For I Have Sinned (A Cate Harlow Private Investigation)
Kristen Houghton, 2014
Koehler Books
253 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781940192710
Summary
Private investigator Cate Harlow finds herself involved in two cases that seemingly have nothing to do with each other; she soon discovers they may be bizarrely connected.
While working the cold case of a boy who went missing ten years ago, she receives an early morning call from her ex-husband, a homicide detective, informing her about a recent murder; the horribly mutilated body of a priest, wearing only a clerical collar has just been found off of Interstate 95 in New York.
The murder is eerily similar to a troublesome and unsolved case that Cate worked on less than a year ago. The only difference between the two victims is that the second dead body has a hand-written message in Latin scrawled across the inside of the priestly collar; a message from Dante's Divine Comedy, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." With the priests’ murders heavily on her mind, Cate's investigation into the missing boy leads her to the august office of a New Jersey archbishop who, she strongly believes, has been hiding pedophile priests for years by transferring them from one parish to another.
When Cate discovers that there may be a solid connection between the priest murders and the missing person cold case, she puts her own life on the line to not only solve her cold case but bring a pedophile to justice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 12, 1967
• Where—Carmel, California, USA
• Education—M.A., Middlebury College
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Visit the author's website.
Follow Kristen on Facebook.
Book Reviews
A masterfully woven story about the horrors of the sex abuse scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church and the impact on both victims and their families. Private investigator Cate Harlow handles the case of a missing boy, a murderer, and a pedophile priest with a perfect combination of hard-nosed detective skills, gut instinct, wry humor, and compassion. A very satisfying read by Kristen Houghton. This is a fascinatingly crafted story that is a true page turner.
Greg Archer - Huffington Post
Private Investigator Cate Harlow makes her literary debut and rocks the reading world with her style, intelligence, sex appeal, and passion for solving a murder case on her own terms. For I Have Sinned (A Cate Harlow Private Investigation) is the first of a series which showcases this phenomenal female private investigator created by the brilliant writer, also phenomenal female, Kristen Houghton. If you enjoy a good read, ...prepare yourself for a GREAT read. This is sure to hit the best-seller lists!
A. William Hopper, book critic
A perfectly wonderful book by Kristen Houghton. What appears to be crimes of revenge are interwoven with the cold case of a boy who has been missing for ten years. This book was hard to put down. As the clues are slowly revealed, the true story of an unthinkable crime that was committed begins to come to light. The main character of Cate Harlow, PI, of Cate Harlow Private Investigations, captured, and held my interest from beginning to end. Cate tells her clients, "I'm very good at what I do," and she is!
Melissa Ford - Morris Post Book Review
This book makes a powerful statement about the horrifying issue of child sexual abuse by clergy. A master observer of people and life... Kristen Houghton's book is a must read thriller for all.
Maria Rago, Ph.D., author of Shut Up Skinny Bitches!
A missing person cold case, a murdered priest; How are they connected? Private investigator Cate Harlow is determined to find out. This book gave me everything that a reader wants in a thriller and introduced me to characters I want to see again and again in future books in the series.
Marla Rosenthal, Sacramento Book Reviewer
Cate Harlow is a gem! A self-aware woman in touch with her own needs and feelings, who can both take it and dish it out. Her sensitivity is leavened with an intelligent, level-headed approach to getting the job done with or without a gun. She is a model for other woman as she weaves her way through a tough, well-plotted story with delicacy and aplomb, somehow managing to solve the mystery and juggle steamy romance at the same time. Her author is a sharp storyteller on a mission to bring the bad guys to justice.
Marilyn Horowitz, author of The Book Of Zev
How would you feel if you were the victim of clerical abuse as a child? For I Have Sinned will rocket you through this world, with Cate Harlow leading the charge. While trying to solve the mystery of a decade old missing child case, Cate also becomes tangentially involved with the gruesome murder of two priests. Little does she know that she too will become a kidnapping victim as she interjects herself into solving the mystery of the murdered priests. Houghton is a master at weaving these two stories into a tale about the disturbing world of child abuse by those who should be the most trusted. Put that together with the ever-charming character of Cate Harlow, and the result is a read you don’t want to overlook.
Darin Gibby, author of The Vintage Club
Discussion Questions
1. What were your initial feelings when reading the book; how did the story affect you?
- Did the flashback scene engage you? Did the short dialogues at the end of specific chapters add to the story as a whole?
- How did you feel about the subject matter and how it was handled?
2. Describe the main character—personality, her feelings about being a private detective, her ideas on life. What do you think of her wry sense of humor and showing of some vulnerability? Does this make her a relatable character? Describe the other characters in the story. How do they help the storyline move along?
- What are the dynamics between Cate, Will, and Giles?
- Cate believes in the law but says that she sometimes does things in a "slightly illegal" way? Do you approve of this?
- Describe Cate's conflicted feelings about taking on a cold case. Why does she decide to help her client locate her brother?
- How does the prim and proper Myrtle Goldberg Tuttle, Cate's part-time secretary balance Cate add to the story?
- Cate's best friend, Melissa, Cate's "source of much-needed girl power," lives well and has some very wealthy male clients. Do you approve or disapprove of Melissa's somewhat shady profession?
- How does Cate's kindness to a homeless man living near her office and the "weekly twenty" plus food she gives him define her character?
3. What do you learn about Cate Harlow by the end of the book? How does the cold case and its resolution affect Cate?
4. Is the plot engaging—does the story interest you? Is this a plot-driven book: a fast-paced page-turner? Or does the story unfold slowly with a focus on character development? Were you surprised by the plot's twists and turns?
5. Talk about the book's structure. Is it a continuous story...or interlocking short stories? Does the time-line move forward chronologically...or back and forth between past and present? Does the author use a single viewpoint ? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story the way she did—and did it make a difference in the way you read or understood it?
6. What main ideas—themes—does the author explore? (Consider the title, often a clue to a theme.) How does the use of three Latin phrases Cate translates add to the story?
7. Cate's comment, "When you get to Hell, I'll be sitting in the hot tub waiting," is a strong comment on her attitude towards religion and states the book's thematic concern. She also tell her clients, "Trust me, I'm very good at what I do." What do the two comments tell you about Cate Harlow? What passages strike you as insightful?
8. Is the ending satisfying? If so, why? If not, why not...and how would you change it?
9. If you could ask the author a question, what would you ask? Have you read other books by the same author? If so how does this book compare. If not, does this book inspire you to read others?
10. Has this novel changed you—broadened your perspective? Have you learned something new or been exposed to different ideas about people and how their religious beliefs and fears affect their lives?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
For Love of the Game
Michael Shaara, 1991
Random House
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345408914
Summary
Billy Chapel is a baseball legend, a man who has devoted his life to the game he loves and plays so well. But because of his unsurpassed skill and innocent faith, he has been betrayed.
Now it's the final game of the season, and Billy's got one last chance to prove who he is and what he can do, a chance to prove what really matters in this life. A taut, compelling story of one man's coming of age, For Love of the Game is Michael Shaara's final novel, the classic finish to a brilliantly distinguished literary career. (From the publisher.)
The book was adapted to film in 1999, starring Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston.
Author Bio
• Birth—June 23, 1929
• Where—Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
• Death—1988
• Where—Tallahassee, Florida
• Education—B.A., Rutgers University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
Michael Shaara was born in Jersey City in 1929 and graduated from Rutgers University in 1951. He serveda as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne division prior to the Korean War.
His early science fiction short stories were published in Galaxy magazine in 1952. He later began writing other works of fiction and published more than seventy short stories in many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Redbook.
His first novel, The Broken Place, was published in 1968. But it was a simple family vacation to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1966 that gave him the inspiration for his greatest achieve-ment, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels, published in 1974. Michael Shaara went on to write two more novels, The Noah Conspiracy and For Love of the Game, which was published posthumously after his death in 1988. (From the publisher.)
Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines in the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. He later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. The stress of this and his smoking caused him to have a heart attack at the early age of 36; from which he fully recovered. Shaara died of another heart attack in 1988. Today there is a Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, established by Jeffrey Shaara, Michael's son and awarded yearly at Gettysburg College.
Jeffrey Shaara is also a popular writer of historical fiction; most notably sequels to his father's best-known novel. His most famous is the prequel to The Killer Angels, Gods and Generals. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Moving, beautiful.... If Hemingway had written a baseball novel, he might have written For Love of the Game.
Los Angeles Times
A delightful and lyrical story about a great athlete's momentous last game.... A fairy tale for adults about love and loneliness and finally growing up.
USA Today
Reading this posthumously published baseball novel is best compared to watching a gifted young player whose promise slowly fades with every strikeout and weak groundball, despite occasional flashes of potential. Shaara, who won a Pulitzer in 1975 for The Killer Angels , died just after the book was finished, and one feels he might have liked to give it a rewrite. Just before the last game of the season, star pitcher Billy Chapel, a veteran of 17 years in the major leagues, discovers that his team plans to trade him. Moreover, he learns that his New York editor/girlfriend has inexplicably ended their romance--leaving him adrift and the reader more than a little indifferent. The love affair, seen in flashbacks (notably a scene in which they achieve congress in a small airplane), must compete with an unhealthy number of baseball cliches and a series of featureless characters; even Billy, whose thoughts we share, seems a blank. The book does come to life, fittingly enough, as Chapel takes the mound for his final and greatest game. Shaara succeeds in conveying the extraordinary physical and psychological demands of the professional game as well as the dizzying pleasures of its triumphs. But even the account of Chapel's greatest victory is marred by a trite ending. While flawed, however, this is a noteworthy attempt to capture the simultaneous loss of a life's love and a life's obsession.
Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize-winner Shaara's final work (he died in 1988) is about a baseball player's final work. Billy Chapel, a great pitcher, is going to be traded after 17 years of service. He plans to end his career with this game, rather than accept this betrayal by his team's new owners. We follow him pitch by pitch through his perfect game, and memory by memory through his imperfect life. Cushioned by a children's game, he has never quite grown up, never taken the ultimate risk of trusting a relationship; the woman he loves is equally frightened of commitment. They come together now, when Billy has to go home, with no home to go to. As much a psychological novel as a baseball tale, this is a good choice for popular fiction collections. —Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, IA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Love of the Game:
1. What kind of man is Chapel? How would you describe him? A number of reviews, and even the publisher, refer to this book as a coming-of-age story? In other words, during the course of the novel, Billy matures...implying that he was immature at the the start. Do you see him as immature? If so, in what way...and how does he mature by the end? Perhaps it's not a coming-of-age tale but rather the story of a good but flawed individual? What do you think?
2. Why have the owners of the Hawks decided to trade Billy Chapel? Is this a betrayal...or simply a smart business decision...or both?
3. If you're a baseball fan, is this a good baseball story? Does it reveal the "ins & outs" of the game or provide insights into the psychology of the game and the physical demands on the players? Does the book capture the thrills and suspense of the sport?
4. If you're not a baseball fan, does the book still engage you? Do you have to be a fan to enjoy the novel?
5. Why might Shaara have structured the book as he does—through a series of flashbacks rather than a straightforward timeline? As you read, did you find the back-and-forth engaging and suspenseful, or distracting and tiresome? What about other stylistic traits—the staccato-like, unfinished sentences? Do they add to the story in any way?
6. Talk about Carol Grey, Billy's on-again-off-again girl friend. What does she mean when she says, "You don't need me, Billy." A fair comment...or not?
7. What accounts for Billy's final, perfect game? Is it a result of his physical skill and innate talent...or his state of mind?
8. A broader question: why has baseball captured American hearts and minds? Why are fans so devoted—what's the appeal?
9. If you have seen the 1991 film, how does it compare with the book? Does it capture the essence of the novel? What changes have been made?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway, 1940
Simon & Schuster
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684830483
Summary
High in the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There he finds the intense comradeship of war. And there he finds Maria who has escaped from Franco’s rebels
More
Robert Jordan, a Spanish professor from Montana serving with Loyalist guerrilla forces during the Spanish Civil War, is guided by the old man Anselmo to Pablo's guerrilla band in the mountains above a bridge which Jordan must blow up when the Loyalist offensive begins. Pablo, aware that Jordan's mission will invite fascist forces, refuses at first to participate, but relents, returning with additional men and horses shortly before the mission begins.
Knowing that the fascists are aware of the offensive, Jordan sends a message to General Golz, hoping the offensive will be canceled, but the message arrives too late. Jordan blows the bridge, and Anselmo is killed by flying steel. As the group attempts escape, Jordan is seriously injured, and Maria, having been told by Jordan that he will always be with her, leaves with the survivors while Jordan remains behind, waiting for death. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 21, 1899
• Where—Oak Park, Illinois
• Death—July 02, 1961
• Where—Ketchum, Idaho
• Education—Oak Park & River Forest High School
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 1952; Nobel Prize, 1954
Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century, and for his efforts he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954. Hemingway wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose. His main protagonists were always men and women of courage and conviction, who suffered unseen scars, both physical and emotional.
Hemingway was born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. After graduation from high school, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he worked briefly for the Kansas City Star. Failing to qualify for the United States Army because of poor eyesight, he enlisted with the American Red Cross to drive ambulances in Italy. He was severely wounded on the Austrian front on July 9, 1918. Following recuperation in a Milan hospital, he returned home and became a freelance writer for the Toronto Star.
In December of 1921, he sailed to France and joined an expatriate community of writers and artists in Paris while continuing to write for the Toronto Star. He began his fiction career with "little magazines" and small presses, which led to a volume of short stories, In Our Time (1925).
Then, as a novelist, he gained international fame: The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) established Hemingway as the most important and influential fiction writer of his generation. He covered the Spanish Civil War, portraying it in fiction in his brilliant novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, (1940), which continued to affirm his extraordinary career. He subsequently covered World War II.
Hemingway's highly publicized life gave him unrivaled celebrity as a literary figure. He became an authority on the subjects of his art: trout fishing, bullfighting, big-game hunting, and deep-sea fishing, and the cultures of the regions in which he set his work—France, Italy, Spain, Cuba, and Africa.
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) earned him the Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954. Hemingway died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
This is the best book Ernest hemingway has written, the fullest, the deepest, the truest. It will, I think, be one of the major novels in American literature.... [T]his is a book filled with the imminence of death, and the manner of man's meeting it;...in it Hemngway has struck universal chords and he has struck them vibrantly...[yet] it is not a depressing book but an uplifting book.
New York Times (11/20/1940)
1. Is Pablo opposed to blowing the bridge because he is a coward, as Pilar says, or is Pablo, himself, correct when he says he "has a tactical sense"? Why does Jordan agree with Pablo's reference to "the seriousness of this" (p. 54)? Is Agustín correct when he calls Pablo "very smart" (p. 94)?
2. Was the communist effort to eliminate God successful? What does Anselmo's view of killing suggest about the limitations of dogma? What does he mean when he says of the bridge sentries, "It is only orders that come between us" (pp. 192-193)? What is implied when Anselmo says soldiers should atone and cleanse themselves after the war?
3. "Time" is a major theme in For Whom the Bell Tolls. How does Pilar's awareness of time affect her attitude toward Robert Jordan's and Maria's relationship? What conclusions does Robert Jordan draw about his own life during the very short time he spends with Maria?
4. Pablo calls his compatriots "illusioned people" (p. 215). Does this remark prove to be true? Does Jordan expose illusions? Does For Whom the Bell Tolls suggest that because of their illusions and vulnerability to exploitation the victims of the war were the entire Spanish people?
5. Does the epigraph, an excerpt from John Donne's Devotions XVII, convey the theme of For Whom the Bell Tolls? What is that theme? What scenes in the novel develop the sentiment of the epigraph? What is the narrator telling us when he says that Robert Jordan, lying on the forest floor waiting for death, is "completely integrated" (p. 471)?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Forbidden Stone: (The Copernicus Legacy Series, 1)
Tony Abbott, 2014
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062194473
Summary
Bestselling author Tony Abbott's epic new middle-grade series the Copernicus Legacy begins with The Forbidden Stone, a thrilling adventure packed with puzzles, intrigue, and action.
Wade, Lily, Darrell, and Becca fly from Texas to Germany for the funeral of an old family friend. But instead of just paying their respects, they wind up on a dangerous, mind-blowing quest to unlock an ancient, guarded secret that could destroy the fate of the world.
Fans of Rick Riordan and Ridley Pearson will love this first book in an exciting series that takes the reader all over the globe in a race to find pieces of a mysterious hidden past—before it's too late. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1952
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, USA
• Raised—Fairfield, Connecticut
• Education—B.A., University of Connecticut
• Currently—lives in Trumball, Connecticut
Tony Abbott is an American author of nearly 100 children's books. His most popular work is the book series The Secrets of Droon, which includes over 40 books. He has sold over 12 million copies of his books and they have been translated into several other languages, including Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, and Russian. He has also written the bestseller "Firegirl".
Abbott was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1952. His father was a university professor and had an extensive library of books which became one of Abbott's first sources of literature. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Connecticut where he went through elementary school and high school.
He attended the University of Connecticut, and after studying both music and psychology, decided to study English and graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in English literature. He attended the workshops of Patricia Reilly Giff to further develop his writing after college.
When he began reading bedtime stories to his children, the spark of writing he had had for so many years finally turned to children’s books. After many failures, his first published book, Danger Guys (1994), was written while taking a writing class with renowned children’s author, Patricia Reilly Giff. That book began the Danger Guy series and was followed by five more books (1994-96).
Since then Abbott has written over ninety-five books for readers ages 6 to 14, including many series—The Secret of Droon, The Haunting of Derek Stone, Underworlds, Goofballs, to name a few. The Copenicus Legacy, starting in 2014, is his newest. He has also written novels for older readers, including Kringle, Firegirl, The Postcard, and Lunch-Box Dream.
The author currently lives in Trumbull, Connecticut, with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs. Tony had one brother and two sisters. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 1/23/2014.)
Book Reviews
[S]trong, ambitious.... four protagonists on a globe-spanning adventure as they attempt to reclaim lost artifacts before a secret organization realizes its evil agenda.... [T]here’s no denying the epic scope of this storyline. Fast-paced and clever...a thriller that engages the intellect even as it rummages through history.... (Ages 8–12.)
Publishers Weekly
[An] ominous message in code...sends Wade Kaplan, his astrophysicist father, stepbrother Darrell, cousin Lily, and her friend Becca on an around-the-globe chase to locate hidden parts of a time-traveling astrolabe built in the 16th century by Copernicus....Characterization takes a backseat to action, but readers won't mind. (Grades 5–8) —Marybeth Kozikowski, Sachem Public Library, Holbrook, NY
School Library Journal
Right before Wade’s uncle Henry, an astronomy professor in Berlin, meets a suspicious and untimely demise, he sends Wade’s dad a coded e-mail.... leading them...all around the world..... [I]nternational intrigue, fast-paced action, entertaining characters, and a healthy helping of science history. (Grades 4-7.) —Sarah Hunter
Booklist
(Starred review.) Four precocious preteens and a distracted astrophysicist travel to Europe to unravel a mystery that has already claimed several lives.... With engaging characters, a globe-trotting plot and dangerous villains, it is hard to find something not to like. Equal parts edge-of-your-seat suspense and heartfelt coming-of-age. (Ages 8-12.)
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.)
Force of Nature
Jane Harper, 2018
Flatiron Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250105639
Summary
Five women go on a hike. Only four return. Jane Harper, the New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, asks: How well do you really know the people you work with?
When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path.
But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened.
Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1979-80
• Where—Manchester, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Kent (Canterbury, England)
• Currently—lives in St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia
Jane Harper is an Englisn-born, partially Australian-raised writer, now living in Australia. She is the author of The Dry (2016/2017), Force of Nature (2018), and The Lost Man (2019)—all crime novels set in Australia.
Jane was born in Manchester, England, but her family moved to a subrub of Melbourne, Australia, where she lived till she was six. The family then returned to England, and Jane attended the University of Kent where she earned her B.A., in History and English.
Her first job out of school was as a journalist (yes, she actually had to pass a qualifying exam). She first worked for the Darlington & Stockton Times and, later, as senior news editor for the Hull Daily Mail, both papers in Yorkshire, England.
But Australia beckoned, and in 2008 Jane returned to her early childhood stromping grounds, again working in journalism—first for the Geelong Advertiser, then in 2011 for the Herald Sun in Melbourne.
After she had a short story accepted for inclusion in the annual Fiction Edition of The Big Issue (Melbourne), Jane turned to fiction writing in a serious way. In 2014, she signed up for a 12-week online creative writing course. The story she submitted for acceptance into the program turned out to be the beginning of her novel, The Dry. By the end of the three months, Jane had her first draft of the novel.
Making this almost a fairytale come true, Jane felt confident enough to enter the novel's third draft in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. It won the $15,000 prize in May, 2015, and Pan Macmillan paid a non-specified “six-figure” sum for a three-book deal.
Jane and her husband live in St. Kilda, outside of Melbourne, with their daughter. Jane now writes fiction full time. (Adapted from the author's website and news.com.au.)
Book Reviews
A gripping tale of an elemental battle for survival.… Harper once again shows herself to be a storytelling force to be reckoned with.
Publishers Weekly
[A]n intriguing crime that might not actually exist and potential suspects with realistically complex personalities and possible motives. The two story lines, past and present, collide with a satisfying yet not gratuitous conclusion.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Riveting, tension-driven thriller.… Perfect for fans of Tana French and readers who enjoy literary page-turners.
Booklist
[C]rackerjack plotting propels the story.… Harper layers her story with hidden depths, expertly mining the distrust between Alice and her four colleagues, and the secrets that simmer under the surface.… A spooky, compelling read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for Force of Nature … then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Ford County: Stories
John Grisham, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
308 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440246213
Summary
In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill.
Wheelchair-bound Inez Graney and her two older sons, Leon and Butch, take a bizarre road trip through the Mississippi Delta to visit the youngest Graney brother, Raymond, who's been locked away on death row for eleven years. It could well be their last visit.
Mack Stafford, a hard-drinking and low-grossing run-of-the-mill divorce lawyer gets a miracle phone call with a completely unexpected offer to settle some old, forgotten cases for more money than he has ever seen. Mack is suddenly bored with the law, fed up with his wife and his life, and makes drastic plans to finally escape.
Quiet, dull Sidney, a data collector for an insurance company, perfects his blackjack skills in hopes of bringing down the casino empire of Clanton's most ambitious hustler, Bobby Carl Leach, who, among other crimes, has stolen Sidney's wife.
Three good ol' boys from rural Ford County begin a journey to the big city of Memphis to give blood to a grievously injured friend. However, they are unable to drive past a beer store as the trip takes longer and longer. The journey comes to an abrupt end when they make a fateful stop at a Memphis strip club.
The Quiet Haven Retirement Home is the final stop for the elderly of Clanton. It's a sad, languid place with little controversy, until Gilbert arrives. Posing as a lowly paid bedpan boy, he is in reality a brilliant stalker with an uncanny ability to sniff out the assets of those "seniors" he professes to love.
One of the hazards of litigating against people in a small town is that one day, long after the trial, you will probably come face-to-face with someone you've beaten in a lawsuit. Lawyer Stanley Wade bumps into an old adversary, a man with a long memory, and the encounter becomes a violent ordeal.
Clanton is rocked with the rumor that the gay son of a prominent family has finally come home, to die. Of AIDS. Fear permeates the town as gossip runs unabated. But in Lowtown, the colored section of Clanton, the young man finds a soul mate in his final days.
Featuring a cast of characters you'll never forget, these stories bring Ford County to vivid and colorful life. Often hilarious, frequently moving, and always entertaining, this collection makes it abundantly clear why John Grisham is our most popular storyteller. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia
John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.
Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.
As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.
Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.
As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.
It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.
His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.
He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.
He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.
Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.
With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
Writing
Grisham said, that sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.
Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.
In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.
Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.
Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."
Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.
Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.
In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)
Book Reviews
Set in a small Mississippi town not unlike the one in which Grisham started practicing law, these seven stories seem so artless that the artlessness turns into an art. They're terrifically charming, if only for this one thing: They start out at a beginning and march straight through to an end. They lack plot twists, literary surprises, authorial showing off…stories that—no matter what your literary scruples—you absolutely can't stop reading.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
Mr. Grisham took seven of his unused plot ideas and turned each of them into a sharp, lean tale free of subplots and padding. At an average length of slightly over 40 pages, these narratives are shorter than novellas but longer than conventional short stories. For a fledgling author, this format would be a tough sell; for Mr. Grisham, it's a vacation from whatever grueling work goes into the construction of fully rigged best sellers. The change invigorates him in ways that show up on the page.... His novels sometimes moralize; these short stories don't need to because they transform their agendas into pure, vigorous plot.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Grisham shows off his literary chops: He can do wry, emotional, funny, serious.
USA Today
Returning to the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill, longtime bestseller Grisham presents seven short stories about the residents of Ford County, Miss. Each story explores different themes-mourning, revenge, justice, acceptance, evolution-but all flirt with the legal profession, the staple of (former attorney) Grisham's oeuvre. Fans will be excited to settle back into Grisham's world, and these easily digestible stories don't disappoint, despite their brevity. Full of strong characters, simple but resonant plotlines, and charming Southern accents, this collection is solid throughout; though his literary aspirations may seem quaint, Grisham succeeds admirably in his crowd-pleasing craft while avoiding pat endings or oversimplifying (perhaps best exemplified in "Michael's Room," which finds a lawyer facing the consequences of successfully defending a doctor against a malpractice suit). As always, Grisham balances his lawyerly preoccupations with a deep respect for his undereducated and overlooked characters.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. How do the small-town lawyers in Ford County compare to some of the high-powered attorneys featured in John Grisham’s other works? What struggles and temptations do they all have in common?
2. When Roger, Aggie, and Calvin decided to travel to Memphis to give blood in “Blood Drive,” what were they each hoping to gain? Was Calvin the only one who lost his innocence on the trip? What ultimately was your impression of Bailey—the character we only meet through hearsay?
3. In “Fetching Raymond,” Inez Graney and her sons Leon and Butch don’t see Raymond’s situation in quite the same way. What accounts for the difference between Raymond and his brothers? What determines whether someone will end up on the wrong side of the law?
4. John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction, The Innocent Man, recounted the story of Ron Williamson, who was sentenced to death for the 1982 murder of an Oklahoma waitress despite a spurious trial. In the fictional Raymond Graney’s case, we’re told on page 75 that he confessed to Butch, and that Butch and Leon knew their brother had ambushed Coy. Nonetheless, was it right for Raymond to receive the death penalty?
5. What drove Mack Stafford to go to such great lengths of dishonesty in his “Fish Files” escape? Was his life in Mississippi beyond salvage? Did he do any real harm in executing his brilliant plan?
6. What is Sidney Lewis’s best ammunition against Bobby Carl Leach? What really ruined Sidney and Stella’s marriage? Did money put it back together again at the end of “Casino,” or was something else at play?
7. In “Michael’s Room,” was Stanley in fact facing enormous lies of his past, or had he simply presented a different version of the truth in the courtroom? Why did Jim Cranwell lose his case? Could any amount of legislation have ensured a victory for him?
8. How did your perception of Gilbert Griffin change as you read “Quiet Haven”? What were your first impressions of him? Were you hoodwinked as well? Could someone like him dodge prosecution forever?
9. What does “home” mean to Emporia and Adrian in “Funny Boy”? What does their friendship prove about the people who make Clanton’s most powerful families feel threatened? What is Adrian’s greatest legacy to his newfound friend?
10. How do the residents of Ford County imagine city life—Memphis, San Francisco, New York? What determines whether they fear it or crave it?
11. What does Ford County tell us about the nature of small towns? What makes them safe havens? What makes them dangerous?
12. Whose lives are changed for the better by the legal agreements and maneuvers described in Ford County? What is the most significant factor in whether the law is a force for good or evil in these stories?
13. Tort reform has received much publicity in recent years. Discuss the question of damages raised in stories such as “Fish Files,” “Michael’s Room,” and “Quiet Haven.” When should an injured person be entitled to financial compensation? What should drive the dollar amount of that compensation?
14. Adrian reads much fiction by William Faulkner, who also created a fictional southern locale (Yoknapatawpha County) as the setting for many of his works. How does Grisham’s take on small-town Mississippi compare to Faulkner’s? What aspects of Ford County have remained unchanged since Grisham created it for A Time to Kill?
15. What makes Grisham’s approach to storytelling so appropriate for short fiction? Linked by time and place, do the stories in Ford County form a novel, in a way?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Foreigner
Francie Lin, 2008
Macmillan Picador
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312364045
Summary
Set against the Taiwanese criminal underworld, The Foreigner is Francie Lin's audacious debut novel. A noirish tale about family, fraternity, conscience, and the curious gulf between a man's culture and his deepest self.
Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close—all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.
But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld, Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle's karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret—a crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn’t about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P's past, and saves what is left of his family.
The Foreigner is a darkly comic tale of crime and contrition, and a riveting story about what it means to be a foreigner—even in one's own family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Francie Lin, a Harvard graduate and former editor at the Threepenny Review, received a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan in 2001-2002. She lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Genre-wise, The Foreigner is best described as a thriller, rife with murders, drugs, secrets and betrayals. But you won't find any of the cardboard characters, clunky writing or clichéd conventions that too often mar suspense fiction. Lin is equally attentive to description and plot. As Emerson walks down the street one day, he notes that the sky "moved above me with the threat of solemnity and grace. A bird sang two high notes in the black slate landscape." The executor of his mother's estate is a "tall, cadaverous man with a voice that rasped like a twig." It's that lovely, detailed writing that makes you care about what happens to these characters more than you might have otherwise.
Carmela Ciuraru - Los Angeles Times
In Lin's stunning debut, a crime novel set in Taiwan, Emerson Chang, a 40-year-old virgin who's a financial analyst, travels from San Francisco to Taipei on a quest to scatter his mother's ashes and re-establish contact with his shady younger brother, Little P, who's been bequeathed the family hotel. At a meeting with Little P, Chang encounters two peculiar cousins, Poison and Big One, as well as Little P's devious friend, Li An-Qing (aka Atticus), who's anxious to get Little P to sell the family hotel to him. Emerson soon finds himself mixed up in machinations involving Atticus and extortion due to Little P's unsavory dealings. In addition, Emerson loses his job back in California, and the property he's inherited in Taipei turns out to have its own mysteries. Chang's distinctive voice propels a strong and original plot, with horrifying revelations. Taut, smart and often funny, this novel will satisfy readers of thrillers and general fiction alike.
Publishers Weekly
Crime fiction that tells us about life in mainland China have become so common (such authors as Lisa See and Qiu Xiaolong are among the leading practitioners) that it comes as a surprise to realize how little we know about what goes on in the darker streets of Taiwan. Fortunately for us, Francie Lin—a Harvard graduate and a former editor of The Threepenny Review—spent two years in Taiwan on a Fulbright Fellowship, which doubtlessly planted in her mind the idea for her absolutely riveting debut thriller. It's about a 40-year-old bachelor called Emerson Chang, a San Francisco financial analyst who doesn't speak a word of Chinese. He has spent his life looking after, and being browbeaten by, his Formosa-born mother, a tough cookie who runs a cheap motel she has renamed the Remeda Inn to suck in the chain's runoff. Mrs. Chang wears her nationality like overdone makeup, saying that her only wish is to have her ashes scattered on her native ground. When she dies, Emerson—after being somewhat shaken by the news of her large bequest to his younger brother, Little P, who deserted the family and is now deeply involved in the Taiwanese criminal underworld—sets off for Taiwan, where Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle's karaoke bar. Lin catches the flavor of the Taiwanese world—especially its underworld—with great skill. But she is best at combining her action scenes with touching moments of memory, as Emerson realizes how much his mother lost by coming to America. In a Taiwan hotel lobby, waiting for Little P to show up, Emerson listens to "the nasal strains of an old Shanghainese pop song.... My mother had liked these pop songs from the mainland herself, the old, plaintive ghost of Shanghai glamour."—Dick Adler
Barnes & Noble
A 40-year-old Taiwanese-American virgin tracks his younger brother into the worst of all possible worlds. Compulsively dutiful Emerson Chang has arrived in the crime-ridden city of Taipei bent on a double mission. Because his mother wants her ashes scattered in the land of her birth, he's carried them there. "At least she was easier to manage in her new form," he reflects. And because he's certain it would have pleased her, he'll hunt for Little P (P for Peter), a quintessentially undutiful son, but her favorite nonetheless. It's been ten years since he's heard from his rascally kid brother, but the instant he locates him, Emerson, who can be as naive as Candide, already knows that he's run true to form. Hard-bitten, shifty and less than delighted at the reunion, Little P now works for an uncle managing the family karaoke bar. Though Emerson speaks no Chinese, even he can spot sleaziness this obvious. This is no ordinary karaoke bar, and its employees, Poison and Big One, are no ordinary cousins but blood-thirsty thugs from whom Emerson instinctively recoils. But it's Little P who keeps the establishment's secret, a secret so ugly and embittering that it ends by pitting brother against brother with biblical fury. Lin can write, and this darkly funny debut is often engrossing, but would that her bachelor protagonist had been a shade less prissy.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Emerson’s mother has a complicated relationship with America – she seems to believe that America has its value, but that it also poses a threat. Why does she think that American culture will taint her children, and what is this “idea” that she claims to be protecting when she insists that Emerson marry a Chinese woman?
2. Along those same lines, is it common for one generation to wish that the next generation marry within the family’s cultural group? Why?
3. Why do you think Emerson’s mother wills the hotel to Little P? Is she betraying her loyal son, or do you think she had a larger scheme in mind?
4. Were you surprised to discover that Emerson is a virgin? Did you notice any early clues regarding his chastity? How do you think he managed to remain a virgin for so long? Did his mother play a role? At the same time, why did he resist J-‘s advances while at the same time doing so much to court her?
5. What does J- mean when she says “that’s all it is”? Are her words echoed in the behavior of Little P, or any of the other characters? Is she telling Emerson to abandon his lofty beliefs about sex and love, or is she simply imploring him to be more human?
6. Discuss the role of Atticus in the story. In what way are his ideals different from Emerson’s, or from Emerson’s mother’s – are they both attempting to preserve the same“idea”? Is Atticus corrupt, misguided, or nobly fighting an unwinable battle?
7. In what ways are Emerson and Little P alike? Underneath their differences, do they share an unbreakable bond? What is the difference between an obligation to a family member, and an obligation to a friend or stranger?
8. Why is it so difficult for Emerson to part with his mother’s ashes? Does the ceremony of consigning her to the afterlife matter to him? Does Emerson believe in a cosmology, an afterlife, or in anything beyond the realm of human consciousness (“It was a kind of immortality, I suppose, to live on in an idea”)? Or is the physical world simply more important to him? Would you say that Emerson’s principles serve as a kind of religion instead?
9. Little P harbors many dark secrets, and he has committed unspeakable crimes. Are his worst crimes forgivable? Consider that Little P is Emerson’s only real connection to the past, to his own childhood—does the value of that connection make Little P worth holding on to? What exactly makes Emerson run off the plane at the end of Part I?
10. Why do Emerson and Little P remember the family hotel so differently? Why does Emerson have so many happy memories, while Little P obviously couldn’t wait to fly away from it?
11. Who do you think is a better romantic match for Emerson, Angel or Grace? Are perhaps neither of them suitable?
12. What do you think of the poem, “Osprey”, which is crudely translated into English by Grace on page 215? What does this poem tell the reader about Grace, and how she feels about love? Discuss how Francie Lin uses the poem to reveal another side of Grace (she is the only character to express herself with poetry, although Emerson certainly has a poetic soul). Is the courtly language of the poem intended to be funny, touching, or both?
13. Discuss how the idea of identity—and of what we expect from ourselves, based on our culture—is woven throughout the novel. Is the very island of Taiwan itself in the grip of an identity crisis, with regard to its politics and its history? And is there a bit of role reversal between China and Taiwan—who is exploiting whom in this novel?
14. Why does Emerson believe, on first arrival in Taiwan, that if he listens hard enough, he will be able to understand Chinese? Is anything elemental about our character and who we are?
15. The Foreigner cleverly plays with conventions of the crime novel – there is gunplay, gambling, gangsters, and much tough talk among a threatening cast of characters. But in what ways is this novel different, how does Francie Lin distort these common elements of the crime genre? Are the characters more vulnerable, more fallible, or perhaps simply more strange and eccentric than the kind you usually find in the crime genre? Are they more human?
16. At the end of the novel, who is the shadowy figure who falls from the bridge? Is it Poison, Little P? Are we intended to know for certain?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Forest Dark
Nicole Krauss, 2017
HarperCollins
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062430991
Summary
An achingly beautiful and breathtakingly original novel about personal transformation that interweaves the stories of two disparate individuals — an older lawyer and a young novelist — whose transcendental search leads them to the same Israeli desert.
Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and outsized personality have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is undergoing a metamorphosis.
In the wake of his parents’ deaths, his divorce from his wife of more than thirty years, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, he’s felt an irresistible need to give away his possessions, alarming his children and perplexing the executor of his estate.
With the last of his wealth, he travels to Israel, with a nebulous plan to do something to honor his parents.
