus is Chris Bohjalian’s 20th novel. It’s a diverse collection. What qualities—of plot, character, theme, mood, and style—make his novels uniquely "Bohjalian"?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Power
Naomi Alderman, 2016 (U.S., 2017)
Little, Brown and Company
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316547611
Summary
Winner, 2017 Baileys Women's Prize-Fiction
What would happen if women suddenly possessed a fierce new power?
In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.
But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power—they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets.
From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— 1974
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University; University of East Anglia
• Awards—Orange Prize-New Writers; Baileys Women's Prize-Fiction
• Currently—lives in London, England
Naomi Alderman is an English author, novelist and game designer whose most recent novel, The Power, won the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
Born in London, the daughter of Geoffrey Alderman, a specialist in Anglo-Jewish history, Naomi attended Lincoln College, Oxford, where she read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Following Oxford, she studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
From 2003-07, Alderman was the lead writer for Perplex City, an alternate reality game, at Mind Candy. She went on to become lead writer on the running video game Zombies, Run! which launched in 2012.
Since 2012, Alderman has been Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She continues to write a monthly technology column for The Guardian.
Novels
Alderman's literary debut came in 2006 with Disobedience, a well-received (if controversial) novel about a North London rabbi's lesbian daughter living in New York. The novel garnered her the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers. Writing the book Alderman to reject her life as a practising Jew. "I went into the novel religious and by the end I wasn’t. I wrote myself out of it," she told Claire Armistead of The Guardian in 2016.
Her second novel, The Lessons, was published in 2010, and her third, The Liar's Gospel in 2012. That work portrays Jesus as an "inconsequential preacher," as described by Jewish Renaissance Magazine, which also referred to the novel as "uncomfortable and problematic."
Alderman's first three novels were all serialized on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.
In 2016, Alderman published The Power, a dystopian novel about young women who develop the ability to deliver deadly electrical shocks and who misuse their new found power. The book won the 2017 Baileys Women Prize for Fiction.
Recognition
2006 - Orange Prize for New Writers
2007 - Sunday Times New Writer of the Year
2012 - Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative*
2013 - Granta's 20 Best Young Writers list
2017 - Baileys Women's Prize-Fiction
* The Initiative is an international philanthropic program which pairs, for one year, "masters" in a specific discipline with emerging talents. Margaret Atwood selected Alderman as her protege, and the result was Alderman's fourth novel, The Power, which she dedicated to Atwood. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/18/2018.)
Book Reviews
I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric, and I felt a closed circuit humming between the book and me as I read.… I felt so hungry, reading this book, for a ball of lightning in my hand instead of keys between my knuckles on a long walk home at night. I felt hungry for the victory of these women…over those who would hurt them.
Amal El-Mohtar - New York Times Book Review
The Power is the stuff of superhero fiction.… What starts out as a fantasy of female empowerment deepens and darkens into an interrogation of power itself, its uses and abuses and what it does to the people who have it.… [Alderman's] breakout work.
Claire Armitstead - Guardian (UK)
Richly imagined, ambitious, and propulsively written.
Sophie Gilbert - Atlantic
The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid's Tale.
Cosmopolitan
Narratively complex, philosophically searching, and gorgeously rendered.
Lisa Shea - Elle
Sometimes lightning does strike the same place twice. Sometimes it strikes a whole bunch of times. In Orange Award winner Naomi Alderman's chilling The Power, women across the globe discover a sudden ability to harness their aggression by inflicting electric shocks through their fingertips. Fans of speculative fiction…about empowered youth will be struck by Alderman's speedy and thorough inhabitation of a world just different enough from ours to jolt the imagination. Mothers, lock up your boys.
Sloane Crosley - Vanity Fair
The Power doesn't necessarily hold the answers to what organizing principle we should rally around instead.… It does audaciously depict, however, the most extreme results of a movement that seeks rather than interrogates power: That if feminism has become a means for domination, it has lost its way.
Bridget Read - Vogue
Alderman tests her female characters by giving them power, and they all abuse it. Readers should not expect easy answers in this dystopian novel, but Alderman succeeds in crafting a stirring and mind-bending vision.
