All Adults Here
Emma Straub, 2020
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594634697
Summary
A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family—as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes.
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier.
Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares.
But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count?
It might be that only Astrid's thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Emma Straub is an American author three novels and a short story collection. Raised on Manhattan's Upper West side, she now lives with her husband and two young sons in Brooklyn.
Emma comes by writing naturally: her father is Peter Straub, an award winning writer of horror fiction, a fact which makes even Emma admit to a belief in a writing gene. Here's what she told Michele Filgate of Book Slut:
I believe the writing gene is located just behind the gene for enjoying red wine and just in front of the gene for watching soap operas, both of which I also inherited from my father. What I do know for sure is that I watched my father write for a living my entire childhood, and I understood that it was a job like any other, that one had to do all day, every day. I think a lot of people have the fantasy that a writer sits around in coffee shops all day, waiting for the muse to appear.
So while genes may play a role, so does hard work and grit: determined to become a writer, she pushed on even after her first four books were turned down. As she told Alexandra Alter of the New York Times,
They all got rejected by every single person in publishing, in the world. It’s still true that I will go to a publishing party or event, and the first thing I will think of is, "I know who you are, you rejected novels 2 and 4."
It's nice to think that today Straub is having the last laugh.
Attending Oberlin College, Straub received her B.A. in 2002. She went on to earn her M.F.A. at the University of Wisconsin where she studied with author Lorrie Moore. Returning to New York, she worked for a number of years at the independent Book Court bookstore in Brooklyn.
Her novels include Modern Lovers (2016), The Vacationers (2014), and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures (2012). Her story collection is titled Other People We Married (2011). Straub's fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, New York Magazine, Tin House, New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and Paris Review Daily. She is also a contributing writer to Rookie. (LitLovers.)
Book Reviews
There’s refuge to be found in stories of everyday people going about their lives.… Emma Straub has become adept at finding amusement in the mundane, and her newest, All Adults Here, might just be her best yet.
Oprah Magazine
The queen of the summer novel…. [W]e have turned to [Emma Straub] to bring us highly enjoyable, yet still thought-provoking, tales about witty protagonists in the throes of life changes.
Entertainment Weekly
All Adults Here is a master class on the small-scale American drama…. [T]his warm, optimistic novel argues that one should keep trying, regardless. All Adults Here affirms the value of community and family, no matter the strife that may rise up within them.
Vogue
In her witty new novel, All Adults Here, Emma Straub examine adolescence, aging, gender, and sexuality through the nuanced experiences of three generations of a New York family.
Harper’s Bazaar
[At] its core about family in all its loving, messy glory…. It’s a page-turner that will make you think about what binds families together and drives them apart.
Good Morning America
This book has it all: conflicted characters, teenagers learning who they are, a single mom having a steamy affair, and goats. Yep, goats.
Good Housekeeping
The perfect book to read during quarantine if your family is driving you crazy…. [A] layered love story that examines, and ultimately celebrates, the modern, multigenerational family dynamic.
Parade
(Starred review) As per usual, Straub’s writing is heartfelt and earnest, without tipping over the edge. There are a lot of issues at play here (abortion, bullying,…) that Straub easily juggles, and her strong and flawed characters carry the day. This affecting family saga packs plenty of punch.
Publishers Weekly
The title is ironic in that 13-year-old Cecelia often seems to be more adult than her parents or her aunt and uncle.… In this engaging novel, Straub explores the ups and downs of a somewhat disaffected 21st-century family with warmth, sympathy, and humor. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal
(Starred review) [C]omforting, often funny truths readers love [Straub] for. Like us, her characters are always getting older but never feeling quite old enough to do the right thing, to be the people they want to be…. [T]his might be her best yet.
Booklist
As always, Straub… draws her characters warmly, making them appealing in their self-centeredness and generosity, their insecurity and hope… Straub has a sharp eye for her characters' foibles…. With humor and insight, Straub creates a family worth rooting for.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the examples you see in this particular multi-generational family, or in your own life, of the ways that children can repeat or mutate the strengths and the mistakes that their parents handed down to them.
