Freshwater
Akwaeke Emezi, 2018
Grove/Atlantic
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802127358
Summary
Ada has always been unusual.
As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but something must have gone awry, as the young Ada becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief.
But Ada turns out to be more than just volatile. Born "with one foot on the other side," she begins to develop separate selves. When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallizes the selves into something more powerful.
As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these alters—now protective, now hedonistic—move into control, Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction.
Written with stylistic brilliance and based in the author’s realities, this raw and extraordinary debut explores the metaphysics of identity and being, plunging the reader into the mysteries of self.
Unsettling, heart-wrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice. (From the publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 6, 1987
• Raised—Aba, Nigeria
• Education—M.P.A., New York University
• Awards—Commonwealth Short Story Prize-Africa
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces. Born and raised in Nigeria, she received her MPA from New York University and was awarded a 2015 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. She won the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Granta. Freshwater (2018) is her debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Remarkable and daring.… Poetic and disturbing.… Rooting Ada’s story in Igbo cosmology forces us to further question our paradigm for what causes mental illness and how it manifests. It causes us to question science and reason.
Tariro Mzezewa - New York Times
A witchy, electrifying story of danger and compulsion … Freshwater recounts the "litany of madness" suffered by Ada in a serpentine prose that proceeds by oblique, hypnotizing movements before it sinks its fangs into you.… As striking and mysterious as the ways of the gods who narrate it.… The latest standout in this exciting boom in the Nigerian novel.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
The novel is based in many of the realities of the writer’s life, but the prose is infused with imaginative lyricism and tone.… The journey undertaken in the novel is swirling and vivid, vicious and painful, and rendered by Emezi in [sharp and glittering] shards.… Emezi’s lyrical writing, her alliterative and symmetrical prose, explores the deep questions of otherness, of a single heart and soul hovering between, the gates open, fighting for peace.
Susan Straight - Los Angeles Times
Freshwater is sheer perfection: sexy, sensual, spiritual, wise. One of the most dazzling debuts I’ve ever read.
Taiye Selasi - Guardian (UK)
Akwaeke Emezi is a name you will want to remember, because surely it is one you will be hearing again and again.… A stunning and disorienting story about a broken woman trying to overcome the pain of her human life while straddling "the other side,".… Freshwater is unlike any novel I have ever read. Its shape-shifting perspective is radical and innovative, twisting the narrative voices like the bones of a python.… Emezi has not only made a rich contribution to Igbo mythology, she has crafted a novel so unique and fresh, it feels as if the medium has been reinvented.
Safa Jinje - Toronto Star
Akwaeke Emezi’s bewitching and heart-rending Freshwater is a coming-of-age novel like no other.… For anyone who has experienced life as a misfit or outcast, this is a resonant rendition.… For all its sheer invention, Freshwater feels more like an interpretive journey through uncharted territory with an experienced guide. Potent and moving, knowing and strange, this is a powerful and irresistibly unsettling debut.
David Wright - Seattle Times
A startling debut novel explores the freedom of being multiple.… Igbo spirituality, Emezi radically suggests, has as much to offer as any [Western] schemas when it comes to decrypting human folly or transcendence.… The book would have made grim sense through a mental-health lens; instead, it is an indigenous fairy tale.… The book becomes a study in dysphoria—not precisely the distress of being misgendered but the more nebulous pain of being imprisoned in a physical form, of losing your wraith-like ability to evade categorization.… There is something self-defeating about trying to trace a self that is defined by indefinability; one achievement of Emezi’s book is to make that paradox feel generously fertile.
Katy Waldman - New Yorker
Akwaeke Emezi parts the seas of the self in her engrossing debut novel, Freshwater.
Sloane Crosley - Vanity Fair
Part magical realism, part meditation on mental illness.… Ada’s struggle provides a thought-provoking and visceral exploration of life with an altered state of mind.
Harper’s Bazaar
Gods torment the young woman they inhabit in Emezi’s enthralling, metaphysical debut novel.… Though some readers may find the correlation between mental illness and the ogbanje limiting.… Emezi’s talent is undeniable …an impressive debut.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Madness is often described in terms of different selves, but Emezi does something absorbingly original … showing that [gods] creep into human beings at birth.… [R]ichly conceived yet accessible to all. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
[M]ind-blowing.… Emezi weaves traditional Igbo myth that turns the well-worn narrative of mental illness on its head, and in doing so she has ensured a place on the literary-fiction landscape as a writer to watch.… A must-read.
