Brass
Xhenet Aliu, 2018
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399590245
Summary
A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life.
Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naïve, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams—and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Back when the brass mills were still open, this bustling factory town drew one wave of immigrants after another. Now it’s the place they can’t seem to leave.
Elsie, herself the granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants, falls in love quickly, but when she learns that she’s pregnant, Elsie can’t help wondering where Bashkim’s heart really lies, and what he’ll do about the wife he left behind.
Seventeen years later, headstrong and independent Luljeta receives a rejection letter from NYU and her first-ever suspension from school on the same day. Instead of striking out on her own in Manhattan, she’s stuck in Connecticut with her mother, Elsie—a fate she refuses to accept.
Wondering if the key to her future is unlocking the secrets of the past, Lulu decides to find out what exactly her mother has been hiding about the father she never knew. As she soon discovers, the truth is closer than she ever imagined.
Told in equally gripping parallel narratives with biting wit and grace, Brass announces a fearless new voice with a timely, tender, and quintessentially American story. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978-79
• Where—Waterbury, Connecticut, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of North Carolina; M.L.I.S., University of Alabama
• Awards—Prairie Schooner Book Prize-Fiction
• Currently—lives in Athens, Georgia
Xhenet Aliu’s debut novel, Brass, was published in 2018. Her short fiction collection, Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories, published in 2013, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. Aliu's stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Barcelona Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.
A native of Waterbury, Connecticut, Aliu was born to an Albanian father and a Lithuanian American mother. She holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and an MLIS from The University of Alabama and now lives in Athens, Georgia, where she works as an academic librarian. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
For Elsie and Lulu, the mother and daughter at the center of the book, the most valuable thing in Waterbury is a ticket out.…The plot advances through each woman's story; as the symmetries between them pile up, along with misunderstandings, the novel accumulates momentum and emotional power…They'll never see each other, or themselves, as clearly as the reader gets to see them both—that's the magic trick here. In granting the reader access to both women's interiority, Aliu brings to life the simple, heartbreaking fact that though our stories can intersect, we're ourselves alone…From its opening page, Brass simmers with anger—the all too real byproduct of working hard for not enough, of being a woman in a place where women have little value, of getting knocked down one too many times. But when the simmer breaks into a boil, Aliu alchemizes that anger into love, and in doing so creates one of the most potent dramatizations of the bond between mother and daughter that I've ever read.
Julie Buntin - New York Times Book Review
An exceptional debut novel, one that plumbs the notion of the American Dream while escaping the clichés that pursuit almost always brings with it.… [Xhenet] Aliu delivers a living, breathing portrait of places left behind.
Eugenia Williamson - Boston Globe
The writing blazes on the page.… The narrative is also incredibly funny, sly, and always popping with personality.… So much about the book is also extraordinarily timely, especially when it focuses on class and culture, and what they really mean.… Yes, we might be lost from who and what we really are. But, as this audacious novel shows, we can—and we must—keep struggling to make our own place in the world.
Carolyn Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle
A] lyrically insightful debut novel by Xhenet Aliu, telling in sharp, pithy parallel narratives the story of a waitress in small-town Connecticut who falls in love with a charismatic Albanian immigrant and the story of her grown daughter, likewise feeling trapped in that same small town and seeking answers about her past. Aliu makes both these stories immediately touching and weaves them together in ways that are surprising without being sappy.
Christian Science Monitor
Aliu is witty and unsparing in her depiction of the town and its inhabitants, illustrating the granular realities of the struggle for class mobility.
The New Yorker
Lustrous… a tale alive with humor and gumption, of the knotty, needy bond between a mother and daughter.… [Brass] marks the arrival of a writer whose work will stand the test of time.
Oprah Magazine
Aliu juxtaposes a mother and daughter’s late teenage desperation 17 years apart in her striking first novel.… This is a captivating, moving story of drastic measures, failed schemes, and the loss of innocence.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Deftly written in a style that is evocative of time and place, this universal story of the search for home is well translated into the blue-collar world of Elsie and Lulu.
