Leaving Berlin 
Joseph Kanon, 2015
Atria Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476704647


Summary
From the bestselling author of Istanbul Passage—called a "fast-moving thinking man’s thriller" by The Wall Street Journal—comes a sweeping, atmospheric novel of postwar East Berlin, a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation.

Berlin 1948. Almost four years after the war’s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War.

Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors.

Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin.

But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment—to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? Betrayal? Survival? Murder?

Filled with intrigue, and the moral ambiguity of conflicted loyalties, Joseph Kanon’s new novel is a compelling thriller and a love story that brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Where—in the state of Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Harvard University; Cambridge University
• Awards—Edgar Award; Hammet Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Joseph Kanon is an American author, best known for thriller and spy novels set in the period immediately after World War II.

Kanon was born in Pennsylvania and studied at Harvard University and at Trinity College in Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he published his first stories in the The Atlantic Monthly. Later he became editor in chief, CEO, and president of the publishing houses Houghton Mifflin and E. P. Dutton in New York, before he began writing in 1995.

Books
1997 - Los Alamos - Edgar Award for best first novel
1998 - The Prodigal Spy
2001 - The Good German - adapted to film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett
2005 - Alibi - Hammett Award (International Association of Crime Writers)
2009 - Stardust
2012 - Istanbul Passage
2015 - Leaving Berlin

Kanon is also a recipient of The Anne Frank Human Writers Award for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust

Kanon's stories are set in the period between World War II and 1950, and he has often used a real event, such as the Potsdam Conference or the Manhattan Project, as the background for a murder case. His novels are critically acclaimed, and reviewers from the Boston Globe and the New York Times have compared his work with the novels of Graham Greene and John le Carre.

Kanon lives with his wife, the literary agent Robin Straus, in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/15/2015.)

Book Reviews
Engaging...deftly captures the ambience of a city that’s still a wasteland almost four years after the Nazis’ defeat.... Kanon keeps the story humming along, enriching the main narrative with vignettes that heighten the atmosphere of duplicity and distrust.
New York Times Book Review


Joseph Kanon’s thought-provoking, pulse-pounding historical espionage thriller [is] stuffed with incident and surprise. . . . Mr. Kanon, author now of seven top-notch novels of period political intrigue, conveys the bleak, oppressive, and creepy atmosphere of occupied Berlin in a detailed, impressive manner. . . . Leaving Berlin is a mix of tense action sequences, sepia-tinged reminiscence, convincing discourse and Berliner wit.
Wall Street Journal


Kanon, who writes his novels at the New York Public Library, conjures from there a Berlin of authentic menace and such hairpin turns that Leaving Berlin evokes comparisons to John LeCarre and Alan Furst. Such good company.
New York Daily News


Not for nothing has Kanon – whose previous books include The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, has been compared to the suspense masters Graham Greene and John LeCarre. He’s certainly in the ballpark.
Buffalo News


The old-fashioned spy craft, the many plot twists and the moral ambiguities that exist in all of the characters make Leaving Berlin an intriguing, page-turning thriller.There’s also a star-crossed love story—and an airport farewell—that might remind some readers of Bogie and Bergman. But it’s the author’s attention to historical detail—his ability to convey the sights, sounds and feel of a beaten-down Berlin—that makes this book so compelling.
Ft. Worth Star Telegram


Galloping and compulsive…. I can’t imagine anyone putting it down…. Admirably atmospheric, the picture of the ravaged Berlin excellently done…. An enjoyable thriller, high-class entertainment.
Allen Massie - Scotsman


An unforgettable picture of a city wrecked by defeat and riddled withbetrayal. Brilliant.
Kate Saunders - (London) Times


Kanon brings the hardships and moral decay of post-war Berlin to lifein glorious detail, ratcheting up the suspense as Meier tries to escape the netclosing in on all sides. Absorbing.
Sunday Express (UK)


There's too much backstory and the period details sometimes bog down the narrative, but once all the pieces are in place the story hits its stride. Kanon likes to wrestle with the moral dimensions of spying (a la le Carre)—and what's more, he's very good at it.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A pleasure from start to finish, blending literary finesse with action, this atmospheric historical thriller will appeal not only to Kanon's many fans but to those who enjoy Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, and other masters of wartime and postwar espionage fiction. —Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Library Journal


Kanon, like Alan Furst, has found a landscape and made it his own. In fact, the two writers make outstanding bookends in any collection of WWII fiction, Furst bringing Paris just before and during the war to vivid life, and Kanon doing the same for Berlin in its aftermath.
Booklist


[E]xplores the grave moral complexities of life in Soviet-controlled East Berlin.... [T]he atmosphere is so rich, the characters so well-drawn and the subject so fascinating.... Another compelling, intellectually charged period piece by Kanon, who works in the shadows of fear as well as anyone now writing.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. When the Allies agreed to a joint occupation of Germany and its capital, the arrangement was expected to be temporary, an interim step toward a demilitarized neutral Germany. But four years later, the time of Leaving Berlin, we see those lines of occupation hardening into permanent borders that would last for forty years. What happened in these first four crucial postwar years?

2. On page 38, Willy tells Alex that the Communists were claiming the "moral high ground." What did they think justified this? Why was the East so successful in attracting exiled cultural figures? Were there ideological as well as practical reasons?

3. Soon after Alex learns that his former lover Irene is the mistress of a Soviet State Security official, she admits that she only sleeps with Markovsky to ensure her own safety. How does Irene’s pragmatism distinguish her from others in the novel? Do you think she was changed by the war, or is she fundamentally the same person now living in different circumstances?

4. The community of exiles returning to Germany in the novel revolves largely around the historical figure Bertolt Brecht and his production, Mother Courage and Her Children. Yet Alex remains slightly critical of the dramatist’s pretentions throughout, mentioning at one point that "what Brecht had really been in exile from all these years was not Berlin, but the twenties, with their tart, almost thrilling nihilism" (79). Is this a fair criticism? How large a role do you think self-interest played in Brecht’s decision to return? How had exile changed him?

5. Each of the American spies Alex encounters is taken aback by his natural talent for espionage. How might Alex’s profession as a novelist inform his ability to manipulate both American and Soviet intelligence?

6. Markovsky notes with pleasure how rubble from Nazi Germany’s ruins are repurposed to build "a new city right on top of the old one" (172). How do Kanon’s descriptions of ruins throughout the novel confirm or refute Markovsky’s ideas of renewal?

7. On page 218, Fritsch’s film pitch brings Alex back to "California, a producer pointing at him with a cigar, rewriting the world." Where else does the novel show the blurring of the lines between journalism, art, and propaganda? Are any of the writers or radio producers in the novel free from having their work used as propaganda?

8. When Alex travels with Roberta Kleinbard to Oranienburg in order to see her imprisoned husband, the Russian guard sneers that her name is Jewish. "Nothing had changed," Alex claims, "new uniforms" (252). In what ways is the Soviet administration in East Berlin similar to the Nazi regime? In what ways is it fundamentally different?

9. When Markus’s mother is released from the Russian camps after her sentence for "counterrevolutionary statements" is commuted, he reacts to her return with confusion and dismay. Why is he unable to embrace her? Is he afraid of his own emotions, or simply hardened to the point where he doesn’t feel? Or is it a more complicated response?

10. When Irene asks Alex if he loves her, as they prepare to say goodbye, he responds, "I do [. . .] But I can see you better now. All of you. Erich. Elsbeth. You. Before I just saw what I wanted to see." (368). What has changed in Alex that allows him now to see reality instead of a more comforting illusion? In what ways does Irene, too, now see Alex more clearly?

11. After all the subterfuge Alex uses to protect himself, Irene, and Erich in East Germany, he passes the Brandenburg Gate and enters West Berlin without ceremony. In a decade’s time the Berlin Wall would have blocked Alex’s unimpeded passage, and Kanon takes care to describe his protagonist’s path down the Luisenstrasse so that his footsteps trace the fated border. How does this retrospective knowledge impact the meaning of the last paragraph of the book?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Leaving Lucy Pear 
Anna Solomon, 2016
Penguin Publishing
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594632655


Summary
Set in 1920s New England, the story of two women who are both mothers to the same unforgettable girl—a big, heartrending novel from award-winning writer Anna Solomon

One night in 1917 Beatrice Haven sneaks out of her uncle's house on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, leaves her newborn baby at the foot of a pear tree, and watches as another woman claims the infant as her own.

The unwed daughter of wealthy Jewish industrialists and a gifted pianist bound for Radcliffe, Bea plans to leave her shameful secret behind and make a fresh start.

Ten years later, Prohibition is in full swing, post-WWI America is in the grips of rampant xenophobia, and Bea's hopes for her future remain unfulfilled. She returns to her uncle’s house, seeking a refuge from her unhappiness.

But she discovers far more when the rum-running manager of the local quarry inadvertently reunites her with Emma Murphy, the headstrong Irish Catholic woman who has been raising Bea's abandoned child—now a bright, bold, cross-dressing girl named Lucy Pear, with secrets of her own.

In mesmerizing prose, award-winning author Anna Solomon weaves together an unforgettable group of characters as their lives collide on the New England coast. Set against one of America's most turbulent decades, Leaving Lucy Pear delves into questions of class, freedom, and the meaning of family, establishing Anna Solomon as one of our most captivating storytellers. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976
• Raised—Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Pushcart Prize (twice); Missouri Review Editor Prize
• Currently—lives in Providence, Rhode Island


Anna Solomon is an American journalist and the author of two novels—The Little Bride (2011) and Leaving Lucy Pear (2016).

Raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Solomon received her B.A. from Brown University. After college, she moved back home to try her hand at writing, enrolling in workshops at GrubStreet writing center in Boston.

When her year at home was up, Solomon took an internship with National Public Radio's Living On Earth in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The position led to a full-time reporting job and eventually to radio producing, working both in Cambridge and Washington, D.C., on award-winning stories about environmental policy and politics. Although Solomon says she loved working in radio (and may some day return to it), she was still committed to becoming a novelist, so she used her commuting time to write fiction.

An M.F.A. at Iowa Writers' Workshop came next. Needing steady income following her graduate work, Solomon turned to teaching. All the while, she continued writing—short stories and essays—for periodicals.

She also married a classmate from Brown, by then a professor in environmental climate law. The couple has two children.

In 2011 Solomon published her first novel, The Little Bride; five years later she released Leaving Lucy Pear. Both books have been well received.

Solomon’s short fiction has appeared in One Story, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Her stories have twice been awarded the Pushcart Prize, have won The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and have been nominated for a National Magazine Award.

Her essays have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Slate’s Double X, and Kveller. (Adapted from Wikipedia and Glen Urquhart School bio. Retrieved 9/20/2016.)

Book Reviews
Interweaving is the mechanism that propels this novel. Tight-linked chains of action and response, misapprehension and revelation are braided together into a narrative that may, at times, feel a little too tidy and, at others, a little too diffuse but, through Solomon's strong prose and fleet pacing, consistently provides the essential pleasures of a good story well told. Perhaps not all of the novel's myriad points of view are strictly necessary, but this is a book governed less by necessity than by earnest empathy, a desire to give each character opportunities for growth and betterment, bravery and openness.
Maggie Shipstead - New York Times Book Review


Gorgeously moving...a dazzling exploration of the impact of roads untaken on motherhood, class, and gender.... Solomon expertly works on a large, mesmerizing canvas, with an almost dizzying array of characters, each moving the terrific drama of the book.... [She] renders each character so exquisitely complex, they could be the heroes of their own novels.... It's impossible to stop reading, because Solomon has made us care so much for all the characters, because she's fashioned a world so real, you can taste the salt spray and smell the heady fragrance of the ripe pears.
Boston Globe


The worlds of three women collide on the coast of Massachusetts in the 1920s in this beautifully told tale of a young woman's journey to discover herself.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


A thoughtful examination of class in the early twentieth century.... Anna Solomon is wise in the ways of mothers and daughters, the ties that bind, the gulfs that separate. Leaving Lucy Pear offers unforgettable characters and many small, meaningful, emotional moments set against the backdrop of larger history, and Lucy Pear, that strong, smart girl, is a character to remember and to root for.
New Orleans Public Radio


Solomon is a beautiful writer, and her prose brings people and scenes achingly alive.... Her characters' struggles with motherhood and identity would be compelling in any era.
Entertainment Weekly


The well-crafted chapters-some could stand alone as short stories-are handsomely written [and] sometimes poetic.... Leaving Lucy Pear is recommended to readers who enjoy historical fiction, a cast of well developed mainly female characters, and handsome prose.
New York Journal of Books


Leaving Lucy Pear-works extremely well on multiple levels...but the real highlights are its characters and the author's clear empathy for them.... With delicate precision, Solomon illustrates their desires and fears, both voiced and unvoiced.
Historical Novel Society


The lives of a girl’s biological and adoptive mother are juxtaposed in this new work from Solomon, a dreamy blend intertwining the harsh gender and class boundaries.... [Solomon] deftly manages to keep this lushly written look at two women’s haunting choices from slipping into family fantasy.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Solomon's razor-sharp prose scrapes her characters raw as she plants them deeply in the history and turmoil of 1920s New England. A beautifully rendered tale of discovering one's true nature. Highly recommended.—Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal


Quietly powerful.... Solomon excels at portraying flawed characters whose passive-aggressiveness overrides their search for love and success. But when the two mothers play tug-of-war for Lucy, readers cannot help but empathize with all involved. [A] moving story.
Booklist


(Starred review.) [F]ocused on the inner lives and challenges of a community, especially the womenfolk.... Solomon reaches resolutions marked with the same reflective maturity as the rest of this solidly absorbing novel. Slow-movement storytelling: fully-fleshed, compassionate, and satisfying.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The novel’s title most obviously refers to Beatrice’s leaving Lucy in the orchard. What else do you think it means, and how did your understanding of it change as you read the book?
 
2. Bea and Albert’s marriage could be called a sham. What do you think? What defines a "real" marriage? What about a good one?
 
3. Bea has made a career out of doing "good works," but their results—and her motivations—turn out to be morally complex. Have you ever had misgivings about an act of charity (your own or another’s)?
 
4. Who is Lucy’s mother? How do Bea’s and Emma’s relationships with Lucy speak to different ideas about what it means to be a mother? What experiences have shaped your own definition of motherhood?
 
5. To that end, what can this novel tell us about what it means to be a biological versus an adoptive parent? In what ways does Emma treat Lucy differently from her other children, and how does this affect Lucy? Do you think it’s possible to be both a member of a family and an outsider?
 
6. Both Emma and Bea feel torn between their own fulfillment and their obligations to family. What sacrifices do these women make, and do you think these sacrifices would look different if Bea and Emma lived in the present day?
 
7. The Roaring Twenties are often depicted as carefree years in the United States, but in Leaving Lucy Pear you see how tumultuous the time period really was. Do you see any resonance between the twenties and the times we’re living in now?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Leaving Time 
Jodi Picoult, 2014
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345544926


Summary
Throughout her blockbuster career, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult has seamlessly blended nuanced characters, riveting plots, and rich prose, brilliantly creating stories that “not only provoke the mind but touch the flawed souls in all of us” (The Boston Globe). Now, in her highly anticipated new book, she has delivered her most affecting novel yet—and one unlike anything she’s written before.

For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice’s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts.

Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest. The first is Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons—only to later doubt her gifts. The second is Virgil Stanhope, a jaded private detective who originally investigated Alice’s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers.

As Jenna’s memories dovetail with the events in her mother’s journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish. A deeply moving, gripping, and intelligent page-turner, Leaving Time is Jodi Picoult at the height of her powers. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1966
• Where—Nesconset (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.Ed., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Hanover, New Hampshire


Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has approximately 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.

Early life and education
Picoult was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island in New York State; when she was 13, her family moved to New Hampshire. Even as a child, Picoult had a penchant for writing stories: she wrote her first story— "The Lobster Which Misunderstood"—when she was five.

While still in college—she studied writing at Princeton University—Picoult published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. To pay the bills, after graduation she worked at a variety of jobs, including copy writing and editing textbooks; she even taught eighth-grade English and attained a Masters in Education from Harvard University.

In 1989, Picoult married Timothy Warren Van Leer, whom she met in college, and while pregnant with their first child, wrote her first book. Song of the Humpbacked Whale, her literary debut, came out in 1992. Two more children followed, as did a string of bestseller novels. All told, Picoult has more than 20 books to her name.

Writing
At an earlier time in her life, Picoult believed the tranquility of family life in small-town New England offered little fodder for writing; the truly interesting stuff of fiction happened elsewhere. Ironically, it is small-town life that has ended up providing the settings for Picoult's novels. Within the cozy surroundings of family and friends, Picoult weaves complex webs of relationships that strain, even tear apart, under stress. She excels at portraying ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Disoriented by some accident of chance, they stumble, whirl, and attempt to regain a footing in what was once their calm, ordered world.

Nor has Picoult ever shied from tackling difficult, controversial issues: school shooting, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teen suicide, and racism. She approaches painful topics with sympathy—and her characters with respect—while shining a light on individual struggles. Her legions of readers have loved and rewarded her for that compassion—and her novels have been consistent bestsellers.

Personal life
Picoult and her husband Timothy live in Hanover, New Hampshire. They have three children and a handful of pets. (Adapted from a 2003 Barnes and Noble interview and from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/28/2016.)

Book Reviews
Longtime fans of Picoult will recognize some of her stock characters—the precocious, sassy teenager; the distant, philosophical mother; the curmudgeonly surrogate father figure—as well the her trademark twist ending, which may well be her strangest to date. When she diverges from her usual formula her storytelling skills are most evident.
Publishers Weekly


[The] heroine...voice, combined with Picoult’s fascinating research on elephants and their behavior, adds layers to the narrative’s complexity. At the end, readers will be stunned and satisfied, as the surprise is indeed a well-kept secret.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. Despite their different backgrounds, Jenna, Serenity, and Virgil form a sort of unconventional family together. What do you think brings them together? Have you ever had a similar experience of finding support from an unlikely source?

2. Alice says that 98 percent of science is quantifiable, leaving 2 percent “that can’t be measured or explained. And yet that does not mean it doesn’t exist.” (p. 392) Do you agree or disagree? Can you think of examples from the book or from your own experience of something that fits into that 2 percent?

3. Virgil grapples with helping Jenna when he suspects discovering the truth might be more painful to her than never knowing. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew a truth that it might hurt someone to hear? What did you do?

4. Serenity’s fake psychic readings are successful, she says, because people look for sense in the nonsensical. Do you agree or disagree? If a psychic reading brings someone comfort or helps them grieve, do you think it matters if the message is faked?

5. Jenna meets up with another character at the very end of the book. (pp. 394–395) Were you surprised to see who that was? Why or why not?

6. Alice describes some amazing examples of elephants appearing to exhibit grief and empathy, which are drawn from real–life research. Discuss some of the ways elephant grief is depicted. How is it the same as human mourning? How is it different?

7. One of the major themes of Leaving Time is loss and how to cope with it. Discuss some of the ways the characters in this novel deal with their losses. Do you identify with any of these coping mechanisms more than others? How do you approach loss?

8. Do you think Thomas’s erratic and upsetting behavior justifies Alice’s affair with Gideon? What would you have done in Alice’s place?

9. Jenna compares her search for her mother to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale in Moby-Dick, or Javert hunting Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, saying they are all three defined by their search. Do you agree with this assessment? Have you ever felt defined in this way by something you wanted?

10. Why do you think Serenity loses her gift? And why do you think Jenna is able to help bring it back?

11. Do you believe in ghosts? If you could communicate with anyone who has passed away, who would it be?

12. Discuss the significance of the title Leaving Time. What is the literal meaning that Jenna ascribes to the phrase as a baby? What are some other ways the title could be interpreted?

13. “Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten.” (p. 12) What do you think this means? Do you agree or disagree? Have you ever experienced something and discovered later that someone else remembers it completely differently?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Leeway Cottage
Beth Gutcheon, 2005
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060539061

Summary
In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, as young lovers do, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring.

By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of virtually all seven thousand of the country's Jews. Meanwhile, in America, Sydney has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.

Combining the story of one long American twentieth-century marriage with one of the most stirring stories of World War II, Leeway Cottage is a beautifully written tour de force of a novel. (From the publisher.)

 Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1945
• Where—Sewickley, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—New York, NY

Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She attended the Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Harvard College, where she took an honors B.A. in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine.

In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living as a full-time storyteller (novels and occasional screenplays) since then. Gutcheon's novels have been translated into 14 languages (if you count the pirated Chinese edition of Still Missing), plus large-print and audio formats. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace and was also published in a Reader's Digest Condensed version, which particularly pleased the author's mother. (From the author's website.)

More
From a 2005 Barnes and Noble interview:

"When my second novel was in manuscript, a subsidiary rights guy at my publisher secretly sent a copy of it to a friend who was working in Hollywood with the producer Stanley Jaffe, who had made Goodbye Columbus, The Bad News Bears, and Kramer v. Kramer, run Paramount Pictures before he was 30, and met the queen of England. My agent had an auction set up for the film rights of Still Missing for the following Friday, with some very heavy-hitter producers and such, which was exciting enough. Two days before the auction, Stanley Jaffe walked into my agent's office in New York and said,

"I want to make a pre-emptive bid for Beth Gutcheon's novel."
"But you haven't read it," says Wendy.
"Nevertheless," says Stanley.
"There's an auction set up. It'll cost a lot to call it off," says Wendy.
"I understand that," says Stanley.
Wendy named a number.
Stanley said, "Done," or words to that effect.

To this day, remembering Wendy's next phone call to me causes me something resembling a heart attack. When, several weeks later, Stanley called and asked me if I had an interest in writing the screenplay of the movie that became Without a Trace, I said, ‘No.' He quite rightly hung up on me.

I then spent twenty minutes in a quiet room wondering what I had done. A man with a shelf full of Oscars, on cozy terms with Lizzie Windsor, had just offered me film school for one, all expenses paid by Twentieth Century Fox. He knew I didn't know how to write screenplays. He wasn't offering to hire me because he wanted to see me fail. Who cares that all I ever wanted to see on my tombstone was ‘She Wrote a Good Book?' The chance to learn something new that was both hard and really interesting was not resistible. I spent the rest of the weekend tracking him from airport to airport until I could get him back on the phone. (This was before we all had cell phones.)

I was sitting in my bleak office on a wet gray day, on which my newly teenaged son had shaved his head and I had just realized I'd lost my American Express card, when the phone rang. "Is this Beth Gutcheon?" asked a voice that made my hair stand on end. I said it was. ‘This is Paul Newman,' said the voice.

It was, too. The fine Italian hand of Stanley Jaffe again, he'd recommended me to work on a script Paul was developing. Paul invited me to dinner to talk about it. My son said, "For heaven's sake, Mother, don't be early and don't be tall." I was both. We did end up writing a script together; it was eventually made for television with Christine Lahti, and fabulous Terry O'Quinn in the Paul Newman part, called The Good Fight."

Extras
• I read all the time. My husband claims I take baths instead of showers because I can't figure out how to read in the shower, and he's right.

• I started buying poetry for the first time since college after 9/11, but wasn't reading it until a friend mentioned that she and her husband read poetry in the morning before they have breakfast. She is right — a pot of tea and a quiet table in morning sunlight is exactly the right time for poetry. I read the New York Times Book Review in the bath and on subways because it is light and foldable. I listen to audiobooks through earphones while I take my constitutionals or do housework. I read physical books for a couple of hours every night after everyone else is in bed—usually two books alternately, one novel and one biography or book of letters.

• I have a dog named Daisy Buchanan. She ran for president last fall; her slogan was ‘No Wavering, No Flip-flopping, No pants.' She doesn't know yet that she didn't win, so if you meet her, please don't tell her.

• When I was in high school I invented, by knitting one, a double-wide sweater with two turtlenecks for my brother and his girlfriend. It was called a Tweter and was even manufactured in college colors for a year or two. There was a double-paged color spread in Life magazine of models wearing Tweters and posing with the Jets football team. My proudest moment was the Charles Addams cartoon that ran in The New Yorker that year. It showed a Tweter in a store window, while outside, gazing at it in wonder, was a man with two heads.

• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is her answer:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Dickens often manages to be both dramatic and funny, while telling a thundering great story, but in Great Expectations, in spite of the unforgettable gargoyles like Miss Havisham and charming Wemmick with his Aged P, it's a very human story about the difference between how things look and how they really are. When Pip recognizes how he has fooled himself, and what he must accept about reality, you see that while Dickens has been amusing you with any number of major and minor melody lines that all seemed to be tripping along by themselves, he has in fact been in perfect control, building up to a major chord, every note right and every instrument contributing at just the right moment. I understood that to make a novel pay off like that, you have to know from the get-go what story you are telling, how it ends, what it means, and exactly what you want the reader to feel and know when it's over. It was the book that made me start thinking like a writer, not just as a passionate reader, about how stories are made.

(Author bio and interview from Barnes and Noble.)

Book Review
It's daring when a writer undertakes a story with intentionally unlikable main characters; Anthony Trollope was one of the very few to pull it off, in The Eustace Diamonds. Fortunately, Gutcheon has strong narrative skills, so while Leeway Cottage doesn't approach the breathless, involving hurtle of Trollope, it's absorbing, mostly because of the subplot about the Danes' remarkable efforts to save the country's Jews (almost all of whom survived the war, despite the German occupation).
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times

In this sprawling family epic, Gutcheon (More Than You Know) chronicles how an unlikely marriage endures over the course of the 20th century. The novel is anchored in the idyllic, fictional summer colony of Dundee, Maine, which will always feel like home to Annabelle Sydney Brant, but turns on the story of the Danish resistance against the Nazis in WWII, a revolt Annabelle's Danish-born, half-Jewish husband, Laurus Moss, leaves the U.S. to join. Annabelle matures from the young, cosseted Annabee (coming-out parties in Cleveland, sailing in Maine) to the bohemian Sydney (voice lessons and a flat in New York City), clashing with her chilly, socialite mother, Candace, along the way. In New York, she meets Laurus, a pianist, and as they court, Hitler marches on Europe. When the Nazis invade Denmark in 1940, Laurus cannot rest idly with his homeland and family endangered, so joins the London-based Danish Resistance. During their separation, Sydney gives birth to the first of three children and Laurus's family escapes from Denmark to Sweden. The war and time apart change but don't estrange Laurus and Sydney, whose lasting union despite glaring differences puzzles observers: "Sydney and Laurus Moss were like a tiger and a zebra married to each other. What were those two doing together?" Charting a marriage against the backdrop of a tumultuous century, Gutcheon writes evocatively of love and war.
Publishers Weekly

In Gutcheon's latest (after More Than You Know), Annabelle Sydney Brant grows up adored by her father and largely criticized by her mother. The best times of her life are spent in the family summer home, Leeway Cottage, in Dundee, ME. After her father's death, a miserable Sydney moves to New York City to study music in an act of rebellion against her mother's superficial lifestyle. There, she falls in love with Laurus Moss, a Danish pianist whom she eventually marries. When World War II breaks out, Laurus moves to London to help build the Danish Resistance and save Denmark's Jews from Nazi extermination. Meanwhile, Sydney gives birth to a daughter who, sadly, will not meet her father until the war is over. Though Sydney turns into a woman not unlike the mother she despises, her marriage endures. Gutcheon tells brave stories of the Danish people, including grim scenes set in concentration camps. A curious combination of a World War II historical/ summer house novel, this is a good old-fashioned, all-encompassing read, with tears and smiles guaranteed. Recommended for all public libraries. —Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L.
Library Journal

The wounds inflicted by bad parenting, the complexities of a flawed but enduring marriage, and Denmark's resistance to the Nazis: three compelling themes awkwardly yoked together in this ambitious latest from Gutcheon (More Than You Know, 2000, etc.). The author's gift for plunging readers directly into her story is evident on the first page, as three siblings sort through the belongings of their parents, who have died together in the family's summer home. Gutcheon then moves back to trace the history of Leeway Cottage in Maine and the miserable childhood of Sydney Brant, anxious daughter of cold, disapproving Candace. In 1938, Sydney falls in love with expatriate Danish pianist Laurus Moss, drawn to his warmth and delighted to shock her snobbish mother by marrying the grandson of a baker. The newlyweds spend a happy summer at Leeway in 1941, but when Laurus leaves a pregnant Sydney that fall to aid the European war effort, the narrative takes a sharp, startling turn. Sydney drops out almost completely for a hundred pages devoted to Laurus's family, particularly his sister Nina, one of the many Danes who risk their lives and save nearly all of the nation's Jews. By the time Nina is liberated from Ravensbruck concentration camp and Laurus returns to America, the grim Danish section has laid the groundwork for an entirely different perspective on Sydney. The unloved girl who seemed so appealing is revealed as a damaged, angry and selfish woman, though Gutcheon deftly drops in a few admirable acts to remind us no one is entirely good or all bad. Laurus remains steadfastly loyal, to the bewilderment of their three children as the narrative moves with increasing speed and selectiveness through the subsequent half-century. A harrowing account of Nina's ordeal at Ravensbruck makes an odd precursor to the final chapter at Leeway. Yet Gutcheon's insights are so keen, her sympathy for all her characters so contagious, that the story's imperfect structure can almost be forgiven. There's more going on here than the narrative can comfortably contain, but Gutcheon gets an A for effort and a solid B for achievement.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How would you characterize the narrator's voice, which sometimes echoes the sentiments of the characters? Describe the storyteller you envision as the novel unfolds. How does this narration compare to that of the many contributors to the Leeway Cottage Guest Book?

2. What do you make of the fact that Sydney's musical talent does not evolve into a profession for her, despite her desire for an unconventional role in the world? Do she and Laurus have a similar appreciation for the arts? In what way does she embody a shifting chapter in American cultural history?

3. From joining the Resistance to integrating his local YMCA, Laurus is willing to be an agent for justice at every turn. From where does he derive this courage? How does his understanding of compassion compare to that of the other men in Sydney's life, including her father, her son, and Neville?

4. Leeway Cottage captures the jealousy Candace feels regarding Sydney's relationship with her father, an emotion Sydney comes to understand when she is a mother herself. Do you believe this dynamic is common or rare? What factors contribute to it?

5. What theories do you have about the reason for Berthe Brant's suicide? Did her marriage to James mirror Sydney's marriage to Laurus in any way?

6. Discuss the role of Gladdy and her family in Sydney's life. What is the significance of Sydney and Laurus making their home at Leeway Cottage, rather than the house built by Sydney's ancestors?

7. Were you surprised by Sydney's infidelity with Neville? How do you interpret the scene in which she and Anselma have an awkward run-in with Gladdy? Do you consider Laurus to have been unfaithful to Sydney during the war?

8. What is the effect of Nina's closing chapter and its position in the novel? Why did Sydney so dislike Nina? What is your understanding of the bequest Nina made to Hans Katz?

9. The novel focuses on many little-known aspects of Nazi occupation, such as Niels Bohr's ultimatum and the Rosh Hashanah plot against Danish Jews. What history did you learn from Gutcheon's telling of it? In what way is this history the centerpiece of the novel?

10. What was your reaction to the death of Sydney and Laurus? Do you believe their deaths were due to dementia and accident, or would it have been in character for them to take their own lives? Why do you think Laurus' "movie" was about his sister, rather than about events that came later in his life?

11. In the last paragraph of her notes regarding the novel's historical inspiration, the author writes "their marriage lasts, as did so many in their generation, but whether it actually worked, and if so, how, becomes the mystery at the heart of their family." Gutcheon also reminds us of how little Sydney understands about her husband's inner life. Is the Moss marriage a product of its generation? Do contemporary couples have different expectations of love and relationships?

12. How does Gutcheon's use of Dundee in this novel compare to her use of it in More Than You Know? What makes Maine an appropriate setting for both books?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Left Neglected 
Lisa Genova, 2011
Simon & Schuster
327 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439164631


Summary 
Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children—Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus.

Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son’s teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it’s a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe.

A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller. Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt.

A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future.

Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny—her new, true life—may in fact lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets. And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 22, 1970
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.S. Bates College; Ph.D, Harvard University
• Currently—lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts


Lisa Genova is an American neuroscientist and author of fiction. She graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude from Bates College with a BS degree in biopsychology and received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University in 1998.

Genova did research at Massachusetts General Hospital East, Yale Medical School, McLean Hospital, and the National Institutes of Health. She also taught neuroanatomy at Harvard Medical School fall 1996.

Genova married and gave birth to a daughter in 2000. Four years later she and her husband divorced, and Genova began writing full-time. To hear Genova tell it:

When I was 33, I got divorced. I’d been a stay-at-home mom for four years, and I planned to go back to work as a health-care industry strategy consultant. But then I asked myself a question that changed the course of my life: If I could do anything I wanted, what would I do? My answer, which was both exciting and terrifying—write a novel about a woman with Alzheimer’s (Cape Cod Magazine.).

In 2007 she self-published her first novel, Still Alice, which went on to became a major best seller and award winning film. Since then, Genova has written three other fictional works about characters dealing with neurological disorders.

Still Alice
Genova's debut novel follows a woman suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice Howland, a 50-year-old woman, is a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned linguistics expert. She is married to an equally successful husband, and they have three grown children. The disease takes hold swiftly, changing Alice’s relationship with her family and the world.

Self-published, Genova sold copies of the book out of the trunk of her car. The book was later acquired by Simon & Schuster and published in 2009. It appeared on the New York Times best seller list for more than 40 weeks, was sold in 30 countries, and translated into more than 20 languages.

The book was adapted for the stage by Christine Mary Dunford and performed by Chicago's  Lookingglass Theatre Company in 2013.

A 2014 film adaptation starred Julianne Moore as the lead and co-starred Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, and Kate Bosworth. Moore won an Oscar for Best Actress.

Other books
♦ Left Neglected (2011)
Genova's second novel tells the story of a woman who suffers from left neglect (also called hemispatial or unilateral neglect), caused by a traumatic brain injury. As she struggles to recover, she learns that she must embrace a simpler life. She begins to heal when she attends to elements left neglected in herself, her family, and the world around her.

♦ Love Anthony (2012)
Offering a unique perspective in fiction, this third novel presents the extraordinary voice of Anthony, a nonverbal boy with autism. Anthony reveals a neurologically plausible peek inside the mind of autism, why he hates pronouns, why he loves swinging and the number three, how he experiences routine, joy, and love. And it is the voice of this voiceless boy that guides two women in this powerfully unforgettable story to discover the universal truths that connect us all.

♦ Inside the O'Briens (2015)
In her fourth novel, Genova follows Joe O'Brien, a middle-aged Boston policeman diagnosed with Huntington's. There is no cure, and the disease is progressive and lethal. The story revolves around the fallout on Joe's family, including his daughter who is at risk for carrying the genes.

TV and film
Since her first novel was published, Genova has become a professional speaker about Alzheimer's disease. She has been a guest on the Today Show, Dr. Oz, CNN, PBS News Hour, and the Diane Rehm Show. She appeared in the documentary film To Not Fade Away. It is a follow-up to the Emmy Award-winning film, Not Fade Away (2009), about Marie Vitale, a woman who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at the age of 45. (Adapated from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/6/2015.)

Book Reviews 
In neuroscientist Genova's second novel (after Still Alice), a car crash gives a successful younger woman an obscure neurological syndrome called Left Neglect. Upwardly mobile Sarah and Bob Nickerson live in suburban Massachusetts with their three small children. Both work 60-hour weeks, though the economic downturn looms. When Sarah wakes up eight days after crashing her car on the way to work, the doctors inform her of her condition, which causes her brain to ignore the left side of everything, and she begins a long and uncertain recovery. Genova vividly describes Sarah's fear and frustration about a recovery that may never come, turning her struggle into a lesson in forgiveness, acceptance, and adaptability; insights reveal themselves with extreme clarity, and small moments between Bob and Sarah illustrate his stalwart love, though readers may want a more thorough investigation of his growing role as caretaker, and as a character. More accessible than her somber first book, which dealt with early-onset Alzheimer's, the central condition causes readers to wonder what brain disease she will think of next.
Publishers Weekly


With a Ph.D. in neuroscience, Genova brings an expertise to this novel about a woman suffering from a little-known neurological syndrome. Sarah Nickerson is a high-powered business executive, juggling 80 hours of work, marriage, and life with three young children. Following a car accident, she wakes up to learn she's suffering from brain damage, a syndrome called left neglect that leaves her unable to feel or see anything on her left side. As she struggles to recover, Sarah also copes with other aspects of her life "left neglected" owing to her busy lifestyle: her relationship with her mother, her son's inability to concentrate, and her own quality of life. Once again, the author of Still Alice, a best-selling debut about a woman dealing with early onset Alzheimer's, has created a character with a compelling voice and perspective in a moving story that shows how brain trauma forces people to change their lives. Verdict: This is a positive novel about hope and strength that should find a market with those who appreciate contemporary women's fiction and readers who either are coping with brain disorders or have family members with these conditions.—Lesa Holstine, Glendale
Library Journal


Neuroscientist Genova (Still Alice, 2009) once again personalizes an actual disabling brain condition to create irresistibly readable and moving fiction. —Michele Leber
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Is Sarah better off at the end of the novel than at the beginning? If so, in what ways?

2. Sarah has a series of anxious dreams in the nights leading up to the accident. How would you interpret these dreams? What do you think her subconscious is trying to tell her?

3. Is Sarah a better mother before or after the crash? How do you think she would answer that question? Consider the amount of time she spends with her kids, her ability to keep track of them, and the level of participation in their lives.

4. The second time Sarah and Bob meet with Charlie's teacher about his progress in class, they learn that he is the target of some bullying. Ms. Gavin tells them many children experience this whether or not they have disabilities. Do you agree with Charlie's teacher? Do disabilities like ADHD make a child more of a target than other kids?

5. Sarah's Type A personality seems like it should help her through her physical therapy, but her friend and therapist Heidi believes she needs to stop trying to "win" and learn how to "adjust." Do you agree? Do you think by adjusting to her new limitations, Sarah holds herself back from a quicker recovery?

6. If Sarah had recovered completely, do you think she would have gone back to her high pressured job at Berkley Consulting?

7. While Sarah is in the rehabilitation hospital, she and Heidi trade watches, even though Sarah's is clearly the more valuable of the two. Toward the end of the novel, Sarah notes that Heidi is still wearing her expensive watch, but never asks for it back. Why do you think she doesn't reclaim her watch?

8. After Sarah's accident, Bob uses his cell phone at least once while driving in the car with Sarah and their kids. Why do you think he does that? Do we sometimes make exceptions for ourselves and do something unhealthy or risky in the interest of saving time or getting more done (like texting or using a cell phone while driving) even when we know it is dangerous? Why do you think that is?

9. At one point Bob argues that he doesn't think Vermont is a place to live full time when they are young. He sees it as a place to spend their retirement. Do you agree? What are the benefits of living and raising a family in a suburban setting versus a rural one?

10.Which character do you identify with the most? Which the least? Who is your favorite?

11.Is Sarah's mother's response to Nate's death understandable or unreasonable?

12.What did Sarah miss out on by having such a withdrawn mother? If her mother had been more available, do you think Sarah would be as high achieving?

13.Sarah's trauma gives her a chance to reconnect with her estranged mother. Why is it so hard for Sarah to forgive her mother?

14.Can working mothers really have it all—a successful career, well-adjusted children, a great marriage, a sense of well-being, and personal happiness? Or is that a myth? Does something always have to give?

15.Sarah's work/life balance before her disability is weighted toward work, whereas after it is weighted toward her family. How would you categorize your own work-life balance? Does Left Neglected make you reconsider any of your career decisions?

16.The back cover states that the novel is "about what we ignore and neglect in ourselves, in our families, and in the world around us." What do you think you are neglecting in your life? Yourself? Your relationships? Your home? Your job?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Leftovers
Tom Perrotta, 2011
St. Martin's Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 978031235834

Summary
What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down?

That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children. 

Kevin Garvey, Mapleton’s new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin’s own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne.  Only Kevin’s teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she’s definitely not the sweet “A” student she used to be.  Kevin wants to help her, but he’s distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.

With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta has written a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio

• Birth—August 13, 1961
• Where—Summit, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Syracuse University
• Awards—Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference
• Currently—Belmont, Massachusetts

Tom Perrotta is the author of several works of fiction, including Joe College, Election, Little Children and The Leftovers. Both Election and Little Children were adapted to film: Election, in 1999, starred Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick; Little Children, in 2006, starred Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly

Perrotta has taught expository writing  at Yale and Harvard University and has been called "one of our true genius satirists" by Mystic River author, Dennis LeHane.  Newsweek hailed him as "one of America's best-kept literary secrets...like an American Nick Hornby." Perrotta lives with this wife and two children in Belmont, Massachusetts. (Adapted from the publisher.)

More
That Tom Perrotta struggled into his early 30s to find success should come as no surprise to fans of his work. A Yale grad, Perrotta studied writing under Thomas Berger and Tobias Wolff before moving on to teach creative writing at Yale and Harvard. It was during this period that he began work on the stories that would comprise his first release, Bad Haircut. He had finished two more novels (including Election, which would prove to be his breakthrough book) before Bad Haircut was finally picked up by a publisher in 1994.

It wasn't until a chance introduction with a screenwriter that Perrotta finally moved into the public eye. The result of that encounter was the publication of Election (1998), which was made into the much-beloved film starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. At last, Perrotta was able to call himself a working novelist.

The theme of ordinary people trapped in lives they never imagined runs throughout Perrotta's novels. Success for his characters is always just out of reach, and the world is always just outside of their control. Characters that seem destined for success serve as foils to the true protagonists, constant reminders of the unfairness of life.

Which is not to say that Perrotta's novels are depressing. On the contrary, his razor-sharp observations of the human condition are often side-splittingly funny, and the compassion he exhibits in his writing makes even the most ostensibly unlikable characters sympathetic. Perotta does not create caricatures; his novels work because he has a basic understanding that life is complex, and everyone has a story if you take the time to listen.

