All You Could Ask For
Mike Greenberg, 2013
HarperCollins
264 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062220752
Summary
Three women are about to find their lives intertwined in ways none of them could ever have imagined.
Brooke has been happily married to her college sweetheart for fifteen years. Even after the C-section, the dog poop, the stomach viruses, and the coffee breath, Scott still always winks at her at just the right moments. That is why, for her beloved, romantic, successful husband's fortieth birthday, she is giving him pictures. Of her. Naked.
Samantha's newlywed bliss is steamrolled when she finds shocking evidence of infidelity on her husband's computer. She has been married for two days. She won't be for much longer.
Katherine works eighteen hours a day for the man who irreparably shattered her heart fifteen years ago. She has a duplex on Park Avenue, a driver, a chef, and a stunning house in Southampton, and she bought it all herself. So what if she has to see Phillip every single workday for the rest of her natural life? Brooke, Samantha, and Katherine don't know one another, but all three are about to discover the conquering power of friendship—and that they have all they could ask for, as long as they have one another. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 6, 1967
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in the state of Connecticut
Michael James "Mike" Greenberg is a television anchor, television show host, and radio host for ESPN and ABC. At ESPN, he hosts the weekday evening, most often Monday, SportsCenter and ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike in the Morning show with Mike Golic. At sister network ABC, he was the host of the now cancelled quiz show Duel. As of 2011, he co-hosts the 6 PM Eastern Monday SportsCenter editions during the National Football League season with Golic.
Greenberg was born to a Jewish family in New York City and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1985. In 1989, Greenberg graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he started work as a sports anchor and reporter at WMAQ-AM in Chicago. He left WMAQ in 1992 to work for WSCR-Radio as a reporter (covering events such as the World Series and the Super Bowl) and talk show host.
From 1993 to 1995, he also wrote a weekly syndicated column for the California-based Copley News Service. In 1994, he added reporting for SportsChannel Chicago to his resume. In 1995, he left SportsChannel Chicago to work at CLTV, becoming an anchor, reporter, and host of a live call-in show. He left Chicago for ESPN in September 1996, where he became one of the first hosts of ESPNEWS when it began broadcasting in November of that year.
Television
In 1999, with ESPN Radio airing in just four markets, Greenberg was approached about returning to radio to be a part of a morning drive-time show with Mike Golic as co-host. Greenberg agreed, with the understanding that he would continue anchoring SportsCenter on a regular basis. On April 26, 2004, the show started a regular simulcast on ESPNEWS. Because of their continued success, the duo moved to ESPN2 in January 2005.
One of the most popular segments of the entire year on Mike and Mike in the Morning is the annual "Sheet of Integrity" wager, a bracket wager based on the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament and the massive ESPN.com bracket contest. The bet originated after Mike Golic told of how he would enter a massive number of sheets into different pools to win the money involved in the pool. Greenberg, believing picks required a sort of integrity, insisted that any such entrant be required to enter only one "Sheet of Integrity." Golic would select one of his (presumably) dozens of sheets against Greenberg, with the loser having to perform a humiliating stunt, usually on the air. The first year, Greenberg won and Golic had to have an eyebrow wax on the air. The next two years, Golic won, and Greenberg had to wear the Notre Dame University Leprechaun mascot costume on the air, the second time on the Notre Dame campus. In the 2007 competition Greenberg, an admitted die-hard New York Jets fan, agreed to wear a New England Patriots jersey to a Jets game and to milk a cow live on-air. Greenberg received advice about milking a cow from ESPN baseball analyst Buster Olney, who grew up on a dairy farm.
Books
In 2006, Greenberg released his first book entitled Why My Wife Thinks I'm An Idiot: The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad, which reached 14th on the New York Times Bestseller list and was nominated in the 2006 Quill Awards for best sports book. In 2010, Greenberg, along with co-host Mike Golic, released a book entitled Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life. In 2013 Greenberg released his novel All You Could Ask For about a group of women who bond because of their shared experiences with cancer. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
This upbeat, snappy debut novel from ESPN sports talk host Greenberg (Why My Wife Thinks I’m an Idiot) involves three iron-willed, independent-minded ladies who meet and become friends through an online support group for breast cancer patients.... Greenberg’s promising first effort, told partly in the form of message board postings, develops the lead characters well enough for its predictably feel-good conclusion to feel justified.
Publishers Weekly
Sportscaster Greenberg's (Why My Wife Thinks I'm an Idiot) first novel delves with authenticity and compassion into the lives and minds of three female characters.... These women are strangers to one another until they learn something that changes their lives, forever linking them in friendship and courage. Verdict: This well-written page-turner by a surprising author features true-to-life characters who are entertaining and compelling. A must read for fans of smart women's fiction. Fans of Greenberg's show might be curious as well. —Anne M. Miskewitch, Chicago P.L.
Library Journal
The shared adversity these women face is portrayed realistically and tenderly.... The three women are well drawn, and Greenberg displays an admirable ear for realistic dialogue. Fans of Deborah Copaken Konan, Sarah Pekkanen, and contemporary ensemble fiction will enjoy this debut novel.
Booklist
Sports pundit Greenberg tries his hand at chick lit, with somber overtones and mixed results.... The unifying element, intended to lend gravitas to the frivolity, involves cancer. Although the cancer section provides opportunities for the women to discover what is truly important in life, it also affords Greenberg too many pretexts for preachy cliches and oversimplification. Any automatic sympathy conferred by illness will be mitigated, for most readers, by how little we've come to care for these superficial and uber-privileged characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Would Samantha have become friends with Katherine and Brooke under different circumstances? What do the three women have in common besides the event that brings them together?
2. Samantha is horrified when she finds those pictures on Robert's laptop, but is she partially to blame for invading his privacy?
3. Why do you think Katherine chose to stay at the company for as long as she did? With her education and experience, she could have found a comparable position elsewhere. Is there a part of her that wants to suffer by witnessing Philip's success? Is there a small part of her that believes she can win him back if she sticks around? Or is it something else entirely?
4. Brooke stakes much of her own happiness on her husband's satisfaction and his perception of her. Is this problematic?
5. Brooke says you need three core girlfriends: one who's like a sister, one who knows everything, and one a generation ahead of you. Do you agree? Who occupies these roles in your own life?
6. Robert seemed genuinely contrite when he went to see Samantha. Would you have taken him back? Why or why not?
7. Samantha is always trying to help people, and she wants to extend her generosity of spirit to Brooke. Do you think she was wrong in forcing Brooke to share her story? Was she at all motivated by guilt?
8. Why do you think Brook decides to do what she does? Do you agree with her choice? Do her loved ones deserve to be included in her decisions?
9. Brooke sees her life as divided into stages – her sweet sixteen, her wedding. What are the stages of your life?
10. Samantha reflects on her evening with Andrew Marks as "the night [she] learned that [she likes] being pretty." Despite confronting a serious life hurdle, she does not abandon her vanity. Is this something many women can relate to? What does being pretty mean to you?
11. When Katherine meets Stephen, she knows she has "met the man who [is] going to change [her] life." Do you believe in love at first sight? Are her strong, serendipitous feelings for Stephen in any way related to this phase of her life?
12. Katherine and Samantha have a few "absolute deal-breakers": a grown-up who calls his mother every day, a man who buys maxi pads for his dog. What are your absolute deal-breakers?
13. In her last person-to-person to Samantha, Brooke writes, "Please leave me alone." She tells her she'll be in touch when she's ready. What do you think ultimately moved her to reach out? What changed?
14. Brooke is the only one with a husband by her side, and yet she does not share her secret with him. Is she motivated by fear? Do you think that has more to do with her or with Scott?
15. In the last chapter, Katherine has run off to Aspen to be with her dream guy, Samantha is dating a pediatrician, and Brooke is laminating meaningful quotes for her fridge. Where do you see them each in five years?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
All Your Perfects
Colleen Hoover, 2018
Atria Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501193323
Summary
A tour de force novel about a troubled marriage and the one old forgotten promise that might be able to save it.
Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage.
The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.
All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past.
This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 11, 1979
• Where—Sulphur Springs, Texas, USA
• Raised—Saltillo, Texas
• Education—B.A., Texas A&M-Commerce
• Currently—lives in Sulphur Springs, Texas
Born in Sulphur Springs, Texas, Colleen Hoover grew up in Saltillo, Texas, and graduated from Texas A&M-Commerce with a degree in Social Work. After college, she took a number of social work and teaching jobs before becoming a bestselling novelist.
Hoover began writing her first novel, Slammed, in 2011 with no intentions of getting published. Inspired by a lyric—"decide what to be and go be it"—from an Avett Brothers song, "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" and ended up incorporating Avett Brothers lyrics throughout the story.
After a few months, her novel was reviewed and given 5 stars by book blogger, Maryse Black. From that point on, sales increased rapidly: both Slammed and its sequel, Point of Retreat, ended up making the New York Times Best Seller list.
Since then Colleen has written and published over a dozen books.
In addition to her writing, Colleen is the founder of The Bookworm Box, a book subscription service which donates 100% of its profit to charity. She also owns a specialty bookstore of the same name, Bookworm Box, located in Sulphur Springs, Texas.
The author married Heath Hoover in 2000. The two have three sons and a pig named Sailor. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2017.)
Book Reviews
Colleen Hoover returns with an emotionally raw page-turner.
Jamie Blynn - Us Weekly
Intimate and raw.
USA Today
Heart-wrenching...another fantastic read.
Bustle
(Starred review) Hoover captures the amazing side of a happy marriage, while… connecting with the struggles of having one's expectations of "the perfect life" not being met. Verdict: Hoover's vast fanbase…will all be waiting impatientlly. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC
Library Journal
A poignant love story.… With Hoover’s evocative style, readers will experience the emotion of this story while sympathizing with both Quinn and Graham.
Booklist
A woman's relationship with her husband before and after she finds out she's infertile.… Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Sitting in the hallway outside Ethan’s apartment, Quinn cracks open a fortune cookie that reads "If you only shine light on your flaws, all your perfects will dim." How does this foreshadow the present-day scenes in the novel? Discuss the stark contrast between the "Then" and "Now" chapters.
2. When we see them "Then," Quinn and Graham’s relationship seems effortless. "Now," faced with the challenges of the present that have built up over eight years of marriage, their relationship could potentially fall apart in an instant. Can a relationship based on "kismet" last the test of time?
3. What began as a beautiful dream of shared parenthood with Graham becomes a single-minded and solitary obsession with conceiving for Quinn. Discuss the differences between how she was "Then" versus "Now." How has her self-esteem and self-perception been affected by her inability to conceive?
4. Quinn and Graham’s marital problems stem from miscommunication, misunderstandings, and secrets. Why is it so hard for Quinn to express her true feelings to Graham? Why does Graham pour his heart out in letters, only to lock them away in the box?
5. Aside from the pressure she places on herself, society’s expectations and others’ constant questions of when she and Graham will have a child of their own weigh heavily on Quinn. In what ways did this affect her pursuit of motherhood and her relationship with Graham, her sister, Ava, and others? Do you think she would have reacted differently if she’d had a better relationship with her own mother? Or a support group of women who’d gone through the same experience?
6. On page 71, as she’s getting over Ethan, Quinn thinks, "When you associate yourself with another person for so long, it’s difficult becoming your own person again." However, think about everything Quinn has gone through to have a child with Graham. In what ways has she lost her identity to the concept of being a mother at any cost? Is she truly doing this for herself, for Graham, or for the people they imagined they would be ten years from their wedding night?
7. In Chapter Fourteen, as Graham drunkenly confesses a fraction of his frustrations with how things are between them now, Quinn retreats deeper into herself. What does this moment mean for their relationship? Discuss other ways in which this scene could have unfolded to avoid—or worsen—what followed.
8. When Graham proposes on page 213, he asks Quinn to weather the "Category 5 moments" with him. In the midst of their struggle with not being able to have children, they both seem to have forgotten that promise. What do you think led each of them to believe that it was their sole responsibility to fix things? What stopped them from having the courage to confide in and confront each other?
9. On page 11, referring to Ethan’s cheating on her with Sasha, Graham says, "Do not forgive him for this, Quinn," but he insists that she listen to his side before making a decision about them after his own indiscretion. Compare the two instances of infidelity. Why did either man stray? Are either of them forgivable? What would you have done in Quinn’s place?
10. On page 200, an old man in his eighties who had been married for sixty years gives Quinn very honest marital advice, saying, "Our marriage hasn’t been perfect. No marriage is perfect. There were times when she gave up on us. There were even more times when I gave up on us. The secret to our longevity is that we never gave up at the same time." How does this tie into the fortune Quinn reads at the beginning? Identify the moments in which each of them gave up. Did they ever both give up at the same time? How did that affect the outcome?
11. What role did the box play in Quinn and Graham’s relationship? Do you think all couples should go through a similar exercise?
12. If you’ve read Colleen’s Hopeless trilogy (Hopeless, Losing Hope, and Finding Cinderella), you may notice a special cameo in the Epilogue. If you know Six’s story, what could this connection potentially mean for Quinn and Graham?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
Fannie Flagg, 2013
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400065943
Summary
A new comic mystery novel about two women who are forced to reimagine who they are and what they are capable of.
Mrs. Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, has just married off the last of her three daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and perhaps traveling with her husband, Earle. The only thing left to contend with now is her mother, the formidable and imposing Lenore Simmons Krackenberry—never an easy task. Lenore may be a lot of fun for other people, but is, for the most part, an overbearing presence for her daughter. Then one day, quite by accident, Sookie discovers a shocking secret about her mother’s past that knocks her for a loop and suddenly calls into question everything she ever thought she knew about herself, her family, and her future.
Feeling like a stranger in her own life, and fearful of confronting her mother with questions, Sookie begins a search for answers that takes her to California, the Midwest, and back in time, to the 1940s, when an irrepressible woman named Fritzi takes on the job of running her family’s filling station. With so many men off to war, it’s up to Fritzi and her enterprising younger sisters to keep it going. Soon truck drivers are changing their routes to fill up at the All-Girl Filling Station. But before long, Fritzi sees an opportunity for an even more groundbreaking adventure when she receives a life-changing invitation from the U.S. military to assist in the war effort. As Sookie learns more and more about Fritzi’s story, she finds herself with new answers to the questions she’s been asking her whole life.
The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion is a perfect combination of comedy, mystery, wisdom, and charm. Fabulous, fun-loving, spanning decades, generations, and centered on a little-known aspect of America’s twentieth-century story, The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion is Fannie Flagg, the bestselling "born storyteller" (New York Times Book Review), at her irresistible best. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Real Name—Patricia Neal
• Birth—September 21, 1944
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Education—University of Alabama
• Currently—lives in Montecito, California
Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Standing in the Rainbow, and A Redbird Christmas. Flagg’s script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.
Before her career as a novelist, Flagg was known principally for her on-screen television and film work. She was second banana to Allen Funt on the long-running Candid Camera, perhaps the trailblazer for the current crop of so-called reality television. (Her favorite segment, she told Entertainment Weekly in 1992, was driving a car through the wall of a drive-thru bank.) She appeared as the school nurse in the 1978 film version of Grease, and on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And she was a staple of the Match Game television game shows in the '70s.
Quite early on in her writing career, Fannie Flagg stumbled onto the holy grail of secrets in the publishing world: what editors are actually good for.
Attending the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference in 1978 to see her idol, Eudora Welty, Flagg won first prize in the writing contest for a short story told from the perspective of a 11-year-old girl, spelling mistakes and all—a literary device that she figured was ingenious because it disguised her own pitiful spelling, later determined to be an outgrowth of dyslexia. But when a Harper & Row editor approached her about expanding the story into a full-length novel, she realized the jig was up. In 1994 she told the New York Times:
I just burst into tears and said, "I can't write a novel. I can't spell. I can't diagram a sentence." He took my hand and said the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. He said, "Oh, honey, what do you think editors are for?"
Writing
And so Fannie Flagg—television personality, Broadway star, film actress and six-time Miss Alabama contestant—became a novelist, delving into the Southern-fried, small-town fiction of the sort populated by colorful characters with homespun, no-nonsense observations. Characters that are known to say things like, "That catfish was so big the photograph alone weighed 40 pounds."
Her first novel, an expanded take on that prize-winning short story, was Coming Attractions: A Wonderful Novel, the story of a spunky yet hapless girl growing up in the South, helping her alcoholic father run the local bijou. But it was with her second novel where it all came together. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe—a novel, for all its light humor, that infuses its story with serious threads on racism, feminism, spousal abuse and hints at Sapphic love -- follows two pairs of women: a couple running a hometown café in the Depression-era South and an elderly nursing home resident in the late 1980s who strikes up an impromptu friendship with a middle-aged housewife unhappy with her life.
The result was not only a smash novel, but a hit movie as well, one that garnered Flagg an Academy Award nomination for adapting the screenplay. She won praise from the likes of Erma Bombeck, Harper Lee and idol Eudora Welty, and the Los Angeles Times critic compared it to The Last Picture Show. The New York Times called it, simply, "a real novel and a good one."
As a writer, though, this Birmingham, Alabama native found her voice as a chronicler of Southern Americana and life in its self-contained hamlets. "Fannie Flagg is the most shamelessly sentimental writer in America," The Christian Science Monitor wrote in a 1998 review of her third novel. "She's also the most entertaining. You'd have to be a stone to read Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! without laughing and crying. The cliches in this novel are deep-fat fried: not particularly nutritious, but entirely delicious."
The New York Times, also reviewing Baby Girl, took note of the spinning-yarns-on-the-front-porch quality to her work: "Even when she prattles—and she prattles a great deal during this book—you are always aware that a star is at work. She has that gift that certain people from the theater have, of never boring the audience. She keeps it simple, she keeps it bright, she keeps it moving right along—and, most of all, she keeps it beloved."
But, lest she be pegged as simply a champion of the good ol’ days, it's worth noting that her writing can be something of a clarion call for social change. In Fried Green Tomatoes, Flagg comments not only on the racial divisions of the South but also on the minimization of women in both the 1930s and contemporary life. Just as Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison commit to a life together—without menfolk—in the Depression-era days of Whistle Stop, Alabama, middle-aged Evelyn Couch in modern-day Birmingham discovers the joys of working outside the home and defining her life outside meeting the every whim of her husband.
On top of her writing, Flagg has also stumped for the Equal Rights Amendment.
I think it's time that women have to stand up and say we do not want to be seen in a demeaning manner," Flagg told a Premiere magazine reporter in an interview about the film adaptation of Fried Green Tomatoes.
Extras
• Flagg approximated the length of her first novel by weight. Her editor told her a novel should be around 400 pages. "So I weighed 400 pages and it came to two pounds and something," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1987." I wrote until I had two pounds and something, and, as it happened, the novel was just about done."
• She landed the Candid Camera gig while a writer at a New York comedy club. When one of the performers couldn't go on, Flagg acted as understudy, and the show's host, Allen Funt, was in the audience.
• Flagg went undiagnosed for years as a dyslexic until a viewer casually mentioned it to her in a fan letter. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Structured much like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Flagg's latest novel alternates between the pedestrian life of Sookie Poole, a timid middle-aged southern woman and that of her brash, adventurous ancestry, a quartet of Polish sisters who ran a filling station and flew planes during WWII.... Readers looking for nuance will not find it here, but there are plot twists, adventure, heartbreak, and familial love in spades, making this the kind of story that keeps readers turning pages in a fever.
Publishers Weekly
Alabama sweetheart Sookie Poole has been a loving wife, a caring mother, and, most important, a patient daughter.... [But now] Sookie is inspired to reexamine her own life.... [F]ull of heartwarming charm that is sure to provoke lighthearted laughter. A complex story told simply and honestly, this is an easy read and another treat for Flagg fans. —Shannon Marie Robinson, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH
Library Journal
Flagg highlights a little-known group in U.S. history...in an appealing story about two women who gather their courage, spread their wings and learn, each in her own way, to fly.... This is a charming story written with wit and empathy. The author forms a comfortable bond with readers and offers just the right blend of history and fiction. Flagg flies high, and her fans will enjoy the ride.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. A lot of Southern identity is wrapped up in one’s family history. “Now, just who are your people?” is an oft-quoted phrase around the region. Sookie’s biggest crisis comes when she realizes that her “people” aren’t actually who she thought they were. How does Sookie’s discovery of her true family affect her identity? How does your own heritage affect your identity?
2. Though Sookie tells us that Lenore’s nickname, “Winged Victory,” came from the way she entered a room—as if she were the statuesque piece on the hood of a car rushing in—how might “Winged Victory” reflect Lenore’s personality in other ways? Does her representation as a classical goddess serve to heighten the air of history and tradition that surrounds her? How might the image of a winged woman tie Lenore in with the ladies of the WASPs?
3. Though Sookie tells us that Lenore’s nickname, “Winged Victory,” came from the way she entered a room—as if she were the statuesque piece on the hood of a car rushing in—how might “Winged Victory” reflect Lenore’s personality in other ways? Does her representation as a classical goddess serve to heighten the air of history and tradition that surrounds her? How might the image of a winged woman tie Lenore in with the ladies of the WASPs?
4. Sookie’s best friend, Marvaleen, is constantly trying different suggestions from her life coach, Edna Yorba Zorbra. From journaling to yoga to the Goddess Within group, which meets in a yurt, Marvaleen tries every method possible to get over her divorce. How does Sookie’s approach to dealing with her problems differ from Marvaleen’s? Do you think her friendship with Marvaleen might have helped push her to confront the question of her mother?
5. In The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, we learn about a mostly unknown part of American history—the WASPs of World War II. These women went for thirty-five years without recognition because their records of service were sealed and classified. Were you surprised to learn about this? What parts of the WASPs’ story spoke to you?
6. As Sookie comes to terms with her new identity, so must the rest of her family. Sookie’s realization that “Dee Dee may not be a Simmons by birth, but she was certainly Lenore’s granddaughter, all right” becomes a comforting thought. Have there been times in your life when you have felt so connected to people that you considered them family? What types of circumstances can create such a bond?
7. Sookie tells her friend one day, “I’m telling you, Dena, when you live long enough to see your children begin to look at you with different eyes, and you can look at them not as your children, but as people, it’s worth getting older with all the creaks and wrinkles.” Have you experienced this change yet with your own parents or children? If so, what were the circumstances in which you began to see them in a different light? How did this make your relationship even more special?
8. “Blue Jay Away,” Sookie’s brand-new invention, keeps Sookie’s house finches and chickadees fed, while also making Sookie famous. Who do you think have been the blue jays in Sookie’s own life? Has she learned to manage them successfully?
9. As Pat Conroy says, Fannie Flagg can make even the Polish seem Southern. A large part of Southern and Polish identity is found in their culture—the food, the music, the values. What are some of the things that are unique to your culture? How do they help bring people together?
10. Throughout the book, Dee Dee and Lenore often represent many characteristics that Sookie finds frustrating about being a Simmons, such as the time Dee Dee had to be driven to the church in the back of a moving van so that her Gone with the Wind wedding dress wouldn’t be messed up. Once Sookie gains perspective on her family, however, she comes to love and accept Dee Dee’s obsession with their history. Have there been times when your own friends or family have frustrated you with their opinions? How were you able to gain perspective and accept their differences?
11. A major theme in this book is accepting your home. Sookie experiences a homecoming many times—after she first meets Fritzi and returns to Point Clear, when she goes to Lenore’s bedside at Westminster Village, and when she flies to Pulaski for the All-Girl Filling Station’s last reunion. What is your favorite part about going home? Who are the people who make home a home for you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Almost Heaven
Marianne Wiggins, 1998
Simon & Schuster
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 978067103860
Summary
Before his thirtieth birthday Holden Garfield has already burned out as a journalist in war-torn Bosnia. Returning to the United States, he hopes the familiar sunshine and rolling hills of Virginia will help him put aside the horrors he reported. Instead he finds Melanie, his mentor's sister, who is institutionalized with a mysterious amnesia after her husband and son were killed five weeks earlier by a freak force of nature.
Struck as if by lightning by her beauty, Holden sets out to help her reconstruct her past, and the pair is swept up in a passionate love affair — one fighting to remember, the other struggling to forget.
With this breakneck story of love and loss, Marianne Wiggins delivers a compelling novel that is a series of powerful metaphors for the curative forces of love as well as her own personal love letter to the American South. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 8, 1947
• Where—Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Manheim Township High School, Lancaster
• Awards—Whiting Award, 1989; Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize
for best novel written by an American woman, 1990
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Marianne Wiggins was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Brussels, Rome, Paris, and London. She is the author of ten books of fiction, including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen, for which she was a National Book Award finalist in fiction, as well as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won an NEA grant, the Whiting Writers' Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. (From the publisher.)
More
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:
Q: What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer—and why?
A: Hands down, this was Tillie Olsen's Silences. It was published soon after I turned 30, when I had one book in print and had not really found my canvas nor my voice. I was at a turning point in my life, not knowing if I could make a "career" of writing and having a young daughter to support on my own. Olsen's masterpiece is not so much "written" as gasped — her passionate engagement with the subject of women writers grips you physically like a madwoman on a bus demanding your participation in her cause. I read it in the kitchen, I read it in bed — I still read parts of it at least once every month.
Q: What are your favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
A: When I moved back to the United States after living 16 years in London, I had to ship all my possessions to California through the Panama Canal. I'll always remember the look on that Allied Movers agent's face when he saw my shelves of books: over 300 cartons' worth, and that was after I weeded out the out-of-date travel books to places like Burma and Romania that I had bought for research for my novels. I'm going to have to sidestep this question, adapting my sister's line. She has five children and frequently, sincerely, says, "I love ‘em all." (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The real main character in Marianne Wiggins' apocalyptic new novel, Almost Heaven, is neither Holden Garfield, the burned-out, bummed-out foreign correspondent who is ostensibly the story's protagonist, nor Melanie John, the fragile amnesiac with whom Garfield falls hopelessly and disastrously in love, but rather, as it happens, the weather. As in meteorology. In her earlier novels, the beautiful John Dollar and the lesser-known Eveless Eden Wiggins wrestled with the horrors of colonialism and the evils of post-Communist Romania, respectively. Here she's back on American soil in a story about Memory. Passion. Loss. —and lightning bolts. Almost Heaven springs fully armed from Wiggins' often portentous sensibility, and what better way to show it than through massing thunderclouds, drenching rain, pounding hail and a final, climactic tornado?
"A hailstorm strikes the way a plague of locusts does in the Bible," Wiggins writes, "like a tornado does—in a band. You can be standing over there on the eighth hole halfway around the course, about to swing onto the ninth, and a light rain might start to fall where you are while over at the next hole a shaft of graupel will be rattling, rat-a-tatting turf with icy grapeshot." Thematically, the ever-menacing skies perfectly suit Wiggins' broody purpose and what appears to be her absolute despair at the state of the world. "All you can expect from life is the unexpected," she remarks. "The only thing you get with any luck is a chance to wrestle with it and pray it doesn't kill you first."
As to plot, Almost Heaven is part love story, part psychodrama and part balderdash, in no particular order. Holden Garfield—why does Wiggins call him that?—has just returned to the United States after eight years as a reporter for Newsweek in Eastern Europe, most recently in Srebrenica, where he's seen a Bosnian child nailed to a tree and heard the cries of mothers in his sleep. Already struggling with a soul-killing gloom, he is drawn unexpectedly to Richmond, Va., and the beautiful, tragic Melanie, the sister of his friend and mentor Noah John—the hero of Eveless Eden—who has seen her husband and four sons killed in an auto accident and suffers from "hysterical amnesia" as a result. Melanie is unable to remember anything that's happened to her since 1975, not that the date matters, since "the truth" doesn't become clear to anyone until a tornado strikes (significantly, at a monument to Jefferson Davis in Kentucky).
"A little late in piecing it together," Wiggins observes, "as soon as Holden sees the cloud he makes the silent prayer, '—oh god, just let it thunder—let it just be lightning, lord.'" You can't escape the feeling—speaking of weather—that Almost Heaven is itself a blast of hot air, but Wiggins writes so richly, so atmospherically, that you're willing to forgive her fancier flights. "Where do dreams go when they die?" she asks. Don't let sentences like that distract you. Just experience the book like a sudden squall and you'll be fine.
Peter Kurth - Salon
Heavy-handed symbolism and cryptic plot elements undermine Wiggins's otherwise provocative novel about two people stunned by grief. Burned-out, Harvard-educated foreign correspondent Holden Garfield wishes he could erase his memories of the war in Bosnia, especially that of a crucified baby nailed to a tree. Melanie Page has also suffered trauma, but hers is so severe—she witnessed the death of her husband and four sons in a tornado—that her memory has vanished. Ironically, Holden may hold the key to her recovery, since his mentor and old friend was Melanie's brother, Noah Johns, who has gone underground for mysterious reasons. Holden decides to take Melanie (who now calls herself Johnnie) from the psychiatric wing of a Virginia hospital to South Dakota, where Noah is hiding. The journey becomes a quest for both of them and is complicated by sexual passion and Melanie's age: she is old enough to be Holden's mother. Holden is a puzzling figure: he calls his mother Kanga and his father Pooh; he has two college friends named Syd, who are marrying each other. He talks in insistently idiomatic dialogue, and Wiggins describes his thoughts in abrupt fragments meant to demonstrate his wired mental state. Wiggins's writing is intelligent, yet her manipulation of characters and themes is blatant. In addition to the repetitive connection between weather and human relationships, she offers interesting meditations on guilt; the mechanism and gestalt of memory and its "dark twin," amnesia; psychoanalytic theory; and the culture of the South. Her premise is promising: "If she could help him to forget [the horrors of war], he could help her to remember... they could learn to face their grief together." But the novel's abrupt and melodramatic conclusion (that we never learn why Noah is hiding is only one of the loose ends) leaves too many issues and relationships unresolved.
Publishers Weekly
Holden Garfield is only in his thirties, but as a correpondent in war-ravaged Bosnia, he has already hit burnout. Yet when he returns home he encounters a tragedy that dwarfs his own pain even as it personalizes all the violence he has witnessed: the sister of a good friend has lost her entire family--husband and four sons—in a freak accident and is hospitalized with amnesia. Only the brother can help restore her, but he's in hiding because of a delicate personal situation, so Holden determines to bring Melanie to her brother—and in the process falls in love. Wiggins writes stunningly polished prose that is both quirky and urgent, letting slip clues to both Holden's and Melanie's situations as the plot builds with a roar to the final blowout. A real tour de force on the immensity of human loss; highly recommended.
Library Journal
Wiggins's latest has its moments of strong pull but suffers badly from the strains of a cripplingly jejune star and an authorial craving for Big Significance. Holden Garfield is eight years out of Harvard and in the US again after having spent those years in Bosnia reporting for Newsweek. The atrocities he saw, especially in the killing field of Srebrenica, have plunged him into a career-crisis of perfervid self-doubt ("Something must have happened./He'd remember in a minute./Where do dreams go when they die?"). In Europe, he knew the journalist nonpareil Noah John, who, it happens, has a sister in Richmond, Virginia, in hysterical amnesia from the unspeakable experience of seeing her husband and four sons all killed. Named Melanie, she can now remember the distant past and the present but nothing in the middle, including her own identity, and the doctor thinks that Noah could help, being trusted brother and able to fill her in gently about who she is and what's happened. Trouble is, Noah's all tied up, by international intrigue, you might guess if you'd read Wiggins's previous book, and can't make it to Virginia. Enter Holden, who goes to see what he can do, falls in love with Melanie at first sight (in the hospital ward), finds out that Noah is in South Dakota and can't budge, and then, against doctor's advice, pops Melanie into a van and heads west. On the road, things deteriorate appallingly as Holden makes love like crazy (against more doctor's advice) with Melanie, reveals himself to have about as much depth or sensitivity as a spoiled teenager, and clumsily brings about tale's end. Best sections are those about Melanie's clinical diagnosis; worst those when dim Holden ("'No', he finally has the balls to tell her.") takes absurd charge (he's in waaaay over his head with this one. )Ambitious enough, but every seam shows and the frame is wrenched.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Who is on Holden's list of "the ten men who have shaped his life"? What does the fact that he keeps a list like this tell us about Holden's character? What is he looking for, what does he value, and what about his current situation compels him to return to this list, searching for "grace, trust, and humility"? Why is his own father not on the list? Is Noah John his surrogate father?
2. Sleep-deprived in the Frankfurt airport, traumatized by his experiences, and possibly in the midst of a nervous breakdown, Holden contends with his memory's "flashbulb effect." What is the "flashbulb effect"? What is Holden remembering?
3. While Holden is lost in memories of his grandfather, Padge, his plane to Richmond is struck by lightning with the abruptness and mystery of a symphonic explosion, "like Beethoven composing." At this point, before any of the central plot of the novel has unfolded, Wiggins has already established two central themes, memory and weather. What connections exist between the two? How do these early scenes foreshadow how the story will unfold and eventually climax?
4. Consider the stark, almost poetic nature of the fragmented phrases and words at the top of each page of the novel. How do they add to the tone and themes of Almost Heaven? Which ones strike you the most? Why?
5. At one pointHolden reflects on the way his own voice sounds, describing it as "willful" and "strident." Would you agree? Although Wiggins writes Almost Heaven in the third person, it is a third-person narrative that is filtered thoroughly and solely through Holden's perspective, and his voice seeps through every line of the novel. What narrative techniques and idiomatic structures does the author employ to portray Holden's often flip personality and ragged state of mind?
6. Is Holden's decision to take Melanie out of the hospital—ignoring Alex's advice and knowingly flirting with disaster—a selfish one? Is it noble? Why? What exactly are his motives? Why is the pursuit of a love that grows out of the absence of history and memory, a love that is utterly without baggage, so appealing to someone like Holden?
7. Is it possible that Holden's drive to shelter and preserve a woman's innocence—even a false and precarious innocence that hinges upon tragedy and amnesia—might be a doomed attempt to find an antidote to his haunted memories of the war in Bosnia? Explain. What other things might be motivating his actions?
8. Why do you suppose Wiggins chose the name Holden Garfield, with its strong echo of Holden Caulfield, the iconic protector of lost innocence in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye? How are these two characters alike?
9. What happens to Melanie and Holden after the novel ends? In your reading group, construct a hypothetical extra chapter.
10. What is the significance of the title? Reread the single-page chapter that begins with "Somewhere there's a monument to the love that you haven't found yet." Why isn't the novel simply called Heaven?
11. In a novel concerned chiefly with the nature of memory and loss in the 1990s, what is Wiggins doing by punctuating Holden's journey with a relentless string of Civil War monuments and museums? Toward the end of Almost Heaven, Holden finally recognizes the utter emptiness in Melanie's eyes —"the Vacancy of meaning in a life whose history's been erased." At this point, what do we and Holden realize about the essence of the countless memorials that dot our landscape? Why is the presence of history, and of memory, so important?
12. In a powerhouse climax, Melanie's memory returns with the force of a tornado. Why is it so fitting that this happens— Melanie recovers her own personal tragedy, just as Holden loses sight of his own personal heaven—at the Jefferson Davis monument in Kentucky, the infamous site of The Lost Cause?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Almost Home
Pam Jenoff, 2009
Washington Square Pess
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416590705
Summary
A rich and startling novel about a woman who must face a past she'd rather forget in order to uncover a dangerous legacy that threatens her future.
Ten years ago, U.S. State Department intelligence officer Jordan Weiss’s idyllic experience as a graduate student at Cambridge was shattered when her boyfriend Jared drowned in the River Cam. She swore she’d never go back—until a terminally ill friend asks her to return.
Jordan attempts to settle into her new life, taking on an urgent mission beside rakish agent Sebastian Hodges. Just when she thinks there’s hope for a fresh start, a former college classmate tells her that Jared’s death was not an accident—he was murdered.
Jordan quickly learns that Jared’s research into World War II had uncovered a shameful secret, but powerful forces with everything to lose will stop at nothing to keep the past buried. Soon, Jordan finds herself in grave peril as she struggles to find the answers that lie treacherously close to home, the truth that threatens to change her life forever, and the love that makes it all worth fighting for. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., George Washington University; M.A., Cambridge University; J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. She attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge University in England.
Upon receiving her master's in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor.
Following her work at the Pentagon, Pam moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.
Pam left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for several years as a labor and employment attorney both at a firm and in-house in Philadelphia and now teaches law school at Rutgers.
Pam is the author of The Kommandant's Girl, which was an international bestseller and nominated for a Quill award, as well as The Diplomat's Wife, The Ambassador's Daughter, Almost Home, A Hidden Affair and The Things We Cherished.
She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
An interesting, unexpected thriller, this tries—and succeeds—to mix romance with the dark arts of espionage ... Written with a flair for place and irony, it paints a very different portrait of the macho world of spooks than the one we're so often treated to, but is none the worse for that. Blessed with an edge-of-the-seat ending, Jenoff's third thriller is the antidote to Bond, leaving you stirred, if not shaken.
Daily Mail (UK)
Pam Jenoff has taken a new twist on the spy novel ... if agent Jordan Weiss may not be exactly the next James Bond, ... she may be a very credible, arguably more human, female alternative.
Times (UK)
Part thriller, part romance, Jenoff's story is a tidy package of secret financing, organised crime and a bit of stuff on the side.
Time Out
A thrilling story, imaginatively told.
Choice
A cool, contemporary romantic thriller.
Publishers Weekly
...a masterly job of blending romance, friendship, loyalty, greed, spies, the political ambitions of the rich and powerful, and a bit of shady World War II history into a suspenseful and multilayered novel.
Library Journal
This thriller delivers politics and plot.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. While at Cambridge, Jordan was the only American in her group of friends. Did she feel fully accepted by her teammates, or was the fact that she was an American or a woman ever an obstacle? Did Jordan ever pretend to be someone she wasn’t?
2. "Chris once teased me about my sentimentality over what he called ‘a silly children’s film’ [Mary Poppins]. Still, perhaps he purposely chose our meeting place so close to the cathedral, since he knows how much I loved it" (pg. 62). Was this Chris’s plan? Does he attempt to manipulate Jordan throughout the novel?
3. After briefly reuniting with Chris, Jordan flees and notes "This is the second time I have fled in two days, and it isn’t like me" (pg. 72). Is this statement accurate? Consider Jordan’s career, which doesn’t allow her to stay in one place too long.
4. Jordan states that the only reason she returned to England was to care for her sick friend Sarah. However, she doesn’t spend much time with Sarah upon arriving. Is she simply too busy with work and finding the truth about Jared? What other reasons could there be?
5. Both Chris and Jordan note how driven Jared was. Why was he so determined to seek the truth?
6. "A meeting would provide an emergency escape hatch if the day in Cambridge got to be too much" (pg. 87). Are there other examples in the book of Jordan taking precautions to protect herself? Do you think these measures are a result of Jared’s death, her work with the State Department, or something else?
7. Jared remarks to Jordan that Chris "can’t stand going home alone" (pg. 126). Is this true? If so, why? And why doesn’t Chris openly share his feelings with Jordan, either before her relationship with Jared or a decade later?
8. "Social justice, my father told me once at Passover, was our obligation as Jews, to free all people from the bonds of oppression as we had once been freed" (pg. 189). Is this desire what drives Jordan? Even though she says she’s not religious, in what other ways might her religion shape who Jordan has become?
9. What could be the reason for Jared strangling Jordan while the two are both sleeping?
10. Why does Mo acquiesce to Ambassador Raines? How much of his plan was she aware of?
11. Several people end up betraying Jordan. When did you first become suspicious of these characters or the novel’s other twists? Is there anyone Jordan can truly trust?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Almost Moon
Alice Sebold, 2007
Little, Brown & Co.
292 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316022842
Summary
When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.
So begins The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold's astonishing, brilliant, and daring new novel. A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this unforgettable work by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky
For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined
Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers; the meaning of devotion; and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 6 1963
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Syracuse University; M.F.A., University of
California, Irvine
• Currently—lives in Long Beach, California
As Alice Sebold relates in her chilling memoir Lucky, she was considered fortunate for surviving a violent, devastating rape in her freshman year at Syracuse University. The woman before her had not been so "lucky": She was murdered and dismembered.
The shadow of this fact survives in Sebold's acclaimed novel The Lovely Bones, which is narrated by another not-so-lucky victim from beyond the grave. It's such a maudlin premise that the book shouldn't have been successful—in fact, Sebold's editor has told the author that the manuscript never would have been bought if she had been told what it was about before reading it.
But in her ability to convey the brutal details of crime and its aftermath—both the imagined instance and the real—Sebold is a gripping writer. She is straightforward, but not simply a reporter; in The Lovely Bones, she maintains with sympathy and humor the voice of a 14-year-old who continues, from heaven, to be engaged with life on earth. Without pandering or overwriting, Sebold can elicit tears with the simple but painfully true expression of a character's thought or wish.
Extras
• Sebold is married to author Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil. The two met when Sebold was in the fiction writing program at University of California, Irvine.
• Part of the aftermath of Sebold's traumatic rape in college was a long period of self-abuse, including heroin addiction. After a hard trial in New York trying (and failing) to get published, Sebold decided to leave the city and ultimately applied to grad school at Irvine. ''I couldn't handle the rejection and the failure anymore...and the 'almost' of it all,'' she told Entertainment Weekly. ''Everybody from New York has their almost-but-not-quite story, and I just felt like I don't want to be walking around on the planet trotting out mine.''
• Sebold says that her continued failures ended up creating a good mindset for her writing. "After a while, you don't think what can't be done and what can be done, because no one's going to care anyway," she said in an Associated Press interview. "You just go and have fun in your room, which is what, to me, art should be about anyway." (Author bio from Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
It is indisputably a good thing when writing is so vivid it causes physical reactions.... [Sebold’s] willingness to pry into the darker aspects of human consciousness is what's important.