Booklist
Akwaeke Emezi’s standout first novel, Freshwater, is a riveting and peculiar variation on coming of age.…. The poetics of Emezi’s prose enhance the mythology she evokes. As enchanting as it is unsettling, Freshwater tickles all six senses. The chorus of voices narrating Ada’s life achieves a remarkable balance between cruel machinations of cavalier deities and deep empathy for the distressed vessel they inhabit.
Shelf Awareness
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 FRESHWATER … then take off on your own:
1. Discuss/describe the various personalities that the ogbanje unleashes inside Ada. Clearly, Asughara is the most formidable—what about the others?
2. How submissive, or passive, is Ada to the commands of the spirits? To what degree does she resist? Can Ada even claim to have a personality of her own?
3. In the author's world, the "insanities" were born with you "tucked behind your liver." Why might Emezi have portrayed mental illness as the result of magical spirits inhabiting us rather than psychological or neurological disorders? Is her imaginative depiction troubling to you in that it negates the thousands of years it took science to make progress in understanding mental illness? Or do you find her personification enlightening, seeing it as an "otherness" that, at times, many of us feel overtakes the body and sabotages our lives?
4. Follow-up to Question 3: How much do we in the Western world understand mental illness, medically and scientifically?
5. In one of her narrations, Ada says, "I am a village full of faces and a compound full of bones, translucent thousands." What do you think: are our personalities fixed for all time, indivisible and unchanging for life? Or are we sometimes multiple people depending on circumstance? (Or does that way lie madness?)
7. How do the spirits respond when Ada's parents take her to Catholic Mass? What do they mean when they say…
We knew him….Yshwa too was born with spread gates, born with a prophesying tongue and hands he brought over from the other side…. He loves them as a god does, which is to say, with a taste for suffering.
8. Talk about Ada's decision to undergo surgical breast removal, which she describes as letting a "masked man take a knife lavishly to the flesh of her chest, mutilating her better and deeper."
9. Does it affect how you think about Freshwater knowing that the novel is, to a fair extent, autobiographical—that the cutting, attempted suicide, and breast removal surgery are based on Akwaeke Emezi's own life?
10. Is there wisdom in the collective "we" of the spirits as they say, at the end: "When you break something, you must study the pattern of the shattering before you can piece it back together"?
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
In Another Time
Jillian Cantor, 2019
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062863324
Summary
Love brought them together. But only time can save them…
A sweeping historical novel that spans Germany, England, and the United States and follows a young couple torn apart by circumstance leading up to World War II—and the family secret that may prove to be the means for survival.
1931, Germany.
Bookshop owner Max Beissinger meets Hanna Ginsberg, a budding concert violinist, and immediately he feels a powerful chemistry between them. It isn’t long before they fall in love and begin making plans for the future.
As their love affair unfolds over the next five years, the climate drastically changes in Germany as Hitler comes to power. Their love is tested with the new landscape and the realities of war, not the least of which is that Hanna is Jewish and Max is not.
But unbeknownst to Hanna is the fact that Max has a secret, which causes him to leave for months at a time—a secret that Max is convinced will help him save Hanna if Germany becomes too dangerous for her because of her religion.
In 1946, Hanna Ginsberg awakens in a field outside of Berlin.
Disoriented and afraid, she has no memory of the past ten years and no idea what has happened to Max. With no information as to Max’s whereabouts—or if he is even still alive—she decides to move to London to live with her sister while she gets her bearings.
Even without an orchestra to play in, she throws herself completely into her music to keep alive her lifelong dream of becoming a concert violinist. But the music also serves as a balm to heal her deeply wounded heart and she eventually gets the opening she long hoped for.
Even so, as the days, months, and years pass, taking her from London to Paris to Vienna to America, she continues to be haunted by her forgotten past, and the fate of the only man she has ever loved and cannot forget.