In Tel Aviv, he is sidetracked by a charismatic American rabbi planning a reunion for the descendants of King David who insists that Epstein is part of that storied dynastic line. He also meets the rabbi’s beautiful daughter who convinces Epstein to become involved in her own project — a film about the life of David being shot in the desert—with life-changing consequences.
But Epstein isn’t the only seeker embarking on a metaphysical journey that dissolves his sense of self, place, and history.
Leaving her family in Brooklyn, a young, well-known novelist arrives at the Tel Aviv Hilton where she has stayed every year since birth. Troubled by writer’s block and a failing marriage, she hopes that the hotel can unlock a dimension of reality — and her own perception of life — that has been closed off to her.
But when she meets a retired literature professor who proposes a project she can’t turn down, she’s drawn into a mystery that alters her life in ways she could never have imagined.
Bursting with life and humor, Forest Dark is a profound, mesmerizing novel of metamorphosis and self-realization—of looking beyond all that is visible towards the infinite. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Reared —Old Westbury, Long Island, USA
• Education—Stanford University; Oxford University
• Awards—William Saroyan Int'l. Prize; Prix du Meilleur Livre
Etranger (France); Edward Lewis Wallant Award
• Currently—Brooklyn, New York City
Nicole Krauss is an American author of several novels: Forest Dark (2017), Great House (2010), The History of Love (2005), and Man Walks into a Room (2002). Her work has achieved wide acclaim, with The New York Times referring to her as "one of America's most important authors."
Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Granta's Best American Novelists Under 40, and has been collected in Best American Short Stories (2003 and 2008). Her novels have been translated into thirty-five languages.
Krauss was born in New York City to an English mother and an American father who grew up partly in Israel. Krauss's maternal grandparents were born in Germany and Ukraine and later emigrated to London. Her paternal grandparents were born in Hungary and Slonim, Belarus, met in Israel, and later emigrated to New York. Many of these places are central to Krauss's 2005 novel, The History of Love, and the book is dedicated to her grandparents.
At the age of 14 Krauss became serious about writing. Until she began her first novel in 2002, Krauss wrote and published mainly poetry.
Education
Krauss enrolled in Stanford University in 1992, and that fall she met Joseph Brodsky who worked closely with her on her poetry over the next three years. He also introduced her to such writers as Italo Calvino and Zbigniew Herbert, who would have a lasting influence.
In 1999, three years after Brodsky died, Krauss produced a documentary about his work for BBC Radio 3, traveling to St. Petersburg where she stood in the "room and a half" where he grew up, made famous by his essay of that title. Krauss majored in English and graduated with Honors, winning a number of undergraduate prizes for her poetry as well as the Dean's Award for academic achievement. She also curated a reading series (with Fiona Maazel) at the Russian Samovar, a NYC restaurant co-founded by Brodsky.
In 1996, she was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and enrolled in a Masters program at Oxford University where she wrote her thesis about the American artist Joseph Cornell. During the second year of her scholarship she attended the Courtauld Institute in London, where she received a Masters in Art History, specializing in seventeenth-century Dutch art, and writing a thesis on Rembrandt.
In 2004, Krauss married the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. They live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York, and have two children. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Strange and beguiling.… [A] mystery that operates on grounds simultaneously literary and existential…metaphysical and emphatically realistic.… It’s a perfectly Kafkaesque vision, almost uncanny enough to be sublime.
Ruth Franklin - Harper’s
(Starred review.) Krauss’s elegant, provocative, and mesmerizing novel is her best yet. Rich in profound insights and emotional resonance.… Vivid, intelligent, and often humorous, this novel is a fascinating tour de force.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Wildly imaginative, darkly humorous, and deeply personal, this novel seems to question the very nature of time and space. Krauss commands our attention, and serious readers will applaud. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Entrancing and mysterious.… Krauss reflects with singing emotion and sagacity on Jewish history; war; the ancient, plundered forests of the Middle East; and the paradoxes of being. A resounding look at the enigmas of the self and the persistence of the past.
Booklist
Illuminating.… [Forest Dark] builds to a powerful emotional crescendo and an ending that feels revelatory. Haunting and reflective, poetic and wise, this is another masterful work from one of America’s best writers.
BookPage
[Krauss's] big questions don't always provoke big effects … and much of the drama … feels dry … [making] it harder to inspire the reader to draw connections…. An ambitiously high-concept tale that mainly idles in a contemplative register.
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 publisher questions if and when they're available.)
Forgetting Tabitha: The Story of an Orphan Train Rider
Julie Dewey, 2016
Holland Press
280 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780578172316
Summary
Raised on a farm, Tabitha Salt, the daughter of Irish immigrants, leads a bucolic and sheltered existence.
When tragedy strikes the family, Tabitha and her mother are forced to move to the notorious Five Points District in New York City, know for its brothels, gangs, gambling halls, corrupt politicians and thieves. As they struggle to survive in their new living conditions, tragedy strikes again. Young Tabitha resorts to life alone on the streets of New York, dreaming of a happier future.
The Sisters of Charity are taking orphans off the streets with promises of a new life. Children are to forget their pasts, their religious beliefs, families and names. They offer Tabitha a choice: stay in Five Points or board the orphan train and go West in search of a new life.
The harrowing journey and the decision to leave everything behind launches Tabitha on a path from which she can never return.
Author Bio
• Birth—September 30, 1970
• Where—Rochester, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York-Potsdam
• Currently—lives in Manlius, New York
Julie Dewey is a novelist residing in Central New York with her family. Julie selects book topics that are little known nuggets of U.S. history and sheds light on them so that the reader not only gets an intriguing story-line but learns a little something too.
Julie's daughter is a Nashville crooner and her son is a student. Her husband's blue eyes had her at hello and her motto is, "Life is too short to be Little!"
In addition to reading, researching, and writing, Julie has many hobbies that include jewelry design, decorating, walking her favorite four legged friends, Wells and Hershey, and spending time with her triplet nephews.
Her works include Forgetting Tabitha: the Story of an Orphan Train Rider; The Back Building; One Thousand Porches; The Other Side of the Fence; and Cat (the Livin' Large Series). (From the author.)
Visit the author's webpage.
Book Reviews
For Julie Dewey of Manlius, one small article, read almost 20 years ago, was enough to spark a continued interest in the orphan trains of America.... Forgetting Tabitha follows a young girl who after tragedy strikes is forced to move to the squalid neighborhood of the Five Points District in New York City.... The [Sisters of Charity] offer her the chance at a new life, though doing so means leaving everything about her past behind, and setting of out west to start a new life with a new family.... This historical story does address some of the issues most common to those who experienced the orphan trains, including some mature content.
Syracuse.com
Discussion Questions
1. The orphan train riders in this book are each flawed in some way. Do you attribute this to their lot in life, or do you think it is innate? Discuss the flaws as they pertain to each character.
2. The author paints an image of time and place, richly detailed with descriptions that evoke emotion; which portions of the book are the most vivid to you and your experience when reading about the orphans’ journeys?
3. How was New York City’s treatment of the indigent different in the 1800s than it is today? Do you agree that the orphan train movement established by Reverend Brace was the impetus for our modern foster care system?
4. What surprised you the most about Tabitha and her journey?
5. Tabitha had many men in her life, her father, Scotty, Edmund and Pap, what do they all have in common?
6. Love and loss are themes throughout Forgetting Tabitha, not just between individuals but families. Discuss how this affected and was significant for each character as portrayed in the story.
7. Was Mary every truly able to forget Tabitha and would you want her to?
8. The author reveals that hundreds of thousands of orphans were sent on trains west. Were you aware of this time in our history?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Forgetting Time
Sharon Guskin, 2016
Flatiron Books
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250076427
Summary
Noah wants to go home. A seemingly easy request from most four year olds.
But as Noah's single-mother, Janie, knows, nothing with Noah is ever easy. One day the pre-school office calls and says Janie needs to come in to talk about Noah, and no, not later, now—and life as she knows it stops.
For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has stopped. A deadly diagnosis has made him realize he is approaching the end of his life. His first thought—I'm not finished yet. Once a shining young star in academia, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, a professor of psychology, he threw it all away because of an obsession. Anderson became the laughing stock of his peers, but he didn't care—something had to be going on beyond what anyone could see or comprehend.
He spent his life searching for that something else. And with Noah, he thinks he's found it.
Soon Noah, Janie and Anderson will find themselves knocking on the door of a mother whose son has been missing for eight years—and when that door opens, all of their questions will be answered.
Sharon Guskin has written a captivating, thought-provoking novel that explores what we regret in the end of our lives and hope for in the beginning, and everything in between. In equal parts a mystery and a testament to the profound connection between a child and parent, The Forgetting Time marks the debut of a major new talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Sharon Guskin is the author of the debut novel, The Forgetting Time published in 2016.
In addition to writing fiction, she has worked as a writer and producer of award-winning documentary films, including Stolen and On Meditation. She began exploring the ideas examined in The Forgetting Time when she worked at a refugee camp in Thailand as a young woman and, later, served as a hospice volunteer soon after the birth of her first child.
She’s been a fellow at Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and Ragdale, and has degrees from Yale University and the Columbia University School of the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Bold, captivating.... Guskin amps up the suspense while raising provocative questions about the maternal bond and its limits.... You'll be mesmerized.
People
For fans of Cloud Atlas and The Lovely Bones, this psychological mystery will have you hooked until the case is closed―or is it?
Cosmo
If you took to Lovely Bones, you'll be completely engrossed by Guskin's mystery, which meticulously weaves together a web of sympathetic, multi-dimensional characters through alternating chapters…Plenty of fodder for your next book club."
InStyle
(Starred review.) Readers will be galvanized by Guskin’s sharply realized and sympathetic characters with all their complications, contradictions, failures, sorrows, and hope. Deftly braiding together suspense, family drama, and keen insights into the workings of the brain, Guskin poses key and unsettling questions about love and memory, life and death, belief and fact.
Booklist
Even as crisis rocks unsettled four-year-old Noah and his single mother, Janie, once-promising academic Jerome Anderson receives a diagnosis that shuts down his future. Further revelation comes when all three meet a mother whose son has long been missing.
Library Journal
A single mom confronts the possibility that her troubled 4-year-old is the reincarnated spirit of a murdered child.... Guskin's debut novel tells a sentimental story with a murder mystery at its core, and it's interesting even if you don't go for the premise.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the novel’s title? What roles do forgetting and remembering play in the lives of Guskin’s characters?
2. How does the novel’s narrative structure illuminate its characters as the chapters move back and forth among perspectives? How does the tone in Janie’s, Denise’s, and Anderson’s chapters differ?
3. How did the case studies embedded within the novel affect your reading experience?
4. Most of Anderson’s cases are in Southeast Asia. Why do you think that is? How does the novel address the East-West cultural divide?
5. At the end of chapter 2, Anderson reflects: "Never expect. It had been the lesson of his life. "How has the unexpected shaped him? How has it shaped Janie and Denise?
6. Anderson gives up prestige and respectability to pursue his chosen path. Does he remind you of other literary heroes? How does he fit in with or complicate the archetypal American striver?
7. In chapter 9, Anderson tells Janie, "Luckily, I’m not in the belief business. I collect data." Do you believe him? How do the scientific and the personal collide in his work?
8. In chapter 20, Janie recalls a Sweet Honey in the Rock song: "Your children are not your children. . . though they are with you, they belong not to you." Discuss the resonances of that song for Janie and for Denise.
9. Discuss the significance of the Emily Dickinson poem that Janie quotes from in chapter 39:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
10. Do you agree with Janie’s ultimate decision to let Anderson use Noah’s case in his book? How do you feel about using children in psychological studies in general?
11. What does Denise mean when she thinks, "Why were we all hoarding love, stockpiling it?"
12. In what ways do Janie, Anderson, and Denise change by the end of the novel?
13. When Janie and Anderson decide to take Noah to Asheville Road, do you think they should have told Denise they were coming? If you were Denise, how would you have responded to them? Would you have given Paul the possibility of redemption and forgiveness?
14. When Anderson begins to pursue his cases, he is looking for "not just nature or nurture, but something else that could cause personality quirks, phobias. Why some babies were born calm and others inconsolable. Why some children had innate attractions and abilities." Why do you think children come out the way they do? Do you think his theories are plausible?
15. Discuss Anderson’s meditation on consciousness:
If consciousness survived death—and he had shown that it did—then how did this connect with what Max Planck and the quantum physicists realized: that events didn’t occur unless they were observed, and therefore that consciousness was fundamental, and matter itself was derived from it?
Did that therefore make this world like a dream, with each life, like each dream, flowing one after the other? And was it then possible that some of us—like these children—were awakened too abruptly from these dreams, and ached to return to them?
16. Have you had any experiences that changed your view of reality or what’s possible? Do you believe in life after death? How did your belief or disbelief affect your reading of this novel"?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Forgetting Tree
Tatjana Soli, 2012
St. Martin's Press
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250001047
Summary
From Tatjana Soli, author of The Lotus Eaters, comes a breathtaking novel of a California ranching family, its complicated matriarch, and the enigmatic caretaker who may destroy them
When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she’s consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son Joshua at kidnappers’ hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she’s devoted her life to preserving.
But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: an illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life. And she's chosen a caregiver, the inscrutable, Caribbean-born Minna, who may just be the darkest force of all.
Haunting, tough, triumphant, and profound, The Forgetting Tree explores the intimate ties we have to one another, the deepest fears we keep to ourselves, and the calling of the land that ties every one of us together. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Salzburg, Austria
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Warren Wilson College
• Awards—James Tait Black Prize; Dana Award
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California, USA
Tatjana Soli is an American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, The Lotus Eaters, won the 2010 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Dana Award, her second novel, The Forgetting Tree, was published in 2012, and The Last Good Paradise came out in 2015.
Soli graduated from Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) and the Warren Wilson College (Asheville, North Carolina) with an MFA. She received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is married and lives in Orange County, California.
Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Boulevard, Five Chapters, The Normal School, The Sun, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Inkwell Journal, Nimrod, Third Coast, Carolina Quarterly, Sonora Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Washington Square Review, and Web del Sol. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
The lesson Soli has to teach...is a salient one for the modern world: even a remote citrus ranch can be a crossroads where cultures collide, and those collisions can be life-changing for everyone involved. Soli writes with patience and wisdom about both sides of this relationship, allowing both of her central female characters the freedom to be eccentric and inconsistent, but also to learn from each other.
Jane Smiley - New York Times Book Review
Soli, who made a splash with her debut, The Lotus Eaters, will captivate readers again with this twisting, intriguing tale of a grieving California woman. Claire and her husband, Forster, live an idyllic life on a citrus farm in California with their three children until their 10-year-old son is murdered in a robbery. Fifteen years later, Claire and Forster have divorced, their eldest daughters are grown, and Claire is diagnosed with breast cancer. Alone on the ranch, she needs a helping hand, and along comes Minna, a mysterious young beauty. The two women forge a co-dependent bond, and Claire sinks deeper under Minna’s spell, even though she senses danger lurking beneath. Though the story is slow and befuddling at times, Soli successfully paints an intimate portrait of two vulnerable women trying to make sense of their separately tragic lives—and becoming eerily entwined for their efforts. With her knack for beautiful prose and striking detail, this is a solid follow-up to her debut.
Publishers Weekly
When life hands you lemons...burn down the lemon tree. The author of the best seller The Lotus Eaters gives us a very different but equally compelling novel about finding what's worth fighting to preserve and the act of surviving in all its moral complexity. The main character, Claire, marries into a family that owns a citrus farm in southern California. When the loss of their son tears her and her husband apart, Claire fights to protect her two daughters from further loss.... Verdict: A lush, haunting novel for readers who appreciate ambiguity, this work should establish Soli as a novelist with depth and broad scope. —Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Lib., Marshall, VA
Library Journal
The fate of a struggling Southern California citrus farm shifts after the arrival of a mysterious Haitian woman. The second novel by Soli (The Lotus Eaters, 2010) centers on Claire, the matriarch of an orchard that's been the source of plenty of financial and emotional heartbreak. Her young son was killed there, and the aftermath of his death drove a wedge between her and her husband and two daughters. Years later, when Claire is diagnosed with breast cancer, she begins to search for live-in help and is introduced to Minna, a young woman...[whose background] isn't quite what she's claimed it was. This book aspires to be a multilayered story about class and race distinctions...[but Soli's] noble goal is undercut somewhat by baggy, sometimes pedantic storytelling.... (Soli's affinity for sentence fragments amplifies the prose's stiff feel.) Minna's own section of the novel, which chronicles her travels from Haiti to Miami to California, features some of Soli's most engaging writing, though it owes a clear debt to the troubled Haitian heroines of the works of Edwidge Danticat. Ambitious but overripe.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Soli named her novel "The Forgetting Tree"? How does the meaning of the title relate to the characters in the book?
2. How does the Baumsarg citrus farm shape the characters in the novel?
3. How does the loss of Josh Baumsarg affect the family? Forster and Claire react differently. How do you feel about the way they chose to live their lives afterwards?
4. Describe Minna. What is it about her that makes such an impression on Claire and her daughters?
5. How does Claire view herself as a mother? Did this perception change after losing Josh? As her daughters have grown into adults? In what ways did Claire’s relationships with Gwen and Lucy evolve throughout the novel? What particular dynamics between parents and their adult children does Soli seem interested in exploring?
6. Describe Claire's relationship with her mother, Raisi, and her mother-in-law, Hanni. What life lessons does she learn from them? How does she pass these on to her own children? To Minna?
7. The novel is structured in four parts. Why do you think Soli chose this way to tell it? What do you think of this technique? Does it change the way you experience the story?
8. In Chapter 17, Claire “could no longer tell the difference between her white and Minna’s black” What does she mean by this, and how does this suggest a theme of the novel?
9. Does knowing Minna’s past absolve her from responsibility to Claire? Do you think she overcomes these motivations by the end of the novel?
10. Jean-Alexi states that the “lost got to help the lost in this world.” In what ways are Claire and Minna lost? In what ways do they help each other out of this state? In what ways do they fail?
11. Why does Claire eventually let the farm go? Do you think this is a good or bad thing?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Forgotten Garden
Kate Morton, 2008
Simon & Schuster
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416550556
Summary
A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a beautiful volume of fairy tales.
She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity.
Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.
This is a novel of outer and inner journeys and an homage to the power of storytelling. The Forgotten Garden is filled with unforgettable characters who weave their way through its spellbinding plot to astounding effect. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Where—Berri, South Australia
• Education—B.A., and M.A., University of Queensland
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Australia
Kate Morton is the eldest of three sisters. Her family moved several times before settling on Tamborine Mountain where she attended a small country school. She enjoyed reading books from an early age, her favourites being those by Enid Blyton.
She completed a Licentiate in Speech and in Drama from Trinity College London and then a summer Shakespeare course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Later she earned first-class honours for her English Literature degree at the University of Queensland, during which time she wrote two full-length manuscripts (which are unpublished) before writing the story that would become the 2006 novel The House at Riverton.
Following this she obtained a scholarship and completed a Master's degree focussing on tragedy in Victorian literature. She is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program researching contemporary novels that marry elements of gothic and mystery fiction.
Kate Morton is married to Davin, a jazz musician and composer, and they have two sons.
Works & recognition
Works and recognition
Morton's novels have been published in 38 countries and have sold three million copies.
♦ The House at Riverton was a Sunday Times #1 bestseller in the UK in 2007 and a New York Times bestseller in 2008. It won General Fiction Book of the Year at the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards, and was nominated for Most Popular Book at the British Book Awards in 2008.
♦ Her second book, The Forgotten Garden, was a #1 bestseller in Australia and a Sunday Times #1 bestseller in the UK in 2008.
♦ In 2010, Morton's third novel, The Distant Hours, was released, followed by her fourth, The Secret Keeper, in 2012. He rmost recent novel, Lake House, came out in 2015. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/23/2015.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
Both books reveal Morton as an author in supreme control of her material, and she delivers again, right on target, with another atmospheric historical saga shot through with mystery and secrets, grand passions and tragic woes...like the maze in the forgotten garden of the title, it's a delicious book to become lost in.
Sunday Mail
This is a novel of a writer who is really getting into her stride. The magical opening of The Forgotten Garden launches us into a complex and richly textured world. Morton skillfully interweaves the different periods in which the novel is set, maintaining pace throughout. She gradually strips away layers of mystery, leaving a nice twist to the end...A beautifully written and satisfying novel
Daily Express
A four-year-old girl abandoned aboard a ship touches off a century-long inquiry into her ancestry, in Morton's weighty, at times unwieldy, second novel.... Intricate, intersecting narratives, heavy-handed fairy-tale symbolism... create a thicket of clues...but the puzzle is pleasing and the long-delayed "reveal" is a genuine surprise.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell's father, Hugh, tells her a secret that shatters her sense of self. How important is a strong sense of identity to a person's life? Was Hugh right to tell her about her past? How might Nell's life have turned out differently had she not discovered the truth?
2. Did Hugh and Lil make the right decision when they kept Nell?
3. How might Nell's choice of occupation have been related to her fractured identity?
4. Is it possible to escape the past, or does one's history always find a way to revisit the present?
5. Eliza, Nell and Cassandra all lose their birth mothers when they are still children. How are their lives affected differently by this loss? How might their lives have evolved had they not had this experience?
6. Nell believes that she comes from a tradition of 'bad mothers'. Does this belief become a self-fulfilling prophesy? How does Nell's relationship with her granddaughter, Cassandra, allow her to revisit this perception of herself as a 'bad mother'?
7. Is The Forgotten Garden a love story? If so, in what way/s?
8. Tragedy has been described as 'the conflict between desire and possibility'. Following this definition, is The Forgotten Garden a tragedy? If so, in what way/s?
9. A 'plait' motif threads through The Forgotten Garden. What significance might plaits have for the story?
10. In what ways do Eliza's fairy tales underline and develop other themes within the novel?
11. In what ways do the settings in The Forgotten Garden represent or reflect the characters' experiences?
(Questions from the author's website.)
top of page (summary)
The Forgotten Room
Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, 2016
Penguin Publising Group
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451474629
Summary
Three bestselling authors come together in a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century.
1945:
When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.
Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?
In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?
The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Karen White
... pursued a degree in business and graduated cum laude with a BS in Management from Tulane University. Ten years later, after leaving the business world, she fulfilled her dream of becoming a writer and wrote her first book. In the Shadow of the Moon was published in August, 2000. Her books have since been nominated for numerous national contests including the SIBA (Southeastern Booksellers Alliance) Fiction Book of the Year, and has twice won the National Readers’ Choice Award
Karen hails from a long line of Southerners but spent most of her growing up years in London, England and is a graduate of the American School in London. When not writing, she spends her time reading, scrapbooking, playing piano, and avoiding cooking. She currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two children, and two spoiled Havanese dogs.
Beatriz Williams
... is a graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia. She 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.)
Lauren Willig
... is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association's annual list of the best genre fiction.
After graduating from Yale University, she embarked on a PhD in English History at Harvard before leaving academia to acquire a JD at Harvard Law while authoring her "Pink Carnation" series of Napoleonic-set novels. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Three's a charm as New York Times best-selling authors White (A Long Time Gone), Beatriz Williams (A Hundred Summers), and Lauren Willig (the "Pink Carnation" series) join forces to craft a...mystery linking three generations of women...to one gracious room in a Gilded Age mansion.
Library Journal
Strong female characters, swoon-worthy romance, and red herrings abound in this marvelous genre blend of romance, historical fiction, and family saga.
Booklist
This sumptuous, suspenseful and heart-wrenching story will keep you up all night...Readers will be utterly enthralled.
Romance Times Reviews
With all three stories taking place in the same location, the novel is filled with both coincidences and parallels, the past finding ways to repeat itself until it reaches a satisfying conclusion. Even with three authors, the story is seamless, and the transitions between narrators are smooth....a compelling and emotionally worthwhile novel.
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 The Forgotten Room...then take off on your own:
1. Kate, Olive and Lucy have different personalities, but they also have some common traits. Talk about how the women differ and the ways in which they're similar.
2. Of the three entwined stories that make up The Forgetting Room, which character(s) were you most drawn to? Which character's story held your interest more than the others? Or were they all equally compelling?
4. What was your experience reading the novel? Did the alternating chapters hold together seamlessly or did you find the shifts jarring?
5. A central concern in the novel, is the power of love, whether appropriate or not. Trace the paths of love in this book. Discuss how love has consequences beyond the two people involved and their time.
6. Lies and secrets are also a major theme in The Forgotten Room: the way they ripple, like a pebble thrown into a pond, through time and across generations. How were the characters affected by the many secrets eventually uncovered in the book. What responsibilities for truth and openness do all of us have to the generations that follow us?
7. As the mystery unraveled itself during the course of the novel, were there any points where you felt you had the answers to the riddles? If so, were your predictions born out...or were you wrong?
(We'll add the publishers' questions when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use LitLovers with attribution. Thanks.)
The Forgotten Roses
Deborah Doucette, 2014
Owl Canyon Press
250 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780991121106
Summary
Rebecca Griffin has everything she could ever want—or so says her big-hearted, opinionated Italian-American family. But now her marriage is unraveling and her teenage daughter is hurtling toward a self-destructive calamity.
While Rebecca struggles to hang onto her husband and save her daughter, she learns of the mysterious death of a young The woman long ago at a local prison. As Rebecca’s mother, Eva, reveals their family’s connection to the girl, Rebecca is drawn into the story—it haunts her. A search for answers takes Rebecca from her small idyllic New England town, to the congested streets of East Boston and the tight-knit Italian neighborhood where many of her family still resides.
As she tries to uncover the facts of the young girl’s life and violent death, the puzzle pieces in Rebecca’s own life begin to take shape and she faces the difficult truth about her husband, Drew. Rebecca, her troubled daughter, Dana, and an enigmatic figure from the past unknowingly embark on a collision course one desperate autumn night when the answers they seek come to light in the most forgotten of places from the most innocent of messengers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 30, 1948
• Raised—Newton and Nadick, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Sherborn, Massachusetts
Deborah Doucette began her writing career as a free-lance journalist subsequently writing the non-fiction book Raising Our Children’s Children: Room In The Heart, slated for second edition release in July, 2014. Her novel, The Forgotten Roses, is about the choices women face, the pull of family, a mystery and a little magic. She is a blogger for the Huffington Post, an artist, and mother of four.
Deborah lives in a small town west of Boston with her red standard poodle Fiamma (Italian for flame) enjoying the comings and goings of her twin grandchildren, and working on a new novel. (From the author.)
Visit the publisher's website.
Follow Deborah on Facebook
Book Reviews
The Forgotten Roses finds a way to be both harrowing and humorous. Doucette weaves a dark tale (laced with deftly comedic underpinnings) in a New England town rife with rumor, mystery, and murder all under a thin veil of magic. This clever, multi-layered, multi-generational book has a warm local flavor made hot with Italian-American spice...Doucette knows her characters intimately and what she describes—from gardens to grandmothers - and marriage to mayhem feels genuine and oddly familiar. Doucette paints portraits of characters which make them come alive as we read, makes us feel we know them. Let Doucette capture and pull you in with her words, so that she can frighten, amuse and mystify you with her droll inner dialog, excellent descriptive capacity and wise-cracking mind. A mystery. A Treat. A great read.
C. Anthony Martignette, Author, Lunatic Heroes and Beloved Demons
The Forgotten Roses is a mesmerizing story that pulls readers into the lives of thre women drawn together by a young woman's mysterious and tragic death. Deborah Doucette's novel is beautifully written with characters that are rich, complex and memorable. A spell-binding novel.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Barbara Walsh, Author of August Gale: A Father and Daughter's Journey Into the Storm
In The Forgotten Roses, Deborah Doucette spins a harrowing tale of three women and their shared journey into an entangled and deeply disturbing past. Doucette is a fresh new voice, and her lush, lyrical prose stays with you long after you've read the last line.
Kim Triedman, Author of The Other Room and Plum(b)
Discussion Questions
1. At the outset, the protagonist, Rebecca Griffin, seems stuck and unsettled. What is the turning point that begins to push her forward
2. Rebecca’s family and culture has had an enormous influence on the her, in both good ways and bad. Her upbringing had essentially created a blueprint for living. What are the ways in which they have held her back, and the ways in which they have strengthened her.
3. What are the parallels among the journeys of each of the main characters—Rebecca, Dana and Serena.
4. How have Rebecca’s past choices affected her children’s choices and behavior? And what legacy does she leave them in the end?
5. How does this quote from The Forgotten Roses resonate with you in your own life: “We unwittingly fashion our futures from the patterns of our past.”
6. In this day and age, is there a clear difference between a “good girl” and a “bad girl” or are the lines “blurred” as the pop song suggests? Are there good girls and bad girls in the story?
7. One of the elements in the story is the historical and systematic attempt to manipulate the “moral reform” of girls and women in society. (Although not mentioned by name in the book, the Magdalene Asylums are a good example of that). Was it a shock to learn that not long ago a young woman could be incarcerated for “shaming her family?” Do you feel that inequities in the justice system exist today for women?
8. In the end, there were no definitive answers regarding Deitzhoff’ and the goings on at the log cabin. The characters had to make choices without the benefit of the clear-cut information they sought. Was this lack of neatly tied-up loose-ends troubling, or merely a fact of life?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Forgotten Waltz
Anne Enright, 2011
W.W. Norton & Co.
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393342581
Summary
A new, unapologetic kind of adultery novel. Narrated by the proverbial other woman—Gina Moynihan, a sharp, sexy, darkly funny thirtysomething IT worker—The Forgotten Waltz charts an extramarital affair from first encounter to arranged, settled, everyday domesticity....
This novel’s beauty lies in Enright’s spare, poetic, off-kilter prose—at once heartbreaking and subversively funny. It’s built of startling little surprises and one fresh sentence after another.
Enright captures the heady eroticism of an extramarital affair and the incendiary egomania that accompanies secret passion: For all their utter ordinariness, Sean and Gina feel like the greatest lovers who've ever lived. (From Elle Magazine.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 11, 1962
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., Trinity College (Dublin); M.A., University of
East Anglia
• Awards—Awards—Rooney Prize, Irish Writing Award, Royal Society
of Authors Encore Prize, Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland
Anne Enright is a Booker Prize-winning Irish author. She has published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels. Before her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom, although her books were favourably reviewed and widely praised. Her writing explores themes such as family relationships, love and sex, Ireland's difficult past and its modern zeitgeist.
Enright won an international scholarship to Lester Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied for an International Baccalaureate for two years. She received an English and philosophy degree from Trinity College Dublin. She began writing in earnest when her family gave her an electric typewriter for her 21st birthday. She won a scholarship to the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course, where she was taught by Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury and earned an M.A.
Enright was a television producer and director for RTE in Dublin for six years. She was a producer for the ground-breaking RTE programme Nighthawks for four years. She then worked in children's programming for two years and wrote at the weekends. The Portable Virgin, a collection of her short stories, was published in 1991. The Portable Virgin won the 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Enright began writing full-time in 1993.
Enright's first novel, The Wig My Father Wore, was published in 1995. The book explores themes such as love, motherhood, Roman Catholicism, and sex. The narrator of the novel is Grace, who lives in Dublin and works for a tacky game show. Her father wears a wig that cannot be spoken of in front of him. An angel called Stephen who committed suicide in 1934 and has come back to earth to guide lost souls moves into Grace's home and she falls in love with him.
Enright's next novel, What Are You Like? (2000), is about twin girls called Marie and Maria who are separated at birth and raised apart from each other in Dublin and London. It looks at tensions and ironies between family members. It was short-listed in the novel category of the Whitbread Awards.
The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) is a fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Lynch, an Irish woman who was the consort of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and became Paraguay's most powerful woman in the 19th century. Her book Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004) is a collection of candid and humorous essays about childbirth and motherhood. Enright's fourth novel, The Gathering, was published in 2007, and The Forgotten Waltz in 2011.
Enright's writings have appeared in several magazines, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, Granta, London Review of Books, Dublin Review, and the Irish Times. She was once a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, and now reviews for the Guardian and RTE. The 4 October 2007 issue of the London Review of Books published her essay, "Disliking the McCanns", about Kate and Gerry McCann, the British parents of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in suspicious circumstances while on holiday in Portugal in May 2007. The essay was criticized by some journalists.
Enright won the Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award for 2004. She also won the Royal Society of Authors Encore Prize.On 16 October 2007 Enright was awarded the Man Booker Prize, which included a cash award of £50,000, for The Gathering.
Enright lives in Bray, County Wicklow. She is married to Martin Murphy, who is director of the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire. They have two children. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The Forgotten Waltz is a nervy enterprise, an audacious bait-and-switch. Cloaked in a novel about a love affair is a ferocious indictment of the self-involved material girls our era has produced. Enright's channeling of Gina's interior monologue is so accurate and unsparing that reading her book is, at times, like eavesdropping on a very long, crazily intimate cellphone conversation. It's a testament to the unwavering fierceness of Enright's project that I mean this as high praise. We've all met people like the characters in her book. Neither evil nor good, they're merely awful in entirely ordinary ways. And it's impressive, how skillfully Anne Enright has gotten them on the page.
Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review
[S]o beautifully written that you could read it once just for the dazzle of the prose, then start over for the content…The sensibility is subtle and complex, as the narrative explores connections between desire and responsibility…and the complicated ways in which duty is refracted into the rest of our lives. It's about love, and sex, and the sinuous, unexpected paths they create, and the way they are inevitably entwined with family. It's about fear and obligation and passion and ways in which we explain our actions to ourselves. The way we give up something we thought essential, for something that is. It's hard to say which is more satisfying about this book: its emotional complexities or the frugal elegance of its prose.
Roxanna Robinson - Washington Post
A new, unapologetic kind of adultery novel. Narrated by the proverbial other woman—Gina Moynihan, a sharp, sexy, darkly funny thirtysomething IT worker—The Forgotten Waltz charts an extramarital affair from first encounter to arranged, settled, everyday domesticity.... This novel’s beauty lies in Enright’s spare, poetic, off-kilter prose—at once heartbreaking and subversively funny. It’s built of startling little surprises and one fresh sentence after another. Enright captures the heady eroticism of an extramarital affair and the incendiary egomania that accompanies secret passion: For all their utter ordinariness, Sean and Gina feel like the greatest lovers who've ever lived.
Elle
In this gorgeous critique of Ireland as the Celtic Tiger draws its dying breaths, Enright chronicles an affair between 32-year-old Gina Moynihan, and Seán Vallely, a rich, dutiful husband and a devoted if somewhat inept father to the otherworldly, epileptic Evie, not yet 13. Set against a backdrop of easy money, second homes, and gratuitous spending, the dissolution of Gina's and Sean's marriages is both an antidote to and a symptom of the economic prosperity that gripped the country until its sudden and devastating fall from grace in 2008: "In Ireland, if you leave the house and there is a divorce, then you lose the house.... You have to sleep there to keep your claim.... You think it is about sex, and then you remember the money." There are, as with any affair, casualties, but what weighs most heavily on Gina is not what will become of her husband, Conor, but rather Evie, who sees Gina kissing her father, and innocently asks if she might be kissed too, oblivious to the fact that this moment heralds the end of her family. She eventually becomes all too aware that her father is gone and that she's stuck with her sad, neurotic mother. And so the question that remains at the end of this masterful and deeply satisfying novel is not just what will happen to Ireland, but what will happen to Evie?
Publishers Weekly
She's a sharp-tongued home wrecker who doesn't try to ingratiate herself. But in this corrosively beautiful novel from Man Booker Prize winner Enright (The Gathering), you want to drag back Gina Moynihan as she recounts plunging headlong into the affair that will change her life. Gina met Seán Vallely at sister Fiona's house and first made love to him, without much preamble, while drunk at a business conference. Lectured by her sister, who proclaims that their just-deceased mother would have been mortified, Gina silently disagrees. Surely Mum would have appreciated this affair, which has liberated Gina from…what? The dread of domesticity with teddybearish but somewhat dense husband Conor? Boredom with a lock-step job in Ireland's grim economy? Writing with cool, clear-eyed logic, Enright is brave and persuasive enough to paint Seán as less than ideal; he's a rigid bully and not overwhelmingly attractive. Through Gina's determined pursuit of their relationship, we see the stupefying nature of desire, which Enright deftly contrasts with the sometimes equally stupefying nature of parenting; Gina's big competition is not Seán's wife but his sweet, not-quite-right daughter. Verdict: A breathtaking work that will surprise you; highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) This stunning novel by a Booker Prize winner....offers up its brilliance by way of astonishingly effective storytelling.
Booklist
In rueful, witty, unpredictable and compassionate prose, Enright gives expression to subtle, affecting shades of human interaction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does Gina’s relationship with Sean evolve throughout the story? Is she ever truly in love with him? What does it say about Gina that she was "slightly repulsed" by Sean after they slept together for the first time?
2. In what ways does the book’s setting, that of early 2000s boom Ireland and the recession that followed, intertwine with Gina and Sean’s relationship? Is the setting a metaphor for their affair or is the affair a metaphor for Ireland?
