Love Sick
Autumn J. Bright, 2014
A Light Bulb Publishing
380 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780986192319
Summary
One woman's turbulent journey to self-discovery and change.
Toni Jones, Charleston’s rising radio personality, has everything going for her: beauty, talent, a promising career, and now a handsome, ambitious husband on the move. The perfect catch!
But when his business fails, his dark side is revealed, leaving Toni to endure a doomed marriage plagued with years of domestic violence, deception, and even murder. But for Toni, giving up the only man she’s ever loved will be harder than she thinks.
And in time, she’ll discover her unhealthy attachment to her husband will make her… Love Sick.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Charleston, South Caroline, USA
• Education—B.A. Columbia College; B.A., University of North Carolina
• Currently—lives in North Carolina
Autumn J. Bright is an American writer. She is a lover of many things: laughter, world travel and, definitely, great stories. Autumn has been writing short stories and poems for over ten years. Love Sick is her debut novel.
She resides in the state of North Carolina, but is a native of Charleston, South Carolina and still considers the beautiful city home. Autumn is currently working on her second novel, Lovely.
Visit the author's website.
Follow Autumn on Facebook.
Discussion Questions
1. In the beginning of the story, did you believe Marvin was innocent of the crime committed against his wife?
2. While in the hospital, Toni was interviewed by an investigator. How did she make you feel as she explained what happened the night she was assaulted? What were your thoughts of her at that point?
3. What were the dynamics between Toni and her sisters, Thelma and Stephanie?
4. After learning about Marvin's troubled upbringing, did you have any sympathy for him? Did it explain his crime of passion?
5. Toni and Justine had a rocky mother-daughter relationship. Justine, a smart kid, strove for a better life and learned self-preservation through negative reinforcement. Examples: She got good grades to avoid conflicts with her mother & she kept her bedroom clean to avoid the chaos that was beyond her walls. But, do you think Justine may have suffered from Post-traumatic stress disorder?
6. What were the similarities and differences between Toni and Marvin?
7. Toni finally realized her tolerance for abuse was learned from her mother as a child. From her childhood, she constructed an unhealthy concept of what real love was and discovered it was her own mind that kept her hostage in a dangerous marriage and unable to leave Marvin for years. What are some other reasons why People tolerate emotional/physical abuse at all cost?
8. Do you think Toni's children will break the cycle of violence?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
Teddy Wayne, 2013
Simon & Schuster
285 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476705859
Summary
Megastar Jonny Valentine, eleven-year-old icon of bubblegum pop, knows that the fans don’t love him for who he is. The talented singer’s image, voice, and even hairdo have been relentlessly packaged—by his L.A. label and his hard-partying manager-mother, Jane—into bite-size pabulum.
But within the marketing machine, somewhere, Jonny is still a vulnerable little boy, perplexed by his budding sexuality and his heartthrob status, dependent on Jane, and endlessly searching for his absent father in Internet fan sites, lonely emails, and the crowds of faceless fans.
Poignant, brilliant, and viciously funny, told through the eyes of one of the most unforgettable child narrators, this literary masterpiece explores with devastating insight and empathy the underbelly of success in 21st-century America. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a tour de force by a standout voice of his generation. (From the publisher.)
Watch the (very funny) video.
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.A.,
Washington University in St. Louis;
• Awards—Whiting Writers' Award
• Currently—lives in New York City
Teddy Wayne, the author of Kapitoil, is the winner of a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award and a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He lives in New York. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
As he did in his critically acclaimed debut novel, Kapitoil...Mr. Wayne seems intent on satirizing the absurdities of late-stage capitalism. In this case he sends up America's obsession with celebrity and the insatiable, implacable fame machine that eats up artists and dreams, lacquers the talented and untalented alike with glitz, and spits out merchandise and publicity in a never-ending cycle of commodification…. What makes Mr. Wayne's portraits of Jonny, his mother and the tour staff so persuasive—and affecting, in the end—is his refusal to sentimentalize them, combined with his assiduous avoidance of easy stereotypes…. Mr. Wayne depicts Jonny as a complicated, searching boy, by turns innocent and sophisticated beyond his years, eager to please and deeply resentful, devoted to his unusual talent and aware of both its rewards and its costs. This is what makes The Love Song more than a scabrous sendup of American celebrity culture; it's also a poignant portrait of one young artist's coming of age.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Onto [Jonny Valentine's] thin, prepubescent shoulders, the very funny Wayne has heaped the full weight of our obnoxious, vacuous, fame-sodden culture. It speaks well of both Jonny and his creator that the result is this good, a moving, entertaining novel that is both poignant and pointed — a sweet, sad skewering of the celebrity industry.
Jess Walters - New York Times Book Review
At once brilliantly funny and beautifully written...The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a novel of many distinctions…. Consistently engaging and lively...Wayne never sacrifices the reader’s sympathies. Jonny is a victim of popular culture, and we wince for him throughout brilliantly awkward set-pieces: a choreographed “homecoming” where he completely fails to communicate with a former best friend, an ill-fated trip to a nightclub with his mischievous support act and an appearance on a Letterman-esque show that channels David Foster Wallace.… If there is any justice in the world, with The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, Wayne will have penned a chart-busting hit.
New York News Day
(Starred review.) A coming-of-age tale with a modern context, this sharply written novel...pulls back the curtain on the 21st-century fame machine. Not unlike a certain fever-inducing pop star, ‘tween sensation Jonny Valentine went from YouTube to Madison Square Garden with bubblegum hits like “Guys vs. Girls” and “U R Kewt.” Now each decision on his national tour is choreographed for mass appeal, from what team to feature on his baseball hat, to the femme pop star with whom his label stages a date. Along for the ride is his mom Jane, micromanaging his image, scheduling weekly weigh-ins, and generally fending off normalcy to keep a good thing going. But through an intimate first-person characterization masterfully executed by Wayne, we see fame through Jonny’s complicated point of view. Beneath the rote catechism of his overmanaged career (“Jane says we’re in the business of making fat girls feel like they’re pretty for a few hours”) are the wholehearted yearnings of a conflicted 11-year-old: his obsession with getting a successful erection, a desire to be like his musical idols, and most of all a quest to reconnect with his father. The smart skewering of the media, both highbrow and low, is wickedly on target. And a mock New Yorker article is a memorable literary lampoon. But the real accomplishment is the unforgettable voice of Jonny. If this impressive novel, both entertaining and tragically insightful, were a song, it would have a Michael Jackson beat with Morrissey lyrics.
Publishers Weekly
Hilarious and heartbreaking.... An original, poignant and captivating coming-of-age story...a breathtakingly fresh novel about the dark side of show business.
BookPage
A provocative and bittersweet illumination of celebrity from the perspective of an 11-year-old pop sensation.... Wayne once again sees American culture through the eyes of an exceptional outsider—in this case, a pre-pubescent pop star.... Rather than turning Jonny into a caricature or a figure of scorn...the novel invites the reader inside Jonny's fishbowl, showing what it takes to gain and sustain what he has and how easily he could lose it. Best of all is his relationship with an artist who made it through this arduous rite of passage...who teaches him that "The people with real power are always behind the scenes. Talent gets chewed up and used. Better to be the one chewing." A very funny novel when it isn't so sad, and vice versa.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think makes the first-person narration in the novel ring so true as an eleven-year-old’s voice? When does Jonny display knowledge beyond his years and when does he reveal his inexperience and naïveté?
2. How does Jonny regard his pre-music-career life in St. Louis? Is he nostalgic, or conflicted? Does this change after his tour stop in St. Louis?
3. Why does Jane offer Jonny the choice between continuing to tour and going to school? Do you think he’s equipped to choose well? How do you feel about Jonny’s decision, in the end?
4. How do marketing and promotional concerns circumscribe Jonny’s life? How do you think his life would have been different if Jane had not chosen to be his manager? Do you think he would have more freedom to be a kid, or not?
5. Though they are employees, Walter and Nadine both care for Jonny and he cares for them. Why are these relationships so important to him? Why do you think Jonny has an easier time relating to adults than to his peers?
6. What attracts Jonny to the Latchkeys, especially to the lead singer, Zack? In your opinion, were they using him, as Jonny comes to suspect, or was Zack’s big-brotherly interest in him genuine?
7. Jane tells Jonny, “The top person is never simply the most talented, or the smartest, or the best-looking. They sacrifice anything in their lives that might hold them back.” (p 37) Do you agree? After his appearance with Tyler Beats, how does Jonny’s perception of his own talent and work ethic change? Do you think this is a healthy change, or not? Would Jonny have been able to see himself this way at the beginning of the book?
8. How would you characterize Jonny’s feelings about his fans and celebrity? At one point he says, “A celeb is only a celeb if you remember them. It’s like we disappear if no one is paying attention.” (p 96) Do you think he’d prefer to disappear? Or to be loved unconditionally by his fans? If you could choose, would you want to have Jonny’s level of fame?
9. Towards the end of his tour, before his Detroit concert, Jonny thinks: “So screw them. If this is what they were giving me, I wasn’t just going to do a bad job. I was going to make it my worst show ever.” (p 236) What is making him feel this way? Does he deserve to be so angry? Why is he unable to follow through on his intention to deliver a poor show?
10. How does the author use the video game Zenon as a metaphor throughout the book? Does Jonny gain something valuable from the game or does the fictional world of Zenon obstruct his understanding of the real world?
11. Over the course of the book we learn that Jane has concealed from Jonny information both personal and music-related. In your opinion, are her decisions motivated more by protecting Jonny or herself, or by keeping him career-focused? Is she really the bad mother the press claims she is?
12. By the time Jonny finally gets a chance to meet his father, he has built up a number of expectations throughout the course of their correspondence. Discuss how this plays out, and what the result of this meeting means for both Jonny and the novel.
13. Throughout the book, Nadine and Jonny are studying slavery in their history lessons; Jonny’s final essay question is “What does it mean to be the property of another person and what does it mean to be free?” (p 223) Talk about how this theme ties into the book’s larger message. When Jonny claims at the end that he knows how to answer the essay question, do you think he’s right? What does his answer tell you about the journey he’s taken in the course of the book?
14. After reading this novel did your feelings about celebrity culture or the music industry change? Do you think one can have both celebrity and normalcy, or are they mutually exclusive?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
Rachel Joyce, 2015
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996678
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes an exquisite love story about Queenie Hennessy, the remarkable friend who inspired Harold’s cross-country journey.
A runaway international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry followed its unassuming hero on an incredible journey as he traveled the length of England on foot—a journey spurred by a simple letter from his old friend Queenie Hennessy, writing from a hospice to say goodbye. Harold believed that as long as he kept walking, Queenie would live.
What he didn’t know was that his decision to walk had caused her both alarm and fear. How could she wait? What would she say? Forced to confront the past, Queenie realizes she must write again.
In this poignant parallel story to Harold’s saga, acclaimed author Rachel Joyce brings Queenie Hennessy’s voice into sharp focus. Setting pen to paper, Queenie makes a journey of her own, a journey that is even bigger than Harold’s; one word after another, she promises to confess long-buried truths—about her modest childhood, her studies at Oxford, the heartbreak that brought her to Kingsbridge and to loving Harold, her friendship with his son, the solace she has found in a garden by the sea.
And, finally, the devastating secret she has kept from Harold for all these years.
A wise, tender, layered novel that gathers tremendous emotional force, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy underscores the resilience of the human spirit, beautifully illuminating the small yet pivotal moments that can change a person’s life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Tinniswood Award
• Currently—Gloucestershire, England
Rachel Joyce is a British author. She has written plays for BBC Radio Four, and jointly won the 2007 Tinniswood Award for her To Be a Pilgrim.
Her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was on the longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. In December 2012, she was awarded the "New Writer of the Year" award by the National Book Awards for the novel. Her second novel, Perfect, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, a companion novel to Harold Fry, was released in 2015.
She is married to actor Paul Venables, and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and four children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/18/2015.)
Book Reviews
In the end, this lovely book is full of joy. Much more than the story of a woman’s enduring love for an ordinary, flawed man, it’s an ode to messy, imperfect, glorious, unsung humanity.... [Queenie’s] love song is for us. Thank you, Rachel Joyce.
Washington Post
Joyce’s writing at moments has a simplicity that sings. She captures hope best of all.
Guardian (UK)
Joyce has a wonderfully evocative turn of phrase and like her other books this is a delightful read. . . . Queenie is an uplifting and moving companion to Harold.
Daily Express (UK)
Joyce nicely calls the book a companion rather than a sequel. But The Love Song is bolder than a retread of the same material from another angle. . . . After two such involving novels, readers are bound to wish for a third.
Telegraph (UK)
A wonderful read.... It is not necessary to read Harold’s story before reading Queenie’s to enjoy this bittersweet novel, which is a pleasure in its own right. However, reading both will only serve to double that pleasure.
Independent (UK)
[A] deeply affecting novel.... Culminating in a shattering revelation, [Queenie’s] tale is funny, sad, hopeful: She’s bound for death, but full of life.
People
Like Harold Fry, Queenie is delightful and dark.... But Joyce is so deft that when the book is over and you close the cover, the darkness fades. What sticks with you is the light of Queenie’s unwavering love.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Fans of Harold's story will appreciate a chance to meet him again and hear his story from a new angle, and after a slow and slightly confusing start, even newcomers to Queenie and Harold's doomed love story will not be immune to its charms. A bittersweet final twist is a fitting cap to a tragic, touching tale.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] beguiling follow-up.... In telling Queenie’s side of the story, Joyce accomplishes the rare feat of endowing her continuing narrative with as much pathos and warmth, wisdom and poignancy as her debut. Harold was beloved by millions; Queenie will be, too.
Booklist
[A] sometimes-funny, sometimes-sad reflection on life's bitter end. Any pathos is mostly subsumed by wry humor and clarity regarding life's foibles, the story ending with a beautiful twist reminding us we all journey through life as lonely, sometimes-inarticulate pilgrims. Reading Harold Fry first will allow this deeply emotional novel to resonate more fully.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Although Queenie is waiting for Harold Fry, she too is on a journey. Did you notice any parallels between the journeys in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy?
2. In her letter, Queenie notes that "we write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice." Do you agree with this statement?
3. "When I woke, I had a visitor. She had a grapefruit on her head. She’d also brought her horse." From the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Queenie is under the influence of morphine. With hindsight, how far do you think reality blurred with illusion?
4. Queenie describes her sea garden in exquisite detail. What is the relevance of the sea garden to the novel as a whole?
5. In her letter to Harold, Queenie describes how she witnessed David’s declining mental health. Do you put David’s troubles down to nature or nurture?
6. "Sometimes we like to laugh at ourselves. We like to be silly." How does Rachel Joyce use humour throughout The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy?
7. "I am starting again, I thought. Because that is what you do when you reach the last stop. You make a new beginning." How do beginnings and endings interact throughout this novel?
8. In her own letter, included at the end of The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Rachel Joyce says that the patients at St Bernadine’s are a "chorus for Queenie—her backing vocals." However, Finty and her fellow patients are described in vivid detail. What backstories might you give them?
9. The doctor of philosophy argues that "when we love, it is only to fool ourselves that we are something." Queenie’s unrequited love for Harold is sustained for twenty years. What do you make of this? Is it true love or something else?
10. At which point in her life do you think Queenie is happiest?
11. Is the Harold of this novel the same man that walks out of his home in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry?
12. Queenie writes "I was to blame. I am to blame." Is her guilt justified?
13. Has the book changed your perception of hospices?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Love the One You're With
Emily Giffin, 2008
St. Martin's Press
342 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312348663
Summary
Ellen's relationship to Andy doesn't just seem perfect on the surface, it really is perfect. She loves his family, and everything about him, including that he brings out the best in her.
That is, until Ellen unexpectedly runs into Leo. The one who got away. The one who brought out the worst in her. The one she can't forget. This is the story about why we chose to love the ones we love, and why we just can't forget the ones who aren't right for us.
Emily Giffin brings both humor and heart to her novels and has an uncanny ability to tap into the things women are really thinking and feeling. In Love the One You're With, she proves, once again, why she is the fastest rising star of women's fiction writing today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1979
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Raised—Naperville, Illinois
• Education—B.A., Wake Forest University; J.D., University of Virginia
• Currenbtly—lives in Atlanta, Georgia
Emily Giffin is the bestselling American author of eight novels commonly categorized as "chick lit." More specifically, Giffin writes stories about relationships and the full array of emotions experienced within them.
Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she also served as manager of the basketball team, the Demon Deacons. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. But Giffin soon determined to seriously pursue her writing.
In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers, but Giffin was undaunted. She began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.
2002 was a big year for Emily Giffin. She married, found an agent, and signed a two-book deal with St. Martin's Press. While doing revisions on Something Borrowed, she found the inspiration for a sequel, Something Blue.
In 2003, Giffin and her husband left England for Atlanta, Georgia. A few months later, on New Year's Eve, she gave birth to identical twin boys, Edward and George.
Something Borrowed was released spring 2004. It received unanimously positive reviews and made the extended New York Times bestsellers list. Something Blue followed in 2005, and in 2006, her third, Baby Proof, made its debut. No new hardcover accompanied the paperback release of in 2007. Instead, Giffin spent the year finishing her fourth novel and enlarging her family. Her daughter, Harriet, was born May 24, 2007.
More novels:
2008 - Love the One You're With
2010 - Heart of the Matter
2012 - Where We Belong
2014 - The One & Only
2016 - First Comes Love
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Emily on Twitter.
Book Reviews
Giffin's talent lies in taking relatable situations and injecting with enough wit and suspense to make them feel fresh. The cat-and-mouse game between Ellen and Leo lights up these pages, their flirtation as dangerously addictive as a high-speed car chase. The ending isn't explosive, but what Ellen learns is quietly thrilling: Sometimes, you have to do whatever it taks to be with the one you love.
People
[Giffin’s books] are smart, sad and witty.... In her latest novel, newlywed photographer Ellen begins to have misgivings about her marriage when she runs into an old flame and feels the familiar lightning bolt of attraction. She contemplates an affair. It all sounds very formulaic, doesn’t it? It isn’t.... Giffin is bold enough to allow a mainstream heroine to be happily married while still maintaining her curiosity about the road—or the guy—not taken, let alone considering infidelity. And she’s able to show the strains that these considerations take on family, friends and husband.... It’s the difference between appealing to a mass audience and a reader who wants her ideals challenged rather than affirmed, often intentionally ending in ambiguity and compromise. It’s the stuff of real life, stripped of literary pretensions.
National Post (Canada)
Love that’s clouded by the memory of an old romantic relationship is the subject of Emily Giffin’s aptly titled Love the One You’re With.... Readers will follow Ellen with fascination and trepidation as she enters the dangerous waters of what might have been—or still could be.
Hartford Courant
Giffin’s book is instantly relatable—few don't wonder how their lives would be different if they had turned left rather than right at life's big forks. Her writing is realistic and entertaining. There are unexpected plot twists and measured jabs at materialism and Southern societal norms…[and] Giffin's funny, honest voice lends credence to this modern riff on the old adage that the grass appears greener on the other side of the fence.
Charlotte Observer
A chance encounter with an old flame in Giffin's bittersweet, sometimes mawkish fourth novel causes Ellen Dempsey to consider anew what could have been. Shortly after marrying Andy, Ellen runs into Leo, her intense first love. Leo, a moody writer, has secretly preoccupied Ellen ever since he broke her heart, so after seeing him again, Ellen wonders if her perfect life is truly what she wants or simply what she was expected to want. This scenario is complicated by Ellen's past: the early death of her mother and subsequent disintegration of her family have left Ellen insecure and saddled with unresolved feelings of guilt. These feelings intensify when Andy's career takes the newlyweds from Ellen's beloved New York City to suburban Atlanta. As Ellen's feelings of inadequacy and resentment grow, her marriage begins to crumble. The novel is sometimes bogged down by characters so rooted in type that they, and the story line, can only move in the most obvious trajectory. However, Giffin's self-aware narrator and focus on troubled relationships will satisfy those looking for a light women's lit fix.
Publishers Weekly
New York City-based photographer Ellen Graham is a happy newlywed—until a chance meeting with an old boyfriend leads her to revisit the past and question her present in Giffin's (Baby Proof) fourth novel. When Ellen crosses paths with her journalist ex, Leo, her obsessive love for him resurfaces. Leo quickly finds an inroad to Ellen's life, offering her up a plum photography assignment she can't refuse. Ellen remains faithful to her husband but can't deny her strong feelings for Leo. Nonetheless, she agrees to move to Atlanta to make her husband happy. Of course, once settled there, Ellen is profoundly unhappy and reconnects with Leo, making plans to take photographs for another of his articles. The tension builds as Ellen balances on the brink of an action that could change the course of her life. Giffin delivers another relatable and multifaceted heroine who may behave unexpectedly but will ultimately find her true path.
Karen Core - Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Ellen and Leo’s meeting at the crosswalk is accidental—or it is fate? Do you believe in fate or destiny? How have fate and destiny played a role in your own life?
2. After running into Leo on the street, Ellen becomes very preoccupied with thoughts of him. Do you think that this is a normal reaction to running into someone you once loved? Do you feel that it is okay to maintain relationships with exes? Explain.
3. The Grahams’ world is vastly different from the world in which Ellen grew up. Would you be attracted to the Grahams’ world? Do you feel that a desire to leave Ellen’s roots behind played a role in her initial friendship with Margot? Do you think it is possible to maintain a close friendship with someone from a much different background? Why or why not?
4. In many ways, Andy seems to be an ideal husband. He is thoughtful, considerate, successful. How do you feel about the fact that Ellen often questions her relationship with him? How do you feel when she compares Andy and Leo?
5. How is Leo different from Andy? Can you think of any ways in which they are similar? What do their similarities and differences say about Ellen? Are the two men reflections of truly different sides of her?
6. Margot was the first person to be supportive of Ellen’s desire to be a photographer. Was Leo? Was Andy supportive of her career? Why or why not?
7. What do you think it says about Ellen that she likes to view the world through the lens of her camera?
8. Do you think that Ellen made the right decision by taking the offer to shoot Drake Watters? At what point do you feel Ellen should have told Andy about Leo’s involvement with the Drake and/or Coney Island projects? Do you feel he would have been accepting if she had been straightforward with him? Do you think it is ever okay to withhold the truth from a spouse? Explain.
9. When Andy suggests the move to Atlanta, did you find yourself rooting for Ellen to agree—or hoping that she’d stay in New York? Do you feel she had good reasons for her decision?
10. What are your overall thoughts on Leo? Do you feel that he is genuine in what he says to Ellen throughout the book? Did your thoughts change at all as the story progressed?
11. Margot doesn’t tell Ellen that Leo came back to the apartment to see her. She does this for Ellen’s “own good.” Do you agree? Do you see this as a betrayal or act of friendship—or both? If you were in Ellen’s shoes, would you be angry?
12. In many friendships, there is a delicate balance of power. Whom do you feel has the power in Margot and Ellen’s relationship? Does that balance of power shift? If so, what causes it to shift?
13. At Ellen and Andy’s going away party, Margot recognizes Leo’s byline in the magazine and puts the pieces together. How do you think Margot feels being caught between her loyalty to her best friend and her brother? Do you feel she handled her conflicting loyalties well throughout the book?
14. Describe the relationship between Ellen and her sister Suzanne. Do you think Suzanne has a positive or negative influence on Ellen and her decision-making? Do you feel Suzanne is a truer friend to Ellen than Margot? If so, how? If not, why not?
15. After the Coney Island shoot, Leo and Ellen go back to Leo’s apartment and are interrupted by a phone call from Suzanne. Do you feel Ellen would have gone further with Leo had her sister not called when she did? Do you feel that Ellen had already cheated on Andy prior to this moment?
16. At what point does a relationship with another man become a true infidelity? When you share secrets with him? When there is physical contact? Do you believe Ellen cheated on Andy on the red-eye flight with Leo?
17. Throughout the book, did Leo give any warning signs that he wouldn’t be good for Ellen? Do you feel Andy gave any warning signs that he also might not be good for Ellen?
18. Do you feel Ellen made the right decision at the end of the book? Were you surprised by her choice?
19. Do you think Ellen and Andy’s relationship was changed by this experience? Do you think Ellen ever confesses what happened in Leo’s apartment? Would you confess?
20. Discuss Ellen’s revelation that love is a choice and not a surge of passion. Do you agree?
(Questions from author's website.)
Love Walked In
Marisa de los Santos, 2006
Penguin Group USA
307 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452287891
Summary
A tribute to classic film and true romance, Love Walked In tells the story of two women—one older, one younger—and the unexpected ways in which their lives are forever changed by chance.
For thirty-one-year old Cornelia Brown, life is a series of movie moments, and "Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up."
So imagine Cornelia's delight when her very own Cary Grant walks through the door of the hip Philadelphia cafe she manages. Handsome and debonair, Martin Grace sweeps Cornelia off her feet, becoming Cary Grant to Cornelia's Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable to her Joan Crawford. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, eleven-year-old Clare Hobbes must learn to fend for herself after her increasingly unstable mother has a breakdown and disappears.
With no one to turn to, Clare seeks out her estranged father, and when the two of them show up at Cornelia's cafe, the lives of Cornelia and Clare are changed in drastic and unexpected ways. A cinematic and heartfelt debut that pays homage to the classic Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, Love Walked In is sure to win over critics and readers of contemporary fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 12, 1966
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Virginia; M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College; Ph.D., University
of Houston
• Currently—lives in Wilmington, Delaware
Marisa de los Santos achieved her earliest success as an award-winning poet, and her work has been published in several literary journals. In 2000, her debut collection, From the Bones Out, appeared as part of the James Dickey Contemporary Poetry Series.
De los Santos made her first foray into fiction in 2005 with the surprise bestseller Love Walked In. Optioned almost immediately for the movies, this elegant "literary romance" introduced Cornelia Brown, a diminutive, 30-something Philadelphian with a passion for classic film and an unshakable belief in the triumph of true love.
In her 2008 sequel, Belong to Me, de los Santos revisited Cornelia, now a married woman, newly relocated to the suburbs, and struggling to forge friendships with the women in her new hometown.
Her third novel, Falling Together, released in 2011, recounts the reunion of three college friends, whose friendships dissolve as everything they believed about themselves and each other is brought into question.
The Precious One, published in 2015, follows the two half-sisters who meet for the first time as they struggle to please their narcissistic, domineering father.
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
• De los Santos' love affair with books began at a young age. She claims to have risked life and limb as a child by insisting on combining reading with such incompatible activities as skating, turning cartwheels, and descending stairs.
• I'm addicted to ballet, completely head-over-heels for it. I did it as a little kid, but took about a thirty year hiatus before starting adult classes. I do it as many times a week as I can, but if I could, I'd do it every day! In my next life, I'm definitely going to be a ballerina.
• I'm terrible with plants, outdoor plants, indoor plants, annuals, perennials. I kill them off in record time. I adore fresh flowers and keep them all over my house all year round because they're beautiful and already dead, but you won't find a single potted plant in my house. So many nice people in the world and in books are growers and gardeners, but the sad truth is that I'll never be one of them.
• I'm an awful sleeper, and the thing that helps me fall asleep or fall back to sleep is reading books from my childhood. Elizabeth Enright's Melendy series and her two Gone Away Lake books, all of the Anne of Green Gables books, Little Women, The Secret Garden, the Narnia books, and a bunch of others. I have probably read some of these books twenty, maybe thirty times. I read them to pieces, literally, and then have to buy new ones.
• I am crazy-scared of sharks and almost never swim in the ocean. Yes, I know it's silly, I know my chances of getting bitten by a shark are about the same as my chances of becoming president of the United States, but I can't help it.
• My favorite way to spend an evening is eating a meal with good friends. The cheese plate, the red wine, the clink of forks, a passel of kids dancing to The Jonas Brothers and laughing their heads off in the next room, food that either I or someone else has cooked with care and love, and warm, lively conversation-give me all this and I'm happy as a clam.
• I adore black and white movies, particularly romantic comedies from the thirties and forties. I love them for the dialogue and for the whip smart, fascinating, fast-talking, funny women.
• When asked what book that most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was ten, I can't count how many times I've read it since, and every single time, I am utterly pulled in. I don't read it; I live it. I'm with Scout on Boo Radley's porch and in the colored courtroom balcony, and my heart breaks with hers at Tom Robinson's fate. Over and over, the book lifts me up and sets me down into her shoes. I remember the wonder I felt the first time it happened, the sudden, jarring illumination: every person is the center of his or her life the way I am the center of mine. It changed everything. I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true. That empathy is the greatest gift fiction gives us, and it's the biggest reason I write. (Author bio and interview adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos, is the kind of book that makes you want to hunker down on a chilly day in a comfy chair and read straight through 'til dark. The beginning is light, entertaining and inviting, the middle grows more serious, and then, toward the end, the violins really start to play in this poignant, heart-tugging story about a single woman and a little girl who develop an unlikely bond.
Susan Adams - Washington Post
Philadelphia cafe manager Cornelia Brown drifts effortlessly through her unattached life, unapologetic for idealizing romance and breathlessly recommending The Philadelphia Story-to the reader and everyone else. Eleven-year-old Clare is a child of divorce whose mother, a successful party planner, is quickly going to pieces. In alternating chapters of Cornelia's first person and Clare's free and direct third, poet de los Santos, making her novel debut, tells the story of their finding each other. That Cornelia, early on, immediately falls for Cary Grant doppelganger Martin Grace is no surprise; his relation to Clare, revealed a third of the way in, isn't really either. As she discovers maternal instincts she wasn't sure she had, Cornelia works up the courage to face her own feelings for Clare with honesty. As Martin exits, Cornelia's childhood friend Teo enters, but neither makes much impact, and Clare's rather serious issues get reduced to Clare-did-this, Clare-thought-that episodes. The two main characters exist for one purpose: to enact a cross-generational, strong-but-vulnerable-and-loving, screenplay-ready femininity. Chick lit? You bet: with rights sold in at least eight countries, and, indeed, to Paramount-Sarah Jessica Parker will star and coproduce with Sideways's Michael London. The book is fine, but for this property, it's a case of waiting for Carrie to walk in.
Publishers Weekly
Cornelia would be the first to admit that she has turned her life into a series of movie moments. She moved to Philadelphia because she fell in love with a movie—The Philadelphia Story—and there she waits for her leading man. When Martin, the handsome stranger in a perfectly cut suit, opens the door of the coffee shop Cornelia manages, she is all too ready to be swept off her feet and into the arms of her Cary Grant, her Clark Gable, her Jimmy Stewart. But is Martin her real love? Will he be the one to transform her fantasies into reality? Across town, eleven-year-old Clara struggles to hold her life together as her mother becomes increasingly unstable. When her mother disappears, abandoning Clara on the side of a road, Clara turns to her estranged father for help. And when Clara and her father show up on Cornelia's doorstep, Clara's and Cornelia's lives are changed forever. This is a novel about love between men and women, friends and strangers, mothers and daughters. There are a few (very few) obscenities, and the intimate moments between some of the characters are discrete. A choice for older teenage girls although many—if not most—will not be familiar with the leading men and the romantic movies of the past.
Anita Barnes Lowen - Children's Literature
Cornelia is a sprightly little thing who's stuck in a rut managing a coffee shop and watching her beloved film classics in her spare time. Then, right out of the movies, "love walked in," looking just like a modern-day incarnation of Cary Grant. Martin seems to be perfect for Cornelia, until she meets his ten-year-old daughter, Clare, whom he had failed to mention. When Cornelia learns that Clare's mother, Martin's ex-wife, has disappeared, she steps right into the situation. Narrated by Cornelia and Claire in alternating chapters, this is the story of how two lives intersect and a great relationship blooms from an unexpected seed. Poet de los Santos's debut is a light, sweet read with just a bit of substance underneath. Sarah Jessica Parker is slated to star and coproduce the film version with Sideways producer Michael London, and it seems like a good match. This may be one of those books that will be even better on the big screen. Recommended. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC
Library Journal
Two heroines, Clare Martin and Cornelia Brown, discover the power of friendship and the meaning of love in this remarkable tale. De los Santos crafts two irresistible characters in her debut novel. First we meet Cornelia, a hopeless romantic, addicted to classic films in which dashing men like Carey Grant bedazzle glamorous leading ladies like Grace Kelly. Cornelia is a 30-something underachiever whiling her time away as the manager of a Philadelphia coffee shop. While she neglects her interior life, Cornelia keeps her intellect sharp by engaging in clever repartee with the eccentrics who patronize Cafe Dora. But everything changes when Martin Grace strolls through the cafe's door. Martin is matinee-idol perfect-the witty banter, the impeccable clothes, the air of mystery. Cornelia is hooked. The relationship whizzes along, bringing Cornelia an offer of marriage. But before she gets to live happily ever after, Cornelia delves deeper into her feelings for Martin. Is she willing to settle for a safe and reliable relationship with a weak physical and emotional connection? Maybe chemistry only exists on movie screens and sparks don't fly for mere mortals. As Cornelia struggles to find her romantic bearings, our other heroine is facing tragedy. Clare, a tenderhearted pre-teen, is devastated when her mother experiences a mental breakdown and abandons Clare during the holidays. Through serendipity, Clare and Cornelia cross paths at the cafe, and the author deftly interweaves their stories. These two fragile souls instinctively cling to one another and share their dreams. Clare longs for a safe and secure home life and a reunion with her mother; Cornelia hopes to create a family of her own and find love. De los Santos's writing engages throughout this powerful story. It's impossible not to cheer for these characters as they search for happiness. A timeless gem.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Clare's attraction to fictional orphans. Why is she so fascinated by them, even before her mother leaves? Why can she relate to them? In what ways is she abandoned even before she is actually abandoned?
2. Cornelia claims that she doesn't fantasize about living in an old Hollywood movie but it becomes clear that she does. In what ways does she try to keep her own desires for the perfect Hollywood romance at bay? Why does she think she'll never have it? Does she harbor false or unrealistic expectations about love? In what ways, in the end, is Cornelia's story "old Hollywood?"
3. Why do you think Cornelia is so immediately drawn to Martin Grace? What does he represent to her? In what ways does he live up to her expectations? In what ways does he fail?
4. Discuss Martin's reaction to Clare's situation. Why do you think he never told Cornelia about Clare? Once Clare reappears in his life, what do you make of his actions and reactions to both Clare and to the missing Viviana? Do you think he handles it well? Try to imagine his perspective. Discuss.
5. In what ways are Cornelia and Clare alike? Why does Cornelia immediately feel the need to comfort Clare? How do they fill empty places in each other's lives? Also, why does Clare take to Teo so quickly when she can't do the same for her father? What about Cornelia and Teo together comforts Clare?
6. Clare realizes quickly that her father does not love her. Do you think that she's correct in her assessment? Do you think, in general, she is fair to Martin? Is Cornelia? When Martin told Cornelia he loved her, did you believe him? Why or why not? Do you think it's possible that he could love Cornelia but not his own daughter?
7. Why does Cornelia insist on taking Clare to her own house for Christmas? Do you think that was a mistake? In what other ways does Cornelia try to accommodate Clare? Why do you think she does these things? In what ways does returning to the house help Cornelia to better understand Clare? Why is this so important later on?
8. On p. 184, Clare thinks about love: "What she came to was that even if someone wasn't perfect or even especially good, you couldn't dismiss the love they felt. Love was always love; it had a rightness all its own, even if the person feeling the love was full of wrongness." Do you think Martin is a bad person? Do you think he deserves Cornelia's love? Clare's? Why or why not?
9. What do you make of Clare's reaction to Martin's death? Discuss the conversation she has with Teo on p. 204. Why does Clare think she's evil? Do you think she is? Why do you think she can have such open conversations with Teo? What about him makes him so trustworthy to her? Why are his opinions so important? What void does he fill in her life?
10. Throughout the novel, Linny is a very stabilizing force. What about her soothes Cornelia? Why are both Clare and Cornelia so relieved when Linny arrives just after Viviana? What role does Linny's character play in the novel? In what ways is she the opposite of Cornelia? Why is that something both Clare and Cornelia need so badly?
11. Were you surprised by Viviana's return? Did you believe that she would return? Do you think Cornelia's plans for herself and Clare were realistic?
12. What does Mrs. Goldberg represent to Cornelia? How do her memories of Mrs. Goldberg help her through difficult situations? How do her stories about Mrs. Goldberg help Clare? What does Mrs. Goldberg's house represent to Cornelia? To Clare? Why does Clare want so badly to stay there?
13. In the end, do you think Cornelia makes the right decision to leave Clare with Viviana? How is leaving them at Mrs. Goldberg's different than them returning to their own home? Why does it seem safer to all of them? Do you think Clare will really forgive Cornelia for leaving her?
14. Why is Cornelia surprised to discover that she is in love with Teo? Were you surprised? Why or why not? In what ways is he exactly what she was looking for? In what ways is he not? What do you make of his relationship with Ollie? Do you think he and Cornelia have a chance? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Love Warrior: A Memoir
Glennon Doyle, 2016
Flatiron Press
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250128546
Summary
Oprah’s Book Club 2016 Selection
A journey of self-discovery after the implosion of a marriage.
Just when Glennon Doyle was beginning to feel she had it all figured out—three happy children, a doting spouse, and a writing career so successful that her first book catapulted to the top of the New York Times bestseller list—her husband revealed his infidelity and she was forced to realize that nothing was as it seemed.
A recovering alcoholic and bulimic, Glennon found that rock bottom was a familiar place. In the midst of crisis, she knew to hold on to what she discovered in recovery: that her deepest pain has always held within it an invitation to a richer life.
Love Warrior is the story of one marriage, but it is also the story of the healing that is possible for any of us when we refuse to settle for good enough and begin to face pain and love head-on.
This astonishing memoir reveals how our ideals of masculinity and femininity can make it impossible for a man and a woman to truly know one another. It captures the beauty that unfolds when one couple commits to unlearning everything they've been taught so that they can finally, after thirteen years of marriage, commit to living true—true to themselves and to each other.
Love Warrior is a gorgeous and inspiring account of how we are born to be warriors: strong, powerful, and brave; able to confront the pain and claim the love that exists for us all. This chronicle of a beautiful, brutal journey speaks to anyone who yearns for deeper, truer relationships and a more abundant, authentic life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1976
• Where—Burke, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., James Madison University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Naples, Florida
Glennon Doyle (formerly Doyle Melton) is a New York Times bestselling author of Untamed (2020), Love Warrior (2016), and Carry On, Warrior (2012). She is an activist, philanthropist and the creator of the online community Momastery. She is also president of Together Rising, a non-profit that has raised more than four million dollars for women and children in crisis.
Doyle was born in Burke, Virginia, and comes from a close family that includes one sister, Amanda Doyle. She completed her B.A. at James Madison University in 1998 and became a teacher in Northern Virginia. During her time at James Madison University.
Career
Doye began her online writing career in 2009, with the creation of her blog, Momastery. The funny, conversational and tell-all nature of her writing quickly gained popularity. Viral blog posts beginning with "2011 Lesson #2: Don't Carpe Diem" led to the publication of her memoir, Carry On, Warrior, and the growth of her social media audience.
Her 2016 memoir, Love Warrior, became an Oprah Book Selection. Doyle describes her career and life philosophy like this:
Life is brutal. But it's also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it. Life's brutal and beautiful are woven together so tightly that they can't be separated. Reject the brutal, reject the beauty. So now I embrace both, and I live well and hard and real. My job is to wake up every day, say yes to life's invitation, and let millions of women watch me get up off the floor, walk, stumble, and get back up again.
Glennon is a sought-after public speaker, and her work has been featured on The Today Show, The Talk, OWN, and NPR; in the New York Times, Ladies' Home Journal, Glamour, Family Circle, Parents Magazine, Newsweek,Woman's Day, and The Huffington Post; and in other television and print outlets.
Awards
In 2013, Carry On, Warrior received the Books for a Better Life Best Relationship Award and was a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards for "Best Memoir & Autobiography." In 2014, Parents Magazine named Doyle and Momastery the winner of its award for Best All-Around at Social Media. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia Retrieved 9/10/2016.)
Book Reviews
A testament to the power of vulnerability. Glennon shows us the clearest meaning of "To thine own self be true." It's as if she reached into her heart, captured the raw emotions there, and translated them into words that anyone who's ever known pain or shame—in other words, every human on the planet—can relate to. She's bravely put everything on the table for the whole world to see (Oprah's Book Club 2016 selection).
Oprah Winfrey
Glennon Doyle Melton has mastered sharing her emotional life with the world, which she does nearly daily on momastery.com. Now she lays herself bare once again in Love Warrior, chronicling her struggles and the depths of her resilience in the darkest of time. A heroic achievement.
Family Circle
How a marital crisis became a catalyst for a painful but ultimately enlightening journey into the depths of the human heart.... Though the memoir sometimes reads like a self-help book rather than a narrative, it nevertheless tells a compelling story about self-discovery and the nature of mature love. Candid, brave, and generous.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
PART ONE
1. Initially, Glennon assumes her marriage began with her wedding. In what ways do we expect weddings to function as beginnings? When do you think a marriage begins?
2. By the time she graduates high school, Glennon has come to see that there are hidden rules about how to matter as a girl (pages 30 and 187). Glennon later understands how she’s been hurt by the messages our culture sends about what success should look and feel like for a woman. What are those messages? Where do they come from? What "hidden rules" did you follow, or feel pressured to follow, as a child or a teenager? How about now? How has following those rules affected your life? What are the hidden rules for boys? How do you think those rules affect the males in your life?
3. When Glennon runs out of places to go, she drives toward God (page 52). How does her experience with Mary compare to her conversation with the priest? Why do you think she feels safe in the presence of Mary? How could the priest have been more helpful or supportive?
4. At Glennon’s first twelve-step meeting, she is relieved to notice that "there are no representatives in this circle, "just "folks who are ready to quit pretending" (pages 66–67). Discuss a time you felt like you had to show up as your representative instead of your true self. How would it have felt to stop pretending?
5. After Glennon accepts her pregnancy as an invitation to come back to life and Craig proposes, she decides she will be a new person. Have you ever wanted to put your old self in a box and tuck it away? Do you believe it’s possible to be a new person?
PART TWO
1. For years in her marriage, Glennon feels lonely because it seems she and Craig cannot meaningfully connect. She says, "He wants to be inside my body like I want to be inside his mind" (page 99). Why do you think men and women often have different understandings of intimacy?
2. When she discovers pornography on the family computer, Glennon realizes she is "part of a system that agrees women are for being… dominated and filmed and sold and laughed at" (page 121). Although her fury "feels primal, all-encompassing…and general and impersonal enough to burn the whole world," she decides to point her anger "directly at Craig" (page 122). Have you ever felt a similar fury? In what ways is it easier to blame a person than a system?
3. After learning of Craig’s infidelities, Glennon wonders, "if the answers to the question of me are not successful wife and mother, then what answers do I have left?" (page 137). What labels would you feel lost without? How do these roles define who you believe you are?
4. Though she would prefer an easier choice, Glennon vows not to use the security of her relationship to avoid her fear and loneliness. She declares that "self-betrayal is allowing fear to overrule the still, small voice of truth"(page 145). What does self-betrayal mean to you? When have you heard your own still, small voice? What habits or activities do you engage in that help you to access that inner wisdom?
5. People respond in varying ways to the news of Glennon’s separation (pages 146–47). Were the descriptions of Shovers, Comparers, Fixers, Reporters, Victims, and God Reps familiar to you? Discuss a time when some onereacted to your pain. What felt supportive? What didn't?
6. While she’s alone at the beach, Glennon’s mother tells her, "Sand and water have always been home to you" (page169). Learning "one true thing" about herself cements Glennon’s commitment to care fiercely for her soul and to become her strongest, healthiest self. What feels like home to you? What is "one true thing" you know about yourself?
PART THREE
1. Reflecting on a passage from Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, Glennon realizes that pursuing the journey of the warrior means enduring the "hot loneliness" without reaching for what Glennon calls the "easy buttons" (pages201–202). What are some of your go-to easy buttons? What happens when you resist pressing them and choose stillness instead?
2. Glennon says that the poison is not our pain, but the lies we tell about our pain. She writes, "We either allow ourselves to feel the burn of our own pain or someone we love gets burned by it" (page 203). Can you think of a time when you’ve found this statement to be true? How does refusing to experience our own pain hurt others?
3. So many people tell Glennon to breathe that she eventually takes a class on the topic and has a transformative experience (pages 213–20). Have you ever paid close attention to your breath? What do you think your breath can teach you?
4. Reflect on Glennon’s experience during her breathing class. Do you agree that "grace can only be personal if it's also universal" (page 219)? How does this understanding affect Glennon's view of Craig? Do you believe forgiveness can be universal without being personal?
5. Glennon grew up understanding the biblical defnition of "woman" to be "helper." When she questions this, she learns that the original Hebrew word for "woman" has a different translation altogether (page 222). Discuss what Glennon’s discovery that "woman" was created "as a warrior" means to you.
6. When she teaches the children at Sunday school that"they are loved by God—wildly, fiercely, gently, completely,without reservation" and that they have nothing inside of them to be ashamed of, Glennon says she is also speaking to her ten-year-old self (page 232). What would you tell your ten-year-old self?
7. To reunite her body, mind, and spirit, Glennon must learn to tell the story of her insides with her voice, which she does for the first time in the scene with the man and the garbage truck (pages 235–37). Do you think the man intended to hurt Glennon with his behavior? How did her response effectively honor them both? When have you given voice to your inside self? Was that experience comfortable or difficult, and why?