Extras
When asked in a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview what book most influenced his career as a writer, here's his response:

I read The Great Gatsby in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love. I've reread it several times since then and have discovered lots of other layers—Nick's idolization of Gatsby, the perverse Horatio Alger narrative of Gatsby's rise in the world, Fitzgerald's keen eye for the hard realities of social class in America—and I still maintain that even if there's no such thing as a perfect novel, Gatsby's about as close as we're going to get. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Mr. Perrotta....has trouble reconciling [his] high concept platform with his talent for smaller-scale portraits of awkward adolescents and angst-ridden suburban families. The result is a poignant but deeply flawed novel.... [Yet] his affectionate but astringent understanding of his characters and their imperfections; his appreciation of the dark undertow of loss that lurks beneath the familiar, glossy surface of suburban life
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Perrotta has delivered a troubling disquisition on how ordinary people react to extraordinary and inexplicable events, the power of family to hurt and to heal, and the unobtrusive ease with which faith can slide into fanaticism. The Leftovers is, simply put, the best "Twilight Zone" episode you never saw—not "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" but "The Monsters Are Us in Mapleton." That they are quiet monsters only makes them more eerie.
Stephen King - New York Times Book Review


Perrotta's shift away from comedy has been picking up speed since Little Children, and despite some witty touches and a few broad swipes at manipulative preachers and cynical politicians, The Leftovers is not particularly satirical or even humorous. But it is certainly his most mature, absorbing novel, one that confirms his development from a funnyman to a daring chronicler of our most profound anxieties and human desires.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


October 14 looked like any other day in the leafy New England enclave of Mapleton—until it didn't. Eighty-seven townspeople and millions more around the world simply disappeared. Cars careened with no one behind the wheel, school kids were without teachers, food went uneaten on dinner tables, and lovers found themselves abandoned. The Rapture? No one knows. What we do know is that the psychological trauma for those left behind is overwhelming, and who better than Perrotta, known for his ability to zero in on the vicissitudes of middle-class America (Little Children; The Abstinence Teacher) to grapple with the impact? Three years after "The Sudden Departure," Kevin Garvey's wife has joined a cult, son Tom has ditched college to follow guru Holy Wayne, and lovely daughter Jill has shaved her head and taken up with stoners. Nora Durst's life is in a holding pattern as she awaits the return of her husband and child, while Reverend Jamison, enraged at being passed over, publishes a newsletter exposing the failings of the missing. VERDICT Perrotta has taken a subject that could easily slip into slapstick and imbued it with gravitas. Like Richard Russo, he softens the sting of satire with deep compassion for his characters in all their confusion, guilt, grief, and humanity. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL 
Library Journal

A bestselling novelist returns with his most ambitious book to date.... There's even a happy ending of sorts, as characters adapt and keep going, fortified by the knowledge that they "were more than the sum of what had been taken from" them.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

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

1. What is The Leftovers about? Is this a religious, or anti-religious, book. Is it even about religion? If not...what is it about?

2. In what ways does the world change after the Sudden Departure. What affect does it have on those left behind—both devout Christians and those not so devout? How does the departure differ from the The Rapture? What about a possible parallel with the events of 9/11—do you see any overtones of what the US went through in the aftermath of that national trauma?

3. Talk about the various groups that spring up—the Barefoot People, the Guilty Remnant. In what way are their formations a response to the Sudden Departure?

4. If the Sudden Departure occured in real life, today, how do you think our society would react? How would you, or your family, react if a loved one departed? Would it the disappearances be a good thing, if you're a Christian, or difficult thing to cope with?

5. Is Perrotta's novel humorous or sad—a comedy or tragedy? Is it a satire?

6. Discuss Nora's decision to pull back from her budding relationship with Kevin. Is she justified in doing so, particularly in light of what she discovers about her husband? Is her pain too deeply felt, or might her sadness have abated had she started a new life with Kevin?

7. How well does Perrotta depict ordinary individuals dealing with loss? Are his characters realistic, believable? Or are they cartoonish and one-dimensional?

8. What larger issues, other than the Sudden Departure (or the Rapture), might be at stake in Perrotta's novel—what might he be making a broader statement about?

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

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A Legacy of Spies  (George Smiley Series)
John le Carre, 2017
Penguin Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735225114


Summary
The undisputed master returns with a riveting new book—his first Smiley novel in more than twenty-five years

Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London.

The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him.

Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications.
 
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carre has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carre and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1931
• Where—Dorset, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Somerset Maugham Award
• Currently—lives in St Buryan, Cornwall. England


David John Moore Cornwell was born to Richard Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75) and Olive (Glassy) Cornwell, in Poole, Dorset, England. He was the second son to the marriage, the first his brother Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive; his younger half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwell; and Rupert Cornwell, a former Independent newspaper Washington bureau chief, is a younger half-brother.

John le Carre said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old. His relationship with his father was difficult, given that the man had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins (among the foremost criminals in London) and was continually in debt. A 2009 UK Guardian-Observer profile recounts:

The family swung between great affluence and bankruptcy. The boys were often called upon to help their father evade creditors during an upbringing that le Carre has referred to as "clandestine survival." He and his brother, he has said, "were conspirators from quite an early age...."

His troubled relationships with each of his parents proved instrumental in shaping his fiction. Duplicitous father figures crop up regularly in his work and, more obviously, the question of trust is at the centre of le Carre's fictional world.

The character Rick Pym, the scheming con-man father of protagonist Magnus Pym in his later novel A Perfect Spy (1986), was based on Ronnie. When Ronnie died in 1975, le Carre paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend.

Education
Cornwell's formal schooling began at St Andrew's Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, then continued at Sherborne School; he proved unhappy with the typically harsh English public school regime of the time and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster so withdrew.

From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950 he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying upon far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents.

When Ronnie declared bankruptcy in 1954, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at a boys' preparatory school; however, a year later, he returned to Oxford and graduated, in 1956, with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts degree.

Intelligence work
He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, afterwards becoming an MI5 officer in 1958; he ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines, and effected break-ins. Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as"John Bingham"), and while an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing Call for the Dead (1961), his first novel. Lord Clanmorris was the inspiration behind spymaster George Smiley.

In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked as a Second Secretary cover in the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective story A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), as "John le Carre" (i,e., John the Square, in French), a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

Cornwell left the service in 1964 to work full-time as a novelist, as his intelligence officer career was ended by the betrayal to the KGB of numberous British agents and their covers by Kim Philby, a British double agent (of the Cambridge Five). Le Carre depicts and analyses Philby as the upper-class traitor, code-named Gerald by the KGB, the mole George Smiley hunts in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974). Credited by his pen name, Cornwell appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party seen in several flashback scenes.

In 1964 le Carre won the Somerset Maugham Award, established to enable British writers younger than thirty-five to enrich their writing by spending time abroad.

Personal life and recognition
In 1954, Cornwell married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons—Simon, Stephen and Timothy. The couple was divorced in 1971. The following year, Cornwell married Valerie Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton. They have one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway. Le Carre has resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, UK, for more than forty years where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End.

In 1998, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa by the University of Oxford.

Writing style
Stylistically, the first two novels—Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962)—are mystery fiction in which the hero George Smiley (of the SIS, the "Circus") resolves the riddles of the deaths investigated; the motives are more personal than political.

The spy novel œuvre of John le Carre stands in contrast to the physical action and moral certainty of the James Bond thriller established by Ian Fleming in the mid- nineteen-fifties; the le Carre Cold War features unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work, and engaged in psychological more than physical drama. They experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers, and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict they are involved in is internal, rather than external and visible.

Unlike the moral certainty of Fleming's British Secret Service adventures, le Carre's Circus spy stories are morally complex, and inform the reader of the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of East-West moral equivalence.

A Perfect Spy (1986), chronicling the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym, as it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographic espionage novel—especially the boy's very close relationship with his con man father. Biographer Lynndianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Richard Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values"; le Carre reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised."

Most of le Carre's novels are spy stories set amidst the Cold War (1945–91); a notable exception is The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), an autobiographical, stylistically uneven, mainstream novel of a man's post-marital existential crisis. Another exception from the East-West conflict is The Little Drummer Girl that uses the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carre's œuvre shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. For example The Night Manager, his first completely post-Cold-War novel, deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin America drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and look-the-other-way western officials.

As a journalist, he wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a non-fiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–92), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the USSR from 1962 until 1975. In 2009, he donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam Ox-Tales project.

Political views
In January 2003 The Times (London) published le Carre's article "The United States Has Gone Mad," which condemned the approaching Iraq War. He observed in this essay, "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger, from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history." He contributed the same article to a volume of political essays entitled Not One More Death. The book is highly critical of the war in Iraq. Le Carre's contribution was entitled "Art, truth and politics." Other contributors include Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Michel Faber, Brian Eno, and Haifa Zangana.  (Adapted from Wikipedia, retrieved 5/8/2012.)

Book Reviews
If not a capstone to John le Carre’s remarkable career (like Philip Roth, le Carre keeps soldiering on), A Legacy of Spies surely puts a finishing touch to his Soviet era spy vs. spy oeuvre. His new book has the feel of an elegy for that earlier time: rather than triumphal — the West, after all, won the Cold War — Legacy is melancholic. It mourns not the glory days but the ugly choices, the betrayals on all fronts, that resulted in the sacrifice of colleagues. And it asks the imponderable: were those sacrifices worth the price? Does patriotism trump personal loyalty and affection?  READ MORE…
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers


The good news about A Legacy of Spies is that it delivers a writer in full. Le Carre's prose remains brisk and lapidary. His wit is intact and rolls as if on casters. He is as profitably interested as ever in values, especially the places where loyalty, patriotism and affection rub together and fray. He wears his gravitas lightly…Le Carre is not of my generation but I have read him for long enough to understand how, for many readers, his characters are old friends — part of their mental furniture. There's something moving about seeing him revive them so effortlessly, to see that the old magic still holds. He thinks internationally but feels domestically. In an upside-down time, he appeals to comprehension rather than instinct. I might as well say it: to read this simmering novel is to come in from the cold.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


Le Carre is such a gifted storyteller that he interlaces the cards in his deck so they fit not simply with this book, but with the earlier ones as well.
Atlantic


We wish for more complexity and logic in our politics, so we look to make political art that is logical and complex: a genre defined by John le Carre.
New Republic


(Starred review.) George Smiley returns in this stunning spy novel from MWA Grand Master le Carre.… He can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional insight in the smallest phrase—and demolish an ideology in a paragraph.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Le Carre incorporates many layers of meaning and numerous memorable characters into this intense story that pulses with tension, humor, and moral ambivalence. Smiley fans will be lining up for this one. —Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA
Library Journal


Le Carre returns to put yet another spin on the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).… The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.
Kirkus Reviews

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 A Legacy of Spies … then take off on your own:

1. At the novel's end, George Smiley, the spymaster observes  that "an old spy in his dotage seeks the truth of ages." Leaving the import (or meaning of that statement) for the time being, let's turn to Peter Guillam. How much "in his dotage" is Guillam? Is his memory dulled by age, or is he still as sharp as a knife? How much does he pretend to be struggling to keep up?

2. Guillam, at one point expresses his "outrage at having my past dug up and thrown in my face." What is the past that is being brought to light? (This might be a tougher question than it seems on the surface.) What was Windfall — what happened and what was supposed to happen? Who was responsible for it?

3. In the letter which summons Guillam back to England, A. Butterfield (who later is humorously known as "Bunny"), refers to "a matter in which you appear to have played a significant role some years back." What was Guillam's role in all that transpired, and how "significant" was his involvement?

4. The book's narrative technique includes Guillam's own memories interspersed with the content of old files —  documents, memos, and letters, even audio tapes. Did the back and forth between memory and files make it difficult to follow the story?

5. Alec Leamas is the hero of le Carre's famed 1963 book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. How would you describe Alec? Does it help to have read the earlier book to understand his character, or is there enough detail in Legacy to give a full portrait of Alec? What was the relationship between the two men, Alec Leamas and Peter Guillam, both professionally and personally?

6. Smiley says at the end of the novel that his ideal had always been that of "leading Europe out of her darkness toward a new age of reason." Hadn't Europe been led into the age of reason following World War II and the defeat of Nazism? What does Smiley mean and did he succeed?

7. Reverting back to Smiley's statement in Question 1, regarding old spies seeing "the truth of ages," what does Smiley mean? What is the truth of the ages?

8. Follow-up to Question 7: Perhaps the most important question of the book is this one, which Guillam poses to himself after meeting with Smiley: “How much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom … before we cease to feel either human or free?” Did the ends justify the means in Windfall?

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

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Leonardo da Vinci 
Walter Isaacson, 2017
Simon & Schuster
624 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501139154


Summary
He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? The author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography.

Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science.

He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.

Da Vinci produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology.

With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius.

His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from having wide-ranging passions. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history’s most memorable smile.

He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo’s lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions.

Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical.

His life should remind us of the importance of instilling, both in ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it—to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 20, 1952
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.A., Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—Washington, D.C. area

Walter Isaacson is an American writer and journalist. He was the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He has been the chairman and CEO of Cable News Network (CNN) and the Managing Editor of Time. He has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Early life and education
Isaacson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Irwin and Betty Lee (Seff) Isaacson. His father was a "kindly Jewish distracted humanist engineer with a reverence for science," and his mother was a real estate broker.

Isaacson graduated from Harvard University in 1974, where he earned an A.B. cum laude in history and literature. He later attended the Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and graduated with first-class honors.

Journalism
Isaacson began his career in journalism at The Sunday Times of London, followed by a position with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He joined Time magazine in 1978, serving as the magazine's political correspondent, national editor, and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th editor in 1996.

Isaacson became chairman and CEO of CNN in July 2001, two months later guided CNN through the events of 9/11. Shortly after his appointment at CNN, Isaacson attracted attention for seeking the views of Republican Party leaders on Capitol Hill regarding criticisms that CNN broadcast content that was unfair to Republicans or conservatives.

He was quoted in Roll Call magazine as saying: "I was trying to reach out to a lot of Republicans who feel that CNN has not been as open to covering Republicans, and I wanted to hear their concerns." The CEO's conduct was criticized by the left-leaning Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) organization, which said that Isaacson's "pandering" behavior was endowing conservative politicians with power over CNN.

In 2003, Isaacson stepped down as president at CNN to become president of the Aspen Institute. Isaacson served as the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute from 2003 until 2017, when he announced that he would leave to become a professor of history at Tulane University and an advisory partner at the New York City financial services firm Perella Weinberg Partners.

Writing
Isaacson is the co-author, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). He is the author of Kissinger: A Biography (1992), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), and American Sketches (2009).

In 2011, Steve Jobs, Isaacson's authorized biography was published, becoming an international best-seller and breaking all sales records for a biography. The book was based on over forty interviews with Jobs over a two-year period up until shortly before his death, and on conversations with friends, family members, and business rivals of the entrepreneur.

Next came another bestseller, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), which explores the history of key technological innovations — notably the parallel developments of the computer and the Internet.

Isaacson's biography, Leonardo da Vinci, came out in 2017 to great fanfare and, even before it's actual publication, became the object of a Hollywood bidding war. Leonardo DiCaprio's production company won the film rights with DiCaprio planning to play the title role of da Vinci.

Government positions
In 2005, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed Isaacson vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority to oversee spending on the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed him as chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, which seeks to create economic and educational opportunities in the Palestinian territories.

He also served as the co-chair of the U.S.-Vietnamese Dialogue on Agent Orange, which in January 2008 announced completion of a project to contain the dioxin left behind by the U.S. at the Da Nang air base and plans to build health centers and a dioxin laboratory in the affected regions.

During the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed him vice-chair of the Partners for a New Beginning, which encourages private-sector investments and partnerships in the Muslim world.

In 2009, President Obama appointed him as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the other international broadcasts of the U.S. government; he served until January 2012.

In 2014, he was appointed by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to be the co-chair of the New Orleans Tricentennial Commission, charged with planning the city's 300th-anniversary commemoration in 2018.

In 2015, he was appointed to the board of My Brother's Keeper Alliance, which seeks to carry out President Obama's anti-poverty and youth opportunity initiatives.

Isaacson is the chairman emeritus of the board of Teach for America.

Honors
Time magazine selected Isaacson in 2012 to be on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Isaacson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded its 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

In 2014, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Isaacson for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. The title of Isaacson's lecture was "The Intersection of the Humanities and the Sciences." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/3/2017.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Isaacson shows how da Vinci’s inquisitiveness set him apart from his contemporaries…. [The author's] scholarship is impressive—he cites not only primary sources but secondary materials by art critics, essayists, and da Vinci’s other biographers. This is a monumental tribute to a titanic figure. Color illus.
Publishers Weekly


What do Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin have in common with Leonardo da Vinci? Isaacson … takes on the master artist /inventor /genius-for-all-seasons by drawing on recent revelations about his life and work and studying his voluminous notebooks.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Encompassing in its coverage, robust in its artistic explanations, yet written in a smart, conversational tone, this is both a solid introduction to the man and a sweeping saga of his genius.
Booklist


(Starred review.) A majestic biography…. Isaacson takes on another complex, giant figure and transforms him into someone we can recognize.… Totally enthralling, masterful, and passionate, this book should garner serious consideration for a variety of book prizes.
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 Leonardo da Vinci … then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe Leonardo da Vinci as presented by Walter Isaacson in this biography? Does the author do an adequate job of making da Vinci accessible to 21st-century readers? Does he bring him to life as a living, breathing human being?

2. Isaacson believes "genius" is too easily applied to people but that Leonardo was "one of the few people in history who indisputably deserved — or, to be more precise, earned — that appellation." Do you agree with Isaacson about our overuse of the term "genius"? How is genius defined? Can you think of someone, in either today's world or in history, who would qualify for genius?

3. According to Isaacson, da Vinci was self-taught and "willed his way to his genius." What does he mean by that statement? What are some of the factors Isaacson identifies as key to da Vinci's developing path to genius.

4. Having read Isaacson's book, what parts of Leonardo's life, personality, or his abilities surprise you most?

5. Isaacson writes about Leonardo's astonishing curiosity. Consider the vast number and variety of objects and pursuits found in the 72,000 pages of the artist's notebooks — what the author refers to as the "greatest record of curiosity ever created." How does the Isaacson suggest that his inquisitiveness set da Vinci apart from his contemporaries?

6. Talk about another aspect of Leonardo's mental process: his ability to recognize patterns — the curls in water, hair, or wind. Why does the author believe that pattern recognition was important for da Vinci?

7. Isaacson is particularly insightful in writing about da Vinci's great paintings — especially The Last Supper and Mona Lisa. Does the author enable you to better understand the significance of those works and how they furthered the development of art?

8. Isaacson says we can all learn from Leonardo. What is it we could learn?

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

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Less 
Andrew Sean Greer, 2017
Little, Brown and Co.
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316316125


Summary
Winner, 2018 Pulitzer Prize

Who says you can't run away from your problems?

You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else.

You can't say yes — it would be too awkward — and you can't say no — it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

What would possibly go wrong?

Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face.

Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.

A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author the New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 21, 1970
• Where—Washington, DC, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., University of Montana
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California


Andrew Sean Greer is an American novelist and short story writer. Born in Washington D.C., he is the son, and identical twin, of two scientists. He attended Brown University, where he was the commencement speaker at his own graduation, with his off-the-cuff remarks criticizing Brown's admissions policies setting off a near riot.

Following graduation Greer lived in New York, working in various jobs — as a chauffeur, theater tech, television extra — to support his habit as an unsuccessful writer. After several years, he headed to graduate school at the University of Montana in Missoula where he received an M.F.A. From Missoula, he moved to Seattle and two years later to San Francisco where he now lives.

Writing
While in San Francisco, Greer began publishing his short fiction in magazines; over the years his stories have appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, New Yorker, among others, and they have been anthologized in The Book of Other People, and The PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009. His collection of stories, How It Was for Me, was released in 2000.

He published his first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, in 2001 and since then has had a string of generally well-regarded, if not always top-selling books: The Confessions of Max Tivoli (2003), perhaps his best-known; The Story of a Marriage (2008), The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (2013); and Less (2017).  (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/12/2013.)

Book Reviews
Less is the funniest, smartest and most humane novel I've read since Tom Rachman's 2010 debut, The Imperfectionists.… Greer writes sentences of arresting lyricism and beauty. His metaphors come at you like fireflies.…  Like Arthur, Andrew Sean Greer's Less is excellent company. It's no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful.
Chrstopher Buckley - New York Times Book Review


Greer is an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy.… Brilliantly funny.… Greer's narration, so elegantly laced with wit, cradles the story of a man who loses everything: his lover, his suitcase, his beard, his dignity.
Ron Charles, Washington Post


Greer's novel is philosophical, poignant, funny and wise, filled with unexpected turns.… Although Greer is gifted and subtle in comic moments, he's just as adept at ruminating on the deeper stuff. His protagonist grapples with aging, loneliness, creativity, grief, self-pity and more.
San Francisco Chronicle


Greer, the author of wonderful, heartfelt novels including The Confessions of Max Tivoli, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells and The Story of a Marriage, shows he has another powerful weapon in his arsenal: comedy. And who doesn't need a laugh right about now?
Miami Herald


Greer elevates Less' picaresque journey into a wise and witty novel. This is no Eat, Pray Love story of touristic uplift, but rather a grand travelogue of foibles, humiliations and self-deprecation, ending in joy, and a dollop of self-knowledge.
National Book Review


(Starred review.) Greer … writes beautifully, but his occasionally Faulknerian sentences are unnecessary. He is entirely successful, though, in the authorial sleights of hand that… [ results] at the end in a wonderful surprise.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A] hilarious and touching novel.… Greer is both clever and compassionate…and while the book focuses on gay men and their relationships, the search for love and meaning is universal. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal


Dressed in his trademark blue suit, Less…discovers something new and fragile about the passing of time, about the coming and going of love, and what it means to be the fool of your own narrative. It's nothing less than wonderful.
BookPage


(Starred review.) Less is perhaps Greer's finest yet.… A comic yet moving picture of an American abroad.… Less is a wondrous achievement, deserving an even larger audience than Greer's bestselling The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Booklist


Facing his erstwhile boyfriend's wedding to another man, his 50th birthday, and his publisher's rejection of his latest manuscript, a miserable midlist novelist heads for the airport.… Nonstop puns on the character's surname aside, this is a very funny and occasionally wise book.
Kirkus Reviews

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 Less … then take off on your own:

1. Have you ever had days, weeks, years, like what Arthur Less is feeling — times when nothing, absolutely nothing, seems to be going your way? What's your solution?

2. Everyone points to the books laugh-out-loud humor. What do you find particularly funny — dialogue, Arthur's haplessness and pratfalls, random observations, the entire tone of the book?

3. How would you describe Arthur? Are you sympathetic to him, or is he primarily a self-pitying guy in midlife crisis? Does he exhibit any humanity or is he too self-indulgent to connect with others? Or do you find yourself falling and rooting for him? Does your attitude toward him change during the course of the novel?

4. Talk about the writing seminar Arthur gives in Berlin — his inventiveness in attempting to get students to fall in love with literature.

5. What do you think of the consolation his former lover/mentor offers him during the phone call from Japan? Is turning 50 all that bad (for those who've been there, done that)?

6. So at the end of his peregrinations, what has Arthur Less come to understand about his life and life in general?

7. Finally, were you surprised by the big reveal at the end?

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

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A Lesson Before Dying
Ernest J. Gaines, 1993
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375702709


Summary
Winner, 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award

Set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying is an "enormously moving" (Los Angeles Times) novel of one man condemned to die for a crime he did not commit and a young man who visits him in his cell.

In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—the expected. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 15, 1933
• Where—Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., San Francisco State University; fellowiship
  to Stanford University
• Awards—Wallace Stegner Fellow, 1957; National Endowment
  for the Arts grant, 1967; Dos Passos Prize, 1993; MacArthur
  Foundation fellow, 1993; National Book Critics Award, 1993;
  National Humanities Medal, 2000; he American Academy of
  Arts and Letters, 2000; Chevalier, Order of Arts and Letters 
  (France), 2000.
• Currently—lives in San Francisco and Oscar, Louisiana


Ernest Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements.

In addition to The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Mr. Gaines is also the author of A Lesson Before Dying, A Gathering of Old Men, Bloodline, and Of Love and Dust.

In 1996 he was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
Despite the novel's gallows humor and an atmosphere of pervasively harsh racism, the characters, black and white, are humanly complex and have some redeeming quality.... A Lesson Before Dying, though it suffers an occasional stylistic lapse, powerfully evokes in its understated tone the "new wants" in the 1940's that created the revolution of the 1960's. Ernest J. Gaines has written a moving and truthful work of fiction.
Calr Senna - The New York Times Book Reivew

A Lesson Before Dying is a coming-of-age story set in a small Louisiana town in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man involved in a shoot-out during a robbery, is convicted of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. Says the defending attorney to the jury, "What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this."

Grant Wiggins, the hope of the community, has returned to teach school after having left for a university education. He fights internal demons, his aunt, and his guilt-ridden sense of community in deciding whether to escape the small town (and the small-town mentality) or to stay. He receives a visit from his aunt, Jefferson's godmother. With the pain of history on her face, the godmother spoke. "Called him a hog.... I don't want them to kill no hog," she said. "I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet." Grant's mandate was to instill in Jefferson a firm sense of self in the short time prior to his execution—a Herculean task, in that Grant had yet to come to terms with his own expectations of himself. In the end, and through their interaction, the two men come to realizations that allow each of them to successfully meet their demons.

In A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines personifies the angst of expectation that comes with being the first of a generation to succeed, the resolute power of community, and the importance of reciprocity—giving back to that which nurtured us.
Sacred Fire

What do you tell an innocent youth who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and now faces death in the electric chair? What do you say to restore his self-esteem when his lawyer has publicly described him as a dumb animal? What do you tell a youth humiliated by a lifetime of racism so that he can face death with dignity? The task belongs to Grant Wiggins, the teacher of the Negro plantation school who narrates the story. Grant grew up on the Louisiana plantation but broke away to go to the university. He returns to help his people but struggles over "whether I should act like the teacher that I was, or like the nigger that I was supposed to be.'' The powerful message Grant tells the youth transforms him from a "hog'' to a hero, and the reader is not likely to forget it, either. Gaines's earlier works include A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. —Joanne Snapp, Randolph-Macon Coll., Ashland, VA
Library Journal

"I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." Hog. The word lingers like a foul odor and weighs as heavily as the sentence on Jefferson and the woman who raised him, his "nannan" (godmother) Miss Emma. She needs an image of Jefferson going to his death like a man, and she turns to the young teacher at the plantation school for help. Meanwhile, Grant Wiggins (the narrator) has his own problems. He loves his people but hates himself for teaching on the white man's terms; visiting Jefferson in jail will just mean more kowtowing, so he goes along reluctantly, prodded by his strong-willed Tante Lou and his girlfriend Vivian. The first visits are a disaster: Jefferson refuses to speak and will not eat his nannan's cooking, which breaks the old lady's heart. But eventually Grant gets through to him ("a hero does for others"); Jefferson eats Miss Emma's gumbo and astonishes himself by writing whole pages in a diary—a miracle, water from the rock. When he walks to the chair, he is the strongest man in the courthouse. By containing unbearably painful emotions within simple declarative sentences and everyday speech rhythms, Gaines has written a novel that is not only never maudlin, but approaches the spare beauty of a classic.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. All the characters in A Lesson Before Dying are motivated by a single word: "hog." Jefferson's attorney has compared him to a hog; Miss Emma wants Grant to prove that her godson is not a hog; and Jefferson at first eats the food she has sent him on his knees, because "that's how a old hog eat." How are words used both to humiliate and to redeem the characters in this novel?

2. Grant's task is to affirm that Jefferson is not a hog, but a man. The mission is doubly difficult because Grant isn't sure he knows what a man is. What definition of manhood, or humanity, does A Lesson Before Dying provide? Why is manhood a subversive notion within the book's milieu?

3. At various points in the book Gaines draws analogies between Jefferson and Jesus. One of the first questions Jefferson asks his tutor concerns the significance of Christmas: "That's when He was born, or that's when he died?" Jefferson is executed eight days after Easter. In what other ways is this parallel developed? In particular, discuss the scriptural connotations of the word "lesson."

4. For all the book's religious symbolism, the central character is a man without faith. Grant's refusal to attend church has deeply hurt his aunt and antagonized Reverend Ambrose, whose religion Grant at first dismisses as a sham. Yet at the book's climax he admits that Ambrose "is braver than I, " and he has his pupils pray in the hours before Jefferson's death. What kind of faith does Grant acquire in the course of this book? Why does the Reverend emerge as the stronger of the two men?

5. One of the novel's paradoxes is that Ambrose's faith—which Grant rejects because it is also the white man's—enables him to stand up against the white man's "justice." How do we resolve this paradox? How has faith served African-Americans as a source of personal empowerment and an axis of communal resistance?

6. Grant believes that black men in Louisiana have only three choices: to die violently, to be "brought down to the level of beasts, " or "to run and run." How does the way in which Gaines articulates these grim choices—and suggests an alternative to them—make A Lesson Before Dying applicable not only to Louisiana in 1948 but to the United States in the 1990s?

7. Women play a significant role in the book. Examine the scenes between Grant and Tante Lou, Grant and Vivian, and Jefferson and Miss Emma, and discuss the impetus that Gaines's women provide his male characters. In what ways do these interactions reflect the roles of black women within their families and in African-American society?

8. A Lesson Before Dying is concerned with obligation and commitment. Discuss this theme as it emerges in the exchanges between Emma Glenn and the Pichots, Grant and Vivian, and Grant and the Reverend Ambrose. What are the debts these people owe each other? In what ways do they variously try to honor, evade, or exploit them?

9. Like Faulkner and Joyce, Gaines has been acclaimed for his evocation of place. In A Lesson Before Dying his accomplishment is all the more impressive because of the book's brevity. What details in this book evoke its setting, and what is the relation between its setting and its themes?

10. From the manslaughter that begins this novel to the judicial murder at its close, death is a constant presence in A Lesson Before Dying. We are repeatedly reminded of all the untimely, violent deaths that have preceded Jefferson's and, in all likelihood, will follow it. Why then is Jefferson's death so disturbing to this book's black characters, and even to some of its white ones? What does Jefferson's death accomplish that his life could not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Let Me Be Frank with You  (Frank Bascombe Series, 4)
Richard Ford, 2014
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061692062


Summary
A brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the celebrated fictional landscape that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe

In his trio of critically acclaimed, bestselling novels—The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/ Faulkner-winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land—Richard Ford, in essence, illuminated the zeitgeist of an entire generation, through the divinings and wit of his now-famous literary chronicler, Frank Bascombe, who is certainly one of the most indelible, provocative, and anticipated characters in modern American literature.

Here, in Let Me Be Frank With You, Ford returns with four deftly linked stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, and again ensconced in the well-defended New Jersey suburb of Haddam, Bascombe has thrived—seemingly if not utterly—in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation.

As in all of the Bascombe books, Ford's guiding spirit is the old comic's maxim that promises if nothing's funny, nothing's truly serious. The desolation of Sandy, which rendered houses, shorelines, and countless lives unmoored and flattened, could scarcely be more serious as the grist for fiction. Yet it is the perfect backdrop and touchstone for Ford—and Bascombe.

With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of American subjects: aging, race, loss, faith, marriage, redemption, the real-estate crash—the tumult of the world we live in.

Through Bascombe—wry, profane, touching, wise, and often inappropriate—we engage in the aspirations and sorrows, longings, achievements, and failings of American life in the morning of the new century. With his trademark candor and brimming wit, Richard Ford brings Bascombe fully back, in all his imperfect glory, to say (often hilariously) what all of us are thinking but few will voice aloud.

Whether you've been a Bascombe insider since The Sportswriter or are encountering Ford's unforgettable inventions newly here, Let Me Be Frank With You is a moving, wondrous, extremely funny odyssey, showcasing the maturity and brilliance of a great writer working at the top of his talents. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 16, 1944
• Where—Jackson, Mississippi, USA
• Education—B.A., Michigan State University; M.F.A., University of California, Irvine
• Awards—PEN/Faulkner Award; Pulitzer Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Boothbay, Maine


Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novels that form the Bascombe quartet: The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995), The Lay of the Land (2006), and Let Me Be Frank with You (2014). He has also published several short story collections, the stories of which have been widely anthologized.

Early years
Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, the only son of Edna and Parker Carrol Ford. Parker was a traveling salesman for Faultless Starch, a Kansas City company. Of his mother, Ford has said, "Her ambition was to be, first, in love with my father and, second, to be a full-time mother." When Ford was eight years old, his father had a major heart attack, and thereafter Ford spent as much time with his grandfather, a former prizefighter and hotel owner in Little Rock, Arkansas, as he did with his parents in Mississippi. Ford's father died of a second heart attack in 1960.

Ford's grandfather had worked for the railroad. At the age of 19, before deciding to attend college, Ford began work on the Missouri Pacific train line as a locomotive engineer's assistant, learning the work on the job.

Ford received a B.A. from Michigan State University. Having enrolled to study hotel management, he switched to English. After graduating he taught junior high school in Flint, Michigan, and enlisted in the US Marines but was discharged after contracting hepatitis. At university he met Kristina Hensley, his future wife; the two married in 1968.

Despite mild dyslexia, Ford developed a serious interest in literature. He has stated in interviews that his dyslexia may, in fact, have helped him as a reader, as it forced him to approach books at a slow and thoughtful pace.

Ford briefly attended law school but dropped out and entered the creative writing program at the University of California, Irvine, to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree, which he received in 1970. Ford chose this course simply because "they admitted me, he confessed in a profile in Ploughshares (7/8/2010):

They admitted me. I remember getting the application for Iowa, and thinking they'd never have let me in. I'm sure I was right about that, too. But, typical of me, I didn't know who was teaching at Irvine. I didn't know it was important to know such things. I wasn't the most curious of young men, even though I give myself credit for not letting that deter me.

As it turned out, Oakley Hall and E. L. Doctorow were teaching there, and Ford has been explicit about his debt to them. In 1971, he was selected for a three-year appointment in the University of Michigan Society of Fellows.

Early writing
Ford published his first novel, A Piece of My Heart, the story of two unlikely drifters whose paths cross on an island in the Mississippi River, in 1976; he followed it with The Ultimate Good Luck in 1981. In the interim he briefly taught at Williams College and Princeton. Despite good notices the books sold little, and Ford retired from fiction writing to become a writer for the New York magazine Inside Sports. Speaking for same the Ploughshares profile, he said:

I realized there was probably a wide gulf between what I could do and what would succeed with readers. I felt that I'd had a chance to write two novels, and neither of them had really created much stir, so maybe I should find real employment, and earn my keep.

In 1982, the magazine folded, and when Sports Illustrated did not hire Ford, he returned to fiction writing with The Sportswriter, a novel about a failed novelist turned sportswriter who undergoes an emotional crisis following the death of his son. The novel became Ford's "breakout book", named one of Time magazine's five best books of 1986 and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Ford followed the success immediately with Rock Springs (1987), a story collection mostly set in Montana that includes some of his most popular stories, adding to his reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Dirty realism
Reviewers and literary critics associated the stories in Rock Springs with the aesthetic movement known as dirty realism. This term referred to a group of writers in the 1970s and 1980s that included Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff—two writers with whom Ford was closely acquainted—along with Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, Larry Brown, and Jayne Anne Phillips, among others.

Those applying this label point to Carver's lower-middle-class subjects or the protagonists Ford portrays in Rock Springs. However, many of the characters in the "Frank Bascombe" books (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, and Let Me Be Frank With You), notably the protagonist himself, enjoy degrees of material affluence and cultural capital not normally associated with the "dirty realist" style.

Mid-career and acclaim
Although his 1990 novel Wildlife, a story of a Montana golf pro turned firefighter, met with mixed reviews and middling sales, by the end of the 1980s Ford's reputation was solid. He was increasingly sought after as an editor and contributor to various projects. Ford edited the 1990 Best American Short Stories, the 1992 Granta Book of the American Short Story, and the 1998 Granta Book of the American Long Story, a designation he claimed in the introduction to prefer to the novella.

In 1995, Ford's career reached a high point with the release of Independence Day, a sequel to The Sportswriter, featuring the continued story of its protagonist, Frank Bascombe. Reviews were positive, and the novel became the first to win both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In the same year, Ford was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, for outstanding achievement in that genre. He ended this prodigiously creative and successful decade of the 1990s with a well-received story collection Women with Men published in 1997.

Later life and writings
Ford lived for many years on lower Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and then in the Garden District of New Orleans, Louisiana, where his wife Kristina was the executive director of the city planning commission. He now lives in East Boothbay, Maine.[12] In between these dwellings, Ford has lived in many other locations, usually in the U.S., though he's pursued an equally peripatetic teaching career.

He took up a teaching appointment at Bowdoin College in 2005, but remained in the post for only one semester. In 2008 Ford served as an Adjunct Professor at the Oscar Wilde Centre with the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, teaching on the Masters programme in creative writing. But at the end of 2010, Ford assumed the post of senior fiction professor at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 2011, replacing Barry Hannah, who died in March 2010.

Ford's intense creative pace (writing, teaching, editing, publishing) did not subside, either, as a new decade (and a new century) commenced. He published another story collection A Multitude of Sins (2002), followed by The Lay of the Land (2006), which continues (and, according to Ford's explicit statements made at this time, was to have ended) the Frank Bascombe series.

However, in April 2013, Ford read from a new Frank Bascombe story without revealing to the audience whether or not it was part of a longer work. But by 2014, it was confirmed that the story would indeed appear as part of a longer work to be published in November of that year. Titled Let Me Be Frank With You, it is a work consisting of four interconnected novellas (or "ong stories"), all narrated by Frank Bascombe.

Also, as he did in the preceding decade, Ford continued to assist with various editing projects. In 2007, he edited the New Granta Book of the American Short Story, followed by the Library of America's two-volume edition of the selected works of fellow Mississippi writer Eudora Welty. Ford's latest novel, Canada, was published in 2012. That same year, he became the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

Critical opinion
Richard Ford's writings demonstrate "a meticulous concern for the nuances of language ... [and] the rhythms of phrases and sentences." Ford has described his sense of language as "a source of pleasure in itself—all of its corporeal qualities, its syncopations, moods, sounds, the way things look on the page."

This "devotion to language" is closely linked to what he calls "the fabric of affection that holds people close enough together to survive." Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy.

Ford's works of fiction "dramatize the breakdown of such cultural institutions as marriage, family, and community." His...

marginalized protagonists often typify the rootlessness and nameless longing... pervasive in a highly mobile, present-oriented society in which individuals, having lost a sense of the past, relentlessly pursue their own elusive identities in the here and now.*

Ford "looks to art, rather than religion, to provide consolation and redemption in a chaotic time."

Awards and honors
2013 - Prix Femina Etranger for Canada
2013 - Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for Canada
2001 - PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction
1995 - PEN/Faulkner Award[9] for Independence Day
1995 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Independence Day
1995 - Rea Award for the Short Story for outstanding achievement in that genre. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/20/2014.)

*Huey Guagliardo, Perspectives on Richard Ford: Redeemed by Affection, University Press of Mississippi, 2000.

Book Reviews
Frank has become [Ford's] Everyman, as much a representative of middle-class American life and its discontents as John Updike's Harry Angstrom was for another generation in the Rabbit novels…[Let Me Be Frank With You] serves as an apt vitrine for Mr. Ford's talents: his journalistic eye for the revealing detail, his knack for tracing the connections between the public and the personal, his gift for capturing the precariousness of daily life…the fact that Let Me works as well as it does is a testament to Mr. Ford's strengths as a writer and his ability to turn his hero's contradictions and discontinuities into something more like the genuine complexities of a real human being.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Ford's prose retains its controlled tang, and despite its room-temperature tone can chill or warm a reader with startling immediacy…However wounded, the New Jersey we've come to know, from riding shotgun with Bascombe on interstates and back roads all these years, remains profoundly present and vibrantly distinct, no more an Anywhere, as the state's reputation mistakenly suggests, than Bascombe is an Everyman.
Jonathan Miles - New York Times Book Review


Of all the serial heroes bustling through postwar American fiction, Frank Bascombe makes the strongest claim on our affection… It is Mr. Ford’s achievement to have made the musings of this suburban everyman captivating.
Wall Street Journal


Now Frank has returned, ushering us through the four linked novellas in Let Me Be Frank With You—which arrives, like an early Christmas gift, to soothe fans who assumed they’d never again have the pleasure of wading through his stream of consciousness.
Washington Post


Let Me Be Frank With You marks the fourth book that Frank [Bascombe] has taken center-stage, and the four stories offered between its covers find the character now deep into his waning years—the age that Frank refers to as his "Default Period of life."
NPR, The Two-Way


Incredibly, Ford maintains, over 30 years, Frank’s voice-he sounds much as he did when he was 38, except he is a little more prone to pontificating… This is what gripped readers on the first page of The Sportswriter…and what continues in Let Me Be Frank With You.
Chicago Tribune


[Frank Bascombe is] as ruminative as ever, continually brooding over past and present; as ironic as ever, flippantly naming his retirement status  "The Next Level"... And this Mississippi-born gentleman also remains as charming and gracious as ever… [A] substantial work of fiction… [a] sharp-eyed collection.
Newsday (Long Island, NY)


Four novellas featuring Frank Bascombe, the main character from three of Ford’s most highly acclaimed novels. Bascombe is older, and though he may not think he’s any wiser, readers will disagree.
San Francisco Chronicle


Ford steers clear of autobiography in his fiction, but his ability to tease out the psychological nuances of his heroes has made him a legend.
New Orleans Times-Picayune


The stories…serve as vehicles for Frank’s witty, sad, poignant and incisive ruminations on life in America in the early 21st century... Readers of the Bascombe trilogy… are sure to be delighted at this unexpected opportunity to renew their acquaintance with Frank and see how he’s coping with life’s changes.
Associated Press


The American master returns with another dispatch from Frank Bascombe.
San Antonio Express-News


Funny, touching and profound… Threading its way through all four tales is Frank’s (Ford’s) sometimes chilling, always wry take on mortality… The ability of slight things to forestall reflection on the weightiest of issues is Ford’s rich theme here, and no one mines it more eloquently.
Financial Times


The beauty of this book lies in its encompassing humanity, its juxtaposition of gravity and wit, and the flawed duality of our protagonist… Ford illuminates parts of us all.
Portland Press Herald


The Pulizer Prize-winner ricochets off his "Frank Bascombe Trilogy" of novels (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land) with four themed stories told by Bascombe, his insightful, funny and irreverent main character now living in New Jersey
Sacramento Bee


In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity. It is a moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment.
Jackson Free Press


[Subtle] stories told with wit and grace… Ford has established himself as one of contemporary America’s most interesting storytellers. Let Me Be Frank With You does nothing to diminish this well-deserved reputation.
New York Journal of Books


Ford is celebrated for his Frank Bascombe novels—stories swirling around the life of a middle-aged real estate agent. His profession lends itself to Ford’s rich descriptions of natural land. Here, Ford places Bascombe in the wake of Hurricane Sandy (Best Books for Fall 2014).
Huffington Post


A quartet of stories set around Christmas 2012 (each Bascombe volume co-opts a holiday), amid the physical and emotional debris of Hurricane Sandy, it’s an estimable book-wise, funny and superbly attentive to the world. If this is the last of Bascombe, it’s an honorable end.
Time


Bascombe is a little grumpier than before but no less introspective...As in the previous books, his fast-running internal commentary on those neighbors...is the book’s engine, streaming along, carrying us from one scene to the next and binding them all together.
Town & Country


Frank has reached his twilight years with his trademark wit and ruminative self-awareness intact, even if his body is starting to slide into geriatric betrayal...There’s no doubt that this is the same old Frank
Entertainment Weekly


[F]our absorbing, funny, and often profound novellas.... Frank’s cranky comments and free-flowing meditations about current social and political events are slyly juxtaposed with references to Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Trollope, Emerson, Milton, and others. Despite Frank’s dyspeptic outlook, Ford packs in a surprising amount of affirmation and redemption.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]after an eight-year hiatus, Frank is back, once again summing up an important American moment by wrestling with the displacement caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) [C]austically hilarious, warmly philosophical, and emotionally lush… In each neatly linked tale, Frank ruminates misanthropically, wittily, and wisely about love, family, friendship, race, politics, and the mystery of the self…Like Frank, Ford, certainly is incisively frank, forensically observant, and covertly tender.
Booklist


The novelist returns with his favorite protagonist for a coda that is both fitting and timely.... [T]here are a couple of revelations that might disturb a man who felt more, but plot is secondary here to Frank's voice, which remains at a reflective remove from whatever others are experiencing. Another Bascombe novel would be a surprise, but so is this—a welcome one
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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Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann, 2009
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812973990

Summary
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a“fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; Rooney Prize; Hennessy Award for 
   Irish Literature; Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/
   Sunday Independent Novel of the Year; Ireland Fund 
   of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award;
   Deauville Festival of Cinema Literary Prize; named French
   Chevalier des arts et lettres; inducted into Ireland's
   Aosdana
• Currently—lives in New York City

Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction—two collections of short stories and several novels, most recently TransAtlantic (2013). He is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Hunter College, New York and a regular visitor to the European Graduate School.

