Red Sky at Noon (Moscow Trilogy, 3)
Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2018
Pegasus Books
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781681776736
Summary
The stunning new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs and Jerusalem, set during an epic cavalry ride across the hot grasslands outside Stalingrad during the darkest times of World War II.
“The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire."
Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines.
But is there a traitor among them?
The only thing Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find no mercy in onslaught of Hitler’s troops as they push East.
Spanning ten epic days, between Benya’s war on the grasslands of southern Russia and Stalin’s intrigues in the Kremlin, between Benya’s intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin’s daughter and a war correspondent, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery, and survival—where betrayal is a constant companion, death just a heartbeat away, and love, however fleeting, offers a glimmer of redemption. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1965
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore is a British historian, television presenter, and award-winning author of popular history books and novels.
Early life
Montefiore, born in London is descended from a line of wealthy Sephardi Jews, originating from Morocco and Italy, who became diplomats and bankers throughout Europe. At the start of the 19th century, Simon's great-great-uncle, Sir Moses Montefiore, was an international financier who worked with the Rothschild family and who became a noted philanthropist.
His mother, Phyllis April Jaffe, comes from a Lithuanian Jewish family of scholars. Fleeing the Russian Empire in the early 20th century, her parents had bought tickets for New York City but were somebow cheated and, instead of the U.S., were dropped off in Ireland. Because of the Limerick boycott against Jews in 1904, his grandfather Henry Jaffe left the country and moved to Newcastle, England.
Simon Montefiore was educated at Ludgrove School and Harrow School. He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he received his Ph.D. He won an Exhibition to Caius College. Early on, he worked as a banker, then a foreign affairs journalist and war correspondent covering the fall of the Soviet Union.
Fiction
Montefiore published his debut novel King's Parade in 1991. The Spectator called it "embarrassing" and "extremely silly." Eventually, however, he went on to write his widely acclaimed Moscow Trilogy: Sashenka (2008), One Night in Winter (2013), which won the Political Novel of the Year Prize, and Red Sky at Noon (2018).
Nonfiction
His nonfiction work includes several well regarded histories.
- Catherine the Great & Potemkin (2001) was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Marsh Biography Award.
- Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003) won History Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards.
- Young Stalin (2007) won the LA Times Book Prize for Best Biography, the Costa Book Award, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Literature, Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique, and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
- Jerusalem: The Biography (2011) was a number one non-fiction Sunday Times bestseller and won The Book of the Year Prize from the Jewish Book Council.
- His latest history is The Romanovs, 1613–1918 (2016).
Montefiore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Buckingham. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retreived 1/20/2018.)
Book Reviews
Montefiore is a natural storyteller who brings his encyclopedic knowledge of Russian history to life in language that glitters. Montefiore shows that the historian seeking the truth must call upon creativity as much as upon meticulous research. Here’s hoping we get more spellbinding historical fiction from him.
Washington Post
The worthy conclusion to [the Moscow Trilogy]. The vivid interplay between a war story and a love story, and between the Kremlin and the frontline, grants the novel its momentum. Like so much historical fiction, Red Sky at Noon keeps readers turning pages not to learn the end but to better understand the individuals who brought about this end. A gripping adventure, a compelling history, and a work that adds humanity to stories we thought we already knew.
Wall Street Journal
For the sheer pleasure of being swept away in an epic tale of love and war by a master storyteller, Red Sky At Noon by Simon Sebag Montefiore had me enthralled from beginning to end. This is the final part of his Moscow trilogy—a series of compelling historical novels in the great tradition of Scott, Thackeray and Tolstoy.
Sunday Herald (UK)
The gripping final installment of The Moscow Trilogy tells of a man wrongly imprisoned in the Gulags and his fight for redemption. Meticulously researched. In this searing tale of love and war, most moving is the redemptive relationship between a soldier and a nurse that blooms amid the brutality. An homage to the author's favorite Russian writers and the Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard, such influences pervade this atmospheric tale told in the author's distinct own voice.
Observer (UK)
A gripping novel. Montefiore is brilliant at depicting brooding menace. As the penal battalions are given increasingly risky missions, it is Benya's journey on horseback that we follow behind enemy lines in the grasslands of southern Russia. An epic tale. The language is arresting. It's all beautifully done: a western on the eastern front.
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain. Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter. Red Sky at Noon is a deeply satisfying page turner. There are atrocities on all sides and a smidgen of love as Benya falls for a brave Italian nurse. A subplot follows the ill-starred affair between Stalin's daughter and a Jewish writer. But Benya's struggle to keep his humanity is the memorable spine of the book.
