Red Clocks
Leni Zumas, 2018
Little, Brown and Co.
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316434812
Summary
Five women. One question. What is a woman for?
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo.
In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom.
- Ro is a single high-school teacher, trying to have a baby on her own while also writing a biography of Eivor, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer.
- Susan is a frustrated mother of two trapped in a crumbling marriage.
- Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro's best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn.
- Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling herbalist, or "mender," who brings all their fates together when she's arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.
Red Clocks is at once a riveting drama, whose mysteries unfold with magnetic energy, and a shattering novel of ideas. In the vein of Margaret Atwood and Eileen Myles, Leni Zumas fearlessly explores the contours of female experience, evoking The Handmaid's Tale for a new millennium.
This is a story of resilience, transformation, and hope in tumultuous-even frightening-times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., University of Massachusetts
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Leni Zumas is the author of three books of fiction: Red Clocks (2018), The Listeners (2012), and Farewell Navigator: Stories (2008). Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature, Quarterly West, Keyhole, Salt Hill, Gigantic, Open City, and New York Tyrant.
A graduate of Brown University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program, Zumas is an associate professor of English at Portland State University. She has also taught at Columbia University, Hunter College, Eugene Lang College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville, and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/4/2018.)
Book Reviews
Zumas has a perfectly tuned ear for the way measures to restrict women's lives and enforce social conformity are couched in the moralizing sentimentalism of children's imagined needs…Zumas is a skillful writer, expertly keeping each of her characters in balanced motion, never allowing one to dominate the rest. Her cunning device of not revealing the name of each character in the sections she narrates grants us a multidimensional perspective on all four women, highlighting their roles in one another's stories. It's a beautiful metaphor for the interdependence of women's lives—for the way that…the laws that imprison or criminalize one of us narrow the options for all of us.
Naomi Alderman - New York Times Book Review
[P]owerful…. [With her]…consistently engaging tone [Zumas] illustrates the extent to which the self-image of modern women is shaped by marriage, career, or motherhood. Dark humor further … [makes] this a thoroughly affecting and memorable political parable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [P]oetic and political…[with] characters who are strong and determined.… Zuma's work is not nearly as dystopic or futuristic [as The Handmaid's Tale], only serving to make it that much more believable. Highly recommended. —Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
Library Journal
(Starred review) Shattering.… With its strong point of view … Zumas has raised [her novel] … to the level of literature, which readers will find deeply moving.… [B]eautifully realized…compulsively readable…. The result is powerful and timely.
Booklist
Following the current fashion for braided narratives, this story is told from five perspectives. [C]haracters are entangled in complicated …ways, as is usual in this type of fractured narrative.… A good story energized by a timely premise but perhaps a bit heavy on the literary effects.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel begins with an epigraph from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse: "For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too." How do you see this quote pertaining to Red Clocks?
2. Five women are at the novel's center: the Biographer, the Wife, the Daughter, the Mender, and the Polar Explorer. Which character do you identify with most, and why?
3. The characters' threads intertwine at the level of plot, but also at the level of form, as the narrative perspective keeps shifting among five different points of view. How does this "braided" structure affect your experience of the novel? What does it suggest about the boundaries between self and other, individual and collective, history and present moment?
4. Ro, Mattie, and Gin are all significantly impacted by new federal restrictions on abortion, fertility treatments, and adoption. How do you respond to their fictional experiences in light of current realities in American politics?
5. During the courtroom trial, the mender reflects:
This predicament is not new. The mender is one of many. They aren’t allowed to burn her, at least, though they can send her to a room for ninety months. Officials of the Spanish Inquisition roasted them alive. If the witch was lactating, her breasts exploded when the fire grew high (p. 257).
Do you think Gin Percival is a witch? Why or why not?
6. Absent loved ones are recurring shadows in Red Clocks. Ro’s mother and brother, Gin’s mother and aunt, Mattie’s best friend Yasmine—all are gone, yet they leave significant traces. What roles do grief and loss play in the novel?
7. In the school music room, after a painful conversation with Mattie, Ro rips a poster of pirates ("THEY CAN HIT THE HIGH C’S!") off the wall (p. 303). Pirates, shipwrecks, and nautical adventure are juxtaposed against domestic/personal crisis throughout the novel. What do you make of this contrast? And how do whales—from Moby-Dick to the stranded bodies Mattie mourns on the beach—figure in?