McCann's fiction has been published in 35 languages. His novels include Songdogs (1995), This Side of Brightness (1998), Dancer (2003), Zoli (2006), Let the Great World Spin (2009), and TransAtlantic (2013). He has written for numerous newspapers and periodicals, including the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Times (of London), Irish Times, Granta, and La Repubblica. His short story "Everything in this Country Must" was made into a short film directed by Gary McKendry. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005.

Early and private life
McCann was born in Dublin and studied journalism in the former College of Commerce in Rathmines, now the Dublin Institute of Technology He began his career as a reporter for the Irish Press, and had his own column and byline by the age of 21.

In 1986 he arrived in the United States with the purpose of writing a novel. He soon found that he was lacking the life experience to undertake such a project, so he took a bicycle tour across North America for the next 18 months, collecting many of the experiences that he later said influenced his fiction, especially the wide range of voices and backgrounds of his characters.

He settled in Texas from 1988 until 1991 where he worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas, and completed his B.A in the University of Texas. In 1992 he married Allison Hawke and moved to Japan, where the McCanns lived for a year and a half. He and his wife then moved to New York where they currently reside with their three children, Isabella, John Michael, and Christian.

Major works
McCann's 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin uses the true story of Philippe Petit as a "pull-through metaphor" and weaves together a powerful allegory of 9/11. The novel has won numerous honours, notably the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.  In 2010, McCann and musician Joe Hurley cowrote a song-cycle—“The House That Horse Built (Let the Great World Spin)”—based on the character of Tillie.

On 16 June 2009, McCann published a Bloomsday remembrance of his long-deceased grandfather, whom he met only once, and of finding him again in the pages of James Joyce's Ulysses.

McCann's 2013 novel Transatlantic tells the intertwined stories of Alcock and Brown (the first non-stop transatlantic fliers in 1919), the visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland in 1845/46, and the story of the Irish peace process as negotiated by Senator George Mitchell in 1998. The book fuses these stories with fictional narratives of women spanning the course of two centuries. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/22/2013.)

Book Reviews 
Let the Great World Spin is an emotional tour de force. It is a heartbreaking book, but not a depressing one. Through their anguish, McCann’s characters manage to find comfort, even a kind of redemption.... Always in the background is a time and a place—the waning days of Nixon and Vietnam, and New York in the 1970s. In recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of a new generation of New York novelists led by Jonathan Lethem and Colson Whitehead, both native New Yorkers. McCann brings an immigrant’s refreshing sense of awe to the same terrain. “Every now and then the city shook its soul out,” he writes. “It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.
Jonathan Mahler - New York Times

McCann can craft penetrating phrases—a smoker resembles "his last cigarette, ashen and ready to fall"—but his theme is stale, and the exhaustive back stories he gives each character never pay off. McCann relies on streams of short sentences that can seem lazy and distracted. "Pureness moving" describes a break-dancer 140 pages before the exact phrase is used again to describe Petit. Perhaps the repetition is deliberate, but, either way, the line doesn't land a punch. By book's end, McCann is writing of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the width of his canvas enhancing neither the plot nor our concern for it.
Mike Peed - Washington Post

McCann's sweeping new novel hinges on Philippe Petit's illicit 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers. It is the aftermath, in which Petit appears in the courtroom of Judge Solomon Soderberg, that sets events into motion. Solomon, anxious to get to Petit, quickly dispenses with a petty larceny involving mother/daughter hookers Tillie and Jazzlyn Henderson. Jazzlyn is let go, but is killed on the way home in a traffic accident. Also killed is John Corrigan, a priest who was giving her a ride. The other driver, an artist named Blaine, drives away, and the next day his wife, Lara, feeling guilty, tries to check on the victims, leading her to meet John's brother, with whom she'll form an enduring bond. Meanwhile, Solomon's wife, Claire, meets with a group of mothers who have lost sons in Vietnam. One of them, Gloria, lives in the same building where John lived, which is how Claire, taking Gloria home, witnesses a small salvation. McCann's dogged, DeLillo—like ambition to show American magic and dread sometimes comes unfocused—John Corrigan in particular never seems real—but he succeeds in giving us a high-wire performance of style and heart.
Publishers Weekly

[B]est-selling literary novelist McCann allows himself more artistic freedom in his shimmering, shattering fifth novel. It begins on August 7, 1974, when New Yorkers are stopped in their tracks by the sight of a man walking between the towers of the World Trade Center.... In McCann’s wise and elegiac novel of origins and consequences, each of his finely drawn, unexpectedly connected characters balances above an abyss, evincing great courage with every step. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

The famous 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers is a central motif in this unwieldy paean to the adopted city of Dublin-born McCann. Told by a succession of narrators representing diverse social strata, the novel recalls Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), except that where Bonfire was deeply cynical about Reagan-era New York, McCann's take on the grittier, 1970s city is deadly earnest. On the day that "the tightrope walker" (never named, but obviously modeled on Philippe Petit) strolls between the Twin Towers, other New Yorkers are performing quieter acts of courage. Ciaran has come from Dublin to the Bronx to rescue his brother Corrigan, a monk whose ministry involves providing shelter and respite to an impromptu congregation of freeway underpass hookers. Corrigan chastely yearns for Adelita, his co-worker at a nursing home. Claire, heiress wife of Solomon, a judge at the "Shithouse" (Manhattan criminal court), has joined a support group of bereaved mothers whose sons died in the Vietnam War. With much trepidation, she hosts the group-including Gloria, Corrigan's neighbor and the only African-American member-at her Park Avenue penthouse. Two of Corrigan's prostitute flock, Jazzlyn and her mother Tillie, are picked up on an outstanding warrant, and he accompanies them to their arraignment in Solomon's courtroom, where the newly arrested sky-walker is among those waiting to plead. Cocaine-addled painters Blaine and Lara, once again fleeing the Manhattan art scene, also flee the accident scene after their classic car clips Corrigan's van from the rear as he's driving Jazzlyn home. (Tillie, having taken the rap for her daughter, is in jail.) Peripheral characters command occasional chapters as well, and this series of linked stories never really gels as a novel. Unfocused and overlong, though written with verve, empathy and stylistic mastery.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Let the Great World Spin is told through the eyes of eleven different characters. What is the effect of this chorus of voices? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story this way? If you had to choose a single character to narrate the whole book, who would it be, and why? What do you think might be lost, or gained, by narrowing the story to a single perspective?

2. As McCann explains in the author’s note, the book’s title comes from “Locksley Hall,” an 1835 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which was itself inspired by a series of ancient Arabic poems. Why do you think McCann chose to use this title for such a modern American story? What does the title mean to you, and do you think it affects your relationship to the book as a reader? Would this be a different novel, do you think, if it had been called something else, like “Highwire”?

3. The narrative takes place almost exclusively in New York City, but could it have taken place in any other city in the world? How can this be seen as a specifically “New York” novel, and how might it not be? Are there ways in which the characters are emblematic of their time and place, or is there an “everyman” quality to them?

4. The novel opens with an extraordinary tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers. This is a fictionalization of a famous stunt by Philippe Petit in August 1974—yet the tightrope walker in the novel remains anonymous, unrelated to any of the other characters. What do you think the effect is of weaving this historical fact into the fiction of the other characters’ stories? What do you think McCann intends toachieve with this, and in what ways do you think he succeeds?

5. How important do you think this historic walk is in the novel itself? In what ways would the stories–and story–McCann is telling be different if the novel had been set on a different day, or in a different era?

6. Do you see ways in which the tightrope might function as a metaphor, or symbol, throughout the book?

7. In the chapter titled “This Is the House That Horse Built” we get an intimate glimpse into the life of a New York prostitute in the 1970s. She considers herself a failure. Do you agree with her? Or do you think she achieves grace despite the circumstances of her life?

8. All but one of the chapters in Let the Great World Spin are set over the course of a couple of days in early August 1974. Why do you think McCann chose to jump thirty-two years, to 2006, for the final chapter? In what ways do these pages add to, complicate, or even change the story that came before? Why do you think he chose the character of Jaslyn to tell that final piece of the story?

9. What do you think Jaslyn discovers at the end of the novel?

10. What parallels do you see between the society of the 1970s, as McCann depicts it in the novel, and today? How do you believe these similarities and differences speak to the changes in America and the world over the past several decades? Would it be fair to say that America itself is one of the evolving characters in the novel, a separate figure whose story is also being told?

11. Adelita says: “The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.” What does she mean by this?

12. It can be argued that Corrigan and Jazzlyn are the book’s two main characters, yet they die in the opening chapters. Why do you think McCann chose to allow their lives to be destroyed so early in the book? Why did he choose not to tell any of the story through their points of view? In what ways do you think that decision makes these two people more–or less–central and powerful in the story as a whole? Could it be said that it is sometimes the stories not told that affect us the most?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays, etc.
David Sedaris, 2013
Little, Brown & Co.
275 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316154697


Summary
A guy walks into a bar car and... From here the story could take many turns. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and intelligence and leave you deeply moved.

Sedaris remembers his father's dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants), his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant), and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered Pygmy. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 26, 1956
• Where—Johnson City, New York, USA
• Education—B.F.A., Art Institute of Chicago
• Awards—Thurber Prize; Time Humorist of the Year;
   Advocate Lambda Award.
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK

According to Time Out New York, "David Sedaris may be the funniest man alive." He's the sort of writer critics tend to describe not in terms of literary influences and trends, but in terms of what they choked on while reading his latest book. "I spewed a mouthful of pastrami across my desk," admitted Craig Seligman in his New York Times review of Naked.

Sedaris first drew national attention in 1992 with a stint on National Public Radio, on which he recounted his experiences as a Christmas elf at Macy's. He discussed "the code names for various posts, such as 'The Vomit Corner,' a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree" and confided that his response to "I'm going to have you fired" was the desire to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed." The radio pieces were such a hit that Sedaris, then working as a house cleaner, started getting offers to write movies, soap operas and Seinfeld episodes.

In subsequent appearances on NPR, Sedaris proved he wasn't just a velvet-clad flash in the pan; he's also wickedly funny on the subjects of smoking, speed, shoplifting and nervous tics. His work began appearing in magazines like Harper's and Mirabella, and his first book Barrel Fever, which included "SantaLand Diaries," was a bestseller. "These hilarious, lively and breathtakingly irreverent stories...made me laugh out loud more than anything I've read in years," wrote Francine Prose in the Washington Post Book World.

Since then, each successive Sedaris volume has zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists. In Naked, he recounts odd jobs like volunteering at a mental hospital, picking apples as a seasonal laborer and stripping woodwork for a Nazi sympathizer. The stocking stuffer-sized Holidays on Ice collects Sedaris' Christmas-themed work, including a fictional holiday newsletter from the homicidal stepmother of a 22-year-old Vietnamese immigrant ("She arrived in this house six weeks ago speaking only the words 'Daddy,' 'Shiny' and 'Five dollar now'. Quite a vocabulary!!!!!").

But Sedaris' best pieces often revolve around his childhood in North Carolina and his family of six siblings, including the brother who talks like a redneck gangsta rapper and the sister who, in a hilarious passage far too dirty to quote here, introduces him to the joys of the Internet. Sedaris' recent book Me Talk Pretty One Day describes, among other things, his efforts to learn French while helping his boyfriend fix up a Normandy farmhouse; he progresses "from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. 'Is thems the thoughts of cows?' I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window."

Sedaris has been compared to American humorists such as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Dorothy Parker; Publisher's Weekly called him "Garrison Keillor's evil twin." Pretty heady stuff for a man who claims there are cats that weigh more than his IQ score. But as This American Life producer Ira Glass once pointed out, it would be wrong to think of Sedaris as "just a working Joe who happens to put out these perfectly constructed pieces of prose." Measured by his ability to turn his experiences into a sharply satirical, sidesplittingly funny form of art, David Sedaris is no less than a genius.

Extras
• Sedaris got his start in radio after This American Life producer Ira Glass saw him perform at Club Lower Links in Chicago. In addition to his NPR commentaries, Sedaris now writes regularly for Esquire.

• Sedaris's younger sister Amy is also a writer and performer; the two have collaborated on plays under the moniker "The Talent Family." Amy Sedaris has appeared onstage as a member of the Second City improv troupe and on Comedy Central in the series Strangers with Candy.

• If I weren't a writer, I'd be a taxidermist," Sedaris said in a chat on Barnes and Noble.com. According to the Boston Phoenix, his collection of stuffed dead animals includes a squirrel, two fruit bats, four Boston terriers and a baby ostrich.

• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, he's what he said:

I guess it would be Cathedral by Raymond Carver. His sentences are very simple and straightforward, and he made writing seem deceptively easy—the kind of thing anyone could do if they put their mind to it. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Sedaris is a remarkably skilled storyteller and savvy essayist. He weaves together vivid images and sensations into a coherent whole that packs a serious emotional punch.... Yes, David Sedaris is really that good. And, based on this latest collection, he's getting only better.
Heather Havrilesky - Los Angeles Times

Fresh....funny, whimsical, unexpected, and never obvious....Who would anticipate that an encounter with an Australian bird could be so damn touching?
Sherryl Connelly - New York Daily News


David Sedaris is horribly observant. He sees things as they are.... He'll be telling some weird story, and all of a sudden, just at the end, it turns out not only to be about him, but also about you.
Nancy Dalva- New York Observer


Ridiculously funny....A find for the reader who appreciates a sense of humor....Sedaris, like the great humorists before him, hits a nerve with his wit, which brings the reader into intimate contact with the human condition."
John Henry - Fort Worth Star-Telegram


Sedaris is certainly worthy of hero worship-he so breezily translates the landscape through his bent, prismatic view that he makes you forget what a skillful narrator he is.
Mark Washburn - Charlotte Observer


Artfully milked embarrassing personal incidents for literary laughs...There are plenty of well-cut gems, including one about an ill-fated adoption of some sea turtles that's both hilarious and touching.
Thom Geier - Entertainment Weekly


If you are a David Sedaris fan, any new book from the humorist is cause for celebration. His newest offering, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, is no exception. It's quintessential Sedaris....There's always a laugh-out-loud moment just around the corner.
Craig Wilson - USA Today


The funniest writer in America.... Sedaris is thoughtful and sweet in addition to being slyly hilarious.
Leigh Haber - Oprah magazine


David Sedaris has become a signifier of taste and intelligence.... Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls was the kind of book that I finished and just immediately wanted to start reading again.
Anna Peele - Esquire


David Sedaris still talks pretty.
Kathryn Schulz - New York Magazine


Sedaris is the preeminent humorist of his generation.
Whitney Pastorek - Entertainment Weekly


 Sedaris's latest essay collection possesses all of the wit, charm, and poignancy his readers have come to expect. His usual cast of delightful characters returns..... Many pieces involve travel, animals, or both.... This is a must-read for fans of smart, well-crafted writing with a sense of humor.
Publishers Weekly


An acute observer and master of the quick, excoriating takedown, Sedaris claims new territory in this exceptionally gutsy and unnerving collection. — Donna Seamen
Booklist


A more varied and less consistent essay collection from the noted humorist. In middle age, Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames, 2008) no longer aims as often for laugh-out-loud funny as he did when he attracted a popular following almost two decades ago. Most of these essays revisit many of the areas he's previously mined for hilarity...but much of what he returns to in memory seems less antic and more melancholy than before.... Those who have followed Sedaris through the years will find plenty to enjoy, though not much in the way of surprise or revelation.
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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Lethal White (Cormoran Strike Series, 4)
Robert Galbraith / J.K. Rowling, 2018
Little, Brown and Company
656 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316422734


Summary
The fourth book in the Cormoran Strike series from the international bestselling author Robert Galbraith.

“I seen a kid killed.… He strangled it, up by the horse.”

When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike’s office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled.

While Billy is obviously mentally distressed, and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic.

Trying to get to the bottom of Billy’s story, Strike and Robin Ellacott—once his assistant, now a partner in the agency—set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside.

And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike’s own life is far from straightforward: his newfound fame as a private eye means he can no longer operate behind the scenes as he once did.

Plus, his relationship with his former assistant is more fraught than it ever has been—Robin is now invaluable to Strike in the business, but their personal relationship is much, much trickier than that.

The most epic Robert Galbraith novel yet, Lethal White is both a gripping mystery and a page-turning next instalment in the ongoing story of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Aka—Robert Galbraith
• Birth—July 31, 1965
• Where—Chipping Sodbury near Bristol, England, UK
• Education—Exeter University
• Awards—3 Nestle Smarties Awards; British Book Award- Children's Book of the Year; British Book Awards- Author of the Year; British Book Awards- Book of the Year.
• Currently—lives in Perthshire, Scotland and London, England.


Joanne "Jo" Rowling, better known under the pen name J. K. Rowling, as well as the mystery writer Robert Galbraith, is a British author known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series, the idea for which was conceived while on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million copies, and been the basis for a popular series of films.

Rowling is perhaps equally famous for her "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on welfare to multi-millionaire status within five years. As of March 2010, when its latest world billionaires list was published, Forbes estimated Rowling's net worth to be $1 billion. The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £560 million ($798 million), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in Great Britain. Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007, and Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fandom.

She has become a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, and the Children's High Level Group.

Early years
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling (nee Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16.1 km) northeast of Bristol. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce. (The school's headmaster has been suggested as the inspiration for Harry Potter's Albus Dumbledore).

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would read to her sister. "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called "Rabbit." He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." When she was a young teenager, her great aunt gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother, Anne, had worked as a technician in the Science Department. Rowling has said of her adolescence, "Hermione [A bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. "Ron Weasley [Harry Potter's best friend] isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish."

Rowling read for a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter. After a year of study in Paris, Rowling moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.

In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately. In December of that same year, Rowling’s mother died, after a ten-year battle with multiple sclerosis, a death that heavily affected her writing: she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.

Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. While there she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in 1992. Their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born in 1993 in Portugal. The couple separated in November 1993. In December 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh, Scotland. During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.

After Jessica's birth and the separation from her husband, Rowling had left her teaching job in Portugal. In order to teach in Scotland she would need a postgraduate certificate of education (PGCE), requiring a full-time, year-long course of study. She began this course in August 1995, after completing her first novel while having survived on state welfare support.

She wrote in many cafes, especially Nicolson's Cafe, whenever she could get Jessica to fall asleep. As she stated on the American TV program A&E Biography, one of the reasons she wrote in cafes was not because her flat had no heat, but because taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.

Harry Potter books
In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by Bloomsbury, a small British publishing house in London, England. The decision to publish Rowling's book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next.

Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, her editor Barry Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books. Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing. The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when she heard the news.

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of 1000 copies, five hundred of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestle Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Children’s Book Award. Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July, 1998.

In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.

The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000, and broke sales records in both countries. Some 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all literary sales records. Rowling admitted that she had had a moment of crisis while writing the novel; "Halfway through writing Four, I realised there was a serious fault with the plot....I've had some of my blackest moments with this book..... One chapter I rewrote 13 times, though no-one who has read it can spot which one or know the pain it caused me." Rowling was named author of the year in the 2000 British Book Awards.

A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This gap led to press speculation that Rowling had developed writer's block, speculations she fervently denied. Rowling later admitted that writing the book was a chore. "I think Phoenix could have been shorter", she told Lev Grossman, "I knew that, and I ran out of time and energy toward the end."

The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release. While writing, she told a fan online, "Book six has been planned for years, but before I started writing seriously I spend two months re-visiting the plan and making absolutely sure I knew what I was doing." She noted on her website that the opening chapter of book six, which features a conversation between the Minister of Magic and the British Prime Minister, had been intended as the first chapter first for Philosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Secrets then Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in July, 2007, (0:00 BST) and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time. It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States. She has said that the last chapter of the book was written "in something like 1990", as part of her earliest work on the entire series. During a year period when Rowling was completing the last book, she allowed herself to be filmed for a documentary which aired in Britain on ITV on 30 December 2007. It was entitled J K Rowling... A Year In The Life and showed her returning to her old Edinburgh tenement flat where she lived, and completed the first Harry Potter book. Re-visiting the flat for the first time reduced her to tears, saying it was "really where I turned my life around completely."

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated £7 billion ($15 billion), and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.

The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television, although the series' overall impact on children's reading habits has been questioned.

Life after Harry Potter
Forbes has named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books, the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world. When first listed as a billionaire by Forbes in 2004, Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire. In addition, the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List named Rowling the 144th richest person in Britain. In 2001, Rowling purchased a luxurious nineteenth-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Rowling also owns a home in Merchiston, Edinburgh, and a £4.5 million ($9 million) Georgian house in Kensington, West London, (on a street with 24-hour security).

On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaesthetist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home. Their son was born in 2003 and a daughter in 2005.

In the UK, Rowling has received honorary degrees from St Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, the University of Exeter and the University of Aberdeen; and in the US, from Harvard. She has been awarded the Légion d'honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. (During the Elysée Palace ceremony, she revealed that her maternal French grandfather had also received the Légion d'honneur for his bravery during World War I.) According to Matt Latimer, a former White House administrator for President George W. Bush, Rowling was turned down for the Presidential Medal of Freedom because administration officials believed that the Harry Potter series promoted witchcraft.

Subsequent writing
Rowling has stated that she plans to continue writing, preferably under a pseudonym. In 2012, however, under her own name, she published her first novels for adults, The Casual Vacancy. Although she "thinks it's unlikely" that she will write another Harry Potter, an "encyclopedia" of wizarding along with unpublished notes may be published sometime in the future.

Using the pen name "Robert Galbraith," Rowling published The Cuckoo's Calling in 2013. It reached the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list within weeks. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
At times you might feel as you did when reading the Harry Potter books, particularly later in the series, when they got longer and looser. You love the plot, and you love being in the company of the characters, and you admire the author's voice and insights and ingenuity, and you relish the chance to relax into a book without feeling rushed or puzzled or shortchanged.… Long live the fertile imagination and prodigious output of J.K. Rowling.
New York Times


Rowling's wizardry as a writer is on fulsome display in Lethal White ( 3.5/4 stars), a behemoth of a novel that flies by in a flash. This is a crime series deeply rooted in the real world, where brutality and ugliness are leavened by the oh-so-human flaws and virtues of Galbraith's irresistible hero and heroine.
USA Today


Even if the world is the seedy underbelly of contemporary London and not Magical Hogwarts, cracking the cover of a Galbraith novel is like stepping through a portal. You're immersed all at once.
Bustle


Addictive, murderous fun.
Vox


Compulsively readable.
People


(Starred review) Rowling impressively sustains suspense over the course of a lengthy mystery in her fourth outing for London PI Cormoran Strike…. Rowling's emotionally intelligent portrayal of her protagonists never overwhelms the whodunit story line.
Publishers Weekly


[T]he book picks up exactly where the last installment left off…. The mystery itself is complex… verging on convoluted … [and] there’s way too much filler in between. Let’s hope Rowling’s next book is sharper and shorter.
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 LETHAL WHITE… 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.

1. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
2. Are they plausible or implausible?
3. 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?

1. Is the conclusion probable or believable?
2. Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
3. Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
4. Perhaps it's too predictable.
5. 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.)

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Christmas Box Collection: The Christmas Box, Timepiece, The Letter
Richard Paul Evans, 1993, '96, '97
Simon & Schuster
672 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780671027643

In Brief 
Richard Paul Evans' #1 New York Times bestseller The Christmas Box has become a holiday classic, a tale so touching that it continues to "tug families' heartstrings" (USA Today). His exquisite prequel, Timepiece, and The Letter completed the glorious trilogy of the Parkin family. Now all three magical stories are compiled in one extraordinary treasury that -reaches into that place where all broken hearts will forever be made whole" (The Star, Chicago).

The Christmas Box
A Christmas story unlike any other, The Christmas Box is the poignant tale of a widow and the young family who moves in with her. Together, they discover the first gift of Christmas — and what the holiday is really all about.

Timepiece
Tracing the lives of a young couple as they discover love, loyalty, and the power of forgiveness, Timepiece is a tale of wisdom and of hope — and a gentle reminder that the connections from one generation to the next are indelible.

The Letter
A mysterious letter is found at the grave of a couple's only child in this unforgettable conclusion to the collection. As they face love's greatest challenge, they find its truest meaning and learn the lessons that are echoed throughout. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author 

• Birth—October 11, 1962
• Where—Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Utah
• Awards—American Mother Book Award; two Story Telling
  World Awards (2000, 2001)
• Currently—lives in Salt Lake City, Utah

The story of Richard Paul Evans's massive success is so miraculous that it could have been the subject of one of his inspirational stories if it hadn't been true. He'd written his very first book The Christmas Box as a holiday gift for his daughters in 1993. As he saw it, this story of a widow and the young family that moves into her home was a tangible, timeless expression of his fatherly love. So, Evans produced twenty copies of the novella, which he then handed out to a select group of friends and family as Christmas gifts.

Incredibly, those mere twenty books began to circulate. And circulate. And circulate. By the following month, copies of The Christmas Box had passed through no less than 160 pairs of hands, some of which belonged to people who were rather influential. Amazingly, book stores began calling Evans at home, asking for copies of his little homemade opus.

The story of The Christmas Box does not end there. This moving tale about the meaning of Christmas was soon picked up by Simon & Schuster and went on to make publishing history when it simultaneously became both the bestselling hardcover and the bestselling paperback book in America. Suddenly, former advertising executive and clay animator Evans was a bestselling writer with a whole new career ahead of him.

Evans followed up The Christmas Box with a prequel titled Timepiece in 1996. Timepiece was another major hit with readers, as was The Letter, the final installment in the Christmas Box trilogy. From there, Evans expanded his repertoire while continuing to focus on the themes dearest to him: faith, family, forgiveness, love, and loyalty. He published The Christmas Candle, his first book for kids.

His work also often became subject to small-screen adaptations. In fact, a 1995 production of The Christmas Box starring Maureen O'Hara and Richard Thomas snared an Emmy for best costuming in a miniseries or special. The following year, a version of Timepiece featured an early appearance by future superstar Naomi Watts, not to mention choice performances by James Earl Jones and Ellen Burstyn, as well as an associate producer credit for the author, himself.

Meanwhile, Evans continued penning and publishing heart-warming mega-sellers like The Locket, The Looking Glass, and The Carousel. In 2001, he took some time to reflect on his stunning success in The Christmas Box Miracle, which recounted his most unusual journey to the top of the bestseller list.

Another string of crowd pleasers followed, including the romantic The Last Promise, A Perfect Day, and The Sunflower, a critically acclaimed account of blossoming love at a humanitarian mission in Peru. Now, Evans is back with Finding Noel, the story of Mark Smart, whose pained life is completely turned around after a chance encounter in a coffee shop. Fans of Evans—and there are legions of them—will no doubt be delighted and deeply touched by his latest work.

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Evans is one of the few writers in history to place on both the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists.

• When Evans is not writing bestsellers, he often makes public appearances as a motivational speaker. He has shared the stage with such notable people as director Ron Howard, writer Deepak Chopra, humorist Steven Allen, and both George Bush senior and George W. Bush.

• In 1997, Evans founded The Christmas Box House International, a foundation responsible for building shelters for abused, neglected, and homeless children throughout the world. More than 16,000 kids have found homes in one of Evans's shelters.

• Evans is the father of five children, who take up most of his time.

• Evans loves playing the game Risk. Also Paintball. He says, "When possible, I round up my friends and go down to our ranch in southern Utah, where we play weekend soldiers."

• When asked about what book most influenced his carrer as a writer, here is his response:

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I was 20 years old when I read it. I was visiting my brother in Monterey, California, where the book takes place, and I became so enraptured by Steinbeck's writing that I decided then that I wanted to write a book someday.

(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Critics Say . . . 
Timepiece — A small treasury of wisdom.... You will probably read many books this year; you will not read one written with more skill or more heart than
Yulsa World


Timepiece — Like the titular treasure chest of Evans's bestselling The Christmas Box, the eponymous timepiece—"a beautiful rose-gold wristwatch"—of this heart-plucking prequel fairly vibrates with sentimentality. Readers of the former novel will recall how the author met aged widow MaryAnne Parkin and learned of her deceased husband, David, a successful businessman, and how their infant daughter, Andrea, died a tragic death. Here, Evans traces events some 80-odd years back to tell this family's story, but not before recalling the eve of his own daughter's wedding, in 1967, when he presents her with the wristwatch, given to him by MaryAnne. Fragments of David Parkin's diary, dated 1908-1918 and set in Salt Lake City, weave evocatively throughout the author's account of the Parkins' courtship, marriage and family tragedy. At the thematic center of the tale lies the timepiece, bequeathed by a wealthy widow to David's friend Lawrence Flake, a black man who repairs clocks. Events force Lawrence to kill another in self-defense; fearing for his friend, David tells police that he fired the shot, and is exonerated. In revenge, the dead man's friends set a fatal fire at the Parkin house and steal the symbolic timepiece, which will come back to the Parkins only after an extraordinary act of kindness and forgiveness by MaryAnne. Evans has a more ambitious tale to tell here than in The Christmas Box, and he generally carries it off with aplomb, though the dark events of the central story and an unabashedly sappy wedding-eve coda don't quite mesh. The nation's supply of Kleenex is bound to deplete after this hits the bookstore shelves.
Publishers Weekly


Timepiece — The prequel to Evans's mega bestseller, The Christmas Box, is longer than the earlier book, has its same cartoony thinness, is just as creaky at the joints — and reveals, if anything, a considerable rise in the tears-per-page ratio.We go back to Salt Lake City, this time to 1908, when David Parkin — thoughtful and sensitive person, millionaire head of Parkin Machinery Co., and collector of clocks — hires as his secretary one MaryAnne Chandler, the young woman (originally from England) destined to become David's wife, to live in his big mansion, and, in time, to become the benevolent, devout, mysteriously wise widow of The Christmas Box. How MaryAnne achieved such wisdom (quick answer: through suffering a lot) is the real subject of this book, and Evans out-Dickenses Dickens in his facile uses of melodrama in getting to his desired end. In Evans's world of tears and truth, people are by and large either all good or all bad, and if MaryAnne's perfections include being attractive, spunky, quick, principled, courageous, loving, and morally unwavering, the qualities of the base and degenerate villains who reduce her life to ashes are her perfect opposites not in some but all ways ("The men entered clumsily, growling in foul and guttural tones, drunk with whiskey and hatred"). In the beginning, there will be marriage, birth, and immeasurable happiness; and then, with purest villainy as its catalyst, there will be profound and equally immeasurable sorrow. But the healing spirit of human love and hope and goodness will not be destroyed entirely, living on in the muted but unquenchable goodness of MaryAnne's heart; in Evans's perfectly choreographed little flurry of symbols at the close; and even in the transformation of one of those pure villains into purely sensitive penitent. Certain handkerchief heaven for many, while others may experience the stirring of — well, let's just say other feelings.
Kirkus Reviews


The Christmas Box — Self-published in paperback during the Christmas season 1994, Evans's first novel quickly gained national media attention. Now the cleverly told tale, which the author reputedly wrote for his daughters and which revels in sentimentality, is available in hardcover. The story relates how a young couple, Richard (who narrates) and Keri, accept a position to care for a lonely widow, MaryAnne Parkin, in her spacious Victorian mansion. As Christmas draws near, MaryAnne becomes anxious about Richard's obsession with success and his failure to make time for his family. She urges him to reconsider his priorities, but he is always too busy to heed her advice. It is only when Mary is on her deathbed and her secret sorrow is revealed through the letter-laden Christmas box of the title that Richard realizes what she has been trying to tell him. The message concerns love, of course, and the strings Evans pulls to vivify it should squeeze sobs from even the stoniest of hearts. It's notable, however, that unlike many well-known Christmas tales (such as Dickens's), which carry that message in a basically nonsectarian manner, this is steeped in specific Christian imagery and belief as the author draws on the drama of Jesus as God's sacrifice for the world's sins, and of his crucifixion and resurrection.
Publishers Weekly

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Book Club Discussion Questions 

1. What is the significance of the ornately carved wooden box that Richard finds in the attic of MaryAnne Parkin's home? Which, if any, of the various explanations Richard Paul Evans offers for the source of the box's magic has particular appeal for you? Do you think it is important that a reader believe in the magic of the box in order to experience the full emotional and spiritual impact of the story? Why or why not?

2. In what sense is the story of The Christmas Box allegorical? What is the central message of the story? In what ways did you find that message meaningful for your own life? Why does it become a matter of such urgency for MaryAnne that Richard understand what the first gift of Christmas was?

3. The #1 bestseller in the nation when it was first published, The Christmas Box has become a modern Christmas classic, selling more than seven million copies in 17 languages worldwide, and inspiring an award-winning CBS television movie starring Maureen O'Hara and Richard Thomas. Why do you think The Christmas Box has become so hugely popular? How do you think it compares with other classic Christmas stories?

4. Asked to tell which of the senses she most identifies with Christmas, Mary points to the sounds of the Yuletide season, while for Richard it is the sense of smell. Which of the senses do you think is most affected by Christmas and why? Are any of your senses more acute than the others? If you were to lose one of your senses, which do you think would be the most difficult to do without? Which one would be the easiest? How do the various senses stir your memories of childhood or other important moments in your past?

5. The author explains to the reader that he believes in angels, "though not the picture-book kind with wings and harps." What kind of angels does Evans believe in and what function do they serve in The Christmas Box? What is the meaning of the recurrent angel dreams that start haunting Richard's slumber once he moves into the Parkin home? Why does the angel that visits Richard in his dreams turn to stone? What role, if any, do angels play in your own life? Why do you think there has been such an explosion of interest in angels in our popular culture—from books and television shows about angels to angel motifs on a wide range of objects from jewelry to clothes?

6. Many of the events of The Christmas Box are shrouded in mystery. Why does Richard hear a lullaby in the middle of the night that seems to be emanating from the Christmas Box? How could the box play music without possessing any mechanism normally found in a music box? Why is Richard, a man who ordinarily wouldn't consider intruding on anyone's privacy, irresistibly drawn to read the letters contained in the Christmas Box? Why are the leaves of MaryAnne's Bible stained from tears — both dried tears from the past and moist ones that seem to have just been spilled? How do you account for these mysterious occurrences? Do you think they are meant to be interpreted literally or symbolically? Do they require a supernatural explanation?

7. As MaryAnne lies in a hospital bed dying, why do the "gentle, sweet tines of the Christmas Box" fill the room? Why does MaryAnne finally seem so at peace? How do you think Richard's life will change now that Mary has helped him to see that "in my quest for success in this world I had been trading diamonds for stones"? Talk about a transforming experience in your own life when you came to a realization that you were pursuing the wrong dreams. Have you ever read a book that inspired you to reorder your priorities? Why do you think so many readers of The Christmas Box have described it as a heartwarming story that not only touched their emotions but actually transformed their lives? Do you think the book will have such a transforming effect on you? Why or why not?

8. Why at the end of the book does Richard throw the letters from the Christmas Box into the fireplace and let the flames devour them one by one? What does Richard mean when he says, "it is the emptiness of the box that I will treasure most"? Is the box really empty?

9. The Christmas Box is the first novel in a trilogy that also includes the prequel, Timepiece, in which we discover the source of the wisdom that MaryAnne bequeaths to Richard; and the sequel, The Letter, in which David and MaryAnne Parkin face love's greatest challenge and discover its truest meaning. When you enjoy a work of fiction do you often wish you could spend more time with the characters? Do you prefer that to be time in the past, or in the future? When reading a prequel, how does it affect your reading pleasure to step back in time to witness earlier events unfolding in characters' lives even though you already know what has happened? Were you inspired by The Christmas Box to read the other books in the trilogy? Why or why not?

10. Fans of Richard Paul Evans's books have often pointed to their multiple-hanky appeal. One captivated reader, sharing her opinion on the web, calls The Christmas Box trilogy "perfect to sit down and cry over." Why do you think so many people relish a book that gives the reader a good cry?

11. Before reading The Christmas Box, if you knew that USA Today expected the book to "tug families' heartstrings," would you have been more or less inclined to read it? Why? The Daily Universe, reviewing the final book in the trilogy, has said: "In a day when popular fiction often fails to inspiregoodness...Evans's story manages to wrap warm hands around its readers, instilling in them a hunger for goodness to prevail." Do you think that the ability to inspire goodness is an appropriate standard by which to evaluate a book? Why or why not? The angel statue described in The Christmas Box has inspired the erection of similar angel monuments in cities across America, from Salt Lake City, Utah, to West Palm Beach, Florida, where parents who have lost a child can come to grieve and heal. Does knowing this change the way you feel about the book? How?
(Questions from author's website.)

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Letters from Skye 
Jessica Brockmole, 2013
Ballentine Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345542601


Summary
A sweeping story told in letters, spanning two continents and two world wars, Jessica Brockmole’s atmospheric debut novel captures the indelible ways that people fall in love, and celebrates the power of the written word to stir the heart.
 
March 1912: Twenty-four-year-old Elspeth Dunn, a published poet, has never seen the world beyond her home on Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye. So she is astonished when her first fan letter arrives, from a college student, David Graham, in far-away America. As the two strike up a correspondence—sharing their favorite books, wildest hopes, and deepest secrets—their exchanges blossom into friendship, and eventually into love. But as World War I engulfs Europe and David volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait for him on Skye, hoping he’ll survive.
 
June 1940: At the start of World War II, Elspeth’s daughter, Margaret, has fallen for a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Her mother warns her against seeking love in wartime, an admonition Margaret doesn’t understand. Then, after a bomb rocks Elspeth’s house, and letters that were hidden in a wall come raining down, Elspeth disappears. Only a single letter remains as a clue to Elspeth’s whereabouts. As Margaret sets out to discover where her mother has gone, she must also face the truth of what happened to her family long ago.
 
Sparkling with charm and full of captivating period detail, Letters from Skye is a testament to the power of love to overcome great adversity, and marks Jessica Brockmole as a stunning new literary voice. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Jessica Brockmole, an American writer, spent several years living in Scotland, where she knew too well the challenges in maintaining relationships from a distance. She plotted her first novel on a long drive from the Isle of Skye to Edinburgh. She now lives in Indiana with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
A love story to the power of the written word.
USA Today


Sensitive and absorbing and unique.
Fredericksburg Free Lance–Star


(Starred review.) Brockmole uses letters to tell a remarkable story of two women...and two world wars.... The beauty of Scotland, the tragedy of war, the longings of the heart, and the struggles of a family torn apart by disloyalty are brilliantly drawn, leaving just enough blanks to be filled by the reader’s imagination.
Publishers Weekly


Already being compared to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, this novel lacks the magical charm of its powerful predecessor.... [T]he story begins to feel heavy-handed, and there are few surprises, good or bad. [T]he narrative also includes a second story line set 20 years later that further reflects on the [original] relationship. However, David and Elspeth never truly come to life. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal


Told exclusively via letters between lovers, mother and daughter, and husband and wife, Brockmole’s novel will make readers feel that they’re illicitly reading someone’s diary. But the letter convention has its drawbacks. It’s difficult to get a full sense of who these characters are beyond what is written in their letters, which leaves them, at times, flat and two-dimensional. —Carolyn Kubisz
Booklist


The correspondence between Elspeth and David, as well as between Margaret and Paul, carefully traces the intertwining of lives. By turns lyrical and flirtatious, Brockmole's debut charms with its wistful evocation of a time when handwritten, eagerly awaited letters could bespell besotted lovers.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
These questions were submitted by Linley Bartell, a member of Book Buddies. Thank you Linley!

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Library of Souls  (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Series, 3)
Ransom Riggs, 2016
Quirk Publishing
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594747588


Summary
The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls.

As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress.

Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.
 
They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all.

Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience. (From the publisher.)

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011) is the first book in the Peculiar Children Series. Hollow City (2014) is the second, and this book, Library of Souls (2016), is the third.

Tim Burton's film adaption of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was released in 2016. It stars Eva Green and Asa Butterfield.

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Englewood, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Kenyon College; M.A., University of Southern California
• Currently—lives in Santa Monica, California


In his words:
Hi, I'm Ransom, and I like to tell stories. Sometimes I tell them with words, sometimes with pictures, often with both.

I grew up on a farm on the Eastern shore of Maryland and also in a little house by the beach in Englewood, Florida where I got very tan and swam every day until I became half fish. I started writing stories when I was young, on an old typewriter that jammed and longhand on legal pads.

When I was a little older I got a camera for Christmas and became obsessed with photography, and when I was a little older still my friends and I came into possession of a half-broken video camera and began to make our own movies, starring ourselves, using our bedrooms and backyards for sets.

I have loved writing stories and taking photographs and making movies ever since, and have endeavored to do all three.

Education and early career
After high school I went to Kenyon College, a very pretty and quite old by American standards college in rural Ohio, where I studied literature and got a degree in English. Then I fulfilled a long-held dream and went to film school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

I'd been making films since the backyard-masterpiece days of my childhood, but at USC I learned how to make them bigger and better and shiny-looking. I graduated with what I thought was a pretty slick thesis film under my arm and went out into the world to conquer the film festival circuit and then Hollywood—or at least that was the plan, though it didn't quite work out that way. I spent a few years writing scripts and taking meetings and getting not very far, trying any way I could to get noticed.

All the while I was writing: for five years I had a gig as a daily blogger for mentalfloss.com, and I also wrote for their magazine, contributed to a few books they published through Harpercollins, and wrote for a couple of other publications here and there, as well.

Books
All of which turned into an opportunity to do some work for a small publisher who knew my editors at mentalfloss. That was Quirk Books, who asked me if I was interested in writing a book about Sherlock Holmes for them. I jumped at the opportunity. That was The Sherlock Holmes Handbook (2009).

Next came Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, born out of my love for vintage photography and bizarro stories, and I never looked back.