Library Journal
(Starred review) A boldly witty and astute inquiry into the nature-versus-nurture debate, the inheritance of pain, and the dream of transcendence.
Booklist
(Starred review) [G]limmering.… Aliu's riveting, sensitive work shines with warmth, clarity, and a generosity of spirit. Her… writing is polished and precise, bringing her characters glowingly to life.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The following questions were generously offered to us by Elaine Steele, Librarian, Gales Ferry Library in Connecticut. Many thanks, Elaine:
1. Why do you think the author chose the title "Brass"?
2. Does anyone have a connection with brass factories?
3. Why do you think Luljeta’s sections are written in second person?
4. How does culture play into this story? Does anyone have any experience with Albanian or Lithuanian culture?
5. How did you feel about Bashkim’s behavior with his money? What about with his wife and Elsie?
7. Why do you think Luljeta admired her aunt Greta so much?
8. How are Elsie and Luljeta’s stories the same? Different?
0. Did you feel as if Elsie or Luljeta changed throughout the course of the novel?
10. Did the ending surprise you?
(Questions created by Elaine Steele and submitted to LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution to both. Thanks.)
The Hunting Party
Lucy Foley, 2019
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062868909
Summary
A shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge … and murder and mayhem ensue.
Everyone's invited … everyone's a suspect.… All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.
During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.
The trip began innocently enough—admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.
Now one of them is dead … and another one of them did it.
Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1985
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Durham University; University College London
• Currently—lives in London, England
Lucy Foley is a British novelist, born and still living in London. She is best known for her works of historical fiction, but she also published two murder mysteries, The Hunting Party (2019) and The Guest List (2020).
After studying English Literature at Durham University in Northeast England and University College London, Foley worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry, before leaving to write full-time. The Hunting Party was inspired by a particularly remote spot in Scotland that fired her imagination.
Foley's historical novels—The Book of Lost and Found (2015), The Invitation (2016) and Last Letter from Istanbul (2018)—have been translated into sixteen languages. Her journalism has appeared in ES Magazine, Sunday Times Style, Grazia and more. (Adapted from Amazon.)
Book Reviews
Lucy Foley proves that the traditional country-house murder formula… can still work brilliantly.… Superb.
Times (UK)
Foley excels at the small details that make up a person… builds the tension cleverly and creepily, underlining the point that old friends aren’t always the best.
Observer (UK)
A claustrophobic, compulsive read.
Tatler (UK)
Like a deliciously drawn out game of Clue, this novel brings together a group of Oxford friends at a remote Scottish highlands estate for the Christmas holidays.…Foley paints such a vivid hunting-lodge-and-lochs setting that you’ll immediately be booking your own highland fling, clandestine killers or no.
National Geographic
A tense, perfectly paced murder mystery.
People
A great update on the classic country house murder… brilliantly builds the tension.
Good Housekeeping
Historical novelist Foley makes an auspicious thriller debut.… Foley spins her story skillfully through multiple narrators, and if she’s less sure-handed with character, this still makes for a cracklingly suspenseful story for a long winter’s night.
Publishers Weekly
In her first crime novel, Foley takes a group of thirtyish Oxford graduates who celebrate New Year's Eve together to a dreamily remote estate in the Scottish Highlands. They're snowed in by a blizzard of historic proportions, and by New Year's one of them lies dead.
Library Journal
Anyone who’s grown apart from old friends will recognize the yearning depicted here to make everything as it was.… Readers are left wondering until the end which guest has died as well as who the killer is; they will be well rewarded by the story’s ending.
Booklist
[T]old in flashbacks from several different characters' perspectives, each with a different… dark secret…, as is classic in this form of the whodunit.… Plot, reasonably clever. Setting, nicely done. Characters, two-dimensional stereotypes, but you can't have everything.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for THE HUNTING PARTY … then take off on your own:
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.)
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre (A Novel)
Max Brooks, 2020
Randdom House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984826787
Summary
The #1 bestselling author of World War Z returns with a horror tale that blurs the lines between human and beast, and asks, What are we capable of when we’re cut off from society?