8. What do you think allows for the creation of physical intimacy between Glennon and Craig? Discuss the idea of consent and how voicing needs and concerns can create safety and connection (pages 237, 241, and 249).
9. What do you think it means to be sexy? Revisit Glennon’s previous understanding of sexy (page 248) and the explanation of sexy she gives to her daughters (page 252). Is there anything you would add or change?
10. The ending of Love Warrior is deliberately ambiguous. Why do you think that is? Were you tempted to root for a happily ever after? In what ways does our society equate staying married with success? In what ways can separation or divorce be considered successes?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Love, Hate and Other Filters
Samira Ahmed, 2017
Soho Teen
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616958473
Summary
In this unforgettable debut novel, an Indian-American Muslim teen copes with Islamophobia, cultural divides among peers and parents, and a reality she can neither explain nor escape.
American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds.
There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy her mom deems “suitable.”
And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City—and maybe (just maybe) pursuing a boy she’s known from afar since grade school, a boy who’s finally falling into her orbit at school.
There’s also the real world, beyond Maya’s control.
In the aftermath of a horrific crime perpetrated hundreds of miles away, her life is turned upside down. The community she’s known since birth becomes unrecognizable; neighbors and classmates alike are consumed with fear, bigotry, and hatred. Ultimately, Maya must find the strength within to determine where she truly belongs. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Where—Bombay, India
• Raised—Batavia, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., M.T.A., University of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois
Samira Ahmed is and American-Indian author, born in Bombay, India, and raised in Batavia, Illinois—growing up in a house scented with the seasonings and spices of India. At the age of eight, while sitting in a car, a man tapped on the window and yelled, "Go home you goddamned fucking Iranian!" It was a racist incident that has haunted her over the years and became the inspiration for her 2017 novel, Love, Hate and Other Filters.
Ahmed attended the University of Chicago, earning both a Bachelor's and Master's of Teaching degree. After graduating, she taught high school English for seven years. She also spent for several years working with two non-profit groups—New Visions for Public Schools and Campaign for Fiscal Equity—attempting to establish 70 smaller high schools in New York City and to obtain additional public school funding from New York State.
Ahmed has appeared in the New York Times and New York Daily News, and on Fox News, NBC, National Public Radio, NY1, and on BBC Radio. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in Jaggery Lit and Entropy.
She currently resides in the Chicago, Illinois. (Adapted from various online souces.)
Book Reviews
Ahmed authentically and expertly tells a story relevant to today's climate. More than that, it's a meaningful #OwnVoices book about identity and inner strength that everyone should absolutely read.
Buzzfeed
Heartfelt.… Ahmed deftly and incisively explores the complicated spaces between "American and Indian and Muslim" in modern America.
Teen Vogue
This intriguing coming-of-age debut will rival Thomas’s The Hate U Give with its sensitive and must-read tale of an Indian-American Muslim teen and her battle with Islamophobia.
HuffPost
An entertaining coming-of-age story that tackles Islamophobia.
Paste Magazine
(Starred review.) In an astute debut, Ahmed intertwines a multicultural teen’s story with a spare, dark depiction of a young terrorist’s act. The characters are fully dimensional and credible, lending depth to even lighter moments and interactions. Alternately entertaining and thoughtful, the novel is eminently readable, intelligent, and timely
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Maya's voice is pitch-perfect; funny, warm, and perfectly teenaged. Sweet and smart with a realistic but hopeful ending, this novel is a great examination of how hatred and fear affects both communities, and individual lives. —Beth McIntyre, Madison Public Library, WI
School Library Journal
The book is wonderfully constructed. Maya’s voice is authentic, providing readers with insight into her life as an American Muslim teenager.… readers will find much to digest here and will be totally engrossed from page one.
VOYA
(Starred review.) Ahmed crafts a winning narrator—Maya is insightful, modern, and complex, her shoulders weighted by the expectations of her parents and the big dreams she holds for herself. Brief interstitials spread evenly throughout the text key readers into the attack looming ahead, slowly revealing the true figure behind its planning with exceptional compassion. Utterly readable, important, and timely.
Booklist
High school senior Maya Aziz works up the courage to tell her parents that she's gotten into the film school of her dreams in New York City, but their expectations combined with anti-Muslim backlash from a terror attack threaten to derail her dream.… A well-crafted plot with interesting revelations about living as a secular Muslim teen in today's climate. (Ages 13-18)
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 Love, Hate and Other Filters … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Maya? Do you admire her … find fault with her … or what? Were you suprised by her final act of rebellion; does it seem out of character?
2. How do Maya's dreams clash with her parents' aspirations for her? Are those contradictions typical of most adolescents and their parents? Or are they perhaps more intense among immigrants who want their children to assimilate yet still maintain ties to their ancestral culture?
3. Maya's narrative alternates with interludes of the troubled young man who commits the Springfield killings. How did you feel reading those passages? Did their display of hate and racism unsettle you, even spur you to consider your own preconceived ideas? If you are an immigrant living in a country with a different culture from your previous country, does the depiciton of prejudice in Ahmed's novel ring true to you?
4. Talk about the attack in Springfield and its affect, physically and emotionally, on Maya and her family.
5. Discuss the role Hini plays in Maya's life. What has Hini sacrificed in her pursuit of independence? What does she offer her niece in terms of Maya's own future?
6. Consider the book's title, especially the word "filters"—obviously drawn from Maya's fascination with film and cameras. How does Maya use filters in her daily life? Do you have filters in your own life?
7. Phil … or Kareem? Who are you rooting for? To what degree is Phil responsible for Brian?
8. What do you think of Violet and her fierce protectiveness of Maya? Thinking back on your own life, have you ever had a friend like Violet … or been a friend like Violet?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris
Jenny Colgan, 2013
Sourcebooks
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402284403
Summary
Inside Paris's premiere chocolate shop, sometimes dreams really can come true.
It's true that Anna Trent is a supervisor in a chocolate factory...but that doesn't necessarily mean she knows how to make chocolate. And when a fateful accident gives her the opportunity to work at Paris's elite chocolatier Le Chapeau Chocolat, Anna expects to be outed as a fraud. After all, there is a world of difference between chalky, mass-produced English chocolate and the gourmet confections Anna's new boss creates.
But with a bit of luck and a lot of patience, Anna might learn that the sweetest things in life are always worth working for. Hopeful, laugh-out-loud funny, and irresistibly addictive, The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris is a novel worth savoring. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 1, 1972
• Where—Prestwick, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK
• Education—University of Edinburgh
• Awards—Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year
• Currently—lives in France and London, England
Jenny Colgan is a British chick-lit writer of romantic comedies since 2000. She also used the pseudonym Jane Beaton and J. T. Colgan for other fiction. In 2013, her novel Welcome to Rosie Hopkin's Sweetshop of Dreams won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the .
In 2000, she published her first novel, iniating a string romantic comedies. In 2013, her novel Welcome to Rosie Hopkin's Sweetshop of Dreams won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award . In July 2012 her Doctor Who tie-in novel Dark Horizons was published under the name J. T. Colgan.
Personal life
Jenny Colgan was born in 1972 in Prestwick, Ayrshire, Scotland, British. She studied at Edinburgh University. She worked for six years in the health service, moonlighting as a cartoonist and a stand-up comic.
She is married to Andrew, a marine engineer, and has had three children. She divides her time between France and London.
Novels
• Stand Alone
Amanda's Wedding (2000)
Looking for Andrew McCarthy (2001)
Talking to Addison (2001)
Working Wonders (2003) aka Arthur Project
Do You Remember the First Time? (2004) aka The Boy I Loved Before
Sixteen Again (2004)
Where Have All the Boys Gone? (2005)
West End Girls (2006)
Operation Sunshine (2007)
Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend (2008)
The Good, the Bad and the Dumped (2010)
The Loveliest Chocolate Shop In Paris (2013)
The Little Beach Street Bakery (2014)
• Cupcake Cafe
Meet me at the Cupcake Cafe (2011)
Christmas at the Cupcake Cafe (2012)
• Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop
Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams (2012)
Christmas at Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop (2013)
• As Jane Beaton
Maggie, a Teacher In Turmoil
Class (2008)
Rules (2010)
• J. T. Colgan
Doctor Who: Dark Horizons (2012)
(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/21/2014.)
Book Reviews
Parallel love stories play out in Paris a generation apart in this funny, lyrical story from U.K.—based chick-lit writer Colgan... This cross-generational story is as irresistible as Colgan's portrayal of Paris itself—and all things chocolate.
Publishers Weekly
Colgan has created a story where love and baked goods are central to the story and sweet endings are a must. Her characters are both believable and funny, while the Parisian setting makes this story practically irresistible.
Shelf Awareness Reader
You can't go wrong with Jenny Colgan books. She's the queen of British chick lit.
American Cupcake Life
The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris will have you laughing one moment and crying the next... will entertain you at every turn. 4 Stars
Romance Times Book Reviews
Heartwarming and funny.... Delightful and compassionate, this will resonate with readers of women's fiction. Chocolate recipes from the author, listed in the back of the book, add to its charm.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold, 2002
Little, Brown & Co.
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316044400
Summary
When we first meet Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. As she looks down from this strange new place, she tells us, in the fresh and spirited voice of a fourteen-year-old girl, a tale that is both haunting and full of hope.
In the weeks following her death, Susie watches life on Earth continuing without her—her school friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her family holding out hope that she'll be found, her killer trying to cover his tracks. As months pass without leads, Susie sees her parents' marriage being contorted by loss, her sister hardening herself in an effort to stay strong, and her little brother trying to grasp the meaning of the word gone.
And she explores the place called heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counselors to help newcomers adjust and friends to room with. Everything she ever wanted appears as soon as she thinks of it—except the thing she most wants: to be back with the people she loved on Earth.
With compassion, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie sees her loved ones pass through grief and begin to mend. Her father embarks on a risky quest to ensnare her killer. Her sister undertakes a feat of remarkable daring. And the boy Susie cared for moves on, only to find himself at the center of a miraculous event.
The Lovely Bones is luminous and astonishing, a novel that builds out of grief the most hopeful of stories. In the hands of a brilliant new writer, this story of the worst thing a family can face is transformed into a suspenseful and even funny novel about love, memory, joy, heaven, and healing. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 6 1963
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Syracuse University; M.F.A., University of
California, Irvine
• Currently—lives in Long Beach, California
As Alice Sebold relates in her chilling memoir Lucky, she was considered fortunate for surviving a violent, devastating rape in her freshman year at Syracuse University. The woman before her had not been so "lucky": She was murdered and dismembered.
The shadow of this fact survives in Sebold's acclaimed novel The Lovely Bones, which is narrated by another not-so-lucky victim from beyond the grave. It's such a maudlin premise that the book shouldn't have been successful—in fact, Sebold's editor has told the author that the manuscript never would have been bought if she had been told what it was about before reading it.
But in her ability to convey the brutal details of crime and its aftermath—both the imagined instance and the real—Sebold is a gripping writer. She is straightforward, but not simply a reporter; in The Lovely Bones, she maintains with sympathy and humor the voice of a 14-year-old who continues, from heaven, to be engaged with life on earth. Without pandering or overwriting, Sebold can elicit tears with the simple but painfully true expression of a character's thought or wish.
Extras
• Sebold is married to author Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil. The two met when Sebold was in the fiction writing program at University of California, Irvine.
• Part of the aftermath of Sebold's traumatic rape in college was a long period of self-abuse, including heroin addiction. After a hard trial in New York trying (and failing) to get published, Sebold decided to leave the city and ultimately applied to grad school at Irvine. ''I couldn't handle the rejection and the failure anymore...and the 'almost' of it all,'' she told Entertainment Weekly. ''Everybody from New York has their almost-but-not-quite story, and I just felt like I don't want to be walking around on the planet trotting out mine.''
• Sebold says that her continued failures ended up creating a good mindset for her writing. "After a while, you don't think what can't be done and what can be done, because no one's going to care anyway," she said in an Associated Press interview. "You just go and have fun in your room, which is what, to me, art should be about anyway." (Christina Nunez - From Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
At its most basic level, The Lovely Bones is about how family and friends cope with every parent's worst nightmare. For the next 8 1/2 years, Suzie looks down from heaven as her father and police attempt to find her murderer. As our narrator, Suzie is omniscient, with the ability to see into the hearts and minds of all, tracing their descent into grief and back out again. On another level, though, the story is a retelling of the Persephone / Demeter myth.
A LitLovers LitPick (July '08)
A savagely beautiful story.... The Salmon family's tragedy is...palpable and multifaceted...a strange and compelling novel....
Sebold takes an enormous risk in her wonderfully strange début novel: her narrator, Susie Salmon, is dead -- murdered at the age of fourteen by a disturbed neighbor -- and speaks from the vantage of Heaven. Such is the author's skill that from the first page this premise seems utterly believable. Susie's voice has all the inflections of a smart teen-ager's, by turns inquisitive, sarcastic, and wistful; unplacated by Heaven, she watches as her family falls apart and her friends resume their lives without her. Sebold slips easily from the ordinary pleasures of a suburban childhood (cutting class; the first kiss) to moments of eerie beauty (a cloud of souls, "all of them clamoring at once inside the air"). If in the end she reaches too far, the book remains a stunning achievement.
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Sebold's first novel after her memoir, Lucky is a small but far from minor miracle. Sebold has taken a grim, media-exploited subject and fashioned from it a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace. The novel begins swiftly. In the second sentence, Sebold's narrator, Susie Salmon, announces, "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Susie is taking a shortcut through a cornfield when a neighbor lures her to his hideaway. The description of the crime is chilling, but never vulgar, and Sebold maintains this delicate balance between homely and horrid as she depicts the progress of grief for Susie's family and friends. She captures the odd alliances forged and the relationships ruined: the shattered father who buries his sadness trying to gather evidence, the mother who escapes "her ruined heart, in merciful adultery." At the same time, Sebold brings to life an entire suburban community, from the mortician's son to the handsome biker dropout who quietly helps investigate Susie's murder. Much as this novel is about "the lovely bones" growing around Susie's absence, it is also full of suspense and written in lithe, resilient prose that by itself delights. Sebold's most dazzling stroke, among many bold ones, is to narrate the story from Susie's heaven (a place where wishing is having), providing the warmth of a first-person narration and the freedom of an omniscient one. It might be this that gives Sebold's novel its special flavor, for in Susie's every observation and memory of the smell of skunk or the touch of spider webs is the reminder that life is sweet and funny and surprising,. Agent, Henry Dunow. (July 3) Forecast: Sebold's memoir, Lucky, was the account of her rape in 1981, at Syracuse University. It is, of course, impossible to read The Lovely Bones without considering the memoir, but the novel moves Sebold effortlessly into literary territory. A long list of writers including Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen blurb The Lovely Bones, and booksellers should expect the novel to move quickly; the early buzz has been considerable. Foreign rights have been sold in England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain and Sweden, with film rights to Film Four.
Publishers Weekly
Sebold, whose previous book, Lucky, told of her own rape and the subsequent trial of her attacker, here offers a powerful first novel, narrated by Susie Salmon, in heaven. Brutally raped and murdered by a deceptively mild-mannered neighbor, Susie begins with a compelling description of her death. During the next ten years, she watches over her family and friends as they struggle to cope with her murder. She observes their disintegrating lives with compassion and occasionally attempts, sometimes successfully, to communicate her love to them. Although the lives of all who knew her well are shaped by her tragic death, eventually her family and friends survive their pain and grief. In Sebold's heaven, Susie continues to grow emotionally. She learns that human existence is "the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human feeling as you went, groping in corners and opening your arms to light all of it part of navigating the unknown." Sebold's compelling and sometimes poetic prose style and unsparing vision transform Susie's tragedy into an ultimately rewarding novel. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. —Cheryl L. Conway, Univ. of Arkansas Lib., Fayetteville.
Library Journal
An extraordinary, almost-successful debut that treats sensational material with literary grace, narrated from heaven by the victim of a serial killer and pedophile. "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." These opening lines in Susie's thoroughly engaging voice show the same unblinking and straightforward charm that characterized Sebold's acclaimed memoir, Lucky (2002)—the true story of the author's surviving a brutal rape when she was a college freshman. Now, the fictional Susie recounts her own rape and—less lucky than the author—murder in a Pennsylvania suburb at the hands of a neighbor. Susie's voice is in exquisite control when describing the intensity and complexity of her family's grief, her longing for Ray Singh-the first and only boy to kiss her-and the effect her death has on Ruth, the lonely outsider whose body her soul happened to brush while rising up to a personal, whimsical, yet utterly convincing heaven. Rapt delight in the story begins to fade, though, as the narrative moves farther away in time from Susie's death and grows occasionally forced or superficial as Susie watches what happens over the next decade to everyone she knew on earth, including her killer. By the time Susie's soul enters Ruth's body long enough to make love to Ray, the author's ability to convince the reader has flagged. The closing third forces its way toward affirmative closure, and even the language changes tone: "The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future." Works beautifully for so long as Susie simply tells the truth, then falters when the author goes for bigger truths about Love and Life. Still, mostly mesmerizing and deserving of the attention it's sure to receive.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In Susie's Heaven, she is surrounded by things that bring her peace. What would your Heaven be like? Is it surprising that in Susie's inward, personal version of the hereafter there is no God or larger being that presides?
2. Why does Ruth become Susie's main connection to Earth? Was it accidental that Susie touched Ruth on her way up to Heaven, or was Ruth actually chosen to be Susie's emotional conduit?
3. Rape is one of the most alienating experiences imaginable. Susie's rape ends in murder and changes her family and friends forever. Alienation is transferred, in a sense, to Susie's parents and siblings. How do they each experience loneliness and solitude after Susie's death?
4. Why does the author include details about Mr. Harvey's childhood and his memories of his mother? By giving him a human side, does Sebold get us closer to understanding his motivation? Sebold explained in an interview about the novel that murderers "are not animals but men," and that is what makes them so frightening. Do you agree?
5. Discuss the way in which guilt manifests itself in the various characters—Jack, Abigail, Lindsay, Mr. Harvey, Len Fenerman.
6. "Pushing on the inbetween" is how Susie describes her efforts to connect with those she has left behind on Earth. Have you ever felt as though someone was trying to communicate with you from "the inbetween"?
7. Does Buckley really see Susie, or does he make up a version of his sister as a way of understanding, and not being too emotionally damaged by, her death? How do you explain tragedy to a child? Do you think Susie's parents do a good job of helping Buckley comprehend the loss of his sister?
8. Susie is killed just as she was beginning to see her mother and father as real people, not just as parents. Watching her parents' relationship change in the wake of her death, she begins to understand how they react to the world and to each other. How does this newfound understanding affect Susie?
9. Can Abigail's choice to leave her family be justified?
10. Why does Abigail leave her dead daughter's photo outside the Chicago Airport on her way back to her family?
11. Susie observes that "The living deserve attention, too." She watches her sister, Lindsay, being neglected as those around her focus all their attention on grieving for Susie. Jack refuses to allow Buckley to use Susie's clothes in his garden. When is it time to let go?
12. Susie's Heaven seems to have different stages, and climbing to the next stage of Heaven requires her to remove herself from what happens on Earth. What is this process like for Susie?
13. In The Lovely Bones, adult relationships (Abigail and Jack, Ray's parents) are dysfunctional and troubled, whereas the young relationships (Lindsay and Samuel, Ray and Susie, Ray and Ruth) all seem to have depth, maturity, and potential. What is the author saying about young love? About the trials and tribulations of married life?
14. Is Jack Salmon allowing himself to be swallowed up by his grief? Is there a point where he should have let go? How does his grief process affect his family? Is there something admirable about holding on so tightly to Susie's memory and not denying his profound sadness?
15. Ray and Susie's final physical experience (via Ruth's body) seems to act almost as an exorcism that sweeps away, if only temporarily, Susie's memory of her rape. What is the significance of this act for Susie, and does it serve to counterbalance the violent act that ended Susie's life?
16. Alice Sebold seems to be saying that out of tragedy comes healing. Susie's family fractures and comes back together, a town learns to find strength in each other. Do you agree that good can come of great trauma?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Lovely War
Julie Berry, 2019
Penguin Young Readers
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780147512970#
Summary
They are Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette.
A classical pianist from London…
A British would-be architect turned soldier…
A Harlem-born ragtime genius in the U.S. Army…
A Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past.
Their story is told by the goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgment on Mount Olympus
It is a tale filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though War is a formidable force, it's no match for the transcendent power of Love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Julie Berry is the author of the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlisted novel The Passion of Dolssa, the Carnegie and Edgar shortlisted All the Truth That's in Me, and many other acclaimed middle-grade novels and picture books.
She holds a BS from Rensselaer in communication and an MFA from Vermont College. She lives in Southern California with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] virtuoso historical fantasy.… When the hurly-burly's done, and the battle's lost and won, does Love conquer War? The answer is never in doubt, but it's a pleasure to have it confirmed by a celestially inspired storyteller.
New York Times Book Review
Leavened by wit and informed by history, Lovely War is a romantic and inventive story from its dramatic start to its laughter- and tear-spangled ending.
Wall Street Journal
The novel you'll want to steal from your teen's night stand.… Though Lovely War is being marketed to teens, adults looking for a memorable, well-told tale should not be shy about delving in, too.
Washington Post
(Starred review) Berry’s evocative novel… gains steam as the stories flesh out. Along the way, it suggests that while war and its devastation cycles through history, the forces of art and love remain steady, eternal, and life-sustaining.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Readers will be swept away by Berry’s lyrical prose.
Library Journal
Berry’s accomplished talent for developing all elements of plot—character, tone, and mood—in addition to her fresh writing style makes this title a compelling page turner.
Library School Journal
(Starred review) Proves again that Berry is one of our most ambitious writers. Happily for us, that ambition so often results in great success.
Booklist
(Starred review) Scheherazade has nothing on Berry…. An unforgettable romance so Olympian in scope, human at its core, and lyrical in its prose that it must be divinely inspired.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review) Julie Berry [is] a modern master of historical fiction for young readers…. Berry’s superb research and attention to detail are perfectly suited to the layers of this story of love in wartime…. [A] romantic yet unflinching look at teenagers coming of age during World War I.
BookPage
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 LOVELY WAR … then take off on your own:
1. Why might Julie Berry have used the device of Olympia to tell her story of love during a time of a devastating war? Why frame her story using mythology? Does the frame work for you? Why or why not?
2. What is your familiarity with Greek mythology, especially the Arphrodite-Ares-Hephestus triangle? If you're familiar with it, how does Berry (shall we say…) "flesh it out"?
3. Talk about the immortals and their incessant bickering, snark, and competition with one another. Which diety did you find funny … sympathetic … wise? Any? None?
4. Which of the mortal couples most pulled at your heart-strings … and why? Or perhaps a fairer question would be how did both couples pull at your heartstrings? Our of the four characters, do you have a favorite?
5. Talk about the manner in which each of the two couples met. What drew them together? Consider, for instance, Hazel and James's dance in London.
6. What does the novel teach about the treatment of black troups during the war? Were you aware of the blatant prejudice African-Americans faced in the military (in World War II, as well)?
7. The horrors of trench warfare in World War I are well-known—through history lessons, oral recollections, books (fiction and nonfiction), and film portrayals. How vividly does Lovely War present those conditions? Have you gained a new perspective, perhaps a more personal one … or neither?
8. The historical war in tbis novel can also be viewed as symbolic—the ongoing battles most of us fight in our personal lives: we have our own demons to overcome, our own weaknesses, to say nothing of societal injustices, and the cruelty and seeming randomness of fate. How do the four mortal characters—Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette—face the tragedies and challenges in their lives?
9. The book poses the question that love wins out over war, hope over fear. Do you think so? Is this book realistic? Or is it bascially a diverting, feel-good romance. What's your take?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
Francine Prose, 2014
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061713781
Summary
A richly imagined and stunningly inventive literary masterpiece of love, art, and betrayal, exploring the genesis of evil, the unforeseen consequences of love, and the ultimate unreliability of storytelling itself.
Paris in the 1920s. It is a city of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club's loyal denizens, including the rising photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol, and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine.
As the years pass, their fortunes—and the world itself—evolve. Lou falls in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosis that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more sinister: collaboration with the Nazis.
Told in a kaleidoscope of voices, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 evokes this incandescent city with brio, humor, and intimacy. A brilliant work of fiction and a mesmerizing read, it is Francine Prose's finest novel yet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 1, 1947
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; PEN-America prize for translation; Guggenheim Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
When it comes to an author as eclectic as Francine Prose, it's difficult to find the unifying thread in her work. But, if one were to examine her entire oeuvre—from novels and short stories to essays and criticism—a love of reading would seem to be the animating force.
That may not seem extraordinary, especially for a writer, but Prose is uncommonly passionate about the link between reading and writing. "I've always read," she confessed in a 1998 interview with Atlantic Unbound. "I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop.... The only reason I wanted to be a writer was because I was such an avid reader." (In 2006, she produced an entire book on the subject—a nuts-and-bolts primer entitled Reading Like a Writer, in which she uses excerpts from classic and contemporary literature to illustrate her personal notions of literary excellence.)
If Prose is specific about the kind of writing she, herself, likes to read, she's equally voluble about what puts her off. She is particularly vexed by "obvious, tired cliches; lazy, ungrammatical writing; implausible plot turns." Unsurprisingly, all of these are notably absent in her own work. Even when she explores tried-and-true literary conventions—such as the illicit romantic relationship at the heart of her best known novel, Blue Angel—she livens them with wit and irony. She even borrowed her title from the famous Josef von Sternberg film dealing with a similar subject.
As biting and clever as she is, Prose cringes whenever her work is referred to as satire. She explained to Barnes & Noble editors, "Satirical to me means one-dimensional characters...whereas, I think of myself as a novelist who happens to be funny—who's writing characters that are as rounded and artfully developed as the writers of tragic novels."
Prose's assessment of her own work is pretty accurate. Although her subject matter is often ripe for satire (religious fanaticism in Household Saints, tabloid journalism in Bigfoot Dreams, upper-class pretensions in Primitive People), etc.), she takes care to invest her characters with humanity and approaches them with respect. "I really do love my characters," she says, "but I feel that I want to take a very hard look at them. I don't find them guilty of anything I'm not guilty of myself."
Best known for her fiction, Prose has also written literary criticism for the New York Times, art criticism for the Wall Street Journal, and children's books based on Jewish folklore, all of it infused with her alchemic blend of humor, insight,and intelligence.
Extras
• Prose rarely wastes an idea. In Blue Angel, the novel that the character Angela is writing is actually a discarded novel that Prose started before stopping because, in her own words, "it seemed so juvenile to me."
• While she once had no problem slamming a book in one of her literary critiques, these days Prose has resolved to only review books that she actually likes. The ones that don't adhere to her high standards are simply returned to the senders.
• Prose's novel Household Saints was adapted into an excellent film starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor in 1993.
• Another novel, The Glorious Ones, was adapted into a musical.
• In 2002 Prose published The Lives of the Muses, an intriguing hybrid of biography, philosophy, and gender studies that examines nine women who inspired famous artists and thinkers—from John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono to Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Alice in Wonderland. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 is a novel of great reach and power, a portrait of an entire era. Prose's canvas is crowded with many characters, but they’re all well-delineated. She has a miraculous gift for imagining a foggy quay or a smoky cabaret—or a strait-laced banquet given by the Führer, eating his vegetarian nut cutlets while his guests tremble with fear. Though there are multiple narrators, each is distinct, since Prose has a knack for parodying different voices.
Edmund White - New York Times Book Review
Prose’s 21st novel captures the brilliance of Paris’s bohemian art scene in the ’20s and ’30s, as well as the dark days that followed.... The novel skillfully portrays the headiness of Parisian cafes, where artists and writers came together to talk and cadge free drinks, and the terror of the Nazi Occupation. Though the momentum lags at times, Prose deftly demonstrates with a wink the self-seeking nature of memory and the way we portray our past.
Publishers Weekly
What's most striking about this latest work from Prose is how effectively she weaves together the stories of more than a half dozen characters to tell the larger picture of France (and, indeed, Europe) between the World Wars while reflecting on the nature of evil and the limits of biography (and biographical fiction).... At first a smoothly unrolling tapestry, the novel deepens as it portrays a society careening toward war. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Artistically and intellectually adventurous, Prose presents a house-of-mirrors historical novel built around a famous photograph by Brassai of two women at a table in a Paris nightclub. The one wearing a tuxedo is athlete, race-car driver, and Nazi collaborator Violette Morris.... Prose considered writing a biography, but instead she forged an electrifying union of fact and fiction.... A dark and glorious tour de force. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
(Starred review.) A tour de force of character, point of view and especially atmosphere, Prose's latest takes place in Paris from the late 1920s till the end of World War II. The primary locus of action is the Chameleon Club, a cabaret where entertainment edges toward the kinky.... Within this multilayered web of characters, Prose manages to give almost every character a voice.... Brilliant and dazzling Prose.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The story of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 centers around Lou Villars. Who is she? What do we learn about her as the novel progresses? What three adjectives would you use to describe her?
2. The novel is told in the voices of the various contemporaries of Lou. How does this method of narration add to the drama and depth of the story? Do you trust one viewpoint more than another? Did you like one narrator more than another?
3. There is another voice in the novel that is not part of Lou's circle—or even of the time—Nathalie Dunois. What does her voice add to the story? When you learn about Nathalie later in the book, how does it affect your understanding of Lou? What is Francine Prose trying to convey to us about the nature of narrative truth? Can we trust any of the characters in the book? Can we ever trust personal narrative—whether in fiction or nonfiction? What are the implications
for our understanding of these characters—especially Lou?
4. Discuss Lou's circle—the photographer Gabor Tsenyi, his girlfriend Suzanne Dunois, Baroness Lily de Rossignol, the Chameleon Club's manager, Yvonne Nagy, the American journalist Lionel Maine, German racer Inge Wallser, and even the collaborator Jean-Claude Bonnet. What impact did they have on Lou's life and outlook? Describe a few of them as individuals and their relationships with each other. What do they each think of Lou? What do Lou's subsequent actions hold for each of their lives? Choose one character and tell the story from his or her viewpoint.
5. What precipitated Lou's actions before and during the war? Was it spurned love, lost opportunity, or something more? Think about her character. Might Lou have acted the same way even if circumstances were different? How much influence did the Nazis have over her? Think about her childhood. How did the circumstances of her youth shape her? What about notions of nationalism and cultural chauvinism? Did they color who she was? Do you think she ever really considered the consequences of her choices?
6. Talk about the Chameleon Club. What purpose does it serve in the novel? Who were its patrons and what drew them there? What about Lou? How were places like the Chameleon Club indicative of their time?
7. Discuss the Paris that is recreated in the pages of the novel. How is the city itself a character? What is intriguing about Lou Villar's Paris? Would you have liked to visit this Paris? Can you feel the winds of change shifting in the novel? How does Francine Prose create mood and atmosphere? How do both add to the story as it unfolds?
8. In her biography of Lou, Nathalie writes, "Not only does creative work mine the rich veins of the unconscious, it also has an uncanny ability to obtain what the artist needs, from the world." How does creative work "mine the rich vein of the unconscious"? How does i have "an uncanny ability to obtain what the artist needs, from the world'? Use examples from this work or another to explain your understanding of Nathalie's words.
9. What is the role of art in the novel? How is it used to elevate the spirit and how can it be used for evil? Think about the period. How did the Nazis use art to promote their cause?
10. Would Lou feel at home with the political atmosphere today—the divisions between left and right, the anger over immigration, the "takers" and the "makers"? How does Lou's world compare to today? Use examples from the story to illustrate your ideas.
11. Late in the novel, the Baroness confides, "During the Occupation we learned to live with fear and humiliation, anger and insults, the witnessing of horrific scenes one could hardly believe were real." How did their lives and their art change as the political situation shifted —as their feelings of freedom turned to terror as fascism took hold?
12. At the end of the novel, well after the war, we learn that Lionel Maine is obsessed with the end of the movie Carrie, from Stephen King's horror novel. Why do you think that final scene—of the dead Carrie's arm punching through the ground where she is buried—affects him so much?
13. What are your impressions of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932? Did it meet your expectations? What made your group choose to read the novel? What did you take away from your reading? If you've read other stories that bring to life this period and place, how do they compare to Lovers at the Chameleon Club?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Loving Frank
Nancy Horan, 2007
Random House
222 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345495006
Summary
I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.
So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.
In this groundbreaking historical novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America's greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Mamah's profound influence on Wright.
Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan's Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world, and her unforgettable journey, marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leads inexorably to this novel's stunning conclusion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Nancy Horan is the American author of Loving Frank (2007) and Under the Wide and Starry Sky (2014). The first is a novel about Mamah Borthwick and her relationship with American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The author was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction by the Society of American Historians in 2009 for works written in 2007-2008.
Under the Wide and Starry Sky is her second biographical novel, this one detailing the marriage of Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne to Robert Louis Stevenson.
A native Midwesterner, Nancy Horan was a teacher and journalist before turning to fiction writing. She lived for 24 years in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where she raised her two sons. She now lives with her husband on an island in Puget Sound. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/9/2014.)
Book Reviews
Though engrossing and beautifully imagined, this book is disturbing. When real-life Mamah Cheney leaves her husband and children to elope with Frank Lloyd Wright, she pays a price. Throughout, one wonders: is the price too high or not high enough?
A LitLovers LitPick (Apr '08)
An enthralling first novel.... A century after pathbreakers like Emma Goldman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Ellen Key struggled to raise female consciousness, there is still no satisfactory answer to the question of how a woman dedicated to her own self-expression can fulfill the tradition-bound, justly demanding needs of her children when presented with a competitor for their love. The problem Ellen Key wrestled with in her philosophy, and that Mamah could not solve in her life, had no solution in 1907 and still has none in 2007. In Loving Frank, bringing the buried truths of the ill-starred relationship of Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright to light, Horan only increases her heroine's mystery. Mamah Borthwick Cheney wasn't just any woman, but Horan makes her into an enigmatic Everywoman—a symbol of both the freedoms women yearn to have and of the consequences that may await when they try to take them.
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times Book Review
The novel belongs to the feminist genre not only in its depiction of a woman's conflicting desires for love and motherhood and a central role in society, but also through its sophisticated—and welcome—focus on the topic of feminism itself.... Loving Frank is a novel of impressive scope and ambition. Like her characters, Horan is going for something big and lasting here, and that is to be admired. In writing about tenderness between lovers or describing a physical setting, she uses prose that is is knowing and natural. At other times, she allows us a glimpse of the hand of fact guiding the hand of art, taking it places where it might not necessarily have chosen to go.
Meg Wolitzer - Washington Post
Horan's ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright's first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th century. Frank and Mamah, both married and with children, met when Mamah's husband, Edwin, commissioned Frank to design a house. Their affair became the stuff of headlines when they left their families to live and travel together, going first to Germany, where Mamah found rewarding work doing scholarly translations of Swedish feminist Ellen Key's books. Frank and Mamah eventually settled in Wisconsin, where they were hounded by a scandal-hungry press, with tragic repercussions. Horan puts considerable effort into recreating Frank's vibrant, overwhelming personality, but her primary interest is in Mamah, who pursued her intellectual interests and love for Frank at great personal cost. As is often the case when a life story is novelized, historical fact inconveniently intrudes: Mamah's life is cut short in the most unexpected and violent of ways, leaving the narrative to crawl toward a startlingly quiet conclusion. Nevertheless, this spirited novel brings Mamah the attention she deserves as an intellectual and feminist.
Publishers Weekly
In 1904, architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house for Edwin and Mamah Borthwick Cheney, respectable members of Oak Park, IL, society. Five years later, after a clandestine affair, Frank and Mamah scandalized that society by leaving their families to live together in Europe. Stunned by the furor, Mamah wanted to stay there, particularly after she met women's rights advocate Ellen Key, who rejected conventional ideas of marriage and divorce. Eventually, Frank convinced her to return to Wisconsin, where he was building Taliesin as a home and retreat. Horan's extensive research provides substantial underpinnings for this engrossing novel, and the focus on Mamah lets readers see her attraction to the creative, flamboyant architect but also her recognition of his arrogance. Mamah's own drive to achieve something important is tinged with guilt over abandoning her children. Tentative steps toward reconciliation end in a shocking, violent conclusion that would seem melodramatic if it weren't based on true events. The plot, characters, and ideas meld into a novel that will be a treat for fans of historical fiction but should not be pigeonholed in a genre section. Highly recommended.
Kathy Piehl - Library Journal
Journalist Horan's debut novel reflects her fascination with the brilliant, erratic architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his scandalous love affair with a married woman and mother of two. The book capitalizes on Horan's research into both the architect's private and professional lives. The story opens when Mamah (pronounced May-Muh) Cheney, an Oak Park, Ill., woman, and her husband Edwin, a successful local businessman, contract with Frank to build their new home. Although both Frank and Mamah are married and seem content, the architect and his female client soon find they not only like being together-they must be together. Mamah, an early feminist longing for a more meaningful life, succumbs to Frank's charms as the two enter an affair that is both physical and spiritual. Soon, their relationship is the hook for all of Oak Park's gossip. After leaving their spouses, the pair flees to Europe, finding delight in a less- disapproving continental society, as well as an outlet for their cultural pursuits. Frank, father of the "prairie style" of architecture, proves a thoughtless and irresponsible businessman, but Mamah remains by his side until the couple finally quits Europe and returns home. There, Frank builds a home they call Taliesin. Eventually, Mamah makes peace with her former husband and her two children-son John and daughter Martha-who visit her at the rural estate. However, Frank's wife, Catherine, adamantly continues her refusal to grant her husband a divorce. But just when it appears that their relationship problems have lessened, a terrible and unanticipated tragedy strikes and changes forever the lives of the two lovers who were forbidden to marry. Lovers Frank and Mamah fail to generate sympathy, and the story closes with the unsubtle reminder that real life is never quite as tidy as fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think that Mamah is right to leave her husband and children in order to pursue her personal growth and the relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright? Is she being selfish to put her own happiness and fulfillment first?
2. Why do you think the author, Nancy Horan, gave her novel the title Loving Frank? Does this title work against the feminist message of the novel? Is there a feminist message?
3. Do you think that a woman today who made the choices that Mamah makes would receive a more sympathetic or understanding hearing from the media and the general public?
4. If Mamah were alive today, would she be satisfied with the progress women have achieved or would she believe there was still a long way to go?
5. In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare writes, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments. Love is not love/That alters where it alteration finds..." How does the relationship of Mamah and Frank bear out the sentiments of Shakespeare’s sonnet? What other famous love matches fill the bill?
6. Is Mamah’s story relevant to the women of today?
7. Is Frank Lloyd Wright an admirable figure in this novel? Would it change your opinion of him to know that he married twice more in his life?
8. What about Edwin Cheney, Mamah’s husband? Did he behave as you might have expected after learning of the affair between his wife and Wright?
9. Edwin’s philosophy of life and love might be summed up in the following words from the novel: "Tell her happiness is just practice. If she acted happy, she would be happy." Do you agree or disagree with this philosophy?
10. "Carved over Wright's fireplace in his Oak Park home are the words "Life is Truth." What do you think these words mean, and do Frank and Mamah live up to them?
11. Why do you think Horan chose to give her novel the epigraph from Goethe, "One lives but once in the world."?
12. When Mamah confesses her affair to her friend Mattie, Mattie demands, "What about duty? What about honor?" Discuss some of the different meanings that characters in the novel attach to these two words.
13. In analyzing the failure of the women’s movement to make more progress, Mamah says, "Yet women are part of the problem. We plan dinner parties and make flowers out of crepe paper. Too many of us make small lives for ourselves." Was this a valid criticism at the time, and is it one today?
14. Why does seeing a performance of the opera Mefistofele affect Mamah so strongly?
15. Why is Mamah's friendship with Else Lasker Schuler important in the book?
16. Ellen Key, the Swedish feminist whose work so profoundly influences Mamah, states at one point, "The very legitimate right of a free love can never be acceptable if it is enjoyed at the expense of maternal love." Do you agree?
17. Another of Ellen Key’s beliefs was that motherhood should be recompensed by the state. Do you think an idea like this could ever catch on in America? Why or why not?
18. Is there anything that Frank and Mamah could have done differently after their return to America that would have ameliorated the harsh welcome they received from the press? Have things changed very much in that regard today?
19. What part did racism play in Julian Carlton’s crime? Were his actions the product of pure insanity, or was he goaded into violence?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Lowcountry Summer
Dorothea Benton Frank, 2010
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061961175
Summary
When Caroline Wimbley Levine returned to Tall Pines Plantation, she never expected to make peace with long-buried truths about herself and her family. The Queen of Tall Pines, her late mother, was a force of nature, but now she is gone, leaving Caroline and the rest of the family uncertain of who will take her place.
In the lush South Carolina countryside, old hurts, betrayals, and dark secrets will surface, and a new generation will rise along the banks of the mighty Edisto River.
Wonderfully evocative, infused with humor and poignancy, and rich with the lyrical cadences of the South, Lowcountry Summer is vintage Dorothea Benton Frank, a deeply moving novel you'll want to savor and share. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—Sullivan's Island, North Carolina, USA
• Education—Fashion Institute of America
• Currently—lives in New Jersey and on Sullivan Island
An author who has helped to put the South Carolina Lowcountry on the literary map, Dorothea Benton Frank hasn't always lived near the ocean, but the Sullivan's Island native has a powerful sense of connection to her birthplace. Even after marrying a New Yorker and settling in New Jersey, she returned to South Carolina regularly for visits, until her mother died and she and her siblings had to sell their family home. "It was very upsetting," she told the Raleigh News & Observer. "Suddenly, I couldn't come back and walk into my mother's house. I was grieving."
After her mother's death, writing down her memories of home was a private, therapeutic act for Frank. But as her stack of computer printouts grew, she began to try to shape them into a novel. Eventually a friend introduced her to the novelist Fern Michaels, who helped her polish her manuscript and find an agent for it.
Published in 2000, Frank's first "Lowcountry tale," Sullivan's Island made it to the New York Times bestseller list. Its quirky characters and tangled family relationships drew comparisons to the works of fellow southerners Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy (both of whom have provided blurbs for Frank's books). But while Conroy's novels are heavily angst-ridden, Frank sweetens her dysfunctional family tea with humor and a gabby, just-between-us-girls tone. To her way of thinking, there's a gap between serious literary fiction and standard beach-blanket fare that needs to be filled.
"I don't always want to read serious fiction," Frank explained to The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. "But when I read fiction that's not serious, I don't want to read brain candy. Entertain me, for God's sake." Since her debut, she has faithfully followed her own advice, entertaining thousands of readers with books Pat Conroy calls "hilarious and wise" and characters Booklist describes as "sassy and smart,."
These days, Frank has a house of her own on Sullivan's Island, where she spends part of each year. "The first thing I do when I get there is take a walk on the beach," she admits. Evidently, this transplanted Lowcountry gal is staying in touch with her soul.
Extras
From a Barnes & Noble interview:
• Before she started writing, Frank worked as a fashion buyer in New York City. She is also a nationally recognized volunteer fundraiser for the arts and education, and an advocate of literacy programs and women's issues.
• Her definition of a great beach read—"a fabulous story that sucks me in like a black hole and when it's over, it jettisons my bones across the galaxy with a hair on fire mission to convince everyone I know that they must read that book or they will die."
• When asked about her favorite books, here is what she said:
After working your way through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, of course, you have to read Gone with the Wind a billion times, then [tackle these authors].
The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood; A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley; The Red Tent by Anita Diamant; Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler; Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King; Making Waves and The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King; Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons; Rich in Love, Fireman's Fair, Dreams of Sleep, and Nowhere Else on Earth (all three) by Josephine Humphrey. (Author bio and interview from Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
Here’s one for the Southern gals as well as Yankees who appreciate Frank’s signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities. In this long-time-coming sequel to Plantation, opinionated and family-centric Caroline Wimbly Levine has just turned 47, but she’s less concerned with advancing middle age than she is with son Eric shacking up with an older single mom. She’s also dealing with a drunk and disorderly sister-in-law, Frances Mae; four nieces from hell; grieving brother Tripp; a pig-farmer boyfriend with a weak heart; and a serious crush on the local sheriff. Then there’s Caroline’s dead-but-not-forgotten mother, Miss Lavinia, whose presence both guides and troubles Caroline as she tries to keep her unruly family intact and out of jail. With a sizable cast of minor characters with major attitude, Frank lovingly mixes a brew of personalities who deliver nonstop clashes, mysteries, meltdowns, and commentaries; below the always funny theatrics, however, is a compelling saga of loss and acceptance. When Frank nails it, she really nails it, and she does so here.
