One Plus One
Jojo Moyes, 2014
Pamela Dorman Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525426585
Summary
One single mom. One chaotic family. One quirky stranger. One irresistible love story...
American audiences have fallen in love with Jojo Moyes. Ever since she debuted Stateside she has captivated readers and reviewers alike, and hit the New York Times bestseller list with the word-of-mouth sensation Me Before You.
Now, with One Plus One, she’s written another contemporary opposites-attract love story.
Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied, and your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a nutshell—until an unexpected knight in shining armor offers to rescue them.
Only Jess’s knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages....maybe ever.
One Plus One is Jojo Moyes at her astounding best. You’ll laugh, you’ll weep, and when you flip the last page, you’ll want to start all over again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., London University
• Awards—Romantic Novel of the year (twice)
• Currently—lives in Essex, England
Jojo Moyes is a British journalist and the author of 10 novels published from 2002 to the present. She studied at Royal Holloway, University of London and Bedford New College, London University.
In 1992 she won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University, London. She subsequently worked for The Independent for the next 10 years (except for one year, when she worked in Hong Kong for the Sunday Morning Post) in various roles, becoming Assistant News Editor in 1988. In 2002 she became the newspaper's Arts and Media Correspondent.
Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her first book Sheltering Rain was published. She is most well known for her later novels, The Last Letter From Your Lover (2010), Me Before You (2012), and The Girl You Left Behind ( 2013), all of which were received with wide critical accalim.
She is one of only a few authors to have won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award twice—in 2004 for Foreign Fruit and in 2011 for The Last Letter From Your Lover. She continues to write articles for The Daily Telegraph.
Moyes lives on a farm in Saffron Walden, Essex with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[A] sobering commentary on the widening gap between haves and have-nots [and a]...quirky tale of lopsided families finding the courage to love.... There’s never anything predictable....exactly that quality that makes this offbeat journey so satisfying, and Moyes’s irrepressible flaws-and-all characters so memorable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [O]ne fine novel. With its ensemble cast of skillfully crafted characters...each person’s story flows on its own, yet they all meld together into an uncommonly good story about family, trust, and love.... Bravo to Moyes for delivering toothsome characters in a story readers will truly care about. —Donna Chavez
Booklist
[A] warmhearted, off-kilter romance, this one between a financially strapped single mother and a geeky tech millionaire.... Unsurprisingly, hostility evolves into mutual attraction. But Moyes throws in a few wrenches.... Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Even though Marty himself is reluctant, Jess opens her home to Nicky, Marty’s son by “a woman he’d dated briefly in his teens” (p. 9), after his birth mother essentially abandons him. If you were Jess, would you be willing to raise Nicky as your own child?
2. Aileen Trent sells designer clothes at a cut rate to people who could never afford to buy them in the shops. Since Jess strongly suspects that they are stolen, is it wrong for her to buy a few items for Tanzie?
3. Jess takes the money that Ed drunkenly drops in the taxi and decides to use it to pay Tanzie’s registration fees. Would she have made that choice if he hadn’t behaved rudely to her while she was cleaning his house? Does his treatment of her excuse her decision?
4. Is it more difficult for the poor to lead law-abiding lives? To what extent is morality a matter of character or circumstance?
5. Ed’s parents couldn’t afford to send both Ed and his sister, Gemma, to public school, so they sent only him. Was it a fair decision? Is Gemma’s resentment justified?
6. Ed helps Nicky get revenge on Jason Fisher by showing him how to hack Jason’s Facebook page. Since Jason intimidated the witnesses to Nicky’s beating into not speaking out against him, is it a justifiable retaliation?
7. At what point in their journey does Ed begin to think less about himself and more about helping Tanzie and her family?
8. Does Ed’s ignorance mitigate the seriousness of his crime? Should he have spent time in prison, or do you feel he was given a fair sentence?
9. Jess’s mother “had been right about many things” (p. 166), but she never made her daughter feel loved. As a result, Jess makes it her priority as a mother to make Tanzie and Nicky feel loved. What is something that your parents did right? What is something they did wrong that you hope to rectify if you are or plan to become a parent yourself?
10. Do you support Jess’s decision to go into debt to pay for Norman’s hospital bills rather than put him to sleep?
11. Did Ed’s financial success go to his head, or was he self-centered before he was rich? What did he have to learn about himself in order to forgive Jess?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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One Step Too Far
Tina Seskis, 2014 (UK); 2015 (US)
HarperCollins
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062340078
Summary
An intricately plotted thriller from a major new voice in suspense fiction that will keep you guessing to the very end.
A happy marriage. A beautiful family. A dream home. So what makes lawyer Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life to start again as someone new?
Deliberately losing herself in London, Emily quickly transforms herself into Cat. She finds a room in a shared house in North London, and a job as a receptionist at a hip advertising agency. Finding easy kinship with the fun-loving Angel, her new best friend, Cat begins to live on the edge, giddy with the euphoria of freedom.
Cat has buried any trace of her old self so well, no one knows how to find her. But she can't bury the past. And she cannot outrun the ghosts that haunt her. And soon, she'll have to face the truth of what she's done—a shocking revelation that may push her one step too far. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Hampshire, England, UK
• Education—University of Bath
• Currently—lives in North London, Engnald
Seskis was born in Hampshire, England and grew up in an atmosphere of self-help. Her father among other things built a boat in the front garden on their commuter belt housing estate and took them all over the world with his free air travel and limited budget.
She tried selling bacon butties with her granny in the Halfway Hut at Wentworth Golf Club and door-to door encyclopedia selling in the US before settling down to study business at the University of Bath.
After university, she went on to work in marketing and advertising for more than 20 years and it was this experience which stood her in good stead when she found herself with a book to market. This was a book which she'd had the idea for whilst on holiday in Venice. Here's its brilliant starting-point:
It's funny how easy it is, when it really comes down to it, to get up from your life and begin a new one. All you need is enough money to start you off, and a resolve to not think about the people you're leaving behind.
The writing went swimmingly and soon she had a manuscript to sell. But life doesn't necessarily go according to plan and seven literary agents turned her down, so at the end of 2011 she decided to go it alone: "I worked out the pros and cons of starting up my own company and there were so many more pros, I thought if I do it and fail, at least I've tried."
This is where her marketing knowledge really helped, as she knew how to publicise her book and has been remarkably successful in building its sales. Within a year she had sold 100,000 ebook copies and 10,000 in hardback and she's just got herself an agent and signed a three-book deal with Penguin.
So what's the second secret of her success? The book has had stunning reviews, and is a genuinely page-turning commercial novel, as its numerous reviews suggest. (Used with permission from Writers Services.*)
Visit the "Success Stories" series on Writers Services.
Book Reviews
Tine Seskis’ twisted psychological thriller keeps readers guessing at Emily’s secrets until the end.
Us Weekly
An evocative, skillful novel about the price of escape, and a very promising debutBritish author Seskis expertly depicts the new life of a runaway wife.... Individual readers will have to decide whether the secret that drives the plot, once it’s revealed, is sufficiently shocking.... [A] diverting read.
Publishers Weekly
Seskis's debut psychological thriller is off and running from the very first page.... The author's use of this technique propels the plot by leaving the reader unsettled and on edge, eager for more information.... [F]or readers...willing to invest the time to reflect on its significance once the destination is reached. —Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT
Library Journal
Debut novelist Seskis displays a keen sense of pacing ... and her backstories on Emily’s family are vivid yet done with great economy. ...Seskis hooks readers from the outset while also spelling out the high emotional costs of abandoning loved ones. A skillfully done novel by a writer to watch.
Booklist
The author reveals Emily’s motivations for leaving her family with great patience and narrative skill....excellent dramatic pacing, dialogue and prose..., culminating in poignant concluding chapters which examine Emily’s decisions without sentimentality. An evocative, skillful novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Can anything justify a mother leaving her child? How did this affect your view of Emily throughout the novel?
2. Angel is the only character who knows both "Cat Brown" and the real Emily. Which personality did you connect more strongly to?
3. How far did the aesthetic description of Finsbury Park Palace affect your views about its occupants? What impression of London are you left with?
4. What do you think are Angel’s motivations in life? How did her relationship with Anthony alter your initial opinion of her?
5. There are four strong, but very different female characters (Frances, Emily, Caroline, and Angel) in this story. What makes each woman finally walk away from some part of their lives?
6. Did Emily’s personality change irreparably on 6th May 2010 in Chorlton, or is she still fundamentally the same person?
7. How did you feel when the truth about Emily’s past was revealed?
8. Ben and Emily found different ways of coping with the accident. Did you sympathise more with one than the other?
9. Emily says, "Don’t wish for too much, don’t expect too much, life doesn’t work like that." Is she right?
10. A lot of the characters are dealing with addictions in one way or another. How far do these addictions define their personalities?
11. Emily was discovered under tragic and shocking circumstances, but can people ever walk out of their lives completely, without leaving a trace?
12. The author wrote One Step Too Far as a love story. What do you think will happen next? Do Emily and Ben have happy ending?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
Jim Fergus and J. Will Dodd (Intro), 1998
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312199432
Summary
Based on actual historical events, One Thousand White Women is the poignant story of May Dodd's journey west.
Committed to an insane asylum by her blueblood family for an affair with a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope of freedom is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from the "civilized" world become the brides of Cheyenne warriors.
She soon falls in love with John Bourke, a gallant young army captain, even though she is married to the great chief Little Wolf. Caught between two worlds and two men, Dodd is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever. (From the publisher.)
Read the novel's 2017 sequel: The Mothers of Vengenace.
Author Bio
• Birth—1950
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—Colorado College
• Awards—Mountains & Plains Booksellers Assn. - Fiction of the Year Award
• Currently—divides his time between Arizona, Colorado, and France
Jim Fergus is an American born author, best know for his 1998 novel Ten Thousand White Woman. Fergus was born in Chicago; his mother was French mother and father American. He attended high school in Massachusetts and headed out West to study English at Colorado College.
After working as a tennis pro for 10 years, in 1980 he moved to Rand, Colorado, with its 13 residents. There he began freelance writing full time, publishing 100s of articles, essays, and interviews for various national publications.
A devoted traveler, Fergus published his first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, in 1992. The LA Times called it "an absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."
Fergus’s first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd came out in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association and has since sold over a million copies in the U.S. and France.
In 1999, Fergus published The Sporting Road, a collection of outdoor articles and essays. That book was followed in 2005 with his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, historical fiction set in the 1930’s in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico.
Marie-Blanche, which he published in France in 2011, is historical fiction set in France and based on his own family — the complex and ultimately fatal relationship between Fergus’s French mother and grandmother.
In 2013, Fergus published another novel, first in France as Chrysis: Portrait de l’Amour, later that year in the U.S. as The Memory of Love. Set in the 1920s, the novel is a love story based on the life of a true life woman painter, Chrysis Jungbluth.
Fergus published a follow-up in 2017 to his widely known One Thousand White Women. The sequel, The Mothers of Vengeance, follows white women married to Cheyennes who seek vengeance after their husbands and children were killed during a raid by U.S. troops.
Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France, (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The best writing transports readers to another time and place, so that when they reluctantly close the book, they are astonished to find themselves returned to their everyday lives. One Thousand White Women is such a book. Jim Fergus so skillfully envelops us in the heart and mind of his main character, May Dodd, that we weep when she mourns, we shake our fist at anyone who tries to sway her course, and our hearts pound when she is in danger.
Colorado Springs Gazette
An imaginative fictional account of the participation of May Dodd and others in the controversial "Brides for Indians" program, a clandestine U.S. government-sponsored program.… This book is artistically rendered with meticulous attention to small details that bring to life the daily concerns of a group of hardy souls at a pivotal time in U.S. history. —Grace Fill
Booklist
Long, brisk, charming…. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding…. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. One Thousand White Women was written by a man, but in a woman's point of view. Did you find this convincing?
2. In 1875, rebellious or unorthodox women were sometimes considered "hysterical" or insane. Is this still true in some circumstances today?
3. Does May Dodd remind you of a modern-day woman?
4. What would be today's equivalent of traveling west to an unknown part of the country with a group of strangers?
5. Did you feel the Native Americans were accurately portrayed in the novel?
6. If the "Brides for Indians" program were actually put into effect in 1875, do you feel it would have been effective?
7. What circumstances would prompt you to undergo a journey like the one May Dodd took?
8. Do you consider One Thousand White Women a tragic story? If so, why? If not, why not?
9. Of the supporting female characters, who did you find the most likeable?
10. Were any of May Dodd's actions unsympathetic? Would you find it difficult to leave your children behind in order to escape a horrendous situation?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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One True Thing
Anna Quindlen, 1994
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812976182
Summary
A young woman returns home from New York to care for her dying mother. In the process she comes to appreciate the choices her mother made in her own life. (From the publisher.)
The book was adapted to film in 1999 with Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger.
Author
• Birth—July 8, 1952
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column
• Currently—New York, New York
Anna Quindlen could have settled onto a nice, lofty career plateau in the early 1990s, when she had won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column; but she took an unconventional turn, and achieved a richer result.
Quindlen, the third woman to hold a place among the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists, had already published two successful collections of her work when she decided to leave the paper in 1995. But it was the two novels she had produced that led her to seek a future beyond her column.
Quindlen had a warm, if not entirely uncritical, reception as a novelist. Her first book, Object Lessons, focused on an Irish American family in suburban New York in the 1960s. It was a bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1991, but was also criticized for not being as engaging as it could have been. One True Thing, Quindlen's exploration of an ambitious daughter's journey home to take care of her terminally ill mother, was stronger still—a heartbreaker that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. But Quindlen's fiction clearly benefited from her decision to leave the Times. Three years after that controversial departure, she earned her best reviews yet with Black and Blue, a chronicle of escape from domestic abuse.
Quindlen's novels are thoughtful explorations centering on women who may not start out strong, but who ultimately find some core within themselves as a result of what happens in the story. Her nonfiction meditations—particularly A Short Guide to a Happy Life and her collection of "Life in the 30s" columns, Living Out Loud—often encourage this same transition, urging others to look within themselves and not get caught up in what society would plan for them. It's an approach Quindlen herself has obviously had success with.
Extras
• To those who expressed surprise at Quindlen's apparent switch from columnist to novelist, the author points out that her first love was always fiction. She told fans in a Barnes & Noble.com chat, "I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels."
• Quindlen joined Newsweek as a columnist in 1999. She began her career at the New York Post in 1974, jumping to the New York Times in 1977.
• Quindlen's prowess as a columnist and prescriber of advice has made her a popular pick for commencement addresses, a sideline that ultimately inspired her 2000 title A Short Guide to a Happy Life Quindlen's message tends to be a combination of stopping to smell the flowers and being true to yourself. Quindlen told students at Mount Holyoke in 1999, "Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world."
• Studying fiction at Barnard with the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Quindlen's senior thesis was a collection of stories, one of which she sold to Seventeen magazine. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Provocative...We leave One True Thing stimulated and challenged, more thoughtful than when we began.
Los Angeles Times
Fiercely compassionate and frank...conveys a world so out of kilter and so like ours that its readers are likely to feel both exhilarated and unnerved by its accuracy.
Elle
Quindlen gets in some good jabs at the media for its feverish appetite for easy scandal and its irrelevance to the truth manifest in genuine tragedies.
Booklist
The second novel by this Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist follows the psychological travails of Ellen Gulden, who against all personal inclinations returns home to care for her dying mother, Kate, and eventually finds herself accused of mercy-killing. Ellen, an intelligent though not particularly warm person, has spent her life earning her professor father's approval. After achieving high school valedictorian and Harvard honors, she aspires to advance her New York career. At her father's insistence, however, she leaves her job and takes on the role of nurse and homemaker. Through long hours as companion to Kate, she discovers the real value of her mother's life. As in Object Lessons, Quindlen's gifts for characterization and clear description provide insight into families and the human heart. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Library Journal
If literature were judged solely by its ability to elicit strong emotions, columnist-cum-novelist Quindlen (Object Lessons, 1991) would win another Pulitzer for this wrenching, albeit flawed fiction. After a short prologue about the time she spent in jail, accused of having killed her mother, Katherine, Ellen Gulden quickly skips back to her story's beginning, when the 24-year-old's father guilts her into putting her high-powered New York writing career on hold and moving back to Langhorne, the small college town where she grew up, to care for her mother, who has cancer. Cerebral, high-achieving Ellen has always been more her father's daughter; he is the English department chairman, while Mom is a Martha Stewart-perfect homemaker, the type of woman who canes her own chairs. But she and Ellen begin to influence each other, and it becomes clear that Katherine is attempting to take care of unfinished business in her characteristically graceful way, even as her body rapidly deteriorates. With this relationship Quindlen shines, capturing perfectly the casual intimacy that mothers and daughters share, as well as the friction between women of two very different generations. Male characters are sometimes less successful. Ellen's father is so cold that it's hard to fathom how her gentle mother has stood him for so many years, and Ellen seems a little smart and a little old to still be reeling from the discovery that Dad isn't perfect. Even more unconvincing is Ellen's long-time boyfriend, ruthless and uncaring Jonathan Beltzer. These problems are generally surmounted by Quindlen's practiced storytelling. By the time Katherine's autopsy reveals that she died of a morphine overdose, the jailhouse prologue has almost been forgotten, so the clever mystery ending (complete with satisfying twist) is an added bonus. When Quindlen gets it right—which is often—she places herself in the league of Mary Gordon and Sue Miller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. One True Thing begins with Ellen in jail. What do you think about the book beginning this way? Did it affect the way you read the rest of the story, knowing (to some extent) how it would end? Looking back, do you think that scene in jail ultimately adds or detracts from the mystery of the story? How?
2. What was your first impression of Ellen? What did you think of her when you finished the novel? It’s clear that she changes over the course of her mother’s illness and in the wake of her death, but in what specific ways?
3. Kate Gulden seems to be the archetypal “perfect mother.” Was she? How were her relationships with her sons, Jeff and Brian, different from her relationship with Ellen?
4. What did you think of George Gulden at the beginning of the book? Were you surprised as you learned more about his relationship with his wife and children? How did your opinion of him change, and why?
5. Ellen reflects, “No one knows what goes on inside a marriage. I read that once; the aphorism ended ‘except for the two people who are in it.’ But I suspect that even that is not the truth, that even two people married to each other for many many years may have only passing similarities in their perceptions and their expectations” (p. 106). What do you think of this statement? How does it apply to George and Kate Gulden?
6. Describe Ellen’s relationship with Jonathan. Why does she remain interested in a man who does not treat her well? How does Ellen’s relationship with Jonathan compare and contrast to her relationship with her father? Were you surprised by Jonathan’s betrayal? Why do you think he turned on Ellen?
7. In reference to her father, Ellen says: “He divided women into groups . . . the intellectual twins, the woman of the mind and the one of the heart . . . I had the misfortune to be designated the heartless one, my mother the mindless one. It was a disservice to us both but, on balance, I think she got the better deal” (p. 281). Discuss the meanings, and implications, of these categorizations.
8. Discuss the reactions to Kate’s cancer diagnosis, and the progression of the disease, both within the Gulden family (Kate, Ellen, George, Brian and Jeff) and in their small town (the Minnies, etc). Were you surprised by any of the reactions? How and why?
9. Against Ellen’s wishes, Dr. Cohn sends Nurse Teresa Guerrero to help care for Kate. How does Teresa fit in with the Gulden family? Do you agree with Ellen, when she thinks that Teresa helped her as much, if not more, than she helped Kate? How?
10. When Kate died, what did you think happened? Were you surprised to learn about the morphine overdose? Before you learned the truth, did you think it was Ellen, George, or Kate who had administered the lethal dose? Did you ever think it could have been an accident?
11. Mrs. Forburg, Ellen’s former English teacher, bails Ellen out of jail and lets her stay at her home during the indictment media frenzy. Why does Mrs. Forburg take such a risk?
12. Were you surprised by the grand jury’s decision? If you thought Ellen would or would not be indicted, explain why. Do you think the jury’s decision was realistic?
13. At the end of the novel, Ellen sees her father for the first time in eight years. About the death of her mother, she says, “Someday I will tell my father. Someday soon, I imagine, although there is great temptation to leave the man I once thought the smartest person on earth in utter ignorance” (p. 287). Do you think Ellen will tell her father what happened? Why or why not? Would you, if you were in her shoes?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Ed Tarkington, 2016
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203825
Summary
Love can make people do terrible things.
Welcome to Spencerville, Virginia, 1977.
Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young, cigarette dangling from his lips, arm slung around his beautiful, troubled girlfriend. Paul is happy to have his younger brother as his sidekick.
Then one day, in an act of vengeance against their father, Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward, Paul disappears.
Seven years later, Rocky is a teenager himself. He hasn’t forgotten being abandoned by his boyhood hero, but he’s getting over it, with the help of the wealthy neighbors’ daughter, ten years his senior, who has taken him as her lover. Unbeknownst to both of them, their affair will set in motion a course of events that rains catastrophe on both their families.
After a mysterious double murder brings terror and suspicion to their small town, Rocky and his family must reckon with the past and find out how much forgiveness their hearts can holds. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Raised—central Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Furman University; M.A., University of Virginia; Ph.D, Florida State
• Currently—lives in Nashville, Tennessee
Ed Tarkington received a BA from Furman University, an MA from the University of Virginia, and PhD from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Florida State. A frequent contributor to Chapter16.org, his articles, essays, and stories have appeared in Nashville Scene, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Post Road, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. A native of Central Virginia, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Set against the backbeat of classic rock hits of the 1970s, Ed Tarkington’s pitch-perfect first novel pays tribute to music, love and growing up in small-town America. That Tarkington throws in illicit sex, a perverted cult leader and a multiple murder only enhances the novel's hypnotic grip on its readers.... This novel may be a murder mystery wrapped in the cloak of Southern Gothic charm but, at its essence, it's a novel about love. Love for the music that informed Tarkington's formative years and love for the familial and romantic relationships that can hurt as much as uplift us.
Chicago Tribune
A coming-of-age story that evolves into a whodunit with tangled roots in three families whose lives collide in 1977.... [A] well-plotted, generous inquiry into the intricacies of the human heart—especially the broken variety.... Secrets abound, imaginations run wild.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
A clear winner—a taut, engrossing, crisply written tale of loss and abiding love.
Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer
A lush mystery-within-a-coming-of-age-tale-within-a-Southern-Gothic. If a book could have an Instagram filter, Tarkington’s would be set on something called "Nostalgic."... [I]nteresting, readable and beautifully written.
NPR Books
Tarkington’s writing is talky, devoid of flash, and calls to mind a young Pat Conroy.... [P]ropulsion is its primary attribute. Not mere plot propulsion—though there’s plenty of that, especially after the corpses turn up—but emotional propulsion: Tarkington’s fidelity to period and place is matched by his fidelity to human contradictions, to the gray area between heroism and villainy in which most of us reside. The gothic elements add spice, but the protein in this assured debut—the part that sticks to your ribs—is the beautiful but ever-threatened connection between Rocky and Paul. Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a novel about brotherhood, most of all, about the delicate fortress of that bond.
Garden & Gun
(Starred review.) This heartbreakingly effective coming-of-age story about the importance of love in one’s life is replete with moments of harsh cruelty and tender love. Beautifully written, it vividly brings to life its Southern characters, landscape, and small-town claustrophobia.
Library Journal
Tarkington’s impressive first novel achieves every author’s goal: Once you start reading, you can’t stop. And as an added bonus for Neil Young fans, Tarkington’s riveting tale provides plenty of classic rock riffs, too
Booklist
Tarkington carefully lays out his elaborate storyline and sensitively depicts his troubled characters, but it all seems rather pat, right down to the After-the-Main-Events summary.... Well-written and observed, though the characters and situations are familiar from many, many previous novels.
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 start a discussion for Only Love Can Break Your Heart...and then take off on your own:
1. Describe the relationships and family dynamics of the Askew household. Why does Rocky's mother distrust Paul, the smoking-drinking bad boy, while the Old Man remains devoted to him? Talk about the couple's marriage. Consider, also, the relationship between the two brothers.
2. How well has Tarkington shaped his characters? Are they convincing—do they seem to live and breath as real people? Finally, do you come to care about them, flaws and all?
3. What affect does Paul's desertion have on Rocky? Why isn't Rocky angry at his brother?
4. Why is Neil Young's song important to Rocky? What is the song's thematic significance to the novel? Consider the various forms of love at work in this story—as well as the ways that love both hurts and uplifts the characters.
5. Rocky is inducted into manhood by Patricia Culver. What do you think of Patricia? What are the consequences of the affair?
6. Contrast Rocky and Patricia's affair with the burgeoning love between Rocky and Cinnamon. In what way is that love "pure and good and true"?
7. Do the musical and pop culture references enrich the story for you? Are they helpful in setting the mood or in creating a sense of the 1970s and '80s? Or do you find them distracting?
8. Tarkington writes of the era of the 1970s as "the sweaty, nauseous, split-headed peak of the hangover between Watergate and "Morning in America." People, he writes, "believe that the country had, in fact, found sympathy for the devil." Are you old enough to remember those times? Does Tarkington's description ring true to you? Are there any parallels with the societal norms of today?
9. When Leigh insists she can't wait to get away from Spencerville, Rocky tells her, "You won't stay away forever." Why does he say that?
10. This book is described as a classic coming of age: an older, wiser narrator looks back at a younger self during a time of crisis. Surviving the crisis becomes a rite of passage, a threshold leading to maturity. In what way does Only Love Can Break Your Heart conform to that literary model? What does Rocky come to learn about the world and his place in it? How is the older Rocky, our narrator, different from his younger self?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Only Time Will Tell (Clifton Chronicles Series 1)
Jeffrey Archer, 2011
St. Martin's Press
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312539566
Summary
The first novel in the Clifton Chronicles, an ambitious new series that tells the story of a family across generations and oceans, from heartbreak to triumph.
The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father and expects to continue on at the shipyard, until a remarkable gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again...
As Harry enters into adulthood, he finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question: Was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?
From the ravages of the Great War and the docks of working-class England to the streets of 1940 New York City and the outbreak of the Second World War, this is a powerful journey that will bring to life one hundred years of history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 15, 1940
• Where—London; raised in Somerset, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University; Oxford Institute
• Currently—lives in London and the Old Vicarage,
Grantchester
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare is a best-selling English author and former politician whose political career ended with his conviction and subsequent imprisonment (2001–03) for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Alongside his literary work, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–74), deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–86) and was made a life peer in 1992.
Early years
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital. He was two weeks old when his family moved to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he spent most of his early life. He has an older brother born out of wedlock, also originally called Jeffrey, who was put up for adoption at an early age. The brother assumed the name David Brown and only discovered his relationship to Archer in 1980.
In 1951 Archer won a scholarship to Wellington School, in Somerset (not to be confused with the public school Wellington College). At this time his mother, Lola, contributed a column "Over the Teacups" to the local press in Weston-super-Mare and wrote about the adventures of her son 'Tuppence'; this caused Archer to be the victim of bullying while at Wellington School.
After Archer left school passing O-levels in English Literature, Art, and History, he worked in a number of jobs, including training with the army and for the police. This lasted only for a few months, but he fared better as a Physical Education teacher; first at Vicar's Hill, a Prep School in Hampshire where he taught fencing amongst other sports, later at the more prestigious independent school Dover College in Kent. As a teacher he was popular with pupils and was reported by some to have had good motivational skills, helping to instil personal confidence in the less confident.
Archer studied for three years, gaining an academic qualification in teaching awarded by the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. The course was based at Brasenose College, Oxford, although Archer was never registered as an undergraduate student of the College.
He raised money for the charity Oxfam, obtaining the support of The Beatles in a charity fundraising drive. The band accepted his invitation to visit the senior common room of Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college, although they did not play there.
It was during this period that Archer met his wife, Mary Weeden, at that time studying chemistry at St Anne's College, Oxford. They married in July 1966. Mary went on to specialise in solar power.
Early career
After leaving Oxford, he continued as a charity fundraiser, working for the National Birthday Trust, a medical charity. He also began a career in politics, serving as a Conservative councillor on the Greater London Council during 1967–70.
One organization Archer worked for, the United Nations Association, alleged discrepancies in his claims for expenses, and details appeared in the press in a scrambled form. Archer brought a defamation action against the former Conservative member of parliament Humphry Berkeley, chairman of the UNA, as the source of the allegations. The case was settled out of court after three years. Berkeley tried to persuade Conservative Central Office that Archer was unsuitable as a parliamentary candidate, but a selection meeting at Louth disregarded any doubts.
Archer set up his own fund-raising company, Arrow Enterprises, in 1969. That same year he opened an art gallery, the Archer Gallery, in Mayfair. The gallery specialised in modern art, including pieces by the acclaimed sculptor and painter Leon Underwood. The gallery ultimately lost money, however, and Archer sold it two years later.
Writing career
His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976. The book was an instant success, with BBC Television adapting the book in 1990, following a BBC radio adaptation in the early 1980s.
Kane and Abel proved to be his best-selling works, reaching number one on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was made into a television mini-series by CBS in 1985, starring Peter Strauss and Sam Neill. The following year, Granada TV screened a ten-part adaptation of another Archer bestseller, First Among Equals, which told the story of four men and their quest to become Prime Minister.
In 2011, Archer published Only Time Will Tell, the first of what will be five books in The Clifton Chronicles, which follow the life of Harry Clifton from his birth in 1920, through to the finale in 2020.
Political career
In 1969 at the age of 29, Archer was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election on 4 December 1969. Archer won over a substantial proportion of younger members at the selection meeting.
In Parliament, Archer was on the left of the Conservative Party, rebelling against some of his party's policies. He urged free TV licences for the elderly and was against museum charges. Archer voted against restoring capital punishment, saying it was barbaric and obscene.
In 1974, he was a casualty of a fraudulent investment scheme involving Aquablast, a Canadian company, a debacle which lost Archer his first fortune. Fearing imminent bankruptcy, he stood down as an MP at the October 1974 general election. By this time the Archers were living in a large five-bedroom house in The Boltons, an exclusive street in South Kensington. As a result of the Aquablast affair, they were forced to sell the house and move into more modest accommodation for a while.
Archer's political career was revived again in 1985 once he became known for his novel. He was a popular speaker among the Conservative grassroots and made deputy chairman of the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher in September 1985.
During his tenure as deputy chairman, Archer was responsible for a number of embarrassing moments, including his statement, made during a live radio interview, that many young, unemployed people were simply unwilling to find work. At the time of Archer's comment, unemployment in the UK stood at a record 3.4 million. Archer was later forced to apologise for the remark, suggesting that his words had been "taken out of context."
Scandals and trials
In 1986 Archer was the subject of an article in The News of the World, "Tory boss Archer pays vice-girl." The story claimed Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 through an intermediary at Victoria Station to go abroad.
When the Daily Star also alleged Archer had paid for sex with Coghlan, he responded by suing that paper. The case came to court in July 1987. Explaining the payment to Coghlan as the action of a philanthropist rather than that of a guilty man, Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages. Archer stated he would donate the money to charity. This case would ultimately result in Archer's final exit from front-line politics some years later.
Archer lost a libel case after accusations in his book Twist in the Tale, portraying Major General James Oluleye to be a thief. (Oluleye is the author of Architecturing a Destiny and Military Leadership in Nigeria.)
In 1994, Mary Archer, then a director of Anglia Television, attended a directors' meeting at which an impending takeover of Anglia Television by MAI, which owned Meridian Broadcasting, was discussed. The following day, Jeffrey Archer bought 50,000 shares in Anglia Television, acting on behalf of a friend, Broosk Saib. Shortly after this, it was announced publicly that Anglia Television would be taken over by MAI. As a result the shares jumped in value, whereupon Archer sold them on behalf of his friend for a profit of £77,219. The arrangements he made with the stockbrokers meant he did not have to pay at the time of buying the shares.
An inquiry was launched by the Stock Exchange into possible insider trading. The Department of Trade and Industry, however, announced that Archer would not be prosecuted due to lack of sufficient evidence.
In 1999, Archer had been selected by the Conservative Party as candidate for the 2000 London mayoral election. But when the News of the World published allegations that he had committed perjury in his 1987 libel case (see above), Archer withdrew his candidacy. In July, 2001, Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at the 1987 trial. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, though released after two.
After the perjury allegations broke, Archer was disowned by his party. Conservative leader William Hague explained: "This is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party." In 2000 Archer was expelled from the party for five years.
Peerage
When Saddam Hussein suppressed Kurdish uprisings in 1991, Archer, with the Red Cross, set up the charity Simple Truth, a fundraising campaign on behalf of the Kurds. In 1992 Archer was made a life peer, as Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, of Mark in the County of Somerset. Prime minister John Major recommended him largely because of his role in aid to the Kurds. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[A]page-turning, heart-stopping saga, with delightful twists, and a surprise ending.... [R]eaders will surely wait for the next [installment] with bated breath.
Publishers Weekly
Internationally best-selling British storyteller Archer launches his most daunting literary project—a five-volume, semiautobiographical, multigenerational epic.... [Readers] will enjoy this unforgettable tale, which abounds with cliff-hangers that propel its intriguing and intricate plot. —Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA
Library Journal
What appears at the outset to be a straightforward coming-of-age tale becomes, by the end, a saga of power, betrayal, and bitter hatred. The novel ends on a deliberately dark note, setting the stage for the sequel.... An outstanding effort from a reliable veteran.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Time Will Tell...then take off on your own:
1. What's the significance of the novel's title, "Only Time Will Tell"? How does it apply to events in the story?
2. What do you think of young Harry Clifton? How would you describe his character?
3. In what way is Harry influenced by his uncle?
4. Did you have an idea as to Harry's paternity? Or were you taken by surprise?
5. Talk about Maisie, Harry's mother. Would you have made the sacrifice that she made for her son? Does her wish for him to have a good life justify her choices?
6. What about young Harry's experiences at boarding school? How does class hierarchy and social snobbery make itself felt at the school?
7. A fun thought experiment: what do you think of Harry's essay on Jane Austen, which purports that...
If Miss Austen had been able to go to university, she might never have written a novel, and even if she had, her work probably wouldn’t have been so insightful.
When challenged by his housemaster, Harry replies that "sometimes it's an advantage to be disadvantaged."
Two questions: 1) what do you think of Harry's statement regarding Austen; 2) what about Harry's response that being disadvantaged can be positive?
8. In what way does Archer draw Harry as a young hero with an almost a mythical quest? What is Harry's quest? And what role, for instance, does Old Jack Tar play in his quest? What about Captain Tarrant?
9. Why might Archer have used different voices to tell his story? What advantages does it offer a writer? Do you find the shifting perspectives illuminating...or distracting? Do you prefer some voices over others? Roger Allam, perhaps, or Emelia Fox?
10. Does the fact that the book ends with a cliff-hanger make you eager for the next installment in the series? Or do you wish this book's ending had offered more closure...a gentler "angel of repose"?
11. A number of readers and critics feel the plot is predictable. Do you agree or disagree? How did you experience the book—with excitement and suspense? Or were you turning pages because ... well, just because pages are meant to be turned?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Only Woman in the Room
Marie Benedict, 2019
Sourcebooks
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781492666868
Summary
She possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both?
Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer.
Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess.
She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis… if anyone would listen to her.
A powerful novel based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication, The Only Woman in the Room is a masterpiece. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• AKA—Heather Terrell
• Birth—ca. 1968-69
• Raised—Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Boston College; J.D., Boston University
• Currently—lives in Sewickley, Pennsylvania
Marie Benedict, AKA Heather Terrell, writes both adult and young adult fiction. She is perhaps best known as Marie Benedict for her works of historical fiction: The Only Woman in the Room (2019), Carnegie's Maid (2018), and The Other Einstein (2016).