I still love movies and I still make short films (here are some recent ones) and one day I will make a feature—when the time and the material are right. These days, though, I'm loving being a novelist, a photo collector, and an occasional short filmmaker.

Personal
I live near Los Angeles, California, with my wife, the lovely and talented Tahereh Mafi—who is also a writer, and if you haven't read her lovely and exciting Shatter Me books you're missing out—and we type and travel and drink tea together and it's really quite wonderful. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Fans of the trilogy’s first two books will enjoy Library of Souls for its unique world, fast action, satisfying answers and a thorough tying up of loose ends.
Free Lance-Star


I was blown away by the way the haunting photographs were woven so seamlessly into the incredible plot. And Library of Souls has simply the most perfect ending.
Nikki - Justine Magazine
 

Oh, my birds, I love this book! I’m obsessed with Ransom Riggs’ wildly creative world packed with heroic, heartwarming characters, supper baddies, and incredible settings like Devil’s Acre and the Library of Souls.
Annalyse - Justine Magazine


Library of Souls will not disappoint.
Forces of Geek


The challenge Riggs faces in Library of Souls is to match the remarkably high standard set by the first two books in the series, either the mind-bending bafflements of the first book or the edge-of-your-seat action of the second. Riggs succeeds, delivering a thrilling conclusion to Jacob’s trilogy.
Paste Magazine


[T]hrilling and satisfying.... [C]haracters, their relationships, and their special abilities help to inform the world-building, and the detailed descriptions set the tone...from humorous to suspenseful to downright terrifying (Gr. 8 & Up). —Billy Parrott, New York Public Library
School Library Journal

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

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Lies You Wanted to Hear 
James Whitfield Thomson, 2013
Sourcebooks
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402284281


Summary
Alone in an empty house, Lucy tries to imagine the lives of her two young children. They have been gone for seven years, and she is tormented by the role she played in that heartbreaking loss. You can hardly see a glimpse of the sexy, edgy woman she used to be. Back then, she was a magnet for men like Matt, who loved her beyond reason, and Griffin, who wouldn't let go but always left her wanting more. Now the lies they told and the choices they made have come to haunt all three of them.

With shattering turns, Lies You Wanted to Hear explores the way good people talk themselves into doing terrible, unthinkable things. What happens when we come to believe our own lies? And what price must we pay for our mistakes?

A searing story that will leave you wondering what choices you would make, Lies You Wanted to Hear is a stunning debut. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1946
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., University
   of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Natick, Massachusetts

Even as a young high school football player who caught the eye of college coaches, James W. Thomson realized that football wasn't truly in his future. Instead, a scholarship enabled him to pursue academics at Harvard, where he discovered his love of literature and art history.

After a two-year tour of duty in Vietnam as a Naval ship navigator, Thomson returned to school and completed his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Following a discouraging stint in academia, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and joined a start-up company. He stayed with the firm for 13 years as it grew to 300 employees with offices from Los Angeles to London.

Eventually, to fulfill a life-time dream of becoming a writer, Thomson joined a workshop led by Andre Dubus, Jr., who taught him to devote time every day to writing. Three novels, a memoir and a dozen short stories later, Thomson can now call himself a writer. His work has earned him a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a number of his stories have appeared in literary quarterlies, with one winning a national short story contest.

Thomson lives with his wife Elizabeth in a Victorian fam house west of Boston. They have five adult children. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Quite an achievement ... confident and eminently readable
New York Journal of Books

A spellbinding stunner of a debut ... Lies You Wanted to Hear is a novel of intensely lifelike characters and chilling choices and consequences that is utterly satisfying from start to finish.
Redbook Magazine

A remarkable, readable novel that's sure to provoke animated debate
Portland Daily Sun


[A] divorced father... kidnaps his two young children from their mother, whom he perceives to be unfit to raise them.... Matt assigns them new identities and lies to his kids about their mother before they take up a fugitive lifestyle. As time passes, the reader’s sympathies align more with Lucy, who is left heartsick over the loss of her kids, in Thomson’s well-told narrative of complex characters and their troubled families.
Publishers Weekly


Matt...falls into paranoia, convincing himself that [his wife] Lucy is a danger to her children and that he must take drastic actions to save them.... Lucy and Matt share with the reader the truths they never told each other. Verdict: This first novel...slowly builds momentum, ending with a satisfying twist on the theme of why good love can go bad and what redemption can cost. —Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC
Library Journal


[An] effective debut.... Thomson lays out the moral complexities underlying acrimonious divorces, taking care to make each side credible.
Booklist


First-time novelist Thomson explores the excruciating pain of a marriage gone wrong in this dreary tale stretched out over two decades.... Thomson writes in clear if pedestrian prose, shifting between Lucy and Matt, but unfortunately, the novel never transcends the dour particulars of its own he said, she said storytelling.... Relentlessly grim melodrama, in the vein of Ordinary People and Kramer vs. Kramer.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Lying is a key element of this novel. Who lies more, Matt or Lucy? What is the worst lie each of them tells? Do you think there is a difference between lying to someone and betraying them?

2. Was Matt justified in kidnapping his children? What do you think drove him over the edge? Does his essential character change once he has taken the kids?

3. Do you agree with Matt when he says that what he did was his “fate” and he had no other choice?

4. Lucy feels as if she can’t quite figure out how to be a good mother, yet she is unable to broach the subject even with her best friend, Jill. Do you think this a common feeling among women? Why do you think that a mother might find this topic difficult to talk about?

5. Is Lies You Wanted to Hear a tragedy? Why or why not?

6. Do the alternating first-person chapters from Matt and Lucy work in terms of storytelling? Do you think Matt’s voice is different from Lucy’s?

7. Lucy has a lot of failings both as a mother and a wife. What are the differences between how Matt sees her and how she sees herself? Is one character’s view more truthful or more insightful than the other?

8. After the confrontation in the bedroom with Lucy and Griffin, Matt says to Lucy, “I never had a chance, did I?” Did Lucy ever really try to make the marriage work? Does Matt bear responsibility for their breakup?

9. Why does Lucy keep going back to Griffin? Do you think Lucy belongs with Griffin? With Matt?

10. Did your feelings about Matt and Lucy shift during the novel? If yes, was there a particular moment that caused that shift?

11. Is it possible to compare one person’s grief to another’s? Do you think that most people measure and compare their losses to those of others?

12. Lucy’s lawyer suggests that it is inappropriate for Matt to take a shower with Sarah, who is almost five years old. Also, Matt often lets Sarah crawl into bed with him in the middle of the night. Is this cause for alarm? If this behavior is acceptable now, at what point should it change?

13. Why does Sara remain so fiercely loyal to her father when she learns the truth about her mother? What pulls Elliot in the opposite direction? Have you ever encountered a startling revelation in your own life or in that of someone you know that causes you to rethink your entire world?

14. Lucy quotes her mother as saying, “Any fool can be happy. The hard part is feeling like you matter.” What do you think about this statement?

15. How does Lucy’s journal-keeping influence her life?

16. How do Lucy’s relationships with other women define who she is and how we think about her?

17. Is there any validity in Matt’s contention that the court system is biased toward a mother? When adjudicating domestic disputes, does the legal system today give fair consideration to the rights of both parents?

18. Matt and Lucy were brought up in very different family situations. Did their upbringing lead them into making the choices they made?

19. The last thing Lucy says to Matt is, “I feel better now. I don’t have to hate you anymore.” But she doesn’t offer him forgiveness. Are there some acts that are simply unforgivable?

20. Did Lucy give up too quickly in trying to find her children? The children’s disappearance takes place before the age of the Internet. Would Lucy’s search be different today?

21. From the first date on, it is clear that Matt is more taken with Lucy than she is with him. Is itthe norm in most romantic relationships that one person falls more deeply in love than the other?

22. Can you think of times when you would rather have heard a lie than the truth? Are there lies you have told because you believed that was what someone wanted to hear?

23. After he takes the kids, Matt never forms a successful long-term relationship with a woman and doesn’t really seem to have any close male friends. Is this something that is an outgrowth of his need for secrecy, or is it more an outgrowth of his basic character? Would you say he is a man who understands himself and knows what he truly believes?

24. In the end, would you say Matt has been a good father or a bad one?

25. Did Lucy get what she deserved?

26. When talking about the difference between movies and films, Matt says, “Movies were entertainment, stories that made you laugh or cry and kept you on the edge of your seat. Films had meanings and subtitles, slow, tortuous stories with bleak endings or no ending at all.” He likes movies; Lucy likes films. Is this a common distinction between men and women? If Lies You Wanted to Hear were made into a motion picture, would it be a movie or a film?|

27. Years after her children have been gone, Lucy says, “People say, Don’t lose hope, miracles happen, as if hoping might have some bearing on the outcome. But hope can be such a cruel companion. Hope never lets you grieve and be done with it. Hope is the abuser you keep hoping will change.” Have you ever felt this way?
(Questions isssued by publisher.)

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The Lieutenant  (Thornhill Trilogy 2)
Kate Grenville, 2008
Canongate U.S.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802145031


Summary
A stunning follow-up to her Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning book, The Secret River, Grenville’s The Lieutenant is a gripping story about friendship, self-discovery, and the power of language set along the unspoiled shores of 1788 New South Wales.

As a boy, Daniel Rooke was always an outsider. Ridiculed in school and misunderstood by his parents, Daniel could only hope, against all the evidence, that he would one day find his place in life. When he enters the marines and travels to Australia as a lieutenant on the First Fleet, Daniel finally sees his chance for a new beginning.

As his countrymen struggle to control their cargo of convicts and communicate with those who already inhabit the land, Daniel immediately constructs an observatory to chart the stars and begin the scientific work he prays will make him famous. But the place where they have landed will prove far more revelatory than the night sky.

Out on his isolated point, Daniel comes to intimately know the local Aborigines, and forges a remarkable connection with one young girl, Tagaran, that will forever change the course of his life. As the strained coexistence between the Englishmen and the native tribes collapses into violence, Daniel is forced to decide between dedication to his work, allegiance to his country, and his protective devotion to Tagaran and her people.

Inspired by the notebooks of astronomer William Dawes, The Lieutenant is a remarkable story about the poignancy and emotional power of a friendship that defies linguistic and cultural barriers, and shows one ordinary man that he is capable of exceptional courage. (From the publisher.)

The other two books in the Thornhill Trilogy are  (1) The Secret River ... and (3) Sarah Thornhill

Author Bio
• Birth—October 14, 1950
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A. University of Sydney; M.A. University of   
   Colorado
• Awards—Vogel Award (Australia); Orange Prize;
   Commonwealth Writers Prize, Short-listed, Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Sydney, Australia

Kate Grenville was born in Sydney, Australia. After completing an Arts degree at Sydney University she worked in the film industry (mainly as an editor) before living in the UK and Europe for several years and starting to write.

In 1980 she went to the USA and completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, where her teachers included Ron Sukenick, Robert Steiner and Steve Katz.

On her return to Australia in 1983 she worked at the Subtitling Unit for SBS Television. In 1984 her first book, a collection of stories — Bearded Ladies — was published.

Since then she's published six novels and four books about the writing process (one co-written with Sue Woolfe).

The Secret River (2005) has won many prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize for Literature and the Christina Stead Prize, and has been an international best-seller. (It also formed the basis for a Doctorate of Creative Arts from University of Technology, Sydney). The Idea of Perfection (2000) won the Orange Prize.

Her other works of fiction have been published to acclaim in Australia and overseas and have won state and national awards. Much-loved novels such as Lilian's Story (1985), Dark Places (1995), and Joan Makes History (1988) have become classics, admired by critics and general readers alike.

Lilian's Story was filmed starring Ruth Cracknell, Toni Collette and Barry Otto. Dream House was filmed under the title Traps, starring Jacqueline MacKenzie.

Kate Grenville's novels have been widely published in translation, and her books about the writing process are used in many writing courses in schools and universities.

She lives in Sydney with her family. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Grenville (The Secret River) delivers another vivid novel about the British colonization of Australia, this one a delightful fictionalization of the life of William Dawes, a soldier-scholar who sailed from England in 1788 with the first fleet to transport British prisoners to New South Wales. Dawes's stand-in is Daniel Rooke, a loner with a passion for mathematics and astronomy who makes a living as a marine. He joins the expedition with the hope of tracking a comet that will not be visible from Great Britain, building a makeshift hut and observatory separate from the settlement (largely so he can avoid his prison guard duties). Although food is insufficient and the marines are outnumbered by the convicts, there is little unrest, but while Daniel shifts his ambitions from identifying previously unnamed stars to discovering a language and culture unknown in England, tensions escalate between the newcomers and the Aborigines, forcing Daniel to choose between duty to his king and loyalty to a land and people he has come to love. Grenville's storytelling shines: the backdrop is lush and Daniel is a wonderful creation—a conflicted, curious and endearing eccentric.
Publishers Weekly

Intellectually gifted but socially awkward, Portsmouth schoolboy Daniel Rooke routinely isolates himself from his peers to explore the mechanisms of logic, arithmetic, and Greek. When a mentor recognizes his potential and introduces him to the study of astronomy, Rooke believes that he has found his place and purpose in life. He volunteers for the marines and signs on as an astronomer with the First Fleet sailing to New South Wales in 1788. After his astronomical studies falter in Australia, Rooke becomes friendly with a group of Aboriginals, attempting to learn and transcribe their language. The bond he forms with a girl named Tagaran — who reminds him of his younger sister — takes Rooke by surprise and leads to an unexpected turning point in his life. Verdict: Rooke is a genuine, sensitive protagonist, and this new novel offers a more intimate and optimistic perspective of Australian history than Grenville's award-winning epic, The Secret River. Grenville displays a graceful touch with the characters and the history that so clearly move her, and her writing sparkles with life. Highly recommended for readers of literary fiction. —Kelsy Peterson, Johnson County Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal

Veteran Australian author Grenville (The Secret River, 2006, etc.) poignantly depicts a man of science forced into a world shaped by action. Growing up in Portsmouth, England, Daniel Rooke is scholarly and bookish, a scientific and mathematical prodigy with minimal social skills and little interest in anything nearer to him than the stars he rapturously observes. Reaching adulthood, Daniel joins His Majesty's Marines as a commissioned officer and navigator, sailing first on a warship patrolling the colonies during the American Revolution. In 1788 he signs on in a similar capacity aboard Sirius, flagship of a fleet bound for Australia to build a penal colony. Grenville subsequently records Daniel's enthralled introduction to this new land's untamed beauty, his hopeful creation of a makeshift observatory, where he can study the mysteries of the southern skies, and his disillusioning perception of his comrade's disdainful indifference to the gentle culture of the local aborigines. An officially ordered act of aggression challenges the integrity of this paradise, destroying Daniel's utopian contentment and his chaste relationship with a beautiful native girl, Tagaran, of whom he and we learn frustratingly little. (Her age and the nature of her feelings for the compassionate Englishman would have been helpful, for starters.) Written with exemplary simplicity and festooned with gorgeous images, the narrative focuses on the meditative inner life of its main character; too many other possibilities are unexplored, too many issues unresolved. Nevertheless, readers' hearts will go out to the grieving Daniel. An involving, affecting novel that should have been even better.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

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

1. Start by reading Kate Grenville's discussion of her research into the historical figure of Richard Dawes, on whom her character Daniel is based. You might then consider how her novel adheres to...or departs from the historical record.

2. Talk about the type of conditions faced by prisoners and military alike in 18th century Australia.

3. What personal traits might have made Daniel sensitive to and appreciative of a people and culture so vastly different from his own? In other words, why would a young man intent on the science of astronomy be drawn to the Aborigines and desirous of learning their language?

4. Describe Tagaran and her relationship with Daniel. What draws the two of them into their friendship...and how does it alter Daniel's life? What insights or revelations are gained by Daniel? Consider the power of friendship and its ability to overcome barriers of language and culture. How does that happen?

5. Discuss the tensions — and their cause — that arise between the Aborigines and the English. Was a clash inevitable?

6. Why does Daniel risk insubordination and punishment when he refuses to follow orders?

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

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Life After Life (Todd Family, 1)
Kate Atkinson, 2013
Little, Brown & Co.
529 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316176491


Summary
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath.

On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.

Wildly inventive, darkly comic, startlingly poignant—this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best, playing with time and history, telling a story that is breathtaking for both its audacity and its endless satisfactions . (From the publisher.)

A God in Ruins, the companion book to Life After Life, was published in 2015.

Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—York, England, UK
• Education—M.A., Dundee University
• Awards—Whitbread Award; Woman's Own Short Story Award; Ian St. James Award;
   Saltire Book of the Year Award; Prix Westminster
• Currently—lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK


Kate Atkinson was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature which she failed at the viva stage. During her final year of this course, she was married for the first time, although the marriage lasted only two years.

After leaving the university, she took on a variety of miscellaneous jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, Yorkshire for a time, before moving to Edinburgh, where she taught at Dundee University and began writing short stories. She now lives in Edinburgh.

Writing
She initially wrote for women's magazines after winning the 1986 Woman's Own Short Story Competition. She was runner-up for the Bridport Short Story Prize in 1990 and won an Ian St James Award in 1993 for her short-story "Karmic Mothers," which she later adapted for BBC2 television as part of its Tartan Shorts series.

Atkinson's breakthrough was with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year award, ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins biography of William Ewart Gladstone. The book has been adapted for radio, theatre and television. She has since written several more novels, short stories and a play. Case Histories (2004) was described by Stephen King as "the best mystery of the decade." The book won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster.

Her work is often celebrated for its wit, wisdom and subtle characterisation, and the surprising twists and plot turns. Four of her novels have featured the popular former detective Jackson Brodie—Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), When Will There Be Good News (2008), and Started Early, Took My Dog (2010). She has shown that, stylistically, she is also a comic novelist who often juxtaposes mundane everyday life with fantastic magical events, a technique that contributes to her work's pervasive magic realism.

Life After Life (2013) revolves around Ursula Todd's continual birth and rebirth. Janet Maslin of the New York Times called it "a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination."

A God in Ruins (2015), the companion book to Life After Life, follows Ursula's brother Todd who survived the war, only to succumb to disillusionment and guilt at having survived.

Atkinson was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to literature. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
[Atkinson's] very best…a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination…[it] is full of mind games, but they are purposeful rather than emptily playful…Even without the sleight of hand, Life After Life would be an exceptionally captivating book with an engaging cast of characters.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Atkinson’s new novel (after Started Early, Took My Dog) opens twice: first in Germany in 1930 with an English woman taking a shot at Hitler, then in England in 1910 when a baby arrives, stillborn. And then it opens again: still in 1910, still in England, but this time the baby lives. That baby is Ursula Todd, and as she grows up, she dies and lives repeatedly. .... [H]alf the book is given over to Ursula’s activities during WWII, and....through Ursula’s many lives and the accretion of what T.S. Eliot called “visions and revisions,” she’s found an inventive way to make both the war’s toll and the pull of alternate history, of darkness avoided or diminished, fresh.
Publishers Weekly


If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you?... [Atkinson's]protagonist's encounter with der Führer is just one of several possible futures. Call it a more learned version of Groundhog Day, but that character can die at birth, or she can flourish and blossom; she can be wealthy, or she can be a fugitive; she can be the victim of rape, or she can choose her sexual destiny. All these possibilities arise, and all take the story in different directions, as if to say: We scarcely know ourselves, so what do we know of the lives of those who came before us.... Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. It's not quite the tour de force that her Case Histories (2004) was, but this latest affords the happy sight of seeing Atkinson stretch out into speculative territory again.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Ursula Todd gets to live out many different realities, something that’s impossible in real life. Though there is an array of possibilities that form Ursula’s alternate histories, do you think any and all futures are possible in Ursula’s world, or are there certain parameters within which each life is lived?

2. As time goes on, Ursula learns more about her ability to restart her life—and she often changes course accordingly, but she doesn’t always correct things. Why not? Do you think Ursula ever becomes completely conscious of her ability to relive and redo her lives? If so, at what point in the story do you think that happens? And what purpose do you think she sets for herself once she figures it out?

3. Do people’s choices have the power to change destiny? How do you think Ursula’s choices are either at odds with or in line with the ideas of fate and destiny throughout the story?

4. Do you think Ursula’s ability to relive her life over and over is a gift or a curse? How do you think Ursula looks at it? Do you think she is able to embrace the philosophy amor fati (“love of fate,” “acceptance”) in the end?

5. Small moments often have huge ramifications in Ursula’s life. Do you think certain moments are more crucial than others in the way Ursula’s life develops? Why, and which moments?|

6. Life After Life encapsulates both the big picture (the sweep of major global historical events) and the small picture (the dynamics of Ursula’s loving, quirky family). How are these pictures tied together? When do Ursula’s decisions affect the big picture more, or the small picture more? When do they affect both?

7. How does Atkinson portray gender throughout the story? How does she comment on the gender roles of this time period, and which characters challenge those roles—and how?

8. How does Atkinson’s humor pepper the story? In what ways is she able to bring a bit of comedy to her characters and their stories as relief from the serious and dark subject matter?

9. How do the various relationships within the Todd family shape the story? What is the significance of maternal bonds and sibling bonds in the story?

10. How does Atkinson capture the terror and tragedy of the Blitz? How does war become its own character in the book? What type of commentary does Atkinson make on the English approach to war? Why do you think Atkinson portrayed one of Ursula’s lives in Germany, experiencing war and the bombing from the opposing side?

11. On page 379, Ursula faces a bleak end in Germany with her daughter, Frieda. She chooses death over life for the first time, saying, “Something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed.” What do you think she means by that? Is this a significant turning point to Ursula’s story? Do you think the end of this life affects her decisions in other lives that follow?

12. On page 354, Klara says, “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.” Do you think this is true? In what ways does the use of hindsight come to pass in the book?

13. “‘Well, we all get on,’ Sylvie said, ‘one way or another. And in the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see that it matters how we get there.’ It seemed to Ursula that how you got there was the whole point…” (page 252). Do you agree with Sylvie or with Ursula? How does this relate to a philosophy raised by Dr. Kellet—that “sometimes a bad thing happens to prevent a worse thing happening” (page 160)?

14. Along similar lines, Ursula says to Teddy on page 446, “You just have to get on with life…. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.” And Teddy responds, “What if we had a chance to do it again and again until we finally did get it right?” What do you think it means to get things right? Is Ursula attempting to make things “right” in life each time she’s reborn? If so, which things in particular—and how?

15. On page 277, Ralph asks Ursula if she could have killed Hitler as a baby, and Ursula thinks, “If I thought it would save Teddy…. Not just Teddy, of course, the rest of the world, too.” Do you think Ursula ultimately had to choose between saving Teddy and saving “the rest of the world”? If so, why did she choose as she did? And was she able to save either?

16. Life continues to restart over and over for Ursula and the Todd family, and outcomes vary greatly each time. What happens to the characters changes drastically in many of the versions. Do you feel the characters change just as drastically, in terms of who they are and what they are like? Or do you think they fundamentally stay the same? Ursula learns many things about life and its progression, but does she herself change over the course of the book?

17. What are the biggest questions this book raised for you? How did it change the way you think about the course of your own life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Life After Life
Jill McCorkle, 2013
Algonquin of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781565122550


Summary
Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction.

Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life’s most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction.

—There’s retired third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts;

—Stanley Stone, a prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son;

—Marge Walker, the town’s self-appointed conveyor of social status, who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime;

—Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle at Pine Haven is a puzzle to everyone but her;

—C.J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop;

—Joanna Lamb, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies in helping people achieve good deaths.

As each character begins to connect with another, the mysteries and consequences of their lives are revealed. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will profoundly transform them all.

Delivered with her trademark wit, Jill ?McCorkle’s constantly surprising novel illuminates the possibilities of second chances, hope, and rediscovering life right up to the very end. With Life After Life, she has conjured up an ?entire community that reminds all of us that grace and magic can—and do—appear when we least expect it. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1958
• Where—Lumberton, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A., Hollins College.
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Hillsborourgh, North Carolina

Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer and novelist. She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D. Rubin. She obtained her M.A. from Hollins College.

Novels
McCorkle has the distinction of having her first two novels published on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said, “One suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist, with July 7th, she is also a full grown one.”

Since then she has published several other novels—including Life After Life (2013) and Hieroglyphics (2020). Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books

Stories
McCorkle has also published four collections of short stories, out of which four stories have been tapped for Best American Short Stories and several collected in New Stories from the South. Her short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Southern Review, Narrative Magazine and American Scholar among others.

Her story “Intervention” is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.  An essay, “Cuss Time,” originally published in American Scholar was selected for Best American Essays. Other essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, Southern Living, Our State, Allure and Real Simple.

Teaching
McCorkle has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, and Brandeis where she was the Fannie Hurst Visiting Writer. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard for five years where she also chaired Creative Writing.

Currently,  McCorkle teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at NC State University and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a frequent instructor in the Sewanee Summer Writers Program and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Awards
New England Booksellers Award
John Dos  Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature
North Carolina Award for Literature

McCorckle lives with her husband, photographer Tom Rankin, in Hillsborough, NC.  (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)

Book Reviews
McCorkle...look[s] at the regrets that haunt the end of a life. [The book's] saddest and most unlovable characters are her most compelling.… McCorkle [is] interested in capturing moments that ring true than in providing closure.
Publishers Weekly


It takes a skillful author to write a book about death that leaves the reader feeling uplifted, and McCorkle is such an author. [This] multilayered… excellent novel [is] unusual in its shifting construction. —Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal


Assisted living residents and a hospice worker confront the inevitable with grit and humor. A potentially cliched unifying device,… [any] predictability is dispelled by the jaw-dropping ending. McCorkle's masterful microcosm invokes profound sadness, harsh insight and guffaws, often on the same page.
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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Life Among Giants
Bill Roorbach, 2012
Algonquin Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203245


Summary
At seventeen, David “Lizard” Hochmeyer is nearly seven feet tall, a star quarterback, and Princeton-bound. His future seems all but assured until his parents are mysteriously murdered, leaving Lizard and his older sister, Kate, adrift and alone.

Sylphide, the world’s greatest ballerina, lives across the pond from their Connecticut home, in a mansion the size of a museum, and it turns out that her rock star husband’s own disasters have intersected with Lizard’s—and Kate’s—in the most intimate and surprising ways.

Over the decades that follow, Lizard and Kate are obsessed with uncovering the motives behind the deaths, returning time and again to their father’s missing briefcase, his shady business dealings and shaky finances, and to Sylphide, who has threaded her way into Lizard’s and Kate’s lives much more deeply than either had ever realized.

From the football fields of Princeton to a stint with the NFL, from elaborate dances at the mansion to the seductions lying in wait for Lizard, and ultimately to the upscale restaurant he opens in his hometown, it only takes Lizard a lifetime to piece it all together.

A wildly entertaining novel of murder, seduction, and revenge—rich in incident, in expansiveness of character, and in lavishness of setting—it’s a Gatsby-esque adventure, a larger-than-life quest for answers that reveals how sometimes the greatest mystery lies in knowing one’s own heart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August, 1953
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Raised—New Cannan, Connecticut
• Education—B.A., Ithaca College; M.F.A, Columbia University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Maine


Bill Roorbach is an American novelist, short story and nature writer, memoirist, journalist, blogger and critic. He has authored fiction and nonfiction works including Big Bend, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and the O. Henry Prize. His recent novels include Life Among Giants (2012) and The Remedy for Love (2014). Roorbach and his wife, painter Juliet Karelsen, live in Maine. They have a daughter.

Background
Bill Roorbach was born in Chicago, Illinois. The next year his family moved to suburban Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended kindergarten, and in 1959 moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where he attended public schools from first grade on, graduating from New Canaan High School in 1971. In 1976, he received his B.A. (cum laude) from Ithaca College.

During what he has called his "writing apprenticeship," Roorbach traveled and worked a series of different jobs. He played piano and sang in a succession of bands, bartended, worked briefly on a cattle ranch, and worked extensively as a carpenter, plumber, and handyman. In January, 1987, he enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts Writing Program of the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts, where he was awarded a School of the Arts Fellowship, a Fellowship of Distinction and an English Department teaching assistantship. In addition, he was a fiction editor of Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose. He graduated in May 1990.

Soon after he published his first book, Summers with Juliet.

Teaching
Roorbach taught at the University of Maine at Farmington from 1991 to 1995 and subsequently at the Ohio State University from 1995 to 2001, winning tenure in 1998. In 2001, he quit his tenured position and returned with his family to Maine where he taught odd semesters as visiting full professor at Colby College.

He wrote full-time until Fall, 2004, when he was awarded the William H.P. Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, a five-year position as full professor. He commuted from Maine to Worcester until April, 2009, when he returned to full-time writing.

Works
Roorbach sold his first book, Summers with Juliet shortly after graduating from Columbia. In 1998, he published Writing Life Stories. During the interim, he published short work, both fiction and nonfiction, in a number of magazines and journals, including The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, Playboy, Missouri Review, and Granta,

His first novel, The Smallest Color; a collection of stories, Big Bend; and a collection of essays, Into Woods, written incrementally during the preceding decade, were published in a flurry in 2000 and 2001. Big Bend was featured on the NPR program Selected Shorts, performed by the actor James Cromwell. Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth, a widely used anthology, was published in 2002. A Place on Water, which Roorbach wrote with poet Wesley McNair and essayist Robert Kimber, was published in 2004. In 2005, Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey was published. Roorbach based on an article of the same name he wrote for Harper’s Magazine. More recently, he published two novels, Life Among Giants in 2012 and The Remedy for Love in 2014.

Awards
2001 - Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
1999 - National Endowment for the Arts Fellow
2002 - O. Henry Prize
2004 - Kaplan Foundation Fellow
2006 - Maine Prize for Literary Nonfiction
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrived 10/14/2014.)

Book Reviews
Life Among Giants is a larger-than-life production. Yet all of its wild characters feel genuine, their aches and flaws and desires wholly organic; and the plot they’re tangled in moves forward at a breakneck pace. It’s a dizzy romp. There’s murder and intrigue and sex and terror, and Roorbach is generous with it all.
Haley Tanner - New York Times Book Review


Life Among Giants, is a bighearted, big-boned story about a young man's entanglement with celebrities. Without a hint of satire, it offers a savvy reflection on America's conflicted relationship to fame: beguiled one minute, horrified the next; desperate to touch the Beautiful People, but just as eager to rebuke them…Roorbach is a humane and entertaining storyteller with a smooth, graceful style.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Consistently surprising and truly entertaining...Part thriller, part family drama, Life Among Giants is deliciously strange and deeply affecting.
Boston Globe


What lingers after finishing Life Among Giants is the beauty of Roorbach’s appreciation of his characters’ exceptional physical abilities, as they play football, cook, make love and dance.
Dallas Morning News


Besides being a compelling mystery, the kind to keep one reading well after bedtime, and a novel that almost insists on being immediately reread, Life Among Giants is a reminder of the ways we all shape our lives into stories, and the ways those stories, in turn, shape us.
Columbus Dispatch


An exploration of lives touched by greatness and tragedy in equal measure, Roorbach’s latest novel traces towering Princeton graduate and NFL player-cum-restaurateur David “Lizard” Hochmeyer in his attempt to unravel the tangled conspiracy behind his parents’ murder in 1970. When his parents are killed in front of him at a restaurant, David believes the culprits are connected to his neighbor, the elegant ballerina Sylphide, whose rock star husband also died under mysterious circumstances.... Roorbach (Big Bend) has written a mystery free of contemporary cynicism and recalling the glitter and allure of a kind of stardom that has also, in its way, been collateral damage to a greedy financial machine.
Publishers Weekly


This ambitious, energetic novel from Roorbach (Big Bend) has something for everyone—steamy sex, rock stars, ballet stars, professional football, a dysfunctional family, an unsolved murder, and a complicated revenge plot.... Verdict: This big, sprawling novel has so much going on that it's easy to lose track of the murder mystery at its heart. It would pack more of a punch if it had a sharper focus. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal


This is one of those novels you read because you care about what happens to the people and the connections between them as those connections grow, fray, and snap. By turns surreal and gritty, the book is written with the same muscular grace possessed by the dancers and athletes who are its main characters,
Booklist


With memories of people tangled "in a hopeless knot," David "Lizard" Hochmeyer attempts to unravel the Gordian in Roorbach's latest novel. The people include his assassinated parents; Emily, his African-American-Korean first love; and Sylphide, prima ballerina and widow...a mere sampling of the exotic, eye-catching cast, the best thing about this book.... Great setup, sparkling characters, but one-third into the book readers will hunger for less setup and characterization and want the story to get moving. It does, in complex fashion.... The rich-and-famous lifestyle is nicely rendered, too. A narrative threaded through with corruption and an appreciable number of love stories.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Specific questions will be added if and when they're made available by the publisher.

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Life Expectancy
Dean Koontz, 2004
Random House
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307414298

Summary
With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between.

Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke.

What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his twent-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth.

Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would be born with syndactyly—the unexplained anomaly of fused digits—on his left foot. Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling significance.

What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous—a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 9, 1945
• Where—Everett, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Newport Beach, California

He is one of the most recognized, read, and loved suspense writers of the 20th century. His imagination is a veritable factory of nightmares, conjuring twisted tales of psychological complexity. He even has a fan in Stephen King. For decades, Dean Koontz's name has been synonymous with terror, and his novels never fail to quicken the pulse and set hearts pounding.

Koontz has a lifelong love of writing that led him to spend much of his free time as an adult furiously cultivating his style and voice. However, it was only after his wife Gerda made him an offer he couldn't refuse while he was teaching English at a high school outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that he had a real opportunity to make a living with his avocation. Gerda agreed to support Dean for five years, during which time he could try to get his writing career off the ground. Little did she know that by the end of that five years she would be leaving her own job to handle the financial end of her husband's massively successful writing career.

Koontz first burst into the literary world with 1970's Beastchild, a science fiction novel that appealed to genre fans with its descriptions of aliens and otherworldly wars but also mined deeper themes of friendship and the breakdown of communication. Although it is not usually ranked among his classics, Beastchild provided the first inkling of Koontz's talent for populating even the most fantastical tale with fully human characters. Even at his goriest or most terrifying, he always allows room for redemption.

This complexity is what makes Koontz's work so popular with readers. He has a true gift for tempering horror with humanity, grotesqueries with lyricism. He also has a knack for genre-hopping, inventing Hitchcockian romantic mysteries, crime dramas, supernatural thrillers, science fiction, and psychological suspense with equal deftness and imagination. Perhaps the Times (London) puts it best: "Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler."

Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Shortly after graduating from college, Koontz took a job with the Appalachian Poverty Program where he would tutor and counsel underprivileged kids. However, after finding out that the last person who held his job had been beaten up and hospitalized by some of these kids, Koontz was more motivated than ever to get his writing career going.

• Koontz was a senior in college, he won the Atlantic Monthly fiction competition.

• Koontz and Kevin Anderson's novel Frankenstein: The Prodigal Son was slotted to become a television series produced by Martin Scorsese. However, when the pilot failed to sell, the USA Network aired it as a TV movie in 2004. By that time Koontz had removed his name from the project.

His own words:

• My wife, Gerda, and I took seven years of private ballroom dancing lessons, twice a week, ninety minutes each time. After we had gotten good at everything from swing to the foxtrot, we not only stopped taking lessons, but also stopped going dancing. Learning had been great fun; but for both of us, going out for an evening of dancing proved far less exhilarating than the learning. We both have a low boredom threshold. Now we dance at a wedding or other celebration perhaps once a year, and we're creaky.

• On my desk is a photograph given to me by my mother after Gerda and I were engaged to be married. It shows 23 children at a birthday party. It is neither my party nor Gerda's. I am three years old, going on four. Gerda is three. In that crowd of kids, we are sitting directly across a table from each other. I'm grinning, as if I already know she's my destiny, and Gerda has a serious expression, as if she's worried that I might be her destiny. We never met again until I was a senior in high school and she was a junior. We've been trying to make up for that lost time ever since.

• Gerda and I worked so much for the first two decades of our marriage that we never took a real vacation until our twentieth wedding anniversary. Then we went on a cruise, booking a first-class suite, sparing no expense. For more than half the cruise, the ship was caught in a hurricane. The open decks were closed because waves would have washed passengers overboard. About 90% of the passengers spent day after day in their cabins, projectile vomiting. We discovered that neither of us gets seasick. We had the showrooms, the casino, and the buffets virtually to ourselves. Because the crew had no one to serve, our service was exemplary. The ship dared not try to put into the scheduled ports; it was safer on the open sea. The big windows of the main bar presented a spectacular view of massive waves and lightning strikes that stabbed the sea by the score. Very romantic. We had a grand time.

• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is his answer:

The high-school grammar textbook with which my teacher, Winona Garbrick, repeatedly rapped my head.

Otherwise, hundreds of books have had an effect on me. Perhaps the book with the most impact on my career, after the aforementioned textbook, was A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, which I did not read until I was in my thirties. The final scene reduced me to tears. More important, I began to think about how modern publishing had compartmentalized fiction into so many narrow genres. A Tale of Two Cities, as a new piece of fiction, would be hard to place on a contemporary publisher's list. It's too much of an adventure story and too much of a love story to win the favor of most editors of "literary" fiction. It is a serious novel of politics and revolution but is also darkly comic in places. Dickens does not shrink from the depiction of evil, and some scenes are horrific, but he also tells a story of redemption and self-sacrifice and hope that some (never me!) would consider almost sentimental.

The more I thought about A Tale of Two Cities, the more determined I became to write novels that bridged genres. This began to bear fruit with Strangers, and to a much greater degree with Watchers. My publisher at the time resisted both the variety I was delivering, book to book, but also the mix of genres within each book. Pressure was exerted to stay within the limits of one label. We had some wonderful rows! In time, readers responded with enthusiasm to my attempts to tell stories with the flavors and the techniques of multiple genres. I doubt I would have had a career half as successful if I had followed another path.

(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Life Expectancy is an inventive, often hilarious fable about decency adrift in a world of madness; Koontz is an adroit storyteller, and the adventures of the Tocks, although they could use some trimming, are funny, scary and entertaining.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post

Koontz has near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.
Los Angeles Times

Of all bestselling authors, Koontz may be the most underestimated by the literary establishment. Book after book, year after year, this author climbs to the top of the charts. Why? His readers know: because he is a master storyteller and a daring writer, and because, in his novels, he gives readers bright hope in a dark world. His new book is an examplar of his extraordinary work. Suspense is difficult to sustain; suspense that's buoyed steadily by humor, even as it deals with the most desperate of circumstances, is nearly impossible—yet Koontz manages it here. As in last year's brilliant Odd Thomas, Koontz writes again in the first person, employing a cleaner, more instantly accessible line than in some of his other work (e.g., this year's The Taking). His narrator is Jimmy Tock, a pastry chef in a Colorado resort town. On the day he was born, Jimmy's dying grandfather predicted five future dates that would be terrible for Jimmy; he might have mentioned, but didn't, the birth day itself, which sees a mass slaying by a bitter, deranged circus clown in the hospital where Jimmy is born. The bulk of the narrative concerns the first terrible day, about 20 years later, when the vengeful son of that clown takes Jimmy and a lovely young woman, Lorrie Hicks, hostage in the local library, with an eye toward destroying the town; Jimmy and the woman live to marry, but will they and their family survive the four subsequent terrible days? Like most of Koontz's novels, this one pits good versus evil and carries a persuasive spiritual message, about the power of love and family and the miracle of existence. As such it deals with serious, perennial themes, yet with its steady drizzle of jokes and witty repartee, it does so with a lightness of touch that few other authors can match. Koontz is a true original and this novel, one of his most unusual yet, will leave readers aglow and be a major bestseller. If the literary establishment would only catch on to him, it might be an award-winner too.
Publishers Weekly

While a man is dying in the ICU, his daughter-in-law is giving birth in the same hospital's maternity ward. As his final moment approaches, this man bursts forth with a string of predictions about his unborn grandson. Rudy Tock, the father-in-waiting and the man's soon-to-be grieving son, faithfully records the ten predictions on the back of a circus pass only moments before confronting an enraged and murderous clown in the obstetrical unit's waiting room. And thus our tale begins. Koontz's latest is a sardonic narrative that follows Jimmy Tock through the trials and ordeals alluded to in his grandfather's predictions. Although the elements of magic realism employed here lend literary authority to Koontz's exploration of how attitude and perspective can shape one's reality, the black humor that underlies the tale threatens to topple his precarious construct. Those among Koontz's readership who support his sojourns from suspenseful horror will, no doubt, welcome this offering. Others may choose to pass. —Nancy McNicol, Ora Mason Lib., West Haven, CT
Library Journal

Koontz shoots for a seriocomic horror novel and takes a dive. Following the failure of The Taking (2004), which began so brilliantly, then faded into Dullsville with an alien invasion, Koontz strives for high entertainment with a ton of witty dialogue, which fans may find passable but others will deem tiresome. The problem is that the story opens with murders in a maternity ward and a crazed clown raving about the excremental existence of the world-famed Vivacemente aerialists. From this emerges a forecast that Jimmy Tock, a lummox born at the same moment his grandfather dies in the same blood-strewn hospital, will have to face five ghastly days in his future. When the first ghastly day arrives, the adult Jimmy is in his small-town library. Punchinello Beezo, the same hospital maniac who appeared at his birth, shoots a librarian and holds Jimmy and Lorrie Lynn Hicks hostage while Beezo and two grisly buddies plant explosives in secret tunnels linking the library to the courthouse and two other buildings. At this point Koontz starts whipping out the witty exchanges between Jimmy and Lorrie as they seemingly face death. It's a dire authorial misstep: the second act of a Grand Guignol bloodfest is no place for Nick-and-Nora-style repartee from The Thin Man. True, a genius could get away with it, and Koontz has genius—but not for humor. Doubtless he amused himself, but his lines are forced blooms. Since logic dictates that Jimmy must survive at least the first four ghastly days (three of which turn out to be humdrum melodrama), the suspense is minimal despite all the guns and dread. The climax turns on incest, but we'll say no more. Readers will need all the suspense possible to keep them wading through the comedy lines. Koontz is a topflight suspense writer, but this error only the fans will love.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Life Expectancy:

1. First, start with your experience reading the book: did you find it a suspense-filled page-turner? Did the novel engage you...or not particularly? Were you able to accept Koontz's use of fantasy (Josef's predictions) as the basis for this story? Or was it unnacceptable for you?

2. Do you find Jimmy Tock convincing as a narrator? Do you like his "voice"—his warmth and humor? How does he present himself to the reader; how does he react to the dangers that he faces—with tinges of self-pity, acceptance, fortitude...or what? How would you react to such a prophecy in his place?

3. What about Lorrie? Do you find her convincing as a character? Some have found her glibness unrealistic and inappropriate, even irritating. Others feel her humor reflects her inner strength. What do you think?

4. Speaking of humor: overall, did you enjoy the narrator's sarcasm, witticisms, and attempts at quirky humor? Or did you find them overworked and tiresome? What reason might Koontz have had for using humor in this work?