Publishers Weekly
Reprising the characters introduced in Plantation (2001), Frank creates a richly atmospheric tale of a loving, if dysfunctional, southern family. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
More folksy love, marriage and magic in Frank's winning book. Caroline Wimbley Levine is at loose ends. The daughter of Wimbley matriarch, Miss Lavinia, she has returned to Tall Pines Plantation to take charge of the family home and, apparently, the lives of her relatives. The lowcountry of South Carolina may have limited romantic possibilities—neither of Caroline's major beaus (a barbecue chef and a local cop) tempt her to remarry—but its limited social circle is full of complications. The major one is her brother Trip's troubled separation from the falling-down drunk Frances Mae, a woman both Caroline and her mother had disapproved of from the start not because "she was a low class red neck slut from nowhere" but because "she was greedy, jealous, small-minded, petty and mean-spirited." The main conflict begins when Frances Mae crashes her car with her young daughter as a passenger, forcing Caroline—and an unwilling Trip—to take action. But as Caroline tries to channel Miss Lavinia's voice, she tends to hear only the old prejudices. While Frances Mae, a woman whose unrefined accent is made clear through her slurred protestations of "I love yew" when the extended family enacts an intervention, is hardly sympathetic, Caroline has a few lessons to learn about tolerance and commitment, too. Joined and amply supported by Frank's usual colorful lowcountry crew-particularly the ancient Miss Sweetie and the magical Millie Smoak-Caroline makes it through this particularly bumpy summer a little wiser and a lot happier. Although a particularly providential accident is necessary to bring about the usual happy ending, this chatty first-person tale of friendship, love and toothsome Southern food shares the appeal of its predecessors. Family complications and Southern charm bolster a proven formula.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Describe Caroline's relationship with her brother and the rest of her clan. How do the young people in the novel behave towards each other and towards their elders?
2. What things might Lavinia—coming from a different generation—have taken for granted that Caroline cannot? What accounts for these differences? How do the three generations of Wimbley women compare and contrast with one another?
3. What is Millie's role in the story? How would you characterize her relationship with Caroline?
4. Caroline firmly believes in good manners and propriety. Why? Do you think these attributes are out of date—or are they more necessary than ever in today's world?
5. Tradition is also important to Caroline. "Families like ours and Miss Sweetie's never downsized and moved to condos in Boca. Sell the blood-soaked land our ancestors had died to protect? Never in a million years! We stayed where we were born until we drew our last breath, making sure that our heirs swore the same fealty to the cause." How does such loyalty shape a person's life? Can someone be too loyal? When can loyalty to a cause, a place, a person become destructive?
6. "In our world, women took care of everything, especially each other, and the art of making each other look good was something that gave us great joy and satisfaction," Caroline explains when pondering her niece, Belle's graduation. "Lesson one of adulthood was putting the needs or even just the wishes of others before your own and then taking pleasure in making them come to pass." Do you agree with Caroline's assessment?
7. Dorothea Benton Frank uses the Lowcounty as both a setting and a character in the novel. How does this place shape its inhabitants? How would you describe it? Have you ever had a connection with a place like Caroline does with Tall Pines Plantation? Would having such a link be comforting or confining?
8. Compare Caroline with her sister in law, Frances Mae. Why do they dislike each other? Are they alike in any way? How can the two join together in the name of the family? Could such a bond be strengthened? Can it last?
9. The bond—or lack of one—between parents and children—is a prevalent theme of Lowcountry Summer. What is Trip's relationship like with his daughters? Why is he so helpless to contain them? Was he placing too much of a burden on his beloved, Rusty, to care for them? What did the girls think about their mother? What makes a good mother?
10. Trip asks his sister if she thinks his relationship with Rusty is wrong. How would you answer this? Should Trip have stayed with Frances Mae? Do you agree with his choices at the end? Do you think reconciliation can work? How much does success depend on Caroline?
11. Did Caroline overreact when she discovered her other niece, Linnie, was smoking pot at Belle's graduation party? Could she have handled the situation better? Did Linnie deserve the slap she got from her aunt? Millie doesn't like hitting and slapping, "But maybe sometimes a chile needs something to shake 'em up. Specially that knucklehead [Linnie]." What do you think of this?
12. What about Caroline's feelings for Matthew—why was she so reluctant to admit how she really felt about him? What do you think the future holds for them?
13. The book is filled with several rites of passage: weddings, funerals, a graduation. How is Caroline's position as matriarch defined by these rites?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Lowland
Jhumpa Lahiri, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
pp. 432
ISBN-13: 9780307278265
Summary
Two brothers bound by tragedy; a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past; a country torn by revolution: the Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times best-selling author gives us a powerful new novel—set in both India and America—that explores the price of idealism and a love that can last long past death.
Growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other.
But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead of them. It is the 1960s, and Udayan—charismatic and impulsive—finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty: he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes.
Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother's political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America. But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family's home, he comes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind—including those seared in the heart of his brother's wife.
Suspenseful, sweeping, piercingly intimate, The Lowland expands the range of one of our most dazzling storytellers, seamlessly interweaving the historical and the personal across generations and geographies. This masterly novel of fate and will, exile and return, is a tour de force and an instant classic. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 11, 1967
• Where—London, England, UK
• Raised—Kingston, Rhode Island, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; 2 M.A's., M.F.A., and
Ph.D., Boston University
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize (see more below)
• Currently—lives in Rome, Italy
Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name.She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna but goes by her nickname Jhumpa. Lahiri is a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Biography
Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the state of West Bengal. Her family moved to the United States when she was two; Lahiri considers herself an American, having said, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been." Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father Amar Lahiri works as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island; he is the basis for the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent," the closing story from Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "proper names". Lahiri recalled, "I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are." Lahiri's ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake, over his unusual name. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989.
Lahiri then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor and now Senior Editor of Time Latin America. The couple lives in Rome, Italy with their two children.
Literary career
Lahiri's early short stories faced rejection from publishers "for years." Her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, was finally released in 1999. The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital difficulties, miscarriages, and the disconnection between first and second generation United States immigrants. Lahiri later wrote,
When I first started writing I was not conscious that my subject was the Indian-American experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or mature enough, to allow in life.
The collection was praised by American critics, but received mixed reviews in India, where reviewers were alternately enthusiastic and upset Lahiri had "not paint[ed] Indians in a more positive light." However, according to Md. Ziaul Haque, a poet, columnist, scholar, researcher and a faculty member at Sylhet International University, Bangladesh,
But, it is really painful for any writer living far away in a new state, leaving his/her own homeland behind; the motherland, the environment, people, culture etc. constantly echo in the writer’s (and of course anybody else’s) mind. So, the manner of trying to imagine and describe about the motherland and its people deserves esteem. I think that we should coin a new term, i.e. “distant-author” and add it to Lahiri’s name since she, being a part of another country, has taken the help of "imagination" and depicted her India the way she has wanted to; the writer must have every possible right to paint the world the way he/she thinks appropriate.
Interpreter of Maladies sold 600,000 copies and received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (only the seventh time a story collection had won the award).
In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her first novel. The story spans over thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta-born parents emigrated as young adults to the United States, where their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A film adaptation of The Namesake was released in 2007, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his parents. Lahiri herself made a cameo as "Aunt Jhumpa".
Lahiri's second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, was released in 2008. Upon its publication, Unaccustomed Earth achieved the rare distinction of debuting at number 1 on the New York Times best seller list. The Times Book Review editor, Dwight Garner, wrote, "It’s hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction — particularly a book of stories — that leapt straight to No. 1; it’s a powerful demonstration of Lahiri’s newfound commercial clout."
Her fourth book and second movel, The Lowland, was published in 2013, again to wide acclaim. The story of two Indian born brothers who take different paths in life, it was placed on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize.
Lahiri has also had a distinguished relationship with The New Yorker magazine in which she has published a number of her short stories, mostly fiction, and a few non-fiction including "The Long Way Home; Cooking Lessons," a story about the importance of food in Lahiri's relationship with her mother.
Since 2005, Lahiri has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center, an organization designed to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers. In 2010, she was appointed a member of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities, along with five others.
Literary focus
Lahiri's writing is characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home. Lahiri's fiction is autobiographical and frequently draws upon her own experiences as well as those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali communities with which she is familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior.
Unaccustomed Earth departs from this earlier original ethos as Lahiri's characters embark on new stages of development. These stories scrutinize the fate of the second and third generations. As succeeding generations become increasingly assimilated into American culture and are comfortable in constructing perspectives outside of their country of origin, Lahiri's fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. She shows how later generations depart from the constraints of their immigrant parents, who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants.
Television
Lahiri worked on the third season of the HBO television program In Treatment. That season featured a character named Sunil, a widower who moves to the United States from Bangladesh and struggles with grief and with culture shock. Although she is credited as a writer on these episodes, her role was more as a consultant on how a Bengali man might perceive Brooklyn.
Awards
• 1993 – TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation
• 1999 – O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 1999 – PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 1999 – "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2000 – Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2000 – "The Third and Final Continent" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2000 – The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 2000 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 2002 – Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2002 – "Nobody's Business" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2008 – Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
• 2009 – Asian American Literary Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/12/13.)
Book Reviews
A classic story of family and ideology at odds, love and risk closely twined.... Lahiri’s subject has always been the complex roots of families, cut and transplanted, trailing thwarted dreams and former selves.... The Lowland, her most ambitious work to date, marks the author’s shift in perspective toward that of a parent, with all its heightened vulnerability.... As the stripped-down sentences accrue with a kind of geologic inevitability, Lahiri renders the undertow of grief and loss.... Novels are often elegies for things that would otherwise be lost to time. Here, over the passing decades, a sacred marshland is sold to developers; a daughter loses a mother, then becomes one. An author, at the height of her artistry, spins the globe and comes full circle.
Megan O’Grady - Vogue
Leave it to Lahiri to create yet another novel that’s as transporting and educational as it is beautiful and emotive. The Lowland explores the bonds of love, family, and obligation against backdrops from the radical Naxalite movement of 1960s Calcutta to the tidal shores of collegiate Rhode Island.... A writer of Lahiri’s caliber is always greeted with fanfare, but The Lowland is among the biggest events of the season.
Elle
Gorgeous.... The painful partitioning of a great country is echoed in the life of one family in Lahiri’s novel of love’s tragic missteps and the sustained devastation of personal independence. The Lowland’s beating heart is the relationship between two devoted brothers.... Lahiri’s beautifully wrought characters make decisions that isolate them inside their haunted thoughts.
Susanna Sonnenberg - More
(Starred review.) Haunting.... A novel that crosses generations, oceans, and the chasms within families.... Lahiri’s skill is reflected not only in her restrained and lyric prose, but also in her moving forward chronological time while simultaneously unfolding memory, which does not fade in spite of the years. A formidable and beautiful book.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Pulitzer Prize-winner Lahiri’s unparalleled ability to transform the smallest moments into whole lives pinnacles in this extraordinary story of two brothers coming of age in the political tumult of 1960s India.... Lahiri is remarkable, achieving multilayered meaning in a simple act.... [This is] is deservedly one of this year’s most anticipated books. Banal words of praise simply won’t do justice; perhaps what is needed is a three-word directive: just read it. —Terry Hong
Library Journal
(Starred review.) An absolute triumph. Lahiri uses a gorgeously rendered Calcutta landscape to profound effect.... As shocking complexities tragedies, and revelations multiply, Lahiri astutely examines the psychological nuances of conviction, guilt, grief, marriage, and parenthood, and delicately but firmly dissects the moral conundrums inherent in violent revolution. Renowned for her exquisite prose and penetrating insights, Lahiri attains new heights of artistry—flawless transparency, immersive intimacy with characters and place—in her spellbinding fourth book and second novel. A magnificent, universal, and indelible work of literature.... Lahiri’s standing increases with each book, and this is her most compelling yet. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
(Starred review.) A tale of two continents in an era of political tumult, rendered with devastating depth and clarity by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. The narrative proceeds from the simplicity of a fairy tale into a complex novel of moral ambiguity and aftershocks, with revelations that continue through decades and generations until the very last page.... The story of two brothers in India who are exceptionally close to each other, and yet completely different, the novel spans more than four decades in the life of [their] family, shaped and shaken by the events that have brought them together and tear them apart.... Lahiri has earned renown for her short stories, [yet] this masterful novel deserves to attract an even wider readership.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “Udayan was the one brave enough to ask them for autographs…He was blind to self-constraints, like an animal incapable of perceiving certain colors. But Subhash strove to minimize his existence, as other animals merged with bark or blades of grass” (p. 11). How do the differences between the boys both strengthen and strain the tie between them?
2. Does Subhash’s decision to make it “his mission to obey (his parents), given that it wasn’t possible to surprise or impress them. That was what Udayan did” (p. 11) follow a pattern common among siblings? What part do their parents play in fostering the roles each boy assumes?
3. What does Udayan’s reaction to Subhash’s decision to go to America (p. 30) and Subhash’s admission that he wanted to leave Calcutta “not only for the sake of his education but also . . . to take a step Udayan never would” (p. 40) convey about the balance between admiration and envy, support and competition, that underlies their relationship? Do you think that Udayan is manipulative, or does Subhash misread him (p. 31)?
4. What aspects of the immigrant experience are captured in Subhash’s first impressions of Rhode Island (p. 34)? How do his feelings about school and about his roommate, Richard, bring to light both his pleasure and his uncertainties about his new independence? In what ways does Udayan’s letter add to his ambivalence about the choice he has made (p. 47)?
5. What does Subhash’s affair with Holly convey about his transition to life in America (pp. 65-83)? What does it reveal about his emotional ties to his old life and family?
6. Why does the author describe the courtship and marriage of Udayan and Gauri from Gauri’s perspective (pp. 51-61)? To what extent does Gauri’s independence, rare for women in India, influence their decision to marry?
7. How do the descriptions of Calcutta (pp. 88-90, 91-2) and Subhash’s first glimpse of his parents (p. 91) capture the complex feelings Subhash experiences on returning home? How do the brothers’ parents’ expectations and beliefs shape their treatment of Gauri?
8. What emotions lie behind his mother does his mother’s reaction to Gauri’s pregnancy (p. 114)? Is it understandable in light of Gauri’s behavior and manner? Is Subhash right to believe that the only way to help the child is to take Gauri away (p. 115)? What other motivation might he have for marrying his brother’s widow?
9. From the start, Gauri and Subhash react differently to Bela and to parenthood. Gauri thinks, “Bela was her child and Udayan’s; that Subhash, for all his helpfulness, for the role he’d deftly assumed, was simply playing a part. I’m her mother . . . I don’t have to try as hard” (p. 146). Although Subhash has a close, loving relationship with his daughter, he is troubled by his marriage: “Almost five years ago they had begun their journey as husband and wife, but he was still waiting to arrive somewhere with her. A place where he would no longer question the result of what they’d done” (p. 159). What is the source of the underlying uneasiness of their marriage? To what extent are they haunted by their attachments to Udayan? What other factors make Gauri feel resentful and trapped? Is Subhash partially responsible for her unhappiness? How does Subhash’s insistence on hiding the truth from Bela influence Gauri’s behavior and the choices she makes?
10. How does the portrait of the brothers’ mother, Bijoli, enhance the novel’s exploration of the repercussions of the family tragedy (pp. 179-89)? What effect does his visit to Calcutta and its many reminders of Udayan have on Subhash—as a son, a brother, and a father?
11. After Gauri the family, what does Bela rely on to make sense of the situation and to create a life for herself? Is her reclusiveness natural, given her family history, although much of it is unknown to her? In what ways do her decisions about her education and her work represent her need to separate and distinguish herself from her parents?
12. Why, despite his pride in Bela and his confidence in her affection, does Subhash feel “threatened, convinced that . . . Udayan’s influence was greater” (p. 225)? How might Bela’s life have been different had Udayan raised her?
13. The novel presents many kinds of parents—present and absent, supportive and reluctant. What questions does the novel raise about the challenges and real meaning of being a parent?
14. What do you find most striking or surprising about Gauri’s reflections on her life (p. 231-40)? “She had married Subhash, she had abandoned Bela. She had generated alternative versions of herself, she had insisted at brutal cost on these conversations. Layering her life only to strip it bare, only to be alone in the end” (p. 240). Is this an accurate and just self-assessment, or is Gauri too hard on herself—and if so, why?
15. Despite his accomplishments and relative contentment, Subhash remains in the grip of the deception that has dominated his life: “He was still too weak to tell Bela what she deserved to know. Still pretending to be her father . . . The need to tell her hung over him, terrified him. It was the greatest unfinished business of his life” (p. 251-52). Why does Bela’s pregnancy move him to reveal the truth? Were you surprised by Bela’s reaction? How does learning about Udayan and the story of her parents’ marriage
16. The keeping of secrets plays a large part in the novel, from the facts of Bela’s parentage to Gauri’s long-hidden guilt about her role in Udayan’s fateful actions. To what extent are the continued deceptions fed by the love and sense of loyalty Gauri and Subhash feel toward Udayan even years after his death? Do they also serve Gauri’s and Subhash’s self-interest?
17. The details of the family’s history emerge through various retellings set in different times and seen from different perspectives. Why do you think Lahiri chose to tell the story in this way? How does this method increase the power of the narrative? Do your opinions of and sympathies for the characters change as more information is revealed?
18. Before reading TheLowland, were you aware of the Naxalite movement? (The group remains active: on May 25, 2013, Naxalite insurgents attacked a convoy of Indian National Congress leaders, causing the deaths of at least twenty-seven people.) What insights does Lahiri offer into the development of radical political groups? What role does history play in the creation of the Naxalite movement and, by extension, other uprisings around the world? What parallels do you see between the events described in the novel and recent activities in the Egypt and other countries torn by internal dissension and violence?
19. In an interview, Lahiri said, “As Udayan’s creator, I don’t condone what he does. On the other hand, I understand the frustration he feels, his sense of injustice, and his impulse to change society” (NewYorker.com, June 3, 2013) Does the novel help you see more clearly the reasons for destruction and deaths revolutionary forces perpetrate to attain their goals? How do you feel about Udayan after reading the novel’s last chapter?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Lucia Zarate: The Odyssey of the World's Smallest Woman
Cecelia Velastegui, 2017
Libros Publishing
278 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780990671381
Summary
In this thrilling new historical novel, award-winning author Cecilia Velástegui again demonstrates her talent for creating spellbinding and haunting period pieces.
Lucia Zárate is based on the poignant, real-life odyssey of the world’s smallest woman. Pretty and gregarious, Lucia Zárate was just twenty inches tall. After her "display" at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, Lucia’s extraordinary, heartbreaking story is one of exploitation by greedy sideshow hucksters and a fishbowl existence on the road, from New York to Victorian London.
Snatched away from her parents at the age of twelve from Veracruz, Mexico, minuscule Lucia Zárate began her life’s arduous journey among Frank Uffner’s traveling troupe, in the care of an interpreter and protector. Despite Velástegui’s rigorous and extensive research, the name of Lucia’s interpreter has disappeared with the dust of time. Nonetheless, Velástegui masterfully creates Zoila, Lucia’s companion, as a character of depth and emotion.
Zoila is a woman who’s felt the sting of exploitation and exile at the hands of powerful vanilla growers in Mexico: her linguistic talents, wily temperament and compassion help her protect Lucia at all costs. She foils kidnapping attempts, teaches Lucia how to hold her own among European royalty, and facilitates a budding romance between Lucia and General Mite, a member of the traveling troupe of little people.
We follow the adventures of diminutive Lucia Zárate and the devoted Zoila as they grapple with life and death, finding joy and adventure in their bumpy sideshow journey of more than fourteen years. This is an artfully balanced novel that is a mesmerizing tale of survival, resilience, and the uplifting force of friendship.
Author Bio
• Birth—September 29, 1953
• Where—Quito, Ecuador
• Education—M.S.Ed., University of Southern California
• Awards—First Place-International Latino Book Awards (twice)
• Currently—Dana Point, California, USA
Cecilia Velastegui received First Place from the International Latino Book Awards for her novels Missing in Machu Picchu (2013) and Traces of Bliss (2012). The Association of American Publishers and Las Comadres International organization selected her novels to the National Latino Book Club. Parisian Promises (2014) was the runner-up for the Paris Book Award and Gathering the Indigo Maidens (2011) was a finalist for the Mariposa Award. Her children’s bilingual fables: Olinguito Speaks Up, Lalo Loves to Help, and Howl of the Mission Owl have received numerous awards.
Cecilia is an experienced public speaker and has been invited to present her novels and fables at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival, Literary Orange, the Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Big Orange Book Festival, the California Bilingual Education Association, and the Los Angeles and Orange County Libraries.
Cecilia was born in Ecuador and raised in California and France. She received her graduate degree from the University of Southern California, is a former Marriage and Family Therapist, speaks four languages, serves on the board of directors of several educational and arts institutions, and has traveled to one hundred countries. She lives in Dana Point, California. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
Cecilia Velástegui’s mystical prose, depth of characterization and adroit plotting have been compared favorably to the work of established literary figure Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It should be no surprise, therefore, that her latest historical novel, Lucía Zarate, Velástegui, though a relative new-comer, is tied with Pérez-Reverte as a finalist in the 2017 International Latino Book awards.…
This unusual tale typifies the strange and wondrous vision associated with great Latin writers like Márquez, Llosa and Allende. Endowing ordinary events with magical symbolism is a talent that Velástegui has displayed in previous works, notably Missing in Machu Picchu and Traces of Bliss, both winners of the coveted Latino Book Award.
Lucía Zárate has been crafted with admirable acumen. It features two heroines—one a physically fragile but spirited entertainer, the other her steely, seasoned caretaker—locked together in an enthralling tale both true and imagined, and polished to gem-like brilliance by skilled wordsmith Velástegui.
Barbara Bamberger Scott - www.awomanswrite.com
Cecilia velástegui’s historical novel, Lucia Zárate, chronicles the extraordinary life of the tiniest person who ever lived. the opening pages, lyrical and riveting, paint Mexico with vivid brushstrokes, bringing the sights, sounds, and smells of Veracruz and its vanilla bean industry to life.
Like all historical fiction, Lucia Zárate plaits fact and fancy. Lucia Zárate (January 2, 1864–January 15, 1890) holds the Guinness World Record as the smallest human, measuring twenty-one inches tall and weighing less than five pounds at seventeen years of age. velástegui describes her as “a wisp of a girl, a perfect and miniature thing, whose singular appearance and sparkling personality were as unique as the cherished fragrance of Veracruz vanilla.” despite her diminutive size, she “spread the velvet folds and lace frills of her gowns in such a way that she extended her personal space in a wide circle all around her.”
Lucia’s story is told primarily from the vantage point of her governess, Zoila. When Zoila realizes she must extricate herself from her village’s internecine vanilla bean trade skirmishes, as well as from the rumors swirling around her own perhaps-nefarious actions, she tucks a vial of her beloved Felipe’s salvaged blood between her ample breasts and heads out. she secures a position as governess for the improbably tiny Lucia, whose parents have contracted for their daughter to perform in human curiosity sideshows. zoila accompanies the Lilliputian girl on the decade-long tour, with visits to domestic and foreign heads of state, as well as considerable time spent among seedy denizens and gawking voyeurs.
This sad life story is intriguing and informative. velástegui’s sensitive descriptions of humans with a variety of deformities and odd conditions is commendable, as is her condemnation of their abominable treatment in nineteenth-century sideshows. Lucia Zárate should appeal to people interested in the human psyche, and those drawn to history should appreciate the author’s adherence to carefully researched historical details. also, young adults with sophisticated vocabularies should enjoy this book.
Forward Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel is framed by the risks and realities of the vanilla trade in nineteenth-century Mexico. Why do you think the author chose to structure the novel this way? How do these risks relate to Lucia’s fragile constitution and to the perils she would encounter by being exhibited abroad? In what way is the vanilla trade symbolic of Lucia’s life?
2. To what extent does the initial chapter concerning Zoila’s life in Paplanta enhance your understanding of her loyalty to Lucia?
3. In what ways do the chapters about Lucia’s childhood in Mexico contribute to a deeper understanding of Lucia’s later life?
4. What is the importance of loyalty in Lucia Zárate? In what ways does the author contrast the treachery and greed of sideshow life with the quality of loyalty and instances of caring?
5. What effect did the opening scene of peril and flight have on your perception of the story that follows?
6. What sort of atmosphere does the author create by using the witchdoctor’s whistle as a recurring motif? Does it initially alarm Lucia and Zoila and how does the motif progress through the novel?
7. How was Lucia’s self-perception shaped by the beliefs of others that she was not human, but rather a mythological chaneque?
8. Consider Zoila’s father’s advice to "always follow the money." Did Zoila heed his advice or did she opt to put Lucia’s immediate welfare first?
9. Despite viewing herself as an "armadillo," how naïve is Zoila? Why didn’t she stand up to Frank Uffner’s or Señor Zárate’s greed?
10. In what ways did Zoila’s compassion for Lucia limit the options she had to lead her own life?
11. Consider Lucia’s progression from a hyperactive and charismatic personality that charmed audiences to a lackluster performer. How would you describe the last phase of her professional life?
12. Consider parallels between Lucia’s diva-like behaviors to today’s young celebrities.
13. How did Lucia cope with her fishbowl existence?
14. Zoila remarks, "As I said earlier, an odyssey is a long and adventurous journey," to which Lucia replied, "But you also said that during an odyssey one faces both adventure and hardships." Do you think that Zoila could have prepared Lucia for the hardships?
15. What parallels does Zoila perceive between the possible trajectory of Lucia’s life and that of Julia Pastrana, Carolina Crachami, and Antonietta Gonzalez ? Comment on the statement, "Zoila resolved to uncover the devious ways these so-called promoters employed to entice unique girls such as Julia Pastrana and to use this knowledge to prevent Lucia from falling victim to their cunning ways."
16. In what ways were Lucia’s shipboard travels transformative for her at different stages of her life?
17. Reflecting on the fact that Frank Uffner felt he had, "Single-handedly created her stage persona, and because of his genius as an impresario, her fame had spread worldwide. Soon, he and he alone would enjoy his well-deserved payback." Do you think Frank Uffner enjoyed the money he earned through exploitation of his performers?
18. What were the pivotal moments that helped Lucia to become a resilient young woman?
19. What is the purpose of the motif of the flying-men from Paplanta? What does this ancient ritual represent in the novel?
20. Lucia was betrayed emotionally, financially, and romantically by her father, Frank Uffner, and General Mite, yet her sense of duty to her family was foremost. Are the morally ambiguous actions of characters, such as Mr. and Mrs. Uffner and Señor Zárate, redeemed?
21. What is the symbolism of the train wrecks and train accidents?
22. How does the friendship between Lucia and Zoila evolve?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Lucia, Lucia
Adriana Trigiani, 2003
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812967791
Summary
It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village.
The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages.
Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris’ honor is tested. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Big Stone Gap, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., St. Mary’s College, Indiana, USA
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
As her squadrons of fans already know, Adriana Trigiani grew up in Big Stone Gap, a coal-mining town in southwest Virginia that became the setting for her first three novels. The "Big Stone Gap" books feature Southern storytelling with a twist: a heroine of Italian descent, like Trigiani, who attended St. Mary's College of Notre Dame, like Trigiani. But the series isn't autobiographical—the narrator, Ave Maria Mulligan, is a generation older than Trigiani and, as the first book opens, has settled into small-town spinsterhood as the local pharmacist.
The author, by contrast, has lived most of her adult life in New York City. After graduating from college with a theater degree, she moved to the city and began writing and directing plays (her day jobs included cook, nanny, house cleaner and office temp). In 1988, she was tapped to write for the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World, and spent the following decade working in television and film. When she presented her friend and agent Suzanne Gluck with a screenplay about Big Stone Gap, Gluck suggested she turn it into a novel.
The result was an instant bestseller that won praise from fellow writers along with kudos from celebrities (Whoopi Goldberg is a fan). It was followed by Big Cherry Holler and Milk Glass Moon, which chronicle the further adventures of Ave Maria through marriage and motherhood. People magazine called them "Delightfully quirky... chock full of engaging, oddball characters and unexpected plot twists."
Critics sometimes reach for food imagery to describe Trigiani's books, which have been called "mouthwatering as fried chicken and biscuits" (USA Today) and "comforting as a mug of tea on a rainy Sunday" (New York Times Book Review). Food and cooking play a big role in the lives of Trigiani's heroines and their families: Lucia, Lucia, about a seamstress in Greenwich Village in the 1950s, and The Queen of the Big Time, set in an Italian-American community in Pennsylvania, both feature recipes from Trigiani's grandmothers. She and her sisters have even co-written a cookbook called, appropriately enough, Cooking With My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes, from Bari to Big Stone Gap. It's peppered with anecdotes, photos and family history. What it doesn't have: low-carb recipes. "An Italian girl can only go so long without pasta," Trigiani quipped in an interview on GoTriCities.com.
Her heroines are also ardent readers, so it comes as no surprise that book groups love Adriana Trigiani. And she loves them right back. She's chatted with scores of them on the phone, and her Web site includes photos of women gathered together in living rooms and restaurants across the country, waving Italian flags and copies of Lucia, Lucia.
Trigiani, a disciplined writer whose schedule for writing her first novel included stints from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. each morning, is determined not to disappoint her fans. So far, she's produced a new novel each year since the publication of Big Stone Gap.
I don't take any of it for granted, not for one second, because I know how hard this is to catch with your public," she said in an interview with The Independent. "I don't look at my public as a group; I look at them like individuals, so if a reader writes and says, 'I don't like this,' or, 'This bit stinks,' I take it to heart.
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I appeared on the game show Kiddie Kollege on WCYB-TV in Bristol, Virginia, when I was in the third grade. I missed every question. It was humiliating.
• I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. In the writing world, I have been a playwright, television writer/producer, documentary writer/director, and now novelist.
• I love rhinestones, faux jewelry. I bought a pair of pearl studded clip on earrings from a blanket on the street when I first moved to New York for a dollar. They turned out to be a pair designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. Now, they are costume, but they are still Schiaps! Always shop in the street—treasures aplenty.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is what she said:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. When I was a girl growing up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, I was in the middle of a large Italian family, but I related to the lonely orphan girl Jane, who with calm and focus, put one foot in front of the other to make a life for herself after the death of her parents and her terrible tenure with her mean relatives. She survived the horrors of the orphanage Lowood, losing her best friend to consumption, became a teacher and then a nanny. The love story with the complicated Rochester was interesting to me, but what moved me the most was Jane's character, in particular her sterling moral code. Here was a girl who had no reason to do the right thing, she was born poor and had no connections and yet, somehow she was instinctively good and decent. It's a story of personal triumph and the beauty of human strength. I also find the book a total page turner- and it's one of those stories that you become engrossed in, unable to put it down. Imagine the beauty of the line: "I loved and was loved." It doesn't get any better than that! (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Trigiani does a wonderful job evoking Lucia’s beloved, homey Greenwich Village and the couture-clad Upper East Side. Vivid, too, are the descriptions of Italian cooking and feasting, and the Sartoris’ storybook hometown in the old country.
Boston Herald
[Trigiani] writes with commanding authenticity about Italian-American life, the landscape of Italy, and New York City.... Lucia, her Italian family, her ambitious girlfriends, her colorful boss, and her mysterious lover are colorful, poignant characters, representative of another time, yet as real as today.... Trigiani has proved she is a multi-faceted writer whose name and stories will be celebrated for years to come.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
In 1950 Greenwich Village, 25-year-old Lucia has it all: a warm and loving Italian family, a papa with a successful grocery business, an engagement ring from her childhood sweetheart, and best of all, a career she loves as a seamstress and apprentice to a talented dress designer at B. Altman's department store. When Lucia meets a rich, handsome businessman whose ambitions for a luxurious uptown lifestyle match her own, her goals for her future soar even higher. Over the next two years, however, her dreams gradually unravel. Sorvino is well-cast as the narrator of Trigiani's (Milk Glass Moon) first-person tale. She ably conveys the confidence, eagerness, and romantic yearnings of youth, as well as the guilt Lucia suffers when she disappoints her loved ones. Sorvino is also adept at providing voices for a large cast of characters: the rich Italian accent of Lucia's father, the scolding tone of her mother, the shy voice of her sister-in-law and the smooth, movie-star tones of the rich stranger Lucia pins her hopes on. This is an engaging, well-told tale about life's unexpected twists and turns, the ways that even small choices have large repercussions and the hopeful notion that sometimes, when you least expect it, you can find happiness.
Publishers Weekly
Trigiani here leaves the rural Virginia setting of her "Big Stone Gap" trilogy for New York City. Kit, an aspiring playwright, agrees to afternoon tea with "Aunt" Lu, an old, but still elegant, fellow tenant. Kit's casual question about Lu's frequently worn mink coat is rewarded by the story of two pivotal years in Lucia Sartori's life. For the bulk of the novel, we are swept back to Greenwich Village in the early 1950s, where we meet Lucia's family. Beautiful and talented Lucia, who works in the custom dress shop at B. Altman's, wants to retain her maiden name after marriage, continue in a nonfamily business, and delay having children, all taboo for an Italian Catholic. Then she meets the irresistible John Talbot, and Lucia's happy life seems destined to unravel. Trigiani creates a compelling story, artfully uniting a snapshot of the past with the present. This bittersweet novel should have broad appeal. —Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Library Journal
Adriana Trigiani’s enchanting new novel will find a warm welcome from every reader who has encountered a fork in the road to love and taken the more perilous path.... A testament to the power of familial love and friendship.... Perhaps [this] is Trigiani’s greatest gift to her reader: the recognition that devotion, loyalty, and forgiveness will ultimately win the day.
BookPage
A heartfelt depiction of homespun characters whose emotions are always very close to the surface.... Trigiani offers an inviting picture of Italian life as well as a finely detailed appreciation of Old World craftsmanship. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
More like a big, sloppy wet kiss to Greenwich Village than anything as mundane and unromantic as a novel: Trigiani's fourth (after Milk Glass Moon, 2002, etc.) starts off in extremely unpromising territory but thankfully doesn't stick with it for long. Narrator Kit is a flighty writer of universally rejected plays and an occasional journalist who lives in the Village and is given to mundane reflections on just how wonderful her neighborhood is. Fortunately, she doesn't have much of a life, so when her neighbor—a charming, gracious old lady everyone calls Aunt Lu—invites her in for some tea and ends up telling Kit the story of her life, Kit has no good reason to say no. In the early 1950s, Lucia Sartori lived with her large Italian family in the Village, where her father and brother ran the beloved Groceria food market. Lucia herself, still in her 20s and considered the neighborhood beauty, worked in the custom clothing section in the grand B. Altman's department store on Fifth Avenue and was engaged to the most promising bachelor around, Dante DeMartino. Spunky Lucia, though, breaks the engagement when she discovers that the DeMartinos expect her to leave work and live with them as a cleaning, cooking, baby-producing housewife. It isn't long before Lucia gets snapped up by John Talbot, a rakishly handsome man-about-town who's vaguely employed in the importing business (alarm bells clang in everyone's head, except for that of the normally bright Lucia). Trigiani is mostly interested in Lucia's relationships with her coworkers and family, only intermittently cutting back to her blossoming romance with John. But she knows how to deliver on basic desires: her story is filled-to-bursting with gorgeous clothes, sumptuous meals, beautiful weather, and the rhapsody of New York City. Where it runs into problems is with its humans: solidly depicted but never quite lifelike. Silly but romantic stuff, written in a state of never-ending swoon.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think the novel begins in the present before telling Lucia's story in flashback? Is this an effective way to relate Lucia's story? How do you think your reading or interpretation of the novel is affected as a result of partially knowing the story's ending?
2. Lucia, Lucia is set in 1950s Greenwich Village. Discuss how Trigiani portrays the neighborhood, especially in contrast to its usual bohemian image.
3. On page 45, Lucia's father tells her, "You deserve your own life." Do you think Lucia eventually gets her own life, or is what happens to her the result of circumstances beyond her control? Overall, how much is Lucia free of her traditions? How much is she a captive of them?
4. What role do the men in Lucia's family—her father and brothers—play in shaping her life and her destiny?
5. What's behind Lucia's decision to stay at home and care for her mother despite the opportunity to advance her career? Also, why does she stay on at B. Altman's despite having to change positions and the changes in the store? Is it only because she has to care for her mother, or are there other factors?
6. Why do you think Lucia keeps all of her wedding presents in her apartment and continues to wear her mink coat? What do you think Lucia's life was like in the years after being jilted by John Talbot until the time she tells her story to Kit?
7. Religion plays a large role in shaping the Sartoris' behavior and customs, as well as the behavior of those closest to them. What is Lucia's view of religion and faith, especially during her and her family's various trials?
8. Dante and John Talbot love Lucia in different ways. Discuss the ways they both love her and the different ways she loves them back. Does Lucia have a true love? Given her experiences, what do you think is Lucia's view of love?
9. How do you think Lucia's life would have turned out if she had married John Talbot? If she had married Dante? Do you think Lucia would have been happier if she'd moved to Hollywood to work with Delmarr?
10. On page 249, Lucia tells Kit that people don't change very much in their lives. Do you think Lucia changes? If so, how?
11. While in Lucia's apartment (page 10) Kit feels as if she's in a room filled with things with meaning but no purpose. Do you think this in any way symbolizes Lucia's life, or is this only Kit's superficial impression of Lucia?
12. Why does Lucia choose to bestow her things on Kit? Is Kit like Lucia? Does Lucia see some of herself in Kit, or vice versa?
13. Lucia believes in beauty, style, and elegance. Do these qualities betray her or do they give her life meaning?
14. Do you think there is any truth in John Talbot's saying to Lucia that she is a woman who can survive being left at the altar (page 255), or is he just making excuses for himself?
15. In her last meeting with John Talbot in the state prison, Lucia seems unusually poised and equanimous throughout their conversation. Are you surprised either by her composure or by her attitude toward him?
16. What do you think are Lucia's dreams? On page 256, Lucia says that she has no regrets over the events in her life. Do you believe her? Do you think Lucia has led a happy life?
(Questions issued by publishers.)
Luckiest Girl Alive
Jessica Knoll, 2015
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476789637
Summary
Her perfect life is a perfect lie.
As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.
But Ani has a secret.
There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.
With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to "have it all" and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears.
The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984 (?)
• Raised—Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Hobart and William Colleges
• Currently—New York City, New York
Jessica Knoll has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and the articles editor at SELF. She grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and graduated from The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. She lives in New York City with her husband. Luckiest Girl Alive is her first book. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Luckiest Girl Alive is Gone Girl meets Cosmo meets Sex and the City.... Knoll hits it out of the park.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Readers guessing what the "dark underbelly" of this story is can guess again. It is just the beginning, a trap set by the author [who] scatters the clues so obscurely and randomly that peeking at the ending is just a waste of time.... No shortcuts here.... Knoll’s knack for social nuances on both sides of the socioeconomic tracks deserves mention for the high praise it already is receiving in the book world.
Buffalo News
This is going to be the book you insist all your friends read this summer.... [A] clever, cunning satire on the female condition in the 21st century.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Luckiest Girl Alive is crime fiction at its best, proving the genre’s deep connections to society’s fears, ambitions, and ability to question the status quo.... Jessica Knoll is a writer to keep an eye on, especially after being compared to Gillian Flynn by Megan Abbott. . . . However, I have found enough personality in Knoll’s debut novel to let her stand on her own, rather than label her "the next Gillian Flynn." Knoll’s version of the feminist crime novel is more steeped in pop culture than Flynn’s, and Ani’s psyche has nothing to envy of Amy’s: they are both troubled, and they both put up outstanding gender and class performances. But while Amy is more private and emotional, Ani relies on modern fashion references that will thrill even Vogue, Cosmo, and Glamour readers.... Luckiest Girl Alive is the ultimate critical companion to millennial femininity.
Los Angeles Review of Books
The perfect page-turner to start your summer (Book of the Week).
People
Dark, twisty...razor-sharp writing...propulsive prose.... [The] reveal is a real doozy—a legitimately shocking, completely unputdownable sequence that unfolds like a slow-motion horror film. It instantly elevates Luckiest Girl...and that momentum keeps going until its final pages.
Entertainment Weekly
Knoll slowly reveals the harrowing truth in a debut that’s part The Devil Wears Prada, part We Need to Talk About Kevin.
O Magazine
Loved Gone Girl? We promise [Luckiest Girl Alive is] just as addictive.
Good Housekeeping
A pulse-pounding, jaw-dropping novel about how tragedy twists and shapes lives.
InTouch
When Ani FaNelli wants something, she gets it: the job, the body, the man. What starts as a Mean Girls-seeming story line transforms into something so dark, so plot-twistingly intense that…well, actually, no spoilers here.
Marie Claire
The perfect kind of summer read: Nail-bitingly addictive, equal parts funny and twisted, and full of "I never saw THAT coming" moments.
Glamour
[Readers] probably won't leave Luckiest Girl Alive wishing they had a friend just like TifAni, but...if they liked Gone Girl, they'll be thrilled to see another woman who's allowed to be smart and mean, vulnerable and detestable.
Time.com
Knoll introduces you to your new best frenemy, and you’re going to love it.... Destined to become one of the summer’s most gripping reads.
Bustle.com
One of "18 Brilliant Books You Won't Want To Miss This Summer."
Huffington Post
One woman’s carefully orchestrated, perfect life slowly cracks to reveal a dark underbelly in Knoll’s knockout debut novel.... [W]hat sets this novel apart is the author’s ability to snare the reader from page one.... [A] completely enthralling read.
Publishers Weekly
[Ani FaNelli is] a cross between Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw and Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne.... Knoll’s debut truly delivers and will keep readers engaged until the end.
Library Journal
[A] dark, cynical psychological comment on our culture of excess and violence.... The promise of redemption in the end is not enough to balance the darkness.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
2. During the course of the book, the way that Ani is identified changes. At varying times, she is TifAni FaNelli, Tif, Finny, and Ani Harrison. What do these names indicate about her and how she relates to herself and others?
3. Why do you think Ani agrees to participate in the documentary about the Five? What was her role in the tragedy? How has it shaped her as an adult?
4. When describing Arthur for the documentary, Ani remembers how “he was the only one who stood up for me when a lot of people turned on me.” Why is it so important that she shares something positive about him? Discuss Ani’s friendship with Arthur. Why do you think he defended her? What was your first impression of Arthur? Did your feelings about him change? If so, why?
5. Ani says the word “fiancé” does not “bother me so much as the one that came after it. Husband. That word laced the corset tighter, crushing organs, sending panic into my throat with the bright beat of a distress signal.” Discuss why it is so important to Ani to be married before the documentary airs. Do you think, as Ani does, that her engagement ring is a symbol of status and legitimacy? What compromises, if any, must Ani make for the sake of her engagement? Do you think the compromises are worth it? Explain your answer.
6. What were your initial impressions of Dina FaNelli? After learning what happened to Ani at Dean’s party, Dina “told me I was not the daughter she raised.” What values did Dina impart? Do you think she was a good mother? Why or why not?
7. During Ani’s junior year of high school, she takes a trip to New York City with her classmates. How is this trip a watershed moment for her? Contrast the reality of her life in New York City with the vision of her future that she had then. Has she achieved the success she dreamed of? How does Ani measure success? Does this change by the novel’s conclusion? In what ways?
8. Although Ani initially distrusts the documentary director, Aaron, she begins to think of him as “kind, rather than leering.” What causes Ani to change her mind? Do you think Aaron has her best interests at heart? Ani’s burgeoning trust of Aaron ultimately leads her to wonder “if that had been the reality all along, and, if it was, what else I’d read wrong.” Many of the characters in this book struggle to distinguish their perceptions from reality. Are there any who are particularly adept at it? If so, who are they? Discuss how they manage to do it.
9. Explain the significance of the title of the book. When Ani is called the “‘luckiest girl alive,’” the phrase is used derisively. Who describes her as such and why? By the conclusion of the book, did you think Ani was lucky? If so, in what way?
10. What do you think led to the tragedy at Bradley? Could it have been prevented, and, if so, how? What role, if any, does Ani play in the tragedy?
11. After Luke meets Ani’s parents, he says “I can’t believe I’m the one who got to save you.” Discuss Luke’s relationship with Ani. Do you think he did save her from her past? Why is he so reluctant to speak with Ani about it? Did you think Luke and Ani were well suited?
12. Discuss the structure of the book. What’s the effect of alternating between Ani’s current life and her freshman year at Bradley? Did learning about Ani’s past help you better understand her current actions? Did your feelings about Ani change as you learned more about her? If so, how?
13. Ani tells Andrew Larson that she is wary of participating in the documentary because “‘I don’t know what the bent is. I know what the editing process can do.’” Are Ani’s reservations justified? Many of the characters edit their versions of events, often to fit self-serving narratives. When Ani is interviewed by Dr. Anita Perkins, Ani “had to guide everyone in my direction with swift surety, otherwise they would dig, dig, dig.” What effect does Ani’s distortion of the truth have on her life and the lives of those around her? Are there other characters who are lying by omission? Who are they and what are their motivations?
14. Why is Ani is desperate to be friends with Hilary and Olivia. What sacrifices is she willing to make to keep their friendship? Contrast Ani’s friendship with Hilary and Olivia with her friendship with Nell. Do you think that Nell is a good friend? In what ways?
Lucky Boy
Shanthi Sekaran, 2017
Penguin Publishing
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101982242
Summary
Eighteen years old and fizzing with optimism, Solimar Castro-Valdez embarks on a perilous journey across the Mexican border. Weeks later, she arrives in Berkeley, California, dazed by first love found then lost, and pregnant.
This was not the plan.
Undocumented and unmoored, Soli discovers that her son, Ignacio, can become her touchstone, and motherhood her identity in a world where she’s otherwise invisible.
Kavya Reddy has created a beautiful life in Berkeley, but then she can’t get pregnant and that beautiful life seems suddenly empty.
When Soli is placed in immigrant detention and Ignacio comes under Kavya’s care, Kavya finally gets to be the singing, story-telling kind of mother she dreamed of being. But she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else’s child.
“Nacho” to Soli, and “Iggy” to Kavya, the boy is steeped in love, but his destiny and that of his two mothers teeters between two worlds as Soli fights to get back to him. Lucky Boy is a moving and revelatory ode to the ever-changing borders of love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Where—State of California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkeley; M.F.A, Johns Hopkins University;
Ph.D, University of Newcastle-Upon Tyne (UK)
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.