As Heather Terrell, she has written Brigid of Kildare (2010, based on the medieval life of Ireland's St. Brigid) and two suspense novels, The Map Thief (2008) and The Chrysalis (2007).
Her young adult books are also under Heather Terrell: the Books of Eva series (Relic, Boundary, and Chronicle), as well as the Fallen Angel series (Fallen Angel and Eternity).
Benedict/Terrill has been drawn to stories of strong women, especially unsung heroines, both real and fictional. A book lover from childhood, it was a gift from her aunt that sparked her imagination—Marion Zimmerman Bradley's tale about the women of the Arthurian legend, The Mists of Avalon. As she told Book Reporter:
This book opened my eyes to the hidden voices and truths lurking in history and legend—particularly the buried histories of women—and set me on an admittedly circuitous path toward a life of uncovering those unknown stories and memorializing them through fiction.
Before becoming an author Benedict/Terrill practiced law in New York City. She received her B.A. from Boston College and her J.D. from Boston University. She met her husband in 2002 while standing in the customs line after landing in Hong Kong. The two were married in 2002 and have since moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they live with their children. (Adapted from various online sources.)
Book Reviews
[R]ousing historical novel…. Benedict paints a shining portrait of a complicated woman who knows the astonishing power of her beauty but longs to be recognized for her sharp intellect. Readers will be enthralled.
Publishers Weekly
Relevant today, especially women's worth in a man's world… a worthy read about this gorgeous and talented woman.
New York Journal of Books
[A] compelling fictionalized biography pays tribute to the overlooked scientific contributions and the hidden depths of a stunning beauty and beloved movie star.
Booklist
One of the most beautiful women ever to grace the silver screen, Hedy Lamarr also designed a secret weapon against Nazi Germany.… A captivating story of a complicated woman blazing new trails.
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 THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about Hedy's marriage to Friedrich Mandl. Was there any indication beforehand of his jealous and violent nature, any clues that might have warned Hedy off? What were the familial and political pressures that convinced Hedy, merely a teenager, to marry a man much older than she?
2. Once in America, how did Hedy's grief and guilt inspire her to turn to scientific investigation? How had her father helped prepare her for the rigors of science?
3. Are you able to grasp the basics of frequency-hopping, as well as its potential boon to the war effort? Does the author do an a good job explaining the science?
4. Talk about the era's view of women. How did Hedy react to the misogyny, prejudice, even humiliation that she faced in her attempt to interest the military in her invention. Might her beauty and fame as a "mere" film star have made it even more difficult for her to have her invention taken seriously?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: Do a bit of research into other women in history who faced similar barriers in their attempts to penetrate the male domains of science and technology. Consider the plight of the women of color at Nasa in the 1950s (Hidden Figures); or Grete Hermann, who in the 1930s found a flaw in the great mathematician John von Neumann's proof for quantum physics yet whose finding was ignored. Consider Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who in 1912 devised the method of calculating the distances of stars yet was prohibited, as a female, from operating the Harvard Observatory's telescopes. Her vital contribution to astronomy, of course, went unrecognized. Also, consider Elizebeth Smith Friedman, who, along with her husband William, pioneered modern-day cryptology, playing a major role in winning World War II. Her work went unrecognized for decades.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Oona Out of Order
Margarita Montimore, 2020
Flatiron Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250236609
Summary
A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence.
Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend?
As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random.
And so begins Oona Out of Order...
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?
Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
After receiving a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, Margarita Montimore worked for over a decade in publishing and social media before deciding to focus on the writing dream full-time. The author of Asleep from Day (2018) and Oona Out of Order (2020), she lives in New Jersey with her husband and dog. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[B]eautiful and heartbreaking, a novel about the nature of time and how life marches on that you simply must read.
PopSugar
Looking for a lighthearted read? Maybe something that will remind you all to live your best life?… A charming, quirky story about aging and self-discovery.
Book Riot
Montimore sustains the concept by rooting the story in Oona’s relationships, employing sparkling humor as Oona struggles to make sense of each year’s new circumstances. This witty, fantastical exploration of life’s inevitable changes is surprising and touching.
Publishers Weekly
A compelling page-turner…Montimore delivers a rock-and-roll love letter to 1980s–90s New York City as Oona discovers her true self through a lifetime of music and pop culture. A perfect match for those who enjoy well-developed characters with a twist. —Charli Osborne, Southfield P.L., MI
Library Journal
(Starred review) Witty, humorous, heartwarming. Imbued with musical and cultural influences spanning decades and reminiscent of Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Oona Out of Order is a delightfully freewheeling romp.
Booklist
[D]azzling…. This madcap opera… told in full with scope and breadth in and out of sequence but never out of tune…. Modern, emotional, funny, ferocious, and spun with… light and magic to fire up the Vegas strip, Oona Out of Order lands like a meteor.
Kirkus Reviews
A smart, funny, time-hopping journey around the last four decades…. Montimore’s meditation on what always changes and what never will sparkles with hope and heart, perfect for readers who love a quirky, thought-provoking tale.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the novel’s epigraph: “Time heals all. But what if time itself is the disease?” How do you interpret that question? How does the novel seek to answer it?
2. In the prologue, Oona reflects that her condition is the closest thing she could imagine to immortality. What do you think she means? Do you agree?
3. Oona has a “no spoiler” approach to time travel and takes precautions to reveal certain things about her future but keep others secret via her annual letters. Do you agree with her approach? If you were to switch places with Oona, how much of your future would you reveal and what would you add/remove from the letters?
4. Family is a major theme in Oona Out of Order. How does Oona and Madeleine’s relationship change over the course of the novel? What about Oona’s ideas about her own family?
5. To counteract living her life out of sequence, Oona spends much of the novel searching for constancy. Who/what are some of the constants she manages to establish throughout her leaps?
6. Oona experiences a variety of romantic connections throughout the course of the novel. How does her perception of her relationship with Dale change over the years? How does her unique marriage affect her views on romantic relationships? What about other men she’s involved with? Do you think it will be possible for Oona to have a sustained romance despite her leaping? Why or why not?
7. The time travel in Oona Out of Order serves as a way to explore imposter syndrome—her leaps often leave her in situations where she feels unprepared for the role she’s in and what’s expected of her. Which situations do you think she handles effectively and which could she have handled better?
8. There are moments when Oona laments mistakes she's made in her life and considers trying to fix them. What mistakes do you think she has made? Do you think she was better off trying to prevent them or learn from them?
9. As each leap brings new challengers into her life, Oona often struggles with a desire to return to her younger self. How does she try to combat nostalgia to live more fully in the present?
10. Oona and the people closest to her often describe her life as “bittersweet.” Do you agree that her time travel makes her life feel more bittersweet than it would if she were living “in order”? Why or why not?
11. Discuss the evolving role of music in Oona’s life. How does her relationship to it change from the first chapter to the last, and why?
12. Near the end of the novel, Kenzie tells Oona that he is sometimes jealous of her time traveling. Do you understand his feelings? Are there aspects of Oona’s condition that appeal to you?
13. How much of Oona’s destiny do you think is predetermined? Do you think she’s capable of changing her future? What do you think this book ultimately says about fate vs. free will? Do you agree or disagree?
14. Did you have a favorite section in the novel? Why?
15. Assuming her “time sickness” will persist, what do you imagine the next few years might look like for Oona?)
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Open City
Teju Cole, 2011
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812980097
Summary
A haunting novel about identity, dislocation, and history, Teju Cole’s Open City is a profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.
Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius wanders, reflecting on his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. He encounters people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.
Open City was named a "Best Book" on more than 20 end-of-year lists. These include: New Yorker ♦ Atlantic ♦ Economist • Newsweek/Daily Beast ♦ New Republic • New York Daily News ♦ Los Angeles Times ♦ Boston Globe ♦ Seattle Times ♦ Minneapolis Star Tribune ♦ GQ • Salon ♦ Slate ♦ New York magazine ♦ The Week ♦ Kansas City Star ♦ Kirkus Reviews (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1975
• Where—U.S.
• Raised—Nigeria
• Education—B.A., Kalamazoo College; M.A., University of London; M.Phil.,
Columbia University
• Awards—Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award; International Literature
Award (for the German transl.)
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian, best known for his 2011 novel, Open City. For that work, Cole won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.
Biography and work
Cole was born in the United States to Nigerian parents, raised in Nigeria, and moved back to the United States at the age of 17. He received his Bachelor's from Kalamazoo College, an M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and his M.Phil. from Columbia University.
He is the author of Every Day is for the Thief, a novella published in 2007 in Nigeria and in 2014 in the U.S. His anovel, Open City was published in 2011.
Cole lives in Brooklyn, New York City, and is currently the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He is also writer in residence of the Literaturhaus Zurich from June to November, 2014. Cole is a regular contributor to publications including the New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Granta, New Yorker, Transition, New Inquiry, and A Public Space. He is currently at work on a book-length non-fiction narrative of Lagos, and on "Small Fates." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/16/2014.)
Book Reviews
With every anecdote, with each overlap, Cole lucidly builds a compassionate and masterly work engaged more with questions than with answers regarding some of the biggest issues of our time: migration, moral accountability and our tenuous tolerance of one another’s differences…Cole's writing is assured, his ideas are well developed, and his imagery is delicious…
Miguel Syjuco - New York Times
Little happens in this impressionistic novel, but that hardly matters. The book is full of so many beautifully phrased observations that it's easy to be simply mesmerized.
Nora Krug - Washington Post
This year, literary discovery came, for me, in the form of Teju Cole’s debut novel, Open City, a deceptively meandering first-person narrative about a Nigerian psychiatry resident in New York. The bonhomous flâneur who strolls Manhattan from top to bottom, reveals, in the course of his walking meditations, both more about the city and about himself than we—or indeed he—could possibly anticipate. Cole writes beautifully; his protagonist is unique; and his novel, utterly thrilling.
Clare Messud - Globe and Mail (Canada)
On the surface, the story of a young, foreign psychiatry resident in post-9/11 New York City who searches for the soul of the city by losing himself in extended strolls around teeming Manhattan. But it's really a story about a lost nation struggling to regain a sense of direction after that shattering, disorienting day 10 years ago. A quiet, lyrical and profound piece of writing.
Seattle Times
Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original…What moves the prose forward is the prose—the desire to write, to defeat solitude by writing. Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a novel can get, with room for reflection, autobiography, stasis, and repetition. This is extremely difficult, and many accomplished novelists would botch it, since a sure hand is needed to make the writer’s careful stitching look like a thread merely being followed for its own sake. Mysteriously, wonderfully, Cole does not botch it.
James Wood - New Yorker
A complicated portrait of a narrator whose silences speak as loudly as his words—all articulated in an effortlessly elegant prose…Teju Cole has achieved, in this book, a rare balance. He captures life’s urgent banality, and he captures, too, the ways in which the greater subjects glimmer darkly in the interstices.
New York Review of Books
Reminiscent of the works of W.G. Sebald, this dreamy, incantatory debut was the most beautiful novel I read this year—the kind of book that remains on your nightstand long after you finish so that you can continue dipping in occasionally as a nighttime consolation.
Ruth Franklin - New Republic
Nothing escapes Julius, the narrator of Teju Cole’s excellent debut novel…In Cole’s intelligent, finely observed portrait, Julius drifts through cities on three continents, repeatedly drawn into conversation with solitary souls like him: people struggling with the emotional rift of having multiple homelands but no home.
GQ
Reminiscent of the works of W.G. Sebald, this dreamy, incantatory debut was the most beautiful novel I read this year—the kind of book that remains on your nightstand long after you finish so that you can continue dipping in occasionally as a nighttime consolation." –Ruth Franklin, The New Republic(Starred review.) America's standing in the world is never far from the restless thoughts of psychiatry resident Julius, a Nigerian immigrant who wanders Manhattan, pondering everything from Goya...to the rise of the bedbug epidemic.... [T]he picture of a mind that emerges in lieu of a plot is fascinating, as it is engaged with the world in a rare and refreshing way.
Publishers Weekly
One of the most intriguing novels you'll likely read, this debut...is riddled with ambiguity. By the end, there is so much disjuncture that readers will wonder whether the protagonist is the classic unreliable narrator.... Verdict: The alienated but sophisticated viewpoint is oddly poignant and compelling. —Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA
Library Journal
For reasons not altogether clear, Julius’ walks turn into worldwide travel, and he flies first to Europe...and makes some interesting friends, then to Nigeria, and finally back to New York City. Along the way, he meets many people and often has long discussions with them about philosophy and politics.... [A] unique and pensive book [and] charming read. —Julie Hunt
Booklist
[M]asterful.... Rather than establishing momentum, the circular, elliptical narrative focuses on the everyday, though in Manhattan this encompasses muggings, car crashes.... A climactic revelation toward the end casts fresh light on all that has preceded.... Determining whether the novel's main character is hero, villain or somewhere in between might require the reader to start over with the book after finishing it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
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Opening Belle
Maureen Sherry, 2016
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501110627
Summary
Getting rich on Wall Street would be a lot more fun if the men would keep their hands off her assets.
A whip-smart and funny novel told by a former Wall Street insider who reveals what it’s like for a working woman to balance love, ambition, and family in a world of glamorous excess, outrageous risk-taking, and jaw-dropping sexism.
In 2008, Isabelle—a self-made, thirty-something Wall Street star—appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband, and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else.
Her trading desk work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls in Belle’s already full lap.
Enter Henry, the former college fiance she never quite got over; now a hedge fund mogul. He becomes her largest client, and Belle gets to see the life she might have had with him. While Henry campaigns to win Belle back, the sexually harassed women in her office take action to improve their working conditions, and recruit a wary Belle into a secret “glass ceiling club” whose goal is to mellow the cowboy banking culture and get equal pay for their work.
All along, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give—and when it does, everything is going to change: her marriage, her career, her world, and her need to keep her colleagues’ hands to themselves.
From Maureen Sherry, a prize winning writer, a former Managing Director on Wall Street (who never signed a nondisclosure agreement when she left), Opening Belle takes readers into the adrenaline-fueled chaos of a Wall Street trading desk, the lavish parties, the lunch-time rendezvous, and ultimately into the heart of a woman who finds it easier to cook up millions at work than dinner at home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1963-64
• Raised—Rockland County, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Life is surely ironic for Maureen Sherry. Her father was an Irish immigrant, who worked in his younger days as a porter in the same Fifth Avenue apartment building where her eventual boss from Bear Stearns once lived. Years later, Maureen became the youngest managing director at Bear Stearns. Her 2016 novel, Opening Belle, is an semi-autobiographical, even farcical, take on her years spent in the world of finance.
Maureen grew up in Rockland County, New York State's southernmost county on the West side of the Hudson River. She earned her Bachelor's degree at Cornell University and spent 12 years on Wall Street. In 2000, however, she left, switching gears to earn her M.F.A. at Columbia University. She spent her time raising her four children, writing, and tutoring at inner city schools.
Her first book, Walls Within Walls (2010)—a mystery for middle schoolers—was awarded curriculum prizes by the states of Texas and Connecticut, and she was named one of the Best New Voices by the American Library Association. She has also written for the New York Times Op-Ed page. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Sherry’s novel is a breezy comedy in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary.... Like her heroine, Ms. Sherry worked on the Bear Stearns trading floor, then a notoriously rowdy place. She said she took the frat-boy antics in stride.
Alessandra Stanley - New York Times
Funny, relevant and often shocking.... Even if your own life is far from a fairy tale, Opening Belle will allow you to laugh, learn and maybe even lean in—to hug your own family a little closer.
Washington Post
Maureen Sherry’s comic novel unspools like a movie.... several [scenes] seem written for Hollywood, possibly for fun, but they read like they’re more for profit. Not that there’s anything wrong with a woman making a living, of course.
Dallas Morning News
[C]haracters' choices are framed as bold, empowering, and optimistic decisions—opportunities for women to excel professionally and make a unique mark on their industries while thriving in work environments that they build themselves. Yet for the reader, they can also feel otherwise, provoking emotions of both sadness and anger; it’s a shame that these industries are so inhospitable to women that their best, and ultimately, only choice is to leave. In the end, though these characters "succeed," they really didn’t have much of a choice at all.
Atlantic Monthly
Compulsively readable…a cheeky—and at times, romantic—battle-cry for any woman who’s ever strived to have it all and been told by a man that she couldn’t.
Entertainment Weekly
This workplace novel that takes a fun look at Wall Street and the Park Avenue set is filled with humor and heart.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] laugh a minute...in this delightful comic novel, at least.... While she's making you laugh, Sherry does an excellent job of explaining what exactly happened in the financial crisis and gives a rare picture of the wide range of ways women in the workplace deal with chauvinism, some as heroes, some as victims, and some as opportunists
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime use our talking points to help start a discussion for Belle Opening...then take off on your own):
1. Describe the world of a Wall Street financial firm: the boys club vs. the glass ceiling club. Consider both the chauvinism and greed. Are you surprised...amused...disturbed by the environment Maureen Sherry portrays?
2. When one of her male colleagues has his hand down her skirt, Belle thinks, "I’m disgusted at myself for not walking away, for putting up with this stuff just to talk business." Why doesn't she walk away?
3. Maureen Sherry said, in an interview with New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley, that she wanted to write about the mortgage crisis in an engaging way that ordinary readers would understand. Do you think she succeeded?
4. Have you read other books on the 2008 financial crash...or have you seen the films Margin Call (2011) with Kevin Spacy or The Big Short (2015, based on Michael Lewis's book) with Steve Carell? If so, how does Opening Belle compare? If not, consider reading The Big Short or watching either or both films.
5. Describe the relationship Belle has with her husband Bruce. What attracted her to him originally, and how has he changed? Also, talk about the rarified life-style Belle and Bruce live, including (or especially) the children's preschool.
6. The end of the novel—did you see it coming?
7. Now that you've read Opening Belle, what do you think of Wall Street? Suspicions confirmed? Or better than you expected?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Operation Shylock
Philip Roth, 1993
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679750291
Summary
In this fiendishly imaginative book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator.
With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a cast of characters that includes Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinian exiles, an accused war criminal, and an enticing charter member of an organization called Anti-Semites Anonymous, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare (From the publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 19, 1933
• Where—Newark, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Bucknell University; M.A., University of
Chicago
• Awards—the most awarded US author—see below
• Currently—lives in Connecticut
After many years of teaching comparative literature—mostly at the University of Pennsylvania—Philip Roth retired from teaching as Distinguished Professor of Literature at Hunter College in 1992. Until 1989, he was general editor of the Penguin book series Writers from the Other Europe, which he inaugurated in 1974 and which introduced the work of Bruno Schultz and Milan Kundera to an American audience.
His lengthy interviews with foreign authors—among them Primo Levi, Ivan Klima, and Aharon Appelfeld—have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 and has lived in Rome, London, Chicago, and New York. He now resides in Connecticut. (From the publisher.)
More
Philip Roth's long and celebrated career has been something of a thorn in the side of the writer. As it is for so many, fame has been the proverbial double-edged sword, bringing his trenchant tragic-comedies to a wide audience, but also making him a prisoner of expectations and perceptions. Still, since 1959, Roth has forged along, crafting gorgeous variations of the Great American Novel and producing, in addition, an autobiography (The Facts) and a non-fictional account of his father's death (Patrimony: A True Story).
Roth's novels have been oft characterized as "Jewish literature," a stifling distinction that irks Roth to no end. Having grown up in a Jewish household in a lower-middle-class sub-section of Newark, New Jersey, he is incessantly being asked where his seemingly autobiographical characters end and the author begins, another irritant for Roth. He approaches interviewers with an unsettling combination of stoicism, defensiveness, and black wit, qualities that are reflected in his work. For such a high-profile writer, Roth remains enigmatic, seeming to have laid his life out plainly in his writing, but refusing to specify who the real Philip Roth is.
Roth's debut Goodbye, Columbus instantly established him as a significant writer. This National Book Award winner was a curious compendium of a novella that explored class conflict and romantic relationships and five short stories. Here, fully formed in Roth's first outing, was his signature wit, his unflinching insightfulness, and his uncanny ability to satirize his character's situations while also presenting them with humanity. The only missing element of his early work was the outrageousness he would not begin to cultivate until his third full-length novel Portnoy's Complaint—an unquestionably daring and funny post-sexual revolution comedy that tipped Roth over the line from critically acclaimed writer to literary celebrity.
Even as Roth's personal relationships and his relationship to writing were severely shaken following the success of Portnoy's Complaint, he continued publishing outrageous novels in the vein of his commercial breakthrough. There was Our Gang, a parodic attack on the Nixon administration, and The Breast, a truly bizarre take on Kafka's Metamorphosis, and My Life as a Man, the pivotal novel that introduced Roth's literary alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman.
Zuckerman would soon be the subject of his very own series, which followed the writer's journey from aspiring young artist with lofty goals to a bestselling author, constantly bombarded by idiotic questions, to a man whose most important relationships have all but crumbled in the wake of his success. The Zuckerman Trilogy (The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, and The Counterlife) directly parallels Roth's career and unfolds with aching poignancy and unforgiving humor.
Zuckerman would later reemerge in another trilogy, although this time he would largely be relegated to the role of narrator. Roth's American Trilogy (I Married a Communist, the PEN/Faulkner Award winning The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America), shifts the focus to key moments in the history of late-20th–century American history.
In Everyman (2006), Roth reaches further back into history. Taking its name from a line of 15th-century English allegorical plays, Everyman is classic Roth—funny, tragic, and above all else, human. It is also yet another in a seemingly unbreakable line of critical favorites, praised by Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and The Library Journal.
In 2007's highly anticipated Exit Ghost, Roth returned Nathan Zuckerman to his native Manhattan for one final adventure, thus bringing to a rueful, satisfying conclusion one of the most acclaimed literary series of our day. While this may (or may not) be Zuckerman's swan song, it seems unlikely that we have seen the last Philip Roth. Long may he roar. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Literary Awards
Philip Roth is one of the most celebrated living American writers. Two of his works of fiction have won the National Book Award (Goodbye, Columbus; Sabbath's Theater); two others were finalists. Two have won National Book Critics Circle awards (Patrimony; Counterlife); again, another two were finalists. He has also won three PEN/Faulkner Awards (Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman) and a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral. In 2001, The Human Stain was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. In 2002, he was awarded the National Book Foundation's Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists still at work, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy. In May 2006, he was given the PEN/Nabokov Award, and in 2007 the first PEN/Saul Bellow Award — both for lifetime achievement.
The May 21, 2006 issue of the New York Times Book Review announced the results of a letter that was sent to what the publication described as "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." Of the 22 books cited, six of Roth's novels were selected: American Pastoral, The Counterlife, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America. The accompanying essay, written by critic A.O. Scott, stated, "If we had asked for the single best writer of fiction of the past 25 years, [Roth] would have won." ("More" and "Awards" from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
It quickly becomes clear that Operation Shylock is less a conventional novel than a playful monograph on the process of writing fiction, less a philosophical thriller than a comprehensive encyclopedia of Mr. Roth's favorite literary themes and preoccupations. As he has done so often in the past, Mr. Roth gives us clever disquisitions on the boundaries between reality and fiction; once again, he holds his own literary oeuvre up to the light, using it as a prism to examine questions of identity, Jewishness and the unreckoned consequences of art....Mr. Roth ... allows all his characters to talk (and talk and talk and talk) about their lives, their obsessions, their theories and their psyches. Although much of this talk is brilliantly rendered—by turns funny, outrageous, ironic and entertaining—it throws the book off balance, undermining its ingenious but fragile plot.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
One of Roth's grand inventions.... [He is] a comic genius...a living master.
Harold Bloom - New York Review of Books
The uncontested master of comic irony.
Time (Best American Novel, 1993.)
Roth's brilliant, absurdist novel, set in Jerusalem during the trial of John Demjanjuk, follows the intersecting paths of two characters who share Roth's name and impersonate one another with dizzying speed.
Publishers Weekly
The drama of Jewish survival takes a new twist in this novel, but Rothean ideas persist: all humans make fiction, man betrays and fulfills his father's dream; an artist's doubt is his integrity; Jews test freedom (in the West from exclusion and prejudice, in Israel from temptations of power); embattled Israel dramatizes the nationalisms that drive history, with the Holocaust their persistent threat. Here, through a pseudo-autobiographical escapade in intifada Israel during the "Ivan the Terrible" trial, a writer confronts his double. Playing off recent autobiography, Roth gives his fictive protagonist, "Philip Roth," the author's known career. Led into Mossad intrigue to defend Jewish security and his writer's integrity, this "Roth" chews the cud of these tortuous themes and is at times as baffled as Kafka's K. Using "Philip Roth" as an irritant to thought, Roth will make some readers steam. By midway he is telegraphing his punches, and his sparkling absurdity dissolves in perseveration. Roth reported in the New York Times, March 9, 1993, that all events depicted in this book are in fact true but that the Mossad insisted that he bill it as fiction. Recommended for public libraries.—Ed., Alan Cooper, York Coll., CUNY
Library Journal
Roth has worked out so frequently and acrobatically with fictional versions of himself that his entanglement here with a doppelganger insisting that he's Philip Roth—a double whose visionary "diasporism" gets the hapless narrator tied up in plots engineered by the Mossad, the PLO, and God knows who else—is as logical as it is frenetically funny. Arriving in Jerusalem just after a hallucinatory withdrawal from Halcion, Roth is comically vulnerable to the double who's using his striking resemblance to the novelist to curry favor and raise money for his reverse-Zionist project: to return all Ashkenazic Jews from Israel, where fundamentalist Muslims threaten them with extinction, to the relatively benign cities of Europe. When Roth threatens legal action against the double, whom he christens Moishe Pipik, Pipik sends opulent, dyslexic Chicago oncology nurse Wanda Jane "Jinx" Possesski, a charter member of Pipik's Anti-Semites Anonymous, to intercede for him. Roth, falling in lust with this latest shiksa, finds himself slipping into Pipik's identity, spouting off diasporist speeches, and unwittingly accepting a million-dollar check for the diasporist cause from crippled philanthropist Louis B. Smilesburger. A zany ride back to Jerusalem from Ramallah, where he's incidentally delivered a loony, impassioned anti-Zionist tirade, ends with Roth rescued by a young lieutenant seeking a letter of recommendation to NYU, and the check lost or stolen. As he takes in the Israeli trial of John Demjanjuk, Roth ponders Pipik's insistence that "I AM THE YOU THAT IS NOT WORDS" and, under challenge from every side, questions his notorious Jewish self-hatred. Still ahead: antiquarian David Supposnik's request that Roth write an introduction to Leon Klinghoffer's recently discovered travel diaries, Roth's kidnapping, and his agreeing to undertake a secret mission in Athens for the Mossad. A deliberately anticlimactic epilogue substitutes for the final chapter that would have described the secret mission. No matter: rarely have fact and fiction, personal confession and wild imaginings, led such a deeply, unnervingly comic dance.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club 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)
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The Opposite of Everyone
Joshilyn Jackson, 2016
HarperCollins
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062105684
Summary
A fiercely independent divorce lawyer learns the power of family and connection when she receives a cryptic message from her estranged mother in this bittersweet, witty novel.
Born in Alabama, Paula Vauss spent the first decade of her life on the road with her free-spirited young mother, Kai, an itinerant storyteller who blended Hindu mythology with southern oral tradition to re-invent their history as they roved.
But everything, including Paula’s birth name Kali Jai, changed when she told a story of her own—one that landed Kai in prison and Paula in foster care. Separated, each holding secrets of her own, the intense bond they once shared was fractured.
These days, Paula has reincarnated herself as a tough-as-nails divorce attorney with a successful practice in Atlanta. While she hasn’t seen Kai in fifteen years, she’s still making payments on that Karmic debt—until the day her last check is returned in the mail, along with a mysterious note:
I am going on a journey, Kali. I am going back to my beginning; death is not the end. You will be the end. We will meet again, and there will be new stories. You know how Karma works.
Then Kai’s most treasured secret literally lands on Paula’s doorstep, throwing her life into chaos and transforming her from only child to older sister. Desperate to find her mother before it’s too late, Paula sets off on a journey of discovery that will take her back to the past and into the deepest recesses of her heart.
With the help of her ex-lover Birdwine, an intrepid and emotionally volatile private eye who still carries a torch for her, this brilliant woman, an expert at wrecking families, now has to figure out how to put one back together—her own.
The Opposite of Everyone is a story about story itself, how the tales we tell connect us, break us, and define us, and how the endings and beginnings we choose can destroy us...and make us whole.
Laced with sharp humor and poignant insight, it is beloved New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson at her very best—an emotionally resonant tale about the endurance of love and the power of stories to shape and transform our lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The unconventional characters in Jackson's books often provide thought-provoking studies of love and loyalty; this must-read also contemplates the transformative power of storytelling.
Bobbi Dumas - New York Times Book Review
The voice is hard-boiled and the plot engrossing...in [this] realistic, contemporary story with a mystery driving it.... Jackson makes her [herione] an easy character to root for by vividly depicting her inner struggle and past. This is an excellent read with a fresh take on the detective genre.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The smart-ass, no holds-barred narration...should please the many fans of Jackson's snappy writing style.... [A] hard-edged, biracial, self-sufficient divorce lawyer allows family and love back into her life after fiercely shielding herself...for over 20 years. —Laurie Cavanaugh, Holmes P.L., Halifax, MA
Library Journal
Jackson excels at weaving a wholly absorbing story with vivid characters… [she makes] some affecting points about the importance of the stories we tell to each other and to ourselves.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [Q]uirky, Southern-based, character-driven novel that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self. A searing yet ultimately uplifting look at broken people who heal themselves and each other.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Paula Vauss is a tough-as-nails divorce attorney who doesn't place much stock in personal relationships. She describes her upbringing as "a Frankenstein's monster made of stolen parts..." How much of who Paula is today is a response to her childhood?
2. After years of sending money to her estranged mother, Kai, Paula learns that Kai is dying of cancer and sends a cryptic message with the return of her last check. Are you surprised by her reaction to the news?
3. Why does the pro-bono work with young, underprivileged girls make Paula feel close to her estranged mother, Kai? How would you describe Kai as a mother?
4. Paula has spent the better part of her life beating herself up for calling the police on her mother. She reflects back on her deed: "If I had never dialed 911, we would have grown up together. I tried to imagine it—a world where Kai never went to prison, and I didn't land in foster care. Where I never learned to hit hard before I could get hit, and where I had a baby brother." How does Julian's arrival compound this guilt?
5. After her initial shock of learning she has a brother, Paula seems to accept the idea of Julian (and, eventually, Hana) into her life. Were you surprised by her acceptance?
6. Kai names her children after Indian deities—Kali for Paula (goddess of destruction, destroyer of evil forces); Ganesha for Julian (remover of obstacles, god of wisdom), and Hanuman for Hana (able to counteract bad Karma). What is the significance of her choices? Did you know anything about Indian deities before reading this novel?
7. The night before Paula leaves for college, a very inebriated Kai tries to tell Paula a different version of the Ganesh story. What do you think Kai was trying to get across to her daughter?
8. Kai used to tell her daughter that "Kali destroys only to renew, to restore justice, Kali brings fresh starts.... Your name literally means 'Hail to the Mother,' over in India." How has Paula lived up to her namesake?
9. Paula attempts to tread lightly on the romance front with Birdwine, despite their mutual attraction. She learned in foster care that "Breaking things was what I did best." What do you think about Paula's relationship with her ex-lover/private investigator? We see in Paula's future that she does get married. Do you think she married Birdwine?
10. What do you think is the significance of the title, "The Opposite of Everyone"?
11. At the end of the novel, Paula reflects back on how "All around us are the shared stories that have formed our lives." How did Kai's stories bond her children together? Does your family have any "shared stories" that have become family legend?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Optimist's Daughter
Eudora Welty, 1972
Knopf Doubleday
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679728832
Summary
The Optimist's Daughter is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying.
After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past, herself, and her parents. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 13, 1909
• Where—Jackson, Mississippi, USA
• Death—July 23, 2001
• Where—Jackson, Mississippi
• Education—Mississippi University for Women, Columbia
University (New York)
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize, 1973; Rea Award, 1992
Eudora Welty was an award-winning writer and photographer who wrote about the American South. Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia University's business school. While at Columbia University, she also was the captain of the women's polo team.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration. This job sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs. Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction.
Her first short story, Death of a Traveling Salesman, appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary short stories "A Worn Path," "Why I Live at the P.O.," and "Petrified Man," all of which have been included in many short story anthologies and literature text books through the years.
The Canadian writer Alice Munro said that Welty's "A Worn Path" was perhaps the most perfect short story ever written. The volume also includes such well-regarded stories as "Powerhouse", "Clytie", "A Piece of News", as well as the title story. In 1992 Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story. Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, at the age of 92. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
The Optimist's Daughter, which first appeared in The New Yorker of March 15, 1969, is a miracle of compression, the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications.... Its story has all those qualities peculiar to the finest short novels: a theme that vibrates with overtones, suspense and classical inevitability. Known as a "Southern regionalist," Miss Welty is too good for pigeonholing labels. Though she has stayed close to home, two interlocking notions have been demonstrated in her fiction: how easily the ordinary turns into legend, and how firmly the exotic is grounded in the banal....the best book Eudora Welty has ever written.
Howard Moss - The New York Times
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)
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The Oracle Year
Charles Soule, 2018
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062686633
Summary
A clever and witty first novel of a twentysomething New Yorker who wakes up one morning with the power to predict the future.
Knowledge is power.
So when an unassuming Manhattan bassist named Will Dando awakens from a dream one morning with 108 predictions about the future in his head, he rapidly finds himself the most powerful man in the world.
Protecting his anonymity by calling himself the Oracle, he sets up a heavily guarded Web site with the help of his friend Hamza to selectively announce his revelations.
In no time, global corporations are offering him millions for exclusive access, eager to profit from his prophecies.
He's also making a lot of high-powered enemies, from the President of the United States and a nationally prominent televangelist to a warlord with a nuclear missile and an assassin grandmother. Legions of cyber spies are unleashed to hack the Site—as it's come to be called—and the best manhunters money can buy are deployed not only to unmask the Oracle but to take him out of the game entirely.
With only a handful of people he can trust—including a beautiful journalist—it's all Will can do just to survive, elude exposure, and protect those he loves long enough to use his knowledge to save the world.
Delivering fast-paced adventure on a global scale, as well as sharp-witted satire on our concepts of power and faith, Marvel writer Charles Soule's audacious debut novel takes readers on a rollicking ride where it's impossible to predict what will happen next. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 18, 1074
• Where—Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., Columbia University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Charles Soule is a Brooklyn, New York-based novelist, comic book writer, musician, and attorney. While he has worked for DC and other publishers, he is best known for writing Daredevil, She-Hulk, Death of Wolverine, and various Star Wars comics from Marvel Comics (Darth Vader, Poe Dameron, Lando and more), and his creator-owned series Curse Words from Image Comics (with Ryan Browne) and Letter 44 from Oni Press (with Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque.)
His first novel, The Oracle Year (2018) is the story of a 20-something man who can see the future and way this ability changes the world.
Awards and recognition
Soule's series Letter 44, illustrated by Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque, was an official selection of the 2016 Festival International de la Bande Dessinee in Angoulême, France, recognizing it as one of the finest graphic titles published in the French language for 2015.
"Power Couple," volume 1 Superman/Wonder Woman, received the 2015 Stan Lee Excelsior Award.
The Twenty-Seven series (with Renzo Podesta) and the She-Hulk series (with Javier Pulido and Ronald Wimberly) were included on the "Great Graphic Novels for Teens" list from the Young Adult Library Services Association in 2012 and 2016, respectively. (From the author's website and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[A]nyone will enjoy this comically fast-paced tale about Will Dando, who wakes up one day with 108 wacky and world-shattering predictions.