5. What about the residents of Snow Village? Are they well drawn? Are there any you particularly enjoy?

6. Then, of course, there are the villains. What do you make of them? They appear rather stupid, but continually evade capture. Are they realistic...or isn't that the point? What are the motives? Why do you think Koontz made them circus performers...clowns v. aerialists? What might Koontz be getting at...or getting at nothing at all, just having fun!

7. Jimmy knows what lies ahead—not precisely what will happen, but that something dire will happen. He even knows the specific dates—which brings up interesting questions: one, can fate (if, indeed, there such a thing) be avoided; two, is it better to know what lies ahead, even if bad, or is it better for life to unfold in unexpected ways? If given a choice, which would you choose?

8. As he narrates the story, Jimmy relates a number of rather minor details. Some of those details end up playing a larger than expected role in the story. Try to recall some of the details, and talk about the way in which Koontz, as author, cleverly passes them off as insignificant.

9. Talk about the significance of the titles for Parts 4, 5, and 6: "All I Ever Wanted Was Immortality,"  "Just Like Pontius Pilot...," and  "I Am Moonlight...."  Also, discuss the title of the novel itself—and it's double meaning.

10. Talk about a moral conundrum! What do you make of Jimmy's agreement to become an assassin in order to save his child? What would you do?

11. Were you surprised by the ending? Is it satisfying? Do the events unfold naturally, or did you feel manipulated? What does Jimmy come to learn about who he is? How do those webbed digits come into play?

12. If you've read other books by Dean Koontz, how does this one compare? How do you rank it in his body of work?

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

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Life First 
R.J. Crayton, 2013
CreateSpace
290 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781490468082


Summary
Strong-willed Kelsey Reed must escape tonight or tomorrow her government will take her kidney and give it to someone else.

In this future forged by survivors of pandemics that wiped out 80 percent of the world's population, life is valued above all else. The mentally ill are sterilized, abortions are illegal and those who refuse to donate an organ when told are sentenced to death.

Determined not to give up her kidney or die, Kelsey enlists the help of her boyfriend Luke and a dodgy doctor to escape. The trio must disable the tracking chip in her arm for her to flee undetected. If they fail, Kelsey will be stripped of everything. (From the author.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Where—Peoria, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Howard University (Washington, DC)
• Currently—Hyattsville, Maryland


R.J. Crayton grew up in Illinois and now lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. She is the author of the Life First series of novels, which includes Life First and Second Life. Prior to writing fiction, Crayton was a journalist, writing for newspapers, including the Wichita Eagle and Kansas City Star. Crayton also worked for several trade publications, including Solid Waste Report, Education Technology News, and Campus Crime.

Her first novels were published in 2013. The third novel in the Life First series, and a short story collection (Four Mothers), were released in 2014. Crayton is a monthly contributor to the Indies Unlimited blog and a regular contributor to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies blog.

When she's not writing, Crayton spends her time being a ninja mom (stealthy and ultra cool, like moms should be) to her son and daughter. (From the author.)

Book Reviews
RJ Crayton just took me on a wild ride in her sci-fi thriller, Life First. This novel was a poignant, riveting, thought provoking read that had me entranced from page one until the very end of the book. In simple speak, I literally could not put it down.
Griffin’s Honey Blog


I was completely intrigued by this book from the very first page. There were fairly few characters in-keeping with the story, but they were all extremely well thought out. I really think RJ Crayton should be expecting calls for film rights because this played out in my mind as I read it like a really great film…. It gripped you like King Kong and would not let go until you had finished the book.
BestChickLit.com


If you like dystopian thrillers, then you’ll enjoy this well-written novel and will be waiting, impatiently, for the next in the series.
Booksquawk


Crayton has envisioned a horrifying future that comes in a pretty package. A future where the individual is less important than the society as a whole. In some strange way this society's reaction to the plague that decimated 80% of the global population makes sense.
Cover Contessa


Nominated for the 2014 Reader’s Choice Award for Speculative Fiction
BigAl's Books and Pals

Discussion Questions
1. The book’s title is "Life First," the mantra of this futuristic society. Having completed the book, what meaning do you take from the title?

2. In the book, there is much discussion about body rights, and whether a person should have their healthy body operated on for the sole purpose of saving the life of someone else. What is your opinion on body rights? Would you donate an organ to a friend, a family member or a stranger?

3. In the book, lingo used in the current abortion debate (such as pro-choice) is used by this anti-mandatory donation faction. Do you find there are comparisons between this debate and FoSS’s organ donation policy?

4. Kelsey is reluctant to give up her kidney, and in the beginning of the book we aren’t exactly sure why. What was your opinion of Kelsey in the first few chapters of the book?  What was your opinion after you learned more about her personal history?

5. Given what you know about the society where Kelsey lives, would you choose to live in FoSS or would you defect to Peoria?

6. Dr. Grant’s character straddles the line between a good guy and a nefarious guy. When all is said and done, where would you put Dr. Grant: ultimately good or ultimately nefarious?

7.  Lewis Reed sacrifices his career to assist his daughter. One of the reasons he gives for this is his guilt over his handling of Kelsey’s mother, Maya. What role do you think he played in what happened to Maya? Is it something he should feel guilty over?

8. Luke is a stand-up guy. Afraid the two weren’t on the same page after Kelsey said no to his marriage proposal, he withheld important information from her, information that could have drastically changed her predicament had she known about it. Do you think Luke made the right decision, given what he knew? If you had been in Luke’s situation, what would you have done?

9. Susan was a true friend, making a huge sacrifice to help Kelsey escape. What do you think of her agreeing to participate in Luke’s plan? Do you have any friends you’d make such a sacrifice for?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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A Life in Men 
Gina Frangello, 2014
Algonquin Books
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616201630


Summary
The friendship between Mary and Nix had endured since childhood, a seemingly unbreakable bond, until the mid-1980s, when the two young women embarked on a summer vacation in Greece.

It was a trip initiated by Nix, who had just learned that Mary had been diagnosed with a disease that would cut her life short and who was determined that it be the vacation of a lifetime. But by the time their visit to Greece was over, Nix had withdrawn from their friendship, and Mary had no idea why.

Three years later, Nix is dead, and Mary returns to Europe to try to understand what went wrong. In the process she meets the first of many men that she will spend time with as she travels throughout the world. Through them she experiences not only a sexual awakening but a spiritual and emotional awakening that allows her to understand how the past and the future are connected and to appreciate the freedom to live life adventurously. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Gina Frangello is a cofounder of Other Voices Books and the editor of the fiction section at The Nervous Breakdown. She is also the author of one previous novel and a collection of short stories. She lives in Chicago. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at age 17, Mary Grace wants to understand why her lifelong friendship with Nix went awry during an ill-fated Greek vacation before their junior year of college..... Frangello’s novel packs an emotional punch throughout, particularly in its final third.
Publishers Weekly


Mary, is diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.... In a twist of fate, [her best friend] Nicole's life ends prematurely, and Mary tries to outrun her emotional burdens by living hard and reinventing herself in London.... Ambitious in breadth and scope. —Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View P.L., IL
Library Journal


In this bravura performance, a quantum creative leap...Frangello astutely dissects the quandaries of female sexuality, adoption, terminal illness, and compound heartbreak in a torrent of tough-minded observations, audacious candor, and storytelling moxie.
Booklist


A stunning novel—Frangello’s broken characters live in a world of terror and redemption, of magnificent sadness and beauty.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

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The Life Intended 
Kristin Harmel, 2015
Gallery Books
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476754154


Summary
A captivating novel about the struggle to overcome the past when our memories refuse to be forgotten.

In this richly told story where Sliding Doors meets P.S. I Love You, Kristin Harmel weaves a heart-wrenching tale that asks: what does it take to move forward in life without forgetting the past?

After her husband’s sudden death over ten years ago, Kate Waithman never expected to be lucky enough to find another love of her life. But now she’s planning her second walk down the aisle to a perfectly nice man. So why isn’t she more excited?

At first, Kate blames her lack of sleep on stress. But when she starts seeing Patrick, her late husband, in her dreams, she begins to wonder if she’s really ready to move on. Is Patrick trying to tell her something?

Attempting to navigate between dreams and reality, Kate must uncover her husband’s hidden message. Her quest leads her to a sign language class and into the New York City foster system, where she finds rewards greater than she could have imagined. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 4, 1979
• Where—Newton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida
• Currently—lives in Orlando, Florida


Kristin Harmel is an American author with more than 10 novels to her name. Originally from Newton, Massachusetts, she gained her first writing experience at the age of 16 as a sports reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, and Tampa Bay All Sports magazine while still attending Northeast High School in St. Petersburg, Florida.

A graduate of the University of Florida, Harmel was a reporter for People magazine starting in 2000. Her work has appeared in dozens of other publications, including Men's Health, Glamour, YM, Teen People, People en Español, Runner's World, American Baby, Every Day With Rachel Ray, and more.

Harmel is the author of more than 10 books, which have been translated into many languages around the world. They include more recently including The Book of Lost Names (2020), The Winemaker’s Wife (2019), The Room on Rue Amelie (2018), and The Sweetness of Forgetting (2012).

Harmel resides in Orlando, Florida with her husband Jason. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/22/2015.)

Book Reviews
Twelve years after losing her husband Patrick...Kate Waithman is ready to move on and get remarried. Or is she?... Harmel hooks the reader from the start with this evocative novel and creates a believable world and despite some predictability,...a satisfying conclusion.  —Amy Stenftenagel, Washington Cty. Lib., Woodbury, MN
Library Journal


The latest from Harmel...is an affecting tale about finding happiness amid grief and guilt. Some twists are telegraphed early in the novel, but that doesn’t diminish the satisfying conclusion.
Booklist


After a loss like [Kate's], how much should be thrown away and how much kept in the rebuilding? Tensions around these questions...make for an absorbing read. Though elements of the plot are predictable and the prose is unadorned, this book is well-paced and warmhearted.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Before his death, Kate and Patrick share a special phrase, "I knew before I met you . . . that I was meant to be yours." How do you think this theme continues to echo throughout the novel as Kate struggles to understand her destiny?

2. Discuss how karma figures into Kate’s story. Patrick superstitiously collects silver coins and then returns them to the universe when experiencing a stroke of good fortune. How do Kate’s feelings about this habit change? What does it mean when she finally relinquishes Patrick’s last coin?

3. When Dan proposes, Kate is besieged by memories of Patrick that are still fresh even twelve years after his death. Discuss how familiar relationship milestones can trigger the emotion of past loves. Do you sympathize with Kate in this moment? Or should she focus on moving on?

4. As Kate is swept into the past, she must also contend with a certainty about her future—her infertility. Discuss her regret upon realizing that she can’t ever get pregnant. How does she react to Dan’s complete indifference to this news?

5. When Kate wakes up to a dream version of Patrick, she is confronted by a world that is strangely familiar yet full of differences from the life she knew with him. She meets Hannah, a hard of hearing girl who can’t possibly be her biological daughter; finds that her sister, Susan, has a happy life in San Diego; and realizes that she no longer works with children. What kind of trade-offs have occurred in a world where Patrick is still alive?

6. Kate relies heavily on Gina, a friend who also lost her first husband, for emotional support. Are Kate and Gina alike in the way they handle grief? How are they different?

7. As both a music therapist and a volunteer for St. Anne’s, Kate consistently witnesses the healing effects that music can have on struggling children. But not all of her students are easy to reach. Who do you think is the toughest shell to crack, and why? How does Kate earn their trust?

8. As Kate’s dreams become more frequent, her experiences with Andrew are connecting her in new ways to the "real world." Why do you think she is so drawn to him? What about their pasts bring them together now?

9. On the day she goes wedding dress shopping, Kate is haunted by the lace gown she wore when she first walked down the aisle. She’s also certain that she sees her dream daughter, Hannah, pass by on the street. Discuss the fine line between being stuck in the past and letting that past inform your future. What is Kate’s gut trying to tell her here?

10. When Dan says his friend Stephen has accidentally gotten a girl pregnant, Kate feels very conflicted. Discuss this moment in the novel and how it relates to her confession to Joan about wanting to be a mother. How does this moment influence Kate’s decision to call off her wedding to Dan?

11. Kate tells Dan that "sometimes the greatest things in life come from the greatest challenges." (pg. 134) What do you think Kate’s greatest challenge was at the beginning of the novel? What do you think it is by the end?

12. During her dreams, Kate realizes that while some parts of her life are drastically different, her essential characteristics and tastes remain the same. How much do you think a person can change over their lifetime? And which aspects of an individual personality are more likely to stay constant?

13. Kate’s mother reminds her that if she is not careful, "regret will grow in spaces you don't even know are there." (pg. 165) What do you think she means by this? Do you think Kate finds a way to take her advice?

14. Although Kate does not end up adopting Allie, she is cleared as a foster parent and finds her way to Patrick’s lost daughter. She also realizes that Andrew might never have made such an impact at St. Anne’s if he hadn’t lost his brother at a young age. While the novel doesn’t necessarily imply that life is fair, it does suggest that there is a balance and order to things. Do you agree with this outlook? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Life Is Short But Wide
J. California Cooper, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400075690


Summary
Beloved writer J. California Cooper has won a legion of loyal fans and much critical acclaim for her powerful storytelling gifts. In language both spare and direct yet wondrously lyrical, Life Is Short But Wide is an irresistible story of family that proves no matter who you are or what you do, you are never too old to chase your dreams.

Like the small towns J. California Cooper has so vividly portrayed in her previous novels and story collections, Wideland, Oklahoma, is home to ordinary Americans struggling to raise families, eke out a living, and fulfill their dreams. In the early twentieth century, Irene and Val fall in love in Wideland. While carving out a home for themselves, they also allow neighbors Bertha and Joseph to build a house and live on their land. The next generation brings two girls for Irene and Val, and a daughter for Bertha and Joseph. As the families cope with the hardships that come with changing times and fortunes, and people are born and pass away, the characters learn the importance of living one’s life boldly and squeezing out every possible moment of joy.

Cooper brilliantly captures the cadences of the South and draws a picture of American life at once down-to-earth and heartwarming in this—as her wise narrator will tell you— "strange, sad, kind’a beautiful, life story." It is a story about love that leads to the ultimate realization that whoever you are, and whatever you do, life is short, but it is also wide. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
J. California Cooper is the author of four novels, including, most recently, Some People, Some Other Place, and six collections of stories. She was honored as Black Playwright of the Year, and has received the American Book Award, the James Baldwin Writing Award, and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association. She lives in Portland, Oregon (From the publisher.)

More
J. California Cooper first found acclaim as a playwright. The author of seventeen plays, she was named Black Playwright of the Year in 1978.

It was through her work in the theater that she caught the attention of acclaimed poet and novelist Alice Walker. Encouraged by Walker to turn her popular storytelling skills to fiction, Cooper wrote her first collection of short stories, A Piece of Mine, in 1984. Called "rich in wisdom and insight" and "a book that's worth reading," A Piece of Mine introduced Cooper's trademark style: her intimate and energetic narration, sympathetic yet sometimes troubled characters, and the profound moral messages that underlie seemingly simple stories.

Two more story collections followed on the heels of A Piece of Mine. In 1986 came Homemade Love, winner of an American Book Award, and, in 1987, Some Soul to Keep. (Author bio from thhe African American Literature Book Club.)

Book Reviews
Gutsy and familiar.... [Cooper’s] power comes from sticking to her instinct, which is to tell a story, plain and simple.
Washington Post

Exuberant.... Cooper’s stories reveal a meticulous attention to the nuances of African-American life.
San Francisco Chronicle

What a voice.... Cooper celebrates family, freedom, perseverance, life, and…powerful voices finally heard.
Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cooper brilliantly captures the cadences of the South and draws a picture of American life at once down-to-earth and heartwarming in this—as her wise narrator will tell you—“strange, sad, kind’a beautiful, life story.” It is a story about love that leads to the ultimate realization that whoever you are, and whatever you do, life is short, but it is also wide.
African American Literature Book Club (aalbc.com)

With another multigenerational, wonderfully crafted Midwest ensemble cast, Cooper (Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns) presents the town of Wideland, Okla., through the eyes of folksy nonagenarian Hattie B. Brown. This community sentinel, though sometimes short on memory, acts as tour guide and historian, introducing the town at the beginning of the 20th century, when the railroad first arrived and, with it, a growing population. Among the new residents, Hattie introduces the industrious, loving African-American cowboy Val Strong and his Cherokee "brother-friend" Wings; Val's hardened but beautiful wife, Irene Lowell; and their two strong-willed daughters, Rose and Tante. Following the Strong family and their associates through the better part of the 1900s, Hattie finds history running roughshod through their lives, crushing some and strengthening others, introducing new generations and obstacles to love, home and happiness. Cooper's characteristic motherly wit carries an appealing raft of characters through a world tougher than it is tender, but touched with beauty and wisdom.
Publishers Weekly

Reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston's groundbreaking 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, this story chronicles the lives of impoverished blacks in the town of Wideland, OK, from the early 20th to the 21st century, as told by the town gossip, Hattie Brown. Narrated with gentle wit and humor, the book explores the importance of love, religion, redemption, and family. Cooper allows the characters to speak in the African American Southern dialect, a technique that lends veracity and texture to their personalities. The pace of the plot is like a slow-burning fire: there's time for rumination, but readers won't be bored. Some, however, may be irritated by frequent references to the Bible and the Christian overtones throughout.
Orville Lloyd Douglas - 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 Life Is Short But Wide:

1. Talk about the hardships encountered by the two couples: Val and Irene, and Bertha and Joseph.

2. How do the the two sisters, Tante and Rose, differ? Which sister do you most admire?

3. Why does Cooper choose 91-year-old Hattie to narrate the story? What does she bring to the narrative?

4. How does Herman Tenderman's return complicate the events of the story?

5. Which characters in this multi-generational saga do you sympathize with most...and least?

6. What is the significance of the novel's title?

7. Ultimately, what lessons in life do characters learn? What are the messages that Cooper works to convey in her novel?

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

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The Life List
Lori Nelson Spielman, 2013
Bantam/Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345540874


Summary
In this utterly charming debut—perfect for fans of Cecelia Ahern’s P.S., I Love You and Allison Winn Scotch’s Time of My Life—one woman sets out to complete her old list of childhood goals, and finds that her lifelong dreams lead her down a path she never expects.
 
Brett Bohlinger seems to have it all: a plum job, a spacious loft, an irresistibly handsome boyfriend. All in all, a charmed life. That is, until her beloved mother passes away, leaving behind a will with one big stipulation: In order to receive her inheritance, Brett must first complete the life list of goals she’d written when she was a naïve girl of fourteen.

Grief-stricken, Brett can barely make sense of her mother’s decision—her childhood dreams don’t resemble her ambitions at age thirty-four in the slightest. Some seem impossible. How can she possibly have a relationship with a father who died seven years ago? Other goals (Be an awesome teacher!) would require her to reinvent her entire future. As Brett reluctantly embarks on a perplexing journey in search of her adolescent dreams, one thing becomes clear. Sometimes life’s sweetest gifts can be found in the most unexpected places. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 30, 1961
• Where—Lansing, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., Central Michigan University; M.A.
   Michigan State University
• Currently—lives in Michigan


A former speech pathologist and guidance counselor, Lori Nelson Spielman currently works as a homebound teacher for inner-city students. Her debut novel, The Life List, was inspired when she discovered an abandoned life list she’d written as a teen. It has been translated into 16 languages, and Fox 2000 has purchased the film option.

Lori enjoys fitness running, traveling, and reading, though writing is her true passion. She and her husband spend their winters cursing the god-awful Michigan winters, and their summers sailing the glorious shores of Lake Michigan.

Lori would be honored to be a guest at your book club, should you select The Life List. If she's in your area, she'd be happy to visit in person. If not, perhaps Facetime or Skype.

Ideas for a unique book club experience:
• Consider a “Bring your Daughter (or Mother) to Book Club” event. The Life List is a perfect read for mothers and daughters.
• Bring your old life list to share, if you have one.
• Create a new life list and share with others. Just email me your address and the number of members in your club, and I’ll send each of you your very own life list. (From the author.)

Visit the author's website.
Contact Lori at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Book Reviews
You won’t want to miss Lori Nelson Spielman’s remarkable debut, an intensely emotional novel of transformation and trust. It’s about how we let go, and how we never let go. The Life List has great heart, and even greater soul.
Addison Allen, author of Garden Spells
 

Irresistible! Everything I love and look for in women’s fiction. A clever, funny, moving page-turner.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips, author of The Great Escape


Devastated by her mother's death, Brett Bohlinger consumes a bottle of outrageously expensive Champagne and trips down the stairs at the funeral luncheon. Add embarrassed to devastated. Could things get any worse? Of course they can, and they do.... Spielman's debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Have you ever created a life list of your own? Like Lori and Brett, were you lucky enough to come upon it later in life and if so, did you find anything surprising? Have you managed to accomplish the majority of your childhood aspirations? How would your life be different if you’d completed your list in its entirety? After reading this book, are you inspired to revisit and even attempt to realize some of those early goals?

2. Frustrated and discouraged by her mother’s final wishes, Brett exclaims, “Life as I know it has just been shredded! And I’m supposed to piece it back together in a way that some—some kid wanted it to be?” Yet Elizabeth was sure all along that Brett would emerge as a happier, more contented woman if she did a major overhaul of her life. Do you think the goals we make as children are still valid into adulthood? Would people generally be better off getting back in touch with the things that mattered most to them as adolescents as opposed to the things they think matter most as adults? Is the shedding of our childhood fancies a necessary aspect of growing up, or might we be forsaking a fundamental piece of ourselves in the process?

3. The meaning of family and heredity is a major theme throughout the novel, especially in terms of how the characters view their relatedness. At one point, Joad refers to Brett as Elizabeth’s “illegitimate daughter,” while he feels disconnected from Austin because she doesn’t look like the rest of the family. Meanwhile, Brett grapples with her own issues of paternity concerning Johnny and Charles, which mirrors their sense of affinity, or lack thereof, for her. How would you say family—real family, as the characters struggle to define it—is distinguished within the context of this novel?

4. Elizabeth implies, and Brett eventually realizes, that she abandoned much of the courage and self-assurance she possessed as a girl to strive for acceptance in the eyes of men. The author herself has said that as a guidance counselor, she has observed this trend manifest in the lives of many girls, who start out with lofty goals only to forsake them in their relationships with the opposite sex. Do you think this is a common occurrence among women? Are there other female characters in the novel who have fallen victim to this unfortunate trap, or if not, how have they managed to avoid making the same mistake?

5. Brett’s relationship with Jean Anderson, the director of the Joshua House, proves to be quite an eye-opener for her, with Jean adding a dose of grim reality to the naïve, wide-eyed way that Brett has of looking at the world. Discuss how Brett’s worldview evolves from the beginning to the end of the novel and the other characters that play a part in this. As Brett asks herself, do you think ending her relationship with Mr. Right in hopes of finding Mr. Absolutely Right was courageous, or merely due to stupidity, immaturity, or arrogance, or perhaps a mix of them all? Do you think the spark that Brett felt was missing with Herbert is absolutely necessary in a relationship?

6. Do you think people commonly resist making difficult changes in their lives unless forced to, as Brett was? How do you tackle the obstacles in your own life that might prevent you from arriving at a positive outcome?

7. Motherhood is a central focus in this story. Interestingly, though, Elizabeth, the foremost maternal figure, is deceased before the novel opens, and in many ways, it’s the “phantom” mothers and children introduced along the way who play such a pivotal role. What are some of the lessons the characters have learned or you think will eventually learn from the absence of their mother or child? Are there any loved ones in your own life who have similarly conveyed an invaluable message after their passing?

8. In her notes to Brett, Elizabeth imparts wisdom that must necessarily last her daughter a lifetime. What was the most significant lesson you took away from her?

9. Brett abandoned her relationship with Carrie Newsome out of embarrassment and fear that she wouldn’t otherwise be accepted by a new clique. Is Brett deserving of Carrie’s unfaltering affection and acceptance? Have you ever experienced a similar situation with a friend, and if so, were you able to re- pair the relationship down the road?

10. For much of the novel, Brett worries she might be incapable of being involved in a “normal” relationship, either because she feels unworthy of love or because she’s grown accustomed to a certain type of man. When and why does this notion begin to deteriorate and what is it about Garrett that changes everything?

11. Looking back on her journey while in the warm familiarity of what was once her mother’s and is now her own home, Brett considers “how places become people, how this house and her old iron bed still pull me in and offer comfort when I need it.” Can you think of any other locales within the novel that take on the persona of a human being? Are there any places in your own life that function in the same manner?

12. What would your life list consist of now?
(Questions coutesy of the author.)

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The Life of Elves 
Muriel Barbery, 2015 (2016, US edition)
Europa Editions
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781609453152


Summary
A moving and deeply felt homage to the power of nature and art by one of the world's most beloved authors.

Maria lives in a remote village in Burgundy, where she learns that she has a gift for communicating with nature. Hundreds of miles away in Italy, Clara discovers that she possesses a stunning musical genius and is sent from the countryside to Rome to develop her preternatural abilities.

Barbery's The Life of Elves tells the story of two children whose extraordinary talents will bring them into contact with magical worlds and malevolent forces. If, against all odds, they can be brought together, their meeting may shape the course of history.

Seven years after the publication of her international bestseller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery returns with a lyrical novel about the quest for enchantment in a world that seems to have forgotten such a thing ever existed.

With its cast of unforgettable characters, each fighting to preserve a sense of enchantment, The Life of Elves is a poetic meditation on art, nature, dreams, and the role of the imagination. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 28, 1969
• Where—Casablanca, Morocco
• Education—Ecole Normale Superieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud
• Currently—lives outside of Paris, France


Muriel Barbery is a French novelist and professor of philosophy.

She was born in Casablanca, Morocco, although her parents left when she was only two months old. She studied at the Lycee Lakanal (comparable to American high schools) in the outskirts of Paris and then entered the Ecole Normale Superieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud in 1990. In 1993 she obtained her agregation in philosophy (secondary teaching degree).

She then taught philosophy in a lycee (at the Universite de Bourgogne) and at the Saint-Lo IUFM (teacher training college). After she quit her job, she lived for two years in Japan (2008 and 2009). She currently lives in the countryside, south of Paris.

Barbery attained fame with her second novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog. The book topped the French best-seller lists for 30 consecutive weeks and was reprinted 50 times. By May 2008 it had sold more than a million copies and has been a bestseller in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, South Korea, and many other countries. The novel concerns the inhabitants of a small upper-class Paris apartment block, notably its autodidact concierge, Renee. In 2009 the book was adapted to film, titled The Hedgehog.

Her third novel, The Life of Elves, a fantastical fable in which elves serve as intermediaries between the human and natural worlds, is a departure from Barbery's normal realism. It was released in 2015 (2016 in the U.S.).

Books
2000 - Gourmet Rhapsody, Europa Editions (2009, Engl.)
2006 - The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2008, Engl.)
2015 - The Life of Elves (2016, Engl.)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/17/2016.)

Book Reviews
The Life of Elves fully delivers on its title. Ms. Barbery unleashes a complete magical menagerie, a kaleidoscopic cast that includes not only elves but also unicorns; a giant squirrel; a fantastical, shape-shifting wild boar; and an otter with a human face.... [The author delivers] an enigmatic and beguiling fairy tale, unicorns and all.
Alexandra Alter - New York Times


Obscurity may be [the book's] downfall, in both individual sentences and as a whole. Despite Alison Anderson’s skillful translation, Barbery’s images can unspool into incomprehensible abstraction.... At times, it’s simply hard to know what’s going on.... [Still, as] often as The Life of Elves confounds, in its many moments of weird lucidity it also beguiles. It’s then that Barbery explores the mystical connections between nature, art and the human heart with vividness and clarity.
Emily Barton - New York Times Book Review


As long as Barbery describes the concrete, known world of the villagers, her vision is clear, the details precise.... It’s when she tries to cross over to her other world, where an entity can have multiple essences...that Barbery’s uncertain language betrays an uncertainty of vision..... Try as I might, I could never quite believe in Barbery’s world of elves.... Sadly my all-too-frequent margin note was “What?!”
Pauline Holdstock - Toronto Globe and Mail


The Life of Elves is at once realistic and dreamlike. Barbery's poetic language and her endearing characters will direct readers.
La Vie (France)


Muriel Barbery has composed a hymn-and a call-to the ancient complicity of hands, minds, and nature.
Le Figaro


Nearly a decade ago, Muriel Barbery enchanted readers the world over with her novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog — and she’s back with a still-more twee tale of two children brought together by their almost supernatural connections to music and the natural world.
Huffington Post


Despite elven politics, Christianity, and war, the plot feels secondary and downplayed.... Just as battle is coming, readers are stopped by descriptions of the numerous participants, breaking the tension and typifying a reading experience in which the parts are greater than the whole.
Publishers Weekly


[A] gauzy, glimmering fantasy that has...drawn worldwide acclaim.... The magical frame and lush loveliness of the writing might be oversweet for some readers, but many fans of both Barbery and fantasy from writers like Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen will be enchanted.
Library Journal


Vivid imagery and a thread of mystery draw readers into the timeless and ethereal world of these young girls with a destiny to fulfill. Passionate and lyrical...a richly imagined tale full of enchanting characters whom readers will love.
Booklist


The conjoined powers of two magical children bring about a new alliance to thwart evil and unite the natural world in this fantastical novel.... Although possibly too abstract for children and too fey for some adults, this fervent, idiosyncratic fable is undeniable evidence of a richly lyrical imagination.
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 Life of Elves...then take off on your own:

1. Describe the world of the elves and the elves themselves. Why do they need Clara and Maria?

2. Talk about the two girls. What personal gifts or powers does each bring to bear upon the elfin world?

3. Talk about the upcoming battle of the elves. What is at stake?

4. Describe how everything—nature, elves, humans and art—are connected in Muriel Barbery's vision. What is the thematic message we are presented with in The Life of Elves? Is there a lesson Barbery is imparting?

5. Do you agree or disagree with the passage below? What does it mean?

True faith, it is a well known fact, has little regard for chapels, but it does believe in the communion of mysteries, and with its unworldly fusion of beliefs, it crushes any temptations that prove too intolerant (p. 56).

6. What does the elfin motto, "siempre mantendre" (always maintain) mean?

7. If you have read J.R.R. Tolkien, how do these elves compare with those in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings series?

8. In what historical era do you believe the novel is set? What clues are you using to make your "guesstimate"? Why do you think Barbery isn't more specific in terms of when the action takes place? Does it matter?

9. Many reviewers have made much of Barbery's obscure and difficult language, saying that it gets in the way of understanding the story. Others, though, have found the writing lush and beautifully descriptive. What do you think?

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use these online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Life of Pi
Yann Martel, 2002
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
348 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156030205

Summary 
Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Award

Life of Pi is a masterful and utterly original novel that is at once the story of a young castaway who faces immeasurable hardships on the high seas, and a meditation on religion, faith, art and life that is as witty as it is profound. Using the threads of all of our best stories, Yann Martel has woven a glorious spiritual adventure that makes us question what it means to be alive, and to believe.

More
Growing up in Pondicherry, India, Piscine Molitor Patel—known as Pi—has a rich life. Bookish by nature, young Pi acquires a broad knowledge of not only the great religious texts but of all literature, and has a great curiosity about how the world works. His family runs the local zoo, and he spends many of his days among goats, hippos, swans, and bears, developing his own theories about the nature of animals and how human nature conforms to it. Pi’s family life is quite happy, even though his brother picks on him and his parents aren’t quite sure how to accept his decision to simultaneously embrace and practise three religions—Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

But despite the lush and nurturing variety of Pi’s world, there are broad political changes afoot in India, and when Pi is sixteen his parents decide that the family needs to escape to a better life. Choosing to move to Canada, they close the zoo, pack their belongings, and board a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum. Travelling with them are many of their animals, bound for zoos in North America. However, they have only just begun their journey when the ship sinks, taking the dreams of the Patel family down with it. Only Pi survives, cast adrift in a lifeboat with the unlikeliest oftravelling companions: a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Thus begins Pi Patel’s epic, 227-day voyage across the Pacific, and the powerful story of faith and survival at the heart of Life of Pi. Worn and scared, oscillating between hope and despair, Pi is witness to the playing out of the food chain, quite aware of his new position within it. When only the tiger is left of the seafaring menagerie, Pi realizes that his survival depends on his ability to assert his own will, and sets upon a grand and ordered scheme to keep from being Richard Parker’s next meal.

As the days pass, Pi fights both boredom and terror by throwing himself into the practical details of surviving on the open sea—catching fish, collecting rain water, protecting himself from the sun—all the while ensuring that the tiger is also kept alive, and knows that Pi is the key to his survival. The castaways face gruelling pain in their brushes with starvation, illness, and the storms that lash the small boat, but there is also the solace of beauty: the rainbow hues of a dorado’s death-throes, the peaceful eye of a looming whale, the shimmering blues of the ocean’s swells. Hope is fleeting, however, and despite adapting his religious practices to his daily routine, Pi feels the constant, pressing weight of despair. It is during the most hopeless and gruelling days of his voyage that Pi whittles to the core of his beliefs, casts off his own assumptions, and faces his underlying terrors head-on.

As Yann Martel has said in one interview, “The theme of this novel can be summarized in three lines. Life is a story. You can choose your story. And a story with an imaginative overlay is the better story.” And for Martel, the greatest imaginative overlay is religion. “God is a shorthand for anything that is beyond the material—any greater pattern of meaning.” In Life of Pi, the question of stories, and of what stories to believe, is front and centre from the beginning, when the author tells us how he was led to Pi Patel and to this novel: in an Indian coffee house, a gentleman told him, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” And as this novel comes to its brilliant conclusion, Pi shows us that the story with the imaginative overlay is also the story that contains the most truth. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—June 25, 1963
• Where—Salamanca, Spain
• Education—B.A., Trent University, Ontario
• Awards—Booker Prize, 2002; Hugh MacLennan Prize, 
  Quebec Writers’ Federation
• Currently—Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of peripatetic Canadian parents. He grew up in Alaska, British Columbia, Costa Rica, France, Ontario and Mexico, and has continued travelling as an adult, spending time in Iran, Turkey and India. Martel refers to his travels as, “seeing the same play on a whole lot of different stages.”

After studying philosophy at Trent University and while doing various odd jobs—tree planting, dishwashing, working as a security guard—he began to write. In addition to Life of Pi, Martel is the prize-winning author of The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, a collection of short stories, and of Self, a novel, both published internationally. Yann has been living from his writing since the age of 27. He divides his time between yoga, writing and volunteering in a palliative care unit. Yann Martel lives in Montreal.

More
Sometime in the early 1990s, Yann Martel stumbled across a critique in the New York Times Review of Books by John Updike that captured his curiosity. Although Updike's response to Moacyr Scliar's Max and the Cats was fairly icy and indifferent, the premise immediately intrigued Martel. According to Martel, Max and the Cats was, "as far as I can remember...about a zoo in Berlin run by a Jewish family. The year is 1933 and, not surprisingly, business is bad. The family decides to emigrate to Brazil. Alas, the ship sinks and one lone Jew ends up in a lifeboat with a black panther." Whether or not the story was as uninspiring as Updike had indicated in his review, Martel was both fascinated by this premise and frustrated that he had not come up with it himself.

Ironically, Martel's account of the plot of Max and the Cats wasn't completely accurate. In fact, in Scliar's novel, Max Schmidt did not belong to a family of zookeepers—he was the son of furrier. Furthermore, he did not emigrate from Berlin to Brazil with his family as the result of a failing zoo, but was forced to flee Hamburg after his lover's husband sells him out to the Nazi secret police. So, this plot that so enthralled Martel—which he did not pursue for several years because he assumed Moacyr Scliar had already tackled it—was more his own than he had thought.

Meanwhile, Martel managed to write and publish two books: a collection of short stories titled The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios in 1993 and a novel about gender confusion called Self in 1996. Both books sold only moderately well, further frustrating the writer. In an effort to collect his thoughts and refresh his creativity, he took a trip to India, first spending time in bustling Bombay. However, the overcrowded city only furthered Martel's feelings of alienation and dissolution. He then decided to move on to Matheran, a section near Bombay but without that city's dense population. In this peaceful hill station overlooking the city, Martel began revisiting an idea he had not considered in some time, the premise he had unwittingly created when reading Updike's review in the New York Times Review of Books. He developed the idea even further away from Max and the Cats. While Scliar's novel was an extended holocaust allegory, Martel envisioned his story as a witty, whimsical, and mysterious meditation on zoology and theology. Unlike Max Schmidt, Pi Patel would, indeed, be the son of a zookeeper. Martel would, however, retain the shipwrecked-with-beasts theme from Max and the Cats. During an ocean exodus from India to Canada, the ship sinks and Pi finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with such unlikely shipmates as a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

The resulting novel, Life of Pi, became the smash-hit for which Martel had been longing. Selling well over a million copies and receiving the accolades of Book Magazine, Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, and, yes, the New York Times Review of Books, Life of Pi has been published in over 40 countries and territories, in over 30 languages. It is currently in production by Fox Studios with a script by master-of-whimsy Jean-Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children; Amélie) and directorial duties to be handled by Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).

Martel is now working on his third novel, a bizarrely allegorical adventure about a donkey and a monkey that travel through a fantastical world...on a shirt. Well, at least no one will ever accuse him of borrowing that premise from any other writer.

Extras
From a 2002 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Life of Pi is not Yann Martel's first work to be adapted for the screen. His short story "Manners of Dying" was made into a motion picture by fellow Canadian resident Jeremy Peter Allen in 2004.

• When he isn't penning modern masterpieces, Martel spends much of his time volunteering in a palliative care unit.

• When asked what book was most influential to his career as a writer, here's what he said: 

I would say Le Petit Chose, by the French writer Alphonse Daudet. It was the first book to make me cry. I was around ten years old. It made me see how powerful words could be, how much we could see and feel through mere black jottings on a page. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews 
Yann Martel is a superb storyteller, and he has fashioned a fable: a metaphysical exploration into our relationship with the cosmos and the divine.
A LitLovers LitPick  (May '07)

Pi is Martel's triumph. He is understated and ironic, utterly believable and pure. The whole fantastic voyage carries hints of The Old Man and The Sea. The playfulness adds another layer to an already strong story.
Globe and Mail

If Canadian writer Yann Martel were a preacher, he'd be charismatic, funny and convert all the non-believers. He baits his readers with serious themes and trawls them through a sea of questions and confusion, but he makes one laugh so much, and at times feel so awed and chilled, that even thrashing around in bewilderment or disagreement one can't help but be captured by his prose.
Charlotte Innes - The Nation

An impassioned defense of zoos, a death-defying trans-Pacific sea adventure à la "Kon-Tiki," and a hilarious shaggy-dog story starring a four-hundred-and-fifty-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker: this audacious novel manages to be all of these as it tells the improbable survivor's tale of Pi Patel, a young Indian fellow named for a swimming pool (his full first name is Piscine) who endures seven months in a lifeboat with only a hungry, outsized feline for company. This breezily aphoristic, unapologetically twee saga of man and cat is a convincing hands-on, how-to guide for dealing with what Pi calls, with typically understated brio, "major lifeboat pests."
The New Yorker

There are echoes in his work of Latin American magic realism (reminiscent of García Márquez and Borges) and touches of absurdist mind games. A cross-cultural feast, the book ranges from India to North America; it's also packed with curious disquisitions on philosophy, zoology, linguistics and God. But in the end, it's the story you'll remember, the kind of twist-and-turns spellbinder that's almost impossible to forget.
Book Magazine

A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient, this novel is an impressive achievement "a story that will make you believe in God," as one character says. The peripatetic Pi (n the much-taunted Piscine) Patel spends a beguiling boyhood in Pondicherry, India, as the son of a zookeeper. Growing up beside the wild beasts, Pi gathers an encyclopedic knowledge of the animal world. His curious mind also makes the leap from his native Hinduism to Christianity and Islam, all three of which he practices with joyous abandon. In his 16th year, Pi sets sail with his family and some of their menagerie to start a new life in Canada. Halfway to Midway Island, the ship sinks into the Pacific, leaving Pi stranded on a life raft with a hyena, an orangutan, an injured zebra and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. After the beast dispatches the others, Pi is left to survive for 227 days with his large feline companion on the 26-foot-long raft, using all his knowledge, wits and faith to keep himself alive. The scenes flow together effortlessly, and the sharp observations of the young narrator keep the tale brisk and engaging. Martel's potentially unbelievable plot line soon demolishes the reader's defenses, cleverly set up by events of young Pi's life that almost naturally lead to his biggest ordeal. This richly patterned work, Martel's second novel, won Canada's 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. In it, Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master.
Publishers Weekly

Named for a swimming pool in Paris the Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel begins this extraordinary tale as a teenager in India, where his father is a zoo keeper. Deciding to immigrate to Canada, his father sells off most of the zoo animals, electing to bring a few along with the family on their voyage to their new home. But after only a few days out at sea, their rickety vessel encounters a storm. After crew members toss Pi overboard into one of the lifeboats, the ship capsizes. Not long after, to his horror, Pi is joined by Richard Parker, an acquaintance who manages to hoist himself onto the lifeboat from the roiling sea. You would think anyone in Pi's dire straits would welcome the company, but Richard Parker happens to be a 450-pound Bengal tiger. It is hard to imagine a fate more desperate than Pi's: "I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me." At first Pi plots to kill Richard Parker. Then he becomes convinced that the tiger's survival is absolutely essential to his own. In this harrowing yet inspiring tale, Martel demonstrates skills so well honed that the story appears to tell itself without drawing attention to the writing. This second novel by the Spanish-born, award-winning author of Self, who now lives in Canada, is highly recommended for all fiction as well as animal and adventure collections. — Edward Cone, New York
Library Journal

A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada's Governor General's Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed "Pi"), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi's ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. In his introductory note Yann Martel says, "This book was born as I was hungry." What sort of emotional nourishment might Life of Pi have fed to its author?

2. Pondicherry is described as an anomaly, the former capital of what was once French India. Do you think the town made a significant difference in Pi's upbringing?

3. In the Author's Note, Mr. Adirubasamy boldly claims that this story "will make you belive in God," and the author, after researching and writing the story, agrees. Did Pi's tale alter your beliefs about God?

4. Chapters 21 and 22 are very short, yet the author has said that they are at the core of the novel. Can you see how?

5. Early in the novel, we discover that Pi majored in religious studies and zoology, with particular interests in a sixteenth-century Kabbalist and the admirable three-toed sloth. In subsequent chapters, he explains the ways in which religions and zoos are both steeped in illusion. Discuss some of the other ways in which these two fields find unlikely compatibility.

6. In the Author's Note, Martel wonders whether fiction is "the selective transforming of reality, the twisting of it to bring out its essence." If this is so, what is the essence of Pi and of his story?

7. There is a lot of storytelling in this religious novel. Is there a relationship between religion and storytelling?Is religion a form of storytelling? Is there a theological dimension to storytelling?

