Napoleon: A Life
Andrew Roberts, 2014
Viking Adult
976 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670025329
Summary
The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman...
Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.
Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.
An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 13, 1963
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B. A., Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—Wolfson History Prize; James Stern Silver Pen Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA
Andrew Roberts is a British historian and journalist, who was born in London, England, the son of Simon (a business executive) from Cobham, Surrey, and Katie Roberts. Simon Roberts inherited Job's Dairy milk business and owned the United Kingdom contingent of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.
He attended Cranleigh School until he was expelled for a variety of misdemeanours. He later attained a first class honours BA degree in Modern History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1985, where he is an honorary senior scholar and PhD. Dr Roberts began his post-graduate career in corporate finance as an investment banker and private company director with the London merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., where he worked from 1985 to 1988.
He is divorced from his first wife with whom he had two children, Henry and Cassia, who live in Edinburgh. Roberts is married to Susan Gilchrist, CEO of the corporate communications firm Brunswick Group LLP and a Governor of the South Bank Centre. They live in New York City.
Support for the Iraq War
During the buildup to the Iraq War Roberts supported the proposed invasion, arguing that anything less would be tantamount to appeasement. For English speaking people, the Iraq War was "an existential war for the survival of their way of life" against Islamofascism. He strongly supported Tony Blair's foreign policy, comparing him to Winston Churchill: he wrote (in 2003) that apotheosis for Churchill came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it would come when Iraq was successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction were unearthed.
When no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, however, he made no comment . Nor did he comment on the hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis killed since the invasion, although he did note that Britain had "lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front." Both the "overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and the victory over Saddam Hussein two years later were won at an incredibly low cost in historical terms."
Books
Robert's first book The Holy Fox (1991) is a biography of Edward Wood, both Neville Chamberlain's and Winston Churchill's foreign secretary. Halifax has been charged with appeasement, along with Chamberlain, but Roberts asserts that Halifax in fact began to move his government away from that policy following the 1938 Munich Crisis.
His second book Eminent Churchillians (1994) is a collection of essays about friends and enemies of Churchill and includes an attack on Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten.
Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999), is the authorised biography of the Victorian prime minister Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award for Non-Fiction.
In Napoleon and Wellington (2001), Roberts investigates the relationship between the two generals. It became the subject of the lead review in all but one of Britain's national newspapers.
Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership (2003), coincided with Roberts's four-part BBC 2 history series. In the book, which addresses the leadership techniques of Hitler and Churchill, he delivered a rebuttal to many of the assertions made by Clive Ponting and Christopher Hitchens concerning Churchill.
His Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Gamble (2005) was published in America as Waterloo: The Battle for Modern Europe.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 (2006) is a sequel to his four volumes on Churchill and won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award.
Masters and Commanders (2008) describes how four figures shaped the strategy of the West during the Second World War.
Roberts served as general editor with a team of historians for The Art of War (2008, 2009), a two-volume chronological survey of the greatest military commanders in history.
The Storm of War (2009), Roberts best-selling title to date, reached number two in the (London) Sunday Times bestseller list. The book was awarded British Army Military Book of the Year 2010.
Napoleon: A Life (2014) has been referred to as the definitive biography of Bonaparte. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2014.)
Book Reviews
Is another long life of Napoleon really necessary? On three counts, the answer given by Andrew Roberts’s impressive book is an emphatic yes. The most important is that this is the first single-volume general biography to make full use of the treasure trove of Napoleon’s 33,000-odd letters, which began being published in Paris only in 2004. Second, Roberts, who has previously written on Napoleon and Wellington, is a masterly analyst of the French emperor’s many battles. Third, his book is beautifully written and a pleasure to read.
Economist
[E]xamines Napoleon Bonaparte’s life and times in excruciating detail, leaving out little.... Roberts writes, describing his coronation as Emperor of France as “a defining moment” of the Enlightenment.... This is a definitive account that dispels many of the myths that surrounded Napoleon from his lifetime to the present day.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The author doesn't apologize for Napoleon's errors but the tone of his study is positive: Napoleon "personified the best parts of the French Revolution." ... Verdict: This voluminous work is likely to set the standard for subsequent accounts of Napoleon's life. It should appeal widely to readers of all types. —David Keymer, Modesto, CA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Women in Clothes
Editors: Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton, 2014
Blue Rider Press
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399166563
Summary
Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.