Set in the wilds of Washington State, Greenloop was once a model eco-community—until nature’s wrath made it a tragic object lesson in civilization’s fragility.
Offering a glorious back-to-nature experience with all the comforts of high-speed Internet, solar smart houses, and the assurance of being mere hours from Seattle by highway, Greenloop was indeed a paradise—until Mount Rainier erupted, leaving its residents truly cut off from the world, and utterly unprepared for the consequences.
With no weapons and their food supplies dwindling, Greenloop’s residents slowly realized that they were in a fight for survival. And as the ash swirled and finally settled, they found themselves facing a specter none of them could have predicted—or even thought possible.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings to light the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own investigations into the massacre that followed and the legendary beasts behind it.
If what Kate saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us—and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.
Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it—and like none you’ve ever read before. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 22, 1972
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—B.A., Pitzer College;
• Currently—lives in Venice, California
Maximillian Michael Brooks is an American actor and author, best known for his novel World War Z (2006) and its related "survival guides." More recently he published the thriller/suspense novel, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre (2020). Brooks is also a lecturer at the Modern War Institute at West Point, New York.
Early life
Brooks, the son of actress Anne Bancroft and director, producer, writer, and actor Mel Brooks, is dyslexic. In a 2017 interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Brooks recalled what it was like growing up in the 1970s before dyslexia was understood:
[T]hey didn't even call it a disability back then; it was just "laziness," "goofing off…." And my mother, one of the greatest, most successful actresses of her day, gave up her career… to be my educational advocate and to teach herself about dyslexia.… She… had [my school books] all read onto audio cassette, so I could listen to my reading list. And if I hadn't been able to do that, I wouldn't have graduated from high school.… [N]ot only did my mother give me my life, she saved my life.
Brooks earned a BA in history from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and he also pursued graduate work in film at American University in Washington, D.C.
Career
From 2001 to 2003, Brooks was a member of the writing team at Saturday Night Live.
In 2003, Brooks published his first book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, which describes the origin and lives of zombies. In 2006, he released World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. The novel was later adapted to film, starring Brad Pitt. Brooks's third book, in 2009, was a graphic novel, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, which depicted several events detailed in the first book's latter section.
Devolution came out in 2020, a thriller written through diary entries, news transcripts, and Brooks's own research. The novel is a fictional account of the legendary Bigfoot in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
In addition to his writing, Brooks has also acted in and done voice-overs for more than a dozen films and TV series. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/10/2020.)
Book Reviews
With Devolution, Brooks brings his considerable investigative powers to a cryptozoological controversy that has been raging in the Pacific Northwest for decades…. The results are uneven ... for far too many pages, Devolution plods along a dull middle ground, not so much building suspense as venting it…. Part of the problem is the diary format. We’re stuck in Kate’s limited perspective trudging through her flat prose…. There’s probably a great horror novel about Sasquatch out there somewhere, but I won’t believe it till I see it.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
[A] substantial and suspenseful case for the existence of Bigfoot in this thriller, told via diary entries, news transcripts, and Brooks’s own research.… Brooks packs his plot with action, information, and atmosphere, and captures the foibles and heroism of his characters.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Brooks, back with his first novel since his seminal World War Z, employs a similar style here, but the scope—and resulting terror—is significantly more concentrated and immediate. The narrative is framed as an investigation…. [C]reative and well-executed.
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] terrifyingly realistic survival encounter…. The escalating alarm of naive people…give[s] insight into weaknesses humanity blithely ignores every day. The story is told in such a compelling manner that horror fans will want to believe and, perhaps, take the warning to heart.
Booklist
(Starred review) Are we not men?… [A]sk Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn…. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes…. [Still], it puts you right there on the scene. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
1. Max Brooks writes: "I will let you judge for yourself if the following pages seem reasonably plausible." Do they? Does the premise of the novel—that Bigfoot exists—feel plausible to you? Why or why not?
2. Who, or what, are the Sasquatches, as portrayed in Devolution? Do you believe they exist? Does Max Brooks?
3. What was your experience reading Devolution? Did you find it suspenseful, frightening, gory, instructive? Something else? Or were you left, well… unmoved?