Told in alternating viewpoints—Max in the years leading up to WWII, and Hanna in the ten years after—In Another Time is a beautiful novel about love and survival, passion and music, across time and continents. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Pennsylvania State University; M.A., University of Arizona
• Currently—lives in the state of Arizona
Jillian Cantor is the author of teen and adult books, most recently her 2019 historical novel, In Another Time. Cantor was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; she received her B.A. from Penn State and her M.A. from University of Arizona. She lives in Arizona with her husband and two children.
Books
2009 - The September Sisters
2010 - The Life of Glass
2010 - The Transformation of Things
2013 - Margot
2014 - Searching for Sky
2015 - The Hours Count
2017 - The Lost Letter
2019 - In Another Time
(Author bio adapted from the publisher. Retrieved 3/6/2019.)
Book Reviews
Cantor stumbles with this awkward blend of historical romance and science fiction.… [She] weaves in a science fiction angle…, but this element isn’t fully developed, and the ending comes across as less a twist than a letdown.
Publishers Weekly
What might have been a truly fascinating tale of pre-Holocaust Europe asks too much of its audience. The most intriguing details come near the end, when truths are revealed. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
Compelling.… [Y]ou will be swept away by this beautiful story about the bonds of love and the strength of the human spirit.
Booklist
[A] well-researched historical novel, showing how the past impacted the future…. Cantor elevates love as a powerful force that transcends tragedy and shows how music speaks to even the cruelest hearts. A powerful story that exalts the strength of the human spirit.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book begins with a quotation about time and ends with Hanna thinking, "The time is everything in this piece, in this concert. In Berlin." Discuss the importance of time and how it is used in multiple ways throughout the novel.Why do you think the novel is called In Another Time?
2. Max’s story begins when he first meets Hanna and ends when he believe she’s lost her, but Hanna’s story both begins and ends with her violin. Whose story is this: Hanna’s, Max’s, or both? Is this a love story? Whose love story is it?
3. The novel moves back and forth in time between prewar Germany and postwar Europe. In Berlin in 1933, Max thinks,
The city was as it always had been—busy.… Everything appeared oddly the same… except for the Nazi flags hanging up in storefronts. In 1946 London Hanna thinks, I’d.… gotten used to the sight of missing and bombed buildings, so that I barely even noticed the piles of rubble and ash anymore, tucked in among the beauty and the splendor of what still stood in the West End.
Compare and contrast prewar Germany and postwar Europe as settings. How do the conditions in both affect Hanna’s and Max’s lives and their relationships?
4. Hanna calls her violin her "greatest love" and also says "my violin was my home, and I would follow it wherever it would take me." Where does Hanna’s violin take her? How does following her passion impact Hanna’s life and her choices, both in good ways and bad? What larger role does music play in the novel?
5. Max references the Heine quote: "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too." Discuss why Max is so taken with this quote. Why is it important both historically and for the characters in the novel? What role do books and Max’s bookshop play in the novel?
6. Hanna says near the beginning of the novel that Julia saw Max as unreliable, that she did not know Max as Hanna did: generous, handsome, brilliant. What do you think about Julia’s perception of Max? Hanna’s? Which is accurate? How do you think the story might have turned out differently if Max had been honest about why he was disappearing for large gaps of time?
7. At the end of the novel Julia tells Hanna that she always thought she’d end up with Stuart. Hanna thinks that "Kissing Stuart was like eating a slice of black forest cake, sweet and rich and satisfying. But kissing Max was like dancing too close to the fire." Compare and contrast Max and Stuart. What do both men mean for Hanna’s life?
8. Johann and Elsa seem to have a safe, quiet, and domestic life in Berlin, even as Hitler is coming to power and danger is growing for Max and Hanna. How do Johann and Elsa act as foils for Max and Hanna? How does Elsa become a key character in the novel after the war? Why does Elsa narrate her own chapter in 1950?
9. Julia and Hanna grow up together and yet they couldn’t be more different. Julia is practical while Hanna is passionate. Julia marries, flees Germany,and starts a family, while Hanna stays devoted to her violin. Discuss Hanna’s relationship with Julia. How does their sister relationship inform the novel?
10. In the end Max says to Hanna: "I’m sorry I didn’t save you." And Hanna replies, "I saved myself." Who or what is ultimately saved in the novel? Is the ending hopeful, sad, or both?
(Questions from the author's website.)
The Leavers
Lisa Ko, 2017
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616206888
Summary
Lisa Ko’s powerful debut, The Leavers, is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice.
