The Invisible Wall:  A Love Story That Broke Barriers
Harry Bernstein, 2007
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345496102


Summary
There are places that I have never forgotten. A little cobbled street in a smoky mill town in the North of England has haunted me for the greater part of my life. It was inevitable that I should write about it and the people who lived on both sides of its "Invisible Wall."

The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up, in a small English mill town, was seemingly unremarkable. It was identical to countless other streets in countless other working-class neighborhoods of the early 1900s, except for the “invisible wall” that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. Only a few feet of cobblestones separated Jews from Gentiles, but socially, it they were miles apart.

On the eve of World War I, Harry’s family struggles to make ends meet. His father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams: new shoes that might secure Harry’s admission to a fancy school; that her daughter might marry the local rabbi; that the entire family might one day be whisked off to the paradise of America.

Then Harry’s older sister, Lily, does the unthinkable: She falls in love with Arthur, a Christian boy from across the street.

When Harry unwittingly discovers their secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.

A wonderfully charming memoir written when the authorwas ninety-three, The Invisible Wall vibrantly brings to life an all-but-forgotten time and place. It is a moving tale of working-class life, and of the boundaries that can be overcome by love. (From the publisher.)

Bernstein published The Dream, a sequel to The Invisible Wall, in 2008

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Author Bio 
• Birth—May 30, 1910
• Where—Stockport, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Brick Township, New Jersey, USA

Harry Bernstein is the author of The Invisible Wall, which deals with his abusive, alcoholic father, the anti-Semitism he encountered growing up in a Lancashire mill town (Stockport— now part of Greater Manchester) in north west England, and the Romeo and Juliet romance experienced by his sister and her Christian lover. The book was started when he was 93 and published in 2007 when he was 96. The loneliness he encountered following the death of his wife, Ruby, in 2002 after 67 years of marriage was the catalyst for Bernstein to begin work on his book.

According to an article by Associated Press writer, Rebecca Santana, Bernstein first sent the finished manuscript to New York publishers but, having no luck, he sent it to the London office of Random House. There the book sat for about a year until it came across the desk of editor Kate Elton, who described it as "unputdownable."

"I think he's a most fantastic writer," Elton said. "He creates the characters of his family so vividly and tells such a moving story."

He finished writing his second book, The Dream, which centers on his family’s move to the United States when he was twelve. It was published in 2008.

Recently, he published his third book, The Golden Willow, which is the third memoir of his series involving his married life and later years.

Before his retirement at age 62, Bernstein worked for various movie production companies reading scripts and working as a magazine editor for trade magazines, and also wrote freelance articles for such publications as Popular Mechanics, Jewish American Monthly and Newsweek.

Bernstein currently lives in Brick Township, New Jersey. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews 
In a forthright voice and with heartbreaking details, the book is a chronicle of the bigotry the family suffered, their struggles to make ends meet, and a Romeo and Juliet romance involving Bernstein's oldest sister.... The book is filled with rich dialogue, intense political debates and long quotations from letters that no longer exist. Bernstein acknowledges that he took some creative license. "The memoir is not necessarily an accurate day-to-day detailing of your life," he said. But, he continued, "certain scenes are projected in your mind as if they are on a screen and you are looking at it."
Motoko Rich - New York Times

Harry Bernstein grew up in a small world. In the Lancashire mill town of his childhood, during the teens and twenties of the last century, the poor Jews clustered along a single dead-end street, and even that was only half theirs. Christians lived on one side, Jews on the other, separated by a few feet that might as well have been hundreds of miles. The Invisible Wall, Mr. Bernstein’s heart-wrenching memoir, describes two cultures cohabiting uneasily, prey to misunderstandings that distort lives on both sides. It is a world of pain and prejudice, evoked in spare, restrained prose that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds.
William Grimes - New York Times Book Review