4. Talk about the tech-pioneers who formed the utopian community of Greenloop? What is their hope moving into a primeval rain forest—while still remaining linked to civilization by internet? Do you sympathize with their idealism, find them naive, or maybe hypocritical?
5. Whom in the novel are you most irritated by or impatient with? Which character do you most admire?
6. After Rainier's eruption, how and why does Mostar begin preparing for catastrophe—even though Greenloop is miles from the volcano and undamaged? Why is she the only community member who worries, while the rest remain blissfully unaware and unprepared?
7. What do you think of Brooks's use of Kate Holland's diary. Along with the fact that is the "first-hand account" mentioned in the book's subtitle, what else does it add? Does the diary enhance the story? Do you feel it builds suspense or does it drag down the pace? Also, what do you think of Kate, herself?
8. Brooks is known for his zombie survival guides. How does this book double as a survival manual? What is the advice it offers people living through cataclysmic events?
9. The novel also takes pot shots at society—at bad behavior, not just on the part of the Sasquatches but also on the part of humans. What social criticism does Brooks offer about the larger society?
10. Should this book be classified as fiction or nonfiction? Joke there… though not to some: Bigfoot has a devoted following, people who are absolutely convinced Bigfoot exists. Why such intensely passionate followers? Why do people continue to insist on Bigfoot/Yeti's existence? Any ideas? Are you a devotee? Do you know people who are?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II
Rhys Bowen, 2017
Amazon Publishing
396 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781503941359
Summary
World War II comes to Farleigh Place, the ancestral home of Lord Westerham and his five daughters, when a soldier with a failed parachute falls to his death on the estate.
After his uniform and possessions raise suspicions, MI5 operative and family friend Ben Cresswell is covertly tasked with determining if the man is a German spy. The assignment also offers Ben the chance to be near Lord Westerham’s middle daughter, Pamela, whom he furtively loves.
But Pamela has her own secret: she has taken a job at Bletchley Park, the British code-breaking facility.
As Ben follows a trail of spies and traitors, which may include another member of Pamela’s family, he discovers that some within the realm have an appalling, history-altering agenda. Can he, with Pamela’s help, stop them before England falls?
Inspired by the events and people of World War II, writer Rhys Bowen crafts a sweeping and riveting saga of class, family, love, and betrayal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Janet Quin-Harkin
• Birth—September 24, 1941
• Where—Bath, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of London
• Awards—2 Agatha Awards: Best Novel and Best Historical Novel
• Currently—lives in San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
Janet Quin-Harkin is a British-born novelist who writes under her own name, as well as the nom de plum, Rhys Bowen (pronounced "Reece"). Her works are legion — children's books, a young adult series, and three mystery series totalling some 40 books and short stories. All told, Harkin-Quin has written more than 50 books and stories. In 2017 she published her first stand-alone mystery thriller, In Farleigh Fields: A Novel of World War II.
Quin-Harkin was born in Bath, England, educated at the University of London, and worked as a drama studio manager for the BBC. Producing plays by others, she decided, at 22, to try her hand at writing her own. When she finished, she dropped her newly penned script on her boss's desk, only to be called in the following day and told they had decided to produce her play.
Driven by England's cold and rainy climate, Quin-Harkin took off for Australia where she met her husband to be, also an expat Brit, who was on his way to California. She joined him, married him, and raised four children with him, all in the San Francisco area where they remain to this day.
In 1976 Quin-Harkin began writing children's books, winning awards with her first, Peter Penny's Dance. That was followed by short stories published in Parents Magazine. Then in 1982 she moved up in age to write teen romances: eight books in all, including the well-known Boyfriend Club series.
Starting in the late 1990s, Quin-Harkin turned to writing her favorite genre as a reader — mysteries. She began with the Constable Evan Evans series in 1997, then the Molly Murphy series, and the Lady Georgiana series.