One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon—and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.
With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind.
Told from the perspective of both Daniel—as he grows into a directionless young man—and Polly, Ko’s novel gives us one of fiction’s most singular mothers. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heartwrenching choice after another.
Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It’s a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Queens, New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—state of New Jersey
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University; M.L.I. S., San Jose State University; M.F.A.,
City University of New York City College
• Awards—PEN/Bellwether Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Lisa is the first generation of her extended family to be born in American. Her parents are of Chinese descent who came to the U.S. from the Philippines. She was born in New York City's Borough of Queens, though eventually her family moved to the New Jersey suburbs where she grew up.
As the only Asian child in her community, Ko knows what it feels like to be an outsider, a feeling that has informed her fiction. Lonely, she turned to reading and writing for company and comfort. At five she started keeping a journal and wrote her first book, Magenta Goes to College. Magenta was her favorite colored crayon. She also read throughout her childhood and adolescence—as she says on her website, "to escape, to dream."
Ko received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. It was there that she devoured books by writers of color and finally began to write about people who looked like she did. After college she moved to New York City where she worked in book, magazine, and web publishing. Then it was on to San Francisco for five years, working in film production and co-starting an Asian American magazine. At 30, she returned to New York to continue writing a book.
It took eight-and-a-half years for Ko to write and edit The Leavers. Meanwhile, she juggled numerous jobs — from freelancing as an editor to adjunct teaching and full-time office work, writing when she could. In an interview with Flavorwire, she recalled:
I’ve had so many random writing, editing, and teaching jobs to pay the bills. I worked full-time as a web content specialist in a university marketing department while finishing The Leavers, but now I’m back to freelance writing and editing.
In 2016, even though The Leavers wasn't quite ready, she decided on a whim to submit it in a competition, all the while believing she would never win. Months later, author Barbara Kingsolver called Ko to tell her that she had had, in fact, won—the award was the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. (Adapted from various online sources, including the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Thoroughly researched and ambitious in scope, Ko’s book ably depicts the many worlds Deming’s life encompasses.… It is impossible not to root for a boy so foundationally unmoored by circumstance. Moreover, Deming’s feisty mother is compellingly complicated: Polly Guo has an itch for freedom she cannot ignore. Indeed, the greatest strength of the book lies in its provocative depiction of a modern Chinese woman uninterested in traditional roles of any kind. What she makes of herself, and what we might make of her, are of interest from any number of angles.
Gish Jen - New York Times Book Review
One of 2017's most anticipated fiction debuts.… The winner of last year's PEN/Bellwether Prize, which recognizes fiction that explores issues of social justice, The Leavers feels as relevant as ever as the future of immigrants in America hangs in the balance.
Time.com
Beautifully written and deeply affecting, combining the emotional insight of a great novel with the integrity of long-form journalism, The Leavers is a timely meditation on immigration, adoption, and the meaning of family.
Village Voice
[G]orgeously redemptive… Lisa Ko’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful read about immigration, adoption, and the drive to belong. Beyond the desensitizing media coverage, Ko gives faces, (multiple) names, and details to create a riveting story of a remarkable family coming, going, leaving … all in hopes of someday returning to one another.
Christian Science Monitor
[A] dazzling debut.… Filled with exquisite, heartrending details, Ko’s exploration of the often-brutal immigrant experience in America is a moving tale of family and belonging (Book of the Week).
People
When Deming Guo was 11, his Chinese immigrant mother, Polly, left for work at a nail salon and never returned. In alternating perspectives, this heart-wrenching literary debut tells both of their stories.
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Ko's The Leavers is the year's powerful debut you won't want to miss. The Leavers expertly weaves a tale of the conflicts between love and loyalty, personal identity and familial obligation, and the growing divide between freedom and social justice. An affecting novel that details the the gut-wrenching realities facing illegal immigrants and their families in modern America, Lisa Ko's debut is the 2017 fiction release you can't afford to miss.