2. Astrid thinks about the role that birth order has played in the personalities of her three children, and how their own individual childhood experiences have helped to shape the adults they have become. To what degree do you think she is correct in her conclusions about the forces that shaped her children? In what ways are the choices they have made as adults reflective of their younger selves? How much do you think birth order plays a role?
3. Why does Astrid choose to tell her children about her relationship with Birdie when she does? What results from that conversation? Why does she keep this relationship from her kids for as long as she does? Do you think Birdie becomes part of the Strick family over the course of the novel?
4. Compare and contrast Nicky and Juliette’s marriage with Elliot and Wendy’s. How are these two couples portrayed?
5. In what ways does Rachel provide Porter with certain aspects of partnership? How does Porter value her relationship with Rachel and how do her feeling change over the course of the book?
6. What do Cecelia and August understand about forgiveness that the older characters do not? How do they provide the adults with a model for how to be true to yourself and what you believe?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
The Jane Austen Society
Natalie Jenner, 2020
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250248732
Summary
Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate.
With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy.
These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen.
As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.
A powerful and moving novel that explores the tragedies and triumphs of life, both large and small, and the universal humanity in us all, Natalie Jenner's The Jane Austen Society is destined to resonate with readers for years to come. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Natalie Jenner was born in England, raised in Canada, and graduated from the University of Toronto with consecutive degrees in English Literature and Law.
She worked for decades in the legal industry and also founded the independent bookstore Archetype Books in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs. A lifelong devotee of all things Jane Austen, The Jane Austen Society is her first published novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[Delightful…. Jenner’s immersive character development is juxtaposed against her study of Austen’s characters, providing clever insight into how the trials of Austen’s life were revealed through her books.
Publishers Weekly
Readers who enjoy character-driven novels will want to read this book. Like Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, it’s a must-purchase for libraries of all sizes.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Just like a story written by Austen herself, Jenner's first novel is brimming with charming moments, endearing characters, and nuanced relationships.… Readers won't need previous knowledge of Austen and her novels to enjoy this tale's slow revealing of secrets that build to a satisfying and dramatic ending.
Booklist
[Seven] lost souls, who have been misjudged by society and/or misjudge themselves, find healing…. [T]hanks to Jenner’s psychologically astute portrayals, the society founders… are very real and thoroughly sympathetic. Readers will root for these characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. There is a wide range of major characters in The Jane Austen Society. Which of the eight main characters was your favorite? Which of their personal stories did you find the most satisfying? Which one do you most identify with and why?
2. Jane Austen’s writing—and the characters’ love of her writing—is what brings them together. If you area fan of Jane Austen, what is your favorite book and why? If not, then which of her books are you now most interested in reading?
3. Several of the characters are living with—and, to differing extents, dealing with—the grief of losing a close loved one. Did you find yourself sympathizing with one of them more than the others? What about their story touched you the most?
4. Most of The Jane Austen Society takes place in the 1940s, right after World War II. Given that it was a very different time, with very different attitudes, what aspect revealed in the novel seemed the most familiar to your experience? What seemed the most changed since that time?
5. Mimi Harrison is in sharp contrast to the rest of the characters—she’s from the U.S., she’s a movie star, she has wealth far beyond the rest of the characters. Beyond their shared love of Jane Austen’s work, what traits do you think she has most in common with the rest of the characters? Which other character does she best complement?
6. Adam Berwick has to make an important decision—one that will not only affect the Society but his family as well. Do you think he made the right decision? Why?
7. What surprised you the most about the book? Were there any plot developments you did not expect?
8. There are many obvious and more subtle allusions to Austen’s own plots and characters throughout the book. If you’re familiar with Austen, which parallels did you particularly notice? Which ones most delighted you?
9. What expectations did you have of this book entitled The Jane Austen Society? What plot lines surprised you? Which ones developed in the way you expected?