Los Angeles Times
It's a strange, wild, even hysterical book: visceral, black and unguarded, and there were moments when I wondered if Sebold had gone too far. But my God, it grips....I lay awake half the night, feverishly hoping both that it would never end, and that it would all be over soon.
London Evening Standard
Advance notices of The Almost Moon have tended to carry a caveat, suggesting that Sebold's topic is too unrelentingly grim to promise the sort of reception that The Lovely Bones warranted. For my money it's a better novel. It's brilliantly paced, it's brutally honest, and the Gordian knot at its core—an abusive mother and her traumatically attached daughter—is depicted with such generous intelligence that the fineness of the novel more than surpasses its own horror show of circumstance.
Boston Globe
The Almost Moon has intensity and a page-turning quality. Readers of this book are likely to be discussing it for a long time.”
Seattle Times
A dark, masterful contrast to her essentially sunny crowd-pleaser, The Lovely Bones.... The material is risky and exciting and refreshingly new. Whether readers sympathize with poor Helen or not, all but the squeamish will fall in and follow her to the end.
Chicago Sun-Times
Sebold's unblinking authorial gaze is her hallmark: where lesser writers would turn away from things too horrible to see or feel or admit, her scrutiny never wavers.
Lev Grossman - Time
Sebold's disappointing second novel (after much-lauded The Lovely Bones) opens with the narrator's statement that she has killed her mother. Helen Knightly, herself the mother of two daughters and an art class model old enough to be the mother of the students who sketch her nude figure, is the dutiful but resentful caretaker for her senile 88-year-old mother, Clair. One day, traumatized by the stink of Clair's voided bowels and determined to bathe her, Helen succumbs to a life-long dream and smothers Clair, who had sucked the life out of [Helen] day by day, year by year. After dragging Clair's corpse into the cellar and phoning her ex-husband to confess her crime, Helen has sex with her best friend's 30-year-old blond-god doofus son. Jumping between past and present, Sebold reveals the family's fractured past (insane, agoraphobic mother; tormented father, dead by suicide) and creates a portrait of Clair that resembles Sebold's own mother as portrayed in her memoir, Lucky. While Helen has clearly suffered at her mother's hands, the matricide is woefully contrived, and Helen's handling of the body and her subsequent actions seem almost slapstick. Sebold can write, that's clear, but her sophomore effort is not in line with her talent.
Publishers Weekly
Sebold strikes two notes: grim and grimmer.... The result is an emotionally raw novel that is, at times, almost too painful to read, yet Sebold stays remarkably true to her vision...[and] brings ... such honesty and empathy that many will find their own dark impulses reflected here; however, it is so unremittingly bleak that it seems unlikely that it will be greeted with the same enthusiasm as her debut. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
(Audio version.) Much has been made of Sebold's opening line to her new novel, but it immediately sets the listener up for a roller-coaster journey into ethics and family relationships that may seem too familiar to some and too discomforting to others. Helen Knightly's climactic decision opens the book, but her history with her mother, Clair, and her deceased father are brutally explored through the skillful weaving of memories and haunted immediacy. Almost Moon is very different from The Lovely Bones, and yet the strength of the author's sense of danger told rather matter-of-factly is highly compelling. Joan Allen's reading is almost hypnotic. Highly recommended.
Joyce Kessel - Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. After the conversation with her father about almost moons, Helen says, "I knew I was supposed to understand something from my father's explanation, but what I came away with was that, just as we were stuck with the moon, so too we were stuck with my mother." (page 134) What did Helen's father intend to say with his example of almost moons? Did you think his metaphor was apt?
2. The Almost Moon opens with a startling confession. After the first several pages, why did you think Helen killed her mother? Did you feel sympathy for her at that point? As you learned more about Helen's relationship with her mother—and her mother's overall mental state—did your feelings about Helen change? Did you think she was more justified to act as she did, or did you lose sympathy for her?
3. In Chapters 2-4 and Chapter 11, Helen flashes back to memories from her past. In the first section, she is slowly removing her mother's clothes to bathe her. In the second, she is posing for art students. What do you think Sebold is implying about the relationship of the body to memory? Can you think of other instances in the text when the tactile leads Helen into a greater understanding or awareness of hers or another's past?
4. What motivated Daniel to stay with Clair for all of those years? Do you think his bouts of depression stemmed from a difficult home situation, or did he have larger issues? Should he have taken his daughter and left his wife—for Helen's sake, if not his own—or did he do the right thing by taking care of his wife, so that she wouldn't have to be in an institution? How much do we owe to those we love or have married?
5. What moves Helen to seek a physical connection with Hamish? Did you think their interaction was more than just physical? Was their relationship troubling to you, and was Natalie right to be angered by it?
7. Helen's two daughters, Emily and Sarah, are very different from each other, at one point reminding Helen of polarized magnets (page 80). Helen also tells Jake that "You left the girls ... I may not have been perfect, but I didn't take off ... " (page 167). Do you think Helen was a good mother? Was she a better mother to Sarah than to Emily? How do you feel her daughters would respond to that question?
8. In Chapter 9, Helen meets Mr. Forrest, who provides her an escape from her house. What is the significance to her of the illuminated manuscripts he collects? How does this visit change her view of her own life?
9. When they meet, Jake is Helen's teacher, and she is his muse. What causes them to drift apart and divorce? When he returns, how has their relationship changed?
10. In Chapter 12, Helen's father takes her to Lambeth, where he shows her the remains of his old house. What is the significance of the plywood people? Do they mean different things to Helen and to her father? Why does he select these particular moments of his life to commemorate? And does the town having been unsuccessfully "drowned" reflect any other situations in the novel?
11. How did you interpret the ending of the novel? What is the best way for Helen to make amends or atone for what she did? Or is there no way for her to make things right?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Almost Sisters
Joshilyn Jackson, 2017
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062105714
Summary
A powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality—-the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy—an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old’s life.
But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she’s pregnant.
Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War.
Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows. (From the publisher.)
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Almost Sisters is one of the most delightful books I’ve read in a good while — it’s packed with Jackson’s trademark blend of quirky and endearing characters, who find themselves in messes of their own making. (Don’t we all.) Lots for book groups to talk about, so be sure to put this one on your list. READ MORE…
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Jackson has packed in all the drama needed for a fast-paced summer read, but this isn’t your average beach book. Dark secrets and racism plague Grandma Birchie’s seemingly charming southern town, and…villains aren’t [always] easy to identify.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] light-dark Southern story…. Book clubs will find much to talk about in this multigenerational, Southern tale of sisters, friendship, and small-town life, including the author's signature quirky characters and deft touch. —Laurie Cavanaugh, Thayer P.L., Braintree, MA
Library Journal
[C]ompulsively readable.… Jackson’s characteristic humor, absorbing characters, and candid depictions of messy families.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A]nother spirited page-turner set in a new South still haunted by the ghosts of the old.… Perhaps the novel overreaches—the ending is a bit sober for what comes before—but it's not a major flaw. A satisfying, entertaining read from an admired writer who deserves to be a household name.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the story Leia deals with motherhood in many iterations—when she gets pregnant, when she reverses roles with Birchie, when she sees Rachel floundering and must help Lavender. How does Leia grow as a mother throughout the story? Leia mentions speaking in "unbrookable mother," what do you think she means by that?
2. Leia makes the decision to hide her pregnancy early on, and keeps her secret throughout much of the story. Do you think Leia made the right decision? Were you surprised by characters’ reactions when her pregnancy was revealed?
3. Leia sees her comic book characters as reflections of her inner self—Violet as a reflection of her own innocence, and Violence as her doppelganger. Do you also feel like you have multiple versions of yourself?
4. We see Jake as Leia’s ex-best friend, as Rachel’s husband, and as Lavender’s father. How does your impression of him change throughout the story? Do you feel more sympathy for Rachel or Jake during their conflict?
5. After discovering the trunk of bones, Birchie says, "I told you the first night you were here. I told you at dinner." Did you have any idea who Birchie had been referring to? Were you surprised by what really happened?
6. Despite her worsening dementia, Birchie remains a strong character throughout the book. How would you describe her lifelong friendship with Wattie? Did your impressions change throughout the novel? Why do you think Birchie chose to keep their true relationship a secret even as times changed?
7. For much of the story, Selcouth Martin is referred to only as "Batman." Were you surprised by how different he was from Leia’s memory of their one-night stand? How did your impression of Selcouth change throughout the novel?
8. There are multiple relationships in the novel that fit the title The Almost Sisters description. How did the title take on new meaning to you as the story developed?
9.At the end of the novel, Selcouth is there for the birth of his son. What was your impression of the nature of Leia and Selcouth’s relationship at this point? Do you want them to be together?
10.Leia is a comic book artist who has found herself up against a creative roadblock. Has this happened to you and how have you worked through it?
11.The Almost Sisters deals with difficult topics like race, privilege and family. Everyone has biases—in life and in books—but some people handle them better than others. Which of these characters dealt with these the best? The worst? Do you see similar situations or challenges in your own life?
12.Leia talks about there being two Souths that exist simultaneously. Do you agree?
(Questions are issued by the publisher.)
Along the Infinite Sea
Beatriz Williams, 2015
Penguin Publishing
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399171314
Summary
An epic story of star-crossed lovers in pre-war Europe collides with a woman on the run in the swinging '60s, in another riveting novel of the Schuyler sisters from the New York Times bestselling author of Tiny Little Thing.
In the autumn of 1966, Pepper Schuyler's problems are in a class of their own. To find a way to take care of herself and the baby she carries—the result of an affair with a married, legendary politician—she fixes up a beautiful and rare vintage Mercedes and sells it at auction.
But the car's new owner, the glamorous Annabelle Dommerich, has her own secrets: a Nazi husband, a Jewish lover, a flight from Europe, and a love so profound it transcends decades.
As the many threads of Annabelle's life before the Second World War stretch out to entangle Pepper in 1960s America, and the father of her unborn baby tracks her down to a remote town in coastal Georgia, the two women must come together to face down the shadows of their complicated pasts. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Raised—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.B.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Greenwich, Connecticut
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons.
She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[R]iveting historical fiction that illuminates love so strong that it transcends decades.
Boston Globe
Annabelle, Stefan and Johann are a complicated and compelling love triangle. In this romantic adventure, Williams gives even the Nazi a measure of humanity. Curl up in your comfy chair and leave your doubts behind. Pepper and Annabelle are fabulous babes to spend time with on a cold winter night.
USA Today
Similar to the author’s other page-turners, there is a parallel story here about another young woman...whose life in 1935 is upended when her Jewish lover disappears.... Though Williams tries to give both narratives nearly equal weight, Annabelle’s distinctive character and story are far stronger than Pepper’s. Nonetheless, the happy ending will surely satisfy the bestselling author’s many fans.
Publishers Weekly
With spunky characters full of grace and grit... The swift pacing and emotional twists and turns of the plot will leave readers guessing up to the final pages. Recommended for readers who enjoyed the atmosphere and characters of Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) With the killer charm of a Rodgers and Hammerstein score and a touch of du Maurier intrigue, Williams' latest sexy and enthralling period drama (on the high heels of Tiny Little Thing) draws readers into the parallel, luxe worlds of two sparky women in the post-Camelot 1960s (a Best Book of the Year).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Along the Infinite Sea...then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the two women, Pepper and Annabelle. Describe their personalities—how they differ from and how they resemble one another. What does Annabelle see in Pepper (other than the pregnancy) that draws her to the younger woman?
2. Is it probable that a woman with a Jewish lover, especially if he joins the Resistance, would fall in love with a Nazi officer? How does the author portray Johann? Talk, then, about the nature of love—how it grows in the most improbable of circumstances and is capable of surmounting obstacles thrown in its path. Does love conquer all?
3. The story switches back and forth between the two heroines and two time frames. Did you find one story more compelling than the other, or were both equally engaging to you?
4. Did you find the plot predictable? Or were you pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns and the way in which the book ended?
5. Have you read Beatriz Williams's two previous books in the Schuyler sisters series. If so, how does this book compare? Is it necessary to have read the other two before reading this third installment, or does this last stand on its own?
6. Talk about the title of the book, "Along the Infinite Sea," and its significance to the story?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Along the Watchtower
Constance Squires, 2011
Penguin Publishing Group
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594485237
Summary
Set against the closing years of the Cold War, Constance Squires's debut novel introduces the family of Army Major Collins, as told through the eyes of Lucinda Collins—the vibrant, headstrong eldest daughter.
Living on a military base, Lucinda feels displaced and isolated. Over time she finds her own tribe through rock and roll, and meets fellow Army brats, GIs, a ghost, and Syd, who knows how it goes. But after her father's final shocking betrayal, the only world she's ever believed in falls in like the Berlin Wall, leaving Lucinda to chart a new path.
In spare, heart-wrenchingly beautiful prose, Squires offers us a rare glimpse into the experiences and sacrifices of an American military family. Along the Watchtower is a powerful story that reveals what it really means to fight for the things we believe in and to defend the ones we love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1968-69
• Where—Fort Sill, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—Ph.D., Oklahoma State University
• Awards—Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Edmond, Oklahoma
Constance Squires is a city person who needs a lot of room. She lives on an acre at the northern edge of Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, with her husband, daughter, three dogs, a cat, a lizard, a piano, a guitar, a drum set, and too many books.
Squires holds a Ph.D. in English from Oklahoma State University and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. In addition to Live from Medicine Park (2017), she is the author of the novel Along the Watchtower (2011), which won the 2012 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction, and a short story collection, Wounding Radius (2018). Her short stories have appeared in Guernica, Atlantic Monthly, Shenandoah, Identity Theory, Bayou, Dublin Quarterly, This Land, and a number of other magazines.
Squires' nonfiction has appeared in Salon, New York Times, Village Voice, World Literature Today, Philological Review, Largehearted Boy, and has been featured on the NPR program Snap Judgment. She has been a regular contributor to the RollingStone500: Telling Stories in Stereo (thers500.com) and wrote the screenplay for Sundance fellow Jeffrey Palmer's 2015 short film, Grave Misgivings. In addition, she was a judge in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, episode of Literary Death Match, and was the featured guest editor for This Land’s summer fiction issue.
She is currently working on a novel, The Real Remains, about a couple in modern-day Oklahoma forced to deal with aftershocks from the 1995 Murrah Bombing when a friend they believed but could never prove perished in the blast reaches out to them on Facebook. (From the author's website .)
Book Reviews
While those interested in military life will be drawn to this book, readers of all backgrounds and of many age groups will feel a strong connection to these characters. This is a superbly told coming-of-age story.
World Literature Today
[T]he coming-of-age of Lucinda Collins, an adolescent army brat growing up in Germany in the '80s.… The best moments come from brief encounters with with uniformed men… pushing Lucinda to make personal her abstract philosophies, on war, the military, and herself.
Publishers Weekly
[A]n inside look at the life of an army brat.… A unique, compelling perspective on the dynamics of a military family, springing from the experience of someone who has been there. —Susanne Wells, MLS, Indianapolis
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. We learn that the Collins family’s first European tour of duty took place when Lucinda was a toddler, and that at that time they "had gone everywhere and seen everything and loved every minute of it." The mood at their arrival at Grafenwoehr, about a dozen years later, is markedly different. Major Collins says about his wife, "I thought she’d take care of things. She always takes care of things"; Faye Collins says to her husband, "A new low, Jack." What do you infer about the intervening years from what Jack and Faye each fail to do at the outset of the novel?
2. Frequent moves subject Lucinda to the repeated loss of friends and, as a result, she experiences conflict at the prospect of friendship with her fellow Army brats. How are the circumstances of Syd Eliot’s and, later, Liz Frye’s departure from Grafenwoehr further complicated? How might Lucinda’s experience of those leave-takings be different if the book was set in today’s world instead of in the 1980s?
3. Very early in Syd and Lucinda’s acquaintance, Major Collins tells Syd "not to give up" on his daughter and calls him Lucinda’s "one true love." Given what you know about Jack Collins, why do you think he says this?
4. The author chooses a Jim Morrison lyric as an epigraph: "Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind," which could literally refer to Lucinda and the Nazi ghost in her Bible school classroom. How does it refer to her in a thematic sense? Major Collins also refers to his Vietnam "ghosts." What evidence is there that this could be literal and not merely the "turn of phrase" his wife dismisses it as?
5. How do Faye Collins and Major Collins cope with Lucinda’s condition?
6. Lucinda shoulders adult responsibility in some critical situations—taking it upon herself to go to her father for help when the family arrives at Grafenwoehr, calling her mother back from Paris when she learns her father is sleeping with a neighbor. How do Jack and Faye Collins intentionally or unintentionally place onerous responsibilities on their daughter? How do their behaviors shape Lucinda’s later relationships with each parent?
7. Despite her father’s rigid beliefs and occasionally unsympathetic behavior, Lucinda’s bond with Major Collins is apparent—for example, she tries to get him to see the Nazi ghost in her Bible school classroom, and he gets Private First Class Nately to tape record albums for her. Do your perceptions of Lucinda’s father change throughout the book? What incidents shift your opinion of him? What surprises you about him?
8. Faye Collins was a foster child and a former "hippie," who married and had Lucinda at a young age. Does her past help you understand her views and actions?
9. Unpleasant realities of war and military life are described or alluded to in the book, including Major Collins’s slides of dead bodies in Vietnam and Major Frye’s apparent post-traumatic stress disorder. How does Lucinda react when confronted with each of these realities?
10. Lucinda’s obsession with music underpins a portion of the book and informs its title, Along the Watchtower. How does it relate to her circumstances in the book?
11. In many ways, Lucinda seems like a typical teenager—obsessed with music, testing boundaries, engaging in risky behavior with no serious consequences. What, if anything, makes her atypical? Though largely unspoken, what evidence is there that her parents’ split is affecting her life at this time?
12. Private Rob Dalton, Lucinda’s ride to the Nuremberg punk club, nicknames himself "Toxic" and at times seems to embody his moniker. How do your sympathies toward this character change: When his tattoos are revealed? When he is beaten up at the punk club? When he drives the tank through the school wall to free the ghost? When his swastika tattoo is revealed to be a fake? What draws Lucinda to him in the first place? What does "Toxic" have in common with her?
13. Major Collins’s Army experience started in Vietnam and ended with the Gulf War. In what ways were those two experiences different for him? How do these experiences parallel varying American public opinions of war, in general? Given that Collins is a career soldier, do his opinions of war change? In what ways do you agree or disagree with him?
15. Lucinda and Syd connect periodically, in different circumstances, throughout the course of the novel. How do the changes we see in Syd each time parallel Lucinda’s personal exploration and growth? Are you surprised, as she is, to find out he enlists in the Army? How do you feel about his explanation?
16. After Faye Collins’s remarriage and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lucinda can feel in her father "the hole in him howling to be filled" and thinks, "she had the same hole.… [It was] their most striking similarity." Is Major Collins himself aware of that hole? Do you think he tries to fill it himself? How?
17. The existence of Shiloh, the Collins’ ancestral home in Texas, is introduced early in the novel and becomes a symbol to Lucinda who envies "people who were from somewhere, who had one constant place that tethered their memories." Discuss the impact that Shiloh has on Lucinda when she finally visits, and juxtapose the idea of Shiloh with the historical Roanoke Colony in Virginia, which also fascinates Lucinda. How are the two different? Why do you think Major Collins goes back to the rock on which Lucinda was conceived? In what ways does this help her process her life situation?
18. Why do you think Major Collins sets up college funds for his two younger children but doesn’t help out Lucinda financially? Is there any evidence in the book that she would "rather die than take help from anybody," as he says? Why, despite her feelings, doesn’t she contradict him more forcefully?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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.)
The Amateur Marriage
Anne Tyler, 2004
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400042982
Summary
From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage—and its consequences, spanning three generations.
They seemed like the perfect couple—young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother’s grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.
Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. While other young marrieds, equally ignorant at the start, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs.
In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings to the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyielding Michael, they become unbearable.
From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition.
Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 25, 1941
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Duke University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize (see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Anne Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published 20 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the third won it.
She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" (New York Times), and her "rigorous and artful style" and "astute and open language" (also, New York Times). While many of her characters have been described as quirky or eccentric, she has managed to make them seem real through skillfully fleshing out their inner lives in great depth.
Her subject in all her novels has been the American family and marriage: the boredom and exasperating irritants endured by partners, children, siblings, parents; the desire for freedom pulling against the tethers of attachments and conflicted love; the evolution over time of familial love and sense of duty. Tyler celebrates unremarkable Americans and the ordinary details of their everyday lives. Because of her style and subject matter, she has been compared to John Updike, Jane Austen, and Eudora Welty, among others.
Childhood
The eldest of four children, she was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father, Lloyd Parry Tyler, was an industrial chemist and her mother, Phyllis Mahon Tyler, a social worker. Both her parents were Quakers who were very active with social causes in the Midwest and the South. Her family lived in a succession of Quaker communities in the South until they settled in 1948 in a Quaker commune in Celo, in the mountains of North Carolina near Burnsville.
The Celo Community settlement was founded by conscientious objectors and members of the liberal Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, with community labor needs shared by the residents. Tyler lived there from age 7 through 11 and helped her parents and others with caring for livestock and organic farming. While she did not attend formal public school in Celo, lessons were taught in art, carpentry, and cooking in homes and in other subjects in a tiny school house. Her early informal training was supplemented by correspondence school.
Her first memory of her own creative story-telling was of crawling under the bed covers at age 3 and "telling myself stories in order to get to sleep at night." Her first book at age 7 was a collection of drawings and stories about "lucky girls...who got to go west in covered wagons." Her favorite book as a child was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. Tyler acknowledges that this book, which she read many times during this period of limited access to books, had a profound influence on her, showing how the years flowed by, people altered, and nothing could ever stay the same."
This early perception of changes over time is a theme that reappears in many of her novels decades later, just as The Little House itself appears in her novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Tyler also describes reading Little Women 22 times as a child. When the Tyler family left Celo after four years to move to Raleigh, NC, 11-year-old Anne had never attended public school and never used a telephone. This unorthodox upbringing enabled her to view "the normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise."
Raleigh, North Carolina
It also meant that Tyler felt herself to be an outsider in the public schools she attended in Raleigh, a feeling that has followed her most of her life. She believes that this sense of being an outsider has contributed to her becoming a writer:
I believe that any kind of setting-apart situation will do [to become a writer]. In my case, it was emerging from the commune…and trying to fit into the outside world.
Despite her lack of public schooling prior to age 11, Anne entered school academically well ahead of most of her classmates in Raleigh. With access now to libraries, she discovered Eudora Welty, Gabriel García Márquez, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. Welty remains one of her favorite writers, and she credits Welty with showing her that books could be about the everyday details of life, not just about major events.
During her years at N. B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, she was inspired and encouraged by a remarkable English teacher, Phyllis Peacock. Peacock had previously taught the writer Reynolds Price, under whom Tyler would later study at Duke University. She would also later teach the writer Armistead Maupin. Seven years after high school, Tyler would dedicate her first published novel to "Mrs. Peacock, for everything you’ve done."
Education
Tyler won a full scholarship to Duke University, which her parents urged her to go accept it because they also needed money for the education of her three younger brothers. At Duke, Tyler enrolled in Reynolds Price's first creative writing class, which also included a future poet, Fred Chappell. Price was most impressed with the sixteen-year-old Tyler, describing her as "frighteningly mature for 16," "wide-eyed," and "an outsider." Years later Price would describe Tyler as "one of the best novelists alive in the world,… who was almost as good a writer at 16 as she is now."
While an undergraduate, Tyler published her short story "Laura" in the Duke literary journal Archive, for which she won the newly created Anne Flexner award for creative writing. She wrote many short stories, one of which impressed Reynolds Price so that he later stated that it was the "most finished, most accomplished short story I have ever received from an undergraduate in my thirty years of teaching." "The Saints in Caesar’s Household" was published in Archive also and won her a second Anne Flexner award. This short story led to her meeting Diarmuid Russell, to whom Price had sent it with kudos. Russell, who was an agent for both Reynolds Price and for Tyler’s "crowning influence" Eudora Welty, later became Tyler’s agent.
Tyler majored in Russian Literature at Duke—not English—and graduated in 1961, at age 19, having been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. With her Russian Literature background she received a fellowship to graduate school in Slavic Studies at Columbia University although she left after a year without her master's degree. She returned to Duke where she got a job in the library as a Russian bibliographer. It was there that she met Taghi Modarressi, a resident in child psychiatry in Duke Medical School and a writer himself, and they were married a year later (1963).
Early writing
While working at the Duke library—before and after marrying Modarressi—Tyler continued to write short stories, which appeared in The New Yoker, Saturday Evening Post, and Harpers. She also started work on her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, eventually published 1964, followed by The Tin Can Tree in 1965. Years later she disowned both of these novels, as well as many of the short stories she wrote during this period, going so far as to say she "would like to burn them." She feels that most of this early work suffers from the lack of thorough character development and her failure to rework material repeatedly.
After the birth of two children (1965 and 1967), followed by a move from Montreal, Canada, to Baltimore in the U.S., Tyler had little time or energy for writing. She published nothing from 1965 to 1970. By 1970, however, she began writing again and published three more novels by 1974—A Slipping-Down Life, The Clock Winder, and Celestial Navigation. In her own opinion, her writing improved considerably during this period; with her children entering school, she was able to devote more time—and focus more intensely—than at any time since her undergraduate days.
National recognition
With Celestial Navigation, Tyler began to get wider recognition. Morgan's Passing (1980) won her the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction and was nominated for both the American Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
With her next novel (her ninth), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Tyler truly arrived as a recognized artist in the literary world. (She considers Homesick her best work.) Her tenth novel, The Accidental Tourist, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1985. It was also made into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. The popularity of this well-received film further increased the growing public awareness of her work. Her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989 and was Time magazine’s "Book of the Year." It was adapted into a 1994 TV movie, as eventually were four other of her novels.
Since her Pulitzer Prize with Breathing Lessons, Tyler has written 9 more novels, all of favorably reviewed, many Book of the Month Club Main Selections and New York Times Bestsellers.
Analysis
In Tyler’s own words, the characters are the driving forces behind the stories and the starting point for her writing:
I do make a point of writing down every imaginable facet of my characters before I begin a book, trying to get to know them so I can figure out how they’ll react in any situation…..My reason for writing now is to live lives other than my own, and I do that by burrowing deeper and deeper….till I reach the center of those lives.
The magic of her novels starts with her ability to create those characters in the reader’s mind through the use of remarkably realistic details. The late Canadian author Carol Shields, writing about Tyler's characters, observes:
Tyler has always put her characters to work. Their often humble or eccentric occupations, carefully observed and threaded with humor, are tightly sewn to the other parts of their lives, offering them the mixed benefit of tedium and consolation, as well as a lighted stage for the unfolding of their dramatic selves. She also allows her men and women an opportunity for redemption.
Tyler has clearly spelled out the importance of her characters to her stories: "As far as I’m concerned, character is everything. I never did see why I have to throw in a plot, too."
Stylistically, Tyler's writing is difficult to categorize or label. Novelist Cathleen Schine describes how her "style without a style" manages to pull the reader into the story:
So rigorous and artful is the style without a style, so measured and delicate is each observation, so complex is the structure and so astute and open the language, that the reader can relax, feel secure in the narrative and experience the work as something real and natural.
The San Francisco Chronicle made a similar point: "One does not so much read a Tyler novel as visit it.
While Tyler herself does not like to think of her novels in terms of themes, numerous reviewers and scholars have noted the importance of family and marriage relationships to her characters and stories. Reviewing Noah's Compass, New York Times' Mitchiko Kakutani noted that
The central concern of most of this author’s characters has always been their need to define themselves in terms of family—the degree to which they see themselves as creatures shaped by genetics, childhood memories and parental and spousal expectations, and the degree to which they are driven to embrace independent identities of their own.
Tyler is not without her critics. The most common criticism is that her works are "sentimental," "sweet," and "charming and cosy." Even Kakutani has also occasionally bemoaned a "cloying cuteness," noting that "her novels—with their eccentric heroes, their homespun details, their improbable, often heartwarming plots—have often flirted with cuteness." In her own defense, Tyler has said,
For one thing I think it is sort of true. I would say piss and vinegar for [Philip] Roth and for me milk and cookies. I can’t deny it…. [However] there’s more edge under some of my soft language than people realize.
Also, because almost all of Tyler’s work covers the same territory—family and marriage relationships—and are located in the same setting, she has come under criticism for being repetitive and formulaic.
Tyler’s advice to beginning writers:
They should run out and buy the works of Erving Goffman, the sociologist who studied the meaning of gesture in personal interactions. I have cause to think about Erving Goffman nearly every day of my life, every time I see people do something unconscious that reveals more than they’ll ever know about their interiors. Aren’t human beings intriguing? I could go on writing about them forever."
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/2015.)
Book Reviews
Although acquaintances like to think of them as a perfect couple, Pauline and Michael are constantly bickering, sulking and fighting at home. And by cutting back and forth among the viewpoints of different characters, Ms. Tyler is able to provide a kaleidoscopic view of their marriage, and the ripple effect that their contentious relationship has on their children...an ode to the complexities of familial love, the centripetal and centrifugal forces that keep families together and send their members flying apart, the supremely ordinary pleasures and frustrations of middle-class American life.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
In new novel The Amateur Marriage, Anne Tyler once again displays the qualities of wisdom, insightful writing and compassion that have made the Baltimore resident the most-admired serious yet popular writer working today. One is never embarrassed to be seen reading a Tyler novel.
Deidre Donahue - USA Today
This novel of marital unhappiness focuses on a couple whose fraught relationship spans sixty years. In the early days of the Second World War, Michael and Pauline find themselves drawn together despite misgivings and bitter fights. The resulting marriage is a thirty-year clash between her impulsiveness and self-absorption and his taciturnity and barely suppressed rage. Tyler examines their acrimonious bond, which persists even after their eventual divorce, with a keen eye for the minor differences that suddenly widen into chasms. In order to illuminate every facet of the couple’s interactions and personalities, the story is told from several points of view: those of Michael and Pauline and two of their three children. Although Tyler’s prose occasionally slips into banality, she never falters in creating vivid characters whose weaknesses are both credible and compelling.
The New Yorker
A lesser novelist would take moral sides, using this story to make a didactic point. Tyler is much more concerned with the fine art of human survival in changing circumstances. The range and power of this novel should not only please Tyler's immense readership but also awaken us to the collective excellency of her career.
Publishers Weekly
Tyler makes a strong return with this memorable exploration of personal identity within middle-class family life.... Their sad story, as dark and ironic as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, is leavened by Tyler's trademark comic details, narrated with characteristic dry and witty understatement. This rewarding work is recommended for most public libraries. —Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Falls Church, VA.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What is noticeable about the narrative voice in the first chapter? At the end of the chapter the narrator states, "They were such a perfect couple. They were taking their very first steps on the amazing journey of marriage, and wonderful adventures were about to unfold in front of them" (p. 34). Whose voice is this meant to be? Why is the chapter called "Common Knowledge"?
2. How does the presence of Mrs. Anton affect Michael and Pauline’s marriage? What has made Mrs. Anton so dependent on her son? Is Michael unfair to Pauline in expecting her to care for his mother? Who is Michael more obligated to—his mother or his wife?
3. How is Pauline’s flirtation with Alex Barrow related to the letters she sent Michael while he was away in the army (pp. 54–55)? What does the reader learn about her character in the chapter called "The Anxiety Committee"? Would someone like Alex Barrow have been a better choice for Pauline? What goes through her mind as she sits downstairs alone? Why does she decide not to go out and meet him that night?
4. In its early chapters, The Amateur Marriage gives readers a view of life in an ethnic working-class neighborhood in Baltimore. Later, the setting shifts to a newly built suburb, where the family gradually moves into the middle class. What are the effects of this shift on the family? How does Anton’s experience reflect a change in American family life in the postwar decades?
5. Michael thinks of Pauline as "a frantic, impossible woman, so unstable, even in good moods, with her exultant voice and glittery eyes, her dangerous excitement" (p. 167). Meanwhile Pauline "chafed daily at...his rigidity, his caution, his literal-mindedness...his reluctance to spend money, his suspicion of anything unfamiliar, his tendency to pass judgment...[and] his magical ability to make her seem hysterical" (p. 75). Does the narrative present us with a more positive view of Michael or of Pauline? Who is the more sympathetic character?
6. Pauline enters Michael’s life in a vivid red coat, bleeding because she jumped impulsively from a streetcar to join a parade (pp. 3–5). Does the report of her death in a car accident years later (pp. 275–76) imply that Pauline hasn’t changed? Why does Tyler frame Pauline’s presence in the novel with two accidents?
7. As he posed in the photography studio for a fifteenth-anniversary portrait with Pauline, Michael remembers thinking, "Who was this woman? What did she have to do with him? How could they be expected to share a house, rear children together, combine their separate lives for all time? The knob of her shoulder pressing into his armpit had felt like an inanimate object" (p. 137). The photograph shows “Mr. and Mrs. Perfectly Fine.... An advertisement for marriage” (p. 137). Are these thoughts an indication that, for Michael at least, the marriage is doomed? How does this photograph relate to the double portrait described on p. 172? What distinction is Tyler making between the public and private aspects of married life?
8. Reflecting on his marriage, Michael imagines that "all those young marrieds of the war years" have grown "wise and seasoned and comfortable in their roles, until only he and Pauline remained, as inexperienced as ever—the last couple left in the amateurs' parade" (p. 168). He felt they were "more like brother and sister than husband and wife. This constant elbowing and competing, jockeying for position, glorying in I-told-you-so" (p. 168). How common are the problems that Michael and Pauline experience in their relationship? Is Michael correct in thinking that he and Pauline are unusual in their long-standing "amateur marriage"?
9. Do Michael and Pauline handle their trip to San Francisco well or badly? Why do they take Pagan home without pursuing their attempt to bring Lindy home as well? Why do they never go back and try again? Does the episode suggest that they are both fundamentally passive and ineffectual people? Or does it suggest, on the other hand, that they are realistic and know how to protect themselves from grief?
10. How is the narrative organized, and how do the chapters handle the flow of time? What is achieved in the structure that Tyler has chosen for this novel? Does the narrative point of view tend to illuminate the thoughts of all characters equally? If not, into which characters are we are given more insight and access?
11. In what ways does Tyler distinguish herself from other contemporary novelists you have read? Look closely at a few favorite passages and discuss how she achieves the effects of style, humor, and insight that make her work so enjoyable.
12. "Time," Anne Tyler has said, "has always been a central obsession of mine—what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own." Does Michael’s decision to leave the marriage after 30 years, and his careful courtship of Anna, reveal a desire to redeem lost time? How is his relationship with Anna different from his first marriage? Why doesn’t Pauline remarry?
13. How surprising is the reappearance of Lindy? Why has Lindy never tried to contact Pagan before this? Is her return to the story satisfying or not?
14. To Lindy, the family was like "an animal caught in a trap.... Just the five of us in this wretched, tangled knot, inward-turned, stunted, like a trapped fox chewing its own leg off" (p. 300). Does Tyler suggest that such a feeling is natural when people feel alienated from their families or misunderstood by them? What might Michael and Pauline have done differently? Is their helplessness in the face of Lindy’s unhappiness their own fault, or does the novel suggest that there is a limit to what parents can feel responsible for?
15. How are George and Karen affected in their development by the disappearance of Lindy and by their parents’ troubled marriage? Does Tyler suggest that children become themselves in spite of, or in reaction to, family stresses?
16. Anne Tyler has said, "My fondest hope for any of my novels is that readers will feel, after finishing it, that for a while they have actually stepped inside another person’s life and come to feel related to that person." Does The Amateur Marriage achieve this goal?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon, 2000
Macmillian Picador
656 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812983586
Summary
Winner, 2001 Pulitizer Prize
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat—smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book.
Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor, and the Otherworldy Mistress of the Night, Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men. The golden age of comic books has begun, even as the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a stunning novel of endless comic invention and unforgettable characters, written in the exhilarating prose that has led critics to compare Michael Chabon to Cheever and Nabokov. In Joe Kavalier, Chabon, writing "like a magical spider, effortlessly spinning out elaborate webs of words that ensnare the reader" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times), has created a hero for the century. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 24, 1963
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.F.A., University of California-Irvine
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon) is an American novelist and short story writer. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1988 when he was still a graduate student. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that New York Times's John Leonard, once referred to as Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. All told, Chabon has published nearly 10 novels, including a Young Adult novel, a children's book, two collection of short stories, and two collections of essays.
Early years
Michael Chabon was born in Washington, DC to Robert Chabon, a physician and lawyer, and Sharon Chabon, a lawyer. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment. When the story received an A, Chabon recalls, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do.... And I never had any second thoughts or doubts."
His parents divorced when Chabon was 11, and he lived in Columbia, Maryland, with his mother nine months of the year and with his father in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the summertime. He has written of his mother's marijuana use, recalling her "sometime around 1977 or so, sitting in the front seat of her friend Kathy's car, passing a little metal pipe back and forth before we went in to see a movie." He grew up hearing Yiddish spoken by his mother's parents and siblings.
Chabon attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied under Chuck Kinder and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then went to graduate school at the University of California-Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.
Initial success
While he was at UC, his Master's thesis was published as a novel. Unbeknownst to Chabon, his professor sent it to a literary agent—the result was a publishing contract for The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and an impressive $155,000 advance. Mysteries appeared in 1988, becoming a bestseller and catapulting Chabon to literary stardom.
Chabon was ambivalent about his new-found fame. He turned down offers to appear in a Gap ad and to be featured as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People." Years later, he reflected on the success of his first novel:
The upside was that I was published and I got a readership.... [The] downside...was that, emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, "Wait a minute, is my thesis done yet?" It took me a few years to catch up.
Personal
His success had other adverse affects: it caused an imbalance between his and his wife's careers. He was married at the time to poet Lollie Groth, and they ended up divorcing in 1991. Two years later he married the writer Ayelet Waldman; the couple lives in Berkeley, California, with their four children.
Chabon has said that the "creative free-flow" he has with Waldman inspired the relationship between Sammy Clay and Rosa Saks in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Entertainment Weekly declared the couple "a famous—and famously in love—writing pair, like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze."
In a 2012 NPR interview, Chabon told Guy Raz that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He attempts 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said,
There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them.... The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life.
Novels
1988 - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
1995 - The Wonder Boys
2000 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2002 - Summerland (Young Adult)
2004 - The Final Solution
2007 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union
2007 - Gentlemen of the Road
2012 - Telegraph Avenue
2016 - Moonglow
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/2/2016.)
Book Reviews
The depth of Chabon’s thought, his sharp language, his inventiveness and his ambition make this a novel of towering achievement.
Ken Kalful - The New York Times Book Review
...the themes are masterfully explored, leaving the book's sense of humor intact and characters so highly developed they could walk off the page...Chabon has pulled off another great feat.
Newsweek
This epic novel about the glory years of the American comic book (1939-1954) fulfills all the promise of Chabon's two earlier novels (The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Wonder Boys) and two collections of short stories, and nearly equals them all together in number of pages. Chabon's prodigious gifts for language, humor and wonderment come to full maturity in this fictional history of the legendary partnership between Sammy Klayman and Josef Kavalier, cousins and creators of the prewar masked comic book hero, the Escapist. Sammy is a gifted inventor of characters and situations who dreams "the usual Brooklyn dreams of flight and transformation and escape." His contribution to the superhero's alter ego, Tom Mayflower, is his own stick legs, a legacy of childhood polio. Joe Kavalier, a former Prague art student, arrives in Brooklyn by way of Siberia, Japan and San Francisco. This improbable route marks only the first in a lifetime of timely escapes. Denied exit from Nazi Czechoslovakia with the visa his family sold its fortune to buy him, Joe, a disciple of Houdini, enlists the aid of his former teacher, the celebrated stage illusionist Bernard Kornblum, in a more desperate escape: crouched inside the coffin transporting Prague's famous golem, Rabbi Loew's miraculous automaton, to the safety of exile in Lithuania. This melodramatic getaway--almost foiled when the Nazi officer inspecting the corpse decides the suit it's wearing is too fine to bury—is presented with the careful attention to detail of a true-life adventure. Chabon heightens realism through a series of inspired matches: the Escapist, who roams the globe "coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains," with Joe's powerlessness to rescue his family from Prague; Kavalier & Clay's Empire City with New York City in the early 1940s; and the comic industry's "avidity of unburdening America's youth of the oppressive national mantle of tedium, ten cents at a time," with this fledgling art form's ability to gratify "the lust for power and the gaudy sartorial taste of a race of powerless people with no leave to dress themselves." Well researched and deeply felt, this rich, expansive and hugely satisfying novel will delight a wide range of readers.
Publishers Weekly
Joe Kavalier, a young artist and magician, escapes pre-World War II Czechoslovakia, making his way to the home of Sam Clay, his Brooklyn cousin. Sam dreams of making it big in the emerging comic-book trade and sees Joe as the person to help him. As the cousins gain success with their masked superhero, the Escapist, Joe banks his earnings to bring his family from Prague and falls in love with Rosa Saks, daughter of an art dealer. But when the ship carrying his brother to America is torpedoed, Joe joins the navy and is posted to Antarctica. Half-insane, he returns to a wandering life that leads back to Rosa and now husband Sam in 1953. What results is a novel of love and loss, sorrow and wonder, and the ability of art to transcend the "harsh physics" of this world and gives us a magical glimpse of "the mysterious spirit world beyond." Recommended.