It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations.
Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us.
Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Sheila Heti
• Birth—25 December 1976
• Where—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Education—University of Toronto; National Theater School of Canada
• Currently—lives in Toronto
Sheila Heti is a Canadian writer and editor. She was born in Toronto, Canada, as the child of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She studied art history and philosophy at the University of Toronto and playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada. She works as Interviews Editor at The Believer where she herself conducts interviews regularly. She previoiusly wrote a column on acting for Maisonneuve. Her brother is the comedian David Heti, a stand-up comedian.
Books
Heti's short story collection, The Middle Stories, was published in 2001, when she was twenty-four
Her novel, Ticknor, was released in 2005. The novel's main characters are based on real people: William Hickling Prescott and George Ticknor, although the facts of their lives are altered.
The Chairs are Where The People Go, published in 2011, was co-written with her friend, Misha Glouberman. The New Yorker called it "a triumph of conversational philosophy" and named it one of the Best Books of 2011.
Heti describes her 2010 book How Should a Person Be? as a constructed reality, based on recorded interviews with her friends, particularly the painter Margaux Williamson. The New York Times selected it as one of the 100 Best Books of 2012, and James Wood of The New Yorker also considered it one of the best books of the year.
In a 2007 interview with Dave Hickey for The Believer, she commented:
Increasingly I'm less interested in writing about fictional people, because it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story. I just can't do it.
Extras
• Heti is the creator of Trampoline Hall, a popular monthly lecture series based in Toronto and New York, at which people speak on subjects outside their areas of expertise. The New Yorker praised the series for "celebrating eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness." It has sold out every show since its inception in December 2001.
• For the early part of 2008, Heti kept a blog called The Metaphysical Poll, where she posted the sleeping dreams people were having about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary season, which readers sent in.
• Heti was an actress as a child, and as a teenager appeared in shows directed by Hillar Liitoja, the founder and Artistic Director of the experiemental DNA Theatre. Heti appears in Margaux Williamson's 2010 film, Teenager Hamlet.
• Heti plays Lenore Doolan in Leanne Shapton's book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry
• In November 2013, Jordan Tannahill directed Heti's play All Our Happy Days are Stupid at Toronto's Videofag. Heti's decade-long struggle to write the play is a primary plot element in her book How Should a Person Be? (From the publisher.)
Heidi Julavitz
• Birth—1968
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City and Camden, Maine
Heidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), The Uses of Enchantment (2006), and The Vanishers (2012).
Background and education
Julavits was born and grew up in Portland, Maine, before attending Dartmouth College. She later went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University.
The Believer
For the debut issue of The Believer, she wrote one of the lead articles, titling it "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!: A Call For A New Era of Experimentation and a Book Culture That Will Support It." The Believer, is a literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers in 2003 and publised nine times a year from San Franciso. It urges its readers and writers to "reach beyond their usual notions of what is accessible or possible."
New York Times cultural critic A.O. Scott described the magazine as part of "a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement." It has a "cosmopolitan frame of reference and an eclectic internationalism," mixing pop genres with literary theory.
In 2005, Julavits told Scott how she decided on The Believer's tone:
I really saw 'the end of the book' as originating in the way books are talked about now in our culture and especially in the most esteemed venues for book criticism. It seemed as though their irrelevance was a foregone conclusion, and we were just practicing this quaint exercise of pretending something mattered when of course everyone knew it didn't.
She added that her own aim as book critic would be "to endow something with importance, by treating it as an emotional experience."
Personal
Julavits currently lives in Maine and Manhattan with her husband, the writer Ben Marcus, and their children. (Adapted from Wikipedia articles. Retrieved 10/12/2014.)
Leanne Shapton
• Birth—June 25, 1973
• Where—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Education—McGill University; Pratt Institute
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York USA
Leanne Shapton is a Canadian artist and graphic novelist, now living in New York City. Her second work, Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, has been optioned for a film slated to star Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman. The novel, which takes the form of an auction catalog, uses photographs and accompanying captions to chronicle the romance and subsequent breakup of a couple via the relationship's significant possessions or "artifacts."
Shapton's first work, Was She Pretty?, was a 2007 nominee for the Doug Wright Award, a Canadian award for comics and graphic novels. It explored, via a series of line-drawn illustrations, the issues of relationship jealousy and feminine insecurity as told through the imagined superior traits of the subjects' boyfriends' exes.