Washington Post
This volatile and unpredictable novel will entertain and keep you guessing until the very end.
New York Journal of Books
[A]wildly entertaining first novel.… Although the premise is a bit shaky, the relentless pacing, richly developed characters, and brilliant ending make this apocalyptic speculative thriller an undeniable page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
Soule’s background in comics shows in this dark, rollicking tale.
Booklist
A man who can see the future—in cryptic fragments—wreaks havoc on the world stage as millions wait breathlessly for every single prediction.… A thrilling, noodle-bending adventure that keeps readers guessing until the very end.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Oral History
Lee Smith, 1983
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345410283
Summary
When Jennifer, a college student, returns to her childhood home of Hoot Owl Holler with a tape recorder, the tales of murder and suicide, incest and blood ties, bring to life a vibrant story of a doomed family that still refuses to give up.
Oral History merges reality, superstition, and legend in this Appalachian odyssey about a strange family whose tragedies and star-crossed love affairs lead them to believe they're cursed. (From the publisher.)
About the Author
• Birth—November 1, 1944
• Where—Grundy, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Hollins College
• Currently—lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina
Lee Smith is an American fiction author who typically incorporates much of her home roots in the Southeastern United States in her works of literature. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry award and the Academy Award For Literature. Her recent book The Last Girls was listed on the New York Times bestseller's list.
Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Appalachian Mountains, less than 10 miles from the Kentucky border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the Levisa Fork River ran just behind it. Her mother, Virginia, was a college graduate who had come to Grundy to teach school.
Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing—and selling, for a nickel apiece—stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown of Grundy and the nearby isolated "hollers."
After spending her last two years of high school at St. Catherine's School in Richmond, Virginia, Smith enrolled at Hollins College in Roanoke. She and fellow student Annie Dillard (the well-known essayist and novelist) became go-go dancers for an all-girl rock band, the Virginia Woolfs. It was in 1966, during her senior year at Hollins, that Smith's literary career began to take off. She submitted an early draft of a coming-of-age novel to a Book-of-the-Month Club contest and was awarded one of twelve fellowships. Two years later, that novel, The Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed (Harper & Row, 1968), became Smith's first published work of fiction.
Since 1968, she has published eleven novels, as well as two collections of short stories, and has received eight major writing awards.
Following her graduation from Hollins, Smith married a poet and teacher, whom she accompanied from university to university as his teaching assignments changed. She kept busy writing reviews for local papers and raising two little boys, but found little time for her own fiction. By 1971, though, she'd completed her second novel, Something in the Wind, which garnered generally favorable reviews. But her next novel, Fancy Strut (1973), was widely praised by critics as a comic masterpiece.
In 1974 Smith and her family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she finished Black Mountain Breakdown (1981), a much darker work than her readers had come to expect. Next she turned her attention to short stories, for which she won O. Henry Awards in 1978 and 1980. Smith published her first collection of short stories Cakewalk in 1981. It was also about this time that her marriage broke up, and she accepted a teaching job at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where she teaches today. In 1983 her fifth novel, Oral History, became a Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection, exposing Smith for the first time to a wide national audience. In 1985 she published Family Linen and married journalist Hal Crowther, to whom she dedicated the new book.
Since then, Smith has published Fair and Tender Ladies (1988) and Me and My Baby View the Eclipse (1990), her second book of short stories. In 1992 she published The Devil's Dream, a generational saga about a family of country musicians; in 1995 her ninth novel, Saving Grace, and in 1996 the novella The Christmas Letters, her eleventh work of fiction. News of the Spirit, a collection of stories and novellas was published in 1997. She published New York Times Bestseller The Last Girls in 2002.
On Agate Hill, published in 2006, is in the style of the nineteenth century epistolary novel and set in the South during the Reconstruction. The novel contains some characters based upon historical people from the Burwell School, an early female boarding school, now an historic site located near Lee's home.
Lee Smith currently lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina and Jefferson, NC. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
What Lee Smith does best of all in this multigeneration family history is to capture the voices that tell her story...her mimicry is perfect. And voices aren't all that Lee Smith does well. The lore of the Virginia mountain terrain seems second nature to her.... It's also part of Lee Smith's talent to make such folk tales [as the Cantrells'] remain plausible as they get passed from generation to generation.... Unfortunately, Oral History is more successful at exploring the origin of the Cantrell curse than it is at translating its effects into the present.... It may be that Miss Smith is leaning over backward to avoid the melodrama that marred her last novel, Black Mountain Breakdown.... If that's the case, then she's gone too far.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
Recreates a vanished way of life with stunning authenticity.
Philadelphia Inquirer
A novel as dark, winding, complicated as the hill country itself.... You could make comparisons to Faulkner and Carson McCullers, to The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Wuthering Heights. You could employ all those familiar ringing terms of praise: "rare," "brilliant," "unforgettable." But Lee Smith and Oral History make you wish that all those phrases were fresh and new, that all those comparisons had never before been made. This is a novel deserving of unique praise.
Village Voice
Enchanting.... [I]nterwoven with the moving and deeply human recital of loves and losses are the folklore, the music, the scenery of the region—one can almost hear the twang of the banjos and the high nasal voices; one almost breathes in the air of Hoot Owl Holler.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
A fine novel.... Wonderfully energetic.... A corner of American that I'm coming to think of as Lee Smith country.
Harper's
Discussion Questions
1. Oral History begins as a third person narrative, told from the viewpoint of a modern college co-ed, Jennifer. Why does Lee Smith frame the novel in this manner? How is it an effective narrative technique?
2. How does the novel function as an actual oral history? What are the effects of a shifting narrative voice and perspective? Through form, content and style, how does Smith make each voice distinctive?
3. The major stories of Oral History center on Almarine, Dory and Pearl. Why are their stories told from the vantage points of others? Does this make their tales more or less effective? Why?
4. In which ways do superstition and natural magic form a foundation of belief in Oral History? What are some examples of events in the novel where spells are used to explain both good events and evil occurrences? Is weather ever personified as a force of good or of evil? How?
5. In the beginning of the novel, how does Smith depict young Almarine? What is his family life like? Why does he value Hoot Owl Holler so much? How does his life change after he becomes determined to find a girl, at Granny Younger's request?
6. How does Granny Younger provide guidance to those around her? What about her character inspires respect? In which ways does she serve as the matriarch of the community around her? After Granny's death, how does Rhoda Hibbitts take her place as the bedrock of the community?
7. What about Emmy so mesmerizes Almarine? What attracts Emmy to him? How does she adjust her life at first to be a suitable wife to him? What about her causes others fear and consternation? Why, ultimately, does Almarine force her to leave, and why does that cause him such pain?
8. How does Almarine meet his second wife, Pricey Jane? How is she different from Emmy? In which ways is she a "girl like a summer day," as Granny Younger says (page 63)? What is her relationship with Almarine like? How is the story of their marriage, and its untimely end, reminiscent of folklore or a fairy tale?
9. Almarine's son, Eli, and Pricey Jane die unexpectedly. What practical reasons can explain their deaths? Why do others blame Red Emmy for it? How does Almarine change after Eli and Pricey Jane's death? What prompts Almarine to then form a relationship with Vashti?
10. How does Almarine change as he grows older? Which of his positive traits harden into negative ones? What actions lead to his death, and how does his family react to it? Does his murder prompt the unraveling of his family? How?
11. Who are the women in Oral History who most captivate those around them? Do these women share any characteristics in common? In your opinion, who comes the closest to finding true love? Who is the most miserable? Why?
12. How does the character of Richard Burlage compare and contrast to the individuals you meet in the first section of Oral History? How is his journal different in terms of content, style and awareness?
13. What motivations—both selfish and unselfish—propel Richard to travel from his privileged home to teach school in Appalachia? How does his family, particularly his brother, react to that decision? How does his life of privilege inform his perceptions of those he meets? What are his attitudes toward his new students and their families?
14. Why does Richard take special note of Jink Cantrell? How does Jink react to Richard's special attention, and why does Richard give it to him? How does Richard's attitude toward Jink change after Dory enters the picture? What does Jink think about Richard after he's gone? Why does Jink save the orange that Richard has given him? What does it represent to Jink?
15. In which ways does Dory intrigue Richard? What does the schoolteacher represent to her? How is the relationship realistic, and in which ways is it rooted in fantasy? Do you think that Dory ever intends to leave her home? Why or why not?
16. Ora Mae not only conceals from Dory the love letter that Richard has written, but also tells him Dory never wants to see him again. Why does she do this? What effect does this deceit have on Dory and Richard individually, and on their relationship? What does that action say about Ora Mae's concept of choice, particularly as it pertains to her half-sister?
17. How does Dory change after she is "ruint," marries Little Luther and becomes a mother? Why does she leave and wander about without giving any warning? What is the reaction of her children to her behavior? How does Little Luther react? What do you think Dory was searching for? Does she ever find it?
18. When Parrot asks Ora Mae if she feels a thing, she replies, "Nope." How true is this assertion? Why is Ora Mae closed up emotionally? How do her circumstances of arrival into the Cantrell family contribute to that attitude? Who else in the novel shares the same emotional ambivalence?
19. Ora Mae views herself as the emotional and physical center of the Cantrell family. Why does she feel this way? Do others share her view? How is Ora Mae a good mother, and in what ways is she lacking as a parent and a role model? How is her conception of motherhood different from Dory's?
20. "Things was not clear in my mind before Parrot," Ora Mae discloses (page 212). What "things" does Parrot clarify for her? Do other women in the story experience a similar turning point after the attentions of a man in their life? Which ones?
21. What does Ora Mae's self-professed ability to see the future affect her? How does it influence her decisions in life, from the time that she was a child to her decisions about marriage and beyond? How is this ability to tell the future itself a form of curse? Do other figures in this novel also believe that they have this ability? Who are they?
22. Which reasons—both public and private—prompt Richard to return to Appalachia? In which ways are Richard's manifestations of wealth and success, important to him? What effect do they have on the people he sees in Appalachia? Why doesn't he speak to Dory, instead taking a picture of her? What events do you imagine are most important in Richard's autobiography (published to "universal but somewhat limited acclaim" (p. 285) )?
23. Why are Dory's earrings such a coveted keepsake? Why is it appropriate that Maggie receives them? Why is Pearl resentful of that? In which ways does Pearl attempt to be different from an early age? What are the reasons behind this behavior?
24. Why does Pearl take Sally into her confidence? What reaction does Sally have to her sister's newfound trust in her? Why does Pearl embark upon a relationship with Donnie Osborne? What are the consequences that result, both for Pearl and her family, and for Donnie himself?
25. Is Little Luther's son Almarine in any way like his namesake? How? How do the two men differ?
26. "Life is a mystery and that's a fact," says Sally (page 275). How does this statement represent a theme that threads throughout the novel? What mysteries remain unexplainable in the book? Who searches for answers to these enigmas?
27. The prologue and epilogue of Oral History appear in italics. Why does Smith set these parts of the book apart? Do you believe that the last part of the novel is real, or imagined in Jennifer's mind? Why do you feel this way?
28. In your opinion, does the adage "blood is thicker than water" apply to this book? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
The Orange Girl
Jostein Gaarder (trans., James Anderson), 2004
Phoenix
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780753819920
Summary
At fifteen, Georg comes upon a letter written to him by his dying father, to be read when he comes of age. Their two voices make a fascinating dialogue as Georg comes to know the father he can barely remember, then is challenged by him to answer some profound questions.
The central mystery of The Orange Girl is the story of an elusive young woman for whom Georg’s father searches in Oslo and Seville—and whom Georg finally realizes is his mother. A thought-provoking fairy-tale romance imbued with the sense of awe and wonder that is Jostein Gaarder’s hallmark.
Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder, whose novel Sophie’s World was a best-seller in 40 countries, is also the author of The Ringmaster’s Daughter, Maya, The Solitaire Mystery, and The Christmas Mystery. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 8, 1952
• Where—Oslo, Norway
• Education—University of Oslo
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Oslo, Norway
Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often utilizes metafiction in his works and constructs stories within stories. His best known work is the novel Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. It been translated into 60 languages; there are over 40 million copies in print.
Personal
Gaarder was born and raised in Oslo. His father was a school headmaster and his mother a teacher and author of children’s books. He attended Oslo Cathedral School and the University of Oslo, where he studied Scandinavian languages and theology. In 1974 he married Siri Dannevig, and the two moved to Bergen, Norway, where Gaarder taught high school prior to his writing career. The couple has two sons.
Environmental activism
Gaarder has been involved in the promotion of sustainable development for nearly two decades. He established the Sophie Prize in 1997, an international award bestowed on foundations and individuals concerned with the environment. Through the Sophie Prize, Gaarder contributed over $1.5 million to worthy environmental causes.
Controversy
Gaarder is active politically. The focus of his concern is the plight of Palestinian refugees, and he has vehemently criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In August 2006, Gaarder wrote "God's Chosen People," an op-ed in response to that year's Israel-Lebanon conflict. Published in Aftenposten, Norway's largest daily newspaper, he argued in favor of "recognizing the State of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967." He referred to Judaism as "an archaic national and warlike religion," contrasting it with Christianity and its belief that the "Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness." After the article's publication, Gaarder was accused of anti-Semitism.
Awards
1990 - Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature (year's best children's literature).
1993 – Norwegian Booksellers' Prize for Through a Glass, Darkly.
1994 – Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for Sophie's World.
1995 – Italy's Preancarella for Sophie's World.
1997 – Buxtehude Bull for Durch einen Spiegel for Through a Glass, Darkly.
2004 – Willy-Brandt Award in Oslo.
2005 – Commander, The Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav.
2005 – Honorary degree, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/15/2014.)
Book Reviews
Eleven years after his father's death, ... Georg begins to read [his father's] letter and is soon captivated by...a woman known as the Orange Girl.... [A] modern fairy tale. Gaarder takes the most ordinary happenings and writes about them in a magical way, creating a truly refreshing tale. (Ages 12 up.)
Children's Literature
[The author] pops a Big Question here, but the leisurely way he prepares readers for it may lose most of them.... As he reads, Georg intersperses reactions and remarks about his own life, deliberately creating a collaborative story that draws together previously unsuspected connections with his barely remembered parent. He closes with his Answer; readers who get that far will be left to mull over their own. (Grades 6-9.) —John Peters, New York Public Library
Children's Library Journal
Threaded through the story of first love is information regarding the Hubble telescope and its "eye on the universe," which leads to a philosophical inquiry about human existence and the short amount of time humans have to spend on Earth. The novel is more about contemplating questions about life than answering them. (Ages 15 to 18.)
Kliatt
Discussion Questions
1. Why does it mean so much for the father who is dying to ask his son these questions, which he knows his son will not be able to think about until many years later? Do you think it is because he cares for the son, to make him think about the big questions in life, and maybe even to enrich his life / improve his quality of life?
2. Do you think it is a problem that Georg is not presented as a whole person? Only his family life is presented, with a few "side trips to school, his teacher, his piano lessons. It makes the book "narrow," in focus. In France, this is called "a theory novel"—a book that sets out to prove a theory, rather than present a whole picture. Do you think it is a limitation? Does it detract from the beauty of the book? Or the wisdom?
3. Working with students: Allow students to familiarize themselves with the following elements from the book: the Hubble telescope, the United Nations, falling in love, Oslo and Norway, the Frognerpark (contains the Vigeland sculpture park), writing a will, their recollections (if any) from when they were three years of age. Also introduce them to the Beethoven's Moonlight sonata.
4. Is the the white pigeon (dove?) which Jan Olav and Veronika see in Spain a premonition of his death? Does Jan himself think so?
5. How does the Hubble telescope function as a metaphor? Does it imply that readers can see everything? Or the narrator can see everything?
6. What would it would be like to get a personal letter from someone who died a long time ago? How do you think the father felt realizing he would not be with his son much longer?
- when did his dad write the letter, and why do you think he did so?
- Why do you think the letter was put in the old cart/pram
- why wasn't it given to Georg's mother so she could give it to him when he was old enough?
7. What do you think is happening between the orange girl and Georg's father?
- Is Georg’s father really that good at reading signs?
- Do you know what scurvy is?
- How many theories does Georg's father have about the orange girl’s use for the oranges? Which do you think is the most realistic? Do you have any theories?
8. Which feelings form the basis for the father’s description of the orange girl and the man in the Toyota?
9. Has this book expanded your knowledge about space?
10. What do these words by Piet Hein mean? “If you don’t live now, you will never live. What do you do?” An alternative translation would be: "Living is a thing you do now or never. Which do you?
11. Where do oranges originate? Do you know any typical "fairy tale rules"?
12. What does Georg's father mean when he talks about the people in the square are like living treasure chests of thoughts and memories. He also says that he himself is in the heart of his own life on earth, as are others. What does he mean?
13. What is the point of The Orange Girl? What is it trying to say? Recall Georg's father's question: has Georg given his answer by the end of the book?
(Questions developed by Linda Johnsen, a librarian in Norway, and sent to us by Conrad, a long-term LitLovers friend. Thanks to both Linda and Conrad.)
The Orchardist
Amanda Coplin, 2012
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062188502
Summary
At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates.
One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.
Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, Amanda Coplin weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. She writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, and in The Orchardist she crafts an astonishing debut novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Wentachee, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Oregon; M.F.A.,
University of Minnesota
• Currently—lives in Portland Oregon
Amanda Coplin was born in Wenatchee, Washington. She received her BA from the University of Oregon and MFA from the University of Minnesota. A recipient of residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Omi International Arts Center at Ledig House in Ghent, New York, she lives in Portland, Oregon. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) The implacable hand of fate, and the efforts of a quiet, reclusive man to reclaim two young sisters from their harrowing past, are the major forces at play in this immensely affecting first novel. In a verdant valley in the Pacific Northwest during the early years of the 20th century, middle-aged Talmadge tends his orchards of plum, apricot, and apples, content with his solitary life and the seasonal changes of the landscape he loves. Two barely pubescent sisters, Jane and Della, both pregnant by an opium-addicted, violent brothel owner from whom they have escaped, touch Talmadge’s otherwise stoic heart, and he shelters and protects them until the arrival of the girls’ pursuers precipitates tragic consequences.... Talmadge turns unlikely hero, ready to sacrifice his freedom to save her. But no miracles occur, as Coplin refuses to sentimentalize. Instead, she demonstrates that courage and compassion can transform unremarkable lives and redeem damaged souls.
Publishers Weekly
Coplin's compelling, well-crafted debut tracks the growing obsession of orchardist William Talmadge, who has lived at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains since the summer of 1857, when he was nine.... His orderly life is altered forever when two runaway girls, Jane and Della, arrive at the edge of his orchard, dirty, starving, and pregnant. A tragedy leaves Talmadge caring for Jane's baby, Angelene.... Verdict: Coplin's lyrical style and forceful storytelling provide many unexpected twists before the poignant conclusion. A breathtaking work from a genuinely accomplished writer. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
Coplin’s mesmerizing debut stands out with its depictions of uniquely Western personalities and a stark, gorgeously realized landscape that will settle deeply into readers’ bones.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Set in early-20th-century Washington State, Coplin's majestic debut follows a makeshift family through two tragic decades.... The novel is so beautifully written, so alive to the magnificence of the land and the intricate mysteries of human nature, that it inspires awe rather than depression. Superb work from an abundantly gifted young writer.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How would you describe William Talmadge, the title character of The Orchardist? What adjective best describes his character? What are the factors that have shaped the man he is?
2. Though he is mostly alone, Talmadge has two good friends, the herbalist Caroline Middey and the Indian horse catcher Clee, What draws these three people together?
3. When Talmadge first meets the young sisters, Della and Jane, they are stealing his fruit. Why isn't he angry with them? Why does he want to help them? What does he see in them that others might not?
4. Jane told Della that their unborn children were a gift. "'They were blessed, said Jane. "It would be themselves they give birth to, only better. That was why she and Della must work so hard to protect them, their children. In protecting the children, Jane and Della would save themselves." Why does Jane tell Della this?
5. Talk about the sisters and the bond they share. Could most people survive the pain and shame of what they were forced to endure? What propels Jane's definitive act? What stops Della from following her? How do these choices reverberate in the years and events that follow?
6. Explore Della's character. Is she a good person? What drives her restlessness? Why is she driven by revenge? Why can't she find solace with Talmadge and Angelene in the orchard?
7. If he could articulate it, how would Talmadge define his relationship to Della? Do you think he thought of himself as Angelene's father? What about Angelene? Though he adored Angelene, "the emotion—the severity of it—also made him afraid." What was the root of Talmadge's fear? Why can love be simultaneously wondrous and terrifying?
8. Is there anything Talmadge could have—should have—done to keep Della with him and Angelene in the orchard? What hold did Della have on him? Did his concern for Della and his longing for her overshadow his relationship with Angelene?
9. Discuss Angelene and Della. How do they view one another? What kind of person does Angelene grow up to be? How might her life have been different if Della had been present?
10. Could you live as Talmadge did? Do you think he was lonely? Did he enjoy his solitude? What about Caroline, Clee, Della, Angelene? Were they lonely? How is being alone different from being lonely?
11. Talmadge insists that Della should return to the Orchard for Angelene. Caroline questions this. "Do they want each other? Does Angelene even want her, Talmadge?" she asks. He replies. "It doesn't matter what we want. It's blood." How important is blood to family? Are Talmadage, Angelene, and even Caroline a family? Would Talmadge agree with your assessment? What about Angelene and Caroline? What ties individuals together as family? Though they themselves cannot define it, what do each of these characters need from the other—including Della?
12. Late in the novel, Talmadge watches Angelene working in the cabin. "She was the dream of the place that bore her and she did not even know it." Explain what he means.
13. What is the significance of the landscape and the natural world in the novel? How does it relate to and shape the characters and the lives they lead? Can you think of some other books for which landscape is integral to the story? In the century since the novel's setting, we have built over much of our farmland and open spaces. How has this affected us as individuals and as a society? What have we gained? What's been lost?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Ordinary Grace
William Kent Krueger, 2013
Atria Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451645859
Summary
That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.
New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.
Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.
Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 16, 1950
• Where—Torrington, Wyoming, USA
• Education—Stanford University (no degree)
• Awards—Anthony Award's Best Novel (twice); Anthony Award's Best First Novel; Loft-McKnight Award
• Currently—lives in St. Paul, Minnesota
William Kent Krueger is an American author and crime writer, best known for the 13 novels of his Cork O'Connor series of books, ending with Tamarack County in 2013. The series is set mainly in Minnesota, USA. In 2005 and 2006, he won back-to-back Anthony Awards for best novel. Only one other author has done this since the award's inception in 1986.
Krueger has said that he wanted to be a writer from the third grade, when his story "The Walking Dictionary" was praised by his teacher and parents.
He attended Stanford University but his academic path was cut short when he came into conflict with the university's administration during student protests of spring 1970. Throughout his early life, he supported himself by logging timber, digging ditches, working in construction, and being published as a freelance journalist. He never stopped writing.
He wrote short stories and sketches for many years, but it was not until the age of 40 that he finished the manuscript of his first novel, Iron Lake. It won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Barry Award for Best First Novel, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award.
In 2013 he published his first stand-alone novel Ordinary Grace, referred to by Publishers Weekly as "elegiac, evocative....a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption."
He lives with family in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Writing influences
Krueger has said his favorite book is To Kill A Mockingbird. He grew up reading Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James T. Farrell. Most influential among these was Hemingway. In an interview for Shots magazine, Krueger described his admiration for Hemingway's prose:
His prose is clean, his word choice perfect, his cadence precise and powerful. He wastes nothing. In Hemingway, what’s not said is often the whole point of a story. I like that idea, leaving the heart off the page so that the words, the prose itself, is the first thing to pierce you. Then the meaning comes.
As a mystery genre writer, Krueger credits Tony Hillerman and James Lee Burke as his strongest influences.
Writing process
Krueger prefers to write early in the morning. Rising at 5.30 am, he goes to the nearby St Clair Broiler, where he drinks coffee and writes long-hand in wirebound notebooks.
He began going to the diner in his 30s when he had to make time for writing early in the morning before going to work at the University of Minnesota. He continues the habit, and today has his "own" booth there. In return for his loyalty, the restaurant has hosted book launches for Krueger. At one, the staff wore T-shirts emblazoned with "A nice place to visit. A great place to die."
Cork O'Connor series
When Krueger decided to set the series in northern Minnesota, he realized that a large percentage of the population was of mixed ancestry. In college, Krueger had wanted to be a cultural anthropologist; he became intrigued by researching the Ojibwe culture and weaving the information into his books. Krueger's books are set in and around Native American reservations. The main character, Cork O'Connor is part Ojibwe, part Irish.
History was a study in futility. Because people never learned. Century after century, they committed the same atrocities against one another or against the earth, and the only thing that changed was the magnitude of the slaughter... Conscience was a devil that plagued the individual. Collectively, a people squashed it as easily as stepping on a daisy.
Krueger has read the first Ojibwe historian, William Whipple Warren, as well as Francis Densmore, Gerald Vizenor and Basil Johnston. He has also read novels by Louise Erdrich and Jim Northrup. Krueger began to meet and get to know the Ojibwe people and remains fascinated by their culture.
His descriptions are meant to express his characters' feelings about the settings. Krueger believes that the sense of place is made resonant by the actions and emotions of the characters within it. He describes it as "a dynamic bond that has the potential to heighten the drama of every scene." (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace…This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some time and you will always remember it with a smile.
Huffington Post
[E]legiac, evocative.... The summer of 1961 finds thirteen-year-old Frank Drum living in small-town New Bremen, Minn. He and his younger brother, Jake, idolize their older sister, Ariel.... The Drums’ peaceful existence is shattered, however, when Ariel fails to return from a late-night party. In the aftermath of her disappearance...dark secrets about New Bremen come to light....for what becomes a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption.
Publishers Weekly
For fans of Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home or Krueger’s other works, this is a touching read, with just enough intrigue to keep the story moving along. —Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Library Journal
A thoughtful literary mystery that is wholly compelling and will appeal to fans of Dennis Lehane and Tom Franklin.... Don’t take the title too literally, for Krueger has produced something that is anything but ordinary.
BookPage
One cannot read Ordinary Grace without feeling as if it is destined to be hailed as a classic work of literature. Ordinary Grace is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece.
Bookreporter.com
(Starred review.) A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God.... Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a stand-alone novel that shares much with his other work.... [A] series of...deaths shake the world of Frank Drum, the 13-year-old narrator.... One of the novel's pivotal mysteries concerns the gaps among what Frank experiences (as a participant and an eavesdropper), what he knows and what he thinks he knows.... Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.
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)
SPOILER ALERT
1. Talk about the characters, starting with Ruth and Nathan Drum, the narrator's mother and father. How would you describe them and, especially, their marriage?
2. What do you think of Emil Brandt and his sister?
3. How would you describe Gus? What is the bond between Gus and Nathan based on? What do you think was the event during the war that the two refer to obliquely as they sit together in the darkened church.
4. Discuss, in particular, Nathan's sermon after Ariel's death? What are its theological implications? Does Nathan answer the question of theodicy: if God is loving and all powerful, why do bad things to happen to good people?
5. What prompts Frank, after his father's sermon, to go to Jake and tell him, "You're my best friend in the whole world. You always have been and you always will be"?
6. Why is Ruth so angry with Nathan after Ariel disappears? How would you respond to such a horrific loss: would you respond as Ruth does, in anger? Or would you be more like Nathan?
7. How would you define grace? What, specifically, does "ordinary grace" refer to in the story, and what is the larger religious significance of the term "ordinary grace"? Why is the grace spoken by Jake so extraordinary...and how does it affect members of his family?
8. Whom did you first suspect...and when did you begin to suspect the real killer? What "red herrings" (false clues) does the author put in the way to lead readers down the wrong path?
9. Much of the book has to do with young Frank's attempt to separate what he thinks he knows from what might (or might not) be the ultimate truth. Have you even been in a position of "knowing" something with certainty...and then learning that your judgment was wrong? How can we guard ourselves against false accusations?
10. What does Warren Redstone mean when he says to Frank, "You've just killed me, white boy"? Why does Frank let Redstone escape? Even Jake tells us...
How could I possibly explain my silence, my complicity in his escape, things I didn't really understand myself? My heart had simply directed me in a way my head couldn't wrap its thinking around....
Was Jake wrong to let Redstone get away? Should he have kept silent?
11. Talk about Karl Brandt and how he dies—an accident...or intentional?
12. What do you think happened to Bobby Cole? Why might the author have left that mystery unresolved?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Ordinary People
Judith Guest, 1976
Penguin Group USA
263 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140065176
Summary
The novel begins as life is seemingly returning to normal for the Jarretts of Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1975. It is slightly more than a year since the elder of their two teenaged sons, Jordan (nicknamed "Buck"), was killed when a sudden storm came up while he and his younger brother Conrad were sailing on Lake Michigan.
Six months later, a severely depressed Conrad attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor in the bathroom. His parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital from which he has only recently returned. He is attending school and trying to resume his life, but knows he still has unresolved issues, particularly with his mother, Beth, who has never really recovered from Jordan's death and keeps an almost maniacally perfect household and family.
His father, a successful tax attorney, gently leans on him to make appointments to see a local psychiatrist, Dr. Tyrone Berger. Initially resistant, he slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger and comes to terms with the root cause of his depression ... his identity crisis and survivor's guilt over having survived when Buck did not. Also helping is a relationship with a new girlfriend, Jeannine Pratt.
Calvin, too, sees Dr. Berger as the events of the recent past have caused him to begin to doubt many things he once took for granted, leading to a midlife crisis. This leads to strain in the marriage as he finds Beth increasingly cold and distant, while she in turn believes he is overly concerned about Conrad to the point of being manipulated.
Spoiler
Finally the friction becomes enough that Beth decides to leave him at the novel's climax. Father and son, however, have closed the gap between them. (Summary from Wikipedia.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1936
• Where—Detroit, Michingan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Awards—Janet Heidegger Kafka Prize, 1976
• Currently—Minneapolis, Minnesota; Harrisville, Michigan
Judith Guest won the Janet Heidegger Kafka Prize for her first novel, Ordinary People, which was made into the Academy Award-winning 1980 film of the same name. Her other novels are The Tarnished Eye, Second Heaven, Killing Time in St. Cloud (with Rebecca Hill), and Errands. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Harrisville, Michigan. (From the publisher.)
More
Her own words:
I was born in 1936 in Detroit, Michigan and grew up there, attending Mumford High School in my freshman year and graduating from Royal Oak Dondero High school in 1954. I studied English and psychology at the University of Michigan and graduated with a BA in Education in 1958, whereupon I promptly...
a) got married to my college sweetheart,
b) got a job teaching first grade in Garden City, Michigan
c) got pregnant and had a baby boy—all inside 14 months.
I have been writing all of my life—since I was about ten years old, actually—in the closet, to the emotional moment, sticking reams of paper in drawers, never finishing anything. I taught more school, had two more sons and then in 1970 I wrote a short story and sent it to a national contest, where I won 60th prize out of 100. It was a book by Richard Perry entitled One Way to Write Your Novel. I read it from cover to cover and decided I already knew all this stuff, so why didn’t I just write a novel myself? It took me three years, during which time I decided to quit teaching and concentrate on finishing something. In retrospect, it was the most important decision I’ve made to date about my writing.
After I finished Ordinary People, I sent it to a publisher, who turned it down flat. The second sent a rejection letter that read in part: “While the book has some satiric bite, overall the level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it.” (I know this letter by heart—didn’t even have to look it up.) The third publisher, Viking Press, hung onto it for 8 months before they decided to publish it. They published my second novel (Second Heaven), turned down my third (Killing Time in St. Cloud), so I went to Delacorte. Delacorte turned down my fourth (Errands), so I went to Ballantine (which had turned down my first one). Ballantine turned down my fifth (The Tarnished Eye) so I went to Scribner. This is the book business in a nutshell. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
My private life is a bit more varied and exciting. I have a husband and three sons and seven grandchildren who all live here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We see them often, summer together, and do an assortment of family things. They are my real life—my obsession and my best material.
I think I should also say that I am the great-niece of Edgar A. Guest, who was at one time the Poet Laureate of Michigan and who wrote a poem a day for the Detroit Free Press for forty years. Which is where I get my endurance from. I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
(Pre-internet works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Eight months before the opening of this novel, Conrad Jarrett has attempted suicide.... What Ms. Guest's novel focuses on is Conrad's attempts to knit himself back into the fabric of suburban middle-American life.... It is with admirable skill that the author has made us experience Con's emergence from isolation.... But what is most touching about Ordinary People is the subtle degrees by which Conrad recovers his emotional elquibrium....What we experience in the process is not so much the relief of sudden revelation as the anxiety, despair, and joy of healing that is common to every human experience of suffering and growth.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
It is difficult to realize that this is a first novel, because it is written with the simplicity of total authority.... I am particularly grateful to Ms. Guest for emphasizing the human need for open grieving…(She) is one of the few writers who has dared depict this aspect of affluent suburbia.
Madeleine L’Engle (author, A Wrinkle in Time)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Ordinary People:
1. Why the title? Clearly, it has thematic significance. I think a good discussion can be had by asking what Guest meant by her use of "ordinary." Is it ironic...or sincere. In other words are the Jarretts an ordinary family? How so...or how not so?
2. In the introduction above , Guest says she "wanted to explore the anatomy of depression." Does she do a good job? How realistic is her portrayal of what has become a much discussed mental health issue.
3. You might also trace Conrad's path to health, which is the crux of the story. What are the steps in his process of recovery.
4. Obviously, you'll want to discuss Beth Jarrette—on the surface an unsympathetic character. But Guest's characters are complex, rich in their emotional and psychological make-ups. Try to ascertain Beth's underlying motivations.
5. As Conrad's health improves, Calvin's relationship with Beth deteriorates. Are those two events related? What's going on, or not going on, in that marriage.
6. Watch selected clips from the superb 1980 movie with Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Southerland, and Timothy Hutton as Conrad. Directed by Robert Redford, it swept up the major film awards.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)
Orfeo
Richard Powers, 2014
W.W. Norton
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393240825
Summary
The National Book Award–winning author of The Echo Maker delivers his most emotionally charged novel to date, inspired by the myth of Orpheus.
In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present.
Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els—the "Bioterrorist Bach"—pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey.
Through the help of his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime collaborator, Els hatches a plan to turn this disastrous collision with the security state into a work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around them. The result is a novel that soars in spirit and language by a writer who “may be America’s most ambitious novelist” (Kevin Berger, San Francisco Chronicle). (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 18, 1957
• Where—Evanston, Illinois, USA
• Education—M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—National Book Award-Fiction
• Currently—lives in the Smoky Mountian region of Tennessee
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. The Echo Maker, perhaps his best known work, won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.
Early years
One of five children, Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois. His family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood where his father was a local school principal. When Powers was 11 they moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok, which Powers attended through his freshman year, ending in 1972.
During that time outside the U.S. he developed skill in vocal music and proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction, primarily, and classics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Education
The family returned to the U.S. when Powers was 16. Following graduation in 1975 from DeKalb High School in DeKalb, Illinois, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a major in physics, which he switched to English literature during his first semester. There he earned the BA in 1978 and the MA in Literature in 1980.
He decided not to pursue the PhD partly because of his aversion to strict specialization, which had been one reason for his early transfer from physics to English, and partly because he had observed in graduate students and their professors a lack of pleasure in reading and writing (as portrayed in Galatea 2.2).
Career
For some time Powers worked in Boston, as a computer programmer. Viewing the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander, on a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, he was inspired to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first book, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985.