Library Journal
As Chabon—equally adept at atmosphere, action, dialogue, and cultural commentary--whips up wildly imaginative escapades punctuated by schtick that rivals the best of Jewish comedians, he plumbs the depths of the human heart and celebrates the healing properties of escapism and the "genuine magic of art" with exuberance and wisdom. Donna Seama.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. When we are first introduced to Sammy Klayman, we are told: "Houdini was a hero to little men, city boys, and Jews; Samuel Louis Klayman was all three. He was seventeen when the adventures began: bigmouthed, perhaps not quite as quick on his feet as he liked to imagine, and tending to be, like many optimists, a little excitable... He slouched, and wore clothes badly: he always looked as though he had just been jumped for his lunch money." Discuss this description. What does this portrayal suggest about growing up in urban America in the late 1930's?
2. What is the appeal of Houdini to Sammy and Joe? How is that appeal common to boys growing up during the depression? To boys of any era?
3. The theme of escape runs throughout the novel. What are Sammy and Joe escaping from? What are they escaping to?
4. Discuss how the following passage draws an analogy between the creation of the Golem and the writing of superhero comics: "Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat—was literally talked into life. Kavalier and Clay—whose Golem was to be formed of black lines and four-color dots of the lithographer—lay down, lit the first of five dozen cigarettes they were to consume that afternoon, and started to talk."
5. What role does the Golem have in the story? What does the Golem signify? Why did Chabon include this legend in his novel?
6. What is a superhero? Are superhero stories mythological in nature? What is it about the experience of young men that inspires superhero stories?
7. In what ways are the experiences of Joe Kavalier parallel to the events in the Superman myth?
8. After the tragedies at the end of "Part IV: The Golden Age," Rosa is left, quite literally, holding the baby. When we see her next, ten years have passed. What decisions was Rosa forced to make? How does she represent stability and security in the novel? Is she in control of her own destiny, or is she subject to the needs and whims of the men in her life? Is there anything that she is escaping from or to?
9. What is the significance of names and name-changes in the novel? How are names significant in the legend of the Golem?
10. How are Joe Kavalier's life and longings reflected in his fictional hero the Escapist?
11. Sammy has a relationship with an actor named Tracy Bacon. What is the attraction between the two men? How does Tracy-in name and person-represent a forbidden fruit to Sammy?
12. In Part I, Joe was able to escape the encroaching Nazi threat by hiding in a coffin. Having avoided the horrors of the war, why did he enlist in the Navy (Part V)? How was his escape from Czechoslovakia mirrored in his survival at the Antarctic Naval station? In what ways were these two escapes similar? What did Bernard Kornblum represent in each case?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Ambassador's Daughter
Pan Jenoff, 2013
Mira
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778315094
Summary
Paris, 1919.
The world's leaders have gathered to rebuild from the ashes of the Great War. But for one woman, the City of Light harbors dark secrets and dangerous liaisons, for which many could pay dearly.
Brought to the peace conference by her father, a German diplomat, Margot Rosenthal initially resents being trapped in the congested French capital, where she is still looked upon as the enemy. But as she contemplates returning to Berlin and a life with Stefan, the wounded fiancé she hardly knows anymore, she decides that being in Paris is not so bad after all.
Bored and torn between duty and the desire to be free, Margot strikes up unlikely alliances: with Krysia, an accomplished musician with radical acquaintances and a secret to protect; and with Georg, the handsome, damaged naval officer who gives Margot a job—and also a reason to question everything she thought she knew about where her true loyalties should lie.
Against the backdrop of one of the most significant events of the century, a delicate web of lies obscures the line between the casualties of war and of the heart, making trust a luxury that no one can afford. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., George Washington University; M.A., Cambridge University; J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. She attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge University in England.
Upon receiving her master's in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor.
Following her work at the Pentagon, Pam moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.
Pam left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for several years as a labor and employment attorney both at a firm and in-house in Philadelphia and now teaches law school at Rutgers.
Pam is the author of The Kommandant's Girl, which was an international bestseller and nominated for a Quill award, as well as The Diplomat's Wife, The Ambassador's Daughter, Almost Home, A Hidden Affair and The Things We Cherished.
She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A tale of surprise betrayals, unquenchable desire, and a necessary awakening, Jenoff’s thorough and elaborate descriptions of character and setting makes for a satisfying period romance
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. As the story opened, Margot appeared to be an independent and confident young woman. How do you think her character changed throughout the story, and what caused those changes? What do you feel was her greatest strength and weakness?
2. How do you think the loss of her mother affected Margot? How did this change throughout the book, particularly when she learned the truth?
3. Georg and Margot developed feelings for one another after mere days. What did you see in their time together that attracted them so powerfully? Do you believe it is possible to fall in love so quickly and for such a relationship to last?
4. How was it possible for Margot to keep secrets from those she professed to love most? How did it affect her relationships with her father, with Georg? Do you think that Margot’s choices were justified by her intentions?
5. Margot and Krysia became such close friends despite significant differences in age and circumstances. What do you think it was that drew them together, and what did each of them provide for the other? Have you ever found yourself in such a close but unlikely friendship?
6. Margot was a very young woman dealing with situations that most of us today would find completely over whelming at age twenty. What do you think it was that Margot really wanted out of life?
7. What did you think about Margot’s relationship with Stefan? Could you sympathize with her, being torn by an old promise to a man she didn’t know anymore and her love for a man that offered her a promising future? What would you have done in her shoes?
8. Margot experienced anti-German sentiment from those around her who saw her as the enemy. Do you think this was a fair judgment, given the political climate of the time? Do you think this type of mentality still exists today?
9. The post-WWI era is less familiar to some readers than WWII and other historical time periods. What did you like about a novel set during this time? Did you identify with any symbolic items, people or places throughout the book? What did they represent to you?
10. Do you agree that Margot’s relationship with her father improved over the course of the novel? How so, or how not?
11. What do you think happens six months after the end of the book? Six years?
12. The Ambassador’s Daughter is the prequel to two of Pam Jenoff’s other novels, The Kommandant’s Girl and The Diplomat’s Wife. If you have read those, how did you feel this book compared? Did knowing what happens twenty years down the line color your reading of this book?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
America America
Ethan Canin, 2008
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812979893
Summary
From Ethan Canin, bestselling author of The Palace Thief, comes a stunning novel, set in a small town during the Nixon era and today, about America and family, politics and tragedy, and the impact of fate on a young man’s life.
In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth.
America America is a beautiful novel about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—7/19/1960
• Where—Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• Reared—San Francisco, California
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., University of
Iowa; M.D., Harvard University
• Awards—California Book Award
• Currently—Iowa City, Iowa
Born in Michigan and raised in California, Ethan Canin entered Stanford University dead set on an engineering career. Then, in junior year he took an English course that changed the direction of his dreams. Exposed for the first time to the brilliant short stories of John Cheever, he underwent a true epiphany. He changed majors and determined there and then to become a writer.
Canin proved sufficiently gifted to be accepted into the world-famous Iowa Writers' Workshop, but between the daunting competition and a severe case of writer's block, he developed serious doubts about his abilities. Discouraged, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School shortly after receiving his M.F.A. "It was a real failure of the imagination," he confessed in an interview with Stanford Magazine. "I just couldn't think of another job."
Perversely, Canin's muse returned in medical school. A few of his stories appeared in Atlantic Monthly, resulting in a book deal with Houghton Mifflin. In 1988, the short story collection Emperor of the Air was published to glowing reviews. (Writing in the New York Times, critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt observed "The way these stories transcend the ordinariness of human voices is ... startling.")
Canin spent the next few years conflicted over what he wanted to do with his life. He received his M.D. from Harvard and, for a while at least, successfully combined writing with the practice of medicine. But after the enthusiastic response to 1994's The Palace Thief, he found it increasingly difficult to juggle two careers. Finally, after much soul-searching, he made the decision to give up doctoring to become a full-time writer.
Although he is best known for short stories and novellas, Canin has also written full-length fiction—most notably the deceptively small and spare Carry Me Across the Water, proclaimed by the London Daily Telegraph as "[t]he most wise and beautiful novel of 2001." This story of a scrappy, 78-year-old Jewish-American who sets out to right a tragic mistake from his past is considered by many to be the author's finest work. In 2008, Canin published America America, an ambitious novel John Updike called "a complicated, many-layered epic of class, politics, sex, death, and social history...shuttling between the twenty-first-century present and the crowded events of 1971-72." Begun in early 2001, and stalled after the tragic events of 9/11, the story underwent ten rewrites before Canin finally finished it.
Canin writes slowly and with great deliberation, polishing phrases with grace, elegance, and an accumulation of detail his hero John Cheever would surely approve. Yet, despite his success, he admits that writing for him is hard work. He has repeatedly stated that the process is "exquisitely difficult," a misery rooted in fear and self-doubt. "Fear of failure is what's hard—it's overwhelming," he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "I'll never get beyond sitting down and saying, 'This is a disaster, this will never work.' "
Yet, "work" it most certainly does! Considered one of our finest writers (in 1996, he was named to Granta's list of Best Young American Novelists), Canin crafts wonderful, mature stories that resonate with timeless, universal themes. He is especially skilled at handling the sensitive, emotional terrain of family life—growing up, marriage, aging, and the complex relationships between fathers and sons. Small wonder the New York Times has called him "one of the most satisfying writers on the contemporary scene." It's an assessment Canin's many fans wholeheartedly endorse.
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Although his parents lived in Iowa City, Canin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while his mother and father were on vacation.
• Canin's father was an accomplished violinist who performed and taught throughout the East and Midwest before accepting the position of concertmaster for the San Francisco Symphony.
• Canin was mentored by his high school English teacher Danielle Steel, who read several of his stories and encouraged him to continue writing.
• In 1998, Canin joined the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the scene of his own literary meltdown. He enjoys teaching and finds the environment far kinder and more supportive than it was in his own student days.
• Along with fellow authors Po Bronson and Ethan Watters, Canin cofounded the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a collective workspace for writers filmmakers, and narrative artists.
• Canin's novella The Palace Thief was filmed as The Emperor's Club, a 2002 movie starring Kevin Kline.
• In his own words:
I started America America in early 2001. After 9/11, I stopped working on it for a full two years, and when I came back I was motivated to make it a more overtly political story. History, politics, the nature of power and its costs-all these subjects were occupying my mind.
This novel was brutally difficult. But they all are. That's not news. I nearly gave up any number of times. I wrote a good ten drafts, but it wasn't till perhaps the seventh or eighth that, while teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, I had a student turn in a story he'd re-written in such a way that I realized exactly what I needed to do on my own novel.
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer here is his response:
In college, I began as an engineering major. I was taking physics and math and not much else. I thought that the humanities, and certainly the arts, were for the soft-minded; I certainly would never have strayed near an English class. Then one day I happened upon a big red book called The Stories of John Cheever. I was waiting for someone and just found the book on a shelf; I sat down and read the first story, called "Goodbye, My Brother." From that point on, I wanted to be a writer. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
are some wonderful, deeply affecting moments here, detailing the relationship between the narrator, Corey Sifter, and his family, but they are unfortunately submerged in a bloated, maladroit narrative that relies on clumsily withheld secrets for suspense and that encumbers the story of Corey’s coming-of-age with ponderous and unconvincing meditations on matters like noblesse oblige, the responsibilities of privilege and working-class resentment of the rich... Mr. Canin manages to make Corey’s affectionate relationship with his parents believable and often touching, and he also succeeds, for the most part, in making Corey’s middle-aged ruminations feel palpable and real.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Canin, who teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has written before about the seductive and transformative power of people with extraordinary wealth, but never with such sensitivity.... Maybe America America presents a more intricate and mature exploration of this theme because the author no longer seems so spellbound by money. That emotional distance allows Canin to draw the rich and poor as vastly more interesting and multivalent characters.... One has to accept—even enjoy—a fair amount of such wisdom in America America. In addition to his role as a teacher in the country's most prestigious writing school, Canin is a physician, and perhaps those two offices of supreme authority are responsible for a narrator who tends to lecture. That's fine with me, so long as the lecturer is this insightful and moving. We've waited a long time for a worthy successor to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, and it couldn't have arrived at a more auspicious moment than this season of potentially epochal political change.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
A brilliant, serious book for serious readers.”
San Diego Union Tribune
Intelligently observed, elegantly written…A perfect story for an election year, but one that will be read long after November.”
Christian Science Monitor
A complicated, many-layered epic of class, politics, sex, death, and social history…Its reach is wide and its touch often masterly.
John Updike - The New Yorker Magazine
Ethan Canin's new novel is a powerful lament that haunts us like a latter-day ghost of The Great Gatsby. Like Gatsby, it deals with an orgiastic rupture in the American dream. If F. Scott Fitzgerald anatomized the Jazz Age and delivered its own corrupt and luscious poetry, Canin gives us a poisoned lullaby of the Nixon era.... The language is often supple, can leap from impressionistic poetry to a coroner's report, and can whiplash through time, from the 1970s to 2006.
Publishers Weekly
Canin asks important questions about wealth, power, and ambition in his latest novel, but...there was also a strong sense that, despite its gorgeous writing, America America does not measure up to the many literary classics, "including F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men it evokes..
Bookmarks Magazine
Discussion Questions
1. Corey Sifter grows up over the course of this book. Which character do you see as the most significant influence on his personal evolution?
2. What motivates Corey to continue questioning the series of events that lead to Senator Bonwiller's downfall: his journalist's curiosity, a sense of loyalty, or his own contemplative nature?
3. Trieste Millbury shows enormous potential as a reporter during her time interning at the newspaper. She also provides a rapt audience for Corey's rehashing of past events. How is she similar to the teenaged Corey? How is she different?
4. When JoEllen Charney enters Bonwiller's world he is well on his way to successfully capturing the Democratic nomination. What does their liaison suggest about the ambitions and assumptions of those who pursue power?
5. Who or what do you think is ultimately responsible for incriminating Bonwiller?
6. How realistically does the book portray political indiscretions? Were you reminded of actual events past or present?
7. Which character's duplicity or innocence did you find the most surprising, and why?
8. Who is the unnamed man with a limp who appears after Bonwiller's funeral? Why do you think Canin chose not to reveal his identity?
9. Christian and Clara's sibling rivalry is hinted at but never fully explained. What do you think motivated it? Did they turn out to be different as adults than you expected them to be? (Questions provided by the publisher.)
top of page (summary)
America's First Daughter: A Novel
Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, 2016
HarperCollins
624 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062347268
Summary
In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph—a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy.
From her earliest days, Patsy Jefferson knows that though her father loves his family dearly, his devotion to his country runs deeper still.
As Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, she becomes his helpmate, protector, and constant companion in the wake of her mother’s death, traveling with him when he becomes American minister to France.
It is in Paris, at the glittering court and among the first tumultuous days of revolution, that fifteen-year-old Patsy learns about her father’s troubling liaison with Sally Hemings, a slave girl her own age.
Meanwhile, Patsy has fallen in love—with her father’s protege William Short, a staunch abolitionist and ambitious diplomat. Torn between love, principles, and the bonds of family, Patsy questions whether she can choose a life as William’s wife and still be a devoted daughter.
Her choice will follow her in the years to come, to Virginia farmland, Monticello, and even the White House. And as scandal, tragedy, and poverty threaten her family, Patsy must decide how much she will sacrifice to protect her father's reputation, in the process defining not just his political legacy, but that of the nation he founded. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Stephanie Dray is a bestselling author of historical women's fiction. Her work has been translated into six different languages, was nominated for RWA s RITA Award, and won NJRW s Golden Leaf. She is a frequent panelist and presenter at national writing conventions and lives near the nation's capital. (From the publisher.)
Laura Kamoie is the bestselling author of historical fiction. She holds a doctoral degree in early American history from The College of William and Mary, published two non-fiction books on early America, and most recently held the position of Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy before transitioning to a full-time career writing fiction. Laura lives among the colonial charm of Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and two daughters. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This is a stunning historical novel that will keep you up late, hoping the engaging story never ends. Highly, highly recommended!
Historical Novel Society
At the age of 10, upon the death of her mother, Patsy Jefferson steps into the role of mistress of the house for her father, Thomas. Patsy, our narrator, recounts the story of a man of great contradictions.... A thorough and well-researched if sometimes flowery saga of the Jefferson family.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. If Thomas Jefferson’s wife hadn’t died, how might he and his daughter have lived different lives? Historically, Jefferson is said to have made a deathbed promise to his wife, and in the novel his daughter makes one as well. How might their lives have differed if they hadn’t made those deathbed promises?
2. As portrayed in the novel and in their letters to each other, how would you describe Jefferson and Patsy’s relationship with each other? Was Jefferson a good father? Did he change as a father over the course of the novel? Was Patsy a good daughter?
3. Does seeing Jefferson through his daughter’s eyes make him more relatable as a Founding Father? How so or why not?
4. The limited choices women had available to them in the Revolutionary era is one theme explored in this book. What were the most important choices Patsy made throughout her life? Do you agree with why she made them? Could or should she have chosen differently?
5. What did you think of Sally’s choice to return to Virginia with Jefferson? Why did she make that decision? What were her alternatives and how viable were they?
6. Another theme explored in this book is sacrifice. What does Patsy sacrifice in her effort to protect her father? What did Jefferson sacrifice? What did Sally sacrifice? What did William Short sacrifice?
7. Why does Patsy think her father needs to be protected? Why does she think she is the only one to do it? In what ways does she protect him? What do you think of Patsy’s effort to protect Jefferson? Would you have done the same thing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The American
Henry James, 1877
500-600 pp. (varies by pubisher)
Summary
Henry James's third novel is an exploration of his most powerful, perennial theme— the clash between European and American cultures, the Old World and the New.
Christopher Newman, a "self-made" American millionaire in France, falls in love with the beautiful aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde. Her family, however, taken aback by his brash American manner, rejects his proposal of marriage. When Newman discovers a guilty secret in the Bellegardes' past, he confronts a moral dilemma: Should he expose them and thus gain his revenge?
James's masterly early work is at once a social comedy, a melodramatic romance and a realistic novel of manners. (From the Penguin Classic edition; cover image, above-right.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 15, 1843
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Death—February 28, 1916
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Attended schools in France and Switzerland;
Harvard Law School
• Awards—British Order of Merit from King George V
Henry James was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life, after which he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. He is primarily known for the series of novels in which he portrays the encounter of Americans with Europe and Europeans.
James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is recognisable to its readers. His theatrical work is thought to have profoundly influenced his later novels and tales.
Life
James was born in New York City into a wealthy family. His father, Henry James Sr., was one of the best-known intellectuals in mid-19th-century America. In his youth James traveled back and forth between Europe and America. At the age of 19 he briefly attended Harvard Law School, but preferred reading literature to studying law. James published his first short story, A Tragedy of Error, at age 21, and devoted himself to literature. In 1866–69 and 1871–72 he was a contributor to The Nation and Atlantic Monthly.
Among James's masterpieces are Daisy Miller (1879) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). The Bostonians (1886) is set in the era of the rising feminist movement. What Maisie Knew (1897) depicts a preadolescent girl who must choose between her parents and a motherly old governess. In The Wings of the Dove (1902) an inheritance destroys the love of a young couple. James considered The Ambassadors (1903) his most "perfect" work of art. James's most famous novella is The Turn of the Screw, a ghost story in which the question of childhood corruption obsesses a governess. Although James is best known for his novels, his essays are now attracting a more general audience.
James regularly rejected suggestions that he marry, and after settling in London proclaimed himself "a bachelor." F. W. Dupee, in several well-regarded volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections.
James's letters to expatriate American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen have attracted particular attention. James met the 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter from May 6, 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry". How accurate that description might have been is the subject of contention among James's biographers, but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasi-erotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment." To his homosexual friend Howard Sturgis, James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile I can only try to live without you."
He corresponded in almost equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow-novelist Lucy Clifford: "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that—if you want it made clear to the meanest intelligence—I love you more than I love Others."
Work
James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from the Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive and embody the virtues—freedom and a more highly evolved moral character—of the new American society. James explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well or badly.
Critics have jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James the First, James the Second, and The Old Pretender" and observers do often group his works of fiction into three periods. In his apprentice years, culminating with the masterwork The Portrait of a Lady, his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period. In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned the serialised novel and from 1890 to about 1897[citation needed], he wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialised novel.
More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate, and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial belongings (seen from the perspective of European polite society) he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working class to aristocratic, and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends. He worked for a living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of Victorian era Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality.
Major Novels
Although any selection of James's novels as "major" must inevitably depend to some extent on personal preference, the following books have achieved prominence among his works in the views of many critics. James believed a novel must be organic. Parts of the novel need to go together and the relationship must fit the form. If a reader enjoys a work of art or piece of writing, then they must be able to explain why. The very fact that every reader has different tastes, lends to the belief that artists should have artistic freedom to write in any way they choose to talk about subject matter that could possibly interest everyone.
The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in The Portrait of a Lady, concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th century fiction. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted favourable comment due to the vivid realisation of the three major characters.
Although Roderick Hudson featured mostly American characters in a European setting, James made the Europe–America contrast even more explicit in his next novel. In fact, the contrast could be considered the leading theme of The American (1877). This book is a combination of social comedy and melodrama concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe.
Washington Square (1880) is a deceptively simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father. The book is often compared to Jane Austen's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships. James was not particularly enthusiastic about Jane Austen, so he might not have regarded the comparison as flattering. In fact, James was not enthusiastic about Washington Square itself. He tried to read it over for inclusion in the New York Edition of his fiction but found that he could not. So he excluded the novel from the edition.
In The Portrait of a Lady (1881) James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The narrative is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, The Portrait of a Lady is described as a psychological novel, exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science, exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds.
The Bostonians (1886) is a bittersweet tragicomedy that centres on Basil Ransom, an unbending political conservative from Mississippi. The storyline concerns the contest between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics.
James followed with The Princess Casamassima (1886), the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in far left politics and a terrorist assassination plot. The book is something of a lone sport in the Jamesian canon for dealing with such a violent political subject. But it is often paired with The Bostonians, which is also concerned with political issues.
Just as James was beginning his ultimately disastrous attempt to conquer the stage, he wrote The Tragic Muse (1890). This novel offers a wide, cheerful panorama of English life and follows the fortunes of two would-be artist. The book reflects James's consuming interest in the theatre and is often considered to mark the close of the second or middle phase of his career.
Criticism, Biographies and Fictional Treatments
James's work has remained steadily popular with the limited audience of educated readers to whom he spoke during his lifetime, and remained firmly in the British canon, but after his death American critics, such as Van Wyck Brooks, expressed hostility towards James's long expatriation and eventual naturalisation as a British citizen. Oscar Wilde once criticised him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty".
Despite these criticisms, James is now valued for his psychological and moral realism, his masterful creation of character, his low-key but playful humour, and his assured command of the language.
Early biographies of James echoed the unflattering picture of him drawn in early criticism. F.W. Dupee, as noted above, characterised James as neurotically withdrawn and fearful, and although Dupee lacked access to primary materials his view has remained persuasive in academic circles, partly because Leon Edel's massive five-volume work, published from 1953 to 1972, seemed to buttress it with extensive documentation.
The published criticism of James's work has reached enormous proportions. The volume of criticism of The Turn of the Screw alone has become extremely large for such a brief work. The Henry James Review, published three times a year, offers criticism of James's entire range of writings, and many other articles and book-length studies appear regularly.
Legacy
Perhaps the most prominent examples of James's legacy in recent years have been the film versions of several of his novels and stories. Three of James's novels were filmed: The Europeans (1978), The Bostonians (1984) and The Golden Bowl (2000). The Iain Softley-directed version of The Wings of the Dove (1997) was successful with both critics and audiences. Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square (1997) was well received by critics, and Jane Campion tried her hand with The Portrait of a Lady (1996) but with much less success.
Most of James's work has remained continuously in print since its first publication, and he continues to be a major figure in realist fiction, influencing generations of novelists. James has allowed the genre of the novel to become worthy of a literary critic's attention. James has formulated a theory of fiction that many today still discuss and debate.
In 1954, when the shades of depression were thickening fast, Ernest Hemingway wrote an emotional letter in which he tried to steady himself as he thought James would: "Pretty soon I will have to throw this away so I better try to be calm like Henry James. Did you ever read Henry James? He was a great writer who came to Venice and looked out the window and smoked his cigar and thought." The odd, perhaps subconscious or accidental allusion to "The Aspern Papers" is striking. More recently, James' writing was even used to promote Rolls-Royce automobiles: the tagline "Live all you can, it's a mistake not to", originally spoken by The Ambassadors' Lambert Strether, was used in one advertisement. This is somewhat ironic, considering the novel's sardonic treatment of the "great new force" of mass marketing. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer 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)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help you get a discussion started for The American:
1. Notice Christopher Newman's name. He tells Noemie Nioche that he was named for the explorer. In what way does his name signify his character and the novel's thematic concerns?
2. How would you describe Newman? What are his qualities as a character? Is he naive...aware...self-aware? What is he looking for? Why, for instance, do we find him at the Louvre at the novel's opening? How does he compare to his friend, Tom Tristam?
3. What about Noemie and the Countess Claire de Bellegard. Compare and contrast the two women. How do they differ in character? What about Lizzie Tristam? Newman takes an immediate liking to her. Is his regard for her justified?
4. Why does Valentin de Bellegarde encourage the romantic attachment between his sister Claire and Christopher? What does the play on his name suggest? How, in a sense, do the two friends (Valentin and Christopher) represent the societal values of their respective continents?
5. Why does the Marquise de Bellegarde and her son Urbain disapprove of a match between Claire and Christopher? What is their objection to Newman's money?
6. Discuss how the motif of genuine vs. artificial plays out in this novel. Consider, for example, that Noemie Nioche is a copyist of original paintings. How might this symbolize her as a character? What about other characters—who else lives under the guise of truthfulness but is dishonest?
7. Many of James's works are concerned with the differences between Europe and America? How is that cultural contrast presented in The American? Keep in mind the novel's title: is the title meant to honor or disparage Americans?
8. What role does wealth play in this story—its accumulation and loss, it's ability to confer status...or lack thereof?
9. Which characters do you find most sympathetic? Which ones least?
10. At one point, Newman thinks that the Marquise and Urbain are "sick as a pair of poisoned cats." Why does he decide not to pursue retaliation toward them? Was he right to stop his efforts? Or should he have continued to expose them?
11. James once admitted that he could have written the novel in such a way that Claire and Christopher married. But he refused a happy ending. What difference would it have made to your reading of the novel had the two lovers been united at the end?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
American Boy
Larry Watson, 2011
Milkweed Editions
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781571310781
Summary
We were exposed to these phenomena in order that we might learn something, but of course the lessons we learn are not always what was intended.
So begins Matthew Garth’s story of the fall of 1962, when the shooting of a young woman on Thanksgiving Day sets off a chain of unsettling events in small-town Willow Falls, Minnesota. Matthew first sees Louisa Lindahl in Dr. Dunbar’s home office, and at the time her bullet wound makes nearly as strong an impression as her unclothed body. Fueled over the following weeks by his feverish desire for this mysterious woman and a deep longing for the comfort and affluence that appears to surround the Dunbars, Matthew finds himself drawn into a vortex of greed, manipulation, and ultimately betrayal.
Immersive, heart-breaking, and richly evocative of a time and place, this long-awaited novel marks the return of a great American storyteller. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Raised—Bismark, North Dakota, USA
• Education—B.A., M.F.A., Unversity of North Dakota; Ph.D.,
University of Utah
• Awards—Milkweed National Fiction Prize, Mountains and
Plains Bookseller Award, Friends of American Writers
Award, Banta Award, Critics Choice Award, ALA/YALSA
Best Books for Young Adults Winner
• Currently—lives in Milwaukee, Wisoconsin
Larry Watson was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and married his high school sweetheart. He received his BA and MFA from the University of North Dakota, his Ph.D. from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Ripon College. Watson has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987, 2004) and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Watson is the author of five novels and a chapbook of poetry. His fiction has been published in more than ten foreign editions, and has received prizes and awards from Milkweed Press, Friends of American Writers, Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association, New York Public Library, Wisconsin Library Association, and Critics’ Choice. Montana 1948 was nominated for the first IMPAC Dublin International Literary Prize. The movie rights to Montana 1948 and Justice have been sold to Echo Lake Productions and White Crosses has been optioned for film.
He has published short stories and poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, North American Review, Mississippi Review, and other journals and quarterlies. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and other periodicals. His work has also been anthologized in Essays for Contemporary Culture, Imagining Home, Off the Beaten Path, Baseball and the Game of Life, The Most Wonderful Books, These United States, and Writing America.
Watson taught writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for 25 years before joining the faculty at Marquette University in 2003. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Graceful shifts from observation to insight, capturing the spare beauty of the landscape.
New York Times Book Review
Filled with rugged prose sometimes as biting as a northern plains wind, the next page is as inviting and lyrical as a well-stoked stove. Watson writes of people universal in their flaws and virtues, a community hat cannot be defined or limited to one region or genre.
Washington Post Book World
There’s something eminently universal in Watson’s ponderings on the human condition, and it’s refracted through a nearly perfect eye for character, place, and the rhythms of language.
The Nation
[Watson] spins charm and melancholy around the same fingers, the result a soft but urgent rendering of a young man coming of age in rural America that is recognizable to even those of us who were never there.
Denver Post
Watson will] harvest a bumper crop of readers this autumn.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Watson is sure-footed on familiar ground in American Boy.... [He’s] made something of a specialty of that space where teenagers struggle between hormonal urges and moral decisions as they grope toward adulthood. His evocation of that difficult passage feels as sure as his evocation of small-town life in the upper Midwest more than one generation ago... As convincing as it is lonely and bleak.
Billings Gazette
Watson’s new novel about a young man’s coming-of-age in rural Minnesota during the early ’60s never veers off course.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Watson has penned some of the best contemporary fiction about small-town America, and his new novel does not disappoint.... With his graceful writing style, well-drawn characters, and subtly moving plot, Watson masterfully portrays the dark side of small-town America. Highly readable and enthusiastically recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Eighteen years ago, Milkweed published Watson’s breakthrough novel, Montana 1948; now the author returns to Milkweed with another powerful coming-of-age story about a teenage boy [Matthew Garth] being shocked into maturity by a moment of sudden and unexpected violence.... Like Holden Caulfield trying to catch innocent children before they fall off the cliff adjoining that field of rye, Matthew struggles to save the Dunbars and, in so doing, save himself. He fails, of course, but that’s the point of much of Watson’s always melancholic, always morally ambiguous fiction: coming-of-age is about failure as much as it is about growth.
Booklist
Watson's sixth novel resonates with language as clear and images as crisp as the spare, flat prairie of its Minnesota setting.... A vivid story of sexual tension, family loyalty and betrayal.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does Matthew’s position as an outsider affect his description of events? Does this identity, along with his age at the time of the novel's events, make him reliable or unreliable as a narrator?
2. Dr. Dunbar is portrayed as a character of contrasts. Townspeople are divided in their opinion on him, and Matthew frequently encounters characteristics of Dr. Dunbar’s that oppose each other. Is one the true Dr. Dunbar?
3. Does Dr. Dunbar step outside the lines of professional ethics by taking the boys under his wing in his medical career?
4. Matthew identifies with the mythological figure Antaeus, comparing his own need for involvement with the Dunbars to Antaeus’s need for contact with the earth. What does this convey about Matthew’s self-image?
5. Matthew describes his attraction to Louisa by saying it was “too soon to call it love and too simple to call it lust, but I felt something powerful…” Where do his feelings rate on a scale between a schoolboy crush and mature love? Is it possible to rate the affections that one experiences in youth?
6. Matthew only briefly describes his father. How does this view contrast to his relationship with Dr. Dunbar? Is Dr. Dunbar truly a father figure to Matthew? Does Dunbar’s abandonment at the end of the novel negate the fathering and counseling that he did previously?
7. How are mothers portrayed in this novel? Think of the quiet and powerless Mrs. Dunbar, the laissez-faire Mrs. Garth, the non-existent mother of the young Louisa, and the seductive Mrs. Knurr.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
American Dirt
Jeanine Cummins, 2020
Flatiron Books
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250209764
Summary
Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.
Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store.
And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city.
When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence.
Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times.
Already being hailed as "a Grapes of Wrath for our times" and "a new American classic," Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Rota, Spain; Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
• Education—Towson University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Jeanine Cummins is the author of the novels The Outside Boy (2010) and The Crooked Branch (2013) and the bestselling memoir A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath 2004). She lives in New York with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This novel is a heart-stopping story of survival, danger, and love.
New York Times
I devoured the novel in a dry-eyed adrenaline rush…. A profoundly moving reading experience.
Washington Post
A heart-pounding, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down, stay-up-till-3 a.m., adrenaline-pumping story…that examines, with sensitivity, care, and complexity of thought, immense, soul-obliterating trauma and its aftermath.
Los Angeles Times
American Dirt just gutted me, and I didn’t just read this book―I inhabited it….Everything about this book was so extraordinary. It’s suspenseful, the language is beautiful, and the story really opened my heart. I highly recommend it, and you will not want to put it down. It is just a magnificent novel (Oprah Book Club Pick).
Oprah
American Dirt is a literary novel with nuanced character development and arresting language; yet, its narrative hurtles forward with the intensity of a suspense tale. Its most profound achievement, though, is something I never could’ve been told…. American Dirt is the novel that, for me, nails what it’s like to live in this age of anxiety, where it feels like anything can happen, at any moment.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR
This tense, illuminating novel takes off like a rocket.
People
The story is masterfully composed of timeless elements: the nightmare logic of grief, the value of human kindness, the power of love to drive us to do the unimaginable…. Cummins proves that fiction can be a vehicle for expanding our empathy.
Time
Heartfelt and hopeful, American Dirt is a novel for our times. Thrilling, epic, and unforgettable.
Esquire
Stunning…remarkable…. A novel as of the zeitgeist as any, American Dirt is also an account of love on the run that will never lose steam.
Vogue
(Starred review) [Cummins's] devastating yet hopeful work...breathes life into the statistics of the thousands fleeing their homelands and seeking to cross the southern border of the United States.... This extraordinary novel about unbreakable determination will move the reader to the core.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) In a book both timely and prodigiously readable, Cummins offers an unrelenting and terrifyingly you-are-there account of a Mexican mother and son fleeing to America after cartel violence takes their entire family.... An important book. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review) American Dirt may be the don’t-miss book of 2020.
Booklist
(Starred review) This terrifying and tender novel is a blunt answer to the question of why immigrants from Latin America cross the U.S. border—and a testimony to the courage it takes to do it.... [Propulsive,] intensely suspenseful and deeply humane.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the novel, Lydia thinks back on how, when she was living a middle-class existence, she viewed migrants with pity:
All her life she’s pitied those poor people. She’s donated money. She’s wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get ,to the dream of some faraway country that doesn’t even want them (chapter 10, page 94).
Do you think the author chose to make Lydia a middle-class woman as her protagonist for a reason? Do you think the reader would have had a different entry point to the novel if Lydia started out as a poor migrant? Would you have viewed Lydia differently if she had come from poor origins? How much do you identify with Lydia?
2. Sebastian persists in running his story on Javier even though he knows it will put him and his family in grave danger. Do you admire what he did? Was he a good journalist or a bad husband and father? Is it possible he was both? What would you have done if you were him?
3. Lydia looks at Luca and thinks to herself: "Migrante. She can’t make the word fit him. But that’s what they are now. This is how it happens" (chapter 10, page 94). Lydia refers to her and Luca becoming migrants as something that happened to them rather than something they did. Do you think the author intentionally made this sentence passive? Do you think language allows us to label things as "other," that is, in a way, tantamount to self-preservation? Does it allow us to compartmentalize things that are too difficult to comprehend?
4. When Lydia is at the Casa del Migrante, she learns the term cuerpomatico—"human ATM machine"—and what it means. Were you surprised to learn how dangerous the passage is, and for female migrants in particular?
5. When Lydia, Luca, Soledad, and Rebeca are at the Casa del Migrante, the priest warns them to turn back: "If it’s only a better life you seek, seek it elsewhere…. This path is only for people who have no choice, no other option, only violence and misery behind you" (chapter 17, page168). Were you surprised that he would be issuing such a dire warning when he must know how desperate they are to be there in the first place? Under what conditions might you decide to leave your homeland?
6. When they get to the US–Mexican border, Beto says, "This is the whole problem, right? Look at that American flag over there—you see it? All bright and shiny; it looks brand-new. And then look at ours. It’s all busted up and raggedy" (chapter 26, page 273). Later he says, "I mean, those estadounidenses are obsessed with their flag" (chapter 26, page 274). Do you agree with Beto? Do the flags symbolize something more than just the countries they represent?
7. The term "American" only appears once in the novel. Did you notice? Why do you think the author made this choice?
8. When Luca finally crosses over to the United States, he’s disappointed:
The road below is nothing like the roads Luca imagined he’d encounter in the USA. He thought every road here would be broad as a boulevard, paved to perfection, and lined with fluorescent shopfronts.This road is like the crappiest Mexican road he’s ever seen. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt (chapter31, page 329).
Discuss the significance of the title, "American Dirt." What do you think the author means by it?
9. Read the passage below from the novel. Then consider: Do you think the narrator intends for the reader to wholeheartedly censure Lydia in this scene? Do you think Lydia is a stand-in for the reader and that the author is sending a broader message? After reading the author’s note, do you think the author includes herself in this group?
Lydia had been aware of the migrant caravans coming from Guatemala and Honduras in the way comfortable people living stable lives are peripherally aware of destitution. She heard their stories on the news radio while she cooked dinner in her kitchen. Mothers pushing strollers thousands of miles, small children walking holes into the bottoms of their pink Crocs, hundreds of families banding together for safety, gathering numbers as they walked north for weeks, hitching rides in the backs of trucks whenever they could, riding La Bestia whenever they could, sleeping in futbol stadiums and churches, coming all that way to el norte to plead for asylum. Lydia chopped onions and cilantro in her kitchen while she listened to their histories.They fled violence and poverty, gangs more powerful than their governments. She listened to their fear and determination, how resolved they were to reach Estados Unidos or die on the road in that effort, because staying at home meant their odds of survival were even worse. On the radio, Lydia heard those walking mothers singing to their children, and she felt a pang of emotion for them. She tossed chopped vegetables into hot oil, and the pan sizzled in response.That pang Lydia felt had many parts: it was anger at the injustice, it was worry, compassion, helplessness. But in truth, it was a small feeling, and when she realized she was out of garlic, the pang was subsumed by domestic irritation. Dinner would be bland (chapter 26, pages276–77).
10. Read the below passage from the novel. Then consider: If you were writing the rules for asylum eligibility, what would they be.
'I heard if your life is in danger wherever you come from, they’re not allowed to send you back there.'
To Lydia it sounds like mythology, but she can’t help asking anyway, 'You have to be Central American? To apply for asylum?'
Beto shrugs. 'Why? Your life in danger?'
Lydia sighs. 'Isn’t everyone’s?' (chapter 26, page 277)
11. Toward the end of the novel, Soledad "sticks her hand through the fence and wiggles her fingers on the other side. Her fingers are in el norte. She spits through the fence. Only to leave apiece of herself there on American dirt" (chapter 28, page 301). Why do you think Soledad spits over the border? Is doing so a victory for her?
12. "Luca wonders if they’re moving perpendicular to that boundary now, that place where the fence disappears and the only thing to delineate one country from the next is a line that some random guy drew on a map years and years ago" (chapter 30, page 317). In his 1971 book Theory of Justice, the philosopher John Rawls came up with what he called the "veil of ignorance." Rawls asked readers to think about how they would design an ideal society if they knew nothing of their own sex, gender, race, nationality, individual tastes, or personal identity. Do you think the decision-makers of the borders might have made a different decision if they had donned the veil of ignorance? Do you think borders are a necessary evil or might their delineation serve a societal good? Do you think that the world would be a better place if we all brought Rawls’s thought experiment to bear in our everyday individual and collective decision making?
13. Why do you think there are birds on the cover of the novel?
14. Read the passage below from the novel. Then consider: Do you think Lydia is better or worse off for not having known about the moment of her boundary crossing? What importance do rituals have in marking milestones in our lives? Can the done be undone, the past rewinded?
But the moment of the crossing has already passed, and she didn’t even realize it had happened. She never looked back, never committed any small act of ceremony to help launch her into the new life on the other side. Nothing can be undone. Adelante (chapter 30, page323).
15. Was Javier’s reaction to Marta’s death at all understandable? Humanizing? Do you believe that he didn’t want Lydia dead? Is what he did, in the name of his daughter, any less paternal than what Lydia does for Luca is maternal? (Questions issued by the publisher.)
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America for Beginners
Leah Franqui, 2018
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062668752
Summary
A funny, poignant, and insightful debut novel that explores the complexities of family, immigration, prejudice, and the American Dream through meaningful and unlikely friendships forged in unusual circumstances.
Pival Sengupta has done something she never expected: she has booked a trip with the First Class India USA Destination Vacation Tour Company.
But unlike other upper-class Indians on a foreign holiday, the recently widowed Pival is not interested in sightseeing. She is traveling thousands of miles from Kolkota to New York on a cross-country journey to California, where she hopes to uncover the truth about her beloved son, Rahi.
A year ago Rahi devastated his very traditional parents when he told them he was gay. Then, Pival’s husband, Ram, told her that their son had died suddenly—heartbreaking news she still refuses to accept.
Now, with Ram gone, she is going to America to find Rahi, alive and whole or dead and gone, and come to terms with her own life.
Arriving in New York, the tour proves to be more complicated than anticipated. Planned by the company’s indefatigable owner, Ronnie Munshi—a hard-working immigrant and entrepreneur hungry for his own taste of the American dream—it is a work of haphazard improvisation.
Pavil’s guide is the company’s new hire, the guileless and wonderfully resourceful Satya, who has been in America for one year—and has never actually left the five boroughs.