Bustle.com
The Leavers describes the devastation caused by forced, abrupt and secret detentions that occur daily under our current Immigration Act. The novel weaves from past to present, from immediate abandonment to chronic loss, showing how the unfathomable disappearance of a mother eats into her son's effort to "move forward.” … [T]he story soars when Ko writes of immigration detention —a civil detention for violation of a civil law that is as callous and brutal as the worst sort of criminal incarceration.… [The Leavers] lets us feel the knife twist of sweeping government authority wielded without conscience or control. [Ko’s] work gives poignant voice to the fact the U.S. can, and must, write a better immigration system.
Ms. Magazine
Consider this book a must-read: They may be fictional, but these characters have a lot to teach us about the difficulties of belonging and the plight of illegal immigrants.
Marie Claire
What Ko seeks to do with The Leavers is illuminate the consequence of [deportation] facilities, and of the deportation machine as a whole, on individual lives. Ko’s book arrives at a time when it is most needed; its success will be measured in its ability to move its readership along the continuum between complacency and advocacy.
Los Angeles Review of Books
[E]ngaging and highly topical… Ko deftly segues between the intertwined stories of the separated mother and son and conveys both the struggles of those caught in the net of immigration authorities and the pain of dislocation.
National Book Review
(Starred review.) Ko’s debut is a sweeping examination of family through the eyes of a single mother, a Chinese immigrant, and her U.S.-born son, whose separation haunts and defines their lives.… [A] stunning tale of love and loyalty—to family, to country—is a fresh and moving look at the immigrant experience in America, and is as timely as ever. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A]n emerging writer to watch. Verdict: Ko's writing is strong, and her characters, whether major or minor, are skillfully developed. Readers who enjoy thoughtfully told relationship tales…will appreciate. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal
[S]killfully written.… [T]hose who are interested in closely observed, character-driven fiction will want to leave room for The Leavers on their shelves.
Booklist
A Chinese woman who works in a New York nail salon doesn't come home one day; her young son is raised by well-meaning strangers who cannot heal his broken heart.… [T]he specificity of the intertwined stories is the novel's strength.… This timely novel depicts the heart- and spirit-breaking difficulties faced by illegal immigrants.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Leavers...then take off on your own:
1. What relevance, if any, does The Leavers have to the immigration issues dividing much of the world today? What are your opinions regarding immigration. Did this book alter those opinions...or confirm them?
2. How is Polly Guo portrayed in this work? Do you admire her...or not? Does she engender sympathy? Does your attitude toward her change during the course of the novel? Early on she is ambivalent about Deming's birth, placing him in a bag and leaving him underneath a city bench...only to return to him, of course. Is she to blame for her ambivalence?
3. Talk about Polly's turbulent past and how it shapes who she has become. She seems driven by dreams of her own. What are those dreams?
4. How would you describe Deming when he arrives back in the U.S. as a six-year-old? What kind of family do Polly and Leon provide for Deming and Michael? What kind of life do they lead in the Bronx? Consider Polly's job in the nail salon.
5. Deming is utterly bewildered by his mother's disappearance. Talk about the effect it has on him as he grows into adolescence and young adulthood? Consider this observation: "If he held everyone at arm’s length, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they disappeared." Or this one: "He had eliminated the possibility of feeling out of place by banishing himself to no place."
6. What role do Ko's music and his gambling play; how do they help assuage his pain? At one point, after a performance with his band, Deming slips out, thinking to himself, "It felt good being the one making the excuse to get away." What does he mean?
7. What do you think of Kay and Peter Wilkinson? Are they clueless? Insensitive? Well-meaning?
8. Polly's story is told in the first person while Deming's is in the third person. Why do you think the author made that choice? Is Polly's tale meant to be a journal for Deming?
9. Polly is the one who sees the nature of the immigration system firsthand. How is the system portrayed in the novel?
10. Lisa Ko says the novel was inspired by a 2009 New York Times article about an undocumented immigrant from China who spent 18 months in detention. She had been arrested at a bus station on the way to Florida for a new job. Does knowing that the novel has its roots in a true story have any impact on how you understand it?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
When All Is Said
Anne Griffin, 2019
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250200587
Summary
I'm here to remember–all that I have been and all that I will never be again.
- If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would they be?
- If you were to raise a glass to each of them, what would you say?
- And what would you learn about yourself, when all is said?
At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He’s alone, as usual—though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story.
Over the course of this evening, he will raise five toasts to the five people who have meant the most to him. Through these stories—of unspoken joy and regret, a secret tragedy kept hidden, a fierce love that never found its voice - the life of one man will be powerful and poignantly laid bare.