3. Gina says that she was "properly in love" with Conor and that falling in love with him "was the right thing to do." Can you call what she had with Conor love? What does this say about love?
4. What role do Gina’s parents play throughout the novel? What do you think about her saying of her father, "it was the right parent who had died"? How does it relate to "the right thing to do" in the previous question about Conor?
5. How much agency does Gina have as a character? To what extent is she making her own decisions versus letting Sean and outside forces dictate her life?
6. At first it seems as though the story follows a chronological timeline. Then we discover that there are several time arcs. How does Enright move her characters backward and forward through time to better tell the story?
7. In what ways does Evie’s character evolve throughout the novel? Or is it Gina’s perception of her that changes? How does Evie’s development into a full-fledged human being force Gina to confront the effects of her affair?
8. There is a lot of unsold real estate at the end of the story, including Gina’s mother’s house, for which Gina and Fiona had high hopes. Trace the ways in which the characters’ aspirations for wealth and love are forced to contend with the reality of a broken housing market and a flawed lover. Do Gina and Fiona react in the same ways?
9. It becomes clear that Sean has had other affairs and that his unfaithfulness began well before Evie’s first episode. What does this say about Sean? How do both he and Gina use Evie’s sickness to account for Sean’s relationship problems with Aileen? Will Sean be faithful to Gina?
10. Enright makes distinctions between passion and love, between lust and passion. How do these different emotions come into play throughout Gina’s affair with Sean? What sentiments did she experience with Sean that she never experienced with Conor?
11. Is Gina truly happy with Sean? What is she searching for? Does she find it?
12. At one point Gina says, "I think we should own up to what we know. We should know why we do the things that we do." In what way is the novel Gina’s attempt to own up to and explain what she did?
13. Gina is constantly describing and noting what the children around her do, although she is not a mother. What makes her so interested in them? Why is she so negative about women who have children?
14. At the end of the story, Gina seems to have come to terms with her situation. Is it because she believes her affair was inevitable and that meeting Sean was destiny?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
The Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan Lethem, 2003
Knopf Doubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375724886
Summary
This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."
This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions—what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money—are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore.
This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist.
This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives.
This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 19, 1964
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—Bennington College (no degree)
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award; World Fantasy
Award; Macallan Gold Dagger Award
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
Early life
Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Judith Frank Lethem, a political activist, and Richard Brown Lethem, an avant-garde painter. He was the eldest of three children. His father was Protestant (with Scottish and English ancestry) and his mother was Jewish, from a family that originated in Germany, Poland, and Russia. His brother Blake became an artist, and his sister Mara became a photographer and writer.
The family lived in a commune in the pre-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood of North Gowanus (now called Boerum Hill). Despite the racial tensions and conflicts, he later described his bohemian childhood as "thrilling" and culturally wide-reaching. He gained an encyclopedic knowledge of the music of Bob Dylan, saw Star Wars twenty-one times during its original theatrical release, and read the complete works of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Lethem later said Dick’s work was "as formative an influence as marijuana or punk rock—as equally responsible for beautifully fucking up my life, for bending it irreversibly along a course I still travel."
His parents divorced when Lethem was young. When he was thirteen, his mother Judith died from a malignant brain tumor, an event which he has said haunted him and has strongly affected his writing. (Lethem discusses the direct relation between his mother and the Bob Dylan song "Like a Rolling Stone" in the 2003 Canadian documentary Complete Unknown.) In 2007, Lethem explained, "My books all have this giant, howling missing [center]—language has disappeared, or someone has vanished, or memory has gone."
Intending to become a visual artist like his father, Lethem attended the High School of Music & Art in New York, where he painted in a style he describes as "glib, show-offy, usually cartoonish." At Music & Art he produced his own zine, The Literary Exchange, which featured artwork and writing. He also created animated films and wrote a 125-page novel, Heroes, still unpublished.
After graduating from high school, Lethem entered Bennington College in Vermont in 1982 as a prospective art student. At Bennington, Lethem experienced an "overwhelming....collision with the realities of class—my parents’ bohemian milieu had kept me from understanding, even a little, that we were poor.... [A]t Bennington that was all demolished by an encounter with the fact of real privilege." This, coupled with the realization that he was more interested in writing than art, led Lethem to drop out halfway through his sophomore year.
He hitchhiked from Denver, Colorado, to Berkeley, California, in 1984, across "a thousand miles of desert and mountains through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, with about 40 dollars in my pocket," describing it as "one of the stupidest and most memorable things I've ever done." He lived in California for twelve years, working as a clerk in used bookstores, including Moe's and Pegasus & Pendragon Books, and writing on his own time. Lethem published his first short story in 1989 and published several more in the early 1990s.
First novels
Lethem’s first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, is a merging of science fiction and the Chandleresque detective story, which includes talking kangaroos, radical futuristic versions of the drug scene, and cryogenic prisons. The novel was published in 1994 to little initial fanfare, but an enthusiastic review in Newsweek, which declared Gun an "audaciously assured first novel," catapulted the book to wider commercial success. It became a finalist for the 1994 Nebula Award. In the mid-1990s, film producer-director Alan J. Pakula optioned the novel's movie rights, which allowed Lethem to quit working in bookstores and devote his time to writing.
His next several books include Amnesia Moon (1995), partially inspired by Lethem's experiences hitchhiking cross-country; The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (1996), a collection of short stories; As She Climbed Across the Table (1997) about a physics researcher who falls in love with an artificially generated spatial anomaly called "Lack."
Lethem moved returned to Brooklyn in 1996, after which he published Girl in Landscape (1998) about a world populated by aliens but "very strongly influenced" by the 1956 John Wayne Western The Searchers, a movie with which Lethem is "obsessed."
In 1999, he released Motherless Brooklyn, a return to the detective theme, with a protagonist suffering from Tourette syndrome and obsessed with language. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, The Macallan Gold Dagger for crime fiction, and the Salon Book Award, and was named book of the year by Esquire.According to the New York Times, the mainstream success of Motherless Brooklyn made Lethem "something of a hipster celebrity," and he was referred to several times as a "genre bender." Lev Grossman of Time classed Lethem with a movement of authors similarly eager to blend literary and popular writing, including Michael Chabon (with whom Lethem is friends), Margaret Atwood, and Susanna Clarke.
In the early 2000s, Lethem published a story collection, edited two anthologies, wrote magazine pieces, and published the 55-page novella This Shape We're In (2000)—one of the first offerings from McSweeney's Books, the publishing imprint that developed from Dave Eggers' McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.
In November 2000, Lethem said that he was working on an uncharacteristically "big sprawling" novel, about a child who grows up to be a rock journalist. The novel was published in 2003 as The Fortress of Solitude. The semi-autobiographical bildungsroman features a tale of racial tensions and boyhood in Brooklyn during the late 1970s.
Lethem's second collection of short fiction, Men and Cartoons, was published in late 2004. In a 2009 interview with Armchair/Shotgun, Lethem said of short fiction:
I'm writing short stories right now, that's what I do between novels, and I love them. I'm very devoted to it.... [T]he story collections I've published are tremendously important to me. And many of the uncollected stories—or yet-to-be-collected stories—are among my proudest writings. They're very closely allied, obviously, to novel writing. But also very distinct..
In 2005 Lethem released The Disappointment Artist, his first collection of essays, and in the same year he received a MacArthur Fellowship.Mid-career novels
After Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem decided it "was time to leave Brooklyn in a literary sense anyway... I really needed to defy all that stuff about place and memory." In 2007, he returned—as a novelist—to California, where some of his earlier fiction had been set, with You Don't Love Me Yet, a novel about an upstart rock band. The novel received mixed reviews.
In early 2009, Lethem published Chronic City, set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The author claimed it was strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles G. Finney. and Hitchcock’s Vertigo and referred to it as "long and strange."
Lethem's next novel, Dissident Gardens, was in 2013. According to Lethem in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the novel concerns "American leftists," very specifically "a red-diaper baby generation trying to figure out what it all means, this legacy of American Communism." He considers it "another New York neighborhood book, very much about the life of the city.... [W]riting about Greenwich Village in 1958 was really a jump for me...as much of an imaginative leap as any of the more fantastical things I've done."
Personal life
In 1987, Lethem married the writer and artist Shelley Jackson; they were divorced by 1997. In 2000, he married Julia Rosenberg, a Canadian film executive; they divorced two years later.
Lethem's current wife is filmmaker Amy Barrett; the couple has a son. Lethem has relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he is the Disney Professor of Writing at Pomona College in Claremont. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2013.)
Book Reviews
The Fortress of Solitude is crowded beyond my powers of summary with lessons, insights, facts, dates, song titles and minor characters. But I much prefer its mess and sprawl to the tightly wound intellectual parlor tricks of earlier Lethem novels like As She Climbed Across the Table and Girl in Landscape. The fictional (Barrett Rude, Abraham Ebdus) is squeezed in alongside the actual (Marvin Gaye, Stan Brakhage), and the naturalistic geography of a borough Lethem knows like the back of his hand is illuminated by a daub of magic realism, when Dylan and Mingus come into possession of a ring that gives them super powers.
A.O.Scot - New York Times
Lethem reconfigures his own autobiography in a book as deep into race as Invisible Man, as deep into the sidewalks of New York as Call It Sleep, and as deep into pop — comics, sci-fi again, and especially music — as everybody but the watchdogs of seriousness.
Village Voice
Magnificent.... [A] massively ambitious, profoundly accomplished novel.
San Francisco Chronicle
Glorious, chaotic, raw.... One of the richest, messiest, most ambitious, most interesting novels of the year. . . . Lethem grabs and captures 1970s New York City, and he brings to it a story worth telling.
Time
If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys. Projected through the prism of race relations, black music and pop art, Lethem's stunning, disturbing and authoritatively observed narrative covers three decades of turbulent events on Dean Street, Brooklyn. When Abraham and Rachel Ebdus arrive there in the early 1970s, they are among the first whites to venture into a mainly black neighborhood that is just beginning to be called Boerum Hill. Abraham is a painter who abandons his craft to construct tiny, virtually indistinguishable movie frames in which nothing happens. Ex-hippie Rachel, a misguided liberal who will soon abandon her family, insists on sending their son, Dylan, to public school, where he stands out like a white flag. Desperately lonely, regularly attacked and abused by the black kids ("yoked," in the parlance), Dylan is saved by his unlikely friendship with his neighbor Mingus Rude, the son of a once-famous black singer, Barnett Rude Jr., who is now into cocaine and rage at the world. The story of Dylan and Mingus, both motherless boys, is one of loyalty and betrayal, and eventually different paths in life. Dylan will become a music journalist, and Mingus, for all his intelligence, kindness, verbal virtuosity and courage, will wind up behind bars. Meanwhile, the plot manages to encompass pop music from punk rock to rap, avant-garde art, graffiti, drug use, gentrification, the New York prison system—and to sing a vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking ballad of Brooklyn throughout. Lethem seems to have devoured the '70s, '80s and '90s-inhaled them whole—and he reproduces them faithfully on the page, in prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks. Scary and funny and seriously surreal, the novel hurtles on a trajectory that feels inevitable. By the time Dylan begins to break out of the fortress of solitude that has been his life, readers have shared his pain and understood his dreams. Although it has less edge-of-the-seat suspense than the Award-winning Motherless Brooklyn, this novel will enhance Lethem's literary reputation and win a wider audience for his work.
Publishers Weekly
Like Don DeLillo's Underworld, this sprawling, ambitious work by Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn) gives a kind of social history of late 20th-century America while remaining grounded in the childhood world of New York stoops. Instead of the 1950s Bronx, however, Lethem starts his story in a few sullen blocks in Brooklyn, following the friendship of two neighbor boys of different races, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude, from the urban era of "white flight" in the early 1970s to gentrification. The life of the block is superbly drawn over the book's first 200 pages, especially Lethem's evocations of children's street life; the years of shakedowns and "yokings" suffered by Dylan, a boy left heartbreakingly unprepared by his hippyish parents, are so knowingly described that anyone who ever suffered the attention of bullies will have to take reading breaks. Also like Underworld, however, Lethem's novel can seem overfilled with cultural riffing, however brilliantly observed. Dylan and Mingus share the boyhood worlds of comics and graffiti (even splitting a street tag identity), of rap, and even of a ring with magic powers, but ultimately they compete with Lethem's scene-setting cultural and musical criticism. And while Lethem is an impressively savvy writer on race, women come and go without adding much weight to his story. This flawed but daring work is recommended for all general collections. —Nathan Ward
Library Journal
Lethem explores many avenues: the origins of gentrification, the development of soul music, the genealogy of graffiti, the seeds of the crack epidemic. The different concepts converge in the closing pages, but this often-excellent novel labors under the weight of its ambition. —Keir Graff
Booklist
Abandoning the inspired and nimble high-concept genre alchemy of his previous novels, Jonathan Lethem follows up his award-winning Tour(ette's)-de-force, Motherless Brooklyn (1999), with a big, personal, sometimes breathtaking, and sometimes disappointing book about music, class, race, authenticity, Brooklyn, and America. Dylan Ebdus is the son of an obsessive monklike artist father and an opinionated hippie-ish mother whose ill-considered idealism plants the family, before she disappears, in a not-yet-gentrified black Brooklyn neighborhood where Dylan’s whiteness becomes his defining quality. Dylan’s best friend, Mingus Rude, has inherited the charisma and effortless cool of his drug-addicted, soul-singer father, Barrett Rude Jr., and Dylan’s existence improves as he taps into it, unaware of the cost to Mingus. When a wino gives Dylan a ring that grants the wearer the power of flight, the boys try to emulate comic-book superheroes, but their crime-fighting backfires, and the ring is used, individually and together, only a handful of times. Following them through the ’70s, we witness the birth of hip-hop culture as the boys tag the city with graffiti and black music turns into what will one day be rap. Dylan’s entering an elite Manhattan high school is his path out of Brooklyn to the larger, white world, and he willfully abandons Mingus, who then teams with Dylan's bête noire, criminal thug Robert Woolfolk, for drug-dealing and eventual disaster. Dylan tries to escape his origins at a Vermont college, a rich-kid Eden, where he encounters the "suburban obliviousness...to the intricate boundaries of race and music which were my inheritance and obsession," but he’s expelled for trailingBrooklyn, and the wrong kind of drug dealing, behind him. Dylan moves on to Berkeley, where he becomes a music writer with a black girlfriend. On a trip to LA—during which he disastrously pitches the story of the Prisonaires, a black singing group formed in jail, to DreamWorks—Dylan finds a lead to his missing mother, and is spurred to visit Mingus in jail. An on-and-off crack addict, mostly incarcerated since shooting his fallen preacher grandfather at 18, Mingus is now fully revealed as bearer of the black man’s burden. Dylan is the self-serving phoenix that rises from Mingus’s sacrifice, as popular music is constructed from the sounds of black suffering. When Dylan offers him the ring to break out, Mingus directs him to give it to Robert Woolfolk, incomprehensible, unyielding Other. The opening section, Dylan’s childhood, is some kind of miracle: the subtleties and cruelties of growing up in the mysterious world, and the nearly instinctive dance of black and white, are perfectly captured in a sometimes dreamy lyric voice anchored by a gorgeous specificity of detail, a vivid portrait of a very particular time and place that rises to the universal. Later, though, while this unique vision of race is intelligent, nuanced, and complex, it becomes sometimes a bit schematic, with symbolism too bald, and, like Dylan’s every effort to expiate his white guilt, it makes things worse: the story, weighed down, ceases to soar. Still, though, terrifically entertaining: a fine, rich, thoughtful novel from one of our best writers. Play that funky music, white boy.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why has Jonathan Lethem titled his novel The Fortress of Solitude? Where does the phrase come from? In what ways is Dylan Ebdus a solitary child? In what ways does he live inside a fortress?
2. What does The Fortress of Solitude reveal about the dynamics of childhood friendships? What kind of friendship does Dylan have with Mingus Rude? With Arthur Lomb? Why does Dylan want so badly to be accepted by Mingus?
3. The Fortress of Solitude is a realistic novel, except for one fantastic element: the magic ring that enables its wearer to fly and to become invisible. Why has Lethem included the ring in the story? What effect does it have on Dylan? How is the ring crucial to the plot of the novel?
4. When Mingus asks Dylan if "everything" is cool, Dylan thinks of his science teacher explaining that "the universe was reportedly exploding in slow motion, everything falling away from everything else at a fixed rate. It was a good enough explanation for now" [p. 118]. Why does Dylan think of this theory at this moment? How does it explain Dylan's neighborhood and home life?
5. What effect do comic books, pop music, and other aspects of popular culture have on the characters in The Fortress of Solitude? How is Dylan's sense of self shaped by his fascination with comic book superheroes?
6. When he sees Dose's tag on a sleeping homeless man, Abraham tells Dylan, "Maybe this is just a terrible place. Maybe in these streets right andwrong are confused, so you and your friends run insane like animals that would do this to a human person" [p. 141]. Is Abraham correct in his assessment? How does the Gowanus neighborhood affect those who grow up in it?
7. Abby tells Dylan, "Your childhood is some privileged sanctuary you live in all the time, instead of here with me" [p. 316-17]. Why is Dylan so obsessed with understanding his childhood? How have his childhood experiences made it harder for him to connect with others?
8. As Dylan is attempting to rescue Mingus from prison, he thinks of the "ordinary angst" he'd earned as a "grown-up Californian . . . an author of liner notes, an inadequate boyfriend," and asks himself: "How could I have thrown over these attainments for this chimera of rescue?" [p. 488]. Why does he take such risks to rescue Mingus? What are his real reasons for offering the ring to Robert Woolfolk?
9. In what ways is The Fortress of Solitude a satirical novel? How are Hollywood and private school education depicted in the novel? How does Lethem present the world of science fiction publishing?
10. Near the end of the novel, Abby tells Dylan, "I guess being enthralled with negritude still beats self-reflection every time" [p. 457]. Is it true that Dylan is obsessed with race? Does he use that obsession to avoid self-knowledge? What is he afraid to discover about himself?
11. When Dylan leaves Croft Vendle, he thinks: "He wasn't the father I never had. . . . Abraham was the father I never had, and Rachel was the mother I never had, and Gowanus or Boerum Hill was the home I never had, everything was only itself however many names it carried" [p. 506]. In what sense is it true that Dylan grew up without a mother or a father or a home? How have these absences affected him?
12. The Fortress of Solitude is a vivid evocation of a particular period and place, as seen through the eyes of Dylan Ebdus, and while the novel does not overtly make any large statements about race relations, what does it suggest about how blacks and whites see each other? What scenes particularly dramatize the tensions between blacks and whites in Brooklyn?
13. The Fortress of Solitude includes two self-contained chapters, "Liner Note" and "Prisonaires," which function almost as set pieces. Why has Lethem included these? How are they different from the rest of the narrative? What do they reveal about Dylan?
14. In interviews, Jonathan Lethem has described the novel as structured like a musical boxed set. In what ways is this novel reminiscent of a boxed set? Why might Lethem have chosen this structure?
15. Much of The Fortress of Solitude concerns the gentrification of Gowanus into Boerum Hill. How has the neighborhood changed when Dylan returns at the end of the novel? Has the neighborhood been genuinely improved or simply turned into another playground for the trendy? What does Dylan mean when he says: "A gentrification was the scar left by a dream, Utopia the show which always closed on opening night"? [p. 508]
16. At the end of the novel, Dylan thinks of his mother pushing him into nearly all-black public schools "which were becoming only rehearsals for prison. Her mistake was so beautiful, so stupid, so American" [p. 508]. Why does Dylan think it was a mistake for Rachel to send him to public school? What does Dylan mean when he calls that mistake beautiful, stupid, and American?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Fortune Hunter
Daisy Goodwin, 2014
St. Martin's Press
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250043894
Summary
Empress Elizabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, is the Princess Diana of nineteenth-century Europe. Famously beautiful, as captured in a portrait with diamond stars in her hair, she is unfulfilled in her marriage to the older Emperor Franz Joseph.
Sisi has spent years evading the stifling formality of royal life on her private train or yacht or, whenever she can, on the back of a horse.
Captain Bay Middleton is dashing, young, and the finest horseman in England. He is also impoverished, with no hope of buying the horse needed to win the Grand National—until he meets Charlotte Baird. A clever, plainspoken heiress whose money gives her a choice among suitors, Charlotte falls in love with Bay, the first man to really notice her, for his vulnerability as well as his glamour.
When Sisi joins the legendary hunt organized by Earl Spencer in England, Bay is asked to guide her on the treacherous course. Their shared passion for riding leads to an infatuation that jeopardizes the growing bond between Bay and Charlotte, and threatens all of their futures.
This brilliant new novel by Daisy Goodwin is a lush, irresistible story of the public lives and private longings of grand historical figures. (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
Goodwin’s second novel travels the difficult protocols of Victorian-era fox hunting, as well as the even more complicated protocols of love and marriage in the era, especially for an intelligent young woman with a fortune.... Goodwin manages to take the reader deep inside the characters’ longings and flaws in a way that makes the reader root for them. An enchanting, beautifully written page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Goodwin uses finely drawn characters and intriguing plot lines to create numerous memorable scenes.... Although readers who enjoyed The American Heiress will be first in line to savor Goodwin's new novel, they will be followed quickly by others who appreciate engaging and thoughtful historical fiction.
Library Journal
Goodwin’s second novel is a luxurious indulgence for romantically inclined readers....Mingling historical fact with imaginative fiction, Goodwin writes with effortless grace, and her dialogue’s subtle wit is delightful.... Elizabeth is never less than beguiling.
Booklist
With its witty dialogue, intriguing research and cameo appearances by Queen Victoria and other royals, Goodwin’s latest is a pleasurable excursion into Downton-land complete with high-society weddings, lavish balls and an exciting, all-or-nothing horse-racing finale
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The fortune hunter of the title, of course, is Bay Middleton. What do you think of his character, and what fate do you think he deserves?
2. In her day, the Empress of Austria, or Sisi, was considered the most beautiful woman in Europe, married to one of the richest and most powerful men. In what ways do you see her position as enviable or otherwise?
3. By the time the novel opens, Sisi is in her 30s, and so worried that her beauty is fading that she refuses to sit for new portraits or to have her photograph taken. How do you regard her beauty rituals and her fears? Were you struck by the similarities between Sisi’s routine and that of a modern celebrity: the exercise, the veal, etc.?
4. While very different, both Sisi and Charlotte Baird face constraints because they are women: Sisi is defined by her husband’s position, and Charlotte, whose wealth gives her certain freedoms, is nevertheless ordered around by her aunt and her future sister-in-law. Maintaining at least the appearance of propriety is essential for both. In what ways has life improved—or not—for women in the 21st century?
5. Queen Victoria offers a different perspective on a woman with unusual power. What do you think of her in this story? How do she and Sisi reflect the privileges and/or burdens of royalty?
6. What is your view of Charlotte? Do you think that she and Bay could be happy together?
7. Daisy Goodwin has said Sisi reminds her of Princess Diana: Each was unhappily married at a very young age to a much older husband with whom she had little in common; each was idolized and hounded for her glamour; each found consolation both in affairs and in charity work. What do you think of these parallels?
8. In the love triangle here, do you see one of three the principals as the central figure, or does the focus seem equal? Do your sympathies lie with one of the characters more than the others, and do your allegiances shift in the course of the story?
9. How do you feel about the ending? Would you have wanted something different for any of the characters?
10. What role do photographs play in the story? How do pictures hide or reveal the truth?
11. Charlotte compares Caspar’s photos of the American west to her own work: “How I envy you your deserts and your endless light. We have nothing like that here, that’s why we have to create little tableaux in studios…housemaids dressed up as goddesses.” Similarly, Sisi feels the need to “escape the stifling formality of the Austrian court.” What does this say about Victorian society, and do you feel things have changed for the better or the worse?
12. The Author’s Note says: “This novel is based on fact: The cast of characters, Sisi, Bay, Charlotte, Earl Spencer, and even Chicken Hartopp are all real, even if their thoughts and feelings have been supplied by me.” What do you think of the mixture of history and fiction here? (One fascinating footnote: In real life, Lady Blanche Hozier’s daughter Clementine, whose paternity has been much debated, grew up to marry Winston Churchill.)
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Fortune is a Woman
Elizabeth A. Adler
Dell
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440211464
Summary
The three met in the aftermath of San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake—the Mandarin Lai Tsin, a runaway American heiress, and a young Englishwoman. Against all odds they made their dreams come true, building one of the world's largest trading companies and most luxurious hotels... They had only each other—and bloody secrets to bury even as they rose to dizzying heights, wary of love yet vulnerable to passion in its most dangerous forms... The Mandarin would pass his multi-billion-dollar empire only to the women in the Lai Tsin dynasty—along with one last devastating truth....
Sweeping from the turn of the century through the 1960's, from the Orient to San Francisco and New York, Elizabeth Adler has written a magnificent novel of new wealth and old privilege, family passions and secret shame, of women surviving, triumphant, in the riveting saga of romantic intrigue. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Elizabeth Adler is the internationally acclaimed bestselling author of twelve previous novels. She lives with her family in California. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Adler follows up Peach and The Rich Shall Inherit with another glitzy roller-coaster saga. Using standard rags-to-riches ingredients, she gives us a trio of Cinderellas who suffer and survive their way to fortune, romance and a predictable happy ending. Set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco and Hong Kong, the novel tells the stories of lifelong friends Francie Harrison and Annie Aysgarth and of Francie's daughter Lysandra. All three are saintly women who've been hideously mistreated by the men in their lives. Indeed, virtually every male in this novel is either a brutal monster or a weakling. Fortunately, the misused heroines all fall under the benevolent influence of a mysterious Chinese mandarin, Lai Tsin; Francie, indeed, becomes his concubine. He guides them through their troubles and bequeaths them a legacy of worldly and philosophical riches. Though Adler's historical setting is appealing, the characters are stereotypes, drawn with no shades of gray, and they never come to life. The narrative drags where the author resorts to showing, not telling, and much of the plot hangs on bizarre coincidence.
Publishers Weekly
Opium dream for shopgirls, without a pinch of grit in its 448 pages; by the author of such glitzy joys as The Property of a Lady (1990) and The Rich Shall Inherit (1989). Plot hippity-hops back and forth over a century of ties between San Francisco and Hong Kong, beginning in 1937 when mandarin Lai Tsin—San Francisco's "most mysterious, most notorious, and richest man," and "grandfather" of Lysandra Lai Tsin, who is the illegitimate daughter of Francie Harrison—dies and leaves baby Lysandra a personal fortune of $300 million (in pre-WW II dollars), plus ownership (as taipan) of Lai Tsin Corporation, a trading company worth $900 million and based in Hong Kong. Which is nice—taxwise—for six-year-old Lysandra. Francesca, her mother, is named head of the company until Lysandra turns 18. At this time, in 1937, Francie's best friend is ex-Yorkshire woman Annie Aysgarth, who has risen from poverty and is now president of Aysgarth Hotels International, a subsidiary of Lai Tsin Corp. Francie and Annie met during the San Francisco earthquake, during which Annie's lost brother Josh died—but not before impregnating Francie with Oliver. In 1906, Francie and Annie brought the poor coolie-gambler Lai Tsin great luck at poker, and he repays by taking them into his new and vastly expanding import-export business. Later, Francie has Lysandra out of wedlock with Buck Wingate, a three-time senator from California whose imperially snobbish wife Maryanne thinks he should run for president. However, Francie's horrible brother Harry, a distraught multimillionaire caught in the Depression, has the hots for Maryanne, who kills him when he starts to rape her, which leads to Buck and Francie's affair being exposed and Buck resigning his office. Then Lysandra comes of age and we discover Lai Tsin's deepest secret, that he's actually.... Never touches earth for a second.
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 Fortune is a Woman:
1. Comment on Lai Tsin's will in which he says, "throughout the years it has been proven to me many times that women are more worthy than men. Therefore I decree that women shall always carry the fortunes of the Lai Tsin family." Does the book bear this belief out? Are the women characters more honorable and trustworthy than the men? Are there any exceptions?
2. In his will the Mandarin leaves his company in the hands of an 18-year-old young woman. Annie questions his judgment when she says: "It's not right to burden a girl with all that responsibility....we don't even know...if she'll even want to run the Lai Tsin Corporation. Francie, it'll just the past all over again, she'll be a woman in a man's world. And you, of all people, know who hard that is." Given how the book turns out, is Annie right or wrong?
3. Describe the two women, Francie and Annie, in this book and their friendship to one another. On what is their devotion to one another based?
4. How would you describe the men in this book, particularly the Harrison father and son—and Annie's father? What drives their hatred of women—especially, their wives, daughters, or sister?
5. What is the relationship between Josh and Sammy. Did you believe, early on, that Josh was the "Moon Killer"? What clues led you to believe he was...or to believe that he wasn't?
6. Why does Tsai Lin feel it necessary for Francie to front his company? What happens to Francie's reputation as a result of her relationship with Tsai Lin? How do the Chinese feel about Tsai Lin's involvement with Francie? What does it say about the values of the times? To what degree, if at all, have those values or attitudes changed?
7. When Lai Tsin returns to visit his brother and to build the temple, he sees his brother debase himself for money. Lai Tsin "knew poverty only too well; he understood that it could turn men to demons selling their souls to find food and shelter for their families or opium for the pipe of oblivion." With his understanding of the demeaning effect of poverty, why does Tsai Lin still despise his brother.
8. How does her brother's death make Francie's feel? What does she say?
9. When Francie and Buck fly over to Hong Kong to visit Lysandra, Philip Chen tells Francie that she is even more beautiful than when he had last seen her. When Francie speaks of her white hairs, Philip responds, "Wisdom arrives with the white hairs, and wisdom enhances beauty." Is that attitude toward aging part of our own culture today? How is aging viewed in the Western part of the world, in the early 21st century?
10. Did Tsai Lin's secret surprise you? Can you trace all the family ties in this novel—who is related to whom?
11. Are you pleased with how the book ends, with the decision that Lysandra makes? Why or why not? Does this then fulfill Annie's fears in question #2?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Forty Rooms
Olga Grushin, 2016
Penguin Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101982334
Summary
Totally original in conception and magnificently executed, Forty Rooms is mysterious, withholding, and ultimately emotionally devastating. Olga Grushin is dealing with issues of women’s identity, of women’s choices, that no modern novel has explored so deeply.
Forty rooms is a conceit: it proposes that a modern woman will inhabit forty rooms in her lifetime. They form her biography, from childhood to death.
For our protagonist, the much-loved child of a late marriage, the first rooms she is aware of as she nears the age of five are those that make up her family’s Moscow apartment. We follow this child as she reaches adolescence, leaves home to study in America, and slowly discovers sexual happiness and love. But her hunger for adventure and her longing to be a great poet conspire to kill the affair.
She seems to have made her choice. But one day she runs into a college classmate. He is sure of his path through life, and he is protective of her. (He is also a great cook.) They drift into an affair and marriage. What follows are the decades of births and deaths, the celebrations, material accumulations, and home comforts—until one day, her children grown and gone, her husband absent, she finds herself alone except for the ghosts of her youth, who have come back to haunt and even taunt her.
Compelling and complex, Forty Rooms is also profoundly affecting, its ending shattering but true. We know that Mrs. Caldwell (for that is the only name by which we know her) has died. Was it a life well lived? Quite likely. Was it a life complete? Does such a life ever really exist? Life is, after all, full of trade-offs and choices.
Who is to say her path was not well taken? It is this ambiguity that is at the heart of this provocative novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Moscow, Russia
• Raised—Prague, Czechoslovakia
• Education—Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts; Moscow State University; Emory University
• Awards—New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award
• Currently—lives outside Washington, DC
Olga Grushin is a Russian-born award-winning writer whose work has been translated into fifteen languages.
Born in Moscow to the family of Boris Grushin, a prominent Soviet sociologist, she spent most of her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was educated at Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Moscow State University before receiving a scholarship to Emory University from which she graduated (summa cum laude) in 1993. She became a naturalized US citizen in 2002 and retains her Russian citizenship.
Grushin has worked as an interpreter for Jimmy Carter, as a cocktail waitress in a jazz bar, a translator at the World Bank, a research analyst at a Washington, D.C., law firm, and most recently an editor at Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Her first novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006), won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and for England’s Orange Award for New Writers. The New York Times chose it as a Notable Book of the Year. Both it and her second novel, The Line (2010), were among the Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of the Year (2007, 2010). In 2007, Granta named Grushin one of the Best Young American Novelists. Forty Rooms (2016) is her third novel.
Grushin now lives outside Washington, D.C., with her two children. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/5/2016.)
Book Reviews
The structure of Olga Grushin's Forty Rooms is ingeniously simple...there is enough material to warrant hours of contemplation.... The reader's impulse to grapple with the text, to wrestle it down and to raise objections or to attempt to identify her own place in the context of the story, is a sign not of weakness, but of Grushin's genius. There is no redemption story to relax into here, and no easy answers.... This novel reminds us that to pursue her dreams, a woman is working against the establishment, not with it. To the young women into whose hands I will most certainly be putting Grushin's novel, I will say this: You can do it all, but together we can create a world in which we might be able to do more. Because if we don't keep working for greater gender equality, it's not in the best interests of the current power brokers to stop us from continuing to spend more than a fair share of our lives elbow-deep in soapsuds whether we choose to or not.
Alexandra Fuller - New York Times Book Review
[An] ingenious and original conceit.... Forty Rooms is a deft, engaging novel written with rare eloquence. But a ferociously uncompromising morality play lurks within it.
Wall Street Journal
[A] child of the Moscow intelligentsia rejects a "small life consumed by happiness" in America and a life driven by "the divine standards of art." But her path veers wildly in the New World.... At the end of life, Grushin concludes that the impossible, irresistible path of art is what’s most joyful—and memorable.
Publishers Weekly
Lacking the grandeur of her previous titles despite the masterly writing (and, at times, overwriting), this work might puzzle some of Grushin's fans but will appeal to readers interested in careful portraiture of one woman's struggles. —Edward B. Cone, New York
Library Journal
(Starred review.) The tension between art and domesticity....narrated by an unnamed heroine who can see through mundane reality...into other worlds.... [The novel poses] questions that women, especially, will recognize. Honest, tender, and exquisitely crafted. A novel to savor.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Who is the narrator of this story? Through whose eyes do you see the events unfold? Is it one of the last incarnations of Mrs. Caldwell, if so, which one? Is it her friend, Olga, or the author, Olga Grushin? Who else might be telling this story?
2. From the anonymous child who becomes Mrs. Caldwell to the Olgas (both author and character), what importance can be found in the assigning of names? Is a name felt more in its presence or absence?
3. What you do you make of the apparitions that visit the protagonist? Are they figments of her imagination or a part of the collective consciousness? Are they cruel or benevolent?
4. Could the protagonist have become a great poet? And is creative success about talent, diligence, or something else?
5. Are there any choices the protagonist made that may have acted as a tipping point, or did each lead inevitably to the next?
6. If you were to write your own life story in forty rooms, where would you begin? Are there key moments you would pick out for yourself? And where did they unfold?
7. In their last conversation Apollo tells Mrs. Caldwell:
You must earn your right to say the things that truly matter—and for that, you pay in years, you pay in sweat, you pay in tears, you pay in blood. Both yours and other people’s.
Did the universe give Mrs. Caldwell opportunities, and did she squander them by seeking not to suffer? Were her prayers, especially for loved ones, selfless? Would it have been selfish to embrace their misfortune for her inspiration? And if so, is art an act of selfish appropriation or selflessness?
8. How is accomplishment defined in Forty Rooms and do you agree with these parameters?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand, 1943
Penguin Group USA
720 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452286375
Summary
When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim.
This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special Afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead. As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero—and about those who try to destroy him. (From the publisher.)
More
The Fountainhead introduces the world to architect Howard Roark, an intransigent, egoistic hero of colossal stature. A man whose arrogant pride in his work is fully earned, Roark is an innovator who battles against a tradition-worshipping society. Expelled from a prestigious architectural school, refused work, reduced to laboring in a granite quarry, Roark is never stopped. He has to withstand not merely professional rejection, but also the enmity of Ellsworth Toohey, leading humanitarian; of Gail Wynand, powerful publisher; and of Dominique Francon, the beautiful columnist who loves him fervently yet, for reasons you will discover, is bent on destroying his career.
At the climax of the novel, the untalented but successful architect Peter Keating, a college friend of his, pleads with Roark for help in designing a prestigious project that Roark himself wanted but was too unpopular to win. Roark agrees to design the project secretly on condition that it be built strictly according to his drawings. During construction, however, Roark’s building is thoroughly mutilated. Having no recourse in law, Roark takes matters into his own hands in a famous act of dynamiting. In the process and the subsequent courtroom trial, he makes his stand clear, risking his career, his love, and his life.
The Fountainhead portrays individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul; it presents the motivations and the basic premises that produce the character of an individualist or a collectivist. The novel was made into a motion picture in 1949, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, for which Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay. (Intro to Penguin edition, by Leonard Peikoff.)