Publishers Weekly
A page-turning thriller and timely exploration of gender roles, censorship and repressive political regimes, The Power is a must-read for today's times. —Lauren Bufferd
BookPage
(Starred review.) [S]ublime…. That Alderman is able to explore…provocative themes in a novel that is both wildly entertaining and utterly absorbing makes for an instant classic, bound to elicit discussion and admiration in equal measure. — Kristine Huntley
Booklist
All over the world, teenage girls develop the ability to send an electric charge from the tips of their fingers.… [The novel asks] interesting questions about gender…. It's fast-paced, thrilling, and even funny. Very smart and very entertaining.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Power … then take off on our own:
1. The premise of The Power seems to be that if a new world order were created—with women in charge—it would look little different from the way it does now. That woman would use their power to oppress men. Do you agree with that premise? Does Naomi Alderman make her case convincingly? Do you see other possibilities?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: The book poses a question: why do people abuse power? What does the book suggest the answer is? What is your answer?
3. As an interesting exercise, go through the novel to identify those societal structures, both legitimate and criminal, that have been changed by feminine power. Look at how the book treats religion, the military, sex trafficking and porn, harassment, even bullying. What does the new power inversion say about the way gender and sexuality operates in "normal" society (i.e., today in the early 21st century)?
4. In what ways does each of the four characters—Eve, Roxy, Tunde, and Margot—illuminate the events of the novel and all that has changed? Whose perspective or story do you find most interesting … or revealing … or engaging?
5. What do you make of Neil Adam Armon and his gushing letter to Naomi Alderman, "I am so grateful you could spare the time," and "Sorry, I'll shut up now"? If you are a woman, does that tone, do those words, have a familiar ring? Also, what's the joke here about appropriation, given that Alderman's name, not Neil's, ends up on the novel? (If you haven't already, play around with the letters of Neil's name.)
6. Vogue reviewer, Bridget Read (really), calls parts of the book "revenge porn." Do you agree with her label? Do you find the revenge satisfying or twisted … or both?
7. Neil ponders: "Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn't. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it's hollow. Look under the shells: It's not there." What does Neil mean, and do you agree or disagree? How do you see gender? Is it "real" or a social construct?
8. The novel: bleak or hopeful?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The German Heiress
Anika Scott, 2020
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062937728
Summary
An immersive, heart-pounding debut about a German heiress on the run in post-World War II Germany.
Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname "the Iron Fräulein" during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire.
It’s been nearly two years since the war ended and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past.
With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa.
Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa.
Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other—if only they can stay ahead of the officer determined to make Clara answer for her actions during the war.
Propulsive, meticulously researched, and action-fueled, The German Heiress is a mesmerizing page-turner that questions the meaning of justice and morality, deftly shining the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Juliet Grames was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in a tight-knit Italian-American family. A book editor, she has spent the last decade at Soho Press, where she is associate publisher and curator of the Soho Crime imprint. This is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[M]agnetic…. Scott’s narrative is embellished with realistic depictions of rubble-filled German cities, scavenging residents, … moral questions about Clara’s family ties to the Nazi regime… [and] exploration of how war changes the moral compass of its victims.
Publishers Weekly
The novel delivers interesting discussions on guilt, redemption, and the actions of ordinary people in extraordinary times.
Booklist
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.)
Oliver Loving
Stefan Merrill Block, 2018
Flatiron Books
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250169730
Summary
A family in crisis, a town torn apart, and the boy who holds the secret has been cocooned in a coma for ten years.
One warm, West Texas November night, a shy boy named Oliver Loving joins his classmates at Bliss County Day School’s annual dance, hoping for a glimpse of the object of his unrequited affections, an enigmatic Junior named Rebekkah Sterling.
But as the music plays, a troubled young man sneaks in through the school’s back door. The dire choices this man makes that evening—and the unspoken story he carries—will tear the town of Bliss, Texas apart.
Nearly ten years later, Oliver Loving still lies wordless and paralyzed at Crockett State Assisted Care Facility, the fate of his mind unclear.
Orbiting the stillpoint of Oliver’s hospital bed is a family transformed: Oliver’s mother, Eve, who keeps desperate vigil; Oliver’s brother, Charlie, who has fled for New York City only to discover he cannot escape the gravity of his shattered family; Oliver’s father, Jed, who tries to erase his memories with bourbon. And then there is Rebekkah Sterling, Oliver’s teenage love, who left Texas long ago and still refuses to speak about her own part in that tragic night.