Beautifully heart-warming and powerfully felt, the voice of Maurice Hannigan will stay with you long after all is said and done. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., M.A., University College Dublin
• Awards—John McGahern Award for Literature
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland
Anne Griffin is an Irish author, best known for her award-winning short stories. In 2019 she published her first novel, When All Is Said. Griffin was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. She received her B.A. from University College Dublin (UCD),
After spending eight years working for Waterstones in both Dublin and London, Griffin decided to change career paths. She attended Maynooth University, earning a post-graduate diploma in community and youth work, and dor the next two decades, she worked with charities—Women’s Aid, Youth Work Ireland, and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland
In 2013 Griffin turned to writing fiction, and two years later, in 2015, she returned to UDC to pursue a Master's in Creative Writing.
Griffin's short fiction has gained her recognition: she won the John McGahern Award for Literature and was shortlisted for both the Hennessey New Irish Writing Award and the Sunday Business Post Short Story Competition. Her work has been featured in the Irish Times and Stinging Fly.
Griffin lives in Ireland with her husband and son. (Adapted from the publisher bio and the author's website. Retrieved 3/6/2019.)
Book Reviews
[Anne Griffin] builds a remarkably rich sense of place, while also tracing the wider changes affecting Ireland.… Maurice is a lovingly rendered example of the current vogue for characters who have fallen through the cracks.
SundayTimes (UK)
An impressively confident debut novel.
Guardian (UK)
Griffin is a magical storyteller whose prose is effortless and clear. She conjures an intimate, poignant and ultimately enthralling portrait of a man who has battled loneliness and other demons throughout his life. Maurice is superbly well-realised: a character who tries to make amends and, in so doing, cracked my heart.
Fanny Blake - Daily Mail (UK)
An atmospheric debut.… The most impressive aspects of this first novel are its rich, flowing prose, it’s convincing voice and it’s imaginative and clever structure.… Griffin is a welcome arrival to the literary scene.
Irish Times
While the plot hinges heavily on coincidence, and the device of addressing an absent son feels extraneous, Maurice is a likable and complex character…. [His] humor, his keen observations …create the feeling of a life connected to many others by strands of affection and hatred
Publishers Weekly
Griffin's storytelling, while economical, is rich and evocative…. Most impressive …is her creation of Maurice. His voice is credible, his story absorbing, and his humanity painfully familiar.… this unforgettable first novel introduces Griffin as a writer to watch. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal
Griffin's deeply moving debut novel highlights the power of nostalgia, the pang of regret, and the impact that very special individuals can have on our lives.
Booklist
What becomes of the brokenhearted? That question, asked—and answered equivocally—in the Motown classic, receives a more thorough treatment in Griffin's debut novel.… Griffin's [novel] provides a stage for the exploration of guilt, regret, and loss, all in the course of one memorable night.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. After reading the author’s note about her conversation with Lale Sokolov, the Tattooist of Auschwitz, did knowing that Cilka’s story is based on areal person change your reading experience? Does the author weave fact and realistic fiction into the story effectively? In what ways?
2. What drew you to this time period and novel? What can humanity still learn from this historical space—from the front lines of an infamous concentration camp to the brutal Russian Gulags? How was this story unique in its voice and characters?
3. Is Cilka’s prison sentence in Vorkuta as punishment for "sleeping with the enemy" in the concentration camp cruel? Was she forced into this role in order to survive as a mere sixteen-year-old girl? How might Cilka’s outward behavior compare to her inner intentions?
4. "What you are doing, Cilka, is the only form of resistance you have—staying alive. You are the bravest person I have ever known, I hope you know that." (Chapter 32) Is Lale right? Is Cilka brave, and were her acts of resistance the best course of action she had? What does Cilka feel guilty about or complicit in? How is she suffering because of it?
5. Could you imagine having the fortitude to survive one death sentence and then another? How do these two hells—the camp and the prison—compare? Were your perceptions challenged or expanded on what life in the Gulag was like after reading this book? In what ways?
6. What strategies does Cilka use to survive? Which ones does she teach the others, including Josie? How could her body be her ticket? What does she sacrifice in giving of her body but not her mind?