Bernstein writes, "There are few rules or unwritten laws that are not broken when circumstances demand, and few distances that are too great to be traveled," about the figurative divide ("geographically... only a few yards, socially... miles and miles") keeping Jews and Christians apart in the poor Lancashire mill town in England where he was raised. In his affecting debut memoir, the nonagenarian gives voice to a childhood version of himself who witnesses his older sister's love for a Christian boy break down the invisible wall that kept Jewish families from Christians across the street. With little self-conscious authorial intervention, young Harry serves as a wide-eyed guide to a world since dismantled-where "snot rags" are handkerchiefs, children enter the workforce at 12 and religion bifurcates everything, including industry. True to a child's experience, it is the details of domestic life that illuminate the tale—the tenderness of a mother's sacrifice, the nearly Dickensian angst of a drunken father, the violence of schoolyard anti-Semitism, the "strange odors" of "forbidden foods" in neighbor's homes. Yet when major world events touch the poverty-stricken block (the Russian revolution claims the rabbi's son, neighbors leave for WWI), the individual coming-of-age is intensified without being trivialized, and the conversational account takes on the heft of a historical novel with stirring success.
Publishers Weekly

At age 93, first-time author Bernstein has crafted a gripping coming-of-age memoir of his childhood in a poverty-stricken and religiously divided mill town in northern England before and during World War I. Home to both Christian and Jewish families, the street where Bernstein grew up was defined by the strict social and vocational segregation of the two religious groups. Bernstein deftly narrates the tale of his sister's forbidden love for a Christian boy from the other side of the street. From the perspective of his boyhood self, Bernstein offers a glimpse into a family riven by poverty, sibling jealousies, and an abusive, alcoholic father yet held together tenaciously by a caring mother. Bernstein's graceful, unsentimental writing depicts fleeting moments of humanity and gentleness in a brutal world. In the tradition of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes or Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers, this harsh yet inspiring memoir will appeal to readers seeking evidence of the power of the human spirit to overcome prejudice and hardship. Recommended for all public libraries
Library Journal

A debut by a nonagenarian who recalls a Romeo-and-Juliet story involving his older, Jewish sister and a Christian boy from across the street. Bernstein demands that readers suspend more than disbelief; they must also disengage all skepticism, all critical thinking. His memoir offers no specific dates (we know only that we are in the era of World War I), no documentation, no photocopies, no way for an interested (or dubious) reader to verify any of this story. And what a story. When he is four years old, living in a Lancashire mill town, the author serves as a sort of Huck Finn intermediary, carrying secret love messages between two local lovers (Jewish girl, Christian boy). The author's father is a sort of Pap Finn, too-drunken, sullen, occasionally violent. When his daughter wins a scholarship, he goes off on a rant about education and drags her by the hair to the tailor's shop where she must labor beside him. The author's mother, by contrast, is archetypal-patient, hardworking, loving, forgiving. When he is 11, the author discovers that his sister, Lily, is secretly meeting with her forbidden boyfriend, Arthur—and that they are planning to elope. He goes along with them, then returns later to inform his family. All in the neighborhood—Christians and Jews—are angry. But then Lily has a baby; there is a block party for the new arrival, and the little child unites the residents. Two things that trouble: (1) much of the story is presented in verbatim dialogue, including, when the narrator is ten, a long debate about Socialism at the dinner table; (2) the author is always where he needs to be. A neighborhood suicide? He's there. Key letters from Mom to relatives? He writes as Mom dictates.Seems less a memoir, more an autobiographical novel. Caveat lector.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. How would you describe The Invisible Wall? A social history exposing religious prejudice? A story of star-crossed lovers? A young boy’s coming of age?

2. Harry’s sister Rose dreams of one day having a parlor and a piano; why does she consider her mother’s faded fruit shop to be a betrayal?

3. If you were in young Harry’s position, would you have kept Lily’s love affair a secret? What was at stake for Harry in maintaining his silence?

4. Despite all that divides them, there is a level of everyday mutual dependence linking the Jews and Christians of Bernstein’s street– gaps in the invisible wall, so to speak. What examples of this mutual dependence can you think of, and do they work to dismantle the wall or to reinforce it?

5. Harry’s mother is a remarkable woman. Her selfless acts sustain the impoverished family, and yet she disowns her daughter for marrying a Christian boy. Discuss this seeming contradiction in her character, and how she ultimately reconciles it within her own heart.

6. In the accompanying interview, Harry Bernstein states that “wars always bring people face-to-face with reality, causing false barriers to disappear.” Do you agree or disagree?