Author Bio
• Also known as—Alice Rosenbaum
• Birth—February 2, 1905
• Where—St. Petersburg, Russia
• Died—March 6, 1982
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—University of Petrograd
Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision that sustained her throughout her life. At the age of nine she decided to make fiction writing her career. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she thought of herself as a European writer, especially after encountering authors such as Walter Scott and — in 1918 — Victor Hugo, the writer she most admired.
During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and — in 1917 — the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. The final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father's pharmacy and periods of near-starvation. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.
When her family returned from the Crimea, she entered the University of Petrograd to study philosophy and history. Graduating in 1924, she experienced the disintegration of free inquiry and the takeover of the university by communist thugs. Amidst the increasingly gray life, her one great pleasure was Western films and plays. Long a movie fan, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screen writing.
In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. Although she told Soviet authorities that her visit would be short, she was determined never to return to Russia. She arrived in New York City in February 1926. She spent the next six months with her relatives in Chicago, obtained an extension to her visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter.
On Ayn Rand's second day in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille saw her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra, then as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank O'Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death fifty years later.
After struggling for several years at various nonwriting jobs, including one in the wardrobe department at the RKO Corporation, she sold her first screenplay, Red Pawn to Universal Studios in 1932 and saw her first stage play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. Her first novel, We the Living, was completed in 1933 but was rejected by publishers for years, until The Macmillan Company in the United States and Cassells and Company in England published the book in 1936. The most autobiographical of her novels — it was based on her years under Soviet tyranny — We the Living was not well-received by American intellectuals and reviewers. Ayn Rand was up against the pro-communism dominating the culture during "the Red Decade."
She began writing The Fountainhead in 1935. In the character of the architect Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the kind of hero whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as "he could be and ought to be." The Fountainhead was rejected by twelve publishers but finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. When published in 1943, it made history by becoming a best seller through word-of-mouth two years later, and gained for its author lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.
Ayn Rand returned to Hollywood in late 1943 to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead, but wartime restrictions delayed production until 1948. Working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions, she began her major novel, Atlas Shrugged, in 1946. In 1951 she moved back to New York City and devoted herself full time to the completion of Atlas Shrugged.
Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. Although she considered herself primarily a fiction writer, she realized that in order to create heroic fictional characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles that make such individuals possible. She needed to formulate "a philosophy for living on earth."
Thereafter, Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy — Objectivism. She published and edited her own periodicals from 1962 to 1976, her essays providing much of the material for nine books on Objectivism and its application to the culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in her New York City apartment.
Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year, so far totaling more than twenty million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. Her vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture. (Author biography from Barnes & Noble, courtesy of The Ayn Rand Institute.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, online reviews from mainstream press. See Amazon's customer reviews for some helpful ones.)
Ayn Rand is a writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly.... [The Fountainhead] is a long but absorbing story of man's enduring battle with evil. This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.... Miss Rand has taken a stand against collectivism, "the rule of the second-hander, the ancient monster" which has brought men "to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth." She has written a hymn in praise of the individual and has said things worth saying in these days. Whether her antithesis between altruism and selfishness is logically correct or not, she has written a powerful indictment.
Lorrine Purette - New York Times (5/16/1943)
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 Fountainhead:
1. Talk about the altrusim v. selfishness, one of the novel's key issues. How do the characters (or Rand) turn those qualities on their heads?
2. Discuss the portrayal of women in the novel, specifically Dominique and Catherine. How do they compare to the novel's male characters?
3. Consider Roark's bombing of the Cortlandt Complex. Are we supposed to approve or disapprove his use of violence?
4. What are the differences between the Dean's philosophy and Roark's? Consider, for instance, how the Dean believes in traditional architecture and the desires of the client rather than innovation and artistic freedom.
5. Toohey and Roark are alike in that they are driven by the belief in adhering to one's principles. How do they differ?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Four Sisters, All Queens
Sherry Jones, 2012
Gallery Books
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451633245
Summary
Rich in intrigue and scheming, love and lust, Sherry Jones’s vibrant historical novel follows four women destined to sway the fate of nations and the hearts of kings.
Amid the lush valleys and fragrant wildflowers of Provence, Marguerite, Eleonore, Sanchia, and Beatrice have learned to charm, hunt, dance, and debate under the careful tutelage of their ambitious mother—and to abide by the countess’s motto: “Family comes first.”
With Provence under constant attack, their legacy and safety depend upon powerful alliances. Marguerite’s illustrious match with the young King Louis IX makes her Queen of France. Soon Eleonore—independent and daring—is betrothed to Henry III of England. In turn, shy, devout Sanchia and tempestuous Beatrice wed noblemen who will also make them queens.
Yet a crown is no guarantee of protection. Enemies are everywhere, from Marguerite’s duplicitous mother-in-law to vengeful lovers and land-hungry barons. Then there are the dangers that come from within, as loyalty succumbs to bitter sibling rivalry, and sister is pitted against sister for the prize each believes is rightfully hers—Provence itself.
From the treacherous courts of France and England, to the bloody tumult of the Crusades, Sherry Jones traces the extraordinary true story of four fascinating sisters whose passions, conquests, and progeny shaped the course of history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 9th
• Where—Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Montana
• Currently—N/A
Sherry Jones is perhaps best known for her controversial novels, The Jewel of Medina and The Sword of Medina, international best sellers about the life of A’isha, who married the Muslim prophet Muhammad at age nine and went on to become the most famous and influential woman in Islam. Her new book, Four Sisters, All Queens, a tale of four sisters in 13th century Provence who became queens of France, England, Germany, and Italy, came out in May 2012 from Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books. She is also publishing a novella, White Heart, about the famous French “White Queen” Blanche de Castille, as an e-book in April, also from Simon & Schuster. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Jones’s excellent new historical (after the prequel, White Heart) reimagines the world of 13th-century Europe and the dramatic true story of four sisters who each became queens. Their influential mother, Beatrice of Savoy and countess of Provence, arranges even before the girls’ births to wed them to powerful men in an effort to ensure the safety of her beloved homeland, which has long been the object of desire of warring parties. Marguerite marries King Louis IX of France, Eleonore weds Henry III of England, Sanchia becomes Queen of the Romans, and Beatrice assumes the crown as Queen of Sicily. Though their mother is thrilled to see her plans come to fruition, the new queens soon become mired in turmoil. Marguerite suffers under her overbearing mother-in-law, the White Queen; Eleonore is roundly disliked by her countrymen; Sanchia is frequently misled by her naivete; and Beatrice grows into a power-hungry villain. As the young sisters desperately try to maintain ties to one another, the political agendas of their new homes threaten to undermine the bonds of family. Jones’s impeccable eye for detail and beautifully layered plot—each sister narrates her side of the story in alternating chapters—makes this not only a standout historical, but an impressive novel in its own right, regardless of genre.
Publishers Weekly
Entertaining... Fans of historical fiction about European royalty should enjoy this well-written novel set during fascinating times. The relationship among the sisters is believable and often heartbreaking.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Beatrice’s maxim, which she tries to pass on to her daughters, is “Family comes 3rst.” Do you agree with this motto? Which queen best upholds this mantra?
2. In the prologue, Beatrice states, “A woman achieves nothing in this man’s world without careful plotting.” (p. 1) How does this statement apply to the rest of the novel? As Eleonore wonders later, is it possible for women to decide their own fate in this novel?
3. Four Sisters, All Queens is told from the perspective of all four queens. Which sister did you identify with most? Who was your favorite? Who was your least favorite? Did any of the relationships in this novel remind you of any relationships in your own life? If so, why?
4. “[Marguerite] had thought that, as queen, she would have control over her own life as well as the lives of others. Now, she thinks the opposite may be true.” (p. 53) Does being in a position of leadership allow one to have more power over others? Or does it actually serve to limit control in one’s own life? Have you ever been in a leadership position? What did you struggle with? What did you enjoy about?
5. Beatrice of Savoy and Blanche, the White Queen, are both strong matriarchs with great influence over the other characters in the novel. Compare and contrast these two powerful women.
6. Discuss the different marriages and relationships throughout the book. What motivates these unions? Love, money, power, sex? In your opinion, which relationship functioned the best? Why?
7. Similarly, as Marguerite wonders, “What is the meaning of loyalty?” (p. 279) Is there any merit to remaining faithful in this novel? How do you define loyalty? Who is the most loyal person in your life?
8. Marguerite ponders the true meaning of happiness, and if it is to be found with a man or in spite of a man. (p. 280) Which do you believe? What would you choose?
9. Eleonore wonders, “[Who] cares which kingdom has more power, which kings and queens have more lands? We 3ght and scheme for our children’s sakes and then we die, and they may lose all that we built up for them. There is nothing we can give to anyone that lasts—except love.” (pp. 400–1) Which characters would agree with her sentiment? Do you agree?
10. What is the source of each character’s power? Where do they derive their confidence and authority? How is power for women different from men?
11. Four Sisters, All Queens takes place over a period of forty years. How does each sister evolve throughout the novel?
12. Why does Beatrice force her daughters into their marriages? Did she sacrifice her daughters for her own interests, as Marguerite believes? (p. 354) Or did she truly have their benefit in mind?
13. “In this struggle to navigate a world made by men, for men, are not all women sisters?” (p. 390) Do you agree with this statement? How does it apply to thirteenth century society in contrast to present day?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Fourth of July Creek
Smith Henderson, 2014
HarperCollins
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062286444
Summary
After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.
But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
In this shattering and iconic American novel, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion, and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions. Fourth of July Creek is an unforgettable, unflinching debut that marks the arrival of a major literary talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972-73
• Where—state of Montana, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Montana; M.A., University of Texas
• Awards—PEN Emerging Writer Award; Pushcart Prize
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Smith Henderson is the recipient of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award in fiction. He was a Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University, a Pushcart Prize winner, and a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. Born and raised in Montana, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. (From the publisher.)
More
Mr. Henderson comes from a long line of Montana cowboys, sheep herders and dynamiters. He was the first person in his immediate family to attend college. His parents married in high school and his father worked as a logger. He was able to afford college because his mother died of lung disease when he was 19, leaving him with insurance money. In what he calls "a fit of pure vocational idiocy," he majored in classics, and studied Latin and Greek at the University of Montana. He took the first paying job he could get out of college at a group home for juveniles in Missoula, working 36-hour weekend shifts. Like his protagonist, Mr. Henderson worked with children who had been through "massive abuse of every kind, extreme neglect, death, murders, every dark thing you could ever think could happen happened," he said.
He left the job after a couple of years and patched together a living from odd writing jobs. He worked in internal corporate communications for Apple and wrote for the chancellor's office at the University of Texas, working on his fiction on the side. He started working as a copywriter for Wieden+Kennedy in Portland in 2010. (Excerpt from Wall St. Journal.)
Book Reviews
[T]his not-to-be-missed first novel…is a Rorschach test of sorts. It may remind readers of many different writers, even though it's such an original. Mr. Henderson has prompted comparisons to a long list of novelists who've written about grim, hardscrabble lives in eloquent prose…a mix of Richard Ford's writing style with characters by Richard Russo. I'd add that there is much of early Russell Banks in Pete's keen awareness of his failings and desperate yearning for the decency that remains just out of reach. And there are hints of [another] bolt-from-the-blue debut: David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (2008). This book is far darker…But its gripping story and shimmering sense of the natural world do bring that great debut to mind.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
[Cormac] McCarthy’s shadow may loom heavy across the prose...but the story this prose conveys, and the manner in which Henderson unfurls it, bears its own unalloyed power.... Henderson butters his characters with great gobs of compassion; only a few characters are denied extenuating circumstances for their sins and degradations.... If there’s a punching bag here, it’s the arrogance of societal strictures, which Henderson swings at by exploring the friction of the so-called greater good clashing with the individual good. As the title suggests, this is a book about freedom, and not unlike Jonathan Franzen’s novel about the same subject, it seeks to map the moral limits of freedom—that border ground where one person’s freedoms infringe upon another’s.
Jonathan Miles - New York Times Book Review
The best book I’ve read so far this year...Henderson choreographs these parts so masterfully that the novel is never less than wholly engaging… All week I was looking for opportunities to slip back into these pages and follow the trials of this rural social worker.... Henderson knows how to create the sensation that we’re being propelled through a story that’s just as poignant as it is frightening. Infused with psychological complexity and lush with the landscape of the Northwest, the novel barrels along with the chaotic demands of Pete’s job and family, from crisis to crisis to quiet scenes of despair.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Breathtaking...heartbreaking…Henderson’s immersive, colorful style makes this scenic journey worthwhile. He’s a curious kind of hard-boiled poet—part Raymond Chandler, part Denis Johnson.
Entertainment Weekly
This uneven debut, set in 1980 Montana, isn’t always able to sustain the interest of its opening sections. The first chapter introduces us to social worker Pete Snow, who has been called by the police to defuse a domestic dispute.... Snow’s efforts to help the Pearls despite the father’s hostility are the focus of the book, which is too long and features an unsatisfying ending.
Publishers Weekly
Graced with powerful characters and beautifully focused writing, Henderson's epic debut hit my desk the day a critic friend buttonholed me at an awards event to tell me that it was something special.... [I]t features social worker Pete Snow, increasingly dismayed with his job until he meets scrawny, untamed, 11-year-old Benjamin Pearl, whose crazy survivalist father is anticipating some kind of apocalypse.
Library Journal
(Starred review.)First-novelist Henderson not only displays an uncanny sense of place...he also creates an incredibly rich cast of characters, from Pete’s drunken, knuckleheaded friends to the hard-luck waitress who serves him coffee to the disturbed, love-sick survivalist. Dark, gritty, and oh so good. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
[D]eep-turning plot twists [in a book about] a man looking for meaning in his own life while trying to help others too proud and mistrustful to receive that assistance. The story goes on a bit long, but the details are just right: It's expertly written and without a false note...in imagining a rural West that's seen better days—and perhaps better people, too.
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.)
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The Fracking King
James Browning, 2014
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544262997
Summary
A striking debut novel about boarding school, hardcore Scrabble, and fracking—a new kind of environmental novel by an important voice in the debate about fracking in America.
When the tap water at the Hale Boarding School for Boys bursts into flames, people blame fracking. Life at Hale has always been fraught—the swim test consists of being thrown into the pool with wrists and ankles tied, and a boy can be expelled if he and a girl keep fewer than "three feet on the floor."
But the sight of combustible drinking water and the possibility that fracking is making Hale kids sick turn one student into an unlikely hero in the fight to stop the controversial drilling practice.
Winston Crwth, a Scrabble prodigy whose baffling last name rhymes with "truth," knows what it’s like to be "fractured," having grown up with his father in Philadelphia and his mother in California. On Winston’s comic journey to the Pennsylvania State Scrabble Championship, where he hopes to win an audience with beauty-queen-turned-governor Linda King LaRue, he matches wits with Thomasina Wodtke-Weir, the headmaster’s prematurely gray daughter and the most popular (read: only) girl at school; the state poet laureate, whose verse consists of copying out dictionary entries and restroom graffiti; and David Dark, son of the CEO of Dark Oil & Gas, the source of Winston’s scholarship money.
The Fracking King is a fantastically inventive debut about rowing crew, using all your tiles, and trying to save the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969-70
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, IUSA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.A., Johns Hopkins University
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvanai
James Browning is a spokesman and chief strategist for Common Cause, a government watchdog group. He attended Brown University and has an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. His nonfiction has been published in The Believer, The Village Voice, and elsewhere, and he is the co-author of “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets,” a series of exposes about the political expenditures of the fracking industry.
He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Elisabeth, and their two sons. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] playful debut about a serious subject: fracking.... Browning effortlessly translates his passion for environmental change into a rousing, witty, and enlightening tale of outsiders and Scrabble. That the author gets his environmental message across without sidetracking Win’s journey is a testament to his ability as a storyteller.
Publishers Weekly
In his whimsical first novel, Browning puts [his environmental] background to good use by satirizing fracking’s environmental hazards while recounting the story of precocious teenager and Scrabble fanatic Winston Win Crwth.... Browning’s clever and engaging debut, with its young Scrabble champion turned unlikely environmental advocate and timely ecological theme, is a funny and thought-provoking tale. —Carl Hays
Booklist
Probably the first novel to bring together the disparate elements of hydraulic fracturing, a struggling boarding school and tournament Scrabble.... The villains of the piece, such as they are, are the members of the Dark family..., which owns a gas and oil company that has tried to cover up the dangers of fracking.... The novel is fine as long as we’re attuned to the quirky characters, but the action remains rather precious and contrived.
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.)
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A Fraction of the Whole
Steve Toltz
Random House
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385521734
Summary
Meet the Deans . . . "The fact is, the whole of Australia despises my father more than any other man, just as they adore my uncle more than any other man. I might as well set the story straight about both of them . . ."
Heroes or Criminals? Crackpots or Visionaries? Families or Enemies?
". . . Anyway, you know how it is. Every family has a story like this one."
Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.
As he recollects the events that led to his father’s demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries—about his infamous outlaw uncle Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin’s constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains.
It’s a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a rollicking rollercoaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.
A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A., University of Newcastle
• Currently—lives in Australia
Toltz attended Knox Grammar School, Killara High School and graduated from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1994. Prior to his literary career, he lived in Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Barcelona, and Paris, variously working as a cameraman, telemarketer, security guard, private investigator, English teacher, and screenwriter.
A Fraction of the Whole, his first novel, was released in 2008 to widespread critical acclaim. It is a comic novel which tells the history of a family of Australian outcasts. The narration of the novel alternates between Jasper Dean, a philosophical, idealistic boy, who grows up throughout the novel and his father, Martin Dean, a philosopher and shut-in described at the start of the novel as "the most hated man in all of Australia". This is in contrast with Terry Dean, Jasper's uncle, whom Jasper describes as "the most beloved man in all of Australia". The novel spans the entirety of Martin's life and several years after (a range never specified in the text, but starting after World War II and ending in the early 2000s), and is set in Australia, Paris, and Thailand.
The novel has repeatedly been compared favourably to John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. A Fraction of the Whole was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Guardian First Book Award. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
First novels these days too seldom dare to raise their voices above an elegant whisper or an ironic murmur. Not so A Fraction of the Whole, a riotously funny first novel that is harder to ignore than a crate of puppies, twice as playful and just about as messy. This is not a book to be read so much as an experience to be wallowed in. Mr. Toltz’s merry chaos—a mix of metaphysical inquiry, ribald jokes, freakish occurrences and verbal dynamite booming across the page—deserves a place next to A Confederacy of Dunces in a category that might be called the undergraduate ecstatic. A Fraction of the Whole is a sort of Voltaire-meets-Vonnegut tale.
Wall Street Journal
A rich father-and-son story packed with incident, humor, and characters reminiscent of the styles of Charles Dickens and John Irving.... Occasionally, a big, sprawling first novel fights its way into print with a flourish, at which point its ambition and the eccentricities of its ‘firstness’ can become its best marketing tools. Such is the case with A Fraction of the Whole, a book that is willfully misanthropic and very funny…like Irving, Toltz makes minor characters leap off the page.... He’s a superb, disturbing phrasemaker...this long novel, which lives or dies in the brilliance of its writing, has a subtle, compelling structure.... A Fraction of the Whole soars like a rocket.
Los Angeles Times
An exuberantly funny debut novel that you should just go away and read.... There is plenty to laugh at in A Fraction of the Whole—and also, goodness knows, there is plenty of plot and the narrative pace of a puppy with attention deficit disorder. But it also has a heart.... A grand achievement and the debut of a great comic talent.
Sunday Times (UK)
Very light on its feet, skipping from anecdote, to rant, to reflection, like a stone skimming across a pond.... There’s a section about a labyrinth that you could imagine Borges writing, another about a lottery gone wrong that made me think of Vonnegut, and a strange, lovely account of childhood illness that had echoes of Garcia Marquez. In some ways it plays like a modern Arabian Nights.... The inevitability of disaster is heartbreaking.... Brilliant.
Guardian (UK)
A Fraction of the Whole is that rarest of long books–utterly worth it.... The story starts in a prison riot and ends on a plane, and there is not one forgettable episode in between…It reads like Mark Twain with access to an intercontinental Airbus....This book moves; it bucks and rocks in a world tha t feels more than a hemisphere away.... So comically dark and inviting that you have no choice but to step into its icy wake.
Esquire
Packed with plots, sub-plots, sub-sub-plots, tangents, flashbacks, diversions, philosophical wanderings and spectacular set pieces…Fuelled by brilliant ideas and driven by an original, bracing, and very funny voice.
The Age (Australia)
(Starred review.) At the heart of this sprawling, dizzying debut from a quirky, assured Australian writer are two men: Jasper Dean, a judgmental but forgiving son, and Martin, his brilliant but dysfunctional father. Jasper, in an Australian prison in his early 20s, scribbles out the story of their picaresque adventures, noting cryptically early on that "my father's body will never be found." As he tells it, Jasper has been uneasily bonded to his father through thick and thin, which includes Martin's stint managing a squalid strip club during Jasper's adolescence; an Australian outback home literally hidden within impenetrable mazes; Martin's ill-fated scheme to make every Australian a millionaire; and a feverish odyssey through Thailand's menacing jungles. Toltz's exuberant, looping narrative-thick with his characters' outsized longings and with their crazy arguments-sometimes blows past plot entirely, but comic drive and Toltz's far-out imagination carry the epic story, which puts the two (and Martin's own nemesis, his outlaw brother, Terry) on an irreverent roller-coaster ride from obscurity to infamy. Comparisons to Special Topics in Calamity Physics are likely, but this nutty tour de force has a more tender, more worldly spin.
Publishers Weekly
For those who, if they think of it at all, think of Australia as a bloated island full of Tasmanian devils, baby-devouring dingoes, and convicts, with an iconic opera house thrown in, this eagerly awaited Australian debut novel comes as further confirmation. Here the focus is the dysfunctional Dean family, which boasts the notorious Terry Dean, bank robber, cop killer, and bona fide Australian legend. Under his large and imposing shadow, his brother and his brother's son, Jasper, have both withered into reclusive, crotchety curmudgeons with more than their fair share of eccentric opinions, and Jasper is in rebellion against not only his uncle but his father as well. This is one Oedipus story told, though, with lots of snap and crackle, as well as pop. While there are no new stories, even Down Under, Jasper's progression reads like the trajectory of a gleefully crazed Roman candle across the southern skies in this sprawling, entertaining, decidedly quirky, and at times laugh-out-loud-funny romp reminiscent of John Irving's family sagas or Brocke Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Recommended for all public libraries.
Bob Lunn - Library Journal
(Starred review.) What satirical fun is found on the madcap pages of this rough-and-tumble tale.... This hilarious, sneaky smart first novel is as big and rangy as Australia.... Toltz salts it all with uproarious ruminations on freedom, the soul, love, death, and the meaning of life. This is one rampaging and irresistible debut.
Booklist
A bloated first novel from Australia. The opening promises suspense. Narrator Jasper Dean is in prison; his father's body, he confides, will never be found. The suggestion of foul play, though, is a misleading tease. Moving back in time, the father, Martin, takes over as narrator; he and Jasper switch roles throughout.... We end, exhausted.... One thing after another in a novel that wallows in excess.
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 A Fraction of the Whole?
1. How would you characterize this book? As a philosophical novel? A family saga? A comedy...or tragic comedy?
2. Steve Toltz' novel is long and packed with metaphysical ideas, strange characters, and mad-cap action. Some say its "stuffed" and "bloated." British reviewer James Wood has gone so far as to label it "hysterical realism"—which is both criticism and description. Others find the novel's screwball excesses delightfully rich and exciting. How did you experience A Fraction of the Whole?
3. Are the characters in this book sympathetic...likable? Do you care about them?
4. Describe Jasper Dean. What are his feelings toward his father? How has the father shaped the son—what affect did Martin's escapades have on Jasper? In his diaries, Martin worries his baby son "is me prematurely reincarnated." Is Martin right?
5. Martin proclaims, "I don't believe in anything." Is he right about himself...or not? What do you think of Martin?
6. Why might Toltz have chosen father and son to narrate his novel? What affect does the dual narration have on how we read the book—our understanding of it?
7. What about Anouk? What does she believe in? Why doesn't she like Martin, and yet why does she try to save him throughout the novel. What is her relationship with Jasper?
8. The novel's title is derived from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction." What does the passage mean...and how do both title and quotation relate to the novel?
9. Martin and his brother Terry are intent on solving the riddle of human happiness. Talk about the various schemes each devises—the suggestion box, the giant telescope, and the murder of corrupt sports figures. What does each scheme attempt to achieve? And why do they fail?
10. How would you describe Martin and Terry's relationship? Is Martin living in Terry's shadow?
11. What, or who, are the world's "inexorably tepid souls," and why are they the scourge of this novel?
12. How do you feel about the comment regarding God's treatment of Lot's wife:
Most of the time when God's supposed to be the hero, he comes across as the villain. I mean, look at what he did to Lot's wife....What was her crime? Turning her head? You have to admit this is a God hopelessly locked in time, not free of it; otherwise he might have confounded the ancients by turning her into a flat-screen television or at least a pillar of Velcro.
Do you find the comment offensive, humorous, insightful? How would you address the charges of God as a villain?
13. Talk about the Towering Inferno. What does it teach Jasper?
14. Talk about Jasper's high school perched on the Cliffs of Despondency—obviously a comment on the desperation of life for bullied youngsters. Is the parody effective...or does it miss the mark?
15. Talk about some of the other objects of satire and parody in this novel? What is Toltz lampooning in the 20th and 21st centuries?
16. What is this book about?
17. Have you read other works comparable to A Fraction of the Whole? Perhaps John Irving, John Kennedy Toole, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia Marquez? If so, what do any of these works have in common with Toltz's?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Fragile Beasts
Tawni O'Dell, 2010
Shaye Areheart Books
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307351685
Summary
When their hard-drinking, but loving, father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town’s matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys’ story. Candace Jack doesn’t have an ounce of maternal instinct, yet for reasons she does not even understand herself, she is compelled to offer them a home.
Suddenly, the two boys go from living in a small, run-down house on a gravel road to a stately mansion filled with sumptuous furnishings and beautiful artwork—artwork that’s predominantly centered, oddly, on bullfighting. And then there’s Miss Jack’s real-life bull: Ventisco—a regal, hulking, jet-black beast who roams the land she owns with fiery impudence.
Kyle adjusts more easily to the transition. A budding artist, he finds a kindred spirit in Miss Jack. But local baseball hero Klint refuses to warm up to his new benefactress and instead throws himself into his game with a fierceness that troubles his little brother. Klint is not just grieving his father’s death; he’s carrying a terrible secret that he has never revealed to anyone. Unbeknownst to the world, Candace Jack has a secret too—a tragic, passionate past in Spain that the boys’ presence threatens to reveal as she finds herself caring more for them than she ever believed possible.
From the muted, bruised hills of Pennsylvania coal country to the colorful, flamboyant bull rings of southern Spain, Tawni O’Dell takes us on a riveting journey not only between two completely different lands, but also between seemingly incompatible souls, casting us under her narrative spell in which characters and places are rendered with fragile tenderness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Indiana, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A. Northwest University
• Currently—lives in Pennsylvania
Tawni O'Dell is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Fragile Beasts, Sister Mine, Coal Run, and Back Roads, which was an Oprah's Book Club pick and a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. She is also a contributor to several anthologies including Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female. Her work has been translated into 8 languages and been published in 20 countries. (From Wikipedia.)
Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, O'Dell graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism. She lived for many years in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania, where she now lives with her two children and her husband, literary translator Bernard Cohen. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
It’s a pleasure to see such a gifted, ambitious writer reinvigorating the tradition of social conscience combined with personal passion that has illuminated some of the finest, most moving works in American literature.
Los Angeles Times
Fragile Beasts marks an impressive step forward for the talented O'Dell, who has broadened her horizons without abandoning her home turf.
Chicago Tribune
With deft prose, authenticity of character, and sheer tenderness, O’Dell...is the absolute master of her craft.
Denver Post
O’Dell is an accomplished writer; assured and perceptive, she is especially good with quick dialogue that captures the anger and disappointment these characters carry.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In her fourth outing, novelist O’Dell returns to Pennsylvania coal country for more dysfunctional family drama. When teenage brothers Klint and Kyle, having already been abandoned by their mother, are left orphaned by the death of their father, they’re unexpectedly taken in by an elderly, “filthy rich” recluse named Candace Jack, known for her family’s mining company, J&P Coal. Taking in the two working-class kids, Candace is reminded of her own emotional wounds (a heart long-broken by the violent death of her bullfighter fiancé), and the damaged trio grope their way toward healing amid heated cultural and generational clashes. Under Candace’s roof, likable and inquisitive Kyle begins to develop artistic skills, while sullen baseball prodigy Klint immerses himself even further in sports. When Kyle and Klint’s cold-hearted mom appears, looking to get at Candace’s money, a series of near-tragic events and terrible revelations ensue. O’Dell can overdo the sentiment, but she’s a pro at capturing dialogue, and some characters’ wisecracks are laugh-out-loud funny. Though predictable, this gritty novel is a memorable read.
Publishers Weekly
Their father's sudden, violent death leaves two teenaged brothers devastated. Troubled Klint, a gifted athlete especially close to his dad, shared a love of baseball with him; artistic Kyle also shared this bond. When their mother, who had abandoned the boys, appears at the funeral, she demands they move to Arizona with her, leaving their Pennsylvania coal country roots; the boys voice strong protests. In steps reclusive septuagenarian coal heiress Candace Jack, who decides, somewhat on a dare, to raise the brothers. Her mysterious, vague background includes a love of Spain and ownership of a fighting bull wandering over her vast property. Rocky roads are ahead for the newly created "family," but, overall, so are great rewards. Verdict: O'Dell's love for the fallen-on-hard-times coal country shines through in her fourth novel (after Sister Mine, Coal Run, and Back Roads). A unique blend of such disparate elements as baseball, bullfighting, and fine art along with O'Dell's multifaceted major and minor characters combine for intriguing vision. Her hard-hitting, well-crafted story packs a wallop. —Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA
Library Journal
In this tough and tender tale, O’Dell’s triumphant portrait of loss and rejection, sanctuary and redemption, shines with poignancy, dignity, and transcendent joy. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Eschewing the melodramatic excesses of Sister Mine (2007), O'Dell crafts a strong, moving story about a rich old lady and two poor boys who help each other overcome shattering losses. As the novel opens, Kyle and Klint Hayes' father has just been killed while driving drunk; Candace Jack's matador lover was gored to death by a bull in 1959. The 76-year-old Candace has never really recovered from the loss of Manuel Obrador. She returned to America with both the bull that killed Manuel and his teenaged sword page; now Luis serves as Candace's cook and cranky voice of reason while a descendant of Calladito roams the grounds surrounding her mansion in Centresburg, the desolate western Pennsylvania town that serves as O'Dell's Yoknapatawpha County. Readers of the author's earlier books already know that J&P Coal made the Jack family rich while it sucked the life from men like Kyle and Klint's father, poisoned the land, then shut down the mines and left the area's residents to scrabble for a living. Klint, a high-school baseball star, might escape via an athletic scholarship; Kyle doesn't know what he can do with the artistic ability that makes him a misfit in his blue-collar community. The boys' mother Rhonda split years ago, and she's happy to relinquish her sons for $15,000 from Candace, who's been persuaded by her great-niece—as well as by ornery delight in infuriating her uber-capitalist nephew—to take them in. Sensitive, observant Kyle, sophisticated, salt-of-the-earth Luis and cantankerous Candace rotate as narrators, showing the grief-stricken boys and the walled-off woman tentatively forging a healing connection until the return of monstrous Rhonda provokes a crisis. O'Dell's eye for class conflict remains as sharp as ever, but she's broadened the reach of her sympathies, tamed her taste for lurid plotting and found new depths in her subject matter and her human understanding. Not her best novel—that remains the towering Coal Run (2004), for now—but her most mature, opening new paths for this talented writer.
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 Fragile Beasts:
1. Who in this story are the "fragile beasts" of the title...and in what ways are they "beasts," as well as "fragile"?
2. Talk about the way in which this observation about bull fighting, taken from the novel's prologue, establishes the an ongoing motif throughout the novel:
[Candace] immediately embraced the almost carnal pleasure and the horror of watching a lone man using elegance and restraint to control a dangerous wild animal, to take the creature’s fear and anger and his own fear and anger and turn it into something solemn and beautiful and for one brief shining moment, something heroic for both man and beast.
3. What kind of character is Candace Jack—how would you describe her? What prompts her to take the boys in after their father's death?
4. Talk about the two brothers, Kyle and Klint, and their relationship with one another, as well as with their dead father. In what ways are the brothers different from one another?
5. What are the rumors surrounding Candace and her wild bull. What's it doing there—and can you discern the bull's thematic significance to the novel?
6. Luis says of Candace, "She's not hollow, broken, numb, or hardened; she's simply unreachable." In what way has Candace allowed the past to trap her?
7. Talk about Luis, one of the books most intriguing characters. Why is he so devoted to Candace? In what way does he claim that she is his "wife"?
8. Talk about the role that the Spanish culture plays in this story. In what way does she connect Spain with the local of the novel, Western Pennsylvania?
9. Don't you just love to hate Rhonda? What about Cam Jack?
10. Talk about the issues of class that O'Dell ferrets out in her novel—between those who once owned the mines and those who worked them.
11. What do you make of the prejudice toward scholastic achievement? Consider this sentence "Everyone I know equates being smart with being stuck up." Is that attitude peculiar to this stretch of geography...or is it prevalent in society as a whole? What is it based on?
12. What was your experience reading this work? Some reviewers have talked about its darkness, others the humor. What about the novel's ending—did you find it satisfying?
13. Have you read any of Tawni O'Dell's other novels? Is so, how does this one compare? If you haven't, are you inspired to read more of her books?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Frances and Bernard
Carlene Bauer, 2013
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
195 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544105171
Summary
A letter can spark a friendship. . . A friendship can change your life.
In the summer of 1957, Frances and Bernard meet at an artists’ colony. She finds him faintly ridiculous, but talented. He sees her as aloof, but intriguing. Afterward, he writes her a letter. Soon they are immersed in the kind of fast, deep friendship that can take over—and change the course of—our lives.
From points afar, they find their way to New York and, for a few whirling years, each other. The city is a wonderland for young people with dreams: cramped West Village kitchens, rowdy cocktail parties stocked with the sharp-witted and glamorous, taxis that can take you anywhere at all, long talks along the Hudson River as the lights of the Empire State Building blink on above.
Inspired by the lives of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, Frances and Bernard imagines, through new characters with charms entirely their own, what else might have happened. It explores the limits of faith, passion, sanity, what it means to be a true friend, and the nature of acceptable sacrifice. In the grandness of the fall, can we love another person so completely that we lose ourselves? How much should we give up for those we love? How do we honor the gifts our loved ones bring and still keep true to our dreams?
In witness to all the wonder of kindred spirits and bittersweet romance, Frances and Bernard is a tribute to the power of friendship and the people who help us discover who we are. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—state of New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Loyala College; M.A., Johns Hopkins University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Carlene Bauer was born in 1973 in New Jersey. She earned an M.A. in Nonfiction Writing from the Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars, and has worked in and around New York publishing for this last long while. Her work has been published in the Village Voice, Salon, Elle, New York Times Magazine, and on the website of n + 1. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, and hopes that you don't hold that against her. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A story of conversion, shattered love and the loss of faith, recalling 20th century masters like Graham Greene and Walker Percy…Frances is refreshingly down-to-earth in her spiritual convictions…Bauer gets right… the shifting balance of literary ambition and emotional need, Yeats’s old choice between perfection of the life or of the work. Bauer is herself a distinctive stylist who can write about Simone Weil or Kierkegaard with wit and charm. A fresh voice thinking seriously about what a religiously committed life might have felt like and perhaps, in our own far-from tranquil period, might feel like again
Christopher Benfey - New York Times Book Review
As Frances and Bernard explore the big questions about faith and a life dedicated to others versus one’s art, their correspondence grows enervatingly self-involved.... The writing has moments of quietly bracing insight, as these two fiercely particular individuals attempt to navigate the other.... It seems a pity that having taken on such potentially rich literary personalities, Ms. Bauer so stringently limits her own scope. The book’s pleasures do not, in the end, compensate for its timidity. Frances and Bernard remains, unlike its protagonists, entirely well behaved.
Claudia La Rocco - New York Times
Bauer…writes with authority and gusto about issues of faith. The prose here is exquisite, winding between narrative momentum and lofty introspection. And she employs the epistolary form nimbly, providing an intimate, uncluttered space for her characters to develop. The most unexpected pleasure of this period love story is spending time in the company of people who are engaged in the edifying pursuit of living as Christians—a good reminder that, regardless of the current upheaval in the church, the big questions are still worth asking.