8. How does Red Clocks define motherhood?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Sea Wife
Amity Gaige, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525656494
Summary
From the highly acclaimed author of Schroder, a smart, sophisticated page literary page-turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a yearlong sailing trip that upends all of their lives.
Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat.
With their two kids—Sybil, age seven, and George, age two—Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them.
The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea.
Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve—until they are tested by the unforeseen.
Sea Wife is told in gripping dual perspectives:
Juliet’s first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea;
Michael’s captain’s log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions.
Sea Wife is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in West Hartford, Connecticut
Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007), and Schroder (2013), and Sea Wife (2020).
Schroder, Gaige's third novel, was short-listed for the Folio Prize in 2014. Published in eighteen countries, it was named one of best books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Cosmopolitan, Denver Post, Buffalo News, and Publisher's Weekly, among others.
Gaige is the recipient of many awards for her other novels, including Foreword Book of the Year Award for 2007; and in 2006, she was named one of the "5 Under 35" outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation.
She has a Fulbright and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, Literary Review, Yale Review, and One Story. She lives in Connecticut with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Gaige has been towing you to tragedy with the graceful crawl of a poet and the motorboat intensity of a suspense author.… [She] tells the story of a family adrift, spun so thoroughly and vigorously out of their comfort zone that they eventually lose sight of the horizon. Finding out how… makes you appreciate the firm, familiar ground under your feet.
Jennifer Egan - New York Times Book Review
Sea Wife is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage. It nods to, but does not fully embrace, the conventions of suspense…. To Gaige’s credit, the final resolution of the Partlow’s differences is achieved in a fashion that even the most sharp-eyed reader won’t be able to spot.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
Gaige here fractures a single, suspenseful plot into… two first-person narratives…. Cutting between storylines generates narrative suspense…. Gaige is a superb maritime writer. She writes beautifully about water and sky… [and] makes sailing seem both an existential drama (when a storm hits, it’s like Lear on the heath) and a complex technical enterprise.
Boston Globe
Gaige's razor-sharp novel is wise to marital and broader politics. But it's also such gripping escapism that it feels like a lifeboat.
People
Cuts to the heart of mundane marital strife and the legacy of trauma.
Elle
(Starred review) [A] splendid, wrenching novel…. Gaige balances …a profound depiction of the weight of depression and the pains of a complicated relationship. Every element of this impressive novel clicks into a dazzling, heartbreaking whole.
Publishers Weekly
This book's unusual structure is effective once you figure out what Gaige is up to. There are multiple layers to explore for… literary scholars or a… book club, as Gaige has much to say about… marriage, particularly in our current political/cultural climate. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
[T]he challenges of two people finding themselves on opposite ends of the political spectrum to Juliet’s depression, which leads her to give up on her dissertation, and the challenges of life at sea, this surprising novel is stunning and deep.
Booklist
Gaige sometimes strains to keep the couple’s parrying going… and a late-breaking murder mystery that feels tacked-on. None of which sinks the story, but it does dampen its power. A powerful if sometimes wayward take on a marriage on the rocks.
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 SEA WIFE … then take off on your own:
1. What is wrong with this marriage? What pulls Juliet and Michael together … and what drives them apart?
2. Why does Michael decide to embark on the sailing adventure? What does he hope the sea voyage will accomplish, for himself, for Juliet, and for their marriage?
3. The novel's first sentence is a question posed by Juliet: "Did my mistake begin with the boat? Or my marriage itself?" What do you think—the boat, the marriage … or something else entirely?
4. Juliet is a complex woman: how would you describe her? Talk about the childhood trauma that continues to haunt her? What role does it play in her marriage, in her overall life?
5. Talk about Michael's political grievances. How do they affect the marriage?
6. What insights does Juliet gain by reading through Michael's log?
7. Did you revel, along with the Partlows, in the early part of the journey, once the the family got its sea legs? What might you have found particularly enchanting?
7. Once the weather and the Partlows' lack of experience catches up with them, did you wonder what they were doing on a 44-foot boat—with their little children—to begin with?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Eden: A Novel
Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg, 2017
She Writes Press
327 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781631521881
Summary
Recca Meister Fitzpatrick—wife, mother, grandmother, and pillar of the community—is the dutiful steward of her family’s iconic summer tradition … until she discover her recently deceased husband squandered their nest egg.