10. What do you imagine happened to the Society and to the members after the end of the book?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
This Could Hurt
Jillian Medoff, 2018
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062660763
Summary
A razor-sharp and deeply felt novel that illuminates the pivotal role of work in our lives—and that captures the emotional complexities of five HR colleagues trying to balance ambition, hope, and fear as their small company is buffeted by economic forces that threaten to upend them.
Rosa Guerrero beat the odds as she rose to the top of the corporate world. An attractive woman of a certain age, the longtime chief of human resources at Ellery Consumer Research is still a formidable presence, even if her most vital days are behind her.
A leader who wields power with grace and discretion, she has earned the devotion and loyalty of her staff. No one admires Rosa more than her doting lieutenant Leo Smalls, a benefits vice president whose whole world is Ellery.
While Rosa is consumed with trying to address the needs of her staff within the ever-constricting limits of the company’s bottom line, her associate director, Rob Hirsch, a middle-aged, happily married father of two, finds himself drawing closer to his "work wife," Lucy Bender, an enterprising single woman searching for something—a romance, a promotion—to fill the vacuum in her personal life.
For Kenny Verville, a senior manager with an MBA, Ellery is a temporary stepping-stone to bigger and better places—that is, if his high-powered wife has her way.
Compelling, flawed, and heartbreakingly human, these men and women scheme, fall in and out of love, and nurture dreams big and small. As their individual circumstances shift, one thing remains constant—Rosa, the sun around whom they all orbit.
When her world begins to crumble, the implications for everyone are profound, and Leo, Rob, Lucy, and Kenny find themselves changed in ways beyond their reckoning.
Jillian Medoff explores the inner workings of an American company in all its brilliant, insane, comforting, and terrifying glory. Authentic, razor-sharp, and achingly funny, This Could Hurt is a novel about work, loneliness, love, and loyalty; about sudden reversals and unexpected windfalls; a novel about life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 21. 1963
• Raised—Moved frequently around the US as a child
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Jillian Medoff is an American the author of several works of fiction, as well as a management consultant in communication and human resources. The eldest daughter of a traveling salesman, Medoff moved 17 times by age 17, ultimately settling in Atlanta, Georgia. She has a BA from Barnard College and an MFA from New York University.
Books
Medoff's first novel, Hunger Point (1997) became the basis for an original 2003 Lifetime movie starring Barbara Hershey and Christina Hendricks. Her second novel is Good Girls Gone Bad (2002), and her third I Couldn't Love You More (2012). This Could Hurt (2018) draws on her work knowledge of corporate human resources.
Corporate career
In addition to her writing, Medoff also has a career in management consulting and corporate communications. She’s worked for a wide range of employers across multiple industries, including Deloitte, Aon, Revlon, Max Factor and Medco.
Currently, Medoff is a Senior Consultant with The Segal Group, advising clients on communication strategies for all aspects of the employee experience. This includes workforce engagement, performance management, and professional development. She’s fluent in HR practices and procedures, as well as benefits and pay programs. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/30/2018.)
Book Reviews
The amount of time we spend on the job—the getting ready for, the getting-to, the getting-from, the long hours doing it and the longer hours worrying about it—make JIllian Medoff’s smart, funny novel, THIS COULD HURT, especially pertinent. The author has penned a comedic love letter to the workplace at a time when morbid satires, spoofs, and putdowns have become the fashion. Her proposition is salutary—work can be the place where we grow into our better selves … if we let it. READ MORE…
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
As smart as Medoff’s critique of corporate inanity is, it’s tempered by compassion for these people, who are ultimately tender with each other, too.… Through the subterranean strata of this failing office run alliances and feuds, love affairs and betrayals that influence raises, promotions and dismissals. And when Rosa herself gets in trouble, how far will her beloved staff go to protect her from the rigid mechanics of the corporation? The answer to that question becomes the story’s central problem, its funniest routine and its most moving element.