Teresa Link - Washington Post
Graceful and gem-like …. Through Bauer’s sharp, witty, and elegant prose , [Frances and Bernard] become vibrant and original characters …. These are not your typical lovebirds, but writers with fierce and fine intellects.… We are reminded of the power of correspondence — the flirtation of it, the nervousness, the delicious uncertainty of writing bold things and then waiting days, weeks, or even months for a reply. After finishing this sweet and somber novel, we might sigh and think, "It's a shame we don’t write love letters anymore"— before stopping for a moment to marvel at the subtlety of what Bauer has wrought out of history and a generous imagination, and being thankful that someone still is.
Boston Globe
(3 stars.) Bauer's first novel is a moving tale about kindred spirits… It showcases an era in which literature and intellect were celebrated; its epistolary form lends itself to a delightful exchange of ideas as the protagonists dance with the possibility of love—and face its disappointments.
People
(Starred review.) Frances and Bernard are writers. She’s a novelist who studied at Iowa, Catholic, a bit prim, but tart-tongued. He’s a poet, descended from Puritans but a convert to Catholicism, prone to fits of mania. They meet in the late 1950s in a writer’s colony and become friends. If this sounds like Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, it should: Frances and Bernard are their fictionalized avatars.... Bauer’s debut novel (after her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl) is well written, engrossing, and succeeds in making Frances and Bernard’s shared interest in religion believable and their relationship funny, sweet, and sad. A lovely surprise.
Publishers Weekly
In the late 1950s, over the course of one long lunch at a writer's workshop, Frances and Bernard begin a journey of love and loss. They banter about writing and the workshop's limitations, and, while falling in love, they struggle with the meaning of religion and the nature of friendship. In the end, their relationship is tested to the limits when Bernard suffers a manic episode.... This remarkable method of storytelling provides snapshots of the events that shape the story. —Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Lib., Providence
Library Journal
[A] debut novel of stunning subtlety, grace, and depth...Bauer’s use of the epistolary form is masterful as she forges a passionately spiritual, creative, and romantic dialogue between characters based on two literary giants famous for their brilliant letters, Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell.... They begin as friends sharing their thoughts and feelings about the church and writing and gradually, cautiously on Frances’ part, venture into love.... Bauer is phenomenally fluent...composing dueling letters of breathtaking wit, seduction, and heartbreak.
Booklist
Debut novelist Bauer pens an epistolary novel whose protagonists lead insular, self-absorbed and very dull lives..... There's no doubt Bauer is well-educated and passionate about her religious views, her love of literature and her characters, but her attempts to create stimulating spiritual and intellectual dialogue feel forced. The characters are too wrapped up in themselves and totally ignore anything outside their narrow personal spheres. How can they not once mention one word about the space race, Elvis, the Beatles, JFK's assassination or Vietnam (just to name a few of the social and political events that occurred) during their 11 years of correspondence? Disappointing.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Authors often quote other authors to create a touchstone that hooks the reader. Bauer quotes Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “So, I have written you a love letter, oh, my God, what have I done!” What questions does this quotation cause you to ask? What have you ever done that would spark a similar reaction?
2. In an interview conducted by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Bauer explained why she chose to write Frances and Bernard in an epistolary format:
After a draft using the third person omniscient, I had the realization that if I wrote the novel in letters, the book would consist of two very strong voices in a struggle and you would feel the struggle more keenly, I hope, because of the intimacy of the form.
Do you agree with Bauer’s rationale? Are letters more personal?
3. While the novel transitions between Frances and Bernard’s letters, the author also develops other characters. What do these other letters allow Bauer to create? How would the story have been different if Bauer had provided only the letters between Frances and Bernard?
4. Bauer’s catalyst for this book was a “What if... ?” notion. Robert Lowell (Bernard) did meet Flannery O’Connor (Frances) at a writing conference; however, Bauer’s novel is fictional except for a few fleeting moments. Bauer has said she “borrowed quite a bit of their temperaments and views.” Knowing that these two authors actually met, does the extrapolation of their love story seem more real and plausible? How much truth did Bauer weave into the letters? Research the life of Lowell and O’Connor. Are there other moments in their lives that add verisimilitude to the fictional account?
5. After Francis and Bernard meet at a writers’ colony, they each tell a friend about their impression of the other. What do you think of Frances’s impression of Bernard? What is Bernard’s first impression of Frances? What do these first impressions foreshadow? How important are first impressions?
6. Bernard’s first letter to Frances is short, but he does ask one profound question: Who is the Holy Spirit to you?” If you had to pick a topic to discuss with someone you would like to know better, what topic would you choose? Why?
7 If this situation had occurred today instead of in the 1950s, how might the novel have been different? The same? What significant developments would alter the pace and mood?
8. In one of his early letters Bernard writes,
In January a man crawls into a cave of hopelessness; he hallucinates sympathies catching fire. Letters are glaciers, null frigates, trapping us where we are in the moment, unable to carry us on toward truth.
What do you think of Bernard’s thought? What paradox is created? How would technology today change this perspective?
9. Bernard and Frances begin an exchange comparing the literature they read as children. What do these titles reveal about them? Compare their lists with what you read as a child. How are the lists different? Why?
10. After seven and a half months, Bernard closes his letter with “Love (may I), Bernard.” Is his declaration made too soon? How long does it take Frances to express her love? What do the timing and format of the declarations say about each character?
11. “I can’t even teach! I had to, when I was at Iowa, but I was not very good at hiding my displeasure at mental sleepiness and mediocrity” (39). Compare past and present ideas about education, students, and learning. How has education changed? Are students better prepared today? Are students more or less interested in learning?
12. After a visit to Frances, Bernard writes a short letter with this final line: “Please do not ever disappear from me” (47). What do you think of Bernard’s plea? Is it sincere? Desperate?
13. Bernard writes,
I can’t stand mysteries. In the same way I can’t stand science fiction. Why pretend we’re somewhere else? Forensics is a feint. Why distract ourselves from the eternal questions with set dressing? Salad dressing (86).
Do you agree with Bernard’s assessment of these types of literature? What type of literature do you think is most rewarding? Why?
14. Bernard tells Francis,
Your face says so much in so little time, you let everything you’re thinking bloom upon your face, and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather watch than you pass through five moods in five minutes. What glorious weather (87).
Would you take these comments as a compliment or an insult? Explain.
15. Claire tells Frances she is the “last stanza of Keat’s ode—Cold Pastoral—when you should be lolling around at the first—Wild Ecstasy (121). Read “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by Keats. What do you think of Claire’s comparison? What is she telling Frances about love? Do you agree?.
16. Why does Frances doubt Bernard’s love for her? Is it something about Frances? Is she correct to be wary about Bernard’s love?
17. How is the theme of unrequited love relevant to the lives of Frances and Bernard? Are there other stories of unrequited love you could compare to Frances and Bernard? How are they similar? Different?
18. Perhaps nothing is more tragic than a love filled with regret. How is love like this for Frances? For Bernard? Is their inability to finally love each other just a matter of timing, or do you think they were never destined to be together?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Francesca's Kitchen
Peter Pezzelli, 2006
Kensington Publishing
340 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780758213273
Summary
No one writes about Italian-American families with the humor, warmth, and heart of Peter Pezzelli. Now, with Francesca’s Kitchen, he delivers another winning novel about how much we need the closeness of family—even if we don’t know it.
Where There’s Food, There’s Family.
For years, Francesca Campanile was the queen of her home. Standing in her Rhode Island kitchen, making sauce from sun-ripened tomatoes, dropping in basil from her garden, and adding fresh onion, Francesca dispensed advice as liberally as she did the garlic, arguing nonstop with her son and two daughters.
It was wonderful.
But now, her children and their children have moved away. And for the widowed Francesca, no longer having a family around to pester, annoy, guide, love, harangue and, of course, cook for, makes her feel useless. Who is she without them? What she needs is another family that needs her, and when she sees Loretta Simmons’s ad in the Providence paper for a part-time nanny, she’s sure she’s found it. All the single mom wants is someone to fill in for a few hours a day. But it’s obvious to Francesca that Loretta and her kids need more—a lot more. Loretta’s struggling to make ends meet. Every man she brings home is a disaster. And her kids could definitely use some guidance—and a little lasagna, frankly. In these frazzled, disconnected people, Francesca senses a hunger and loneliness as deep as her own. It’s time for Francesca to work her magic—if she can—and the best place to start is the kitchen...
Funny and moving, with a heroine to adore, Francesca’s Kitchen is a delicious story about sharing love, life, advice, and, above all, food. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 28, 1959
• Where—Providence, Rhode Island, USA
• Education—B.A., Wesleyan University
• Currently—lives in Narragansett, Rhode Island
Peter Pezzelli was born and raised in Rhode Island. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he lives with his wife, two children and their dog in Rhode Island where, most days, he is busy at work on his next novel. Every Sunday, however, if he’s not riding his bike, you’ll find him and his family at the dinner table, enjoying a plate of rabes and sausage, or a nice fritatta, or some other favorite Italian dish cooked up by his wife. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A warmhearted novel, perfect for an autumn evening in front of the fire.
Litchfield Enquirer
Pezzelli (Home to Italy) returns with another tale of an everyday Italian-American family, this one an empty nest. Mamma and all-around good egg Francesca Campanile, widowed with children and grandchildren all elsewhere, is floating aimlessly in her Providence, R.I., house. When she decides what she needs is to be needed, Francesca answers the babysitter-wanted ad of Loretta Simmons, a single mother working full-time. Pezzelli nicely renders Loretta's anxieties as she first rejects, and then, out of desperation, hires Francesca, who is not the student-type sitter she'd imagined. He's also lovely on Francesca's reminiscing about husband Leo and on the mutual sniffing-out processes as Francesca parses Loretta's harried home, and neglected children Penny and Will slowly learn to trust Francesca. Francesca's adult son Joey then unexpectedly returns to the nest. He meets Loretta, sparks fly, and suddenly Francesca isn't certain any of this was such a good idea. Most of the action happens in kitchens: home cooking, good pasta and traditional family values conquer all in this amusing and touching story.
Publishers Weekly
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 Francesca's Kitchen:
1. How well is Francesca dealing with being an empty nester? How helpful are her friends...and what does her priest tell her? If she were your friend, what would you advise her? If you are "of an age" and also alone, can you relate to Francesca's circumstances?
2. How would you describe Francesca as a character? Do you know someone like her?
3. Why doesn't Francesca tell her children about her new job? What is she afraid of? If you were in her situation, would you do likewise? Or if your mother were in the same situation, how would you feel?
4. What does Francesca think about Loretta's household?
5. Is Loretta's situation typical of full-time working mothers or not? What are Loretta's anxieties regarding her life...and her initial anxieties regarding Francesca?
6. Talk about Penny and Will. Why do they initially distrust Francesca? How does Francesca first go about winning them over—and eventually changing the household for the better?
7. Consider the relationship between the two women, young and old. What eventually draws them together? What do they come to learn in the process of their budding relationship?
8. Do you enjoy the kitchen scenes and Francesca's approach to cooking? What about the recipes—have you tried them or do you intend to? How do they compare to your own recipes... or you own way of cooking?
9. Were you expecting the romance between Joey and Loretta to develop? When Joey returns why does Francesca begin to develop reservations about what she's doing?
10. In an age where the majority of women are in the workforce, and where the nuclear family has all but dissolved, what do you make of this story with it's emphasis on the traditional values regarding home and family? Do you find it out-dated...or a sort of "cautionary tale" about what is lacking in many modern households?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, 1818
Penguin Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780141439471
Summary
The world’s most famous work of horror fiction: a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.
Mary Shelley’s timeless gothic novel presents the epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness.
How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror.
Based on the third edition of 1831, this Penguin Classics edition, with an introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle, contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s preface to the first edition. It also includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with "A Fragment" by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori’s "The Vampyre: A Tale." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 30, 1797
• Where—London, England, UK
• Death—February 1, 1851
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—home tutored
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (nee Godwin) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).
She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
After Wollstonecraft's death less than a month after her daughter Mary was born, Mary was raised by Godwin, who was able to provide his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his own liberal political theories. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbour, with whom, as her stepmother, Mary came to have a troubled relationship.
In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father’s political followers, the then married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and traveled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.
In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley.
In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that was to kill her at the age of 53.
Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements.
Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837).
Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–46), support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life.
Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/24/2016.)
Discussion Questions
1. The horror story is just as popular today as it was in Shelley’s early nineteenth century England. What is the appeal of this genre? Discuss elements from Frankenstein that parallel characteristics of modern horror tales such as Stephen King’s, or contemporary films such as Nightmare on Elm Street. What are the effects of these elements on the audience, and how might that explain our fascination?
2.Dr. Frankenstein finds himself unable to "mother" the being he creates. Why does Shelley characterize Victor in this way? What does this choice say about the role of women during Shelley’s era? Discuss the significance of parent-child relationships and birth references throughout the novel.
3. Dreams and nightmares play a recurrent role throughout Shelley’s novel. Trace the use of dreams throughout the book, with emphasis on how they relate to changes in Victor’s character.
4. Why are there so many references to sickness and fever in Frankenstein? Trace these references throughout the novel. What broader theme might Shelley be expressing?
5. Re-visit some of your pre-reading activities, such as the journal entry on the "Philosopher’s Stone" and the anticipation guide on parenting. Now that you have completed Frankenstein, have your views changed? Why or why not?
6. Ice is a prevalent image and an integral plot device in Shelley’s Frankenstein. How is it appropriate that the novel ends in ice? What is the symbolism of ice for the characters and the story?
7. In his afterword in the Signet Classics edition of Frankenstein, Harold Bloom asserts that "all Romantic horrors are diseases of excessive consciousness, of the self unable to bear the self." Does this Romantic characteristic apply to Victor and his treatment of the creature? Explain. Consider the fact that Victor never gives the creature a name.
8. Place Frankenstein’s creature in modern times. Suppose he had a family that raises him, includes him, and even enrolls him in school. How might today’s society treat Victor’s creature differently? How would it mimic the time period of the novel?
9. Consider the character of Justine Moritz. While her story only takes two chapters of Shelley’s novel, her role as a secondary character is significant. What is Shelley’s purpose in telling Justine’s story? What truths about her time is Shelley revealing?
10. The patriarchal society of Frankenstein is one in which men pursue their goals against hopeless odds. In light of this work ethic, is Robert Walton a failure when he turns his ship around at the end of the novel? How would Victor Frankenstein answer this question? What would Mary Shelley say? What do you think?
(Questions from A Teachers Guide issued by Signet Classics.)
A Free Man of Color: (Benjamin January series #1)
Barbara Hambly, 1997
Random House
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553575262
Summary
Benjamin January has lately returned to New Orleans from Paris, where he's made his home for the last 16 years. In Paris, January was a surgeon; in New Orleans, his life is constrained by a rigid set of rules that control his every move. He is known as a "free man of color," but in 1833, that freedom is tenuous at best.
January has found a position playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans, where the Blue Ribbon Ball of this year's Carnival caps the season's revelry. The Blue Ribbon Ball, in New Orleans's strict caste system, is the quadroon ball, where the light-skinned, beautiful daughters of colored society dance with their white "protectors"—while their protectors' wives and families are at the subscription ball in the Theatre next door. From the safety of his piano bench, January is able to watch and comment upon the goings-on. But that detachment doesn't last.
The most beautiful—and the most poisonous—belle of the ball, the infamous Angelique Crozat, has infuriated everyone present, from the young suitor whose stutter she has publicly mocked, to the girls whose dresses she has purposefully made somewhat less than beautiful—including the widow of her late protector, who has violated every caste rule in order to confront her.
When Angelique is discovered, in a parlor of the Salle, strangled to death, January becomes embroiled in a pursuit of the killer—only to discover that the authorities are investigating him. Now he must run for his life, and find the culprit before he is caught and enslaved—or hung. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 28, 1951
• Born—San Diego, California, USA
• Raised—Montclair, California
• Education—University of California, Riverside
• Awards—Locus Award for Best Horror Novel; Lord Ruthven
Award for fiction
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Barbara Hambly is an award winning and prolific American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. Her writing includes novels occurring within worlds of her own creation (generally occurring within an explicit multiverse), as well as within previously existing mythos (notably Star Trek and Star Wars).
Hambly was born in San Diego, California and grew up in Montclair, California. Her parents, Edward Everett Hambly Sr. and Florence Moraski Hambly, are from a coal-mining town in eastern Pennsylvania. She has an older sister, Mary Ann Sanders, and a younger brother, Edward Everett Hambly Jr. In her early teens, Hambly read and was transfixed by J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and affixed images of dragons to her bedroom door. She early-on became interested in costumery, and has been a long-time participant in Society for Creative Anachronism activities. In the mid-1960s, the Hambly family spent a year in Australia.
Hambly has a Masters in Medieval History from the University of California at Riverside, completing her degree in 1975 and spending a year in Bordeaux as part of her studies. Her first novel to be published was Time of the Dark in 1982 by Del Rey. Previous to becoming a writer, Hambly chose occupations that allowed her time to write; all of her novels contain a biography paragraph with a litany of jobs familiar to her readers—high school teacher, model, waitress, technical editor, all-night liquor store clerk, and Shotokan karate instructor. Hambly served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1994 to 1996. Her works have been nominated for many awards in the fantasy and horror fiction categories, winning a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, Those Who Hunt the Night (1989) (released in the UK as Immortal Blood) and the Lord Ruthven award for fiction for its sequel, Travelling With the Dead (1996).
Hambly was married for some years to fellow science fiction writer George Alec Effinger before his death in 2002. She now lives in Los Angeles. Hambly speaks freely of suffering from seasonal affective disorder, which was undiagnosed for years.
Fantasy
Given Hambly's diverse portfolio, there are only a few themes that run throughout all of her novels.
She has a penchant for unusual characters within the fantasy genre, such as the menopausal witch and reluctant scholar-lord in the Winterlands trilogy, or philologist secret service agent in the vampire novels.
Her writing is filled with rich descriptions and actors whose actions bear consequences for both their lives and relationships, suffusing her series with a sense of loss and regret; Hambly's characters experience the pain of frustrated aspirations to a degree that is uncommon in most fantasy novels.
Though using many standard clichés and plot devices of the fantasy genre, her works depart from the norm through an exploration of the ethical implications of the consequences of these devices, and what their impact is for the characters, were they real people. In avoiding the "...easy consolatory self-identification of genre fantasy" (p. 449) and refusing to let her work be guided more explicitly by conventions and the desires of her audience, Hambly may have missed out on the remunerative success and acclaim that she is due.
Although magic exists in many of her settings, it is not used as an easy solution but follows rules and takes energy from the wizards. The unusual settings are generally rationalized as alternative universes.
Hambly heavily researches her settings, either in person or through books, frequently drawing upon her degree in medieval history for background and depth.
Benjamin January Mysteries
The series, beginning with A Free Man of Color, follows Benjamin January, a brilliant, classically educated free colored surgeon and musician living in New Orleans during the belle epoque of the 1830s, when New Orleans had a large and prosperous free colored demimonde. January was born a slave but freed as a young child and provided with an excellent education; he is fluent in several classical and modern languages and thoroughly versed in the whole of classical Western learning and arts. Although trained in Paris as a surgeon, he has returned to Louisiana to escape the memory of his dead Parisian wife. As he is a very dark-skinned black man, in Louisiana he cannot find work as a surgeon. Instead, he earns a modest living by his exceptional talent and skill as a musician.
Each title is an entertaining murder mystery with a complex plot and well-developed characters, and each explores many aspects of French Creole society. However, most tend to emphasize some particular element of antebellum Louisiana life, such as Voodoo religion (Graveyard Dust), opera and music (Die Upon a Kiss), the annual epidemics of yellow fever and malaria (Fever Season), fear of miscegenation (Dead and Buried), or the harsh nature of commercial sugar production (Sold Down the River). (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In her breakout from fantasy and Star Wars novels, Hambly (Mother of Winter) chronicles the adventures of piano teacher and surgeon Ben January, a free man of color. The setting, 1833 New Orleans, is vivid and ornate. Riverboat dandies and roughshod frontiermen rub elbows with dueling gentlemen of the landed aristocracy as their splendidly gowned wives and colored mistresses celebrate Mardi Gras, oblivious to the squalor, fever and plague around them. Social and sexual mores are lax. Racial bigotry is the norm in a society that classifies people according to an elaborate scale of color and bloodline (octoroon, quadroon, musterfino, etc.). The plot is a whodunit involving the murder of Angelique Crozat, a beautiful but grasping octoroon who was the ex-mistress of a recently deceased Creole (white) planter. Back home after 16 years in Paris, January intervenes on behalf of Madeleine Dubonnet, a former piano student recently widowed by Arnaud Trepagier, the murdered woman's former patron. For his trouble, the ebony-skinned January becomes an unwitting scapegoat of the influential white suspects. Menaced by ruthless cutthroats, he must risk his freedom to absolve himself. Hambly pays rich attention to period detail fashion, food, manners, music and voodoo. Her characters, however, speak and think with decidedly modern accents, a departure from period verisimilitude that's easily justified on grounds of rhythm and pace. The tale lacks some of the moral gravity implied by the title, but it works as an escapist entertainment flavored liberally with the sights, textures, sounds and tastes of a decadent city in a distant time.
Publishers Weekly
With this historical novel, Hambly departs from her usual work in the sf/fantasy genre (e.g., Traveling with the Dead). Her new work is set in 19th-century Louisiana Creole society, where it was customary for a man to have a wife and also to keep a mistress in her own house. Benjamin January, a free Creole with dark brown skin, has returned to this society after living in Paris for more than a decade. He is trained as a surgeon, but in Louisiana, he makes his living playing the piano. Soon he is the main suspect in the death of a wealthy man's young mistress, found murdered at a ball. January spends the rest of the book gathering evidence in his defense with the help of his sisters and a host of other colorful characters he encounters on the run. The result is a complicated mystery that could have used more romantic involvement. —Shirley Coleman, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
A few suspenseful moments notwithstanding, this isn't an action-packed or suspenseful whodunit. Rather, it's a richly detailed, telling portrait of an intricately structured racial hierarchy, which was to leave its mark on everyone—from Ben January to the white woman whose life he ultimately saves. —Stephanie Zvirin
Booklist
Once again exercising her talent for gold stained description, Hambly moves from a stylish fin de siècle tale of Continental vampirism (Traveling with the Dead, 1995) to an equally stylish romantic suspenser set in New Orleans. The author focuses on the delicate, twilit world of color in New Orleans in the 1830s, striving to capture both the city's exotic strangeness and an absolute sense of physical reality. Despite rapt storytelling, though, Hambly's prose shows less care than her research, being replete with tired phrases ("crimson with rage," etc.). After 16 years abroad, widower Benjamin January, a very dark Creole, returns from Paris having earned his degree as a physician and, for Carnival, takes up playing piano in the band for the Blue Ribbon Ball at the Salle d'Orleans. This is the ball at which white gentlemen meet their mistresses of various skin shades, having parked their wives at the nearby Theatre d'Orleans. When Benjamin spots a former piano student, the virtuous, newly widowed, pure white Madame Madeleine Trepagier (nee Dubonnet), at the wrong ball, he tries to save her from disgrace. She's there to recover her family jewels from the city's worst, most malicious woman of color, Angelique Crozat, mistress of the late Armand Trepagier. But Angelique is strangled, robbed, and stuffed into a closet before Madeleine can talk with her. The murder investigation plunges us into the tangled nature of race relations in New Orleans, made even more complex by the fact that the free colored folk there now have to deal with the recently arrived imperial Americans, who don't recognize (as the French, the founders of the city, did) a colored entitlement to civil rights. What does it mean that the dead Angelique was wearing Madeleine's own handsewn white dress when she died? A sharp portrait of curiously nuanced class divisions transforms Hambly's latest into something far more than the modest melodrama it might otherwise have been.
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 A Free Man of Color:
1. What is the significance of the book's title? In what way is it ironic?
2. What does Benjamin January find when he returns to America from Paris? For a man of color, how does Parisian culture differ from New Orleans culture? Has America changed in Benjamin's 16-year absence...or has he been changed by Europe?
3. Why is it important to the novel's plot that Benjamin be an outsider? As a writer, why might Barbara Hambly have placed him in Paris for 16 years prior to the beginning of the story?
4. In what ways do the newly arrived Americans differ from the older residents of New Orleans in their treatment of African-Americans.
5. Talk about the social hierarchy among people of color in New Orleans. What is the terminology used to describe those social distinctions?
6. Are you appalled by the quadroon balls—and the practice, commonplace among wealthy Creole men, of keeping a mistress? How precarious a life is it for the "placee"? How would you feel as the wife left on the plantation?
7. What made Angelique Crozat the most feared—and despised—mistress in New Orleans? What gave her power? What social code does Madame Madeleine violate in attending the quadroon ball to confron Angelique?
8. How and why is the murder evidence manipulated so that it points to Benjamin?
9. In mystery stories, clues are slowly revealed and sometimes lead readers (and characters) astray; twists and turns confound our expectations and serve to build suspense. As a mystery, does this novel deliver? Is it a suspenseful page-turner? Is the ending predictable...or surprising?
10. Are you more intrigued by the historical milieu—social and political—that Barbara Hambly limns for us or by the mystery itself? Which aspect of the novel was more gripping for you—Benjamin's predicament, as a good man caught in an evil world, or bringing Angelique's killer to justice?
11. Does the author do a good job of bringing antebellum New Orleans to life? Has she created a near palpable experience of time and place? What about her characters? Do you find them convincing and well-developed...or shallow and not particularly believable?
12. This is the first installment in the Benjamin January series. Does this book make you want to read the others? Why/why not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Free Men
Katy Simpson Smith, 2016
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062407597
Summary
From the author of the highly acclaimed The Story of Land and Sea comes a captivating novel, set in the late eighteenth-century American South, that follows a singular group of companions—an escaped slave, a white orphan, and a Creek Indian—who are being tracked down for murder.
In 1788, three men converge in the southern woods of what is now Alabama.
Cat, an emotionally scarred white man from South Carolina, is on the run after abandoning his home. Bob is a talkative black man fleeing slavery on a Pensacola sugar plantation, Istillicha, edged out of his Creek town’s leadership, is bound by honor to seek retribution.
In the few days they spend together, the makeshift trio commits a shocking murder that soon has the forces of the law bearing down upon them. Sent to pick up their trail, a probing French tracker namecard Le Clerc must decide which has a greater claim: swift justice, or his own curiosity about how three such disparate, desperate men could act in unison.
Katy Simpson Smith skillfully brings into focus men whose lives are both catastrophic and full of hope—and illuminates the lives of the women they left behind.
Far from being anomalies, Cat, Bob, and Istillicha are the beating heart of the new America that Le Clerc struggles to comprehend. In these territories caught between European, American, and Native nations, a wilderness exists where four men grapple with the importance of family, the stain of guilt, and the competing forces of power, love, race, and freedom—questions that continue to haunt us today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1985-86
• Where—Jackson, Mississippi, USA
• Education—B.A., Mount Holyoke College; M.F.A. Bennington College; Ph.D., University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Currently—lives in New Orleans, Louisiana
Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She attended Mount Holyoke College and received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has been working as an adjunct professor at Tulane University and lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Books
2013 - We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835.
2014 - The Story of Land and Sea
2016 - Free Men
(Author bio adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
With this collage of experiences twisted together and soaked in blood, Smith cuts to the bone of our national character. Then, as now, for all its violence and desperation, it’s noble and inspiring, too.
Washington Post
[A] brilliant, wild ride…. Not only does Smith step boldly into the terrain of the classics of the American canon, her novel feels like one of those classics. Smith has succeeded in writing a novel of American masculinity that deserves comparison with Cormac McCarthy, Jim Harrison and Herman Melville.
Jackson Clarion-Ledger
[G]limpses into a vanished but fully realized world, one which has completely engaged us by [the] novel’s satisfying end.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
We are lucky to be in a position to follow an amazing author at the start of her publishing career…. Smith applies her close attention to historical subjects, a feel for evocative language and the undertone of a woman’s longing and adds to that structured suspense and epic ambition.
Asheville Citizen-Times
Free Men marries exhaustive research into the time period with effortless prose and insight into her characters that makes a story from several centuries ago feel immediate.
Huffington Post
Set in 1788 and drawing from a historical incident, Smith’s searching second novel probes connection and isolation, forgiveness and guilt.... [T]his novel evokes the complexity of a fledgling America in precise, poetic language. Though likely too slow-paced for some readers, it is rich with insights about history and the human heart.
Publishers Weekly
[I]lluminating.... An uncommon story of three men on the run as well as a complex tale about freedom of the individual and justice in society. There's much to ponder after reading the last page. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal
Smith deftly evokes the swamp heat, fetid woods, and pitiless inhabitants of a barely settled region of the nascent United States.... Despite crisp, vivid prose, the exciting premise becomes bogged down by the multiple narrators, whose voices blend until they are too similar to distinguish, while their complicated back stories become too crowded.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does the setting of the novel affect the actions of the characters? How might their stories unfold differently in another place or time?
2. Le Clerc is fascinated and confused by the bond among the three fugitives. Why do they feel connected, and why do they decide to stay together after the events at the creek?
3. For Le Clerc, "disorder was intoxicating" and "flashes of the undomesticated soothed [him]." What kind of upbringing is he reacting against, and why does he believe he'll be more fulfilled in America?
4. Bob's mother countered their captivity as slaves by telling stories "like they were rare sugar." How might such storytelling help during extreme, unjust hardship? What roles can memory and imagination play with making sense of our lives?
5. Throughout his life, Bob finds comfort in incessant talking, even when void of much truth or meaning. Why has he developed this habit? What might he mean later in his life when he says that "talking is how to cross over all the holes in the world"?
6. Beck is an enslaved woman who had "given up...having any feeling again that even tasted like love." In what ways is Bob influenced by her rejection of him? In what significant ways is his wife Winna similar or different? What lessons does he learn about the shape love takes in slavery?
7. For their daughters Delphy and Polly, Bob wants freedom while Winna wants safety. In a situation where these are mutually exclusive, which is more important? Why?
8. How is Cat's tragic upbringing similar to or different from the childhoods of Bob, Istillicha, or even Le Clerc? How do these formative years shape their sense of the world?
9. Cats gruesome experience working as a medical assistant taught him that "no man is never hurt" and to be "precious toward [his] body." How do these ideas influence his behavior and decision-making?
10. How is it that Cat is the least guilty of wrongdoing and yet believes he's the most deserving of punishment and retribution?
11. Istillicha, in his constant arranging of leaves and sticks, believes that in life "there was little to control besides debris." What might this mean? What does the idea imply about how to live one's life?
12. On the verge of his first tribal battle, Istillicha tells himself that "to bend the paths of little beings to your own vision" is the "peak of all living." To what extent is this true or not? What role has such an idea played in human history? Does Istillicha's belief change as he gains more experience?
13. Istillicha believes that power comes only from violence or money. Would the other men agree? What might be other significant sources of power?
14. How do three fugitives and even Le Clerc justify their own acts of violence and harm?
15. Many characters in the novel are literally or psychologically "orphaned." What is central to this experience? How do these feelings of isolation or abandonment affect each of the characters? Is a lack of attachment the same as freedom?
16. In what ways do the women in the book make different choices about their lives than the men do? Why might this be? What social and cultural factors in this era make women's lives even more constrained, and how do they react against this?
17. Consider the old woman who lives alone in the woods. What important qualities does she possess? How does her treatment of each of the men affect them? She refers to Bob, Cat, and Istillicha, for instance, as both "bandits" and sons, and her rings shock Le Clerc into thoughts of his mother. What do these scenes add to the narrative exploration of the nature of family, intimacy, and loneliness?
18. Le Clerc observes that "despite the rhetoric" about equality in America, there are "few encounters between rich and poor" and at meetings about liberty "slaves would circulate with glasses of wine." How did such blatant hypocrisy lay the foundation for the next few centuries of American history? Why was Le Clerc expecting to see something different in the new world?
19. In his quest for a universal connection, or "sublayer," among all people, Le Clerc considers that the fugitives' desperation has them, "like all men here...pursuing...advancement, or hope." What might this mean? If that sublayer isn't fear or grief or faith, what might it be?
20. What does freedom actually mean for each of the characters, and how does it change over the course of the novel? In what ways can freedom be burdensome or undesirable? What is the best balance between individual liberty, bonds of family or kinship, and social connection?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Free of Malice
Liz Lazarus, 2016
Mitchell Cove Publishing
274 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780990937401
Summary
Laura Holland awakes in the middle of the night to see a stranger standing in her bedroom doorway. She manages to defend herself from the would-be rapist, though he threatens to return as he retreats.
Traumatized with recurring nightmares, Laura seeks therapy and is exposed to a unique treatment called EMDR. She also seeks self-protection—buying a gun against the wishes of her husband.
When Laura learns she could have gone to prison had she shot her fleeing assailant, she decides to write a hypothetical legal case using the details of that night. She enlists the help of a criminal defense lawyer, Thomas Bennett, who proves to be well versed in the justice system but has an uncanny resemblance to her attacker.
As the two work together to develop the story, Laura's discomfort escalates, particularly when Thomas seems to know more about that night than he should. Reality and fiction soon merge as her real life drama begins to mirror the fiction she’s trying to create.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Valdosta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.I.E., Georgia Institute of Technology; M.B.A., Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in Brookhaven, Georgia
Liz Lazarus is the author of Free of Malice, a psychological, legal thriller loosely based on her personal experience and a series of ‘what if’ questions that trace the after effects of a foiled attack; a woman healing, and grappling with the legal system to acknowledge her right to self-defense.
She was born in Valdosta, Georgia, graduated from Georgia Tech with an engineering degree and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern with an MBA in their executive master’s program. She spent most of her career at General Electric’s Healthcare division and is currently a Managing Director at a strategic planning consulting firm in addition to being an author.
Free of Malice is her debut novel, set in Atlanta, and supplemented by extensive research with both therapists and criminal defense attorneys. She currently lives in Brookhaven, GA, with her fiance, Richard, and their very spoiled orange tabby, Buckwheat. (From the author.)
Visit the author's webpage.
Follow Liz on Facebook...and Twitter.
Book Reviews
After a woman is attacked in her own home, she struggles to return to her "before" life in this cathartic and empowering suspense thriller.
Kirkus Reviews
In a literary world too filled with formula writing and overdone approaches, Lazarus’s ability to inject more than an element of surprise to keep readers guessing and on their toes is her finest achievement—and what sets Free of Malice apart from any potential competitors, making it a worthy and riveting pick for any who look for legal thrillers firmly rooted in psychological depth.
D Donovan - Midwest Book Review
Utterly absorbing! Integrates state-of-the-art psychotherapy techniques with all the elements of a classic thriller.
Stephanie Foxman, EMDR- trained psychotherapist
A gritty, intense, engaging Southern "courtroom" drama with gripping suspense! Free of Malice provides an interesting and provocative insight into our courts and jury system through a skillfully constructed narrative and with an authentic feel and voice to the characters. It's a page-turner that held my attention throughout. This novel not only provides a wealth of education on gun laws and ownership, but it also confirms the importance of the 2nd Amendment as an equalizer for women.
Ken Baye, Owner, Stoddard's Range & Guns
Discussion Questions
1. MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIP
From your experience, did Laura and Chris have a realistic relationship?
2. COUNSELING & EMDR
Were you surprised that Laura resisted professional counseling? Prior to reading the book, were you familiar with EMDR? Have you experienced or do you know someone who has tried or practices EMDR? Do you believe counseling would play a significant role toward recovery for someone in Laura’s position? When do you believe therapy isn’t necessary?
3. GUNS & SELF-DEFENSE
Laura opted to "process" her way through her recovery. Part of that process included figuring out ways to protect herself. For Laura, that meant learning how to use a gun and buying her own handgun. Have you ever shot a handgun? If someone disturbed the privacy of your home, could you see yourself buying a gun and doing target practice? Why or why not?
4. JURY SELECTION
Have you ever served on a jury? After reading the detailed account of how juries are chosen, did you learn more about the process of jury selection? If you’ve served on a jury, are you more or less surprised that you were chosen? Why or why not?
5. VICTIM MENTALITY
Throughout the book, Laura demonstrates a variety of ways of comforting herself. How does Laura comfort herself? What do you see as the relationship between self-comfort and being a victim? Do you believe Laura handled being a victim effectively? What do you think she should have done differently?
6. HYPER-VIGILANCE
After the attack, Laura struggled to figure out if she was being hyper-vigilant or too trusting in the face of what she saw as clear evidence against the people around her. Do you believe Laura handles her emotions well or does she rein them in too closely—or, at some points, does she go too far? If so, where does she cross the line?
7. RACE
What surprised you about the role race played in the way Laura’s story played out?
8. TABOO TOPICS
Free of Malice touches on multiple contemporary issues including race, gun rights and victim’s rights. Most of us refrain from discussion of those issues in polite conversation. What is the value in having open discussion of topics like race and gun rights?
9. ENDING
Were you surprised by the ending? What different ending could you imagine for this book? Was the ending too “happily-ever-after”?
10. MOVIE CASTING
If Free of Malice were made into a movie, whom would you cast as Laura, Thomas, Barbara and Chris?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Freedom
Jonathan Franzen, 2010
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
608 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312576462
Summary
Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire.