Shapton is also an art director for newspapers and magazines. Formerly associated with Saturday Night, Maclean's and the National Post in Canada, she has worked as art director for the op-ed page at The New York Times. She has created hand lettering for a number of book covers, including Chuck Palahniuk's 2003 novel Diary. She is also a partner in J&L Books.
Her autobiographical book Swimming Studies (2012) deals with her youth as a national competitive swimmer, who made it as far as the 1988 and 1992 Canadian Olympic trials. It is a "meditation on the grueling years of training, the ways swimming is refracted through her memory now." It won the National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography).
Shapton created the "armpit sex drawing" for Spike Jonze's 2013 film Her. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/12/2014.)
Book Reviews
[P]art advice manual, part anthropological study, part feminist document…The volume contains hundreds of stories, which is why it's not the kind of book you'll read straight through but is perfect for flipping around in late at night in the tub, or for giving as a gift with certain parts marked…All three of the editors, when they appear in the text as interlocutors, are wonderful interviewers and essayists—subtle, probing, sympathetic—but Heti, especially, has a gift for pulling insight from details of other women's lives that might at first seem banal or irrelevant.
Sasha Weiss - New York Times Book Review
This charming patchwork expands the scope of fashion writing by looking not at forerunners of style but at how those outside the industry think about what they wear….The range of women involved [is] dazzling…a welcome addition to writing that often focuses on a single trend for all.
Madeleine Schwartz - Boston Globe
Thoughtfully crafted and visually entertaining, this collection...uses personal reflections from 642 contributors to examine women’s relationship with clothes in a deceptively lighthearted and irreverent tone.... A provocative time capsule of contemporary womanhood, this collection is highly recommended. B&w illus and photos throughout, 32 pages in full color.
Publishers Weekly
[A] delirious assortment of conversations, essays, journal entries, and photographs…This big, busy book feels like a thrift store brimming with jumbles of clothes and accessories and alive with women’s voices.... A uniquely kaleidoscopic and spirited approach to an irresistible subject of universal resonance.
Booklist
A quirky anthology exploring the meaning of clothes. [The editors] are interested not in what women wear, but why.... Poems, interviews, pieces that read like diary or journal entries—all these responses help the editors fulfill their aims: to liberate readers from the idea that women have to fit a certain image or ideal.... [A] delightfully idiosyncratic book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
My Fluorescent God
Joe Guppy, 2014
Booktrope Editions
202 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620154410
Summary
In 1979, the 23-year-old Guppy was dealing with a bad breakup and existential angst, but it was a few stomach pills he took in Mexico that pushed him over the edge into paranoid psychosis… and straight into the mental ward of Seattle’s Providence Hospital.
Once Guppy recovered, he put his journals and medical records in a cardboard box, marked the box “Crazy Period,” and didn’t open it until 30 years later when he decided to write My Fluorescent God.
In this raw, often wryly comic memoir, Guppy battles his personal demons, jumps out a second-story window, and encounters God in a fluorescent light fixture. He was barraged with psychotropic drugs and rigid cognitive-behavioral therapy, and threatened with shock treatment, but what helped him was the traditional "talking cure."
The story of Guppy’s struggle to rebuild his sanity is not only a gripping spiritual and psychological adventure, but one he hopes will speak to those whose lives have been touched by mental illness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—M.A., Washington University
• Currently—Seattle, Washington
Seattle native Joe Guppy, an award-winning writer and performer, worked in theater and television from 1980 to 1995. In 1996, he switched careers and trained to be a psychotherapist at Seattle University’s existential-phenomenological master’s program. He was a community mental health counselor for seven years and currently has a private practice in Seattle where he sees clients for such issues as anxiety, depression, and compulsive behaviors. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website
Follow Joe on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Riveting. Captures the world of mental illness and made me feel like I was right there in it. All of the tension, anguish, frustration is brought to life on the page, as well as the moments of hopefulness, humor, and eventual triumph.
Bob Nelson, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska
Joe Guppy’s My Fluorescent God is a moving and poignant examination of madness and redemption.