8. Pi's full name, Piscine Molitor Patel, was inspired by a Parisian swimming pool that "the gods would have delighted to swim in." The shortened form refers to the ratio of a circle's circumference divided by its diameter, the number 3.1415926..., a number that goes on forever without discernable pattern, what in mathematics is called an irrational number. Explore the significance of Pi's unusual name.

9. One reviewer said the novel contains hints of The Old Man and the Sea, and Pi himself measures his experience in relation to history's most famous castaways. How does Life of Pi compare to other maritime novels and films?

10. How might the novel's flavor have been changed if the sole surviving animal had been the zebra with the broken leg? Or Orange Juice? Or the hyena? Would Pi have survived with a harmless animal or an ugly animal, say a sheep or a turkey? Which animal would you like to find yourself with on a lifeboat?

11. In chapter 23, Pi sparks a lively debate when all three of his spiritual advisors try to claim him. At the heart of this confrontation is Pi's insistence that he cannot accept an exclusively Hindu, Christian, or Muslim faith; he can only be content with all three. What is Pi seeking that can solely be attained by this apparent contradiction? Is there something commmon to all religions? Are they "all the same"? If not, how are they different? Is there a difference between faith and belief?

12. What do you make of Pi's assertion at the beginning of chapter 16 that we are all "in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God"? Do you believe that Pi's faith is a response to his father's agnosticism?

13. Among Yann Martel's gifts is a rich descriptive palette. Regarding religion, he observes the green elements that represent Islam and the orange tones of Hinduism. What color would Christianity be, according to Pi's perspective?

14. How do the human beings in your world reflect the animal behavior observed by Pi? What do Pi's strategies for dealing with Richard Parker teach us about confronting the fearsome creatures in our lives?

15. Besides the loss of his family and possessions, what else did Pi lose when the Tsimtsum sank? What did he gain?

16. Nearly everyone experiences a turning point that represents the transition from youth to adulthood, albeit seldom as traumatic as Pi's. What event marked your coming of age?

17. How do Mr. Patel's zookeeping abilities compare to his parenting skills? Discuss the scene in which his tries to teach his children a lesson in survival by arranging for them to watch a tiger devour a goat. Did this in any way prepare Pi for the most dangerous experience of his life?

18. If shock hadn't deluded him, do you think Pi would have whistled and waved at Richard Parker? What would you have done?

19. Pi imagines that his brother would have teasingly called him Noah. How does Pi's voyage compare to the biblical story of Noah, who was spared from the flood while God washed away the sinners?

20. Is Life of Pi a tragedy, romance, or comedy?

21. Pi defends zoos. Are you convinced? Is a zoo a good place for a wild animal?

22. What did you think of Pi's interview with the investigators from the Japanese Ministry of Transport? Do you think Pi's mother, along with a sailor and a cannibalistic cook, were in the lifeboat with him instead of the animals? Which story do you believe, the one with animals or the one without animals? When the investigators state that they think the story with animals is the better story, Pi answers "Thank you. And so it goes with God." What do you think Pi meant by that? How does it relate to the claim that this is a story "that will make you believe in God"?

23. The first part of the novel starts twenty years after Pi's ordeal at sea and ends with the words "This story has a happy ending." Do you agree?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Life Sentences
Laura Lippman, 2009
HarperCollins
344 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061944888

Summary

Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life on the page. Her two widely popular memoirs continue to sell briskly, acclaimed for their brutal, unexpurgated candor about friends, family, lovers—and herself. But now, after a singularly unsuccessful stab at fiction, Cassandra believes she may have found the story that will enable her triumphant return to nonfiction.

When Cassandra was a girl, growing up in a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, her best friends were all black: elegant, privileged Donna; sharp, shrewd Tisha; wild and worldly Fatima. A fifth girl orbited their world—a shy, quiet, unobtrusive child named Calliope Jenkins—who, years later, would be accused of killing her infant son. Yet the boy's body was never found and Calliope's unrelenting silence on the subject forced a judge to jail her for contempt. For seven years, Calliope refused to speak and the court was finally forced to let her go. Cassandra believes this still unsolved real-life mystery, largely unknown outside Baltimore, could be her next bestseller.

But her homecoming and latest journey into the past will not be welcomed by everyone, especially by her former friends, who are unimpressed with Cassandra's success—and are insistent on their own version of their shared history. And by delving too deeply into Calliope's dark secrets, Cassandra may inadvertently unearth a few of her own—forcing her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious, as the stark light of truth illuminates a mother's pain, a father's betrayal...and what really transpired on a terrible day that changed not only a family but an entire country. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio• Birth—January 31, 1959
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.S., Northwestern University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland


Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a well known and respected writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team.

Lippman is a former reporter for the (now defunct) San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter (like Lippman herself) turned private investigator.

Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. Her 2007 release, What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York Times bestseller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which has been optioned for the movies by Academy Award–winning actor Frances McDormand.

Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. In January, 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College.

Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.

Awards
2015 Anthony Award-Best Novel (After I'm Gone)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Anthony Award-Best Short Story ("Hardly Knew Her")
2008 Barry Award-Best Novel (What the Dead Know)
2008 Macavity Award-Best Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2007 Anthony Award-Best Novel (No Good Deeds)
2007 Quill Award-Mystery (What the Dead Know)
2006 Gumshow Award-Best Novel (To the Power of the Three)
2004 Barry Award-Best Novel (Every Secret Thing)
2001 Nero Award (Sugar House)
2000 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
2000 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (In Big Trouble)
1999 Anthony Award-Best Paperback Original (Butchers Hill)
1998 Agatha Award-Best Novel (Butchers Hill)
1998 Edgar Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
1998 Shamus Award-Best Paperback Original (Charm City)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Ms. Lippman makes good use of the way memoirists often choose sides in stories of divorce, and of how their idealizing and demonizing respective parents may be deeply wrong. But her greatest sleight of hand is the maneuvering that deftly compromises Cassandra as she reignites old emotions. Not until the end of Life Sentences…will the reader grasp how fully Ms. Lippman has shaped and controlled this narrative. Warts and all, Cassandra becomes a sufficiently sympathetic character to lure readers into making the same mistakes that she makes in excavating old truths.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

Theirs is a strong and vivid story, one that will intrigue many readers—especially, I suspect, women who find echoes of their own lives and friendships in this drama.
Washington Post

Succeeds brilliantly.... Lippman is in total command of her material, weaving strands about race, family myths and self-deception into a mystery so taut the reader is nearly afraid to keep going—and simultaneously powerless to stop.
People

(Starred review.) This stunning stand-alone from bestseller Lippman (Baltimore Blues) examines the extraordinary power and fragility of memories. Writer Cassandra Fallows achieved critical and commercial success with an account of her Baltimore childhood growing up in the 1960s and a follow-up dealing with her adult marriages and affairs. The merely modest success of her debut novel leads her back to nonfiction and the possibility of a book about grade school classmate Calliope Jenkins. Accused of murdering her infant son, Jenkins spent seven years in prison steadfastly declining to answer any questions about the disappearance and presumed death of her son. Fallows (white) tries to reconnect with three former classmate friends (black) to compare memories of Jenkins and research her story. In the process, she discovers the gulf (partially racial) that separates her memories of events from theirs. Fallows's pursuit of Jenkins's story becomes a rich, complex journey from self-deception to self-discovery.
Publishers Weekly

A writer discovers the power of silence in the latest stand-alone from Lippman (Hardly Knew Her, 2008, etc.). Author of two successful memoirs and a tepidly received novel, Cassandra Fallows is jolted by a reminder of her classmate, Calliope Jenkins, who served seven years in prison rather than reveal the whereabouts of her infant son. When a similar case in New Orleans returns Callie's name to the news, Cassandra leaves her Brooklyn brownstone for her home town of Baltimore, hoping to learn enough of Callie's story so that it will serve as an anchor for a fourth book. Coping with her parents, who split when Cassandra was ten (her classics-professor father fell in love with voluptuous young Annie Reynolds, an apparent victim of the race riots that engulfed Baltimore in the wake of the King assassination) is a challenge. And her efforts to find the absent Callie provoke present-day racial tensions of their own as she faces her former classmates, Tisha Barr and Donna Howard, who close ranks against her and stonewall her efforts. Even as her attraction for Callie's attorney, Reg Barr—Tisha's brother and Donna's husband—becomes an echo of her father's interracial relationship with Annie, Cassandra knows that she will never be part of their circle, any more than silent, wary Callie will ever become part of Cassandra's empire of words. Lippman's writing is powerful and her gaze unflinching as she invokes a world in which no one is either entirely guilty or truly innocent.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Life Sentences suggests that stories belong to whomever tells them. Is that fair, unfair? Under what circumstances, if any, does a story—a life—belong only to the person who lived it?

2. Is Cassandra a likable person, or at least an ethical one? Does it matter if she's likable?

3. Was Cassandra's memoir, Her Father's Daughter, "true"?

4. What do you think happened to Callie's son? Does she tell Cassandra the truth, or the truth as she needs to believe it? Is there a difference?

5. Life Sentences has many references to myths and folk tales—stories of the ancient Greeks, but also Br'er Rabbit. What myths do the characters need in order to go about their day-to-day lives? Does Tisha have a myth that sustains her? Gloria Bustamante?

6. Cassandra is white, most of her childhood friends were African-American (as was her stepmother) and Gloria Bustamanate is Latina. But is race that central to the story of Life Sentences? In what ways?

7. Why does Lenore allow her husband's version of events to stand uncontested?

8. Is Cedric Fallows self-aware? Does he have any sense of the way he has affected his daughter?

9. What has Cassandra learned beyond the facts of her own life and Callie's life? Does she change over the course of this book? In what ways? Would the Cassandra we meet in that opening chapter make the same choices that Cassandra makes at the book's end?

10. What point is Tisha trying to make when she shows Cassandra a small inaccuracy in Her Father's Daughter?

11. On the last page of the novel, Callie passes a sign that Cassandra has also noticed: If you lived here, you would be home by now. Cassandra had wondered if the sign was a tautology, or at least mildly redundant. But Callie responds to the sign very differently. What does this tell us about Cassandra and Callie? Where is Callie—in her life—at the book's end? Has she found a home in the world? Has she at last made all the lies true?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Life She Wants 
Robyn Carr, 2016
MIRA
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778319672


Summary
A poignant novel with a rich tapestry of characters, and a story that will leave the reader laughing and crying as two friends confront their pasts and move towards their futures.

In the aftermath of her financier husband’s suicide, Emma Shay Compton’s dream life is shattered.

Richard Compton stole his clients’ life savings to fund a lavish life in New York City and, although she was never involved in the business, Emma bears the burden of her husband’s crimes.

She is left with nothing.

Only one friend stands by her, a friend she’s known since high school, who encourages her to come home to Sonoma County. But starting over isn’t easy, and Sonoma is full of unhappy memories, too. And people she’d rather not face, especially Riley Kerrigan.

Riley and Emma were like sisters—until Riley betrayed Emma, ending their friendship. Emma left town, planning to never look back. Now, trying to stand on her own two feet, Emma can’t escape her husband’s reputation and is forced to turn to the last person she thought she’d ever ask for help—her former best friend.

It’s an uneasy reunion as both women face the mistakes they’ve made over the years. Only if they find a way to forgive each other—and themselves—can each of them find the life she wants. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1951
• Where—the State of Minnesota, USA
• Education—nursing degree
• Awards—RITA Award; Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award
• Currently—lives in Henderson, Nevada


Robyn Carr is an American author of more than 50 historical and romance novels. She is perhaps best known for her Virgin River Series, 20 some books published from 2007-2012.

Carr originally intended a career as a nurse rather than a writer. But she married her high school sweetheart who had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a helicopter pilot. It was during the Vietnam War, and as Robyn accompanied him, moving from base to base, it became obvious that her peripatetic lifestyle made it almost impossible to accommodate a nursing schedule.

Then in the mid-'70s came two children. When her doctor told her she needed to stay off her feet during one of her pregnancies, she turned to writing. Two healthy infants later, Robyn was still writing all the while juggling babies, feedings and diaper changes. She published her first historical novel in 1978.

Thirty years and some 25 novels later, she hit the New York Times bestseller list with her breakthrough novel, A Virgin River Christmas (2008). Three years later, Bring Me Home for Christmas, the 17th in what had become the Virgin River series, reached #1 on the NYT list; all told, since 2008 her books have spent more than 230 weeks on the NYT bestseller list.

Robyn and her husband Jim, now retired, live near Las Vegas, Nevada. In addition to traveling and enjoying her grandchildren, Carr hosts monthly "Carr Chats" at the Paseo Verde Library in Henderson, Nevada, her hometown, where she interviews other authors.

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
Too much melodrama, shallow character portrayals, and lifeless romantic scenes unfortunately undercut what could have been an insightful exploration of a woman’s world turned upside down by circumstances beyond her control.
Publishers Weekly


A layered, well-paced plot and flawed, three-dimensional characters whom readers will care about make this quick and entertaining read for those who relish contemporary family sagas with strong female characters as well as readers who like their stories tinged with romance. —Charli Osborne, Oak Park P. L., MI
Library Journal


Carr’s take on this complicated situation is interesting, though readers seeking a deeper reflection from Emma in the aftermath of her husband’s death or her stepmother’s spite may be disappointed. A satisfying reinvention story that handles painful issues with a light and uplifting touch.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Life She Wants...then take off on your own:

1. What do you think of Emma Compton? How would you describe her? Do you find her sympathetic? What about Riley Kerrigan? Describe her. Were you able to connect or identify with either character? Is one more likable than the other?

2. Emma berates herself for having failed to see what was going on with her husband's financial schemes. Do you blame her? Was she overly naive? Should she, could she, have understood his business operations?

3. Follow-up to Question #2: Is it fair for Emma to be blamed and mistrusted for her husband's actions?

4. Talk about Emma and Riley's friendship years ago. What was the breaking point, and who was at fault? Has something similar ever happened between you and a friend?

5. On the other hand, is it strange to you that two women have held a grudge against one another for something that happened so many years in the past?

6. What is Riley's back story? Why is she working so hard to forgive herself?

7. How do the main characters change or grow by the end of the novel?

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

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The Life She Was Given 
Ellen Marie Wiseman, 2017
Kensington Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781617734496


Summary
 A vivid, daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets—beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s.

On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom.

Lilly isn’t allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She’s never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it’s for Lilly’s own protection, that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night, Lilly is taken outside for the first time — and sold to the circus sideshow.

More than two decades later, nineteen-year-old Julia Blackwood has inherited her parents’ estate and horse farm. For Julia, home was an unhappy place full of strict rules and forbidden rooms, and she hopes that returning might erase those painful memories.

Instead, she becomes immersed in a mystery involving a hidden attic room and photos of circus scenes featuring a striking young girl.

At first, The Barlow Brothers’ Circus is just another prison for Lilly. But in this rag-tag, sometimes brutal world, Lilly discovers strength, friendship, and a rare affinity for animals. Soon, thanks to elephants Pepper and JoJo and their handler, Cole, Lilly is no longer a sideshow spectacle but the circus’s biggest attraction … until tragedy and cruelty collide.

It will fall to Julia to learn the truth about Lilly’s fate and her family’s shocking betrayal, and find a way to make Blackwood Manor into a place of healing at last.

Moving between Julia and Lilly’s stories, Ellen Marie Wiseman portrays two extraordinary, very different women in a novel that, while tender and heartbreaking, offers moments of joy and indomitable hope. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1961-62
• Where—Three Mile Bay, New York, USA
• Education—Lyme Central School
• Currently—lives on Lake Ontario in upstate New York


Ellen Marie Wiseman discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in upper New York State.

Her debut novel The Plum Tree—a WWII story about a young German woman trying to save the love of her life, a Jewish man—was inspired by her mother's childhood in Germany during the Second World War. The book was published in 2013.

Wiseman's second novel, What She Left Behind, published in 2014, centers on the now-shuttered Willard Asylum for the Insane in Ovid, near Seneca Lake, New York, and involves a woman wrongly committed.

Coal River, Wiseman's 2016 novel, revolves around the efforts of a young woman to help at-risk workers in the Pennsylvania col mines.

The Life She Was Given, released in 2017, tells the story of two sisters: Lilly who is sold to the circus in 1931, and the other, years later, who inherits the family farm.

Originally from Three Mile Bay, New York, Wiseman lives on Lake Ontario with her husband. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Wiseman alternates between 1930s and 1950s New York State in this emotional tale of one young girl’s tragedy and another’s coming of age.… Wiseman has created two equally enticing story lines…. This well-crafted novel provides rewards throughout.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Switching back and forth…from Lilly to Julia, Wiseman has crafted a can't-put-it-down novel of family secrets involving two young girls.… Perfect for book clubs and readers who admired Sara Gruen's Like Water for Elephants. —Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. In the beginning of the book, Lilly has never stepped foot outside the attic of Blackwood Manor. Yet she dreams of escaping and exploring the outside world. What effect do you think being locked up for the first ten years of her life had on her? Do you think it’s possible for a child in that situation to develop normally? When Momma finally lets her out, Lilly is frightened and wants to return to the attic. Why do you think she feels that way?

2. Julia was brought up believing bad things would happen if she didn’t behave. What effect do you think that belief had on her relationships with other people? Do you think she was a people pleaser? Why or why not? How do you think she changed over the course of the novel? What were the most important events that facilitated those changes?

3. Momma is strict, cold, and physically abusive. But even after she sells Lilly to the circus sideshow, Lilly still loves and misses her. Do you think that’s realistic? Why or why not?

4. Julia can’t help but study the interactions between mothers and daughters. She is drawn to watching people who clearly love each other, especially parents and their children whose faces light up with affection and recognition of their unconditional love. She wonders what that feels like. How do you think that fascination with parental love effected her decisions concerning the horses at Blackwood Farm? What events revealed how she felt about them?

5. How much of a role do you think religion played in Momma’s decision to keep Lilly locked in the attic? How much of a role do you think shame played? Have you ever heard stories of parents hiding their mentally or physically handicapped children in an attic or back bedroom? Do you think that still happens today?

6. Before she knows the truth, Julia briefly wonders if Lilly would have been better off if she had "gotten help". What do you think would have happened to Lilly if she had been sent away instead of locked in the attic? Considering the time period of the story, would she have been better off or worse? Why?

7. How long did it take for you to figure out what was "wrong" with Lilly? Were you surprised when you learned the truth? What do you think the real reason was behind Momma’s decision to sell Lilly to the sideshow? Was it money, or something else?

8. When Momma takes Lilly out of the house the first time, she gives her a jacket despite the fact that she’s selling her to the circus and it’s a warm summer night. Why do you think she does it? What do you think it means, if anything? What do you think would have happened to Lilly if she had been able to get away from Momma that night? Would she have survived? How?

9. Why do you think Julia was so determined to take good care of the horses and the farm? Why do you think she wanted to prove herself to Claude?

10. Lilly feels like she has a lot in common with the circus animals. Why do you think that is? What does she have in common with Pepper? What about Jojo? Is there a difference between what she has in common with each of them?

11. Both Momma and Merrick used fear to keep Lilly from trying to escape. In what ways did they use it similarly? In what ways did they use it differently?

12. Claude knew the truth about Lilly all along. Why do you think he kept it a secret? Do you agree with his reasoning? What would you have done if you saw Momma taking Lilly into the woods, then coming back without her? What do you think made Claude change his mind about telling Julia the truth? How did you feel about him in the beginning of the book? How did you feel about him at the end?

13. Lilly goes from being locked in an attic to performing in front of thousands of people. What fears did she need to conquer to make that transition? What other changes did she make to survive in the circus? What aspects of her earlier life do you think were hardest for her to overcome?

14. In the 1870’s, P.T. Barnum was one of the first showmen to take a collection of oddities and human marvels on the road with his circus. Back then, the sideshow created quite a sensation and became a popular form of entertainment. In the heyday of the sideshow, human curiosities were respected as the bread and butter of the circus, and revered all over the world. The freaks were royalty, not victims or monsters. Certainly there was exploitation, as in the case of Daisy and Violet Hilton, Siamese twins who were kept in a cage, beaten, and passed down in their aunt’s estate like a piece of old jewelry. But for the most part, the sideshow provided the opportunity for people who couldn’t make a living in the traditional ways to stand on their own two feet, instead of slowly dying in institutions. Eventually the appeal of sideshows declined due to various factors, including increased medical knowledge, political correctness, and the belief that disease and abnormalities should evoke pity rather than wonder. Have you ever been to a sideshow? How did it make you feel? What do you think of people brave enough to expose their vulnerabilities to the world? If you were born with an anomaly or deformity, would you be willing to let people stare at you to make a living?

15. What did you think of Lilly’s father when you first met him? How did your perception of him change over the course of the book? What could he have done differently? He attends the circus once a year to see Lilly, but she never knows he’s there. How did you feel when he showed up in her tent? Were you surprised by his confession at the end of the story?

16. Pepper is based on a real elephant, Mary, who was hanged by the neck from a railcar- mounted industrial crane in 1916 for killing an inexperienced trainer after he prodded her behind the ear with a hook when she reached down to nibble on a watermelon rind. The first attempt to hang Mary resulted in a snapped chain, causing Mary to fall and break her hip as dozens of children fled in terror. The gravely wounded elephant died during a second attempt at execution and was buried beside the tracks. A veterinarian examined Mary after the hanging and determined she had a severely infected tooth in the precise spot where the trainer had prodded her. When Pepper kills Merrick for trying to take Jojo, Lilly is devastated because she knows Pepper is going to be punished. She hates the fact that people get mad at animals for acting like animals. Her worst fears come true when the crowd wants Pepper killed and Mr. Barlow makes the decision to execute her. Do you think animals should be killed for injuring or killing humans? Does it depend on the circumstance, for instance, if an animal is being caged, forced to perform, or a human threatens the animal’s young or encroaches on its territory? Do you think it’s okay to kill an animal based solely on its potential to be dangerous?

17. What do you think Lilly’s life would have been like if Momma had never sold her to the circus? How long do you think she would have lived in the attic? Do you think she would have eventually escaped? How? What would you have done if you were in that situation?

18. Besides honoring Lilly, why do you think Julia started the horse rescue?? What do you think Julia’s life was like after she discovered the truth about her family?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Life We Bury 
Allen Eskens, 2015
Prometheus Books
303 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616149987


Summary
College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.

Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran—and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.

Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1962-63
• Raised—Jefferson City, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., Minnesota State University; J.D., Hamline University
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Minnesota


Allen Eskens has been a criminal defense attorney for twenty years. He honed his creative writing skills through the MFA program at Minnesota State University as well as classes at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. He is a member of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime. The Guise of Another (2015) is his follow-up novel to The Life We Bury. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Set against the backdrop of a brutal Minnesota winter, The Life We Bury is much more than a satisfying, suspenseful novel. This story kept me turning the pages, and it touched my heart. The characters are as real as my next-door neighbors, the story compelling, and the writing superb.
Suspense Magazine


(Starred review.) [A] masterful debut.... As Joe learns more about the events of [a decades-old] murder, he is faced with several threats to his own safety, yet refuses to give up his pursuit of the truth. More complications ensue, until the novel's satisfying resolution.
Publishers Weekly


Eskens’s first-person narration grabs the reader and never relinquishes its hold (Editor's Pick).
Library Journal


Eskens’ compulsively suspenseful first novel reveals that guilt takes many forms—and that getting the story right is essential.
BookPage


The tension builds to an all-stops-out finale that works on every level. Thriller fans should keep their eyes on Eskens; he’s a comer.
Booklist


A struggling student's English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.... Eskens' debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How did you experience the book? Were you immediately drawn into the story—or did it take you a while? Did the book intrigue, amuse, disturb, alienate, irritate, or frighten you?

2. What aspects of the novel did the author draw from to come up with the title for The Life We Bury?

3. Which character, if any, did you identify with the most? Why?

4. Was there a particular scene that resonated with you or stayed with you after you finished the novel?

5. How did you feel about the character of Carl Iverson when he was first introduced?

6. Would you say that the story is plot driven or character driven? In other words, do events unfold quickly? Or is more time spent developing characters' inner lives? Does it make a difference to your enjoyment?

7. How does guilt affect or influence the various characters?

8. What would you say are Joe's strongest character traits?

9. If you could change the character of Joe Talbert, what would you change?

(Questions from the author's website.)

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Life's a Beach
Claire Cook, 2007
Hyperion
272 pp.
ISBN-13 9780641939020

Summary
When Must Love Dogs was published, the Chicago Tribune called it "pitch-perfect" and the Washington Post declared, "Readers will hope that Claire Cook will be telling breezy summer stories from the South Shore of Massachusetts for seasons to come." Luckily for her legions of fans, Cook returns with another sparkling romantic comedy that's reminiscent of Must Love Dogs in all the right ways, but very much its own animal—about a relationship-challenged single woman, her quirky-to-put-it-mildly extended family, and the summer the shark movie came to town.

Life's a bit of a beach these days for Ginger Walsh, who's single at forty-one and living back home in the family FROG (Finished Room Over Garage). She's hoping for a more fulfilling life as a sea glass artist, but instead is babysitting her sister's kids and sharing overnights with Noah, her sexy artist boyfriend with commitment issues and a dog Ginger's cat isn't too crazy about. Geri, her BlackBerry-obsessed sister, is also nearly over the deep end about her pending fiftieth birthday (and might just drag Ginger with her). Toss in a dumpster-picking father, a Kama Sutra T-shirt-wearing mother, a movie crew come to town with a very cute gaffer, an on-again-off-again glassblower boyfriend, plus a couple of Red Hat realtors, and hilarity ensues. The perfect summer read, Life's a Beach is a warm, witty, and wise look at what it takes to move forward at any stage in life. (From the publisher.)

About the Author Bio
• Birth—February 14, 1955
• Where—Alexandria, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Syracuse University
• Currently—Scituate, Massachusetts

Raised on Nancy Drew mysteries, Claire Cook has wanted to write ever since she was a little girl. She majored in theater and creative writing at Syracuse University and immersed herself in a number of artistic endeavors (copywriter, radio continuity director, garden designer, and dance and aerobics choreographer), yet somehow her dreams got pushed to the side for more real-life matters—like marriage, motherhood, and a teaching career. Decades passed, then one day she found herself parked in her minivan at 5 AM, waiting for her daughter to finish swim practice. She was struck with a now-or-never impulse and began writing on the spot. By the end of the season, she had a first draft. Her first novel, Ready to Fall, was published in 2000, when Cook was 45.

Since then, this "late starter" has more than made up for lost time. She struck gold with her second book, Must Love Dogs. Published in 2002, this story of a middle-aged divorcee whose singles ad produces hilariously unexpected results was declared "funny and pitch-perfect" by the Chicago Tribune and "a hoot" by the Boston Globe. (The novel got a second life in 2005 with the release of the feature film starring Diane Lane and John Cusack.) Cook's subsequent novels, with their wry, witty take on the lives of middle-aged women, have become bestsellers and book club favorites.

Upbeat, gregarious, and grateful for her success, Cook is an inspiration for aspiring writers and women in midlife transition. She tours indefatigably for her novels and genuinely enjoys speaking with fans. She also conducts frequent writing workshops, where she dispenses advice and encouragement in equal measure. "I'm extraordinarily lucky to spend my time doing what I love," she has said on countless occasions. " The workshops are a way to say thank you and open doors that I stumbled through to make it easier for writers coming up behind me.''

Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:

• I first knew I was a writer when I was three. My mother entered me in a contest to name the Fizzies whale, and I won in my age group. It's quite possible that mine was the only entry in my age group since "Cutie Fizz" was enough to win my family a six-month supply of Fizzies tablets (root beer was the best flavor) and half a dozen turquoise plastic mugs with removable handles. At six I had my first story on the "Little People's Page" in the Sunday paper (about Hot Dog, the family Dachshund) and at sixteen, I had my first front page feature in the local weekly.

• In the acknowledgments of Multiple Choice I say that even though it's probably undignified to admit it, I'm having a blast as a novelist. To clarify that, having a blast as a novelist does not necessarily mean having a blast with the actual writing. The people part—meeting readers and booksellers and librarians and the media—is very social and I'm having lots of fun with that. The writing part is great, too, once you get past the procrastination, the self-doubt, and the feelings of utter despair. It's all of the stuff surrounding the writing that's hard; once you find your zone, your place of flow, or whatever it is we're currently calling it, and lose yourself in the writing, it really is quite wonderful. I've heard writers say it's better than sex, though I'm not sure I'd go that far.

• I love books that don't wrap everything up too neatly at the end, and I think it's a big compliment to hear that a reader is left wanting more. After each novel, I hear from many readers asking for a sequel— they say they just have to find out what will happen to these people next. I think it's wonderful that the characters have come to life for them. But, for now, I think I'll grow more as a writer by trying to create another group of quirky characters. Maybe a few books down the road, I'll feel ready to return to some of them—who knows?

• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is her answer:

I get asked this question a lot on book tour, and I'm always tempted to say anything by Jane Austen or Alice Munro, just so people will know I'm well read, and sometimes I'm even tempted to say something by Gogol, just so people will think I'm really, really well read. But, alas, ultimately I tell the truth. The Nancy Drew books influenced me the most. I think they taught me a lot about pacing, and about ending chapters in such a way that the reader just can't put the book down and absolutely has to read on to the next chapter. I also think these books are responsible for the fact that I can't, for the life of me, write a chapter that's much longer than ten pages.

There's another variation of this question that I'm asked all the time on book tour: Who are your favorite authors? I always answer it the same way: My favorite authors are the ones who've been nice to me. It's so important for established authors to take emerging authors under their wings. Two who've been particularly generous to me as mentors and friends are Mameve Medwed and Jeanne Ray. Fortunately, they both happen to be very talented—and funny—so if you've somehow missed their books, you should read them immediately.

(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
A fun beach novel with moments of depth.... A delightful and surprisingly compelling page turner.
Boston Globe

As always, Cook's delightful way with dialogue and her deft demonstrations of how family members manage to support one another even while driving each other crazy, make reading this book a day at the beach.
Hartford Courant

Dive into this gleefully quirky coming-of-age story centered on.... a 41-year-old. With the help of her hippie parents, Boyfriend the cat, and a shark-crazy movie crew, Ginger Walsh is finally growing up—and there's no escaping a few growing pains.
Redbook

Midlife love, laughter, sibling rivalry and self-discovery.... Goes down as easy as it sounds.
People

Ginger Walsh, 41, has ditched her job in sales and moved above her parent's garage with a cat she calls Boyfriend—despite (or because of) her casual relationship with alluring glassblower Noah. As big sister Geri gets anxious about her impending 50th, their parents decide to sell the house, and Geri's second-grader Riley lands a small role in a horror movie being filmed in their quaint New England town. Ginger babysits Riley on the set and meets a gaffer who may be charming enough to make her forget all about Noah. Cook's wit and unflagging heart save this moderately paced beach read from its anticlimactic ending.
Publishers Weekly

In this lighthearted, breezy read, Cook displays a wry sense of humor and knows how to write realistic characters.
Library Journal

Flakey younger sis tries to shake her inability to commit. Ginger Walsh has always been envious of those possessing passion and conviction. Over the years she's blindly wandered from job to job and man to man. Now 41, Ginger is back in her hometown falling into a spinster-like existence. She freeloads off her parents and earns spare cash babysitting the kids of her annoyingly composed sister, Geri. Geri and Ginger have never gotten along, with Geri always taking the straight and narrow path and Ginger opting for the road less traveled. Now Geri's 50th birthday is looming, and she feels trapped by her roles of executive, wife and mother. As for Ginger, she wonders if her restless ways have kept her from experiencing the joys of family and a fulfilling career. When a movie crew lands in their small New England town, the sisters are given a chance to shake things up. Ginger takes Geri's kids to the movie's casting call, and though Ginger doesn't get discovered, one of Geri's kids is picked for a speaking part in the movie. Since Geri is obsessed with her career, she pawns the caretaker role off on Ginger. Ginger leaps at the chance to be a de facto stage mom. Accompanying her nephew on location will help her avoid analyzing her latest flagging romance and perhaps spark some creative energy. Soon the sisters will need each other to confront disappointment and heartbreak. While their rivalry provides a few giggles, the overall effect feels forced. Cook (Multiple Choice, 2004, etc.) ably catalogues the issues facing 40-something women, but the generic settings and tepid romances prevent this book from taking off.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Are you a Ginger? Do you have a sister just like Geri? Do you think most women you know fall into one category or the other?

2. Have you ever met an Allison Flagg in real life? Was she dead-heading a beach rose?

3. Do you think Ginger ended up with the person she was meant to be with? If you could date either Noah or the gaffer, which one would you pick and why? Do you think their characters are based on real men, and if so, do you think Claire Cook has their phone numbers?

4. The father in Life's a Beach is a bit of a dump picker. Do you have a family member who can't stay away from the dump? Is there a Take It or Leave it, a Put 'n' Take, or a Swap Shop in your town? (Or a great dumpster in your city?) What's the best thing you ever found there?

5. Ginger Walsh, the heroine of Life's a Beach, is transitioning from a life in sales to what she hopes will be a more fulfilling life as a sea glass artist. Claire Cook always wanted to be a novelist, yet didn't go after her dream until she was in her forties. If you decided to quit your current job, what dream would you pursue?

6. Who is your favorite minor character in Life's a Beach? Why?

7. Would you ever let one of your own children become a child actor? Why or why not?

8. Ginger's older sister Geri is struggling with how to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. What will/did you do for yours? Of all the ideas listed in "User's Guide to the Fun, Feisty and Fabulous" at the back of the book, which one would you most like to try?

9. When book groups met to discuss Must Love Dogs, they often served Sarah's Winey Macaroni and Cheese, made without butter, with white wine instead of milk, and served in wine glasses for best effect. What will your book group serve when discussing Life's a Beach? (Check out LitLovers book club menus. Click on America-New England. —LitLovers Ed. )

10. Which scene in Life's a Beach made you laugh the hardest? Which one brought a tear to your eye? Which one gave you the biggest jolt of recognition?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Lifeboat
Charlotte Rogan, 2012
Little, Brown and Co.
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316185905


Summary
Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow. She is also on trial for her life.

In the summer of 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying her and her husband Henry across the Atlantic suffers a mysterious explosion. Setting aside his own safety, Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die.

As the castaways battle the elements, and each other, Grace recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met, and the new life of privilege she thought she'd found. Will she pay any price to keep it?

The Lifeboat is a page-turning novel of hard choices and survival, narrated by a woman as unforgettable and complex as the events she describes. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1953?
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Princeton University
• Currently—lives in Westport, Connecticut, USA


Charlotte Rogan graduated from Princeton University in 1975. She worked at various jobs, mostly in the fields of architecture and engineering, before teaching herself to write and staying home to bring up triplets. An old criminal law text and her childhood experiences among a family of sailors provided inspiration for The Lifeboat, her first novel. After many years in Dallas and a year in Johannesburg, she and her husband now live in Westport, Connecticut. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Charlotte Rogan manages to distill this drama about what's right and wrong when the answer means life or death into a gripping, confident first novel.... Other novels have examined the conscience and guilt of a survivor among the dead, but few tales are as thoughtful and compelling as this.
Christina Ianzito - Washington Post


Set at the beginning of WWI, Rogan’s debut follows 22-year-old Grace Winter, a newlywed, newly minted heiress who survives a harrowing three weeks at sea following the sinking of her ocean liner and the disappearance of her husband, Henry. Safe at home in the U.S., Grace and two other survivors are put on trial for their actions aboard the under-built, overloaded lifeboat. At sea, as food and water ran out, and passengers realized that some among them would die, questions of sacrifice and duty arose. Rogan interweaves the trial with a harrowing day-by-day story of Grace’s time aboard the lifeboat, and circles around society’s ideas about what it means to be human, what responsibilities we have to each other, and whether we can be blamed for choices made in order to survive. Grace is a complex and calculating heroine, a middle-class girl who won her wealthy husband through smalltime subterfuge. Her actions on the boat are far from faultless, and her memory of them spotty. By refusing to judge her, Rogan leaves room for readers to decide for themselves. A complex and engrossing psychological drama.
Publishers Weekly


First-time novelist Rogan's architectural background shows in the precision with which she structures the edifice of moral ambiguity surrounding a young woman's survival during three weeks in a crowded lifeboat adrift in the Atlantic in 1914.... There are natural deaths and (reluctantly) voluntary sacrificial drownings. Dissention grows.... The lifeboat becomes a compelling, if almost overly crafted, microcosm of a dangerous larger world in which only the strong survive..
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. In disaster situations, is it right to save women and children first? What moral justifications exist for your answer?

2. Discuss the thought experiment referred to in Grace’s trial, also known as “The Plank of Carneades.” Is either the first or second swimmer to reach the plank justified in pushing the other swimmer away?

3. What do you think of the concept of necessity as a justification for behavior that would not be condoned in ordinary circumstances?

4. If you were to ask Grace what qualities she looked for in a friend, what would she say? What would the truth be?

5. Which characters, in your opinion, hold the moral high ground?

6. Seventeenth-century political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke postulated that humankind started off in a state of nature and gradually gave up certain freedoms in return for security, an exchange sometimes called the social contract. How does the lifeboat approximate a state of nature? Does survival in such a state require giving up personal freedom and autonomy?

7. Some modern writers assert that the advances in opportunities for women have been predicated on the requirement that women become more like men. Do you agree with this?

8. Are people more likely to revert to traditional male/female roles in crisis situations? What traditional male/female traits might help a person survive?

9. Author Warren Farrell, who writes about gender issues, has said: “Men’s weakness is their façade of strength; women’s strength is their façade of weakness.” Does this hold true for the characters in The Lifeboat?

10. In his book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick argues that an “authoritarian” leadership style is useful in the early stages of a disaster, but a “social” style becomes more important over time. Does this dynamic fully explain the power struggle in Lifeboat 14, or were other forces at work?

11. Does power always involve the threat of coercion? Besides violence, what forms of power influence the characters in The Lifeboat?|

12. The first thing a person says is often more honest than later explanations. Are there instances in the book where a character’s early words are a clue to assessing the truth of a particular situation or incident?

13. Do you think Mr. Hardie stole or helped to steal anything from the sinking Empress Alexandra? Would this have been wrong, given that any valuables were destined to be lost forever?

14. Should Grace have been acquitted of Mr. Hardie’s murder?

15. Comment on the use of storytelling in the novel. Does your answer shed any light on Grace’s own story?

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The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman
Scribner
345 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451681758


Summary
The debut of a stunning new voice in fiction—a novel both heartbreaking and transcendent

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast.

To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel.

Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel. (From the publisher.)

See the 2016 film version with Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbinder.
Listen to our Movies Meet Book Club Podcast as Hollister and O'Toole discuss the movie and book.

Author Bio
M.L. (Margot) Steadman was born and raised in Western Australia and now lives in London. This is her first novel. (From the publisher.)

More
Excerpt from The Age (Australia).
Her official biography comprises a single line: ''M.L. Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia and now lives in London.'' Even her first name, Margot, is concealed.

In only her second media interview, by phone from Perth, Stedman is nervous and bats back questions about her age, schooling, family and her work as a lawyer with a polite: ''I really don't want to answer that.'' Stedman later explains that she has never been one to seek out the limelight. ''As the book's not autobiographical, details of my life won't really shed light on the story for the reader and I'd much rather let readers focus on the book and their own experience of it.''

These are the dot points of her writing life that Stedman reluctantly offers for public consumption: raised and schooled in Perth, she says she always adored the artistry of words, had an affinity for them. Working in London as a lawyer in 1997, while staring at her office computer screen, she had a eureka moment, ''from God knows where'', deciding then to try creative writing. She hired a writing coach, went to Greece on a creative-writing holiday, where she wrote her first published short story, Flight, and went on to study creative writing part time at the University of London. Three novellas were published in an out-of-print anthology, Desperate Remedies, in 2008. Read more . . .

Book Reviews
As time passes the harder the decision becomes to undo and the more towering is its impact. This is the story of its terrible consequences. But it is also a description of the extraordinary, sustaining power of a marriage to bind two people together in love, through the most emotionally harrowing circumstances.
Victoria Moore - Daily Mail (UK)


This fine, suspenseful debut explores desperation, morality, and loss, and considers the damaging ways in which we store our private sorrows, and the consequences of such terrible secrets.
Martha Stewart Whole Living


(Starred review.) In Stedman’s deftly crafted debut, Tom Sherbourne, seeking constancy after the horrors of WWI, takes a lighthouse keeper’s post on an Australian island, and calls for Isabel, a young woman he met on his travels, to join him there as his wife. In peaceful isolation, their love grows. But four years on the island and several miscarriages bring Isabel’s seemingly boundless spirit to the brink, and leave Tom feeling helpless until a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living child. Isabel convinces herself—and Tom—that the baby is a gift from God. After two years of maternal bliss for Isabel and alternating waves of joy and guilt for Tom, the family, back on the mainland, is confronted with the mother of their child, very much alive. Stedman grounds what could be a far-fetched premise, setting the stage beautifully to allow for a heart-wrenching moral dilemma to play out, making evident that “Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot ’em both, and then it’s too late.” Most impressive is the subtle yet profound maturation of Isabel and Tom as characters.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Haunting...Stedman draws the reader into her emotionally complex story right from the beginning, with lush descriptions of this savage and beautiful landscape, and vivid characters with whom we can readily empathize. Hers is a stunning and memorable debut
Booklist


(Starred review.) The miraculous arrival of a child in the life of a barren couple delivers profound love but also the seeds of destruction. Moral dilemmas don’t come more exquisite than the one around which Australian novelist Stedman constructs her debut.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the novel’s title, The Light Between Oceans. Why do you think the author selected this title? What do you visualize when you hear or read The Light Between Oceans?

2. The novel is rich with detailed descriptions of the ocean, the sky, and the wild landscape of Janus Rock. Is there a particular passage or scene that stood out to you? What role does the natural world play in Tom and Isabel’s life?

3. “The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm—the turning of the light. The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you’re wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.” (page 110) Discuss the impact of living in seclusion on both Tom and Isabel. Why do you think each of them is drawn to live on Janus Rock? Do you think, in the moments when we are unobserved, we are different people?

4. When Isabel tries to get Tom to open up about his family, he responds: “I’ll tell you if you really want. It’s just I’d rather not. Sometimes it’s good to leave the past in the past.”(pages 44-45) Do you think it is possible to leave the past in the past? What do you think of Tom’s opinion that it’s a “pity” that we’re a product of our family’s past? What does this tell you about his character? Discuss the impact of family history on Tom, Isabel, Hannah, and Frank.

5. Tom is haunted by what he witnessed—and what he did—during his enlistment in World War I. The narrator reflects that he’s not “one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels….But he’s scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then.” (page 10) How do you think Tom’s experiences as a soldier impact his decisions throughout the novel? What other outside elements, like the war, influences the narrative?