Sekaran's work has appeared in the New York Times, Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. Her first novel, The Prayer Room was published in 2008 and reissued in 2016. Lucky Boy, her second novel, came out in 2017.
A California native, Sekaran lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Sekaran has made sure to tell a story without obvious villains.... Despite the unsurprising and drawn-out ending, Soli and Kavya are both given sympathetic treatment thanks to the textured rendering of their lives, and readers will be emotionally invested.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) By giving both sides equal weight, Sekaran evokes compassion for all the principals involved in the story, which...will not lead to a fully happy conclusion. Despite a few implausible plot twists in the book's last third, the novel is highly recommended. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Remarkably empathetic...Deeply compassionate...Delivers penetrating insights into the intangibles of motherhood and indeed, all humanity.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Two very different women reckon with pregnancy, childbirth, and the meaning of family.... [Their] heartbreaking journeys [are] bound by love of the baby boy.... Sekaran is a master of drawing detailed, richly layered characters and relationships.... A superbly crafted and engrossing novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The narrative alternates between Soli and Kavya. Did you relate to one woman more than the other? If so, why?
2. Soli travels to America riding on La Bestia, while Kavya’s family arrived by more traditional means. How does this novel portray privileged versus unprivileged immigration? Do you feel differently about immigration after reading the book?
3. Kavya would be the first to admit she did not live the life her parents pictured for her. How do the expectations of her parents shape her character? Does Kavya’s love for Iggy change her understanding of heritage? Does it change her husband’s and parents’ understanding of heritage?
4. Is Silvia a good role model for Soli? Why or why not? Is Silvia’s one big lie forgivable?
5. Discuss how the novel explores motherhood. What are some key differences between the way Soli thinks of motherhood and the way Kavya does? In what ways is motherhood the same for both women?
6. When Rishi is asked if he wants a child, he thinks “Children had seemed like a project planted permanently in the future. A certainty about which he never thought he’d be asked. Had anyone asked his own father if he’d wanted a baby?” (p. 54). How does the novel portray fatherhood? Is it different from motherhood? Do you think men plan for children differently than women do?
7. Discuss how Lucky Boy addresses the classic idea of the American dream. Is the American dream still attainable? Has it changed?
8. After giving birth to Nacho, Soli thinks “I’m a mother in Berkeley, but I’m no Berkeley mother” (p. 188). What do you think she means.
9. As Soli plans to become a housekeeper in California, she remembers her father telling her that “servitude lives in the heart” (p. 63). How does the novel portray class stratification? Does race play a role in these class divides?
10. From Santa Clara Popocalco to Berkeley, the Weebies campus, and Silicon Valley, the novel paints a vivid portrait of the West. How does this setting shape the novel? Would the story be different if it was set elsewhere in America?
11. Were you shocked by how Soli was treated in immigrant detention? Why or why not?
12. Kavya reasons with herself...
Why did people love children who were born to other people? For the same reason they lived in Berkeley, knowing the Big One was coming: because it was a beautiful place to be, and because there was no way to fathom the length or quality of life left to anyone, and because there was no point running from earthquakes into tornadoes, blizzards, terrorist attacks. Because destruction waited around every corner, and turning one corner would only lead to another” (p. 350).
Do you agree with Kavya’s decision to fight to keep Iggy? Why or why not? Have you ever made a decision you knew might hurt down the line? What about a decision you knew others might not understand?
13. How did you feel about the ending? Were you surprised? Do you think Soli should have made a different choice?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Lucky One
Nicholas Sparks, 2008
Grand Central Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446618328
Summary
A photograph found by chance; a chain of events that lead inexorably to the woman it portrays: The Lucky One traces a path so ephemeral and artful that we would know that Nicholas Sparks had written even if his name did not appear on the title page. This story about a man whose scrape with death leads to his one true love will keep you up at night and then make you sleep more soundly. Inimitable storytelling. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 31. 1965
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Notre Dame
• Currently—lives in New Bern, North Carolina
Nicholas Charles Sparks is an American novelist, screenwriter and producer. He has published some 20 novels, plus one non-fiction. Ten have been adapted to films, including Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John, The Last Song, The Lucky One, and most recently The Longest Ride.
Background
Sparks was born to Patrick Michael Sparks, a professor of business, and Jill Emma Marie Sparks (nee Thoene), a homemaker and an optometrist's assistant. He was the middle of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister, "Dana", who died at the age of 33 from a brain tumor. Sparks said that she is the inspiration for the main character in his novel A Walk to Remember.
His father was pursuing graduate studies at University of Minnesota and University of Southern California, and the family moved a great deal, so by the time Sparks was eight, he had lived in Watertown, Minnesota, Inglewood, California, Playa del Rey, California, and Grand Island, Nebraska, which was his mother's hometown during his parents' one year separation.
In 1974 his father became a professor of business at California State University, Sacramento teaching behavioral theory and management. His family settled in Fair Oaks, California, and remained there through Nicholas's high school days. He graduated in 1984 as valedictorian from Bella Vista High School, then enrolled at the University of Notre Dame under a full track and field scholarship. In his freshman year, his team set a record for the 4 x 800 relay.
Sparks majored in business finance and graduated from Notre Dame with honors in 1988. He also met his future wife that year, Cathy Cote from New Hampshire, while they were both on spring break. They married in 1989 and moved to New Bern, North Carolina.
Writing career
While still in school in 1985, Sparks penned his first (never published) novel, The Passing, while home for the summer between freshman and sophomore years at Notre Dame. He wrote another novel in 1989, also unpublished, The Royal Murders.
After college, Sparks sought work with publishers or to attend law school, but was rejected in both attempts. He then spent the next three years trying other careers, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone and starting his own manufacturing business.
In 1990, Sparks co-wrote with Billy Mills Wokini: A Lakota Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding. The book was published by Random House sold 50,000 copies in its first year.
In 1992, Sparks began selling pharmaceuticals and in 1993 was transferred to Washington, DC. It was there that he wrote another novel in his spare time, The Notebook. Two years later, he was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park, who picked The Notebook out of her agency's slush pile, liked it, and offered to represent him. In October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for The Notebook from Time Warner Book Group. The novel was published in 1996 and made the New York Times best-seller list in its first week of release.
With the success of his first novel, he and Cathy moved to New Bern, NC. After his first publishing success, he began writing his string of international bestsellers.
Personal life and philanthropy
Sparks continues to reside in North Carolina with his wife Cathy, their three sons, and twin daughters. A Roman Catholic since birth, he and his wife are raising their children in the Catholic faith.
In 2008, Entertainment Weekly reported that Sparks and his wife had donated "close to $10 million" to start a private Christian college-prep school, The Epiphany School of Global Studies, which emphasizes travel and lifelong learning.
Sparks also donated $900,000 for a new all-weather tartan track to New Bern High School. He also donates his time to help coach the New Bern High School track team and a local club track team as a volunteer head coach.
In addition to track, he funds scholarships, internships and annual fellowship to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
U.S. Marine Logan Thibault carries a picture of a woman he's never met because it brings him good luck. But when he sets out to find the woman, he is met with unexpected circumstances surrounding his new love and his shrouded past. Though not Sparks's most original tale, the story flows well and narrator John Bedford Lloyd delivers a solid performance. Lloyd's deep bass tone is perfectly suited for Thibault, a manly man if ever there was one. Lloyd's supporting characters are rich and interesting in their own right, some speaking in comical Southern drawls, others with a raw reality. The final result is quite touching without much over-the-top sentimentality on Lloyd's part.
Publishers Weekly
While stationed in Iraq, U.S. Marine Logan Thibault finds a picture of a mystery woman whom he tracks down on his return home. Sparks's (nicholassparks.com) novel can be predictable, but his strong, determined characters make this an excellent piece of escapist lit. Narrator John Bedford Lloyd (A King's Ransom) handles the Southern accents with ease, believably voicing characters of both genders. Romance fans will enjoy this.
Johannah Genett - Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. After Thibault finds the photo of a girl wearing a shirt that says lucky lady across the front, his best friend Victor convinces him that the photo is his lucky charm. Do you believe in lucky charms? Do you think the photo is Thibault’s lucky charm, or is his good luck just a coincidence?
2. Do you find it odd that Thibault walked across the country to find the girl in the photograph, a woman he knew next to nothing about? Why is Thibault so compelled to find this woman?
3. Thinking about how difficult marriage is, Beth remembers her grandmother’s saying: “Stick two different people with two different sets of expectations under one roof and it ain’t always going to be shrimp and grits on Easter.” Do you agree? Do you think marriage is worth the hardship that often accompanies it?
4. Compare the main male characters in the novel—Thibault, Clayton and Drake. How are they different and how are they similar?
5. Thibault, we learn, was a soldier in the Iraq war, but when we meet him he looks and acts nothing like a soldier. How has the war affected Thibault and in what ways are his actions in this novel determined by his time spent in Iraq?
6. Victor seems to think that Thibault is in love with Beth even before he’s met her. Do you think it is true that Thibault fell in love with Beth before he ever met her?
7. Beth is somewhat guarded and she doesn’t allow herself to fall in love with Thibault easily. What, besides her past romantic failures, makes her initially wary of Thibault?
8. What role does Nana play in bringing Thibault and Beth together?
9. Why doesn’t Thibault reveal the truth about himself to Beth earlier? Do you think he acted dishonestly and do you think Beth is right to be upset when he finally tells her the truth? Should she have forgiven him?
10. Do you think Thibault and Beth are destined to be together? Do you believe in fate?
11. What do you make of Clayton? Do you dislike him? Do you understand why he behaves the way he does? Is he a good father to Ben? Does your own opinion of him change by the end of the book?
12. What role does Zeus play in this story?
13. Describe Ben and Thibault’s relationship. How does Ben change as he and Thibault become close?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Lucky Us
Amy Bloom, 2014
Random House
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400067244
Summary
My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.
So begins the story of teenage half sisters Eva and Iris in this brilliantly written, deeply moving, and fantastically funny novel by the beloved and critically acclaimed author of Away.
Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star, and Eva, the sidekick, journey across 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the sisters from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.
With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with memorable characters and unexpected turns, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, these unforgettable people love, lie, cheat, and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A. Weslyan University; M.S.W. Smith College
• Awards—Costa Award; National Magazine Award
• Currently—lives in Connecticut, USA
Amy Bloom is an American writer best know for her 2007 novel Away. Her next novel, Lucky Us, was published in 2014. She has also penned short stories—in 1993 her collection, Come to Me, was nominated for National Book Award, and in 2000 her collection, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Bloom received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater/Political Science, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Wesleyan University, and a M.S.W. (Master of Social Work) from Smith College.
Having trained and practiced as a clinical social worker, Bloom used her psychotherapeutic background in creating the Lifetime Television network TV show, State of Mind. She is listed as creator, co-executive producer, and head writer for the series, which examines the professional lives of psychotherapists.
Bloom has also written articles in periodicals including The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon.com. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories and several other anthologies, and has won a National Magazine Award.
Currently, Bloom is a University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University (as of 2010). Previously, she was a senior lecturer of Creative Writing in the department of English at Yale University, where she taught Advanced Fiction Writing, Writing for Television, and Writing for Children.
In August 2012, Bloom published her first children's book entitled Little Sweet Potato. According to the New York Times, the story "follows the trials of a 'lumpy, dumpy, bumpy' young tuber who is accidentally expelled from his garden patch and must find a new home. On his journey, he is castigated first by a bunch of xenophobic carrots, then by a menacing gang of vain eggplants."
Bloom resides in Connecticut. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/3/2014.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [E]verything here is fresh.... Told partially from Eva’s perspective, and with epistolary interludes...Eva’s world is one of endless opportunities for reinvention—and redemption—if one only takes them. With a spare and trusting style, Bloom invites readers to fill the spaces her pretty prose allows, with true and beautiful results. —Annie Bostrom
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
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The Luminaries
Eleanor Catton, 2013
Little, Brown & Co.
848 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316074292
Summary
Winner, 2013 Man Booker Prize
A breathtaking feat of storytelling where everything is connected, but nothing is as it seems....
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes.
A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
Eleanor Catton was only 22 when she wrote The Rehearsal, which Adam Ross in the New York Times Book Review praised as "a wildly brilliant and precocious first novel" and Joshua Ferris called "a mesmerizing, labyrinthine, intricately patterned and astonishingly original novel." The Luminaries amply confirms that early promise, and secures Catton's reputation as one of the most dazzling and inventive young writers at work today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1985
• Raised—Christ Church, New Zealand
• Education—B.A., Umiversity of Canterbury; M.A., Victoria
University of Wellington
• Awards—Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in New Zealand
Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand author whose second novel The Luminaries has been named on the shortlist of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, thus making her the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Set on the goldfields of New Zealand in 1866, The Luminaries is a mystery and a ghost story. The novel was published by Granta in 2013.
Catton's 2007 debut novel, The Rehearsal deals with reactions to an affair between a male teacher and a girl at his secondary school.
Catton was born in Canada while her father, a New Zealand graduate, was completing a doctorate at the University of Western Ontario. She grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand. She attended Burnside High School, studied English at the University of Canterbury, and completed a Master's in Creative Writing at The Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington. She wrote The Rehearsal as her Master's Thesis.[3]
She was described in 2009 by London's Daily Mail as "this year's golden girl of fiction." (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/16/13.)
Book Reviews
Eleanor Catton is an extraordinary writer. Her first novel, The Rehearsal, ...had the reader's mind spinning with the complexities of its narrative invention.... The Luminaries is every bit as exciting. Apparently a classic example of 19th-century narrative, set in the 19th century...the project twists into another shape altogether as we read, and continue to read. The book is massive—weighing in at a mighty 832 pages. But every sentence of this intriguing tale set on the wild west coast of southern New Zealand during the time of its goldrush is expertly written, every cliffhanger chapter-ending making us beg for the next to begin. The Luminaries has been perfectly constructed as the consummate literary page-turner..
Guardian (UK)
It is, in this way, a very old-fashioned book; one that rightfully respects the joy it imparts with each of its many small revelations. And it is this sheer rip-roaring readability, perhaps, that could work against it when the Booker Prize comes to be handed out. Yes it's big. Yes it's clever. But do yourself a favor and read The Luminaries before someone attempts to confine its pleasures to the screen, big or small. It may not be the thing to say these days, but this is a story written to be absorbed from the page.
Observer (UK)
Catton matches her telling to her 19th-century setting, indulging us with straightforward character appraisals, moral estimations of each character along with old-fashioned rundowns of their physical attributes, a gripping plot that is cleverly unravelled to its satisfying conclusion, a narrative that from the first page asserts that it is firmly in control of where it is taking us. Like the 19th-century novels it emulates, The Luminaries plays on Fortune’s double meaning – men chasing riches, and the grand intertwining of destinies.
Telegraph (UK)
But there is a problem with characterisation, especially in a novel of this size. While Anna and Lydia stand out easily enough, the men do not. Catton has a tendency to establish characters by summarising their appearance in a long paragraph, then by giving us another long paragraph to expound on their moral views or emotional predilections. This is scarcely enough.... Catton writes with real sophistication and intelligence, so this weak characterisation is at odds with the rest of the novel, its intricate plotting and carefully wrought scenes. Can it be part of her subversion of the 19th-century narrative? I suspect not – but with a talent like Catton’s, one can never be too sure.
Scotsman (UK)
Discussion Questions
1. Do you believe in astrology? Do you attribute any part of your personality to your star sign? To what extent do you think the characters in The Luminaries are bound to their astrological signs?
2. In a similar vein, Eleanor Catton has given each of the twelve men the personality stereotypical to an astrological sign. Does this mean all their actions are pre-determined? And when taking into account the fact that this is a story filled with coincidences, unpredictability, and mistaken assumptions, what do you think Catton is saying about fate vs. coincidence? Does she give more clout to one concept than to the other?
3. Following the Zodiac as a guiding structure, The Luminaries is a stunning feat of construction. Some have argued that, in novels especially, high structural complexity can come at the expense of plot. In what ways does The Luminaries defy this theory?
4. Throughout the book, people are either hurting Anna or helping her. What is it about her that makes her a litmus test for other characters' morality?
5. This book is filled with stories within stories. The reader is often told multiple versions of events. For example, at the beginning of the book, do the twelve men at the secret meeting tell Walter Moody the whole truth? If not, what are their reasons for being less than truthful? Are there other times when you found yourself doubting the validity of a character's assertions?
6. Do you feel that the narrator was completely trustworthy? Like her Victorian predecessors, Catton doesn't hesitate to intersperse the narrative with moral judgments of her characters—frequently, her characters judge one another. Sometimes, the narrator "breaks the fourth wall" by addressing the audience directly. Do these techniques make the narrator more reliable than one who "feigns" neutrality? Is there ever such a thing as a narrator who is completely objective?
7. Some have interpreted The Luminaries as a philosophical meditation on time, pointing to the conflation of present and past throughout the story. Do you agree? What do you think The Luminaries is saying about time?
8. The Luminaries is set in a New Zealand that is rapidly changing as a result of the gold rush. Banking has become all-important, and the outside world is exerting its growing influence, resulting in the confluence of "the savage and civil, the old world and the new." Do any of the concerns of the people in this place and time still resonate today? Are there ways in which this story could be universal?
9. Eleanor Catton was born in Canada, lives in New Zealand, studied in the United States, and travels regularly. How do you think that her experiences as an international citizen have shaped her prose? Are there certain limitations or freedoms that Catton's nationality have on her legacy as a writer?
10. Some media outlets have asserted that The Luminaries is dominated by male characters and brings to life a male-dominated world with this story. Do you agree? If Catton were a man, do you think this issue would have surfaced? Should female writers have to take their own gender into account when writing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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An Interview with Roland Merullo |
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In early 2013 Roland Merullo sat down with good friend and author Matthew Quick (
Lunch with Buddha
Roland Merullo, 2012
AJAR Contempories
392 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780984834570
Summary
Heartbreaking in places, hilarious in others, Lunch with Buddha takes its readers on a quintessentially American road trip across the Northwest. That outer journey, complete with good and bad meals, various outdoor adventures, and an amusing cast of quirky characters, mirrors a more interior journey—a quest for meaning in the hectic routine of modern life.
Otto Ringling, who's just turned 50, is an editor of food books at a prestigious New York publishing house, a middle-of-the-road father with a nice home in the suburbs, children he adores, and a sense of himself as being a mainstream, middle-class American. His sister, Cecelia, is the last thing from mainstream. For two decades she's made a living reading palms and performing past-life regressions. She believes firmly in our ability to communicate with those who have passed on.
In Lunch with Buddha, when Otto faces what might be the greatest of life's emotional challenges, it is Cecelia who knows how to help him. As she did years earlier—in this book's best-selling predecessor, Breakfast with Buddha—she arranges for her brother to travel with Volya Rinpoche, a famous spiritual teacher—who now also happens to be her husband. After early chapters in which the family gathers for an important event, the novel portrays the road trip made by Otto and Rinpoche, in a rattling pickup, from Seattle, across the Idaho panhandle and the vast Montana prairie, to the family farm in North Dakota. Along the way, the brothers-in-law have a series of experiences—some hilarious, some poignant—all aimed at bringing Otto a deeper peace of mind.
During visits to American landmarks, they meet a cast of minor characters, each of whom enables Rinpoche to impart some new spiritual lesson. Their conversations range from questions about life and death to talk of history, marijuana, marriage and child-rearing, sexuality, Native Americans, and outdoor swimming. In the end, with the help of their miraculous daughter, Shelsa, and the prodding of Otto's own almost-adult children, Rinpoche and Cecelia push this decent, middle-of-the-road American into a more profound understanding of the purpose of his life. His sense of the line between possible and impossible is altered, and the story's ending points him toward a very different way of being in this world. (From the publisher.)
Read Roland Merullo's interview and Matthew Quick
Author Bio
• Born—September 19, 1953
• Raised—Revere, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Brown University
• Awards—Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfction; Maria
Thomas Fiction Prize; Alex Award
• Currently—lives in western Massachusetts
Roland Merullo is an American author who writes novels, essays and memoir. His best-known works are the novels Lunch with Buddha (2012), Breakfast with Buddha (2007), A Little Love Story (2005), Golfing with God (2005), In Revere, In Those Days (2002), Revere Beach Boulevard (1998) and the memoir Revere Beach Elegy (2002). His books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, German and Croatian
Early years
Merullo was born in Boston and raised in Revere, Massachusetts. His father, Roland (Orlando) was a civil engineer who worked for state government and was named personnel secretary by Christian Herter, governor of Massachusetts. In his 50s, Orlando attended Suffolk Law School, passed the Bar at 60, and became an attorney. Roland's mother Eileen was a physical therapist who worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital with amputees injured in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Later, she became a science teacher and taught at the middle school level for 25 years. He has two brothers, Steve and Ken.
Merullo earned his high school degree from Phillips Exeter Academy. After receiving a B.A. and M.A. (in Russian Language and Literature) from Brown University, Merullo spent time in Micronesia during a stint with the Peace Corps. He worked in the former Soviet Union for the United States Information Agency and was employed as a cab driver and carpenter. He taught creative writing at Bennington College and Amherst College, and was a writer in residence at Miami Dade Colleges and North Shore Community College.
In 1979 Merullo married Amanda Stearns, a photographer he met in college. The couple lives in western Massachusetts and has two daughters.
His first published essays appeared in the early 1980s. They include a piece on solitude featured in The Rosicrucian Digest and a humorous "My Turn" column for Newsweek.
Writing
Leaving Losapas, Merullo's first novel, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1991 and named a B. Dalton Discovery Series Choice. Publishers Weekly called his second book, A Russian Requiem (1993), "smoothly written and multifaceted, solidly depicting the isolation and poverty of a city far removed from Moscow and insightfully exploring the psyches of individuals caught in the conflicts between their ideals and their careers."
The works Revere Beach Boulevard, In Revere in Those Days, and Revere Beach Elegy are often referred to as the Revere Beach trilogy. Of In Revere, in Those Days David Shribman of the Boston Globe wrote,
The details are just right, and the result is a portrait of a time and a place and a state of mind that has few equals.This is a story that is true to life because it is about life itself, the tragedies and trials and travails, and even the triumphs, momentary and meaningless as they sometimes seem. This is a Boston story for the ages.
PBS correspondent Ray Suarez said,
I've never met Roland Merullo, or even read anything he's written before now. Yet today I feel as if I've known him my whole life.... At the close of Elegy, the reader is comfortably walking alongside a man who has grown into himself, accepted and embraced his past.
A Little Love Story, published in 2005, centers on a woman with Cystic Fibrosis. According to Bloomsbury Review (2005), the novel...
tinkers with traditional formula; the lovers are neither innocent nor naive, nor completely helpless in the face of their impossible barrier to produce a love story for the 21st century.... [The story] circumscribes a dramatic arc that takes in 9/11, media saturation, lecherous men in politics, ethnic family stereotypes, adult-onset dementia, and terminal illness in the relatively young. This is an utterly charming, beautifully told, completely affecting story that is one part love story, one part medical thriller.
Merullo’s early works have been termed thoughtful and reflective. "I think I am a person who cares about the emotional life of people...and so I spend a lot of time on the emotional experiences of my characters," he has said.
But Golfing with God, Breakfast with Buddha, American Savior and, most recently, Lunch with Buddha exhibit a more overtly spiritual theme—albeit humorous in tone. The seeds of this thematic shift can perhaps be traced to A Little Love Story. However, in the fall of 2008, Merullo surprised many with the release of Fidel’s Last Days, his first thriller. At the time, Merullo said,
I've had editors counsel me to write the same book over and over, and some readers who complained that I haven’t kept writing books set in greater Boston. But it would be like trying to keep a migratory bird in your backyard. I just want to go places, to see things, to observe the human predicament in different forms.... Like most novelists, I have a peculiar fascination with the way people behave and the psychological roots of, or reasons for, their behavior.
Merullo has won the Massachusetts Book Award for non fiction and the Maria Thomas Fiction Prize. He has been a Booklist Editor's Choice recipient and was among the finalists for a PEN New England / Winship Prize. In 2009, Breakfast with Buddha was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and American Savior was chosen as an Honor Book in Fiction at the Massachusetts Book Awards. Revere Beach Boulevard was recently named one of New England's top 100 essential books by the Boston Globe. The Talk-Funny Girl was a 2012 Alex Award Winner. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A]lternately hilarious and poignant...Merullo's detailed descriptions of the American Northwest keep the writing grounded even as its themes turn increasingly spiritual. Merullo doesn't try too hard to prove any spiritual points, however. As a result, Lunch is a moving yet entertaining and never histrionic account of how an ordinary American family—with a few extraordinary members in its ranks--deals with the overwhelming grief of losing one of their own.
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Lunch with Buddha examines questions that crop up sooner or later for many (most?) of us. Although Volya's wise lectures are helpful to Otto's search for answers, it is the variety of people they meet-and the attitudes [they] carry-that are what provide Otto with the evidence and reminders and motivation to decide to live a certain way.... Reading Merullo's novel, I couldn't help but think of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman—their great reverence for independent, passionate, non-conformist thought-the different drummer-but never without the accompanying respect for it in others.
Salem News
[An] engaging follow-up novel (Breakfast With Buddha, 2008).... Otto Ringling is a successful New York City editor who has built a happy, comfortable life with his family in the suburbs. But when his wife, Jeannie, dies, Otto's entire orbit is suddenly thrown off course. Along with his two college-aged children, his New-Age sister Cecelia, her eccentric, sort-of Buddhist husband and guru, Volya Rinpoche, and their enlightened 6-year-old daughter, Otto finds himself in the forests of Washington to spread his wife's ashes.... Volya teaches Otto how to let go.... One can't help but root for Otto, despite—or perhaps because of—his curmudgeonly tendencies.... [A] beautifully written and compelling story about a man's search for meaning that earnestly and accessibly tackles some well-trodden but universal questions. A quiet meditation on life, death, darkness and spirituality, sprinkled with humor, tenderness and stunning landscapes.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The main idea of this novel is a very somber one. How does the author use humor to soften it? Do you feel it’s appropriate to mix such a sad subject with humorous moments? Does it dilute or sharpen the reader’s empathy with Otto and his family?
2. How important is family in this story? At the end of the novel there is a shift where Rinpoche appears a bit less and other family members more. What did the author have in mind by doing this?
3. How does the author approach the sensitive subject of religious faith? Did you feel the book was ever “preachy”? If you have read Breakfast with Buddha, did you see any progression in Otto’s spiritual search? If so, how would you describe it?
4. What role does food play and does that role change at all as the book goes on?
5. What kinds of images and objects does Rinpoche use as spiritual lessons and do these work for you? Did you connect this with Emerson’s quote in the epigraph?
6. Is Rinpoche likeable and, if so, how is he made likeable? What don’t you like about him? About Otto?
7. This story is fiction, but it’s based on an actual road trip. In what way does that “factual skeleton” strengthen or weaken the novel? There are photos of the trip on the website. Did you choose to look at them? Did they correspond to the written descriptions in the book?
8. What are your thoughts about Shelsa? Landrea? Gilligan Neufaren? Rundy? Jarvis Barton-Phillips? What role or roles do these minor characters play in the novel?
9. It’s a risk to end a book with a solitary retreat. Was it effective for you? Did it fit the rest of the novel?
10. What role does Cecelia play in Otto’s spiritual education? Does his opinion of her change as the novel progresses?
11. What roles do Otto’s children play? How are they different?
12. What do you think of Rinpoche’s talk in Spokane? Did your opinion of it change as the book went on?
13. Is there an effort here to make a distinction between Otto’s spiritual search and the “powers” that someone like Landrea has? Is there a difference between her contact with Jeannie and Otto’s contact with Jeannie?
14. What role does the Spokane transgendered person play? When she speaks of troubles, and when Rinpoche mentions his worrisome dreams—where do you think that could lead in the future?
15. Why does the author mention roadside signs and radio programs so often?
16. If you read Breakfast with Buddha, how is Lunch with Buddha the same, and how is it different? Would you be interested in having Dinner with these characters?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
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Luncheon of the Boating Party
Susan Vreeland, 2007
Penguin Group USA
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143113522
Summary
Instantly recognizable, Auguste Renoir’s masterpiece depicts a gathering of his real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a cafe terrace along the Seine near Paris. A wealthy painter, an art collector, an Italian journalist, a war hero, a celebrated actress, and Renoir’s future wife, among others, share this moment of la vie moderne, a time when social constraints were loosening and Paris was healing after the Franco-Prussian War.
Parisians were bursting with a desire for pleasure and a yearning to create something extraordinary out of life. Renoir shared these urges and took on this most challenging project at a time of personal crises in art and love, all the while facing issues of loyalty and the diverging styles that were tearing apart the Impressionist group.
Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models and using settings in Paris and on the Seine, Vreeland illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, she paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs in a brilliant portrait of her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 20, 1946
• Where—Racine, Wisconsin, USA
• Death—August 23, 2017
• Where—San Diego, California
• Education—San Diego State University
• Awards—Inkwell Grand Prize, Fiction, 1999; San Diego Book Awards' Theodore Geisel Award and Best Novel of the Year, 2002.
Susan Vreeland's short fiction has appeared in journals such as The New England Review, The Missouri Review, Confrontation, Calyx, Manoa, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her first novel, What Love Sees, was broadcast as a CBS Sunday night movie in 1996. Ms. Vreeland is the recipient of several awards, including a Women's National Book Association First Place Award in Short Fiction (1991) and a First Place in Short Fiction from New Voices (1993). Inkwell Magazine for her short story, "Gifts". She teaches English literature, creative writing, and art in San Diego public schools, where she has taught since 1969. (From the publisher.)
More
"When I was nine, my great-grandfather, a landscape painter, taught me to mix colors," Susan Vreeland recalls in an interview on her publisher's web site. "With his strong hand surrounding my small one, he guided the brush until a calla lily appeared as if by magic on a page of textured watercolor paper. How many girls throughout history would have longed to be taught that, but had to do washing and mending instead?"
As a grown woman, Vreeland found her own magical way of translating her vision of the world into art. While teaching high school English in the 1980s, she began to write, publishing magazine articles, short stories, and her first novel, What Love Sees. In 1996, Vreeland was diagnosed with lymphoma, which forced her to take time off from teaching—time she spent undergoing medical treatment and writing stories about a fictional Vermeer painting.
Creative endeavor can aid healing because it lifts us out of self-absorption and gives us a goal," she later wrote. In Vreeland's case, her goal "was to live long enough to finish this set of stories that reflected my sensibilities, so that my writing group of twelve dear friends might be given these and know that in my last months I was happy—because I was creating."
Vreeland recovered from her illness and wove her stories into a novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue. The book was a national bestseller, praised by the New York Times as "intelligent, searching and unusual" and by Kirkus Reviews as "extraordinarily skilled historical fiction: deft, perceptive, full of learning, deeply moving." Its interrelated stories move backward in time, creating what Marion Lignana Rosenberg in Salon called "a kind of Chinese box unfolding from the contemporary hiding-place of a painting attributed to Vermeer all the way back to the moment the work was conceived."
Vreeland's next novel, The Passion of Artemisia, was based on the life of the 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, often regarded as the first woman to hold a significant place in the history of European art. "Forthright and imaginative, Vreeland's deft recreation ably showcases art and life," noted Publishers Weekly.
Love for the visual arts, especially painting, continues to fire Vreeland's literary imagination. Her new novel, The Forest Lover, is a fictional exploration of the life of the 20th-century Canadian artist Emily Carr. She has also written a series of art-related short stories. For Vreeland, art provides inspiration for living as well as for literature. As she put it in an autobiographical essay, "I hope that by writing art-related fiction, I might bring readers who may not recognize the enriching and uplifting power of art to the realization that it can serve them as it has so richly served me."
Extras
• Two other novels relating to Vermeer were published within a year of Girl in Hyacinth Blue: The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.
• Vreeland taught high school English and ceramics for 30 years before retiring to become a full-time writer. She lived in San Diego, California, and died in 2017. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Vreeland takes the big bold brush strokes of Renoir's personal and artistic oeuvre and displays them with her usual vividness in this eponymous novel.... Sensual and provocative.
Baltimore Sun
Exquisitely wrought.... This summer's most satisfying historical novel.
Seattle Times
Imagining the banks of the Seine in the thick of la vie moderne, Vreeland (Girl in Hyacinth Blue) tracks Auguste Renoir as he conceives, plans and paints the 1880 masterpiece that gives her vivid fourth novel its title. Renoir, then 39, pays the rent on his Montmartre garret by painting "overbred society women in their fussy parlors," but, goaded by negative criticism from Emile Zola, he dreams of doing a breakout work. On July 20, the daughter of a resort innkeeper close to Paris suggests that Auguste paint from the restaurant's terrace. The party of 13 subjects Renoir puts together (with difficulty) eventually spends several Sundays drinking and flirting under the spell of the painter's brush. Renoir, who declares, "I only want to paint women I love," falls desperately for his newest models, while trying to win his last subject back from her rich fiance. But Auguste and his friends only have two months to catch the light he wants and fend off charges that he and his fellow Impressionists see the world "through rose-colored glasses." Vreeland achieves a detailed and surprising group portrait, individualized and immediate.
Publishers Weekly
Here, Vreeland uses words to paint the changing world of late 19th-century France. After being stung by remarks in an essay written by French novelist Émile Zola concerning the inadequacies of Impressionism, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is goaded to paint a masterpiece surpassing his Montmartre spectacle Bal au Moulin de la Galette, which will finally establish this school as heir to the artistic traditions of France and Italy. He uses models, allowing the listener to experience la vie moderne, the new modes of living, thinking, and expressing that transformed the social world of the late 19th century into the one we inhabit today. Alphonsine, daughter of the proprietor of La Maison Fournaise, and Angèle, a debauched child of Montmartre, are naturals. The beautiful yet spoiled Circe, fobbed off on Renoir by a jaded Parisian socialite, provokes a crisis when she quits midstream, refusing to be painted in profile. Renoir finds her replacement in Aline, a 19-year-old seamstress he will one day marry. Other models add their own piquancy. Karen White brings a cadenced elegance to her reading that is set off by her irreverent over-the-top voicing of the snobby Circe and the naïve innocence of Aline. Recommended for libraries with a commitment to historical fiction and books about art.
David Fauacheux - Library Journal
Critics agree that the concept (tracing Renoir's steps back from this joyous painting) and the research (combining facts not only about Renoir's inner circle but also details about French café society, culture, and painting techniques) demonstrate considerable skill and dedication.... Despite this perhaps overabundance of historical material, Luncheon succeeds as a portrait of both a man and an era.
Bookmarks
(Starred review.) Once again—to the delight of her legion of fans—the best-selling author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) and The Passion of Artemesia (2002) imaginatively uses art history as the basis for a carefully constructed historical novel.... [R]iveting, complex novel. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. How do you think Renoir’s humble beginnings affected his life and his painting?
2. Describe what you think was going through Renoir’s mind as he took on the technical challenge of this painting. Was he ready for this? How was he to achieve the perspective? Position the figures? Anchor the terrace? Convey the river below?
3. Besides Renoir, how do other characters explore the issue of creative expression? In whom is this yearning most deeply felt? What effect does the gathering of these people have on each other? While reading this book, could you imagine being a model in the painting? What would it have been like for you? Elaborate on how you would have fit in or not.
4. Discuss the level of commitment each character had to the painting. How did their involvement affect the painting? Do you relate to any one of the characters in the painting Luncheon of the Boating Party?
5. How do the separate models’ plots act upon the progress of the painting and enlighten a single common theme? Which of the male models is your favorite? And of the female models? Why does each hold a place in your affections?
6. How did the fact that there was time pressure to finish the painting affect its result? Would the painting have turned out differently if Renoir had had more time to work on it?
7. Renoir seems to fall in love over and over again with the two things he most adored: the female form and the riverscape. He saw one woman as color, another as line. Was there something about the season in which he was painting and his relationships with Aline and Alphonsine that contributed to the overall effect of the image?
8. Why did Renoir hate the term “Impressionist” so much?
9. What does Luncheon of the Boating Party suggest about finding oneself in life and in love? Is there something unique about the way an artist finds his or her way?
10. In what ways, if any, did the novel surprise you? How do you react to a novel that incorporates real and well-known people as characters? Did anything in the novel affect the way you had previously thought about Renoir? Impressionism? French culture?
11. What in the story of this painting gives you a fresh perspective on understanding and developing the relationships and creative inclinations in your own life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Lush Life
Richard Price, 2008
Macmillan Picador
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312428228
Summary
So, what do you do?” Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter.... But now he’s thirty-five years old and he’s still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be.
What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn’t say tending bar. He was going places—until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that’s Eric’s version. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1949
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Gotham Award, 1991
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Richard Price is an American novelist and screenwriter, known for the books The Wanderers (1974), Clockers (1992), Lush Life (2008), and The Whites (2015, writing under the pen name of Harry Brandt).
Early life
A self-described "middle class Jewish kid," Price was born in the Bronx, New York City and grew up in a housing project in the northeast Bronx. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1967 and obtained a B.A. from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia University. He also did graduate work at Stanford University.
He has taught writing at Columbia, Yale University, and New York University. He was one of the first people interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air when it began airing nationally in 1987. In 1999, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, receiving the academy's Award in Literature that year.
Novels
Price's novels explore late 20th century urban America in a gritty, realistic manner that has brought him considerable literary acclaim. Several of his novels are set in a fictional northern New Jersey city called Dempsy. In his review of Lush Life (2008), Walter Kirn compared Price to Raymond Chandler and Saul Bellow.
Price's first novel was The Wanderers (1974), a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx in 1962, written when Price was 24 years old. It was adapted into a film in 1979, with a screenplay by Rose and Philip Kaufman and directed by the latter.
Clockers (1992), nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was praised for its humor, suspense, dialogue, and character development. In 1995, it was made into a film directed by Spike Lee; Price and Lee shared writing credits for the screenplay.
Screen plays
Price has written numerous screenplays including The Color of Money (1986), for which he was nominated for an Oscar, Life Lessons (the Martin Scorsese segment of New York Stories) (1989), Sea of Love (1989), Mad Dog and Glory (1993), Ransom (1996), and Shaft (2000).
He also wrote for the HBO series The Wire. Price won the Writers Guild of America Award award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony for his work on the fifth season of that series. He wrote the screenplay for the 2015 film Child 44. He is often cast in cameo roles in the films he writes. His eight part HBO mini series CRIME began filming in Sept. 2014
Price did uncredited work on the film American Gangster, wrote and conceptualized the 18-minute film surrounding Michael Jackson's "Bad" video.
Other
He has published articles in the New York Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, Village Voice, Rolling Stone and others.
In July 2010, a group art show inspired by Lush Life was held in nine galleries in New York City.
Personal life
Price lives in Harlem in New York City, and is married to the journalist Lorraine Adams. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/22/2015.)
Book Reviews
The hard, daily slog of police work, made up not of highlight-reel discoveries and arrests, but of the grinding, old-school, shoe-leather following of leads; the glitter, aspirational energy and spiritual emptiness of the "Bohèmers'" world of swank bars and trendy restaurants; the narrow, unforgiving routine of life in the projects, where drug dealing seems like one of the few ways out of a future of small-time "mouse plays"—all these disparate worlds are captured by Mr. Price here with a pitch-perfect blend of swagger and compassion. He knows how these tectonic plates slide and crash up against one another, and he also knows how the six degrees of separation between his characters can instantly collapse into one, when a random act of violence or kindness brings players from these worlds together. He depicts his characters' daily lives with such energy, such nuance and such keen psychological radar that he makes it all come alive to the reader—a visceral, heart-thumping portrait of New York City and some of its residents, complete with soundtrack, immortalized in this dazzling prose movie of a novel.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Raymond Chandler is peeping out from Price's skull, as well he should be, given such gloomy doings…one detects Saul Bellow's vision, too. Price is a builder, a drafter of vast blueprints, and though the Masonic keystone of his novel is a box-shaped N.Y.P.D. office, he stacks whole slabs of city on top of it and excavates colossal spaces beneath it. He doesn't just present a slice of life, he piles life high and deep. Time too.
Walter Kirn - New York Times Book Review
A vivid study of contemporary urban landscape. Price's knowledge of his Lower East Side locale is positively synoptic, from his take on its tenements, haunted by the ghosts of the Jewish dead and now crammed with poor Asian laborers, to the posh clubs and restaurants, where those inclined can drink "a bottle of $250 Johnnie Walker Blue Label" or catch "a midnight puppet porno show." In this "Candyland of a neighborhood," where kids from all over the nation come to "walk around starring in the movie of their lives," it is hardly surprising that an ambitious suburban boy believes he can front up to armed muggers and live to write a treatment about it. Price's ear for dialogue is equally sharp.... In the end, Lush Life is most effective as a study of sudden crime and its lingering aftermath.
Stephen Amidon - Washington Post
(Audio version.) With a perfect ear for dialogue, Bobby Cannavale sounds like he grew up on the same patch of New York's Lower East Side that Price so effectively captures. It's a neighborhood in the midst of gentrification.... He adds dimension and surprisingly subtle touches to all of Price's already rich characters.
Publishers Weekly
(Audio version.) The whodunit part of the book contains enough twists and turns to hold listeners' interest. More powerful are Price's descriptions of the different neighborhoods of Manhattan, making the city as much a character as any human in the story.
Stephen L. Hupp - Library Journal
Price tells [his characters'] stories in a complex structure of juxtaposed scenes that ratchets up the tension. The only thing even close to a flaw in this book is its plot's surface resemblance to that of Clockers. But this time Price digs deeper, and the pain is sharper. There oughta be a law requiring Richard Price to publish more frequently. Because nobody does it better. Really. No time, no way.
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 Lush Life:
1. How sympathetic a character is Eric Cash? How would you describe him? Why does he dislike Ike?
2. Once exonerated, why does Cash refuse to help Matty Clark identify the killers? Given his treatment at the hands of the police, is his refusal justified, self-indulgent, cowardly, self-pitying... or what?
3. Talk about the community itself. The book opens with Cash feeling a sense of connectedness to the previous denizens, the Jewish immigrants who settled the neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century and then moved on. There are also under-ground cellars which contain relics of previous lives. Talk about the kind people who populate the neighborhood now— the Bohemer's, the project kids, the drug dealers, and the police. Is there even a "community" or simply disconnected people who walk the same sidewalks?
4. Cash says he feels like everyone he knows on the lower East side "went to the same...art camp or something." What does he mean?
5. What about the memorial service Steven Boulware puts on? Is it an appropriate mourning, a brilliant celebration of Ike's life...or self-dramatization of the part of the participants? How did it affect Ike's family?
6. Talk about Billy, Ike's father. Do you find him sympathetic or irritating or a brave survivor? And what's going on between Matty Clark and Billy's wife?
7. How do you feel about Matty Clark. Is he the book's hero? What about his two sons?
8. Do you find the ending satisfying? Is anything resolved? Should it be?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Luster
Raven Leilani, 2020
Farrar. Straus and Giroux
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374194321
Summary
No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her.
And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric.
She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era.
It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1990-91
• Raised—Bronx, New York, and Albany, New York, USA
• Education—M.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
Raven Leilani Baptiste is an American writer whose debut novel, Luster, was published in 2020 under the name Raven Leilani. Her writing, she has said, is influenced by her experiences and her love of art, poetry, comic books and music.
Leilani grew up in a family of artists in the Bronx and later moved to a suburb of Albany, New York. She attended an art high school, aiming for a career as a visual artist. Her first job after college was as an imaging specialist at Ancestry.com., but several jobs, and several years, later she enrolled in New York University's MFA program for creative writing. At NYU she studied under Zadie Smith and with writers Katie Kitamura and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Leilani's writing has also been published in Granta, Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern,
Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. (Adapted rom the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/10/2020.)
Book Reviews
There is nothing on offer like Luster―the story of a Black woman who is neither heroic nor unduly tragic.… She is destructive but tender, ravenous for experience but deeply vulnerable―and often wickedly funny.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
The relationship between Edie and Rebecca is a living thing with its own heartbeat, and it is here that Leilani is at her most nimble, her writing sinewy and sharp…. [I]t is Edie’s hunger for recognition—more than her desire for self-improvement or the humiliation of heterosexuality, or her attempts to wrestle her life into something worth the pain—that colors the novel.
Jazmine Hughes - New York Times Book Review
Luster is a crackling debut about sex, art and the inescapable workings of race…. [J]ust when one fears that Luster might sink into endless woeful lusting, the book slyly pivots…. Edie addresses us in a funny, shrewd narrative voice that precisely describes the wide-ranging contours of her life.
John Powers - NPR
There are no perfect Black women in Raven Leilani’s debut novel, Luster, and that is by design.… Edie’s matter-of-fact confessions, underscored by Leilani’s caustic prose, are on-brand for Millennial literature of the past few years…. The most interesting moments in Luster are those between Edie and other Black women and girls, especially Akila, because they subvert expectations of what Black women should mean to one another.
Atlantic
Blistering… thrums with observational humor…. Luster is not a novel concerned with romantic drama. It’s all about attention―why we crave it and what forms it takes. Leilani carefully pulls the strings of Edie, Rebecca, Eric and Akila, revealing how lonely they all are…. Unsettling and surreal.
Time
[S]trikingly observed…. What ensues over the next 200-plus pages is indeed a wild ride: an irreverent intergenerational tale of race and class that’s blisteringly smart and fan-yourself sexy…. Leilani paints a complex, gloriously messy portrait of three people pushing boundaries.