Washington Post
There’s an air of The Office TV show in its darkly comic tone, but it delves more deeply and seriously into the dynamics of a workplace.… It’s a rich lode. Medoff mines the phenomenon of the "office wife," generational values, gender politics, racial nervousness, networking and more, all set against the irrevocable reality of meeting the bottom line.… She’s a deft observer of office politics, as well as human relationships. She has a sense of history. And she wastes no one’s time: The narrative cracks along, without an indulgent passage in the book.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
This smart, jaunty novel takes the lid off a small company’s faltering human resources department to reveal intrigue and backstabbing that only intensify when the boss gets sick. But, as Medoff deftly reminds us, decency can find a way of surfacing even among the filing cabinets.
People
Medoff explores the effects of the 2008 economic downturn on a small staff of human resources managers…in this witty novel.… The characters are well-drawn, though the author gets stuck in their personal tangents…. Nevertheless, this is a sharp and moving novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Medoff is a master of the small, telling detail that completely nails a person's psyche, delivering a cast of characters flawed yet struggling to redeem themselves. An ultimately hopeful, completely inventive tale. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal
Incisive.… Medoff’s scenarios will be familiar to everyone employed everywhere,… and she cogently captures the angst and celebrates the camaraderie of coworkers committed to group success while struggling with personal demons.
Booklist
Shrewd and deeply affecting.… Sharply drawn intimate details about the lives of each character add even greater depth and broaden the timeless appeal of this very smart, thoroughly absorbing story.
Shelf Awareness
Intrigue swirls around HR executive Rosa Guerrero in this engrossing workplace drama…. An economical epilogue makes clever use of corporate organization charts to quickly trace the characters' odysseys after the story's bittersweet conclusion…. A sharp-eyed novel of corporate manners.
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 This Could Hurt by Jillian Medoff … then take off on your own:
1. How Emory has been impacted by the 2008 financial meltdown? In particular, how does the crash affect the team working for Rosa?
2. Talk about Rosalita Guerrero. What kind of a manager is she, and what kind of sacrifices has she made for her career? Have you ever worked for someone as devoted to the job as she is? Do you have a similar kind of investment in your own career or job?
3. According to Rosa, "A business unit was not a family—period. Yet what fueled an employee's success, and in turn, the company's, were the very qualities that bound a family: loyalty, diligence, humor, grace." Care to unpack that statement? Do you find it contradictory—a business unit is a not a family, but it has to act like a family—or does it make sense to you?
4. Talk about Rosa's staff—their various traits and quirks: Rob Hirsch, Lucy Bender, Leo Small, and Ken Verville. Of the team members, whom do you admire … distrust … find fault with … or sympathize with more than others?
5. Rosa advises her subordinates: "The key is to be the same person at home and at work." Why does she believe that? Are you the same person in both venues? Is it truly advisable—is it even possible? Or is Rosa implying that the "you" at home is the more authentic person than the "you" in the office?
6. Talk about Lucy and Rob's relationship. Is Lucy Rob's "office wife"? What is an "office wife"? Are there "office husbands"? Have you been an office spouse or had one? Does your spouse have an office spouse?
7. What kind of "gender wars," if any, are played out in this novel?
8. The author pokes fun at the way women dressed for the office in the 2000s, calling it "the worst period of women's business attire." How should women dress in the corporate world—what is appropriate attire? Same goes for men—and why is the business suit de rigueur?
9. What is the significance of the book's title?
10. Follow-up to Question 9: Is it true that "every new job is another chance to reinvent yourself"?
11. The primary concern of This Could Hurt is finding satisfaction and fulfillment in our work and relationships. How does the novel suggest we should go about that?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Perfect Nanny
Leila Slimani, 2016 (U.S. transl., 2018)
Penguin Publishing
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143132172
Summary
Winner - 2017, Prix Goncourt (France)
She has the keys to their apartment. She knows everything. She has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her.
When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children.
They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic apartment in Paris’s upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties.