6. Janus Rock is named for Janus, the Roman God of doorways, “always looking both ways, torn between two ways of seeing things.” (page 65) How does this knowledge impact your reading of The Light Between Oceans? Who is “torn between two ways of seeing things”?

7. Discuss the theme of opposites in The Light Between Oceans—darkness and light; safety and danger; land and water; truth and lies. How do these opposing forces shape your reading?

8. When Isabel brings Tom the map of Janus, complete with new names for all the locations on the island, Tom has an interesting reaction: “Janus did not belong to him: he belonged to it, like he’d heard the natives thought of the land. His job was just to take care of it.” (page 62) Discuss the difference in Tom’s point of view compared to Isabel’s. Does this difference in opinion foreshadow future events? How does it relate to their conflicting opinions of what to do with Lucy?

9. Did you sense that the silver rattle might turn out to play a pivotal role in the story?

10. Tom believes that rules are vital, that they are what keep a man from becoming a savage. Do you agree with him?

11. Which characters won your sympathy and why? Did this change over the course of the novel? Did your notion of what was best or right shift in the course of your reading?

12. Tom and Isabel’s deception impacts the lives of everyone around them. What did you think of the other characters’ reactions when they discover the truth about Lucy? Consider Hannah, Gwen, Septimus, Isabel’s parents, Ralph, Bluey.

13. Discuss Hannah’s reunion with Grace. Do you think she had fair expectations? Did you agree with Dr. Sumpton’s advice to Hannah about completely cutting Lucy off from Isabel and Tom?

14. M.L. Stedman makes it clear that there is no one perfect answer to the question of who should raise Grace/Lucy. She seems to undermine all notions of absolutes. It is clear that she will not dismiss all Germans as evil either. There is Hannah’s husband, ripe for persecution, and yet he is utterly innocent. Discuss the places in the novel where easy certainty turns out to be wrong.

15. Were you surprised by Isabel’s final decision to admit her role in the choice to keep Lucy—freeing Tom, but losing her child forever? Why or why not? What would you have done?

16. What did you think of the conclusion of the novel? What emotions did you feel at the story’s end? Did it turn out as you expected? Were you satisfied?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Light Fell
Evan Fallenberg, 2007
Soho Press
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781569475362

Summary
Twenty years have passed since Joseph left his family and his religious Israeli community when he fell in love with a man, the brilliant rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig. Now, for his fiftieth birthday, Joseph is preparing to have his five sons and the daughter-in-law he has never met spend the Sabbath with him in his Tel Aviv penthouse. This will be the first time he and his sons will have all been together in nearly two decades.

Awarded the 2009 Stonewall Prize for Fiction, the first and most enduring award for GLBT books, sponsored by the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table. (From the publisher.)

More
The sumptuous meal Joseph Licht prepares in his Tel Aviv beachfront penthouse is even better organized than his customary elegant dinner parties, but then his guests are more special than usual: in honor of his own fiftieth birthday, Joseph will host his five grown sons and his new daughter-in-law for the entire Sabbath.

It is the first time the family will be reunited in twenty years, since the day Joseph left behind his entire life—wife Rebecca, sons, father, the religious moshav where he grew up—in favor of a riveting affair with his soulmate, illui Yoel Rosenzweig, the genius rabbi of his generation. Their love affair has long since ended, but its echoes reverberate over twenty years and into the lives of Joseph, Rebecca, and their sons in ways none of them could have predicted. In this novel of desire and need, of choices and consequences, no one is unaffected. (From the author's website.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgetown University; M.F.A., Vermont
  College
• Awards—Stonewall Prize for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Israel

Evan Fallenberg the author or two books: Light Fell (2008) and When We Danced on Water (2011).

Fallenberg's recent translations include Ron Leshem's Beaufort, Batya Gur's Murder in Jerusalem, Alon Hilu's Death of a Monk and The House of Dajani, and Meir Shalev's A Pigeon and a Boy, winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award for fiction and a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. Fallenberg is an instructor in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University and heads his own Studio for Writers (and Readers) of English in the garden of his home. The recipient of a MacDowell Colony fellowship, Fallenberg is the father of two sons.

Fallenberg is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, a graduate of Georgetown University and the MFA program in creative writing at Vermont College. He has lived in Israel since 1985, where he writes, translates and teaches. His first novel, Light Fell, won the American Library Association's Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award for Literature and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award in fiction and a Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction

Book Reviews
When literature professor Joseph Licht invites his five adult sons to celebrate his 50th birthday in 1996 Tel Aviv, he hopes to win his boys' love and forgiveness by plying them with their favorite foods. From that opening in Fallenberg's ambitious debut, Joseph's life unfolds in retrospect: 20 years earlier, as a married father of five, Joseph discovers he is gay as he falls in love with a charismatic, and married, rabbi. The rabbi kills himself not long after he and Joseph start their affair, and a crushed Joseph, in one fell swoop, jettisons his marriage and adherence to Modern Orthodox Judaism. The familial repercussions are myriad and extreme, leaving Joseph's wife bereft and his sons with issues that range from low self-esteem and lack of trust to fanatical nationalism and religiosity. While Joseph and the rabbi's lovemaking is sentimentalized, and Joseph's and one son's homosexual awakenings seem abrupt, Fallenberg's descriptions of Israeli life, from the rural and academic arenas to the gay milieu, are credible and absorbing. The book adroitly sketches the heartfelt struggles of a sympathetic cast.
Publishers Weekly

Fallenberg (creative writing, Bar-Ilan Univ., Israel), who has translated the works of several renowned Israeli authors, presents his first novel, which takes place in 1996 Tel Aviv on the eve of literature professor Joseph Licht's 50th birthday. As Joseph prepares to reunite with his five sons for the first time in 20 years since he left their mother for a prominent male rabbi, flashbacks enlighten us as to the circumstances of his choice as well as to the characters of his sons, who serve as a bizarre microcosm of Israeli society, ranging from the completely secular to the ultra-Orthodox. After so much buildup, the denouement feels somewhat rushed, and several characters are little more than stereotypes. But Joseph's story, in which he eventually realizes his desires, is a compelling one. Recommended for general fiction collections.
Alicia Korenman - Library Journal

Fallenberg’s smoothly flowing observations of father-son bonds and of love of many kinds resonates on many levels.
Booklist

Love between men-fathers and sons, as well as lovers-binds a sensitive first novel of family reconciliation. Israeli academic Joseph Licht, married with five sons, is shocked to encounter a kindred soul when he meets "young Torah genius" Rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig. The intensity of their love affair compels Licht to forsake his wife Rebecca and their children at the moshav and move to a small apartment in Tel Aviv. But almost immediately Yoel commits suicide. These facts are 20 years in the past when the book opens, on Licht's 50th birthday, as he prepares a meal to which his five sons are invited, coming together for the first time in two decades. Licht has weathered many difficult years since Yoel's death, finally finding happiness with rich Pepe, a crude (but loving) hedonist, in contrast with Yoel's eloquent intellectualism. The father's departure affected his sons differently-Ethan, the army officer, learned to take responsibility early, while Gideon, the ultra-Orthodox Jew, rejects his father's homosexuality as the sin of all sins. After the elaborate meal, Licht unburdens himself, offering the boys his side of the story. Angry eldest son Daniel counters with his account of saving Rebecca from a suicide attempt. But the next day brings a confession, a paternal reprimand, a long-lost suicide note and finally a frank conversation with Daniel that reopens the door to Licht's role in his family's life. Intelligent craftsmanship confined within a theatrical, excessively tidy format.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Which character did you care about most in the story? Which one did you care about least? Why?

2. Did your attitude toward Joseph, Yoel, or Rebecca change as you got to know them? In what ways?

3. Do you think it significant that Joseph’s children were all boys? Do you think a girl might have reacted differently?

4. Near the end of the book, Joseph says, “I made a choice—the most awful, terrifying, sobering choice of my life.” Did he make a well thought out choice when he left home, or did his attraction for Yoel blind him to the consequences and propel him into a course of action he could never have envisaged previously? What choices were made by other characters in the story, and what might this tell us about the role of choice in our own lives?

5. Rebecca seems to have accepted her situation. Could things have turned out differently if she had lashed out instead of nurturing the “snake” inside her?

6. If Joseph had decided to go back to his family after Yoel died—“while we’ll still have you,” as his father said—do you think he could have resumed his former life?

7. On page 50, Yoel says, “…the doubts will creep in, and the guilt. And the guilt will last until the next time we meet, when we have begun to wonder, begun to know, in our separate prisons, that we have crossed a dangerous boundary into a country that demands too much of citizens like us—shame and abhorrence followed by complete repentance, or the shattering of our lives as we know them.” Joseph replies, “Can’t we love one another and God?” Do you think Joseph was naïve in thinking this? Did he truly believe it? How does this reflect their different attitudes to their relationship?

8. Joseph goes to visit Yoel’s widow, assuming she doesn’t know who he is and without even knowing what he's going to say to her. She greets him with the words, “My husband’s lover and assassin,” curses him, and throws him out. Yet Joseph feels“mischievous and daring” when he leaves. Why would this encounter have such an effect on him?

9. Yoel’s conflict is reflected in the way he regards their relationship: on the one hand he considers it “self-interested and hedonistic,” yet in the long letter he wrote to Joseph, treasured through all those years, he says, “It was His intention that we know each other in order to know Him, that our spiritual and physical love is the love He feels for all creation.” What was Joseph’s greatest conflict, both when he left home and in the years that followed?

10. At the “birthday dinner,” Joseph feels he must make the boys “see the unfolding of events through his eyes.” How successful is he in this? Is Joseph trying to convince them that his leaving was actually in their best interests at the time? How does each of the boys come to terms with what Joseph tells them?

11. What role does memory play in the unraveling of the story—Joseph’s memories of his boys as children; his memories of his meetings with Yoel; Daniel’s vivid memory of his mother’s “suicide attempt,” as opposed to his total lack of recollection of their outings with their father; Rebecca’s memories of their family life and of her reaction to Joseph’s leaving?

12. At the end of the book, Joseph says to Daniel, “Sometimes you just have to let go.” What do you think he means?  
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Light from Other Stars 
Erika Swyler, 2019
Bloomsbury
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781635573169


Summary
From the author of national bestseller The Book of Speculation, a poignant, fantastical novel about the electric combination of ambition and wonder that keeps us reaching toward the heavens.

Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach—if she can just grow up fast enough.

Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer.

The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.

Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she's never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else.

Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her.

Light from Other Stars is about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the cost of meaningful work. It questions how our lives have changed, what progress looks like, and what it really means to sacrifice for the greater good. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—on Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., New York University
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York


Erika Swyler is a graduate of New York University. Her short fiction has appeared in WomenArts Quarterly Journal, Litro, Anderbo.com, and elsewhere. Her writing is featured in the anthology Colonial Comics, and her work as a playwright has received note from the Jane Chambers Award.

Born and raised on Long Island's North Shore, Erika learned to swim before she could walk, and happily spent all her money at traveling carnivals. She blogs and has a baking Tumblr with a following of 60,000. Erika recently moved from Brooklyn back to her hometown, which inspired the setting of the book. The Book of Speculation is her 2015 debut novel. Light from Other Stars, her second, was published in 2019. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
In Erika Swyler’s glittering novel Light from Other Stars, Nedda has sky-high dreams of following in Judith Resnik’s footsteps but finds herself subject to the reckless whims of others.… Both external and internal landscapes—including Florida orange groves in sweltering demise, the constrictions of womanhood, and deep space—are rendered with precision.… [E]licits wonder and sadness in turn.
Foreword Reviews


A tender and ambitious journey through space and time, Light From Other Stars contains stunning twists and turns along the way from Nedda’s childhood to her later life aboard a spacecraft on a mission bound for Mars.
Vulture


Exquisite prose in an ambitious novel told in two timelines.… It's hard to imagine a sci-fi book so focused on pure, deep emotion while centered on the Earth and the wonders of space. Light from Other Stars hits big issues: loneliness, the bond between parent and child; grief; death and what happens to us after death . . . Plain and simple, I loved this book.
Midwest Book Review


A masterful story that hops through time to tell a tale of love and ambition, grief and resilience.… It is full of joy and wonder, a reminder to never stop looking up into the stars and the infinite spaces in between them.
Nylon


(Starred review) In the dual narratives of Swyler’s poignant latest, a small Florida town falls into a sinkhole in time…. Swyler’s beautiful story, told in eloquent prose, induces shivers of wonder. This meditation on time, loss, and the depth of human connection is both melancholy and astonishing.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) [Swyler] offers a moving, often heartrending story with lyrical grace.… Fans of the film Interstellar, Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach" trilogy, and character-driven drama will have a new favorite. Simply gorgeous.
Library Journal


(Starred review) [B]ends genres as it explores how the past intrudes on the present.… Although… plenty of science fiction elements, [the novel is] also a coming-of-age story.…  Swyler has set herself an ambitious task. But the novel is well-paced, with a satisfying twist near the end.
BookPage


(Starred review) Love and loss compel a brilliant scientist to defy the laws of physics.… Grand in scope and graceful in execution, Swyler's latest is at once a wistfully nostalgic coming-of-age tale and a profound work of horror-tinged science fiction.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the juxtaposition of science and faith, whether religious or otherwise, as explored in the novel.

2. For readers who are old enough to remember the Challenger disaster, what are your memories of it? How does Nedda’s experience of it compare with your own?

3. What is the significance of setting the novel in a town called Easter?

4. What do Theo and Betheen’s personal passions and career paths reveal about their characters as individuals, as well as their marriage? What role do their scientific pursuits play in their roles as parents?

5. Discuss the similarities and differences between the various parent/child relationships described in the book, particularly Denny and Nedda’s relationship with their parents. What impact do their upbringings have on Denny and Nedda as adults?

6. Do you view Theo’s motivation for building Crucible as altruistic or selfish? Why?

7. Why does Pete tell Betheen to look at the man’s car as it sinks after the accident? How does their interaction after the crash foreshadow their future relationship? How does it compare with Betheen’s instructions to Nedda during the explosion in the lab?

8. Compare and contrast Nedda’s thoughts and feelings while witnessing Denny trapped on the pruner after the explosion with Betheen’s thoughts and feelings upon seeing Theo trapped in his lab. Also, compare and contrast Theo’s experience when he gets “stuck" with Denny’s. Why do you think Swyler describes each experience the way she does?

9. Discuss the ways in which Nedda’s feelings towards each of her parents evolves over the course of the novel. Are there specific moments you can point to when her attitude towards them shift? If so, when and why do these occur?

10. Throughout the novel, there are recurring instances of characters keeping secrets from or lying to other characters in order to protect them. Do you agree with this philosophy? Discuss some of these moments and whether you feel the characters should have behaved differently.

11. Consider the different ways in which characters including Betheen, Theo, Nedda, Evgeni, and Denny grieve. Which character do you identify with the most in this regard, and why?

12. Did you have a sense of when the Chawla/ "present-day" timeline was taking place before it was revealed? Why or why not?

13. Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian origin to go to space, and died along with the rest of her crew in the Columbia disaster of 2003, nearly two decades after the Challenger disaster. What is the significance of naming Nedda’s ship after her?

14. Swyler begins and ends Light From Other Stars by quoting the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, a fighter pilot who was killed during World War II. How does this poem relate to events in the novel? In what ways, if any, do Nedda and the rest of her Chawla crew mates view themselves as soldiers?

15. Why does Nedda finally feel warm after her walk to Amadeus at the end of the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Light in August
William Faulkner, 1932
Knopf Doubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679732266


Summary  
Light in August interweaves the stories of several major characters. Lena Grove, orphaned as a young girl and living with her brother’s family, becomes pregnant by a man named Lucas Burch. Burch has gone away, supposedly to look for work, promising to send for her. Having waited for six months without a word, she sets out on foot to find him and arrives, eight months pregnant, at the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. There she finds the similarly named Byron Bunch, a man who has sought to keep himself free from sin by filling his life with work and churchgoing. At first sight, he falls in love with Lena.

Bunch’s friend, the Reverend Gail Hightower, is otherwise completely friendless in the community where he has lived for years. Haunted by a heroic vision of his great-grandfather who died in the Civil War, Hightower has forsaken his life to live in the unreal past.

The novel’s central figure is Joe Christmas, a drifter and bootlegger who has settled for a time in Jefferson. He has taken up with a garrulous new arrival called Joe Brown, who sells the whiskey for him. The two men live in an old slave cabin behind the house of Joanna Burden, an unmarried woman whose abolitionist family came to Jefferson decades before. A local man killed her grandfather and brother for interfering in the affairs of slaveholders.

Faulkner eventually draws all of these characters into the drama surrounding Joe Christmas, which accelerates to a harrowing climax. Illuminating two grim legacies in American history—fanatical Calvinism and fanatical race hatred—Light in August is a mesmerizing journey into the nightmare of race, religion, and violence in the national psyche. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—September 25, 1897
• Where—New Albany, Mississippi, USA
• Death—July 6, 1962
• Where—Byhalia, Mississippi
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 1950; 2 Pulitizer prizes; others


William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His family was rooted in local history: his great-grandfather, a Confederate colonel and state politician, was assassinated by a former partner in 1889, and his grandfather was a wealth lawyer who owned a railroad. When Faulkner was five his parents moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he received a desultory education in local schools, dropping out of high school in 1915. Rejected for pilot training in the U.S. Army, he passed himself off as British and joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918, but the war ended before he saw any service. After the war, he took some classes at the University of Mississippi and worked for a time at the university post office. Mostly, however, he educated himself by reading promiscuously.

Faulkner had begun writing poems when he was a schoolboy, and in 1924 he published a poetry collection, The Marble Faun, at his own expense. His literary aspirations were fueled by his close friendship with Sherwood Anderson, whom he met during a stay in New Orleans. Faulkner's first novel, Soldier's Pay, was published in 1926, followed a year later by Mosquitoes, a literary satire. His next book, Flags in the Dust, was heavily cut and rearranged at the publisher's insistence and appeared finally as Sartoris in 1929. In the meantime he had completed The Sound and the Fury, and when it appeared at the end of 1929 he had finished Sanctuary and was ready to begin writing As I Lay Dying. That same year he married Estelle Oldham, whom he had courted a decade earlier.

Although Faulkner gained literary acclaim from these and subsequent novels—Light in August (1932), Pylon (1935), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), The Wild Palms (1939), The Hamlet (1940), and Go Down, Moses (1942)—and continued to publish stories regularly in magazines, he was unable to support himself solely by writing fiction. he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Warner Brothers, forming a close relationship with director Howard Hawks, with whom he worked on To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Land of the Pharaohs, among other films. In 1944 all but one of Faulkner's novels were out of print, and his personal life was at low ebb due in part to his chronic heavy drinking. During the war he had been discovered by Sartre and Camus and others in the French literary world. In the postwar period his reputation rebounded, as Malcolm Cowley's anthology The Portable Faulkner brought him fresh attention in America, and the immense esteem in which he was held in Europe consolidated his worldwide stature.

Faulkner wrote seventeen books set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, home of the Compson family in The Sound and the Fury. "No land in all fiction lives more vividly in its physical presence than this county of Faulkner's imagination," Robert Penn Warren wrote in an essay on Cowley's anthology. "The descendants of the old families, the descendants of bushwhackers and carpetbaggers, the swamp rats, the Negro cooks and farm hands, the bootleggers and gangsters, tenant farmers, college boys, county-seat lawyers, country storekeepers, peddlers--all are here in their fullness of life and their complicated interrelations." In 1950, Faulkner traveled to Sweden to accept the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. In later books—Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), A Fable (1954), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), and The Reivers (1962)—he continued to explore what he had called "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself," but did so in the context of Yoknapatawpha's increasing connection with the modern world. He died of a heart attack on July 6, 1962. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
To say that Light in August is an astonishing performance is not the use the word lightly.... Not only does Faulkner emerge from this book a stylist of striking strength and beauty: he permits some of his people, if not his chief protagonist, to act sometimes out of motives which are human in their decency.... In a word, Faulkner has admitted justice and compassion to his scheme of things.
J. Donald Adams - New York Times (10/9/1932)

The critics...now tell us that his style is florid, that his plots are hard to follow, that he sometimes shows bad taste in his choice of material.... On the other hand, I can think of no other living American author who writes with the same intensity or who carries us so completely into a world of his own. There is no American author or our time who has undertaken and partly completed a more ambitious series of novels and stories..... Faulkner has been writing a sort of human comedy that was partly inspired by his reading of Balzac.
Malcolm Cowley - New York Times ( 10/29/1944)

Faulkner...belongs to the full-dressed post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust.
Edmund Wilson

For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must return to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics.
Ralph Ellison

For all the range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, [Faulkner's works] are without equal in our time and country.
Robert Penn Warren

Discussion Questions 
1. The opening chapter belongs to Lena Grove as she arrives in Jefferson. What are the core elements of Lena’s character? Does she change during the course of the novel? If Lena has a symbolic function, what is it? What, if anything, does Lena’s background explain about her character, motivations, and desires?

2. The story contains many flashbacks, shifts in temporal sequence, and shifts in the narrative point of view. How does the book’s structure affect the reading experience? In terms of prose style, what is most striking about Faulkner’s use of language and imagery?

3. Byron Bunch is a man who has tried to live in such a way that “the chance to do harm could not have found him” [p. 77]. He says to Hightower, early in the story, “a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change” [p. 75]. Yet Byron changes more than any other character. He falls in love and, in pursuit of Lena, completely alters his life. Is Byron an admirable character, and if so, how and why?

4. The critic Malcolm Cowley felt that the novel “dissolved too much into the three separate stories” [The Faulkner-Cowley File, p. 28] of Lena, Gail Hightower, and Joe Christmas. Would you agree or disagree? Do their stories come together, and if so, how? Do these characters belong in the same novel?

5. Byron says, “A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he cant escape from” [p. 75]. How does this statement relate to Joe Christmas, Joanna Burden, and Reverend Hightower? What are the various ways in which their enslavement to “dead folks” and past history determines their lives?

6. Before he kills Joanna Burden, Joe thinks, “Something is going to happen to me. I am going to do something” [p. 104]. Notice the passive and active modes of those two juxtaposed thoughts. Does Joe actively seek the fulfillment of “something awful” that he believes to be his fate? The narrator tells us, “He believed with calm paradox that he was the volitionless servant of the fatality in which he believed that he did not believe” [p. 280]. Faulkner seems to be interested in the relationship between volition and passivity in the novel; how do you understand the “paradox” of will and fate as it embraced by Joe Christmas? Are other characters similarly caught between will and fate?

7. One of Faulkner’s central preoccupations in Light in August is the legacy of Calvinism in the American psyche. In which characters is this stringent, unforgiving strain of thinking most apparent, and what are its effects? How are guilt and Calvinism linked?

8. In Light in August, womanhood and female sexuality are often described with a combination of fascination, desire, and loathing. Does this psychological attitude originate in certain characters, or does it seem to emanate from the author? Consider this question in the context of the following quotes: “He began to look about the womanroom as if he had never seen one before: the close room, warm, littered, womanpinksmelling” [Doc Hines, p. 132]; “the bodiless fecundmellow voice of negro women murmured. It was as though he and all other manshaped life about him had been returned to the lightless hot wet primogenitive Female” [Joe Christmas, p. 115]; and “Now and then she appointed trysts beneath certain shrubs about the grounds, where he would find her naked, or with her clothing half torn to ribbons upon her, in the wild throes of nymphomania” [Joanna Burden, p. 259].

9. As he takes a whipping from his foster father, Joe’s body “might have been wood or stone; a post or a tower upon which the sentient part of him mused like a hermit, contemplative and remote with ecstasy and selfcrucifixion” [pp. 159–60]. Why does Joe seek punishment from McEachern and reject the love offered by McEachern’s wife [pp. 166–69)]? Why are the fanatical and sadistic patriarchs of the novel, like Simon McEachern, Calvin Burden, and Doc Hines, so powerful?

10. What are the most startling and memorable scenes in the novel? Are these scenes extremely visual in their effects? Do they seem appropriate to, or influenced by, the genre of film?

11. Chapter 5 is told from Joe’s point of view; what insight does the reader gain into Joe’s reason for killing Joanna Burden? Does he have a clear motive? Joanna is depicted as a masculine woman, a spinster, a Northerner and a nymphomaniac. What is at the heart of Joanna’s desire for Joe, and of his desire for her?

12. Critic Eric Sundquist has remarked that “violence and sexuality determine the contours of the South’s romance of blood” and that Joe is “a character whose very physical and emotional self embodies the sexual violence of racial conflict” [William Faulkner: The House Divided, pp. 89–90]. Discuss this yoking of violence, race, and sexual thinking in the novel, particularly as it is reflected in Joe’s relationship with Joanna Burden and in Percy Grimm’s murder and castration of Joe [pp. 464–65].

13. With Percy Grimm, Faulkner himself said that he had “created a Nazi,” a “Fascist galahad who saved the white race by murdering Christmas” [qtd. in William Faulkner: The House Divided, p. 93]. “I wrote [Light in August] in 1932 before I’d ever heard of Hitler’s Storm Troopers” [Faulkner in the University, p. 41]. Discuss the ways in which Chapter 19 explores the fantasies and fanaticism of both the individual and the group. Does Grimm intend to lead a lynching or to prevent one? Does Grimm function as the executioner whose fantasy is merely an exaggerated version of what the community also believes?

14. Joe’s life is figured repeatedly as a journey along a road; returning to Mottstown, Joe feels that “he is entering it again, the street which ran for thirty years.... It had made a circle and he is still inside of it” [p. 339]. Should we see a thematic link between Lena’s journey and Joe’s? How do their wanderings differ in spirit and in function?

15. Light in August is primarily a book about racial identity, race hatred, and hysteria. Faulkner commented later that Joe “didn’t know what he was, and so he was nothing. He deliberately evicted himself from the human race because he didn’t know which he was...which to me is the most tragic condition a man could find himself in—not to know what he is and to know that he will never know” (qtd. in Light in August and the Critical Spectrum, p. 1). Are the coldness and violence in Joe’s character explained by Faulkner’s statement? How does the reader react to Joe Christmas—with empathy, with distaste, with bewilderment?

16. In The Sound and the Fury Quentin Compson says, “a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among” [p. 86]. Discuss the ways in which Joe Christmas functions among the white community as an idea, a symbol, a negative image of their own ideal selves, and not as a person. What is the effect of this function on Joe’s own subjectivity?

17. Chapter 19, which tells of Joe Christmas’s death and castration, is followed by a chapter narrated from the perspective of Gail Hightower which tells the story of his past life and his failures, ending in the present moment. What might Faulkner have meant to do by juxtaposing Hightower’s meditation with the horror that has come just before? What role does Hightower play in the novel?

18. A furniture dealer who gave Lena and Byron a lift in his wagon is the narrator of the final chapter, and their courtship is the subject of the comical tale he is telling his wife. Lena’s pursuit of the feckless Lucas Burch has also been a source of comedy. Why might Faulkner have chosen to end the novel on this note of optimism and good-humored comedy?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Light in the Ruins 
Chris Bohjalian, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
309 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307743923


Summary
A spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge—set in war-ravaged Tuscany.

1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Eighteen-year-old Cristina spends her days swimming in the pool, playing with her young niece and nephew, and wandering aimlessly amid the estate’s gardens and olive groves.

But when two soldiers, a German and an Italian, arrive at the villa asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis’ bucolic tranquility is shattered. A young German lieutenant begins to court Cristina, the Nazis descend upon the estate demanding hospitality, and what was once was their sanctuary becomes their prison.

1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence police department, has her own demons. A beautiful woman, Serafina carefully hides her scars along with her haunting memories of the war.

But when she is assigned to a gruesome new case—a serial killer targeting the Rosatis, murdering the remnants of the family one-by-one in cold blood—Serafina finds herself digging into a past that involves both the victims and her own tragic history. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—White Plains, New York, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Anahid Literary Award, 2000; New England Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Lincoln, Vermont


Christopher Aram Bohjalian, who goes by the pen name Chris Bohjalian, is an American novelist. Bohjalian is the author of 15 novels, including New York Times bestsellers Midwives, Secrets of Eden, The Law of Similars, Before You Know Kindness, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and The Night Strangers.

Bohjalian is the son of Aram Bohjalian, who was a senior vice president of the New York advertising agency Romann & Tannenholz. Chris Bohjalian graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an account representative for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York.

He and his wife lived in a co-op in Brooklyn until March 1986, when the two were riding in a taxicab in which the driver refused to let them out of the car for 45 minutes, ignoring all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight, the driver dropped them off at a near-deserted street in front of a crack house, where the police were conducting a raid and Bohjalian and his wife were forced to drop to the ground for their protection. The incident prompted the couple to move from Brooklyn; Bohjalian said, "After it was all over, we just thought, "Why do we live here?" A few days later, the couple read an ad in The New York Times referencing the "People's Republic of Vermont," and in 1987 the couple moved to Lincoln, Vermont.

Early career
After buying their house, Bohjalian began writing weekly columns for local newspaper and magazine about living in the small town, which had a population of about 975 residents. The Concord Monitor said of Bohjalian during this period, "his immersion in community life and family, Vermont-style, has allowed him to develop into a novelist with an ear and empathy for the common man." Bohjalian continued the column for about 12 years, writing about such topics as his own daily life, fatherhood and the transformation of America. The column has run in the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Bohjalian has also written for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.

Bohjalian's first novel, A Killing in the Real World, was released in 1988. Almost two decades after it was released, Bohjalian said of the book, "It was a train wreck. I hadn't figured things out yet." His third novel, Past the Bleachers, was released in 1992 and adapted as a Hallmark Channel television movie in 1995.

In 1998, Bohjalian wrote his fifth book, Midwives, a novel focusing on rural Vermont midwife Sibyl Danforth, who becomes embroiled in a legal battle after one of her patients died following an emergency Caesarean section. The novel was critically acclaimed and was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the October 1998 selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which helped push the book to great financial success. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Victoria Blewer has often described her husband as having "a crush" on the Sybil Danforth character. In 2001, the novel was adapted into a Lifetime Movie Network television film starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Spacek said the Danforth character appealed to her because "the heart of the story is my character's inner struggle with self-doubt, the solo road you travel when you have a secret."

Later career
Bohjalian followed Midwives with the 1999 novel The Law of Similars, about a widower attorney suffering from nameless anxieties who starts dating a woman who practices alternative medicine. The novel was inspired by Bohjalian's real-life visit to a homeopath in an attempt to cure frequent colds he was catching from his daughter's day care center. Bohjalian said of the visit, "I don't think I imagined there was a novel in homeopathy, however, until I met the homeopath and she explained to me the protocols of healing. There was a poetry to the language that a patient doesn't hear when visiting a conventional doctor." The protagonist, a father, is based in part on Bohjalian himself, and his four-year-old daughter is based largely on Bohjalian's daughter, who was three when he was writing the book., Liz Rosenberg of The New York Times said the novel shared many similarities with Midwives but that it paled in comparison; Rosenberg said, "Unlike its predecessor, it fails to take advantage of Bohjalian's great gift for creating thoughtful fiction featuring characters in whom the reader sustains a lively interest." Megan Harlan of The Boston Phoenix described it as "formulaic fiction" and said Bohjalian focused too much on creating a complex plot and not enough of complex characterizations. The Law of Similars, like Midwives, made the New York Times bestsellers list.

He won the New England Book Award in 2002, and in 2007 released "The Double Bind," a novel based on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

In 2008, Bohjalian released Skeletons at the Feast, a love story set in the last six months of World War II in Poland and Germany. The novel was inspired by an unpublished diary written by German citizen Eva Henatsch from 1920 to 1945. The diary was given to Bohjalian in 1998 by Henatsch's grandson Gerd Krahn, a friend of Bohjalian, who had a daughter in the same kindergarten class as Bohjalian's daughter. Bohjalian was particularly fascinated by Henatsch's account of her family's trek west ahead of the Soviet Army, but he was not inspired to write a novel from it until 2006, when he read Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, Max Hastings' history of the final years of World War II. Bohjalian was struck not only by how often Henatsch's story mirrored real-life experiences, but also the common "moments of idiosyncratic human connection" found in both. Skeletons of the Feast was considered a departure for Bohjalian because it was not only set outside of Vermont, but set in a particular historical moment.

His 2010 novel, Secrets of Eden, was also a critical success, receiving starred reviews from three of the four trade journals (Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly), as well as many newspapers and magazines. It debuted at # 6 on The New York Times bestseller list.

His next novel, The Night Strangers, published in 2011, represents yet another departure for Bohjalian. The is both a gothic ghost story and a taut psychological thriller.

He has written a weekly column for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since February 1992 called "Idyll Banter." His 1,000th column appeared in May 2011.

Personal comments
In a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview, Bohjalian offered up these personal comments:

I was the heaviest child, by far, in my second-grade class. My mother had to buy my pants for me at a store called the "Husky Boys Shop," and still she had to hem the cuffs up around my knees. I hope this experience, traumatizing as it was, made me at least marginally more sensitive to people around me.

I have a friend with Down syndrome, a teenage boy who is capable of remembering the librettos from entire musicals the first or second time he hears them. The two of us belt them out together whenever we're driving anywhere in a car.I am a pretty avid bicyclist. The other day I was biking alone on a thin path in the woods near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, and suddenly before me I saw three bears. At first I saw only two, and initially I thought they were cats. Then I thought they were dogs. Finally, just as I was approaching them and they started to scurry off the path and into the thick brush, I understood they were bears. Bear cubs, to be precise. Which is exactly when their mother, no more than five or six feet to my left, reared up on her hind legs, her very furry paws and very sharp claws raised above her head in a gesture that an optimist might consider a wave and guy on a bike might consider something a tad more threatening. Because she was standing on a slight incline, I was eye level with her stomach—an eventual destination that seemed frighteningly plausible. I have never biked so fast in my life in the woods. I may never have biked so fast in my life on a paved road.

I do have hobbies—I garden and bike, for example—but there's nothing in the world that gives me even a fraction of the pleasure that I derive from hanging around with my wife and daughter.

He lives with his wife and daughter in Lincoln, Vermont, where he is active in the local church and the Vermont theater community—always off-stage, never on.

Writing style
Bohjalian novels often focus on a specific issue, such as homelessness, animal rights and environmentalism, and tend to be character-driven, revolving around complex and flawed protagonists and secondary characters. Bohjalian uses characteristics from his real life in his writings; in particular, many of his novels take place in fictional Vermont towns, and the names of real New Hampshire towns are often used throughout his stories. Bohjalian said, "Writers can talk with agonizing hubris about finding their voices, but for me, it was in Vermont that I discovered issues, things that matter to me." His novels also tend to center around ordinary people facing extraordinarily difficult situations resulting from unforeseen circumstances, often triggered by other parties. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
The Light in the Ruins elucidates, haunts and raises moral quandaries.... Bohjalian’s historical re-telling is riveting.... A memorable read.
Claudia Puig - USA Today


Dead solid perfect. Bohjalian has written another winner.
Curt Schleier - Minneapolis Star-Tribune

 
At the heart of a good novel is a good story, and this story is a doozy. Bohjalian expertly weaves together a tale of how the war split Italy between the people who willingly collaborated with the Germans and the ones who did not.... Not every author could manage to tell a war story, throw in a serial killer and drop in several interesting romances, but Bohjalian manages.
Amanda St. Amand - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

 
Historic fiction at its very finest.... This novel moves with the heat and inexorable flow of lava. Not to be missed.
Edmund August - Louisville Courier-Journal


A must-read...stunning.... Bohjalian specializes in the suspense created when people are cut off, physically and emotionally, from society (as he did in his best-selling Midwives). Here he goes back in time to create that suspense, with a compelling female detective running from demons of her own as his heroine.
Mary Duan - Tucson Weekly


A mystery that reminds us of the harrowing choices World War II forced on so many. Beautifully structured, written with restrained intensity and suspenseful to the end, this is both a satisfying mystery and a gut-wrenching account of moral dilemma in a time of moral struggle.
People


With each book, Bohjalian flexes his literary muscles, crafting a ghost story, historical fiction, and now police procedural.... [Bohjalian] is skilled at evoking the sepia-tinged past.
Entertainment Weekly


The Rosatis’ Etruscan burial site, effectively ravaged and exploited by the Germans for its potentially priceless artifacts, becomes the metaphor for the excruciating violations unfolding across the entire continent. Similarly, Bohjalian raises questions about the nature of injustice and the, often, arbitrary codes we deploy in order to keep a firm grasp on right and wrong, good and evil, or hero and villain. The Light in the Ruins offers an engaging story that unspools in such a way as to keep the reader with her nose to the pages long after the light has actually faded.
Sheila Moeschen - New York Journal of Books


A taut, suspenseful page-turner.... Bohjalian effortlessly turns a work of historical fiction into a breathless whodunit.
Wendy Plotkin - Armenian Weekly


One of the fifteen best books of summer.... A picturesque page turner.
Good Housekeeping


The Light in the Ruins is a riveting re-creation of a time and place long gone, but not forgotten.
Valerie Ryan - Shelf Awareness


An exploration of post-WWII Italy doubles as a murder mystery in this well-crafted novel from Bohjalian. In 1952 Florence, Francesca Rosati, a dress-shop worker, is brutally murdered by a killer who carves out her heart, and Detective Serafina Bettini is assigned to solve the homicide.... [S]he learns that the family’s wartime record was more complicated than it appears.... Bohjalian tips his hand too early as to the killer’s identity, but otherwise delivers an entertaining historical whodunit.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) In 1955 Florence, Italy, a serial killer is carefully, gruesomely killing off members of the Rosati family.... [T]he murderer has something important to say about this family of noble blood.... Weaving pieces back and forth through the two time periods, ...[Bohjalian] illuminates the ruination of family, trust, and community in crisis in time of war. Verdict: Thoroughly gripping, beautiful, and astonishingly vengeful, this novel is a heartbreaker... [and] immensely rewarding. —Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal


Mastering matters subtle and grotesque, Bohjalian combines intricate plotting and bewitching sensuality with historical insight and a profound sense of place to create an exceptional work of suspense rooted in the tragic aberrations of war. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


In Bohjalian's literary thriller, the ruin of the aristocratic Rosati family is triggered by Nazi interest in an Etruscan tomb on their estate, Villa Chimera. The action ricochets between the war years...and 1955, when Francesca [Rosati]...is found brutally murdered in a seedy pensione.... Called in to investigate, Florentine detective Serafina Bettini....struggles with her own postwar nightmares.... A soulful why-done-it.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Before reading The Light in the Ruins, how much did you know about the Nazi occupation of Italy and the rise of fascism? Which historical aspects of the novel surprised you the most?
 
2. If you had been in Antonio and Beatrice’s position, would you have shown any hospitality to the Germans? How would you have navigated the grim choices such families were forced to make?
 
3. Chris Bohjalian is known for creating unique narrators. What sort of person did you picture when you read the italicized passages? How did your theories about the killer shift?
 
4. How did love flourish between Cristina and Friedrich despite their circumstances? How did they rise above their cultural differences?  What does their romance say about the human experience?
 
5. What does Enrico and Teresa’s story illustrate about the emotional cost of war? Who are the novels heroes?
 
6. Discuss Serafina’s relationship to the past. Why is she able to ignore those who accuse the Rosatis of colluding with the enemy?
 
7. How did you react to Friedrich’s compassion and sensitivity? What was it like to experience a character who so strongly defies stereotypes?
 
8. What does Vittore’s interest in archaeology say about his personality? What timeless aspects of life are captured in the novel’s artifacts? How do antiquities provide a form of immortality to the people who created them?
 
9. Discuss the novel’s title. How is it reflected in the theme of survival, albeit with physical or emotional scars? How could someone like Francesca—who was criticized for making waves—find meaning in life after so many tragic losses? Why is Villa Chimera ultimately an appropriate name for the estate?
 
10. Compare Marco and Vittore. Which one uses power more effectively? How do they perceive their heritage and their responsibilities to their families?
 
11. What are your theories about the making of a soldier like Erhard Decher? What does it take for someone to become as ruthless and as loyal as he? In what ways did his supposed strengths lead to his downfall?
 
12. In the closing scenes, when Muller orders Cristina to take him to the hideout of the partisans, would you have done as she did? Could you give your life to protect another?
 
13. Which aspects of The Light in the Ruins echo the storytelling in previous Bohjalian novels you have enjoyed?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Light Keeper's Daughter 
Jean E. Pendziwol, 2017
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062572028


Summary
Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed.

No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family—a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father's journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck.

With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenage performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together.

Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own — to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse seventy years before.

As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed. While the discovery of Morgan's connection sheds light onto her own family mysteries, the faded pages of the journals hold more questions than answers for Elizabeth, and threaten the very core of who she is. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where—Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
• Education—N/A
• Awards— Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award
• Currently—lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario


Jean E. Pendziwol was born in Thunder Bay on Lake Superior, in northwestern Ontario, Canada. She spent much of her childhood aboard her family’s sailboat, exploring the islands and bays of the inland sea. After working as a freelance writer and photographer, she spent several years focusing on raising her three children before publishing her first children’s book. She lives in Ontario, in the shadow of the Nor’Wester Mountains, with her husband, two of her three grown children, a loveable mutt, and three temperamental chickens, who sometimes lay eggs (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Morgan Fletcher is performing community service at the senior center, penance for tagging it with graffiti art. She’s matched up with Elizabeth Livingstone, an elderly woman whose mind is still sharp, even though her eyesight has failed her. Elizabeth has just been sent some journals belonging to her late father, but she needs Morgan’s help to read them. As Elizabeth uncovers details from her past with each page, Morgan becomes more determined to solve the mysteries in her own life.
New York Post


A remarkable achievement.… [A] story of commitment, identity, and familial loyalty that will leave one in tears. Five out of five stars.
New York Journal of Books


Seamlessly weaves between past and present.… I loved this story! From the characters to the setting, each aspect is perfect. The Light Keeper's Daughters is one of the best books that I’ve read this year.… [B]eautifully written.
Fresh Fiction


YA author Pendziwol pins her first story for adults to the "fortunes of chance."… This is a perfect hammock read for those who love the Brontë sisters and Jodi Picoult in equal measure.
Publishers Weekly


This atmospheric novel tells an intricate story about familial love and deception. While the story at the novel's core may lean toward the melodramatic, readers will be drawn in by the intergenerational relationship. —Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH
Library Journal


Deeply satisfying.… With strong characters and rich in historical details, The Lightkeeper’s Daughters looks carefully at love and identity and the things we do to keep them both safe.
Booklist


Pendziwol has created an intricately satisfying story about love and deception that manages to be both melancholy and exhilarating. A haunting tale of nostalgia and lost chances that is full of last-minute surprises.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
The following questions were generously provided to LitLovers by Linda of Anaheim Page Turners. Thank you, Linda!

1. What is the setting for this novel? Did you think the author portrayed the setting and the experiences of a lighthouse keeper well?