When a new medical test promises a key to unlock Oliver’s trapped mind, the town’s unanswered questions resurface with new urgency, as Oliver’s doctors and his family fight for a way for Oliver to finally communicate— and so also to tell the truth of what really happened that fateful night.
A moving meditation on the transformative power of grief and love, a slyly affectionate look at the idiosyncrasies of family, and an emotionally-charged page-turner, Stefan Merill Block's Oliver Loving is an extraordinarily original novel that ventures into the unknowable and returns with the most fundamental truths. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—Plano, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Washington University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first novel, The Story of Forgetting, won Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers’ League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre and The Center for Fiction. The Storm at the Door (2011) is his second novel, and Oliver Loving (2018) his third. Block lives in Brooklyn. (From the publisher.)
Read author interview.
Book Reviews
In Stefan Merrill Block’s psychologically astute novel, the damaged people that surround Oliver try to piece together their own versions of what happened that night and since then, even as doctors prepare a new treatment that might help Oliver communicate again.
Esquire
A moving novel of love, family, and loss, Stefan Merrill Block's Oliver Loving pulls on every heart string and leaves no stone unturned throughout one man's quest to escape the paralysis that has ensconced him and live a normal, happy life.
Pop Sugar
Block discloses the truth…by telling [his] story from different perspectives. Though the lead-up to the big reveal is perhaps too long to sustain itself, the book poses big questions about what constitutes a life worth living.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Block's powerful, ambitious third novel examines the … psychological trauma [of] families and communities when sudden, violent loss of life occurs.… A beautifully rendered meditation on … forgiveness.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Block has done an excellent job of building … characters and … setting, which lives vividly on the page, all heat and dust and decrepitude. [T]imely and timeless, this is an exciting story that rewards reader interest.
Booklist
Block has serious chops; he should trust the reader more, repeat and analyze a little less. A topic both timely and timeless, psychologically astute and vividly rendered, with strong characters and a rich sense of place.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Oliver Loving … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the school shooting and its devastatingly long impact on the three surviving members of Oliver's family. As a parent or a sibling, do you find their responses to the trauma believable?
2. How has the shooting also affect Rebekkah Sterling? She refuses to talk about that night. As you were reading, did you find yourself becoming suspicious, wondering if she knew more than she let on?
3. Follow-up to Questions 1 and 2: In what way are all the narrators of this novel weighed down by guilt, about things they did or didn't do, the feeling that, if they'd done something differently, things would have turned out different ly? Are those reasonable, rational responses, or are they purely emotional reactions to any trauma? In other words, life is contingent: how responsible are we for much of what happens? How much of life is within our control?
4. The author uses a second-person narrative for Oliver's point of view. Why might he have chosen such an unusual, even daring (because it's difficult for a writer to pull off) narrative technique?
5. Were you able to identify with Oliver despite his extreme condition? Thought experiment: try imagining yourself in his position, prone on a bed, trapped in your body, yelling and yelling "until you had exhausted yourself, fell asleep and woke up, rejuvenated for another day's muted warfare." Would you even want to live, to wake up the next day and engage in that "muted warfare" all over again?
6. Prior to the end of the novel, how did you suppose Oliver was able to think and communicate his thoughts? Was it clear he was fully conscious … or did you think it merely an artistic conceit … or that Oliver was in a parallel universe ? Or … ?
7. What happened to the town of Bliss after the tragedy. In way did the shooting become a cause celebre, "a story that people told to serve their own ends"?
8. Eve says to an acquaintance, "My son is in pieces. He's scattered all over the world. And I have to pick them up." What does she mean?
9. Some readers/reviewers have mentioned the book's wordiness. What are your thoughts?
10. Oliver ponders from this bed:
The tragedy of love, you had learned from ten years spent looking up at your mother, is that it is only possible to love perfectly a person who is lost to you; only a lost person, lodged in a place before the narrow, clumsy gates of language, could ever understand you perfectly.
Care to unpack that observation? What does Oliver mean? Is he correct in that "it is only possible to love perfectly a person who is lost to you"?
11. Talk about the reactions to the possibility that Oliver could be conscious.
12. Was the ending what you'd hoped for, or what you expected? Do you find it satisfying or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)