In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 17, 1959
• Where—Western Springs, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Swarthmore College; Fulbright Scholar at Freie Universitat in Berlin
• Awards—National Book Award; Whiting Writer's Award; James Tait Memorial Prize;
American Academy's Berlin Prize
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, and Boulder Creek, California
Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel, The Corrections, a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earning Franzen a National Book Award. His next two novels, Freedom (2010) and Purity (2015) garnered similar high praise. Freedom led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine, and both novels continue to elicit the epithet "Great American Novelist."
His next two novels, Freedom (2010) and Purity (2015) garnered similar praise. Freedom led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine, and both novels continue to elicit the epithet "Great American Novelist."
In recent years, Franzen has been recognized for his blunt opinions on contemporary culture:
- social networking, such as Twitter ("the ultimate irresponsible medium")
- the proliferation of e-books ("just not permanent enough")
- the disintegration of Europe ("The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people.")
- the self-destruction of America ("almost a rogue state").
Early life and education
Franzen is the son of Irene Super and Earl T. Franzen. He was born in Western Springs, Illinois, but grew up in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.
He majored in German at Swarthmore College, studying in Munich during his junior year. (While there he met Michael A. Martone, on whom he would later base the Walter Berglund character in Freedom.) After his 1981 graduation, Franzen became a Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universitat in Berlin. He speaks fluent German as a result of these experiences.
Franzen married Valerie Cornell in 1982 and moved to Boston to pursue a career as a novelist. Five years later, the couple moved to New York where, in 1988, Franzen sold his first novel The Twenty-Seventh City.
Early novels
The Twenty-Seventh City is set in St. Louis and follows the city's decline from what had been its place in the late 19th century as the country's "fourth city." The novel was well received and established Franzen as an author to watch. In a conversation with novelist Donald Antrim for Bomb Magazine, Franzen described the book as "a conversation with the literary figures of my parents' generation[,] the great sixties and seventies Postmoderns." In a Paris Review article, he referred to himself as
...a skinny, scared kid trying to write a big novel. The mask I donned was that of a rhetorically airtight, extremely smart, extremely knowledgeable middle-aged writer.
Strong Motion (1992), Franzen's second novel, focuses on the dysfunctional Holland family and uses seismic events on the U.S. East Coast as a metaphor for quakes that can disrupt the veneer of family life. Franzen has said the book is based on the ideas of "science and religion—two violently opposing systems of making sense in the world."
The Corrections
The Corrections, Franzen's third novel, came out in 2001. A novel of social criticism, it garnered considerable acclaim, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The book was also a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (won by Richard Russo for Empire Falls).
The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club in 2001. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah, but later expressed unease. In an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, he worried that the Oprah logo on the cover would dissuade men from reading the book:
So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry—I'm sorry that it's, uh—I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking.
Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced,
Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book.
These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen thanked Winfrey "for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of The Corrections."
In 2011, it was announced that Franzen would write a multi-part television adaptation of The Corrections for HBO in collaboration with director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and The Whale). The project was canceled, however, because it was feared that the "challenging narrative, which moves through time and cuts forwards and back" might make it "difficult...for viewers to follow."
Freedom
After the release of Freedom in 2010, Franzen appeared on Fresh Air. He had drawn what he described as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he agreed with.
While promoting the book, Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Stephen King in 2000. The photo appeared alongside the headline "Great American Novelist."
In an interview in Manchester, England, in October 2010, Franzen talked about his choice of a title for the book:
I think the reason I slapped the word on the book proposal I sold three years ago without any clear idea of what kind of book it was going to be is that I wanted to write a book that would free me in some way. And I will say this about the abstract concept of "freedom"; it’s possible you are freer if you accept what you are and just get on with being the person you are, than if you maintain this kind of uncommitted I’m free-to-be-this, free-to-be-that, faux freedom.
On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of The Oprah Winfrey Show. On December 6, 2010, he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Freedom where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking The Corrections and what that would entail.
Purity
Purity, released in 2015, is described by the publisher as a multigenerational American epic that spans decades and continents. The novel centers on a young woman named Purity Tyler, or Pip, who sets out to uncover the identity of her father, whom she has never known. The narrative stretches from contemporary America to South America to East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall; it hinges on the mystery of Pip's family history and her relationship with a charismatic hacker and whistleblower.
Like Franzen's two previous novels, Purity was published to strong reviews: New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote that it was Franzen's "most intimate novel yet" and that the author "has added a new octave to his voice." Time called it "magisterial," while Ron Charles of the Washington Post referred to Franzen's "ingenious plotting" and perfectly balanced fluency." Sam Tannenhaus of the New Republic said of Franzen that "his vision unmasks the world in which we actually live."
Other works
In 2002, following The Corrections, Franzen published How to Be Alone, a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream," his 1996 Harper's article about the state of the novel in contemporary culture. In 2006, he published his memoir The Discomfort Zone (2006), recounting the influence his childhood and adolescence have had in his creative life.
In 2012, two years after his release of Freedom, Franzen published Farther Away, another collection of essays on such topics as his love of birds, his friendship with David Foster Wallace, and his thoughts on technology.
Philosophy
In various lectures given while on tour, Franzen has mentioned four perennial questions often asked of him that he finds annoying:
- "Who are your influences?"
- "What time of day do you work, and what do you write on?"
- "I read an interview with an author who says that, at a certain point in writing a novel, the characters 'take over' and tell him what to do. Does this happen to you, too?"
- "Is your fiction autobiographical?"
Personal life
Franzen and Valerie Cornell separated in 1994 and are now divorced. Franzen still lives part of the year in New York City but also spends time in Boulder Creek, California. While in California, he lives with his girlfriend, writer Kathy Chetkovich.
In 2010, Franzen's glasses were stolen, then ransomed for $100,000, at an event in London celebrating the launch of Freedom. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/7/2015.)
Book Reviews
Jonathan Franzen's galvanic new novel, Freedom, showcases his impressive literary toolkit—every essential storytelling skill, plus plenty of bells and whistles—and his ability to throw open a big, Updikean picture window on American middle-class life. With this book, he's not only created an unforgettable family, he's also completed his own transformation from a sharp-elbowed, apocalyptic satirist focused on sending up the socio-economic-political plight of this country into a kind of 19th-century realist concerned with the public and private lives of his characters.... Franzen has written his most deeply felt novel yet—a novel that turns out to be both a compelling biography of a dysfunctional family and an indelible portrait of our times.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, like his previous one, The Corrections, is a masterpiece of American fiction. The two books have much in common. Once again Franzen has fashioned a capacious but intricately ordered narrative that in its majestic sweep seems to gather up every fresh datum of our shared millennial life.... Like all great novels, Freedom does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew.
Sam Tanenhaus - New York Times Book Review
Freedom, his new book, and The Corrections, its predecessor, are at the same time engrossing sagas and scathing satires, and both books are funny, sad, cranky, revelatory, hugely ambitious, deeply human and, at times, truly disturbing. Together, they provide a striking and quite possibly enduring portrait of America in the years on either side of the turn of the 21st century.... His writing is so gorgeous.... Franzen is one of those exceptional writers whose works define an era and a generation, and his books demand to be read.
Harper Barnes - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A lavishly entertaining account of a family at war with itself, and a brilliant dissection of the dissatisfactions and disappointments of contemporary American life... Compelling.... Freedom, though frequently funny, is ultimately tender: its emotional currency is both the pain and the pleasure that that word implies.... A rare pleasure, an irresistible invitation to binge-read.... That it also grapples with a fundamental dilemma of modern middle-class America—namely: Is it really still OK to spend your life asserting your unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, when the rest of the world is in such a state?—is what makes it something wonderful. If Freedom doesn’t qualify as a Great American Novel for our time, then I don’t know what would.... The reason to celebrate him is not that he is doing something new but that he is doing something old, presumed dead—and doing it brilliantly. Freedom bids for a place alongside the great achievements of his predecessors, not his contemporaries; it belongs on the same shelf as John Updike’s Rabbit, Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. It is the first Great American Novel of the post-Obama era
Benjamin Secher - Telegraph (UK)
It’s refreshing to see a novelist who wants to engage the questions of our time in the tradition of 20th-century greats like John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis.... [This] is a book you’ll still be thinking about long after you’ve finished reading it.
Patrick Condon - Associated Press
[A] great novel.... While his contemporaries content themselves with small books about nothing much or big books about comics, Franzen delivers the massive, old-school jams. It's not that Franzen's prose makes other writers seem untalented; it's that he makes them seem so lazy, so irrelevant, so lacking in the kind of chutzpah we once expected from our best authors. Freedom doesn't name check War and Peace for nothing. It's making a claim for shelf space among the kind of books that the big dogs used to write. The kind they called important. The kind they called greats.
Benjamin Alsup - Esquire
[T]he first question facing Franzen's feverishly awaited follow-up is whether it can find its own voice.... In short: yes, it does, and in a big way. [W]here the book stands apart is that...Franzen tries to account for his often stridently unlikable characters and find where they (and we) went wrong, arriving at—incredibly—genuine hope.
Publishers Weekly
[A] sprawling, darkly comic new novel. The nature of personal freedom, the fluidity of good and evil, the moral relativism of nearly everything—Franzen takes on these thorny issues...a penchant for smart, deceptively simple, and culturally astute writing. —Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Jonathan Franzen refers to freedom throughout the novel, including the freedom of Iraqis to become capitalists, Joey's parents attempt to give him an unencumbered life, an inscription on a building at Jessica s college that reads USE WELL THY FREEDOM, and alcoholic Mitch, who is a free man. How do the characters spend their freedom? Is it a liberating or destructive force for them? Which characters are the least free?
2. Freedom contains almost cinematic descriptions of the characters dwelling places, from the house in St. Paul to Abigail's eclectic Manhattan apartment. How do the homes in Freedom reflect the personalities of their occupants? Where do Walter and Patty feel most at home? Which of your homes has been most significant in your life?
3. As a young woman, Patty is phenomenally strong on the basketball court yet vulnerable in relationships, especially with her workaholic parents, her friend Eliza, and the conflicted duo of Richard and Walter. What did her rapist, Ethan Post, teach her about vulnerability? After the rape, what did her father and the coaches attempt to teach her about strength?
4. What feeds Richard and Walter's lifelong cycle of competition and collaboration? If you were Patty, would you have made the road trip with Richard? What does Freedom say about the repercussions of college, not only for Walter and Patty but also for their children?
5. How would you characterize Patty's writing? How does her storytelling style compare to the narrator s voice in the rest of the novel? If Walter had written a memoir, what might he have said about his victories, and his suffering?
6. Which tragicomic passages in Freedom made you laugh? Which characters elicited continual sadness and sympathy in you? How does Franzen balance poignant moments with absurdity?
7. Discuss the nature of attraction, both in the novel and in your own experience. What does it take to be desirable in Freedom? In the novel, how do couples sustain intense attraction for each other over many phases of their lives?
8. Does history repeat itself throughout Walter's ancestry, with his Swedish grandfather, Einar, who built roads, loathed communism and slow drivers, and was cruel to his wife; his father, Gene, a war hero with fantasies of success in the motel business; and his mother, Dorothy, whose cosmopolitan family was Walter s salvation? What do all the characters in the novel want from their parents? How do their relationships with their parents affect their relationships with lovers?
9. After her father s death, Patty asks her mother why she ignored Patty s success in sports, even though Joyce was a driven woman who might have relished her daughter's achievements. She doesn't get a satisfactory answer; Joyce vaguely says that she wasn't into sports. Why do you think Patty did not garner as much attention as her sisters did? How did your opinion of Veronica and Abigail shift throughout the novel? Does Patty treat Jessica the same way her parents treated her?
10. How is Lalitha different from the other characters in the novel? How does her motivation for working with the Cerulean Mountain Trust compare to Walter's? Does Walter relate to the cerulean warbler on some level?
11. What accounts for the differences between Joey and Jessica? Is it simply a matter of genes and temperament, or does gender matter in their situation?
12. What does Joey want and get from Jenna and Connie? What do they want and get from him?
13. Did Carol and Blake evolve as parents? What sort of life do you predict for their twin daughters?
14. Near the end of the novel, Franzen describes Walter s relationship with Bobby the cat as a sort of troubled marriage. Was their divorce inevitable? When Patty is eventually able to serve as neighborhood peacemaker, even negotiating a truce with Linda Hoffbauer, what does this say about her role in Walter's life? Does she dilute his sense of purpose and principle, or does she keep him grounded in reality?
15. How would you answer the essential question raised by Walter's deal with the Texas rancher Vin Haven: What is the best way to achieve environmental conservation?
16. Consider the novel s epigraph, taken from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The lines are spoken by Paulina in the final act, after she learns the fate of her dead husband. She receives the news while surrounded by happy endings for the other characters. The most obvious parallel is to Walter, but who else might be reflected in these lines?
17. What unique truths emerge in Freedom? In what ways does this novel enhance themes (such as love and commitment, family angst, the intensity of adolescence, and the individual against the giant corporate, governmental, and otherwise) featured in Franzen's previous works, including his nonfiction?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Freedom of a Tangled Vine
Heather Tierney, 2014
Wise Ink Press
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781940014104
Summary
Two women. Two generations. Two different concepts of truth.
Photographs of a stranger are found in her mother’s jewelry box. A small town whispers about the baby with auburn hair.
With her daughter’s uncovering of a long-held family secret, Alina is forced to reopen the wounds she had hidden for more than forty years. Now, with her family as the audience, Alina must give breath to fragments of her life she had drowned, and unravel what she had twisted into truth.
The Freedom of a Tangled Vine is the story of one family’s discovery of what lies between memory and reality. And of the intricate ties that define and embrace us.
Told through both Alina’s and her daughter’s perspectives and covering different time-frames, the stories unweave the past—and braid together the present. In doing so, both women discover that it is not what is said, but rather what is felt, that creates the meaning and beauty of family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Heather Tierney was raised in Wisconsin, lives in Minnesota, and considers both places home. She received her Masters degree in English at St. Cloud State University. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
A beautiful and emotional novel about the bonds that define who we are. With words that matter and images with purpose, this nostalgic read is a brilliantly crafted story of the strength of family and the unwavering love of a mother.
Marilyn Jax, international award-winning author of Sapphire Trails, Road to Omalos, and The Find.
This book was a phenomenal read. The story is interesting and it is sweet and the author has a way of making you love all the characters and understand them. Can't wait for Heather Tierney to write another book!
Josie K. - Goodreads review
This story has beautiful prose, realistic dialogue, and characters that feel like they live next door - powerful writing. It is an emotional and realistic family drama, and I read it in two days. I love this story, and I recommended it to other readers who loved it too.
Jay - Goodreads review
5 out of 5 star ratings on all reviews at www.goodreads.com
Discussion Questions
1. The story is told not only through plot, but also through images. Discuss which of the following images stood out to you, and what they seem to represent: vines, Alina’s garden, Fawn’s garden, the neighbor Margaret’s lawn, Alina’s auburn hair, trees, the Milwaukee harbor. Are there other images that stood out to you? What objects in your life hold great meaning or are symbolic to you?
2. One theme of the story is our sense of place and home. There are certain places that hold great meaning and evoke strong emotions in us. Where is a place that does this for you, and what does it make you feel or remember? How has this place changed over time, and how do those changes impact your feelings toward it?
3. One of the greatest discoveries in the book is the moment when Fawn considers whether she can hold onto her beautiful memories of childhood while also accepting the new truths about her family. What are the new truths? What does she conclude? What knowledge or event in your life has made you need to “rewrite” or rethink your past? How did you do this?
4. Fawn readily questions Alina about Aileen, but never directly questions Joe. What holds her back? Why do we approach some family members more openly, and sweep certain issues under the rug with others? Is Fawn sweeping the issue under the rug with her father, or is it still addressed indirectly?
5. There is a moment when Fawn realizes she will never remember her father as youthful and healthy, the way she used to think of him. Is this a positive or negative moment for her? What memories have you let fade, and has it been healthy or unhealthy to do so?
6. Before Alina actually mails the letter to initiate the meeting with Aileen, she confesses to Fawn that she is afraid of whether or not she’ll live up to the fantasy Aileen has created. Fawn assures her mother that she will, yet Fawn herself has created a fantasy of who her mother is. How has Fawn done this, and how do the flashbacks in the story help the reader understand the fantasy? How does Fawn’s fantasy of her mother differ from what Aileen’s might be?
7. Fawn’s relationships with her brothers differ, as the reader senses she is more connected with Jon. What makes Fawn protective of Jon, and how does her adult relationship with him echo her youthful one? In what ways do we, even as adults, fall into place with the old patterns of our sibling relationships?
8. Fawn’s friendship with Luisa opens up the sub-plot of Matthew and his girlfriend. How does this sub-plot reiterate the themes of the novel?
9. Consider how peripheral characters impact the story and add additional dimension to the reader’s understanding of the story. Consider Uncle Arthur, Jon and Pete, and Lea’s parents.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Freefall
Jessica Barry, 2019
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062874832
Summary
A propulsive debut novel with the intensity of Luckiest Girl Alive and Before the Fall, about a young woman determined to survive and a mother determined to find her.
When your life is a lie, the truth can kill you.
When her fiance’s private plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, Allison Carpenter miraculously survives. But the fight for her life is just beginning.
Allison has been living with a terrible secret, a shocking truth that powerful men will kill to keep buried. If they know she’s alive, they will come for her. She must make it home.
In the small community of Owl Creek, Maine, Maggie Carpenter learns that her only child is presumed dead. But authorities have not recovered her body—giving Maggie a shred of hope.
She, too, harbors a shameful secret: she hasn’t communicated with her daughter in two years, since a family tragedy drove Allison away. Maggie doesn’t know anything about her daughter’s life now—not even that she was engaged to wealthy pharmaceutical CEO Ben Gardner, or why she was on a private plane.
As Allison struggles across the treacherous mountain wilderness, Maggie embarks on a desperate search for answers. Immersing herself in Allison’s life, she discovers a sleek socialite hiding dark secrets.
What was Allison running from—and can Maggie uncover the truth in time to save her?
Told from the perspectives of a mother and daughter separated by distance but united by an unbreakable bond, Freefall is a riveting debut novel about two tenacious women overcoming unimaginable obstacles to protect themselves and those they love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Boston University; M.A., University College London
• Currently—lives in London, UK
Jessica Barry is a pseudonym for Melissa Pimentel, an American writer and publishing professional. She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and was raised on a steady diet of library books and PBS. Pimentel attended Boston University, where she majored in English and Art History, before moving to London in 2004 to pursue an MA from University College London.
Today, Pimentel lives in London, England. When not working or writing, she spends her free time running around various muddy parks and reading books in Stoke Newington pubs. She and her husband, Simon, live with two their cats, Roger Livesey and BoJack Horseman. (Adapted from both British and American publishers.)
Book Reviews
[An] uneven debut…. Barry’s meditations on mother-daughter relationships and female roles add much-needed dimension to an otherwise shallow plot full of predictable twists and surface-level emotion. Still, this psychological thriller is perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Claire Mackintosh.
Publishers Weekly
Pseudonymous author Barry spins a great tale using familiar tropes but adding a surprising amount of heart to the mystery showing the fierce bond between mother and daughter. —Brooke Bolton, Boonville-Warrick Cty. P.L., IN
Library Journal
[F]ast-paced.… [N]ew twists as motives are brought to light and secrets that Allison struggled to hide are revealed.…[Readers will be kept] guessing to the end, and… will enjoy this thriller written with a focus on family relationships.… [T]his debut will be everywhere.
Booklist
Although the setup…is clever and her concluding twist surprises, the plot feels underbaked…. Barry makes some keen observations regarding female identity and personal empowerment, but her characters lack verisimilitude, which undercuts the novel's drama.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the dire situation after the crash, Allison reminds herself that she "can’t afford to remember." What does this mean? How is this similar or different from Maggie’s realization that she "couldn’t afford to relive every memory"? In what ways is memory a blessing or a burden? What are the most important functions of memory?
2. In the depths of her despair, Maggie considers the possibility that "no one deserves anything." What does she mean? Why is such an idea "enough to make [her] knees give way"?
3. After Charles’ death, Allison refuses to see or talk to her mother for years. Why? Was it best for Maggie to respect this or, as she later believes, should she have "kept pushing" to make contact?
4. Why was it "important" to Allison’s father that she struggle to learn to start a fire with stone sparks instead of matches? What other difficult lessons might be important later in one’s life?
5. Allison was involved with a magazine that intended to show "women celebrating women" in a way that would "interrogate" the publishing and advertising industries. What does this mean? In what ways are such industries harmful to women? How might that be improved?
6. What skills and strengths does Allison call upon and discover as she struggles to survive in the mountains? Do you think you could survive in her circumstances?
7. At one point, purposefully gouging her hand on sharp rock to stay awake, Allison finds that, "the pain shocks through… clearing my mind like a gust of wind." In what other ways might pain be useful or necessary? What determines a person’s pain threshold?
8. At one point, obsessed with exercise and diet to please Ben, Allison feels "faint and flushed with righteousness" and a "power in abstention." How does her obsession and struggles with body image speak to the extreme pressures that women experience in our society?
9. In what ways is Shannon an effective officer? How in particular does she help Maggie?
10. Discussing grief, Tony explains to Maggie that "even when you’re surrounded by people, you’re still completely lonely," and "you’ve got to deal with it whatever way you can." How does Maggie respond to her grief? What are the healthiest responses to loss and regret?
11. Unable to remember the funeral service for Charles, Maggie thinks, "The mind is funny that way." What might she mean?
12. Maggie had always tried to teach Allison "how important it was for a woman to be independent." What, besides financial independence, does this mean for Maggie?
13. Jim suggests to Maggie that her estrangement from Allison is "the way of the world… our children grow up and become strangers to us." In what ways is this true or not? What elements of modern living might cause such separation? What, if anything, can we do about it?
14. Settled back into her mother’s house after all that happened, Allison acknowledges that "it feels like home" and is "etched in [her] bones." What is home? In what ways is it a place or a feeling? How is it important throughout one’s life?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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French Exit
Patrick deWitt, 2018
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062846921
Summary
A brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.
Frances Price—tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature—is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy.
Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development.
And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.
Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin—to riotous effect.
A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.
Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind "tragedy of manners," a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, Rogers Prize, Stephen Leacock Award
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon, USA
Patrick deWitt is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. He was born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and later lived in California and Washington. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
His first book, Ablutions (2009), was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. His second book, The Sisters Brothers (2011), was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the 2011 Governor General's Award for English language fiction. He was one of two Canadian writers, alongside Esi Edugyan, to make all four award lists in 2011.
On November 1, 2011, he was announced as the winner of the Rogers Prize, and on November 15, 2011, he was announced as the winner of Canada's 2011 Governor General's Award for English language fiction. On April 26, 2012, the book The Sisters Brothers won the 2012 Stephen Leacock Award. Alongside Edugyan, The Sisters Brothers was also a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/7/2013.)
Book Reviews
The comic brilliance that sparked deWitt’s earlier adventures ignites this "tragedy of manners" and Frances Price, "a moneyed, striking woman of sixty-five years," is revealed to be another of deWitt’s sublime eccentrics.… Rarely has a transatlantic voyage and its limited diversions been so pithily evoked.
Anna Mundow - Washington Post
A modern story, a satire about an insouciant widow on a quest for refined self-immolation.… DeWitt’s surrealism is cheerful and matter-of-fact, making the novel feel as buoyantly insane as its characters.… DeWitt is a stealth absurdist, with a flair for dressing up rhyme as reason.
Katy Waldman - The New Yorker
A sparkling dark comedy that channels both Noel Coward’s wit and Wes Anderson’s loopy sensibility. DeWitt’s tone is breezy, droll, and blithely transgressive.… These are people you may not want to invite to dinner, but they sure make for fun reading.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
Hilarious.… Delightful.… In his book, as in [Edith] Wharton’s, New Yorkers’ wit and elaborate manners cannot hide the searing depth of their pain.… DeWitt is aiming for farce and to say something about characters who cannot get out of their own way, and he achieves both with elan.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] riotous tragedy of (ill) manners.… The show stealer here is deWitt’s knack for scene setting and dialogue in the form of Frances’ wry one-liners.… That Frances sure is a force to contend with. But what a classy broad.
San Francisco Chronicle
Darkly comic.… French Exit is both a satiric send-up of high society and a wilding mother-son caper.
Poets & Writers
[DeWitt] creates and conveys entire worlds—and not just names and places, but colors, smells, sounds and style.… Incredibly entertaining and oddly sympathetic.… And snappy stage-worthy dialogue—deWitt’s wheelhouse.
Eugene Register-Guard
[E]ntertaining.… DeWitt’s novel is full of vibrant characters taking good-natured jabs at cultural tropes; readers will be delighted.
Publishers Weekly
Whatever you do, don’t mess with Frances Price.… An entertaining portrait of people who are obsessed with the looming specter of death and who don’t quite feel part of the time they were born into.
BookPage
"They're not normal people": an entertaining romp among the disaffected bourgeoisie..… [S]harply observed moments give deWitt's well-written novel more depth than the usual comedy of manners.… [A] bright, original yarn with a surprising twist.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for FRENCH EXIT … then take off on your own:
1. Patrick deWitt's French Exit is subtitled "A Tragedy of Manners." What does the subtitle mean?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Despite the subtitle, there is much that is funny in this novel. What made you laugh (or chuckle)? In what way is this book also "a comedy of manners"—a genre that satirizes the hypocrisy of the privileged: people who value appearance over substance?
3. Katy Waldman in The New Yorker considers the opening sequence of French Exit a sort of tour de force. What do we learn in the first several pages about Frances Price and her son Malcolm? Does your attitude toward them change over the course of the novel? Do they elicit sympathy from you …or disgust …or laughter …or eye-rolling or… anything in particular?
4. "Do you know what a cliche is?" Frances asks her friend Joan. "It's a story so fine and thrilling that it's grown old in its hopeful retelling." What does she mean? How would you define cliche? And why does Frances bring up cliches in the first place?
5. What do we come to learn about the Price's marriage and about Malcolm's childhood? What kind of man was Franklin Price, and what was his relationship to—and the effect he had on—those closest to him?
6. Do the characters ever achieve true intimacy in the novel? Do they ever break out of deWitt's witty dialogue and narration?
7. Talk about the novel's conclusion, especially the twist at the end? What do you think will become of Malcolm?
8. Oh, and Small Frank? Care to comment?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles, 1969
Little, Brown & Company
467 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316291163
Summary
In a feat of seductive storytelling, John Fowles immerses us in the emotionally charged world of a Victorian love triangle and, through a startling act of literary invention, reveals the image of modern man reflected in the past. The French Lieutenant's Woman is perhaps the most beloved of Fowles's internationally best selling novels; it is universally regarded as a modern classic. (From the publisher.)
The French Lieutenant's Woman, on one level a historical romance, is on another level an audacious, innovative experiment in storytelling. The novel portrays Victorian characters living in 1867, but the narrator / author, writing in 1967, intervenes with wry, ironic commentary. The plot centers on Charles Smithson who is engaged to Ernestina Freeman, a conventional, wealthy woman. But after a series of clandestine trysts with a beautiful, mysterious woman, he breaks off the engagement. The woman, Sarah Woodruff, a social outcast, is the reputed lover of a French lieutenant who has deserted her—and Charles first sees her waiting on the pier for his return. The intrusive narrator / author, who offers readers different endings, encourages us to reach our own conclusions. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 31, 1926
• Where—Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, UK
• Death—November 5, 2005
• Where—Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK
• Education—University of Edinburg; B.A. Oxford University
• Awards—Silver Pen Award
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times (of London) named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945."
Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the son of Gladys May Richards and Robert John Fowles. Gladys Richards belonged to an Essex family originally from London as well. The Richards family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea during 1918, as Spanish Flu swept through Europe, for Essex was said to have a healthy climate. Robert met Gladys Richards at a tennis club in Westcliff-on-Sea during 1924. Though she was ten years younger, and he in bad health from the World War I, they were married a year later on 18 June 1925. Nine months and two weeks later Gladys gave birth to John Robert Fowles.
Fowles spent his childhood attended by his mother and by his cousin Peggy Fowles, 18 years old at the time of his birth, who was his nursemaid and close companion for ten years. Fowles attended Alleyn Court Preparatory School. The work of Richard Jefferies and his character Bevis were Fowles's favorite books as a child. He was an only child until he was 16 years old.
Education
During 1939, Fowles won a position at Bedford School, a two-hour train journey north of his home. His time at Bedford coincided with the Second World War. Fowles was a student at Bedford until 1944. He became Head Boy and was also an athletic standout: a member of the rugby-football third team, the Fives first team and captain of the cricket team, for which he was bowler.
After leaving Bedford School during 1944, Fowles enrolled in a Naval Short Course at Edinburgh University. Fowles was prepared to receive a commission in the Royal Marines. He completed his training on 8 May 1945 — VE Day. Fowles was assigned instead to Okehampton Camp in the countryside near Devon for two years.
During 1947, after completing his military service, Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he stopped studying German and concentrated on French for his BA. Fowles was undergoing a political transformation. Upon leaving the marines he wrote, "I ... began to hate what I was becoming in life—a British Establishment young hopeful. I decided instead to become a sort of anarchist."
It was also at Oxford that Fowles first considered life as a writer, particularly after reading existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Though Fowles did not identify as an existentialist, their writing, like Fowles', was motivated from a feeling that the world was wrong.
Teaching Career
Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher. His first year after Oxford was spent at the University of Poitiers. At the end of the year, he received two offers: one from the French department at Winchester, the other "from a ratty school in Greece," Fowles said, "Of course, I went against all the dictates of common sense and took the Greek job."
During 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetsai, a critical part of Fowles's life, as the island which would later serve as the setting of his novel The Magus. Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside of the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow exiles. But during 1953 Fowles and the other masters at the school were all dismissed for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.
On the island of Spetsai, Fowles had grown fond of Elizabeth Christy, who was married to one of the other teachers. Christy's marriage was already ending because of the relationship with Fowles, and though they returned to England at the same time, they were no longer in each other's company.
It was during this period that Fowles began drafting The Magus. His separation from Elizabeth did not last long. On 2 April 1954 they were married and Fowles became stepfather to Elizabeth's daughter from her first marriage, Anna. After his marriage, Fowles taught English as a foreign language to students from other countries for nearly ten years at St. Godric's College, an all-girls in Hampstead, London.
Writing Career
During late 1960, though he had already drafted The Magus, Fowles began working on The Collector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a year making revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, the publisher at Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book was published during 1963 and when the paperback rights were sold in the spring of that year it was "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel," according to Howard. The success of his novel meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to a literary career. The Collector became a film in 1965.
Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second book published be The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, he set about collating all the drafts he had written of what would become his most studied work, The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences in Greece.
During 1965 Fowles left London, moving to a farm, Underhill, in Dorset, where the isolated farm house became the model for "The Dairy" in the book Fowles was then writing, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farm was too remote, "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, and during 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he lived in Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema.
The film version of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allen was asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus."
The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by the British playwright Harold Pinter (who would later receive a Nobel laureate in Literature) and was nominated for an Oscar.
Later Years
Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. His works The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1981), and A Maggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. His wife Elizabeth died in 1990.
Fowles became a member of the Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from 1979–1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild stroke. Fowles was involved occasionally in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote letters to the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles was generally considered reclusive. In 1998, he was quoted in the New York Times Book Review as saying, "Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation."
Fowles, with his second wife Sarah by his side, died in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles from Lyme Regis on 5 November 2005. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Fowles manipulates all the story-teller's artifices to challenge our usual assumptions about the authority of the novelist....At first the narrative voices seems to be that of the traditional Victorian author....It is appropriately enough in Chapter 13 that the new rules of the game break through the surface. [Until then Fowles has followed] "a convention universally accepted...that the novelist stands next to God; but after all he actually lives in the world of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barte [French theorists]." The dogma of the responsible omniscient narrator is dead [which allows the author a] new freedom.... Our final impression is of pleasure and even, on occasion, awe, at so harmonious a mingling of the old and the new in matter and manner.
Ian Watts - New York Times (11/09/69)
Dazzling...audacious...highly rewarding....A remarkable, original work in which at least two visions operate simultaneously, the one Victorian and melodramatic, the other modern and wise. An outlandish achievement!
Joyce Carol Oates - Washington Post Book World
By giving characters their freedom, Fowles also liberates himself from the tyranny of the rigid plan; but there remains a more basic limitation of fiction, and from this Fowles frees himself by means of his double ending: "The novelist is still a god," Fowles says in The French Lieutenant's Woman, "since he creates (and not even the most aleatory avant-garde modern novel has managed to extirpate its author completely); what has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image, omniscient and decreeing; but in the new theological image, with freedom our first principle, not authority." Thus, although the novel seems in many ways a Victorian novel, the author reminds the reader that it is not; it is actually a novel of our time, with "this self-consciousness about the processes of art [that] is a hallmark of much twentieth-century fiction."
Gale Research
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 French Lieutenant's Woman:
1. Charles Smithson (Fowles is playing here with James Smithson, the founder of the Smithsonian museum) is hunting fossils and meditating on Darwin's challenge to the old scientific order when he stumbles upon a new species—Sarah Woodruff. How does the idea of a new vs. old order pervade this book in terms of its characters and in terms of Fowles's reworking of fiction?
2. What is your attitude toward the book's different endings? What is Fowles trying to do? Which ending do you prefer? Which one do you think is most realistic? Would you have preferred a single ending?
3. Are you willing to give up on a narrator's or writer's authority to control events of a story? Are you comfortable or uncomfortable with that idea? (You might also consider Ian McEwan's Atonement—how that story also offers competing versions of "reality.")
2. Freedom from societal conventions is an overriding theme in this novel. How do the each of the characters respond to the social constraints of Victorian society? How does Fowles, as an author, confront the constraints of traditional storytelling?
5. Discuss the characteristics of Charles, Tina, and Sarah. Is Charles worthy of Sarah?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Freshwater
Akwaeke Emezi, 2018
Grove/Atlantic
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802127358
Summary
Ada has always been unusual.
As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but something must have gone awry, as the young Ada becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief.
But Ada turns out to be more than just volatile. Born "with one foot on the other side," she begins to develop separate selves. When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallizes the selves into something more powerful.
As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these alters—now protective, now hedonistic—move into control, Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction.
Written with stylistic brilliance and based in the author’s realities, this raw and extraordinary debut explores the metaphysics of identity and being, plunging the reader into the mysteries of self.
Unsettling, heart-wrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice. (From the publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 6, 1987
• Raised—Aba, Nigeria
• Education—M.P.A., New York University
• Awards—Commonwealth Short Story Prize-Africa
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces. Born and raised in Nigeria, she received her MPA from New York University and was awarded a 2015 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. She won the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Granta. Freshwater (2018) is her debut novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Remarkable and daring.… Poetic and disturbing.… Rooting Ada’s story in Igbo cosmology forces us to further question our paradigm for what causes mental illness and how it manifests. It causes us to question science and reason.
Tariro Mzezewa - New York Times
A witchy, electrifying story of danger and compulsion … Freshwater recounts the "litany of madness" suffered by Ada in a serpentine prose that proceeds by oblique, hypnotizing movements before it sinks its fangs into you.… As striking and mysterious as the ways of the gods who narrate it.… The latest standout in this exciting boom in the Nigerian novel.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
The novel is based in many of the realities of the writer’s life, but the prose is infused with imaginative lyricism and tone.… The journey undertaken in the novel is swirling and vivid, vicious and painful, and rendered by Emezi in [sharp and glittering] shards.… Emezi’s lyrical writing, her alliterative and symmetrical prose, explores the deep questions of otherness, of a single heart and soul hovering between, the gates open, fighting for peace.
Susan Straight - Los Angeles Times
Freshwater is sheer perfection: sexy, sensual, spiritual, wise. One of the most dazzling debuts I’ve ever read.
Taiye Selasi - Guardian (UK)
Akwaeke Emezi is a name you will want to remember, because surely it is one you will be hearing again and again.… A stunning and disorienting story about a broken woman trying to overcome the pain of her human life while straddling "the other side,".… Freshwater is unlike any novel I have ever read. Its shape-shifting perspective is radical and innovative, twisting the narrative voices like the bones of a python.… Emezi has not only made a rich contribution to Igbo mythology, she has crafted a novel so unique and fresh, it feels as if the medium has been reinvented.
Safa Jinje - Toronto Star
Akwaeke Emezi’s bewitching and heart-rending Freshwater is a coming-of-age novel like no other.… For anyone who has experienced life as a misfit or outcast, this is a resonant rendition.… For all its sheer invention, Freshwater feels more like an interpretive journey through uncharted territory with an experienced guide. Potent and moving, knowing and strange, this is a powerful and irresistibly unsettling debut.
David Wright - Seattle Times
A startling debut novel explores the freedom of being multiple.… Igbo spirituality, Emezi radically suggests, has as much to offer as any [Western] schemas when it comes to decrypting human folly or transcendence.… The book would have made grim sense through a mental-health lens; instead, it is an indigenous fairy tale.… The book becomes a study in dysphoria—not precisely the distress of being misgendered but the more nebulous pain of being imprisoned in a physical form, of losing your wraith-like ability to evade categorization.… There is something self-defeating about trying to trace a self that is defined by indefinability; one achievement of Emezi’s book is to make that paradox feel generously fertile.