Times (UK)
Amidst the killing and the chaos, a group of prisoners are offered a chance of redemption on a secret mission behind enemy lines on horseback. Montefiore has a keen sense of place and an eye of unexpected details. Switching between the frontline on the Russian steppes and Stalin in the Kremlin, this is an exciting and fast-paced adventure and a lament for love in dark and brutal times.
Mail on Sunday (UK)
Montefiore's skill with imagery is such that he immerses the reader in an utterly ethereal landscape, only to snap them into horror as men emerge from rippling sunflowers with "swords streaked with blood and grass," and that soft horizon is suddenly filled "squadrons of tanks like steel cockroaches." Montefiore can effortlessly meld beauty with battle. Vivid and impeccably researched.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
(Starred review.) Montefiore’s third novel in his Moscow Trilogy.… Montefiore’s immersive portrayal of the Eastern Front makes this a gripping, convincing tale.
Publishers Weekly
Montefiore has legions of fans…, but his "Moscow Trilogy" opens the floodgates to the imaginative re-creation of archival facts.… World War II fiction aficionados will want to read this. —Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [Montefiore's]…latest demonstrates his deftness in crafting a deeply engaging story that is only enriched by his skills as a historian and biographer. Offering historical accuracy, a fine empathy for his characters…Red Sky at Noon is brilliant on multiple levels.
Booklist
A novel this ambitious could use a little more moral nuance, as the characters are either all good or (in most cases) all evil. Yet the gritty war scenes and the lovers' pursuit keep the pages turning.
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 Red Sky at Noon … then take off on your own:
1. Describe the conditions for prisoners in the Gulags … which are then traded for conditions at the front. Which is the more horrific—the forced labor camp or warfare?
2. How would you describe Benya's relationship with Silver Socks? How do they give one another strength?
3. What have you learned about the Cossacks: their history and their role in World War II?
4. Benya is an odd man out when it comes to his comrades in arms: he is a Jew, an intellectual, a political prisoner, and an urbanized man. What is his relationship with his fellow soldiers?
5. The novel contains two romances. How well do you think the author handles them? Do they add to the novel's poignancy … or feel cumbersome? Do they enhance the narrative … or feel extraneous? Does it make a difference in knowing that Svetlana's romance is based on real life?
6. What are your overall reactions to Red Sky at Noon? Is it a "page turner"?
7. Is it necessary to have read the first two volumes of Montefiore's trilogy to appreciate this final one? If you've read the other two—Shashenka (2008) and/or One Night in Winter (2013)—how does this final installment stack up? If you haven't read the other two, do you think you might?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Pretty Things
Janelle Brown, 2020
Random House
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525479123
Summary
Two wildly different women—one a grifter, the other an heiress—are brought together by the scam of a lifetime in this twisty page-turner.
Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan.
Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.
Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales.
But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.
Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.
This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 12, 1973
• Raised—San Francisco, California
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkley
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Janelle Brown is an American author and journalist-essayist. She was raised in San Francisco, California, and graduated from University of California-Berkeley in the 1990s. Eventually, she decamped to Los Angeles where she lives with her husband and two children.
Brown began her career as a staff writer for Wired, and then spent five years as senior staff writer for Salon. Early on she helped found and edit Maxi, an irreverent, and now defunct, women’s pop culture magazine. She has also written frequently for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Elle, Vogue, along with a number of other publications.
Brown, however, is most widely known for her novels — Pretty Things (2020), Watch Me Disappear (2017), This Is Where We Live (2010), and All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (2008). (Adapted from the publisher .)
Book Reviews
It’s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith…. Duplicity abounds when two messed-up clans collide, and Brown’s final multiple twists are doozies.
Washington Post
Despite a catchy opening, the stakes fade and the narrative flags during Nina and Lachlan’s overlong ruse, and long flashbacks and shifts in perspective drag out what quickly becomes a predictable storyline. There’s promise here, but many readers will find their interest waning.
Publishers Weekly
[A] riveting tale of secrets and deception.… With flawless suspense, masterly storytelling, and a plot that hits all the notes of our Instagram world perfectly, this novel is a must-read. —Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
Brown offers a glittering, high-stakes drama, stacking childhood nostalgia against the power to reinvent oneself in the age of social media.… Packed with plot twists.