As she struggles to accept what is likely her last season in Long Harbor, Becca is inspired by her granddaughter’s boldness in the face of impending single-motherhood, and summons the courage to reveal a long-buried secret: the existence of a daughter she gave up fifty years earlier.
Eden is the heartrending account of the days leading up to the Fourth of July weekend as Becca prepares to uncover her secret and her son and brothers conspire to put the estate on the market, interwoven with the century-long history of Becca’s family—her parents’ beginnings and ascent into affluence, and her mother’s own secret struggles in the grand home her father named "Eden." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 28, 1965
• Raised—Westchester County, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and Westerly, Rhode Island
Jeanne Blasberg is a voracious observer of human nature and has kept a journal since childhood. She has been known to stare at strangers on more than one occasion to the embarrassment of her three children. (Mom, stop staring!)
After graduating from Smith College, she surprised everyone who knew her by embarking on a career in finance, making stops on Wall Street, Macy’s and Harvard Business School, where she worked alongside the preeminent professor of retail and wrote case studies and business articles on all sorts of topics on everything that has to do with…shopping.
A firm believer that you are never too old to change course or topics (in truth, she’s not a big shopper), Jeanne enrolled at Grub Street, one of the country’s great creative writing centers, where she turned her attention to memoir and later fiction, inspired by her childhood journal. Eden is her debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Jeanne on Facebook.
Book Reviews
[A] beautifully written masterpiece that takes you on a historical journey….
Boston Herald
If you enjoy reading family sagas that cover real history and life, this is a must-read for you.
Reader’s Favorite
This beautifully written family saga firmly establishes Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg as a rising writer to watch – and it will likely have you liking your family a whole lot more this summer.
Redbook
This debut novel rings with lively dialogue that vivifies the rarified ethos of a family across generations.
Improper Bostonian
[A] big-hearted, if sometimes harrowing journey through one family’s twentieth century.
Squash Magazine
A classic family drama that centers around the Fourth of July, be sure to pack this in your tote bag this summer before anything else.
Working Mother Magazine
[An] evocative depiction of old summers in Watch Hill….
The Day (New London, CT)
[P]oignant and powerful….
Reader Views
Eden is splendid, majestic, and engaging.
Chick Lit Cafe
[A] love story to a family property and the beach community it inhabits….
Loud Library Lady
[T]he writing is seamless and the story is ageless.
Holly’s Little Book Reviews
Blasberg hit it out of the park….
Midwest Ladies who Lit
A stirring historical novel perfect for women’s fiction fans.
Booklist
Blasberg’s evocative prose captures the place and atmosphere…. An engrossing, character-driven family saga.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
A SPOILER ALERT is in order here. Below are questions as well as approaches for discussion, which reveal plot points.
1. Why Eden?
Eden is utopia, a place of innocence, idyllic, most enjoyed by children. Ideals and paradise are, however, hard to hold on to. What happens when you cling to a place for too long, hide within its walls, expect too much?
The Garden of Eden is also an archetypal creation story. Eden is a creation story as well—it is all about babies being born! The circumstances around a conception have consequences for the mother and father and baby for years to come. Let’s say it sets the stage…
2. Discuss how history repeats itself in the novel.
Sadie was sent to Banford. Becca was sent to the Willows and Rachel sent herself to Copper Hill. They all go for different reasons, but they each take a hiatus from society to deal with a problem: postpartum depression, pregnancy, alcoholism.
What about these "banishments" from society? Where has progress been made over the years and where has it stayed the same? Clearly, Sadie and Becca lived during eras when their situation could not be discussed in polite company, nor, ironically enough, could they be discussed within the family. Were their retreats more for their sake or to protect their social class from unseemly details.
Rachel, leaves in more modern times and attends a 12 step program. It is her choice and her affliction is not exclusive to women, however, her departure echoes what happened to her mother and grandmother.
3. Discuss the similarities and differences between the unplanned pregnancies portrayed in the novel.
Eden illustrates how between only two or three generations in one family, so much can stay the same, while a great degree of change is imposed by the outside world. In the years between 1920 and 2000, so much changed in the United States. There were enormous industrial and technological advancements, economic shifts, and the impact of world wars. Eden shines a spotlight on the additional changes women faced. My characters, women from the same family, have lives that span a century and experience extremely different education and career opportunities, and especially different choices when it came to their reproductive rights. Each mother wistfully observed the freedoms her daughter enjoyed.