Oprah Magazine
Darkly funny with wicked insight…. This keenly observed, dynamic debut is so cutting, it almost stings.
Elle
Wildly beguiling…. [Leilani is] a phenomenal writer, her dense, dazzling paragraphs shot through with self-effacing wit and psychological insight.
Entertainment Weekly
[This] moving examination of a young black woman’s economic desperation and her relationship to violence… is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged. Edie’s frank, self-possessed voice will keep a firm grip on readers all the way to the bitter end.
Publishers Weekly
Luster is a gritty novel about appetites—for sex, companionship, attention, money—and what happens when they are sated…. Edie is deftly written… suffering from the rootlessness of an addict’s child…. Leilani’s writing is cerebral and raw…. [She's] a powerful new voice.
BookPage
(Starred review) Leilani’s radiant debut belongs to its brilliant, fully formed narrator. Old soul Edie has an otherworldly way of seeing the world and reflecting it back to readers…. A must for seekers of strongly narrated, original fiction.
Booklist
(Starred review) An unstable ballet of race, sex, and power. Leilani’s characters act in ways that often defy explanation, and that is part of what makes them so alive.… Sharp, strange, propellent—and a whole lot of fun.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When we meet Edie, the narrator of Raven Leilani’s Luster, she is an aspiring painter who hasn’t taken a brush to canvas in years. She explains, "The last time I painted, I was twenty-one. The president was black. I had more serotonin and I was less afraid of men" (7). Discuss the reasons for Edie’s initial paralysis when it comes to making art. Later, what motivates her to start painting again?
2. In the novel’s opening chapter, Edie goes on her first date with Eric, an older man she met online. Rather than diminishing her attraction to him, their age difference forms part of Eric’s appeal for Edie. "Beyond the fact of older men having more stable finances and a different understanding of the clitoris, there is the potent drug of a keen power imbalance," she observes (7). As their relationship evolves, what forms does Eric’s power over Edie take? Why is a relationship marked by "a keen power imbalance" appealing to her?
3. The novel takes us through Edie’s past, shedding light on her sexual history and the loneliness that has defined her life since she was young. Considering her dynamic with Eric, she thinks, "If I’m honest, all my relationships have been like this, parsing the intent of the jaws that lock around my head. Like, is he kidding, or is he hungry? In other words, all of it, even the love, is a violence"(206). What role does violence play in Edie’s connection with Eric? How do her prior experiences of sex, love, and violence inform her response to him?
4. In her relationship with Eric, the fact that Edie is black contributes to "our asymmetry, which even in New York is a stumbling block for waitresses and cabbies and which Eric is totally oblivious to, even as I am routinely making assurances that yes we are going to the same place, and yes, it is a single check" (5). Consider Edie’s feelings about this asymmetry. What factors allow Eric, a "friendly, white, midwestern man," to remain unaware of it (36)?
5. Early in their relationship, Eric informs Edie that he and his wife, Rebecca, have reached an understanding: their marriage is open, but governed by rules that she has laid out for him. Talk about the significance of these rules for Edie, Eric, and Rebecca. How does this significance shift over the course of the novel? Are there unspoken rules that apply to the changing relationships between these characters?
6. Edie’s curiosity about Eric’s life with his wife drives her to enter their home on a day when she expects neither will be there. To her surprise, she encounters Rebecca in the couple’s bedroom, and winds up attending their anniversary party, where she notes, "Eric’s fly is down and this current iteration, this soft, breathing haircut—I can’t say what it is, but I get this feeling that this is actually his most honest form, and it really pisses me off" (56). Why do you think Edie reacts this way? How does the "form" Eric takes in his private encounters with Edie differ from the man his family and friends know? How does it change as his relationship with Edie progresses?
7. Over the course of the novel, Edie engages in a variety of work: as a managing editorial coordinator at a publishing house, as a delivery person, as a job applicant, and—in a way that is complicated, and unspoken—within Eric and Rebecca’s home. Consider Edie’s expectations for each of these kinds of labor and the work environments, as well as what expectations are held of her—directly and indirectly. What role do aspects of Edie’s identity play in these dynamics? How does work figure into Edie’s self-concept and self-worth? What other characters do "work" in the book and how does that work play into your understanding of who they are and their places in the world? Finally, how does the idea of work engage with the idea of art—the reality of being a worker with the ambition of being an artist?
8. Edie is fired from her publishing job because of her "inappropriate sexual behavior" at the office: she has had affairs as fleeting as a single encounter or as significant as her abruptly truncated relationship with Mark, the head of the art department (25). What motivates Edie to pursue these encounters with her coworkers? What makes her relationship with Mark special?
9. After Edie loses her job and apartment, Rebecca allows her to move into the couple’s home—without Eric’s knowledge. Talk about why Rebecca makes this decision. What does she gain from getting to know Edie during her stay in New Jersey? What does Edie get out of their time together?
10. Eavesdropping on a conversation between Eric and Rebecca, Edie thinks that they resemble "a couple of aliens who have seen all the invasion agitprop and want to reiterate that they come in peace" (141-142). Consider the evolution of Eric’s marriage to Rebecca. Why might their relationship feel alien to Edie?
11. Like Edie, Eric and Rebecca’s adopted daughter, Akila, is black. Edie feels that she has been "invited here partly on the absurd presumption that I would know what to do with Akila simply because we are both black" (120). Discuss Eric and Rebecca’s parenting of Akila. How do they approach parenting a black girl as white parents? What impact do they expect Edie’s presence in their home will have on her?
12. Talk about Edie’s relationship with Akila. How does their shared race affect the development of their relationship? What does Akila make of Edie’s relationship with each of her parents?
13. When Eric begins to pull away from her, Edie thinks, "I have learned not to be surprised by a man’s sudden withdrawal. It is a tradition that men like Mark and Eric and my father have helped uphold"(153–154). Discuss Edie’s father and mother. How have her relationships with them influenced what Edie expects from the people in her life? How have they shaped her view of herself as a woman and an artist?
14. Edie finds inspiration for her long-dormant art practice throughout her stay with Eric and Rebecca. After she realizes that Eric has gotten her pregnant, Edie feels that her paintings are better than ever, noting, "I can’t sleep knowing what is happening inside my body, and when I don’t sleep, I paint. I have never been so tired. I have never been so prolific" (194). Talk about the art Edie creates during her time in New Jersey. Why does pregnancy have this effect on her?
15. Discuss the closing lines of the novel: "I’ve made my own hunger into a practice, made everyone who passes through my life subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficiently, into paint. And when I am alone with myself, this is what I am waiting for someone to do to me, with merciless, deliberate hands, to put me down onto the canvas so that when I’m gone, there will be a record, proof that I was here" (227). What are some of the ways Edie has sought to create a record of her existence? At the novel’s end, what has she learned about herself as an artist?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Lying Game
Ruth Ware, 2017
Simon & Schuster
468 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501156007
Summary
On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister.
The next morning, three women in and around London — Fatima, Thea, and Isabel — receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, "I need you."
The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them.
The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each othe r— ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year of school under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose (who also happens to be Kate’s father).
Atmospheric, twisty, and with just the right amount of chill that will keep you wrong-footed — which has now become Ruth Ware’s signature style — The Lying Game is sure to be her next big bestseller. Another unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1977
• Raised—Lewes, Sussex, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Manchester University
• Currently—lives in London
Ruth Ware is the British author of mystery thrillers. She grew up in Sussex, on the south coast of England. After graduating from Manchester University she moved to Paris, before returning to the UK. She has worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer. She now lives in London with her husband and two small children.
After her debut In a Dark, Dark Wood was published in 2015, Ware was asked by NPR's David Greene about mystery writers who had influenced her:
I read a huge amount of it as a kid. You know, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, Dorothy L. Sayers, Sherlock Holmes. And I didn't consciously channel that when I was writing, but when I finished and reread the book, I did suddenly realize how much this kind of structure owed to...Agatha Christie. And it wasn't consciously done, but...I would say I definitely owe a debt to Christie.
Indeed many have noticed Christie's influence in both of Ware's books, including her second, The Woman in Cabin 10, released in 2016. Ware's third novel, The Lying Game, came out in 2017, and her fourth, The Death of Mrs. Westaway in 2018. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[An] engrossing psychological thriller…. Alternating between the past and present, Ware builds up a rock-solid cast of intriguing characters and spins a mystery that will keep readers turning pages to the end.
Publishers Weekly
The mystery unfolds slowly and the "big reveal" is likely to be guessed at by observant readers. Verdict: Though not as chill-inducing as her previous titles, Ware's latest offers nuanced characters, an atmospheric small-town British setting, and a satisfying mystery. —Kiera Parrott
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Ware masterfully harnesses the millhouse’s decrepit menace to create a slow-rising sense of foreboding, darkening Isa’s recollections of the weeks leading to Ambrose’s disappearance.… [W]ith arguably her most complex, fully realized characters yet, this one may become her biggest hit yet.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Suspense queen Ware's third novel in three years introduces four women who have been carrying a terrible secret since their boarding school days, a secret that is about to be literally unearthed.… Cancel your plans for the weekend when you sit down with this book, because you won't want to move until it's over.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Describe the Lying Game and its rules. What inspired Thea originally to come up with the idea for the game? Why do she and Kate decide to include Fatima and Isa in the Lying Game? What about the game is appealing to the girls?
2. Isa says that Kate "knows what we’ll say—what we’ve always said, whenever we got that text" (p. 5). Were you surprised by how quickly Isa, Fatima, and Thea rushed down to Salten upon receiving Kate’s text? Why do they rush to her aid so quickly? Do you have any friends whom you would do the same for?
3. Describe the Tide Mill. What role has it played in the adolescence of the girls in the clique, and why is it so important to Kate, in particular? Isa is convinced that Kate will never leave the Tide Mill or Salten. Did you think she was correct in her assessment as the novel progressed? Why might Kate be unwilling or unable to leave?
4. When Isa and her friends reunite at Salten seventeen years after they have been dismissed from school there, Thea gives the same toast that she gave when they were students: "To us… May we never grow old" (p. 56). What is Isa’s reaction to Thea’s toast? Were you surprised by it? Why do you think Isa reacts the way she does? How has she changed since leaving Salten as a student?
5. Each section of The Lying Game begins with a rule from the game. What’s the effect of having the rules as chapter headings? How do they inform your reading of the story?
6. Isa says, "I once tried to describe Ambrose to an old boyfriend … but I found it almost impossible" (p. 73). How would you describe Ambrose? What kind of a teacher and parent was he? Mary Wren says that Ambrose would have done anything for his children whereas Fatima describes him as "an irresponsible fool" (p. 243). Why do each of the women feel so differently about Ambrose? What did you think of him?
7. Isa’s housemistress tells her, "I’m very glad you’ve found friends. But remember, part of being a well-rounded young woman is having a wide variety of friends" (p. 99). Do you agree with the housemistress? What were some of the benefits of having such close friends? Mary describes Isa and her friends as a "little clique" (p. 105). Is that an accurate description? How does Isa feel about Mary’s description and the clique itself as an adult? Were there any disadvantages to being part of it?
8. Rick praises Kate for staying in Salten, telling her, "Your dad was a good man, no matter what others in this place say, and you done well to stick it out here with the gossips" (p. 23). Do you think that Kate is brave for staying in Salten? Why or why not? Discuss some of the rumors about Kate and her father. What are they? Why might the townspeople find them plausible? Were there any rumors that you thought had merit? Which ones and why?
9. On Isa’s first morning back at the Mill, Kate discovers a dead sheep. Who or what did you think was responsible for the sheep’s death? Why? Describe the note that Isa finds in Kate’s pocket. What does it say? Although Isa’s initial impulse is to tell Fatima, "a kind of instinct takes over" (p. 88). Why doesn’t Isa tell Fatima about the note? Would you?
10. When Isa reflects upon the events that took place, she muses that she will tell Freya "a story about bravery, and selflessness, and sacrifice" (p. 366). Do you agree with Isa? Do any of the characters in The Lying Game embody the traits that Isa enumerates? If so, who? How would you characterize the events that have taken place at Salten both during Isa’s school days and at the friends’ reunion?
11. When describing the events that happened shortly before their expulsion from Salten, Thea proclaims that the girls had no choice but to take the actions that they did. Do you agree with Isa when she cries, "Of course we had a choice!" (p. 197). Why or why not? Why might the girls have felt that they had no other options in the moment? Do you think that Kate took advantage of her friends when she asked for their help? If so, how?
12. Although Isa wants to tell Owen what she and her friends did while they were students at Salten, she feels she "can’t. Because it’s not only my secret — it’s theirs, too. And I have no right to betray them" (p. 223). Do you agree with Isa’s decision to withhold this information from Owen? Explain your answer. Do you think that there are any instances when it is permissible to betray a shared secret? If so, what are they?
13. Isa says that she and her friends "have spent seventeen years running and hiding, in our different ways" (p. 93). What are they hiding from? Describe the ways that each of the women has attempted to run from their shared past. Have any of their attempts been successful? Why or why not?
14. What were your initial impressions of Luc? Did you trust him? Why or why not? Describe his relationship with Ambrose and Kate. Were you surprised by his anger as an adult? Why does he harbor such resentment toward Kate? Do you think he is justified in doing so?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Lying in Wait
Liz Nugent, 2018
Simon & Schuster
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501167775
Summary
An "unputdownable psychological thriller with an ending that lingers long after turning the final page” (The Irish Times) about a Dublin family whose dark secrets and twisted relationships are suddenly revealed.
My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.
On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life—wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin.
That beautiful house, however, holds a secret. And when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax.
For fans of Ruth Ware and Gillian Flynn, this novel is a “seductively sinister story. The twists come together in a superbly scary denouement, which delivers a final sting in the tail. Brilliantly macabre” (Sunday Mirror).
(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Holy Child Killiney Secondary School
• Awards—Irish Book Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin
Liz Nugent is an Irish novelist who has twice won the Irish Book Award. She was born and raised in Dublin, attending Holy Child Killiney Secondary School, and continues to reside in Dublin today, with her husband.
Her first novel, Unraveling Oliver was published in 2014, and her second, Lying In Wait, came out in 2017. Both won the Irish Book Award, and the latter was also selected for the Spring 2017 list of the UK's Richard & Judy Book Club, winning the overall Readers' Vote.
Skin Deep, Nugent's third novel was released in Ireland in 2018. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/22/2018.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [A] devastating psychological thriller.… Lydia is the most intriguing puzzle; equal parts victim and villain, she simultaneously inspires pity, outrage, and horror. The result is an exquisitely uncomfortable, utterly captivating reading experience.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Readers who love sinister psychological thrillers will tear through these pages to discover how far Lydia will go to keep her son at home, and what accidents will befall those who cross her. —K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX
Library Journal
(Starred review) Nugent introduces an unforgettable cast of characters in this tour de force.… [A]stonishing… everyone should grab it the second it appears.
Booklist
[T]his is a whydunit, not a whodunit, and the real meat lies in Nugent's exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and what could drive a person to murder…. A page-turner chock full of lies and betrayals and a very creepy mother-son relationship.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. From the start of the book, we know respected judge Andrew Fitzsimons and his wife, Lydia, have murdered Annie Doyle. How does this narration style, starting with such a shocking event, affect your understanding of the story? How did you react to the first chapter?
2. Would things have turned out differently for Annie if she had been the pretty sister? Why or why not?
3. Lydia often says that everything she does is for Laurence, for his protection and his benefit. What are Lydia’s true motivations?
4. Consider each of the parent-child relationships in the book. Which parents are good parents in your opinion? How would things have been different for Laurence if his parents acted more like Bridget’s parents, or like Karen and Annie’s parents, or Helen’s mother?
5. How is Laurence’s sense of self affected by the way he views his father and his father’s death? How does this affect him as an adult?
6. What does Lydia's mother's red lipstick mean to her? Why does she put it on after Laurence tells her about Karen?
7. Dessie is obsessively protective of Karen; he tries to explain this as he fears that Karen will end up like Annie. How does Annie’s reputation continue to haunt her family?
8. How is marriage depicted in the novel? Are any of the marriages happy? Which marriages are affected by divorce being illegal in 1980s Ireland?
9. How is Lydia shaped by her sister’s death and her mother’s downfall? Why are reputations and appearances so important to Lydia?
10. Compare and contrast the two sister dynamics in the book: how are Lydia and Diana similar to Annie and Karen? What does being a sister mean to Karen? What does it mean to Lydia?
11. Lydia assumes all children are closest to their mothers. How does the novel prove or disprove her assumption?
12. What role does class play in Laurence's relationships? How much of that influence is inherited versus learned?
13. Laurence is very self-aware, but it takes him a long time to see his mother clearly. Why do you think that is? Why is it difficult for adult children to see their parents' flaws?
14. How did you react to the scene after Laurence and Karen's dinner with Lydia, the final events of the novel, and Part Three? Were you surprised by the final revelations?
15. Does Lydia get what she wants? Does she get what she deserves? Does anyone else? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Lying Life of Adults
Elena Ferrante, 2019 (2020, U.S.)
Europa Editions
324 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781609455910
Summary
Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day.
But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise?
Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.
Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.
Named one of 2016’s most influential people by Time magazine and frequently touted as a future Nobel Prize-winner, Elena Ferrante has become one of the world’s most read and beloved writers.
With this new novel about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ferrante proves once again that she deserves her many accolades. In The Lying Life of Adults, readers will discover another gripping, highly addictive, and totally unforgettable Neapolitan story. (From the publisher.)
The Lying Life of Adults is set to become a Netflix series.
Author Bio
Elena Ferrante is the pen-name of an Italian novelist whose true identity is not publicly known. Though heralded as the most important Italian novelist of her generation, she has kept her identity secret since the publication of her first novel in 1992.
Works
Ferrante is the author of a half dozen novels, the most well-known of which is Days of Abandonment. Her four "Neapolitan Novels" revolve around two perceptive and intelligent girls from Naples who try to create lives for themselves within a violent and stultifying culture. The series consists of four novels: My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015), which was nominated for the Strega Prize, an Italian literary award.
Two of Ferrante's novels have been turned into films by Italian filmmakers. Troubling Love became the 1995 feature film Nasty Love, and The Days of Abandonment became a 2005 film of the same title.
Her nonfiction book Fragments (2003) discussion her experiences as a writer.
Identity
In a January 21, 2013, article in The New Yorker, James Woods wrote that Ferrante has said, "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors." Perhaps that is one reason for her pen-name.
Speculation about Ferrante's identity is rife. In the same New Yorker article, Woods also wrote:
In the past twenty years or so, though, she has provided written answers to journalists’ questions, and a number of her letters have been collected and published. From them, we learn that she grew up in Naples, and has lived for periods outside Italy. She has a classics degree; she has referred to being a mother. One could also infer from her fiction and from her interviews that she is not now married. (“Over the years, I’ve moved often, in general unwillingly, out of necessity.… I’m no longer dependent on the movements of others, only on my own” is her encryption.) In addition to writing, “I study, I translate, I teach. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
[S]uspenseful and propulsive.… [It is] the story of the evolution of a young woman, so brash and sensibly secretive, allergic to banality, prone to fabrication but honest with herself about her desires. Ferrante leaves many threads dangling; we’re left to wonder at the… enigmatic, oddly heroic conclusion.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
Yes, this book lives up to its author’s reputation, and then some. In focusing on Giovanna and her journey, The Lying Life of Adults achieves an energy and warmth sometimes missing in the narratives about Lila and Lenu in the Quartet.… Giovanna’s fate, containing elements both expected and unexpected, makes her one of this year’s most memorable heroines.
Bethanne Patrrick - Boston Globe
Ferrante… shows again how she is unbeatable at pulling you inside the mind of a teenage girl, making you see how everything that looks irrational from the outside—the moods, the silences, the jealousy, fears, tears and resentments—are utterly logical and reasonable…. The book does sag in the middle.… However, the pace picks up in the final third.… [and shows] that five years on Elena Ferrante can still deliver.
Tom Kington - Guardian (UK)
[T]he overwrought language of [Ferrante's] new book doesn’t illuminate the anguish that it seeks to plumb.... [T]he Lying Life has passages of electric dialogue and acute perception. But its crude hinting and telegraphing suggest an author who distrusts her reader’s discernment, and they made me wonder if Ferrante hadn’t drafted the story as a much younger writer, still honing her craft.
New Yorker
Giovanna’s coming-of-age trials… buttress the gripping, plot-heavy tale. While this feels minor in comparison to Ferrante’s previous work, Giovanna is the kind of winning character readers wouldn’t mind seeing more of.
Publishers Weekly
[A] powerful coming-of-age story…. Ferrante’s ability to draw in her reader remains unparalleled.… The novel simmers with overt rage toward parental deception, teachers’ expectations and society’s impossible ideals of beauty and behavior.
BookPage
(Starred review) Fans of Ferrante’s first two Neopolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend (2012) and The Story of a New Name (2013), will especially revel in Giovanna’s confessional, perceptive, gut-wrenching, and often funny narration of what she calls her "arduous approach to the adult world."
Booklist
Ferrante’s legion of devoted readers will be encouraged by another equivocal ending, permitting the hope of further exploration of Giovanna’s journey in future volumes. A girl, a city, an inhospitable society: Ferrante’s formula works again!
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS, then take off on your own:
1. What would your reaction have been as a child to have heard a parent say you were "ugly"? What effect would such a remark have had on you?
2. For most of us going through adolescence, we view our families through a different lens than we did in childhood. How does Giovanna come to questions her family and the "lies" that were once accepted as truths?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) How similar to Giovanna's was your own passage from childhood to young adulthood? Consider the ideals of love, marriage, faith, and sex. How did your own understanding of them change?
4. As in her other works, Ferrante focuses on class. Start by talking about the childhood household of Giovanna and her parents. How does it differ from the Naples in which her aunt Vittoria lives. What effect does this new environment have on Giovanna? Why is she intent on casting off her privileged upbringing?
5. How would you describe Vittoria? What is Giovanni's reaction to meeting Vittoria? How does the relationship change Giovanni? In what way do her familial alliances change?
6. Giovanni wonders, "What happened in the world of adults, in the heads of very reasonable people, in their bodies loaded with knowledge? What reduced them to the most untrustworthy animals, worse than reptiles?" How would you answer that question? How does Giovanni come to answer that question?
7. Giovanna's sexual experiences are dark? Why does she pursue young men to whom she has no attraction? What drives her?
8. What is the significance of the bracelet, symbolically?
9. What is the meaning of Ferrante's title for this novel?
10. At the end of The Lying Life of Adults, Giovanna and a friend promise each other to "become adults like no one else has before." What do they mean? Does the ending suggest the possibility of additional Giovanni novels?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Madame
Antoni Libera, 1998 (trans., Agnieszka Kolakowska, 2000)
Canaongate Books
438 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781841955209
Summary
The comic "sentimental education" of a schoolboy who falls in love with his French teacher.
Madame is an unexpected gem: a novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity, which nonetheless sparkles with light and warmth.
Our young narrator-hero is suffering through the regulated boredom of high school when he is transfixed by a new teacher—an elegant "older woman" (she is thirty-two) who bewitches him with her glacial beauty and her strict intelligence. He resolves to learn everything he can about her and to win her heart.
In a sequence of marvelously funny but sobering maneuvers, he learns much more than he expected to—about politics, Poland, the Spanish Civil War, and his own passion for theater and art—all while his loved one continues to elude him. Yet without his realizing it, his efforts—largely bookish and literary—to close in on Madame are his first steps to liberation as an artist. Later, during a stint as a teacher-in-training in his old school, he discovers that he himself has become a legendary figure to a new generation of students, and he begins to understand the deceits and blessings of myth, and its redemptive power.
A winning portrait of an artist as a young man, Madame is at the same time a moving, engaging novel about strength and weakness, first love, and the efforts we make to reconcile, in art, the opposing forces of reason and passio. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 19, 1949
• Where—Warsaw, Poland
• Education—Warsaw University; Ph.D., Polish Academy of
Sciences
• Awards—Grand Prix of Znak
• Currently—N/A
Antoni Libera, a Polish leading literary critic, translator, writer, theatre director, is best known for his translations and productions of Samuel Beckett's plays. Other translated authors include Shakespeare (Macbeth), Sophocles (Antigone), Wilde (Salome), Hölderlin and others. He translated a number of operas as well.
Libera's first novel Madame (1998) was awarded Grand Prix of Znak (a major publishing house in Poland) and has been translated into 20 languages. (Adapted from Wikipedia .)
Book Reviews
Madame is at the same time an enthralling read, a nostalgic tale of youthful passion, and a sober analysis of growing up under Eastern Europe's gray skies in the sixties. Antoni Libera, known in Poland up till now as a translator and director, proves himself here to be an experienced and absorbing prose writer.
Times (London)
Antoni Libera's Madame, set in Soviet-controlled Warsaw in the 1960's, demonstrates the power of the coming-of-age novel to renew itself with each generation.... Libera's portrayal of a gifted mind learning courage and honor in the most deprived of circumstances is inherently powerful and dramatic.
David Walton - New York Times Book Review
Stendhal would have loved this novel. If he had known Polish, he would even have been able to write it himself.
Washington Post
The hero of this excellent novel is a high-school student, trying to fulfill his romantic destiny in the decidedly unromantic world of the Communist Polish People's Republic... As the boy investigates his beloved's complicated past with a particularly earnest and endearing deviousness, he is forced to make sense of the social and political myths he has inherited.
The New Yorker
A teenage boy's doomed love for his glamorous French instructor in 1960s Poland informs the masterfully constructed debut of Warsaw critic and drama director Libera. When a beautiful 32-year-old teacher, known primarily as "Madame," takes over the narrator's high school French class, he is entranced by her combination of austere intelligence and immaculate beauty. He soon begins following her and researching her life to feed his obsession. When he flirtatiously taunts her in class with covert references to her past, she seems only mildly indignant. Finally, he discovers that she is the daughter of a man who left Poland for political reasons during the 1940s, and that she has felt uncertain of her own identity for much of her adult life; this revelation fills him with empathy for her. The unlikely chemistry between the immature pupil and his adult teacher is electrifying, and the tantalizing pace builds to a mystifying and heart-wrenching climax. Libera paints the narrator's obsession with Madame with a wit worthy of Nabokov (in a crystalline translation by Kolakowska) as his satire of the youth's reckless romantic impulse mixes with heated romantic intrigue. In the course of researching his amour, the narrator sees Picasso's The Human Comedy drawings and Lelouch's film A Man and a Woman, both new at the time; the attitude toward physical and psychological love expressed in both adds a complex and fitting symbolism to the intense politics and passion in the narrative. The layers of the student's obsession unravel with impressive measure as well, even if Libera occasionally gives too much attention to the inner workings of his hero's mind or the history of Poland's oppression by Communist forces. This epic fantasy is deeply satisfying, heartbreaking and enthralling.
Publishers Weekly
In this first novel from Polish critic and theater director Libera, the high school-aged protagonist finds life in Soviet-dominated Poland to be dreary and lacking in the drama of earlier eras. The pressure to conform politically and socially thwarts his desire for pure artistic expression. His resignation to the unremarkable is interrupted by a growing obsession with his elegant and enigmatic French teacher, Madame—seemingly out of reach at age 32. Thus, the young man spends his final year of high school uncovering the details of Madame's personal life, hoping to use these details to woo her through a covert operation that involves the intricate manipulation of the spoken and written word. While engaged in this espionage, he learns that the dramatic is made up of the everyday and that the Polish-Soviet system promotes mediocrity while burying the exceptional. This deeply symbolic Bildungsroman is full of tragedy and comedy, exuberance and suffocation. Highly recommended. —Rebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA
Library Journal
Though numerous digressions sometimes take away from the flow of the novel, the narrator's lively and passionate voice keeps the reader engaged. The only other detraction is the untranslated French throughout the text, but overall, this is an impressive debut. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Discussion Questions
(Many thanks to Monterey County Free Libraries, of California, for developing and sharing the following questions as part of their Book Club to Go program.)
1. What makes this book distinctive?
2. Did you notice any symbolism or underlying themes?
3. How is the setting and period important to the theme?
4. Recollect your time in High School and compare your school with the one portrayed in the book.
5. Did you have any memorable teachers similar to any teacher portrayed in the book?
6. How did you perceive the countries from behind the “iron curtain”? Did you learn something new about life in Eastern Europe in the sixties?
7. How did the ending of the book change your perception of the whole story?
8. Did any literary allusions encourage you to read more books, like “Victory” by Joseph Conrad or plays by Samuel Beckett?
9. Which of the characters from the book would you like to meet in person? What would you like to talk about with her/him?
10. In your opinion, why was Madame so desperate to leave Poland?
11. What do you think really happened to Madame and what was her life like after she left Poland?
12. In your opinion, why didn’t the protagonist escape from Poland? Do you think he finally did, when he finished the book?
13. What can be the meaning of the fact that we don’t know characters’ names?
14. Would this book make a good movie? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by Monterey County Free Libraries of California. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution
Michelle Moran, 2011
Crown Publishing Group
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307588661
Summary
The world knows Madame Tussaud as a wax artist extraordinaire.... but who was this woman who became one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous and amazing story comes to life as only Michelle Moran can tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin.
Smart and ambitious, Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire. From her popular model of the American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie’s museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, and even politics.
Her customers hail from every walk of life, yet her greatest dream is to attract the attention of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI; their stamp of approval on her work could catapult her and her museum to the fame and riches she desires. After months of anticipation, Marie learns that the royal family is willing to come and see their likenesses. When they finally arrive, the king’s sister is so impressed that she requests Marie’s presence at Versailles as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. It is a request Marie knows she cannot refuse—even if it means time away from her beloved Salon and her increasingly dear friend, Henri Charles.
As Marie gets to know her pupil, Princesse Élisabeth, she also becomes acquainted with the king and queen, who introduce her to the glamorous life at court. From lavish parties with more delicacies than she’s ever seen to rooms filled with candles lit only once before being discarded, Marie steps into a world entirely different from her home on the Boulevard du Temple, where people are selling their teeth in order to put food on the table.
Meanwhile, many resent the vast separation between rich and poor. In salons and cafés across Paris, people like Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre are lashing out against the monarchy. Soon, there’s whispered talk of revolution.... Will Marie be able to hold on to both the love of her life and her friendship with the royal family as France approaches civil war? And more important, will she be able to fulfill the demands of powerful revolutionaries who ask that she make the death masks of beheaded aristocrats, some of whom she knows?
Spanning five years, from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 11, 1980
• Where—San Fernando Valley of California, USA
• Education—B.A., Pomona College; M.A., Claremont Graduate University
• Currently—lives in southern California
Michelle Moran, an American novelist, was born in California's San Fernando Valley. She took an interest in writing from an early age, purchasing Writer's Market and submitting her stories and novellas to publishers from the time she was twelve. She majored in literature at Pomona College. Following a summer in Israel where she worked as a volunteer archaeologist, she earned an MA from the Claremont Graduate University.
Her experiences at archaeological sites were what inspired her to write historical fiction. A public high school teacher for six years, Moran is currently a full-time writer living in California
Novels
Moran's novels have been published in both the UK and the US, and have been translated and sold in more than 20 countries, including France, Bulgaria, Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Poland, Russia, China, and Taiwan.
2016 - Mata Hari's Last Dance
2015 - Rebel Queen
2012 - The Second Empress
2011 - Madame Tussaud
2009 - Cleopatra's Daughter
2008 - The Heretic Queen
2007 - Nefertiti
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/18/2016.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Michelle's on History Buff.
Book Reviews
[A] historical novel of fierce polarities.... This is an unusually moving portrayal.... Marie Antoinette in particular becomes a surprisingly dimensional figure rather than the fashionplate, spendthrift caricature depicted in the pamphlets of her times.
Publishers Weekly
[T]his superbly written and plotted work is a welcome addition to historical fiction collections. The shocking actions and behavior required of Tussaud to survive the revolution make the novel a true page-turner and a perfect reading group choice. —Audrey M. Johnson, Arlington, VA
Library Journal
Moran takes liberties with the facts, as any historical novelist has a right to do; but some of her inventions tend to clutter up a story that is already fascinating on its own. Still, readers will be intrigued by Madame Tussaud, and by witnessing a tumultuous era through her eyes. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
Well-plotted if sometimes slow-moving novel of the French Revolution and one now-famous survivor of that heady (or, perhaps, be-heady) time.... Mannered and elegant; reminiscent in many ways of novels of days long past, particularly the Baroness Orczy's swifter-paced Scarlet Pimpernel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How do you think Marie’s life differed from most other women of her time? Where would you say she placed her emphasis?
2. When Marie visited the Marquis de Sade in the Bastille, she was surprised by the conditions she found there. Were you surprised as well? If so, in what way did those conditions surpass or fall short of your expectations?
3. What was the comparison Marie made between the Bastille and Versailles? How would you describe the organization, operations, scent and reality of daily life in each location?
4. Who was the Duc D’Orleans and what type of role would you say he played regarding the French revolution? What role would you say he played in the common people’s belief regarding the king?
5. When the Royal family tried to economize their personal lifestyle and the kingdom’s expenses, how did the other nobles respond and why?
6. At one point, Marie told her neighbor, and later fiancé, Henri, she didn’t agree with Rousseau’s philosophy regarding the goodness of man. In what way would you say Marie’s philosophy regarding people differed from Rousseau?
7. How would you describe the Royal family’s knowledge of the way the populace felt about them? Why was this so? What role do you think this knowledge, or lack thereof, played as a catalyst for the revolution?
8. How would you describe the king’s style of ruling? What factor do you think this played in the people revolting against him? If he’d been a harsher ruler do you think the people would have been more or less likely to revolt and why? By the same token, if he had been a more lenient ruler do you think this would have increased or diminished the likelihood of the revolution?
9. hat do you think was the king’s greatest virtue as a ruler? What was his greatest vice? Which characteristic of his do you think played the greatest role in his ultimately losing his throne and his life?
10. What events in Madame Tussaud would you describe as ironic? Can you think of similar things or events that have occurred during your lifetime, whether in this country or elsewhere? If so, how are they similar?
11. Marie’s brother, Edmund, accused Marie of making matters worse for the Royal family by portraying them through her wax figures in a misleading or lurid way. Do you agree? How did the Salon De Cire’s exhibits mirror or differ from the way the French newspapers described the Royal family?
12. Would you describe Marie as a Royalist or a revolutionary? Why? If she’d had the ability to do so, at the end of her life what specific things do you think she would have gone back and rectified or done differently?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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MaddAddam
Margaret Atwood, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385528788
Summary
Bringing together Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community, and love.
Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, newly fortified against man and giant pigoon alike.
Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. Their reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is recovering from a debilitating fever, so it's left to Toby to preach the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.
Zeb has been searching for Adam One, founder of the God's Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. But now, under threat of a Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters.
At the center of MaddAddam is the story of Zeb's dark and twisted past, which contains a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.
Combining adventure, humor, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy. (From the publisher.)
This is the third book in Atwood's dystopian trilogy: the first is Oryx and Crake (2003); the second is The Year of the Flood (2009).
Author Bio
• Birth—November 18, 1939
• Where—Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Toronto; M.A. Radcliffe; Ph.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Governor General's Award; Booker Prize; Giller Award
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada
Early life
Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Atwood is the second of three children of Margaret Dorothy (nee Killam), a former dietitian and nutritionist, and Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist. Due to her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and traveling back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was in grade 8. She became a voracious reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957.
Atwood began writing at the age of six and realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary journal. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) and a minor in philosophy and French.
In late 1961, after winning the E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University for two years but did not finish her dissertation, “The English Metaphysical Romance." She has taught at the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967–68), the University of Alberta (1969–70), York University in Toronto (1971–72), the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (1985), where she was visiting M.F.A. Chair, and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English.
Personal life
In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk; they were divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship with fellow novelist Graeme Gibson soon after and moved to a farm near Alliston, Ontario, north of Toronto, where their daughter was born in 1976. The family returned to Toronto in 1980.
Other genres
While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen books of poetry. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.
Atwood has also produced several children's books, including Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995) and Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes (2003)—delicious alliterative delights that introduce a wealth of new vocabulary to young readers
Speculative fiction vs. sci-fic
The Handmaid's Tale received the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. The award is given for the best science fiction novel that was first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, and the 1987 Prometheus Award, both science fiction awards.
Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to the UK's Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." She told the Book of the Month Club: "Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians."
She clarified her meaning on the difference between speculative and science fiction, admitting that others use the terms interchangeably: "For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... [S]peculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth." She said that science fiction narratives give a writer the ability to explore themes in ways that realistic fiction cannot.
Environmentalism
Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being left-wing, she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a Red Tory in the historical sense of the term. Atwood, along with her partner Graeme Gibson, is a member of the Green Party of Canada (GPC) and has strong views on environmental issues. She and Gibson are the joint honorary presidents of the Rare Bird Club within BirdLife International. She has been chair of the Writers' Union of Canada and president of PEN Canada, and is currently a vice president of PEN International. In a Globe and Mail editorial, she urged Canadians to vote for any other party to stop a Conservative majority.
During the debate in 1987 over a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, Atwood spoke out against the deal, and wrote an essay opposing the agreement.
Atwood celebrated her 70th birthday at a gala dinner at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, marking the final stop of her international tour to promote The Year of the Flood. She stated that she had chosen to attend the event because the city has been home to one of Canada's most ambitious environmental reclamation programs: "When people ask if there's hope (for the environment), I say, if Sudbury can do it, so can you. Having been a symbol of desolation, it's become a symbol of hope." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2013.)
Book Reviews
What a joy it is to see Margaret Atwood taking such delicious pleasure in the end of the world.... In MaddAddam, the third volume of Atwood's apocalyptic MaddAddam trilogy, she has sent the survivors of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood to a compound where they await a final showdown. But what gives MaddAddam such tension and light are the final revelations of how this new world came to be, and how the characters made their way to this battle for the future of humanity. Atwood has brought the previous two books together in a fitting and joyous conclusion that's an epic not only of an imagined future but of our own past, an exposition of how oral storytelling traditions led to written ones and ultimately to our sense of origin…Atwood's prose miraculously balances humor, outrage and beauty.
Andrew Sean Greer - New York Times Book Review
[S]ardonically funny.... [Atwood] certainly has the tone exactly right, both for the linguistic hypocrisy that can disguise any kind of catastrophe, and for the contemptuous dismissal of those who point to disaster.... MaddAddam is at once a pre- and a post-apocalypse story.
Wall Street Journal
This unsentimental narrative exposes the heart of human creativity as well as our self-destructive darkness.... MaddAddam is fueled with edgy humor, sardonic twists, hilarious coincidences.
Boston Globe
MaddAddam is sharp, witty and strong enough to stand alone.... Peppered with witty neologisms, Atwood’s character-driven novel is terrific precisely because of close attention to detail, to voice, to what’s in the hearts of these people: love, loss, the need to keep on keeping on, no matter what.... [T]his novel sings.
Miami Herald
[T]here is something funny, even endearing, about such a dark and desperate view of a future—a ravaged world emerging from alarmingly familiar trends—that is so jam-packed with the gifts of imagination, invention, intelligence and joy. There may be some hope for us yet.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Margaret Atwood continues to flourish as she approaches her fifth decade of publication.... A thrilling and enchanting—funny, sad, clever, audacious—tale of grumpy, deflated, and perilous post-apocalyptic times, year 0.6.
Vancouver Sun
[T]he imaginative universe Atwood has created in these books is huge.... It's a dystopia, but it's still fun.... Atwood doesn't just ask what if, she raises an eyebrow and says, See where we're going? Yet she's not a pessimist: She's invented a future large enough to include, after the end of the world, people falling in love.
Los Angeles Times
The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire.... Her vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve.
Independent (UK)
(Starred review.) The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire. The novel begins where Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood end, just after most of the human species has been eradicated by a man-made plague. The early books explore a world of terrifying corporate tyranny, horrifying brutality, and the relentless rape of women and the planet.... [Atwood's] vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he story of the MaddAddamites, survivors of a global pandemic that wiped out most of humanity. Readers...will be quickly drawn in and eager to find out what happens to the MaddAddamites and to the Crakers, a gentle, quasihuman species created by Crake.... [T]his finale is a gripping read for any reader. —Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
Ten years after Oryx & Crake rocked readers the world over, Atwood brings her cunning, impish, and bracing speculative trilogy—following The Year of the Flood—to a gritty, stirring, and resonant conclusion.... Atwood is ascendant, from her resilient characters to the feverishly suspenseful plot involving battles, spying, cyberhacking, murder, and sexual tension.... The coruscating finale in an ingenious, cautionary trilogy of hubris, fortitude, wisdom, love, and life’s grand obstinacy.
Booklist
Atwood closes her post-apocalyptic trilogy with...suggestions about how new-world mythologies are made.... Atwood herself has taken care to layer this story with plenty of detail...[and] closes out the story with just a touch of optimism. By no means her finest work, but Atwood remains an expert thinker about human foibles and how they might play out on a grand scale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why are Adam and Zeb so different? Or are they more similar than they first seem?
2. The MaddAddamites set about building a basic community for themselves, one that meets the need for food, clothing, shelter, and an energy source. If you were in this position, would you do things differently? Should children be taught elementary survival skills?
3. What comment, if any, do you think Margaret Atwood is making about environmentalism in this book, through organizations like Bearlift? Or does Bearlift suffer simply from the human flaws that appear in all organizations, no matter how well-meaning?
4. The Internet has an almost physical presence in MaddAddam—the “lilypads,” the game Intestinal Parasites. Do you think this is where the Internet is heading? Is it becoming a “real” entity of its own?
5. Is Toby right to trust Zeb? Do you think his feelings for Toby are genuine?
6. Toby teaches Blackbeard to write. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? What consequences do you think this will have for the Crakers and their new world?
7. Margaret Atwood’s trilogy often portrays humans and our future grimly, but it is also both funny and profane. Is Atwood’s gallows humor effective?
8. What parallels do you see between the events of MaddAddam and recent events in our real world? Are Atwood’s three dystopian books exaggerated or could they really be our future?
9. Despite having seemed violent and disposed to eat humans, the Pigoons ultimately display more compassion than many of the humans in MaddAddam. Is that because the Pigoons are animals, or is it because of the implanted human tissue in their brains?
10. The Crakers seek stories from Jimmy and Toby to explain the world around them. What do these stories say about how myths are formed? Is the desire for religion innate within us? What do you think MaddAddam is saying about our need for gods and how religions are created?
11. How important is language in shaping and changing history and rumour into myth? Discuss the way gods form in Toby’s monologues to the Crakers—including the one named for a swear word . . .
12. Religion and our need for belief is a key concern in MaddAddam. What does the Church of PetrOleum say about Atwood’s view of religion? Has religion become a commodity?
13. How do you think the hybrid babies will turn out? Will they be more human or Craker, and which would be best for the future of Earth?
14. Is Atwood’s view of humanity ultimately negative? Is there hope at the end of MaddAddam, and if there is, where does it come from?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Made for Love
Alissa Nutting, 2017
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062280558
Summary
From the exciting and provocative writer of Tampa, a poignant, riotously funny story of how far some will go for love—and how far some will go to escape it.
Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane—his extremely lifelike sex doll—as her roommates. Life with Hazel’s father is strained at best, but her only alternative seems even bleaker.
She’s just run out on her marriage to Byron Gogol, CEO and founder of Gogol Industries, a monolithic corporation hell-bent on making its products and technologies indispensable in daily life. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked.
But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human “mind-meld,” Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. The world she escapes into is a far cry from the dry and clinical bubble she’s been living in, a world populated with a whole host of deviant oddballs.
As Hazel tries to carve out a new life for herself in this uncharted territory, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. His threats become more and more sinister, and Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches once and for all.
Perceptive and compulsively readable, Made for Love is at once an absurd, raunchy comedy and a dazzling, profound meditation marriage, monogamy, and family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Raised—Valrico, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida, M.F.A., University of Alabama
Ph.D., University of Nevada-Las Vegas
• Awards—Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction
• Currently—lives in Grinnell, Iowa
Alissa Nutting is an American author and creative writing professor. She graduated from high school in Valrico, Florida, (about an hour from Tampa, which became the title of her debut novel). She received her B.A. from the University of Florida, her M.F.A. from the University of Alabama, and her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. She has taught creative writing at John Caroll University in Ohio and the University of Nevada. She is currently assistant professor at Grinnell College in Iowa.
Writing
Nutting is author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010). The book was selected by judge Ben Marcus as winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction and was a finalist for a ForeWord Book of the Year.
Her first novel, Tampa, published in 2013, is based on a real-life story about a middle school teacher in Tampa who, in 2005, had sex with her students. Tampa is not far from where Nutting was raised—and the teacher in question was a classmate of Nutting. The novel is overtly sexual and was banned in some bookstores although Nutting says neither her publisher nor editors asked her to tone it down, They understood that the content needed to be explicit.
Nutting released her second novel, Made for Love, in 2017. It is an absurd take on the impact of modern technology on human intimacy. One character, the heroine's father, is in love with an inflatable sex doll, and another character in love with a dolphin.
In addition to her books, Nutting's writing has appeared in Tin House, Fence, BOMB, Oprah Magazine, and the fairy tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.
Personal
Nutting lives in Iowa with her daughter and her second husband, fellow Grinnell professor Dean Bakopoulos. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/3/2017.)
Book Reviews
[Hazel] is the rare literary heroine in whose company it would be a pleasure to absolutely wreck my life.… The book is a total joyride, dizzying and surprising, like a state-fair roller coaster that makes you queasy for a moment but leaves you euphoric in the end.