To avoid the publicity and attention generated by that first novel, Powers moved to the Netherlands where he wrote Prisoner's Dilemma, followed up with The Gold Bug Variations. During a year's stay at the University of Cambridge, he wrote most of Operations Wandering Soul; then, in 1992 Powers returned to the U.S. to become writer-in-residence at the University of Illinois.
All told, Powers has published a dozen books, winning him numerous literary awards and other recognitions. These include, among various others, a MacArthur Fellowship; Pushcart Prize, PEN/Faulkner Special Citation, Man Booker long listing; nominations for the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the National Book Award itself in 2006.
In 2010 and 2013, Powers was a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, during which time he partly assisted in the lab of biochemist Aaron Straight. In 2013, Stanford named him the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English.
While writing his 2018 novel, The Overstory, Powers left Palo Alto, California, moving to the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/16/2018.)
Book Reviews
Why…was I unable to resist the emotional pull of Orfeo? Why did I pick it up eagerly each day and find myself moist-eyed when I came to its last pages? That, I think, has everything to do with Powers's skill at putting us into the mind of his protagonist. Peter Els is blessed (or cursed) with an almost painfully exquisite musical sensibility. Throughout Orfeo we experience tonal patterns of all kinds—from bird song to the overtone series of a single piano note to the "caldera of noise" at a John Cage happening and the "naked pain" in the Largo of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony—filtered through Peter's lyrical consciousness.
Jim Holt - New York Times Book Review
Extraordinary…his evocations of music, let alone lost love, simply soar off the page…. Once again, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our finest novelists.
Newsday
Orfeo… establishes beyond any doubt that the novel is very much alive.
Troy Jollimore - Chicago Tribune
Orfeo is that rare novel truly deserving of the label ‘lyrical'…. Richard Powers offers a profound story whose delights are many and lasting.
Harvey Freedenberg - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Powers deftly dramatizes the obsession that has defined Els’s life: ‘How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul?'
The New Yorker
Powers proves, once again, that he's a master of the novel with Orfeo, an engrossing and expansive read that is just as much a profile of a creative, obsessive man as it is an escape narrative.
Elizabeth Sile - Esquire
Orfeo reveals how a life, and the narrative of a life, accumulates, impossibly, infinitely, from every direction…. In this retelling of the Orpheus myth Powers also manages enchantment.
Scott Korb - Slate
(Starred review.) When Els’s dog has a heart attack, police respond to his 911 call and stumble into a room converted into an amateur biochemical engineering lab.... Powers’s talent for translating avant-garde music into engrossing vignettes on the page is inexhaustible. Els’s obsession...isolates him from everyone he loves, becomes the very thing that aligns him with the reader.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Retired composer Peter Els has an unusual hobby, do-it-yourself genetic engineering. Is his work dangerous? We’re not sure.... Powers has a way of rendering the world that makes it seem familiar and alien, friendly and frightening. He is sometimes criticized as too cerebral, but when the story’s strands knit fully together in the final act, the effect is heartbreaking and beautiful. —Keir Graff
Booklist
(Starred review.) The earmarks of the renowned novelist's work are here—the impressive intellect, the patterns connecting music and science and so much else, the classical grounding of the narrative—but rarely have his novels been so tightly focused and emotionally compelling.... [T]his is taut, trim storytelling.
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 using these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Orfeo:
1. We're told at the beginning of Orfeo that Americans have shortened their attention spans. “The country’s collective concentration was simply shot,” Powers writes. “People couldn’t hold a thought or pursue a short-term goal for anywhere near as long as they could a few years before.” Do you agree? If so, why...or how?
2. Throughout his life Peter has craved a sense of awe: "surprise...suspense...and a sense of the infinite...beauty"—a nobel goal, perhaps. But in his attempts to attain the sublime, what has he sacrificed?
3. The music that Peter has worked his life to create has as its goal "to change its listeners....to raise everyone he every new from the dead and make them laugh with remembering." Is he overstating his belief in music's capabilities? What is music's effect on the human soul? What is it to you personally?
4. What drives Peter? What is he so desperate to encode melody in the nucleotides of bacteria? What might Richard Powers be suggesting about the place of music in life...or the place of all art?
5. "All I ever wanted was to make one slight noise that might delight you all," Peter says. what does he mean? Is he being disingenuous...or sincere?
6. The book can be seen as a commentary on government's overreaching and the media's gullibility. In fact, Powers draws parallels between viruses and viral media. In light of 9/11, is the nation overly tramatized? Or do think our fearfulness is justified?
7. If you're not already familiar with the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, do some research. Why has the author chosen this to name his book after Orpheus (more precisely, the the opera by Monteverdi)? Is the title symbolic? Is it ironic?
8. On the lam from government agents, Peter revisits his past. To which character are are you most sympathetic? His exwife, perhaps, or his daughter? How did Richard's pursuit of transcendence and music interfer, even damage, his relaitonships with those closest to him?
9. Talk about the book's other powerful stories of fraught connections between music and politics—Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," written in a Nazi death camp, and Shostakovich's relationship with the Stalin regime.
10. Peter believes that we are glutted with artistic attempts to be original and transcendent. What do you make of his observation that "the job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste."
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Orhan's Inheritance
Aline Ohanesian, 2015
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203740
Summary
When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal—a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs—is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business.
But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson.
Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.
Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Kuwait
• Rasied—Northridge, California, USA
• Education—M.A., University of California-Irvine
• Currently—lives in San Juan Capistrano, California
Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel,
Born Kuwait and raised in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Ohanesian’s heartrending debut chronicles the painful odyssey of one family against the broader backdrop of the Armenian genocide.... Ohanesian does a remarkable job of conveying the weight and the influence of time and place without excusing or excluding the human dimension that necessarily factors into the unfolding cataclysm.
Booklist
Unforgettable.... Drawing on the stories her Armenian great-grandmother told her, Ohanesian brings to life a painful, tragic history unfamiliar to most Americans (Editor's Pick).
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A harrowing tale of unimaginable sacrifice.... A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope.
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.)
The Orphan Keeper
Camron Wright, 2016
Shadow Mountain Publishing
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781629722245
Summary
Seven-year-old Chellamuthu’s life—and his destiny—is forever changed when he is kidnapped from his village in Southern India and sold to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children.
His family is desperate to find him, and Chellamuthu anxiously tells the Indian orphanage that he is not an orphan, he has a mother who loves him. But he is told not to worry, he will soon be adopted by a loving family in America.
Chellamuthu is suddenly surrounded by a foreign land and a foreign language. He can’t tell people that he already has a family and becomes consumed by a single, impossible question: How do I get home?
But after more than a decade, home becomes a much more complicated idea as the Indian boy eventually sheds his past and receives a new name: Taj Khyber Rowland.
It isn’t until Taj meets an Indian family who helps him rediscover his roots, as well as marrying Priya, his wife, who helps him unveil the secrets of his past, that he begins to discover the truth he has all but forgotten. Taj is determined to return to India and begin the quest to find his birth family.
But is it too late? Is it possible that his birth mother is still looking for him? And which family does he belong to now?
From the best-selling author of The Rent Collector, this is a deeply moving and gripping journey about discovering one’s self and the unbreakable family bonds that connect us forever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Camron Wright was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has a master’s degree in Writing and Public Relations from Westminster College.
He has owned several successful retail stores, in addition to working with his wife in the fashion industry, designing for the McCall Pattern Company in New York.
Camron began writing to get out of attending MBA School at the time and it proved the better decision. Letters for Emily was a “Readers Choice” award winner, as well as a selection of the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. In addition to North America, it was published in several foreign countries.
His book, The Rent Collector, won Book of the Year, Fiction, from ForeWord Reviews; Best Novel of the Year from the Whitney Awards; and was a nominee for the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award.
Camron lives with his wife, Alicyn, in Utah, just south of Salt Lake City, at the base of the Wasatch mountains. He is the proud father of four children. (From the author's webpagege.)
Book Reviews
Armed with a map drawn from memory, Taj returns to India to search for his birth family. Wright (The Rent Collector, 2012) turns the story of the real-life Chellamuthu/Taj into a meditation on identity and the meaning of family, and a novel that is sure to be a book club favorite.
Booklist
When I finished The Orphan Keeper I was keenly aware of the fragility associated with losing something precious then finding something of even greater value. Beautifully crafted by Camron Wright.... Like Dickens, the child in this story is subjected to loss leavened with love. Everything that happens is not fiction. It happened as written, and for a reader who waivers between agnosticism and belief, this is a story that has me — and keeps me — thinking. The loss and pain [is] described with consummate skill. The Orphan Keeper taps into questions of coincidence and belief that have kept me in a state of wonder since I reluctantly closed its covers. Amazing read.
Huffington Post
Truly a remarkable story of one young man’s journey to discover his past. Camron Wright’s fascinating novel is actually based on a true story, which makes it all the more powerful."
(four and a half out of five stars)
Portland Book Review
Fascinating novel paints a detailed picture of India far from the glamour of Bollywood, and takes the reader deep into what it means to lose a family and be transplanted into a new culture. It also details the drive of an adult to rediscover what was lost. Taj’s story entertains and touches the heart.
Washington Independent Review of Books
A deftly crafted and consistently compelling read from beginning to end. Riveting story of self-discovery and will prove to be an enduring popular addition to community library collections. Very highly recommended.
Midwest Book Review
Discussion Questions
1. The book’s dedication reads: To the lost child in all of us, searching for home. Can you relate to the plight of little lost Chellamuthu? In what ways are you also an orphan? In what ways are you an orphan keeper? Who in the story could be called an orphan keeper? Why?
2. Eli poses the question, “If a child is kidnapped from hell and carried to heaven, should we condemn the kidnapper?” How would you answer? Was Eli saving children by taking them out of poverty and abuse to give them a chance at a better life, or was he condemning them? Is there any justification for his actions?
3. It’s not unusual in India for kidnapped children to be intentionally maimed and then forced to beg on the streets in order to collect money for those caring for them. It has been argued that giving to these children encourages the practice. If you walked past such a child, would you give or refrain? Why?
4. When Taj returned to India as an adult, he remembered the orphanage as being three to four hours away from his home. If you were a kidnapped child of seven, would you have been able to gauge the distance so accurately? Why would Taj (Chellamuthu) have perhaps been more mature than the average seven-year-old American?
5. The Lincoln Home for Homeless Children was established to help poor Indian orphans find new homes. Did it lose its purpose over time? Is greed always destined to push noble aspirations aside? How can the slide to greed be prevented?
6. Linda quotes The Phoenician Women, by Euripides: “This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.” How was Chellamuthu enslaved? How do we enslave ourselves in a similar manner?
7. It was an amazing coincidence that Priya, when first dating Taj, discovered a letter written years earlier by her own father to Fred and Linda Rowland. Later, Taj coincidentally met Vakesh, a child with whom he had played at the orphanage. Later still, as Taj drove past his unrecognizable childhood home, he would hear the hacking of coconuts, causing him to stop, listen, and remember. Do you believe in coincidence? Are our lives guided strictly by chance, or is there something more that might explain these situations?
8. Linda dreamed that Taj would marry an Indian girl, which he eventually did. How important are dreams in our lives? Can they predict the future? If yes, how is that possible?
9. When Taj saw Priya’s picture, it was love at first sight, with his instant declaration that he was going to marry her. Do you believe in love at first sight? Is it rational? Why? Why not?
10. Many Indian parents still arrange the marriages of their children. What might be the benefits of arranged marriage? What might be the drawbacks?
11. Taj eventually discovered that he was actually from a higher caste than Priya and her family. What do you know about the caste system in India? Why do you suppose it has endured for so many years? How would you respond if you were taught that you could never rise above the duties of your caste? Although we don’t follow a caste system in the United States, do socioeconomic conditions often limit our potential? What other conditions might also be limiting?
12. When Taj was desperate for help to search for his family, he begged Christopher Raj, a man he’d just met in person the day before, to take time off work, leave his family, and return to Coimbatore to assist. Christopher, with barely a hesitation, jumped on the train for another ten-hour trip to help Taj. Would you have made a similar decision for a virtual stranger? It turned out to be a choice that dramatically changed the course of Christopher’s life (and that of Taj). What lessons can be learned from Christopher’s actions? How careful should we be with our own everyday decisions and how we interact with others?
13. In the story, Arayi visits with three astrologers. The last one tells her that her son will return, and when he does, he will fly. Although the timing of this visit to this astrologer was presented in the book as having occurred shortly after Chellamuthu was taken (for the sake of pacing and plot), in real life, it occurred years later, about eight months before Taj actually returned. Do you believe there is any validity to astrology? If not, how does one explain the accuracy of the astrologer’s prediction?
14. What in the story points to the possibility that Chellamuthu’s father sold him to the orphanage? What points to the probability that his father was not involved? Does it matter? Why? Why not?
15. Taj cherishes his wife and daughters, family he would not have if he had remained in India. That said, he still feels conflicted over having been ripped from his family in India as a child. Should Taj be grateful he was kidnapped, or should he be angry?
16. In the final pages of the book, Priya talks with Taj about his father’s possible involvement in his kidnapping, as well as Taj’s ongoing angst. When Taj confides that sharing his story has helped, she notes that stories are redemptive. Is she right? What parallels can be drawn between the telling of stories and redemption?
(Questions from the author's website.)
The Orphan Master's Son
Adam Johnson, 2012
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812982626
Summary
Winner, 2013 Pulitizer Prize
An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.
Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”
Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master’s Son ushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today’s greatest writers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—July 12, 1967
• Where—South Dakota, USA
• Where—Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., Arizona State University; M.F.A.,
McNeese State University; Ph.D., Florida State
University
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Adam Johnson, an American novelist and short story writer, was born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona. He earned a BA in Journalism from Arizona State University in 1992; a MFA from the writing program at McNeese State University, where he was a classmate of the writer Neil Connelly, in 1996; and a PhD in English from Florida State University in 2000.
Johnson is currently a San Francisco writer and associate professor in creative writing at Stanford University. He founded the Stanford Graphic Novel Project and was named "one of the nation's most influential and imaginative college professors" by Playboy Magazine.
Writing
His 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, was called by New York Times reviewer,Michiko Kakutani, "a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice." Johnson's interest in the topic arose from his sensitivity to the language of propaganda, wherever it occurs.
He also wrote the short-story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award in 2003. His work has been published in Esquire, Harper's Magazine, Tin House and The Paris Review, as well as Best New American Voices and The Best American Short Stories. His work focuses on characters at the edge of society for whom isolation and disconnection are nearly permanent conditions. Michiko Kakutani, described the central theme "running through his tales is also a melancholy melody of longing and loss: a Salingeresqe sense of adolescent alienation and confusion, combined with an acute awareness of the randomness of life and the difficulty of making and sustaining connections."
According to Daniel Mendelsohn, writing for New York Magazine, “Johnson's oh-so-slightly futuristic flights of fancy, his vaguely Blade Runner–esque visions of a cluttered, anaerobic American culture, illustrate something very real, very current: the way we must embrace the unknown, take risks, in order to give flavor and meaning to life.” A strain of absurdity also runs through is work, causing it to be described as "a funky new science fiction that was part irony and part pure dread." "Teen Sniper" is about young sniper prodigy enlisted by the Palo Alto police department to suppress the disgruntled workers of Silicon Valley. "The Canadanaut" follows a remote team of Canadian weapons developers who race to beat the Americans to the Moon.
Awards
Johnson has received a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Swarthout Writing Award, a Kingsbury Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. He was named Debut Writer of the Year in 2002 by Amazon.com, and in 2003 he was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series. He was nominated for a Young Lions Award from the New York Public Library and received scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers' conferences. In 2010, he won the Gina Berriault Literary Award. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Johnson does an agile job of combining fablelike elements with vivid emotional details to create a story that has both the boldness of a cartoon and the nuance of a deeply felt portrait. He captures the grotesque horrors that Jun Do is involved in, or witness to, even as he gives us a visceral sense of the world that his characters inhabit…In making his hero, and the nightmare he lives through, come so thoroughly alive, Mr. Johnson has written a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That's the genius of The Orphan Master's Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable…Johnson's book is an audacious act of imagination: an intimate narrative about one of the most closed nations on Earth…Yet the setting is precisely rendered…I haven't liked a new novel this much in years.
David Igantius - Washington Post
Adam Johnson's remarkable novel "The Orphan Master’s Son" is set in North Korea, an entire nation that has conformed to the fictions spun by a dictator and his inner circle…Mr. Johnson is a wonderfully flexible writer who can pivot in a matter of lines from absurdity to atrocity…We don't know what's really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel.
Wall Street Journal
Startling…Johnson's carefully layered story feels authentic...[He] writes light-footed prose, barely allowing harrowing glimpses of atrocity to register before accelerating onward. He resists the temptation to turn his subject matter into comic fodder, but never ignores the absurdity, provoking laughter with jagged edges that tends to die in your throat.
Newsday
The death of Kim Jong Il couldn't have come at a better time for novelist Adam Johnson. "The Orphan Master’s Son" is a richly textured political thriller about the hidden world of North Korea with all of its misery, violence and defiant acts of love under impossible circumstances. Stunning and evocative imagery abounds on every page.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Starred review.) Johnson’s novel accomplishes the seemingly impossible: an American writer has masterfully rendered the mysterious world of North Korea with the soul and savvy of a native, from its orphanages and its fishing boats to the kitchens of its high-ranking commanders. While oppressive propaganda echoes throughout, the tone never slides into caricature; if anything, the story unfolds with astounding empathy for those living in constant fear of imprisonment—or worse—but who manage to maintain their humanity against all odds. The book traces the journey of Jun Do, who for years lives according to the violent dictates of the state, as a tunnel expert who can fight in the dark, a kidnapper, radio operator, tenuous hero, and foreign dignitary before eventually taking his fate into his own hands. In one of the book’s most poignant moments, a government interrogator, who tortures innocent citizens on a daily basis, remembers his own childhood and the way in which his father explained the inexplicable: ‘...we must act alone on the outside, while on the inside, we would be holding hands.’ In this moment and a thousand others like it, Johnson juxtaposes the vicious atrocities of the regime with the tenderness of beauty, love, and hope.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Readers who enjoy a fast-paced political thriller will welcome this wild ride through the amazingly conflicted world that exists within the heavily guarded confines of North Korea. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] fantastical, careening tale…Informed by extensive research and travel to perhaps the most secretive nation on earth, Johnson has created a remarkable novel that encourages the willing suspension of disbelief.…Johnson winningly employs different voices, with the propagandizing national radio station serving as a mad Greek chorus. Part adventure, part coming-of-age tale, and part romance, The Orphan Master's Son is a triumph on every level.
Booklist
The Orphan Master runs an orphanage...and Jun Do may have been the only non-orphan in the place, but that doesn't keep his father, a man of influence, from mistreating him as merrily as if he weren't one of his own flesh and blood. For this is the land of Kim Jong Il, the unhappy Potemkin Village land of North Korea, where even Josef Stalin would have looked around and thought the whole business excessive. Johnson's tale hits the ground running, and fast.... The reader will have to grant the author room to accommodate the show-offishness, which seems to say, with the rest of the book, that in a world run by a Munchkin overlord like Kim, nothing can be too surreal. Indeed, once Fearless Leader speaks, he's a model of weird clarity: "But let's speak of our shared status as nuclear nations another time. Now let's have some blues." Ambitious and very well written, despite the occasional overreach.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Orphan Master's Son:
1. What makes Pak Jun Do believe he is the son of the Orphan Master? Is he right? How does a child become an orphan, what are they used for, and why are they despised by North Koreans?
2. What is the thematic significance of the Americans mistaking Jun Do as "John Doe"? What does the appellation "John Doe" mean to Americans? What does it suggest about Jun Do himself, as well as the millions of people who live under the North Korean flag?
3. How would you describe life in North Korea for its citizens? What do you find most horrifying about the way in which Adam Johnson portrays that society? How would you—or any of us—fare under such circumstances?
4. What do you make of the various characters who express their horror at life in America and the American's lack of protection by their own government? Why would North Koreans prefer their life to that of Americans?
5. Talk about the treatment of women in North Korea? What actually happens to beautiful young women who are born in the provinces? What is their fate?
6. Jun Do tells the Second Mate's wife that he can no longer distinguish dream from reality: that the Second Mate was devoured by sharks or that he floated away on a raft with only a radio. The wife tells Jun Do to "choose the beautiful story." Then the following exchange takes place:
'But isn't it more scary to be utterly alone upon the waters, completely cut off from everyone, no friends, no family, no direction, nothing but a radio for solace?'
She touched the side of his face. 'That's your story,' she said. 'You're trying to tell me your story, aren't you?... Oh, you poor boy. You poor little boy.... Come in off the water, things can be different. You don't need a radio. I'm right here. You don't have to choose to be alone.'
a) What does she mean? Is Jun Do telling his own story?
b) Why is Jun Do more frightened to be "alone upon the waters" than to be eaten by sharks?
c) Why does Jun Do miss the Junma, the captain, and his radio?
d) What is the symbolic significance of his radio work...and the fact he does it at night?
7. Even though Kim Jong Il is offstage more than not, he is ever present in the lives of the characters. How does Adam Johnson portray Dear Leader in this novel? Does Johnson lend him psychological depth? Or is he a cartoonish, one-dimensional villain?
8. The book is disjointed as it shifts perspective, time periods, and even genres. Did you find the structure confusing? The author has described his book as a "trauma narrative." What does he mean?
9. In his days on tunnel patrol, Jun Do thinks to himself...
Never use your imagination. The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.
a) How might this statement be considered a thematic concern throughout the novel?
b) What does it mean for individuals who are told not to use their imagination?
c) What does it mean for art or music or literature?
10. The author's wit is on display in The Orphan Master's Son. Were you disturbed by Johnson's humor to convey the grim horrors of life under the DPRK? Or does the author's use comedy, even farce, resemble Charles Dickens in it's ability to highlight a society's malignant insanity?
11. The book converts the second-half of the novel into an adventurous, almost lunatic, quest. Does the second half seem far-fetched to you? Does it matter?
12. How would you describe this book: thriller, coming-of-age, romance, satire?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Orphan Mother
Robert Hicks, 2016
Grand Central Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446581769
Summary
An epic account of one remarkable woman's quest for justice from the author of The Widow of the South and A Separate Country.
In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock—the "Widow of the South"—has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee.
But when her ambitious, politically-minded grown son, Theopolis, is murdered, Mariah—no stranger to loss—finds her world once more breaking apart.
How could this happen? Who wanted him dead?
Mariah's journey to uncover the truth leads her to unexpected people—including George Tole, a recent arrival to town, fleeing a difficult past of his own—and forces her to confront the truths of her own past.
Brimming with the vivid prose and historical research that has won Robert Hicks recognition as a "master storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle). (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 30, 1951
• Where—West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—unspecified college in Nashville, Tennessee
• Currently—lives in Franklin, Tennessee
Robert Hicks is the author of New York Times bestseller, The Widow of the South (2005) and two other novels in the Southern saga, A Separate Country (2009) and The Orphan Mother (2016). Hicks was born and raised in South Florida, moving to Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1974. He now lives at "Labor in Vain," his late-eighteenth-century log cabin near the Bingham Community.
Because of his writing, as well as his work in music, art, and historical preervation, Hicks made the #2 spot in the "Top 100 Reasons to Love Nashville." The list was featured in a 2015 issue of Nashville Lifestyles, which dubbed Hicks "Nashville's Master of Ceremonies."
Music and art
Hicks's interest in the arts are varied: over the years he has worked in music as a publisher and an artistic manager in both country and alternative-rock music. He has also been a partner in the B. B. King's Blues Clubs—located in Nashville, Memphis, Orlando, and Los Angeles—and continues to serve as the company's "Curator of Vibe."
As a lifelong art collector, Hicks was the first Tennessean ever to be listed among Art & Antiques's Top 100 Collectors in America. He focuses on artists such as Howard Finster and B.F. Perkins, as well as on different genres, such as Tennesseana and Southern Material Culture.
Hicks has also served as curator of the exhibition "Art of Tennessee" at the First Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. The exhibition—first conceived at Hicks's kitchen table—was seven years in the making, opening in September 2003. Hicks also co-edited of the exhibition's award winning catalog, Art of Tennessee.
Historic preservation
Hicks has long been fascinated by the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864—a particularly bloody fight that weakened the Confederate's ability to win the Civil War. Hick's interest led him to found Franklin's Charge, an organization that saved what remained of the eastern flank of the battlefield—turning it into a public battlefield park. It was a massive project, considered "the largest battlefield reclamation in North American history" by the American Battlefield Protection Program.
By the end of 2005, Franklin's Charge had already raised over 5 million dollars toward this goal, surpassing anything ever achieved by other communities in America to preserve battlefield open space. As Jim Lighthizer, President of the Civil War Preservation Trust said, "There is no 'close second' in any community in America, to what Robert Hicks and Franklin's Charge has done in Franklin."
In addition to his work for the battlefield park, Hicks has served on the boards of the Historic Carnton Plantation (a focal point of the Franklin Battle), Tennessee State Museum, The Williamson County Historical Society, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He presently serves on the board of directors of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
Historical novels
Hicks's interest in the Franklin battlefield—and a chance meeting with Civil War historian and author Shelby Foote—inspired an idea for a book, eventually leading to The Widow of the South, his first novel, which was published in 2005. Hick's intent for the book was to bring national attention to those five bloody hours on the Franklin battlefield and the impact the battle had in remaking us a nation.
A Separate Country, Hicks's second novel published in 2009, takes place in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War. It is based on the life of John Bell Hood, one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army—and one of its most tragic figures.
In 2016, Hicks released his third book in the Civil War saga, The Orphan Mother. The story follows Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock—the "Widow of the South"—who has built a new life for herself as a midwife during the post-war Reconstruction Era.
Other writing
Hicks has written other works in addition to his novels. His first book, published in 2000, is a collaboration with French-American photographer Michel Arnaud: Nashville: the Pilgrims of Guitar Town. In 2008, he co-edited (with Justin Stelter and John Bohlinger) the story collection, A Guitar and A Pen: Short Stories and Story-Songs By Nashville Songwriters.
He has also written the introduction to two books on historic preservation authored by photographer Nell Dickerson, GONE: A Photographic Plea for Preservation and Porch Dogs.
Hicks's essays on regional history, southern material culture, furniture and music have appeared in numerous publications over the years. He also writes op-eds for the New York Times on contemporary politics in the South and is a regular contributor to Garden & Gun.
More
Hicks travels throughout the nation speaking on a variety of topics ranging from "Why The South Matters" to "The Importance of Fiction in Preserving History to Southern Material Culture" and "A Model for the Preservation of Historic Open Space for Every Community."
In January 2016 Hicks was a panelist and featured speaker at the third annual Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in California. Along with American historian H.W. Brands, Hicks took part in the panel discussion "The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Matters."
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, in 2014 Hicks released the first small batch of his bourbon whiskey Battlefield Bourbon. Each of the 1,864 bottles is numbered and signed by Hicks. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/14/2016.)
Book Reviews
The ingredients for a compelling drama are there, but The Orphan Mother falls short. The storyline is plodding and there’s no real drama.... In Mariah, Hicks has created a strong and noble soul, whose comfort with herself allows her to withstand the indignities of racism.... Mariah’s reaction to Theopolis’ death lacks the passion or devastation of a parent whose only child has been viciously murdered.... The story gives readers some idea about the conflicts that marred Reconstruction and fueled Jim Crow, but it falls short of tying America’s racial past to its present.
Jeanne Marie Brown - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Hicks is a talented storyteller, and this story moves at a clip, but it feels deliberate and inorganic, his characters sometimes seemingly just vehicles moving the story forward.... Only George seems truly flesh and blood, and is the most memorable character.
Publishers Weekly
Hicks's bittersweet novel reveals a woman discovering a new sense of self in slavery's aftermath. She becomes driven by a demand for justice, though justice for blacks is almost impossible to imagine. A beautifully rendered portrait for all lovers of Civil War fiction. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
Hicks extends his Tennessee-set historical saga into the...Reconstruction Era [which] was one of the messiest times in American history, not least because establishing civil and political rights for African-Americans newly freed from slavery was left unfinished for another century. That turmoil forms the setting for Hicks' latest... Satisfying historical fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Orphan Mother...then take off on your own:
1. What kind of picture does Robert Hicks paint of the South after the Civil War? How would you describe the relations between former slaves and whites?
2. How much did you know about the Reconstruction Era before you read the Orphan Mother?
3. Talk about Mariah. Some reviewers have trouble liking her, seeing her as somewhat one-dimensional. Her anger is front and center; however given her history and all she has suffered, is her anger justified? What do you think?
4. Was Theopolis naive? Did he not expect to stir up resentment and anger among certain individuals? Or was his hope of election a real possibility?
5. What about George Tole? Talk about his past and how it has shaped the man he has become.
6. In what way does Mariah's role as a midwife elevate her status in the community?
7. What is the relationship between Mariah and her former mistress, Carrie McGovick. How do they renegotiate their new relationship with Mariah now a free woman?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Orphan Train: A Novel
Christina Baker Kline, 2013
HarperCollins
278 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061950728
Summary
Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adoles-cence of hard labor and servitude?
As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.
Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.
Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Raised—in Maine and Tennessee, USA, and the UK
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.B., Cambridge University; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives in Montclair, New Jersey
Christina Baker Kline is a novelist, nonfiction writer, and editor. She is perhaps best known for her most recent novels, The Exiles (2020) A Piece of the World (2017) and Orphan Train (2013).
Kline also commissioned and edited two widely praised collections of original essays on the first year of parenthood and raising young children, Child of Mine and Room to Grow. She coauthored a book on feminist mothers and daughters, The Conversation Begins, with her mother, Christina L. Baker, and she coedited About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror with Anne Burt.
Kline grew up in Maine, England, and Tennessee, and has spent a lot of time in Minnesota and North Dakota, where here husband grew up. She is a graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing.
She has taught creative writing and literature at Fordham and Yale, among other places, and is a recent recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation fellowship. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her family. (From the pubisher.)
Book Reviews
This superbly composed novel tells two parallel stories of suffering and perseverance, capturing the heart and mind equally and remaining mesmerizing through the intensely heart-wrenching conclusion.
RT Times Review
Kline’s absorbing new novel (after Bird in the Hand) is a heartfelt page-turner.... Seventeen-year-old Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer has spent most of her life in foster care. When...she ends up cleaning out elderly Vivian Daly’s attic[,] Molly learns that Vivian was herself an orphan...put on the Orphan Train in the late 1920s and tossed from home to home in Minnesota. The growing connection leads Molly to dig deeper into Vivian’s life, which allows Molly to discover her own potential and helps Vivian rediscover someone she believed had been lost to her forever.... Kline lets us live the characters’ experiences vividly through their skin, and...[t]he growth from instinct to conscious understanding to partnership between the two is the foundation for a moving tale.
Publishers Weekly
[A] compelling story about loss, adaptability, and courage. Molly is a rebellious 17-year-old foster child sentenced to community service for stealing a copy of Jane Eyre. She finds a position cleaning out the attic of Vivian, an elderly woman in their coastal Maine town. As Molly sorts through old trunks and boxes, Vivian begins to share stories from her past.... [when] she was packed off on one of the many orphan trains intended to bring children to Midwestern families who would care for them. Each orphan's lot was largely dependent on the luck of the draw. In this, Vivian's life parallels Molly's, and an unlikely friendship blossoms. —Christine Perkins, Bellingham P.L., WA
Library Journal
[A] dramatic, emotional story from a neglected corner of American history. Molly is a troubled teen, a foster child bounced from one unsuitable home to another. Vivian is a wealthy 91-year-old widow, settled in a Victorian mansion on the Maine seashore. But Vivian's story has much in common with Molly's.... Vivian's journey west was aboard an "Orphan Train," a bit of misguided 1900s-era social engineering moving homeless, destitute city children, mostly immigrants, into Midwest families.... Kline does a superb job in connecting goth-girl Molly...to Vivian, who sees her troubled childhood reflected in angry Molly.... A deeply emotional story drawn from the shadows.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. On the surface, Vivian's and Molly's lives couldn't be more different. In what ways are their stories similar?
2. In the prologue Vivian mentions that her "true love" died when she was 23, but she doesn't mention the other big secret in the book. Why not?
3. Why hasn't Vivian ever shared her story with anyone? Why does she tell it now?
4. What role does Vivian's grandmother play in her life? How does the reader's perception of her shift as the story unfolds?
5. Why does Vivian seem unable to get rid of the boxes in her attic?
6. In Women of the Dawn, a nonfiction book about the lives of four Wabanaki Indians excerpted in the epigraph, Bunny McBride writes:
In portaging from one river to another, Wabanakis had to carry their canoes and all other possessions. Everyone knew the value of traveling light and understood that it required leaving some things behind. Nothing encumbered movement more than fear, which was often the most difficult burden to surrender.
How does the concept of portaging reverberate throughout this novel? What fears hamper Vivian's progress? Molly's?
7. Vivian's name changes several times over the course of the novel: from Niamh Power to Dorothy Nielsen to Vivian Daly. How are these changes significant for her? How does each name represent a different phase of her life?
8. What significance, if any, does Molly Ayer's name have?
9. How did Vivian's first-person account of her youth and the present-day story from Molly's third-person-limited perspective work together? Did you prefer one story to the other? Did the juxtaposition reveal things that might not have emerged in a traditional narrative?
10. In what ways, large and small, does Molly have an impact on Vivian's life? How does Vivian have an impact on Molly's?
11. What does Vivian mean when she says, "I believe in ghosts"?
12. When Vivian finally shares the truth about the birth of her daughter and her decision to put May up for adoption she tells Molly that she was "selfish" and "afraid." Molly defends her and affirms Vivian's choice. How did you perceive Vivian's decision? Were you surprised she sent her child to be adopted after her own experiences with the Children's Aid Society?
13. When the children are presented to audiences of potential caretakers, the Children's Aid Society explains adoptive families are responsible for the child's religious upbringing. What role does religion play in this novel? How do Molly and Vivian each view God?
14. When Vivian and Dutchy are reunited she remarks, "However hard I try, I will always feel alien and strange. And now I've stumbled on a fellow outsider, one who speaks my language without saying a word." How is this also true for her friendship with Molly?
15. When Vivian goes to live with the Byrnes Fanny offers her food and advises, "You got to learn to take what people are willing to give." In what ways is this good advice for Vivian and Molly? What are some instances when their independence helped them?
16. Molly is enthusiastic about Vivian's reunion with her daughter, but makes no further efforts to see her own mother. Why is she unwilling or unable to effect a reunion in her own family? Do you think she will someday?
17. Vivian's Claddagh cross is mentioned often throughout the story. What is its significance? How does its meaning change or deepen over the course of Vivian's life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Orphan's Tale
Pam Jenoff, 2017
MIRA
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778319818
Summary
A powerful novel of friendship and sacrifice, set in a traveling circus during World War II, by international bestselling author Pam Jenoff.
Seventeen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier during the occupation of her native Holland.
Heartbroken over the loss of the baby she was forced to give up for adoption, she lives above a small German rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep.
When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants, unknown children ripped from their parents and headed for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the baby that was taken from her. In a moment that will change the course of her life, she steals one of the babies and flees into the snowy night, where she is rescued by a German circus.
The circus owner offers to teach Noa the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond.
But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their unlikely friendship is enough to save one another—or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., George Washington University; M.A., Cambridge University; J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. She attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge University in England.
Upon receiving her master's in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor.
Following her work at the Pentagon, Pam moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.
Pam left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for several years as a labor and employment attorney both at a firm and in-house in Philadelphia and now teaches law school at Rutgers.
Pam is the author of The Kommandant's Girl, which was an international bestseller and nominated for a Quill award, as well as The Diplomat's Wife, The Ambassador's Daughter, Almost Home, A Hidden Affair and The Things We Cherished.