The book’s earliest matriarch is Sadie. She is married and in search of effective birth control in the early part of the 20th century, inspired by the contraceptive pioneer, Margaret Sanger. She is not successful and has a late in life pregnancy that she is unhappy about. Her daughter, Becca, is raped, although given the era in which she lived, is not equipped with the awareness nor vocabulary to call it such, and becomes pregnant. The only option Sadie will consider for her daughter, is to send her away to a maternity hospital under a veil of secrecy. Becca’s daughter, Rachel, is impregnated by her college boyfriend, and Becca and Dan coerce the young couple to do the "honorable thing" and marry. And modern day, Sarah, with almost no societal pressure at all to worry about, entertains the option of being a single mother.
4. Which biblical allusions stood out for you?
Allusions to the Bible are scattered throughout the novel to emphasizes that the same personal struggles described in the Book of Genesis carry on generation after generation, and indeed today.
The biblical allusions in Eden that are easiest to spot are names. There’s the title for one, and the name of the family home, with its abundant gardens. The names of the women: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, are those of the Jewish matriarchs. Ruth is the dutiful daughter-in-law from the Book of Ruth, and Joseph and Benjamin are men from which future Jewish leaders are descended.
There is a serpent who enters the "Garden," offering temptation in the form of Charles and Maud Butterfield. They attempt to seduce Bunny and Sadie away from their original intention of creating a space sacred for their family.
There is a flood that acts as a cleanse, almost an opportunity to start anew in the form of the 1938 Hurricane. The day after the great storm, Becca sees a rainbow in the sky, and the following summer, when her family is all together, rebuilding their home, is the best ever.
5. Compare Bunny, the patriarch to Sadie, the matriarch.
Bunny is the preeminent patriarch of the family. None of the men that follow after, can ever live up to him. But Bunny was in no means perfect, he was hemmed in by societal pressures as much as Sadie was. He felt pressure to send his beautiful wife away to the Banford Sanitarium, and although the question lurks as to whether he ever really understood where Becca had gone when she was sent away to the maternity hospital, he was limited by the proper boundaries a father must keep with his daughter. There were certain realms of life that a successful businessman just could not dare enter. The irony is that Bunny was not born into the society in which he ultimately found himself, he aspired to it, and sought opportunities to be accepted throughout his life.
The matriarchs in the novel did not amass the family’s great wealth nor were they responsible for constructing Eden, but Eden would not have existed without them. The women breathed life into the home. Just like the ebb and flow of the tides, and the cycles of the moon, life in Long Harbor and within the walls of Eden operated with a maternal rhythm. Although Becca had little power in the commercial world, within her family and within her home she maintained control.
6. Discuss ways in which the act of naming is important in the novel.
To name a person is a great honor. It can be done as if offering a blessing, but it can also imply power or ownership. Giving a name is a venerable act, the first thing our parents give us, and in the Bible it is something GOD does repeatedly.
Characters in Eden are named and then re-named such as Bernhard becoming Bernard and later, Sadie dubbing him Bunny.
Bunny names their daughter Rebecca for his mother’s sister, while Sadie, who is displeased by the name, shortens it to Becca.
Bunny names their home Eden.
Rachel is persuaded to name her daughter Sarah, and Sarah, in turn, will name her baby for her mother.
The blessing that Becca reads at the end of the novel is a commentary on the various names a person takes on, the best, of course, being the one a person chooses for herself.
7. What is your reaction to the speculative conversation between Leah and Sarah in the book’s final chapter?
This conversation may or may not have actually happened. It is only something that Becca imagined. Sarah and Leah were each conceived out of wedlock, however Sarah’s parents married and Becca gave Leah up for adoption. The juxtaposition of these two upbringings and their respective emotional side effects is a primary theme of the novel. It gets back to Eden being a creation story, and to portray the different paths a life might take as a consequence of parents' choices.
8. How is the setting important to the story?
Multi-generational living was much more common in the early part of the twentieth century. In summer enclaves like fictional Long Harbor, multi-generational living continues to this day. The novel needed to be set in a place where it would be believable for the generations of an upper class family to gather. Long Harbor needed to be an upperclass, small town, rife with gossip and a set of rules all its own.
A summer home tradition can be wonderful and bind a family together, but can also amplify a family’s dysfunction. Adults often regress to childhood roles, as is the case with poor Rachel who loves Eden dearly even as it keeps her from moving on in her life.