New Yorker
Bizarre and brutally funny… relentlessly entertaining… Made for Love is a whip-smart critique of our relationship with technology and the ways we connect to other humans.
Harper's Bazaar
Provocative and irreverent, Made for Love is an absurdly hilarious musing on love and marriage.
W Magazine
Made for Love has a deviant instinct that make it initially captivating — but it doesn't do the necessary other work of a good novel. For all the ostensible unexpectedness (again, dolphins), it rarely surprises. And, for all that it plays on the idea of intimacy, the book gives us little sense of why we might want it, if people are just screens for mishap and absurdist sex
NPR.org
Made for Love will be one of the funniest, most absurd books you’ll read this summer.… Hilarious, clever, and strikingly original, Made for Love speaks to the absurdity of our societal obsessions with technology and wealth.
Buzzfeed
Nutting’s uniquely hilarious voice is the perfect guide to this darkly surreal, extremely relatable universe, in which the absurd becomes expected and our own personal hells feel like they’ve been perversely rendered in neon, airbrushed paint.
Nylon Magazine
Hilarious… Nutting’s smart, ribald, and hugely entertaining new novel provokes many chuckles. Occasionally, she reaches higher, and grants the reader flashes of something truly great: a striking view of the pathetic, that Gogolian, absurdist sublime.
Rumpus.com
Nutting deftly exploits the comic potential of perverse attachments, here to sex dolls, aquatic mammals, and technological devices.… Hazel’s story and touches on relevant themes of anonymity and objectification, [but] it never fully works. Nonetheless, the novel charms in its witty portrait of a woman desperate to reconnect with her humanity.
Publishers Weekly
A sly satire of our tech- and prosperity-obsessed society.
Booklist
[D]istinctive…and…darkly absurd …. But character-building is not among [the author's] strengths.… While Nutting borrows plot elements from thrillers, narrative momentum is constantly undercut by back story and scenes that are odd and amusing but not entirely necessary. An uneven effort from a terrific writer.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; meanwhile, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Made for Love … then take off on your own:
1. Absurd is a word frequently used to describe Alissa Nutting's novel. Talk about the plot or character elements you find absurd. Consider the difference between the absurd and general humor. Why might a author turn to absurdity? For laughs? Anything else?
2. Okay… Jason's sex doll—what about it? How does the doll fit, say, thematically, into a novel concerned with the impact of high technology on life? (Btw, have you ever seen Ryan Gossling's 2007 film, Lars and the Real Girl. If so how does this compare?)
3. Describe Hazel. Is she a typical modern day heroine (accomplished, independent) …or sort of a parody of one. Talk about her upbringing (including the dreams about one of her teacher's tirades). Do you root for Hazel …or become impatient with her? Or what?
4. Then there is Byron Gogol. First of all, consider his last name and how the author might be having fun with us. Talk also about Gogol Industries and what it represents for society.
5. Is Jasper a feminist? Discuss!
6. Rachel compares love with starving: "when people are really hungry they will be driven to eat the inedible." Same with love. Do you agree with her assessment?
7. Follow-up to Question XX: consider that in Nutting's world, people would actually prefer the "non-edible" or non-lovable. They use stand-ins for human lovers: sex dolls, flamingos, dolphins. Why?
8. As Hazel and Byron's courtship plays out, do you see parallels with Fifty Shades of Grey? What is the author mocking?
9. Mrs. Cheese tells Hazel toward the end of the book, "I hope you win your soul back in a bet or something." Why does she say this? By the end, is there any redemption, especially for Hazel?
10. How did you experience the book? Did you find it funny, hilarious...or not? Did you have affection for the characters and their many foibles...or not? Were you satisfied with the outcome...or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Made in the U.S.A.
Billie Letts, 2008
Grand Central Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446582452
Summary
Lutie McFee's history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Yankton, South Dakota with her nine-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father. While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows and worrying about global warming and the endangerment of pandas.
As if their life is not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart, Floy keels over and the two motherless kids are suddenly faced with the choice of becoming wards of the state or hightailing it out of town in Floy's old Pontiac. Choosing the latter, they head off to Las Vegas in search of a father who has no known address, no phone number and, clearly, no interest in the kids he left behind.
Made in the U.S.A. is the alternately heartbreaking and life-affirming story of two gutsy children who must discover how cruel, unfair and frightening the world is before they come to a place they can finally call home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1937
• Where—Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—B.A., Southeast Missouri State University
• Awards—Percy Walker Award
• Currently—lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Billie Letts is the author of numerous highly acclaimed short stories and screenplay, and a former professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Her first novel, Where The Heart Is, won the Walker Percy Award, sold more than three million copies, and became a major motion picture. Her second novel, The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, was named the first "Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma" selection. Her third novel, Shoot the Moon and her fourth novel, Made in the U.S.A. were both New York Times bestsellers. Billie Letts is a native Oklahoman, and currently lives in Tulsa. (From the publisher.)
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Betts was married to professor-turned-actor Dennis Letts, from 1958 until his death from cancer in 2008. Dennis served as Billie's editor for her novels. Together they had three sons: Dana Letts; playwright and actor, Tracy Letts; jazz musician and composer, Shawn Letts. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In a second Letts title where a pivotal event occurs at a Wal-Mart (the first was the author's bestseller Where the Heart Is), two long-neglected kids have to fend for themselves—and quickly. After their father's ex-girlfriend, Floy, who is their guardian, drops dead at the chain's Spearfish, S.D., megastore, 15-year-old Lutie McFee persuades her 11-year-old brother, Fate, to take off in Floy's Pontiac to their long-gone dad's last known address, a fleabag hotel in Las Vegas. There, they discover discouraging secrets about their father's whereabouts. Lutie gets fake working papers and a string of dead-end jobs. But with the threat of foster care looming, Lutie and trivia-mad Fate are soon at the mercy of child predators. Letts (whose son Tracy won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) manages this potentially maudlin or lurid material with a frank lyricism, delivering a heartbreaking tale about love, loss and survival that will stick with the reader long after the last page is turned.
Publishers Weekly
(Adult/high school.) After the sudden death of Floy, her father's 300-pound girlfriend, 15-year-old Lutie McFee flees Spearfish, SD, with her 11-year-old brother, Fate. With only an apartment address to guide them, the siblings head toward Las Vegas in Floy's Pontiac, in search of the father they haven't seen or heard from in a year. Lutie's defiant personality lands the pair in a number of dangerous and precarious situations. However, her equally dominant determination drives her to do almost anything to protect her intellectual and withdrawn brother. When she is almost beaten to death during a robbery, a mysterious protector, Juan Vargas, comes to their aid. After getting medical treatment for her, Juan transports Lutie and Fate to his hometown in Hugo, OK. While Fate discovers a world of wonder and happiness, Lutie struggles to accept the support that is being offered to her. The ending, while unlikely, is satisfying and emotionally rewarding. Teens will immediately be drawn into the story by Lutie's feisty personality as well as the adventure, and ultimate hardship, of living by your wits. Recommend this one to those who enjoy gutsy protagonists, gritty plotlines, and fairy-tale endings. —Lynn Rashid, Marriots Ridge High School, Marriotsville, MD
School Library Journal
Letts (Shoot the Moon, 2004, etc.) returns with another uplifting tearjerker, this time about an orphaned brother and sister who face travail before finding love and acceptance within an Oklahoma circus family. Fifteen-year-old Lutie McFee's mother is long dead. Her alcoholic father has decamped to Las Vegas, leaving Lutie and her 11-year-old brother Fate in the care of his latest girlfriend Floy. When Floy drops dead at Wal-Mart, tough but lovable Lutie and precocious but friendless Fate head to Vegas to find their father. By the time they arrive and discover he's died in prison, they're flat broke. Lutie earns money any way she can, including posing for porn, while Fate sells lost golf balls when he's not hanging around the library or the elementary school he hopes to attend. After a rape and a few other humiliations, Lutie, who has also developed a cocaine habit, is robbed and badly beaten. Fortunately, Lutie and Fate have a guardian angel. Juan Vargas, who has been helping them anonymously since their arrival, now saves Lutie. A former aerialist with Cirque de Soleil until a fall ended his career and left him disabled, Juan drives the McFees to Oklahoma where his family runs a circus. Juan has his own emotional baggage; having left Vargas Brothers Circus years earlier, he never returned to face his heartbroken father. Instead, after his accident, Juan drifted into addiction until joining AA (which he describes glowingly although he never attends meetings). In Oklahoma, Fate almost immediately feels at home, making his first real friend and learning to fish. Recuperating from her attack, Lutie at first resists the care offered by Juan's grandmother Mama Sim, but once she reveals to Mama Sim her deepest, guiltiest (most trite) secret, Lutie is emotionally ready to accept the love the Vargas family offers. And through Lutie's talent as an aerialist, Juan finds his own way back into the family fold. So much travail, so much uplift! So much phony plotting and superficial characterization.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. This novel revolves around a brother and a sister who have both experienced hard times, but react to their plight quite differently. How would you describe their relationship to each other and their contrasting reactions to hardship?
2. Fate, as a younger sibling, seems to need Lutie more than she needs him. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
3. Early in the novel, Lutie makes the choice to flee Spearfish rather than risk being put in foster care. Toward the middle of the novel, Fate says to Lutie: “Well, maybe we should have stayed in Spearfish after Floy died. Sure, we would’ve gone on to foster care, but maybe we would’ve been lucky. Both of us might’ve gone with a nice family.” What do you think of Lutie’s decision? Do you think Lutie and Fate might have been better off if they’d been put in foster care?
4. Lutie often acts recklessly and impulsively. Why do you think she often puts herself and Fate in such dangerous situations—such as when she and Fate pick up Michael, the hitchhiker?
5. Much of this book is set in Las Vegas, a place known for its glitz and glamour and its promise of wealth, fame, and happiness. The Las Vegas described in the book, however, is a very different sort of place. Why do you think Billie Letts chose to set most of this book in Las Vegas?
6. How does Lutie change after the incident with her boss at the Desert Palms Motel?
7. Do you like Lutie? Do you empathize with her?
8. Juan Vargas helps Fate and Lutie out many times while they are in Las Vegas, but he does not reveal himself to them until later in the novel. Why doesn’t Juan identify himself to the children initially? He is a loner, so why is he drawn to these children?
9. Mama Sim is incredibly kind to Lutie and Fate. Why do you think she welcomes the children into her home so easily and why is she so tolerant of Lutie’s behavior?
10. Why is Juan Vargas insistent on returning to Las Vegas before his father comes home? Do you understand his reluctance to come back home?
11. How does Fate grow throughout the novel, and in particular, how does he change after he meets Johnny?
12. Why is Lutie so intent on leaving Mama Sim’s house, even after Fate asks her to stay? Why is it so hard for Lutie to accept love and help?
13. How are Lutie and Juan alike? In what ways do they learn from each other throughout the course of the book?
14. How is the word “family” defined in this novel? Juan describes his family as a “tribe.” Is there a difference between tribe and family?
15. Made in the U.S.A. is the story of two children’s journey to find a home. Do you think they’ve found one at the end of the novel?
16. Discuss the very last scene of the novel. Do Lutie and Fate seem changed from the beginning of the novel? Do you like the way Letts chose to end the novel or would you have ended it differently?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Madonnas of Echo Park
Brando Skyhorse, 201o
Simon & Schuster
199 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439170847
Summary
Winner of the 2011 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours. With these words, spoken by an illegal Mexican day laborer, The Madonnas of Echo Park takes us into the unseen world of Los Angeles, following the men and women who cook the meals, clean the homes, and struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream.
When a dozen or so girls and mothers gather on an Echo Park street corner to act out a scene from a Madonna music video, they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife.
The Esperanzas’ shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again."
Like the Academy Award–winning film Crash, The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the intersections of its characters and cultures in Los Angeles. In the footsteps of Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie, Brando Skyhorse in his debut novel gives voice to one neighborhood in Los Angeles with an astonishing— and unforgettable—lyrical power. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Brando Skyhorse is the author of The Madonnas of Echo Park. Born and raised in Echo Park, CA, Brando Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Writers' Workshop program at UC Irvine. For the past ten years he has worked in New York publishing as a book editor, at Grove Press, Lyons Press, and Skyhorse Books. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A literary glimpse into the often unseen world of Mexican Americans trying to make it as Americans.
USA Today
Skyhorse maps in his vivid debut the spirit of L.A.'s Echo Park, where Mexican-Americans define themselves either in alignment with or in opposition to their barrio. Each story-like chapter tells the tale of a character who has grown up in, moved to, or fled Echo Park, such as an itinerant construction worker hired to dispose of a murder weapon, a woman who converses with the Virgin Mary, and a hustler who swears he's going to stay out of prison this time. These lives coalesce around a random shooting that claims the life of a young girl. Family epics also emerge, notably the story of Aurora Esperanza, whose absent father narrates the opening story and whose mother was at the center of a tragedy. Aurora herself closes out the book, drawing together threads of homecoming that weave throughout the novel. Though a few of the narrators' voices aren't distinct enough, Skyhorse excels at building a vibrant community and presenting several perspectives on what it means to be Mexican in America, from those who wonder “how can you lose something that never belonged to you?” to those who miraculously find it.
Publishers Weekly
Eye-opening and haunting, Skyhorse’s novel will jolt readers out of their complacence. —Deborah Donovan
Booklist
First-time novelist Skyhorse offers a poignant yet unsentimental homage to Echo Park, a working-class neighborhood in east Los Angeles where everyone struggles to blend in with American society but remains tied to the traditions of Mexico. Twenty-five years ago, a teenage Skyhorse tells Aurora Esperanza at a high school dance, "I can't dance with you…you're Mexican." Before he can apologize, she disappears. These eight linked stories—real voices, with details changed—are his apology. Hector, Aurora's father, is 40 years old with no job because the Hollywood restaurant where he worked closed. He picks up a construction job, but it isn't what he bargained for. Felicia, Hector's ex-wife and Aurora's mother, works for wealthy Mrs. Calhoun, to whom she is invisible. Efren Mendoza, a by-the-rules bus driver, is proud that he has escaped his family's gang associations, but after a terrible accident he breaks all the rules. Finally, Aurora's story is a lament to Echo Park. She is the last to move out, carried by force by the L.A. Sheriff's Department so Dodger Stadium can be built. Verdict: Universal appeal for readers who favor in-depth character-centered stories, this is enthusiastically recommended. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa County P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. The first chapter of The Madonnas of Echo Park is actually a fictional Author's Note, telling the story of the real Aurora Esperanza and the inspiration for the novel. Did you read the Author's Note before starting the novel? Did you realize it was fictional? Do you prefer to know an author's thoughts about their book before you start, or formulate your own thoughts about it first?
2. The reporters that cover the drive-by shooting raise questions about the positioning that saved Aurora and placed Alma Guerrero in the path of the bullet. Felicia seems doubtful herself about what actually happened during the shooting. Was it just a mother-daughter spat, or did survival instincts kick in and shape the incident?
3. "Tall poppy syndrome" or "crab mentality" is often pointed out by observers of minority cultures, when a member of the community achieves, or has goals, outside of the average and is dragged down or derided by others. Do you see this at work in any of the characters' lives?
4. The incident on Efren Mendoza's bus highlights the racial tensions simmering below the surface of everyday L.A. Was the bus driver trying to manage an unmanageable situation, or acting out of his own prejudices?
5. Aurora, speaking of her obsession with Morrissey, says, "You can't help who, or what, you love." Is she speaking solely about music, or is there a broader context for her statement? Do you agree with her?
6. Felicia works for wealthy white people cleaning their homes; Hector and Diego do construction work off the books. Are these genuine opportunities, or examples of immigrants being taken advantage of?
7. Beatriz (Felicia's mother, Aurora's grandmother) believes she has been visited by Our Lady of Guadalupe at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard. Do you believe in religious visions, or is this simply a hallucination brought on by age and guilt?
8. Juan's father, Manny, is an ex-gangster. What purpose do gangs serve for their neighborhoods? Are they the only option available for many teens, or an actual choice on the part of their members? Can people truly change, after being involved in that kind of violence?
9. Felicia knows her employers as Rick and Mrs. Calhoun, despite the fact that she becomes much closer to Mrs. Calhoun than Rick. Is the way she refers to them indicative of their relationships? Why doesn't it change with the changing circumstances?
10. Are the Calhouns camouflaging their dysfunction with charitable acts, or are they genuinely sympathetic to Felicia? Is this an accurate portrait of their society/demographic? Are the Calhouns' dark secrets the exception or the rule?
11. Which character was your favorite, and which was your least favorite? Which did you identify with the most?
12. The Madonnas of Echo Park has many points of view and many connections that are often revealed slowly. Did the structure of the novel enhance or detract from the reading experience? Would you change it? If so, how?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Madonnas of Leningrad
Debra Dean, 2006
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060825317
Summary
Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye.
Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return.
As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1958-1959
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Whitman College; M.F.A., University of
Oregon
• Awards—Nelson Bentley Prize-Fiction
• Currently—lives in Miami, Florida
Debra Dean worked as an actor in New York theater for nearly a decade before opting for the life of a writer and teacher. She and her husband now live in Miami, where she teaches at the University at Miami. This is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
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Debra Dean was born and raised in Seattle. The daughter of a builder and a homemaker and artist, she was a bookworm but never imagined becoming a writer. “Growing up, I read Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jane Austen, the Brontes. Until after I left college, I rarely read anyone who hadn’t been dead for at least fifty years, so I had no model for writing books as something that people still did. I think subconsciously I figured you needed three names or at the very least a British accent.”
At Whitman College, she double-majored in English and Drama and graduated in 1980. “If you can imagine anyone being this naïve, I figured if the acting thing didn’t work out, I’d have the English major to fall back on.” After college, she moved to New York and spent two years at The Neighborhood Playhouse, a professional actor’s training program. She worked in the New York and regional theatre for nearly a decade and met her future husband when they were cast as brother and sister in A.R. Gurney’s play The Dining Room. “If I’d had a more successful career as an actor, I’d probably still be doing it because I loved acting. I understudied in a couple of long-running plays, so I was able to keep my union health insurance, but the business is pretty dreadful. When I started thinking about getting out, I had no idea what else I might do. What I eventually came up with was writing, which in many ways was a comically ill-advised choice because the pitfalls of writing as a career are nearly identical to acting. One key difference, though, is that you don’t have to be hired first before you can write. Another big advantage is that you don’t need to get facelifts or even be presentable: most days, I can wear my ratty old jeans and t-shirts and not bother with the hair and make-up.”
In 1990, she moved back to the northwest and got her MFA at the University of Oregon. She started teaching writing and publishing her short stories in literary journals. “Everyone told me I needed to either get a PhD or write a novel, and logically they were right, but —well, as I’ve mentioned - I have no instinct for doing the smart thing.” The Madonnas of Leningrad, it turns out, was begun as a short story and when she realized that the short form wouldn’t contain the story, she put it back in the drawer for a few years.
“In retrospect, I’m very grateful for my circuitous journey, that I wasn’t some wunderkind. I like to think I have more compassion now and a perspective that I didn’t have when I was younger.” (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A story about memories and imagination.... [Dean's] descriptive passages and dialogue are painteresque and exquisitely drawn. They bring to life wonderful paintings as well as the tortured lives of Leningrad's residents.
USA Today
Rare is the novel that creates that blissful forgot-you-were-reading experience. This sort of transcendence is rarer still when the novel in question is an author's debut, but that is precisely what Debra Dean has achieved with her image-rich book.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Russian emigre Marina Buriakov, 82, is preparing for her granddaughter's wedding near Seattle while fighting a losing battle against Alzheimer's. Stuggling to remember whom Katie is marrying (and indeed that there is to be a marriage at all), Marina does remember her youth as a Hermitage Museum docent as the siege of Leningrad began; it is into these memories that she disappears. After frantic packing, the Hermitage's collection is transported to a safe hiding place until the end of the war. The museum staff and their families remain, wintering (all 2,000 of them) in the Hermitage basement to avoid bombs and marauding soldiers. Marina, using the technique of a fellow docent, memorizes favorite Hermitage works; these memories, beautifully interspersed, are especially vibrant. Dean, making her debut, weaves Marina's past and present together effortlessly. The dialogue around Marina's forgetfulness is extremely well done, and the Hermitage material has depth. Although none of the characters emerges particularly vividly (Marina included), memory, the hopes one pins on it and the letting go one must do around it all take on real poignancy, giving the story a satisfying fullness.
Publishers Weekly
As a young woman, Marina became a docent, guiding Soviet citizens through the treasures of the Hermitage Museum. Through the 900-day siege of Leningrad beginning in 1941, her knack for describing in great detail the images of the works of Italian Renaissance painter Titian and Flemish Baroque painter Rubens helped her survive when thousands of others died. Later, she and her husband fled westward and settled in the United States. As this first novel by Dean, a Seattle college teacher, opens, Marina is living in the tattered shreds of her memory. Her elusive grasp of the present and her meticulous recollections of a long-suppressed past are in delicate opposition. Memory, once her greatest ally, is now her betrayer. Like her adoring museum audiences 60 years earlier, readers will absorb Marina's glorious, lush accounts of classical beauties as she traces them in her mind. Dean eloquently depicts the ravages of Alzheimer's disease and convincingly describes the inner world of the afflicted. Spare, elegant language, taut emotion, and the crystal-clear ring of truth secure for this debut work a spot on library shelves everywhere. —Barbara Conaty, Moscow, Russia
Library Journal
(Starred review.) When Leningrad came under siege at the beginning of World War II, museum workers...stowed away countless treasures, leaving the painting's frames in place as a hopeful symbol of their ultimate return.... Gracefully shifting between the Soviet Union and the contemporary Pacific Northwest, first-time novelist Dean renders a poignant tale about the power of memory.—Allison Block
Booklist
As Alzheimer's slowly erases Marina's world, her past in wartime Leningrad begins to again take form around her. In 1941, as Hitler besieged and bombed Leningrad, Marina was one of hundreds of workers in the Hermitage dedicated to preserving its vast art collection from destruction. Day and night, she and her colleagues dismantle frames, move furniture, pack and ship objects. Most are women and many are old, and as the bombing becomes more intense, they all move with their families to the basement of the museum. A winter of legendary ferocity descends; the food stores of the city are destroyed; there is no sign of the blockade lifting. People eat pine needles, bark, and finally their own pets. To cling to her sense of the value of life, young Marina begins to assemble a mental version of the Hermitage, committing the paintings, and their placement, to memory. Sixty years later, this "memory palace" will be all that is left in Marina's memory, a filter through which she sees a world she no longer understands as a series of beautiful objects. In her debut, Dean has created a respectful and fascinating image of Alzheimer's. The story of the older Marina—mustering her failing powers in a war for dignity, struggling to make reality without recollection—makes the war sequences seem almost hackneyed in comparison. And when Dean falters, it is by pushing the emotive war material into the territory of hysteria. A thoughtful tragedy that morphs into a tear-jerker in the third act.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The working of memory is a key theme of this novel. As a young woman, remembering the missing paintings is a deliberate act of survival and homage for Marina. In old age, however, she can no longer control what she remembers or forgets. "More distressing than the loss of words is the way that time contracts and fractures and drops her in unexpected places." How has Dean used the vagaries of Marina's memory to structure the novel? How does the narrative itself mimic the ways in which memory functions?
2. Sometimes, Marina finds consolations within the loss of her short-term memory. "One of the effects of this deterioration seems to be that as the scope of her attention narrows, it also focuses like a magnifying glass on smaller pleasures that have escaped her notice for years." Is aging merely an accumulation of deficits or are there gifts as well?
3. The narrative is interspersed with single-page chapters describing a room or a painting in the Hermitage Museum. Who is describing these paintings and what is the significance of the paintings chosen? How is each interlude connected to the chapter that follows?
4. The historical period of The Madonnas of Leningrad begins with the outbreak of war. How is war portrayed in this novel? How is this view of World War II different from or similar to other accounts you have come across?
5. Even though she says of herself that she is not a "believer," in what ways is Marina spiritual? Discuss Marina's faith: how does her spirituality compare with conventional religious belief? How do religion and miracles figure in this novel? What are the miracles that occur in The Madonnas of Leningrad?
A central mystery revolves around Andre's conception. Marina describes a remarkable incident on the roof of the Hermitage when one of the statues from the roof of the Winter Palace, "a naked god," came to life, though she later discounts this as a hallucination. In her dotage, she tells her daughter-in-law that Andre's father is Zeus. Dmitri offers other explanations: she may have been raped by a soldier or it's possible that their only coupling before he went off to the front resulted in a son. What do you think actually happened? Is it a flaw or a strength of the novel that the author doesn't resolve this question?
6. At the end of Marina's life, Helen admits that "once she had thought that she might discover some key to her mother if only she could get her likeness right, but she has since learned that the mysteries of another person only deepen, the longer one looks." How well do we ever know our parents? Are there things you've learned about your parents' past that helped you feel you knew them better?
7. In much the same way that Marina is struggling with getting old, her daughter, Helen, is struggling with disappointments and regrets often associated with middle-age: her marriage has failed, her son is moving away, she may never get any recognition as an artist, and last but not least, she is losing a life-long battle with her weight. Are her feelings of failure the result of poor choices and a bad attitude or are such feelings an inevitable part of the human condition?
8. n a sense, the novel has two separate but parallel endings: the young Marina giving the cadets a tour of the museum, and the elderly Marina giving the carpenter a tour of an unfinished house. What is the function of this coda? How would the novel be different if it ended with the cadets' tour?
9. What adjectives would you use to describe The Madonnas of Leningrad? Given the often bleak subject matter—war, starvation, dementia—is the novel's view of the world depressing?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Maestra
L.S. Hilton, 2016
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399184260
Summary
With the cunning of Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne, and as dangerous as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander, the femme fatale of this Talented Mr. Ripley–esque psychological thriller is sexy, smart, and very, very bad in all the best ways.
By day, Judith Rashleigh is a put-upon assistant at a prestigious London art house.
By night, she’s a hostess at one of the capital’s notorious champagne bars, although her work there pales against her activities on nights off.
TO GET WHAT SHE WANTS
Desperate to make something of herself, Judith knows she has to play the game. She’s transformed her accent and taught herself about wine and the correct use of a dessert fork, not to mention the art of discretion.
She’s learned to be a good girl. But when Judith is fired for uncovering a dark secret at the heart of the art world—and her honest efforts at a better life are destroyed—she turns to a long-neglected friend. A friend who kept her chin up and back straight through every slight: Rage.
SHE WILL CROSS EVERY LINE
Feeling reckless, she accompanies one of the champagne bar’s biggest clients to the French Riviera, only to find herself alone again after a fatal accident.
Tired of striving and the slow crawl to the top, Judith has a realization: If you need to turn yourself into someone else, loneliness is a good place to start. And she’s been lonely a long time.
Maestra is a glamorous, ferocious thriller and the beginning of a razor-sharp trilogy that introduces the darkly irresistible Judith Rashleigh, a femme fatale for the ages whose vulnerability and ruthlessness will keep you guessing until the last page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• AKA—Lisa Hilton
• Birth—December 15, 1974
• Where—Liverpool, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—London, England
Lisa Hilton grew up in the north of England and read English at New College, Oxford, after which she studied History of Art in Florence and Paris. After eight years in New York, Paris and Milan, she returned to England and now lives in London with her daughter Ottavia.
Biographies
Hilton has written three historical biographies on royal subjects: ♦ The Real Queen of France: Athenais and Louis XIV (2002) ♦ Mistress Peachum's Pleasure: The Life of Lavinia Fenton, Duchess of Bolton (2006) ♦ Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens (2008).
Horrors of Love (2011) is a biographical treatment of 20th-centiury English novelist and socialite Nancy Mitford and her love affair with Gaston Palewski.
Novels
Hilton has written several novels: ♦ The House With The Blue Shutters (2010) ♦ Wolves in Winter (2012) ♦ The Stolen Queen (2015) ♦ Maestra (2016). The latter, written under the name L.S. Hilton, is the first in a trilogy about femme fatale Judith Rashleigh, her sexual adventures and misadventures.
Journalism
In addition to authoring books, Hilton also works as a journalist. She has written for the Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, Vogue, Tatler, Elle, Daily Beast, Evening Standard, Observer, Independent and Daily Telegraph. She writes a monthly restaurant column for the British cultural and political affairs magazine Standpoint. (Adapted from the author's website and Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/19/2016.)
Book Reviews
Maestra features a feisty, morally complex and sharp heroine who may appeal to fans of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.
New York Times
An unpredictable London auction house assistant turned high-class escort slips effortlessly into the world of the glamorous and wealthy, crossing international borders and leaving destruction in her wake (5 Killer Books for 2016).
Wall Street Journal,
Maestra will be one of this year’s most talked-about novels…Judith may well be [a] more interesting character [than Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley].... Will Judith’s dreams come true, or will her crimes catch up with her? We won’t know right away. At least two more of her adventures remain...more mayhem, more art—and certainly more sex—lie ahead for insatiable Judith and for all those consenting adults who will delight in her endless ups and downs.
Washington Post
What makes a woman who’ll do anything to get what she wants so threatening...and thrilling?... It’s Judith’s modes of retaliation that make her a radical heroine. She deploys a uniquely female arsenal...weaponizing femininity.... It’s hard not to feel vicariously empowered by a woman unapologetically in pursuit. Let’s call her the Sheryl Sandberg of sociopaths, leaning in to the hilt.
Oprah Magazine
[J]ubilantly mordant.... Already optioned for the big screen by Amy Pascal, [Maestra is] the story of a twenty-first-century femme fatale as lethal as Tom Ripley and as seductive as [Lauren] Bacall.
Vogue
As readable as any crime thriller, but also clearly belongs in the literary tradition of Moll Flanders and Vanity Fair.
Sunday Times (UK)
Meet Judith, an art-house assistant who'll make you root for the bad girl once you really get to know her.
Marie Claire
The name Judith Rashleigh will be on everyone's lips, just like Amy Dunne (Gone Girl) and Lisbeth Salander (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) were in summers past.... Thank the book gods that L.S. Hilton's Maestra is only the first installment in a series.
Redbook
You're going to want to hurry up and read this R-rated psychological thriller before it hits the big screen—it's already been optioned by Columbia Pictures. Think 50 Shades of Grey meets The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Allure.com
(Starred review.) [D]deliciously Highsmithian thriller, the first of a trilogy.... As Judith assumes and sheds identities...during a twisty series of increasingly treacherous escapades (several X-rated), Hilton artfully conjures a glossy world where just about everything—and everyone—has its price.
Publishers Weekly
Judith is a female Tom Ripley (Patricia Highsmith's con artist protagonist)—doing all she can to survive and further her entree into the upper echelon of society. Verdict: The first of a planned trilogy, Hilton's debut is not for the faint of heart as Judith's exploits—from sex parties to murders—are described graphically.... [A] scandalous, thrilling tour through Europe and the art world. —Lynnanne Pearson, Skokie P.L., IL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Delicious....at once glamorous, edgy, decadent (like rich but somewhat bitter dark chocolate), erotic, and irresistible. Judith Rashleigh is just full of surprises. She is ruthless and, yet...vulnerable.... [M.aestra] is a gift for readers who delight in vengeful female protagonists. The detailed sex scenes will also appeal to fans of the Fifty Shades series.
Booklist
Hilton's novel about a woman with exotic sexual appetites, and a penchant for murdering those who cross her, mixes blood and sex the way a bartender slaps together martinis.... Billed as erotic suspense, this is not a book for suspense fans; it's more a portrait of a sociopathic woman with a voracious appetite for sexual adventure.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Judith’s childhood. How does her background shape her character?
2. At one point Judith reflects that "wealth creeps under your epidermis like poison. It invades your posture, your gestures, the way you carry yourself" (p. 112). Does wealth change Judith? Would she be different if she had been born rich? How does the novel portray people born into wealth?
3. Do you like Judith? Why or why not? What surprised you the most about her character?
4. Judith is never described physically in the novel. Why do you think this is? How do you picture her?
5. In the beginning of the novel Judith reveals, "Rage had always been my friend.... Rage had kept my back straight; rage had seen me through the fights and the slights" (p. 64). At what points in the novel does Judith turn to rage? How does rage shape Judith’s decisions? Can you relate to her frustrations? Why or why not?
6. What does Renaud’s relationship with Judith reveal about her character? Did you guess where their relationship was going?
7. Discuss the portrayal of sex in the novel. How does Judith’s sexuality inform your understanding of her character? Would you react differently to the sex scenes if Judith were a man? Why or why not?
8. Judith is a woman who decides unapologetically to own herself—her body, her desires, her ambitions. In what ways does her character challenge conventional expectations for women? How did you feel reading her transgressive behavior? Is Maestra a feminist novel?
9. Judith relates to other women in a variety of ways throughout the novel. Were you shocked by how some of those relationships develop over the course of the novel?
10. On page 160, Judith tells us, "Later, I had a lot of time to think about when I’d made the decision. Had it been swelling inside me all along, waiting, like a tumor?" Was there one moment in the novel in which you saw her character change? If so, when? If not, why?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
Mitch Albom, 2015
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062294432
Summary
Mitch Albom creates his most unforgettable fictional character—Frankie Presto, the greatest guitarist to ever walk the earth—in this magical novel about the bands we join in life and the power of talent to change our lives.
An epic story of the greatest guitar player to ever live, and the six lives he changed with his magical blue strings.
In Albom’s most sweeping novel yet, the voice of Music narrates the tale of its most beloved disciple, young Frankie Presto, a war orphan raised by a blind music teacher in a small Spanish town. At nine years old, Frankie is sent to America in the bottom of a boat. His only possession is an old guitar and six precious strings.
But Frankie’s talent is touched by the gods, and his amazing journey weaves him through the musical landscape of the 20th century, from classical to jazz to rock and roll, with his stunning talent affecting numerous stars along the way, including Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Carole King, Wynton Marsalis and even KISS.
Frankie becomes a pop star himself. He makes records. He is adored. But his gift is also his burden, as he realizes, through his music, he can actually affect people’s futures—with one string turning blue whenever a life is altered.
At the height of his popularity, Frankie Presto vanishes. His legend grows. Only decades later, does he reappear—just before his spectacular death—to change one last life.
With its Forest Gump-like romp through the music world, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto is a classic in the making. A lifelong musician himself, Mitch Albom delivers a remarkable novel, infused with the message that “everyone joins a band in this life” and those connections change us all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 23, 1958
• Raised—Oaklyn, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Brandeis University; M.J., Columbia
University; M.B.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Detroit, Michigan
Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio, television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition for sports writing in the earlier part of his career, he is perhaps best known for the inspirational stories and themes that weave through his books, plays and films.
Early life
Mitch Albom was born May 23, 1958 in Passaic, New Jersey. He lived in Buffalo for a little bit but then settled in Oaklyn, New Jersey which is close to Philadelphia. He grew up in a small, middle-class neighborhood from which most people never left. Mitch was once quoted as saying that his parents were very supportive and always used to say, “Don’t expect your life to finish here. There’s a big world out there. Go out and see it.”
His older sister, younger brother and he himself, all took that message to heart and traveled extensively, His siblings are currently settled in Europe. Albom once mentioned that how his parents presently say, “Great. All our kids went and saw the world and now no one comes home to have dinner on Sundays.”
Sports journalism
While living in New York, Albom developed an interest in journalism. Supporting himself by working nights in the music industry, he began to write during the day for the Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Flushing, New York. His work there helped earn him entry into the Graduate School of Journalism. During his time there, to help pay his tuition he took work as a babysitter. In addition to nighttime piano playing, Albom took a part-time job with SPORT magazine.
Upon graduation, he freelanced in that field for publications such as Sports Illustrated, GEO, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and covered several Olympic sports events in Europe, paying his own way for travel and selling articles once he was there. In 1983, he was hired as a full-time feature writer for the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun Sentinel, and eventually promoted to columnist. In 1985, having won that year’s Associated Press Sports Editors award for best Sports News Story, Albom was hired as lead sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press.
During his years in Detroit he became one of the most award-winning sports writers of his era; he was named best sports columnist in the nation a record 13 times by the Associated Press Sports Editors, and won best feature writing honors from that same organization a record seven times. No other writer has received the award more than once.
He has won more than 200 other writing honors from organizations including the National Headliner Awards, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, and National Association of Black Journalists. In 2010, Albom was awarded the APSE's Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement, presented at the annual APSE convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. Many of his columns have been collected into a series of four anthologies—the Live Albom books—published from 1988-1995.
Sports books
Albom's first non-anthology book was Bo: Life, Laughs, and the Lessons of a College Football Legend (1998), an autobiography of football coach Bo Schembechler co-written with the coach. The book became Albom's first New York Times bestseller.
Albom's next book was Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, The American Dream (1993), a look into the starters on the University of Michigan men's basketball team who, as freshman, reached the NCAA championship game in 1992 and again as sophomores in 1993. The book also became a New York Times bestseller.
Tuesdays with Morrie
Albom's breakthrough book came about after a friend of his viewed Morrie Schwartz's interview with Ted Koppel on ABC News Nightline in 1995, in which Schwartz, a sociology professor, spoke about living and dying with a terminal disease, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).
Albom, who had been close with Schwartz during his college years at Brandeis, felt guilty about not keeping in touch so he reconnected with his former professor, visiting him in suburban Boston and eventually coming every Tuesday for discussions about life and death. Albom, seeking a way to pay for Schwartz's medical bills, sought out a publisher for a book about their visits. Although rejected by numerous publishing houses, the idea was accepted by Doubleday shortly before Schwartz's death, and Albom was able to fulfill his wish to pay off Schwartz's bills.
The book, Tuesdays with Morrie (1997) is a small volume that chronicles Albom's time spent with his professor. The initial printing was 20,000 copies. Word of mouth grew the book sales slowly and a brief appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" nudged the book onto the New York Times bestseller's list in October 1997. It steadily climbed, reaching the No. 1 position six months later. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 205 weeks. One of the top selling memoirs of all time, Tuesdays With Morrie has sold over 14 million copies and been translated into 41 languages.
Oprah Winfrey produced a television movie adaptation by the same name for ABC, starring Hank Azaria as Albom and Jack Lemmon as Morrie. It was the most-watched TV movie of 1999 and won four Emmy Awards. A two-man theater play was later co-authored by Albom and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher and opened Off Broadway in the fall of 2001, starring Alvin Epstein as Morrie and Jon Tenney as Albom.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Albom's next foray was in fiction with The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003). The book was a fast success and again launched Albom onto the New York Times bestseller list, selling over 10 million copies in 35 languages. In 2004, it was turned into a television movie for ABC, starring Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Imperioli, and Jeff Daniels. The film was critically acclaimed and the most watched TV movie of the year, with 18.6 million viewers.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven is the story of Eddie, a wounded war veteran who lives what he believes is an uninspired and lonely life fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, Eddie is killed while trying to save a little girl from a falling ride. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a location but a place in which your life is explained to you by five people who were in, who affected, or were affected by, your life.
Albom has said the book was inspired by his real life uncle, Eddie Beitchman, who, like the character, served during World War II in the Philippines, and died when he was 83. Eddie told Albom, as a child, about a time he was rushed to surgery and had a near-death experience, his soul floating above the bed. There, Eddie said, he saw all his dead relatives waiting for him at the edge of the bed. Albom has said that image of people waiting when you die inspired the book's concept.
For One More Day
Albom's third novel, For One More Day (2006), spent nine months on the New York Times bestseller list after debuting at the top spot. It also reached No. 1 on USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. It was the first book to be sold by Starbucks in the launch of the Book Break Program in the fall of 2006. It has been translated into 26 languages. On December 9, 2007, the ABC aired the 2-hour television event motion picture Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day, which starred Michael Imperioli and Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her role as Posey Benetto.
For One More Day is “Chick” Benetto, a retired baseball player who, facing the pain of unrealized dreams, alcoholism, divorce, and an estrangement from his grown daughter, returns to his childhood home and attempts suicide. There he meets his long dead mother, who welcomes him as if nothing ever happened. The book explores the question, “What would you do if you had one more day with someone you’ve lost?”
Albom has said his relationship with his own mother was largely behind the story of that book, and that several incidents in For One More Day are actual events from his childhood.
Have a Little Faith
His first nonfiction book since Tuesdays was published, Have a Little Faith (2009) recounts Albom's experiences which led to him writing the eulogy for Albert L. Lewis, a Rabbi from his hometown in New Jersey. The book is written in the same vein as Tuesdays With Morrie, in which the main character, Mitch, goes through several heartfelt conversations with the Rabbi in order to better know and understand the man that he would one day eulogize. Through this experience, Albom writes, his own sense of faith was reawakened, leading him to make contact with Henry Covington, the African-American pastor of the I Am My Brother's Keeper church, in Detroit, where Albom was then living. Covington, a past drug addict, dealer, and ex-convict, ministered to a congregation of largely homeless men and women in a church so poor that the roof leaked when it rained. From his relationships with these two very different men of faith, Albom writes about the difference faith can make in the world.
The Time Keeper
Albom's third work of fiction, The Time Keeper (2012) is fablistic tale about the inventor of the world's first clock who is punished for trying to measure God's greatest gift. He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more days, more years. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning of time.
The First Phone Call from Heaven
Albom's fourth work of fiction, The First Phone Call from Heaven (2013) tells the story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife.
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
Told from the point of view of the Spirit of Music, Albom's fifth novel (2015) traces the life of the legendary (and fictional) super guitarist Frankie Presto and his extraordinary impact on the music of his time.
Charity work
Albom has founded a number of charitable organizations whose missions are to aid disadvantaged and homeless people. The groups have raised funds to pay for resuce services, youth programs, beds, kitchen, food, and daycare.
• The Dream Fund at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) was started by Albom in 1992. Its purpose is to provide funding for under-served children to participate in the arts and to instill confidence in our youth. Since its founding, CCS has used the Dream Fund to support visual, performing, summer “Week at a Time” youth scholarships, community art programs, and even the Detroit 300 project in 2001. The Dream Fund has raised over $115,000 in scholarships since its inception.
• S.A.Y. Detroit (which stands for Super All Year Detroit) is an umbrella organization for charities dedicated to improving the lives of the neediest—including A Time to Help, S.A.Y. Detroit Family Health Clinic, and A Hole in the Roof Foundation. S.A.Y. distributes money to shelters in Detroit for projects specifically designed to help the plight of those in need. Its projects to date include the building of a state-of-the-art kitchen at the Michigan Veterans Foundation shelter and a day-care center at COTS for children of homeless women
• A Time To Help was established in 1997 as a means of galvanizing the people of Detroit to volunteer on a regular basis. The group has staged more than 100 monthly projects ranging from building houses, delivering meals, beautifying city streets, running adoption fairs, repairing homeless shelters, packing food, and hosting an annual Christmas party to a shelter for battered women.
• A Hole in the Roof Foundation helps faith groups of any denomination, who care for the homeless, to repair the spaces in which they carry out their work and offer their services. The seed that gave root to the Foundation—and also inspired its name—is the I Am My Brother's Keeper church in Detroit, MI. Here, despite a gaping hole in the roof, and no matter how harsh the weather, the pastor tends to his community to provide spiritual nourishment and a sanctuary for the homeless. (Adapted from Wikiipedia. First retrieved 9/18/2013.)
Book Reviews
Albom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto hits the right notes. Albom’s love for music is richly apparent...and his maxims about life will no doubt bring readers on a pleasantly sentimental journey about the bandmates in their lives.
USA Today
As always, Albom’s novel has a larger message...and The Magic Strings of Frankie Pesto resonates with a kind of cosmic connection.
Miami New Times
A beautiful story that forces us to think about the concept of a life well lived…. Albom brings his literary magic once again.
Huffington Post
Albom’s fable about the power of song carries you along like a beautiful melody.
People
Within a few pages, you’ll be as delighted with this sparkling book as I was. Start it, stick with it, and you’ll find The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto to be a book of note.
Yankton Daily Press
What an entertainer! Mitch Albom, author, playwright, screenwriter, nationally syndicated columnist—and philanthropist, as his audience learned, was a charmer…. There seemed to be no end to this man’s talents.
NorthJersey.com
Albom...blends the spiritual and the musical to tell the story of Frankie Presto, the greatest guitar player the world has ever heard. Fleeing Spain for America with a battered old guitar, [Presto] moves from the Forties to the Sixties, affecting everyone and transforming a few...
Library Journal
At the funeral of guitar superstar Frankie Presto, who disappeared at the peak of his fame, the Spirit of Music looks back on his life.... [A] sentimental journey that might be a mashup of the lives of shooting stars like Bobby Darin or Ricky Nelson.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What are the effects of having The Spirit of Music narrate the novel? How does it shade the story?
2. Of what significance—literal or symbolic—is it that Frankie Presto was born amidst El Terror Rojo, the Spanish civil war? How do you think the cultural restrictions and political tensions affected Frankie’s childhood? How do you think they impacted his music?
3. Throughout the novel, we get glimpses of Frankie’s story from people—both real andimagined—who knew Frankie through his music. What does this array of voices and characters add to the novel? How do they add to our understanding of Frankie?
4. The narrator suggests that “everyone joins a band in this life,”likening family or other social groups to being in a band. In what ways is this true? How might it be helpful to think of life and relationships this way?
5. Cast into the river as a baby, Frankie is saved by the hairless dog. What is the role of the dog in Frankie’s life?
6. Very early in his life, Frankie shows “flashes of genius” with music. How much of genius talent is given, how much is earned?