Katy Waldman - New Yorker
Akwaeke Emezi parts the seas of the self in her engrossing debut novel, Freshwater.
Sloane Crosley - Vanity Fair
Part magical realism, part meditation on mental illness.… Ada’s struggle provides a thought-provoking and visceral exploration of life with an altered state of mind.
Harper’s Bazaar
Gods torment the young woman they inhabit in Emezi’s enthralling, metaphysical debut novel.… Though some readers may find the correlation between mental illness and the ogbanje limiting.… Emezi’s talent is undeniable …an impressive debut.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Madness is often described in terms of different selves, but Emezi does something absorbingly original … showing that [gods] creep into human beings at birth.… [R]ichly conceived yet accessible to all. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
[M]ind-blowing.… Emezi weaves traditional Igbo myth that turns the well-worn narrative of mental illness on its head, and in doing so she has ensured a place on the literary-fiction landscape as a writer to watch.… A must-read.
Booklist
Akwaeke Emezi’s standout first novel, Freshwater, is a riveting and peculiar variation on coming of age.…. The poetics of Emezi’s prose enhance the mythology she evokes. As enchanting as it is unsettling, Freshwater tickles all six senses. The chorus of voices narrating Ada’s life achieves a remarkable balance between cruel machinations of cavalier deities and deep empathy for the distressed vessel they inhabit.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for FRESHWATER … then take off on your own:
1. Discuss/describe the various personalities that the ogbanje unleashes inside Ada. Clearly, Asughara is the most formidable—what about the others?
2. How submissive, or passive, is Ada to the commands of the spirits? To what degree does she resist? Can Ada even claim to have a personality of her own?
3. In the author's world, the "insanities" were born with you "tucked behind your liver." Why might Emezi have portrayed mental illness as the result of magical spirits inhabiting us rather than psychological or neurological disorders? Is her imaginative depiction troubling to you in that it negates the thousands of years it took science to make progress in understanding mental illness? Or do you find her personification enlightening, seeing it as an "otherness" that, at times, many of us feel overtakes the body and sabotages our lives?
4. Follow-up to Question 3: How much do we in the Western world understand mental illness, medically and scientifically?
5. In one of her narrations, Ada says, "I am a village full of faces and a compound full of bones, translucent thousands." What do you think: are our personalities fixed for all time, indivisible and unchanging for life? Or are we sometimes multiple people depending on circumstance? (Or does that way lie madness?)
7. How do the spirits respond when Ada's parents take her to Catholic Mass? What do they mean when they say…
We knew him….Yshwa too was born with spread gates, born with a prophesying tongue and hands he brought over from the other side…. He loves them as a god does, which is to say, with a taste for suffering.
8. Talk about Ada's decision to undergo surgical breast removal, which she describes as letting a "masked man take a knife lavishly to the flesh of her chest, mutilating her better and deeper."
9. Does it affect how you think about Freshwater knowing that the novel is, to a fair extent, autobiographical—that the cutting, attempted suicide, and breast removal surgery are based on Akwaeke Emezi's own life?
10. Is there wisdom in the collective "we" of the spirits as they say, at the end: "When you break something, you must study the pattern of the shattering before you can piece it back together"?
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Freud's Mistress
Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman, 2013
Amy Einhorn Books
510 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399163074
Summary
His theories would change the world—and tear hers apart... A page-turning novel inspired by the true-life love affair between Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law.
It is fin-de-siecle Vienna and Minna Bernays, an overeducated lady’s companion with a sharp, wry wit, is abruptly fired, yet again, from her position. She finds herself out on the street and out of options. In 1895, the city may be aswirl with avant-garde artists and revolutionary ideas, yet a woman’s only hope for security is still marriage. But Minna is unwilling to settle. Out of desperation, she turns to her sister, Martha, for help.
Martha has her own problems—six young children and an absent, disinterested husband who happens to be Sigmund Freud. At this time, Freud is a struggling professor, all but shunned by his peers and under attack for his theories, most of which center around sexual impulses. And while Martha is shocked and repulsed by her husband’s “pornographic” work, Minna is fascinated.
Minna is everything Martha is not—intellectually curious, engaging, and passionate. She and Freud embark on what is at first simply an intellectual courtship, yet something deeper is brewing beneath the surface, something Minna cannot escape.
In this sweeping tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal—between a husband and a wife, between sisters—fact and fiction seamlessly blend together, creating a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman and her struggle to reconcile her love for her sister with her obsessive desire for her sister’s husband, the mythic father of psychoanalysis. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaurman reside in Los Angeles. Freud's Mistress is their third novel. Their first, Literacy and Longing in L.A. (2006), was on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for 15 weeks reaching #1 and won the Best Fiction Award from the Southern California Bookseller’s Association. Their second novel, A Version of the Truth (2007), was also on the L.A. Times bestseller list.
Karen Mack, a former attorney, is a Golden Globe award-winning film and television producer. Karen has produced many film and television productions including the Golden Globe, Christopher, and Emmy Award winning “One Against the Wind”, a Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation. For the past fourteen years, she has been Executive Producer of “A Home for the Holidays,” an annual CBS Network Special which promotes foster care adoption. “A Home for the Holidays” won the 2008 Television Academy Honors, an award given out by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Karen is a cum laude graduate of UCLA with a B.A. in Political Science and a Juris Doctorate from the UCLA School of Law.
Jennifer Kaufman is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and a two-time winner of the national Penney-Missouri Journalism Award. Jennifer spent three years as Bureau Chief for Fairchild Publications, Woman’s Wear Daily and W magazine in Milan and Rome. Prior to that, she worked for Fairchild Publications in New York covering business, film and features. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Baltimore News American and The Prince George’s County Sentinel in Bethesda, Maryland.
(Adapted from the publisher and the book's website.)
Book Reviews
A portrait of forbidden desire based on historical speculations, Mack and Kaufman’s thoroughly researched novel explores the difficult moral questions that can arise from adultery.... Minna grapples with the “burden of betrayal” and Sigmund’s cunning rationalizations while trying to answer this novel’s cliched but nonetheless thought-provoking central question: how far are you willing to go to be happy?
Publishers Weekly
Too outspoken to succeed as a lady's companion or to settle for a marriage of convenience, Minna Bernays seeks a temporary solution to her financial difficulties by moving in with her sister Martha [Freud]'s family.... Freud's intellect and charm shine through his self-centeredness. Rumors about Freud and his sister-in-law, who in real life lived with the family for more than 40 years, abound. This novel, inspired by historical events, places the possible affair between Freud and Minna firmly in the intellectual and social milieu of fin de siecle Vienna. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Mankato
Library Journal
A fictionalized account of Sigmund Freud's romantic involvement with his sister-in-law...based loosely on unsubstantiated conjecture that Sigmund Freud and his wife's sister, Minna Bernays, had a love affair while living under the same roof.... Does Martha know or care that her husband's engaged in intimate acts with her own sister? Neither spouse appears overly concerned about the activities of the other....but Minna's racked with guilt.... Freud's theories about human sexuality and behavior may be considered pretty wild, but his own sex life comes across as dull.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Minna Bernays was unmarried, educated and independent-minded. Was she a typical nineteenth-century woman? Were you surprised by the limited options available to women like her? In what ways did she break the mold? What about her might have made her irresistible to Sigmund Freud?
2. As readers, we see Freud through Minna’s eyes. How do her impressions of his character, appearance, and research compare with your knowledge of him as a historical figure?
3. If, as Freud stated, he and Martha were no longer physically intimate, do you feel that Minna betrayed Martha?
4. In many ways this is a story about two sisters. How would you describe the changing dynamic between Minna and Martha over the course of the novel? Where did your sympathies lie? Did their relationship resolve itself in the way you expected?
5. Minna and Martha were raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, but Freud did not allow them to practice traditional Jewish customs in his household. Did his anti-religious views surprise you? Why do you think he held the opinions he had on God, sin, and guilt?
6. Among the most famous quotations attributed to Sigmund Freud is this: “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’” How did his lack of understanding carry over to his treatment of the women closest to him? In what way was this evident in his relationship with Martha? With Minna?
7. How did Minna rationalize returning to her sister’s household after being in Switzerland? Did she make the right choice? If she had not miscarried, what might she have ended up doing?
8. Do you think Martha suspected her husband of adultery? If so, when did she begin to suspect him? Why did she maintain such a nonchalant reaction to his infatuations? How did his betrayals affect her mental health?
9. Minna was described by Freud as his “closest confidante” and has been called his muse. Do you think she influenced the theories he developed in his psychoanalytic work?
10. Throughout the novel, there are instances in which Minna showed signs of jealousy over Freud’s relationship with her sister. Did she have a right to be jealous? Which sister do you feel Freud was truly devoted to?
11. Freud is revealed as a flawed, egotistical man with eccentric tastes and addictive habits, surprisingly lacking in empathy when it came to the women in his life. With this in mind, just what was it about Freud that attracted Mina to him? Why was she so much more interested in him than in other men? In light of what you know about his theories, does his behavior surprise you?
12. At the end of the novel, did you think Martha knew about Minna and Freud?
(Questions from book's website.)
The Friday Night Knitting Club
Kate Jacobs, 2007
Penguin Group USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425219096
Summary
Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday Night Knitting Club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for just a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her whole world is shattered.
Luckily, Georgia's friends are there, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—N/A
• Raised—near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—B.A., Carleton University (Ottowa); M.A., New
York University
• Currently—lives near Los Angeles, California, USA
Kate Jacobs is the New York Times bestselling author of Comfort Food, Knit Two, and The Friday Night Knitting Club, which has over 1 million copies in print.
Kate grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia, in the scenic and delightfully named town of Hope (pop. 6,184). It’s an area filled with friends and family and Kate loves to visit. Back then, of course, it was tremendously boring, as only home can be to a teenager. As a result, Kate begged her parents to send her to boarding school in Victoria, BC. From there she traded in her navy blazer to earn a Bachelor’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. Next, in a fit of optimism/ courage /naivete—take your pick—she followed it up with a move to bustling New York City (pop. 8,143,197).
The plan? Breaking into magazine publishing. First she received a Master’s degree at NYU and worked at a handful of unpaid internships, then got a spot as an assistant to the Books & Fiction Editor at Redbook magazine. It was here that Kate answered multiple phones, read a ton of slush (getting to know some wonderful writers- to-be), and began to experience the impact of sharing women’s stories. Around this time, Kate settled into an apartment complex that housed about as many people as her entire hometown in Canada: It seemed that she wasn’t just a small-town girl anymore.
Professionally, Kate made it a priority to explore content that resonated with women: She was an editor at Working Woman and Family Life and was later a freelance writer and editor at the website for Lifetime Television. Personally, as a newcomer to New York, she learned the power of building a surrogate family and stitching together friendship connections that will endure. Exploring the richness of women’s relationships is a key focus of her novels.
After a decade of Manhattan living, Kate moved to sunny Southern California with her husband. (And discovered that she likes suburban living just fine, thank you very much.)
She relished the idea of her very own home office but found herself setting up the laptop on the dining table, just as she’d done in New York, and writing late at night in her pajamas.
A firm believer in the creative power of free time, Kate loves to recharge by tackling knitting projects that she can finish quickly (all the better to feel that sense of accomplishment). She’s also a fan of taking naps, especially when she’s on deadline, snuggling under a favorite green-and-yellow afghan knitted by her grandmother decades ago. Her beloved liver-and-white English Springer Spaniel, Baxter, often snoozes alongside. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Knitters will enjoy seeing the healing power of stitching put into words. Its simplicity and soothing repetition leave room for conversation, laughter, revelations and friendship-just like the beauty shop in Steel Magnolias.
Detroit Free-Press
Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her 12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own brewing. Jacobs surveys the knitters' histories, and the novel's pace crawls as the novel lurches between past and present, the latter largely occupied by munching on baked goods, sipping coffee and watching the knitters size each other up. Club members' troubles don't intersect so much as build on common themes of domestic woes and betrayal. It takes a while, but when Jacobs, who worked at Redbook and Working Woman, hits her storytelling stride, poignant twists propel the plot and help the pacing find a pleasant rhythm.
Publishers Weekly
Georgia Walker's entire life is wrapped up in running her knitting store, Walker and Daughter, and caring for her 12-year-old daughter, Dakota. With the help of Anita, a lively widow in her seventies, Georgia starts the Friday Night Knitting Club, which draws loyal customers and a few oddballs.... Jacobs' winning first novel is bound to have appeal among book clubs. — Kristine Huntley
Booklist
A Steel Magnolias for the 21st-century set in a New York City knitting shop. Debut novelist Jacobs capitalizes on last year's hot knitting trend with this laughs-and-tears women's novel. Georgia Walker, a single mother in her gorgeous late 30s, runs a specialty knitting shop in midtown Manhattan. Every Friday, a quirky group of women gathers at the shop for food, gossip and tips. The novel follows the threads of their criss-crossing lives-more or less. Its true focus is Georgia's romance, past and possibly present, with Dakota's father James, a handsome, charming, successful black architect who has reappeared on the scene after a 12-year absence. (Jacobs touches on race-Georgia is white-but it serves as little more than an exotic grace note in an otherwise standard romance plot.) The novel's most successful stretch takes place in Scotland, far away from the knitting shop and the club, when Georgia visits her wisdom-dispensing grandmother with her 12-year-old daughter Dakota and her spoiled, ex-socialite best friend in tow. Jacobs seems all too aware of her book's niche market potential. Readers are encouraged to visit a website devoted to the book for knitting tips and patterns. The female cast is likeable, but Jacobs pushes hard the idea of knitting as a metaphor for life, which thickens the novel's syrupy Lifetime Channel melodrama until it congeals into a bizarre ending.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Georgia reject her parents’ offer to house her and Dakota?
2. The role of friendships among women is a central theme of The Friday Night Knitting Club. Some friendships develop easily, like K.C. and Georgia’s, while others begin on unsure footing, like Darwin and Lucie’s. Cat’s insecurities create conflicted feelings about drawing Georgia closer. Discuss the emotional baggage and issues of class that challenge trust between various women in the knitting club.
3. Georgia has a history of being burned by the people closest to her. Cat’s decision to attend Dartmouth meant breaking a pact of friendship, and James abandoned her for another woman. Leading up to forgiveness, do you think there are moments when her defenses against intimacy and protectiveness of Dakota are excessive?
4. What does Anita see in Georgia that gives her the confidence to invest? Why does Georgia trust Anita, given her past relationships that went awry?
5. Lucie’s decision to become pregnant without telling the man she conceives with is a choice that flies in the face of social convention and her mother’s expectations, to say nothing of her Catholic upbringing. What factors led to her choice? How does the whole of Georgia’s experience as a single mother support or undermine her decision?
6. Entrepreneurs, single moms, and a seventy-something undergoing a sexual reawakening—the women of the knitting club are hardly traditional, although a highly traditional woman’s craft is what brings them together each Friday. Eventually Darwin decides to write her thesis about the positive impact of knitting in the lives of modern women rather than criticizing it as a “throwback” that prevents women from focusing their energy on professional success. In your opinion, which is the more feminist interpretation?
7. Georgia gets defensive when James asserts that he has things to teach Dakota about race that Georgia could never teach her. Is her indignation totally justified in light of James’s delinquency as a father, or is there some truth to his claim?
8. How does Dakota’s major act of rebellion (her attempt to go to Baltimore) alter Georgia and James’s playing field? Do you agree with Georgia’s decision on an initial trip to Scotland over a trip to Baltimore?
9. Before Georgia gives James a second chance, she claims to harbor “hatred lite” toward him, reasoning that she’d always heard the opposite of love is hate. When Cat’s lawyer informs her that Adam wants to settle and be done with her, she’s unexpectedly hurt because he’s letting her walk away without a fight. Given Cat’s reaction, how does indifference factor into the love/hate equation?
10. When Cat responds to Georgia’s sincere questions about her college experience at Dartmouth by saying, “It wasn’t like you think,” what does she mean?
11. Things get interesting in Scotland when Georgia’s Gran offers her loving but firm analysis of the women’s lives. She points out that Cat is capable of handling stress but hasn’t tried, and that Georgia’s spent too much time ruminating on the past. Her advice: mistakes are made; the important thing is to decide how to react to what people offer, because you can’t make them change. How do the women accept this advice in each of their lives?
12. If Georgia had opened the letters she received from James in a timely fashion, how might things have been different?
13. While James and Dakota are in Baltimore visiting his parents, Georgia decides to tell the club that she has cancer. Why does she share her news with the knitting club before she tells her immediate family?
14. When Georgia gets diagnosed, she worries that a show of weakness will be unacceptable to Dakota, James, and others who know and love her as a pillar of strength. How do her loved ones prove her wrong?
15. In your opinion what is the main lesson of The Friday Night Knitting Club?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Friday Nights at Honeybee's
Andrea Smith, 2003
Dell Publishing
306 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385336987
Summary
Everyone who's anyone in the Harlem music scene has heard of Honeybee McColor and the famous Friday night gathers that fill her house to bursting. In the early 1960s, nowhere but "The Big House" attracts so many renowned jazz and blues musicians—and no one but Miss Honeybee attracts talented lost souls like Forestine Bent and Viola Bembrey.
The two singers come from separate worlds: one the Brooklyn projects, the other the Baptist, rural South. One has a God-given voice and the ambition to be a star, the other a more subtle gift and a handful of hazy fantasies. But both learn the destructive consequences of following their hearts. They find sanctuary together under Honeybee's tender guidance, struggling to find the balancing point where music doesn't overpower love.
Including a passel of characters both wildly raunchy and remarkably dignified, Andrea Smith has woven an unforgettable tale overflowing with energy, heart, and humanity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Andrea Smith has received fellowships from the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and The New York Council on the Arts. She was born and raised in Brooklyn and now lives in Atlanta with her son. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Perceptive…penetrating…a rich and satisfying story of women who courageously carve out the lives they want rather than endure those prescribed for them.
Washington Post Book World
A love of music, a gift for song, and a healthy dose of bad judgment (when it comes to men) all harmonize to bring together the stories of two unique women in this accomplished first novel. Brooklyn-born-and-bred Forestine knows better than to count on her looks to take her where she wants to go. Strong-willed and confident, her single-minded ambition and a voice made for jazz will launch her onto the stage despite a lack of willowy beauty. But a passionate moment with her brother-in-law sends her on the road faster than she'd planned, yielding additional unanticipated lessons.
Viola, a South Carolinian beauty, finds herself on the wrong side of the Bible Belt after a brief extramarital dalliance. Excommunicated from her family's church and the only community she's ever known, Viola flees north to New York, a disillusioned young woman seeking to carve out a new life from the sanctuary of Honeybee's boarding house in Harlem.
Honeybee's is a legendary presence on the Harlem music scene. Her notorious Friday night "gathers" draw both well-known and nascent musical talents from far and wide for late-night jam sessions that feature riotous entertainment, authentic southern cooking, and musical networking galore. But Honeybee's is also famous for attracting lost souls, and Forestine and Viola sadly qualify. Though the trials they've been through would have most folks singing the blues to themselves, the hearts of these women are made of stronger stuff, as they prove that two are indeed better than one.
Barnes & Noble - Discover Great New Writers
Two young women unlucky in love but blessed with talent and friendship are at the core of this vibrant first novel.... The warmth and caring of Miss Honeybee's home supports both women through troubled times in this wonderful celebration of music and community. —Michele Leber
Booklist
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 Friday Nights at Honeybee's:
1. Talk about the differences between Viola and Forestine— their personalities and their backgrounds which led them to Honeybee's. Do you sympathize or identify with one over the other?
2. Is Viola to blame for her excommunication? What were her feelings toward her husband, and what was she looking for that she didn't find in her marriage?
3.What are the roles played by the two different mothers in this book? To what extent did they shape their daughters' lives? What about the fathers? Honeybee becomes a surrogate mother for both young women. How does she help them?
4. Would you enjoy the atmosphere at Honeybee's? Does Smith do a good job of picturing the boarding house, its smells and sounds, the characters who live there...and, of course, the wonderful music played there?
5. Do you feel you've learned something about, or gained a greater appreciation for, jazz, R & B, and blues?
6. What might Smith be suggesting as she explores the tug-of-war for women between pursuing careers vs. taking on the more tradition roles of wife and motherhood? How have those issues been resolved more than 40 years later? Are they resolved?
7. Do both women make the right decisions by the end of the book? What does each learn? Were you satisfied with the ending?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fannie Flagg, 1987
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804115612
Summary
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age.
The tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.
And as the past unfolds, the present—for Evelyn and for us—will never be quite the same agains. (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
The people in Miss Flagg's book are as real as the people in books can be. If you put an ear to the pages, you can almost hear the characters speak. The writer's imaginative skill transforms simple, everyday events into complex happenings that take on universal meanings.
Chattanooga Times
When Cleo Threadgood and Evelyn Couch meet in the visitors lounge of an Alabama nursing home, they find themselves exchanging the sort of confidences that are sometimes only safe to reveal to strangers. At 48, Evelyn is falling apart: none of the middle-class values she grew up with seem to signify in today's world. On the other hand, 86-year-old Cleo is still being nurtured by memories of a lifetime spent in Whistle Stop, a pocket-sized town outside of Birmingham, which flourished in the days of the Great Depression. Most of the town's life centered around its one cafe, whose owners, gentle Ruth and tomboyish Idgie, served up grits (both true and hominy) to anyone who passed by. How their love for each other and just about everyone else survived visits from the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan, a host of hungry hoboes, a murder and the rigors of the Depression makes lively reading -- the kind that eventually nourishes Evelyn and the reader as well. Though Flagg's characters tend to be sweet as candied yams or mean clear through, she manages to infuse their story with enough tartness to avoid sentimentality. Admirers of the wise child in Flagg's first novel, Coming Attractions, will find her grown-up successor, Idgie, equally appealing. The book's best character, perhaps, is the town of Whistle Stop itself. Too bad the trains don't stop there anymore.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. This novel has a very complex structure alternating between the past and the present and the point of view of a whole host of different characters. Did this narrative format work for you? Were there particular narrators you found more compelling than others and why?
2. Idgie and Ruth's friendship is truly a case of opposites attract. Why is the scene where Idgie reveals her bee charming skills to Ruth so pivotal to the story of their relationship and in understanding what drew them together despite their differences?
3. Jasper Peavey's grandson is embarrassed by his grandfather's behavior toward white people. Discuss generational conflict and how life changed or did not change across the generations in both the Peavey and Threadgoode families.
4. This novel has a great deal to say about race relations in the South. How did the black and white communities interact in this story both within and beyond the borders of Whistle Stop? Were Idgie and Ruth's egalitarian views on race typical?
5. What is Artis Peavey's secret? Do you think the events he witnessed as a child had an impact upon his later life? How does race have an impact upon the lives of all the Peavey children--Jasper, Artis, Willie Boy, Naughty Bird? What options were available to them and what choices did they make and why? What do you think of the revenge that Artis takes on the man who murdered his brother?
6. Do you think the color of Jasper and Artis' skin--Jasper being very light-skinned and Artis being very dark-skinned--made a difference in their approach to life? What does the light-skinned Clarissa's encounter with her dark-skinned Uncle Artis say about life as a blackSoutherner?
7. How do you feel about a character like Grady Kilgore, Whistle Stop sheriff, member of the Ku Klux Klan, and friend to Idgie and Ruth at the same time?
8. Eva Bates is a woman you might call sexually liberated before her time. What role does she play in Idgie's life? In Stump's? What are Ruth's feelings toward Eva?
9. We never learn where Ninny came from or how she came to be adopted by the Threadgoodes, only that they took her in and treated her like a member of the family. This is only one example in a novel full of non-traditional families. What are some other examples of familial bonds that do not look like a traditional nuclear family? How does this author challenge and expand our understanding of the meaning and structure of family?
10. What drives Idgie to masquerade as Railroad Bill? What role did the economic devastation of the Great Depression play in the lives of Idgie, Ruth, Smokey, and everyone in Whistle Stop?
11. Why did Ruth leave Idgie and marry Frank? What made her finally leave him?
12. Did the identity of Frank Bennett's killer surprise you? What drove her to do what she did? Why was Idgie prepared to take the blame?
13. What do Dot Weems' weekly dispatches tell us about the nature of life in a small town? Were you sorry to see Whistle Stop fade away? Why has this been the fate of so many small towns in America?
14. How does Idgie help Stump overcome having lost his arm?
15. How did Evelyn's relationship with Ninny Threadgoode change her life? What did she learn from Mrs. Threadgoode? And how did Evelyn help her friend?
16. What did Ninny Threadgoode's stories offer Evelyn? Why do you think Evelyn is so drawn to this woman and her stories?
17. Ninny tells Evelyn that her memories are all she has left. Discuss the importance of memory and storytelling in this novel.
18. Why and how was Evelyn able to finally overcome her revenge fantasies, send Towanda packing and make important changes in her life? What steps did she take that ensured these changes would be for good and not a temporary thing?
19. How does this story explore the process of aging? How do we die with dignity when all those we loved and who loved us are gone? How does Ninny manage?
20. Does the Whistle Stop Cafe sound like a restaurant you would like to frequent?
21. Is domestic violence viewed differently today than it was in Ruth's time? Do you see any changes in Ruth's character after she leaves her abusive marriage?
22. Which character would you be most interested in meeting and why?
23. For those of you who have seen the movie, how do the movie and the book compare? What is missing from the movie and why do you think this is so? Do you think the choices made in terms of how to streamline this complex novel for film were the best ones?
24. The importance of food in the fabric of everyday life is a central theme in this book. For example, Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode bond over the treats Evelyn brings. What does Evelyn's battle with her weight say about contemporary society and women's relationships with food and their weight? Are these struggles evident in the lives if Ninny, Idgie, or Ruth?
25. In the final chapter, we learn what has happened to Idgie. Why do you think she and Julian left Whistle Stop to take to the road? Why don't their friends or family appear to know where they are? Does this seem like an appropriate ending for Idgie?
26. Will anyone or has anyone tried any of Sipsey's recipes?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself
William Boyle, 2019
Pegasus Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781643130583
Summary
Goodfellas meets Thelma and Louise when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts.
After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure.
Taking off in Enzio’s ’62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door.
Their neighbor, Lacey "Wolfie" Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her.
When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend Richie, she figures Rena’s her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand.
But Richie has massacred a few members of the Brancaccio crime family for a big payday, and he drags even more trouble into the mix in the form of an unhinged enforcer named Crea. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from something and unsure what comes next.
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself is a screwball noir about finding friendship and family where you least expect it, in which William Boyle again draws readers into the familiar—and sometimes frightening—world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York–New Paltz; M.F.A., University of Mississippi
• Awards—
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi
William Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Originally from Brooklyn, New York City, he lived with his mother's family, who were from Italy, in the Bensonhurst and Gravesend section of the boro. (Gravesend became the title of his 2014 novel.) Boyle's father, of Scottish descent, was mainly absent during his childhood.
Even as a child, Boyle says he was a disciplined writer, writing for 10-12 hours a day (when he had the time) at the age of 14. Boyle earned his B.A. from the State University of New York at New Paltz and, later, his M.F.A. at the University of Mississippi, where he now teaches as an adjunct. He wrote his first novel, Gravesend, in 2011 for his master's thesis; it was published in 2013. The novel was also released in France, where it was nominated for Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, and in the UK, where it was shortlisted for the New Blood Dagger Award. The novel was re-released in the U.S.
in 2018.
In 2015, Boyle published a volume of short stories, Death Don’t Have No Mercy. A novel, Tout est Brise (Everything is Broken) was published in France in 2017. Another novel, The Lonely Witness came out in the U.S. in 2018, and A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself in 2019.
Boyle lives with his wife in Oxford, Mississippi; they have two children. (Adapted from various online sources. Retrieved 3/5/2019.)
Book Reviews
Comic crime capers are fun. Comic crime capers starring women are even more fun. William Boyle delivers some choice laughs and a terrific trio of felons in A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself …on a road trip that's so much fun you don't want it to end.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
[A] funny, gritty, touching narrative about the strength of three New York women caught in a world of abusive men, broken families, and mob violence. Friend is a rarity; a fresh novel about New York's underbelly. Crime fiction usually stays within the confines of the genre, but Boyle breaks away from those restrictions.
NPR
★ [An] addictive hardboiled crime novel…. Boyle skillfully mixes a classic Westlake/Leonard–style caper with the powerful tale of three women facing the ghosts of their pasts.
Publishers Weekly
This all sounds a little bit loopy, along the lines of Carl Hiaasen or Tim Dorsey, and there is indeed a surreal element to this caper. But there is also more than a little Thelma & Louise in Boyle’s terrific tale, which has some of the most stylish noir prose to grace the page in some time.
BookPage
★ The novel incorporates the snappy timing of both those films, and the Elmore Leonard–like cinematic prose begs for a film adaptation. Recommend this triumph of moral ambiguity to fans of black humor, including that of Carl Hiaasen and Dennis Lehane.
Booklist
[A] caper-inspired road story of quirky personalities on the run littered with gruesome deaths…. Deploying an inimitable tone that packs sardonic storytelling atop action and adventure…, Boyle's voice works even when it feels like it shouldn't. It's just the right kind of too much.
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.)
Friend of My Youth
Alice Munro, 1990
Knopf Doubleday
274 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679729570
Summary
Winner, 1990 Trilliam Book Award
The ten miraculously accomplished stories in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience. They are haunting stores of women and men in the midst of contemporary quandries and crises—lives so universal, they seem to involve us all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 10, 1931
• Where—Wingham, Ontario, Canada
• Education—University of Western Ontario
• Awards—Nobel Prize for Literature; Man Booker Prize;
3 Governor General's Literary Awards; Giller Prize;
National Book Critics Circle Award; Trillium Book Award;
Marian Engel Award; Lorne Pierce Medal; Foreign
Honorary Member, American Academy Arts & Letters
• Currently—lives in Clinton, Ontario, and Comox, British
Columbia
Even though Alice Munro is known for her love stories, don't mistake her for just another romance writer. Munro never romanticizes love, but rather presents it in all of its frustrating complexity. She does not feel impelled to tack happy endings onto her tales of heartbreak and healing. As a result, Munro's wholly credible love stories have marked her as a true original who spins stories that are as honest as they are dramatic.
Alice Munro got her start in writing as a teenager in Ontario, and published her first story while attending Western Ontario University in 1950. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled Dance of the Happy Shades, would not be published until 1968, but when it arrived, Munro rapidly established herself as a unique voice in contemporary literature. Over the course of fifteen short stories, Munro displayed a firmly focused vision, detailing the loves and life-altering moments of the inhabitants of rural Ontario. Munro takes a gradual, methodical approach to unraveling her stories, often developing a character's perspective through several paragraphs, only to demolish it with a single, biting sentence. Yet she also explores those heartbreaking delusions of her characters with humanity, undercutting the bitterness with genuine compassion.
Munro was instantly recognized for her debut collection of stories, winning the prestigious Governor General's Award in Canada. Monroe would then spend the majority of her career writing short stories rather than novels. "I want to tell a story, in the old-fashioned way—what happens to somebody—but I want that 'what happens' to be delivered with quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds, and strangeness," she explained to Random House.com. "I want the reader to feel something is astonishing—not the 'what happens' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me."
Munro would write only one novel, Lives of Girls and Women, a coming-of-age tale about a young girl named Del Jordan, which is actually structured more like a collection of short stories than a typical novel. Throughout the rest of her work, she would continue to explore themes of love and the way memories shape one's life in short story collections such as Friend of My Youth, Open Secrets, the award-winning The Love of a Good Woman, and Runaway
Because her stories are so unencumbered by cliches and speak with such clarity and truthfulness, it is often assumed that Munro's work is largely autobiographical. The fact that she chooses to set so many of her tales in her hometown only fuel these assumptions further. However, Munro says that very little of her material is based on her own life, and takes a more creative approach to inventing her finely developed characters. "Suppose you have—in memory—a young woman stepping off a train in an outfit so elegant her family is compelled to take her down a peg (as happened to me once)," she explains, "and it somehow becomes a wife who's been recovering from a mental breakdown, met by her husband and his mother and the mother's nurse whom the husband doesn't yet know he's in love with. How did that happen? I don't know."
As Munro grows older, her themes are turning more and more toward illness and death, yet she continues to display a startling vitality and youthfulness in her writing. A writer with a long and celebrated career, Alice Munro's work is just as compelling, honest, and insightful as ever.
Extras
• Munro dropped out of college in 1951 to marry fellow student James Munro. The couple opened a bookstore in Victoria, had three children, and divorced in 1972. Munro continues to live in Canada with her second husband, geographer Gerald Fremlin.
• Munro wrote on a typewriter for a good part of her career, calling herself a "late convert to every technological offering" in a publisher's interview. "I still don't own a microwave oven," she says. (From Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
One of the most eloquent and gifted writers of contemporary fiction...A wonderful collection of stories, beautifully written and deeply felt.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Munro's unfailing sense of the timeless propels the stories in her seventh book to the point of quiet revelation. Writing often of Canadians in the provinces who look back on years past from the vantage point of middle or old age, she tells of an elderly man attempting a discreet exit from his life; a widow who seeks a better understanding of her late husband in his former Scottish stomping grounds; and a daughter who relates and then recasts a classic tale of female self-denial handed down as an uncomfortable inheritance by her mother. The last, the volume's title story, is an especially insightful work, suggesting both the opposition and communion between art and experience—between a daughter who will write as she likes and a mother whose steely mask forbids her to. It is difficult to do justice to Munro's magical way with characterization or to her unerring control of her own resources: she writes about the forging and dismantling of friendships, marriages, families and solitudes with a trenchant knowledge of life and fiction as conspiring forces of creation.
Publishers Weekly
Munro is an established author, one of the few who have mastered the art of short story writing. This fine collection contains ten stories that are all good to read. Most—but not all—are about the inhabitants of small Canadian towns. The primary characters, mainly women, have diverse relationships with their families and other unusual acquaintances. The plots are sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, but always within the realm of realism. Very seldom does anything occur that seems too ridiculous to actually have happened to somebody one knows. Most readers will find these stories entertaining and often thought-provoking. Recommended for libraries already owning Munro's previous works.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Friends and Strangers
J. Courtney Sullivan, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525520597
Summary
An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions.
Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City.
Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night., she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.
Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit.
Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close.
But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.
A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—near Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—Brooklyn, New York, New York
Julie Courtney Sullivan, better known as J. Courtney Sullivan, is an American novelist and former writer for the New York Times. She comes from an Irish-Catholic family where many of the women go by their middle rather than first names.
Sullivan grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she majored in Victorian literature and received the Ellen M. Hatfield Memorial Prize for best short story, the Norma M. Leas prize for excellence in written English, and the Jeanne MacFarland Prize for excellent work in Women's Studies.
She graduated in 2003, then moved to New York and began working at Allure. Sullivan later moved to the New York Times, where she worked for over three years. Her writing has since appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, New York Observer, Men's Vogue, Elle, and Glamour.
In 2007, her first book was published, a dating guide titled Dating Up: Dump the Shlump and Find a Quality Man; she has since stated that she wrote the book for money and that "fiction was always [her] passion."
She self-identifies as a feminist, a stance that has been reflected in both her fiction and nonfiction work. In 2006, she wrote a piece for the New York Times "Modern Love" column about her experiences in the dating world, and in 2010 she co-edited a feminist essay collection titled Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Her novels often deal prominently with relationships between female characters. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/11/2013.)
Book Reviews
J. Courtney Sullivan… begins in the middle of the night… from which promising vantage point we’re given delightful permission to sit back and spy…. Drawn by Sullivan’s deft hand, the relationship feels authentic and richly textured…. Friends and Strangers is a big novel with big ideas…. An honest rendering of what happens behind closed doors.
Clare Lombardo - New York Times Book Review
There’s a rare degree of emotional maturity in Friends and Strangers, a willingness to resist demonizing any of the players, a commitment to exploring the demands of family with the deliberate care such complex relations require. Once again, Sullivan has shown herself to be one of the wisest and least pretentious chroniclers of modern life. Every hard-won insight here is offered up with such casual grace.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Sullivan’s intimate, incisive latest explores the evolving friendship between a new mother and her babysitter…, showing where the cracks seep into their friendship. Readers will be captivated by Sullivan’s authentic portrait of modern motherhood.
Publishers Weekly
Sullivan humanizes the roadblocks to successful relationships and the modern tools that help or hinder those bonds… in a deceptively quiet tale delivering big truths, complete with an enticing epilog 10 years in the future —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
Sullivan… displays her keen observation skills with this insightful examination of two women at very different places in their lives.… [A] deeply personal yet profound exploration of motherhood, friendships, and [how] privilege… shapes our lives.