Charles R. Cross, New York Times best-selling author of Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
Joe Guppy describes the isolated experience of insanity with such insight, brilliance, and intensity, I found myself thinking, "Oh my god, this is exactly the hell of mental illness. I get it. I get it." Plus, it’s often FUNNY. Not an easy task.
Lauren Weedman, author of
A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body
Discussion Questions
1. The 23-year-old Joe Guppy was clearly in an unstable state even before the prescribed stomach medications triggered his toxic psychosis. Has there ever been a moment or period in time when you felt like you were losing your mind? If so, what brought you back?
2. A friend of Joe Guppy's once pointed out to him that he (Joe) was convinced his perceptions of Dr. Hardaway as Satan and his fear of demons were delusions… but that Joe considered his mystical encounter with God as real. Joe addresses this question on page 196 of My Fluorescent God, but how might you explain it?
3. Does it surprise you that the author is an award-winning comedy writer? Were there parts of the book that you found funny? If so, which scenes, and why?
4. When Joe was in the high-security room, he describes the walls—and even the floor—as being covered in dark red medium-pile carpet. When you read that, did you think this was just part of Joe’s hallucination of Hell? Were you surprised to find out in the Dialogues in Part III that this was real—an actual soundproofing attempt? Was there anything else about the conversations in the Dialogues that informed or enhanced your reading of Joe’s story?
5. Part of the reason Joe Guppy was motivated to write My Fluorescent God was to express how important the "talking cure" was in his struggle to regain his sanity…not shock treatment, not drugs, but talking with professionals who connected with him and who cared about him. Has there ever been a time of crisis for you that talking with others helped you get through?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage
Molly Wizenberg, 2014
Simon & Schuster
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451655094
Summary
In this funny, frank, tender memoir and New York Times bestseller, the author of A Homemade Life and the blog Orangette recounts how opening a restaurant sparked the first crisis of her young marriage.
When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, he was a trained composer with a handful of offbeat interests: espresso machines, wooden boats, violin-building, and ice cream–making. So when Brandon decided to open a pizza restaurant, Molly was supportive—not because she wanted him to do it, but because the idea was so far-fetched that she didn’t think he would. Before she knew it, he’d signed a lease on a space. The restaurant, Delancey, was going to be a reality, and all of Molly’s assumptions about her marriage were about to change.
Together they built Delancey: gutting and renovating the space on a cobbled-together budget, developing a menu, hiring staff, and passing inspections. Delancey became a success, and Molly tried to convince herself that she was happy in their new life until—in the heat and pressure of the restaurant kitchen—she realized that she hadn’t been honest with herself or Brandon.
With evocative photos by Molly and twenty new recipes for the kind of simple, delicious food that chefs eat at home, Delancey is a moving and honest account of two young people learning to give in and let go in order to grow together. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; University of Washington (graduate work)
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
An intense love of food is nothing new to Molly Wizenberg, a former Ph.D. student at the University of Washington who now writes a popular food blog along with a full plate of other goodies.
Molly came to the UW after graduating from Stanford to study the cultural values surrounding the French social security system in the pursuit of becoming a medical anthropologist. Today, she is very far from that goal. Now she’s the author of Orangette, a tasty blog that mixes Molly’s life experiences with the foods she loves. She’s also the co-host of the humorous food podcast Spilled Milk as well as a columnist for various food magazines, author of two books: A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, as well as Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage, about the Delancey Pizzeria she co-owns with husband Brandon Pettit.
Molly has become a true foodie of Seattle. “I’m just grateful to earn a living doing work that I love,“ she said. “That’s the best part, hands down.“
Orangette is the blog Molly began in 2004 just after leaving the cultural anthropology program at UW. Since then, she has shared with readers stories about her past, her love of food and many innovations on new and old recipes. The stories she tells on Orangette are heartfelt and honest, and her inner self shows through completely. In the story of living in France and having leeks vinaigrette prepared by her host mother, readers can feel the love of learning about new food. Likewise, her enjoyment of summer is evident in the raspberry yogurt popsicles she shared with readers last July.
Through her blog, Molly met the man she is married to. Their wedding was unintentionally on the anniversary of the day she started the blog. Brandon has a Master’s in music composition from Brooklyn College, and came to the UW for a Ph.D. before leaving to open Delancey, which opened near Ballard High School in 2009. It is revered for its fired pizzas and chocolate chip cookies. “Brandon is there each night, tending the pizza oven,“ Molly said. “We’ve never been open without him there.“ Molly and Brandon gave birth to a daughter shortly after opening the Essex bar, next to Delancey. (Adapted from the University of Washington Alumni Association’s blog.)