But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, and motherhood—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—Rabat, Morocco
• Education—Ecole superieure de commerce de Paris-Europe
• Awards—Prix Goncourt (France); La Mamounia (Moroccan)
• Currently—lives in Paris, France
Leïla Slimani is a Franco-Moroccan writer and journalist, who was awarded the 2016 Prix Goncourt for her novel Chanson douce. The novel was published in 2018 in the U.S. as The Perfect Nanny.
Life and work
Slimani was born in Rabat, Morocco, and left at the age of 17 for Paris to study political science and media studies at the Sciences Po and Ecole superieure de commerce de Paris-Europe (ESCP). After her graduation she began to work as a journalist for the magazine Jeune Afrique.
Slimani's first novel, Dans le jardin de l’ogre ("In the Garden of the Ogre"), published in 2014, won the Moroccan La Mamounia literary award. Two years later, Chanson douce was released, becoming a bestseller even before it was awarded the Prix Goncourt. That novel made Slimina the most-read author in France in 2016.
Slimani holds French and Moroccan citizenships. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/31/2018.)
Book Reviews
[An] unnerving cautionary tale.… Pretty radical for a domestic thriller, but what’s more remarkable about this unconventional novel is the author’s intimate analysis of the special relationship between a mother and a nanny.… Slimani writes devastatingly perceptive character studies.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
Brilliantly observed.… Slimani is brilliantly insightful about the peculiar station nannies assume within the households of working families.
Wall Street Journal
A slim page-turner, The Perfect Nanny can be read in a single, shivery sitting.… A chilling domestic thriller.… It will make a great film.
Economist
This brutal chiller has the same compulsive readability as Emma Donoghue’s Room.
Guardian
A year ago, I picked up a book … that I’ve thought about pretty much every day since.… [It] felt less like an entertainment, or even a work of art, than like a compulsion. I found it extraordinary.… If you are a mother, whatever kind of mother you aspire to be, you’ll know what kind of mother you are after reading Slimani. If you are not a mother, the insights that she administers can be no less jolting.… Like Jenny Offill, Slimani can write ravishingly of female bodies, even postpartum ones.… The novelist Rachel Cusk has chronicled what motherhood did to her; Slimani examines what mothering is doing to society.
Lauren Collins - New Yorker
I think this might be one of the most important books of the year. You can’t unread it.… If you’ve ever taken care of a kid, even if, just on a bus, someone has handed you a child for five seconds as they rummage through their purse, this will do something to you.… At the end of reading this book, I was so devastated, but I really felt like I was looking at the world through new eyes.
Barrie Hardymon - NPR’s Weekend Edition
[A] slim dagger of a novel.… You won't move until you reach the last page.
People
[An] unsettling tale of a nanny who insinuates herself into every aspect of her employers’ lives, with tragic results.… Those seeking a thought-provoking character study will appreciate this gripping anatomy of a crime.
Publishers Weekly
[A] spare domestic thriller.… What initially feels like routine, unremarkable women's fiction morphs into a darkly propulsive nail-biter overlain with a vivid and piercing study of class tensions.
Library Journal
A devastating, entrancing, literary psychological drama supported by absorbing character studies.… Readers won’t be able to look away.
Booklist
Since the book opens with the murders, leaving no doubt as to the culprit, the reader quickly gathers that the inquiry here is not who did it but why.… [But] the why…remains unfathomable, rendering it all the more frightening.
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 Perfect Nanny … then take off on your own:
1. Do you see this this novel as a guilt trip for working moms—inspiring a sense of maternal inadequacy?
2. What do you think of Myriam and her husband Paul? In what way would you call them needy?
3. Why doesn't Myriam, who is Moroccan-French, want to hire a North African nanny? She admits that she would worry about "immigrant solidarity." What does she mean?
4. Myriam tells friends, "My nanny is a miracle worker." What does that statement suggest a) about Myriam and … b) about her relation with Louise?
5. What do you think of the fact that when Myriam goes shopping "she hides the new clothes in an old cloth bag and only opens them once Louise has gone." Paul praises her for being "tactful." What is your take on Myriam's tactfulness?