Honors
2000 - finalist, Agatha and Anthony Awards, "The Seal of the Confessional"
2001 - Agatha Award for Best Novel, Murphy's Law
2002 - finalist, Agatha Award for Best Novel, Death of Riley
2004 - finalist, Anthony Award for best short story, "Doppelganger" –
2011 - Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel, Naughty in Nice
2016 - RT convention: career achievement award
As well as novels, Rhys has written many short stories, including an Anthony winner. She is an ex-chapter president of Mystery Writers of America. When not writing she loves to travel, sing, hike, paint, play her Celtic harp, and spoil her grandchildren. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 5/26/2017.)
Book Reviews
In Farleigh Field delivers the same entertainment mixed with intellectual intrigue and realistic setting for which Bowen has earned awards and loyal fans.
New York Journal of Books
Suspenseful and thrilling, with some espionage too, this novel will keep readers deeply involved until the end.
Portland Book Review
Well-plotted and thoroughly entertaining…With characters who are so fully fleshed out, you can imagine meeting them on the street.
Historical Novel Society
This story of war, love, and mystery is extremely suspenseful …both realistic and believable. Through the character’s eyes, readers will be drawn into the era and begin to understand the sacrifices and hardships placed on English society.
Crimespree Magazine
[A] well-crafted, thoroughly entertaining thriller…. The gripping action shifts among Farleigh Place…, London, and various hush-hush locations. Soon it’s a game of spy versus spy, and with every twist and turn, the reader is unsure whom to trust.
Publishers Weekly
In what could easily become a PBS show of its own, Bowen’s novel winningly details a World War II spy game. It features an English aristocrat’s daughter who works at London’s top-secret home of code breakers, Bletchley Park.
Library Journal
The skills Bowen brings to her several mystery series, including Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness, inform the plotting in this character-rich tale, which will be welcomed by her fans as well as by readers who enjoy fiction about the British home front.
Booklist
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 In Farleigh Field …then take off on your own:
1. How does author Rhys Bowen portray the early 1940s in England — the war effort sagging, the many sacrifices required, and the ever-present fear of German invasion? Is her portrait similar to, or consistent with, other works you've read (or watched) about the era?
2. Talk about the rumor of the Ring, the Nazi sympathizers within the upper ranks of society. What does the author have to say in her author's note about the historical authenticity of the group?
3. Most of the novel is told through the alternating perspectives of Pam and Ben. Occasionally, however, the author shifts to secondary characters. Why might she have done so? How do those shifts add to your understanding of the story?
4. Talk about Lord Westerham's five daughters, how they differ from one another and how they are similar. Aside from Pamela, is there another sister or two you admire...or whom you particularly disliked? Dido, for instance? What about Margot's story: how engaged were you with her plight in France?
5, How much had you known before reading this novel about the work, especially of women code-breakers, at Bletchley Park. Have you watched the BBC series?
6. Were you surprised by the revelation about the dead parachutist at the end? Did you see it coming? Does it make sense?
7. Also, what about the traitor and assassination plot Ben has been investigating? Is that plot well-developed and were you caught up in the suspense?
8. Talk about the way Pamela and Ben are forced to maneuver around the secrets they carry but cannot share. There are a few mishaps, as well as a bit of humor. How hard would it be for you to maintain such secrecy in your own life?
9. In all, does this book deliver the goods in terms of mystery and suspense?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Alternate Side
Anna Quindlen, 2018
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996067
Summary
The tensions in a tight-knit neighborhood—and a seemingly happy marriage—are exposed by an unexpected act of violence. A provocative novel about money, class, and self-discovery.
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life—except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college.
And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness.
The owners watch one another’s children grow up. They use the same handyman. They trade gossip and gripes, and they maneuver for the ultimate status symbol: a spot in the block’s small parking lot.
Then one morning, Nora returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the enviable dead-end block turns into a potent symbol of a divided city.
The fault lines begin to open: on the block, at Nora’s job, especially in her marriage. With an acute eye that captures the snap crackle of modern life, Anna Quindlen explores what it means to be a mother, a wife, and a woman at a moment of reckoning. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 8, 1952
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column
• Currently—New York, New York
Anna Quindlen could have settled onto a nice, lofty career plateau in the early 1990s, when she had won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column; but she took an unconventional turn, and achieved a richer result.