She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In prose that is beautiful, ethereal, and poignant, The Orphan's Tale is a novel you won't be able to put down.
Bustle
Against the backdrop of circus life during the war, the author captures the very real terrors faced by both women as they navigate their working and personal relationships and their complicated love lives while striving for normalcy and keeping their secrets safe.
Publishers Weekly
Noa becomes pregnant by a soldier and is compelled to give up both baby and home. Living above a railway station she cleans to pay her bills, she discovers a boxcar full of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp and steals one, joining a traveling circus to cover her tracks. Over-the-top imagination.
Library Journal
A Jewish trapeze artist and a Dutch unwed mother bond, after much aerial practice, as the circus comes to Nazi-occupied France.… The diction seems too contemporary for the period, and the degree of danger the characters are in is more often summarized than demonstrated. An interesting premise imperfectly executed.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add the author's questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Orphan's Tale...then take off on your own:
1. Noa gives her newborn away but remains bereft by the loss and tormented by visions of the child. What do you make of her decision?
2. In her own voice, Noa tells us...
I am unfamiliar with infants and I hold him at arm's length now, like a dangerous animal. But he moves closer, nuzzling against my neck.
Talk about the horror of that scene in the "nursery car" (which is historically accurate). What prompts Noa to save a half-dead?
3.What do you make of Astrid, whose voice alternates with Noa's? How has her tumultuous past shaped her character, especially in terms of her ability to trust others?
4. Talk about the development of the Noa and Astrid's relationship, on the ropes and off.
5. Author Pam Jenoff conducted considerable research into Jewish circus dynasties, which has enabled her to provide the grainy details of circus life. What do you find interesting or what, in particular, strikes you about life under the tent?
6. Talk about the symbolic use of the circus with its twinkling lights as a foil to the darkness and terror of the Nazi era.
7. What do you make of the novel's other characters—Herr Neuhoff, or Peter, for instance. In what way do they demonstrate courage in the face of danger, brutality, and evil?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Orphans at Race Point
Patry Francis, 2014
HarperCollins
544pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062281302
Summary
When a horrific act of violence shatters the peaceful October night in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the fates of nine-year-olds Gus Silva and Hallie Costa become inextricably entwined.
Told in alternating voices, The Orphans of Race Point traces their relationship over the next three decades as they try to come to terms with the past. What begins as a childhood friendship evolves into something stronger, but when a terrible tragedy exhumes the ghosts they thought they'd put to rest, their dreams are abruptly destroyed.
Hallie and Gus move forward to build separate lives, but Gus's hard-won peace is threatened when he meets a troubled woman who awakens memories of the childhood he has worked so hard to forget. Although helping her offers him a chance at the redemption he desperately desires, it will come at a devastating price.
Turning around an unthinkable betrayal, this epic, all-consuming novel explores how far we will go for love, even if it means sacrificing everything—and in doing so, celebrates our capacity for faith, forgiveness, and hope. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Brockton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Currently—lives in Hyannis, Massachusetts
Patry Francis has published stories and poems in the Ontario Review, Tampa Review, Antioch Review, Colorado Review, American Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is a three time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and has been the recipient of a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council twice. Her first novel The Liar's Diary was published in 2007, and her second, The Orphans of Race Point, in 2014. She has four children and lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Like Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, this sprawling...[novel] starts out with a traumatic incident involving a young boy befriended by a girl and expands from there into a Dickensian story in which criminals with murky motives mingle casually with the pure of heart. —Laurie Cavanaugh, Holmes P.L., Halifax, MA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [T]his beautifully wrought novel is a sometimes wrenching but ultimately uplifting story of murder and betrayal in the face of faith, family in its truest sense, and—most of all—love.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. In the opening chapter of the novel, Hallie experiences an almost mystical connection with Gus at the hour when he suffers a lifealtering tragedy. Yet, she never tells anyone what happened to her that night—not even Gus. Why do you think she keeps her secret? How are the bonds we form as children different from those we make later on?
2. Nick lives by something he calls cortesia, which means courtesy in Portuguese. In what way is his interpretation different from simple politeness? How does it shape who his daughter, and to some extent, even Gus, becomes? If you had to choose one guiding principle for your life, what would it be?
3. Gus and Hallie grow up in an unusually tight-knit Portuguese community in which extended family, neighbors, and cultural tradition play a significant role. How does that shape their identity and sustain them in difficult times? In what ways is life diminished when we lose that?
4. The sea itself is a character in this novel, obsessing some, influencing all. Wolf spends his life trying to capture the ever-changing waters at Race Point on canvas, but never feels satisfied with the results. How do the other characters relate to the ocean? How does geography shape us all?
5. In a pivotal scene in the graveyard, Gus tells Hallie the secrets he never told anyone. She accepts most of it, but there are some things she doesn't understand until much later. What are they, and how do they affect her dreams for the future?
6. There are many orphans in this novel, some literally parentless, others emotionally bereft. Discuss the different ways they deal with their loneliness and loss. Why do some characters thrive, while others are destroyed by their sense of isolation?
7. Talk about the role of spirituality in the story. Gus has committed his life to traditional religion, and Hallie finds solace and awe in nature. Yet, their values are very similar and they share an abiding respect. How important is this in the novel? In our world?
8. After Gus is approached by a desperate Ava, his desire to help causes him to make a series of reckless choices. Why is he willing to take such risks for a stranger? Is it his personality, his history, or a combination of both?
9. Gus takes two "sacred" items to prison with him: a copy of David Copperfield and the photograph of a child he never met. Why are those things so important to him? Why does he give one back, but refuse to return the other?
10. Were you surprised by Hallie's marriage, or did it make sense in a way? Do you think its fate would have been different if she hadn't received the devastating call from Neil when she did?
11. How does the introduction of Mila as a first person narrator in the final third of the story change the narrative? In what way does she change Gus's life in their very first meeting? What is it about his presence that causes her to admit her vulnerability?
12. Following years of devastating and life-threatening abuse from their husbands, both Maria and Ava come to believe they are powerless to protect themselves and their children. How are their situations similar? How are they different?
13. Talk about the various "chosen families" that appear in the novel. Are they different from those formed by blood? If so, how? Do you believe they will endure?
14. After Nick's death, Hallie deeply regrets the time she didn't spend with her father. Is this a universal theme? How does she come to terms with it? How does Nick's presence continue to be felt when he is gone?
15. This is a long novel with many significant characters. Apart from the three protagonists, was there one who particularly resonated with you? Why?
16. At the end of the novel, Gus and Hallie feel as if they've never truly known their childhood friend, Neil. Did he change? If so, why? What were the signs throughout the story that he was not who they thought he was? Why did they choose to ignore them?
17. How does Hallie's concept of love evolve from the beginning of the story to the end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood, 2003
Knopf Doubleday
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385721677
Summary
Margaret Atwood's new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.
The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.
With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. (From the publisher.)
This is the first book in Atwood's dystopian trilogy: the second is The Year of the Flood (2009); the third is MaddAddam (2013)
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
This is the intention of the novel: to goad us to thought by making us screen in the mind a powerful vision of competence run amok. What Atwood could not have intended, and what is no less alarming and exponentially more urgent, is the resonance between her rampaging plague scenario and the recent global outbreak of SARS. Moving from book to newspaper, or newspaper to book, the reader realizes, with a jolt, how the threshold of difference has been lowered in recent months. The force of Atwood's imagining grows in direct proportion to our rising anxiety level. And so does the importance of her implicit caution.
Steve Bricket - New York Times
Set in a future some two generations hence, Oryx and Crake can hold its own against any of the 20th century's most potent dystopias—Brave New World, 1984, The Space Merchants—with regard to both dramatic impact and fertility of invention, while it leaves such lesser recent contenders as Paul Theroux and Doris Lessing in the dust.
Thomas M. Disch - Washington Post
A less talented writer might have preached. But Atwood entices with deadpan humor and wry asides from Snowman's sunbaked subconscious, commenting on the fall of civilization.
Jakie Pray - USA Today
Atwood has visited the future before, in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale. In her latest, the future is even bleaker. The triple whammy of runaway social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event. As Jimmy, apparently the last human being on earth, makes his way back to the RejoovenEsencecompound for supplies, the reader is transported backwards toward that cataclysmic event, its full dimensions gradually revealed. Jimmy grew up in a world split between corporate compounds (gated communities metastasized into city-states) and pleeblands (unsafe, populous and polluted urban centers). His best friend was "Crake," the name originally his handle in an interactive Net game, Extinctathon. Even Jimmy's mother—who ran off and joined an ecology guerrilla group when Jimmy was an adolescent—respected Crake, already a budding genius. The two friends first encountered Oryx on the Net; she was the eight-year-old star of a pedophilic film on a site called HottTotts. Oryx's story is a counterpoint to Jimmy and Crake's affluent adolescence. She was sold by her Southeast Asian parents, taken to the city and eventually made into a sex "pixie" in some distant country. Jimmy meets Oryx much later—after college, after Crake gets Jimmy a job with ReJoovenEsence. Crake is designing the Crakers—a new, multicolored placid race of human beings, smelling vaguely of citron. He's procured Oryx to be his personal assistant. She teaches the Crakers how to cope in the world and goes out on secret missions. The mystery on which this riveting, disturbing tale hinges is how Crake and Oryx and civilization vanished, and how Jimmy—who also calls himself "the Snowman," after that other rare, hunted specimen, the Abominable Snowman—survived. Chesterton once wrote of the "thousand romances that lie secreted in The Origin of Species." Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them, and one of the most brilliant.
Publishers Weekly
The doyenne of Canadian literature (she's won both a Booker and a Giller Prize), the versatile Atwood has an uncanny ability to write in a number of literary genres. Like The Handmaid's Tale, her latest work is set in a near future that is all too realistic and almost too terrifying to contemplate. Having once led a life of comfort and self-indulgence, Jimmy, now known as Snowman, has survived an ecological disaster that has destroyed the world as we know it. As he struggles to function without everything he once knew, including time, Snowman reflects on the past, on his relationships with two characters named Oryx and Crake, and on the role of each individual in the destruction of the natural world. From its opening scene, in which the children of Crake scavenge through debris, to its horrifying conclusion, this novel challenges the reader, cleverly pairing familiar aspects of the world with parts that have been irrevocably changed. A powerful and perturbing glimpse into a dark future, this is Atwood's impassioned plea for responsible management of our human, scientific, and natural resources and a novel that will cast long and lingering shadows in the reader's mind, well after the book is closed. —Caroline Hallsworth, City of Greater Sudbury, Ont.
Library Journal
Environmental unconcern, genetic engineering, and bioterrorism have created the hollowed-out, haunted future world of Atwood's ingenious and disturbing 11th novel, bearing several resemblances to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). Protagonist Jimmy, a.k.a. "Snowman," is perhaps the only living "remnant" (i.e., human unaltered by science) in a devastated lunar landscape where he lives by his remaining wits, scavenges for flotsam surviving from past civilizations, dodges man-eating mutant predators, and remembers. In an equally dark parallel narrative, Atwood traces Jimmy's personal history, beginning with a bonfire in which diseased livestock are incinerated, observed by five-year-old Jimmy and his father, a "genographer" employed by, first, OrganInc Farms, then, the sinister Helthwyzer Corporation. One staggering invention follows another, as Jimmy mourns the departure of his mother (a former microbiologist who clearly foresaw the Armageddon her colleagues were building), goes through intensive schooling with his brilliant best friend Glenn (who renames himself Crake), and enjoys such lurid titillations as computer games that simulate catastrophe and global conflict (e.g., "Extinctathon," "Kwiktime Osama") and Web sites featuring popular atrocities (e.g., "hedsoff.com"). Surfing a kiddie-porn site, Jimmy encounters the poignant figure of Oryx, a Southeast Asian girl apprenticed (i.e., sold) to a con-man, then a sex-seller (in sequences as scary and revolting as anything in contemporary fiction). Oryx will inhabit Jimmy's imagination forever, as will the perverse genius Crake, who rises from the prestigious Watson-Crick Institute to a position of literally awesome power at the RejoovenEsenseCompound, where he works on a formula for immortality, creates artificial humans (the "Children of Crake"), and helps produce the virus that's pirated and used to start a plague that effectively decimates the world's population. And Atwood (The Blind Assassin, 2000, etc.) brings it all together in a stunning surprise climax. A landmark work of speculative fiction, comparable to A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and Russian revolutionary Zamyatin's We. Atwood has surpassed herself.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Oryx and Crake includes many details that seem futuristic, but are in fact already apparent in our world. What parallels were you able to draw between the items in the world of the novel and those in your own?
2 . Margaret Atwood coined many words and brand names while writing the novel. In what way has technology changed your vocabulary over the past five years?
3. The game "Extinctathon" emerges as a key component in the novel. Jimmy and Crake also play "Barbarian Stomp" and "Blood and Roses." What comparable video games do you know of? What is your opinion of arcades that feature virtual violence? Discuss the advantages and dangers of virtual reality. Is the novel form itself a sort of virtual reality?
4. If you were creating the game "Blood and Roses," what other "Blood" items would you add? What other "Rose" items?
5. If you had the chance to fabricate an improved human being, would you do it? If so, what features would you choose to incorporate? Why would these be better than what we've got? Your model must of course be biologically viable.
6. The pre-catastrophic society in Oryx and Crake is fixated on physical perfection and longevity, much as our own society is. Discuss the irony of these quests, both within the novel and in our own society.
7. One aspect of the novel's society is the virtual elimination of the middle class. Economic and intellectual disparities, as well as the disappearance of safe public space, allow for few alternatives: People live either in the tightly controlled Compounds of the elites, or in the more open but seedier and more dangerous Pleeblands. Where would your community find itself in the world of Oryx and Crake?
8. Snowman soon discovers that despite himself he's invented a new creation myth, simply by trying to think up comforting answers to the "why" questions of the Children of Crake. In Part Seven-the chapter entitled "Purring"-Crake claims that "God is a cluster of neurons," though he's had trouble eradicating religious experiences without producing zombies. Do you agree with Crake? Do Snowman's origin stories negate or enhance your views on spirituality and how it evolves among various cultures?
9. How might the novel change if narrated by Oryx? Do any similarities exist between her early life and Snowman's? Do you always believe what she says?
10. Why does Snowman feel compelled to protect the benign Crakers, who can't understand him and can never be his close friends? Do you believe that the Crakers would be capable of survival in our own society?
11. In the world of Oryx and Crake, almost everything is for sale, and a great deal of power is now in the hands of large corporations and their private security forces. There are already more private police in North America than there are public ones. What are the advantages of such a system? What are the dangers?
12. In what ways does the dystopia of Oryx and Crake compare to those depicted in novels such as Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale? What is the difference between speculative fiction—which Atwood claims to write—and science fiction proper?
13. The book has two epigraphs, one from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and one from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Why do you think these were chosen?
14. The ending of the novel is open, allowing for tantalizing speculation. How do you envision Snowman's future? What about the future of humanity—both within the novel, and outside its pages?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Oscar and Lucinda
Peter Carey, 1988
Knopf Doubleday
443 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679777502
Summary
Winner, 1988 Booker Prize
This sweeping, irrepressibly inventive novel, is a romance, but a romance of the sort that could only take place in nineteenth-century Australia. For only on that sprawling continent—a haven for misfits of both the animal and human kingdoms—could a nervous Anglican minister who gambles on the instructions of the Divine become allied with a teenaged heiress who buys a glassworks to help liberate her sex.
Only the prodigious imagination of Peter Carey could implicate Oscar and Lucinda in a narrative of love and commerce, religion and colonialism, that culminates in a half-mad expedition to transport a glass church across the Outback. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 7, 1943
• Where—Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
• Education—Monash University
• Awards—Booker Prize (twice); National Book Council Award;
Commonealth Writers Prize (twice); Franklin Miles Award
(thrice); Prix duMeilleur Livre Etranger; Colin Roderick Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA
"My fictional project has always been the invention or discovery of my own country," the prizewinning Australian author Peter Carey has said. This postcolonial undertaking has sometimes led Carey to wrestle with the great works of English literature: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994) draws on Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, while Jack Maggs (1997), a version of Dickens's Great Expectations, is told from the perspective of the convict who returns to England from Australia.
But although Carey went to what he calls "a particularly posh" Australian boarding school, he claims he didn't discover literature until he was out of school. He studied chemistry at Monash University for just a year before leaving to work in advertising. There, surrounded by readers and would-be writers, he discovered the great literature of the 20th century, including authors like Joyce, Faulkner and Beckett. "To read Faulkner for the first time was for me like discovering another planet," Carey said in an interview with The Guardian. "The pleasure of that language, the politics of giving voice to the voiceless."
Publishers rejected Carey's first three novels, so he began writing short stories. These, he later said, "felt like the first authentic things I had done." He was still working for an advertising agency when his first collection of short stories appeared in 1973, and he kept the part-time job after moving to an "alternative community" in Queensland. His first published novel, Bliss (1981), won a prestigious Australian literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. The book is about an advertising executive who has a near-death experience and ends up living in a rural commune.
Carey's later novels ranged farther outside the bounds of his own experience, but he continued to develop his concern with Australian identity. 1988's Oscar and Lucinda, which tells the story of a colonial Australian heiress and her ill-fated love for an English clergyman, won the Booker Prize and helped establish Carey as one of the literary heavyweights of his generation. He won another Booker Prize for True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), the story of a notorious 19th-century outlaw whose legacy still shapes Australia's consciousness.
Though Carey now lives and teaches in New York City, his home country and its past still possess his imagination. ''History,'' he writes, ''is like a bloodstain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we paint over it.''
Extras
• Peter Carey and J. M. Coetzee are the only two-time Booker Prize winners to date.
• Carey caused a stir in the British press when he declined an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II. The royal invitation is extended to all winners of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, which Carey received in 1998 for Jack Maggs. He did meet the Queen after he won the award a second time, for True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.
• Fans of Carey's work know that in 1997, Oscar and Lucinda was made into a critically acclaimed movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett. But they may not know that Carey wrote the screenplay for the critically panned Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World (1991) as well as the screenplay adaptation of his own novel, Bliss (1991). (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Bursting with informed gusto, freewheeling comedy, pauses of pathos and moments of surreal poetry – swaggering streetboys ‘with their hands boasting against their braces,’ scared cockatoos flying up "like screeching feathers from a burst pillow"– Oscar & Lucinda is a creative explosion of delight at life’s wayward, diverse plentifulness.
Peter Kemp - Sunday Times (London)
Carey is one of the great story-tellers of our time, the kind who make you take the telephone off the hook, forget the television and ignore the doorbell.... He has the rare gift of making the written world more vivid than life. A magnificent book.
Evening Standard (UK)
Luminous and magical, Oscar and Lucinda dances with a shimmer of light and dark as its two noble gamblers play out dreams of God and glass. A spectacular achievement.
The Age (Australia)
It is Thomas Wolfe one is reminded of most when reading Peter Carey...they share that magnificent vitality, that ebullient delight in character, detail and language that turns a novel into an important book.
New York Times Book Review
A kind of rollercoaster ride...The reader emerges...gasping, blinking, reshaped in a hundred ways, conscious that the world is never going to look the same again.
Washington Post
We have a great novelist living on the planet with us, and his name is Peter Carey.
Los Angeles Times
As fine a love story and as fascinating an exploration as any reader could wish...Carey writes as if the world he has created, and his own private life, are at stake.
Chicago Tribune
The stuff of shimmering, transparent fantasy, held together by the struts of 19th-century history and the millions of painstaking details.
Time
If Illywhacker astounded us with its imaginative richness, this latest Carey novel does so again, with a masterly sureness of touched added. It's a story, in a sense the story, of mid-19th century England and Australia, narrated by a man of our time and therefore permeated with modern consciousness. Oscar is a shy, gawky, Oxford-educated Church of England minister with a tortured conscience; Lucinda is a willful, eccentric Australian who sinks her family inheritance into a glass factory; and the basis for the star-crossed love that develops between them is a shared passion for gambling. They meet on the boat to Sydney, Oscar becomes Lucinda's lodger after being defrocked for his "vice" and, finally, leaving a trail of scandal behind them, they construct a glass church in the Outback, their wildest gamble yet. The narrative techniques though which Carey dramatizes the effects of English religious beliefs and social mores upon frontier Australia smack of both Dickens and of Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman; but he doesn't lean upon his sources, he uses them, for his own subtle and controlled purposes. His prose (full of such flashes as "A cormorant broke from the surface, like an improbable idea tearing the membrane between dream and life") is an almost constant source of surprise, and he is clearly in the forefront of that literary brilliance now flowing out of Australia..
Publishers Weekly
As he demonstrated in Bliss (1981) and Illywhacker (1985), Carey is partial to eccentrics. Here, he provides a splendid array of cranks and monomaniacs — with two of them, the title characters, living out an odd and tender love story. Yet theirs is only the central plot in an astonishingly complex literary performance that moves between England and Australia in the 1860's. There are dozens of characters and at least five important storylines, two set in the Old World and three in the New. Mostly, though, this is a leisurely and witty fable about the two great enthusiasms of the 19th century — religion and science. Many great schemes were hatched to try to harmonize the two, and so it is here. Lucinda, an Australian heiress, consults Joseph Paxton, architect of London's Crystal Palace, and then she and Oscar, a clergyman, set out to erect a glass church — in darkest New South Wales. The whole book is also a literary parody. Here, the results are uneven, largely because Carey has made some errant choices. His first targets are Fielding and Sterne. But these were 18th-century writers who expressed the energy of a particular moment: the last gasp of Merrie Olde England, about to be submerged by piety, industrialism, and red plush draperies with ball fringe. Carey is off the mark here. He fares better when he begins to parody Trollope. His style then becomes more appropriate to the material; also less facetious and digressive. Oscar and Lucinda (582 pp.) is sometimes too slow, and its energetic whimsicality can be grating. Against that, though, set writing that is far more often lucid and fine, beautifully drawn characters, and a remarkably clever narrative scheme. A brave and original novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Oscar and Lucinda:
1. The earliest of the many arresting episodes in this book is the Christmas pudding incident. How does Oscar's delight in this new taste—and the subsequent anger of his father—set the stage for the events of the novel?
2. In relation to Question #1, many see the pudding scene as a retelling of Adam and the forbidden fruit in Genesis. Does that reading make sense to you? How might that interpreta-tion, the fall and expulsion from paradise, play itself out in the remainder of the story?
3. What explains Oscar's conversion from his father's fundamentalist sect to the Anglican Church? Discuss Oscar's hopscotch-like theology. Does God direct where the stone falls...or is it a game of chance? What does Oscar believe? What do you believe?
4. Talk about Oscar's religious beliefs. Is he good...or corrupt? Is he endangering his soul by gambling? Or does the fact that he devotes his winnings to charitable causes justify, or make right, his gambling obsession? What does Oscar believe?
5. In relation to Question #2: Peter Carey invokes 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal in this novel. Pascal postulates that belief in God is a necessary bet: if you're right about the existence of God, you win. Even if you're wrong, and there is no God, you still win because you've led a good life. Oscar adheres to Pascal's ideas: belief in God is a gamble. What do you think? Is Oscar (or Pascal) right? Can faith be reduced to a bet—a matter of chance?
6. What kind of characters are Oscar and Lucinda? They're eccentric, of course, but how else might you describe them? What makes them fall in love? (Can you recall the moment when Lucinda suddenly realizes that she might be in love with Oscar?) Why aren't the two honest in their feelings with one another?
7. Discuss the ways Lucinda flouts prevailing societal codes for women of her day?
8. In what way do Oscar and Lucinda refuse to accept their society's racist views of Australia's Aboriginals?
9. Is it a flaw, or a strength, in their characters that neither Oscar nor Lucinda understands or cares (which?) how others view them?
10. Reviewer Aravind Adiga writes that "for Oscar and Lucinda, [gambling is] an expression of their desire for real change and reformation. In that sense, gambling is also an expression of their innocence." Thus the two make their fantastic wager on the glass church. Can you comment on Adiga's observation? Do you think he's right—that their gambling is not only a rebellion but also a way to right the wrongs of rigid societal codes—against Aboriginals, women and innovators? (See the full review in The Second Circle.)
11. What is Lucinda's fascination with glass? (Consider the name Lucinda...just for fun.)
12. Relating to Question #11: glass is obviously (clearly?) symbolic in this work. What does it represent? Carey has said in an interview with BBC World Book Club that glass is perfect and pure but also dangerous—when glass breaks, it cuts. How does that idea connect with a church of made of glass—which is being carried into the wilds of Australia? What might it mean, metaphorically, that Oscar bets he can carry the glass without breaking it?
12. Although it may be overly schematic, consider the metaphor of church and commerce betting against one another for the soul of Australia (or any society). What are the ramifications of such a bet by two powerful institutions— particularly for indigenous people?
13. Oscar comes to regard the trials of his journey through the outback as punishment for his sins. Do you think he's right? Will his suffering redeem him in God's eyes?
14. What affect does the use of shifting perspectives have on your reading of the novel? Did you find the varying points of view illuminating or confusing or interruptive?
13. What was your experience reading this book? Did you find it humorous, sad, funny, intriguing? Talk about Carey's writing style—his descriptive passages; insinuations and indirect sentences; and satirical eye. He has been compared by some to Charles Dickens in his idiosyncratic characters and convoluted plots. Do you see similarities?
14. Were you satisfied or disappointed by the novel's ending? Where were the plot's turning points—where different decisions by either Oscar or Lucinda might have changed the story's outcome?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Other
David Guterson, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
255 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307274816
Summary
From the author of the best-selling Snow Falling on Cedars, a dazzling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.
John William Barry has inherited the pedigree—and wealth—of two of Seattle’s elite families; Neil Countryman is blue-collar Irish. Nevertheless, when the two boys meet in 1972 at age sixteen, they’re brought together by what they have in common: a fierce intensity and a love of the outdoors that takes them, together and often, into Washington’s remote backcountry, where they must rely on their wits—and each other—to survive.
Soon after graduating from college, Neil sets out on a path that will lead him toward a life as a devoted schoolteacher and family man. But John William makes a radically different choice, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods, convinced that it is the only way to live without hypocrisy. When John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, Neil finds himself drawn into a web of secrets and often agonizing responsibility, deceit, and tragedy—one that will finally break open with a wholly unexpected, life-altering revelation.
Riveting, deeply humane, The Other is David Guterson’s most brilliant and provocative novel to date. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 4, 1956
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—M.A., University of Washington
• Awards—Pen/Faulkner Award, 1995
• Currently—lives on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, Washington
David Guterson is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind; Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense; Snow Falling on Cedars, which won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award, the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award, and was an international bestseller; and the national bestseller East of the Mountains.
More
Like many great writers before him, David Guterson draws on the rich local culture of the Pacific Northwest for inspiration in creating unforgettable characters and settings. Guterson credits many influences on his writing, beginning with his father, Murray Guterson, a distinguished criminal defense lawyer: His father's example taught him first and foremost to choose a career he would love, which also meant making positive contributions to the world.
Guterson was intrigued by the narrative of his father's cases. He often sat in on trials, but never felt the urge to become an attorney. When he started college, after one week in a creative writing class, he decided to become a writer. He eventually studied under Charles Johnson (author of Middle Passage), developing his ideas about the moral function of literature and concluded that it is the obligation of writers to present moral questions for reflection.
As Guterson honed his skills as a writer, he sought a variety of jobs that would afford him the time to practice his craft. He narrowed it down to firefighter or English teacher, and chose to become a teacher, mainly because he wanted to surround himself with books and writers on a daily basis. He moved to Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, teaching English at the local high school and freelancing as a journalist for Sports Illustrated and Harper's magazine.
During his years as an English teacher, Guterson discovered another one of his life's great influences. Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird became his favorite book, using the structure as a basis for Snow Falling on Cedars and asking many of the same moral questions. He says of Harper Lee's only book, "No other book had such an enormous impact. I read it 20 times in 10 years and it never got old, only richer, deeper and more interesting."
Guterson's first published works were short stories, mostly about young men poised on the edge of manhood, set in the Pacific Northwest. The stories were eventually published under the title The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind in 1989.
Finally, after ten years of researching and writing, Guterson's first novel was released in1995. Snow Falling on Cedars is the story of a tranquil town of fishermen and strawberry farmers, captivated by the murder a local man and the resulting trial of his lifelong friend. But the novel is more than a historical novel about the internment of Japanese-Americans or an inter-racial love story. Ultimately, the narrative seeks to ask the most basic of questions. That is, in a universe so indifferent to our fate, what is the best way to endure? Readers and critics responded, and the novel won a string of awards, including a Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers distinction and the 1995 Pen/Faulkner award.
Guterson's sophomore release in 1998 may have had some large shoes to fill, but the beautifully written East of the Mountains treated readers to a story of rebirth, set in the lush apple orchards of the Pacific Northwest. The novel details the final journey of a dying man's determination to end his life on his own terms, and contains Guterson's signature style of lustrous, emotional prose.
Fans of Guterson had to wait five more years for the 2003 release of Our Lady of the Forest, but readers and critics agree it was worth the wait. Guterson allows his characters to be all-to-human in this story of a young runaway who develops a following of believers after she reports seeing the Virgin Mary in the forest. His characters lust, fail and do the wrong thing, and even the landscape is imperfect in this suspenseful tale of what happens when one's faith is called into question. Classic Guterson.
Extras
• When he won the 1995 Pen/Faulkner award for Snow Falling on Cedars, Guterson quickly recognized the reclusive Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird for his success. He wrote to Lee asking her to come to the award ceremony in Washington, D.C., but being a highly private woman, she didn't attend.
• Snow Falling on Cedars was adapted for a 1999 film of the same title, directed by Scott Hicks and starring Ethan Hawke. The movie received an Academy Award nomination for cinematography. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The sad, enigmatic story of Mr. McCandless was recounted with enormous sympathy and skill by Jon Krakauer in his 1996 book, Into the Wild...[and] Mr. McCandless’s story now seems to have inspired a novel by David Guterson, The Other, which moves the narrative to the author’s native Pacific Northwest.... It’s hard for the reader to understand why Mr. Guterson...would want to reinvent such a well-known and well-told story. And while he has created an engaging enough voice for his narrator, Neil Countryman, much of his novel feels derivative and overly familiar.... Worse, some of the theories advanced in this novel to explain John William’s withdrawal from society seem overly pat and reductive.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Mesmerizing, even heart-breaking...vivid...David Guterson explores the fissures in our divided souls: Attachment vs. alienation; moral behavior vs. expediency; joy vs. suffering.... The Other examines the dilemma that has confounded sages and saints for millennia: whether to engage in our tormented world, or turn our faces from it.... By indelibly capturing the Seattle of the 1970s and ’80s, [the novel] becomes a testament to the city’s breathless transition from a quirky, idiosyncratic town of working- and middle-class families to a metropolis for the nouveau-techno riche.... With fine-grained details, Guterson displays his near-photographic memory for the fading details of our city’s heritage. [He] is equally eloquent on the raw terrain of the Olympic Peninsula.... The Other stayed with this reader for days after finishing the book. [The narrator] Neil Countryman is a rich, complicated Everyman.... And [his best friend] John William must go down as one of the saddest figures in contemporary literature–a bright young man swallowed by his own darkness. Most of us have a friend or loved one who dropped out, checked out and faded away. Could we have saved them? By choosing a different path, have we saved our own skins/souls, or merely preserved them? These are the questions The Other raises. Readers will spend a long time thinking about the answers.
Mary Ann Gwinn - Seattle Times
In 1972, two Seattle teens, working-class Irish boy Neil Countryman and tortured trust funder John William Barry, bond over their love of adventuring in the Northwest’s vast wilderness. Countryman, who continues on to college, marriage, and a career teaching high school English, narrates the story of helping Barry drop out of society to live a hermit’s life ‘without hypocrisy’ in a remote, self-excavated cave. [This plot] is the perfect scaffolding to support Guterson’s absorbing meditation on what it means to grow up, sell out, and lead an honest life.
Entertainment Weekly
Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars) runs out of gas mulling the story of two friends who take divergent paths toward lives of meaning. A working-class teenager in 1972 Seattle, Neil Countryman, a "middle of the pack" kind of guy and the book's contemplative narrator, befriends trust fund kid John William Barry—passionate, obsessed with the world's hypocrisies and alarmingly prone to bouts of tears—over a shared love of the outdoors. Guterson nicely draws contrasts between the two as they grow into adulthood: Neil drifts into marriage, house, kids and a job teaching high school English, while John William pulls an Into the Wild, moving to the remote wilderness of the Olympic Mountains and burrowing into obscure Gnostic philosophy. When John William asks for a favor that will sever his ties to "the hamburger world" forever, loyal Neil has a decision to make. Guterson's prose is calm and pleasing as ever, but applied to Neil's staid personality it produces little dramatic tension. Once the contrasts between the two are set up, the novel has nowhere to go, ultimately floundering in summary and explanation.
Publishers Weekly
In his fourth novel, PEN/Faulkner Award winner Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars) constructs a sensationalistic story that in other hands might have emerged as a page-turning potboiler. Here, events unfold in exquisitely refined prose, which creates a plot as believable as any quotidian workday while evoking an unforgettable sense of place in its depiction of Washington State's wilderness. Middle-aged narrator Neil Countryman, lately the recipient of an enormous and unexpected inheritance, traces the roots of this windfall back to an equally unexpected encounter at age 16 with a fellow runner on a Seattle high school track field. Bonded by a mutual love of the outdoors, working-class Neil and wealthy John William Barry become lifelong friends despite cultural disparities. The bond holds as their adult paths diverge, Neil choosing to teach while John William retreats to a hermit's life in remote woodlands. When Neil agrees to help his friend disappear, haunting questions of values, responsibility, and choice leave Neil-and the readers of this provocative fiction-to ponder the proper definition of a good life. Recommended for most fiction collections.
Starr E. Smith - Library Journal
Guterson’s novel of friendship and ideas is a moving meditation on choices, sacrifices, and compromises made in search of an authentic life. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
In this philosophically provocative and psychologically astute novel, two boyhood friends take very different paths: The richer one renounces all earthly entanglements, while the poorer one becomes unexpectedly wealthy beyond imagination. Once again, Guterson (Our Lady of the Forest, 2003, etc.) writes of the natural splendor of his native Pacific Northwest, though the ambiguity of isolating oneself in nature, rejecting family and society in the process, provides a tension that powers the narrative momentum to the final pages. There are parallels between this story and Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book Into the Wild, as the novel relates the life and death of John William Barry, whose mother and father come from two of Seattle's wealthiest families, but who forsakes his elite destiny to achieve posthumous notoriety as "the hermit of the Hoh." What distinguishes Guterson's novel is the narrative voice of Neil Countryman (perhaps an unfortunate surname), who has been Barry's best and maybe only friend since the two competed at a track meet. On a hike into the wildness, Barry forces his blue-collar buddy to swear a blood oath never to reveal this secret spot to anyone. That oath is tested when Barry disappears from society and enlists his friend's complicity in covering his tracks. The first one in his family to attend college, Countryman becomes an aspiring writer who supports himself as a high-school English teacher, and who marries and raises a family. Yet if Barry is ostensibly "the other" of the title, so is Countryman, whose bond with a friend who may have a severe (possibly hereditary) psychological disturbance seems stronger than the one he shares with anyone else. Ultimately, Barry rewards Countryman for the latter's complicity in keeping a secret and helping the hermit sustain himself, but the greater reward for Countryman is the material that becomes this book. When a novelist scores as popular a breakthrough as Guterson did with Snow Falling on Cedars, a long shadow is cast over subsequent efforts. Here, he succeeds in outdistancing that shadow.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Other:
1. What explains John William's retreat from civilization into the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest? What theories does Neil Countryman put forth? Are they convincing?