9. Discuss the prevalence of natural forces in the novel.
The book is filled with the images of cycles: cycles of the seasons, the tides and the moon. The image of the full moon is present many times which emphasizes the close alignment between lunar power and feminine power.
There are also several storms in the book. There is the Hurricane of 1938, of course, which destroyed and tossed about all that man had built. Hurricane season returns at the end of the novel as Sarah’s baby is being born, however, the mood then is not of destruction, but of hope and renewal. Both storms bring about an opportunity for cleansing and the chance to start anew.
Natural forces abound to remind the reader of the presence of Mother nature (the greatest mother of all) as well as the universality of our stories and our vulnerability.
10. Discuss Lilly’s role in the family.
Lilly is outside the family, while also being a dear part of the family. If it weren’t for her, the other women wouldn’t have time to play cards, go to the beach, read, or write. There is an inference that their abundance of leisure time might lead to their communal dissatisfaction… Being on the outside looking in, Lilly is somewhat like Ruth in that way. Outsiders often have the most interesting perspective on a situation. However, Lilly is quite biased and loyal to Becca, Rachel, and Sarah. Lilly is a beloved employee of the family and the fact that her relationship is so strong and longstanding with Becca also speaks to both of their characters.
Rachel makes the claim, "Lilly practically raised me." Although it is very common for women in affluent families to have help with their children, it is interesting to consider the buffer they create between mothers and children. Is it possible that Lilly’s presence (and Alice’s before her) may have prevented the all-important mother/child bond from fully forming?
(Questions courtesy of the author and/ or publisher.)
Simon the Fiddler
Paulette Jiles, 2020
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062966742
Summary
The critically acclaimed, bestselling author of News of the World and Enemy Women returns to Texas in this atmospheric story, set at the end of the Civil War, about an itinerant fiddle player, a ragtag band of musicians with whom he travels trying to make a living, and the charming young Irish lass who steals his heart.
In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down.
Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty thanks to his slight stature, youthful appearance, and utter lack of compunction about bending the truth.
But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, Simon finds himself conscripted, however belatedly, into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position in a regimental band.
Weeks later, on the eve of the Confederate surrender, Simon and his bandmates are called to play for officers and their families from both sides of the conflict. There the quick-thinking, audacious fiddler can’t help but notice the lovely Doris Mary Dillon, an indentured girl from Ireland, who is governess to a Union colonel’s daughter.
After the surrender, Simon and Doris go their separate ways. He will travel around Texas seeking fame and fortune as a musician. She must accompany the colonel’s family to finish her three years of service.
But Simon cannot forget the fair Irish maiden, and vows that someday he will find her again.
Incandescent in its beauty, told in Paulette Jiles’s trademark spare yet lilting style, Simon the Fiddler is a captivating, bittersweet tale of the chances a devoted man will take, and the lengths he will go to fulfill his heart’s yearning. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—Salem, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Missouri
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives near San Antonio, Texas
Poet, memoirist, and novelist Paulette Jiles was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks and moved to Canada in 1969 after graduating with a degree in Romance languages from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
She spent eight years as a journalist in Canada, before turning to writing poetry. In 1984, she won the Governor General's Award (Canada's highest literary honor) for Celestial Navigation, a collection of poems lauded by the Toronto Star as "...fiercely interior and ironic, with images that can mow the reader down."
In 1992, Jiles published Cousins, a beguiling memoir that interweaves adventure and romance into a search for her family roots. Ten years later, she made her fiction debut with Enemy Women (2002), the survival story of an 18-year-old woman caged with the criminally insane in a St. Louis prison during the Civil War. Janet Maslin raved in the New York Times, "This is a book with backbone, written with tough, haunting eloquence by an author determined to capture the immediacy of he heroine's wartime odyssey." The book won the Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction (U.S.) and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (Canada).
In her second novel, 2007's Stormy Weather, Jiles mined another rich trove of American history. Set in Texas oil country during the Great Depression, the story traces the lives of four women, a widow and her three daughters, as they struggle to hold farm and family together in a hardscrabble world of dust storms, despair, and deprivation. In its review, the Washington Post praised the author's lyrical prose, citing descriptions that "crackle with excitement."
A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, Jiles currently lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas.