Quindlen, the third woman to hold a place among the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists, had already published two successful collections of her work when she decided to leave the paper in 1995. But it was the two novels she had produced that led her to seek a future beyond her column.
Quindlen had a warm, if not entirely uncritical, reception as a novelist. Her first book, Object Lessons, focused on an Irish American family in suburban New York in the 1960s. It was a bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1991, but was also criticized for not being as engaging as it could have been. One True Thing, Quindlen's exploration of an ambitious daughter's journey home to take care of her terminally ill mother, was stronger still—a heartbreaker that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. But Quindlen's fiction clearly benefited from her decision to leave the Times. Three years after that controversial departure, she earned her best reviews yet with Black and Blue, a chronicle of escape from domestic abuse.
Quindlen's novels are thoughtful explorations centering on women who may not start out strong, but who ultimately find some core within themselves as a result of what happens in the story. Her nonfiction meditations—particularly A Short Guide to a Happy Life and her collection of "Life in the 30s" columns, Living Out Loud—often encourage this same transition, urging others to look within themselves and not get caught up in what society would plan for them. It's an approach Quindlen herself has obviously had success with.
Extras
• To those who expressed surprise at Quindlen's apparent switch from columnist to novelist, the author points out that her first love was always fiction. She told fans in a Barnes & Noble.com chat, "I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels."
• Quindlen joined Newsweek as a columnist in 1999. She began her career at the New York Post in 1974, jumping to the New York Times in 1977.
• Quindlen's prowess as a columnist and prescriber of advice has made her a popular pick for commencement addresses, a sideline that ultimately inspired her 2000 title A Short Guide to a Happy Life Quindlen's message tends to be a combination of stopping to smell the flowers and being true to yourself. Quindlen told students at Mount Holyoke in 1999, "Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world."
• Studying fiction at Barnard with the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Quindlen's senior thesis was a collection of stories, one of which she sold to Seventeen magazine. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Captures the angst and anxiety of modern life with… astute observations about interactions between the haves and have-nots, and the realities of life among the long-married.
USA Today
Quindlen’s provocative novel is a New York City drama of fractured marriages and uncomfortable class distinctions.… [A]n exceptional depiction of complex characters—particularly their weaknesses and uncertainties—and the intricacies of close relationships.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Quindlen’s quietly precise evaluation of intertwined lives evinces a keen understanding of and appreciation for universal human frailties.
Booklist
A Manhattan comedy of manners with a melancholy undertow.… Quindlen's sendup of entitled Manhattanites is fun but familiar.… There's insight here …and some charm, but the novel is not on a par with Quindlen's best.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How would you describe the state of the Nolan's marriage, at the start of the novel …and at the end?
2. Quindlen spends the first 100 pages or so depicting city life—dogs, rats, housing costs, and parking tickets. What do you find most amusing, insightful, or interesting in her portrait of urban life? Or perhaps this book is too narrowly focused on New York life for your taste.
3. In what way does Quindlen poke fun at the Manhattan elites: especially their exclusivity and sense of entitlement? Do you recognize anything in some of the characters—people you know, have met, or perhaps have read about?
4. Follow-up to Question 3: Does the following passage accurately describe the Nolan's marriage? Does it seem pertinent to any, many, or some, marriages which have lasted 25 years?
You could argue they'd lost their way, in their choices, their work, their marriage. But the truth was, there wasn't any way. There was just day after day, small stuff, idle conversation, scheduling. And then after a couple of decades it somehow added up to something, for good or for ill or for both.
5. Which characters do you most sympathize with? Does your attitude toward any of them change during the course of the novel? Do the characters themselves change by the end? Do they attain enlightenment—self-knowledge, maturity, a wider (or deeper) understanding of the world around them and their place in it?
6. Discuss the parking lot incident and how it created fault lines in the neighborhood? How does it affect the various characters?
7. Talk about the significance of the book's title? What are the multiple meanings?
8. If you have read Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, do you see any similarities to that book in Anna Quindlen's Alternate Side?
9. Talk about the class divisions so prominent in this novel. Do they ring true? Or do you find them overly exaggerated?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)