7. "Another number. Cilka subconsciously rubs her left arm; hidden under her clothing is her identity from that other place. How many times can one person be reduced, erased?" (Chapter 3) How would you answer Cilka here? What inner fire allows Cilka to live? How does she endure with so much death and suffering around her?
8. Does Cilka assume a protective role for the women in her hut? For her block at the camp? In what ways is Cilka a target for their rage and a focus for their hopes for life beyond the fencing? How does she help the women survive the toughest parts of their sentences (the rapes, work, injuries, separation)?
9. How do the women form a sisterhood or join in solidarity? Do you believe there is something universal about what they do? From snowy rescues to smuggled food—even Elena’s self-inflicted burn in order to get a message to Cilka—how do the women look out for one another? How is this essential for their survival?
10. Why do the women invest their time and scarce energies into "beautifying" the hut with their meager resources? What does this tell us about the human spirit?
11. How does Yelena help and advocate for Cilka? What chances and tests is Cilka given because of Yelena’s attentions? How does Cilka repay her faith and kindness? Also, why do you think Yelena would choose to serve in such a brutal place?
12. "She doesn’t dare hope that she has broken her curse. That she could have a role in helping new life come into the world, rather than overseeing death." (Chapter 12) In what ways is Cilka’s time served in the maternity ward a turning point? How does she intervene with her patients and make a difference? How does she put herself at risk?
13. Discuss Josie’s desperation regarding her baby Natia’s fate, and what lies ahead for them both after the two-year mark? How does Cilka ensure her safe transfer? What does Natia’s presence stir up for the others in the hut?
14. How would you describe a mother’s love? How does it manifest in the book?
15. How does Cilka find her calling with her ambulance work? How did she spur others to be their best selves? On the other hand, what sexist abuse did she face while performing such technical and important work?
16. Why does Cilka reject the comfort of the nurses’ quarters at first? In what ways is she seeking forgiveness?
17. How are Cilka and Alexandr joined together? How does she administer to him and what new hope does he offer for her future? What risks? Were you surprised by their reunion on the train platform?
18. The main oppressors in this novel are men—from the commanders and guards to her fellow prisoners—and their sense of menacing entitlement and acts of rape and cruelty shape the novel. Have things changed for women in times of both war and peace when it comes to their bodies and defining their own destinies? What can society do about it?
19. Why does Cilka ultimately tell her hut-mates about her experiences and actions at Auschwitz? How does she know the time is right?
20. Why are women’s voices of wartime so important to unearth and tell? What could be lost when they are unreported or under reported?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Since We Fell
Dennis Lehane, 2017
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062129383
Summary
Since We Fell follows Rachel Childs, a former journalist who, after an on-air mental breakdown, now lives as a virtual shut-in.
In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel’s marriage. As does Rachel herself.
Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths.
By turns heart-breaking, suspenseful, romantic, and sophisticated, Since We Fell is a novel of profound psychological insight and tension. It is Dennis Lehane at his very best. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 4, 1965
• Where—Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Eckerd College; M.F.A., Florida International University
• Awards—Edgar Award (2); Shamus Award-Best First Novel; Anthony Award; Dilys Award
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Dennis Lehane is an American author. He has written several award-winning novels, including A Drink Before the War and the New York Times bestseller Mystic River, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.
Another novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, was also adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film. His novel Shutter Island was adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese in 2010. Lehane is a graduate of Florida International University in Miami, Florida.
Personal Life
Lehane was born and reared in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, and continues to live in the Boston area, which provides the setting for most of his books. He spent summers on Fieldston Beach in Marshfield. Lehane is the youngest of five children. His father was a foreman for Sears & Roebuck, and his mother worked in a Boston public school cafeteria. Both of his parents emigrated from Ireland. His brother, Gerry Lehane, who is two and a half years older than Dennis, is a veteran actor who trained at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence before heading to New York in 1990. Gerry is currently a member of the Invisible City Theatre Company.
He was previously married to Sheila Lawn, formerly an advocate for the elderly for the city of Boston but now working with the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office as an Assistant District Attorney. Currently, he is married to Dr. Angela Bernardo, with whom he has one daughter.
He is a graduate of Boston College High School (a Boston Jesuit prep school), Eckerd College (where he found his passion for writing), and the graduate program in creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He occasionally makes guest appearances as himself in the ABC comedy/drama TV series Castle.