Booklist
The daughter of a grifter plans to fund her mother's cancer treatment with a revenge con. Rich people suck, don't they?… Definitely stay to see how it all turns out. Why you double-crossing little double crossers! Fiendishly clever.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our Generic Mystery Questions.)
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 Widows of Malabar Hill (A Mystery of 1920s Bombay, 1)
Sujata Massey, 2018
Soho Press
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616957780
Summary
1920s India: Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first female lawyer, is investigating a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in full purdah when the case takes a turn toward the murderous. The author of the Agatha and Macavity Award-winning Rei Shimura novels brings us an atmospheric new historical mystery with a captivating heroine.
Inspired in part by the woman who made history as India’s first female attorney, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp and promising new sleuth.
Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India.
Armed with a legal education from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes women’s legal rights especially important to her.
Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity.
What will they live on?
Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X—meaning she probably couldn’t even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah—in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men.
Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian?
Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 4, 1964
• Where—Sussex, England, UK
• Raised—California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Johns Hopkins University
• Awards—Agatha Award; Macivity Award
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Sujata Massey was born in England to parents from India and Germany. She immigrated with her family to the United States in the late 1960s, ultimately settling in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in the Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Maryland.
After college, Sujata spent five years as a features reporter for The Baltimore Evening Sun. She then moved to Japan with her husband, who was serving as a medical officer with the US Navy. Sujata took up the study of Japanese, ikebana and cooking, all the while teaching English and traveling throughout Japan.
In her home in the Yokohama suburbs, she began writing her first mystery novel about Rei Shimura, a young Japanese-American woman in Tokyo. That book, The Salaryman’s Wife won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 1997 and was followe by ten more books that mixed the Japanese cultural arts with murder.
A decade ago, Sujata put Japan on pause to write about India, a country that she has visited with her family since the time she was nine. Her interest especially grew after the adoption of her two children, who were born in Kerala.
Sujata decided to write fiction set in Calcutta during the late colonial period because she was intrigued by the untold stories of the Indians and Europeans who’d once inhabited landmark buildings that were being knocked down so shopping malls and mega apartment towers could go up. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [An] outstanding series launch…. The period detail and thoughtful characterizations, especially of the capable, fiercely independent lead, bode well for future installments.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [Massey] does a wonderful job of taking life in India at the beginning of the 20th century.… The two plotlines wonderfully depict the development of the main character and the mystery as it unfolds.… Fresh and original.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A]n…unusual perspective on women’s rights and relationships, [while] readers are treated to a full viewof historical downtown Bombay…. Each of the many characters is uniquely described…. [A] well-constructed puzzle.
Booklist
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Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Perveen Mistry is in a historically groundbreaking role: she is representing the rights of female clients, some of whom have never before had any access to legal protection because of religious law, limited education, or patriarchal restrictions that greatly disadvantage them. Perveen is the perfect female lawyer to represent women’s rights, since she herself has had terrible legal problems and has seen how frustrating it is to have no power under the law. How much moredifficultiPerveen’sjobthan a contemporaryfemalelawyer’s?Did any of her encounters particularly frustrate or anger you as a reader? Did she face problems that you couldn’t imagine a lawyer today facing? On the other hand, have things not changed as much as we think?
2. What do you make of Perveen’s last meeting with Cyrus? How would you have felt in her position?
3. The difference between "modern" and "orthodox" religiosity is an important one in this book. Perveen’s parents, the Mistrys, are depicted as modern Parsis who educate their daughter and hope she will have a career. The Sodawallas, meanwhile are orthodox Parsis who still obey ancient purity laws that are now thought to be unhealthy and who expect their new daughter-in-law to leave her education behind and be a traditional housewife. The gap in the two families’ beliefs becomes violent and heartbreaking. How has this conversation about religious orthodoxy changed since the 1920s? How does it still relate to our 21st-century societies?
4. Why do you think Behnoush Sodawalla is so insistent that Perveen isolate herself? What do you think are the real reasons behind her strict Parsi traditionalism?
5. Meanwhile, in the Farid house in Bombay, the Muslim widows live in purdah, another form of religious orthodoxy. How do the Muslim and Parsi restrictions on women differ? How do they overlap? From each of the Farid widows’ points of view, what would you say are the advantages and disadvantages of living in purdah? Were you surprised by their decision to leave purdah at the end of the book?
6. What role does class play in the novel? How different would Perveen’s choices have been if she had not been from such a wealthy family? Do you think she would have been more or less likely to marry Cyrus, or more or less likely to leave him? What other choices of hers would have been impossible if she had come from a poor or middle-class family?