7. By encouraging Lily to improve herself through education, is her mother sowing the seeds that ultimately lead to Lily’s dissatisfaction with the boundaries of Judaism and her involvement with her Christian neighbor, Arthur?

8. Why do you think Lily’s father prevents her from going to the grammar school after she’s won the scholarship?

9. What does America represent to the Bernstein family?

10. Fatherhood and forgiveness are important themes in Bernstein’s story. Do you think Bernstein has forgiven his father? Do you think his father deserves to be forgiven? On the other hand, what do you think of the rabbi’s son, Max? Does he betray his father and his faith by going to Russia to fight in the revolution?

11. Have you ever experienced living in a divided community, like the street on which Harry lived as a child? Reflect on the religious, class, or racial separations you may encounter in today’s society, both outwardly and self-imposed.

12. Harry Bernstein published his first memoir in his nineties; what are your own dreams, and how does Bernstein’s story inspire you to reach for them?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer, 1951
HarperCollins
177 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060505912

Summary
This best-selling analysis of fanaticism and mass movements is an important addition to the field of sociology.

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—July 25, 1902
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Death—May 21, 1983
• Where—San Francisco, California
• Awards—Presidential Medal of Freedom—February, 1983

Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.

Early life
Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and for a time my memory"). After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.

Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easily make good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day

In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels." A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read The Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent."

Hoffer was in San Francisco by 1941. He attempted to enlist in the Armed forces there in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he found ample opportunity as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. It was there he felt at home and finally settled down. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued this work until he retired at age 65.

Writings
Hoffer's first work was The True Believer, a landmark explanation of fanaticism and mass movements. The Ordeal of Change is also a literary favorite. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hoffer was a charismatic individual and persuasive public speaker. Despite authoring 10 books and a newspaper column, in retirement Hoffer continued his robust life of the mind, thinking and writing alone, in an apartment near San Francisco’s waterfront. A longtime smoker, Hoffer developed emphysema towards the end of his life.

Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the allegedly anti-American academics of the West. He believed academics craved power but were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer understood to be an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.

Although his writings were often likened to the centrist political philosophies of mid 20th century liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies often led Hoffer to consistently non-ideological positions. He said, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a long-shoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors as "longshoreman philosopher."

Ideas
Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in The True Believer, he believed a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life.

The mass movements discussed in The True Believer include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements that are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn't so important as that they are part of that movement. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities.

Hoffer's work was original, staking out new ground largely ignored by dominant academic trends of his time. In particular, Hoffer's work was completely non-Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was informed by the Freudian paradigm. Many argue[who?] Hoffer's lack of a formal college education contributed to his independent thought, with his book remaining an insightful classic today. Hoffer appeared on public television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s. Both times he drew wide response for his patiently considered but unorthodox views. (All biographical information from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
Some of the world's most provocative, controversial and influential books have been written by shrewd and learned men...Machiavelli, Marx, Spengler, Ortega y Gasset, Sorokin, Toynbee.... A new candidate for inclusion in their company has volunteered this week...Eric Hoffer.
Orville Prescott - New York Times (1951)

It is in the cards, as surely as weeds outnumber nutritious plants, that many souls are doomed to suffer pangs of self-disgust engendered by frustration. This searching pain drives the victim to seek release in politico-religious identification.
E.B. Garside - New York Times (1951)

If you want concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement at their most primal level, may I suggest an evening with Eric Hoffer.... It’s an odd coincidence that the 50th anniversary of its publication should coincide so precisely with the renewed and remarkable relevance of its ideas.
New York Herald Tribune (now defunct)

Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.... It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
John McDonough - Wall St. Journal

[Hoffer] is a student of extraordinary perception and insight. The range of his reading and research is vast, amazing. He has written one of the most provocative books of our immediate day.
Christian Science Monitor

Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.... It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
The New Yorker

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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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The True Believer:

1. What is Hoffer's central thesis regarding mass movements? To what does he attribute their formation? What are the specific ingredients necessary to create a movement?

2. How does he describe or define the True Believer? What is the appeal of a mass movement to its followers?

3. Overall, how would you say Hoffer views human nature? Do you agree with his view or not?

4. Hoffer sees similarities in all mass movements despite their ideological content. They are, he believes, interchangeable. Do you agree with his lumping together of, say, the nazi-fascist movement with the early Christian or Jewish religion?