Literary Career
His first book, A Drink Before the War, which introduced the recurring characters Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, won the 1995 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel. The fourth book in the series, Gone, Baby, Gone, was adapted to a film of the same title in 2007; it was directed by Ben Affleck and starred Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as Kenzie and Gennaro. Reportedly, Lehane "has never wanted to write the screenplays for the films [based on his own books], because he says he has 'no desire to operate on my own child.'"
Lehane's Mystic River was made into a film in 2003; directed by Clint Eastwood, it starred Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon. The novel itself was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystère de la Critique.
Lehane's first play, Coronado, debuted in New York in December 2005. Coronado is based on his acclaimed short story "Until Gwen," which was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly and was selected for both The Best American Short Stories and The Best Mystery Short Stories of 2005.
Lehane described working on his historical novel, The Given Day, as "a five- or six-year project" with the novel beginning in 1918 and encompassing the 1919 Boston Police Strike and its aftermath. The novel was published in October, 2008.
On October 22, 2007 Paramount Pictures announced that they had optioned Shutter Island with Martin Scorsese attached as director. The Laeta Kalogridis-scripted adaptation has Leonardo DiCaprio playing U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, "who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island." Mark Ruffalo played opposite DiCaprio as U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule. Shutter Island was released on February 19, 2010.
Teaching Career
Since becoming a literary success after the broad appeal of his Kenzie and Gennaro novels, as well as the success of Mystic River, Lehane has taught at several colleges. He taught fiction writing and serves as a member of the board of directors for a low-residency MFA program sponsored by Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He has also been involved with the Solstice Summer Writers' Conference at Boston's Pine Manor College and taught advanced fiction writing at Harvard University, where his classes quickly filled up.
In May 2005, Lehane was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Eckerd College and was appointed to Eckerd's Board of Trustees later that year. In Spring 2009, Lehane became a Joseph E. Connor Award recipient and honorary brother of Phi Alpha Tau professional fraternity at Emerson College in Boston, MA. Other brothers and Connor Award recipients include Robert Frost, Elia Kazan, Jack Lemmon, Red Skelton, Edward R. Murrow, Yul Brynner, and Walter Cronkite. Also in Spring 2009, Lehane presented the commencement speech at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts, and was awarded an honorary degree.
Film Career
Lehane wrote and directed an independent film called Neighborhoods in the mid 1990s. He joined the writing staff of the HBO drama series The Wire in 2004. Lehane returned as a writer for the fourth season in 2006 Lehane and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony and the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay for their work on the fourth season. Lehane remained a writer for the fifth and final season in 2008. Lehane and the writing staff were nominated for the WGA Award award for Best Dramatic Series again at the February 2009 ceremony.He served as an executive producer for Shutter Island. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Endlessly surprising.… [A] twisty tale.
Wall Street Journal
The surfeit of plot twists and emotional baggage are buoyed by Lehane’s hard-boiled lyricism and peerless feel for New England noir.
USA Today
With sharply acute characterization, this is classic Lehane.
Guardian (UK)
A pleasantly twisted character study and a love story.… Lehane is in command of what he’s doing.
Tampa Bay Times
Make no mistake, Since We Fell is crime fiction, filled with con men, murder, greed and revenge. But the love story gives this novel its heart.
Associated Press
Another winner from the author of Mystic River.… A raucous mix of lust, greed, and betrayal.
AARP Magazine
A ride you won’t want to miss.
New York Journal of Books
[An] expertly wrought character study masquerading as a thriller.… The book’s conspiracy plot doesn’t cut the deepest; it’s Lehane’s intensely intimate portrayal of a woman tormented by her own mind.
Publishers Weekly
[T]his narrative vehicle never veers out of control, and when Lehane hits the afterburners in the last 50 pages, he produces one of crime fiction’s most exciting and well-orchestrated finales — rife with dramatic tension and buttressed by rich psychological interplay between the characters. —Bill Ott
Booklist
[P]lenty of intrigue, intricacies, and emotional subtleties..… What seems at the start to be an edgy psychological mystery seamlessly transforms into a crafty, ingenious tale of murder and deception—and a deeply resonant account of one woman’s effort to heal deep wounds.
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.)
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