7. Meanwhile, Perveen is very accepting of her best friend’s homosexuality, but Alice’s parents are clearly not. How do you think Alice’s situation might have been different if she had not been as wealthy? How much advantage does she have as an expatriate? How do you think the flowering women’s rights movement will affect her? Do you think she’ll end up finding more freedom and happiness in India, as she hopes, or do you think she will eventually find gender roles and sexuality there to be just as stifling?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Eighth Life
Nino Haratischvili, 2014 (2020 in the U.S & U.K.; transl., Charlotte Collins, Ruth Martin)
Scribe Publications, Ltd.
944 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781950354146
Summary
An epic family saga beginning with the Russian Revolution and swirling across a century, encompassing war, loss, love requited and unrequited, ghosts, joy, massacres, tragedy.
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers.
It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste.
Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the center of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia’s is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.
Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections.
A ballet dancer never makes it to Paris and a singer pines for Vienna. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again.
The world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. At home in two different worlds, each with their own language, she has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve.
In 2010, her debut novel Juja was nominated for the German Book Prize, as was her most recent Die Katze und der General in 2018. In its German edition, The Eighth Life was a bestseller, and won the Anna Seghers Prize, the Lessing Prize Stipend, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize 2018.
The Eighth Life is being translated into many languages, and has already been a major bestseller on publication in Holland, Poland, and Georgia. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Something rather extraordinary happened. The world fell away and I fell, wholly, happily, into the book…. My breath caught in my throat, tears nestled in my lashes…devastatingly brilliant.
New York Times Book Review
Spanning six generations of a family between 1900 and the 21st century, its characters travel to Tbilisi, Moscow, London and Berlin in an epic story of doomed romance that combines humour with magic realism.
Guardian (UK)
This is a long, rewarding novel…ably translated through a collaborative process. It makes for an engrossing book. Haratischvili has created a fascinating cast (and it’s easy to imagine it as a television series) whose lives illuminate some of the greatest events of the 20th century.
Irish Times (UK)
Elegant… [and] demonstrates a technical mastery, impressively sustained…. The Eighth Life is more than a family saga: it is an ode, a lamentation, a monument―to Georgia, its people, its past and future.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
The Eighth Life is capacious, voluble, urgent, readable, translated heroically and sparklingly by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.
Telegraph (UK)
Nino Haratischvili's elegant epic… is a triumph of both authorship and painstaking translation…. The Eighth Life is an unforgettable love letter to Georgia and the Caucasus, to lives led and to come, and to writing itself.
Economist
The Eighth Life… is a lavish banquet of family stories that can, for all their sorrows, be devoured with gluttonous delight. Nino Haratischvili’s characters… come to exuberant life. Her huge novel… shows a double face, its crushing pain and loss nonetheless conveyed with an artful storyteller’s sheer joy in her craft.
Financial Times
(Starred review) [An] exceptional, deeply evocative saga…. In heartfelt prose, Haratischvili seamlessly weaves the political upheaval around the characters into love and loss…. [Her] epic portrait of a close-knit family is a stunning tribute to the power of resilience.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) If it’s a family saga you’re seeking, look no further than this grand tale…. The author gracefully interweaves the historical backdrop of her novel with the lives of her characters, thus adding depth to her story. Heartily recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review) This novel has generated substantial industry buzz and international critical praise. Both are justified…. The Eighth Life—the story of a family, a country, a century—is an imaginative, expansive, and important read.
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.)
Green: A Novel
Sam Graham-Felson, 2018
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399591143
Summary
A coming-of-age novel about race, privilege, and the struggle to rise in America, written by a former Obama campaign staffer and propelled by an exuberant, unforgettable narrator.
Boston, 1992.
David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won’t even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school.
Unless he tests into the city’s best public high school—which, if practice tests are any indication, isn’t likely—he’ll be friendless for the foreseeable future.
Nobody’s more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar’s a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave’s own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave’s assumptions about black culture: He’s nerdy and neurotic, a Celtics obsessive whose favorite player is the gawky, white Larry Bird.
Before long, Mar’s coming over to Dave’s house every afternoon to watch vintage basketball tapes and plot their hustle to Harvard. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar’s. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he’s been given—and that Mar has not.
Infectiously funny about the highs and lows of adolescence, and sharply honest in the face of injustice, Sam Graham-Felsen’s debut is a wildly original take on the American dream. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 18, 1981
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A. Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Samuel Graham-Felsen is an American author, blogger, and journalist who was the blog director of the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008. His debut coming-of-age novel, Green, was published in 2018.