5. Hoffer writes, "We are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting." Do you agree with this passage, or disagree? Or somewhere in between?

6. What roles (and why) do make-believe, play-acting, ceremonies and pageantry play in mass movements? Why are they important? What about fear-mongering and hatred of outsiders...or the world at large...? What role do they play?

7. Some readers have talked about the timelessness of Hoffer's book—that it is as relevant now as it was nearly 60 years ago when first issued. Do you agree or disagree...and for what reasons? What, if any, parallels do you see today?

8. Identify some mass movements that have developed after 1951, the year this book was published?

9. Do you agree, or not, with this statement by Hoffer: "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."

10. In what ways does a mass movement, according to Hoffer, improve participants' self-esteem? What does he mean when he says, "the vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless"? (A side question: Does that vanity also apply to individual acts of charity—do we feel proud of ourselves when we donate to a cause? Is that the reason we give, even when we're not part of a movement?)

11. Here is another comment by Hoffer: "Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us." First of all, define self-righteousness. Then consider the meaning of Hoffer's passage...and whether or no you agree with him.

12. Is Hoffer's book a dispassionate (objective) work? Or is it a polemical statement that makes judgments on mass movements and their members?

13. Hoffer claims that the success of a movement doesn't depend on the truth of its claims but by how well its organization and management deliver fulfillment to their followers. Agree? Give examples? Disagree?

14. Does Hoffer believe that mass moments are bad? What do you think?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
Kate Summerscale, 2008
Walker & Co.
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802715357

Summary 
The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today...from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—1965
• Raised—Japan, England, and Chile
• Education—B.A., Oxford University; M.A., Stanford University
• Awards—Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction; Somerset
   Maugham Award
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK

Kate Summerscale is the former literary editor for the Daily Telegraph and author of The Queen of Whale Cay, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Summerscale lives in London (From the publisher.)

More
Kate Summerscale is an award-winning English writer and journalist. She is the author of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House (about the Constance Kent case), which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2008, and the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, about Joe Carstairs, 'fastest woman on water', which won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1998 and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Awards for biography.

She worked for The Independent and from 1995 to 1996 she wrote and edited obituaries for the Daily Telegraph. She is the former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph. Her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. She has also judged various literary competitions, including the Booker Prize in 2001. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews 
Summerscale has done excellent research in ferreting out the details of this curious case.   [She] has come up with a new solution to the puzzle and in doing so has produced a book that deepens and expands the knowledge of what one would have thought was an already over-examined case: a remarkable achievement.
Sunday Times (London)

A fastidious reconstruction and expansive analysis of the Road Hill murder case.... Summerscale smartly uses an energetic narrative voice and a suspenseful pace, among other novelistic devices, to make her factual material read with the urgency of a work of fiction. What she has constructed, specifically, is a traditional country-house mystery, more brutal than cozy, but presenting the same kind of intellectual puzzle as her fictional models and adorned, as such books once were, with wonderfully old-fashioned maps, diagrams, engravings, courtroom sketches and other illustrations.... More important, Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society.... The author's startling final twist both vindicates her fallen hero and advances an ‘aggressive’ attack on moral hypocrisy in his day and ours.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review

Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is not just a dark, vicious true-crime story; it is the story of the birth of forensic science, founded on the new and disturbing idea that innocent, insignificant domestic details can reveal unspeakable horrors to those who know how to read them.
Lev Grossman - Time

Kate Summerscale’s book is a tour de force. It sweeps us irresistibly into the investigation, turning us into armchair detectives.... Under the spell of [her] scrupulous intelligence and mesmerizing research, we are drawn into a detective story within a detective story that takes us halfway into the 20th century and across the sea to Tasmania before the clues finally add up to what surely must be the last word on the Road Hill Murder.
Daily Mail (UK)