Booklist
(Starred review. Sullivan… writes with empathy for her characters even as she reveals their flaws… [and] illuminates broader issues about… dueling demands of career and domesticity…. This perceptive novel… resonates as broadly as it does deeply.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Elisabeth’s fascination with the BK Mamas Facebook group. Why does it have such a strong hold on her? Does she continue to identify as a BK Mama after she moves away, or does she feel different from the women who post in the group?
2. Examine Sam and Elisabeth’s connection. What draws them to each other? How accurate is each woman’s perception of the other? When and why do cracks begin to form in their friendship?
3. Explore Elisabeth and Andrew’s marriage. What challenges does their relationship face over the course of the novel, and how do they confront them? How does parenthood affect their relationship? Do you feel they have a strong foundation as a couple? Why or why not?
4. Consider the role that money plays in the novel. How are the characters’ relationships with each other affected by money? To what extent does money give people power over others? Can money ever strengthen a relationship or is it always a toxic element?
5. Examine Elisabeth’s opinion of the Laurels. In what ways are they different from her friends in Brooklyn? Why does she find them so irksome? What does her judgment of these women suggest about Elisabeth herself? Does her opinion of them ever soften? Consider, as you answer this question, Elisabeth’s struggles with loneliness, her career, and her long-distance friendship with Nomi.
6. Discuss Sam’s feelings for Clive. What initially attracts her to him? What about their relationship gives her pause? How do her friends and family view their relationship? How does she react when she learns of Clive’s deception, and what does his decision to lie about his first marriage suggest about his motivations for wanting to marry Sam?
7. Explore the theme of privilege in the novel. What different kinds of privilege are evident in the lives of the novel’s characters? Are these characters able to recognize their privilege or are they blind to it? Is privilege something to be ashamed of? Why or why not?
8. Examine George’s theory of the Hollow Tree. What are his central beliefs, and why do they resonate so deeply with Sam? Why are Andrew and Elisabeth frustrated with George’s fixation on economic inequality? Why does Elisabeth eventually decide to write a book based on George’s observations?
9. Compare and contrast Sam’s friendship with Isabella and her friendship with Gaby. What common ground does she share with each woman? With which woman does she feel more at ease? Do you believe that both friendships are genuine? Why or why not?
10. Discuss Sam’s decision to write an anonymous letter to President Washington about the working conditions of service employees at the college. What does she hope to accomplish? Why does she decide not to tell her friends in the dining hall about it? What do her friends’ reactions to the letter reveal about their relationship with Sam?
11. Explore the theme of hypocrisy in the novel. Which characters act in a way that contradicts their professed sense of morality? How do these characters reconcile their behavior with their beliefs? How does their hypocrisy affect their friends and family?
12. Examine Elisabeth’s relationships with her mother and father. What are her earliest memories of each of them? How does her relationship with each parent, in addition to her understanding of their marriage, influence her approach to marriage and parenthood?
13. Explore Elisabeth’s decision to lie to Andrew about IVF. What does it reveal about Elisabeth’s character? About her marriage? Why do you think Sullivan chose not to explain how and why Elisabeth and Andrew had a second child?
14. Discuss Sam’s experience of returning to her college town for her ten-year reunion. How has she changed since graduation? In what ways has time altered her perception of her college experience, her friendships with the women in the dining hall, her fallout with Elisabeth, and her relationship with Clive?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Friendship: A Novel
Emily Gould, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374158613
Summary
A novel about two friends learning the difference between getting older and growing up
Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have been best friends for years; now, at thirty, they’re at a crossroads. Bev is a Midwestern striver still mourning a years-old romantic catastrophe.
Amy is an East Coast princess whose luck and charm have too long allowed her to cruise through life. Bev is stuck in circumstances that would have barely passed for bohemian in her mid-twenties: temping, living with roommates, drowning in student-loan debt. Amy is still riding the tailwinds of her early success, but her habit of burning bridges is finally catching up to her. And now Bev is pregnant.
As Bev and Amy are dragged, kicking and screaming, into real adulthood, they have to face the possibility that growing up might mean growing apart.
Friendship, Emily Gould’s debut novel, traces the evolution of a friendship with humor and wry sympathy. Gould examines the relationship between two women who want to help each other but sometimes can’t help themselves; who want to make good decisions but sometimes fall prey to their own worst impulses; whose generous intentions are sometimes overwhelmed by petty concerns.
This is a novel about the way we speak and live today; about the ways we disappoint and betray one another. At once a meditation on the modern meaning of maturity and a timeless portrait of the underexamined bond that exists between friends, this exacting and truthful novel is a revelation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 13, 1981
• Raised—Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Eugene Lang College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
Emily Gould is an American author. She is the co-owner, with Ruth Curry, of the indie e-bookstore Emily Books, and the former co-editor of Gawker.com.
Gould grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and attended Kenyon College for two years before transferring to Eugene Lang College in New York City. Gould resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Career
Gould began her blogging career as one-half of The Universal Review before starting her own blog, Emily Magazine, and writing for Gawker on a freelance basis. Before joining the Gawker staff, Gould was an associate editor at Disney's Hyperion imprint.
Gould is the co-author, with Zareen Jaffery, of the young adult novel Hex Education (2007). She is also the author of a memoir, And the Heart Says Whatever (2010) and the novel, Friendship (2014).
Criticism
On April 6, 2007, Emily Gould appeared on an episode of Larry King Live hosted by talk show host Jimmy Kimmel during a panel discussion entitled "Paparazzi: Do they go too far?" During the interview, Kimmel accused Gould of irresponsible journalism resulting from Gould's popular blog, mentioning the possibility of assisting real stalkers and suggesting that Gould and her website could ultimately be responsible for someone's death. Kimmel continued to claim a lack of veracity in Gawker's published stories, and the potential for libel it presents. At the end of the exchange Gould stated that she didn't "think it was ok" for websites to publish false information, after which Kimmel said she should "check your website then."
On May 4, 2007, Gould wrote about the interview in an article for the New York Times. She penned another article for a New York Times Magazine cover story (May 25, 2008) about her experiences with Gawker, in which she described how the negative response to her television appearance led to panic attacks and subsequent psychotherapy. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/10/2014.)
Book Reviews
In Ms. Gould’s...often sharply observed first novel, Friendship...Amy and Bev have just crossed a microgenerational line into their 30s, and there’s a self-conscious, faintly melancholy tone to [the novel]: the girls’ sense of looking back on the turmoil (and, in Amy’s case, hubris) of their swiftly receding 20s with both alarm and nostalgia, worried that things are starting to add up, that the clock is ticking more loudly now, that the arithmetic of their lives is changing.... Depicting Amy and Bev in the third person gives Ms. Gould a measure of perspective on—and distance from—her characters, enabling her to depict their follies and foibles with a mixture of sympathy and humor. The novel form...also accentuates Ms. Gould’s strengths as a writer.... Whereas the blogs tended to create a self-portrait of the author as human word processor (automatically slicing, dicing and churning experience into prose), Friendship isn’t the simple spewing (or venting or whining or knee-jerk reacting) of an obsessive oversharer. Rather, at its best, it points to Ms. Gould’s abilities as a keen-eyed noticer and her knack for nailing down her ravenous observations with energy and flair.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Gould is holding up an ideal. Friendship, a slim, sometimes piercing novel, is a sharply observed chronicle of the inequality inherent in even the most valued friendships.
Alyssa Rosenberg - Washington Post
More than an exploration of friendship, this novel is about what happens when the things we take for granted slip away and we are forced to come up with new ways of being. For Amy and Bev, an unplanned pregnancy opens up a flood of questions that the women must wrestle with together, and, ultimately, individually.... Gould does a fine job capturing the women's frustrations, big and small, and the ways in which their friendship serves both as a hindrance and a means to maturing. But even if the writing is far superior to that commonly associated with commercial fiction, the novel's flippant tone—and the fact that it never really probes very far beneath the surface of what the characters are thinking—makes it read like a more highbrow version of chick lit. Call it literary chick lit.
Shoshana Olidort - Chicago Tribune
Gould’s strengths as a writer lie in her ability to portray contemporary women. Both main characters, who moved to Manhattan—well, Brooklyn—in order to conquer it often end up defeated.... Though Gould’s book is called Friendship it’s about much more than, as the main characters might say, BFFs. It’s about transitioning from idealistic youth to realistic adulthood, sacrificing freedom for stability, and abandoning creative lifestyles in order to craft sustainable lives.... Amy and Bev can be impulsive and oblivious. However, they’re recognizable to anyone who was ever told, as a child, that she could grow up to be anyone she wanted to be—and later struggled to figure out who that was.... Though Friendship is a modern tale astutely told, it offers the class-consciousness reminiscent of a Victorian novel.... Gould is a master of the telling detail or the ironic turn of phrase.... With Friendship, Gould establishes herself as a distinctively contemporary literary voice. Her dialogue resounds, and her dark humor gives texture to the prose. And though Friendship focuses on young women, readers need be neither young nor female in order to enjoy it.... This is a very human story for any of us who have ever been jealous of a friend or wished our friends were more jealous of us.
Christian Science Monitor
Work—sustained creativity, the problems of receiving too much attention, too fast and too young, paycheques, temp gigs, what it all might add up to and protect from—is as much a theme of the book as friendship is. The novel has a disarmingly for-real sense of these kinds of women’s lives, and features high-def, immersive verisimilitude about roommates, instant messages, storage units, job applications, buses, shirts, drinks and, largely, money; these are, of course, also the quotidian but hugely meaningful circumstances that create, maintain and end friendships, especially between women, especially in cities.... Adult female friendships act as load-bearing walls, but they’re also precarious: jealousy and judgments can rip them open in a day; errors in the careful balance sheet of neediness and interest in the other one’s day undo years of emotional work. ‘Sharply observed’ is a gross cliché, but Friendship is Gould seeing and understanding the small and mounting details of what women like her want, what they have to do to get it, and what they do to ruin everything. Gould’s first, best talent...is to see things as they are, like a craftsperson, like a writer of novels has to see them.
Kate Carraway - The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
There is a sentimental delight in reading Friendship and its roller coaster ride of urban highs and lows.... In the end, Gould draws a vivid and convincing portrait of a friendship—in all of its human misunderstandings, disappointments, and brokenness.... It is no small feat to animate and chart the emotional fluctuations and subtle contours of female friendships on the page.... [Gould] illuminate[s] what it means to grow up together and then sometimes apart.
S. Kirk Walsh - Virginia Quarterly Review
Gould’s novel is admirably, readably realistic—she knows these girls and the world they live in (including the omnipresence of technology and the way that it pervades relationships).... Gould nails the complex blend of love, loyalty, and resentment that binds female friends. It is worth reading for the richness of its details (at one point, Amy is overwhelmed by the desire to put an engaged coworker’s wedding ring in her mouth), and it offers new insight into the experience of young women.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Plot takes a back seat to Gould’s razor-sharp humor and observations about life in New York among a class of young people who know more about how they’d like to live than how to pay for it. It’s also a delight to read a novel that places female friendship at its center; we watch Bev and Amy manage their fluctuating feelings of love, jealousy and sometimes disdain for each other...[as] Gould brilliantly charts their ups and downs.
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.)
top of page (summary)
Frog Music
Emma Donoghue, 2014
Little, Brown & Co.
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316324687
Summary
Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.
In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 24, 1969
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College Dublin; Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—Irish Book Award
• Currently—lives in London, Ontario, Canada
Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland, the youngest of eight children. She is the daughter of Frances (nee Rutledge) and academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue. Other than her tenth year, which she refers to as "eye-opening" while living in New York, Donoghue attended Catholic convent schools throughout her early years.
She earned a first-class honours BA from the University College Dublin in English and French (though she admits to never having mastered spoken French). Donoghue went on receive her PhD in English from Girton College at Cambridge University. Her thesis was on the concept of friendship between men and women in 18th-century English fiction.
At Cambridge, she met her future life partner Christine Roulston, a Canadian, who is now professor of French and Women's Studies at the University of Western Ontario. They moved permanently to Canada in 1998, and Donoghue became a Canadian citizen in 2004. She lives in London, Ontario, with Roulston and their two children, Finn and Una.
Works
Donoghue has been able to make a living as a writer since she was 23. Doing so enables her to claim that she's never had an "honest job" since she was sacked after a summer as a chambermaid. In 1994, at only 25, she published first novel, Stir Fry, a contemporary coming of age novel about a young Irish woman discovering her sexuality.
Donoghue is perhaps best known for her 2010 novel, Room—its popularity practically made her a household name. Room spent months on bestseller lists and won the Irish Book Award; it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange prize, and the (Canadian) Governor General's Award. In 2015, the novel was adapted to film. Donoghue wrote the screenplay, which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Bafta Award.
Since Room, Donoghue has published seven books, her most recent released in 2020—The Pull of the Stars. (Adapted from the author's website and Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2016.)
Book Reviews
Emma Donoghue’s novel Room...is a triumph.... The same cannot be said of Donoghue’s new novel, Frog Music, which is based on a true-life unsolved murder that occurred on the outskirts of San Francisco in the summer of 1876.... Frog Music refuses to come to life, quietly collapsing under the weight of its own tedium. This may be a function both of the thinness of the actual story on which it’s based and of Donoghue’s failure to develop it.... [T]he plot doesn’t gain any traction, repetitively hitting the same two beats, the loss of the child and the unsolved murder.
Patrick McGrath - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) Donoghue's first literary crime novel is a departure from her bestselling Room, but it's just as dark and just as gripping as the latter.... Aside from the obvious whodunit factor, the book is filled with period song lyrics and other historic details, expertly researched and flushed out.... Donoghue's signature talent for setting tone and mood elevates the book from common cliffhanger to a true chef d'oeuvre.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Donoghue's evocative language invades the senses.... Readers won't quickly forget this rollicking, fast-paced novel, which is based on a true story and displays fine bits of humor with underlying themes of female autonomy and the right to own one's sexual identity. —Sally Bissell, Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Donoghue flawlessly combines literary eloquence and vigorous plotting in her first full-fledged mystery, a work as original and multifaceted as its young murder victim.... An engrossing and suspenseful tale about moral growth, unlikely friendship, and breaking free from the past. —Sarah Johnson
Booklist
More fine work from one of popular fiction's most talented practitioners.... Donoghue's vivid rendering of Gilded Age San Francisco is notable for her atmospheric use of popular songs and slang in Blanche's native French, but the book's emotional punch comes from its portrait of a woman growing into self-respect as she takes responsibility for the infant life she's created.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the title. How do frogs relate to the story?
2. Frog Music takes place during 1870s San Francisco. How does Donoghue describe the city?
3. How is Frog Music different from other historical fiction you've read recently? Did anything surprise you about the novel?
4. How does Donoghue incorporate lyrics and French references into the book? What do the lyrics and references reveal about the characters and plot? How do they influence the structure and style of the book?
5. Discuss the role of cross-dressing in Frog Music. How does Jenny defy and transcend the social boundaries of 1870s San Francisco?
6. Frog Music features depictions of strong female characters. How are Jenny and Blanche similar? How are they different?
7. Describe the role of motherhood in Frog Music. How does Donoghue depict the role of motherhood during this time period and for specific characters in the book?
8. What roles do secondary characters play in the story? Discuss the role of Arthur. Why does Arthur find Jenny so threatening?
9) What taboos does Emma Donoghue address during Frog Music? Do any of them still exist today?
10. Was Blanche a likeable character? In what ways did you sympathize with her? In what ways could you not relate? In what ways does Blanche have to fight against what she wants in life versus what society expects from her? Discuss.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
From Sand and Ash
Amy Harmon, 2017
Amazon Publishing
372pp.
ISBN-13: 9781503939325
Summary
Italy, 1943—Germany occupies much of the country, placing the Jewish population in grave danger during World War II.
As children, Eva Rosselli and Angelo Bianco were raised like family but divided by circumstance and religion. As the years go by, the two find themselves falling in love.
But the church calls to Angelo and, despite his deep feelings for Eva, he chooses the priesthood.
Now, more than a decade later, Angelo is a Catholic priest and Eva is a woman with nowhere to turn. With the Gestapo closing in, Angelo hides Eva within the walls of a convent, where Eva discovers she is just one of many Jews being sheltered by the Catholic Church.
But Eva can’t quietly hide, waiting for deliverance, while Angelo risks everything to keep her safe. With the world at war and so many in need, Angelo and Eva face trial after trial, choice after agonizing choice, until fate and fortune finally collide, leaving them with the most difficult decision of all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Amy Harmon is an American author of more than 10 best selling novels. She has also been a motivational speaker, a singer (with the Emmy Award winning Saints Unified Voices Choir directed by Gladys Knight), a teacher, and a mother of four.
Harmon grew up in a small town in the state of Nevada, the daughter of two school teachers. She and her siblings had no television (but plenty of wheat fields) so they entertained one another. Amy also turned to her own imagination — reading books (Jane Eyre at 12!) and writing songs and stories.
As an adult, Harmon spent 10 years in Las Vegas, singing, teaching, and raising her family. She taught in a small private school, both elementary and middle school grades. Later she home-schooled her children. Eventually, Harmon moved from writing songs and poetry to writing novels. She ended up self-publishing her first two books in 2012: Running Barefoot (in April) and Slow Dance in Purgatory (in August). Both became bestsellers, as have most of her books. They have been sold in 12 countries around the globe. (From various online sources. Retrieved 5/26/2017.)
Book Reviews
See additional reviews from Amazon customers and on Goodreads.
I just finished and I can't stop crying. From Sand and Ash was phenomenal. The writing was brilliant, the love story was epic, and the depiction of events, gut-wrenching. I had to stop throughout to catch my breath.
Schmexy Girl Book Blog
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Sand and Ash … then take off on your own:
1. Describe the personalities of Eva and Angelo. We see them first as children: what brings them together and forges their years-long bond?
2. How do the new laws change Eva's life and change her relationship with Angelo?
3. Eva's Uncle Felix tells Eva:
They can take our homes, our possessions. Our families. Our lives.… They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds.
Those are inspiring words, but do spiritual and intellectual freedom truly compensate for loss of physical freedom? What do you think? If you had to make a choice…?
4. Death and mourning are major themes in the book: what is the significance of the number seven?
5. Talk about Camillo's decision to go to Austria. What is his reasoning?
6. When Angelo returns to Florence, intending to take Eva back to Rome, why does she greet him the way she does?
7. When Nonna Fabia tells Eva that God sees both her and Angelo, Eva thinks to herself, "Either God sees everyone or he sees no one." Talk about that statement—what does Eve mean and why. How do you view her thinking?
8. When the raids begin in Rome, discuss the bravery shown by many of the individuals.
9. How are Angelo's beliefs in God changing, and how does that alter his position as a priesthood, on the inside or outside?
10. What is the significance of dragons in the novel? In Chapter 18, Angelo is warned that he will slay dragons, but not before they slay him. Dragons come up again in the next chapter when Angelo rejoins Eva at the hotel.
11. It takes Greta three days to tell her husband. What would you do in her shoes?
12. In chapter 21, why does no one try to escape? What role does hope play in that decision: do you think hope is powerful enough to make someone cooperate to the very end?
13. In the epilogue, Eva says that she is still a Jew and Angelo still a priest. What does she mean?
14. (Follow-up to Question 13) "There are two things I know for sure. I love you, and no one knows the nature of God." What are your thoughts about Eva's statement?
(Questions adapted from the author's reading guide. See the full guide on the author's website.)
Fruit of the Drunken Tree
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385542722
Summary
A mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogota.
But the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation.
When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction.
As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.
Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories.
In lush prose, Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Bogota, Columbia
• Education—M.F.A., Columbia College Chicago
• Awards—Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award-Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Guernica, and Huffington Post, among others.
She has received fellowships and awards from The Missouri Review, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures.
Contreras currently lives in San Francisco, where she blogs about books for NPR affiliate KQED and teaches fiction at the University of San Francisco. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The use of raw potato to treat any ailment. Guard booths and gates. Buying barrels of water during blackouts. Leaving the television on to know exactly when the electricity comes back on. And the graphic news reports, the car bombs, the kidnappings, the ever-present fear in your gut that something terrible could happen to someone you love at any moment. It's vividly specific details like these that made me wince in recognition while reading Ingrid Rojas Contreras's Fruit of the Drunken Tree, a beautifully rendered novel of an Escobar-era Colombian childhood. Although this debut novel is inspired by the author's personal experiences…you don't need to have grown up in Bogot? to be taken in by Contreras's simple but memorable prose and absorbing story line.… [S]ensitive and thoughtful.
Julianne Pachico - New York Times Book Review
One of the most dazzling and devastating novels I’ve read in a long time.… An exquisitely intimate double portrait of two young women.… Unforgettable.… Readers of Fruit of the Drunken Tree will surely be transformed.
San Francisco Chronicle
Simultaneously propulsive and poetic, reminiscent of Isabel Allende.… Fruit of the Drunken Tree offers a wake-up call for many. An eye-opening story of survival in a place history books and crime sagas (see: "Narcos") would have us think we know better than we do.… Listen to this new author’s voice—she has something powerful to say.
Entertainment Weekly
Original, politically daring, and passionately written—Fruit of the Drunken Tree is the coming-of-age female empowerment story we need in 2018.
Vogue
[F]ull of details about life in early 1990s Colombia during the last year of Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror.… This striking novel offers an atmospheric journey into the narrow choices for even a wealthy family as society crumbles around them.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Rojas Contreras's…does an excellent job of articulating the complicated political situation and illustrating the heartbreaking day-to-day reality for children.… A fascinating, poetic read from an up-and-coming author. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
Library Journal
[I}ncomparable.… Contreras’ deeply personal connection to the setting lends every scene a vital authenticity, and a seemingly unlimited reservoir of striking details brings the action to life…. A riveting, powerful, and fascinating first novel.
Booklist
The perils of day-to-day existence in late-20th-century Colombia …are glimpsed through the eyes of a child and her family's teenage maid…. A tragic history…, and the results are patchy: sometimes constrained by invention, sometimes piercing.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Fruit of the Drunken Tree shifts between the perspectives of Chula and Petrona. How do the dual perspectives impact your reading of the novel? What would be lost without Chula’s perspective? Without Petrona’s?
2. During most of the novel, Chula narrates Fruit of the Drunken Tree as a child. How did the child narration effect your reading experience? Did you enjoy that perspective?
3. The author does a great job of showing the many sides to a story, and develops each character fully. With which character did you sympathize the most? The least?
4. When Chula is brought back to her mother after the kidnapping attempt, she doesn’t understand her mother’s anger and protests "but [Petrona] brought me back." Who do you side with? Do you think Petrona deserves forgiveness?
5. Did you understand Petrona’s final decision to stay with Gorrion? Were you surprised to learn that she married him? Why?
6. The symbol of the drunken tree figures heavily into the novel. How does Ingrid use this symbol? What is its significance?
7. There are many mentions of supernatural elements (witches, ghosts, tarot cards) in Fruit of the Drunken Tree. Why do you think the author included them? And what do they add to your reading experience?
8. What did you know about Colombia before reading this novel? Did the book change your perspective?
9. At the end of the novel, you find out that much of the story is based off of experiences from the author’s life. Did you know it was autofiction? If not, how did that knowledge add to your overall reading of the book?
10. Each character in the novel copes with trauma in a different way. How do their strategies compare to one another? How do you imagine you would react to a similar experience?
11. Did Chula’s experience immigrating to the US impact your understanding of refugees and immigrants? Do you feel that you have more empathy after reading it?
12. What do you envision happens to the characters after the book ends?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Full Ridiculous
Mark Lamprell, 2014
Soft Skull
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781619022959
Summary
Michael O’Dell is hit by a car, and when he doesn’t die, he is surprised and pleased.
But what should have been a catalyst for a new lease on life turns into a dance with the black dog: depression. Post-accident, Michael can’t concentrate, control his anger and grief, or work out what to do about much of anything. His professional life begins to crumble, and although his wife, Wendy, is heroically supportive, his teenage children only exacerbate his post-accident angst.
His daughter Rosie punches out a vindictive schoolmate, plunging the family into a special parent-teacher hell. Meanwhile, his son Declan is found with a stash of illicit drugs, and a strange policeman starts harassing the family, causing ordinary mishaps to take on a sinister desperation.
Equal parts hilarious and painful, this compelling novel delves into the difficulties of family, marriage, and the precarious business of being a man. Mark Lamprell’s pithy and poignant debut novel examines the terrible truth: sometimes you can’t pull yourself together until you’ve completely fallen apart.
Author Bio
• Birth—September 26, 1958
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A., Macquarie University, New South Wales, Aus.
• Currently—Rome, Italy (soon to be Sydney, Australia)
(From the author.)
Book Reviews
[Lamprell] delivers a comic novel that is smoothly executed and full of minor pleasures.
Toronto Star
Screen writer Lamprell debuts with a first-rate novel told almost exclusively in the second person. It begins with Michael O’Dell being hit by a car, an accident that sets off a yearlong descent into an "Alice-less Wonderland" of personal and familial trouble. […] As Michael and his family work to resolve their crises, Lamprell manages to temper sentimentalism with a tonic wryness.
Publishers Weekly
The Full Ridiculous will appeal to readers of quirky, contemporary fiction such as The Rosie Project and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It reminds us that sometimes, to really appreciate the beautiful highs of life, you need to hit rock bottom first.
Bookseller & Publisher
Discussion Questions
1. How does this depiction of modern society reflect your own experience? What are the similarities and differences?
2. Discuss the different descriptions of depression in the book. For example: "a winter that began in summer and lasted one whole year," or "despair descends and paralyses you ... like a chemical wash."
3. Michael is aware that other people are worse off than him. Should we compare our own difficulties to those of others?
4. The narrator tells us that the best entry point into the story is Rosie’s altercation with Eva. But the actual book starts with the car accident. And Michael comes to realise that his feelings of abandonment stem from his adoption at birth. Do the different possible beginnings mirror the different possible causes for Michael’s depression?
5. How much of Michael’s self-loathing stems from his inability to fulfill traditionally masculine roles, especially as breadwinner?
6. Discuss some of the other males in the novel and the alternative models of masculinity they exemplify (for example, George Pessites, Rat-tat-tat, Declan). What about the character Michael often contemplates—Zorba?
7. "So this perfect little person has arrived and now we get to fuck him up," Wendy says after Declan is born. Is it possible to be a parent without fucking up your children?
8. "You are no longer big, strong dependable Daddy. Daddy who puts a roof over our heads and brings home money for food and clothes. Daddy who fixes things and makes things better. Daddy who knows best" (120). What does the novel say about the importance of traditional models of fatherhood?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Funny Girl
Nicky Hornby, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594205415
Summary
Set in 1960's London, Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingenue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters.
Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 17, 1957
• Where—Surrey, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Cambridge
• Awards—E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Currently—lives in London, England
Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels High Fidelity and About a Boy. Hornby's work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists. His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.
Early life and education
Hornby was born in Redhill, Surrey, England. He was brought up in Maidenhead, and educated at Maidenhead Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English. His parents divorced when he was 11.
Books
Hornby's first published book, 1992's Fever Pitch, is an autobiographical story detailing his fanatical support for Arsenal Football Club, and earning Hornby the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The memoir was adapted for film in the UK in 1997, with a 2005 American remake with Jimmy Fallon as an obsessed Boston Red Sox fan.
After the success of Fever Pitch, Hornby began publishing articles in the Sunday Times, Time Out and the Times Literary Supplement. He also wrote music reviews for The New Yorker.
High Fidelity—his second book and first novel—was published in 1995. About a neurotic record collector and his failed relationships, the book was adapted into a 2000 film, starring John Cusack, and a 2006 Broadway musical.
His second novel, About a Boy, published in 1998, is about two "boys"—Marcus, an awkward yet endearing adolescent from a single-parent family, and Will Freeman, afree-floating, mid-30s who overcomes his own immaturity and self-centeredness through his growing relationship with Marcus. Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult starred in the 2002 film version.
In 1999, Hornby received the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Hornby's next novel, How to Be Good, came out in 2001. The female protagonist in the novel explores contemporary morals, marriage and parenthood. It won the W.H. Smith Award for Fiction in 2002.
In 2002 Hornby edited Speaking with the Angel, twelve short stories written by friends. A portion of the money from the book went to TreeHouse, a charity for children with autism, the disorder that affects his own son.
In 2003, Hornby wrote a collection of essays on selected popular songs and the emotional resonance they carry, called 31 Songs (Songbook in the US). Also in 2003, Hornby was awarded the London Award 2003, an award that was selected by fellow writers.
Hornby has also written essays on various aspects of popular culture, in particular on pop music and mixed tapes. Since 2003, he has written a book review column, "Stuff I've Been Reading", for the monthly magazine The Believer; all of these articles are collected in The Polysyllabic Spree (2004), Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (2006), Shakespeare Wrote for Money (2008), and More Baths Less Talking (2012).
Hornby's novel A Long Way Down was published in 2005 and made the shortlist for the Whitbread Award. The film version, starring Pierce Brosnan and Toni Collett, was released in 2014. Hornby has also edited two sports-related anthologies: My Favourite Year and The Picador Book of Sports Writing.
Hornby's book Slam his first novel for young adults, was published in 2007. It was recognized as a 2008 ALA Best Books for Young Adults. The protagonist of Slam is a 16-year-old skateboarder named Sam whose life changes drastically when his girlfriend gets pregnant.
Hornby's next novel, Juliet, Naked, was published in September 2009. On the same wavelength as his first novel High Fidelity, the book follows a reclusive '80s rock star who is forced out of isolation when the re-release of his most famous album brings him into contact with some of his most passionate fans.
In 2010, Hornby co-founded the Ministry of Stories, a non-profit organisation in East London dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Hornby discussed his bouts of depression in 2012 on the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of "Fever Pitched: Twenty Years On."
Hornby's seventh novel, Funny Girl, about a Sixties beauty queen determined to make her mark upon television comedy, was released in 2014.
Music
The importance of music in Hornby's novels, and in his life, is evidenced by his long-standing and fruitful collaborations with the rock band Marah, fronted by Dave and Serge Bielanko. Hornby has even toured in the US and Europe with the band, joining them on stage to read his essays about particular moments and performers in his own musical history that have had a particular meaning for him.
Hornby's music criticism (most notably for The New Yorker and in his own Songbook) has been widely criticised by writers such as Kevin Dettmar (in his book Is Rock Dead), Curtis White (in an essay at www.centreforbookculture.org, titled "Kid Adorno"), Barry Faulk and Simon Reynolds for his embrace of rock traditionalism and his conservative take on post-rock and other experimental musics (exemplified in Hornby's negative review of the Radiohead album Kid A).
Hornby has also had extensive collaboration with American singer/songwriter Ben Folds. Their album Lonely Avenue was released in September 2010. Folds wrote the music, with Hornby contributing lyrics.
Personal
Hornby has been married twice. He and his first wife have one son, born in 1992, who has autism. Hornby's second wife is producer Amanda Posey. They have two sons, born in 2003 and 2005.
Hornby was directly involved in the creation of the charity Ambitious about Autism, then known as TreeHouse Trust, and its school TreeHouse School, as a result of trying to find specialist education for his son Danny. Hornby remains a major donor to the charity and is still involved as a vice president. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/15.)
Book Reviews
In Funny Girl, Nick Hornby uses the story of a reluctant beauty queen from Blackpool as the hook for a rambunctious cultural history of British television comedy 50 years ago. As befits a novel about a popular sitcom, this novel packs in lots of laughs, but it's also got more heft than Mr. Hornby's readers may expect
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Funny and fast moving, perceptive and sharp.
Los Angeles Times
A smart comic novel that...induces binge-reading that's the literary equivalent of polishing off an entire television series in one weekend.
NPR
Beautifully captures the thrill of youthful success and of discovering your own talent.
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Funny Girl may be read as Hornby's latest defence of popular entertainment against high-culture elitism. Funny Girl makes his case for him eloquently and entertainingly...both hugely enjoyable and deceptively artful.
Spectator (UK)
I loved this hymn to the 1960s, their infinite creative possibilities.
Scotsman (UK)
Endearing, humorous and touching. Hugely enjoyable.
Sunday Mirror (UK)
Engaging...Hornby’s fictionalized evocation of the era is spot-on.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] light, fond, funny tale by the author of About a Boy…[a] fizzy delight about the likable oddballs who populate showbiz.
People
Theera and the theme (surfing the crest of a revolution, then getting dumped in its wake) are pure Mad Men, but the pulpy warmth and sprightly dialogue are classic Hornby.
Vulture
(Starred review.) Hornby wonderfully captures the voice and rhythms of broadcast television of the time, and seems to delight in endless inversions of art imitating life imitating art.... The result is a delightful collection of characters that care as much as they harm, each struggling to determine who they want to be.
Publishers Weekly
For a novel about comedy, the humor is off camera, implied but not evident. Hornby's usual spark is missing. A readable but melancholy and definitely not funny book. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Art and life are intertwined in a novel about TV sitcoms set during the cultural sea change of the 1960s. Hornby's...most ambitious novel to date extends his passion for pop culture and empathy for flawed characters in to the world of television comedy. "It's funny, and sad—like life." And like this novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Early in Funny Girl, before recording Barbara (and Jim) for Comedy Playhouse, Sophie Straw says of the show, “I don’t want it to go out into the world . . . I want to stay like we were” (see page 107). What is Sophie trying to preserve? What is she afraid of losing?
2. There are some in the book who are irritated by Barbara (and Jim)’s popularity (Edith Maxwell-Bishop and Vernon Whitfield, for example) and who seem to believe that entertainment should be more traditional and less bawdy. Whitfield also says of the show’s audience, “I love ordinary people individually. It’s ordinary people en masse that trouble me” (page 207). Does the narrator take a stand on this sentiment? How is it conveyed?
3. On page 150, a reviewer for The Times writes: “The very existence of Barbara (and Jim) indicates the birth of a modern Britain, one prepared to acknowledge that its citizens are as sex-obsessed as our neighbors across the Channel . . .” In what other ways does Funny Girl illustrate Britain’s transition from the austere 1950s to the Swinging ’60s? From the ’60s to the 2010s?
4. What do you make of the inclusion of real historical evidence (photographs, cartoons, and images of the 1960s) alongside fictional text? Does it blur the line between fact and fiction?
5. At the launch party for Bill Gardiner’s book, Diary of a Soho Boy, Tony Holmes does not feel jealous toward his colleague’s success but does feel jealous upon seeing a “beautiful young colored girl” (see page 368) and wonders, Why didn’t he know any young, colored women? What does this tell us about both Bill and Tony and about the milieu of Britain at the time?
6. Much of Funny Girl’s energy lies in the bantering dialogue between characters. How do these exchanges allow the characters to define themselves in ways the narrator cannot? For example, Sophie’s agent, Brian Debenham, is repeatedly telling young women, “I’m a happily married man” (see page 48, for example). What other character traits can we glean from such dialogue?
7. On page 208, when Dennis Maxwell-Bishop and Vernon Whitfield appear on Pipe Smoke to argue over the current state of entertainment, Whitfield says, “But . . . where are we going with all of this? The BBC is full of horse-racing and variety shows and pop groups who look and sounds like cavemen. What will it look like in ten years’ time? Fifty? You’re already making jokes about lavatories and God knows what. How long before you people decide it’s all right to show people taking a shit, so long as some hyena in the audience thinks it’s hysterical?” How does his argument address not just the fictional plot but entertainment as we know it today? Is Funny Girl a defense of lighthearted entertainment?
8. A recurring question the characters face while producing Barbara (and Jim) is whether comedy can be intelligent. How is this addressed throughout Funny Girl? How would you respond to the question?
9. Sophie quietly struggles with feeling that she is relevant to the world of comedy. She’s disappointed when she meets Lucille Ball—her idol—after it becomes clear Lucy hasn’t seen Barbara (and Jim). But when Sophie and the team meet the Prime Minister, she is heartened that the “invitation was official acknowledgment that they mattered” (page 288), despite realizing the Prime Minister doesn’t watch the show either. Why do you think Sophie feels this way?
10.Funny Girl to narrate the book this way? How might it read differently if it had been told in the first person—say, if it had been told by Sophie?
11. As a “quick-witted, unpretentious, high-spirited, funny, curvy, clever, beautiful blonde” (page 257), Sophie might strike some readers as almost too good to be true. Is she? How does Hornby address this anomaly?
12. What dawning realization allows Sophie’s anger toward her mother, Gloria Balderstone, to soften? What does this tell us about Sophie? What does this tell us about the eras from which these two women came?
13. How do both the imaginary sitcom Barbara (and Jim) and the novel Funny Girl deal with issues of sex and class in Britain?
14. How does the relationship between Tony and Bill change over the course of Funny Girl?
15. The narrator tells us that, as an older woman, Sophie thinks that entertainment has “taken over the world, and she wasn’t sure that the world was a better place for it” (page 442). Do you agree with her assessment? Why or why not?
16. Funny Girl captures the excitement of youthful success and of burgeoning talent, but it also considers what it’s like once that excitement fades. How would you describe the mood at the end of the book as Barbara (and Jim)’s glory days inevitably pass?
17. What do you imagine Sophie did with the teapot in the opening scene of Barbara and Jim—The Reunion! to get them “off and running” (page 452)?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)