Book Reviews
Wizenberg shines as a writer. She brilliantly turns the ups and downs of their do-it-yourself project into a compelling yet hilarious narrative....Like dipping into a lively, keenly observed diary....Charming.
Boston Globe
You'll feel the warmth from this pizza oven...affectionate...cheerfully honest...warm and inclusive, just like her cooking.
USA Today
The messy, explosive, and exhilarating story of giving birth to a restaurant...draws readers right into the heat of the kitchen.
Christian Science Monitor
When I sit down with Molly Wizenberg’s writing, it feels as though she’s just across the counter, coffee cup in hand, sharing an intimate truth….Inspiring, entertaining and informative, [Delancey] is a satisfying read.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
A crave-worthy memoir that is part love story, part restaurant industry tale. Scrumptious.
People
Charming, funny, and honest--in a hip, understated way--Wizenberg combines simple, appealing recipes with a tale of how nurturing her husband's passion project helped her see him, and herself, more clearly.
More
Wizenberg’s narrative is rich in such details.... Her fun and engaging narrative encompasses recipes, an odd assortment of the familiar (meatloaf) and the earnest (ricotta), undergirding overall what is an industrious, youthful effort at keeping marital harmony.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Food writer and creator of the popular blog Orangette....recounts the birth of her husband's Seattle restaurant, Delancey, in this charming memoir.... Wizenberg candidly describes her fears and doubts, as well as her struggles with trying to be a supportive wife. Recipes of favorite foods that the author and her husband turned to for comfort and in celebration are included.... [H]umorous, intimate, and honest. —Melissa Stoeger, Deerfield P.L., IL
Library Journal
Marriage plus business isn’t always the best formula to produce happiness. Just ask author Wizenberg and her husband, Brandon Pettit. Armed with a lot of enthusiasm and youthful vigor, the two opened a Seattle pizzeria.... Anyone, married or not, considering launching a restaurant will take away from this memoir some valuable personal and professional lessons. —Mark Knoblauch
Booklist
As always, Wizenberg is at her best when discussing the food, and though she quickly determines how small a part of restaurant ownership that is, she still manages to sprinkle fairy dust on everything—from the homemade cold meatloaf sandwiches...to the Vietnamese rice noodle salad.... A pleasantly rendered if not earth-shattering reality check for anyone with restaurant-owning envy.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the introduction Molly discusses some of Brandon’s early ambitions, including making violins, building a boat, and opening an ice cream shop. None of these ever materialized. After those nonstarters, why do you think Brandon went through with Delancey?
2. Molly freely admits that change has always been difficult for her. When attempting to fully engage in the restaurant process, she remarks, “I didn’t want my life to change.... But it already had. I hated that“ (p. 107). Is Molly’s resentment only about change, or is it about the restaurant as well? How does Molly come to terms with change over the course of the book?
3. Both Molly and Brandon suffer emotional breakdowns, Molly’s on Halloween of 2009 (p. 178), and Brandon’s subsequent crisis after drinks with his staff (p. 186). Compare the two experiences. What was each of them truly upset about? In what ways did Molly’s breakdown affect her reaction to Brandon’s?
4. Molly and Brandon agree that they “wouldn’t be married anymore if (1) I hadn’t worked at Delancey and (2) I hadn’t stopped working at Delancey“ (p. 193). What was the significance of her working there? What was the significance of leaving? What effects do you think these two events had on both their relationship and their business?
5. Brandon and Molly take on a great deal of risk to start the restaurant. Discuss an experience where you took a risk, either alone or with others. How did the experience turn out? What did you learn?
6. Molly often compares the act of cooking to a way of caring for someone. In the beginning of her relationship with Brandon, that act consisted of cooking for and with each other. With the restaurant however, that act became a more communal one, an idea she contemplated when her editor asked, “What will it be like for you and Brandon to make it public?“ (p. 196). Discuss Molly’s thoughts about this idea through her poignant comment, “We would lose it“ (p. 197). How does the act of caring for someone through food and cooking alter for Molly? For Brandon? Is that alteration permanent? Do you think they will ever get “it“ back?