Early life
Graham-Felsen grew up in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Boston public schools, including the William Monroe Trotter school and Boston Latin School. He graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2004 with a degree in social studies. He was a writer and columnist for The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of the university.
Career
From 2004 to 2007, he worked for The Nation magazine, covering youth politics. He also produced videos for Current TV, filing reports from France, Cambodia, and Pakistan.
From 2008 to 2009 he was content director at Blue State Digital, a Washington, D.C.-based Internet strategy and technology firm. He is currently a featured speaker for the American Program Bureau and travels worldwide covering his experience with the Obama campaign and other new media campaigns.
Obama campaign
Graham-Felsen was a member of the presidential campaign staff of Barack Obama in 2008. As the blog director of the New Media committee, he wrote for and oversaw BarackObama.com/blog, worked with key national and state bloggers to promote the campaign's message, helped direct the campaign's online rapid response operation, and produced and collaborated on dozens of online videos for the campaign. (From Wikipedia, Retrieved 1/30/2018.)
Book Reviews
[P]rickly and compelling…Graham-Felsen lets boys be boys: messy-brained, impulsive, goatish, self-centered, outwardly gutsy but often inwardly terrified. The voice with which Graham-Felsen equips Green, overseasoned with hip-hop slang, is the epitome of this. At first blush it suggests Holden Caulfield as translated by Vanilla Ice.… Yet as the novel advances, and this street stud pose starts splintering, the voice itself gathers a kind of dorky poignancy, the reader sensing an unseen wobble upon Green's stiff, pale lip. Is it linguistic blackface, with all that implies, or a 12-year-old's guileless attempt to cobble together a voice of his own from what's nearest at hand?
Jonathan Miles - New York Times Book Review
One of the most original voices you’ll read this year.
Southern Living
(Starred review.) [S]ubtly humorous, surprisingly touching…. Where Graham-Felsen shines is in his depiction of the pressures put on Marlon to rise above his circumstances and to cope with his mother’s mental illness.… [M]emorable and moving.
Publishers Weekly
[Green] poignantly captures the tumultuous feelings of adolescence against the historical backdrop of a racially segregated city and country (Fall Pick).
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [S]uperb … a memorable first novel.… [Green is replete with] wonderful characters, fully realized and multidimensional.
Booklist
A white boy in a majority-black Boston middle school gets an education on race and friendship..… A well-turned if familiar race-themed bildungsroman.
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 Green … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the role that both class and race play in Graham-Felson's novel. Is one more significant than the other in determining friendships and in shaping young peoples' paths in life? Consider, for instance, the boys' snow shoveling business. Or when Dave is caught cheating from Marlon during an exam. Does Dave get a pass because he's white?
2. Talk about Lou and Liz Greenfield, Dave's parents. What is their reason for sending Dave to Martin Lutheran King Middle School? Is their idealism heartfelt or a pretense? Why do they refuse to move Dave to Latin? Would you have moved him or kept him in King?
3. What's "mad ghetto"?
4. What are the things that matter to Dave? Is he typical of most middle-schoolers? Despite all of his privilege, why does Dave feel sorry for himself? Do you like Dave?
4. What are the small events that make Dave begin to understand just how privileged he is and to grasp the reality of racial inequality? In your own life, what prompted your awareness of the diffferences between black and white and between privilege and poverty.
5. What draws Dave and Marlon together as friends—what connects them? On more than one occasion, Marlon "ices" Dave, turning away from their friendship. Does he have cause to do so?
6. What pressures does Marlon have to face that make it difficult to rise above his circumstances?
7. Dave insists that the force "isn’t some Jedi bullshit; the force I’m talking about is real, and its energies are everywhere, working on everyone." What is the "force" — is it racism, or race consciousness, or society's idea of racial difference?
8. "I wish I had what he has," Dave says of Marlon at one point. "All I came up with was confusion." What does Dave mean?
9. The author says much of his inspiration for Green came from the TV sit-com, Freaks and Geeks. If you're familiar with the series, what similarities do you see between the show and the novel?
10. At the end, Dave says of his and Marlon's friendship, "But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we were meant to be shards from the start. Not just me and Mar—everyone. Look around.… The force is everywhere, prying us apart." Was their friendship doomed from the beginning to fall apart; was it's failure inevitable?
11. What's the significance of the cover art (hardcover edition)?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)