6. How are mothers in general portrayed in this novel? Consider the description of mothers sitting on park benches "starring into space" or the mother who has just given birth and who still carries around "her body of pain and secretions.… This flesh that she drags around with her, which she gives no care or rest."
7. Follow-up to Question 6: If you are a mother, do the narrator's depictions of motherhood resonate with you—the desire to continue a career outside the home, the feeling of guilt … or perhaps the opposite: the feeling that you shouldn't stay at home, that you should pursue a career?
8. How do you feel about Louise (absent the fact that we know she has a murdered two children)? What do we learn about her background: why she's so obsessive, for instance, about her own mothering skills?
9. Follow-up to Question 8: Talk about this observation of Louise by Myriam: I had the feeling that she was like a plate that you put every day on the table, and she breaks every day a little bit. And one day you put it on the table and she breaks into pieces." What does Myriam mean? Is it a fair assessment of Louise?
10. Talk about the first sentence of the novel, even the first paragraph. How did it make you feel as you read it?
11. How would you describe the narrative voice in The Perfect Nanny? In what way does it contribute to a sense of dread...or horror?
12. Does knowing that this novel is based on a real case of child murder by a nanny (in New York City) affect your reading experience?
13. This isn't a whodunnit. It's a whydunnit. Why does Louise murder the children? Is her motivation ever fully explained?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Paris Hours
Alex George, 2020
Flatiron Books
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250307187
Summary
One day in the City of Light. One night in search of lost time.
Paris between the wars teems with artists, writers, and musicians, a glittering crucible of genius. But amidst the dazzling creativity of the city’s most famous citizens, four regular people are each searching for something they’ve lost.
Camille, the maid of Marcel Proust, has a secret: when she was asked to burn her employer’s notebooks, she saved one for herself. Now she is desperate to find it before her betrayal is revealed.
Souren, an Armenian refugee, performs puppet shows for children that are nothing like the fairy tales they expect.
Guillaume, a lovesick artist is down on his luck and running from a debt he cannot repay—but when Gertrude Stein walks into his studio, he wonders if this is the day everything could change.
Jean-Paul, a journalist, tells other people’s stories, because his own is too painful to tell.
When the quartet’s paths finally cross in an unforgettable climax, each discovers if they will find what they are looking for.
Told over the course of a single day in 1927, The Paris Hours takes four ordinary people whose stories, told together, are as extraordinary as the glorious city they inhabit. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
A native of England, Alex George read law at Oxford University and worked for eight years as a corporate lawyer in London and Paris. He has lived in the Midwest of the United States for the last sixteen years.
He is the founder and director of the Unbound Book Festival, and is the owner of Skylark Bookshop, an independent bookstore in downtown Columbia, Missouri. Alex is the author of A Good American (2012), Setting Free the Kites (2017), and The Paris Hours (2020). (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[E]ngrossing…. By evoking fictional characters and historical figures with equal vividness and wisely using repeated motifs (a Ravel piece, a prostitute, a club, a painting), George unites his narratives in a surprising yet wholly convincing denouement. Elegant and evocative.
Publishers Weekly
An artist, a writer, a puppeteer, and an author's intimate—the stories of these characters move back and forth in a beautiful dance. How they come together in the final movement is tres belle! George has captured the ethos of 1920s Paris… not to be missed. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC
Library Journal
Enchanting…. Like the film Midnight in Paris… the novel has put us under the spell of the City of Light yet again…. Stunning.
Booklist
[A]tmospheric.… [T]he loose connections he creates among [the characters] seem at times… heavy-handed… [and the story] undermined by the flatness of the character development.…Still, the ambiguous ending will provide discussion fodder for reading groups.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Of the four interwoven storylines that comprise the novel—Souren’s, Guillaume’s, Jean Paul’s, and Camille’s—did you have a favorite? If so, why?