(Starred review.) Summerscale delivers a mesmerizing portrait of one of England's first detectives and the gruesome murder investigation that nearly destroyed him. In 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found murdered in the outdoor privy of his family's country estate. Local police scrambled for clues, but to no avail. Scotland Yard Det. Insp. Jonathan Jack Whicher was called in and immediately suspected the unthinkable: someone in the Kent family killed Saville. Theories abounded as everyone from the nursemaid to Saville's father became a suspect. Whicher tirelessly pursued every lead and became convinced that Constance Kent, Saville's teenage half-sister, was the murderer, but with little evidence and no confession, the case went cold and Whicher returned to London, a broken man. Five years later, the killer came forward with a shocking account of the crime, leading to a sensational trial. Whicher is a fascinating hero, and readers will delight in following every lurid twist and turn in his investigation.
Publishers Weekly

An English country house, a ghastly child murder, family secrets, a brilliant detective—all the elements of a Victorian crime novel are here in this true account of a celebrated murder in 1860. On June 29, three-year-old Saville Kent was found with his throat slashed in the servant's privy at Road Hill House. An incompetent police investigation proved fruitless, so the magistrate called in London detective James Whicher. Detectives, who investigated crimes across different police districts, were viewed with both awe and suspicion; their investigations often threatened the sacred privacy of the home. Whicher was certain that a member of the family had murdered the child, but a flat denial and the outrage of the community sent him back to London in disgrace. Later developments proved him right, but Whicher's real claim to fame was as the template for fictional detectives, particularly Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Summerscale organizes the book like a period novel, with a denouement that suggests that full justice was never done. Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City) fans will be enthralled. For public and academic libraries. —Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L.
Library Journal

Painstaking but never boring recreation of a sensational 1860 murder brings to shivering life the age of the Victorian detective. The Road Hill case served as fodder for the emerging detective genre taken up with relish by such authors as Dickens, Poe and Wilkie Collins. It perplexed detectives at the time and was resolved five years after the deed-and then only partially and unsatisfactorily, avers British journalist and biographer Summerscale (The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of ‘Joe' Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water, 1997, etc.). She models this engaging true-crime tale on the traditional country-house murder mystery, packed with secretive family members moving about with hidden motives in a commodious old manor house. On June 30, 1860, in the Wiltshire village of Road, three-year-old Saville Kent was removed in the dead of night from his cot in the room he shared with his nursemaid, suffocated, stabbed and dumped in the privy outside the kitchen. In addition to his parents, Samuel and Mary Kent, the inhabitants of Road Hill House included numerous servants and Samuel's four children from his previous marriage, each harboring various grievances since their mother's untimely death. After the local constable made a mess of the investigation, authorities called in Scotland Yard's "prince of detectives," Jonathan Whicher, then at the height of his career at age 45. The author dispassionately presents highlights from the record of Whicher's interviews with servants and family members, allowing readers to fill in the blanks much as the detective had to do. On largely circumstantial evidence, he arrested Samuel's 16-year-old daughter Constance, but she was soon released, and the press ridiculed Whicher for accusing an innocent girl. In 1865, however, she confessed to the crime and after a sensational trial served a 20-year prison sentence. Summerscale pursues the story over decades, enriching the account with explanations of the then-new detective terminology and methods and suggesting a convincing motive for Constance's out-of-the-blue confession. A bang-up sleuthing adventure.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. This book is modelled on the country-house murder mystery, the form that the Road Hill case inspired, and uses some of the devices of detective fiction,” Summerscale writes in her introduction (xiii). How does the form of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher complement its subject? What are some of the “devices” that Summerscale borrows from fiction?

2. Summerscale delves into the vocabulary of detection, from “coppers” (46) to “clue” (68) to “detect” (157). Which word origins were the most surprising and interesting, and why?

3. What role did privacy play in the Road Hill case? How did notions of privacy impede or advance the case? How do Victorian ideas of privacy and domesticity compare to today’s concept of the home?

4. Summerscale lists some of “Whicher’s detective qualities: an excellent memory, an eye for the incongruous, psychological acuity, and confidence” (50). Which of these qualities were apparent in Whicher’s investigation of the Road Hill murder? Which qualities seemed to fail him as the case unraveled?

5. Discuss the importance of class relations to the Road Hill case. What was the relationship between the Kent family and the villagers of Road? What were the sources of class tension between Whicher and the local police?

6. How was the Road Hill murder case a product of its time? What features of the Victorian era were especially prominent in the case? What was the influence of Charles Darwin’s emerging theories?