7. One of the prominent themes in the book is the transformative nature of the restaurant on Molly’s and Brandon’s lives, and Molly emphasizes that she has become a different person than she was before Delancey, often with a regretful tone. She admits, “I wondered when I’d go back to being the old, better me“ (p. 197). By the end of the book, does she still mourn the loss of her old self? How does she view, even embrace, the new version of herself?
8. From Molly’s description, the restaurant business is rife with impermanence: food spoils, employees come and go, and restaurants can close in the blink of an eye for any number of reasons. How does this sense of transience add to the challenge of running a successful restaurant? How do Molly and Brandon cope with it?
9. Molly and Brandon had a tumultuous experience with their first pizza cook, Jared. What did this relationship, and its abrupt ending, teach Molly and Brandon about the business and themselves as business owners?
10. In what ways do you think Brandon and Molly’s experience starting Delancey would have been different without the help and support of knowledgeable friends?
11. Molly eventually accepts the fact that she does not have the right personality to cook at the restaurant, yet after quitting, she says, "I didn’t know what do to with myself“ (p. 211). Contrast this thought with the opening Wendell Berry quote. How does this sentiment reflect Molly’s realization? What does it intimate about her path forward?
12. As novices in the restaurant industry, Molly and Brandon had to learn on their feet. How did the sometimes painful learning process help them identify their strengths and weaknesses? Without their flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, do you think Delancey would have succeeded as it has?
(Questions are issued by the publisher.)
The Girls from Corona del Mar
Rufi Thorpe, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385351966
Summary
"Why did Lorrie Ann look graceful in beat-up Keds and shorts a bit too small for her? Why was it charming when she snorted from laughing too hard? Yes, we were jealous of her, and yet we did not hate her. She was never so much as teased by us, we roaming and bratty girls of Corona del Mar, thieves of corn nuts and orange soda, abusers of lip gloss and foul language."
An astonishing debut about friendships made in youth, The Girls from Corona del Mar is a fiercely beautiful novel about how these bonds, challenged by loss, illness, parenthood, and distance, either break or endure.
Mia and Lorrie Ann are lifelong friends: hard-hearted Mia and untouchably beautiful, kind Lorrie Ann. While Mia struggles with a mother who drinks, a pregnancy at fifteen, and younger brothers she loves but can’t quite be good to, Lorrie Ann is luminous, surrounded by her close-knit family, immune to the mistakes that mar her best friend’s life. Then a sudden loss catapults Lorrie Ann into tragedy: things fall apart, and then fall further—and there is nothing Mia can do to help. And as good, brave, fair Lorrie Ann stops being so good, Mia begins to question just who this woman is, and what that question means about them both.
A staggeringly honest, deeply felt novel of family, motherhood, loyalty, and the myth of the perfect friendship, The Girls from Corona del Mar asks just how well we know those we love, what we owe our children, and who we are without our friends. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—?
• Raised—Corona del Mar, California, USA
• Education—B.A., New School; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives outside of Los Angeles, California
Rufi Thorpe is an American writer, the author of three novels: The Knockout Queen (2020), Dear Fang, with Love (2016), and The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014), which was long listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.
Thorpe received her B.A. from the New School in New York City and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in 2009. Raised in Corona del Mar, the setting of her first novel, she married and returned to California where she currently lives outisde of Los Angeles with her husband and sons. (Adaoted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The Girls From Corona del Mar is a slim book that leaves a deep impression. Mia and Lorrie Ann are vivid and fully formed, and their stories provoke strong emotions that linger like lived memory. Thorpe is a gifted writer who depicts friendship with affection and brutality, rendering all its love and heartbreak in painstaking strokes.
Steph Cha - Los Angeles Times
A knockout of a debut novel.... Pugnacious, risk-taking Mia, a child of divorce, grows up envious of Lorrie Ann, with her intact family and her elegant, upturned nose. Then in their junior year of high school, everything changes when a family tragedy strikes, marking “the first tap-tap on Lorrie Ann’s windowpane by those bad luck vultures.”... Thorpe is too firmly in control to let an abundance of plot points crowd out her narrative’s deeper meanings. Her worldly, rambunctious, feminist, morally interrogative prose style galvanizes every episode with smart, almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb wonder, and, of course, further tragic events... We can’t help but root for these memorable heroines, and Thorpe’s beautiful twist of an ending is admirably earned.