Books
1973 - Waterloo Express (poetry)
1984 - Celestial Navigation (poems)
1985 - The Golden Hawks (children)
1986 - Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma Kola
1986 - The Late Great Human Road Show
1988 - The Jesse James Poems
1988 - Blackwater (short stories)
1989 - Song to the Rising Sun (poems)
1992 - Cousins (memoir)
1995 - North Spirit: Travels Among the Cree and Ojibway Nations and Their Star Maps (memoir)
2002 - Enemy Women
2005 - Flying Lesson: Selected Poems
2007 - Stormy Weather
2009 - The Color of Lightning
2013 - Lighthouse Island
2016 - News of the World
2020 - Simon the Fiddler
Awards
Governor General’s Award for Poetry,Canada (Celestial Navigation)
Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Canada (Enemy Women)
Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction, U.S. (Enemy Women)
Extras
From a 2007 Barnes & Noble interview:
• When I lived in Nelson, British Columbia, there were three or four of us women who were struggling writers; we were very poor and we had a great deal of fun. We shared writing and money and wine. Woody (Caroline Woodward) had a great, huge Volkswagen bug—green—named Greena Garbo. When any of us managed to publish something there were celebrations. It was a wonderful time. They always managed to show up at my place just when I'd baked bread. One time Meagan and Joanie arrived to share with me a horrible dinner they had made of cracked wheat and onions—we were actually all short of food. I had just made lasagna—and they ate all of my lasagna and left me with that vile dish of groats and onions. And then we all got married and went in different directions.
• I have a small ranch that keeps me busy—two horses, a donkey, a cat, a dog, fences, a pasture—I and spend lots of time preventing erosion, clearing cedar, etc.
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye gives a clear and cogent analysis of the various sorts of imaginative narratives, among them the quest story. It does not assign value to any one type of story. I came upon Frye's The Well-Tempered Critic in college and loved it. It has the same sort of descriptive brilliance as Anatomy. It was a relief from the contemporary insistence that only the novel of psychological exploration was of literary value."
Other influential books include The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway; All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The reader is treated to a kind of alchemy on the page when character, setting and song converge at all the right notes, generating an authentic humanity that is worth remembering and celebrating.
New York Times
[Jiles's] description of Simon and Doris traveling on separate journeys across the Texas landscape is superb, causing us to feel the elation and sense of possibility that rises in the hearts of man, woman and beast in setting out on the road.
Wall Street Journal
Endearing…. And when the final battle royal arrives in San Antonio, it’s just the rousing ballad we want to hear.
Washington Post
Jiles’ sparse but lyrical writing is a joy to read…. A beautifully written book and a worthy follow-up to News of the World.
Associated Press
In Simon the Fiddler we once again accompany a cast of intriguing characters on a suspenseful Texas-based quest just after the Civil War.… A crackling-good adventure tale.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Luminescent prose.… Jiles’ timeworn territory provides a cozy escape.
Los Angeles Times
Jiles’s gritty and richly atmospheric seventh novel returns to the post–Civil War Texas she explored in News of the World.… Jiles immerses the reader in the sensory details of the era…. [Her] limber tale satisfies with welcome splashes of comedy and romance.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Imbued with the dust, grit, and grime of Galveston at the close of the Civil War,… Jiles brings… her written word as lyrical and musical as Simon's bow raking over his strings. Loyal Jiles readers… will adore the author's latest masterpiece.
Booklist
(Starred review) [A]tmospheric adventure… [with] clever plotting …true to Jiles' loving but cleareyed portrait of Texas' vibrant, violent frontier culture. Vividly evocative and steeped in American folkways: more great work from a master storyteller.
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 SIMON THE FIDDLER … then take off on your own
1. Talk about Simon Boudlin; what kind of a person is he? Is he an idealist, a realist, a romantic … or all three?
2. In a particularly lyrical passage, Jiles writes of her hero:
To Simon, the world of musical structures was far more real than the shoddy saloons in which he had to play.… It existed outside him. It was better than he was. He was always on foot in that world, an explorer in busted shoes.
How does the passage describe not just Simon but all of us—especially our capacity to sense the transcendent nature of art? Does art—music, painting and sculpture, literature, or drama—affect you in a similar manner?
3. Describe the land of Texas and the turmoil of its people as the Civil War winds down. Consider the Union occupying forces, the poverty, disease, and violence.
4. What do you think of Doris. Talk about her "situation" vis-a-vis Col. Webb, which is just as precarious as Simon's.
5. Some reviewers (New York Times and Wall Street Journal) feel that the romance between Simon and Doris hits a false note, that it is "ludicrously melodramatic." Others have found in it the promise of hope in a troubled world. What do you think?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
An American Marriage
Tayari Jones, 2018
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616208776
Summary
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career.