For modesty’s sake Pival and Satya will be accompanied by Rebecca Elliot, an aspiring young actress. Eager for a paying gig, she’s along for the ride, because how hard can a two-week "working" vacation traveling across America be?
Slowly making her way from coast to coast with her unlikely companions, Pival finds that her understanding of her son—and her hopes of a reunion with him—are challenged by her growing knowledge of his adoptive country.
As the bonds between this odd trio deepens, Pival, Satya, and Rebecca learn to see America—and themselves—in different and profound new ways.
A bittersweet and bighearted tale of forgiveness, hope, and acceptance, America for Beginners illuminates the unexpected enchantments life can hold, and reminds us that our most precious connections aren’t always the ones we seek. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Mumbai, India
Leah Franqui is a graduate of Yale University and received an MFA at NYU-Tisch. She is a playwright and the recipient of the 2013 Goldberg Playwriting Award, and also wrote a web series for which she received the Alfred Sloan Foundation Screenwriting award (aftereverafterwebseries.com).
A Puerto Rican-Jewish Philadelphia native, Franqui lives with her Kolkata-born husband in Mumbai. America for Beginners is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] satisfying, heartfelt novel about three strangers whose lives are altered on a trip across the U.S.…Franqui adroitly balances all the characters, making them distinct and refreshing. Readers will be taken by this emotionally rewarding novel.
Publishers Weekly
[A] tender, funny, wrenching, beautifully executed tale of three lost souls who traverse the chasms of cultural, generational, and geographical divides to forge some bonds strong and true enough to withstand life's gut punches. —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
Franqui deftly juggles her characters’ competing perspectives, mining small moments in the narrative for larger insights into cultural and personal differences.… This is a humorous and heartfelt excursion into the promise that America represents, to both natives and immigrants.
Booklist
[T]he book is occasionally charming and occasionally engaging; despite everything, you'll want to find out what happens in the end.Clichés and overexplaining get in the way of the humor and genuine sentiment that this novel strains toward.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. "Mrs. Sengupta was traveling scandalously alone, without a husband or a gaggle of women her own age…" Many people in Pival’s orbit are shocked by her decision to go to the US by herself. What about a woman—especially an older woman—traveling alone is so alarming to them? Is it really about safety—as Pival’s maid insists—or about propriety? Are solo women travelers viewed with the same concern in other cultures?
2. "Nothing would erase the sense of continued shame" that Satya feels for abandoning his friend Ravi and edging him out of a job. How do you feel about Satya’s betrayal of Ravi? Is it understandable or unforgivable?
3. Mr. Ghazi sees Rebecca’s "early enthusiasm become a hardened fear, and he worried for her." How do you feel about Rebecca’s sadness and struggles compared to the sadness and struggles of other characters in the book? What does she, the American-born child of an affluent family, stand to learn from the journey, and from the other "beginners?"
4. Ronnie Munshi seems to have achieved the American Dream: arriving from Bangladesh with no money, building a successful business, bringing over a wife, and employing other new arrivals. What do you make of him? Is he the picture of a "model immigrant"? What about the Iranian immigrant Mr. Ghazi?
5. Bhim calls himself "the ice queen" because he is so painfully unaffectionate with Jake in public. Jake "thought that Bhim was determined to live in a way his parents would approve of, despite the fact that they would never know it." Why can’t Bhim just be out and proud in this new gay-friendly country? How do Jake and Bhim navigate Bhim’s deep sense of shame and keep it from destroying their love?
6. Pival reflects that "at home Bangladeshis had no status. They did the worst jobs, if they had jobs at all. They were illegal immigrants with no rights and no names, just men who melted into the background and women who looked hungry all the time." Because of this stigma, Ronnie Munshi is desperate to ensure that none of his Indian clients know he and his guides are Bangladeshi. Does this distinction between Bangladeshis and Indians matter in America? Do "illegal immigrants" in America face the same stigma as those Bangladeshis in India?
7. Pival reflects that "I do think most parents at the heart, want their children to be happy. It is only that we want our children to be happy in the right way. The way we were taught that happiness was. I think this is a cause of much pain, thinking, perhaps, that there is a right way." Would Bhim agree? Would Rebecca, who has her own fraught relationship with her parents?
8. Did you think that Bhim might still be alive, and be reunited with his mother? Why or why not?
9. As a college student, before her marriage, Pival describes herself as "young, alive with purpose." Does she regain her purpose by the end of the novel? How does Pival, the widow and bereaved mother in America, compare to Pival the miserable, voiceless wife in Kolkata?
10. "When she woke, the first thought Pival had was, What happens next?" What do you think happens next for these characters? Where will they be five or ten years after the end of this novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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American Gods
Neil Gaiman, 2001
HarperCollins
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062059888
Summary
Winner of the following awards: 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novel; 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel; 2002 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel; 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novel; 2003 Geffen Award for best Fantasy Book.
But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.
Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined—it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own. Along the way Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know. Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path.
Relevant and prescient, American Gods has been lauded for its brilliant synthesis of “mystery, satire, sex, horror, and poetic prose” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World) and as a modern phantasmagoria that “distills the essence of America” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). It is, quite simply, an outstanding work of literary imagination that will endure for generations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Portchester, Hampshire, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Awards—See below
• Currently—Lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Early life
Gaiman's family is of Polish and other Eastern European Jewish origins; his great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (nee Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.
After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I’d say, 'I’m a Jewish Scientologist.'" Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion.
Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said...
I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them-which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it.
One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school library, although it only had the first two books in the trilogy. He consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third book in the trilogy.
For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. Years later, he said...
I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you.... I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets.
Narnia also introduced him to literary awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When he won 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "....It had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another childhood favourite, and "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He also enjoyed "Batman" comics as a child.
Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, includging Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77). His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being blocked from entering a boys' school, forcing him to remain at the school that he had previously been attending. He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965–1980 and again from 1984–1987. He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.
Early Writings
As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. He later became a fan of science fiction, reading the works of authors as diverse as Alan Moore, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Robert A. Heinlein, H. P. Lovecraft, Thorne Smith, and Gene Wolfe.
In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984, when he was 24.
When waiting for a train at Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he would later write; "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".
In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Even though Gaiman thought he did a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by Penthouse. He refused the offer.
He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. As he was writing for different magazines, some of them competing, and "wrote too many articles", he sometimes went by a number of pseudonyms: Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, "along with a couple of house names". Gaiman ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers can "make up anything they want and publish it as fact."
In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style. Following on from that he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.
Comics and Graphic Novels
After forming a friendship with comic book writer Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comic books, picking up "Marvelman" after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short "Future Shocks for 2000 AD" in 1986–7. He wrote three graphic novels with his favorite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: "Violent Cases", "Signal to Noise", and "The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch". Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him, and he wrote the limited series "Black Orchid". Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read "Black Orchid" and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, The Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.
"The Sandman" tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in December 1988 and concluded in March 1996: the 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print.
In 1989, Gaiman published "The Books of Magic" (collected in 1991), a four-part mini-series that provided a tour of the mythological and magical parts of the DC Universe through a frame story about an English teenager who discovers that he is destined to be the world's greatest wizard. The miniseries was popular, and sired an ongoing series written by John Ney Rieber.
In the mid-90s, he also created a number of new characters and a setting that was to be featured in a title published by Tekno Comix. The concepts were then altered and split between three titles set in the same continuity: "Lady Justice, Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man, and Teknophage".They were later featured in Phage: Shadow Death and Wheel of Worlds. Although Gaiman's name appeared prominently on all titles, he was not involved in writing of any of the above-mentioned books (though he helped plot the zero issue of Wheel of Worlds).
Gaiman wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a boy's fascination with Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric of Melniboné for Ed Kramer's anthology Tales of the White Wolf. In 1996, Gaiman and Ed Kramer co-edited The Sandman: Book of Dreams. Nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the original fiction anthology featured stories and contributions by Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Gene Wolfe, Tad Williams, and others.
Asked why he likes comics more than other forms of storytelling Gaiman said “One of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on Sandman, I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before. When I’m writing novels I’m painfully aware that I’m working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now. And you go, well, I don’t know that I’m as good as that and that’s two and a half thousand years old. But with comics I felt like I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun.”
In 2009, Gaiman wrote a two-part "Batman" story for DC Comics to follow "Batman R.I.P." It is titled "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" a play off of the classic Superman story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore. He also contributed a twelve-page "Metamorpho" story drawn by Mike Allred for Wednesday Comics, a weekly newspaper-style series.
Novels
In a collaboration with author Terry Pratchett (best known for his series of Discworld novels), Gaiman's first novel Good Omens was published in 1990. In recent years Pratchett has said that while the entire novel was a collaborative effort and most of the ideas could be credited to both of them, Pratchett did a larger portion of writing and editing if for no other reason than Gaiman's scheduled involvement with "Sandman".
The 1996 novelization of Gaiman's teleplay for the BBC mini-series Neverwhere was his first solo novel. The novel was released in tandem with the television series though it presents some notable differences from the television series. In 1999 first printings of his fantasy novel Stardust were released. The novel has been released both as a standard novel and in an illustrated text edition.
American Gods became one of Gaiman's best-selling and multi-award winning novels upon its release in 2001. A special 10th Anniversary edition was released, with the "author's preferred text" 12,000 words longer than the original mass-market editions. This is identical to the signed and numbered limited edition that was released by Hill House Publishers in 2003. This is also the version released by Headline, Gaiman's publisher in the UK, even before the 10th Anniversary edition. He did an extensive sold-out book tour celebrating the 10th Anniversary and promoting this edition in 2011.
In 2005, his novel Anansi Boys was released worldwide. The book deals with Anansi ('Mr. Nancy'), a supporting character in American Gods. Specifically it traces the relationship of his two sons, one semi-divine and the other an unaware Englishman of American origin, as they explore their common heritage. It debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.
In late 2008, Gaiman released a new children's book, The Graveyard Book. It follows the adventures of a boy named Bod after his family is murdered and he is left to be brought up by a graveyard. It is heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. As of late January 2009, it had been on the New York Times Bestseller children's list for fifteen weeks.
As of 2008, Gaiman has several books planned. After a tour of China, he decided to write a non-fiction book about his travels and the general mythos of China. Following that, will be a new 'adult' novel (his first since 2005's Anansi Boys). After that, another 'all-ages' book (in the same vein as Coraline and The Graveyard Book). Following that, Gaiman says that he will release another non-fiction book called The Dream Catchers. In December 2011, Gaiman announced that in January 2012 he would begin work on what is essentially, American Gods 2.
Literary Allusions
Gaiman's work is known for a high degree of allusiveness. Meredith Collins, for instance, has commented upon the degree to which his novel Stardust depends on allusions to Victorian fairy tales and culture. Particularly in The Sandman, literary figures and characters appear often; the character of Fiddler's Green is modelled visually on G. K. Chesterton, both William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer appear as characters, as do several characters from within A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. The comic also draws from numerous mythologies and historical periods. Such allusions are not unique to Sandman; Stardust, for example, also has a character called Shakespeare.
Clay Smith has argued that this sort of allusiveness serves to situate Gaiman as a strong authorial presence in his own works, often to the exclusion of his collaborators. However, Smith's viewpoint is in the minority: to many, if there is a problem with Gaiman scholarship and intertextuality it is that "...His literary merit and vast popularity have propelled him into the nascent comics canon so quickly that there is not yet a basis of critical scholarship about his work."
David Rudd takes a more generous view in his study of the novel Coraline, where he argues that the work plays and riffs productively on Sigmund Freud's notion of the Uncanny, or the Unheimlich.
Though Gaiman's work is frequently seen as exemplifying the monomyth structure laid out in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Gaiman says that he started reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces but refused to finish it: "I think I got about half way through The Hero with a Thousand Faces and found myself thinking if this is true – I don’t want to know. I really would rather not know this stuff. I’d rather do it because it’s true and because I accidentally wind up creating something that falls into this pattern than be told what the pattern is."
Awards
British Fantasy Award
British Sci-Fi Awards (2)
Bram Stoker Awards (4)
Carnegie Medal
Eisner Awards (19)
Geffen Awards (3)
Hugo Awards (4)
International Horror Guild Award
Locus Awards (5)
Nebula Awards (2)
Newberry Medal
Mythopoeic Awards (2)
(From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Titans clash, but with more fuss than fury in this fantasy demi-epic from the author of Neverwhere. The intriguing premise of Gaiman's tale is that the gods of European yore, who came to North America with their immigrant believers, are squaring off for a rumble with new indigenous deities: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon." They all walk around in mufti, disguised as ordinary people, which causes no end of trouble for 32-year-old protagonist Shadow Moon, who can't turn around without bumping into a minor divinity. Released from prison the day after his beloved wife dies in a car accident, Shadow takes a job as emissary for Mr. Wednesday, avatar of the Norse god Grimnir, unaware that his boss's recruiting trip across the American heartland will subject him to repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife and brutal roughing up by the goons of Wednesday's adversary, Mr. World. At last Shadow must reevaluate his own deeply held beliefs in order to determine his crucial role in the final showdown. Gaiman tries to keep the magical and the mundane evenly balanced, but he is clearly more interested in the activities of his human protagonists: Shadow's poignant personal moments and the tale's affectionate slices of smalltown life are much better developed than the aimless plot, which bounces Shadow from one episodic encounter to another in a design only the gods seem to know. Mere mortal readers will enjoy the tale's wit, but puzzle over its strained mythopoeia. Verdict: Even when he isn't in top form, Gaiman, creator of the acclaimed "Sandman" comics series, trumps many storytellers. Momentously titled, and allotted a dramatic one-day laydown with a 12-city author tour, his latest will appeal to fans and attract mainstream review coverage for better or for worse because of the rich possibilities of its premise.
Publishers Weekly
Shadow Moon, recently released from prison and dealing with his wife's death, accepts a job offer from the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. Together they travel across America gathering up Mr. Wednesday's creepy friends. Soon Shadow discovers this road trip involves the upcoming epic battle between the old gods of the immigrants and today's new gods credit cards, TV, and the Internet. He also experiences repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife, Laura. Shadow's personal tale and the details of American small-town life are well developed compared with the not-well-defined plot. The focus shifts from the gods' Armageddon to Shadow's life, to subplots about secondary characters. The book has wit but is too busy and not very engaging and includes some graphic language, sex, and disturbing events. George Guidall's clear, well-articulated narration contributes to a positive listening experience. Fans will no doubt enjoy the subject matter and the mythic scope. —Denise A. Garofalo, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Library Journal
Shadow, a strong, silent, Steven Seagal type, has kept his head down while doing time for creaming the guys who ran off with his share of a heist. He is about to be released, ticket home in hand, thanks to his lovely wife; then his departure is pushed up a few days-unhappily, so that he can attend her funeral. Weather forces his flight down in St. Louis, and he winds up on a short hop seated next to a mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who informs him that his once and, he had hoped, future boss is also dead. Would he like to work for Wednesday, instead? The guy is too creepy by half but, as it happens, hard to refuse. And after Shadow meets some of Wednesday's equally creepy friends, becomes an accomplice to a clever bank robbery, and gets coldcocked and kidnapped by black-clad heavies, he acquires a certain job loyalty, if only to find out what he has signed on for--an upcoming battle between the old gods of America's many immigrants' original cultures and the new gods of global, homogenizing consumerism. The old gods are trying to live peaceably enough in retirement, which is the predicament Wednesday (i.e., Wotan, or Odin) must overcome to rally them. After two sterling fantasies, the dark Neverwhere (1997) and the lighter, utterly charming Stardust (1999), Gaiman comes a cropper in a tale that is just too busy and, oddly for him, unengaging. His large fandom may make it a success, but many of them, even, will find it a chore to get through. —Ray Olson
Booklist
An ex-convict is the wandering knight-errant who traverses the wasteland of Middle America, in this ambitious, gloriously funny, and oddly heartwarming latest from the popular fantasist (Stardust, 1999, etc.). Released from prison after serving a three-year term, Shadow is immediately rocked by the news that his beloved wife Laura has been killed in an automobile accident. While en route to Indiana for her funeral, Shadow meets an eccentric businessman who calls himself Wednesday (a dead giveaway if you're up to speed on your Norse mythology), and passively accepts the latter's offer of an imprecisely defined job. The story skillfully glides onto and off the plane of reality, as a series of mysterious encounters suggest to Shadow that he may not be in Indiana anymore—or indeed anywhere on Earth he recognizes.... Gaiman layers in a horde of other stories whose relationships to Shadow's adventures are only gradually made clear.... Only an ogre would reveal much more about this big novel's agreeably intricate plot. Suffice it to say that this is the book that answers the question: When people emigrate to America, what happens to the gods they leave behind? A magical mystery tour through the mythologies of allcultures, a unique and moving love story—and another winner for the phenomenally gifted, consummately reader-friendly Gaiman.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. American Gods contains both the magical and the mundane, a fantastic world of divine beings and bizarre happenings and a world of prisons, rundown roadside attractions, and quaint small towns. How is Gaiman able to bring these worlds together in the novel? How does he manage to make their coexistence believable?
2. What is the cultural significance of the war between the gods of old and the "new gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon"? In what ways have Americans transferred their devotion from spiritual to material and technological gods? What are the consequences of such a shift?
3. Gaiman, who now lives in the U.S., is originally from England. How might his perspective as a relative outsider affect his view of America? In what ways can American Gods be read as a satire or critique of American life?
4. What makes Shadow such a compelling protagonist? What are his most appealing qualities? At what crucial points in the novel does he demonstrate courage, compassion, intelligence, a willingness to sacrifice himself? What does his relationship with Laura reveal about him? What is the significance of his obsession with coin tricks?
5. What role do dreams play in American Gods? What are some of Shadow's more vivid and unusual dreams? Why does the Buffalo Man tell him in a dream to "believe everything"?
6. The narrator, discussing how we relate to the suffering of others, writes that "Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out thorough other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page and close the book, and we resume our lives." What does American Gods reveal by letting readers see through the eyes of a collection of down-at-heel and nearly forgotten divinities? What vicarious deaths does it allow us to experience?
7. After shortchanging a waitress, Wednesday tells Shadow that the American people "don't sacrifice rams or bulls to me. They don't send me the souls of killers and slaves, gallows-hung and raven-picked. They made me. They forgot me. Now I take a little back from them. Isn't that fair?" What are the implications of a god like Odin becoming, essentially, a con-man? What is the biggest con he tries to pull off in the novel?
8. What do the old gods need to stay alive and vital? What means do they use to get what they need? What is Gaiman suggesting about the nature of divinity, sacrifice, and devotion?
9. Late in the novel, the narrator says that "Religions are, by definition, metaphors.... Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world." Would you agree with this assertion? What are the gods in American Gods metaphors for? What is the difference between a world view based on worship, sacrifice, and belief in the divine and a world view based on the accumulation of material wealth and comfort?
10. Who are some of the more colorful and vividly drawn secondary characters, human and divine, in the novel? What do they add to the overall impression of the book? How do they affect Shadow?
11. What does the novel imply about the reality of life in small-town America? What darker truth lies behind the pleasant idyll of Lakewood, Wisconsin?
12. At the end of the novel, Shadow thinks to himself: "People believe.... People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen." Would you agree that what people believe in are largely projections of their own needs and desires? In what ways does the novel itself confirm or refute this idea?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Amerian Heiress
Daisy Goodwin, 2011
St. Martin's Press
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312658663
Summary
Be careful what you wish for.
Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.
Witty, moving, and brilliantly entertaining, Cora’s story marks the debut of a glorious storyteller who brings a fresh new spirit to the world of Edith Wharton and Henry James. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 19, 1961
• Where—England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University; Columbia University Film School
• Currently—lives in London, England
Daisy Georgia Goodwin is a British television producer, poetry anthologist and novelist.
Having attended Westminster School and Queen's College, London (another fee paying school, not a university), Goodwin studied history at Trinity College at Cambridge, and attended Columbia Film School before joining the BBC as a trainee arts producer in 1985.
In 1998 she moved to Talkback Productions as head of factual programmes, and in 2005 founded Silver River Productions. Her first novel, My Last Duchess, was published in the UK in August 2010 and, under the title The American Heiress, in the U.S. and Canada in June 2011. Her second novel, The Fortune Hunter, was released in 2014.
Victoria, published in 2016, is also the title of PBS's Masterpiece Theater's series by the same name. Goodwin is both writer and creator of the series.
In addition to her novels and film work, Goodwin has also published eight poetry anthologies and a memoir entitled Silver River, and was chairman of the judging panel for the 2010 Orange Prize for women's fiction. She has presented television shows including Essential Poems (To Fall In Love With) (2003) and Reader, I Married Him (2006).
Goodwin is married to Marcus Wilford, an ABC TV executive; they have two daughters. She appeared as part of the winning Trinity College, Cambridge team on the Christmas University Challenge BBC2, 27 December 2011. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/15/2014.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Goodwin is brazen enough to name her moneybags heroine Cora Cash and to borrow from the life of Consuelo Vanderbilt in telling Cora’s tale. Thanks to the 1895 marriage to Charles Spencer-Churchill that turned Consuelo into the ninth Duchess of Marlborough, Ms. Goodwin need not strain to imagine what it was like for an American girl, from a family that had its own railroad, to catapult herself into the ranks of British royalty. Not that Ms. Goodwin is unimaginative: she gives Cora distinct personality and allure [and]...remains a vibrant character throughout Ms. Goodwin’s archly entertaining story.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
It's a battle of the New and Old Worlds, and for much of this lush look at Edwardian excess and scandal on both sides of the Atlantic, it's tough taking sides. American Cora Cash is the impetuous and spoiled-brat daughter of a flour-making millionaire and a nouveau rich mother from hell, growing up in mansions on Fifth Avenue and Newport at the tail end of the 19th century and introduced to society at a ball where gold-sprayed hummingbirds are released at midnight. But Cora's mother has her one good eye—the other was mangled in a bizarre wardrobe malfunction—on just one prize for her only daughter: a title. Cora, only too happy to free herself from her overbearing mother, happily obliges and, once in Jolly Ol' England, literally falls in front of, and in love with, the handsome and mysterious ninth duke of Wareham. But plopped into a chilly English castle and laughed at for her American ways by high- and low-brow alike, Cora discovers she's merely traded prisons and has to use some Yankee resilience and resourcefulness to unravel her stubbornly aloof husband's dark secrets, win his heart, and earn her place. Television producer Goodwin's debut is a propulsive story of love, manners, culture clash, and store-bought class from a time long past that proves altogether fresh.
Publishers Weekly
Cora Cash may be America's richest heiress in 1893, but her father's money can't buy what her social-climbing mother most desires for her: a title. Desperate to escape her mother's control, Cora urges her friend Teddy Van Der Leyden to marry her, but he chooses to pursue his art. Cora and her mother then head to Europe to find a bachelor, and Cora becomes engaged to the Duke of Wareham. Their opulent New York wedding attracts throngs of gawkers and garners headlines. Back in England, Cora is despised by her powerful mother-in-law. Servants ignore her. Aristocrats delight in her every misstep. Most distressing are the Duke's moodiness and hesitation to reveal his past. The only one loyal to Cora is her maid, Bertha, equally out of place because of her race, class, and nationality. Teddy's fortuitous arrival offers possible escape but no easy answers. Readers likely will recognize the lingering impact of the Duke's past affair before Cora does, but the story is more complex than it first appears. Verdict: Top-notch writing brings to life the world of wealth on both sides of the Atlantic. This debut's strong character development and sense of place will please fans of historical romance, including book club members. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Library Journal
A shrewd, spirited historical romance with flavors of Edith Wharton, Daphne du Maurier, Jane Austen, Upstairs, Downstairs and a dash of People magazine that charts a bumpy marriage of New World money and Old World tradition.... Superior entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is your initial impression of Cora Cash? How does she develop as a person in the course of the novel?
2. In America, Cora is clearly at the top of society, while Bertha is very near the bottom. In what ways do their circumstances change when they move to England?
3. What role do the mothers in the story—Mrs. Cash, Mrs. Van Der Leyden, and the Double Duchess—play in the central characters’ lives?
4. Cora is always aware that “no one was unaffected by the money.” How does the money affect Cora herself ? What are the pleasures and perils of great wealth?
5. What is your opinion of Teddy and the Duke? What about Charlotte?
6. What do you think about Cora’s decision at the end of the book? Would you have made the same choice? (The author has said she was of two minds up until the last chapter.)
7. What are the differences between the Old World and the New in the novel? Do both worlds seem remote in the twenty-first century, or do you see parallels to contemporary society?
8. Why do modern readers enjoy reading novels about the past? Take a moment to discuss your experiences as a reader of historical fiction, in general, and of The American Heiress in particular.
9. When she was chair of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010, Daisy Goodwin wrote a controversial essay lamenting the “unrelenting grimness” of so many of the novels and pointing out that “generally great fiction contains light and shade”—not only misery but joy and humor. What do you think about Daisy’s argument that “it is time for publishers to stop treating literary fiction as the novelistic equivalent of cod-liver oil: if it’s nasty it must be good for you”?
10. Kirkus Reviews called The American Heiress a “shrewd, spirited historical romance with flavors of Edith Wharton, Daphne du Maurier, and Jane Austen.” Other critics have also seen echoes of Henry James. If you have read any of these earlier novelists, what parallels and differences do you see in Daisy’s work?
(Questions by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
American Housewife: Stories
Helen Ellis, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385541039
Summary
A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line.
Meet the women of American Housewife:
♦ They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy.
♦ They casserole. They pinwheel.
♦ They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy.
♦ And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven.
These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop.
Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Goo Goo Cluster, American Housewife is an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Raised—Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
• Education—M.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Helen Ellis is the author of two novels, a collectiion of short stories, and one of essays. She is also a world class poker player.
Her first novel, Eating the Cheshire Cat (2001), is a dark comedy written in Southern Gothic fiction style. It tells the story of three girls raised in the South and the odd, sometimes macabre, tribulations they endure.
Her second novel, The Turning Book: What Curiosity Kills (2010), is a "teen vampire" story about a 16-year-old girl from the South adopted into a wealthy New York City family. The book's plot includes shape-shifting, teen romance, and the supernatural.
Ellis's story collection, American Housewife (2016) contains 12 stories that turn the stereotypical housewife ideal on its head. Each one centers on the trials and tribulations of a particular housewife.
In addition to writing, Ellis also competes in high-stakes poker tournaments. Passionate about poker from the time her father first taught her the game when she was six, she began playing in tournaments in 2008. Two years later, she won $20,000 at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
A year later, fellow author Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor, etc.) hired her as his coach in the World Series of Poker. He wrote about the expperience in his book The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death (2014).
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/3/2016. Also from a 12/22/2015 New York Times article.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Ellis, 45, calls herself a housewife. But that only begins to describe her. She is also a shrewd poker player who regularly competes in high-stakes tournaments, and the author of a forthcoming story collection, American Housewife, that focuses a dark and humorous lens on the domestic… The stories are addictive and full of pitch-perfect observations like, "the only thing with less character than Chardonnay is wainscoting" and "Delores was as fertile as a Duggar." They are populated by, among others, neighbors in a co-op whose fight over decorating turns deadly; women in a book club trying to seduce a new member into carrying their babies; and a chilling series of dead doormen.
J. Courtney Sullivan - New York Times
The 12 compact tales are delightfully dark and leave readers always rooting for the housewife, no matter how twisted her plots…. With punchy writing and unique conundrums, American Housewife can be devoured in a sitting. Resist. The tales are best consumed like the pinot grigio some of these housewives enjoy—daily.
Christina Ledbetter - Washington Post
Satirical humor as twisted as screw-top bottles — and more effervescent than the stuff that pours out of them… American Housewife is a better cure for winter blahs than hot chocolate… The opening story captures her frisky, subversive take on domesticity… Ellis's [one-liners] are outrageously good… ‘What I Do All Day’ is a three-page tour-de-force, boasting as many dazzlers as a wealthy Upper East Side matron's jewelry box… Amid the furious activity, Ellis works her story to a touching punchline you never saw coming. This is shock and awww writing… Ellis is a master of the unhinged monologue, delivered by narrators whose conventional, seemingly benign, honeyed patter gradually reveals the disturbing demon within.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
The first line of Helen Ellis' book of short stories is a kind of call to arms for the American housewife. Quote, "inspired by Beyonce, I stallion walk to the toaster." Ellis is a self-described housewife. She's the kind of Southern lady that deals a mean hand of cards and once played at the World Series of Poker.
Rachel Martin - NPR Morning Edition
Delightful in its originality and eerie, almost demented, humor… Ellis’s stories start in a place that’s quite familiar—the domestic sphere of New York City’s ritzy Upper East Side, where the author also resides—and end in a place that’s decidedly not. Her characters are stealthily complex, their perfectly composed, well-maintained exteriors the ideal cover for inner lives that seethe with pathos and ambition.”
Julia Felsenthal - Vogue.com
The perfect cocktail of Amy Sedaris's wacky wit and Margaret Atwood's insight, Ellis's prose is both searingly funny and emotionally sound… Pithy, witty, and biting, a combination that makes Ellis's writing delicious… The women in these stories are alone in their homes all day, and in that they possess a unique power, command over a confined kingdom.
Claire Luchette - Elle.com
Crackle[s] with domestically ambivalent characters: the modern day Betty Drapers in Helen Ellis’s short story collection, American Housewife, whose tensions over wainscoting and book clubs escalate into near-farce.
Vogue
Ellis...turns domesticity on its head in her darkly funny 12-story collection, featuring hausfraus in various stages of unraveling.... [She] hits the satirical bull’s-eye with a deliciously dry, smart voice that will have readers flipping the pages in delight.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Each story is lively and active. The hilarity of each premise will pull in readers, and the twists will keep them glued to the pages. Anyone who has...felt awkwardly settled into the domestic life will appreciate this not-to-be-missed collection. —Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Ellis’s 12 short stories about women under pressure are archly, acerbically, even surreally hilarious.... Her pacing is swift and eviscerating, and her characters’ rage and hunger for revenge are off the charts… Perfectly crafted. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
The wives in these guffaw-out-loud short stories by novelist Ellis are a wonderfully wacky crew.... The 12 stories here cheekily tackle subjects ranging from neighborhood book clubs to reality TV shows, and while a few of them feel, sadly, like filler, breaking up the madcap momentum, on the whole, they are deliciously dark and deliriously deranged.
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)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for American Housewife...then take off on your own:
1. Of the 12 stories, which do you find funniest, or most pointed? Did the stories resonate with parts of your life? Did any of them offend you or make you uneasy? Which ones made you laugh the hardest?
2. What, precisely, in these stories, is Helen Ellis skewing? Talk about the stereotypical housewife and how each story, or perhaps all of them together, subverts the supposed ideal?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: On the surface, Ellis might be accused of poking fun at her creations. But is she? Could you make the case that, ultimately, her characters are sympathetic, silly or self-absorbed on the surface but with hidden depths, even tragic flaws?
4. Ellis has a brilliant touch with one-liners. Take the fury and near violence of "What I Do All Day"; then talk about that last line. How does it undercut what comes before? Were you taken by surprise?
5. Pick out other passages/lines to discuss. Do you find them sad, funny, poignant, or dead-on accurate: Here are a few for starters:
"Dead Doorment" —When my husband's at work I don't get lonely. I have plenty to do. There's the dusting.
"The Fitter—A perfect bra provides "the confidence of a homecoming queen. It's a tiara for your ta-tas.
"Hello! Welcome to Book Club!" —Your Book Club name will be a secret name that only we will call you. Trust me, you’ll like it. It feels like a dollar bill in your bra.
(Questions by LitLovers. Feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
American Pastoral
Philip Roth, 1997
Knopf Doubleday
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375701429
Summary
Winner, 1998 Pulitizer Prize
As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss.
Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the "American pastoral" and into the indigenous American berserk.
Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 19, 1933
• Where—Newark, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Bucknell University; M.A., University of
Chicago
• Awards—the most awarded US writer—see below
• Currently—lives in Connecticut
After many years of teaching comparative literature—mostly at the University of Pennsylvania—Philip Roth retired from teaching as Distinguished Professor of Literature at Hunter College in 1992. Until 1989, he was general editor of the Penguin book series Writers from the Other Europe, which he inaugurated in 1974 and which introduced the work of Bruno Schultz and Milan Kundera to an American audience.
His lengthy interviews with foreign authors—among them Primo Levi, Ivan Klima, and Aharon Appelfeld—have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 and has lived in Rome, London, Chicago, and New York. He now resides in Connecticut. (From the publisher.)
More
Philip Roth's long and celebrated career has been something of a thorn in the side of the writer. As it is for so many, fame has been the proverbial double-edged sword, bringing his trenchant tragic-comedies to a wide audience, but also making him a prisoner of expectations and perceptions. Still, since 1959, Roth has forged along, crafting gorgeous variations of the Great American Novel and producing, in addition, an autobiography (The Facts) and a non-fictional account of his father's death (Patrimony: A True Story).
Roth's novels have been oft characterized as "Jewish literature," a stifling distinction that irks Roth to no end. Having grown up in a Jewish household in a lower-middle-class sub-section of Newark, New Jersey, he is incessantly being asked where his seemingly autobiographical characters end and the author begins, another irritant for Roth. He approaches interviewers with an unsettling combination of stoicism, defensiveness, and black wit, qualities that are reflected in his work. For such a high-profile writer, Roth remains enigmatic, seeming to have laid his life out plainly in his writing, but refusing to specify who the real Philip Roth is.
Roth's debut Goodbye, Columbus instantly established him as a significant writer. This National Book Award winner was a curious compendium of a novella that explored class conflict and romantic relationships and five short stories. Here, fully formed in Roth's first outing, was his signature wit, his unflinching insightfulness, and his uncanny ability to satirize his character's situations while also presenting them with humanity. The only missing element of his early work was the outrageousness he would not begin to cultivate until his third full-length novel Portnoy's Complaint—an unquestionably daring and funny post-sexual revolution comedy that tipped Roth over the line from critically acclaimed writer to literary celebrity.
Even as Roth's personal relationships and his relationship to writing were severely shaken following the success of Portnoy's Complaint, he continued publishing outrageous novels in the vein of his commercial breakthrough. There was Our Gang, a parodic attack on the Nixon administration, and The Breast, a truly bizarre take on Kafka's Metamorphosis, and My Life as a Man, the pivotal novel that introduced Roth's literary alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman.
Zuckerman would soon be the subject of his very own series, which followed the writer's journey from aspiring young artist with lofty goals to a bestselling author, constantly bombarded by idiotic questions, to a man whose most important relationships have all but crumbled in the wake of his success. The Zuckerman Trilogy (The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, and The Counterlife) directly parallels Roth's career and unfolds with aching poignancy and unforgiving humor.
Zuckerman would later reemerge in another trilogy, although this time he would largely be relegated to the role of narrator. Roth's American Trilogy (I Married a Communist, the PEN/Faulkner Award winning The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America), shifts the focus to key moments in the history of late-20th–century American history.
In Everyman (2006), Roth reaches further back into history. Taking its name from a line of 15th-century English allegorical plays, Everyman is classic Roth—funny, tragic, and above all else, human. It is also yet another in a seemingly unbreakable line of critical favorites, praised by Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and The Library Journal.
In 2007's highly anticipated Exit Ghost, Roth returned Nathan Zuckerman to his native Manhattan for one final adventure, thus bringing to a rueful, satisfying conclusion one of the most acclaimed literary series of our day. While this may (or may not) be Zuckerman's swan song, it seems unlikely that we have seen the last Philip Roth. Long may he roar. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Literary Awards
Philip Roth is one of the most celebrated living American writers. Two of his works of fiction have won the National Book Award (Goodbye, Columbus; Sabbath's Theater); two others were finalists. Two have won National Book Critics Circle awards (Patrimony; Counterlife); again, another two were finalists. He has also won three PEN/Faulkner Awards (Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman) and a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral. In 2001, The Human Stain was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. In 2002, he was awarded the National Book Foundation's Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists still at work, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy. In May 2006, he was given the PEN/Nabokov Award, and in 2007 the first PEN/Saul Bellow Award — both for lifetime achievement.
The May 21, 2006 issue of the New York Times Book Review announced the results of a letter that was sent to what the publication described as "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." Of the 22 books cited, six of Roth's novels were selected: American Pastoral, The Counterlife, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America. The accompanying essay, written by critic A.O. Scott, stated, "If we had asked for the single best writer of fiction of the past 25 years, [Roth] would have won." ("More" and "Awards" from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
American Pastoral is a little slow--as befits its crumbling subject, but unmistakably slow all the same—and I must say I miss Zuckerman's manic energies. But the mixture of rage and elegy in the book is remarkable, and you have only to pause over the prose to feel how beautifully it is elaborated, to see that Mr. Roth didn't entirely abandon Henry James after all. A sentence beginning "Only after strudel and coffee," for instance, lasts almost a full page and evokes a whole shaky generation, without once losing its rhythm or its comic and melancholy logic, until it arrives, with a flick of the conjuror's hand, at a revelation none of us can have been waiting for.
Michael Wood - New York Times Book Review
American Pastoral is a relentlessly mental book, full of inconclusive rumination on material often left strangely undramatized. And that, along with the book's mystifyingly haphazard structure, prevents it from becoming a "genuine imaginative event." ... It never ceases to feel arbitrary, trumped up, forced upon the poor Swede. This is mostly because the notion seems to have little reality for the author, leaving him to summarize and philosophize rather than dramatize the concrete.... Roth is a masterly prose stylist, of course, and there are many passages of fine language in American Pastoral. ... But these strengths are indulged in a way that becomes the book's weakness. The abstracted treatment of ideas, the weighty, morally serious exposition, result in a novel that holds its material at arm's length from the reader.... A story has to work as a story before it can work as an allegory.
Ralph Lombreglia - Atlantic Monthly
Because in this, my one life, I can only spend so much time meditating upon Philip Roth's sexual hang-ups and identity issues, I've approached that ongoing self-obsession, which he regularly parses into novel-sized chunks, with wariness. Now along comes American Pastoral, a novel about three generations of family life and, in particular, the rupture between a father and daughter that embodies the social upheaval of the '60s. A big-picture book, it aspires to naturalist traditions that pit irresistible social forces against hapless souls. Clearly, this time around Roth wants to dodge the much-leveled charge of navel gazing.
At least as much as he can. American Pastoral successfully shoulders its weighty public theme of American optimism undone by a propensity for the extreme. It also rounds up Roth's usual subjects—Jewish assimilation, bourgeois pretension and the shiksa's fatal allure. His perennial alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, can't help but make an appearance at his high school reunion. It was in high school during the 1940s that Zuckerman got to know Seymour Levov, a blond, supremely confidant athletic hero nicknamed "the Swede," upon whom the Jews of Newark heaped adoration. In his physical prowess and simple ease of being—"no striving, no ambivalence, no doubleness"—the Swede represented "a oneness with America" for these first- and second-generation immigrants.
After learning of Seymour's death at the reunion, Zuckerman decides to write about him. The golden boy of Weequahic took over his father's profitable business, married an Irish Catholic former Miss New Jersey and moved to a posh 100-acre spread far from decaying Newark. It's the postwar American dream, until he slams smack up against another pure product of America: To protest the Vietnam War, the Swede's teenage daughter blows up a small-town post-office, accidentally killing a popular local doctor. She goes into hiding for 25 years, during which time the Swede is tortured, first by not knowing how she is, and then by knowing all too well the madness that has consumed her life.
Roth's faithful, often piercing apprehension of the jagged emotional transactions between parent and child form this book's true achievement. (Perhaps, since it was revealed in Claire Bloom's recent memoir that Roth ordered her teenage daughter out of the house, the childless Roth wants to prove he knows from parenthood.) Sadly though, this is another novel by a marquee author that suffers from intimidated or inactive editors. There are long sections of conversation (one features the Swede's bulldog of a father interrogating his Catholic future daughter-in-law about anti-Semitism), that just go on and on. Structurally, the book is poorly shaped. Roth doesn't circle back to the 90-page preamble featuring Zuckerman, the ending feels arbitrary and the gratifying if bracing payoff that American Pastoral vigorously promises throughout is denied. But, if you want a Philip Roth book that isn't just another bulletin from his life, this one is that and more.
Alabert Mobilio - Salon
The protagonist of Roth's new novel, a magnificent meditation on a pivotal decade in our nation's history, is in every way different from the profane and sclerotic antihero of Sabbath's Theater (for which Roth won the National Book Award in 1995). It's as though, having vented his spleen and his libido in Mickey Sabbath, Roth was then free to contemplate the life of a man who is Sabbath's complete opposite. He relates the story of Seymour "Swede" Levov with few sex scenes and no scatological sideshows; the deviant behavior demonstrated here was common to a generation, and the shocks Roth delivers are part of our national trauma. This is Roth's most mature novel, powerful and universally resonant. Swede Levov's life has been charmed from the time he was an all-star athlete at Newark's Weequahic high school. As handsome, modest, generous and kind as he is gifted, Swede takes pains to acknowledge the blessings for which he is perceived as the most fortunate of men. He is patriotic and civically respon-sible, maritally faithful, morally upstanding, a mensch. He successfully runs his father's glove factory, refusing to be cowed by the race riots that rock Newark, marries a shiksa beauty-pageant queen, who is smart and ambitious, buys a 100-acre farm in a classy suburb-the epitome of serene, innocent, pastoral existence-and dotes on his daughter, Merry. But when Merry becomes radicalized during the Vietnam War, plants a bomb that kills an innocent man and goes under-ground for five years, Swede endures a torment that becomes increasingly unbearable as he learns more about Merry's monstrous life. In depicting Merry, Roth expresses palpable fury at the privileged, well-educated, self-centered children of the 1960s, who in their militant idealism demonstrated ferocious hatred for a country that had offered their families opportunity and freedom. After three generations of upward striving and success, Swede and his family are flung "out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy-into the fury, the violence and the desperation of the counterpastoral-into the American berserk." Roth's pace is measured. The first two sections of the book are richly textured with background detail. The last third, however, is full of shocking surprises and a message of existential chaos. "The Swede found out that we are all in the power of something demented,'' Roth writes. And again: "He had learned the worst lesson that life could teach-that it makes no sense." In the end, his dream and his life destroyed by his daughter and the decade, Swede finally understands that he is living through the moral breakdown of American society. The picture is chilling.