Lisa Shea - Elle
The divergent paths of two girls raised in a Southern California beach town plot the course for Thorpe's affecting debut novel.... Thorpe unflinchingly examines the psychological tug-of-war between friends, and delves in to the pro-choice debate and issues relating to medical malpractice to give the personal narrative heft. The result is a nuanced portrait of two women who are sisters in everything but name.
Publishers Weekly
This debut novel would be unbearably grim if it were not for the sardonic humor of the first-person narration by Mia, who is so likable that it's hard to see why she has such a poor opinion of herself. The book should appeal to readers who enjoy dark-edged relationship dramas. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Best friends since high school, Lorrie Ann and Mia couldn’t be more different.... As time and distance separate the women, narrator Mia recounts every time the women tried (and mostly failed) to reconnect. This literary novel will leave readers questioning the myths and realities of complicated relationships. —Rebecca Vnuk
Booklist
Thorpe brings sensitivity to her well-trodden terrain of female friendship and dilemmas of choice, but Mia’s journey of discovery about herself and her "opposite twin" feels excessively binary. A slender, overplotted account of finding emotional peace.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Girls from Corona del Mar opens with a scene in which Mia asks Lorrie Ann to break her toe. How does this scene echo throughout the novel? Can this scene, and other scenes in which feet and toes appear, be read symbolically?
2. How does Mia characterize herself in her youth? How does she characterize Lorrie Ann? Which aspects of their personalities remain the same over the course of the novel? What are some notable changes?
3. Discuss how Mia defines motherhood throughout the novel. How do Mia’s interactions with her own mother affect her understanding of what it means to be a mother? Why do you think Mia is so hesitant to become a mother?
4. Discuss the scene in which Mia hits her brother with a hanger. Did it change your perception of Mia?
5. What is the significance of the anecdote that opens the chapter “Dead Like Dead-Dead,” in which Mia’s dog gets hit by a car? Discuss the phone call that Mia makes to Lorrie Ann afterward. How does this incident change the dynamics of their relationship? Why do you think the author choose to juxtapose the death of Mia’s dog with the death of Jim?
6. Mia and Lorrie Ann’s friendship is rooted in the common experiences of youth, but their lives take completely different paths after high school. Why do you think Mia holds on to the friendship? Is it because of nostalgia? Familiarity? Loyalty? Discuss the moments in which Mia doubts the validity of their friendship. By the end of the novel, how has she come to view their relationship?
7. Lorrie Ann’s romantic relationships are sometimes judged harshly by Mia. Discuss Mia’s first meeting with Arman. What are her impressions of him? How do her assumptions about him change? By the end of the novel, does Mia see Arman in a different light?
8. Consider Mia’s upbringing in Corona del Mar and her surprise when she is admitted into Yale. What value does she place on education, and why? Why do you think Mia chose to study classics? How do her studies shape her worldview?
9. How does Mia describe her relationship with Franklin? Why do you think she is so hesitant about commitment in their relationship? How do her feelings about the topic shift after Lorrie Ann’s visit?
10. On page 8, Mia says that her father “never felt like family.” How does the absence of her father affect her? Discuss the scene in which Mia, Franklin, and her father meet. After Franklin defuses the tense conversation between Mia and her father, how does Mia’s perception of her father change?
11. Discuss the significance of the tea set that Mia purchases at the beginning of the novel. What does her contentious relationship with Bensu symbolize? When Mia discovers the where the tea set has ended up at the end of the novel, how does she react?
12. How does Mia’s anxiety about financial stability manifest throughout the novel? Discuss how wealth and poverty are explored by the author. How does Mia’s relationship with Franklin change these concerns?
13. On page 103, Mia states that “I feared the Inanna in myself.” How does the mythology of Innana factor in The Girls of Corona del Mar? How does Mia use the story of Innana to explore her feelings about motherhood? Parental relationships? Lorrie Ann’s behavior?
14. Discuss the emails that Mia sends to Lorrie Ann after Lorrie Ann leaves Istanbul. Why do you think she sent those notes?
15. On page 19, Mia mentions that “the Corona del Mar in which Lorrie Ann and I grew up actually ceased to exist almost at the exact moment we left it.” What is the significance of this statement? Does she mean that the town physically changes or that her connection to the town has changed over time? Or both?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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