2. Discuss John's mantra, "No escape from the unhappiness machine." What does he mean?
3. How does Neil view his friend John early on? Does he admire him...think him foolish...idealistic...what?
4. Neil eventually senses John's troubled psyche and watches him descend into something akin to the early "hominids [he'd] read about in Introduction to Physical Anthropology." Neil goes on to say that "anyone with the poor luck to come across [John] could not be blamed for assuming he'd gone comically mad, or maybe dangerously mad." Yet Neil never calls John's father, and he even conspires with John in his dangerous plan. What responsibility does Neil have toward John...or toward John's father? To what degree is Neil at fault for the ensuing tragedy? Eventually, when Neil explains his failure to get help for John, do his explanations sound convincing?
5. What about the fact that the authorities fail to investigate Neil's role in John's disappearance or the fact that Neil stands to inherit John's fortune? Do you find that plausible?
6. How does Guterson portray the Pacific Northwest's wilderness. Does he present its dangers, its allures, its beauty?
7. Who in this book do you find most sympathetic?
8. Have you read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which is based on the true life tragedy of Christopher McCandless's death in the wilderness. If so, how are these two works similar or different? Do you prefer one over the other?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Other Alcott
Elise Hooper, 2017
HarperCollins
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062645333
Summary
Elise Hooper’s debut novel conjures the fascinating, untold story of May Alcott — Louisa’s youngest sister and an artist in her own right.
We all know the story of the March sisters, heroines of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. But while everyone cheers on Jo March, based on Louisa herself, Amy March is often the least favorite sister. Now, it’s time to learn the truth about the real "Amy," Louisa’s sister, May.
Stylish, outgoing, creative, May Alcott grows up longing to experience the wide world beyond Concord, Massachusetts. While her sister Louisa crafts stories, May herself is a talented and dedicated artist, taking lessons in Boston, turning down a marriage proposal from a well-off suitor, and facing scorn for entering what is very much a man’s profession.
Life for the Alcott family has never been easy, so when Louisa’s Little Women is published, its success eases the financial burdens they’d faced for so many years. Everyone agrees the novel is charming, but May is struck to the core by the portrayal of selfish, spoiled "Amy March." Is this what her beloved sister really thinks of her?
So May embarks on a quest to discover her own true identity, as an artist and a woman. From Boston to Rome, London, and Paris, this brave, talented, and determined woman forges an amazing life of her own, making her so much more than merely "The Other Alcott." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974
• Where—Hopkinton, New Hampshire, USA
• Education—B.A., Middlebury College, M.A.T, Seattle University
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Though a New Englander by birth (and at heart), Elise Hooper lives with her husband and two young daughters in Seattle, where she teaches history and literature. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A fascinating concept, and just the way to kick off your celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women.
Historical Novel Society
A mix of history and imagination, this debut novel focuses on May Alcott, the model for Amy in Little Women …. Some clumsy exposition aside, this is a lively, entertaining read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At the end of Part 1, when Alice tells May that "a thinking woman … sounds dangerous," what does she mean? What made a "thinking woman" dangerous in the late 1800s?
2. How does May change over the course of the story? What moments mark critical turning points in her journey?
3. What is your perception of the relationship between Louisa and May? How did Louisa’s financial support of May affect their feelings toward each other?
4. What were the challenges that women faced while studying art? How were these challenges different in Boston and in Europe?
5. When May marries Ernest suddenly, do you think it’s because as Louisa says, "she’s unmoored?" What do you think contributed to May’s quick decision to marry?
6. Louisa appears to send conflicting messages about May’s marriage to Ernest — she discourages her from doing it, but then sends a substantial check as a wedding present — how do you think she felt about May’s decision to marry?
7. Between their beliefs on education, abolitionism, woman suffrage, among other causes (Bronson was also vegetarian), the Alcotts were viewed as radicals and seen as unconventional. What do you think it was like to grow up as part of this family? As the youngest family member, how difficult do you think it was it for May to grow up in this family? In what ways does she seem to forge her own identity, separate from that of her family?
8. What do you think it would be like to have a family member write a thinly-veiled account of your life? Since May doesn’t think Little Women was a favorable portrayal of her, how would that shape her relationship with her family?
9. Louisa struggles with the tension that exists between the success of Little Women and feeling trapped by being famous for something that she didn’t really want to write. Did you empathize with her feelings? What would it be like to become famous for something you resented?
10. At the end of the novel, the author provides a Postscript with more information about all of the characters. Was there anything in there that surprised you?
11. Of the two sisters, Louisa is infinitely more famous. Were you surprised by anything you learned about her in this novel? Were any of your previous impressions of her challenged by this new information?
12. Louisa remains dutiful to her family to the end and continues to write stories that the market welcomes so that she earn money to support her family while Mary Cassatt breaks from the establishment creates work that satisfies her. Which character can you relate to more? Do you understand the motivations behind both women?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Other Boleyn Girl (Tudor Court, 3)
Philippa Gregory, 2002
Simon & Schuster
672 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416560609
Summary
When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen.
However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne.
Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands.
A rich and compelling tale of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, The Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her own heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1954
• Where—Nairobi, Kenya
• Raised—Bristol, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Sussex University; Ph.D., Edinburgh University
• Currently—lives in the North York Moors, Yorkshire, England
Philippa Gregory is a British historical novelist, writing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Early life and academic career
Philippa Gregory was in Nairobi, Kenya, the second daughter of Elaine (Wedd) and Arthur Percy Gregory, a radio operator and navigator for East African Airways. When she was two years old, her family moved to Bristol, England.
She was a "rebel" at Colston's Girls' School where she obtained a B grade in English and two E grades in History and Geography at A-level. She then went to journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year as an apprentice with the Portsmouth News before she managed to gain a place on an English literature degree course at the University of Sussex, where she switched to a history course.
She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.
Private life
Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing a PhD in 18th-century literature and living in a cottage on the Pennine Way with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter, Victoria. They divorced before the book was published.
Following the success of Wideacre and the publication of The Favoured Child, she moved south to near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the Wideacre trilogy was set. Here she married her second husband Paul Carter, with whom she has a son. She divorced for a second time and married Anthony Mason, whom she had first met during her time in Hartlepool.
Gregory now lives on a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm in the North York Moors national park, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening.
Writing
She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of the slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.
Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. She has also written contemporary fiction—Perfectly Correct; Mrs Hartley And The Growth Centre; The Little House; and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.
Some of her novels have won awards and have been adapted into television dramas. The most successful of her novels has been The Other Boleyn Girl, published in 2002 and adapted for BBC television in 2003 with Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May and Jared Harris. In the year of its publication, The Other Boleyn Girl also won the Romantic Novel of the Year and has subsequently spawned sequels—The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Other Queen. Miramax bought the film rights to The Other Boleyn Girl and produced a film of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and co-starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry Tudor, Juno Temple as Jane Parker, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn. It was filmed in England and generally released in 2008.
Gregory has also published a series of books about the Plantagenets, the ruling houses that preceded the Tudors, and the Wars of the Roses. Her first book The White Queen (2009), centres on the life of Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. The Red Queen (2010) is about Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. The Lady of the Rivers (2011) is the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, first married to John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry the Fifth. The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012) is the story of Anne Neville, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the wife of Richard III. The next book, The White Princess (2013), centres on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII.
Controversy
In her novel The Other Boleyn Girl, her portrayal of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn drew criticism. The novel depicts Anne as cold and ruthless, as well as heavily implying that the accusations that she committed adultery and incest with her brother were true, despite it being widely accepted that she was innocent of the charges. Novelist Robin Maxwell refused on principle to write a blurb for this book, describing its characterisation of Anne as "vicious, unsupportable." Historian David Starkey, appearing alongside Gregory in a documentary about Anne Boleyn, described her work as "good Mills and Boon" (a publisher of romance novels), adding that: "We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous." Susan Bordo criticized Gregory's claims to historical accuracy as "self-deceptive and self-promoting chutzpah", and notes that it is not so much the many inaccuracies in her work as "Gregory’s insistence on her meticulous adherence to history that most aggravates the scholars."
Media
Gregory is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, with short stories, features and reviews. She is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team. She won the 29 December 2008 edition of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC1, taking Elizabeth Woodville as her specialist subject.
Charity work
Gregory also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia. Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book A Respectable Trade.
Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.
In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in batik and pottery and is working with larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)
Book Reviews
Sisterly rivalry is the basis of this fresh, wonderfully vivid retelling of the story of Anne Boleyn. Anne, her sister Mary and their brother George are all brought to the king's court at a young age, as players in their uncle's plans to advance the family's fortunes. Mary, the sweet, blond sister, wins King Henry VIII's favor when she is barely 14 and already married to one of his courtiers. Their affair lasts several years, and she gives Henry a daughter and a son. But her dark, clever, scheming sister, Anne, insinuates herself into Henry's graces, styling herself as his adviser and confidant. Soon she displaces Mary as his lover and begins her machinations to rid him of his wife, Katherine of Aragon. This is only the beginning of the intrigue that Gregory so handily chronicles, capturing beautifully the mingled hate and nearly incestuous love Anne, Mary and George ("kin and enemies all at once") feel for each other and the toll their family's ambition takes on them. Mary, the story's narrator, is the most sympathetic of the siblings, but even she is twisted by the demands of power and status; charming George, an able plotter, finally brings disaster on his own head by falling in love with a male courtier. Anne, most tormented of all, is ruthless in her drive to become queen, and then to give Henry a male heir. Rather than settling for a picturesque rendering of court life, Gregory conveys its claustrophobic, all-consuming nature with consummate skill. In the end, Anne's famous, tragic end is offset by Mary's happier fate, but the self-defeating folly of the quest for power lingers longest in the reader's mind.
Publishers Weekly
Before Henry VIII ever considered making Anne Boleyn his wife, her older sister, Mary, was his mistress. Historical novelist Gregory (Virgin Earth) uses the perspective of this "other Boleyn girl" to reveal the rivalries and intrigues swirling through England. The sisters and their brother George were raised with one goal: to advance the Howard family's interests, especially against the Seymours. So when Mary catches the king's fancy, her family orders her to abandon the husband they had chosen. She bears Henry two children, including a son, but Anne's desire to be queen drives her with ruthless intensity, alienating family and foes. As Henry grows more desperate for a legitimate son and Anne strives to replace Catherine as queen, the social fabric weakens. Mary abandons court life to live with a new husband and her children in the countryside, but love and duty bring her back to Anne time and again. We share Mary's helplessness as Anne loses favor, and everyone abandons her amid accusations of adultery, incest, and witchcraft. Even the Boleyn parents won't intervene for their children. Gregory captures not only the dalliances of court but the panorama of political and religious clashes throughout Europe. She controls a complicated narrative and dozens of characters without faltering, in a novel sure to please public library fans of historical fiction. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ.
Library Journal
Historically based, page-turning story of Mary Boleyn, sister of the infamous Anne, decapitated by Henry VIII: here, as much a tale of love and lust as it is a saga about an ambitious family who used their kin as negotiable assets. Rich with period detail, the story is told by Mary, the younger sister, who is married off at 13 to William Carey, a courtier at Henry's court. Mary serves Queen Katherine, mother of the future Queen Mary, and begins her tale when her sister Anne, stylish and beautiful, returns from France to join Mary at court. The sisters' ambitious parents and their uncle, the future Duke of Norfolk, are determined to acquire power and influence, as well as titles and estates, from the king, even if it means that Mary must become his mistress. Their son George is made to work on his sisters' behalf and to live a life not of his choosing (he's homosexual and loves a fellow courtier). Mary bears the king a son, but Anne soon after uses all her wiles to make Henry divorce the Queen and marry her. The Boleyns, more ruthlessly functional than dysfunctional, continue to plot and push to achieve their ends. Mary recounts the king's wish for a male heir; his break with the Pope; Anne's skillful if criminal plotting that leads to the divorce and her marriage to Henry; the birth of the future Queen Elizabeth; and Anne's desperate attempts to bear a son. Meanwhile, she herself, widowed after her first husband dies from the plague, finds love with Sir William Stafford—the only strand of the story with possibilities for future happiness. Absorbing tale of a Renaissance family determined to climb as high as they can, whatever the cost.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Philippa Gregory choose Mary to narrate the story? Keeping in mind the relationship between the observer and those observed, is Mary a good, trustworthy, narrator? As Mary ages, how is her loss of innocence reflected in her telling of the story?
2. Look at the exchange between Mary and her mother at the end of the first chapter. How does the author foreshadow what is to come? How do the events of the first chapter frame the entire story?
3. Discuss the Boleyn family's scheming and jockeying for favor in the court. In light of these politics, discuss the significance of Mary's explanation that she had "a talent for loving [the king]" (page 119). Is this simply a girl's fantasy? Why does Mary call herself and George "a pair of pleasant snakes" (page 131)?
4. On page 29, Mary professes her love and admiration for Queen Katherine and feels she can't betray her. In what ways are her honorable ideals compromised as she embarks on her adulterous affair with the king? Recount the whirlwind of events preceding Anne's becoming queen. Reading page 352, do you agree that "from start to finish" Mary "had no choice" but to betray Queen Katherine by taking the queen's letter to her uncle?
5. Consider pages 38 and 82. How does the author create sexual tension? How do the narrator's thoughts and feelings communicate the attraction between her and the king? Why is this important to the story of The Other Boleyn Girl?
6. On page 85, Anne tells Mary, "I am happy for the family. I hardly ever think about you." Do you think she's telling the truth? Later, Anne says to her sister, "We'll always be nothing to our family" (page 310). Do you think she believes this, especiallygiven her overwhelming desire to advance her own status?
7. Why does Mary say, "I felt like a parcel..." (page 60)? What happens later to make Mary think she's no longer a "pawn" of the family, but "at the very least, a castle, a player in the game" (page 173)?
8. Look at the exchange between Mary and Anne about the king on page 72. Do you agree with Anne when she tells Mary that "you can't desire [the king] like an ordinary man and forget the crown on his head." What does this statement reveal about Anne's nature? And what does it reveal about Mary's?
9. In general, what are your impressions of the sisters? Keep in mind Anne and Mary's discussion on page 104: "So who would come after me?...I could make my own way." Also look at page 123, when Anne says, "Hear this, Mary...I will kill you." Why are these statements significant, particularly given their timing?
10. Share some of the characteristics that you like about historical fiction. For you, what aspect of The Other Boleyn Girl stands out the most? How does the book change your impressions of life in King Henry VIII's court? Looking at the letter on page 275, discuss the level of corruption in the court. Does it surprise you? Were you aware of Anne's dogged and exhausting pursuit of the king? Did the way Anne became queen shock you?
11. How do you feel about the idea that a woman had to be married before she could bed the king? What do you think about the king changing the laws to suit his needs? When Anne states that "Nothing will ever be the same for any woman in this country again," examine why she could believe she would be exempt from the same treatment. In other words, why didn't she realize that "when she overthrew a queen that thereafter all queens would be unsteady" (page 519)? Do you think the family realized this but persevered anyway?
12. Discuss Mary's evolution of thinking from when she realizes that after Queen Katherine's departure, "from this time onward no wife...would be safe" with her later thought (on page 468) that "the triumph of Anne, the mistress who had become a wife, was an inspiration to every loose girl in the country." What does this say about Mary's state of mind? Is she being a reliable narrator here?
13. On page 303, George exclaims to Mary, "You cannot really want to be a nobody." Why is this such a revolutionary idea in Henry's court, and for the Boleyns in particular? What should the response have been to Mary's question to Anne (page 330) about the rewards of Anne's impending marriage to the king: "What is there for me?"
14. In King Henry's court, homosexuality was a crime. Why do you think George essentially flaunted his preference? What do you make of the intimate kiss between George and Anne that Mary witnessed? What is the impetus behind George and Anne's relationship? Discuss whether or not you believe that George slept with Anne so that she might have a son, and why.
15. Why do you think George declares that Anne is "the only Boleyn anyone will ever know or remember" (page 410)? Was that true for you before you read The Other Boleyn Girl? What about now?
16. After Anne is arrested, Mary pleads for her by saying, "We did nothing more than that was ordered. We only ever did as we were commanded. Is she to die for being an obedient daughter?" (page 650). What is your reaction to these arguments? Did Henry have no choice but to sentence her to death?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Other Mrs.
Mary Kubica, 2020
Park Row Books
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778369110
Summary
Hypnotic and addictive and perfect for fans of You, The Other Mrs. is the twisty new psychological thriller from Mary Kubica, the blockbuster bestselling author of The Good Girl.
Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor, Morgan Baines, is found dead in her home.
The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie, who is terrified by the thought of a killer in her very own backyard.
But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. It’s their eerie old home, with its decrepit decor and creepy attic, which they inherited from Will’s sister after she died unexpectedly.
It’s Will’s disturbed teenage niece Imogen, with her dark and threatening presence. And it’s the troubling past that continues to wear at the seams of their family.
As the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of Morgan’s death. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Mary Kubica is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of THE GOOD GIRL and PRETTY BABY. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children and enjoys photography, gardening and caring for the animals at a local shelter. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[C]onvoluted psychological thriller…. Red herrings litter the multiple narratives, adding too much weight to an already overloaded plot, and a soapy twist disappoints. Hopefully, this is a temporary slump for the talented Kubica.
Publishers Weekly
[A] mesmerizing tale…, but the story is wrapped up a bit too neatly. What is satisfying is the oppressive sense of unease that permeates this intense psychological suspense drama. —Gloria Drake, Oswego P.L. Dist., IL
Library Journal
A fresh start for a doctor and her family becomes a living nightmare…. Kubica ably molds Sadie into a (very) complicated woman with simmering secrets; as usual, she…can turn almost any location into a swirling cesspool of creepy possibility.… A page-turner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Sadie’s role as a victim in the novel. Do you think she should be held accountable for her actions in the story? In what ways is she the hero of her own story?
2. Trauma and recovery are important themes in the book. Talk about how each of the characters experience trauma and how it informs their actions and behaviors. Do you think it’s possible to ever fully recover from trauma?
3. What do you think of Sadie’s relationships with Otto and Tate? How do you think her experiences from the past shaped her approach to motherhood?
4. Discuss the characters of Sadie, Camille, and Mouse. How does each perspective enhance the story?
5. Did you think Will was a good husband throughout the novel? Do you think he ever truly loved Sadie?
6. How does the isolated setting play into the novel? In what ways does it compound the circumstances in the story and Sadie’s state of mind?
7. What is the significance of the title, The Other Mrs.? Who did you think it referred to at different parts of the story?
(Questions from the author's website.)
Other People's Children
Joanna Trollope, 1998
Penguin Group USA
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425174371
Summary
With The Best of Friends, American readers have taken Joanna Trollope into their hearts. That critically-acclaimed novel has climbed bestseller lists around the country and garnered raves from reviewers like Good Housekeeping who said that she "captures the poignant rituals of family attachment and detachment with delicious wryness and large doses of empathy."
But with Other People's Children—a number 1 bestseller in England—she brings her work to a bold, new level, with a novel of rare seriousness and depth, about a subject that hits readers right where they live. Here, she delves fearlessly into the emotional dynamics of family life—or rather, life in that ever-expanding unit, the stepfamily.
With her sensitive eye and unerring ear, she explores the hard-won truths and often harder-to-overcome difficulties of coping with present and former husbands and wives, and above all, with other people's children. And sometimes it becomes painfully clear that good intentions—and even love—are not enough.
Joanna Trollope's understanding of the human condition and empathy with the frailties of her characters are unmatched. No one goes more fearlessly into the emotional and practical dynamics of family life, nor offers such bittersweet truths mixed with hopeful solutions. So moving, so provocative, and so unforgettable is the portrait she has created in Other People's Children that American readers and reviewers are sure to fall in love with Joanna Trollope all over again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Carolyn Harvey (pen name)
• Birth—December 9 1943
• Where—Gloucestershire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Order of the British Empire (OBE), 1996
• Currently—lives in London, England
Joanna Trollope (born in her grandfather's rectory in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire), is an English novelist. She was educated at Reigate County School for Girls, followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. She is distantly related to Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope and is a cousin of the writer and broadcaster James Trollope.
From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office. From 1967 to 1979, she was employed in a number of teaching posts before she became a writer full-time in 1980. Trollope was formerly married to the television dramatist Ian Curteis. Trollope's books are generally upmarket family dramas and romances that somewhat transcend these genres via striking realism in terms of human psychology and relationships. Several of her novels have been adapted for television. The best-known is The Rector's Wife.
Trollope is the author of the novels Girl from the South, Next of Kin, Marrying the Mistress, Other People's Children, The Best of Friends, and A Spanish Lover, as well as The Choir and The Rector's Wife, which were both adapted for Masterpiece Theatre. Writing as Caroline Harvey, she is also the author of the historical novels The Brass Dolphin, Legacy of Love, and A Second Legacy. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
As set of vulnerable, maddening, often likable characters goes about the work of forging new families amid the disruptions that come when people remarry and are forced to raise — and love — kids who have little reason to love or trust them in return.
Linda Barrett Osborne - New York Times Book Review
Trollope is an observant chronicler of middle-class domestic mess, and she knows how to turn a tale....There are no heroes in this novel and no obvious villains, either. Just believably normal people trying to get it right. The endings are not necessarily happy, but they have the ring of truth.
Linda Mallon - USA Today
Her characters are at once vexing and endearing, which is to say fully human.
Richard Yardley - Washington Post
A skilled artisan of nuance and insight reveals a vigorous new edge as she explores the painful and contentious arena of stepfamilies. Here Trollope focuses on three women and two men who wrestle with new family configurations, along with their six children, ranging from eight to 28. When Josie marries Matthew, she already has experience as both a mother and stepmother, and she feels prepared for the impending battles with Matthew's difficult and bitter ex-wife, Nadine. But her patient determination crumbles as Matthew's three children turn sullen, mutinous and downright nasty to Josie and her eight-year-old son, Rufus. "Has it ever struck you that stepchildren can be quite as cruel as stepmothers are supposed to be?" Josie asks her sister-in-law, who later observes, "Everyone seems to expect so much of women it nearly drove you mad." Things seem at first to be a lot easier for Josie's ex-husband, Tom, an architect who has two other children besides Rufus (Tom's first wife died suddenly when his children were small). In no time Tom has a fianc e, the calm and reasonable Elizabeth, whom Rufus (who visits Tom regularly) seems to like rather well. It is Tom's 25-year-old daughter, Dale, who can't bear to see her father passionately in love. The narrative moves back and forth between Josie and Elizabeth as the latter finds her new life in sudden turmoil; the spare, dramatic revelation of Dale's psychological hold on Tom injects Hitchcockian suspense. Though Trollope's wry intelligence supports the plot, her command of raw emotional content--her portraits of the children, for example--is equally impressive. The urgency of her vision adds clout to this affecting drama.
Publishers Weekly
Best-selling English writer Trollope, who has a following here as well, has the knack of rendering people's lives with infinite clarity and truth. Here she plumbs the effects of divorce and remarriage on children, as Josie and Matthew marry and try to create a family with her son and his three children. This is no Brady bunch, but the emotionally messy world of children (and adults) is so palpably real that the reader will know them as well or better than their own children. Those who have read Trollope (The Best of Friends) know that her endings are never simple, happily ever after, and one outcome here seems similar to that in Trollope's The Men and the Girls (1992). Nevertheless, her writing and characterization place her far above the commonplace. Highly recommended.
Francine Fialkoff - Library Journal
From acclaimed Britisher Trollope (The Best of Friends, 1998), a bittersweet tale of the painfully divided affections created whenever a stepfamily is formed. An adroit choreographer of the baffled dance of the contemporary English family, Trollope now details the confusions caused as old marriages end and new alliances solidify. When Josie Carver marries Matthew Mitchell, a deputy-school principal, its a second marriage for each. Both have children from their first: for Josie, its eight-year-old Rufus, while Matthew has three: Becky, 15, Rory, 12, and 10-year old Claire. The previous marriages were mutually unsatisfactory. Josie, married to widower Tom, with grown children of his own, found him decent but dull. Matthew, hitched to volatile, self-absorbed Nadine, tired of coping with her eccentric behavior. But, though stepmothers are traditionally regarded as malevolent forces, stepchildren can also behave badly. And while the Mitchell trio found mother Nadine difficult to deal with, loyalty demands that they now make Josies life difficult (as well as their fathers). In fact, Toms adult daughter Dale deliberately destroys his new romance with thirtysomething civil servant Elizabeth because Dale never got over the death of her own mother when she was a child. The parents are also tugged by loyalties to their children. Josies new marriage undergoes increasing strain as Nadine blackmails her children emotionally, the children fail at school, and Becky runs away. When Matthews three move back with him, Josie feels not just even more stressed but alienated from Matthew (who takes his children's side instead of supporting her). Still, Nadines emotional breakdown and a professional crisis for Matthew bring the family closer together, and Josies Rufus begins to feel as much a part of the new family as his half-siblings. Family ties affirmed with warmth and wisdom.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. It's often said that "Blood is thicker than water." How does this truism relate to the step-family? Discuss the ways in which being related by marriage, rather than blood, can be advantageous.
2. All three of the families in Other People's Children have their strengths and weaknesses. Which family, at the beginning of the book, would you rather belong to? Did that change by the end?
3. Do you think Elizabeth was inflexible as a result of a lifetime on her own? Or did you find her well-adjusted and too secure to adapt to a troubled household?
4. All of the men in this book show a certain weakness of character. Discuss the similarity in their shortcomings.
5. How do you think Tom should have dealt with Dale? Did you find it surprising that this seemingly placid and affluent family would fall apart?
6. Nadine obviously loves her children, yet there's no doubt she's ill-suited to motherhood. What should happen in a situation like this one? How much blame does Matthew share for not protecting his children from her volatility?
7. Do you think Tom's inability to stand up to Dale, and Matthew's failure to take a stand on behalf of Josie are similar in any way? Why is Tom's weakness fatal to his new relationship? Why does Matthew's failure not doom his new family?
8. When Lucas's relationship with Amy ends, it's clear that he has been conditioned to put Dale's needs above his own, just as Tom has. Did you feel hopeful that moving away from Dale would help him to change?
9. Discuss the complexity of Becky's loyalty to Nadine, despite her mother's instability. Do you think Josie handled Matthew's children as well as could be expected, given their complicated issues with Nadine?
10. Divorce is an extremely upsetting event for children. How could Matthew and Nadine have made theirs easier on the children? Discuss the issue money plays in this story. In what way does it contribute to strife in Matthew and Nadine's homes? How does it ease things for Rufus? Or does it?
11. Josie's determination and flexibility were not enough to save her marriage to Tom because of a lack of feeling. Elizabeth has finally met, in Tom, the man who makes her feel(yet she can't make the relationship work either. Did Dale doom both of these marriages? Pauline's ghost? Or did Tom? Or is Trollope suggesting a more complex set of issues?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Other People's Houses
Abbi Waxman, 2018
Penguin Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399587924
Summary
A hilarious and poignant new novel about four families, their neighborhood carpool, and the affair that changes everything.
At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find … repressed hopes and dreams … moments of unexpected joy … someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband…
*record scratch*
As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this...
After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, Frances vows to stay in her own lane.
But that's a notion easier said than done when Anne's husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families—and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where—England, UK
• Education—University College London
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Abbi Waxman is a novelist whose books include The Garden of Small Beginnings (2017), Other People's Houses (2018), and The Bookish Life of Nina Hall (2019). She worked in advertising for many years, which is how she learned to write fiction.
Wasman is a chocolate-loving, dog-loving woman who lives in Los Angeles and lies down as much as possible. She has three daughters, three dogs, three cats, and one very patient husband. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] “gaggle of middle-class white people”—and all of the comedy, drama, and quotidian details that make up their lives.… Hilarious ruminations about child-rearing, shopping, and other parents give this broad appeal.
Publishers Weekly
Waxman is a gifted storyteller with an impressive talent for penning realistic dialog for adults and children: no easy feat. For fans of fast-moving contemporary humorous fiction about women and families. —Samantha Gust, Niagara Univ.Lib., NY
Library Journal
[A] far-reaching topic… sprinkle[d] with spicy dialogue.… Frances is equal parts warmth and snark as she considers her friends and neighbors through the lens of TMI. [For] those who like to turn pages quickly without sacrificing complex characters.
Booklist
[C]harming yet provocative.…Waxman is a master at purveying the wry humor that rides just below the surface of even the tough times. An immensely enjoyable read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In this book the neighborhood plays an important role. What other situations create this kind of community, and how does seeing people every day change your relationship to them?
2. The central character, Frances Bloom, is someone who likes to help, because it makes her feel useful. Do you know someone like this? Do you find it easier to help or be helped?
3. Frances and Michael have a very happy but not very romantic marriage. Do you think that this will eventually drive them apart?
4. Anne Porter has an affair and nearly destroys her marriage. How important is sexual fidelity? Is it the most important element in a marriage? Can trust be rebuilt after a betrayal of this kind?
5. How much do children understand their parents’ marriage? How hard is it to maintain privacy in a relationship once you have children?
6. Sara and Iris are experiencing communication problems in their marriage, although it’s very strong. Have you gone through something similar, where communication breaks down for no apparent reason, and then becomes difficult to reopen?
7. Anne felt she was someone else in her affair, that it was something just for her. Ava also mentions a strong desire to be her own person, driving her own choices. How hard is it to balance a sense of self with responsibilities within a family?
8. Frances and Ava are navigating their changing relationship as Ava becomes more independent. Did you struggle against your parents or one parent in particular as you were becoming an adult? How do you think the experience of adolescence has changed since you were a teenager?
9. The title, Other People’s Houses, alludes to the impression one gets of someone just by looking at them. How much can you really tell about someone based on their home, or the way they dress? Is appearance an expression of character, or armor?
10. Bill and Julie Horton are dealing with a challenging time in a very private way. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of approaching it this way?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Other Queen (Tudor Court, 8)
Philippa Gregory, 2008
Simon & Schuster
438 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416549147
Summary
Philippa Gregory presents a new and unique view of one of history's most intriguing, romantic, and maddening heroines. Biographers often neglect the captive years of Mary Queen of Scots, who trusted Queen Elizabeth's promise of sanctuary when she fled from rebels in Scotland and then found herself imprisoned as the "guest" of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and his indomitable wife, Bess of Hardwick.
The newly married couple welcome the doomed queen into their home, certain that serving as her hosts and jailors will bring them an advantage in the cutthroat world of the Elizabethan court.
To their horror, they find that the task will bankrupt them, and as their home becomes the epicenter of intrigue and rebellion against Elizabeth, their loyalty to each other and to their sovereign comes into question. If Mary succeeded in seducing the Earl, or if the great spy master William Cecil linked them to the growing conspiracy to free Mary from her illegal imprisonment, they will all face the headsman.
Heralded as "the queen of royal fiction" by USA Today, Philippa Gregory uses new research and her passion for historical accuracy to place a well-known heroine in a completely new story full of suspense, passion, and political intrigue. The Other Queen is the result of her determination to present a story worthy of this extraordinary heroine (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 9, 1954
• Where—Nairobi, Kenya
• Raised—Bristol, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Sussex University; Ph.D., Edinburgh University
• Currently—lives in the North York Moors, Yorkshire, England
Philippa Gregory is a British historical novelist, writing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Early life and academic career
Philippa Gregory was in Nairobi, Kenya, the second daughter of Elaine (Wedd) and Arthur Percy Gregory, a radio operator and navigator for East African Airways. When she was two years old, her family moved to Bristol, England.
She was a "rebel" at Colston's Girls' School where she obtained a B grade in English and two E grades in History and Geography at A-level. She then went to journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year as an apprentice with the Portsmouth News before she managed to gain a place on an English literature degree course at the University of Sussex, where she switched to a history course.
She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.
Private life
Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing a PhD in 18th-century literature and living in a cottage on the Pennine Way with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter, Victoria. They divorced before the book was published.
Following the success of Wideacre and the publication of The Favoured Child, she moved south to near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the Wideacre trilogy was set. Here she married her second husband Paul Carter, with whom she has a son. She divorced for a second time and married Anthony Mason, whom she had first met during her time in Hartlepool.
Gregory now lives on a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm in the North York Moors national park, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening.
Writing
She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of the slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.
Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. She has also written contemporary fiction—Perfectly Correct; Mrs Hartley And The Growth Centre; The Little House; and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.
Some of her novels have won awards and have been adapted into television dramas. The most successful of her novels has been The Other Boleyn Girl, published in 2002 and adapted for BBC television in 2003 with Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May and Jared Harris. In the year of its publication, The Other Boleyn Girl also won the Romantic Novel of the Year and has subsequently spawned sequels—The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Other Queen. Miramax bought the film rights to The Other Boleyn Girl and produced a film of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and co-starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry Tudor, Juno Temple as Jane Parker, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn. It was filmed in England and generally released in 2008.
Gregory has also published a series of books about the Plantagenets, the ruling houses that preceded the Tudors, and the Wars of the Roses. Her first book The White Queen (2009), centres on the life of Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. The Red Queen (2010) is about Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. The Lady of the Rivers (2011) is the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, first married to John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry the Fifth. The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012) is the story of Anne Neville, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the wife of Richard III. The next book, The White Princess (2013), centres on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII.
Controversy
In her novel The Other Boleyn Girl, her portrayal of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn drew criticism. The novel depicts Anne as cold and ruthless, as well as heavily implying that the accusations that she committed adultery and incest with her brother were true, despite it being widely accepted that she was innocent of the charges. Novelist Robin Maxwell refused on principle to write a blurb for this book, describing its characterisation of Anne as "vicious, unsupportable." Historian David Starkey, appearing alongside Gregory in a documentary about Anne Boleyn, described her work as "good Mills and Boon" (a publisher of romance novels), adding that: "We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous." Susan Bordo criticized Gregory's claims to historical accuracy as "self-deceptive and self-promoting chutzpah", and notes that it is not so much the many inaccuracies in her work as "Gregory’s insistence on her meticulous adherence to history that most aggravates the scholars."
Media
Gregory is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, with short stories, features and reviews. She is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team. She won the 29 December 2008 edition of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC1, taking Elizabeth Woodville as her specialist subject.
Charity work
Gregory also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia. Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book A Respectable Trade.
Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.
In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in batik and pottery and is working with larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)
Book Critics
A cynical observer might think the world could get along without another book about Mary Queen of Scots. The cynic would be missing a bet. Philippa Gregory's novel looks at Mary Stuart and her times from a fresh and engaging angle, while making an unusual point about history in general.... One of the most admirable things about The Other Queen is the delicate way in which Gregory drops bits of historical allusion into a very personal story. We're never distracted by information, but there's enough of it to make the past both factually comprehensible and emotionally accessible. In the author's view as well as Bess Shrewsbury's, questions of religion and political allegiance always come down in the end to money. That's true, but fiction rarely focuses primarily on the economic basis of history; this novel is a refreshing exception. Above all, the book is an examination of the nature of loyalty, as well: to a spouse, to a monarch, to a family or a family name, to a religion, to political ideals and especially to one's sense of self.
Diana Gabaldon - Washington Post
In her latest foray into the lives and minds of Elizabethan shakers and movers, Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl) takes on Mary Queen of Scots during her 16-year house arrest. By the secret order of her cousin, Elizabeth I, Mary is held at the estate of George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife, Bess of Hardwick; the latter three share first-person narrative duties. The book centers on Mary's never-ending clandestine efforts to drum up enough support to take her cousin's throne, but the real story is in the clash of two women and the earl who stands between them. Shrewsbury's refusal to recognize superior intelligence and force of will in his wife, who runs the estate, and in Mary, who tries to make him her instrument at every turn, makes for one delicious conflict after another. The voices are strong throughout, but Gregory's ventriloquism is at its best with Bess of Hardwick, a woman who managed to throw off the restrictions of birth, class and sex in order to achieve things that proved beyond her titled husband.