7. Summerscale observes an aspect that Whicher and Samuel Kent have in common: “Factory inspectors, like police inspectors, were agents of surveillance” (61). What is the significance of this similarity? Did Whicher and Kent seem aware of what their occupations have in common? Might Whicher have had a bias toward Kent? Why or why not?

8. What role did gender play in the case? How were the female suspects, Elizabeth Gough and Constance Kent, treated by the police, the press, and the public? How might the case have proceeded differently with a male primary suspect, such as Samuel Kent, William Kent, or a male servant?

9. “Whicher’s job was not just to find things out, but to put them in order. The real business of detection was the invention of a plot” (94). How does the chronology of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher parallel the order of detection? When does Summerscale deviate from chronological order, and why?

10. “The Road Hill case was dense with fabric” (70). How did the material evidence shape or unravel the case? How would a murder investigation today handle these bits of fabric?

11. Summerscale recounts, “In the early 1860s the emotions aroused by the Road Hill murder went underground, leaving the pages of the press to reappear, disguised and intensified, in the pages of fiction” (217). What was the relationship between fiction and nonfiction in the Road Hill case? Which genre came closer to the truth of the murder and its motives?

12. To the public, Constance’s confession was a sign that “God had triumphed where man—and science, and detection—had failed” (236). What role did religion play in the unraveling of the Road Hill murder case? Why might the public have credited religion over detection in the resolution of the case?

13. Summerscale points out Constance Kent’s own “impulse to detect,” dating from her childhood (296). What did Constance and Whicher have in common? Where did their “detection” methods differ? In the end, how was Constance an “imperfect detective” (299)? Could the same label also be applied to Whicher? Why or why not?

14. Summerscale identifies a pitfall of investigation: “The danger, in a real murder case, was that the detective might fail to solve the crime he had been sent to investigate. He might instead get lost in the tangle of the past, mired in the mess he had dug up” (75). In the end, which secrets of the Kent family seem irrelevant to the murder?

15. William Kent is a shadowy figure for much of the book, emerging as a distinct personality mostly in Part Three. Why is so little recounted of William in the beginning? What aspects of his personality emerge as most interesting—and most suspicious—in the final pages of the book? Is Whicher’s accomplice theory the most plausible? Why or why not?

16. Summerscale writes of Saville Kent in her afterword, “In unravelling the story of his murder, I had forgotten him” (303). Is this forgetting apparent in the book? Is this work of nonfiction “a tragedy with a happy ending,” as Raymond Chandler deemed the detective story (304)? Why or why not?

17. Which recent murder cases have caused as great a sensation as the murder at Road Hill of 1860? Why might murder prove so riveting in the press and in fiction, both in the Victorian era and today?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us
Steve Almond, 2010
Random House
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400066209

Summary
Drooling fanatic, n. 1. One who drools in the presence of beloved rock stars. 2. Any of a genus of rock-and-roll wannabes/geeks who walk around with songs constantly ringing in their ears, own more than 3,000 albums, and fall in love with at least one record per week.

With a life that’s spanned the phonographic era and the digital age, Steve Almond lives to Rawk. Like you, he’s secretly longed to live the life of a rock star, complete with insane talent, famous friends, and hotel rooms to be trashed. Also like you, he’s content (sort of) to live the life of a rabid fan, one who has converted his unrequited desires into a (sort of) noble obsession.

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life traces Almond’s passion from his earliest (and most wretched) rock criticism to his eventual discovery of a music-crazed soul mate and their subsequent production of two little superfans. Along the way, Almond reflects on the delusional power of songs, the awkward mating habits of drooling fanatics, and why Depression Songs actually make us feel so much better. The book also includes:

• sometimes drunken interviews with America’s finest songwriters
• a recap of the author’s terrifying visit to Graceland while stoned
• a vigorous and credibility-shattering endorsement of Styx’s Paradise Theater
• recommendations you will often choose to ignore
• a reluctant exegesis of the Toto song “Africa”
• obnoxious lists sure to piss off rock critics.

But wait, there’s more. Readers will also be able to listen to a special free mix designed by the author, available online at www.stevenalmond.com, for the express purpose of eliciting your drool. For those about to rock—we salute you! (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—October 27, 1966
• Raised—Palo Alto, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University
• Currently—lives in Arlington, Massachusetts

Steve Almond is an American short story writer and essayist. He was raised in Palo Alto, California, graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School, and received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.