2. We first are introduced to Morgan. Describe her. What are her problems at the beginning of the story?

3. What takes Morgan to the care facility? What is she supposed to do there?

4. What attracts Elizabeth to Morgan so that she would reveal her background to a stranger?

5. How does Morgan move the story of the Livingston sisters forward and help reveal their secrets?

6. Describe the Livingston family: Elizabeth, Emily, Lil, Andrew, Peter, and Charlie.

7. Greyson and David Fletcher worked at the lighthouse at different times. How are they related to the Livingston family experiences?

8. Who were Alfred and Millie? How did they save Elizabeth and Emily? How did they enrich their lives?

9. Who said, "You should have let her die. Emily will never be right"? How did you interpret that statement? Does that statement help you understand her actions that occur later in the story?

10. Elizabeth called the year of 1942 the Year of 3 Deaths. Whose deaths was she referring to?

11. Elizabeth said, "Have I created a truth? One I can live with? Have I relived the moment so many times that my fiction is now my truth — the truth I want it to be?" What was she referring to? Have you ever repeated past events in your mind so many times, you are no longer sure what is really true and what you have convinced yourself is true?

12. How did Emily learn she was not related to Lil or Pa or Emily?

13. What happened to Emily after the fire which burned the lighthouse and killed Lil?

14. Who arranged the release of Emily? How did this change her life?

15. Who was Elizabeth really?

16. Who hid Andrew’s logbooks? And how were they found?

17. Emily was raped and became pregnant by whom? What was his motivation? How did Arnie Richardson pay for his practical joke in the Indian graveyard?

18. What did Emily name her baby? Who took the baby away? What name was she then given? What was her fate?

19. How is Morgan related to the Livingstone family? How does she bring the family full circle? Was David Fletcher actually her grandfather?

20. The wolf mentioned throughout the novel is a symbol of what?

20. What theme or message did you take away from this story?

21. Did you enjoy the story? Why or why not?   

(Questions submitted to LitLovers by Linda of Anaheim Page Turners. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)

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The Light of Paris 
Eleanor Brown, 2016
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399158919


Summary
Madeleine is trapped—by her family's expectations, by her controlling husband, and by her own fears—in an unhappy marriage and a life she never wanted. From the outside, it looks like she has everything, but on the inside, she fears she has nothing that matters.

In Madeleine’s memories, her grandmother Margie is the kind of woman she should have been—elegant, reserved, perfect. But when Madeleine finds a diary detailing Margie’s bold, romantic trip to Jazz Age Paris, she meets the grandmother she never knew: a dreamer who defied her strict, staid family and spent an exhilarating summer writing in cafés, living on her own, and falling for a charismatic artist.

Despite her unhappiness, when Madeleine’s marriage is threatened, she panics, escaping to her hometown and staying with her critical, disapproving mother. In that unlikely place, shaken by the revelation of a long-hidden family secret and inspired by her grandmother’s bravery, Madeleine creates her own Parisian summer—reconnecting to her love of painting, cultivating a vibrant circle of creative friends, and finding a kindred spirit in a down-to-earth chef who reminds her to feed both her body and her heart.

Margie and Madeleine’s stories intertwine to explore the joys and risks of living life on our own terms, of defying the rules that hold us back from our dreams, and of becoming the people we are meant to be. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Born—ca. 1973
• Where—outside Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—M.A., in literature
• Currently—lives outside Denver, Colorado


Eleanor Brown is the author of two novels: The Light of Paris (2016) and The Weird Sisters (2011), which became a New York Times bestseller, receiving both popular and critical praise. Her writing has also appeared in anthologies, magazines, and journals.

She was born in the Washington D.C. area, one of three sisters. She taught middle school for seven years, earned an M.A. in literature, and now teaches writing workshops in the Denver, Colorado, area. She lives with thriller writer J.C. Hutchins.

Book Reviews
Fresh, endearing…finely written and absorbing, and explores the always compelling questions of how to balance reality and romance, duty and dreams, family and freedom.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


A story about love, marriage, divorce, self-discovery and how things often turn out far from what you had planned.
Fort Worth Telegram


Stylistically less daring than Brown's previous title (The Weird Sisters), this book still manages to plumb the difference between the things in life that give us joy and the things that we do to stifle that joy. Verdict: For all fans of intelligent women's literature. —Jennifer Mills, Shorewood-Troy Lib., I
Library Journal


Brown’s novel tackles an age-old question about what life would be like if we took more chances….Makes readers sit up and take notice.
Romance Times


Brown conveys the miseries and satisfactions of women's journeys toward happiness.... While some characters—or their motivations—might have benefited from more fleshing out..., the whimsy and romance of post-World War I Paris and Madeleine's growing [confidence]...provide forward momentum.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The city of Paris becomes a character in its own right throughout the novel. What is the significance of Paris to the story itself? What does it mean to Margie when she lives there and to Madeleine as she reads about it?

2. What are the family patterns that are carried through the three generations of women—Margie, Simone, and Madeleine? How are they similar and how are they different?

3. Madeleine has a difficult relationship with her mother, Simone. Did you feel sympathy for Simone at any point? Have you experienced a mother-daughter dynamic like this in your own life?
4. How are Margie and Madeleine’s relationships with their mothers similar? How are they different? Do you think the habit of parents placing expectations on their children is a breakable pattern?

5. Madeleine and Margie want independent lives, but both have been very sheltered. In what ways are they prepared or unprepared for the realities that face them?

6. The story takes place during two different time periods: 1924 and 1999. What do those years have in common, and how do they affect the story?

7. Madeleine escapes to her home town of Magnolia in the same way that Margie escapes to Paris. Do these two cities have anything in common? How are they different? Do they impact Madeleine and Margie in similar or different ways?

8. Margie wants to write, Madeleine to paint. How does their art affect both their lives and what happens in the story?

9. Did Margie make the right choice? What were the consequences of her decision?

10. At the end of the novel, Madeleine gets a studio to paint in—a room of her own. What is the significance of this space for Madeleine? How does it affect her character?

11. How have circumstances for women changed between the different time periods of Margie and Madeleine’s stories? In what way are they the same?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Light of the World 
Elizabeth Alexander, 2015
Grand Central Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455599875


Summary
A deeply resonant memoir for anyone who has loved and lost, from acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander.

In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss.

As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons, Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning and acceptance in the wake of loss.

The Light of the World is at once an endlessly compelling memoir and a deeply felt meditation on the blessings of love, family, art, and community. It is also a lyrical celebration of a life well-lived and a paean to the priceless gift of human companionship. For those who have loved and lost, or for anyone who cares what matters most, The Light of the World is required reading. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 30, 1962
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Rasied—Washington, DC
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Boston University; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award; numerous fellowships
• Currently—lives in New Haven, Connecticut


Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, essayist, playwright and a university professor. She is also the author of a memoir, The Light of the World (2015)

Alexander was born in Harlem, New York City. After she was born, the family moved to Washington, D.C. She was just a toddler when her parents brought her in March 1963 to the March on Washington, site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have A Dream" speech. Alexander recalled that "Politics was in the drinking water at my house."

She is the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman Clifford Alexander, Jr. and Adele (Logan) Alexander, a teacher of African-American women's history at George Washington University and writer. Her brother Mark C. Alexander was a senior adviser to the Barack Obama presidential campaign and a member of the president-elect's transition team.

She was educated at Sidwell Friends School, and graduated in 1980. From there she went to Yale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1984.

She studied poetry at Boston University under Derek Walcott and got her Master's in 1987. Her mother had said to her, "That poet you love, Derek Walcott, is teaching at Boston University. Why don't you apply?" Alexander originally entered studying fiction writing, but Walcott looked at her diary and saw the poetry potential. Alexander said, "He gave me a huge gift. He took a cluster of words and he lineated it. And I saw it."

In 1992, she received her PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. While she was finishing her degree, she taught at nearby Haverford College from 1990 to 1991.

At this time, she would publish her first work, The Venus Hottentot. The title comes from Sarah Baartman, a 19th-century South African woman of the Khoikhoi ethnic group. Elizabeth is an alumna of the Ragdale Foundation.

After College
While a graduate student, she was a reporter for the Washington Post for a year (1984-85. She soon realized that "it wasn't the life I wanted." She began teaching at University of Chicago in 1991 as an assistant professor of English. Here she would first meet future president Barack Obama, who was a senior lecturer at the school's law school from 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004. While in Chicago in 1992, she won a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1996, she published a volume of poetry, Body of Life and a verse play, Diva Studies, which was staged at Yale University. She also became a founding faculty member of the Cave Canem workshop which helps develop African-American poets.

In 1997, she received the University of Chicago's Quantrell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Later in that year, she moved to Massachusetts to teach at Smith College. She became the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in-Residence and the first director of the college's Poetry Center.

In 2000, she returned to Yale University, where she would teach African-American studies and English. She also released her third poetry collection, Antebellum Dream Book.

In 2005, she was selected in the first class of Alphonse Fletcher Foundation fellows and in 2007-08, she was an academic fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

Since 2008, Alexander has chaired the African American Studies department at Yale. She currently teaches English language/literature, African-American literature and gender studies at Yale.

Works
Alexander's poems, short stories and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals such as: The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Village Voice,  Women's Review of Books, and Washington Post. Her play, Diva Studies, which was performed at the Yale School of Drama, garnered her a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.

Her 2005 volume of poetry, American Sublime was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize of that year. Alexander is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays entitled The Black Interior.

Alexander received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry in 2010.

Obama Inauguration
On January 20, 2009, at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, Alexander recited the poem "Praise Song for the Day," which she composed for the occasion. She became only the fourth poet to read at an American presidential inauguration, after Robert Frost in 1961, Maya Angelou in 1993 and Miller Williams in 1997.

The announcement of her selection was favorably received by her fellow poets, including Maya Angelou. The Poetry Foundation also hailed the choice: "Her selection affirms poetry's central place in the soul of our country."

Though the selection of the widely unknown poet, who was a personal friend of Obama, was lauded, the actual poem and delivery were met with a poor reception. The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times Book editor, and most critics found that "her poem was too much like prose," and that "her delivery [was] insufficiently dramatic." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune found the poem "dull, 'bureaucratic' and found it proved that "the poet's place is not on the platform but in the crowd, that she should speak not for the people but to them."

Personal life
On a 2010 PBS episode of Faces of America, it was revealed, that Alexander is a lineal cousin of Stephen Colbert. The revelation was based on DNA analysis by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. Her paternal grandfather came to the United States in 1918 from Kingston, Jamaica.

She was married to Ficre Ghebreyesus until his death in April 2012. She lives with their two sons in New Haven, Connecticut. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Alexander was devastated by the death of her artist husband, who died of cardiac arrest at age 50.... This memoir is an elegiac narrative of the man she loved.... Alexander is grateful, patient, and willing to pursue a fit of magical thinking that he might just return.
Publishers Weekly


Expect truth and beauty in this heartrending memoir from poet Alexander, a Pulitzer Prize finalist who recited her "Praise Song for the Day" at President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.
Library Journal


A distinguished poet meditates on the early death of her beloved artist husband.... At the same time, she celebrates how the love she and Ficre shared.... In letting go of—but never forgetting—her husband, Alexander realizes a simple truth: that death only deepens the richness of a life journey that must push on into the future. A delicate, existentially elegiac memoir.
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 Light We Lost 
Jill Santopolo, 2017
Penguin Publishing
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735212756


Summary
He was the first person to inspire her, to move her, to truly understand her. Was he meant to be the last?

Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story—their story—at the very beginning.

Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter.

When they meet again a year later, it seems fated—perhaps they’ll find life’s meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East and Lucy pursues a career in New York.

What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, of love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other’s hearts.

This devastatingly romantic debut novel about the enduring power of first love, with a shocking, unforgettable ending, is Love Story for a new generation. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981
• Raised—Hewlett, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University; M.F.A., Vermont College of Fine Ats
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Jill Santopolo is the author of children's and young-adult books, as well as adult novels, including The Light We Lost (2017) and More Than Words (2019).  She grew up in Hewlett New York, on the South Shore of Long Island.

Santopolo received a BA in English literature from Columbia University and an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. In addition to her work as the editorial director of Philomel Books (an imprint of Penguin Young Readers group), she is an adjunct professor in The New School’s MFA program. Santopolo lives in New York City and  travels the world to speak about writing and storytelling. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
This moving story is a perfect understanding of the sacrifices we make for love and for our dreams.
Real Simple

It’s the epic love story of 2017 and the ending is one you’ll be feeling for months to come.
Redbook

Your new tearjerker has arrived: Fans of Me Before You and One Day will love/weep over this elegant novel.
New York Post

Have your tissues ready…This book will sink its hooks into your heart on page one, and leave you scarred long after you're done.
Bustle


The scale of this book's ambition is matched only by Santopolo's flawless execution. 9/11, love, sex, war, Shakespeare, American foreign policy—The Light We Lost has it all, illuminating so much of what our generation and what we in the media have lived through for fifteen years. The arc of this book, from the fall of the Twin Towers to a love letter written from the Middle East, gracefully and tragically charts the course not only of a genuine and deep love, but also that of our country and of our collective identities. It is memorable and haunting, because it is authentic and so close to home.
Nick Schifrin, PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent, NPR Correspondent


A children's/YA author and editorial director of Philomel Books, Santopolo goes adult with the story of Lucy and Gabe, who meet one fateful day as seniors at Columbia University and face more than a decade of love, jealousy, and turmoil.
Library Journal


Comparisons will be made to David Nicholls’ One Day, but there is something more romantic here—yet also more grounded—that will draw readers in.
Booklist


(Starred review.) Santopolo explores passion, fate, love, and what it means to truly be a good person. She raises questions readers will find themselves pondering long after they've turned the last page.… A beautiful and devastating story that will captivate readers.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The novel begins on September 11, 2001, a day in which history and Lucy’s life both change. Is there a day in your own life that you’ll never forget?

2. Lucy calls her love for Gabe “all-consuming and powerful” (p. 321). Was there a time in your life when you felt like this? Do you remember your own first love? How do you feel about that person now?

3. The novel explores how the choices we make can lead us to very different lifestyles. Do you think Lucy regrets any of her choices? Have you made a decision that has changed the course of your life drastically? If so, what was it? How do you feel about it now?

4. When talking to Lucy, Jay compares his explosive first relationship to the gummy bear experiment and his marriage to Vanessa to the Old Nassau experiment. He tells Lucy that “there are lots of ways to love people” (p. 80). Do you agree with Jay? Why or why not? Do you prefer one of these relationships in your own life?

5. Did you have a favorite man in the novel—Gabe or Darren? Who would you pick in the end?

6. Lucy and her friend Kate use the metaphor of fire to discuss the relationships in their lives—some are wildfires and some are hearth fires or bonfires (p. 138). Do you think the metaphor works? Is there one kind of relationship, or fire, that you wish you could find?

7. Lucy thinks, “There are so many moments that change a person’s world. Some are because of a decision that’s made. Others, I think, might be because of the universe, fate, God, a higher power, whatever you want to call it” (p. 291). How do you feel about Lucy’s approach to fate and free will? Do you believe in fate? Why or why not?

8. How is marriage portrayed in the novel? How did you feel when Gabe and Lucy reconnected? Were you surprised by Lucy’s reaction to Gabe?

9. Lucy is a loving mother, but she also balances a successful career in television, which Darren doesn’t always support. Were you frustrated with Darren’s priorities for Lucy, or were there times you agreed? How did you feel about Darren’s “paper doll” philosophy for finding a wife? How do you think this philosophy affected Lucy?

10. How did you feel about Gabe’s photography exhibit Light? Were you surprised? How does Gabe’s art shape the way he lives? How does it shape the way Lucy lives

11. What do you think about the way the novel ends?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Lightkeepers 
Abby Geni, 2016
Counterpoint Press
340 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781619026001


Summary
A luminous debut novel from a talented and provocative new writer.

In The Lightkeepers, we follow Miranda, a nature photographer who travels to the Farallon Islands, an exotic and dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one-year residency capturing the landscape.

Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions; they document the fish populations around the island, the bold trio of sharks called the Sisters that hunt the surrounding waters, and the overwhelming bird population who, at times, create the need to wear hard hats as protection from their attacks.

Shortly after her arrival, Miranda is assaulted by one of the inhabitants of the islands. A few days later, her assailant is found dead, perhaps the result of an accident.

As the novel unfolds, Miranda gives witness to the natural wonders of this special place as she grapples with what has happened to her and deepens her connection (and her suspicions) to her companions, while falling under the thrall of the legends of the place nicknamed “the Islands of the Dead.” And when more violence occurs, each member of this strange community falls under suspicion.

The Lightkeepers upends the traditional structure of a mystery novel—an isolated environment, a limited group of characters who might not be trustworthy, a death that may or may not have been accidental, a balance of discovery and action—while also exploring wider themes of the natural world, the power of loss, and the nature of recovery. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Friends of American Writers Literary Award
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois


Abby Geni is a graduate of Oberlin University and the Iowa Writers Workshop as well as the recipient of an Iowa Fellowship. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and was listed in The Best American Stories 2010. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. (From the publisher.)

Read author interview with Midwestern Gothic.

Book Reviews
Readers [...] will find themselves carried along by a sturdy, rather old-fashioned thriller ramped up by some modern, ecologically themed plot twists.... The plot is structured like that of a horror film, moving from one alarming event to another, and in between, maintaining a tension around the question of how much worse the situation will get... [a] peculiar, atmospheric novel.... It's become customary—the fallback consolation of the book reviewer—to say that one is eager to see what a writer will do next. But in fact that is the case here. Ultimately, what engages us in The Lightkeepers, beyond its energetic plot, is the sense of watching its author discover her ability to construct a suspenseful narrative. And we finish this novel curious to find out what sorts of stories Abby Geni will choose to tell.
Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review


With The Lightkeepers, Geni joins the ranks of Barbara Kingsolver and Annie Proulx—novelists for whom nature is a driving narrative force instead of a backdrop. However, Geni’s debut is a few shades darker than Prodigal Summer or Close Range, and instead of Kingsolver and Proulx’s architectural prose, Geni writes in small, perfect sentences stripped of ornamentation, often single clauses. It’s a beautiful effect; pages pass quickly and effortlessly. By the novel’s end, you’ll crave another journey with Geni to some other wild, forgotten corner of the globe.
Chicago Review of Books


[A] dazzlingly unsettling first novel.... The language is as startlingly rich as the terrain, making you look at everything as if you had never seen it before.... Geni expertly propels her story into a breathtakingly shocking climax. The nature she describes has no sense of right or wrong. And what’s more frightening, neither do her characters, and in this stunning debut, both pull you in and hold you like a riptide.
Caroline Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle


Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, part ode to one of the western world's wildest landscapes, this dark, compelling tale is an astonishingly ambitious debut.... Like many literary classics and novels that are destined to be classics, The Lightkeepers raises questions about humanity that are anything but light. Unlike many classics, it's an accessible page-turner whose surprises, both fictional and stylistic, unfold so satisfyingly that the novel is also a pleasure to read.
Meredith Maran - Chicago Tribune


Geni's haunting debut takes place on an island just 30 miles from San Francisco, but it might as well be another planet—killer sharks circle the water, violent birds rip the skin off of seals and peck humans in the head, and the waters are so rough, there isn't even a dock for boats. Miranda, a nature photographer, applies for short-term residence on the island, living in a cabin with a few quirky biologists. But things change when she suffers a violent attack—and then her attacker is mysteriously killed the next day. Geni's writing about the natural world is marvelous and her atmospheric novel is not to be missed.
Entertainment Weekly


[V]iolence in the small community seems to be everywhere, and everyone and everything seems culpable.
Marie Claire


Spending a year documenting the harsh beauty of California’s Farrallon Islands is a dream come true for photographer Miranda—until her idyll turns deadly.
People


(Starred review.) [An] evocative and enchanting debut novel...[set on an] archipelago off the coast of San Francisco.... [Geni] writes with the clear, calm confidence of a master storyteller. This is a haunting and immersive adventure.
Publishers Weekly


A novel filled with wide-open spaces and also a creeping claustrophobia. The setting takes on the role of a character, and the Farallons are masterfully brought to life on the page through Geni’s luminous prose. There is a soothing, hypnotic quality to Geni’s writing—and an unexpected tenderness, too, one that belies the thick sense of malice and increasing sense of dread that swirls about Miranda’s island home…Riveting from beginning to end, The Lightkeepers is unsettling in all the best ways.
Book Page


(Starred review.) Miranda's travelogue [is]at once emotional and dreamy and rendered in crisp, stunning prose.... Geni may be unmatched in her ability to describe nature.... Natural wildness, human unpredictability, and the subtle use of literary devices are woven here into a remarkable, vertiginous web
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 Light Keepers...then take off on your own:

1. Describe Farallon: the weather, animal populations (birds, sharks, and rodents), its stream, even the granite bed rock. In what way does the archipelago itself become a character rather than simply a setting in the novel? Also, consider Farallon's history, as well as how it got its epithet— "Island of the Dead."

2. Follow up to Question #1: If you are familiar with the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds (based on a Daphne du Maurier short story), what are some of the parallels between the film and The Lightkeepers?

3. How would you describe Miranda? Why, for instance, is the isolation of the Farallon Islands suited to her personality? How does she eventually find her way out of her seclusion? In other words, how does she change by the novel's end?

4. Talk about the letters Miranda writes to her mother. What purpose do they serve in the story, and what do they reveal about Miranda (both the fact that she writes them and the content of the letters themselves)?

5. Miranda's relationship with her fellow housemates has "the dynamic of a family, minus any semblance of warmth." How would you describe the various characters in that "family"—Andrew and Lucy, Galen, Mick, Forest, and Charlene—and their relationships with one another?

6. Miranda finds comfort, even relief, from the others in the natural world of Farallon. What are some of the connections she makes with creatures. How does she come to view the biologists and their relationship to nature? What effect do their studies have on island life?

7. Were you surprised by the novel's climax? Do you find it somewhat implausible? If so, does it detract from your enjoyment of the novel?

8. What is the derivation of the book's title—The Lightkeepers. Who, in the novel, are the eggers and who are the lightkeepers?

9. Is there an underlying message within the book? What major issues are raised?

10. Bonus question: For Shakespeare lovers: Miranda's name?

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use these, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Lights All Night Long 
Lydia Fitzpatrick, 2019
Penguin Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525558736


Summary
A gripping and deftly plotted narrative of family and belonging, Lights All Night Long is a dazzling debut novel from an acclaimed young writer.

Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student.

The abundance of his new world—the Super Walmarts and heated pools and enormous televisions—is as hard to fathom as the relentless cheerfulness of his host parents.

And Sadie, their beautiful and enigmatic daughter, has miraculously taken an interest in him.

But all is not right in Ilya's world: he's consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown.

The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their town's seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison.

With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimir's descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect him—a truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind.

A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Awards—Wallace Stegner Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Lydia Fitzpatrick's work has appeared in the The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant.

Fitzpatrick graduated from Princeton University and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.  (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
A luminous debut.… Fitzpatrick does so many things right in Lights All Night Long, it’s hard to believe it’s a debut novel. As a mystery, it’s paced perfectly, with the novel moving seamlessly back and forth in time between Ilya’s life in Russia and his new one in America. Fitzpatrick proves to be an expert in building suspense; it’s hard not to read the book in a single sitting.… It’s tricky to capture the specific, sometimes difficult language that brothers use to let each other know they care, but Fitzpatrick manages to do so perfectly, and it makes their relationship all the more beautiful and affecting. Lights All Night Long is both an expertly crafted mystery and a dazzling debut from an author who’s truly attuned to how families work at their darkest moments.… An excellent novel from an author who seems to be at the beginning of an impressive career.
Los Angeles Times

 
Formidably accomplished.… Fitzpatrick sharply examines the cheapness of life while at the same time flagging up and homing in on various redemptive riches, from brotherly bonds to cross-cultural relations to the pursuit of justice.… Few debut novels are so tightly plotted and powerfully written.… A gripping, emotional journey.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


This vivid coming-of-age novel spools out an engrossing mystery amid a tender story about family ties and adopted homes.
Esquire


[G]littering…. The murder mystery is intricate and well-crafted, but the highlight is the relationship between the two brothers…. [A] heartbreaking novel about the lengths to which people go to escape their own pain, and the prices people are willing to pay to alleviate the suffering of their loved ones.
Publishers Weekly


Fitzpatrick’s remarkable debut novel is a coming-of-age narrative interwoven with a gripping mystery.
Shelf Awareness


(Starred review) Beyond the brothers’ crystalline characterizations, Fitzpatrick gifts her intriguing debut with elegant prose, affecting images, and rich settings.
Booklist


A poised, graceful literary debut… An absorbing tale imparted with tenderness and compassion.
Kirkus Reviews


[T]hat rare work of fiction that gathers page-turning momentum from its prose as much as its plot. Fitzpatrick’s writing, accessible yet exquisite, relies on surgically precise metaphors for a lot of heavy emotional lifting.… Darkly beautiful, melancholic but not bleak, Lights All Night Long is storytelling at its finest. Fitzpatrick has written a compelling novel full of intimately portrayed, easy-to-love characters whose spoiled joys and resurgent hopes will linger with readers.
BookPage

Discussion Questions
1. Ilya arrives in Leffie and finds nearly everything about it foreign and strange, from the Masons’ church to the swimming pool that’s lit up at night. Have you had a similar fish-out-of-water experience in an entirely new setting? What specific features about your new surroundings seemed most strange to you?

2. One of the primary themes of the novel is the complexity of Ilya and Vladimir’s relationship. What are the different forms that their brotherly bond takes, and what circumstances cause that bond to shift and change?

3. Berlozhniki and Leffie are different in so many ways. What are some ways that they might be more similar than it seems at first glance?

4. Very soon after Ilya arrives, he and Sadie find themselves to be kindred spirits. What do you think draws them together so strongly?

5. Gabe Thompson is an enigmatic supporting character in the novel. What do you take from his short-lived experience in Berlozhniki, and what do you make of the model he builds of the town upon his return home?

6. Their role in solving the murders aside, what role do you think The Adventures of Michael & Stephanie English-language tapes serve in Ilya’s life, first in Berlozhniki and then once he arrives in Leffie?

7. How would you describe the growth or change that Ilya undergoes during his first year in the United States?

8. Throughout the novel, Ilya experiences powerful feelings of homesickness for Berlozhniki, but by its end, he’s come to think of Leffie as a kind of home as well. What do you think this says about what "home" means to us, and do you think more than one place can be a true home to the same person?

9. Mothers play a very large role in this story. How do you think the personalities of Sadie, Ilya, and Vladimir have been shaped by their mothers?

10. Vladimir’s story ends with devastating finality, but Ilya’s story is left open-ended. What do you think happens to Ilya after the novel ends? How about Sadie and her mother, or Maria Mikhailovna?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Like a Mother:  A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
Angela Garbes, 2018
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062662941


Summary
A candid, feminist, and personal deep dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and motherhood.

Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant.

What exactly is a placenta and how does it function? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? Is wine totally off-limits?

But as she soon discovered, it’s not easy to find satisfying answers. Your obstetrician will cautiously quote statistics; online sources will scare you with conflicting and often inaccurate data; and even the most trusted books will offer information with a heavy dose of judgment.

To educate herself, the food and culture writer embarked on an intensive journey of exploration, diving into the scientific mysteries and cultural attitudes that surround motherhood to find answers to questions that had only previously been given in the form of advice about what women ought to do—rather than allowing them the freedom to choose the right path for themselves.

In Like a Mother, Garbes offers a rigorously researched and compelling look at the physiology, biology, and psychology of pregnancy and motherhood, informed by in-depth reportage and personal experience.

With the curiosity of a journalist, the perspective of a feminist, and the intimacy and urgency of a mother, she explores the emerging science behind the pressing questions women have about everything from miscarriage to complicated labors to postpartum changes.

The result is a visceral, full-frontal look at what’s really happening during those nine life-altering months, and why women deserve access to better care, support, and information.

Infused with humor and born out of awe, appreciation, and understanding of the female body and its strength, Like a Mother debunks common myths and dated assumptions, offering guidance and camaraderie to women navigating one of the biggest and most profound changes in their lives. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977
• Raised—in the state of Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Barnard College
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington


Angela Garbes (GARB-es) is a Seattle-based writer specializing in food, bodies, women’s health, and issues of racial equity and diversity. Garbes began writing for Seattle's newsweekly, The Stranger, in 2006, and became a staff writer in 2014.

Her piece “The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am” is the publication’s most-read piece in its twenty-four-year history, and the inspiration for this book.

Garbes is an experienced public speaker, frequent radio and podcast guest, and event moderator. She grew up in a food-obsessed, immigrant Filipino household iin a small town in Pennsylvania and now lives in Seattle with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
An empowering resource…Garbes shares up-to-date, well-substantiated information about women’s physical and mental health, aiming to help readers reduce their anxiety and make truly informed choices.
Publishers Weekly


In spite of how long women have been giving birth, there is a lot of misinformation out there about pregnancy and motherhood. Angela Garbes seeks to get it straight in Like a Mother. She not only corrects misinformation but offers advice and support.
Bustle

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 LIKE A MOTHER … then take off on your own:

1. What did you learn about pregnancy, giving birth, and being a new mother that you were unaware of before reading Angela Garbes's Like A Mother?

2. Talk about the remarkable abilities of both the placenta and beast milk. What surprised you most about the way each functions?

3. If you have given birth, talk about your own experiences compared to the author's. If you have yet to give birth but hope to, does Like a Mother put you at ease by providing needed information … or does it increase your anxiety by providing too much information?

4. Do you agree with Garbes that women deserve more information, compassion, and support surrounding child birth?

5. How, specifically, does Garbes fault postpartum care and treatment for mothers? What is missing?

6. Garbes also believes that woman should be given more autonomy. What does she mean? Do you agree?

7. How would you describe current American attitudes toward pregnancy and motherhood? In what way are we more enlightened than we were in previous generations? Where is there room for improvement in Garbes's eyes?

8. On page 230 Garbes writes about pregnancy as akin to opening an intricately folded piece of paper. Do you like her imagery? Can you think of other metaphors that apply?
 
9. How familiar were you with the role of doulas in childbirth?

10. Garbes writes with a fair amount of humor: what are some of the passages that made you laugh out loud?

11. Is this a book you wish you had read when you were pregnant?

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

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Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments, with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies
Laura Esquivel, 1989 (Eng. trans., 1992)
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385420174


Summary
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.

The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup.

This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 30, 1950
• Where—Mexico
• Education—N/A
• Awards—ABBY Award by American Booksellers
   Association; 11 Ariel Awards by the Mexican
   Academy of Motion Pictures (for the film)
• Currently—lives in Mexico


Laura Esquivel is a Mexican author making a noted contribution to Latin-American literature. She was born the third of four children of Julio Cesar Esquivel, a telegraph operator, and Josefa Valdes.

First novel
In her first novel Like Water for Chocolate (1989), Esquivel uses magical realism to combine the ordinary and the supernatural, similar to Isabel Allende. The novel, taking place during the revolution in early twentieth century Mexico, shows the importance of the kitchen in Esquivel's life. The book is divided into twelve sections, named after the months of the year, each section beginning with a Mexican recipe. The chapters outline the preparation of the dish and ties it to an event in the protagonist's life.

Esquivel believes that the kitchen is the most important part of the house and characterizes it as a source of knowledge and understanding that brings pleasure. The "title refers to a colloquial phrase used by the Spanish that means an extremity of feeling. It refers to a boiling point in terms of anger, passion and sexuality." The idea for the book came to Esquivel "while she was cooking the recipes of her mother and grandmother." Reportedly, Esquivel ...

used an episode from her own family to write her book. She had a great-aunt named Tita, who was forbidden to wed. Tita never did anything but care for her own mother. Soon after her mother died, so did Tita.

Like Water for Chocolate was developed into a film in 1994, becoming one of the largest grossing foreign films ever released in the US. Esquivel earned 11 Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures.

Other writings
Esquivel's second novel, The Law of Love (1996), takes place in the twenty-third century Mexico City and combines romance and science fiction. Reportedly, "the theme of romantic love, particularly love thwarted, appears repeatedly throughout her novels, as does the setting in Mexico."

Between Two Fires (2000) featured essays on life, love, and food. Her 2006 novel, Malinche, "explores the life of a near mythic figure in Mexican history—the woman who served as Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez's interpreter and mistress" as he fought to overthrow the Aztecs.

Personal life
Esquivel was once married to actor and director Alfonso Arau.  She currently lives in Mexico City. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Each chapter of screenwriter Esquivel's utterly charming interpretation of life in turn-of-the-century Mexico begins with a recipe—not surprisingly, since so much of the action of this exquisite first novel (a bestseller in Mexico) centers around the kitchen, the heart and soul of a traditional Mexican family. The youngest daughter of a well-born rancher, Tita has always known her destiny: to remain single and care for her aging mother. When she falls in love, her mother quickly scotches the liaison and tyrannically dictates that Tita's sister Rosaura must marry the luckless suitor, Pedro, in her place. But Tita has one weapon left—her cooking. Esquivel mischievously appropriates the techniques of magical realism to make Tita's contact with food sensual, instinctual and often explosive. Forced to make the cake for her sister's wedding, Tita pours her emotions into the task; each guest who samples a piece bursts into tears. Esquivel does a splendid job of describing the frustration, love and hope expressed through the most domestic and feminine of arts, family cooking, suggesting by implication the limited options available to Mexican women of this period. Tita's unrequited love for Pedro survives the Mexican Revolution the births of Rosaura and Pedro's children, even a proposal of marriage from an eligible doctor. In a poignant conclusion, Tita manages to break the bonds of tradition, if not for herself, then for future generations.
Publishers Weekly


Take one part Whitney Otto's How To Make an American Quilt (1991), add a smidgen of magical realism a la Garcia Marquez, follow up with several quixotic characters, garnish with love, and you'll have Like Water for Chocolate , a thoroughly enjoyable and quirky first novel by Mexican screenwriter Esquivel. Main character Tita is the youngest of three daughters born to Mama Elena, virago extraordinaire and owner of the de la Garza ranch. Tita falls in love with Pedro, but Mama Elena will not allow them to marry, since family tradition dictates that the youngest daughter remain at home to care for her mother. Instead, Mama Elena orchestrates the marriage of Pedro and her eldest daughter Rosaura and forces Tita to prepare the wedding dinner. What ensues is a poignant, funny story of love, life, and food which proves that all three are entwined and interdependent. Recommended for most collections. —Peggie Partello, Keene State Coll., N.H.
Library Journal


A first novel ("the number one bestseller in Mexico in 1990")—liberally sprinkled with recipes and homemade remedies—from screenwriter Esquivel. Set in turn-of-the-century Mexico, it tells the romantic tale of Tita De La Garza, the youngest of Mama Elena's three daughters, whose fate, dictated by family tradition, is to remain single so that she can take care of her mother in her old age. Tita has grown up under the tutelage of the spinster cook Nacha and has learned all the family recipes and remedies. When Pedro, Tita's admirer, asks for Tita's hand in marriage, her mother refuses permission, offering instead Tita's older sister, Rosaura. Pedro accepts, thinking it will be a way to stay close to his one true love. But Tita doesn't know his thinking and, crushed by what she sees as betrayal, she must make the wedding cake. Crying as she bakes, her tears mingle with the ingredients and unleash a wave of longing in everyone who eats a piece. It is just the beginning of the realization that Tita has special talents, both in the kitchen and beyond. As we witness the nurturing Tita's struggle to be true both to family tradition and to her own heart, we are steeped in elaborate recipes for dishes such as turkey mole with almonds and sesame seeds or quail with rose petals, in medicinal concoctions for ailments such as bad breath and gas, and in instructions on how to make ink or matches. Eventually, Tita must choose between marrying a loving, devoted doctor or saving herself for Pedro, her first true love. Her choice is revealed in a surprise last chapter. Playful in its flirtation with magical realism and engaging in its folkloric earthiness but, nonetheless, light, romantic fare.
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 Like Water for Chocolate:

1. Talk about the three De La Garza sisters—Gertudis, Rosaura, and Tita. How do they differ from one another?

2. Do you consider Tita a strong or weak female heroine? Does she change by the end of the novel? If so, how? Or if not, why?

3. Describe the matriarch of the family, Mama Elena. Does the revelation later in the book about her own history alter your opinion of her?

4. What about Nacha? Both she and Mama Elena represent maternal figures for Tita. How do their maternal qualities differ?

5. What role does tradition play in this book? Is it always a negative role, as exemplified by Mama Elena? What might the author be suggesting about family or cultural customs in general?

6. Discuss the magical properties of food and cooking in this book. In what way is food a central metaphor in the novel—what does it represent? How does Tita use food—as a weapon? Or does she use it for solace, seduction, or healing? Is her use of it unwitting or purposeful? How does food affect the actions of various characters?

7. What does the title of the book refer to—and what is its thematic significance? How does the title relate to the internal passions of characters?

8. Follow-up to Question 7: Discuss the images of heat and fire (as a symbol of desire) found throughout the novel. How does heat affect different characters? Are heat and fire sources of strength...or destruction?

9. Different characters are plagued with illnesses in Like Water for Chocolate. What is the significance—psychological or symbolic or spiritual—of those physical ailments?

10. What role do spirits (ghosts) play in the novel?

11. Talk about what happens when Tita finally stands up to her mother's ghost.

12. Compare the two male figures—Pedro and John Brown. What is each of the men's relationship with Tita? Why does she make the choice she does?

13. What do Tita's and Pedro's deaths suggest about love? About their love in particular?

14. What is the significance of the narrator's identity. What does it mean that she is the one who tells the story?

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

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The Likeness  (Dublin Murder Squad 2)
Tana French, 2008
Penguin Group USA
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143115625

Summary
Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover.

She's transferred out of the murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O'Neill, but she's too badly shaken to make a commitment to him or to her career.

Then Sam calls her to the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in a small town outside Dublin. The dead girl's ID says her name is Lexie Madison—the identity Cassie used years ago as an undercover detective—and she looks exactly like Cassie.

With no leads, no suspects, and no clue to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old undercover boss, Frank Mackey, spots the opportunity of a lifetime. They can say that the stab wound wasn't fatal and send Cassie undercover in her place to find out information that the police never would and to tempt the killer out of hiding.

At first Cassie thinks the idea is crazy, but she is seduced by the prospect of working on a murder investigation again and by the idea of assuming the victim's identity as a graduate student with a cozy group of friends.

As she is drawn into Lexie's world, Cassie realizes that the girl's secrets run deeper than anyone imagined. Her friends are becoming suspicious, Sam has discovered a generations-old feud involving the old house the students live in, and Frank is starting to suspect that Cassie's growing emotional involvement could put the whole investigation at risk.

Another gripping psychological thriller featuring the headstrong protagonist we've come to love, from an author who has proventhat she can deliver. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—Vermont, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity College (Dublin)
• Awards—Edgar Award, Macavity Award, Barry Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland


Tana French is an Irish novelist and theatrical actress. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel. She is a liaison of the Purple Heart Theatre Company and also works in film and voiceover.

French was born in the U.S. to Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi and David French. Her father was an economist working in resource management for the developing world, and the family lived in numerous countries around the globe, including Ireland, Italy, the US, and Malawi.

French attended Trinity College, Dublin, where she was trained in acting. She ultimately settled in Ireland. Since 1990 she has lived in Dublin, which she considers home, although she also retains citizenship in the U.S. and Italy. French is married and has a daughter with her husband.

Dublin Murder Squad series
In the Woods - 2007
The Likeness - 2008
Faithful Place - 2010
Broken Harbor - 2012
The Secret Places - 2014
The Trespasser - 2016

Stand-alone mystery
The Witch Elm - 2018
(Bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/2/2014.)

Book Reviews
Ms. French resists genre conventions defiantly enough to have written a long, rambling book, one that is more interested in character revelations than in “Aha!” moments about the plot. She could have achieved the same effects much more succinctly in a more tightly edited version of this same story. But Cassie herself remains a strong enough character to sustain interest, even if many of her observations...have a vague, hazy quality. All she needs is a sparring match with Frank, and Cassie quickly returns to the land of the living—and to the subtle demands of her perilous, suspenseful masquerade.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

The Likeness [is] a book even better than the first, which was very good indeed.... The suspense is gut-grinding.... A wonderful book.
New York Daily News

[French’s] already signature blend of psychological insight, beautiful writing and wry humor is on display once more in The Likeness.”
Baltimore Sun

[Tana French] aces her second novel. The Likeness [is a] nearly pitch- perfect follow-up to her 2007 debut thriller, In the Woods.
Entertainment Weekly

Suspense writing is clearly French's forte. Rather than employing cliff-hanger tactics, such as ending chapters with striking discoveries, French relies on more delicate revelations to engage readers all along.
Rocky Mountain News

The Likeness has everything: memorable characters, crisp dialogue, shrewd psychological insight, mounting tension, a palpable sense of place, and wonderfully evocative, painterly prose. In the Woods was an Edgar Award finalist; this one just might go one step further. —Thomas Gaughan
Booklist

Stunning…. French cleverly subverts the conventions of the locked room mystery, ratcheting up the tension at every turn with her multidimensional characters. Readers looking for a new name in psychological suspense need look no further than this powerful new Irish voice.
Publishers Weekly

French creates remarkably complex characters while gradually unpeeling the layers of her story in this rich and insightful psychological thriller. A stunner.
Library Journal

The discovery of her murdered doppelganger leads a Dublin detective to insert herself into the victim's life.… Police procedures, psychological thrills and gothic romance beautifully woven into one stunning story.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Early on in the book, Cassie Maddox says that "all the best undercovers have a dark thread woven into them, somewhere." What is hers?

2. For Cassie, going undercover is almost a compulsion. What drives her to accept Frank's offer and take on Operation Mirror?

3. The rule at Whitethorn House is "no pasts," yet the house is seeped in history and artifacts from earlier eras. How does the house help its inhabitants avoid their own histories?

4. Undercover, Cassie slowly gets drawn into life at Whitethorn House and develops a fondness for Lexie's idiosyncratic housemates. What is it about this world that is so enchanting for her?

5. Cassie says this is Lexie Madison's story, not hers, yet she tells it like it's her own. Whose story do you think it is?

6. Commitment is an issue for Cassie, as she can't seem to settle down with a desk job or her boyfriend. At the same time, she has chosen to work undercover and devote her every hour to this case—a very serious commitment of a different kind. Is this a contradiction in her personality, or are they complementary behaviors?

7. Daniel, Abby, Rafe, Justin, and Lexie's relationship is a fascinating study of group dynamics and each character plays a distinct role. Just as Lexie did before her, Cassie can home in on who she needs to be to fit in. Do you think this is something most people do in social situations or is it a special skill?

8. What does posing as Lexie teach Cassie about herself? What are the differences between the two characters and where does Cassie draw the line?

9. Cassie wonders if Frank Mackey may have had a stronger hunch about the killer than he was admitting all along. Do you think he knew who the killer was?

10. French leaves the story of what happened the night of the stabbing somewhat open. What do you think really happened to Lexie and who was truly responsible?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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