Publishers Weekly
Gregory makes a return trip to Tudor England, focusing on the period when Mary, Queen of Scots, fleeing from rebel Scottish lords, found herself imprisoned in England by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. The story is narrated from multiple perspectives: that of Queen Mary as well as her two jailors, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his new wife, Bess of Hardwick, a much-married and canny financial administrator as well as a spy for the ruthless William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's chief adviser. As the months, then years, pass, George's hopeless, forever unfulfilled love for the Queen of Scots wars with his desire to retain his honor and serve Queen Elizabeth, and also destroys the affectionate business relationship that united him and his wife in amiable marriage. Bess watches the substantial fortune she amassed through well-chosen husbands, good investments and careful accounting dwindle in support of Queen Mary's extravagant lifestyle. And, of course, Mary plots and plots again, to little avail. Reading the novel is a bit like witnessing a fixed tennis match: Queen Mary shuttles back and forth between various castles, her return to Scotland always imminent until each grand scheme fails. Meanwhile, the reader marks time waiting for the queen's inevitable walk to the scaffold. Gregory vividly evokes her three protagonists, but their personalities remain static to the point of tedium; however, it's fair to say that each one's inability to change is the very thing that leads to their joint tragedy. Mary believes that her beauty and royal status allow her to do whatever she likes with impunity; Bess, despite her wealth and title, can never surmount her humble origins; and George, in the face of obvious evidence that his way of life is dying, stubbornly insists that noble blood, not ambition, must determine rank. Not without interest, but this claustrophobic novel should be more intriguing than it is.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Bess describes George and herself as newlyweds happy and in love. On page 2, she says, "Only my newly wedded husband is so dotingly fond of me that he is safe under the same roof as such a temptress." What is it that first makes Bess uneasy about her husband's feelings towards Queen Mary?
2. Authors often challenge themselves by writing from the point of view of characters of the opposite sex. Do you think Gregory does a convincing job of creating her main male character, George Talbot? Do you think he is more or less realistic than the women in this novel, such as his wife, Bess, or Queens Mary and Elizabeth?
3. George and Bess marry for choice and admiration. Identify how they describe one another early in the novel, and discuss how their opinions change over the course of the story. Do you think they ever really knew one another, or do you think their affection is just another casualty of Mary and Elizabeth's treacherous conflict?
4. On page 55, George compares Elizabeth and Mary. He says, "My queen Elizabeth is a most solid being, as earthy as a man. But this is a queen who is all air and angels. She is a queen of fire and smoke." How else are the two queens compared throughout the novel by different characters? How do they describe themselves in comparison to each other?
5. George holds tightly to a noble, genteel way of life that has all but slipped away in England under Elizabeth's rule. How do you feel about his devotion to Queen Elizabeth given the circumstances of the times? Do you think Bess ultimately betrays her husband, or does she save him from himself? How might you deal with your own spouse if your fundamental beliefsand loyalties rested on opposite sides?
6. Examine both Mary's reasoning for her belief that her cousin Elizabeth must naturally support her as the heir to the English throne and restore her to the Scottish throne, and Elizabeth's reasoning for the actions she takes to keep Mary subordinated and under a watchful eye. With whom do you sympathize most, and why?
7. At the heart of the conflict between Queens Elizabeth and Mary is a power struggle between the "new ways" of Protestant England and the "old ways" of Catholicism. How has the transition to Protestantism changed England as portrayed in this novel? In what ways do George and Bess serve as representatives of these two Englands?
8. Set in a religious time period, God naturally played an important role in all aspects of these characters' lives. Compare and contrast the various characters' interpretation of religion and their relationship to God with respect to their Papist or Protestant sensibilities. How do the characters differ in their use of God as justification and enlightenment?
9. Bess thinks George is a great fool. Mary finds him entirely honorable, and yet she relates to her rapist and captor, Bothwell, more powerfully. What do you think of these men? How do these two men compare to other significant male characters in the novel such as Cecil, Hastings, the Duke of Norfolk, and Ralph Sadler?
10. Throughout the novel, George and Bess are constantly in opposition. George fears and detests the "new England" that he believes Cecil has created, while Bess sees Cecil's reforms as part of a golden dawn for England and for all Protestants. Who has the stronger character? Which side do you think you'd choose?
11. On page 225, Bothwell tells Mary, "The magic of royalty is an illusion that can be shattered by a man without a conscience." What significance does this observation have for the novel and for this time in history? Using examples from the novel to support your opinion, explain why you either agree or disagree. Similarly, discuss the parallels between the effects of lifting the mystery of royalty and lifting the mystery of religion as described in this novel.
12. What understanding do Bess and Mary finally come to about one another? Do you think either can truly understand the other's perspective, given such wildly different upbringings?
13. In the end, George is utterly heartbroken to learn that Mary has lied to him and to most everyone else. In her defense, Mary explains that she cannot possibly give her "true word" while under duress and imprisoned. Do you think this is just an excuse? Why or why not?
14.. The Shrewsburys and Queen Mary trek back and forth across the English countryside multiple times throughout the novel. Make a map tracing their journeys complete with a timeline of dates to get a visual representation of how unsettling this time period must have been for the entire household.
15. The Other Queen presents a darker Elizabeth than has currently been popularized in movies such as Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). Watch these films with your book club and compare their portrayal of various historic figures to their counterparts in Gregory's novel.
16. Get a better sense of the time period in which this novel takes place by doing a little research on Tudor England. You can start with local histories.org/tudor.html. You can also read more about some of the estates that served as settings for this novel, including Chatsworth, Tutbury Castle, and Bess's own home of Hardwick Hall.
(Questions issued by publishers.)
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The Other Side of the Bridge
Mary Lawson, 2006
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385340380
Summary
From the author of the beloved best seller, Crow Lake, comes an exceptional new novel of jealously, rivalry and the dangerous power of obsession.
Two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming. Arthur is reticent, solid, dutiful and set to inherit the farm and his father’s character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know – the family misfit. When a beautiful young woman comes into the community, the fragile balance of sibling rivalry tips over the edge.
Then there is Ian, the family’s next generation, and far too sure he knows the difference between right and wrong. By now it is the fifties, and the world has changed – a little, but not enough.
These two generations in the small town of Struan, Ontario, are tragically interlocked, linked by fate and community but separated by a war which devours its young men – its unimaginable horror reaching right into the heart of this remote corner of an empire. With her astonishing ability to turn the ratchet of tension slowly and delicately, Lawson builds their story to a shocking climax. Taut with apprehension, surprising us with moments of tenderness and humour, The Other Side of the Bridge is a compelling, humane and vividly evoked novel with an irresistible emotional undertow. (From the publisher.)
The Other Side of the Bridge was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Where—Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., McGill University
• Awards—Books in Canada First Novel; McKitterick Prize
(both for Crow Lake);
• Currently—lives in Kingston-upon-Thames, England, UK
Mary Lawson was born and brought up in a farming community in central Ontario. She is a distant relative of the author of Anne of Green Gables. She moved to England in 1968, is married with two sons, and lives in Kingston-upon-Thames. Crow Lake is her first novel. Her second is The Other Side of the Bridge. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
There's an almost Sophoclean momentum as events rush to their end. The reader prays that inescapable harm will not come to good people. But the novel's true literary antecedent is in Genesis: the story of Esau and Jacob, brothers in a dysfunctional family where each parent has a favorite child and the younger son can think circles around the older. Lawson honors these archetypes by using them discreetly; biblical undertones simply add to the story's richness.The Other Side of the Bridge is an admirable novel. Its old-fashioned virtues were also apparent in Crow Lake—narrative clarity, emotional directness, moral context and lack of pretension—but Lawson has ripened as a writer, and this second novel is much broader and deeper. The author draws her characters with unobtrusive humor and compassion, and she meets one of the fiction writer's most difficult challenges: to portray goodness believably, without sugar or sentiment.
Frances Taliaferro - Washington Post
Lawson’s gifts are enormous, especially her ability to write a literary work in a popular style. Her dialogue has perfect pitch, yet I’ve never read anyone better at articulating silence. Best of all, Lawson creates the most quotable images in Canadian literature.
Toronto Star
One of the most eagerly awaited books of the autumn season.... The prologue draws you in, as does the novel, which is consistently well-written, involving and enjoyable to read.... Achingly real, known, [Arthur’s] inner life, with all its shifts in understanding, emotion, perception and conflicted impulses, is rendered with compelling force in concise, supple prose.
Ottawa Citizen
I could not put it down, but perhaps better to say that I could not let it go or that it would not let me go . . . Lawson transported me into a place that I know does not exist by taking me deep down into the story of a family whose fate is inexorable and universal. Her reality became mine.
Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“[Lawson] returns to several of the themes that marked her brilliantly successful first novel, Crow Lake .... Lawson’s cornucopia of novelistic gifts, even more bounteously on display in her second book, includes handsome, satisfying sentences, vivid descriptions of physical work and landscape and an almost fiendish efficiency in building the feeling that something very bad is about to happen.
National Post (Canada)
In this follow-up to her acclaimed Crow Lake, Lawson again explores the moral quandaries of life in the Canadian North. At the story's poles are Arthur Dunn, a stolid, salt-of-the-earth farmer, and his brother, Jake, a handsome, smooth-talking snake in the grass, whose lifelong mutual resentments and betrayals culminate in a battle over the beautiful Laura, with Arthur, it seems, the unlikely winner. Observing, and eventually intervening in their saga, is Ian, a teenager who goes to work on Arthur's farm to get close to Laura, seeing in her the antithesis of the mother who abandoned his father and him. It's a standard romantic dilemma who to choose: the goodhearted but dull provider or the seductive but unreliable rogue? but it gains depth by being set in Lawson's epic narrative of the Northern Ontario town of Struan as it weathers Depression, war and the coming of television. It's a world of pristine landscapes and brutal winters, where beauty and harshness are inextricably intertwined, as when Ian brings home a puppy that gambols adorably about and then playfully kills Ian's even cuter pet bunny. Lawson's evocative writing untangles her characters' confused impulses toward city and country, love and hate, good and evil.
Publishers Weekly
At the center of Lawson's follow-up to her lauded debut, Crow Lake, are the antithetical personalities of two brothers the handsome and insidious Jake and Arthur, who's diffident and diligent. This stark contrast bursts into dangerous sibling rivalry when a girl named Laura comes between them. Lawson composes the novel in mutually enlightening chapters that vacillate between two different periods: the brothers' adolescence and early adulthood during World War II and a setting 20 years later, when Arthur and Laura are married, Jake has returned to Arthur's farm after a long absence, and Ian, a local boy who also is attracted to Laura, is working with Arthur. Lawson ingeniously uses this narrative structure to create immense tension by gradually disclosing the past Ian walks into and the unresolved hostility he unwittingly reignites in his adoration for Laura. The suspense of Arthur's impending explosion is a double-edged sword, though, as along the way his reticence depletes many events of their emotional impact. Despite this flaw, Lawson proves herself an adept chronicler of the conflicting dispositions and priorities that divide a family. Recommended for most fiction collections.
Library Journal
Lawson's melancholy saga of misspent youth, misplaced passion, and mistaken assumptions evinces both an enchanting delicacy and provocative vitality, and delivers an unerring sensitivity to place and time, people and passions. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Another note-perfect take on coming of age in northern Canada, as beautiful as the landscape is stark, from Lawson. Jake and Arthur are as dissimilar as brothers can be. Arthur, stolid and strong, takes after their farmer father, which is a great help as the Depression hits even their self-sufficient village of Struan. Quicksilver younger brother Jake is their mother's favorite. She admires his good looks and wit, but is blind to his selfishness. The brothers are so different that the story's crisis feels inevitable. Assigned to walk cows to a neighbor's farm, Arthur patiently leads a nervous heifer over a rickety bridge, while Jake fools around on the bridge's underside. When Jake calls out that the cow's movements might make him fall, Arthur responds with one rare word, "Good," that will haunt him throughout life. Cut to 20 years later, and Arthur is in charge of the family farm, still silent, still suffering, despite a healthy family and lovely wife. This second story focuses on young Ian, the son of Struan's doctor, who obsesses over Arthur's wife. As he wrestles with his own legacy, he becomes more involved with Arthur's, bringing about an event that will lay bare several secrets. With all the elements of melodrama, Lawson instead crafts a deftly interwoven story of family and loss. Jake's not evil, just bored. He, like Ian's mother, isn't valued in this hardscrabble climate, where his father and brother miss his school play due to errands. "Farming's important. Work's important. Time he knew what matters and what doesn't." The calm and beauty of the setting pervade Lawson's second novel, intensifying the heartfelt pull of its simple human drama.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How were you affected by the novel’s prologue? What did you discover about Arthur and Jake in this scene? How did your perceptions of the brothers change throughout the book?
2. How would you answer the questions that conclude the prologue? What accounts for the differences between those who follow the rules, like Arthur, and those who defy them? Which came more easily for you as an adolescent: obedience or defiance?
3. How were Jake and Arthur affected by their family dynamic? Did their mother pamper Jake too much? Did their father favor Arthur because he was easier to manage, or was Jake difficult to manage because of his father’s favoritism?
4. What was the effect of the novel’s timeline? How did it compare to your own experience of the continuum between present moments and memory? What parallels run between Ian’s life and Arthur’s?
5. Discuss the use of the headlines that open each chapter. What do they say about the local and global concerns of humanity? In what way were the headlines timeless, and in what way did they convey the unique attributes of this locale? What headlines would be most significant in marking the chapters of your life?
6. What is the significance of the two time periods in the lives of the characters? How were the Dunn brothers shaped by a youth of economic hardship and the presence of POWs? How was Ian shaped by an era of greater liberation, with television for entertainment and “risqué” music on the radio? What dreams for the future did each of these generations possess?
7. Discuss the nature of love and marriage as described in the novel. What made Jake so irresistible to Laura? What made Dr. Christopherson’s wife choose another man? Was Laura’s appeal strictly physical when she first moved to town? What is the riskiest romantic decision you have made?
8. How are the characters shaped by the novel’s setting? What do the natural surroundings of the town mean to them? What separates those who want to escape from those who bask in the town’s familiarity?
9. Why is Ian so transformed by the “day of the dragonflies” that concludes chapter nine? What did these memories mean to him?
10. Discuss the novel’s title. What does it mean for the characters to reach the other side of the bridge? Could Jake and Arthur ever be free of the wounds they inflicted on each other?
11. Who ultimately was responsible for Jake’s fall from the bridge? Who ultimately paid the price (literally, in terms of his medical bills, and figuratively as well)?
12. How did you react to the knowledge that Ian followed in his father’s footsteps after all? Did he make the right decision?
13. Laura confides in Arthur soon after meeting him, telling him she doesn’t believe that God cares about humanity (Chapter Ten). How would you have responded to her?
14. Discuss the cycles of tragedy conveyed in the Dunn family history, from the death of Arthur’s father to the closing scenes of Carter. How do characters cope with the concepts of fate versus intent? How do they cope with regret?
15. What common threads link the families in this novel to those in Crow Lake? What makes rural landscapes so appropriate for both of these storylines? Do you think people who grow up in cities feel the same passion for them as the characters in these two novels feel for the land?
16. If Matt Morrison, the brilliant and adored older brother in Crow Lake, had wandered into this book, which character do you think he would have had more in common with, Ian or Pete?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Other Typist
Suzanne Rindell, 2013
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399161469
Summary
For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Great Gatsby comes one of the most memorable unreliable narrators in years.
Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job.
It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings, and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room she is once again the weaker sex, best suited for filing and making coffee. This is a new era for women, and New York is a confusing place for Rose. Gone are the Victorian standards of what is acceptable. All around her women bob their hair, they smoke, they go to speakeasies.
Yet prudish Rose is stuck in the fading light of yesteryear, searching for the nurturing companionship that eluded her childhood.
When glamorous Odalie, a new girl, joins the typing pool, despite her best intentions Rose falls under Odalie’s spell. As the two women navigate between the sparkling underworld of speakeasies by night and their work at the station by day, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Suzanne Rindell is a doctoral student in American modernist literature at Rice University. The Other Typist is her first novel. She lives in New York City and is currently working on a second novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
With prohibition picking up steam, the New York precinct where Rose Baker works typing confessions is busy enough to need a new girl. Enter the beautiful, disturbing, and enviable Odalie.... Odalie's mysterious past shows up and raises questions even Rose can't ignore, and her curiosity leads her to challenge Odalie, with explosive results. Though the final twist—the one that should make readers gasp and look back for the clues they missed—is hinted at too often to snap smartly when sprung, Rindell's debut is a cinematic page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
"The other typist" is Odalie, the mysterious, magnetic young woman who joins Rose Baker's typing pool at a Lower East Side precinct in 1924 Manhattan. Rose, confused by the rapid changing mores as the Twenties roar along, is enthralled with the newcomer, but her admiration soon turns into threatening obsession. First novelist Rindell has published poetry and short fiction in places like Conjunctions, so she can write.
Library Journal
With hints toward The Great Gatsby, Rindell’s novel aspires to recreate Prohibition-era New York City, both its opulence and its squalid underbelly. She captures it quite well, while at the same time spinning a delicate and suspenseful narrative about false friendship, obsession, and life for single women in New York during Prohibition.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] pitch-black comedy about a police stenographer accused of murder in 1920s Manhattan.... Rose [Baker] begins her narration archly with off-putting curlicues she gradually discards. She is tart, judgmental, self-righteous and self-justifying. She is also viciously astute. Whether she's telling the truth is another matter. A deliciously addictive, cinematically influenced page-turner, both comic and provocative, about the nature of guilt and innocence within the context of social class in a rapidly changing culture.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Rose is a reliable or unreliable narrator? Why? If you did question her veracity, at what point in the novel did you begin to do so?
2. Why is Rose so captivated by Odalie, someone she wholly disapproves of initially?
3. Through Odalie, Rose gains entry into a world she's never seen before, one filled with opulence and rich, glamorous people. Clearly Rose is an outsider who doesn't belong. Yet she seems to take to it all rather quickly. Why do you think this is so? Why, despite all the new people she comes into contact with, is Odalie the only one she seems to be charmed by?
4. Some readers may think that Rose is a lesbian. Do you? Why or why not? Might her Victorian sensibility, when viewed by a contemporary reader, be misinterpreted and sexualized even if it might be innocent and pure?
5. Rose is such a stickler for the rules, yet as the novel progresses, she starts breaking them frequently. In retrospect, do you think she ever follows the rules? Or does she follow only the ones she agrees with?
6. Rose is actually quite funny, an astute observer. ("I crawled into [bed]...exhausted...from the efforts of making conversation with a man who if he were any duller might be declared catatonic by those in the medical profession.") Why, then, is she so humorless when it comes to people like Iris, Gib, and the Lieutenant Detective, especially?
7. Rose states in the beginning of the book: "I am there to transcribe what will eventually come to be known as the truth." The novel plays with the notion that the written word is superior to the spoken-Rose's transcripts and her diary that the reader is reading, versus the narration she provides throughout the book. Do you think the written word carries more weight than oral history? Why or why not?
8. Consider the many possible story lines for Odalie's history. Did she really kill her ex-fiancé? Was Gib really the driver of the train? Was she indeed a debutante from a wealthy family in Newport? Did she at a young age leave her mother to live with Czakó, the Hungarian, in Europe? Which of these stories is the most plausible? Do you believe any of them is true?
9. What do you make of Rose's appearance? Throughout the novel she takes pains to point out that she is plain-looking. Yet the Lieutenant Detective obviously finds her attractive, and at the end of the book, she is a doppelgänger for Odalie, who is portrayed as a knockout. What do you think Rose really looks like? Should her appearance even matter?
10. When Rose is in the hospital at the end of the book, the doctors call her "Ginevra." That is the name Teddy used for Odalie. Who do you think is the real Ginevra? Are Odalie and Rose the same person?
11. What do you make of the kiss at the end of the novel? Is Rose doing it just to get the Lieutenant Detective's knife, or is there some true feeling behind it? Were you surprised that she admits she's never kissed a man before?
12. What do you believe really happened at the end of the book? Did Rose kill Teddy? Or did Odalie?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Other Woman
Sandie Jones, 2019
Minatour Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250192004
Summary
HE LOVES YOU: Adam adores Emily. Emily thinks Adam’s perfect, the man she thought she’d never meet.
BUT SHE LOVES YOU NOT: Lurking in the shadows is a rival, a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.
AND SHE'LL STOP AT NOTHING: Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother Pammie. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants: Emily gone forever.
The Other Woman will have you questioning her on every page, in Sandie Jones' chilling psychological suspense about a man, his new girlfriend, and the mother who will not let him go. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Sandie Jones is a British journalist and author of the 2019 debut thriller, The Other Woman. For the past 20 years, she has worked mainly as a freelance writer for national newspapers and magazines, the Sunday Times, Woman’s Weekly and the Daily Mail. Sandie lives in South London with her husband and three children. (Adapted from the agent's website.)
Book Reviews
Whiplash-inducing final pages.
New York Times Book Review
Excellent.… [Jones] delves into the motives of a homegrown monster… deliver[ing] a tightly coiled story in The Other Woman and fills it with believable characters.
Associated Press
Such fun you'll cheer [Emily's] chutzpah.
People Magazine
Monster-in-law! The love triangle in this twisted psychological thriller is between Emily, her new boyfriend Adam and Adam’s mother, Pammie, who refuses to let her son go and wants Emily out of his life!
In Touch Weekly - Book Report
It's a page turner like no other, and the ending will knock your socks off,
Hello Giggles
Begs to be devoured in one sitting… deliciously dramatic and sinister.… If you're in the market for a lighter suspense read with a genuinely jaw-dropping finale, Sandie Jones' debut belongs on your TBR.
Crime by the Book
For anyone who's dealt with an unsavory in-law, this thriller will hit close to home.
Refinery29
This book will have you cheering its spunky heroine one minute and gasping from shock the next.
PopSugar
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for THE OTHER WOMAN… 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.)
Our Kind of Cruelty
Araminta Hall, 2018
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374228194
Summary
A spellbinding, darkly twisted novel about desire and obsession, and the complicated lines between truth and perception, Our Kind of Cruelty introduces Araminta Hall, a chilling new voice in psychological suspense.
This is a love story. Mike’s love story.
Mike Hayes fought his way out of a brutal childhood and into a quiet, if lonely, life before he met Verity Metcalf. V taught him about love, and in return, Mike has dedicated his life to making her happy.
He’s found the perfect home, the perfect job; he’s sculpted himself into the physical ideal V has always wanted. He knows they’ll be blissfully happy together.
It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been returning his e-mails or phone calls.
It doesn’t matter that she says she’s marrying Angus.
It’s all just part of the secret game they used to play. If Mike watches V closely, he’ll see the signs. If he keeps track of her every move, he’ll know just when to come to her rescue. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Araminta Hall has worked as a writer, journalist and teacher. Her first novel, Everything & Nothing, was published in 2011 and became a Richard & Judy read that year. Her second, Dot, came out in 2013. Both were published in the U.K. only. Our Kind of Cruelty, releaed in 2018, is her first novel published in the U.S.
Hall teaches creative writing at New Writing South in Brighton, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her latest book, Our Kind of Cruelty, is a deeply unsettling thriller of a love story, in which a secret game between lovers has deadly consequences. (Adapted from the UK pubisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] searing, chilling sliver of perfection about a toxic relationship that may or may not be finished…To a degree that's astonishing, this genre is still picking itself up from Gillian Flynn's brilliant and monumentally crucial Gone Girl, which retaught readers to doubt everything. That doubt lingers all the way through the stunning final pages of Our Kind of Cruelty, which may well turn out to be the year's best thriller.
Charles Finch - New York Times Book Review
A seriously twisted story of obsessive attachment.… If you like sustained discomfort you'll love this one.
Sarah Murdoch - Toronto Star
[A] fiendishly clever psychological thriller.… Hall forces her readers to consider their attitudes to the sexes.
Alison Flood - Guardian (UK)
In Hall’s impressive novel, sexual role-playing games have dangerous undercurrents.… While the orchestration of suspense is masterly, Hall’s real agenda becomes apparent in a feminist subtext: the way in which female desire is judged more harshly in modern society.
Barry Forshaw - Financial Times (UK)
A story of obsession and self delusion, as well as the pain that intense passion can bring, it is disturbing and thrilling.
Daily Mail (UK)
Thrilling.… The reader will wrangle over what's real and what's imagined. As a courtroom drama unfurls, readers may be left wondering if their interpretation of events is due to their own biases.
Irish News (UK)
One of the most unsettling books I have read in a while but brilliant.… Obsessive love has never been written so frighteningly.
Women's Day
[A] disturbing psychological thriller.…Readers never learn enough about V and arguably a lot more than they might wish about a narrator whose head is an uncomfortably creepy place to be. Still, Hall is a writer to watch.
Publishers Weekly
[A] slow-burn, sinister psychological thriller.… Hall’s depiction of stalker mentality and behavior is chilling. Perhaps most interesting is the examination of gender politics and how women are punished for sexual behavior in ways that men are not.
Library Journal
Hall brings the unreliable narrator to new heights in this disturbing narrative.… For fans of Nabokov’s Lolita [and] Highsmith’s Ripley tales.
Booklist
Here's a change—a psychological thriller in which a man is the crazy one.… Which is worse—an emotionally disturbed murderer or a woman with a fierce libido? Hall's U.S. debut is designed to show just how much trouble society has answering that question.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. As the book begins, Mike Hayes, the narrator and main character, is in prison. His barrister has told him to write down the story of events leading to the murder for which he will soon go to trial. Why does the barrister say that Mike’s story feels like "something he can’t grab hold of"? What are clues in Part I that Mike’s version of events may not be accurate? Are there things he tells us about himself that reveal more than he intends?
2. When Mike and Verity met, as students at university, they were both promising young people from very different backgrounds. What initially drew them together? What challenges did they each face and how were they suited to help each other? As their relationship progressed over nine years, how did they each change?
3. What is the Crave, the game Mike and Verity play? How did it begin and how was it named? What does Mike read into Verity’s e-mails and meetings with him that make him believe her marriage to Angus is "the ultimate Crave"?
4. Why does Verity invite Mike to the wedding? Why does she get back in touch with him at all?
5. What is Kaitlyn’s motivation for befriending Mike? How does he interpret her kindness? What does she mean when she says they are both outsiders at work? How does she come to suspect that he is not what he seems?
6. "Eagles are magnificent," Verity tells Mike, explaining to him why she wears a necklace with a silver eagle on it. What does the eagle mean to her? What does it mean to Mike?
7. Mike’s childhood was a combination of cruelty and kindness—a boyhood of damaging cruelty, followed by foster care with Elaine and Barry, who loved him and tried to repair the damage done to him by his mother and her boyfriends. What are instances of kindness and cruelty toward Mike or between other characters? How does Mike respond to kindness? What is his idea of love?
8. What is in the box that Elaine gives Mike when he goes away to university? Which objects are meaningful to him? Even though he says he meant to throw it away at the first opportunity, why has he kept it? How is Mike a combination of the cruelties and kindnesses that the objects in the box represent?
9. What is the sequence of events leading to Angus’s death? Are there signs that Mike is an angry man who might be capable of killing? Who else might bear some of the responsibility for Mike’s actions?
10. The testimony given at the trial often challenges Mike’s version of events. For example, he tells us that Verity’s friend Louise made a pass at him at Verity’s wedding. But Louise testifies that she had never liked Mike, that he was agitated at the wedding and had pushed her. Which version of the story is more believable? What are other examples of testimony that contradict Mike?
11. "I am well practiced in ruining things," Mike thinks as he remembers the events leading to Angus’s death. What leads him to make this observation? Is he a confused and grieving man who has been betrayed by circumstance or a man who deliberately chooses to do wrong—the dangerous fantasist invoked by Petra Gardner or the confused "good lad" his foster mother believes him to be? Does he deserve any sympathy?
12. Besides Verity, are there other people who matter to Mike? How would they describe him? How do his impulses, either cruel or kind—toward his foster parents, co-workers, neighbors, and acquaintances—intensify during the months after Verity leaves him?
13. The media covers the trial as a scandal and relishes in reporting every detail of Verity’s background and relationships. Why are the press and public opinion more focused on her than on Mike? Why do they seem eager to assume she is guilty? Is she treated fairly in court?
14. As the book ends, Mike receives the YOU ARE NOT postcard from Verity. Why did Verity send the postcard? How does Mike interpret her message? Why does he believe he has "saved" her?
15. The epigraph that opens the book (from The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch) implies that Our Kind of Cruelty is essentially a love story. Is it? What else does the epigraph foreshadow?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene, 1959
~200-250 pp. (varies by publisher)
Summary
Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates today. Conceived as one of Graham Greene’s “entertainments,” it tells of MI6’s man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. (From Penguin Group USA edition.)
Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of power outages. His adolescent daughter spends his money with a skill that amazes him, so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he's tempted. In return all he has to do is file a few reports. But when his fake reports start coming true things suddenly get more complicated and Havana becomes a threatening place. (From Random House UK edition.)
The 1959 film version stars Alec Guiness, Burl Ives, and Maureen O'Hara...and Noel Coward as Hawthorne. Also, Jeremy Northam does a fine turn in the novel's audio version.
* The novel was copyrighted in 1958 and published in 1959, thus the disparity in dates.
Author Bio• Birth—October 2, 1904
• Where—Berkhamstd, England, UK
• Death—April 3, 1991
• Where—Vevey, Switzerland
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Hawthornden Prize; Companion
of Honour; Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour; Order of Merit.
Known for his espionage thrillers set in exotic locales, Graham Greene is the writer who launched a thousand travel journalists. But although Greene produced some unabashedly commercial works—he called them "entertainments," to distinguish them from his novels—even his escapist fiction is rooted in the gritty realities he encountered around the globe. "Greeneland" is a place of seedy bars and strained loyalties, of moral dissolution and physical decay.
Greene spent his university years at Oxford "drunk and debt-ridden," and claimed to have played Russian roulette as an antidote to boredom. At age 21 he converted to Roman Catholicism, later saying, "I had to find a religion...to measure my evil against." His first published novel, The Man Within, did well enough to earn him an advance from his publishers, but though Greene quit his job as a London Times subeditor to write full-time, his next two novels were unsuccessful. Finally, pressed for money, he set out to write a work of popular fiction. Stamboul Train (also published as The Orient Express) was the first of many commercial successes.
Throughout the 1930s, Greene wrote novels, reviewed books and movies for the Spectator, and traveled through eastern Europe, Liberia, and Mexico. One of his best-known works, Brighton Rock, was published during this time; The Power and the Glory, generally considered Greene's masterpiece, appeared in 1940. Along with The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair, they cemented Greene's reputation as a serious novelist—though George Orwell complained about Greene's idea "that there is something rather distingué in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only."
During World War II, Greene was stationed in Sierra Leone, where he worked in an intelligence capacity for the British Foreign Office under Kim Philby, who later defected to the Soviet Union. After the war, Greene continued to write stories, plays, and novels, including The Quiet American, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, and The Captain and the Enemy. For a time, he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, producing both original screenplays and scripts adapted from his fiction.
He also continued to travel, reporting from Vietnam, Haiti, and Panama, among other places, and he became a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy in Central America. Some biographers have suggested that his friendships with Communist leaders were a ploy, and that he was secretly gathering intelligence for the British government. The more common view is that Greene's leftist leanings were part of his lifelong sympathy with the world's underdogs—what John Updike called his "will to compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist. Its unit is the individual, not any class."
But if Greene's politics were sometimes difficult to decipher, his stature as a novelist has seldom been in doubt, in spite of the light fiction he produced. Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, and R. K. Narayan paid tribute to his work, and William Golding prophesied: "He will be read and remembered as the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."
Extras
• Greene's philandering ways were legendary; he frequently visited prostitutes and had several mistresses, including Catherine Walston, who converted to Catholicism after reading The Power and the Glory and wrote to Greene asking him to be her godfather. After a brief period of correspondence, the two met, and their relationship inspired Greene's novel The End of the Affair.
• Greene was a film critic, screenwriter, and avid moviegoer, and critics have sometimes praised the cinematic quality of his style. His most famous screenplay was The Third Man, which he cowrote with director Carol Reed. Recently, new film adaptations have been made of Greene's novels The End of the Affair and The Quiet American. Greene's work has also formed the basis for an opera: Our Man in Havana, composed by Malcolm Williamson. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Had [Greene] decided to believe his own tale, and told it with simple conviction, it might have been hair-raising.... Instead, he has used tricks, and achieved mostly unreality. His characters lack bone, flesh, and blood, and only occasionally seem lifelike. They are dumb when convenience requires, smart when convenience requires, rarely showing initiative on their own.
James M. Cain - New York Times (10/28/1958)
The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety
William Golding - Author (Lord of the Flies)
As comical, satirical, atmospherical an ‘entertainment’ as he has given us.
Daily Telegraph - (UK)
Nobody should be anywhere near power who hasn't read (or seen the film of) Our Man in Havana, a powerful satire on the silly world of spying by a man who had experienced it
Mail on Sunday (UK)
No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than did Graham Greene.
Time
He had a sharp nose for trouble and injustice. In Our Man In Havana—a witty send-up of an agent's life —it was Cuba before Castro.
Financial Times
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 Our Man in Havana:
1. What kind of man is Wormold? Do you consider him heroic? Or would you describe him as a Walter Mitty type, at heart a decent but vacuous being? Why would Graham have made Wormold the novel's protagonist?
2. Why does Wormold agree to accept Hawthorne's proposal to become an agent for the British government? If he had refused, what might have happened?
3. What is the joke about the vacuum cleaners that Wormold sells...as does Mr. Carter. Don't neglect to talk about the product names.
4. Hasselbacher is perhaps the most interesting character in the novel, certainly his pithy sayings are. How would you describe his world view or philosophy toward life? What does he mean when he says to Wormold? ...
You are interested in a person, not in life,
and people die or leave us....But if you're
interested in life, it never lets you down.
Hasselbacher also compares people to crossword puzzles. Can you explain, or expand on, that comparison? Do you agree with his observation? What are some other observations of his that strike you?
5. Follow-up to Question #4: Who is Dr. Hasselbacher—is he an agent? Or is he an innocent by-stander who gets swept up in Wormwold's intrigue? How does he become involved with Raoul? How does he know to warn Wormold about the European Traders' Association luncheon? Is Hasselbacher a martyr of sorts (consider the quotation in Question #4)?
6. What do you think of Beatrice? Why was she not sad to see her husband leave her? Why is she so delighted when Wormold confesses to her that his spying operation has been a sham?
7. What does the last line of the novel mean—and what precipitates Beatrice's thought? What does the future hold for their relationship?
8. Why isn't Wormold summarily fired? Why does the service keep him on—and even award him the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
9. In what way is this novel a sly comment on the work of an author, writing a novel?
10. This is a work of satire. What is Graham satirizing? Do you consider this a cyncical novel? Is it humorous? Consider the era in which this novel was written...and also the events of the Cuban missle crisis three years after the novel's publication.
11. Does Captain Segura represent pure evil?
12. Consider James Cain's 1958 review in the New York Times (see "Book Reviews" above). Do you agree with his assessment of this novel...or does he miss the mark?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Our Souls at Night
Kent Haruf, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101911921
Summary
A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the imminent future.
In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf’s inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters.
Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis’s wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with.