But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.
Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain—into the future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— November 30, 1970
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—Spelman College; Arizona State University; University of Iowa
• Awards—Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (twice); Lillian C. Smith Award
• Currently—lives in Booklyn, New York City
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including An American Marriage (2018, an Oprah Book Club pick), Silver Sparrow (2011), The Untelling (2005), and Leaving Atlanta (2002). Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. She lives in Brooklyn.
Currently, she serves on the MFA faculty at Rutgers-Newark. She has also been the recipient of the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/6/2018.)
Visit the author's blog.
Book Reviews
Jones maintains a brisk pace…. The dialogue …[is] sometimes too heavily weighted by exposition, and the language slides toward melodrama. But the central conflict is masterfully executed: Jones … explore[s] simmering class tensions and …racial injustice,
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Jones's writing is engagingly layered with letters between the main characters integrated through the narrative. Her personal letter to readers demonstrates how writing this novel changed her. —Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC
Library Journal
Jones crafts an affecting tale that explores marriage, family, regret, and other feelings made all the more resonant by her well-drawn characters and their intricate conflicts of heart and mind.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Subtle, well-crafted, and powerful.… This is, at its heart, a love story, but a love story warped by racial injustice. And, in it, Jones suggests that racial injustice haunts the African-American story.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review.) [A]n enchanting novel.… [It] explores philosophical and political quandaries, including generational expectations of men and women, the place of marriage in society, systemic racism, toxic masculinity … [while] avoiding didacticism.… [G]ripping, and the characters are unforgettable.
Forward Reviews
Discussion Questions
1) The title of this novel is "An American Marriage." Do you feel this title accurately represents the novel? Why or why not? And if you do find the title appropriate, what about the story makes it particularly "American"?
2) When Celestial asks Roy if he would have waited for her for more than five years, he doesn’t answer her question but reminds her that, as a woman, she would not have been imprisoned in the first place. Do you feel that his response is valid, and do you think it justifies his infidelity? Do you believe that he would have remained faithful if Celestial had been the one incarcerated? Does this really matter, and if so, why?
3) In her "Dear John" letter to Roy, Celestial says, "I will continue to support you, but not as your wife." What do you think she means by this statement? Do you feel that Roy is wrong to reject her offer?
4) You may not have noticed that Tayari Jones does not specify the race of the woman who accuses Roy of rape. How did you picture this woman? What difference does the race of this woman make in the way you understand the novel’s storyline?
5) Andre insists that he doesn’t owe Roy an apology for the way his relationship with Celestial changed. Do you agree? Why or why not?
6) There are two father figures in Roy’s life: Big Roy is the one who shepherded him into adulthood and helped him grow into a responsible, capable person, but Walter is the one who taught Roy how to survive. Do you feel these men deserve equal credit? If not, which was the more important figure in Roy’s life and why?
7) Big Roy explains that he and Olive never had children of their own because Olive feared that he would not love Roy as much if he had his "own" children. Do you feel she had the authority to make that decision? And do you feel she was right in making that decision?
8) When Roy is released from prison, he first goes to his childhood home and almost immediately makes a connection with Davina. Do you feel that given the tenuous relationship he has with Celestial—who is still legally his wife—he is cheating? Why or why not? And when Roy announces to Davina his intention to return to his wife, do you feel that her anger is justified?
9) Roy is hurt when Celestial, in discussing her career as an artist, doesn’t mention him or the role he played in giving her the encouragement and freedom to follow her dreams, but Walter argues that she is justified in her silence. Do you agree? Do you think her silence is due to shame, or is she just being practical in how she presents herself to advance her career?
10) It is obvious that Andre is different from Roy in many ways. Do you feel that ultimately he is a better match for Celestial? If so, why? Also, why do you think Celestial and Andre decide against formally marrying? Do you think that as a couple they will be good and nurturing parents? Do you feel that as a couple, they will be better at parenting than Celestial and Roy would have been? If so, why?
11) Do you think that Andre strategized to get Celestial to fall in love with him, or did it happen naturally? Do you feel that it was a surprise to them that it happened after all those years? Do you predict that Celestial’s parents will come to accept Andre as her life partner?
12) Toward the end of the novel, Celestial does a complete about-face and returns to Roy. What do you think her emotions were in coming to that decision? Do you feel that it was the right decision?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)