7. In what ways might working with language—writing, reading, and speaking—be like making music?
8. Consider Frankie’s music teacher, El Maestro. What does he value most about music? How did losing his sight affect him? How does getting Frankie into his life fulfill him?
9. Beyond teaching Frankie how to play the guitar, how does El Maestro impact Frankie’s life? How does he step in when Baffa is imprisoned? What else does he teach him?
10. El Maestro tells Frankie, in no uncertain terms, that, “music hurts.” What might he mean? In what ways is this statement true or not for Frankie? Do you agree with El Maestro?
11. When Frankie shows himself to be a talented singer as well as guitar player, El Maestro says that he must choose because “being both means being neither.” What does he mean? Is it true that a person can only be truly great at one thing?
12. Frankie enjoys and plays many genres of music, from intricate classical or jazz to simple, contemporary pop. What does it take to appreciate such different expressions of music? Why might many people limit their listening to a particular type of music?
13. Franco’s oppressive political regime in Spain created conditions under which “art suffers.” How can art be limited by politics? What do you think is powerful or threatening to strict political rule about art and music? How do we see music exercise that power in Frankie’s life?
14. Music is often defined as the organization of sound and silence in time. What do you think is the role of silence in music? How do we see Frankie balance sound and silence in his own life. Why do you think this is important?
15. Consider the long, romantic, and complex relationship between Frankie and Aurora York. Why do they always return to one another? What does this say about the role of forgiveness in the novel?
16.The narrator states that, “all love stories are like symphonies,” with four movements: Allegro, Adagio, Minuet/Scherzo, and Rondo. In what ways is this true? Why do such relationships experience such change?
17. Frankie “grew up all over the place: Spain, England, Detroit, Nashville, New Orleans, Louisiana, California.” How does this influence him and his music? How might different places and landscapes affect an artist?
18. Despite all his talent and success, late in his life Frankie still doesn’t believe he deserves applause. Why might this be so?
19. How does Frankie and Aurora’s adopted daughter, Kai, change Frankie’s life? His music? What does Frankie mean when he tells Paul Stanley that “the older you get, the more you want your kids to know about you”?
20. The narrator, Music, claims that “all humans are musical.” Do you agree? In what ways might this be true? What do you think defines music and what role does it play in our everyday life?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Magic Thief of Gavalos (Sequel to Shield of Paladine)
Barbara T. Cerny, 2015
Strategic Book Publishing
495 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781631359415
Summary
Because of Hestia’s unspeakable betrayal, Zeus unwittingly creates his own mortal enemy and sets the path to his own destruction.
Seventeen years have passed on Earth and Amorgos calls Pierre and Elise Tonnelier once again. Through their children’s antics, they find themselves back to a place they never wanted to be. Amorgos is bereft of magic and Elise, as the Redeemer, finds herself reluctantly leading the races to save their world as she finds herself trying to save her marriage.
French teens Elam and Illieya Tonnelier and their friend, Chace Bagot, do the one thing they have been told to never do – touch the Sword of the Western Sun. Its portal stone sends them first to Amorgos and then the Shield of the Palidine sends them to a world worse than Amorgos - Olympus. There they face the gods of Greek mythology and are set on a quest to destroy the most powerful witch who has ever lived, Zeus.
Magic Thief of Gavalos picks up where Shield of the Palidine finishes. This incredible adventure chronicles two journeys: a second of Elise and Pierre on Amorgos and five years in the lives of Illieya, Elam, and Chace as they battle witches and each other. Both groups must come to terms with themselves and their relationships to save Amorgos, Olympus, and their families.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Denver, Colorado, USA
• Education—A.S., Mesa State College; B.S., Arizona State University; M.S., Lehigh University
• Currently—Oakwood, Ohio
Author Barbara T. Cerny grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado, which at that time was a small town of 30,000 people.
She left that little burg to see the world, garner three college degrees, and to serve in the US Army. After eight years on active duty and fourteen years in the reserves, she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2007.
While deployed to the Middle East in 2005, Ms. Cerny finally figured out she had to get going on the real love of her life, writing. She wrote her first two novels during that time and hasn’t stopped. She is presently working on novels number seven, eight, and nine.
When not writing, Ms. Cerny works as an information technology specialist and supervisor for the US Air Force. She lives with her loving husband, their two active teenagers, two needy cats, and two turtles. The turtles patiently watch her write and listen to her intently as she discusses plot lines with them. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Barbara on Facebook...and Twitter.
Book Reviews
(5 Stars) Barbara T. Cerny has created a magical world that rivals that of Tolkien’s Middle Earth in Shield of the Palidine and its sequel, Magic Thief of Gavalos. With a concise summary of the first book as a prologue, you can easily get into the new story, whether you have read the previous one or not. Fantastic creatures, a difficult quest, soaring emotions and intense action keep you enthralled as you follow Elam, Illieya and Chace through torments and triumphs on an alien world. Thoroughly absorbing, Magic Thief of Gavalos is a book you can’t put down. The depth of the author's insight and the emotions portrayed are amazing!
Melinda Hills - Readers' Favorite
I really enjoyed it. It was sadly ironic that the loss of magic on Amorgos was caused by Pierre tossing the shield out of the window to save Elise's life at the end of the first book. But what a great foundation for this fascinating story! It was brilliant to have all the magic that Illieya & Chace brought from Olympus restore the magic on Amorgos! Gave me goosebumps! I loved how Illieya's role as a magic thief and Chace's role as a magic vessel complemented each other. The battle scenes are so good—both when they were trying to capture the creatures on Amorgos and the battle at the mithril mine on Olympus and especially the final battle with the Pantheon. These would play out wonderfully in a movie. [Barbara Cerny has] such a talented imagination!
Ruth Woodman, beta reader
Discussion Questions
1. MToG is a sequel. Could it stand on its own or does it need the Shield of the Palidine to be complete? Do you like series better? Why/why not?
2. Illieya is an intellectual with disdain for those around her that aren’t as well read. Why do you think she was this way? Would the story have been better or worse if Illieya had been more like her brother?
3. Zeus tortures the three teenagers for information on the portal stone and Chace’s inexplicable ability to survive. What was your reaction to this torture? Was it needed? Did it set the stage properly or go to far?
4. What did you think of the ensemble cast of characters? Did they overwhelm you or add fun and flavor? And you imagine a pixie and a giant having a conversation?
5. Is it possible to lose your love like Pierre and Elise did yet find it again? Were you cheering for them or wondering if separation would be best? Would you want to take romance advice from all the male creatures like Pierre tried to?
6. The author really went back and forth between Illieya ending up with Latar or with Chace. Did she make the right decision to have her end up with the other human? Was it right for Elam to end up with Selene? She waited for him for five years until he turned 18. Is this realistic?
7. As the battle in Edessa unfolded, when Chace took off his helmet, was he giving Zeus the middle finger or trying to say something else? What did Elam's comments in French to Zeus portray?
8. Did you find the ending with the female witch taking Zeus's place interesting? How should that play into a future book?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Magician King (The Magicians Trilogy, 2)
Lev Grossman, 2012
Penguin Group USA
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452298019
Summary
Quentin Coldwater should be happy. He escaped a miserable Brooklyn childhood, matriculated at a secret college for magic, and graduated to discover that Fillory—a fictional utopia—was actually real. But even as a Fillorian king, Quentin finds little peace. His old restlessness returns, and he longs for the thrills a heroic quest can bring.
Accompanied by his oldest friend, Julia, Quentin sets off—only to somehow wind up back in the real world and not in Fillory, as they'd hoped. As the pair struggle to find their way back to their lost kingdom, Quentin is forced to rely on Julia's illicitly-learned sorcery as they face a sinister threat in a world very far from the beloved fantasy novels of their youth. (From the publisher.)
This is the second book of the Magicians Trilogy: the first is The Magicians (2009), and the final is The Magician's Land (2014).
Author Bio
• Birth—June 26, 1969
• Raised—Concord, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard College; Yale University (graduate studies)
• Awards—Alex Award; John W. Campbell Award
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, New York USA
Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the Magicians Trilogy: The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), The Magician's Land (2014). He is a senior writer and book critic for Time.
Personal life
Grossman is the twin brother of video game designer and novelist Austin Grossman, and brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and the son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with a degree in literature. Grossman then attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature for three years at Yale University, but left before completing his dissertation. He lives in Brooklyn with a daughter named Lily from a previous marriage and his second wife, Sophie Gee, whom he married in early 2010. In 2012, his second child, Benedict, was born.
Journalism
Grossman has written for the New York Times, Wired, Salon.com, Lingua Franca, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Wall Street Journal, and Village Voice. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and as the chair of the Fiction Awards Panel.
In writing for Time, he has also covered the consumer electronics industry, reporting on video games, blogs, viral videos and Web comics like Penny Arcade and Achewood. In 2006, he traveled to Japan to cover the unveiling of the Wii console. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Johnny Cash. He wrote one of the earliest pieces on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Grossman was also the author of the "Time Person of the Year 2010" feature article on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Novels
Lev Grossman's first novel, Warp, was published in 1997 after he moved to New York City. Warp is about "the lyrical misadventures of an aimless 20-something in Boston who has trouble distinguishing between reality and Star Trek." His second novel Codex, published in 2004, became an international bestseller.
In 2009 Grossman published the book that he is best known for, The Magicians. It became a New York Times bestseller. The Washington Post called it “Exuberant and inventive.... Fresh and compelling...a great fairy tale.” The New York Times said the book "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults," injecting mature themes into fantasy literature.
The Magicians won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books that appeal to young adults; the book also won the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
The book's sequel The Magician King came out in 2011 and returns readers to the magical land of Fillory, where Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens. The Chicago Tribune called it "The Catcher in the Rye for devotees of alternative universes" and "a rare, strange and scintillating novel." It was an Editor's Choice pick of the New York Times, which referred to it as a "serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out." The Boston Globe called the it "a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."
The final book of the Magician's Trilogy, The Magician's Land, was published in 2014. Kirkus Reviews referred to it as a " brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters" and called it "endlessly fascinating."
Grossman confirmed that he has sold the rights for a television adaptation of The Magicians but added that he's not certain the source material would be conducive to a film adaptation. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/14.)
Book Reviews
This serious, heartfelt novel turns the machinery of fantasy inside out.
New York Times Book Review
A darkly cunning story about the power of imagination itself.
The New Yorker
The Magician King is a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy
Boston Globe
[The Magician King] is The Catcher in the Rye for devotees of alternative universes. It’s dazzling and devil-may-care.... Grossman has created a rare, strange, and scintillating novel.
Chicago Tribune
Readers who have already enjoyed The Magicians should lose no time in picking up The Magician King. For those who haven’t, read both books: Grossman’s work is solid, smart, and engaging adult fantasy
Miami Herald
Grossman has devised an enchanted milieu brimming with possibility, and his sly authorial voice gives it a literary life that positions The Magician King well above the standard fantasy fare.
San Francisco Chronicle
Grossman's stylish sequel to The Magicians smoothly fuses adventure fantasy, magic realism, and mythic fiction. It's been two years since Quentin, Eliot, Janet, and Julia have become kings and queens of the magical utopia of Fillory, but Quentin is becoming bored with his seemingly idyllic existence. Spurred on by a dark prophecy of the "Seeing Hare," "one of the Unique Beasts of Fillory," he and Julia decide to embark on a trip to a faraway island, but their voyage turns out to be more perilous than expected and they end up back on Earth. With no apparent means to return to their home at Castle Whitespire, they must somehow find a way back to Fillory and save their realm from imminent destruction. Grossman effortlessly injects innumerable pop culture and literary references (Monty Python, Harry Potter, Pink Floyd, the Lorax, the Teletubbies, etc.) into the fantastical storyline. Mainstream fiction and fantasy fans alike will find this fairy tale for adults rewarding.
Publishers Weekly
Grossman's sequel to his best-selling The Magicians returns to the magical land of Fillory as Quentin, Eliot, Janet, and Julia enjoy pampered lives as kings and queens. A sudden tragedy pushes Quentin and Julia to volunteer for a sea voyage to a remote island. What was supposed to be a routine trip turns into disaster when they are abruptly returned to the real world, with no way back to Fillory. The thought of remaining there is unbearable to both, so Quentin turns to old allies for assistance. Meanwhile, we see flashbacks from Julia's perspective of the long and difficult road she took to gain magical powers. Grossman's flawed characters struggle for what they want and often lose their way, a refreshing twist. Fillory's pointed resemblance to Narnia gets a bit tiresome, however. Verdict: This is best for readers who like some grit and realism in their fantasy and who have read the first book. —Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib.
Library Journal
Fans of The Magicians will find this sequel a feast and will be delighted that a jaw-dropping denouement surely promises a third volume to come.
Booklist
Now a king in the magical land of Fillory, Quentin embarks on a quest to save the universe in Grossman's searing sequel to The Magicians (2009, etc.).... It's been two years since Quentin assumed one of Fillory's four crowns along with Eliot and Janet.... Echoes from The Chronicles of Narnia, in particular The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, continue to reverberate, but Grossman's psychologically complex characters and grim reckoning with tragic sacrifice far surpass anything in C.S. Lewis' pat Christian allegory.... Fabulous fantasy spiked with bitter adult wisdom—not to be missed.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Who is Quentin Coldwater? What are your first impressions of him? How would you describe his life as one of the kings of Fillory? How does he see his affairs at the beginning of the book?
2. How would you describe Julia when you first read about her? How does she differ from her comrades? How does that difference inform her actions throughout the book?
3. During the initial leg of his journey, Quentin reads The Seven Golden Keys. What significance does this story have for Quentin? How does this story of a man searching for his daughter relate to the rest of the novel?
4. When Quentin and Julia are accidentally transported to Earth, describe their reaction to returning. What does being back on Earth mean to each of them? What drives each of them to return to Fillory?
5. How does the Neitherlands connect the worlds in this book? Why do you think the Neitherlands are affected by the events of the novel?
6. What does Quentin learn from the Dragon of the Grand Canal? What does the dragon mean? How does this news complicate not only Quentin’s plan to return to Fillory, but the purpose of his quest?
7. Who is Poppy? How do her views challenge the other magicians in this journey? When she claims that Quentin wants to return to Fillory “because it’s easier,” what does she mean by that? Do you agree?
8. Why are the travelers successful in returning to Fillory after spending a night playing games with a little boy called Thomas? Why is this significant? What relationship do you see between childhood and the idea of magic?
9. What is your understanding of magic as it is portrayed in this novel? How would you describe the culture of magicians? How does Julia’s magic differ from Quentin’s? What relationship does magic have with ideas like God and religion?
10. Following the battle to retrieve the next to last key, Quentin finds that fate has dealt a blow to Benedict. What effect does this event have on Quentin? How does what happened to Benedict change the tone of the adventure?
11. Toward the end of the novel, it is revealed that Julia endured a devastating event. How would you describe what happened to her? What effect did it have on her? What is your opinion of what Julia ultimately becomes?
12. What sacrifice does Quentin make at the end of the book? What’s your take on this? How does this affect his character? What do you think lies in store for Quentin?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Magician's Assistant
Ann Patchett, 1997
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156006217
Summary
When Parsifal, a handsome and charming magician, dies suddenly, his widow Sabine—who was also his faithful assistant for twenty years—learns that the family he claimed to have lost in a tragic accident is very much alive and well. Sabine is left to unravel his secrets, and the adventure she embarks upon, from sunny Los Angeles to the bitter windswept plains of Nebraska, will work its own magic on her. Sabine's extraordinary tale captures the hearts of its readers just as Sabine is captured by her quest. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio• Birth—December 2, 1963
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Raised—Nashville, Tennessee
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Guggenheim Fellowship; PEN/Faulkner Award; Orange Prize
• Currently—lives in Nashville, Tennessee
Ann Patchett is an American author of both fiction and nonfiction. She is perhaps best known for her 2001 novel, Bel Canto, which won her the Orange Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award and brought her nationwide fame.
Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray. Her father, Frank Patchett, who died in 2012 and had been long divorced from her mother, served as a Los Angeles police officer for 33 years, and participated in the arrests of both Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan. The story of Patchett's own family is the basis for her 2016 novel, Commonwealth, about the individual lives of a blended family spanning five decades.
Education and career
Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She managed to publish her first story in The Paris Review before she graduated. After college, she went on to the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa
For nine years, Patchett worked at Seventeen magazine, writing primarily non-fiction; the magazine published one of every five articles she wrote. She said that the magazine's editors could be cruel, but she eventually stopped taking criticism personally. She ended her relationship with the magazine following a dispute with one editor, exclaiming, "I’ll never darken your door again!"
In 1990-91, Patchett attended the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was there she wrote The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in 1992 (becoming a 1998 TV movie). It was where she also met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken—whom Patchett refers to as her editor and the only person to read her manuscripts as she is writing.
Although Patchett's second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994, her fourth book, Bel Canto, was her breakthrough novel. Published in 2001, it was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and won the PEN/Faulkner Award and Britain's Orange Prize.
In addition to her other novels and memoirs, Patchett has written for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue. She is the editor of the 2006 volume of the anthology series The Best American Short Stories.
Personal
Patchett was only six when she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and she lives there still. She is particularly enamored of her beautiful pink brick home on Whitland Avenue where she has lived since 2004 with her husband and dog. When asked by the New York Times where would she go if she could travel anywhere, Patchett responded...
I've done a lot of travel writing, and people like to ask me where I would go if I could go anyplace. My answer is always the same: I would go home. I am away more than I would like, giving talks, selling books, and I never walk through my own front door without thinking: thank-you-thank-you-thank-you.... [Home is] the stable window that opens out into the imagination.
In 2010, when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she co-founded Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes; the store opened in November 2011. In 2012, Patchett was on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is a vegan for "both moral and health reasons."
In an interview, she once told Barnes and Noble that the book that influenced her writing more than any other was Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow.
I think I read it in the tenth grade. My mother was reading it. It was the first truly adult literary novel I had read outside of school, and I read it probably half a dozen times. I found Bellow's directness very moving. The book seemed so intelligent and unpretentious. I wanted to write like that book.
Books
1992 - The Patron Saint of Liars
1994 - Taft
1997 - The Magician's Assistant
2004 - Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
2001 - Bel Canto
2007 - Run
2008 - What Now?
2011 - State of Wonder; The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life
2013 - This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
2016 - Commonwealth
2019 - The Dutch House
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/5/2016.)
Book Reviews
The kindliness of The Magician's Assistant is beguiling, and Patchett is an adroit, graceful writer.... She is especially practiced at the razzle-dazzle of odd juxtapositions.
Suzanne Berne - New York Times
Patchett's third novel is something of a magic trick itself—a 90s love story wrought with the same grace and classic charm of a 19th-century novel.... We read Patchett's novel with the same pleasure and awe of an audience watching a chained Houdini escape from an underwater chamber.
Newsweek
This beautifully realized tale suggests that even a woman skilled in the art of magic cannot fool herself.
Glamour
After working as his assistant for more than 20 years, Sabine marries her beloved boss, Parcifal, knowing that he's gay and has just lost his lover. What she doesn't find out until after his death from AIDS is that Parcifal was actually Guy Fettera from Alliance, Neb., and had a family he never spoke about. Karen Ziemba creates an appropriately light tone for the narrator, despite some dark events that Sabine discovers when she visits Parcifal's sweet, dysfunctional family. She crafts clear, flat Midwest accents for the magician's mother and sisters and her pace and annunciation are excellent. Ziemba's men all sound alike, but they play minimal roles. She is an experienced and professional reader with just the right stuff for Patchett's 1997 novel, which probes the complex motives of Parcifal and his assistant.
Publishers Weekly
For two decades, Sabine has loved the magician Parsifal and served as his assistant. Theirs is an unorthodox relationship, however, for Parsifal loves men. When Parsifal's lover dies of AIDS, he marries Sabine so that she will be his widow. When Parsifal dies, Sabine receives some surprising news about his will. Believing her husband to have no living relatives, she is shocked to learn of a trust fund established for a mother and two sisters in Nebraska. When his family contacts her, she introduces them to the Los Angeles Parsifal. She then visits them in Nebraska to discover the truth about the man she loved and thought she knew, gaining insight into herself as well. Well written and full of interesting twists, this is recommended for larger collections. —Kimberly G. Allen, network MCI Lib., Washington, DC
Library Journal
Having produced wonders in two earlier novels (The Patron Saint of Liars; Taft), Patchett here conjures up a striking tale of pain and enchantment as an L.A. woman, who lost the love of her life after a few short months of marriage, finds unexpected consolation from her husband's family—a family she never knew he had. When Parsifal the Magician died suddenly of an aneurism, he left his assistant of 22 years, the statuesque Sabine, whom he'd recently married after his longtime gay partner Phan's death, heartbroken and numb. He also left a rude surprise: The family he always spoke of as dead is in fact alive and well in Alliance, Nebraska—and his mother and younger sister are soon on their way to see Sabine. Seemingly decent folk, the two women return home leaving her mystified as to why Parsifal (born Guy Fetters) would have denied their existence. And so, lonely and still paralyzed with grief, Sabine decides to visit them in the dead of a Nebraska winter, hoping for relief and some answers. She gets more than she bargained for when older sister Kitty, herself married to an abusive husband, reveals that Parsifal had accidentally killed his father in trying to keep him from beating their pregnant mother. After he did time in the reformatory, his family lost touch with him completely—until one night when they saw him and Sabine on the Johnny Carson Show. The nightly replay of a video of that show became a family ritual of hope, especially for Kitty's two boys, now teenagers as desperate to get away as their uncle had been. Sabine, quite a magician herself, begins a process of healing for them all, and with it comes realization of the hope that the family had long cherished. Masterful in evoking everything from the good life in L.A. to the bleaker one on the Great Plains, and even to dreams of the dead: a saga of redemption tenderly and terrifically told.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Sabine never had the kind of passionate love with Parsifal that her mother has with her father and that Bertie has with Haas. Is it possible to be happy in a marriage without it? Was Sabine genuinely happy with Parsifal? Dot tells Sabine she has never experienced this kind of passion either. Do you think finding your true love is destiny or luck?
2. The settings of this novel play an important role in defining the characters. Los Angeles is a city where "there are no laws against pre-tending to be something you weren't." Considering that he was born in a conservative Midwestern town and that he killed his father there, was the illusion Parsifal created about his past understandable or was he selfish? If Parsifal had been born and raised in New York City or Chicago, would his illusion have been necessary?
3. Sabine's dreams help her journey through her grief. She believes that "sometimes it was possible for someone to come back." Do you think Phan and Parsifal are really coming back from the "beyond" in her dreams? Why is it Phan and not Parsifal whom she dreams about first? Why do you think Sabine was able to have such a good relationship with her husband's lover when he was alive?
4. On the plane to Nebraska, Sabine looks out of the window and reflects that "it looked like a world she would build herself, the order and neatness of miniature." What is she revealing about herself? Are the miniature buildings she creates saying something important about her personality or is that just her job? When her airplane is struck by violent turbulence, she thinks dying then wouldn't be so terrible. Do you think Sabine really wants to die?
5. The first magic trick that Sabine performs in Nebraska is when she pulls an egg out from behind Dots ear. What is significant about her doing this trick at this very moment? Gradually, Sabine performs more and more magic tricks. What is happening to her emotionally that the magic reveals? Is she discovering something about her own ability or is she simply carrying on for Parsifal?
6. Watching the Johnny Carson video is like a religion for Dot's family. Why is it so important to them? Sabine watches it with them twice. While watching it the first time what does she realize about their magic act and her role as the magician's assistant? How is her reaction different the second time she watches it, and why?
7. Sabine finally dreams about Parsifal. But at first she thinks that he is Kitty. Was this just a mistake because they look so much alike or is it more meaningful? Do you think that Sabine and Kitty are really gay? Do you think they would have fallen in love had each of them not loved Parsifal? Kitty says that she dreams of Parsifal and Phan too. Are we supposed to think that Parsifal has somehow brought them together?
8. A big part of a magician's trick is the skillful manipulation of the audience. Is Sabine manipulating the Fetters? When she performs the card trick that enrages Howard, do you think it was an honest mistake? Do you think Kitty leaves him simply because he hurts Bertie? Do you think that if Howard had been a better husband and father Kitty and Sabine would have fallen in love?
9. At Bertie's wedding, Sabine does Parsifal's card trick from her dream. Is there a secret to this trick or is it really "magic"? She tells her assistant at the wedding that she doesn't know how she pulled it off. Is Sabine telling the truth? In her dream Parsifal's card trick causes great excitement, but at the wedding the guests are more impressed by how she shuffles the cards. Why doesn't this disappoint Sabine?
10. The Magician's Assistant begins, "Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story." Is Parsifal s death really the end of the story? In her last dream, Sabine waves goodbye to him. Do you think she will dream about Parsifal again? Do you think Kitty will finally leave Al and go to Los Angeles with Sabine?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Magician's Elephant
Kate DiCamillo (illus., Yoko Tanaka), 2009
Candlewick Press
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780763644109
Summary
What if? Why not? Could it be?
When a fortuneteller's tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister still live? And if so, how can he find her? The fortuneteller's mysterious answer (an elephant! An elephant will lead him there!) sets off a chain of events so remarkable, so impossible, that you will hardly dare to believe it’s true. With atmospheric illustrations by fine artist Yoko Tanaka, here is a dreamlike and captivating tale that could only be narrated by Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo.
In this timeless fable, she evokes the largest of themes—hope and belonging, desire and compassion—with the lightness of a magician’s touch. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 25, 1964
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—University of Florida, Gainesville
• Awards—McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers; Newbery
Honors Award, Because of Winn-Dixie; Newbery Medal, The
Tale of Despereaux
• Currently—lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, moved to Florida's warmer climate when she was five years old, and landed in Minneapolis in her 20s.
While working at a children's bookstore, DiCamillo wrote her first novel, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). It was inspired by one of the worst winters in Minnesota, when she became homesick for Florida after overhearing a little girl with a southern accent. One thing led to another, and soon DiCamillo had created the voice of Opal Buloni, a resilient ten-year-old girl who has just moved to a small town in Florida with her father. Opal's mother abandoned the family when she was three years old, and her father has a hard time explaining why.
Though her father is busy and she has no friends, Opal's life takes a turn for the better when she adopts a fun-loving stray dog, Winn-Dixie (named after the supermarket where she found him, out in the parking lot). With Winn-Dixie as her guide, Opal makes friends with the eccentric people of her new town and even convinces her father to talk about her mother. Through Opal, readers are given a gift: a funny and heartrending story of how one girl's spirit can change her life and others'. Critics loved the book as much as readers, and in 2001, Because of Winn-Dixie was named a Newbery Honor Book.
DiCamillo's second novel, The Tiger Rising (2001), also deals with the importance of friendships, families, and making changes. Twelve-year-old Rob Horton and his father are dealing with grief, anger, and isolation after moving to Lister, Florida, six months after Rob's mother succumbs to cancer. Rob's father has a job at a motel (where they both also live), but it barely pays the bills. Struggling through the loss of his mother, Rob stifles his many confusing emotions as he battles bullies at his new school, worries about a rash on his legs, and copes with living in poverty.
In many ways, The Tiger Rising is a darker, more challenging story than Because of Winn-Dixie, but there is a similar light of deliverance in this beautiful novel: the healing power of friendship. Two meetings change Rob's life. First, he encounters a caged lion in the woods. Shortly thereafter he meets Sistine, who has recently moved to Lister after her parents' divorce. Sistine and Rob are polar opposites—she stands up to the school bullies and lets out every bit of her anger at her parents' divorce and her relocation. Through Sistine, Rob recognizes himself in the caged lion, and the story of how the two children free the beast is one of the most engaging reads in contemporary young adult fiction. With the lion free, Rob is free to grieve the loss of his mother and move on with his bittersweet new life in Lister. A National Book Award finalist, The Tiger Rising is hard to put down as it overflows with raw, engaging emotion.
In 2003, DiCamillo's third novel, The Tale of Despereaux, was released to the delight of readers and critics alike. This odd but enthralling fairy tale also touches on some of the topics from her first two novels—parental abandonment and finding the courage to be yourself. The hero, Despereaux Tilling, is a mouse who has always been different from the rest of his family, and to make matters worse, he has broken a serious rule: interacting with humans, particularly Princess Pea, who captures his heart. When Despereaux finds himself in trouble with the mouse community, he is saddened to learn that his father will not defend him. Characters in the tale are Princess Pea, whose mother died after seeing a rat in her soup; King Pea, who, in his grief, declares that no soup may be served anywhere in the kingdom; Miggery Sow, a servant girl who dreams of being a princess after being sold into servitude by her father after her mother dies; and Roscuro, a villainous rat with a curious soup obsession.
The story of how the characters' paths cross makes The Tale of Despereaux an adventurous read, reminiscent of Grimm's fairy tales. In the spirit of love and forgiveness, Despereaux changes everyone's life, including his own. As the unnamed, witty narrator of the novel tells us, "Every action, reader, no matter how small, has a consequence." Kate DiCamillo's limitless imagination and her talent for emotional storytelling earned her one of the most prestigious honors a children's author can receive—in 2004, she was awarded the Newbery Medal.
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I wrote The Tale of Despereaux for a friend's son, who had asked me to write a story for him about a hero with large ears.
• I can't cook and I'm always on the lookout for a free meal.
• I love dogs and I'm an aunt to a very bad dog named Henry.
• My first job was at McDonald's. I was overjoyed when I got a nickel raise.
• I'm a pretty boring person. I like reading. I like eating dinner out with friends. I like walking Henry. And I like to laugh. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo tells a timeless tale as "strange and lovely and promising" as her title character. The occasional illustrations, too, are dreamlike and magical. In delicate shades of gray, Yoko Tanaka's acrylics convey the city's low wintry light and the mood of a place haunted by a recent, unnamed war. With its rhythmic sentences and fairy-tale tone, this novel yields solitary pleasures but begs to be read aloud. Hearing it in a shared space can connect us, one to one, regardless of age, much like the book's closing image: a small stone carving, hands linked, of the elephant's friends.
Mary Quattlebaum - Washington Post
DiCamillo writes here in a register entirely her own, catching not the whimsical-fabulous note of earlier masters for young readers, nor the jokey-realistic one that has too often taken its place, but instead a mood of sober magic that unfolds into something that can be called, without pejorative, "sentimental," meaning straightforward and heartfelt. The style may evoke Calvino, but the substance belongs to Christmas…the magic of DiCamillo's stories is that while they have the dignity of literature, they're never unduly "literary." Young readers are caught up in the fable before they know they are being fabulized at, trapped in the poetry of the allegory without any idea that allegories are set as traps by authors.
Adam Gopnik - New York Times
In DiCamillo's fifth novel, a clairvoyant tells 10-year-old Peter, an orphan living with a brain-addled ex-soldier, that an elephant will lead him to his sister, who the ex-soldier claims died at birth. The fortuneteller's prediction seems cruelly preposterous as there are no pachyderms anywhere near Baltese, a vaguely eastern European city enduring a bitter winter. Then that night at the opera house, a magician “of advanced years and failing reputation” attempts to conjure a bouquet of lilies but instead produces an elephant that crashes through the ceiling. Peter learns that both magician and beast have been jailed, and upon first glimpse of the imprisoned elephant, Peter realizes that his fate and the elephant's are linked. The mannered prose and Tanaka's delicate, darkly hued paintings give the story a somber and old-fashioned feel. The absurdist elements—street vendors peddle chunks of the now-infamous opera house ceiling with the cry “Possess the plaster of disaster!”—leaven the overall seriousness, and there is a happy if predictable ending for the eccentric cast of anguished characters, each finding something to make them whole.
Publishers Weekly
On a perfectly ordinary day, Peter Augustus Duchene goes to the market square of the city of Baltese. Instead of buying the fish and bread that his guardian, Vilna Lutz, has asked him to procure, he uses the coin to pay a fortune-teller to get information about his sister, whom he believes to be dead. He is told that she is alive, and that an elephant will lead him to her. That very night at a performance in the town's opera house, a magician conjures up an elephant (by mistake) that crashes through the roof and cripples the society dame she happens to land on. The lives of the boy, his guardian, and the local policeman, along with the magician and his unfortunate victim, as well as a beggar, his dog, a sculptor, and a nun all intertwine in a series of events triggered by the appearance of the elephant. Miraculous events resolve not only the mystery of the whereabouts of Peter's sister, but also the deeper needs of all of the individuals involved. DiCamillo's carefully crafted prose creates an evocative aura of timelessness for a story that is, in fact, timeless. Tanaka's acrylic artwork is meticulous in detail and aptly matches the tone of the narrative. This is a book that demands to be read aloud.—Tim Wadham, St. Louis County Library, MO
School Library Journal
I intended only lilies. In a small 1890-something European village, an anonymous traveling magician changes lives forever when a simple trick goes tragically wrong. Instead of lovely flowers, a full-grown elephant falls through the ceiling of the theater, landing on a woman and crushing her legs. At almost the same moment, young Peter hears from a fortuneteller that Adele, the sister he had been told was dead is actually alive and that an elephant would reunite them. DiCamillo entrances her audience with a group of quaint characters to accompany Peter and Adele on their journey back to one another—a crippled carver of gargoyles, an embittered soldier, a childless policeman and his wife, and a noblewoman who insists on housing the elephant in her ballroom. Each plays a valuable role in the others' lives as individual answers to the question, "What if?" become clear. Tanaka's pencil illustrations in shades of gray portray the characters as stiff and angular, almost marionette-like in appearance, they but are an oddly agreeable match for the fantastical events. Thoughtful readers will feel a quiet satisfaction with this almost dainty tale of impossible happenings. —Pam Carlson
VOYA
Ten-year-old Peter Augustus Duchene goes to the market for fish and bread but spends it at the fortuneteller's tent instead. Seeking his long-lost sister, Peter is told, "You must follow the elephant. She will lead you there." And that very night at the Bliffenendorf Opera House, a magician's spell goes awry, conjuring an elephant that crashes through the ceiling and lands on Madam Bettine LaVaughn. Reading like a fable told long ago, with rich language that begs to be read aloud, this is a magical story about hope and love, loss and home, and of questioning the world versus accepting it as it is. Brilliant imagery juxtaposes "glowering and resentful" gargoyles and snow, stars and the glowing earth, and Tanaka's illustrations (not all seen) bring to life the city and characters from "the end of the century before last." A quieter volume than The Tale of Despereaux (2003) and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006), this has an equal power to haunt readers long past the final page.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. An author makes a very important choice with the first line of any story. This story begins: "At the end of the century before last, in the market square of the city of Baltese, there stood a boy..."
•Why do you think that Kate DiCamillo made this choice?
•How long ago is the story set?
2. Peter has been given money by Vilna Lutz to buy food, but he spends part of it on a fortuneteller instead. In "Jack and the Beanstalk," Jack makes a similar choice when he trades his cow for five magic beans instead of selling it. Can you think of any other stories that begin with an errand that is waylaid? What makes this an effective narrative device?
3. When he is standing in line in the market, Peter overhears the fishmonger say, "Well, he wasn't much of a magician, and none of them was expecting much, you see—that's the thing. Nothing was expected.... He hadn't promised them nothing special, and they wasn't expecting it neither" (page 19).
•Who is the fishmonger talking about?
•What happened that was out of the ordinary?
•How does the unexpected event change the attitude of the city (see pages 55 and 59)?
•Does it affect everyone in the same way?
•Can you think of an unexpected event in your own life that changed you? How?
4. In the middle of his usual trick to produce lilies, the magician adds the words of a different spell, even though he knows that "the words were powerful and also, given the circumstances, somewhat ill-advised. But he wanted to perform something spectacular" (pages 25–26).
•Why do you think he made this choice?
•Given what you know about what happened because of this choice, would you have done the same? Why?
5. After her injury, Madam LaVaughn visits the prison every day to speak to the magician. Every day they say the same things to each other: the magician says that he intended only to produce flowers, and she responds that he doesn't understand that she is crippled. Madam LaVaughn's manservant, Hans, finally says to them: "It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak words that matter" (page 49).
•What inspires him to say this?
•What does he mean?
6. When the elephant is on display, the entire city comes to see her. "And everyone, each person, had hopes and dreams, wishes for revenge, and desires for love. They stood together. They waited. And secretly, deep within their hearts, even though they knew it could not truly be so, they each expected that the mere sight of the elephant would somehow deliver them, would make their wishes and hopes and desires come true" (pages 113–114).
•Can you think of any people or events in contemporary society that have made people feel the same way?
•If the same thing were to happen tomorrow, do you think we would experience it differently? How?
7. After Peter sees the elephant in the ballroom, he promises to help her. But as he walks away, he feels that it was the worst kind of promise to make (page 130)Why? Have you ever done the same?
8. Faith and hope are central themes in this story. Peter believes that if he can find the elephant, he will find his sister. This faith overcomes even his doubt that he can keep his promise. As he asks the other characters to join him, they each believe because he asks them to. The elephant believes most of all: "In the ballroom of the countess Quintet, when the elephant opened her eyes and saw the boy standing before her, she was not at all surprised. She thought simply, You. Yes, you. I knew that you would come for me" (page 173).
•How would the story have unfolded if Peter had not believed?
•What other examples of faith do you find in the story?
9. When Peter eats Gloria's stew, he begins to cry. Why? Is it just because he has been so hungry, or is it something more (pages 136–137)?
10. When the magician goes to reverse his spell, he knows that "There is as much magic in making things disappear as there is in making them appear. More, perhaps. The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing" (page 185).
•Have you ever had to undo something you wish you had never done?
•Do you agree with the statement?
11. After the elephant has disappeared, the narrator says, "And that, after all, is how it ended. Quietly. In a world muffled by the gentle, forgiving hand of snow" (page 193).
•What did you think of the book's ending?
•Do all the characters have happy endings?
•Do you believe each character is where he or she belongs by the end?
•If you were the author, would you change anything about the story's ending? Why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Magician's Land (Magicians Trilogy, 3)
Lev Grossman, 2014
Viking Adult
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670015672
Summary
The stunning conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy.
Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.
Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory—but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.
The Magician’s Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic, and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent conclusion, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. It’s the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole. (From the publisher.)
This is the third in the Magicians Trilogy: the first is The Magicians (2009), followed by The Magician King (2011.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 26, 1969
• Raised—Concord, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard College; Yale University (graduate studies)
• Awards—Alex Award; John W. Campbell Award
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, New York USA
Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the Magicians Trilogy: The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), The Magician's Land (2014). He is a senior writer and book critic for Time.
Personal life
Grossman is the twin brother of video game designer and novelist Austin Grossman, and brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and the son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with a degree in literature. Grossman then attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature for three years at Yale University, but left before completing his dissertation. He lives in Brooklyn with a daughter named Lily from a previous marriage and his second wife, Sophie Gee, whom he married in early 2010. In 2012, his second child, Benedict, was born.
Journalism
Grossman has written for the New York Times, Wired, Salon.com, Lingua Franca, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Wall Street Journal, and Village Voice. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and as the chair of the Fiction Awards Panel.
In writing for Time, he has also covered the consumer electronics industry, reporting on video games, blogs, viral videos and Web comics like Penny Arcade and Achewood. In 2006, he traveled to Japan to cover the unveiling of the Wii console. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Johnny Cash. He wrote one of the earliest pieces on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Grossman was also the author of the " Person of the Year 2010" feature article on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Novels
Lev Grossman's first novel, Warp, was published in 1997 after he moved to New York City. Warp is about "the lyrical misadventures of an aimless 20-something in Boston who has trouble distinguishing between reality and Star Trek." His second novel Codex, was published in 2004, became an international bestseller.
In 2009 Grossman published the book that he is most well known for, The Magicians. It became a New York Times bestseller. The Washington Post called it “Exuberant and inventive.... Fresh and compelling...a great fairy tale.” The New York Times said the book "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults," injecting mature themes into fantasy literature.
The Magicians won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books that appeal to young adults; the book also and the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
The book's sequel, The Magician King, came out in 2011 and returns readers to the magical land of Fillory, where Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens. The Chicago Tribune called it "The Catcher in the Rye for devotees of alternative universes" and "a rare, strange and scintillating novel." It was an Editor's Choice pick of the New York Times, which referred to it as a "serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out." The Boston Globe called the it "a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."
The final book of the Magician's Trilogy, The Magician's Land, was published in 2014. Kirkus Reviews referred to it as a " brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters" and called it "endlessly fascinating."
Grossman confirmed that he has sold the rights for a television adaptation of The Magicians but added that he's not certain the source material would be conducive to a film adaptation. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/14.)
Book Reviews
The Magician’s Land, more than any other book in the trilogy, wrestles with the question of humanity. When Quentin and Plum cast spells to become birds or whales, for instance, they prove just how easily human consciousness mucks up joy and the simple pleasure of existing. And when Alice becomes a niffin, her human impulse for suffering is burned away—but so is her empathy. The same thorny consciousness that can make us miserable also enables us to forgive, to connect, to change.... [S]tories...enable us to celebrate and comprehend the human experience. It’s in stories that we find ourselves. It makes sense, then, that as a boy, Quentin Coldwater read a series of books that led him into a life of magic. He fell in love with those books.
Edan Lapucki - New York Times Book Review
Though the tone is occasionally too ironic, and Quentin’s victories overly easy—such as a reconciliation with a key character from the first novel—this novel serves as an elegantly written third act to Quentin’s bildungsroman.... Fans of the trilogy will be pleased at how neatly it all resolves.
Publishers Weekly
When he's not reviewing books for Time, Grossman writes engrossing fantasy that has won him the 2011 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer from the World Science Fiction Society. Here's the conclusion to a trilogy.
Library Journal
An absolutely brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters—old and new—and prodigious feats of imagination.... Endlessly fascinating.... Fantasy fans will rejoice at its publication.
Booklist
[A] deeply satisfying finale...[Grossman’s] characters’ magical battles have a bravura all their own.... The essence of being a magician, as Quentin learns to define it, could easily serve as a thumbnail description of Grossman’s art: "the power to enchant the world."
Kirkus Review
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.)
The Magician's Lie
Greer Macallister, 2015
Sourcebooks
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402298684
Summary
The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage.
One night in Waterloo, Iowa, with young policeman Virgil Holt watching from the audience, she swaps her trademark saw for a fire ax. Is it a new version of the illusion, or an all-too-real murder? When Arden's husband is found lifeless beneath the stage later that night, the answer seems clear.
But when Virgil happens upon the fleeing magician and takes her into custody, she has a very different story to tell. Even handcuffed and alone, Arden is far from powerless-and what she reveals is as unbelievable as it is spellbinding.
Over the course of one eerie night, Virgil must decide whether to turn Arden in or set her free... and it will take all he has to see through the smoke and mirrors. (From the publisher.)
ABA Indie Next Selection for January 2015
January 2015 Midwest Connections Pick
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Midwest, USA
• Education—M.F.A., American University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister is a poet, short story writer, playwright and novelist whose work has appeared in publications such as The North American Review, The Missouri Review, and The Messenger. Her plays have been performed at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. She lives with her family in Brooklyn. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Smart and intricately plotted... a richly imagined thriller.
People
More bewitching than a crackling fire.
Oprah.com
The ride MacAllister takes us on is a grand one. She describes what it’s like to call a boxcar home for 11 months of the year as part of a traveling show. Her descriptions of the Biltmore Estate (vast and elegant) and old New York (stinky, noisy and crowded) are lush and evocative. At the end, you might find yourself rooting for the story so much, you’ll make your own disbelief disappear
Dallas Morning News
Macallister is as much of a magician as her subject, misdirecting and enchanting while ultimately leaving her audience satisfied with a grand finale.
Columbus Dispatch
And for its next trick, the novel The Magician’s Lie by Greer Macallister just might become a hit.
Christian Science Monitor
Readers may well compare Greer's novel to The Night Circus, as it revolves around the mysterious world of magic and illusions... the story is spun like a bard's hypnotic tale. By the end, the reader is left wondering what is real and what is illusion.
Romantic Times
(Starred review.) This well-paced, evocative, and adventurous historical novel from Macallister, a poet and short story writer, chronicles the career of America’s preeminent female stage illusionist at the turn of the 20th century, who, as the Amazing Arden, created the lurid, controversial stage act known as the Halved Man. ... [R]ollicking...top-notch novel.
Publishers Weekly
What happens when a magician's illusion becomes real?... Macallister...has created a captivating world of enchantment and mystery that readers will be loath to leave.... [E]xotic settings (circus, magic show) are more of a backdrop for a larger story in both cases than an integral part of the plot. —Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola
Library Journal
Combined, the two points of view reveal magic and illusion, romance and lost loves, murder and intrigue, and Macallister captures the whimsy and wonder of the traveling magic shows of the 20th century with stunning detail.
Shelf Awareness
Greer Macallister's haunting first novel is a compelling mystery.... [her] painstaking descriptions of the costumes, technique and trickery involved in Ada’s work as an illusionist are unparalleled.
BookPage
A female illusionist is questioned about a murder in Macallister's debut, set at the turn of the 20th century.... Macallister makes a concerted effort to ensure historical accuracy, but her prose is labored and lacks intensity.Nevertheless, devotees of illusion may enjoy the story based on the author's detailed focus on early costumes, movement and techniques.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The action of The Magician's Lie alternates between a single night in 1905, with Arden imprisoned by Officer Holt, and the story of her life that Arden is telling him, which ranges over a number of years. Did you find one storyline more intriguing than the other? Were you eager to get back to one or the other?