Publishers Weekly
In his latest novel, Roth shows his age. Not that his writing is any less vigorous and supple. But in this autumnal tome, he is definitely in a reflective mood, looking backward. As the book opens, Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, recalls an innocent time when golden boy Seymour "the Swede" Levov was the pride of his Jewish neighborhood. Then, in precise, painful, perfectly rendered detail, he shows how the Swede's life did not turn out as gloriously as expected, how it was, in fact, devastated by a child's violent act. When Merry Levov blew up her quaint little town's post office to protest the Viet Nam war, she didn't just kill passing physician Fred Conlon, she shattered the ties that bound her to her worshipful father. Merry disappears, then eventually reappears as a stick-thin Jain living in sacred povery in Newark, having killed three more people for the cause. Roth doesn't tell the whole story blow by blow but gives us the essentials in luminous, overlapping bits. In the end, the book positively resonates with the anguish of a father who has utterly lost his daughter. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
Roth's elegiac and affecting new novel, his 18th, displays a striking reversal of form—and content—from his most recent critical success, the Portnoyan Sabbath's Theater (1995). Its narrator, however, is a familiar Rothian figure: writer Nathan Zuckerman (of The Ghost Writer, et al.)—and in case you're wondering whether he still seems to be his author's alter ego, Nathan is now in his early 60s, recovering from both cancer surgery and a longtime affair with an English actress. Essentially retired, Nathan is approached by a high-school classmate's older brother—and the well-remembered hero of his youth: Seymour "Swede" Levov, once a blue-eyed athletic and moral paragon who strode through life with ridiculous ease, now nearing 70 and crushed by outrageous misfortunes. Swede asks his help writing a tribute to his late father, and soon thereafter dies himself. Piqued by the enigma of a seemingly perfect life (superb health, a successful family business, marriage to a former beauty queen) inexplicably gone wrong, Zuckerman "dream[s] a realistic chronicle" that reconstructs Swede's life—compounded of information gleaned from others who knew him, and centering in the 1960s when Swede's life began to unravel. His only daughter Meredith ("Merry") had rebelled against her parents' and her culture's complacency, protested against the war in Vietnam, claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing in which innocent people were killed, and gone "underground" as a fugitive. Most of the scenes Zuckerman/Roth imagines, therefore, are intensely emotional conversations in which the conflicting claims of social solidarity and individual integrity are debated with pained immediacy. Here, and in more conventionally expository authorial passages, meditativeness and discursiveness predominate over drama. Nevertheless, passion seethes through the novel's pages. Some of the best pure writing Roth has done. And Swede Levov's anguished cry "What the hell is wrong with doing things right?" may be remembered as one of the classic utterances in American fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is the effect of being told the story through Zuckerman? Are we led to believe aspects of the story are a projection of Zuckerman's fantasies about a character who caught his imagination?
2. Zuckerman sees the Swede's life as an illustration of the Jewish "desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre-America insecurities and the old, constraining obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals" [p. 85]. How does Roth illustrate this thought? The Swede tries very hard to form himself as this ideal person. Does the story imply that such a life, such a reinvention of the self, is ultimately impossible?
3. There could hardly be two more different personality types than the Swede and his brother, Jerry. What do Jerry's positive traits tell us about the Swede's negative ones? Why have the two of them chosen such different paths?
4. Does Lou Levov appear to be a benign or a negative influence on his sons' lives? How, if at all, has he contributed in making the Swede what he is?
5. The passionate kiss that the Swede gave Merry when she was eleven was a once-in-a-lifetime transgression. "Never in his entire life, not as a son, a husband, a father, even as an employer, had he given way to anything so alien to the emotional rules by which he was governed" [p. 91]. Later the Swede fears that this moment precipitated the infinite anger of her teenage years. Is this conclusion erroneous? What does it reveal?
6. The Swede believes that the political radicalism professed by Merry and Rita Cohen is nothingbut "angry, infantile egoism thinly disguised as identification with the oppressed" [p. 134]. Is the answer as simple as that? How genuine is Merry's identification with the oppressed? Are her political arguments convincing?
7. What effect did the experience of watching, as a child, the self-immolation of the Buddhist monks have upon Merry? Does her reaction seem unusual to you? Did it affect what happened to her later?
8. What effect do all the details about the glove trade have upon the narrative? How do they illuminate the story?
9. Do you believe Merry when she says that she doesn't know Rita Cohen? If she is telling the truth, who might Rita Cohen be? What is her function within the story?
10. The Swede planned his life to be picture perfect, and he lived that life until it turned dark and violent. Was his life the essential American Dream, or was it a nightmare rather than a pastoral? What comment does the novel's title make upon the story it tells?
11. What are Merry's feelings for America? What are her feelings for her parents? How are the two connected?
12. Merry's stuttering began to disappear when she worked with dynamite. What emotional purpose did Merry's stuttering serve, and why was she able to leave the handicap behind her when she left home?
13. When the Swede calls Jerry to ask for his advice, he is treated to a diatribe. "What's the matter with you?" Jerry asks. "You're acceding to her the way you acceded to your father, the way you have acceded to everything in your life" [p. 273]. Is Jerry right? Should the Swede force Merry to come home? Why does the Swede refuse Jerry's offer to come get Merry himself?
14. Why does Merry, when she becomes a Jain, choose to settle in the neighborhood of her father's factory in Newark?
15. Does Dawn, in reinventing herself after Merry's disappearance, seem ruthless to you, or do you sympathize with her struggle for personal survival? When she tells Bill Orcutt that she always hated the Old Rimrock house, is she telling the truth? And is she telling the truth when she claims she is glad that she didn't become Miss America?
16. Describing his brother, Jerry says, "In one way he could be conceived as completely banal and conventional. An absence of negative values and nothing more. Bred to be dumb, built for convention, and so on" [p. 65]. Is this how you see Swede Levov by the end of the novel? Does he depart from banality and convention?
17. "His great looks, his larger-than-lifeness, his glory, our sense of his having been exempted from all self-doubt by his heroic role—that all these manly properties had precipitated a political murder made me think of the compelling story... of Kennedy" [p. 83]. In what ways do American Pastoral's political metaphors reflect the story of mid-century America? Why might they be presented through a Kennedy-like figure?
18. The Swede" had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense." What leads him to this conclusion? Did his life in fact make no sense?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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American Rust
Philipp Meyer, 2008
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385527521
Summary
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation—as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love—that arise from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.
Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University
• Currently—near Ithaca, New York; Austin, Texas
Philipp Meyer is an American fiction writer, born in 1974, and is the author of the novel American Rust, as well as short stories published in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and Esquire UK. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood often featured in the films of John Waters. His mother is an artist; his father is an electrician turned college biology instructor.
Meyer attended Baltimore city public schools, including Baltimore City College High School, until dropping out at age 16 and getting a GED. He spent the next five years working as a bicycle mechanic and occasionally volunteering at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center.
At age 20, while taking college classes in Baltimore, Meyer decided to become a writer. He also decided to leave his hometown and at 22, after several attempts at applying to elite colleges, was admitted to Cornell University. Meyer graduated Cornell with a degree in English but then took a job on Wall Street to pay off his student loans.
With the Swiss investment bank UBS, Meyer trained in London and Zurich and was given a position as a derivatives trader. After several years at UBS, he had written most of a novel (no relation to American Rust) and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. When attempts at publishing that novel failed, a book he has called “an apprentice-level work,” Meyer took jobs as an emergency medical technician and construc-tion worker. He was preparing for a long-term career as a paramedic when, in 2005, he received a fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas, where he wrote the majority of American Rust.
Not long after arriving in Austin, Meyer drove to New Orleans to do relief work during Hurricane Katrina. He arrived in the middle of the hurricane and spent several days doing emergency medical work for a local police department.
American Rust was an Economist Book of the Year in 2009, a Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009, a New York Times Notable Book of 2009, a Kansas City Star Top 100 Book of 2009, and an Amazon Top 100 Book of 2009. Reviewers in the London Telegraph, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and Dayton Daily News have suggested it fits the category of "Great American Novel."
The book is a third person, stream-of-consciousness narrative influenced, according to Meyer, by writers such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Kelman. While a reviewer in The Baltimore Sun compared the novel to the work of Faulkner, various other reviewers, including Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, Ron Charles of the Washington Post, and Taylor Antrim writing in the Daily Beast, have favorably compared Meyer to a wide variety of more traditional writers, including Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, and Dennis Lehane.
The Son, published in 2013, has been hailed a classic, even the "Great American Novel," by reviewers. It is a saga of the Texas Mccullough family—"the tale of the United States written in blood across the Texas plains, a 200-year cycle of theft and murder that shreds any golden myths of civilized development." (Ron Charles, Washington Post).
Meyer currently lives in rural areas outside Ithaca, New York, and Austin, Texas. (Adapted from Wikipedia..)
Book Reviews
Mr. Meyer...conjures up this blue-collar Rust Belt town with the same sort of social detail and emotional verisimilitude that Richard Russo has brought to his depictions of upstate New York and Russell Banks has brought to downstate New Hampshire. He writes about his characters' lives in Buell with sympathy and unsentimental clarity.... American Rust announces the arrival of a gifted new writer—a writer who understands how place and personality and circumstance can converge to create the perfect storm of tragedy.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Within just a few pages of meeting the central players, we're allowed such intimate access to the rhythm of their thoughts that it becomes easy to fathom—even relate to—their blunders. We hope they will not fail, and this hope makes their failures good reading…American Rust is a bold, absorbing novel with a keen interest in how communities falter. Meyer knows that reductive explanations aren't sufficient, and he moves deftly from the panoramic to the microscopic—from sweeping views of a dying valley to the quiet ruminations of a mind behind bars.
Lewis Robinson - New York Times Book Review
[a] powerful first novel.... Told in language both plaintive and grand…Meyer's tone is less polemic than John Steinbeck's, but he's working on the same broad scale, using the struggles of a few desperate people to portray the tragedy of life in a place that offers no employment, no chance for improvement.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
In his unrelentingly downbeat debut, Meyer offers up a character-driven near-noir set in Buell, a dying Pennsylvania steel town, where aimless friends Billy Poe and Isaac English are trapped by economic and personal circumstance. Just before their halfhearted escape to California, Isaac accidentally kills a transient who tries to rob Poe. The boys return to the crime scene the next day with plans to cover up the crime, setting the plot in motion. Poe is soon under suspicion, and Isaac, distraught after discovering Poe has been carrying on a relationship with Isaac's sister, Lee, sets off for California alone. Meanwhile, Poe's mother, Grace, mourns her own lost opportunities, broods over her son and pines for her on-again-off-again love, the local sheriff. A fully realized tragic heroine, Grace is the poignant thrust of the novel, embodying enough rural tragedy to nearly atone for the novel's weakness: a sense that some of the plot mechanics are arbitrary. Still, Meyer has a thrilling eye for failed dreams and writes uncommonly tense scenes of violence, and in the character of Grace creates a woeful heroine. Fans of Cormac McCarthy or Dennis Lehane will find in Meyer an author worth watching.
Publishers Weekly
The dying steel towns of southwestern Pennsylvania are the somber canvas upon which Meyer paints this tale of class, crime, and circumscribed choices. Lifelong buddies Isaac and Billy find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now Isaac's on the run, Billy's taking the fall for a murder he didn't commit, and their respective families struggle to make sense of what's happened. Meyer's slow, eloquent pacing and lofty vocabulary occasionally seem at odds with the grim realities of Isaac and Billy's adventures, which include prison scenes and tales of life on the road. However, the elegant phrasing provides an ironic contrast between life as it really is and life as the characters wish it could be. Meyer's greatest strength as a novelist lies in his poignantly well-rounded characters, particularly Billy's long-suffering mother, Grace, who repeatedly sacrifices her own prospects for those of her child. A Pandora's box of debate for book clubs, this novel is an essential purchase for libraries in Pennsylvania.
Library Journal
Part earnest Dreiserian tragedy, part Cormac McCarthy novel transplanted to the Steel Belt, Meyer's debut in the end takes a gothic turn into blockbuster-movie bloodbath. Gifted, 20-year-old Isaac has the double bad luck of being born in a dying Pennsylvania steel town and of having an equally smart sister who's already escaped, to Yale and afterward to marriage, leaving him home to tend his disabled father. At the novel's beginning, Isaac has stolen $4,000 from the old man's desk and is lighting out with the quixotic idea that he'll hop a freight and somehow reach the Shangri-La of Berkeley and an astrophysics degree. Isaac is accompanied for the first stretch by his friend Poe, an ex-football star on probation because of a brutal fight that could have earned him serious time except that the sheriff, his mother's lover, intervened. When they seek refuge from the weather in an abandoned factory along the tracks, Isaac and Poe encounter other refugees, transients of longer standing and rougher mien. Hair-triggered Poe incites a fight, and Isaac kills a man with a stone thrown in defense of his friend. This death sets in motion a complex plot that centers on the impossibility of escape, be it from place, circumstance or character. Meyer does a terrific job capturing the tone and ethos of his setting, half postindustrial wasteland and half prelapsarian Eden (OK, four-fifths postindustrial wasteland and one-fifth prelapsarian Eden). Several of the alternating narrators are compellingly drawn, especially the sheriff and Isaac, whose flight is a hellishly compacted journey from innocence to experience. The self-styled "Kid" encounters misery and perfidy everywhere he goes—until he decides to face the music and turns homeward. Despite some contrived plot developments, a grimly powerful hybrid: provocative literary fiction crossed with a propulsive thriller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In what ways does seeing the novel through the eyes of six different characters change the experience of the book? How would the book be different if seen from only one point of view? Which characters would be more or less likeable if the reader could see them omnisciently? Do you think Meyer was trying to make a broader point by writing this way?
2. Does your opinion of various characters change throughout the book? How and why?
3. Isaac, Poe, Lee, Grace, and Harris are all faced with important decisions that will affect not only their own lives, but also the lives of their loved ones. Whose choice was hardest to make?
4. Which characters behaved in the most unexpected ways?
5. Much of the book touches on the idea of consciously knowing versus knowing subconsciously. In which characters and subplots does this become an important distinction?
6. One of Isaac’s obsessions is the question of what differentiates humans from other animals. What does he ultimately conclude, and why? Do you agree with him?
7. When the book begins, Poe, despite his athleticism, considers himself a coward. Do you agree with his assessment? Has it changed by the time the book ends?
8 . Harris, by most conventional measures, is a “good” man at the book’s beginning. Has he changed by the book’s end? Is he still good? Would society agree with you?
9. Lee says in her own words at the beginning of the novel,that she abandoned her family to save herself. Do you agree with this self-assessment? Does your opinion of her change as the story unfolds? What would you do in her shoes?
10. How much responsibility does Grace have forHarris’s actions near the end of the book? Does she have moral responsibility? Are her actions more or less pure than Harris’s? What would you have done in her or Harris’s position? Is Grace still a good person?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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American Spy
Lauren Wilkinson, 2019
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812988284
Summary
What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?
It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork.
So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.
Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Sankara is doing for his country.
Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place.
Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.
In the year that follows, Marie will observe Sankara, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.
Inspired by true events—Thomas Sankara is known as "Africa’s Che Guevara"—American Spy knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Lauren Wilkinson earned an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and has taught writing at Columbia and the Fashion Institute of Technology.
She was a 2013 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, and has also received support from the MacDowell Colony and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Wilkinson grew up in New York and lives on the Lower East Side. American Spy is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[W]hile embracing ambitions and concerns that don’t always figure highly in the spy genre, [American Spy] is first and foremost a thriller…. Plenty to enjoy on its own terms, then, as a slick, well-observed thriller, but what adds depth are the perspectives offered by the central character…. [C]hallenging boundaries is what brave fiction does, and Wilkinson proves confident enough to carry it off. For a debut novel it’s remarkably assured, earning its genre stripes with panache, and addressing thought-provoking issues along the way.
New York Times Book Review
Lauren Wilkinson’s new novel, American Spy, is extraordinary in a lot of ways—most obviously because it places a female African American intelligence officer… at the center of a Cold War tale of political espionage. But also striking is the novel’s deeper recognition that, to some extent, rudimentary tradecraft is something all of her African American characters have learned as an everyday survival skill…. American Spy is a morally nuanced and atmospheric political thriller.
Washington Post
[Wilkinson's] first novel starts off with a literal bang, and never once lets up. American Spy is a beautifully paced spy thriller as well as a promising debut from a writer who's not content to rely on the settled tropes of any literary genre…. Wilkinson packs a lot of plot into American Spy…. But [she] handles the several threads in the novel deftly, and she has a real gift for pacing…. Above all, it's just so much fun to read ... [American Spy] marks the debut of an immensely talented writer who's refreshingly unafraid to take risks, and has the skills to make those risks pay off.
NPR
(Starred review) [U]nflinching, incendiary debut… a thrilling, razor-sharp examination of race, nationalism, and U.S. foreign policy that is certain to make Wilkinson’s name as one of the most engaging and perceptive young writers working today.
Publishers Weekly
Wilkinson works within the true history of Burkina Faso, blending high-stakes political drama and Marie’s contemplation of the sister she lost and what her own choices will mean for her sons. Appealing in its insightful characterizations, well-plotted action, and rich settings, this should find a large audience.
Booklist
There are many tangled strands to unravel here… [and] Wilkinson… navigates… this tale of divided loyalties with the poise of such classic masters as Eric Ambler and Graham Greene…. Wilkinson’s book is a noteworthy contribution.
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:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
American War
Omar El Akkad, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451493583
Summary
An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074.
But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place.
But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be.
Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—Cairo, Egypt
• Raised—Doha, Qatar, and Canada
• Education—B.A., Queens University (Kingston, Ontario)
• Awards—National Newspaper Award (see below)
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in Doha, Qatar, until he moved to Canada with his family. He is an award-winning journalist and author who has traveled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade.
His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. He is a recipient of Canada's National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. He lives in Portland, Oregon. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A dystopian novel set in the no-longer-United States of America between 2075- 2095 — a time when “the planet turned on the country and the country turned on itself.” Through the life of Sarat Chestnut readers learn that climate change has won, wiping out whole cities and turning once inhabitable places uninhabitable.… The writing is phenomenal; the story is compelling; the premise is terrifying. Let’s hope that while Omar El Akkad can spin a good yarn, he is in no way a psychic.
Abby Fabiaschi, AUTHOR - LitLovers
American War is an unlikely mash-up of unsparing war reporting and plot elements familiar to readers of the recent young-adult dystopian series The Hunger Games and Divergent. From these incongruous ingredients, El Akkad has fashioned a surprisingly powerful novel—one that creates as haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy did in The Road, and as devastating a look at the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America.… El Akkad has…deftly imagined the world his characters inhabit, and writes with…propulsive verve.… He demonstrates cool assurance at using details—many gathered, it seems, during his years as a reporter—to make his fictional future feel alarmingly real. And he writes here with boldness and audacity.… El Akkad has written a novel that not only maps the harrowing effects of violence on one woman and her family, but also becomes a disturbing parable about the ruinous consequences of war on ordinary civilians.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
The novel may be set in the future, and the title may be American War, but there's nothing especially futuristic or, for that matter, distinctly American about it. This is precisely the author's point.… America is not Iraq or Syria, but it's not Denmark, either; it's a large, messy, diverse country glued together by 250-year-old paperwork composed by yeoman farmers, and our citizens seem to understand one another less by the day. Puncture the illusion of a commonwealth, El Akkad asserts, fire a few shots into the crowd and put people in camps for a decade, and watch what happens.… The novel's thriller premise notwithstanding, El Akkad applies a literary writer's care to his depiction of Sarat's psychological unpacking and the sensory details of her life.…Whether read as a cautionary tale of partisanship run amok, an allegory of past conflicts or a study of the psychology of war, American War is a deeply unsettling novel. The only comfort the story offers is that it's a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.
Justin Cronin - New York Times Book Review
Follow the tributaries of today’s political combat a few decades into the future and you might arrive at something as terrifying as Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War. Across these scarred pages rages the clash that many of us are anxiously speculating about in the Trump era: a nation riven by irreconcilable ideologies, alienated by entrenched suspicions…both poignant and horrifying.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Striking.… A most unusual novel, one featuring a gripping plot and an elegiac narrative tone.
Rayyan Al-Shawaf - Boston Globe
Astounding, gripping and eerily believable…masterful.… Both the story and the writing are lucid, succinct, powerful and persuasive.
Lawrence Hill - Toronto Globe and Mail
Sarat is a fascinating character.… Thought-provoking [and] earnest.… El Akkad’s formidable talent is to offer up a stinging rebuke of the distance with which the United States sometimes views current disasters, which are always happening somewhere else. Not this time.
Jeff VanderMeer - Los Angeles Times
Depicting a world uncomfortably close to the one we live in, American War is as captivating as it is deeply frightening.
Jarry Lee - Buzzfeed.com
American War is terrifying in its prescient vision of the future.
Maris Kreizman - New York / Vulture
(Starred review.) Part family chronicle, part apocalyptic fable, American War is a vivid narrative of a country collapsing in on itself, where political loyalties hardly matter given the ferocity of both sides and…[violence that] erodes any capacity for mercy or reason. This is a very dark read.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [G]ripping and frightening debut novel takes off from current American political and environmental issues to imagine a bleak and savage not-too-distant future.… Well written, inventive, and engaging. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) El Akkad has created a brilliantly well-crafted, profoundly shattering saga of one family’s suffering in a world of brutal power struggles, terrorism, ignorance, and vengeance. American War is a gripping, unsparing, and essential novel for dangerously contentious times. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
A dystopian vision of a future United States undone by civil war and plague.… El Akkad's novel is an allegory about present-day military occupation, from drone strikes to suicide bombers to camps full of refugees.… A well-imagined if somber window into social collapse.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel’s epigraphs are taken from two classic texts, an ancient Arabic book of poems and the Bible. What do the quotes and their sources suggest about the conflict that will follow in the novel?
2. Were you surprised by the way the map of the United States has been altered—the states’ borders and the landmasses themselves—in the projections for 2075? What do you think caused those changes; was it solely politics or other forces as well?
3. What does the first-person narrator we meet in the prologue explain—and not explain—about how the country has changed, the timeline of the Second American Civil War itself, and the unnamed “she” who has stayed in his memory since his youth?
4. What is the significance of Sarat’s changing of her own name when she’s a girl? How does that sense of agency and identity develop as she gets older? How does her having a twin sister fit into your understanding of her independence and actions?
5. The novel presents many different laws, agencies, and other government entities for the future America. Which did you find to be most plausible, including as sources for political conflict that would escalate into war? Are any similar to real-life policies as you’re reading about them today?
6. Describe the dynamic of the Chestnut family, parents and children. What’s similar and what’s different about domestic life in their world versus today’s and during the time of the first Civil War?
7. How pervasive is the allegiance to the Free Southern State where the Chestnuts live and throughout the cordoned region? What threats do those who disagree with the cause face?
8. How closely do the events and details of the Second American Civil War follow those of the first and/or other historical events in American history? After you finished the novel, were you more or less likely to think another such conflict could happen again in this way, on a national or global scale?
9. How do the interludes of primary source texts—textbook excerpts, government reports, notebooks, letters, etc.—enhance the personal story of Sarat and her family, in terms of the motives for and timeline of the war on a micro and macro level?
10. What gender stereotypes persist in the future between the young girls and boys, especially once the family reaches Camp Patience? How does Sarat push back against expectations of what she can and cannot do, including in contrast to her sister and brother?
11. How does the novel complicate the meaning of “home,” in a personal and national level? Does where and how a character lives at any given point determine his or her sense of security or belonging, or does this feeling come from somewhere else?
12. Sarat sees on Albert Gaines’s, a northerner’s, map different kinds of borders and observes, “To the north the land looked the same but she knew there existed some invisible fissure in the earth where her people’s country ended and the enemy’s began.” (133) How did such fissures form, and what does the outcome of the war and novel suggest about their ability to be healed?
13. How does Sarat’s plight speak to Gaines’s statement that “the first thing they try to take from you is your history”? (122)
14. What defines one’s sense of “belief” in the novel? Are people more motivated by personal beliefs, or by more institutional ones like religion or politics?
15. How are certain characters in the novel mythologized? What does this do to their day-to-day existence and their legacy? How do the mythic characters in the book parallel historical figures in what they’re remembered for and how?
16. Discuss the sequence of events and outcomes of the plague. How does that kind of warfare reflect advancements in society as well as the sense of humanity’s worth?
17. What is the role of love in the novel? By the story’s conclusion, does the idea of love conquering all still apply, or does revenge supersede it?
18. Many historians consider the first Civil War to have been a battle of the past (the South) versus the future (the North). Do those distinctions apply to the Second American Civil War, and what does this say about the future—and present—of the country and those running it?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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American Wife
Curtis Sittenfeld, 2008
Random House
592 pp
ISBN-13: 9780812975406
Summary
On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”
A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.
As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectoryof her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?
In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 23, 1975
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in St. Louis, Missouri
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld is an American writer, the author of several novels and a collection of short stories.
Sittenfeld was the second of four children (three girls and a boy) of Paul G. Sittenfeld, an investment adviser, and Elizabeth (Curtis) Sittenfeld, an art history teacher and librarian at Seven Hills School, a private school in Cincinnati.
She attended Seven Hills School through the eighth grade, then attended high school at Groton School, a boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1993. In 1992, the summer before her senior year, she won Seventeen magazine's fiction contest.
She attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At Stanford, she studied Creative Writing, wrote articles for the college newspaper, and edited that paper's weekly arts magazine. At the time, she was also chosen as one of Glamour magazine's College Women of the Year. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Novels
• Prep
Her first novel Prep (2005) deals with coming of age, self-identity, and class distinctions in the preppy and competitive atmosphere of a private school.
• The Man of My Dreams
Sittenfeld's second novel, The Man of My Dreams (2006), follows a girl named Hannah from the end of her 8th grade year through her college years at Tufts and into her late twenties.
• American Wife
Sittenfeld's third novel, American Wife (2008), is the tale of Alice Blackwell, a fictional character who shares many similarities with former First Lady Laura Bush.
• Sisterland
Her fourth novel, Sisterland (2013), concerns a set of identical twins who have psychic powers, one of whom hides her strange gift while the other has become a professional psychic.
• Eligible
A 21st-century retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Eligible was released in 2016. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/12/2013.)
Book Reviews
Clearly, American Wife…will attract a lot of readers in much the same way as Joe Klein's 1996 novel Primary Colors got a lot of readers, who thought they were getting a roman a clef about Bill and Hillary Clinton. American Wife, however, isn't political satire; rather it attempts to give us an emotionally detailed portrait of a woman and her marriage to a politician, much the way Ms. Sittenfeld's first novel, Prep, tried to give us an emotionally detailed portrait of a teenager and her experience of boarding school. And while the final chapters dealing with the Blackwell presidency are badly undermined by Ms. Sittenfeld's obvious contempt for Charlie's politics (and her inability to understand how Alice could possibly share her husband's views), this latest novel succeeds in creating a memorable and sympathetic heroine.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Detractors from both sides of the aisle might want to veer off message and actually read the book before lobbing grenades. This story isn't really about Laura Bush, although main character Alice Blackwell does share so many traits with the current first lady that the steamy sex scenes are bound to elicit a collective ewww. Never mind that. American Wife advances the notion that there is more to a president's wife than orchestrated public appearances. Still a radical notion in Washington, perhaps, but one that women around the country will welcome. Sittenfeld offers a smart and sophisticated portrait of a high-profile political wife who takes the reins of a life she never wanted and holds on tight to who she wants to be, regardless of how the rest of the world perceives her.
Connie Schultz - Washington Post
The scope and detail of American Wife are reminiscent of Richard Russo. Like Russo, she creates characters from the ground up, ancestry, neighborhood, culture and all.
Los Angeles Times
Sittenfeld boldly imagines the inner life of a first lady...an intimate and daring story.... American Wife is a vicarious experience, an up-close portrait of the interior life of a very complicated woman…cinematic.
USA Today
We love Sittenfeld. We love her wry, razor-sharp observations. We love her funny, straightforward honesty…[American Wife] is an empathetic, fascinating, and gorgeously written story about a 30-year marriage. We devoured it in one night.
Boston Magazine
Sittenfeld tracks...the life of bookish, naïve Alice Lindgren and the trajectory that lands her in the White House as first lady.... Once the author leaves the realm of pure fiction, however, and has the first couple deal with his being ostracized..., the book quickly loses its panache and sputters to a weak conclusion that doesn't live up to the fine storytelling that precedes it.
Publishers Weekly
Bold...conveys in convincing, thoroughly riveting detail a life far more complicated than it appears on the surface.... What she does here, in prose as winning as it is confident, is to craft out of the first-person narration a compelling, very human voice, one full of kindness and decency. And, as if making the Bush-like couple entirely sympathetic is not enough of a feat in itself, she also provides many rich insights into the emotional ebb and flow of a long-term marriage.
Booklist
An elementary-school librarian marries the least promising son of an old-moneyed, intensely competitive Republican family and sticks by him as he rises from hard-drinking fool to unpopular U.S. President in this roman a clef from Sittenfeld.... This fictional first lady is a wimp and her husband a lightweight. So what's new?
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens and closes with Alice wondering if she’s made terrible mistakes. Do you think she has? If so, what are they?
2. Alice’s grandmother passes down her love of reading. How else is Alice influenced by her grandmother?
3. Why does Andrew remain such an important figure to Alice, even decades later? Do you think they would have ended up together under different circumstances?
4. To what do you attribute Dena’s anger at what she calls Alice’s betrayal? Do you believe her anger is justified?
5. Is Charlie a likable character? Can you understand Alice’s attraction to him?
6. Does Alice compromise herself and her ideals during her marriage, or does she realistically alter her behavior and expectations in order to preserve the most important relationship in her life?
7. Were you surprised by the scene between Alice and Joe at the Princeton reunion? Why do you think it happened?
8. What would you have done in Alice’s situation at the end of the novel? Do you think it was wrong of her to take the stance she did?
9. How do you think Laura Bush would react to this novel if she read it?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The American Wife: Stories
Elaine Ford, 2007
University of Michigan Press
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780472116201
Summary
Of Elaine Ford’s novel, Missed Connections, the Washington Post wrote that it is a work "of small episodes, of precise sentences, of unusual clarity." That same clarity proves an unsettling force in Ford’s collection of stories, The American Wife, where precision of prose often belies uncertainties hidden beneath.
In the title piece, an American woman in England, embroiled in a relationship doomed to fail, discovers how little she understands about her own desires and impulses. In another story, another American wife, abandoned in Greece by her archaeologist husband, struggles to solve a crime no one else believes to have been committed.
Throughout her stories Ford touches on the mysteries that make up our lives. Each story in itself is a masterpiece of such detail and power as to transform the way we see the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Elaine Ford is the author of five novels. For her fiction she has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Maine, where she taught creative writing and literature. She lives in Harpswell, Maine. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Miss Ford makes every inch of her fictional territory count.
New York Times Book Review
Ford's prose has a poised, finely tuned quality that doesn't scream because it doesn't need to.... Her keen grasp of the inescapable and convoluted effects of family ties is one of the finest achievements of the book.
Harper's
Elaine Ford’s collection roams the territory between the intellect and the heart. She writes of the human condition with precision, in language that is both grave and conversational. Her characters step out of the real world onto the page, where she develops them quietly, but with compassionate fullness. This writer grips the reader with her keen knowledge of the psyche of individuals—their motives and secrets—and also with the surprising things that happen to them.”
Laura Kasischke - Michigan Literary Fiction Awards
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, try these LitLovers talking points for several of the stories to help get a discussion started for The American Wife stories:
1. In the "Garage Artist," what is the significance of Daniel's snowscapes? Why is it the only thing he paints?
2. In "The Changeling," can you personally relate to Sandy's fear that her infant has been replaced by another? Do you believe that's actually what has happened here? How might her fear be emblematic of a troubled marriage?
3. Talk about the relationship of the young woman and her mother in "Levitation." How does the title of the story relate to the protagonist's attempt to establish independence from her mother and lead a life of her own making?
4. Talk about the humor—or pathos—in "Cousins" regarding Edie's mother, who "has largely dispensed with politeness." Edie sees this as a "conservation-of-energy move." Also, in what way does this story illuminate obligations to family and kin?
5. In "The Scow," how does the protagonist come to believe that her parents may have ended their own lives? How does such a discovery affect the way she views her own life?
6. In the title story, what does the American wife come to learn about herself while living in England? What prompts her self-discovery?
8. In what way does "Since You've Been Gone" explore the dangers of interracial relationships?
9. How do many (or all) of Elaine Ford's short stories explore this thematic idea: "In making poems, as in living, non c'e trucco. There is no trick, no secret, no shorcut. You must find your way yourself. That is what...we all must [learn]"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
588 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307455925
Summary
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.
As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 15, 1977
• Where—Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria
• Education—B.A., Eastern Connecticut State University; M.A.
(creative writing), Johns Hopkins University; M.A. (African
Studies), Yale University
• Awards—Orange Prize; Best First Book Award from the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize; O.Henry Prize
• Currently—divides her time between the US and Nigeri
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer. She is Igbo, one of the largest and most influential ethnic groups in Nigeria. Adichie has been called "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors" that have succeeded "in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature."
Education
Born in the town of Enugu, she grew up in the university town of Nsukka in southeastern Nigeria, where the University of Nigeria is situated. While she was growing up, her father was a professor of statistics at the university, and her mother was the university registrar.
Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university's Catholic medical students. At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria and moved to the United States for college. After studying communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, she transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) to live closer to her sister, who had a medical practice in Coventry. She received a bachelor's degree from ECSU, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2001.
In 2003, she completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. In 2008, she received a Master of Arts in African studies from Yale University.
Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year. In 2008 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also been awarded a 2011-2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Adichie, who is married, divides her time between Nigeria, where she teaches writing workshops, and the United States.
Writing
In 1997 Adichie published Decisions, a collection of poems, and in 1998, a play For Love of Biafra. She was shortlisted in 2002 for the Caine Prize[ for her short story "You in America."
In 2003, her story "That Harmattan Morning" was selected as joint winner of the BBC Short Story Awards, and she won the O. Henry prize for "The American Embassy." She also won the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award), for "Half of a Yellow Sun."
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), received wide critical acclaim; it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005). Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Her third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of short stories. In 2010 she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker′s "20 Under 40" Fiction Issue. Adichie's story "Ceiling" was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories. Her third novel Americanah was published in 2013. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/22/2013.)
Book Reviews
Adichie...is an extraordinarily self-aware thinker and writer, possessing the ability to lambaste society without sneering or patronizing or polemicizing. For her, it seems no great feat to balance high-literary intentions with broad social critique. Americanah examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience—a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie’s observations.... Americanah is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic.... It never feels false.
Mike Peed - New York Times Book Review
Adichie’s new novel takes root in the vagaries and murmured promises of a love story like much of her other work.... Her writing hits a nerve. [She] doesn’t hold back on criticizing [Nigeria’s] culture that fosters widespread government corruption. Or what she perceives as the excessive, neutered politeness of "political-correct language" in the U.S.
Jon Gambrell - Philadelphia Sunday Sun/Associated Press
Americanah is one of the freshest pieces of fiction of the year...and the fact that its subject isn’t instantly recognizable does not make it any less of an engrossing, all-encompassing read. Americanah is quite explicitly a book about race and African identity, but there are many moments when it transcends these themes. Adichie’s style of writing is familiar and personal, and her depiction of the African diaspora scathingly casts many of her main characters as a particularly loathsome type of East Coast intellectual. . . . Her success comes at the level of sentences, the way she can bring a character to life on the strength of a few words.... This book is absolutely essential.
Drew Grant - New York Observer
Adichie has written a big knockout of a novel about immigration, American dreams, the power of first love, and the shifting meanings of skin color.... Americanah is a sweeping story that derives its power as much from Adichie’s witty and fluid writing style as it does from keen social commentary.... Americanah works in so many different genres—coming-of-age novel, romance, comic novel of social manners, up-to-the-minute meditation on race, as well as the aforementioned immigrant saga—that I’m shortchanging its bounty by only mentioning some of the main characters’ adventures here. Like Ifemelu’s hairdo, Adichie’s novel tightly braids together multiple ideas and storylines. It’s a marvel of skilled construction and imagination.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR
Powerful.... If you think racism expired when President Obama was elected, this is perhaps not—or absolutely is—the book for you. [Americanah] is a story of relocation, far-flung love and life as an alien, spread across three continents. It’s also about the lonely but privileged perspective a stranger gains by entering a new culture. Ifemelu experiences America both as a black woman and as an African woman. In the U.S., those two identities combine, for experiences dark and light that Adichie skillfully renders in gray scale.... Adichie’s evocative power, transporting my imagination while keeping my feet firmly on the ground, has me looking forward to [her] books for years to come.
Rosecrans Baldwin - NPR
Americanah is that rare thing in contemporary literary fiction: a lush, bighearted love story that also happens to be a piercingly funny social critique. . . . Adichie writes with insight. A scene in a braiding salon, which unfolds over the course of the book, has more to say about the politics of self-image than any novel in recent memory.... Both for Adichie and [Ifemelu], her alter ego, coming in to oneself is ultimately about coming home, and to the place that—and to the person who—understands you, no explanation required. And love remains the last great hope for solving America’s complicated relationship with race.... A love story for our time.”
Megan O’Grady, Vogue
Glorious...a saga of a young couple’s efforts to escape their troubled homeland and seek their fortune abroad that bears comparison to the classical canon of the social novel.... Americanah provides Adichie with a fictional vehicle for pithy, sharply sensible commentary on race and culture—and us with a symphonic, polyphonic, full-immersion opportunity to think outside the American box and commune with the wholly global sensibility of Adichie, an author who truly contains multitudes.
Ben Dickson, Elle
(Starred review.) Adichie['s]...compelling and important new novel follows the lives of that country’s postwar generation as they suffer endemic corruption and poverty under a military dictatorship. An unflinching but compassionate observer, Adichie writes a vibrant tale about love, betrayal, and destiny; about racism; and about a society in which honesty is extinct and cynicism is the national philosophy. She broadens her canvas to include both America and England, where she illuminates the precarious tightrope existence of culturally and racially displaced immigrants.... [A] touching love story and an illuminating portrait of a country still in political turmoil.
Publishers Weekly
MacArthur fellow Adichie is a word-by-word virtuoso with a sure grasp of social conundrums in Nigeria, East Coast America, and England; an omnivorous eye for resonant detail; a gift for authentic characters; pyrotechnic wit; and deep humanitarianism. Americanah is a courageous, world-class novel about independence, integrity, community, and love—and what it takes to become a "full human being.” —Donna Seaman
Booklist
(Starred review.) FIfemelu, the Nigerian expat and Princeton lecturer at the heart of this novel....writes biting, dead-on blog posts taking aim at the cultural schism between non-African blacks, Africans, and everyone else.... But one day...Ifemelu senses that she has lost her way.... Verdict: Witty, wry, and observant, Adichie is a marvelous storyteller who writes passionately about the difficulty of assimilation and the love that binds a man, a woman, and their homeland. Her work should be read by anyone clutching at the belief that we're living in a post-racial United States. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Estero, FL
Library Journal
Ifemelu, beautiful and naturally aristocratic, has the good fortune to escape Nigeria during a time of military dictatorship.... Ifemelu's high school sweetheart, Obinze...has been denied a visa to enter post-9/11 America,...and now he is living illegally in London, delivering refrigerators and looking for a way to find his beloved.... The years pass, and Ifemelu is involved in the usual entanglements, making a reunion with Obinze all the more complicated. Will true love win out? Can things be fixed and contempt disarmed?... Soap-operatic in spots, but a fine adult love story with locations both exotic and familiar.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The first part of Ifemelu’s story is told in flashback while she is having her hair braided at a salon before she returns to Nigeria. Why might Adichie have chosen this structure for storytelling? What happens when the narrator shifts to Obinze’s story? How conscious are you as a reader about the switches in narrative perspective?
2. The novel opens in the Ivy League enclave of Princeton, New Jersey. Ifemelu likes living there because “she could pretend to be someone else, ...someone adorned with certainty” (3). But she has to go to the largely black city of Trenton, nearby, to have her hair braided. Does this movement between cities indicate a similar split within Ifemelu? Why does she decide to return to Nigeria after thirteen years in America?
3. How much does your own race affect the experience of reading this or any novel? Does race affect a reader’s ability to identify or empathize with the struggles of Ifemelu and Obinze? Ifemelu writes in her blog that “black people are not supposed to be angry about racism” because their anger makes whites uncomfortable (223). Do you agree?
4. Aunty Uju’s relationship with the General serves as an example of one mode of economic survival for a single woman: she attaches herself to a married man who supports her in return for sexual access. But Uju runs into a serious problem when the General dies and political power shifts. Why, given what you learn of Uju’s intelligence and capabilities later, do you think she chose to engage in this relationship with the General instead of remaining independent?
5. Ifemelu feels that Aunty Uju is too eager to capitulate to the demands of fitting in. Uju says, “You are in a country that is not your own. You do what you have to do if you want to succeed” (120). Is Uju right in compromising her own identity to a certain extent? How is Dike affected by his mother’s struggles?