2. Discuss the epigraph: "For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness." Do you agree? How does this novel carryout James Baldwin’s directive?
3. Guillaume tells Suzanne that "any street or square in Paris would give the Folies-Bergère arun for its money." How does Paris itself become a character in this book? If you have spent time in Paris, did the portrait ring true? Were you surprised by any aspects of it?
4. Younis tells Souren, "We’ll always be from somewhere else, won’t we?" In what ways does Souren’s Armenian background shape his identity? Do you have to be from a place to belong to it? How does Souren’s experience resonate with current debates around immigration?
5. When Suzanne sits for Guillaume, the painting he creates is not of her body but of a cottage in the forest with a door set high on the facade. What did you make of his painting? What resonance does it have throughout the novel?
6. After Suzanne and Guillaume’s night together, Suzanne has no interest in seeing him again: "I want to remember us exactly like this. No fights, no disappointments. No broken hearts. Just a perfect memory." Do you empathize with her decision? Is a perfect memory sometimes worth sacrificing a potential relationship?
7. Discuss Jean-Paul’s view of the Eiffel Tower: "The combination of first-rate mechanical engineering and such manifest uselessness strikes him as being particularly, deliciously,French." What does he mean? Does that description of French identity ring true with regard to any other characters or events in this novel?
8. Discuss how each of the main characters continues to be pulled back into the past. Proust tells Camille, "The only place where you can regain lost paradises is in yourself." In what ways are the characters’ attempts to regain their lost paradises helpful or hurtful?
9. Every day, Souren puts on puppet shows in the Jardin du Luxembourg: "He tells his stories to communicate, to connect with others…. The gasps from the audience, the cries of alarm, the applause—this is how he knows he is alive." Do you sympathize with his belief that art requires audience reception to be meaningful? How do other characters’ views of art differ in this novel? Discuss the tension between isolation and connection that characterizes the artists’ experiences.
10. Although Souren speaks Armenian when he performs puppet shows, his audience can’t understand what he is saying. When he overhears two men speaking to one another in Armenian, then, he is deeply affected: "What moved him about the conversation… was not hearing his native language spoken, but hearing it understood. That sense of connection is what he misses so badly." What does he mean? Do you agree that there are forms of connection that can only be achieved through one’s native language?
11. Jean-Paul remembers one of his grandfather’s beatings during his childhood, after he catches him throwing pebbles at swans. He reflects on the severity of the punishment: "It was only after Elodie was born that Jean-Paul understood that it was the ferocity of the old man’s love for him that had prompted such severe retribution. Love like that raises the stakes." Does that make sense to you? Are there other instances in this novel where love and cruelty are connected in surprising ways?
12. When Guillaume despairs that he will have to leave Paris without ever learning the truth about his daughter, a priest urges him to find her: "We only get so many chances at happiness. I think we should take every single one of them." What happiness is available to the different characters in this novel? How much agency do they have to pursue it?
13. When Camille learns that Proust wrote down her secret, she is furious: "He was a thief, a pirate. He plundered other people’s lives for his own ends." Do you agree? Are all writers thieves of a sort? If so, do the ends justify the means?
14. Jean-Paul reflects on Josephine Baker: "All he knows about her is exactly what she wanted him to know. She is the most famous person in Paris, but her celebrity is a mask. That dazzling smile was a suit of armor, hiding her from view." This novel is peppered with famous historical figures—Baker, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust—yet they remain on the periphery of the novel, not at its heart. What do you make of that narrative decision? What does the novel seem to be saying about celebrity?
15. Jean-Paul tells Josephine that "everyone is running toward somewhere": "We’re always gazing toward the horizon, searching for the next adventure. And those who are trapped still dream helplessly, obsessively." Do you agree? How do the characters in this novel confirm or contradict his assessment of the human condition?
16. Were you surprised by the twist at the very end of the book? Do you think Camille and Olivier’s secret is understandable? Is it forgivable?
17. What is the effect of setting the entire novel over the course of just one day? What do you think the future holds for these characters?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)