2. As the novel opens, Virgil Holt has just received the bad news that the doctor won’t operate on the bullet lodged near his spine. How does this affect his actions? Do you think he would have behaved differently if he were uninjured?
3. “The law is perfect. The men in charge of executing it are not.” Officer Holt decides early on that if Arden is innocent, it’s his responsibility to free her instead of turning her in, since the courts can’t be trusted to determine guilt or innocence. Do you believe this? Do you think he should have turned her in either way?
4. Before her mother runs away with Victor Turner, Arden lives in splendor at her grandparents’ mansion in Philadelphia, but is raised mostly by tutors and household servants. Do you think she would have been better off if her mother hadn’t taken her along to Tennessee?
5. After Ray breaks Arden’s leg, preventing her from dancing for Madama Bonfanti and having the chance to enter ballet school, she says, “There were so many what-ifs.” What do you think would have happened if he hadn’t done this?
6. Misunderstandings and difficulties arise from Arden’s differences of opinion with other characters, but she also has a great deal in common with some of the same people. Who else in the book is most like her? Her mother? Ray? Clyde? Adelaide? Who is she least like?
7. When Arden confesses that Ray has hurt her, her mother tells her, “You must be mistaken…we all depend on that boy’s father, for our lives, for everything…I think you know Ray won’t be the one he’ll punish. We will all suffer instead.” Do you feel Arden’s mother bears some responsibility for what happened to Arden at Ray’s hands? Should she have spoken up, even though it could have endangered their family’s well-being?
8. Fleeing Tennessee for Biltmore is a huge, pivotal moment in Arden’s life. Do you think it was the right choice? Should she have stayed with her family and tried to find another way to fight Ray?
9. In a key scene, the master of Biltmore tells Arden, “We all have agency,” and she later repeats it to Holt. What does this quote mean to you? Do you think it applies to your own life, and if so, how?
10. Arden is surprised that Holt easily believes in magic. Did this surprise you as well? Did you believe from the beginning that the disappearance of the bruise on Arden’s throat was magical, or did you suspect some sort of trick?
11. Ray pursues Arden for years, eventually finding her, first in Chicago and then again in Savannah. “My God, Ada, I’ve missed you so much. You’re my other half. The only one like me. I haven’t felt complete without you.” Why do you think he was so obsessed with her?
12. During their romance at Biltmore, Clyde is a slightly shadowy figure, and Arden learns that he’s not entirely trustworthy during their trip up the coast. Is Arden right to distrust him when they meet again years later? How hard is it to re-evaluate your relationship with someone you’ve known for a long time?
13. Arden is suspicious of rich people at several points in the book, and feels she can only fit in at Biltmore as a servant. Yet she was raised in wealth by her grandparents. Why do you feel she identifies so strongly with the life she led starting at age 12 instead of her life before that?
14. Adelaide Herrmann isn’t close to the people who work for her, except for Arden. Why does Adelaide choose Arden as her protégé?
15. Adelaide Herrmann is a huge success as a female magician. Yet she maintains emotional distance from everyone who works for her, except for her protégé Arden. Does she seem satisfied with her life, up until the ill-fated Second Sight act? Does she seem satisfied after her retirement, when Arden visits her many years later?
16. Virgil is convinced that he was his wife’s second choice, after her childhood love Mose married another girl. Do you think this prevents him from being honest with her about his fears and hopes?
17. Arden’s near-death experience at the Iroquois Theatre, including her unhappy reunion with Ray, frightens her deeply. Yet she doesn’t share the full extent of her feelings, or the truth of what happened, with Clyde. Why do you think she keeps this from him? Does it contribute to their problems later in the story?
18. Arden’s illusions, such as the “Fair Shake,” comment on gender relations in a time when that would have been very controversial. How would the same illusions be received today? Do you think a woman cutting a man in half on stage would still be shocking to some audiences?
19. When Clyde asks her to marry him, Arden refuses, telling herself, “It was a trap…We were too strong-willed to be locked together in marriage, a permanent institution. If we tried to hold each other too close, it could destroy us.” Did you believe this reasoning? What other reasons would she have to accept or refuse his offer of marriage?
20. “I let him damage me and try to heal that damage, with his delusions of magic. I talk a good game about risk, but when it all came down to it, I chose something awful and safe.” When Ray threatens Clyde, Arden gives up, and allows him to hurt her and essentially keep her captive. Did you feel she had other options? If so, what should she have done instead?
21. Arden claims that “in different circumstances, she might have liked Officer Virgil Holt, and he might have liked her.” Do you think this is true? What about their interactions makes it seem more or less likely?
22. Arden isn’t guilty of the murder of Ray, but she did cut his throat in Chicago, and she tells Holt she was “ready to kill him” before Clyde did so. In your mind, does this compromise her claims of innocence?
23. As the book ends, Holt has resolved to begin living his life anew, without letting his fear of death get in the way. Do you feel he has been profoundly changed by his experience with Arden? Or do you think these resolutions will fade in the harsh light of day?
24. Where do you think Arden and Clyde’s story might go from the ending onward?
25. Whether or not Arden is telling Officer Holt the truth is a key question throughout the book. When did you most believe her? Were there times where you were sure she was lying?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Magicians (Magicians Trilogy, 1)
Lev Grossman, 2009
Penguin Group USA
402 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452296299
Summary
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.
He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.
Exploring universal issues of adolescent angst and alienation through a prism of magic, The Magicians is a brilliantly imagined fantasy adventure that is as mesmerizing as it is intelligent. Using the beloved novels of C. S. Lewis, T. H. White, and J. K. Rowling as a springboard, bestselling author Lev Grossman unspools a riveting coming-of-age tale in which magic is as fallible and mercurial as the humans that wield it. (From the publisher.)
This is the first book of the Magicians Trilogy: the second is The Magician King (2011), and the third is The Magician's Land (2014).
Author Bio
• Birth—June 26, 1969
• Where—Concord, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard College; Yale University (graduate studies)
• Awards—Alex Award; John W. Campbell Award
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the Magicians Trilogy: The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), The Magician's Land (2014). He is a senior writer and book critic for Time.
Personal life
Grossman is the twin brother of video game designer and novelist Austin Grossman, and brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and the son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with a degree in literature. Grossman then attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature for three years at Yale University, but left before completing his dissertation. He lives in Brooklyn with a daughter named Lily from a previous marriage and his second wife, Sophie Gee, whom he married in early 2010. In 2012, his second child, Benedict, was born.
Journalism
Grossman has written for the New York Times, Wired, Salon.com, Lingua Franca, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Wall Street Journal, and Village Voice. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and as the chair of the Fiction Awards Panel.
In writing for Time, he has also covered the consumer electronics industry, reporting on video games, blogs, viral videos and Web comics like Penny Arcade and Achewood. In 2006, he traveled to Japan to cover the unveiling of the Wii console. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Johnny Cash. He wrote one of the earliest pieces on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Grossman was also the author of the "Time Person of the Year 2010" feature article on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Novels
Lev Grossman's first novel, Warp, was published in 1997 after he moved to New York City. Warp is about "the lyrical misadventures of an aimless 20-something in Boston who has trouble distinguishing between reality and Star Trek." His second novel Codex, published in 2004, became an international bestseller.
In 2009 Grossman published the book that he is best known for, The Magicians. It became a New York Times bestseller. The Washington Post called it “Exuberant and inventive.... Fresh and compelling...a great fairy tale.” The New York Times said the book "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults," injecting mature themes into fantasy literature.
The Magicians won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books that appeal to young adults; the book also won the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
The book's sequel The Magician King came out in 2011 and returns readers to the magical land of Fillory, where Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens. The Chicago Tribune called it "The Catcher in the Rye for devotees of alternative universes" and "a rare, strange and scintillating novel." It was an Editor's Choice pick of the New York Times, which referred to it as a "serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out." The Boston Globe called the it "a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."
The final book of the Magician's Trilogy, The Magician's Land, was published in 2014. Kirkus Reviews referred to it as a " brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters" and called it "endlessly fascinating."
Grossman confirmed that he has sold the rights for a television adaptation of The Magicians but added that he's not certain the source material would be conducive to a film adaptation. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/14.)
Book Reviews
Grossman clearly has read his Potter and much more. While this story invariably echoes a whole body of romantic coming-of-age tales, Grossman's American variation is fresh and compelling. Like a jazz musician, he riffs on Potter and Narnia, but makes it his own.
Washington Post
This gripping novel draws on the conventions of contemporary and classic fantasy novels (most obviously, those of J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis) in order to upend them, and tell a darkly cunning story about the power of imagination itself. Quentin Coldwater is a geeky high-school senior in Brooklyn who is convinced that happiness and “the life he should be living” are elsewhere—for example, in the series of nineteen-thirties British adventure novels that he was obsessed with as a child. When Quentin stumbles on a portal that takes him to a college for magicians in upstate New York, he learns that the world depicted in these novels, known as Fillory, is real, and he is forced to square his youthful ideas with the realities that exist there, too—boredom, regret, shame, and despair. Quentin’s journey becomes an unexpectedly moving coming-of-age story in which he learns that magical worlds are much like the real one, in that they are places “where bad, bitter things happened for no reason, and people paid for things that weren’t their fault.
The New Yorker
An irresistible storytelling momentum makes The Magicians a great summer book, both thoughtful and enchanting.
Salon
Harry Potter discovers Narnia is real in this derivative fantasy thriller from Time book critic Grossman (Codex). Quentin Coldwater, a Brooklyn high school student devoted to a children's series set in the Narnia-like world of Fillory, is leading an aimless existence until he's tapped to enter a mysterious portal that leads to Brakebills College, an exclusive academy where he's taught magic. Coldwater, whose special gifts enable him to skip grades, finds his family's world "mundane and domestic" when he returns home for vacation. He loses his innocence after a prank unintentionally allows a powerful evil force known only as the Beast to enter the college and wreak havoc. Eventually, Coldwater's powers are put to the test when he learns that Fillory is a real place and how he can journey there. Genre fans will easily pick up the many nods to J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis, not to mention J.R.R. Tolkien in the climactic battle between the bad guy and a magician.
Publishers Weekly
Most of us secretly believed as children that we were somehow destined for greatness. Someday there would be a letter delivered by owl or a magical wardrobe, and it would turn out we were the long-lost ruler of a land in eternal winter! Time magazine book critic Grossman (Codex) explores what it might be like if this really happened. High school senior Quentin is on his way to a college interview when he wanders off the street and ends up transported to another place...where it's still summer. At first he thinks he must be in the land of Fillory, where his favorite childhood books took place, but no, he is actually at a magical college in upstate New York. He passes the entrance exam and decides to skip the rest of senior year and become a wizard instead—well, wouldn't you? In the course of his adventures, he finds out that studying magic is actually insanely difficult and that fighting a war for the royal succession of an alternate world is much less glamorous than it sounds. But this is not quite a "be careful what you wish for" story. Ultimately, being a magician is, in fact, awesome. This is a book for grown-up fans of children's fantasy and would also appeal to those who loved Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Highly recommended
Jenne Bergstrom - Library Journal
Fantasy fans can't afford to miss the darkly comic and unforgettably queasy experience of reading this book-and be glad for reality.
Booklist
Grossman (Codex, 2004, etc.) imagines a sorcery school whose primary lesson seems to be that bending the world to your will isn't all it's cracked up to be. When Quentin manages to find Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy and pass its baffling entrance exam, he finally feels at home somewhere. Back in the real world, Quentin and fellow students, like brilliant, crippling shy Alice and debonair, sexually twisted Eliot, were misfits, obsessed with a famous children's series called Fillory and Further (The Chronicles of Narnia, very lightly disguised). Brakebills teaches them how to tap into the universe's flow of energy to cast spells; they're ready to graduate and...then what? "You can do nothing or anything or everything," cautions Alice, who has become Quentin's lover. "You have to find something to really care about to keep from running totally off the rails." Her warning seems apt as he indulges in aimless post-grad drinking and partying, eventually betraying Alice with two other Brakebills alums. The discovery that Fillory actually exists offers Quentin a chance to redeem himself with Alice and find a purpose for his life as well. But Fillory turns out to be an even more dangerous, anarchic place than the books suggested, and it harbors a Beast who's already made a catastrophic appearance at Brakebills. The novel's climax includes some spectacular magical battles to complement the complex emotional entanglements Grossman has deftly sketched in earlier chapters. The bottom line has nothing to do with magic at all: "There's no getting away from yourself," Quentin realizes. After a dreadful loss that he discovers is the result of manipulation by forces that care nothing about him or his friends, Quentin chooses a bleak, circumscribed existence in the nonmagical world. Three of his Brakebills pals return to invite him back to Fillory: Does this promise new hope, or threaten more delusions? Very dark and very scary, with no simple answers provided-fantasy for grown-ups, in other words, and very satisfying indeed.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In many ways The Magicians depicts and amplifies the quintessential adolescent experience: depression, ennui, emotional carelessness. Would magic be a gift or a curse for the typical teenager?
2. Would Quentin ultimately have been happier if he had chosen not to attend Brakebills?
3. Which character least typifies your vision of what a true magician would be? Explain.
4. What does Quentin’s encounter with Julia in the cemetery say about him?
5. During their time at Brakebills South, the aspiring magicians take the shape of a number of different animals. If it were a part of every human’s general education to spend some time as a particular animal, what animal should that be and why?
6. After the Brakebillians discover that Martin Chatwin is the beast, Alice tells Quentin, “you actually still believe in magic. You do realize, right, that nobody else does?” (p. 179). How does his faith differentiate him from his friends?
7. What do you make of Emily Greenstreet’s condemnation of magic, asserting “nobody can be touched by that much power without being corrupted?” (p. 399).
8. Jane Chatwin specifically chose Quentin for the task of vanquishing the beast, yet he isn’t the one who winds up killing him. Why?
9. Quentin says, “The problem with growing up is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.” (p. 197). Has Quentin grown up at the end of the novel or is he, like Martin and Jane, frozen in a chronological netherland?
10. Quentin seems, at times, to be a more potent magician than most of the Brakebills crew, skipping ahead a year in his studies and successfully making the journey to the South Pole. But his cacodemon is puny and he himself absolutely crumples once in Fillory. How powerful is he, really?
11. Janet is neither “the most assiduous student...nor the most naturally gifted” (p. 121). She’s also a troublemaker and a bit of a coward but it is Janet—and not Alice—who will return to be a queen in Fillory. What does her survival say?
12. Have you reread any of your favorite childhood novels as an adult? How did your understanding of the book change?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Magnificent Ambersons
Booth Tarkington, 1918
Random House-Modern Library
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375752506
Summary
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class.
Today The Magnificent Ambersons is best known through the 1942 Orson Welles movie, but as the critic Stanley Kauffmann noted, "It is high time that [the novel] appear again, to stand outside the force of Welles's genius, confident in its own right." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 29, 1869
• Where—Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
• Death—May 19, 1946
• Where—Indianapolis, Indiana
• Education—Purdue Univesity; Princeton University (no degrees)
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize (twice); O. Henry Memorial Award
Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is, with William Faulkner and John Updike, one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.
Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He was named after his maternal uncle, Newton Booth, then the governor of California. Tarkington was also related to Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth through his wife Almyra Booth Woodworth.
Education
Tarkington first attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, but completed his secondary education at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school on the East Coast.
He attended Purdue University for two years, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the university's Morley Eating Club. Tarkington later made substantial donations to Purdue for the building of an all-men's residence hall, which the university named Tarkington Hall, in his honor. Purdue awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Princeton
When some of his family's wealth returned after the Panic of 1873 his mother transferred Booth from Purdue to Princeton University. At Princeton, Tarkington is said to have been known among his fellow Eating Club members as "Tark." He was active as a student-actor and served as president of Princeton's Dramatic Association, which later became the Triangle Club.
While an undergraduate he is known to have socialized with Woodrow Wilson, an associate graduate member of the Ivy Club. Wilson returned to Princeton as a member of the political science faculty shortly before Tarkington matriculated; they maintained contact throughout Wilson's life.
Tarkington failed to earn his undergraduate degree, the A.B., because of missing a single course in the classics. Nevertheless, his place within campus society was already determined, and he was voted "most popular" by the class of 1893.
Honors and awards
Although never earning a college degree, Tarkington was accorded awards recognizing and honoring his skills and accomplishments as an author. He was twice asked to return to Princeton for the conferral of honorary degrees—an A.M. in 1899 and a Litt.D. in 1918. Princeton's conferral of more than one honorary degree on a single alumnus remains a university record.
In addition to the honorary degrees from Princeton, he was also awarded honorary doctorates from Purdue and Columbia University, as well as from several other universities.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction twice, in 1919 and 1922, for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. In 1921 booksellers rated him "the most significant contemporary American author" in a poll conducted by Publishers' Weekly.
He won the O. Henry Memorial Award in 1931 for his short story "Cider of Normandy." His works appeared frequently on best sellers lists throughout his life.
Midwesterner
Tarkington was an unabashed Midwestern regionalist, if somewhat of a world traveler, and set much of his fiction in his native Indiana. In 1902, he served one term in the Indiana House of Representatives as a Republican.
Tarkington saw such public service as a responsibility of gentlemen in his socio-economic class, and consistent with his family's extensive record of public service. This experience provided the foundation for his book In the Arena: Stories of Political Life. While his service as an Indiana legislator was his only official public service position, he remained politically conservative his entire life. He supported Prohibition, opposed FDR, and worked against FDR's New Deal.
Recognition
Tarkington was one of the more popular American novelists of his time. The Two Vanrevels and Mary's Neck appeared on the annual best-seller lists a total of nine times. The Penrod novels depict a typical upper-middle class American boy of 1910 vintage, revealing a fine, bookish sense of American humor. At one time, his Penrod series was as well known as Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Much of Tarkington's work consists of satirical and closely observed studies of the American class system and its foibles. He himself came from a patrician Midwestern family that lost much of its wealth after the Panic of 1873. Today, he is best known for his novel The Magnificent Ambersons, which Orson Welles filmed in 1942. It is included in the Modern Library's list of top-100 novels. As the second volume in Tarkington's Growth trilogy, it contrasted the decline of the "old money" Amberson dynasty with the rise of "new money" industrial tycoons in the years between the American Civil War and World War I.
Tarkington dramatized several of his novels; some were eventually filmed. He also collaborated with Harry Leon Wilson to write three plays. In 1928, he published a book of reminiscences, The World Does Move. He illustrated the books of others, including a 1933 reprint of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as his own. He took a close interest in fine art and collectibles, and was a trustee of the John Herron Art Museum.
Personal
Tarkington was married to Laurel Fletcher from 1902 until their divorce in 1911. Their only child, Laurel, was born in 1906 and died in 1923. He married Susanah Keifer Robinson in 1912. They had no children. Tarkington began losing his eyesight in the 1920s and was blind in his later years. He continued producing his works by dictating to a secretary.
Tarkington maintained a home in his native Indiana, at 4270 North Meridian in Indianapolis. From 1923 until his death, Tarkington spent summers and then much of his later life in Kennebunkport, Maine, at his much loved home, Seawood.
In Kennebunkport he was well known as a sailor, and his schooner, the Regina, survived him. Regina was moored next to Tarkington's boathouse, The Floats which he also used as his studio. His extensively renovated studio is now the Kennebunkport Maritime Museum. It was from his home in Maine that he and his wife Susannah established their relation with nearby Colby College.
Legacy
Tarkington made a gift of some his papers to Princeton University, his alma mater, and his wife Susannah, who survived him by over 20 years, made a separate gift of his remaining papers to Colby College after his death.
Purdue University's library holds many of his works in its Special Collection's Indiana Collection. Indianapolis commemorates his impact on literature and the theatre, and his contributions as a Midwesterner and "son of Indiana" in its Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre. He is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
Indianapolis Public Elementary School #92 is named after Booth Tarkington.
In an Atlantic Monthly (May 2004) essay "Hoosiers: The Lost World of Booth Tarkington," Thomas Mallon wrote of Tarkington that "only general ignorance of his work has kept him from being pressed into contemporary service as a literary environmentalist—not just a "conservationist," in the TR mode, but an emerald-Green decrier of internal combustion:
The automobile, whose production was centered in Indianapolis before World War I, became the snorting, belching villain that, along with soft coal, laid waste to Tarkington's Edens. His objections to the auto were aesthetic—in The Midlander (1923) automobiles sweep away the more beautifully named "phaetons" and "surreys"—but also something far beyond that. Dreiser, his exact Indiana contemporary, might look at the Model T and see wage slaves in need of unions and sit-down strikes; Tarkington saw pollution, and a filthy tampering with human nature itself. "No one could have dreamed that our town was to be utterly destroyed," he wrote in The World Does Move. His important novels are all marked by the soul-killing effects of smoke and asphalt and speed, and even in Seventeen, Willie Baxter fantasizes about winning Miss Pratt by the rescue of precious little Flopit from an automobile's rushing wheels.
(Autor bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/13/2015.)
Book Reviews
An admirable study of character and of American life.
New York Times (10/20/1918)
The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington's best novel.... [It is] a typical story of an American family and town—the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city. This novel no doubt was a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end.
Van Wyck Brooks (literary critic and scholar, 1886-1963)
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 start a discussion for The Magnificent Ambersons:
1. What aspect of society is Tarkington taking aim at in The Magnificent Ambersons? Do you consider the novel's concerns dated in any way, or can comparisons be made to our own era?
2. Talk about George Amberson Minafer, the central character of the novel. What is your impression of him? Do you find him at all sympathetic? Do your sympathies ever change? Is the author's characterization of George flat or overly one-sided, to the point of making him a cartoonish figure? Or is George a fully-realized character with depth and understandable motives and/or explanations for his actions?
3. Was the Amberson family decline inevitable given the pace of change in the early 20th century? Consider the Morgan family fate; why was that family's outcome different? Was George Minifer's stance against modernity one of principle or of blinded stubbornness...or what?
4. Talk about the question George's friend asks: "Don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?" Also, take notice the spelling of "rather better" as "rahthuh bettuh"—what does that imply?
5. In what way do Lucy's beliefs contrast with George's? Given their differences, why would she find him attractive?
6. Discuss the tangle of relationships among George and Lucy Morgan and Isabel and Eugene Morgan. Talk about what happens at the end when George undercuts his own mother.
7. Is progress all bad? Where do you think Tarkington stands on this question?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Magpie Murders
Anthony Horowitz, 2017
HarperCollins
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062645227
Summary
This fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery.
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others
After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.
Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.
Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 5, 1955
• Where—Stanmore, Middlesex, UK
• Education—University of York
• Awards—Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award
• Currently—lives in London, England
Anthony Horowitz, OBE is a prolific English novelist and screenwriter specialising in mystery and suspense. His work for children and teenagers includes The Diamond Brothers series, the Alex Rider series, and The Power of Five series (aka The Gatekeepers). His work for adults includes the novel and play Mindgame (2001) and two Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk (2011) and Moriarty (2014). He has also written extensively for television, contributing numerous scripts to ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot and Midsomer Murders. He was the creator and principal writer of the three ITV series—Foyle's War, Collision and Injustice.
Personal life
Horowitz was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, into a wealthy Jewish family, and in his early years lived an upper-middle class lifestyle. As an overweight and unhappy child, Horowitz enjoyed reading books from his father's library. At the age of eight, Horowitz was sent to the boarding school Orley Farm in Harrow, Middlesex. There, he entertained his peers by telling them the stories he had read. Overall, however, Horowitz described his time in the school as "a brutal experience," recalling that he was often beaten by the headmaster. At age 13 he went on to Rugby School and discovered a love for writing.
Horowitz adored his mother, who introduced him to Frankenstein and Dracula. She also gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. Horowitz said in an interview that it reminds him to get to the end of each story since he will soon look like the skull. From the age of eight, he knew he wanted to be a writer, realizing "the only time when I'm totally happy is when I'm writing." He graduated from the University of York with a lower second class degree in English literature and art history in 1977.
Horowitz's father was associated with some of the politicians in the "circle" of prime minister Harold Wilson, including Eric Miller. Facing bankruptcy, he moved his assets into Swiss numbered bank accounts. He died from cancer when his son Anthony was 22, and the family was never able to track down the missing money despite years of trying.
Horowitz now lives in Central London with his wife Jill Green. They have two sons whom he credits with much of his success in writing. They help him, he says, with ideas and research. He is a patron of child protection charity Kidscape.
Early writing
Horowitz published his first children's book, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower in 1979 and, in 1981, a second, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet. In 1983 he released the first of the Pentagram series, The Devil's Door-Bell, which was followed by three more in the series until the final in 1986.
In between his novels, Horowitz worked with Richard Carpenter on the Robin of Sherwood television series, writing five episodes of the third season. He also novelized three of Carpenter's episodes as a children's book under the title Robin Sherwood: The Hooded Man (1986). In addition, he created Crossbow (1987), a half-hour action adventure series loosely based on William Tell.
Starting in 1988, Horowitz published two Groosham Grange novels, partially based on his boarding school years. The first won the 1989 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award.
The major release in his early career was The Falcon's Malteser (1986), which became the first in the eight-book Diamond Brothers series. The book was filmed for television in 1989 as Just Ask for Diamond. The series' final installment was issued in 2008.
Midcareer writing
Horowitz wrote numerous stand alone novels in the 1990s, but in 2000 he began the Alex Rider novels—about a 14-year-old boy becoming a spy for the British Secret Service branch MI6. The series is comprised of nine books (a tenth is connected but not part of it) with the final installment released in 2011.
Another series, The Power of Five (The Gatekeepers in the U.S.) began in 2005 with Raven's Gate—"Alex Rider with witches and devils," Horowitz called it. Five books in all were published by 2012
Horowitz also turned to playwrighting with Mindgame, which opened Off Broadway in 2009 at the Soho Playhouse in New York City. The production starred Keith Carradine, Lee Godart, and Kathleen McNenny; it was the New York stage directorial debut for Ken Russell
The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle selected Horowitz as the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement. The resulting book, The House of Silk, came out in 2011, followed by Moriarty in 2014.
Horowitz was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to literature.
TV and film
Horowitz's association with televised murder mysteries began with the adaptation of several Hercule Poirot stories for ITV's popular Agatha Christie's Poirot series during the 1990s.
Starting in 1997, he wrote the majority of the episodes in the early series of Midsomer Murders. In 2001, he created a drama anthology series of his own for the BBC, Murder in Mind, an occasional series which deals with a different set of characters and a different murder every one-hour episode.
He is also less-favourably known for the creation of two short-lived and sometimes derided science-fiction shows, Crime Traveller (1997) for BBC One and The Vanishing Man (pilot 1996, series 1998) for ITV. The successful 2002 launch of the detective series Foyle's War, set during the Second World War, helped to restore his reputation as one of Britain's foremost writers of popular drama.
He devised the 2009 ITV crime drama Collision and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael A. Walker. Horowitz is the writer of a feature film screenplay, The Gathering, released in 2003 and starring Christina Ricci. He wrote the screenplay for Alex Rider's first major motion picture, Stormbreaker. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/1/2014.)
Book Reviews
Each of the narratives…is engaging and fluid, each with its own charm, though Horowitz’s joyful act of Christie ventriloquism is, in particular, spectacularly impressive.
Washington Post
An ingenious funhouse mirror of a novel sets a vintage "cozy" mystery inside a modern frame.
Wall Street Journal
Horowitz…has devised an ingenious whodunit within a whodunit, a metamystery with Agatha Christie roots.
Oprah Magazine
There’s much to enjoy in Anthony Horowitz’s spry, sardonic Magpie Murders.
Guardian (UK)
An ingenious novel-within-a-novel . . . part crime novel, part pastiche, this magnificent piece of crime fiction plays with the genre while also taking it seriously.
Sunday Times (UK)
Superbly written, with great suspects, a perfect period feel, and a cracking reveal at the end.
Spectator (UK)
Anthony Horowitz has devised a fiendish mystery within a mystery that will have you hooked from page one. We loved this Agatha Christie-esque crime novel.
Good Housekeeping (UK edition)
A stylish, multi-layered thriller—playful, ingenious and wonderfully entertaining.
Sunday Mirror (UK)
A compendium of dark delights.… A brilliant pastiche of the English village mystery and a hugely enjoyable tale of avarice and skullduggery in the world of publishing.
Irish Times
This can only be described as incredibly clever—but what else would you expect from Horowitz?
Glasgow Herald
(Starred review.) [A] tour de force that both honors and pokes fun at the genre.…Horowitz throws in several wicked twists as the narrative builds to a highly satisfying explanation of the prologue.
Publishers Weekly
Agatha Christie fans will line up for this salute to Golden Age whodunits.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A preternaturally brainy novel within a novel.… Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who's evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome this wildly inventive homage/update/commentary as the most fiendishly clever puzzle—make that two puzzles—of the year.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions …then take off on your own:
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Magus
John Fowles, 1966
Little, Brown & Co.; Random House
~650 pp. (varies by publisher)
ISBN-13: 9780316296199 (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN-13: 9780440351627 (Random House)
Summary
Filled with shocks and chilling surprises, The Magus is a masterwork of contemporary literature. In it, a young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, accepts a teaching position on a Greek island where his friendship with the owner of the islands most magnificent estate leads him into a nightmare. As reality and fantasy are deliberately confused by staged deaths, erotic encounters, and terrifying violence, Urfe becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his life.
A work rich with symbols, conundrums and labrinthine twists of event, The Magus is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, a work that ranks with the best novels of modern times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 31, 1926
• Where—Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, UK
• Death—November 5, 2005
• Where—Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK
• Education—University of Edinburg; B.A. Oxford University
• Awards—Silver Pen Award
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times (of London) named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945."
Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the son of Gladys May Richards and Robert John Fowles. Gladys Richards belonged to an Essex family originally from London as well. The Richards family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea during 1918, as Spanish Flu swept through Europe, for Essex was said to have a healthy climate. Robert met Gladys Richards at a tennis club in Westcliff-on-Sea during 1924. Though she was ten years younger, and he in bad health from the World War I, they were married a year later on 18 June 1925. Nine months and two weeks later Gladys gave birth to John Robert Fowles.
Fowles spent his childhood attended by his mother and by his cousin Peggy Fowles, 18 years old at the time of his birth, who was his nursemaid and close companion for ten years. Fowles attended Alleyn Court Preparatory School. The work of Richard Jefferies and his character Bevis were Fowles's favorite books as a child. He was an only child until he was 16 years old.
Education
During 1939, Fowles won a position at Bedford School, a two-hour train journey north of his home. His time at Bedford coincided with the Second World War. Fowles was a student at Bedford until 1944. He became Head Boy and was also an athletic standout: a member of the rugby-football third team, the Fives first team and captain of the cricket team, for which he was bowler.
After leaving Bedford School during 1944, Fowles enrolled in a Naval Short Course at Edinburgh University. Fowles was prepared to receive a commission in the Royal Marines. He completed his training on 8 May 1945—VE Day. Fowles was assigned instead to Okehampton Camp in the countryside near Devon for two years.
During 1947, after completing his military service, Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he stopped studying German and concentrated on French for his BA. Fowles was undergoing a political transformation. Upon leaving the marines he wrote, "I...began to hate what I was becoming in life—a British Establishment young hopeful. I decided instead to become a sort of anarchist."
It was also at Oxford that Fowles first considered life as a writer, particularly after reading existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Though Fowles did not identify as an existentialist, their writing, like Fowles', was motivated from a feeling that the world was wrong.
Teaching Career
Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher. His first year after Oxford was spent at the University of Poitiers. At the end of the year, he received two offers: one from the French department at Winchester, the other "from a ratty school in Greece," Fowles said, "Of course, I went against all the dictates of common sense and took the Greek job."
During 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetsai, a critical part of Fowles's life, as the island which would later serve as the setting of his novel The Magus. Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside of the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow exiles. But during 1953 Fowles and the other masters at the school were all dismissed for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.
On the island of Spetsai, Fowles had grown fond of Elizabeth Christy, who was married to one of the other teachers. Christy's marriage was already ending because of the relationship with Fowles, and though they returned to England at the same time, they were no longer in each other's company.
It was during this period that Fowles began drafting The Magus. His separation from Elizabeth did not last long. On 2 April 1954 they were married and Fowles became stepfather to Elizabeth's daughter from her first marriage, Anna. After his marriage, Fowles taught English as a foreign language to students from other countries for nearly ten years at St. Godric's College, an all-girls in Hampstead, London.
Writing Career
During late 1960, though he had already drafted The Magus, Fowles began working on The Collector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a year making revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, the publisher at Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book was published during 1963 and when the paperback rights were sold in the spring of that year it was "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel," according to Howard. The success of his novel meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to a literary career. The Collector became a film in 1965.
Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second book published be The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, he set about collating all the drafts he had written of what would become his most studied work, The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences in Greece.
During 1965 Fowles left London, moving to a farm, Underhill, in Dorset, where the isolated farm house became the model for "The Dairy" in the book Fowles was then writing, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farm was too remote, "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, and during 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he lived in Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema.
The film version of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allen was asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus."
The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by the British playwright Harold Pinter (who would later receive a Nobel laureate in Literature) and was nominated for an Oscar.
Later Years
Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. His works The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1981), and A Maggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. His wife Elizabeth died in 1990.
Fowles became a member of the Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from 1979–1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild stroke. Fowles was involved occasionally in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote letters to the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles was generally considered reclusive. In 1998, he was quoted in the New York Times Book Review as saying, "Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation."
Fowles, with his second wife Sarah by his side, died in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles from Lyme Regis on 5 November 2005. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Great, good, lavish, eerie fun.... The Magus is a stunner.... It is at once a pyrotechnical extravaganza, a wild, hilarious charade, a dynamo of suspense and horror, a profoundly serious probing into the nature of moral consciousness, a dizzying, electrifying chase through the labyrinth of the soul..... Read it in one sitting if possible—but read it.
Eliot Fremont-Smith - New York Times
Mr. Fowles's narrative gift is genuine, his manipulation of suspense is of a high order.
Brian Moore - Washington Post
Fast and frightening.... An emotional maelstrom of high intrigue.
Newsweek
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 Magus
1. Talk about the significance the novel's title. A magus is a magician or a trickster—one of mythology's enduring archetypes. How does the title relate to the events of the book? (See question 13.)
2. Why does Nicholas decide to leave his life in England and take up a position as an English teacher on Phraxos?
3. What kind of person is Nicholas? What is he seeking...or running away from?
4. What are Nicholas's feelings upon visiting the cloistered elegance of Maurice Conchis's villa? What is it that draws him to return again...and again?
5. What is Nicholas to learn from the gamble with the loaded gun, the die, and the cyanide pill? When Nicholas refuses to take his own life, why does Conchis agree with his decision? (See question 14.)
6. Did you believe the twins' story about being kept as prisioners on Bouranis and made to perform at Conchis's will? What about the later one that Conchis is a psychiatrist doing research? In other words, were you continually tricked and bedazzled as was Nicholas?
7. Talk about Nicholas's reaction to the news that Allison had committed suicide. Is his response appropriate? Is he remorseful, sad, relieved, accusatory?
8. Discuss the meaning of the judgement ritual, the stripping, offer to flay Julia, and lovemaking in front of Nicholas? What is the point of it all?
9. What is the point, in the end, of Conchis's entire charade? What lesson is he attempting to teach Nicholas? What does Nicholas, for his part, learn?
10. Is Maurice Conchis's trickery benevolent or sadistic?
11. Is Nicholas wrong to demand that Allison choose "them or me"? Why does she reject his demand? What is the future of their relationship?
12. Were you satisfied or dissatisfied with the ending? (When the book was first published, Fowles has said he received angry letters from readers complaining about the book's indeterminant conclusion.)
13. What ideas about the nature of life might Fowles be attempting to express in The Magus? All mentors and great teachers, in religion, history, or literature, even in pop culture, use a combination of magic, fable, and tricks to teach their proteges life's wisdom. How does Conchis fit into this tradition?
14. Finally, Fowles wrote to a reader that "to be free (which means rejecting all the gods and political creeds and the rest) leaves one no choice but to act according to reason: that is, humanely to all humans." How does this apply to what Nicholas learns from his time on the island?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
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The Maid's Version
Daniel Woodrell, 2013
Little, Bown & Co.
164 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316205887
Summary
The tale of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations.
Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident?
Alma thinks she knows the answer-and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace-and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it"—tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— March 4, 1953
• Where—Springfield, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Kansas; M.F.A.,
Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—PEN USA Award for Fiction
• Currently—lives in West Plains, Missouri
Daniel Woodrell is an American writer of nine novels and one short story collection. He was was born in Springfield, Missouri, in the southwestern corner of the state. Althought he dropped out of high school to join the Marines, he later he earned a BA from the University of Kansas and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Most of his novels are set in the Missouri Ozark Mountains, a landscape which he knew from childhood. He has created novels based on crime, a style he termed "country noir," a phrase which has been adopted by commentators on his work. His 1999 Tomato Run won the PEN USA Award for Fiction.
In addition to finding readers for his fiction, Woodrell has had two novels adapted for films. Woodrell's second novel, Woe to Live On (1987), was adapted for the 1999 film Ride with the Devil, directed by Ang Lee.
Winter's Bone (2006) was adapted by writer and director Debra Granik for a film of the same title, released commercially in 2010 after winning two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including the Grand Jury Prize for a dramatic film. Several critics called it one of the best films of the year and an American classic, and it received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
Woodrell lives in West Plains, Missouri—in the Ozarks—and is married to the novelist Katie Estill. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/16/1013.)
Book Reviews
Evocative...lyrical...resonant. [Y]oung Alek is sent to West Table, Missouri., to spend the summer of 1965 with his grandmother, Alma Dunahew, a hardworking maid to a wealthy local. The bad blood between Alek’s father and Alma stems from her opinion of what transpired just before the 1929 Arbor Dance Hall explosion.... Who was responsible?... From an economy of poetic prose springs forth an emotionally volcanic story of family, justice, and the everlasting power of the truth.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he story of a catastrophe based on a real-life occurrence. Alek Dunahew is sent to live with his grandmother...[who is] haunted by the death of her sister, Ruby, in the explosion of the Arbor Dance Hall in 1928.... Alek is curious and listens carefully.... [T]he story is gripping and heartrending at the same time.... Woodrell confirms his place among the literary masters. —Elizabeth Dickie
Booklist
Loosely based on the real-life West Plains Dance Hall Explosion of 1928, [the novel] centers on Alma DeGeer Dunahew, a maid with three children in fictional West Table, Mo. After years of bitter silence, Alma has chosen to unburden her story on her grandson, Alek....This may be a minor work for this major American writer, but no craftsman toiling away in a workshop ever fashioned his wares so carefully. A commanding fable about trespass and reconstruction from a titan of Southern fiction.
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.
A Maiden's Grave
Jeffrey Deaver, 1995
Penguin Group USA
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451204295
Summary
Eight vulnerable girls and their helpless teachers are forced off a school bus and held hostage. The madman who has them at gunpoint has a simple plan: one hostage an hour will die unless the demands are met.
Called to the scene is Arthur Potter, the FBI's best hostage negotiator. He has a plan. But so does one of the hostages—a beautiful teacher who's willing to do anything to save the lives of her students. Now, the clock is ticking as a chilling game of cat and mouse begins. (From the publisher.)
The 1997 HBO-TV film adaption of the novel, titled Dead Silence, stars James Garner and Marlee Matlin.
Author Bio
• Birth—May 6, 1950
• Where—Glen Ellyn, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Missouri; J.D., Fordham
University
• Awards—Nero Wolf Award; Steel Dager and Short Story
Dagger from Brittish Crime Writers' Assn.; Ellery Queen
Reader's Award for Best Short Story (3 times); Thumping
Good Read Award (British); Book of the Year by Mystery
Writers' Assn. of Japan; Grand Prix Award by Japanese
Adventure Fiction Assn.
• Currently—N/A
Jeffery Deaver is an American mystery/crime writer. He originally started working as a journalist, but trained as a lawyer and later practised law.
Many of Deaver's books tend to promote lateral thinking, particularly his short story collection Twisted. One of his books, The Blue Nowhere, features criminal hackers (one using social engineering to commit murder), as well as a law enforcement computer crime unit.
His most popular series features his regular character Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic detective, and Amelia Sachs. According to a 2006 interview on The Early Show, Deaver said he would rotate between his new series and Lincoln Rhyme each year. Virtually all of his works feature a trick ending, or sometimes multiple trick endings.
Deaver edited The Best American Mystery Stories 2009.
Two of Deaver's novels have been produced into films: The Bone Collector with Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie (in 1999), and A Maiden's Grave as the HBO film Dead Silence with James Garner and Marlee Matlin (in 1997).
Deaver also created the characters and—in a collaboration with 14 other noted writers—wrote the 17-part serial thriller The Chopin Manuscript narrated by Alfred Molina that was broadcast on Audible.com from September 25th to November 13, 2007.
Deaver was chosen as author of the newest James Bond novel (May, 2011), known as Project X, which is set in the present era and published in May of 2011. He is the second American author to write Bond novels, after Raymond Benson. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
It's said that great minds think alike; apparently great thriller writers do too. Here's the second outstanding novel in as many months to see a busload of schoolchildren kidnapped by maniacs. The first was Mary Willis Walker's Under the Beetle's Cellar (Forecasts, June 12); Deaver's is equally gripping, with the added twist that these kids are deaf. In rural Kansas, an act of kindness launches a nightmare when Mrs. Harstrawn, along with hearing-impaired apprentice teacher Melanie Charrol, stops her busload of deaf schoolgirls at a car wreck, only to be taken hostage by Lou Handy and two other stone-cold killers who've just escaped from prison. Pursued by a state trooper, the captors race with their prey to an abandoned slaughterhouse. There, Arthur Potter, the FBI's foremost hostage negotiator, sets up a command post-but the nightmare intensifies when Handy releases one girl, then shoots her in the back just as she reaches the agent. After further brutalities, Melanie decides to rescue her students herself, tricking the killers with sign language games to convey her plan to her charges. Meanwhile, pressure mounts on Potter as the media get pushy, the local FBI stonewalls, Kansas State hostage rescue units try an end run to grab the glory and an assistant attorney general butts in. Deaver (Praying for Sleep) brilliantly conveys the tensions and deceit of hostage negotiations; he also proves a champion of the deaf, offering poetic insight into their world. Throughout, heartbreakingly real characters keep the wildly swerving plot from going off-track, even during the multiple-whammy twists that bring the novel, Deaver's best to date, to its spectacular finish.
Publishers Weekly
A bus carrying eight deaf children and their teachers stops in the middle of the Kansas countryside, a car wreck directly ahead. Soon, three escaped killers rise out of the nearby cornfields and take children and teachers hostage. Pursued by the police, the convicts are forced to hole up in an abandoned slaughterhouse. There they threaten to shoot a child every hour until their demands are met. A 12-hour war of wits begins between FBI hostage expert Arthur Potter and the escapees' leader, Louis Jeremiah Handy. "I aim to get outta here. ...If it means I gotta shoot 'em dead as posts then that's the way it's gonna be," Handy boasts. Potter finds himself "in the middle of the week's media big bang," battling publicity-hungry politicians, trigger-happy cops, and the press as well as the unpredictable killers. This book by the best-selling author of Praying for Sleep (1994) starts with a bang, and the tension never lets up. A topnotch thriller with an unexpected kicker at the end. —David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Library Journal
Eight students and two teachers from a school for the deaf are kidnapped on a remote Kansas highway by three murderous escaped convicts.... In Arthur Potter, [the author] introduces a sympathetic and human hero, a complex, moralistic man who can only succeed at his craft by befriending the vilest criminals and then betraying them. Deaver has also succeeded in making his deaf characters vivid individuals, without a hint of patronizing
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Maiden's Grave:
1. Jeffrey Deaver did a great deal of research into the world of deaf people. How convincing is his treatment of their world? What most surprised...and/or impressed you by some of his revelations?
2. A strong bond exists among people in the deaf community, yet there are also serious divisions. Talk about that divisiveness. Whom do you side with?
3. Why might Deaver have chosen a slaughterhouse as the setting for A Maiden's Grave? What affect does it have on your reading of the novel?
4. Talk about the villains of the story, especially Lou Handy. How would you describe him? Is there anything to admire in him? What about his cohorts, Wilcox and Bonner?
5. Discuss the method of hostage negotiations portrayed in the book. What is the standard strategy?
6. Talk about Arthur Potter. What do you think of his character—and his technique as a hostage negotiator? Is he right to take the risks he does? Why does he refer to the hostages as nearly dead—to the situation as a homocide-in-progress? What about his befriending of Handy? Is he a moral man?
7. What do you think of Melanie Charrol and her efforts to avert disaster? How do she and Potter develop feelings for one another...when their only "contact" has been a single glimpse and a mouthed message?
8 What are your feelings toward the hostages, especially, say, Donna Hawstrawn, or Susan, Kielle and Shannon? Does Deaver do a good job of portraying frightened young girls? What about the decision to take matters into their own hands—how did you feel about that? And why do the girls repeat lines of the poem they were to deliver at the recital?
9. What are the conflicts of interest between the various factions of law enforcement officials, politicians, and media? In what ways do they actually endanger the girls' lives? Do you think Deaver has described their competing interests authentically?
10. What is the significance of the novel's title?
11. Does this book deliver in terms of suspense and excitement? Were you surprised by all the twists and turns—or did you find them predictable? How about Deaver's last minute roller coaster ride? Is the ending satisfying? And, finally, what about character development—does Deaver adequately develop his characters in a book dependent on plot?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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