6. In the clothing shop she visits with her friend Ginika, Ifemelu notices that the clerk, when asking which of the salespeople helped her, won’t say, “Was it the black girl or the white girl?” because that would be considered a racist way to identify people. “You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things,” Ginika tells her (128). In your opinion and experience, is this a good example of American political correctness about race? Why does Ifemelu find it curious? Do you think these attitudes differ across the United States?
7. For a time, Ifemelu is a babysitter for Kimberly, a white woman who works for a charity in Africa. Adichie writes that “for a moment Ifemelu was sorry to have come from Africa, to be the reason that this beautiful woman, with her bleached teeth and bounteous hair, would have to dig deep to feel such pity, such hopelessness. She smiled brightly, hoping to make Kimberly feel better” (152). How well does Kimberly exemplify the liberal guilt that many white Americans feel toward Africa and Africans?
8. Ifemelu’s experience with the tennis coach is a low point in her life. Why does she avoid being in touch with Obinze afterward (157–58)? Why doesn’t she read his letters? How do you interpret her behavior?
9. In her effort to feel less like an outsider, Ifemelu begins faking an American accent. She feels triumphant when she can do it, and then feels ashamed and resolves to stop (175). Which aspects of her becoming an American are most difficult for Ifemelu as she struggles to figure out how much she will give up of her Nigerian self?
10. Ifemelu realizes that naturally kinky hair is a subject worth blogging about. She notices that Michelle Obama and Beyoncé never appear in public with natural hair. Why not? “Because, you see, it’s not professional, sophisticated, whatever, it’s just not damn normal” (299). Read the blog post “A Michelle Obama Shout-Out Plus Hair as Race Metaphor” (299–300), and discuss why hair is a useful way of examining race and culture.
11. What does Ifemelu find satisfying about her relationships with Curt and Blaine? Why does she, eventually, abandon each relationship? Is it possible that she needs to be with someone Nigerian, or does she simply need to be with Obinze?
12. Ifemelu’s blog is a venue for expressing her experience as an African immigrant and for provoking a conversation about race and migration. She says, “I discovered race in America and it fascinated me” (406). She asks, “How many other people had become black in America?” (298). Why is the blog so successful? Are there any real-life examples that you know of similar to this?
13. Obinze goes to London, and when his visa expires he is reduced to cleaning toilets (238); eventually he is deported. On his return home, “a new sadness blanketed him, the sadness of his coming days, when he would feel the world slightly off-kilter, his vision unfocused” (286). How does his experience in London affect the decisions he makes when he gets back to Lagos? Why does he marry Kosi? How do these choices and feelings compare to Ifemelu’s?
14. While she is involved with Curt, Ifemelu sleeps with a younger man in her building, out of curiosity. “There was something wrong with her. She did not know what it was but there was something wrong with her. A hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself. The sense of something farther away, beyond her reach” (291–92). Is this a common feeling among young women in a universal sense, or is there something more significant in Ifemelu’s restlessness? What makes hers particular, if you feel it is?
15. When reading Obinze’s conversations with Ojiugo, his now-wealthy friend who has married an EU citizen, did you get the sense that those who emigrate lose something of themselves when they enter the competitive struggle in their new culture (Chapter 24), or is it more of a struggle to maintain that former self? Does Adichie suggest that this is a necessary sacrifice? Are all of the characters who leave Nigeria (such as Emenike, Aunty Uju, Bartholomew, and Ginika) similarly compromised?
16. Aunty Uju becomes a doctor in America but still feels the need to seek security through an alliance with Bartholomew, whom she doesn’t seem to love. Why might this be? How well does she understand what her son, Dike, is experiencing as a displaced, fatherless teenager? Why might Dike have attempted suicide?
17. Is the United States presented in generally positive or generally negative ways in Americanah?
18. The term “Americanah” is used for Nigerians who have been changed by having lived in America. Like those in the novel’s Nigerpolitan Club, they have become critical of their native land and culture: “They were sanctified, the returnees, back home with an extra gleaming layer” (408). Is the book’s title meant as a criticism of Ifemelu, or simply an accurate word for what she fears she will become (and others may think of her)?
19. How would you describe the qualities that Ifemelu and Obinze admire in each other? How does Adichie sustain the suspense about whether Ifemelu and Obinze will be together until the very last page? What, other than narrative suspense, might be the reason for Adichie’s choice in doing so? Would you consider their union the true homecoming, for both of them?
20. Why is it important to have the perspective of an African writer on race in America? How does reading the story make you more alert to race, and to the cultural identifications within races and mixed races? Did this novel enlarge your own perspective, and if so, how?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Amity & Sorrow
Peggy Riley, 2013
Little, Brown & Co.
312 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316220880
Summary
A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she's convinced will follow them wherever they go—her husband.
The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can't imagine what the world holds outside their father's polygamous compound. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley's abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family. An unforgettable story of belief and redemption, Amity & Sorrow is about the influence of community and learning to stand on your own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Bridport Highly Commended Prize
• Currently—lives on the North Kent coast, UK
Peggy Riley is an American writer and playwright living in England. She recently won a Highly Commended prize in the 2011 Bridport Prize. Her short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio and has been published in "New Short Stories 4," Mslexia Magazine, and as an app on Ether Books. Her plays have been commissioned and produced off-West End (London), regionally and on tour. She has been a festival producer, a bookseller, and writer-in-residence at a young offender's prison.
Originally from Los Angeles, Peggy now lives on the North Kent coast in Britain. She is currently working on her second novel, which will be set in the women's internment camp on the Isle of Man during WWII. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Peggy Riley...has an engaging way of raising mysteries, then deferring their answers. How exactly does a man talk a wife into sharing him? Who set the temple fire just before the escape? Why is Amaranth grateful for Sorrow’s miscarriage?... One of the conceits and pleasures of an escape-to-society story—cutting across genres from memoir to novels like Emma Donoghue’s Room—lies in lifting the escapee’s blindfold and watching her relish the dailiness of life...like a foreigner to Earth.... A shimmering first novel...delicately stitched, finely patterned and poetic.
Dylan Landis - New York Times Book Review
A literary page-turner.... Her writing is clear, crisp, chilling.
Reader's Digest
(Starred review.) [A] harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture through the lens of a polygamous cult. Sisters Amity and Sorrow were born and raised by their mother, Amaranth, the first of the 50 wives of a self-proclaimed prophet, the leader...of a doomsday sect. When a confrontation with the law results in gunshots and a fire, Amaranth grabs her teenage daughters, steals a car, and drives for four days....explor[ing] this new world, meeting people and making...choices for the first time.... Riley’s mastery keeps this unusual tale from descending into melodrama, and she makes no easy choices.... A fierce and disturbing novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [An] accomplished, harrowing debut.... Riley's descriptive prose is rich in metaphor.... [and] the haunting literary drama simmers to a boil as it deftly navigates issues of family, faith, community, and redemption. —Ann Kelley
Booklist
The eponymous title refers to the daughters of Amaranth, the first wife (out of 50) of Zachariah, Messianic leader of a Doomsday cult. The novel opens with Amaranth on the lam with her two daughters, trying desperately to put some distance between herself and Zachariah.... Amaranth has recently become so spooked by Zachariah's growing megalomania that she feels she no longer has a home.... Through flashbacks we get glimpses into the lives Amaranth, Sorrow and Amity have led with Zachariah, shielded from the world and subject to his apocalyptic paranoia.... Simple in style but complex in tone, this book raises troubling questions about the power of doomladen cults, and their leaders and followers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How are names used as metaphors in the novel?
2. What is the meaning behind how names are given (i.e., attribute names for the children and the family name shared by the Bradleys of Oklahoma), and do you think they serve a purpose?
3. How does the writer explore the bond between Sorrow and Amity? In what ways is their relationship typical of the bond between sisters?
4. The children in the polygamous community were illiterate. What are the implications and impact of that type of ignorance? Is a faith that is designed to keep its believers ignorant and isolated a "true" faith?
5. How can blind faith be dangerous? Was Sorrow brainwashed or devout?
6. Who defines what makes a family, and is there a true definition of family anymore? Do you think these polygamous women are a "true" family?
7. Are there scenarios that can justify a polygamous lifestyle? What are the benefits of a polygamous community to the wives in Amity & Sorrow? Do you think Amity will be drawn to live a polygamous lifestyle?
8. What role did meth play in the story? What did that add to the plot or reveal about the community?
9. Is it a fair exchange to join a faith and a family to "get clean"? Who gets more out of the exchange—the individual women or the family in total? Does a faith that offers a safe place of healing appeal to you, or is it a kind of con?
10. One of the hardest decisions a mother can make is to turn against her child. How does Amaranth struggle with this decision? Do you think she makes the right choice?
Caution: Spoiler Alert
11. To what extent was Sorrow a victim? Or did she become a willing participant when she returned "home"? At what age should children be responsible for their actions?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Among the Ten Thousand Things
Julia Pierpont, 2015
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812995220
Summary
A portrait of an American family on the cusp of irrevocable change, and a startlingly original story of love and time lost.
Jack Shanley is a well-known New York artist, charming and vain, who doesn’t mean to plunge his family into crisis. His wife, Deb, gladly left behind a difficult career as a dancer to raise the two children she adores. In the ensuing years, she has mostly avoided coming face-to-face with the weaknesses of the man she married.
But then an anonymously sent package arrives in the mail: a cardboard box containing sheaves of printed emails chronicling Jack’s secret life. The package is addressed to Deb, but it’s delivered into the wrong hands: her children’s.
With this vertiginous opening begins a debut that is by turns funny, wise, and indescribably moving. As the Shanleys spin apart into separate orbits, leaving New York in an attempt to regain their bearings, fifteen-year-old Simon feels the allure of adult freedoms for the first time, while eleven-year-old Kay wanders precariously into a grown-up world she can’t possibly understand.
Writing with extraordinary precision, humor, and beauty, Julia Pierpont has crafted a timeless, hugely enjoyable novel about the bonds of family life—their brittleness, and their resilience. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1986-87 (?)
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Julia Pierpont is a graduate of the NYU Creative Writing Program, where she received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellowship, as well as the Stein Fellowship. She lives in New York City. (From the publisher.)
See Vanity Fair's article about the author.
Book Reviews
[A] sharp, knowing dissection of an unraveling marriage…it shows a remarkably mature understanding of the delicate emotional balances in families—how feelings can flow back and forth like electricity in some kind of zero-sum game—and the subtle, irrational vicissitudes of people's psyches. We follow first one character and then another as each tries to manage what has happened. It is an old story, a crumbling marriage, but Ms. Pierpont gives it fresh insights, making the particular unhappiness (and occasional happiness) of the Shanleys by turns poignant, funny and very sad.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times
[L]uscious, smart summer novel...about a family blown apart and yet still painfully tethered together, written by a blazingly talented young author whose prose is so assured and whose observations are so precise and deeply felt that it's almost an insult to bring up her age. At 28, Pierpont has a preternatural understanding of the vulnerabilities of middle age and the vicissitudes of a long marriage…In truth, the writing and the storytelling make the twists and turns of a marriage between such shallow characters more interesting than they have any right to be…Among the Ten Thousand Things is…an impressive debut.
Helen Schulman - New York Times Book Review
[A] tender, delicately perceptive account of one family torn apart by infidelity.... Pierpont’s voice is wry and confident, and she is a fine anthropologist of New York life, especially for those creative types who never quite manage to fit in with cultural expectations.
Washington Post
[An] excellent, insightful first novel...[and] gripping portrait of the disintegration of the Shanley family.... Pierpont brings this family of four to life in sharply observed detail.... An acute observer of social comedy, Ms. Pierpont has a keen eye for the absurd.
Moira Hodgson - Wall Street Journal
Pierpont displays a precocious gift for language and observation.... She captures the minutiae of loneliness that pushes us away from each other and sometimes brings us back.... It’s an impressive insight from such a young writer and a reminder that none of us can know for certain what we would put up with in light of this truth.
San Francisco Chronicle
Pierpont orchestrates the narrative with verve, telling her story from the perspective of each family member. There are moments of wry hilarity, and of wisdom. . . . Pierpont leaps into the future in two brief sections titled That Year and Those That Followed, then back into the ongoing crisis, making the details of how this family unravels ever more touching.
BBC
What sets Pierpont apart...is her storytelling chops. The chapters that follow that dramatic opening make it clear that there are going to be as many ingenious twists and turns in this literary novel as there are in a top-notch work of suspense like Gone Girl. The effect is dizzying: as a reader you feel, as the Shanleys do, that the earth keeps shifting beneath your feet.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR
Pierpont’s language is heart-stopping. In one scene, with her characters suspended in emotional turmoil, she pauses to describe their empty house. There’s even a sparse, poetic interlude in the middle of the book that skips across the family’s lives for decades. . . . Then she rewinds the decades and picks up where she left off. It’s the kind of structural risk that shouldn’t work, but in her skilled hands it lands beautifully. Technically, of course, this is a domestic drama. But between Pierpont’s literary finesse and her captivating characters, it reads like a page-turner. (Grade A)
Entertainment Weekly
Bracing.... Pierpont’s killer ending reveals the long reach of the affair’s consequences (sorry, no plot spoilers). Consider this a twisty, gripping story—that packs an emotional wallop.
O Magazine
Fans of [Virginia] Woolf’s insight into the human consciousness...will savor Pierpont’s acute observation of a family in crisis, her deft pacing and deeply human characterization of each member of the family. Among the Ten Thousand Things speaks to what makes a person, and a family, tick, even when it can so easily seem utterly inexplicable.
Huffington Post
An emotionally sophisticated, nuanced examination of a splintering Upper West Side New York City family.... Among the Ten Thousand Things rises above for its imagined structure, sentence-by-sentence punch, and pure humanity. Weaving readers through the New York streets with the Shanleys, and in and out of each of their minds as they try to survive the infidelity that’s torn them from the life they’ve built, Pierpont has written a debut so honest and mature that it will resonate with even the most action-hungry readers—perhaps against reason. Her story is the one we’ll be talking about this summer, and well beyond.
Meredith Turits - Vanity Fair
(Starred review.) The perennial theme of marital infidelity is given a brisk, insightful, and sophisticated turn in Pierpont’s impressive debut.... Pierpont throws an audacious twist midway through the book, giving the slow, painful denouement a heartbreaking inevitability. This novel leaves an indelible portrait.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A]n expertly crafted story of a family in crisis.... Pierpont wields words like beautiful weapons. This short novel is a treat for fans of Jonathan Franzen, Jami Attenberg, and Emma Straub, and shows off an exciting new voice on the literary landscape. —Kate Gray, Worcester P.L., MA
Library Journal
Long-simmering tensions boil over in the Shanley household to devastating effect.... [F]or all the book's sadness, much of its lingering force comes from Pierpont's sharp-witted detailing of human absurdity. A quietly wrenching family portrait.
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.)
Amy and Isabelle
Elizabeth Strout, 1998
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375705199
Summary
In her stunning first novel, Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother—and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets.
In most ways, Isabelle and Amy are like any mother and her 16-year-old daughter, a fierce mix of love and loathing exchanged in their every glance. And eating, sleeping, and working side by side in the gossip-ridden mill town of Shirley Falls doesn't help matters.
But when Amy is discovered behind the steamed-up windows of a car with her math teacher, the vast and icy distance between mother and daughter becomes unbridgeable. As news of the scandal reaches every ear, it is Isabelle who suffers from the harsh judgment of Shirley Falls, intensifying her shame about her own secret past.
And as Amy seeks comfort elsewhere, she discovers the fragility of human happiness through other dramas, from the horror of a missing child to the trials of Fat Bev, the community peacemaker. Witty and often profound, Amy and Isabelle confirms Elizabeth Strout as a powerful new talenta. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1956
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., Bates College; J.D. and Certificate of Gerontology, Syracuse University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, and in Maine.
Elizabeth Strout is an American writer of fiction. She was born in Portland, Maine, and raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. Her father was a science professor, and her mother taught high school. After graduating from Bates College, she spent a year in Oxford, England, followed by studies at law school for another year. In 1982 she graduated with honors, and received both a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law and a Certificate of Gerontology from the Syracuse School of Social Work. That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.
Strout moved to New York City, and continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen. It took her six or seven years to write Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. The novel was made into a television movie starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.
She was a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) professor at Colgate University during the Fall Semester of 2007, where she taught creative writing at both the introductory and advanced level. She was also on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge (2008), a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine. In 2010, Italian booksellers voted Olive Kitteridge and Strout as the winner of the Premio Bancarella award in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy. Her new book, The Burgess Boys, was published in 2013.
Strout is married to former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, who currently serves as the Director of the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School. She divides her time between New York and Maine. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:
• My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it. I would be so bored scrubbing at some kitchen tile, that my mind would finally float all over the place, to the beach, to a friend's house...all this happened in my mind as I scrubbed those tiles, so it was certainly good for my imagination. But I did hate it."
• Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it. I would listen, as a child, when some friend of hers came to visit, and they would gossip about the different people they knew. My mother had the most fascinating stories about people's families, murderers, mental illnesses, babies abandoned, and she delivered it all in a matter-of-fact way that was terribly compelling. It made me believe that there was nothing more interesting than the lives of people, their real hidden lives, and this of course can lead one down the path of becoming a fiction writer.
• Later, in college, one of my favorite things was to go into town and sit at the counter at Woolworth's (so tragic to have them gone!) and listen to people talking; the waitresses and the customers — I loved it. I still love to eavesdrop, but mostly I like the idea of being around people who are right in the middle of their lives, revealing certain details to each other — leaving the rest for me to make up.
• I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being. There is something about the actual relationship that is going on between the audience and the actors that I just love. I love seeing the sets and costumes, the decisions that have been made about the staging...it's a place for the eye and the ear to be fully involved. I have always loved theater."
• I also like cell phones. What I mean by that is I hear many people complain about cell phones; they can't go anywhere without hearing someone on a cell phone, etc. But I love that chance to hear half a conversation, even if the person is just saying, ‘Hi honey, I'll be home in ten minutes, do you want me to bring some milk?' And I'm also grateful to have a cell phone, just to know it's there if I need it when I'm out and about. So I'm a cell phone fan.
• I don't especially like to travel, not the way many people do. I know many people that love to go to far-off and different places, and I've never been like that. I seem to get homesick as quickly as a child. I may like being in some new place for a few days, but then I want to go home and return to my routine and my familiar corner stores. I am a real creature of habit, without a doubt.
• When asked what book most inluenced her life as a writer, she answered:
Perhaps the book that had the greatest influence on my career as a writer was The Journals of John Cheever. Of course many, many books had influenced me before I read that, but there was something about the honesty found in Cheever's journals that gave me courage as a writer. And his ability to turn a phrase, to describe in a breath the beauty of a rainstorm or the fog rising off the river... all this arrived in my life as a writer at a time when I seemed ready to absorb his examples of what a sentence can do when written with the integrity of emotion and felicity of language.
Book Reviews
Evocative...one of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place.
Suzanne Berne - New York Times Book Review
Unflaggingly engaging...What a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book.
New Yorker
Amy and Isabelle is an impressive debut....with an expansiveness and inventiveness that is the mark of a true storyteller.
Philadelphia Inquirer
This first-time novelist is destined for great things....Stunning.
San Francisco Chronicle
[A]n impresive debut novel....Strout writes with abundant warmth.
Laura Jamison - People Magazine
[I]n Strout's sure hands, [the central revelatory] truth isn't awful but, in fact, revelatory.
Vanessa V. Friedman - Entertainment Weekly
Strout's insights into the complex psychology between [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two comings of age.
Time
Lovely, powerful.
Jeff Giles - Newsweek
Stories of young women who suffer the sexual advances of an authority figure (in this case, a high school math teacher) seem ubiquitous these days. But in Strout's gently powerful, richly satisfying debut, the damage shows less within the heart of the teenaged girl in question than in the wreckage of the previously tranquil relationship she had enjoyed with her mother.
Publishers Weekly
This mother-daughter novel tells the story of how Isabelle Goodrow escaped her past and moved to a small town with her daughter, telling everyone her husband and family were dead..... [Strout's] attention to the detail of everyday life resembles that of Alice Munro and Anne Tyler. —Nancy Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Library Journal
A lyrical, closely observant first novel, charting the complex, resilient relationship of a mother and daughter..... Matters come to a head when Amy [the daughter] and her teacher are discovered in compromising circumstances.... In less sure hands, all of this would seem merely melodramatic.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Isabelle comes to Shirley Falls in order to start a new life. How does her desire to re-create herself affect the way she is perceived by other people? How does it influence the way she raises Amy?
2. Why is Amy so attracted to Fat Bev? What does the atmosphere at the mill offer her that she finds neither at home nor at school?
3. What role does Isabelle's "crush" on Avery Clark play in her life? How do her fantasies about being a loving wife to Avery compare to the way she treats Amy and runs their home? Which is the "real" Isabelle?
4. Before you know the reason for the estrangement between Amy and Isabelle, where do your sympathies lie? What insights do their brunch in the restaurant and window-shopping spree [pp. 54-56], as well as their uncomfortable encounter with Barbara Rawley at the grocery store [p. 57] give you into the nature of their relationship before the crisis?
5. At first Mr. Robertson appears to be a motivational teacher. Are his teaching methods appropriate and effective? Are his questions and comments to Amy and the other students commonplace, or unusual for a math teacher? Is it possible for a high school teacher to be "cool" without overstepping the boundaries between student and teacher? Why do you think he was drawn to Amy? At what point do Mr. Robertson's attentions toward her become unacceptable?
6. Why doesn't Amy tell Isabelle about Mr. Robertson at the beginning of their friendship? Why does Amy feel "as though something dark and wobbly sat deep within her chest" [p.78] after her as yet still innocent afternoons with Mr. Robertson?
7. What impact does Isabelle'sprotectiveness have on Amy's character and her sense of self? How did Isabelle's own childhood [p. 185] shape her character, not only as a mother, but as a woman?
8. Why does Strout choose Madame Bovary as the first serious book to engage Isabelle's passionate interest and attention? What parallels, if any, does Isabelle draw between Emma Bovary's life and her own? What other similarities exist between the two women?
9. Why does her conversation with Amy so quickly take a wrong turn when Isabelle hears about Amy and Mr. Robertson [p.159]? Why does Amy's accusation that Isabelle doesn't "know what the world is like" [p. 161] hurt her so deeply? Is Amy's outburst crueler than Isabelle's own impulse to shout at Amy "You weren't even supposed to be born" [p. 162]?
10. Why does Amy insist that she initiated the physical relationship? Is she only trying to protect Mr. Robertson, or does she have other reasons for taking the responsibility for what happened?
11. Mr. Robertson's seduction of Amy and his absolute disregard for the consequences of his act shock Isabelle. After her confrontation with him, why does she say that "in the end, he 'won.' In the end he had retained his sense of dignity and managed to destroy hers" [p. 166.]? Do you think that Isabelle mishandles the situation or is Mr. Robertson incapable feeling shame or remorse?
12. Why is Isabelle satisfied with Mr. Robertson's promise to leave town? Are her motives entirely unselfish? What would have been the consequences for both Amy and Isabelle if the scandal had been made public? Why did Isabelle react so differently to Amy's actions than Stacey's parents did to their daughter's pregnancy?
13. How accurate is Amy's belief that her mother is angry because Amy found someone to love her? What would make Amy think that? "It was not...the fact that she had been lying to Isabelle for so many months nor did Isabelle hate Amy for having taken up all the space in her life. She hated Amy because the girl had been enjoying the sexual pleasures of a man, while she herself had not" [p. 206]. Are Isabelle's feelings natural?
Why or why not?
14. Amy and Isabelle's conflict is presented within the context of small town life. How do the events in the lives of the women at the mill—like the break-up of Dottie Brown's marriage—and the revelations about Dr. Burrow's affair with Peg Dunlap and the secret relationship between the high school principal and the Spanish teacher, enhance the book?
15. Do you think the novel would have unfolded differently if Amy and Isabelle had lived in a large city? In what ways does the story about the abduction of a teenage girl in the neighboring town mirror what is happening in Amy's and Isabelle's lives?
16. What is the significance of Amy's relationship with Paul Bellows? What purpose do they serve in each other's lives?
17. Is Isabelle's reaction to Amy's involvement with Mr. Robertson justified after she reveals her own past to Dottie and Bev? Were both Amy and Isabelle particularly vulnerable because they lived in fatherless homes? How/why was this incident the impetus for Isabelle to confront her own past and to help Amy find hers?
18. Why does Strout describe the changing seasons in such detail throughout the book? What parallels are there between the rhythms of the natural world and the rhythms of life in the town? Does this add to the flow and structure of the book or did you feel it was unnecessary or even intrusive?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (A Carls Book-1)
Hank Green, 2018
Penguin Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524743444
Summary
In his much-anticipated debut novel, Hank Green—co-creator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and SciShow—spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined.
The Carls just appeared.
Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture.
Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship—like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor—April and her friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube.
The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world—from Beijing to Buenos Aires—and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight.
Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity.
And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.
Compulsively entertaining and powerfully relevant, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with big themes, including how the social internet is changing fame, rhetoric, and radicalization; how our culture deals with fear and uncertainty; and how vilification and adoration spring for the same dehumanization that follows a life in the public eye.
The beginning of an exciting fiction career, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a bold and insightful novel of now. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 5, 1980
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.S., Eckerd College; M.S. University of Montana
• Currently—lives in Missoula, Montana
Hank Green is the CEO of Complexly, a production company that creates educational content, including Crash Course and SciShow, prompting The Washington Post to name him “one of America’s most popular science teachers.”
Complexly’s videos have been viewed more than two billion times on YouTube.
Green cofounded a number of other small businesses, including DFTBA.com, which helps online creators make money by selling cool stuff to their communities; and VidCon, the world’s largest conference for the online video community. In 2017, VidCon drew more than forty thousand attendees across three events in Anaheim, Amsterdam, and Australia.
Hank and his brother, John, also started the Project for Awesome, which last year raised more than two million dollars for charities, including Save the Children and Partners in Health. Hank lives in Montana with his wife, son, and cat. (From the publishers.)
Book Reviews
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a thrilling journey that takes a hard look at the power of fame and our willingness to separate a person from the brand. Green manages to blend humor, mystery and science fiction in his fast-paced debut novel.
Lincee Ray - Washington Post
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a thrilling journey that takes a hard look at the power of fame and our willingness to separate a person from the brand. Green manages to blend humor, mystery and science fiction in his fast-paced debut novel.”
Associated Press
With this comic story about the ugly side of Internet fame, Green gives his brother John (The Fault in Our Stars) a run for his money.
People
A quirky millennial mix of sci-fi alien mystery, celebrity and social media commentary.
Family Circle
Hank Green, super-vlogger and brother to YA legend John, pens the heart-warmer An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.
Cosmopolitan
Packed with meditations on the nature of celebrity, social media, and the cultural response to the unknown.
Harper Bazaar
A quirky millennial mix of sci-fi alien mystery, celebrity and social media commentary.
Family Circle
It’s not in the nature of a sci-fi comedy blockbuster to shift boulders in your soul. But with his debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Hank Green pulls it off.… There are still a few exceptionally remarkable things that rise above the rest of their absolutely remarkable peers. In the pages of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, April’s discovery of New York Carl is one of these exceptions; in the real world, Green’s debut deserves to be another."
Paste Magazine
[A] comic debut that combines science fiction and mystery with philosophical musings about the perils of internet fame.… Though the ending is disappointing (it appears to be setting up a sequel), fans… will find his humor and perceptiveness intact in this novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Led by an earnestly flawed, bisexual heroine with direction and commitment issues, coupled with an abundant generosity of spirit, this read is timely and sorely needed. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Green makes an entertaining book debut in this fast-paced, witty first contact novel…At once funny, exciting, and a tad terrifying, this exploration of aliens and social media culture is bound to have wide appeal to readers interested in either theme.
Booklist
(Starred review) [Green] applies wit, affection, and cultural intelligence to a comic sci-fi novel.… A fun, contemporary adventure that cares about who we are as humans, especially when faced with remarkable events.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Upon seeing Carl for the first time, April says, "And here I am, hardened by big-city life and mentally drained by hours of pixel pushing, not even giving something so magnificent a second glance." Have you ever found yourself in a situation where being jaded prevented you from noticing or acknowledging something special?
2. What do you think we can all do to stay more present in these moments?What do you think it is about New York City that bars its denizens from noticing something strange, like Carl? And what does it say about April that she was the only one to stop and notice?
3. Andy remains a constant in April May’s life, while Maya, Miranda, her parents, her agent and assistant, and many others float in and out of it throughout the book. Do you see Andy as a good friend or an enabler? What effect does he have on April’s actions?
4. Are there people in media and entertainment that April May reminds you of? How are their journeys similar to or different from April May’s journey? How do they handle stardom and how might April May have learned from their experiences, good or bad?
5. Though Robin suggests that April stay in a stable relationship as she navigates her burgeoning fame, why do you think April ends her relationship with Maya? What are the motivating factors there?
6. When pondering what Carl is, Miranda brings up Occam’s razor. What do you think of the notion of Occam’s razor—that the simplest solution tends to be the correct one? Recall a time where Occam’s razor made sense in your life.
7. What is the significance of the Sherman photography that April stops to examine, and how does it equate to the power that the owner of the photograph, the talent agent Jennifer Putnam, wields?
8. What are the different ideologies of the Dreamers and the Defenders? Can you find any real-world implications of each group’s beliefs and actions?
9. Throughout An Absolutely Remarkable Thing we see the impact that social media has on April’s life and the lives of the people who love her. Is social media a big part of your life? How do you represent yourself online? Have you made any specific personal choices with regard to social media?
10 Of all the issues Hank Green explores—the price of fame, the struggle to connect with our fellow humans, the hope (and perhaps fear) of life beyond our earth—what do you think An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is ultimately about?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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An American Marriage
Tayari Jones, 2018
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616208776
Summary
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career.
But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.
Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain—into the future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— November 30, 1970
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—Spelman College; Arizona State University; University of Iowa
• Awards—Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (twice); Lillian C. Smith Award
• Currently—lives in Booklyn, New York City
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including An American Marriage (2018, an Oprah Book Club pick), Silver Sparrow (2011), The Untelling (2005), and Leaving Atlanta (2002). Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. She lives in Brooklyn.
Currently, she serves on the MFA faculty at Rutgers-Newark. She has also been the recipient of the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/6/2018.)
Visit the author's blog.
Book Reviews
Jones maintains a brisk pace…. The dialogue …[is] sometimes too heavily weighted by exposition, and the language slides toward melodrama. But the central conflict is masterfully executed: Jones … explore[s] simmering class tensions and …racial injustice,
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Jones's writing is engagingly layered with letters between the main characters integrated through the narrative. Her personal letter to readers demonstrates how writing this novel changed her. —Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC
Library Journal
Jones crafts an affecting tale that explores marriage, family, regret, and other feelings made all the more resonant by her well-drawn characters and their intricate conflicts of heart and mind.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Subtle, well-crafted, and powerful.… This is, at its heart, a love story, but a love story warped by racial injustice. And, in it, Jones suggests that racial injustice haunts the African-American story.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review.) [A]n enchanting novel.… [It] explores philosophical and political quandaries, including generational expectations of men and women, the place of marriage in society, systemic racism, toxic masculinity … [while] avoiding didacticism.… [G]ripping, and the characters are unforgettable.
Forward Reviews
Discussion Questions
1) The title of this novel is "An American Marriage." Do you feel this title accurately represents the novel? Why or why not? And if you do find the title appropriate, what about the story makes it particularly "American"?
2) When Celestial asks Roy if he would have waited for her for more than five years, he doesn’t answer her question but reminds her that, as a woman, she would not have been imprisoned in the first place. Do you feel that his response is valid, and do you think it justifies his infidelity? Do you believe that he would have remained faithful if Celestial had been the one incarcerated? Does this really matter, and if so, why?
3) In her "Dear John" letter to Roy, Celestial says, "I will continue to support you, but not as your wife." What do you think she means by this statement? Do you feel that Roy is wrong to reject her offer?
4) You may not have noticed that Tayari Jones does not specify the race of the woman who accuses Roy of rape. How did you picture this woman? What difference does the race of this woman make in the way you understand the novel’s storyline?
5) Andre insists that he doesn’t owe Roy an apology for the way his relationship with Celestial changed. Do you agree? Why or why not?
6) There are two father figures in Roy’s life: Big Roy is the one who shepherded him into adulthood and helped him grow into a responsible, capable person, but Walter is the one who taught Roy how to survive. Do you feel these men deserve equal credit? If not, which was the more important figure in Roy’s life and why?
7) Big Roy explains that he and Olive never had children of their own because Olive feared that he would not love Roy as much if he had his "own" children. Do you feel she had the authority to make that decision? And do you feel she was right in making that decision?
8) When Roy is released from prison, he first goes to his childhood home and almost immediately makes a connection with Davina. Do you feel that given the tenuous relationship he has with Celestial—who is still legally his wife—he is cheating? Why or why not? And when Roy announces to Davina his intention to return to his wife, do you feel that her anger is justified?
9) Roy is hurt when Celestial, in discussing her career as an artist, doesn’t mention him or the role he played in giving her the encouragement and freedom to follow her dreams, but Walter argues that she is justified in her silence. Do you agree? Do you think her silence is due to shame, or is she just being practical in how she presents herself to advance her career?
10) It is obvious that Andre is different from Roy in many ways. Do you feel that ultimately he is a better match for Celestial? If so, why? Also, why do you think Celestial and Andre decide against formally marrying? Do you think that as a couple they will be good and nurturing parents? Do you feel that as a couple, they will be better at parenting than Celestial and Roy would have been? If so, why?
11) Do you think that Andre strategized to get Celestial to fall in love with him, or did it happen naturally? Do you feel that it was a surprise to them that it happened after all those years? Do you predict that Celestial’s parents will come to accept Andre as her life partner?
12) Toward the end of the novel, Celestial does a complete about-face and returns to Roy. What do you think her emotions were in coming to that decision? Do you feel that it was the right decision?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Anatomy of a Miracle
Jonathan Miles, 2018
Crown/Archetype
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553447583
Summary
A profound new novel about a paralyzed young man’s unexplainable recovery—a stunning exploration of faith, science, mystery, and the meaning of life
Rendered paraplegic after a traumatic event four years ago, Cameron Harris has been living his new existence alongside his sister, Tanya, in their battered Biloxi, Mississippi neighborhood where only half the houses made it through Katrina.
One stiflingly hot August afternoon, as Cameron sits waiting for Tanya during their daily run to the Biz-E-Bee convenience store, he suddenly and inexplicably rises up and out of his wheelchair.
In the aftermath of this "miracle," Cameron finds himself a celebrity at the center of a contentious debate about what’s taken place.
When scientists, journalists, and a Vatican investigator start digging, Cameron’s deepest secrets—the key to his injury, to his identity, and, in some eyes, to the nature of his recovery—become increasingly endangered.
Was Cameron’s recovery a genuine miracle, or a medical breakthrough? And, finding himself transformed into a symbol, how can he hope to retain his humanity?
Brilliantly written as closely observed journalistic reportage and filtered through a wide lens that encompasses the vibrant characters affected by Cameron’s story, Anatomy of a Miracle will be read, championed, and celebrated as a powerful story of our time, and the work of a true literary master. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 28, 1971
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, USA
• Raised—Phoenix, Arizona
• Education—University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in rural New Jersey
Jonathan Miles is an American journalist and novelist. His debut novel, Dear American Airlines (2008), was published to wide acclaim. He has since published two more novels, Want Not (2013) and Anatomy of a Miracle (2018).
Early life
Miles was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and later moved with his family to Phoenix, Arizona, where he was raised. At 17 he ran away from home and, after a stint back in Cleveland, headed to Oxford, Mississippi. Eventually he attended the University of Mississippi where he took a writing class with Barry Hannah.
Finding work as a newspaper reporter and aspiring jazz musician, Miles met novelist Larry Brown. The two became friends, and while Miles didn't graduate from "Ole Miss", Brown taught and encouraged Miles to write: "It was an astonishing education. Some people go to the Iowa Writer's Workshop. I had Larry."
Career
While Miles never studied journalism in college, his work soon found publication in a local literary magazine, the Oxford American, and he continued to contribute essays and critique for several years.
A friend suggested Miles apply as a reporter for The Oxford Eagle, and while the pay wasn't good, being forced to churn out daily copy gradually improved his ability to write more dispassionately about complex and emotional subjects. Miles claims he was fired by the paper years later for writing an obituary about a subject who had admitted regularly providing bootlegged liquor to noted Oxford resident William Faulkner and correctly reporting the fact.
Fortunately, Miles's writing caught the eye of Esquire editor Will Blythe, who published an account Miles wrote of an ingenious prison escape he'd investigated while writing for the Oxford paper. Miles had developed a reputation as a keen observer of Mississippi culture, selling essays to Food & Wine, Men's Journal and The New York Times Magazine.
He credits his early literary voice to his time in Oxford, Mississippi, but when Men's Journal offered him an annual contract Miles was already driving a moving van toward New York City in search of such an opportunity. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/7/2018.)
Book Reviews
Miles…[puts] his characters through one absurd situation after another, but he laces his tale with moments of philosophical seriousness…. Well-drawn characters and… witty repartee help give the book’s wild and wacky events a very human frame of reference.
Publishers Weekly
Satire at its best is constructive social criticism, and Miles is perfecting this craft in the 21st century.… With sincerity and wit, Miles pens a strong, sardonic rumination on the religious boundaries of the miraculous. —Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY
Library Journal
Vibrant, bustling, and humorous.… Cleverly shaped as a journalistic report… Miles' tale offers a nuanced and endlessly entertaining exploration of the age-old debate between faith and reason.
Booklist
(Starred review.)[A] rare and admirable command of structure and style,… his sentences are thick with data, wittily delivered.… An expertly shaped tale about faith in collision with contemporary American culture.
Kirkus Reviews
The impossible happens in… Anatomy of a Miracle. But it's what occurs before the astonishing event and what unspools after that will break open hearts and imaginations.… Miles's powerful prose nudges readers to seek the soft spots between faith and judgment, story and science, and fact and fiction.
CJ Lotz - Garden & Gun
[A] remarkable combination of medical mystery, satire and war story. Like Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it captures the long-lasting effects of war by focusing on those for whom war is only a tangential thing somewhere far away.
Shelf Awareness
Jonathan Miles’ smart exploration of everything from the excesses of American popular culture to the deepest aspects of religious belief roars to life.… A vivid portrait of our need to believe and its unintended consequences.… [A] thoughtful modern morality play.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. Anatomy of a Miracle opens as Tanya wheels her brother, Cameron, to their local convenience store, the Biz-E-Bee. This site is important to much of the novel’s action, being the scene of the seemingly miraculous moment when Cameron, formerly paralyzed from the waist down, steps out of his wheelchair and onto the asphalt of the store’s parking lot. What kind of atmosphere does this scene evoke? How does the routine of Tanya and Cameron’s daily errands speak to the circumstances of their life? Is it indicative of small-town life in the Deep South?
2. Jonathan Miles’s novel is set years after Hurricane Katrina, though Biloxi, Mississippi, is still defined by the storm. Where do you see Katrina’s lasting effects on the town?
3. What were your first impressions of Cameron and Tanya and of their brother/sister relationship? Early on, their home in Biloxi is described as "starkly devoid of family history," swept away with their possessions by the hurricane. Did your opinion of the characters develop as you gained insight to their backstories?
4. What do you make of the internet and social media’s role in the novel? Does it reflect things that you see on Facebook and Twitter?
5. What do you think of Cameron’s doctor, Janice? Is her confidence in science similar or different from the faith that other characters have in religion?
6. In the story, there is controversy about what constitutes a miracle. How would you define a miracle? Can one at once believe in miracles and doubt the existence of God?
7. Cameron struggles with feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Why do you think he feels this way?
8. How did you feel about the way people tried to capitalize on Cameron’s recovery? Think of the Biz-E-Bee’s conversion to a site of public pilgrimage with its own line of spiritual novelties for sale, or the reality television show, Miracle Man. Do you agree or disagree with attempts to make money off of Cameron’s life?
9. How do Cameron and Darmarkus react to postwar life and adapt to their injured bodies? Cameron agonizes over life’s what-ifs while Damarkus settles with what is. Does Damarkus exhibit acceptance for what happened? Does Cameron?
10. How did you react to the revelation about Cameron’s sexuality? Discuss the implications that this had for the public’s perception of Cameron. In light of this, why did many choose to denounce his recovery as a sign of divine intervention?
11. As an adolescent, Cameron recognizes that he is attracted to boys and not girls, but does not identify as "gay" because of the negative perceptions at his school and in popular culture. What do you think this struggle might have been like for him?
12. Tanya believes that a cocktail of antidepressants, sleeping aids, and anti-anxiety medication saved her brother’s life following his return from Afghanistan. How does this compare to the Cameron’s self-medication with alcohol and nonprescription drugs? Why are Tanya and Janice concerned when Cameron stops taking his medication?
13. What do you think of the reported style of the novel? How do you think the blend of fact and fiction reflects current cultural preoccupations with truth?
14. Honeybun chastises Griffin for wanting to represent Cameron’s recovery as a metaphor for self-acceptance. Did you read the "miracle" as a metaphor?
15. The last figure that we witness visiting the Biz-E-Bee tells Quŷnh that he prays for "love and understanding." How do you think this message applies to the story overall?
16. Toward the novel’s end, Janice’s father, Winston Lorimar discusses science and religion with his daughter, arguing that storytelling is a way of understanding the world whether or not you believe in God. Do you agree with him?