Almond spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, mostly in El Paso and at the Miami New Times. He has been writing fiction for over ten years. His work can be found in a range of literary magazines, and newspapers including the Boston Globe, Playboy Magazine, Nerve, Polite, Lake Effect, 3:AM Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. He also reviews books for the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times. His work was selected for the Best American Short Stories 2010.

His books include Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (2004); (Not That You Asked) Rants, Exploits and Obsessions (2007); Letters from People Who Hate Me (2010); Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life (2010).

Almond served as adjunct professor in creative writing at Boston College for five years until publishing an open letter of resignation in the the Boston Globe on May 12, 2006, in which he explained that his resignation was intended to protest the selection of Condoleezza Rice as the college's 2006 commencement guest speaker.

Almond was a contributing writer to Alarm Clock Theatre Company's Elliot Norton Award winning play PS Page Me Later, based on selections from Found Magazine.

He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
The goofiness and magnetism of rock is celebrated in this exuberant memoir. Rock critic and memoirist Almond (Candyfreak) describes himself as a “drooling fanatic” of rock and roll with a morbid passion for obscure bands, arcane record collections, and proselytizing his musical tastes. This freewheeling mix tape recounts the central role music played in his relationships, sexual encounters, and life transitions, while sprinkling in idiosyncratic lists, from “Rock's Biggest Assholes” to “Silly Names of Rock Star Spawn,” and tragicomic exegeses of songs great and terrible. His rock-critic gig enables his obsessions, giving him cover to profile, hang with, and otherwise stalk rockers while gazing into the bleak underside of their lives, “the desolation in which... art continues to bloom.” Almond deftly straddles the line between intellectual and fan. He's canny about the ways rock stars manipulate their idolators, yet happy to be seduced by them. He veers smoothly between funny, cruel takedowns of rock fatuity while registering its emotional impact (the song “I Bless the Rains Down in Africa” may be “the lovechild of Muzak and imperialism,” but you can't help “sort of digging it”). Almond's snarky, swoony counterpoint makes for a hilarious riff on the power of music.
Publishers Weekly

The result is the nonfiction equivalent of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, a knowing and exhilarating look at how one man dove headfirst into rock music and emerged on the other side intact.
BookPage

(Starred review.) Almond makes clear from the start that he’s no rock star, just a guy who obsesses over music he can’t play.... His hilarious musings seem to contain elements of both Hornby and David Sedaris, but he’s truly a character of his own idiosyncratic making. —June Sawyers
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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)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life:

1. What does it mean to be a Drooling Fanatic? Are you one—and proud of it? Or a little embarrassed by your obsession?

2. To what does Almond attribute his passion for R&R? Why is the music so deeply wedged into his soul? And you—why are you hooked...and when did it happen? How much of Almond's story is your own?

3. As a follow-up to Question 2: how can/will rock save your soul? What is its spiritual hook?

4. What was your personal Nil Lara moment for R&R—the moment Almond describes as "the holy shit of all holy shits"?

5. What does Almond see as the difference between great rock artists and their songs...and today's pop artists?

6. Talk about the intersection, as Almond sees it, of the rock culture with the commercial/marketing/corporate culture. So you agree?

7. Which in the book did you enjoy or appreciate most: Almond's stories or his critical appraisals of rock and roll?

8. Talk about Almond's stalking certain rock artists—Reilly, Schneider and Dayna Kurtz—and involving himself in their offstage lives. What does he gain, or learn? Anything? Does he deepen his understanding of their work? Or does his attempts at closeness alter the critical distance he needs to write honestly about the bands' work?

9. How do you react to Almond's list of "Ten Things You Can Say to Piss Off a Music Critic"? Do you agree with some, most, or none of it? What about his other lists...do they add to the book, or are they simply "fillers"?

10. What parts of the book did you find hilarious...or insightful ...or moving...or even cruel?

11. Overall, does this book deliver? Is it funny and informative? Does it cohere and hold your attention? Or do you find it rambling and digressive? Are parts of it awkward or uninteresting, perhaps self-indulgent? What is your assessment?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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