17. Having finished reading the novel, do you think it "really matters" whether or not Cameron’s recovery was a miracle?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Anatomy of a Murder
Robert Traver, 1958
St. Martin's Press
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312033569
Summary
A gripping legal thriller, Anatomy of a Murder is based on a true the story of the sensational trial of a young soldier accused of murdering a town's well-known tavern owner. In the novel, fictional defense attorney Paul Biegler agrees to defend Frederick Manion—a seemingly impossible task: Manion admits to the killing and there is no shortage of eye-witnesses willing to testify against him.
The story becomes Biegler's as underdog in a tough contest against a high-powered prosecutorial team. Biegler must find a way to legally justify the act in such a way as to overcome the natural sympathies and consciences of the jury. It seems an insurmountable challenge—until Biegler begins to dig beneath the surface and uncovers startling facts have not yet come to light. The truth is far more complex than anyone imagined.
More
First published by St. Martin's in 1958, Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder immediately became the number-one bestseller in America, and was subsequently turned into the successful and now classic Otto Preminger film. For the twenty-fifth birthday of a work that is not only the most popular courtroom drama in American fiction, but one of the most popular novels of our time, St. Martin's is proud to introduce this special anniversary edition, with a new introduction by the author.
A gripping tale of deceit, murder, and a sensational trial, Anatomy of a Murder is unmatched in the authenticity of its settings, events, and characters. This new edition should delight both loyal fans of the past and an entire new generation of readers. (From the publisher's 25th anniversary edition.)
Author Bio
• Real Name—John D. Voelker
• Birth—June 19, 1903
• Where—Ishpeming, Michigan, USA
• Death—March 19, 1991
• Education—University of Michigan Law School
• Occupation—lawyer, prosecutor, justice of Michigan
Supreme Court
Robert Traver is the pen name for John D. Voelker (1903–1991), an attorney, county prosecutor, judge, and author. Voelker based his most famous work, Anatomy of a Murder, on a homicide and trial that originated in Big Bay, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early morning of July 31, 1952. He was the defense attorney for Coleman A. Peterson, a Lieutenant in the Army, who was charged with murdering Maurice Chenoweth. The alleged motive behind this murder was that Chenoweth raped Peterson's wife the prior evening after she accepted a ride from him. Voelker successfully defended Peterson who was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Voelker was born in Ishpeming, Michigan and spent most of his life there. He graduated from the University of Michigan law school in 1928 and practiced law for a time in Chicago, Illinois before tiring of city life and returning to Ishpeming to enter private practice. Later, he was elected to the office of Marquette County prosecutor. In 1957, he was appointed the 74th justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and was subsequently re-elected to that position. Voelker retired from the court in 1959 in order to write full-time after the success of his novel Anatomy of a Murder and to fish at his beloved Frenchman's Pond.
Under the pen name Robert Traver, Voelker published a number of novels and short stories with legal themes, all with the small-town Upper Peninsula setting he was most familiar with. He chose to write under a different pen name in order to assure others that his agenda as a writer and a prosecutor were completely separate. He also published three books on fishing which are regarded as classics of the genre. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Rarely have I been so entertained as I have been by this strange novel, and for the life of me I can't tell why..... Traver is a bit naive about writing, putting in all sorts of extraneous things that don't really bear on his story, overlapping the distinguishing marks of his characters, and being careless about their insides.... Nevertheless, ...it held me as few books have, I couldn't put it down. The style is simple, colloquial English, beautifully adapted to its task, and often pungently effective.
James Cain - New York Times, 1958
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 Anatomy of a Murder:
1. Manion's culpability—if you were on the jury how would you vote?
2. Insanity pleas—are we rational or irrational beings? To what degree are we responsible for our actions? Are there extenuating circumstances?
3. The central irony of the work—how the justice system seems to subvert truth. How is truth skewed in this novel? Is justice achieved? Is Traver's portrayal realistic—or simply poetic license ? If realistic, what are the real life implications? (For a good understanding of irony, check out LitCourse 8)
4. Whom did you root for and why? Do you feel Travers manipulates his readers?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Anatomy of Wings
Karen Foxlee, 2009
Random House Children's
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375856433
Summary
Ten-year-old Jennifer Day lives in a small mining town full of secrets. Trying to make sense of the sudden death of her teenage sister, Beth, she looks to the adult world around her for answers.
As she recounts the final months of Beth’s life, Jennifer sifts through the lies and the truth, but what she finds are mysteries, miracles, and more questions. Was Beth’s death an accident? Why couldn’t Jennifer—or anyone else—save her?
Through Jennifer’s eyes, we see one girl’s failure to cross the threshold into adulthood as her family slowly falls apart (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Karen Foxlee lives in Gympie, Australia. The Anatomy of Wings is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Set in the author's native Australia in the early 1980s, this sensitive debut novel weaves and bobs between two time frames as the narrator, Jennifer, tries to understand the death of her older sister, 14-year-old Beth, who fell from a water tower. In the prevailing view, Beth was wild: she had sex with strangers and fell asleep, drunk, in neighbors' yards. But the girls' grandmother believes that Beth once saw an angel and had a bit of grace in her ever since, and that her acts were her attempts to save people. Jennifer sees evidence of both, remembering that "the more [Beth] glowed, the wilder she got." Trying to understand Beth's decline and to cope with her own grief, which has deprived her of her singing voice, Jennifer searches for clues in a box of Beth's belongings. Tangents may confuse; at times, the litany of small details and anecdotes burden the plot. But the metaphors embedded in the story and the luscious prose (a teacher's eyes are "a flat gray-green and impenetrable as a crocodile's") will hold readers until the moving conclusion. Ages 14-up.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Not all the plot’s tangents are well integrated, but the story works as memory does, with skips, gaps, and sudden, piercing moments that are as illogical and illuminating as a dream. With heart-stopping accuracy and sly symbolism, Foxlee captures the small ways that humans reveal themselves, the mysterious intensity of female adolescence, and the surreal quiet of a grieving house, which slowly and with astonishing resilience fills again with sound and music. —Gillian Engberg
Booklist
Foxlee's debut novel (published in Australia in 2007) seeks answers to a sister's meaningless downfall and death on the cusp of adulthood. Narrated by an adult Jenny channeling her ten-year-old self, the novel arcs from her older sister's funeral back through the preceding year in their small Australian mining town and ends with the eventual, hope-filled beginnings of healing. Jenny's exploration is partially about Beth's life (sexual awakening, drinking, cigarettes) and partially her own search for her singing voice which has disappeared, clearly in response to the fracturing of her family. Whether Beth truly saw angels or thought sex would mend broken men remains unclear; Jenny's perspective means she fills in the blanks of her sister's life, as anyone must after a loss. Elegant, evocative writing set this apart from the rash of recent and forthcoming dead-sibling stories, but the young narrator, unfamiliar Australian terms and seemingly unnecessary recent-past setting (1983) will make this a hard sell to nearly any teen reader—although adult readers will rejoice in its elegiac beauty.
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)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Anatomy of Wings:
1. Discuss Jennifer and her sense of loss. What kind of child is she? Why are facts so important to Jennifer, and what does that suggest about how her mind works?
2. What is the significance of Jennifer's singing voice? Talk about how it "got stuck"—and how she ultimately regains it.
3. How does Jennifer's family react to Beth's death. How would Jennifer prefer they deal with it—and why?
4. Discuss the differing views of Beth—that she was wild and loose, or that she operated through grace and saw angels. Which way does Jennifer lean...and which way do you? Why?
5. What is the trajectory of Beth's behavior shortly before she dies? How does it change and why? Who, if anyone, is to blame? How do Beth's parents respond to her changes in behavior?
6. Not only in its title, but throughout, the book has many references to wings—birds wings, Icarus's wings.... What is their symbolic significance to the story?
7. Talk about the box of Beth's belongings and what its contents suggest to Jennifer about her sister.
8. Did you enjoy the structure of the novel, the breaks in straightforward narrative? In what way might it mimic how memory works?
9. What does the novel gain by being told as a first-person narrative?
10. In addition to coping with loss, what are other basic human issues explored in Anatomy?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Ancient Light
John Banville, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307957054
Summary
The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea gives us a brilliant, profoundly moving new novel about an actor in the twilight of his life and his career: a meditation on love and loss, and on the inscrutable immediacy of the past in our present lives.
Is there any difference between memory and invention? That is the question that fuels this stunning novel, written with the depth of character, the clarifying lyricism and the sly humor that have marked all of John Banville’s extraordinary works.
And it is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave, an actor in the twilight of his career and of his life, as he plumbs the memories of his first—and perhaps only—love (he, fifteen years old, the woman more than twice his age, the mother of his best friend; the situation impossible, thrilling, devouring and finally devastating)...and of his daughter, lost to a kind of madness of mind and heart that Cleave can only fail to understand.
When his dormant acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role portraying a man who may not be who he says he is, his young leading lady—famous and fragile—unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see with aching clarity the “chasm that yawns between the doing of a thing and the recollection of what was done.”
Ancient Light is a profoundly moving meditation on love and loss, on the inscrutable immediacy of the past in our present lives, on how invention shapes memory and memory shapes the man. It is a book of spellbinding power and pathos from one of the greatest masters of prose at work today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Benjamin Black
• Birth—December, 1945
• Where—Wexford, Ireland, UK
• Education—St. Peter's College, Wexford
• Awards—Booker Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland
John Banville is an Irish novelist and journalist. His novel The Book of Evidence (1989) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.
Banville is known for his precise and cold prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. His stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".
Background
Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties; his mother was a housewife. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.
Banville was educated at a Christian Brothers school and at St Peter's College in Wexford. Despite having intended to be a painter and an architect he did not attend university. Banville has described this as "A great mistake. I should have gone. I regret not taking that four years of getting drunk and falling in love. But I wanted to get away from my family. I wanted to be free."
After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply-discounted rates. He took advantage of this to travel in Greece and Italy. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at the Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970.
Early career
After the Irish Press collapsed in 1995, he became a sub-editor at the Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left.
Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990. In 1984, he was elected to the Irish arts association Aosdana, but resigned in 2001 so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the annuity. He described himself in an interview with Argentine paper La Nacíon, as a West Brit. Banville also writes hardboiled crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black, beginning with Christine Falls (2006).
Banville has two adult sons with his wife, the American textile artist Janet Dunham. They met during his visit to San Francisco in 1968 where she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Dunham described him during the writing process as being like "a murderer who's just come back from a particularly bloody killing". Banville has two daughters from his relationship with Patricia Quinn, former head of the Arts Council of Ireland.
Banville has a strong interest in animal rights, and is often featured in Irish media speaking out against vivisection in Irish university research.
His writing
Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of the English language, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling. David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls Banville "one of the great stylists writing in English today"; Don DeLillo called his work "dangerous and clear-running prose;" Val Nolan in the Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious" [10]; The Observer described his 1989 work, The Book of Evidence, as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Banville himself has admitted that he is "trying to blend poetry and fiction into some new form." He is also known for his dark humour, and sharp wit.
Banville has written two trilogies; "The Revolutions Trilogy", consisting of Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter and a second unnamed trilogy consisting of The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena.
Banville is highly scathing of all of his work, stating of his books "I hate them all ... I loathe them. They're all a standing embarrassment. Instead of dwelling on the past Banville is continually looking forward; "You have to crank yourself up every morning and think about all the awful stuff you did yesterday, and how how you can compensate for that by doing better today". He writes only about a hundred words a day for his literary novels, versus several thousand words a day for his Benjamin Black crime fiction. He appreciates his work as Black as a craft while as Banville he is an artist, though he does consider crime-writing, in his own words, as being "cheap fiction."
Banville is highly influenced by Heinrich von Kleist, having written adaptations of three of his plays (including Amphitrion) and having again used Amphitrion as a basis for his novel The Infinities. One of Banvilles earlier influences was James Joyce—"After I'd read the Dubliners, and was struck at the way Joyce wrote about real life, I immediately started writing bad imitations of the Dubliners."
Awards
Booker Prize, James Tail Black Memorial Prize, Irish Book Awards, Guiness Peat Aviation Award, Guardian Ficiton Award, Franz Kafka Prize, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Glittering visual evocation, expressed in a tone at once fresh and wistfully ironic.... A world at once random, dreamlike and deeply experienced.
Sunday Times (UK)
Banville proves here over and over that one can write with the true texture of erotic memory without resorting to titillation. He deserves to outsell Fifty Shades of Grey tenfold.
Sunday Express (UK)
Banville does regretful roues better than almost anyone.... His use of language can also be startlingly brilliant .... Terrific.... Full of sadness and yearning.
Sunday Telegraph (UK)
This dazzling novel captures a long-lost adolescent world of passion and desire.
Independent (UK)
The Booker prize winning author—widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in English today—has produced what many already consider a literary masterpiece.
Sunday Independent (UK)
Ravishingly written and scrupulously observed
Irish Times
We now want them [novels] to provoke, cajole, edify, entertain, puzzle, divert, clarify and console. Banville's new novel does all these things and much more besides.
Irish Independent
Banville, with his forensic sensory memory, his great gift for textural (and textual) precision, his ability to inhabit not just a room, as a writer, but also the full weight of a breathing body, is exactly in his element here.
Observer
Prose that lingers on every last physical and psychological detail.
Metro
A novel criss-crossed with ghost roads and dead-ends and peopled by shifty characters who seem provisional even to themselves. It is written in Baville's customary prose, rhythmic and allusive and dense with suggestive imagery, prose and deliberately slows you down and frequently wrongfoots you.
Guardian
In Man Booker Prize-winner Banville's 16th novel, the Irish author reprises the character of Alex Cleave, who first appeared in 2000's Eclipse, and then two years later in Shroud. Cleave, a has-been theater actor, reminisces about his 15th summer, "half a century ago," when he had an affair with his best friend's mother, Mrs. Gray, who, he tells us, was "unhappy then," lest readers judge her too harshly for bedding a minor. Interwoven with this vividly drawn summer is Cleave's current existence, which is saturated with pain and regret: His daughter, Cass, flung herself off the Italian coast 10 years ago, and his wife, Lydia, still sleepwalks in the night to rampage through the house in search of her. When, out of the blue, Cleave is offered a role in a biopic of literary critic Axel Vander entitled The Invention of the Past, life and art intertwine beguilingly for Alex, who is engaged in the tricky business of inventing his own past; how is he to unravel the strands of his existence when memory is such an unreliable muse? The problem with this book is that the past is beautifully—perfectly—imagined; it's Alex's over-determined present that's unbelievable.
Publishers Weekly
At the end of a stuttering career, suddenly revived by a role-of-a-lifetime movie turn, actor Alexander Cleave looks back at his first and probably only love—a charged and ultimately catastrophic passion at age 15 for his best friend's mother. Then there's his daughter, whose own scary turn of mind he cannot understand. Always an honored writer, Banville has gained a bigger audience here since winning the Man Booker Prize for The Sea, so this probing study of memory's shiftiness will be anticipated.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
(Caution: Spoiler Alert)
1. What are the most distinctive features of John Banville’s prose style? What accounts for its remarkable richness, lyricism, and subtlety of perception?
2. What is the effect of Ancient Light being told simultaneously from the points of view of the teenage Alex and the adult Alex? How does Alex’s present affect his past? How does his past affect his present?
3. Alex frequently interrupts himself as he’s telling his story by asking questions in asides, such as, “She was not a native of our town—have I said that?—and neither was her husband” (p. 66). What is the effect of this kind of self-reflexive, self-questioning narration? In what ways does it feel true to Alex’s character?
4. At the opening of the book, Alex writes: “Images from the far past crowd in my head and half the time I cannot tell whether they are memories or inventions. Not that there is much difference between the two, if indeed there is any difference at all” (p. 3). How reliable is Alex as a narrator? His memory seems extraordinarily vivid and detailed, but how trustworthy is it? Is it possible to discern what he’s remembering and what he’s inventing or embellishing?
5. Why does Alex feel compelled now, fifty years after the fact, to write about his first love? What purpose does writing this story serve for him?
6. After Mrs. Gray flees, Alex feels abandoned and afraid. “This was grown-up territory, where I should not have to be. Who would rescue me, who would follow and find me and lead me back to be again among the scenes and the safety I had know before...?” (p. 264). Has Alex been victimized by Mrs. Gray, in spite of his more-than-enthusiastic involvement in their passionate affair? Has he been prematurely robbed of his innocence or given the gift of a great love?
7. Why does Alex take Dawn Devonport to Ligurian coastal town of Portovenere after her failed suicide attempt? What are his ostensible motives? What deeper reasons might be guiding him?
8. In playing the part of the Belgian literary critic Axel Vander, who lived most of his adult life under an assumed identity, Alex is pretending to be an impostor. What is the significance of this double impersonation?
9. Near the end of the novel, Alex says “People, real people, expect actors to be the characters they play. I am not Axel Vander, nor anything like him. Am I?” (p. 274). Is Alex anything like Axel, beyond their anagrammatic names? Why would he assert that he is not like Axel, and then immediately question that assertion?
10. How has their daughter Cass’s suicide affected Alex and Lydia’s marriage? Does Dawn Devonport serve as a kind of daughter-substitute for them?
11. Alex says that he was happy to listen to Mrs. Gray’s ramblings, “or to pretend to, so long as she consented to lie in my embrace in the back seat of the station wagon or on the mattress in Cotter’s place” (p. 144). Is he a narcissist or merely displaying the passionate impatience of youthful male lust? Could he have loved her less selfishly?
12. Why doesn’t it occur to Alex that when Mrs. Gray wonders aloud what it might be like to not be here, and asks him if he ever thinks about death, she is tacitly referring to her own grave illness? Why does he immediately assume she’s referring to her husband’s impending death?
13. How does learning the fate of Mrs. Gray—the real reason she disappeared from Alex’s life—change the way the novel should be read? How might Mrs. Gray’s awareness of her illness help explain her affair with young Alex?
14. Alex muses, “I used to think, long ago, that despite all the evidence I was the one in charge of my own life.... Now I realise that always I have been acted upon, by unacknowledged forces, hidden coercions” (p. 278). Why would he come to this conclusion? What are the “unacknowledged forces” and “hidden coercions” that have acted on him?
15. Why does Banville choose to end the novel with Alex remembering sleeping on the floor next to his mother’s bed, in the aftermath of the end of his affair with Mrs. Gray? What might be the “radiant being” he feels approaching the house just before he falls asleep?
...And Ladies of the Club
Helen Hooven Santmyer, 1982
Penguin Group USA
1184 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425174401
Summary
...And Ladies of the Club, a novel by Helen Hooven Santmyer, recounts the lives of a group of women in Waynesboro, Ohio, who begin a study club. Over the years the club evolves into a influential community service organization in the town.
The book spans decades in the lives of the women involved in the club, between 1868 and 1932. Numerous characters are introduced in the course of the novel, but primary are Anne Gordon and Sally Rausch, who in 1868 as the book begins are new graduates of the Waynesboro Female Seminary. The book flows through decades, as it chronicles the two women's marriages and those of their children and grandchildren. Santmyer focuses not just on the lives of the women in the Club, but also their families, friends, politics, and developments in their small town and the larger world.
Originally published by the Ohio State University Press in 1982 and only selling a few hundred copies, the book was chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection in 1984, making it a best-seller that year. The recognition earned its 88-year-old author critical acclaim and literary recognition; according to the back cover of the 1985 paperback edition, the novel took Santmyer more than 50 years to write. (From Wikipedia.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 25, 1895
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Death—February 21, 1986
• Where—Xenia, Ohio
• Education—Wellesley College;Cambridge University (a
Rhodes Scholar)
Helen Hooven Santmyer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved to Xenia, Ohio, when she was five years old. She went to Wellesley College in 1918 and was active in the struggle for women's rights. She attended Oxford University in England and was one of the first female Rhodes Scholars. When she returned to the United States with her first book published, she expected fame and fortune but found instead the Great Depression.
Later, she returned to Wellesley College to teach in the English Department. She also wrote poetry that appeared in anthologies such as The Bookman Anthology of Verse (1922) from Doran and Company. Her sonnet, "The Prairie Town," from that collection indicates her talent as a poet.
In 1935, Helen moved back to Xenia becoming the Dean of Women and the head of Cedarville University English department. She was 88 when her most famous work ...And Ladies of the Club was published—it was a best-seller in 1984. She also wrote Herbs and Apples; Ohio Town; and The Fierce Dispute.
She received most of her fame late in life and died on February 21, 1986, in Xenia, Ohio, aged 90. She was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Pre-internet works have few mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
A great novel that is American to its core...so gently memorable, so bursting with life, that those who abandon themselves to its pages will find it claiming a permanent place close to their hearts.
New York Daily News
A warm, evocative, often hilarious picture of society, culture, politics and family life.
Atlanta Constitution
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)
And the Dark Sacred Night
Julia Glass, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307377937
Summary
In this richly detailed novel about the quest for an unknown father, Julia Glass brings new characters together with familiar figures from her first two novels, immersing readers in a panorama that stretches from suburban New Jersey to rural Vermont and ultimately to the tip of Cape Cod.
Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has never known the identity of his father—a mystery that his wife insists he must solve to move forward with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There, in the midst of a fierce blizzard, Kit and Jasper confront memories of the bittersweet decade when their families were joined.
Reluctantly breaking a long-ago promise, Jasper connects Kit with Lucinda and Zeke Burns, who know the answer he’s looking for. Readers of Glass’s first novel, Three Junes, will recognize Lucinda as the mother of Malachy, the music critic who died of AIDS. In fact, to fully understand the secrets surrounding his paternity, Kit will travel farther still, meeting Fenno McLeod, now in his late fifties, and Fenno’s longtime companion, the gregarious Walter Kinderman.
And the Dark Sacred Night is an exquisitely memorable tale about the youthful choices that steer our destinies, the necessity of forgiveness, and the risks we take when we face down the shadows from our past. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 23, 1956
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale College
• Awards—Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, 1999; Nelson Algren
Fiction Awards, 1993, 1996, 2000; National Book Award for
Fiction, 2002
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
After graduating from Yale with a degree in art, Julia Glass received a fellowship to study figurative painting in Paris. Upon her return, she moved to New York, where she became involved in the city's vibrant art scene, worked as a copy editor, and wrote the occasional magazine column. She had always been a good writer, but her energies were initially focused on an art career. Finally, the pull to write became too strong. Glass put down her paint brush and picked up her pen.
One of her earliest short stories, never published, was a semi-autobiographical piece called "Souvenirs." Loosely based on her experiences as a student traveling in Greece, the story was (by Glass's own admission) pretty formulaic. Yet, she found herself returning to it over the years, haunted by the faint memory of someone she had met on that trip: an older man whose wife had recently died.
Then, during the early 1990s, Glass experienced some serious setbacks in her life: Within the space of a few years, her marriage ended in divorce, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her beloved younger sister—a dynamic woman with a seemingly wonderful life—committed suicide. Devastated by her sister's death, Glass turned to writing as a way of working through her grief and loss. Suddenly, the memory of the sad widower in Greece took on a melancholy resonance. She retrieved "Souvenirs" from her desk drawer for one final rewrite, expanded it to novella length, and spun it from a different point of view. Renamed "Collies," the story won the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal in 1999. It also became the first section of Glass's remarkable 2002 debut novel, the National Book Award winner Three Junes.
After a spate of "postmodern" bestsellers, Three Junes was like a breath of fresh air, harkening back to an era of more straightforward, gimmick-free writing. Spanning a period of ten years (1989-1999), the novel covers three disparate, event-filled months in the lives of a well-to-do Scottish family named McLeod, weaving a cast of colorful, interconnected characters into a tapestry of contemporary social mores that would do Glass's 19th-century role model George Eliot proud.
The same dazzling sprawl that distinguished her acclaimed debut has characterized Glass's subsequent efforts—rich, dense narratives that unfold from multiple points of view and illuminate the full, complicated spectrum of relationships (among parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and lovers). In an interview with NPR, she explained her penchant for ensemble casts and panoramic multidimensional stories: "I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in."
Extras
From a 2002 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Glass's first published writing was a regular column on pets called "Animal Love" that ran in Glamour magazine for two years in the late eighties. Says Glass, "I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always horses, dogs, and cats, as well as a revolving infirmary of injured wildlife being nursed by my sister the aspiring vet. Without any conscious intention on my part, animals come to play a significant role in my fiction: in Three Junes, a parrot and a pack of collies; in The Whole World Over, a bulldog named The Bruce. To dog lovers, by the way, I recommend My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley—by far the best 'animal book' I've ever read."
• She is an avid rug-hooker in her free time. She explains that "unlike the more restrictive needlepoint, this medium permits me to work with yarn in a fluid, painterly fashion." Several of her rugs were reproduced in a book called Punch Needle Rug Hooking, by Amy Oxford (Schiffer Books).
• Glass considers herself a "confirmed, unrepentant late bloomer." She explains, "I talked late, swam late, did not learn to ride a bike until college —and might never have walked or learned to drive a car if my parents hadn't overruled my lack of motivation and virtually forced me to embrace both forms of transportation. I suspect I was happy to sit in a corner with a book. Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do."
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is how she responded:
I cannot imagine how many books I've read in my life so far — and to name a "favorite" would be impossible, but the most influential, hands down, was Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, because, though it's certainly flawed, it's the book that put me to work writing fiction as an adult. As a child, and through college, I had always loved reading and writing, but the notion of "being a writer" wasn't one I thought much about pursuing; perhaps writing came so naturally to me from an early age that I took it for granted, saw it as a means rather than a possible "end," a life's labor unto itself. My professional sights were set on the visual arts; In college I majored in art, then won a fellowship to spend a year painting abroad after graduation, and then, like so many artists, found myself in New York City holding down a day job as a copy editor and painting at night. I was showing my work here and there, but I was also reading a great deal.
Having adored Middlemarch in college, I picked up Daniel Deronda—and fell so deeply in love with the experience of reading it that, now in my late twenties, I began to yearn to write fiction for the first time since high school. George Eliot's astonishingly beautiful use of language, her nearly contemptible yet ultimately captivating heroine—Gwendolen Harleth, who remains one of my favorite all-time characters—and the daring structure of the novel itself, the way it leaves major characters offstage for significant stretches, all made me think at length about what an extraordinary thing a book really is—and suddenly I wanted, fiercely, to be making up stories of my own. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
What does it mean to discover your father when you are older than he would ever be? Kit worries that he is unable to feel sad enough. Too often now, he wonders what it is he should feel.” The reader may have a similar reaction, never quite believing in these people or in what links them to one another. Part of this can be attributed to a loose authorial grip on character management.... Glass has her hands full keeping everyone on the page, let alone making significant connections among them. And in truth, significant connection rarely happens at family gatherings. These get-togethers really serve to find references in the past, update the present and smoke pipe dreams for the next generation
Carol Anshaw - New York Times Book Review
Glass's uneven new novel centers around 40-year-old Kit Noonan, an unemployed college professor who—against his mother Daphne's wishes—wants to track down Malachy Burns, the father he never knew (and a character from Glass's 2002 National Book Award-winning debut Three Junes).... [Some] sections ring with emotional truth while others feel precious.... This imperfect work will still reward loyal readers.
Publishers Weekly
Winner of the National Book Award for her 2002 debut, Three Junes, Julia Glass takes another sympathetic look at the complexities of contemporary life in this novel about family secrets.... Examining complicated family relationships among several families whose lives intertwine in unexpected ways, this warm and engaging story about what it means to be a father will appeal to most readers. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, Massachusetts
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Glass explores the pain of family secrets, the importance of identity, and the ultimate meaning of family.... Although Glass borrows characters from her National Book Award–winning Three Junes, it is not necessary to have read that previous book to enjoy this lovely, highly readable, and thought-provoking novel.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Kit’s wife, Sandra, tells him, “I think you need to move, I mean pry yourself free from a place that’s become so familiar you simply can’t see it” (p. 22). Have you ever come to a place in your life where you felt stuck? How did you resolve this?
2. Why do you think Daphne insists on keeping the name of Kit’s father a secret? Whom is she protecting?
3. Daphne tells Kits that he “does not get to know everything” just because he wants to. Do you think Daphne owes Kit the name of his father?
4. If you were Kit, do you think you could/would have waited so long to find your father? Do you think men and women have different attitudes toward “finding” their lost family connections?
5. Describe Kit and Daphne’s relationship. How does this change throughout the book?
6. Do you see any parallels between Kit’s relationship with Daphne and Malachy’s relationship with Lucinda? If you read Three Junes, what do you bring from that book about the latter relationship? Knowing what you know from this book, do you think you’d feel differently about either of those characters if you went back to reread Three Junes?
7. Daphne accepted Lucinda’s help with Kit for the first few years of his life. What do you think about her cutting off that connection so abruptly? Can you empathize with her reasons for doing so?
8. Lucinda has yearned for decades to reconnect with Kit. Do you think she should have done that on her own, without waiting for him to take the initiative? Or do you think the initiative always has to come from the child/grandchild?
9. “Things that make sense don’t always make sense” (p. 40). Jasper says this to Daphne in reference to her plan to move with Kit closer to her school. Do you think she is already planning to leave that marriage, or is Jasper missing important hints that he is already losing her?
10. What do you think about Daphne and Malachy’s relationship as teenagers at the music camp? How do you think the culture of the camp itself affects the way she feels about him?
11. Did you have a magical time or place in your life similar to that summer?
12. Malachy is a central figure in this work, but we cannot know what he felt or what he thought. How does this affect the people in the story? What do you think about his complete removal of himself from Daphne and Kit’s life—and his father’s tacit support of that distance?
13. Forgiveness is a prevalent theme. Discuss some of the characters who need to give and seek forgiveness in the book. Are some of the “crimes” they’ve committed unforgivable?
14. In your view, who has the most to forgive? Who most deserves forgiveness? Who most needs it?
15. Lucinda admits to herself that she loved Malachy more than her other children—but it’s clear they realize this. What do you think will happen, in the future, as Malachy’s “lost” son is absorbed into the family, especially after Lucinda’s death?
16. Lucinda gets mad at Zeke for hiding Malachy’s need to know of Kit, and gets mad at Jonathan for hiding his homosexuality from Malachy as well as from his parents. Do you think these secrets were justified?
17. At one point, a woman who was clearly a client of Lucinda’s at The House confronts her on the street and tells her that Lucinda ruined her life. What do you think about the work Lucinda did, inspired by her faith, to help young single mothers have and raise babies on their own in an era when they might have had other choices?
18. The Burnses’ barn, the Shed at the music camp, Jasper’s crow’s nest: All of these structures hold meaning for the characters involved. Are there places in your life that you feel as strongly about?
19. The character Fenno McLeod, the protagonist from Julia Glass’s novel Three Junes, returns as a key point of view near the end of the book. If you read that earlier novel, how does it feel to meet him again in this different context? What do you think about his changed circumstances and his relationship with Walter Kinderman (a pivotal character in Glass’s The Whole World Over)?
20. In the end, do you think Kit found what he was looking for?
21. When Daphne finally revisits the music camp, along with her second husband and Kit, do you think she is changed by facing down this fateful place in her past?
22. Similarly, do you think Fenno is changed by giving up the artifacts of Malachy that he has kept to himself, especially the box of letters and photos? How do you think Kit will respond to that gift?
23. Julia Glass fills her novels with vivid “cameo” characters, such as Loraina and Rayburn in Jasper’s part of the book, or Matthew in Lucinda’s. Do you have a favorite among these characters—or wish that some of them had been given larger roles?
24. What character in this story do you most identify with, and why?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini, 2013
Penguing Group USA
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594632389
Summary
Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.
In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most.
Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 04, 1965
• Where—Kabul, Afghanistan
• Education—B.S., Santa Clara University; M.D., University
of California, San Diego School of Medicine
• Currently—lives in northern California
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and History at a large high school in Kabul. In 1970, the Foreign Ministry sent his family to Tehran, where his father worked for the Afghan embassy. They lived in Tehran until 1973, at which point they returned to Kabul.
In July of 1973, on the night Hosseini’s youngest brother was born, the Afghan king, Zahir Shah, was overthrown in a bloodless coup by the king’s cousin, Daoud Khan. At the time, Hosseini was in fourth grade and was already drawn to poetry and prose; he read a great deal of Persian poetry as well as Farsi translations of novels ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series.
In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry once again relocated the Hosseini family, this time to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States. In September of 1980, Hosseini’s family moved to San Jose, California. They lived on welfare and food stamps for a short while, as they had lost all of their property in Afghanistan. His father took multiple jobs and managed to get his family off welfare.
Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California-San Diego’s School of Medicine, where he earned a Medical Degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and began practicing Internal Medicine in 1996. His first love, however, has always been writing.
In 2003, Hosseini published The Kite Runner, which became a runaway bestseller and film in 2007. He followed up with his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2007, also a bestseller. His third novel, And the Mountians Echoed, was published in 2013.
Hosseini has vivid, and fond, memories of peaceful pre-Soviet era Afghanistan, as well as of his personal experiences with Afghan Hazaras. One Hazara in particular was a thirty-year-old man named Hossein Khan, who worked for the Hosseinis when they were living in Iran. When Hosseini was in the third grade, he taught Khan to read and write. Though his relationship with Hossein Khan was brief and rather formal, Hosseini always remembered the fondness that developed between them.
In 2006, Hosseini was named a goodwill envoy to the UNHCR, The United Nations Refugee Agency. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• During his years in the U.S., Hosseini has soaked in more than his share of American culture. He professes to be a fan of such U.S. institutions as the music of Bruce Springsteen and football. Still, he admits that he simply cannot appreciate baseball, saying, "I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S."
• When it comes to chickens, Hosseini is a chicken. "I'm terrified of chickens," the writer confesses. "Absolutely petrified. This intense and irrational fear is, I believe, caused by the memory of a black hen we owned in Kabul when I was a child. She used to peck her own chicks to death as soon as the eggs hatched."
• When Hosseini isn't writing or tending to one of his patients, he enjoys games of no-limits Texas hold 'em poker with his brother and friends.
• When asked what book most influenced him, here is what he had to say:
I remember reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an "Aha!" moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter. For some reason, I identified with the disenfranchised farm workers in that novel—I suppose in one sense, they reminded me of my own country's traumatized people. And indeed, when I went back to Afghanistan in 2003, I met people with tremendous pride and dignity under some very bleak conditions; I suspect I met a few Ma Joads and Tom Joads in Kabul.
Book Reviews
Hosseini’s third novel (after A Thousand Splendid Suns) follows a close-knit but oft-separated Afghan family through love, wars, and losses more painful than death. The story opens in 1952 in the village of Shadbagh, outside of Kabul, as a laborer, Kaboor, relates a haunting parable of triumph and loss to his son, Abdullah. The novel’s core, however, is the sale for adoption of the Kaboor’s three-year-old daughter, Pari, to the wealthy poet Nila Wahdati and her husband, Suleiman, by Pari’s step-uncle Nabi. The split is particularly difficult for Abdullah, who took care of his sister after their mother’s death. Once Suleiman has a stroke, Nila leaves him to Nabi’s care and takes Pari to live in Paris. Much later, during the U.S. occupation, the dying Nabi makes Markos, a Greek plastic surgeon now renting the Wahdati house, promise to find Pari and give her a letter containing the truth. The beautiful writing, full of universal truths of loss and identity, makes each section a jewel, even if the bigger picture, which eventually expands to include Pari’s life in France, sometimes feels disjointed. Still, Hosseini’s eye for detail and emotional geography makes this a haunting read.
Publishers Weekly
This bittersweet family saga spans six decades and transports readers from Afghanistan to France, Greece, and the United States. Hosseini weaves a gorgeous tapestry of disparate characters joined by threads of blood and fate.... Each character tells his or her version of the same story of selfishness and selflessness, acceptance and forgiveness, but most important, of love in all its complex iterations. Verdict: In this uplifting and deeply satisfying book, Hosseini displays an optimism not so obvious in his previous works. Readers will be clamoring for it. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Estero, FL
Library Journal
...explore[s] the effect of the Afghan diaspora on identity. It begins powerfully in 1952. Saboor is a dirt-poor day laborer in a village two days walk from Kabul. His first wife died giving birth to their daughter Pari.... Saboor's brother-in-law Nabi is a cook/chauffeur for a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul; he helps arrange the sale of Pari to the couple.... The drama does nothing to prepare us for the coming leaps in time and place.... The stories spill from Hosseini's bountiful imagination, but they compete against each other, denying the novel a catalyst; the result is a bloated, unwieldy work.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. And the Mountains Echoed introduces us to Saboor and his children Abdullah and Pari, and the shocking, heartbreaking event that divides them. From there, the book branches off to include multiple other characters and storylines before circling back to Abdullah and Pari. How do each of the other characters relate back to the original story? What themes is the author exploring by having these stories counterpoint one another?
2. The novel begins with a tale of extraordinary sacrifice that has ramifications through generations of families. What do you think of Saboor's decision to let the adoption take place? How are Nila and Nabi implicated in Saboor's decision? What do you think of their motives? Who do you think is the most pure or best intended of the three adults? Ultimately, do you think Pari would have had a happier life if she had stayed with her birth family?
3. Think of other sacrifices that are made throughout the book. Are there certain choices that are easier than others? Is Saboor's sacrifice when he allows Pari to be adopted easier or more difficult than Parwana's sacrifice of her sister? How are they similar and how are they different? Who else makes sacrifices in the book? What do you think the author is saying about the nature of the decisions we make in our lives and the ways in which they affect others?
4. "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, / there is a field. I'll meet you there." The author chose this thirteenth-century Rumi poem as the epigraph for the book. Discuss the novel in light of this poem. What do you think he is saying about rightdoing and wrongdoing in the lives of his characters, or in the world?
5. The book raises many deep questions about the wavering line between right and wrong, and whether it is possible to be purely "good"—or purely "bad." What do you think after reading the novel: Are good intentions enough to create good deeds? Can positive actions come from selfish motivations? Can bad come from positive intent? How do you think this novel would define a good person? How would you define one?
6. Discuss the question of wrongdoing and rightdoing in the context of the different characters and their major dilemmas in the book : Saboor and his daughter Pari; Parwana and her sister, Masooma; the expats, Idris and Timur, and the injured girl, Roshi; Adel, his warlord father, and their interactions with Gholam and his father (and Abdullah's half brother), Iqbal; Thalia and her mother. Do any of them regret the things they have done? What impact does it have on them?
7. The overlapping relationships of the different characters are complex and reflective of real life. Discuss the connections between the different characters, how they are made, grow, and are sustained. Consider all the ways in which an event in one of the families in the book can resonate in the lives of so many other characters. Can you name some examples?
8. Saboor's bedtime story to his children opens the book. To what degree does this story help justify Saboor's heart-wrenching act in the next chapter? In what ways do other characters in the novel use storytelling to help justify or interpret their own actions? Think about your own experiences. In what ways do you use stories to explain your own past?
9. Two homes form twin focal points for the novel: the family home of Saboor, Abdullah, and Pari—and later Iqbal and Gholam—in Shadbagh; and the grand house initially owned by Suleiman in Kabul. Compare the homes and the roles they play in the novel. Who has claims to each house? What are those claims based on? How do the questions of ownership complicate how the characters relate to one another?
10. The old oak tree in Shadbagh plays an important role for many different characters (Parwana, Masooma, Saboor, Abdullah, and Pari) during its life. What is its significance in the story? What do its branches represent? Why do you think Saboor cuts it down? How does its stump come back as an important landmark later on?
11. In addition to all of the important family relationships in the book, there are also many nongenetic bonds between characters, some of them just as strong. Discuss some of these specific relationships and what needs they fill. What are the differences between these family and nonfamily bonds? What do you think the author is trying to say about the presence of these relationships in our lives?
12. And the Mountains Echoed begins in Afghanistan, moves to Europe and Greece, and ends in California, gradually widening its perspective. What do you think the author was trying to accomplish by including so many different settings and nationalities? What elements of the characters' different experiences would you say are universal? Do you think the characters themselves would see it that way?
13. Discuss the title, And the Mountains Echoed, and why you think it was chosen. Can you find examples of echoes or recurrences in the plot? In the structure of the storytelling?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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And Then I Found You |
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The Story Behind the Story
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And Then I Found You |
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—Excerpt—
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And Then I Found You
Patti Callahan Henry, 2013
St. Martin's Press
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312610760
Summary
Kate Vaughan is no stranger to tough choices. She’s made them before. Now it’s time to do it again.
Kate has a secret, something tucked away in her past. And she’s getting on with her life. Her business is thriving. She has a strong relationship with her family, and a devoted boyfriend whom she wants to love with all her heart. If Kate had ever made a list, Rowan would fill the imagined boxes of a perfect mate. But she wants more than the perfect on paper relationship; she wants a real and imperfect love. That's why, when Kate discovers the small velvet box hidden in Rowan's drawer, she panics.
It always happens this way. Just when Kate thinks she can love, just when she believes she can conquer the fear, she’s filled with dread. And she wants more than anything to make this feeling go away. But how?
When the mistakes have been made and the running is over, it’s time to face the truth. Kate knows this. She understands that a woman can never undo what can never be undone. Yet, for the first time in her life she also knows that she won’t fully love until she confronts those from her past. It’s time to act.
Can she do it? Can she travel to the place where it all began, to the one who shares her secret? Can the lost ever become found?
And Then I Found You gives new life to the phrase “inspired by a true story.” By travelling back to a painful time in her own family’s history, the author explores the limits of courage, and the price of a selfless act. (From the publisher.)
Read an Excerpt
Read the Story-Behind-the-Story
Visit Patti on Facebook
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Philadelphia, PA USA
• Education—R.N., Auburn University; M.C.H., Georgia State
• Currently—lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama
New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry has published nine novels: Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks, Between the Tides, The Art of Keeping Secrets, Driftwood Summer, The Perfect Love Song, Coming up for Air, and And Then I Found You—her most recent. Hailed as a fresh new voice in southern fiction, Henry has been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and nominated four different times for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Novel of the Year. Her work is published in five languages and in audiobook by Brilliance Audio.
Henry has appeared in numerous magazines including Good Housekeeping, skirt!, South, and Southern Living. Two of her novels were Okra Picks and Coming up For Air was selected for the August 2011 Indie Next List. She is a frequent speaker at fundraisers, library events and book festivals. A full time writer, wife, and mother of three—Henry lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Patti Callahan Henry grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of an Irish minister, and moved south with her family when she was 12 years old. With the idea that being a novelist was “unrealistic,” she set her sights on becoming a pediatric nurse, graduating from Auburn University with a degree in nursing, and from Georgia State with a Master’s degree in Child Health.
She left nursing to raise her first child, Meagan, and not long after having her third child, Rusk, she began writing down the stories that had always been in her head. Henry wrote early in the mornings, before her children woke for the day, but it wasn’t until Meagan, then six, told her mother that she wanted “to be a writer of books” when she grew up, that Henry realized that writing was her own dream as well. She began taking writing classes at Emory University, attending weekend writers’ conferences, and educating herself about the publishing industry, rising at 4:30 AM to write. Her first book, Losing the Moon, was published in 2004. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Henry writes this story with eloquence and beauty. This is her most personal and her most powerful story to date.
Huffington Post
A delicious read featuring all of the elements of love, loss and familial tension.
Atlantan
A fictional work based on real-life events in the life of the author's sister. In the fictional version, Katie falls in love with Jack when she is 13 and makes a promise she will love him forever. He reciprocates.... But when Katie wants to take a job in Arizona..., Jack finds it hard to wait for her return.... By the time Katie realizes she is pregnant with their child, Jack is married to someone else.... Katie decides to give the little girl to an anonymous couple who have been trying to have a child for years.... In the midst of these developments, the daughter they continue to think about and love for 13 years finds them. Lives are rearranged, and cherished dreams are finally realized.... [The author] was inspired to write a novel that explores the emotions and life changes that such a miraculous reunion can bring to a family. A touching story.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. This novel was inspired by a true story. Is there an event in your life that you think would make a good novel?
2. Katie is so devoted to her work with damaged girls that she postpones her life together with Jack. Do you think that Jack should have been more patient in waiting for her? Or was Katie taking their relationship for granted?
3. Katie hears a lot of "terrible stories" from the girls at The Winsome Wilderness. How did these experiences contribute to her decision to place Luna for adoption?
4. Kate seems to take great comfort in rituals. Have these rituals served a positive purpose in her life—or have they held her back?
5. Do you think Kate and Rowan's relationship would have had a different outcome if she had been able to confide in him about her past?
6. Lida is much more than an employee to Kate, who seems to turn a blind eye to the younger woman's shortcomings. What do you think they offer each other?
7. When he was married, Jack didn't tell his wife about Luna. Do you think that this compromised their marriage?
8. Kate mentions that she "wants to love" Rowan. Can Kate—or anyone make themselves love someone? Can you want to love enough to love?
9. Jack says in one of his letters, "of all of the awful parts of missing their daughter, the non-knowning was the absolute worse." Why did Jack feel this way? Do you agree?
10. In the opening of the novel we see that March 20th is a significant date for Katie Vaughn, and it remains so throughout the remainder of the novel. Is there a date that is deeply significant to you and if so, why?
11. Thirteen-year-old Emily wonders about her "birth parents." Do you know any adopted children and if so, do they often wonder about their birth parents?
12. Emily is deeply loved and has a close family, but still she struggled with feeling wanted. Why do you think this is?
13. Emily wants to know "her story"—don't we all? Did hearing her story directly from Jack and Kate help Emily? Do you think that hearing "your story" helps you understand your life? Do you believe that telling "your story" helps others?
14. At one point in the novel, Emily believes that it would be nicer to live with Katie and Jack. Can you see why she would believe this?
15. Kate has a very close family and they often talk about Luna, and yet her birth and adoption are also a tightly held secret. Do you believe families can hold these kinds of secrets? How do they affect the family and those who are close to them?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
And Then She Was Gone
Rosalind Noonan, 2014
Kensington Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780758274991
Summary
Eleven-year-old Lauren O'Neil vanished one sunny afternoon as she walked home from school. Six years later, her parents Rachel and Dan still tirelessly scour their Oregon hometown and beyond, always believing Lauren will be found.
Then one day, the call comes. Lauren has been rescued from a secluded farm mere miles away, and her abductor has confessed. Yet her return is nothing like Rachel imagined.
Though the revelations about what Lauren endured are shocking, most heartbreaking of all is to see the bright-eyed, assertive daughter she knew transformed into a wary, polite stranger. Lauren's first instinct is to flee. For years she's been told her parents forgot her; now she doubts the pieces of her life can ever fit together again.
But Rachel refuses to lose her a second time. Little by little they must relearn what it means to be a family, trusting that their bond is strong enough to guide them back to each other. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—suburban Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Wagner College, Staten Island
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Rosalind Noonan grew up in suburban Maryland on the outskirts of Baltimore and Washington. One of five children, she enjoyed the comical, energetic vibe of a noisy Irish household and remains close with her four siblings.
Noonan spent her senior year of high school in Ludwigsburg, Germany, and used that time to travel extensively throughout Europe. Noonan is a graduate of Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. Coincidentally, the campus was used as the primary location for the film School of Rock, one of Roz's favorite comedies. She recalls her four years on "the Hill," living in a dormitory with a breathtaking view of New York Harbor and lower Manhattan, as a time of vast growth and possibility.
Rosalind currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Michael, children Carly and Alex, and a small King Charles Cavalier Spaniel named Ruby. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Highly sympathetic and compelling...will hold readers in its sway.
Booklist
Beautifully written...handles sensitive topics with grace, bringing the inner thoughts of characters to light in a manner that will make readers ache for their struggles.
Romantic Times
Discussion Questions
1. Although stranger abduction is one of a parent’s worst nightmares, most abducted children are kidnapped by their own parents or relatives. Are there ways that society might safeguard children from people like Kevin Hawkins? Discuss the balance between warning children of “stranger danger” and allowing them a modicum of trust toward their community.
2. Do you think Rachel’s decision to let Lauren walk home from school was irresponsible? Have you ever made a “responsible” choice that you regretted later?
3. Kidnapped at age eleven, Lauren was held captive in semi-isolation for six years. Discuss the important stages of development she “missed” during that time. What lifedefining moments do you remember from your teenage years?
4. While in captivity, Lauren nurtured an idealized view of family life by watching videotapes of old television sitcoms. What is the downside of looking for relationship truths in shows like Full House and Seventh Heaven? What positive values might these shows teach a child?
5. In the later years of her captivity, Lauren was not handcuffed or locked inside by Kevin Hawkins. What kept her from fleeing the compound?
6. Rachel believed that the terrible ordeal would be over once her daughter was found. Instead, the young woman who was rescued did not want to return to her family. What expectations should society have toward recovered captives? Should women of legal age be pressured to return to their families of origin? Why or why not?
7. When Lauren tries to re-assimilate with her family, her mother is the one person she finds it hard to bond with. “I know Mom can be a pain in the ass,” Sierra tells Lauren, “but she does mean well. She loves you a lot.” Although Lauren knows this is true, the feelings of resentment and betrayal prevail. Why does Lauren feel so much anger toward her mother? Do you think Rachel’s personality makes their breach worse, or does it help them mend their relationship?
8. In therapy, Lauren learns about finding balance in life. “Male and female, darkness and light, cold and hot, evil and good. At first she had told Wynonna that she wanted to be only yang, the sunny side of the slope. But Wynonna pointed out that the sun always moves across the slope, obscuring what was revealed and revealing what was hidden.” Discuss the interplay between yin and yang. Do you agree with Wynonna’s assertion that “We appreciate the sunlight more when we’ve been living in darkness”?
9. In the past, conventional therapy has not worked for Dan, who “was not an advocate of wasting time on a shrink’s couch. Too invasive, too touchy-feely, and way too expensive.” What elements of Wynonna’s program appealed to him? How could conventional psychotherapy be adapted to better suit clients?
10. The use of horses as a therapeutic aid dates back to ancient Greece. This therapy developed Lauren’s cognitive skills as well as establishing a relationship of trust between horse and rider. From playing ball with a horse to teaching it how to deal with fear, what was the most interesting aspect of this therapy for you?
11. What do you think Lauren will be doing five years after the story ends? What sort of career/future do you envision for Sierra?
12. If you were producing And Then She Was Gone as a movie, who would you cast as Lauren? What actress has the nurturing quality and hard drive of Rachel? Who do you see as Dan? Sometimes attractive villains are the most devastating. Who would you cast as Kevin Hawkins?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie, 1939
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062073488
Summary
The World's Bestselling Mystery
"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen."
"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.
"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die.
"Seven . . ."
Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 15, 1890
• Where—Torquay, Devon, UK
• Death—January 12, 1976
• Where—Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK
• Education—home schooled and fininshing school
in Paris.
• Awards—Edgar Award and the Grand Master Award
(broth from Mystery Writers of American)
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for the 66 detective novels and more than 15 short story collections she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple and Tommy and Tuppence. She also wrote the world's longest-running play The Mousetrap.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly four billion copies, and her estate claims that her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the world's most widely published books. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author, and her books have been translated into at least 103 languages. And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time. In 1971, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952 and as of 2012 was still running after more than 25,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. Many of her books and short stories have been filmed, and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.
Childhood
Born to a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, Christie would describe her childhood as "very happy" and was surrounded by a series of strong and independent women from an early age. Her time was spent alternating between her Devonshire home, her grandmother's house in Ealing, West London, and parts of Southern Europe, where her family would holiday during the winter. Nominally Christian, she was also raised in a household with various esoteric beliefs, and like her siblings believed that their mother Clara was a psychic with the ability of second sight.
Her mother insisted that she receive a home education, and so her parents were responsible for teaching her to read and write, and to be able to perform basic arithmetic, a subject that she particularly enjoyed. They also taught her about music, and she learned to play both the piano and the mandolin; she was also a voracious reader from an early age. Much of her childhood was spent largely alone and separate from other children, although she spent much time with her pets, whom she adored. Eventually making friends with a group of other girls in Torquay, she noted that "one of the highlights of my existence" was her appearance in a local theatrical production of The Yeomen of the Guard where she starred alongside them.
Her father was often ill, suffering from a series of heart attacks, and in November 1901 he died, aged 55. His death left the family devastated, and in an uncertain economic situation. Clara and Agatha continued to live together in their Torquay home; Madge had moved to the nearby Cheadle Hall with her new husband, and Monty, who had joined the army, had been sent to South Africa to fight in the Boer War. Agatha would later claim that her father's death, occurring when she was 11 years old, marked the end of her childhood for her.
In 1902, Agatha would be sent to receive a formal education at Miss Guyer's Girls School in Torquay, but found it difficult to adjust to the disciplined atmosphere. In 1905 she was then sent to the city of Paris, France, where she was educated in three pensions—Mademoiselle Cabernet's, Les Marroniers and then Miss Dryden's—the latter of which served primarily as a finishing school.
Early writing
Returning to England in 1910, she engaged in social activities in search of a husband and also took part in writing and performing in amateur theatrics. She helped put together a play called The Blue Beard of Unhappiness with a number of female friends.
Her writing extended to both poetry and music, and some of her early works saw publication, but she decided against focusing on either of these as future professions. It was while recovering in bed from an illness that she penned her first short story; entitled "The House of Beauty", it consisted of about 6000 words and dealt with the world of "madness and dreams" which fascinated Christie. She soon followed this up with a string of other shorts, all of which were rejected, although they would all be revised and published at a later date, sometimes under new titles.
Christie then began to put together her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, which was set in Cairo and drew from a recent visit to the city. Sending it to various publishers under the pseudonym of Monosyllaba, which was rejected by a number of publishers.
Marriage
Meanwhile, she had continued searching for a husband, and had entered into short-lived relationships with four separate men before meeting a young man named Archibald "Archie" Christie at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford of Chudleigh, about 12 miles from Torquay. Archie had been born in India, the son of a judge in the Indian Civil Service, before travelling to England where he joined the air force, who stationed him in Devon in 1912. Soon entering into a relationship, the couple fell in love, and after being informed that he was being stationed in Farnborough, Archie asked her to marry him, and she accepted.
1914 saw the outbreak of the First World War, and Archie was sent to France to battle the German forces. Agatha also involved herself in the war effort, joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and attending to wounded soldiers at the hospital in Torquay. In this position she was responsible for aiding the doctors and trying to keep up morale, performing 3,400 hours of unpaid work between October 1914 and December 1916 before earning a wage as a dispenser at an annual rate of £16 until the end of her service in September 1918.
She met her fiance in London during his leave at the end of 1914, and they were married on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. They would meet up again throughout the war each time that he was posted home. Rising through the ranks, he was eventually stationed back to Britain in September 1918 as a colonel in the Air Ministry, and with Agatha he settled into a flat at 5 Northwick Terrace in St. John's Wood, Northwest London.
First novels: 1919–1923
Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White and The Moonstone as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. Deciding to write her own detective novel, entitled The Mysterious Affair at Styles, she created a detective named Hercule Poirot to be her protagonist. A former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly moustache and egg-shaped head, Poirot had been a refugee who had fled to Britain following Germany's invasion of Belgium; in this manner, Christie had been influenced by the Belgian refugees whom she had encountered in Torquay.
After unsuccessfully sending her manuscript to such publishing companies as Hodder and Stoughton and Methuen, she sent it to John Lane at The Bodley Head, who kept it for several months before announcing that the press would publish it on the condition that Christie agreed to change the ending. She duly did so, and signed a contract with Lane that she would later claim was exploitative.
Christie meanwhile settled into married life, giving birth to a daughter named Rosalind at Ashfield, where the couple—having few friends in London—spent much of their time. Archie obtained a job in the City working in the financial sector, and although he started out on a relatively low salary, he was still able to employ a maid for his family.
Christie's second novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), featured new protagonists in the form of detective couple Tommy and Tuppence; again published by The Bodley Head, it earned her £50. She followed this with a third novel, once again featuring Poirot, entitled Murder on the Links (1923), as well as a series of Poirot short stories commissioned by Bruce Ingram, editor of Sketch magazine. When Archie was offered a job organising a world tour to promote the British Empire Exhibition, the couple left their daughter with Agatha's mother and sister and travelled to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. The couple learnt to surf prone in South Africa and in Waikiki became some of the first Britons to surf standing up.
Disappearance
In late 1926, Christie's husband Archie announced he was in love with Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. On 3 December 1926 the couple quarrelled, and Archie left their house Styles in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. That same evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom were admirers of her novels. Despite a massive manhunt, she was not found for 10 days.
On 14 December 1926 Agatha Christie was identified as a guest at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, where she was registered as Mrs Teresa Neele from Cape Town. Christie never accounted for her disappearance. Although two doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from psychogenic fugue, opinion remains divided. A nervous breakdown from a natural propensity for depression may have been exacerbated by her mother's death earlier that year and her husband's infidelity. Public reaction at the time was largely negative, supposing a publicity stunt or attempt to frame her husband for murder.
Author Jared Cade interviewed numerous witnesses and relatives for his sympathetic biography, Agatha Christie and the Missing Eleven Days, and provided a substantial amount of evidence to suggest that Christie planned the entire disappearance to embarrass her husband, never thinking it would escalate into the melodrama it became. The Christies divorced in 1928.
Second marriage and later life
In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was always happy, continuing until Christie's death in 1976. Max introduced her to wine, which she never enjoyed, preferring to drink water in restaurants. She tried unsuccessfully to make herself like cigarettes by smoking one after lunch and one after dinner every day for six months.
Christie frequently used settings which were familiar to her for her stories. Christie's travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, where she was born. Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.
During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital, London, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she put to good use in her post-war crime novels. For example, the use of thallium as a poison was suggested to her by UCH Chief Pharmacist Harold Davis, and in The Pale Horse, (1961) she employed it to dispatch a series of victims, the first clue to the murder method coming from the victims' loss of hair. So accurate was her description of thallium poisoning that on at least one occasion it helped solve a case that was baffling doctors.
To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 New Year Honours The next year, she became the President of the Detection Club. In the 1971 New Year Honours she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, three years after her husband had been knighted for his archaeological work in 1968. They were one of the few married couples where both partners were honoured in their own right. From 1968, due to her husband's knighthood, Christie could also be styled as Lady Mallowan.
Final years
From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health began to fail, although she continued to write. In 1975, sensing her increasing weakness, Christie signed over the rights of her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her grandson. Recently, using experimental textual tools of analysis, Canadian researchers have suggested that Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia.
Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire. She is buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey.
Christie's only child, Rosalind Margaret Hicks, died, also aged 85, on 28 October 2004 from natural causes in Torbay, Devon. Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, was heir to the copyright to some of his grandmother's literary works (including The Mousetrap) and is still associated with Agatha Christie Limited. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery Agatha Christie has ever written.
New York Times
There is no cheating; the reader is just bamboozled in a straightforward way from first to last….The most colossal achievement of a colossal career. The book must rank with Mrs. Christie’s previous best—on the top notch of detection.
New Statesman (UK)
One of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies.
Observer (UK)
One of the most ingenious thrillers in many a day.
Time
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 And Then There Were None:
1. Talk about the characters—are any of them likable? Do you develop sympathy for anyone in particular: put another way, are some more sympathic than others? Why might Christie have put together such an unpleasant cast of characters?
2. Was there any one individual you originally suspected? What about Dr. Armstrong, who goes off alone to find General Macarthur?
3. Locate the various clues Christie leaves along the way... 1) clues designed to lead us off the path, as in a red herring, and 2) clues that point to the real culprit.
4. What is the point of the poem "Ten Little Soldiers" and the fact that after each death one of the figurines on the dining room table goes missing? How do both poem and figurines function in the story? Why might Christie have used such a symbol?
5. Why does Emily Brent write in her diary the name Beatrice Taylor as the murderer? Does Brent feel guilt for what she had done...or not? Do any of the guests come to regret their past actions?
6. Talk about class and gender distinctions. Do you find it strange that Rogers continues to serve the guests despite the death of his wife? Or that women are in charge of meals and clean-up? What about the anti-semitic references?
7. Talk about the motive behind the murders of all the guests—which then might lead you into a discussion of legal justice vs. philosophical justice. Each of the guests is guilty of a crime, but not one that could be prosecuted in a court of law. Does each receive his/her just deserts? In other words, has true justice been accomplished by the end of the novel? Is the murderer insane as all the guests claim? Or is he/she acting with clear-headed logic and rationality?
8. Is the endng satisfying? Were you surprised by the identity of the murderer? Would you have preferred the final victim to discover who the killer was before dying? Why might Christie have withheld that information from readers, as well, until the epilogue?
9. Have you read any other Agatha Christie novels? Which ones...and how does this compare?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
And When She Was Good
Laura Lippman, 2012
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061706875
Summary
When Hector Lewis told his daughter that she had a nothing face, it was just another bit of tossed-off cruelty from a man who specialized in harsh words. But now, Heloise considers it a blessing to know how to avoid attention. At home, she's merely a mom and a lobbyist with a good cause and a mediocre track record.
But in discreet hotel rooms, she's the woman of your dreams—if you can afford her hourly fee.
For more than a decade, Heloise has believed she is safe. Only now her secret life is under siege. One county over, another so-called suburban madam has been found dead in her car, a suicide. Or is it?
And then she learns that her son's father might be released from prison, which is problematic because he doesn't know he has a son. He also doesn't realize that he's serving a life sentence because Heloise betrayed him.
Heloise has to remake her life—again. Disappearing will be the easy part. The trick will be living long enough to start a new life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 31, 1959
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.S., Northwestern University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland
Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a well known and respected writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team.
Lippman is a former reporter for the (now defunct) San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter (like Lippman herself) turned private investigator.
Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. Her 2007 release, What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York Times bestseller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which has been optioned for the movies by Academy Award–winning actor Frances McDormand.
Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. In January, 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College.
Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.
Awards
2015 Anthony Award-Best Novel (After I'm Gone)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Short Story ("Hardly Knew Her")
2008 Barry Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Macavity Award-Best Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2007 Anthony Award-Best Novel (No Good Deeds)
2007 Quill Award-Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2006 Gumshow Award-Best Novel (To the Power of the Three)
2004 Barry Award-Best Novel (Every Secret Thing)
2001 Nero Award (Sugar House)
2000 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
2000 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
1999 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (Butchers Hill)
1998 Agatha Award-Best Novel (Butchers Hill)
1998 Edgar Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
1998 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
And When She Was Good is a steady, surprising tale about how Heloise adapts when her business is put in jeopardy.... There are easy, conventional ways for Ms. Lippman to escalate and end her story. But she cares less about mayhem than about ways for Heloise to adapt her talents to changing times. Call it sustainability: this book gives Heloise power, versatility and the gift of foresight, all of which serve her well in a crisis. Ms. Lippman's nominal subject may be prostitution, but her book is not about a woman who takes care of clients. It's about a woman who can take care of herself.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The consequences of long-buried secrets involving misogyny, motherhood, and morality play out in this excellent stand-alone.… Lippman delivers an intense character study about a strong, complex woman… [compelled] to make some desperate choices.
Publishers Weekly
While the author slowly ratchets up the tension until the final, blood-drenched showdown, this is really a story about a woman wresting control of her life…. It's a page-turner, but often an uncomfortable one,… [in light] of her more unsavory decisions. —Stephanie Klose, Library Journal
Library Journal
Lippman…puts a madam at the center of her latest dysfunctional family.… Like Mary Cassatt, Lippman studies families with a different eye than her male contemporaries, showing the heartbreaking complexity of life with those you love.
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)
Specific discussion questions will be added if and when they are made available by the publisher.
Andrew's Brain
E.L. Doctorow, 2014
Random House
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400068814
Summary
This brilliant new novel by an American master, takes us on a radical trip into the mind of a man who, more than once in his life, has been the inadvertent agent of disaster.
Speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is thinking, Andrew is talking, Andrew is telling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to this place and point in time. And as he confesses, peeling back the layers of his strange story, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, brain and mind, personality and fate, about one another and ourselves.
Written with psychological depth and great lyrical precision, this suspenseful and groundbreaking novel delivers a voice for our times—funny, probing, skeptical, mischievous, profound. Andrew’s Brain is a surprising turn and a singular achievement in the canon of a writer whose prose has the power to create its own landscape, and whose great topic, in the words of Don DeLillo, is “the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.” (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1931
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—A.B., Kenyon College; Columbia University
• Awards—3 National book Critics Circle Awards; National
Book Aware; PEN/Faulkner Award
• Currently—lives in Sag Harbor, New York and New York City
E.L. Doctorow, one of America's preeminent authors, has received the National Book Critics Circle Award (three times), the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation For Fiction, and the William Dean Howells medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has also published a volume of selected essays Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution, and a play, Drinks Before Dinner, which was produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival. (From the publisher.)
More
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author whose critically acclaimed and award-winning fiction ranges through his country’s social history from the Civil War to the present. Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent. He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo, where he published his first literary effort, The Beetle, which he describes as ”a tale of etymological self-defamation inspired by my reading of Kafka.”
Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with the poet and New Critic, John Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions and majored in Philosophy. After graduating with Honors in 1952 he did a year of graduate work in English Drama at Columbia University before being drafted into the army. He served with the Army of Occupation in Germany in 1954-55 as a corporal in the signal corps.
He returned to New York after his military service and took a job as a reader for a motion picture company where he said he had to read so many Westerns that he was inspired to write what became his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. He began the work as a parody of the Western genre, but the piece evolved into a novel that asserted itself as a serious reclamation of the genre before he was through. It was published to positive reviews in 1960.
Doctorow had married a fellow Columbia drama student, Helen Setzer, while in Germany and by the time he had moved on from his reader’s job in 1960 to become an editor at the New American Library, (NAL) a mass market paperback publisher, he was the father of three children. To support his family he would spend nine years as a book editor, first at NAL working with such authors as Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand, and then, in 1964 as Editor-in-chief at The Dial Press, publishing work by James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ernest J. Gaines and William Kennedy, among others.
In 1969 Doctorow left publishing in order to write, and accepted a position as Visiting Writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed The Book of Daniel, a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Published in 1971 it was widely acclaimed, called a “masterpiece” by The Guardian, and it launched Doctorow into "the first rank of American writers" according to the New York Times.
Doctorow’s next book, written in his home in New Rochelle, New York, was Ragtime (1975), since accounted one of the hundred best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library Editorial Board.
Doctorow’s subsequent work includes the award winning novels World's Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989), The March (2005) and Homer and Langley (2010); two volumes of short fiction, Lives of the Poets I (1984) and Sweetland Stories (2004); and two volumes of selected essays, Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (1993) and Creationists (2006). He is published in over thirty languages. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
We'll add more reviews as they appear.
From the start of this magnificent novel, we’re told that “Andrew” has done bad things. “I am numb to my guilt … incapable of punishing myself,” he tells the unnamed man he calls “Doc.” The things we don’t know about these two men are numerous. Where is Andrew? Who’s he speaking with? A shrink? A cop? And why? It gives nothing away to state that the unraveling of those and other questions is what makes this such a strange and compelling page turner.
Neal Thomas - Amazon Editor Review
Discussion Questions
1. Near the beginning of the story, Andrew says that he is indirectly responsible for Briony’s death: “indirect—not directly causal.” How might he have reasoned that he was responsible for her death? Do you agree that Andrew ultimately has a hand in it, or not?
2. Andrew switches back and forth between telling the story in the first person and the third person, sometimes describing what happened to him, sometimes describing what happened to “Andrew.” Why might he do this switching back-and-forth? Did you notice any patterns in the moments at which Andrew switched from one form of narration to another?
3. In speaking to “Doc,” Andrew says, “Your field is the mind, mine is the brain.” What do you understand to be the difference between mind and brain, within the context of this book? Would the meaning of the title have changed for you, if it was called Andrew’s Mind instead of Andrew’s Brain?
4. Andrew says, “What else can we do as eaters of the fruit of knowledge but biologize ourselves?” Does the quest to “biologize ourselves” contain pitfalls or dangers? How might it relate to the tension, within the story, between the biology of the brain and the more intangible aspects of the mind?
5. Andrew describes the Wasatch mountains as ruling the town, as a “mountain bureaucracy” that negotiated the light and colonized the townspeople. Why might Andrew have decided to describe the mountains in such specific and unusual terms, as a “bureaucracy”? How might this connect with Andrew’s later experience with a different kind of bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.?
6. When Andrew connects Briony to the brain graph machine, he says, “I saw things more intimately Briony’s than if I had seen her undressed.” What does he mean by this? What are the implications of this “cephalic-invasive” voyeurism for Andrew and Briony’s relationship?
7. Mark Twain is a recurring motif in the book. Why do you think Andrew is so drawn to Twain? Think of when Andrew refers to the “imperial outrages annotated by MT in the last years of his life.” Twain lived through a different imperialistic era in America (the late 1800s and early 1900s), but how might this resonate with “imperial outrages” in Andrew’s own lifetime?
8. Andrew describes the possibility of a human yearning for a group brain, a larger social mind: “Perhaps we long for something like the situation these other creatures have— the ants, the bees— where the thinking is outsourced.” He mentions that this kind of thinking “brings us to politics.” What does he mean by this? How might this relate, specifically, to his encounters with the White House later in the book? What are other instances, in the book and in real life, when humans are drawn to this kind of “group brain” phenomenon?
9. Briony seems to transform Andrew. He speaks of how “watching her lifted me into a comparable state of happiness.” How do you think Briony manages to rescue Andrew from his “cold clear emotionless pond of silence”? What is it about her that inspires such life in him?
10. Andrew also remarks about Briony that he finds “redemption” in “the loving attentions of this girl.” Then, at the very end of the book, he describes how Mark Twain found a different kind of redemption in the world, when his children “remember this tale and laugh with love for their father.” What is similar about their two kinds of redemption? What is different?
11. How does love transform Andrew? Is it a permanent transformation, or is it temporary? Andrew describes love as “the blunt concussion that renders us insensible to despair.” He also describes the happiness that stems from love as a feeling “possibly induced by endormorphin, the brain’s opiate.” Why do you think Andrew gravitates towards physical metaphors to describe the power of love?
12. By the end of the story, how much did you trust or believe in the literal truth of what Andrew was saying? Did your attitude towards his narrative reliability change at all, over the course of the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Andromeda Strain
Michael Crichton, 1969
Knopf (1969); HarperCollins (current)
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061703157
Summary
This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis. As in most crises, the events surrounding the Andromeda Strain were a compound of foresight and foolishness, innocence and ignorance. Nearly everyone involved had moments of great brilliance, and moments of unaccountable stupidity....
Thus begins this extraordinary novel of the world's first space-age biological emergency.
The Andromeda Strain sets forth with almost documentary verisimilitude the unfolding story of "Project Wildfire"—the crash mobilization of the nation's highest scientific and medical resources when an unmanned research satellite returns to earth mysteriously and lethally contaminated.
Four American scientists, chosen in advance for their experimental achievements in the fields of clinical microbiology, epidemiology, pathology, and electrolyte chemistry, are summoned under conditions of total news blackout and utmost urgency to Wildfire's secret laboratory five stories beneath the Nevada desert.
There—surrounded by banks of the most sophisticated computer-assisted equipment, and sealed off from the outside world except for a telecommunications link with the national security apparatus—they work against the threat of a worldwide epidemic to find an antidote to the unknown microorganism that has inexplicably killed all but two inhabitants (an elderly derelict and an infant) of the tiny Arizona town where the satellite was retrieved.
Step by step they begin to unravel the puzzle of the Andromeda Strain, until, terrifyingly, their microbacterial "adversary" ruptures the hypersterile seal of the laboratory and their already desperate search for a biomedical answer becomes a split-second race against an atomic deadline.
With its narrative force, its scientific detail, its suspense—as four brilliant individualists work together under ultimate pressure—this novel makes real for the reader the real world of today's science and medicine at the top-secret levels of the Science-Space-Military high command. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 23, 1942
• Raised—Roslyn (Long Island), New York, USA
• Death—November 4, 2008
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—A.B., M.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Edgar Award for Best Novel (1969)
John Michael Crichton—the American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter—is best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at #1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively).
Crichton's literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. He was the author of, among others, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next (the final book published before his death), Pirate Latitudes (published November 24, 2009), and a final unfinished techno-thriller, Micro, which was published in November 2011
Background
John Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, but raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York. He showed a keen interest in writing from a young age and at the age of 14 had a column related to travel published in The New York Times. Crichton had always planned on becoming a writer and began his studies at Harvard College in 1960. During his undergraduate study in literature, he conducted an experiment to expose a professor whom he believed to be giving him abnormally low marks and criticizing his literary style. Informing another professor of his suspicions, Crichton plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. The paper was returned by his unwitting professor with a mark of B-minus.
His issues with the English department led Crichton to switch his concentration to biological anthropology as an undergraduate, obtaining his A.B. summa cum laude in 1964. He was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the UK in 1965.
Crichton later enrolled at Harvard Medical School, when he began publishing work. By this time he had become exceptionally tall. By his own account, he was approximately 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m) tall in 1997. In reference to his height, while in medical school, he began writing novels under the pen names "John Lange" and "Jeffrey Hudson" ("Lange" is a surname in Germany, meaning "long", and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th-century dwarf in the court of Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of England). In Travels, he recalls overhearing doctors who were unaware that he was the author of The Andromeda Strain, discussing the flaws in his book. A Case of Need, written under the Hudson pseudonym, won him his first Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1969. He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name "Michael Douglas." The back cover of that book carried a picture, taken by their mother, of Michael and Douglas when very young.
During his clinical rotations at the Boston City Hospital, Crichton grew disenchanted with the culture there, which appeared to emphasize the interests and reputations of doctors over the interests of patients. Crichton graduated from Harvard, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. He never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his writing career instead.
Reflecting on his career in medicine years later, Crichton concluded that patients too often shunned responsibility for their own health, relying on doctors as miracle workers rather than advisors. He experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, coming to believe that these included real phenomena that scientists had too eagerly dismissed as paranormal.
In 1988, Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Personal life
Crichton was a diest.
As an adolescent Crichton felt isolated because of his height (at 6'9"). As an adult he was acutely aware of his intellect, which often left him feeling alienated from the people around him. During the 1970s and 1980s he consulted psychics and enlightenment gurus to make him feel more socially acceptable and to improve his karma. As a result of these experiences, Crichton practiced meditation throughout much of his life.
Crichton was a workaholic. When drafting a novel, which would typically take him six or seven weeks, he withdrew completely to follow what he called "a structured approach" of ritualistic self-denial. As he neared writing the end of each book, he would rise increasingly early each day, meaning that he would sleep for less than four hours by going to bed at 10 pm and waking at 2 am. In 1992, Crichton was ranked among People magazine's 50 most beautiful people.
He married five times; four of the marriages ended in divorce. He was married to Suzanna Childs, Joan Radam (1965–1970), Kathleen St. Johns (1978–1980), and actress Anne-Marie Martin (1987–2003), the mother of his daughter Taylor Anne (born 1989). At the time of his death, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander, who was six months pregnant with their son. John Michael Todd Crichton was born on February 12, 2009.
Death
In accordance with the private way in which Crichton lived his life, his throat cancer was not made public until his death. According to Crichton's brother Douglas, Crichton was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2008. He was undergoing chemotherapy treatment at the time of his death, and Crichton's physicians and family members had been expecting him to make a recovery. He unexpectedly died of the disease on November 4, 2008 at the age of 66.
Michael's talent outscaled even his own dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the earth. In the early days, Michael had just sold The Andromeda Strain to Robert Wise at Universal and I had recently signed on as a contract TV director there. My first assignment was to show Michael Crichton around the Universal lot. We became friends and professionally. Jurassic Park, ER, and Twister followed. Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place. —Steven Spielberg at Michael Crichton's death.
Crichton had an impressive collection of 20th century American art, which was auctioned by Christie's in May 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Pre-internet books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
The Andromeda Strain is a reading windfall—compelling, memorable, superbly executed. Everything hangs on plot, and the plot is inspired. Which means that the book probably cannot last as "literature." But Crichton's narrative line is so strong, and his resources for sustaining it are so abundant, that The Andromeda Strain can't miss popular success. It's a sure best seller. And if one judges the book by the standards of its intentions...it achieves something important. It transmits intelligence. It expands our knowledge of the world we live in.
Webster Schott - New York Times (6-8-1969)
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 Andromeda Strain:
1. The Andromeda Strain, written over 40 years ago in 1969, remains a classic in the scientific-thriller genre. What is its lasting appeal? Does it have relevance to the 21st century?
2. Research some of the scientific technology—then in its infancy—mentioned in the book. Trace the development, for instance, of remote surveillance, voice activation, computer imaging, handprint identification, and biosafety lab procedures. Was Crichton a visionary...or were these inventions already on their way to common usage?
3. Are extraterrestrial microbes an actual, potentially serious, threat today?
4. What current governmental bodies are chartered to control epidemics—extraterrestrial or earthbound (biochemical or viral)? How equipped are we as a society to cope with a major epidemic? Have the dangers of a planetwide disease (of any kind) lessened or increased since The Andromeda Strain was published?
5. Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain shortly after the end of the Vietnam War. In what way does that war influence the tone of the novel? In other words, how is Chricton's personal attitude toward the military reflected in the novel? Does his skepticism seem relevant today...or outdated?
6. Jeremy Stone believes that human...
intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying.
Crichton's book explores the limits of human intelligence: its vulnerability to self-delusion and irrationality...it's capacity to destroy the planet coupled with its incapacity to control the danger...and its susceptibility to malfunction under stress. How does this idea (or ideas) play out in the novel? Do you agree with Crichton's/Stone's concept of human intelligence? Or is it overwrought?
7. Talk about the "Odd Man" hypothesis, which seems authentic and factual. Is there any truth at all to the theory, or is it purely fictional? If the latter, why the ruse to make it sound plausible? (Hint: look up "false document" literary technique.)
8. This novel might be viewed as a cautionary tale. If so, a caution against what?—disease preparedness, government secrecy, the limits of human intelligence, scientific and technological overreach? Something else?
9. Stone comments at the end that "the important thing is that we now understand." What exactly is understood?
10. Describe the moral dilemma the scientists face regarding the destruction of the Andromeda strain?
11. Does something like Project Scoop exist today? Should it exist? Is it possible for civilians to know whether or not something like it might exist? To what extent should government keep secrets from its citizens...as well as potential foes?
12. Michael Crichton was writing science fiction. Yet a contemporary reviewer wrote in 1969 (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that the author had convinced him—"with his copies of Government files and memos and computer-based output mapping, with his reference notes to actual scientific papers (not to mention the actual news that the crew members of Apollo 11 will be quarantined after their return from the moon)—that it was all really happening." Do you find this same degree of realism in Crichton's novel? Or has the novel become less realistic, less plausible after 40 years.
13. What about the ending of this book? Science fiction thrillers usually end with the defeat of either humanity or the extraterrestrial threat. Is the ending to The Andromeda Strain disappointing? Is it, as one reviewer puts it, "a series of phony climaxes" and "a huge biological cop-out"? Or does Crichton resolve his plot satisfactorily—with a conclusion that flows logically from events in the novel?
14. Watch two movies and compare them to Crichton's novel: The Andromeda Strain (based on the novel) and Contagion, a 2011 film about a (fictional) viral epidemic.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Angel Chronicles: Undercover Angels
Elliot Dylan, 2010
CreateSpace
372pp.
ISBN-13: 9781453640098
Summary
Conner Forrest is just your average middle school boy. He hangs out with his friend Sarah and obsesses over his favorite TV show. But all that changes when the clerk at the local soda shop tells him he is Conner's guardian angel.
Now Conner is on the road to becoming an Undercover Angel. With constant attacks from both friends and foes, will he be able to withstand the onslaught? Christian fiction that combines the excitement of action novels with Biblical character building lessons woven into the story. Great for readers from middle schoolers through adults. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—state of Kansas, USA
• Currently—lives in Kansas
Elliot is an novelist for Christian Youth. Elliot loves books and has always enjoyed writing. She feels a daily walk with God is important and wants to weave Bible studies into her books to encourage youth to read their Bibles and study God's Word daily.
Elliot is a college graduate with a digital imaging degree. She has two younger sisters who inspire her to write for youth.
When she's not writing her novels, she has a hobby creating art for her online comic-strip, "Subject to Change: College Woes," featuring spin-offs of her long-time friends who have gone off to Union and Southern Colleges, (without her!).
She also designs art for t-shirts and other products, featuring the crazy antics of the Subject to Change gang. (From the author's webpage.)
Book Reviews
I thought this novel was inspiring and thought-provoking. Undercover Angels put a desire in my heart to read more about what God calls us to do as Christians. Reading the author's thoughts about the armor of God gave me a new perspective on what kind of power God can have in our lives. This unique book shed a new light on my perspective of the spiritual realm. I was so impressed with the way the author describes the warfare between evil and good. Not only did this book open my mind to new ideas and opinions, but it also encouraged me as a Christian soldier to fight a better fight for the battle of righteousness.
Kayla Frishman
I thought this book might appeal only to a teenager but I really enjoyed it. I believe this author is filling a much-needed niche that hasn't been filled—that of Christian teen action-adventure. It's not one of those typical teen Christian fiction romance novels. In fact it's not about romance at all. It's a great book and I would recommend it for your middle to high school teens. I think boys would like it as much as girls because it has fantasy, action adventure, school, battles with armor and good and evil, and more. I'm going to be looking for this author to make an impact in the lives of Christian teens. The book is full of scripture quotes and shows teens making tough choices.
Nannette Thacker
Discussion Questions
1. When Conner found out he had been chosen to be part of the elite group of Undercover Angels he was excited. How would you react if your angel suddenly appeared and told you the same thing?
2. Sarah was pretty upset when Conner was selected to be a UA and she was not. How would you feel if your best friend was given a special position and you were not? How would you react?
3. William takes Conner and Sarah to see several Bible stories up close. If you could see any Bible story event which one would you want to see?
4. The story of creation is a grand and beautiful story of God's love. Why do you think God made each thing in the order He did during creation? If you could create anything from nothing like God did, what would you create?
5. If you had the Belt of Truth and could hear anyone's thoughts would you use the belt to help yourself or to help others? How could you use it to help others?
6. Conner and Sarah both thought the other had hurt them because of Adrian. If you were in the same situation how do you think you could have made the other believe it wasn't true? Have you ever been in a situation where you thought someone did something wrong and later found out it wasn't them? How did you handle it and how could you have handled it better?
7. Because of Sarah's jealousy she let Adrian's lies fool her into thinking she was the UA and Conner was part of Satan's Destructive Force. Have you ever let your jealousy fool you into thinking what you were doing was right? In the future how could you prevent that from happening?
8. To help him get good grades so he could raise the money for the convention Connor used the Helmet of Salvation to help him remember things. Why do you think Sarah got so mad at him? Do you think it was wrong for him to use it, and why?
9. With each piece of armor Conner gained a new ability such as walking on water and flying. What piece of armor would you want? What could you do with it to help others?
10. In the Bible David killed a man to hide his sin. Can you really hide your sins? Why or why not? If God knows everything can you really hide anything from Him?
11. Sarah and Conner were both hurt in different ways with the loss of Rafe. Have you ever lost anyone? How did you deal with it? How could you have dealt with it? What could Conner have done differently to deal with his anger over the loss?
12. Though Rafe hurt a lot of people during his time as Loki, in the end he realized he was wrong and sought forgiveness. Do you think God forgave him? Why or why not?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)