Their brave adventures—their pleasures and their difficulties—are hugely involving and truly resonant, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer’s enduring contribution to American literature. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 24, 1943
• Where—Pueblo, Colorado, USA
• Died—November 30, 2014
• Where—Salida, Colorado
• Education—B.A., Nebraska Wesleyan University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—(see below)
Alan Kent Haruf was an American novelist and author of six novels, all set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado.
Life
Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister. He graduated with a BA from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965, where he would later teach, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973.
Before becoming a writer, Haruf worked in a variety of places, including a chicken farm in Colorado, a construction site in Wyoming, a rehabilitation hospital in Denver, a hospital in Phoenix, a presidential library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, as an English teacher with the Peace Corps in Turkey, and colleges in Nebraska and Illinois.
He lived with his wife, Cathy, in Salida, Colorado until his death in 2014. He had three daughters from his first marriage.
Works
All of Haruf's novels take place in the fictional town of Holt, in eastern Colorado, a town based on Yuma, Colorado, one of Haruf's residences in the early 1980s. His first novel, The Tie That Binds (1984), received a Whiting Award and a special Hemingway Foundation/PEN citation. Where You Once Belonged followed in 1990. A number of his short stories have appeared in literary magazines.
Plainsong was published in 1999 and became a U.S. bestseller. The New York Times' Verlyn Klinkenborg called it "a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader." Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.
Eventide, a sequel to Plainsong, was published in 2004. Library Journal described the writing as "honest storytelling that is compelling and rings true." Jonathan Miles saw it as a "repeat performance" and "too goodhearted."
On November 30, 2014, at the age of 71, Kent Haruf died at his home in Salida, Colorado, of interstitial lung disease.
Our Souls at Night, his final work, was published posthumously in 2015 and received wide praise. Ron Charles of the Washington Post called it "a tender, carefully polished work that it seems like a blessing we had no right to expect."
Recognition
1986 - Whiting Award for fiction
1999 - Finalist for the 1999 National Book Award for Plainsong
2005 - Colorado Book Award for Eventide
2005 - Finalist for the Book Sense Award for Eventide
2009 - Dos Passos Prize for Literature
2012 - Wallace Stegner Award
2014 - Folio Prize shortlist for Benediction
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/26/2015.)
Book Reviews
His great subject was the struggle of decency against small-mindedness, and his rare gift was to make sheer decency a moving subject.... [This] novel runs on the dogged insistence that simple elements carry depths, and readers will find much to be grateful for.
Joan Silber - New York Times Book Review
Short, spare and moving.... Our Souls at Night is already creating a stir.
Jennifer Maloney - Wall Street Journal
Utterly charming [and] distilled to elemental purity.... such a tender, carefully polished work that it seems like a blessing we had no right to expect.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Lateness—and second chances—have always been a theme for Haruf. But here, in a book about love and the aftermath of grief, in his final hours, he has produced his most intense expression of that yet... Packed into less than 200 pages are all the issues late life provokes.
John Freeman - Boston Globe
A fitting close to a storied career, a beautiful rumination on aging, accommodation, and our need to connect.... As a meditation on life and forthcoming death, Haruf couldn’t have done any better. He has given us a powerful, pared-down story of two characters who refuse to go gentle into that good night.
Lynn Rosen - Philadelphia Enquirer
Haruf is never sentimental, and the ending—multiple twists packed into the last twenty pages—is gritty, painful and utterly human.... His novels are imbued with an affection and understanding that transform the most mundane details into poetry. Like the friendly light shining from Addie's window, Haruf’s final novel is a beacon of hope; he is sorely missed.
Francesca Wade - Financial Times
A marvelous addition to his oeuvre...spare but eloquent, bittersweet yet hopeful.
Kurt Rabin - Fredericksburg Freelance-Star
More Winesburg than Mayberry, Holt and its residents are shaped by physical solitude and emotional reticence.... Haruf's fiction ratifies ordinary, nonflashy decency, but he also knows that even the most placid lives are more complicated than they appear from the outside.... The novel is a plainspoken, vernacular farewell.
Catherine Holmes - Charleston Post and Courier
A fine and poignant novel that demonstrates that our desire to love and to be loved does not dissolve with age.... The story speeds along, almost as if it's a page-turning mystery.
Joseph Peschel - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Haruf spent a life making art from our blind collisions, and Our Souls at Night is a fitting finish.
John Reimringer - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Elegiac, mournful and compassionate. . .a triumphant end to an inspiring literary career [and] a reminder of a loss on the American cultural landscape, as well as a parting gift from a master storyteller.
William J. Cobb - Dallas Morning News
By turns amusing and sad, skipping-down-the-sidewalk light and pensive.... I recommend reading it straight through, then sitting in quiet reflection of beautiful literary art.
Fred Ohles - Lincoln Journal Star
Haruf was knows as a great writer and teacher whose work will endure.... The cadence of this book is soft and gentle, filled with shy emotion, as tentative as a young person's first kiss—timeless in its beauty.... Addie and Louis find a type of love that, as our society ages, ever more people in the baby boom generation may find is the only kind of love that matters.
Jim Ewing - Jackson Clarion-Ledger
Blunt, textured, and dryly humorous. . . this quietly elegiac novel caps a fine, late-blooming and tenacious writing career.... Haruf’s gift is to make hay of the unexpected, and it feels like a mercy.... This is a novel for just after sunset on a summer’s eve, when the sky is still light and there is much to see, if you are looking.
Wingate Packard - Seattle Times
There is so much wisdom in this beautifully pared-back and gentle book.... [A] small, quiet gem, written in English so plain that it sparkles.
Anne Susskind - Sydney Morning Herald
A delicate, sneakily devastating evocation of place and character.... Haruf’s story accumulates resonance through carefully chosen details; the novel is quiet but never complacent.
The New Yorker
In a fitting and gorgeous end to a body of work that prizes resilience above all else, Haruf has bequeathed readers a map charting a future that is neither easy nor painless, but it’s also not something we have to bear alone.
Esquire
Haruf once again banishes doubts. Our souls can surprise us. Beneath the surface of reticent lives—and of Haruf’s calm prose—they prove unexpectedly brave.
Ann Hulbert - Atlantic
(Starred review.) [A] gripping and tender novel.... [Haruf] returns to the landscape and daily life of Holt County, Colo.,...this time with a stunning sense of all that’s passed and the precious importance of the days that remain.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A]cclaimed novelist Haruf captures small-town life to perfection in his signature spare style.... Poignant and eloquent, this novel resonates beyond the pages. Don't miss this exceptional work from a literary voice now stilled. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal
A sweet love story about the twilight years.... [Addie] and Louis find an emotional intimacy beyond anything either has previously known, and both come to recognize that they "deserve to be happy," no matter what friends and family think.... Those who have been immersed in Holt since Plainsong (1999) will appreciate one last visit.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What does the title mean?
2. The novel begins with the word "and": "And then there was the day when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters." What do you imagine came before it?
3. Kent Haruf was known for using simple, spare language to create stories of great depth. How does the modest action in Our Souls at Night open onto larger insights about getting older?
4. It takes a considerable amount of courage for a woman of Addie’s generation to invite a man she hardly knows to sleep in her bed. What do you think propelled her to do it?
5. When Louis comes over for the first time, he knocks on her back door in the name of discretion. Addie says, "I made up my mind I’m not going to pay attention to what people think. I’ve done that too long—all my life. I’m not going to live that way anymore. The alley makes it seem we’re doing something wrong or something disgraceful, to be ashamed of" (8). How does her attitude influence Louis’s?
6. Both Louis and Addie have to contend with gossip about their relationship. Who handles it better?
7. What does Addie’s friendship with Ruth show us about Addie’s character?
8. Addie and Louis both had troubled marriages, but stayed married until their partners died. How does that sense of propriety, of loyalty, influence their relationship with each other?
9. In describing his affair, Louis says, "I think I regret hurting Tamara more than I do hurting my wife. I failed my spirit or something" (42). What does he mean by this?
10. Why did Addie refuse to move after Connie’s death? How did this decision color Gene’s reaction to his mother’s late-in-life love affair?
11. On page 52, Louis describes his relationship with Addie to his daughter, "It’s some kind of decision to be free. Even at our ages." Why does he feel freer with Addie than he does alone? How does his behavior become more uninhibited as the novel progresses?
12. How does Jamie’s arrival deepen the connection between Addie and Louis?
13. When Louis confesses that he wanted to be a poet, what effect does it have on Addie’s opinion of him? And on your opinion?
14. Addie and Louis both have regrets about the way they raised their children. How does that influence their relationship with Jamie?
15. Why did Addie buy new clothes for her trips to Denver that she never wears in Holt? What signal does it send to the reader?
16. On page 145, Addie mentions the Denver Center for the Performing Arts production of Benediction, based on the author’s own novel. Addie and Louis discuss the fact that it’s set in Holt, the fictional town in which they live. Why do you think Haruf slipped this into the story?
17. At the end of that conversation, Addie says, "Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this. That it turns out we’re not finished with changes and excitements. And not all dried up in body and spirit" (147). What point is Haruf making?
18. Jamie’s arrival ultimately leads to grave consequences. What is Gene afraid of?
19. Several times during the novel, Addie is described as being brave, but she gives in to Gene’s demands. Is this a brave act? What is she protecting?
20. How would you describe the ending—as heartbreaking, hopeful, or something else?
21. In his final interview, conducted a few days before his death from interstitial lung disease, Haruf discussed Our Souls at Night: "The idea for the book has been floating around in my mind for quite a while. Now that I know I have, you know—a limited time—it was important to me to try to make good use of that time. So I went out there every day. Typically, I have always had a story pretty well plotted out before I start writing. This time I knew generally where the story was going, but I didn’t know very many of the details. So as it happened, I went out every day trusting myself to be able to add to the story each day. So I essentially wrote a new short chapter of the book every day. I’ve never had that experience before. I don’t want to get too fancy about it, but it was like something else was working to help me get this done. Call it a muse or spiritual guidance, I don’t know. All I know is that the trust I had in being able to write every day was helpful." How does reading this affect your understanding of the book?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Out Stealing Horses
Per Petterson, 2003; English trans., 2005
Macmillan-Picador
250 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312427085
Summary
Winner, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Out Stealing Horses has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he's out on a walk.
From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss, and in the precise, irresistible prose of a newly crowned master of fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July18, 1952
• Where—Oslo, Norway
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Norwegian Critics prize for Literature; Booksellers Best Book of the Year
Award; Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
• Currently—lives in Oslo, Norwary
Per Petterson is a prize-winning Norwegian novelist. His debut was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories.
He has since published five novels to good reviews. Til Sibir (To Siberia, 1996; nominated for The Nordic Council's Literature Prize), a novel set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998. His novel I kjølvannet, (In the Wake, 2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990.
Petterson's breakthrough, however, was Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses, 2003). The novel received two top literary prizes in Norway—the The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award. The 2005 English language translation was awarded the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (the world's largest monetary literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English (€100,000). In the December 9. 2007 issue of the New York Times Book Review Out Stealing Horses was named one of the 10 best books of the year.
Out Stealing Horses has double meanings and two sets of twins. When asked “How did the Nazi Occupation of Norway translate into the plot of your novel?” Mr. Petterson responded:
Well, like I said, I do not plan, so that double meaning came up when I needed it. That is disappointing to some readers, I know. But for me it shows the strength of art. It is like carving out a sculpture from some material. You have to go with the quality of the material and not force upon it a form that it will not yield to anyway. That will only look awkward. Early in the book, in the 1948 part, I let the two fathers (of my main characters, Jon and Trond) have a problem with looking at each other. And I wondered, why is that? So I thought, well, it’s 1948, only three years after the Germans left Norway. It has to be something with the war. And then I thought, shit, I have to write about the war. You see, I hate research.
In 2012 Petterson published his ninth work of fiction, I Refuse, in Norway; the novel quickly became a best seller. By the time of its U.S. printing in 2015, rights had been sold to 16 countries.
Petterson is a trained librarian. He has worked as a bookstore clerk, translator and literary critic before becoming a full-time writer. He cites Knut Hamsun and Raymond Carver among his influences. All told, his works have been translated into nearly 50 languages. (Adated from Wikipedia. First retrieved in 2008.)
Book Reviews
This short yet spacious and powerful book—in such contrast to the well-larded garrulity of the bulbous American novel of today—reminds us of the careful and apropos writing of J. M. Coetzee, W. G. Sebald and Uwe Timm. Petterson’s kinship with Knut Hamsun, which he has himself acknowledged, is palpable in Hamsun’s “Pan,” “Victoria” and even the lighthearted “Dreamers.” But nothing should suggest that his superb novel is so embedded in its sources as to be less than a gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader’s own experience of life.
Thomas McGuane - New York Times
Read Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. From the first terse sentences of this mesmerizing Norwegian novel about youth, memory, and, yes, horse stealing; you know you're in the hands of a master storyteller.
Newsweek
Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force.... Loss is conveyed with all the intensity of a boy's perception but acquires new resonance in the brooding consciousness of the older man.
The New Yorker
Award-winning Norwegian novelist Petterson renders the meditations of Trond Sander, a man nearing 70, dwelling in self-imposed exile at the eastern edge of Norway in a primitive cabin. Trond's peaceful existence is interrupted by a meeting with his only neighbor, who seems familiar. The meeting pries loose a memory from a summer day in 1948 when Trond's friend Jon suggests they go out and steal horses. That distant summer is transformative for Trond as he reflects on the fragility of life while discovering secrets about his father's wartime activities. The past also looms in the present: Trond realizes that his neighbor, Lars, is Jon's younger brother, who "pulls aside the fifty years with a lightness that seems almost indecent." Trond becomes immersed in his memory, recalling that summer that shaped the course of his life while, in the present, Trond and Lars prepare for the winter, allowing Petterson to dabble in parallels both bold and subtle. Petterson coaxes out of Trond's reticent, deliberate narration a story as vast as the Norwegian tundra.
Publishers Weekly
An aging loner remembers a childhood summer that marked a lifetime of loss. Fifteen-year-old Trond, spending the summer of 1948 with his father, away from their Oslo home in a cabin in the easternmost region of Norway, wakes to an invitation from his friend, Jon, to "steal" their neighbor's horses for an early-morning joy ride. But what Trond doesn't yet know is that the ride is Jon's farewell to him. The day before, when Jon was supposed to be minding his young twin brothers, Lars and Odd, Lars found Jon's prized gun and, imitating his older brother, accidentally killed his twin. Nearly 60 years later, Trond has returned to the rustic region after a devastating car accident that killed his wife and left him gravely injured, hoping to live out the rest of his days quietly, with his dog as his only companion. But late one night, he has a chance encounter with his only neighbor, an aging man named Lars. Trond realizes that this neighbor is his childhood friend's younger brother, and their meeting causes him to remember not only the morning of the horse theft, but the rest of the summer as well. After Jon's disappearance, Trond spends the summer working with his father to send lumber down the river to the Swedish border, ostensibly the reason for their retreat. He is stunned to learn that his father is having an affair with Jon's grieving mother, also the object of Trond's own first intimate moment. As Trond begins to talk to the other workers, he also realizes that his father has had complicated reasons for spending much of the war years in the eastern region of the country, close to Sweden's neutral borders. He even learns that the phrase "out stealing horses," which he had tossed around casually with his friend, has a meaning that reaches beyond their childhood pranks. Haunting, minimalist prose and expert pacing give this quiet story from Norway native Petterson an undeniably authoritative presence.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “I needed to concentrate,” Trond says at the start of the book (pg. 7), explaining his decision to move to the country. Do you think he is happy in his isolation? Is he making a brave choice by withdrawing to the country, as he has always dreamt of doing; or do you think he’s fleeing the responsibilities of his life?
2. Soon after Odd is killed, Trond says "I felt it somewhere inside me; a small remnant, a bright yellow speck that perhaps would never leave me." What is it he feels? How does that day stealing horses with Jon, and learning what has happened to Odd, change Trond? Do you see the effects of that loss in him as an older man?
3. Petterson has been widely praised for his descriptions of nature, and of small quiet moments in everyday life. How does his writing make these ordinary moments compelling? Which images of landscapes or domestic scenes remained most vivid in your memory after finishing the book?
4. After his dream at the start of Chapter 5, which leaves him weeping, Trond says, "But then it is not death I fear." Do you believe him? If so, what is he afraid of?
5. How do you think Trond’s life would have changed if he had hit the man in Karlstad (pp. 231- 233)? Why does he attach so much significance to that decision?
6. Look at the scene in which Trond’s car goes off the road and he sees the lynx in the woods (pg. 65). At the end of the scene, Trond says “I can’t recall when I last felt so alive as when I got the car onto the road again and drove on.” Why does a near accident, and the sight of the lynx, thrill him?
7. Were you surprised by Ellen’s reaction to her father when she finds him at the end of the book? Would you be angrier in her position, or more forgiving? Has Trond been unfair to her?
8. How has Trond become like his father, and how has he managed to take a different path? What parallels do you see between the lives they lead in the book? How is Trond’s behavior as an adult influenced by the short time he spent with his father as a young man?
9. Look at the book’s final section, after Trond has discovered that his father isn’t coming back. How does his behavior change? Were you surprised by his reaction to the news?
10. How do you think Trond’s life will change after the end of the novel? Will he see more of his daughter? Will he and Lars become friends, or will he return to the isolation he had sought out when he moved to the country?
11. Look at Ellen’s monologue about the opening lines of David Copperfield (pg. 197). How do you understand the phenomenon she’s describing, of not being “the leading characters of our own lives”? Has this happened to anyone you know? Do you think it has happened to Trond? Is it a good or a bad thing?
12. Why do you think Trond’s father doesn’t tell him the story of the Resistance? Why does he leave it to Franz? How do you think Trond’s perception of his father would have changed if his father had told the story himself?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Outlander
Diana Gabaldon, 1991
Random House
850 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440212560
Summary
Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century, and a lover in another...
In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an "outlander"—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord...1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire's destiny in soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidden Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life...and shatter her heart. For here, James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 11, 1952
• Where—Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
• Education—B.S., Northern Arizona University; M.S., Scripps
Oceanographic Institute; Ph.D., Northern Arizona University
• Awards—Favorite Book of the Year, Romance Writers of
America, 1991 (for Outlander); Romantic Times Career
Achievement Award, 1997; Odom Heritage Award, 2000;
Quill Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, 2006
• Currently—lives in Flagstaff, Arizona
To millions of fans, Diana Gabaldon is the creator of a complex, original, and utterly compelling amalgam of 18th-century romantic adventure and 20th-century science fiction. To the publishing industry, she's a grassroots-marketing phenomenon. And to would-be writers everywhere who worry that they don't have the time or expertise to do what they love, Gabaldon is nothing short of an inspiration.
Gabaldon wrote her first novel while juggling the demands of motherhood and career: in between her job as an ecology professor, she also had a part-time gig writing freelance software reviews. Gabaldon had never written fiction before, and didn't intend to publish this first novel, which she decided to call Outlander. This, she decided, would be her "practice novel." Worried that she might not be able to pull a plot and characters out of thin air, she settled on a historical novel because "it's easier to look things up than to make them up entirely."
The impulse to set her novel in 18th-century Scotland didn't stem—as some fans have assumed—from a desire to explore her own familial roots (in fact, Gabaldon isn't even Scottish). Rather, it came from watching an episode of the British sci-fi series Dr. Who and becoming smitten with a handsome time traveler in a kilt. A time-travel element crept into Gabaldon's own book only after she realized her wisecracking female lead couldn't have come from anywhere but the 20th century. The resulting love affair between an intelligent, mature, sexually experienced woman and a charismatic, brave, virginal young man turned the conventions of historical romance upside-down.
Gabaldon has said her books were hard to market at first because they were impossible to categorize neatly. Were they historical romances? Sci-fi adventure stories? Literary fiction? Whatever their genre (Gabaldon eventually proffered the term "historical fantasias"), they eventually found their audience, and it turned out to be a staggeringly huge one.
Even before the publication of Outlander, Gabaldon had an online community of friends who'd read excerpts and were waiting eagerly for more. (In fact, her cohorts at the CompuServe Literary Forum helped hook her up with an agent.) Once the book was released, word kept spreading, both on the Internet and off, and Gabaldon kept writing sequels. (When her fourth book, Drums of Autumn, was released, it debuted at No. 1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and her publisher, Delacorte, raced to add more copies to their initial print run of 155,000.)
With her books consistently topping the bestseller lists, it's apparent that Gabaldon's appeal lies partly in her ability to bulldoze the formulaic conventions of popular fiction. Salon writer Gavin McNett noted approvingly, "She simply doesn't pay attention to genre or precedent, and doesn't seem to care that identifying with Claire puts women in the role of the mysterious stranger, with Jamie—no wimp in any regard—as the romantic 'heroine.' "
In between "Outlander" novels, Gabaldon also writes historical mysteries featuring Lord John Grey, a popular, if minor, character from the series, and is working on a contemporary mystery series. Meanwhile, the author's formidable fan base keeps growing, as evidenced by the expanding list of Gabaldon chat rooms, mailing lists, fan clubs and web sites—some of them complete with fetching photos of red-haired lads in kilts.
Extras
• Outlander may have been Gabaldon's first novel, but she was already a published writer. Her credits included scholarly articles, political speeches, radio ads, computer manuals and Walt Disney comic books.
• Gabaldon gets 30 to 40 e-mails a day from her fans, who often meet online to discuss her work. "I got one letter from a woman who had been studying my book jacket photos (with a magnifying glass, evidently), who demanded to know why there was a hole in my pants," wrote Gabaldon on her web site. "This strikes me as a highly metaphysical question, which I am not equipped to answer, but which will doubtless entertain some chat-groups for quite a long time. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Gabaldon is a born storyteller.
Los Angeles Daily News
Marvelously entertaining.... A page-turner of the highest order and a good read from start to finish.
Chattanooga Times
Absorbing and heartwarming, this first novel lavishly evokes the land and lore of Scotland, quickening both with realistic characters and a feisty, likable heroine. English nurse Claire Beauchamp Randall and husband Frank take a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands in 1945. When Claire walks through a cleft stone in an ancient henge, she's somehow transported to 1743. She encounters Frank's evil ancestor, British captain Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, and is adopted by another clan. Claire nurses young soldier James Fraser, a gallant, merry redhead, and the two begin a romance, seeing each other through many perilous, swashbuckling adventures involving Black Jack. Scenes of the Highlanders' daily life blend poignant emotions with Scottish wit and humor. Eventually Sassenach (outlander) Claire finds a chance to return to 1945, and must choose between distant memories of Frank and her happy, uncomplicated existence with Jamie. Claire's resourcefulness and intelligent sensitivity make the love-conquers-all, happily-ever-after ending seem a just reward.
Publishers Weekly
After being separated by seven years of World War II, Claire and Frank Randall return to the Scottish Highlands for a second honeymoon. Left to her own devices while her husband immerses himself in historical pursuits, Claire inadvertently enters a circle of standing stones and is plunged back 200 years to a Scotland on the verge of the second Jacobite uprising. Her pluck and skill as a nurse win the Scots' grudging respect, but only marriage to a Scot will save her from the clutches of Frank's vicious forbear, Black Jack Randall. Though first novelist Gabaldon uses time travel primarily to allow a modern heroine, this is basically a richly textured historical novel with an unusual and compelling love story. —Cynthia Johnson Whealler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA
Library Journal
Once-in-a-lifetime romantic passion and graphically depicted torture sessions are only the two extremes of this lively time-travel romance set in 18th-century Scotland—an imaginative and lighthearted debut by a promising newcomer. World War II has finally ended and Claire Beauchamp Randall, a British Red Cross nurse, has gone off to Scotland with her historian husband, Frank, to try to resume their married life where it left off six years before. Their diligent attempts to make a baby come to a halt, however, when Claire discovers an ancient stone circle on a nearby hilltop, slips between two mysterious-looking boulders, and is transported willy-nilly to the year 1743. Stumbling down the hillside, disoriented and confused, Claire is discovered by Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, an evil English officer who happens to be her husband's direct ancestor and physical look-alike. Randall notes Claire's revealing 1940's summer dress, assumes she is a whore, and attempts to rape her, whereupon she is rescued by the fierce MacKenzie clan, who take her to their castle and confine her there. Claire adjusts to her changed circumstances with amazing ease, using her nursing experience to tend to her hosts' illnesses while she impatiently awaits a chance to return to the circle of stones. Before she can get away, circumstances force her into a marriage with James Frazer, a Scottish renegade from English justice and Jonathan Randall's archenemy. Young Jamie's good looks, passion, and virility soon redirect Claire's energies to defending her stalwart new husband against her former mate's evil clone, and the fierce, courageous but historically doomed Scottish clans against the course of destiny itself. A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.
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 Outlander:
1. What kind of characters has Gabaldon has created? Given that she has created a historical / fantasy novel, are her characters realistically drawn? Are they emotionally and psychologically complex...or flat, one-dimensional and cartoonish?
2. What assumptions does Jonathan Randall make regarding Claire upon first encountering her...and why?
3. In what ways does Clair adjust to her new circumstances, and how does she put her 20th-century knowledge to work in an 18th-century world?
4. How does Clair end up marrying James Frazier, and to what extent does this marriage compromise her marriage to Frank Randall? Talk about the irony of defending her new husband against a direct ancestor and physical look-alike of her 20th-century husband?
5. How disorienting—or appealing—would it be for you to be transported back in time? How would you cope with the time change? What era would be most appealing to you to travel back to?
6. If you time-traveled, how much of the future from which you have come would you be tempted to reveal? What might you attempt to change using your knowledge of modern times?
7. The Outlander series was difficult to market, at first, not fitting into any neat genre of fiction. But it eventually caught on...and in a very big way. To what do you ascribe the huge popularity of this series? What is the fascination for its millions of readers?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
The Outlander
Gil Adamson, 2007
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061491344
In Brief
In 1903 Mary Boulton flees alone across the West, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, she has just become a widow—and her husband's killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother's death. Responding to little more than the primitive instinct for survival at any cost, she retreats ever deeper into the wilderness—and into the wilds of her own mind.
With the stunning prose and captivating mood of great works like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or early Cormac McCarthy, Gil Adamson's extraordinary debut novel weds a brilliant literary style to the gripping, moving, picaresque tale of one woman's desperate journey. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—1961
• Awards—Drummer General's Award; Books in Canada First
Novel; Hammett Award; ReLit Award; 2009 Canada Reads
• Currently—Toronto, Canada
Gil Adamson (born Gillian Adamson, 1961) is a Canadian writer. She won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2008 for her 2007 novel The Outlander.
Adamson's first published work was Primitive, a volume of poetry, in 1991. She followed up with the short story collection Help Me, Jacques Cousteau in 1995 and a second volume of poetry, Ashland, in 2003, as well as multiple chapbooks and a commissioned fan biography of Gillian Anderson, Mulder, It’s Me, which she coauthored with her sister-in-law Dawn Connolly in 1998.
The Outlander, a novel set in the Canadian West at the turn of the 20th century, was published by House of Anansi in the spring of 2007 and won the Hammett Prize that year. The novel was later selected for the 2009 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by actor Nicholas Campbell.
Adamson currently lives in Toronto with poet Kevin Connolly. (From Wikipedia.)
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Critics Say . . .
An absorbing adventure from a Canadian poet and short story writer who knows how to keep us enthralled. Of course, the Girl Being Chased is one of the most enduring figures of chivalric and chauvinistic literature, a staple of television dramas and horror films.... But Gil is short for Gillian, and her strange and complicated heroine has nothing in common with Hollywood's worn-out damsels in distress…there are pages here you can't read slowly enough to catch every word. Adamson is as captivating with descriptions of vast mountain ranges as she is with the smaller calamities, like the drowning of a yearling "frightened into madness.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
A hallucinatory road novel—or, more accurately, trail novel—written in a chanting prose that's rich with wilderness description, physical adventure and barbed humor.... Here's a novel that offers both an intense journey (Mary's) and a portrait of a specific time and place: the Canadian frontier.
Seattle Times
Set in 1903, Adamson's compelling debut tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton ("[w]idowed by her own hand") and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton's sad past—an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression—slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothers-in-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Boulton's journey and ultimate liberation—made all the more captivating by the delirium that runs in the recesses of her mind-speaks to the resilience of the female spirit in the early part of the last century. Lean prose, full-bodied characterization, memorable settings and scenes of hardship all lift this book above the pack. Already established as a writer of poetry (Ashland) and short stories (Help Me, Jacques Cousteau), Adamson also shines as novelist.
Publishers Weekly
Canadian poet and short fiction writer Adamson (Ashland), a 2007 Hammett Prize nominee, has shaped a picaresque tale in the style of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. Set in 1903, it reveals Mary Boulton's life with her cruel husband, John, in jagged flashbacks reflecting her sporadic delirium from hunger and the harsh elements. After their sickly newborn son dies, Mary takes the only way out she knows: she kills John with his hunting rifle and escapes West, with John's two angry brothers in pursuit. Various eccentrics help her along her harrowing journey, including William Moreland, a rough mountain man who eventually leaves her to return to the wilderness. Mary barely survives until a Crow Indian finds and takes her to a nearby mining town, where she recuperates. The brothers eventually track her down there, arriving just after a calamitous landslide. Authentic historical details, a strong female character running for her life, and a murder-driven plot will appeal to fiction readers in all public libraries. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
The slow unfolding of story and character coupled with lyrical descriptions of the terrain, an occasional touch of bizarre humor, and a multitude of well-chosen historical details will appeal to readers of literary writing as well as historical-fiction fans. —Ellen Loughran
Booklist
The perambulations of a young woman across an austere landscape, knowing what she's running from but fuzzy about what she's running toward. At the age of 19, Mary Boulton becomes a fugitive: The self-made widow killed her husband with his own rifle. This murderous act doesn't occur in frustration or in rage but is done calmly, almost dispassionately, owing to a cumulative series of outrages in their brief marriage. The novel traces her journey across an early-20th-century landscape. Pursuing her are her two beefy twin brothers-in-law, who want revenge if not justice for the killing of their younger brother. Along the way Mary has several significant encounters, first with William Moreland, a self-sufficient frontiersman who readily admits he can't put up with civilization. After their relationship heats up considerably, he leaves, Mary being almost more civilization than a body can stand. She continues west and temporarily settles in the forlorn mining town of Frank, where she meets up with the Reverend Bonnycastle, a limited but sincere minister. Their relationship is one of surrogate father-daughter. She also meets the requisite eccentrics, including McEchern, a dwarf who owns a small business but who makes most of his money through the sale of white lightning. Disaster strikes when a) Mary visits a mine closely followed by b) a rockslide that buries most of the town. It turns out that a woman in a mine is considered something other than an omen of good fortune. The narrative picks up steam as the twins finally catch word of Mary's whereabouts and Moreland has a change of heart and decides that Mary is just what he needs to anchor him more firmly to his natural existence. At times the book reads almost like an allegory, for Adamson refers to her characters by abstractions like "the widow," "the Reverend" and "the Ridgerunner." A lovingly crafted novel.
Kirkus Reviews
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Book Club Discussion Questions
1. When we meet the widow, she is emotionally remote, frightened, and unable to form a plan. She has a strong will to survive, but few skills. By the end of the book she seems like a different woman. Is she a different person, or the same person with new skills? Never mind fictional characters, is it possible for people to change?
2. What is the cause of the widow's madness? Is this a manifestation of severe post-partum depression, or has Mary always been a little off? Will she always be, or is there some hope?
3. Regarding religion, the author says of Mary that "she had a child's disinterest in any father other than her own." Does Mary truly understand faith? Does she herself have any faith? Has she has been given any real instruction in faith? Does one need instruction? Of all the characters in this novel, who has the greatest sense of faith, or of the divine?
4. What motivates the bird lady to take in "strays and lame ducks"? She is described as a Good Samaritan—do you think she is one? Why are Zenta and Jeffrey so protective of her? Also, she tells the widow that the maid Zenta "dislikes you more than any other person I've brought to the house." Is there something about Mary that is different than the other "lame ducks"?
5. The names in this novel are out of a fairy tale: the widow, the Ridgerunner, the Reverend, the giant, the dwarf. Why did the author decide to choose such archetypal monikers for her characters? Do the characters come across as archetypes, or as fleshed-out personalities?
6. While sewing an injured miner's wound closed, Mary thinks "This is what the embroidery lessons were for." Did you learn anything new about women's (and men's) lives at the turn of the last century? Is historical detail important to you, or do you pay most attention to the story and character?
7. At one point, the widow realizes she has found "a kind of amnesty" with the Reverend. Is amnesty different from forgiveness? Do you think Mary wants forgiveness, or that she forgives herself?
8. The natural world itself is almost a character in The Outlander. Different characters have different relationships with it. For instance, in the "fine black boots," the twins seem out of place in the mountains, while William Moreland has been content to live alone in the wilderness for over a decade. What was your feeling about this element of the novel? In real life, have most of us lost a sense of the natural world?
9. After the avalanche, the widow lies in McEchern's store "as if dead" and thinks "he is gone, he is gone." It seems clear she is thinking of Bonny—but perhaps her lament for "him" is wider than that. What have men meant to her over the span of this novel?
10. After the landslide, Mary registers a change in herself. She is "like a different woman, one direly accustomed to loss. With nothing to her name, she had simply let go, let go of everything." What has she been holding onto? What does letting go accomplish?
11. "Find me." Why does Mary leave at the end? Does she want to live alone, as Moreland has—or is it a lover's game? Will the Ridgerunner have much trouble finding her? Where will she/they go now? Deeper into the wild, or toward civilization?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Outline
Rachel Cusk, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374228347
Summary
A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language.
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives.
Rachel Cusk’s Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane.
The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.
Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people’s motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing.
This is Rachel Cusk’s finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Canada
• Raised—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Whitbread Award; Somerset Maughm Award
• Currently—lives in London
Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles before finishing her education at St Mary's Convent, Cambridge. She read English at New College, Oxford, and has travelled extensively in Spain and Central America.
She is the author of eight novels, the first of which, Saving Agnes (1993), won the Whitbread First Novel Award. Her 2001 nonfiction exploration of motherhood, A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, generated considerable controversy. Some women accused Cusk of loathing her own children while others secretly felt the book mirrored their own troubled attitudes. Inspite of—or because of—the controversy, the book has been reprinted numerous times, with Lynn Barber of the UK's The Guardian regarding it as "probably the most powerful book on motherhood ever written."
Her third novel, The Country Life (1997) won the Somerset Maughm Novel Award, while two other novels (see below) were shortlisted for literary prizes. In 2003, Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 Best of Young British Novelists.
Cusk is divorced from her second husband, photographer Adrian Clarke, with whom she has two daughters, Albertine and Jessye. Cusk wrote in detail about the marriage in Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012); a review of the book by Camilla Long won Long the "Hatchet Job of the Year" award.
Books
1993 - Saving Agnes (Whitbread First Novel Award)
1995 -The Temporary
1997- The Country Life (Somerset Maughm Novel Award)
2001 - A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother
2003 - The Lucky Ones (shortlisted, Whitbread Award)
2005 - In the Fold
2006 - Arlington Park (shortlisted, Orange Prize)
2009 - The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
2009 - The Bradshaw Variations
2012 - Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation
2014 - Outline
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/15/2015.)
Book Reviews
[L]ethally intelligent…. While the narrator is rarely alone, reading Outline mimics the sensation of being underwater, of being separated from other people by a substance denser than air. But there is nothing blurry or muted about Cusk's literary vision or her prose: Spend much time with this novel and you'll become convinced she is one of the smartest writers alive. Her narrator's mental clarity can seem so hazardously penetrating, a reader might fear the same risk of invasion and exposure. Cusk is also—this sounds ridiculous—but she is also noticeably an adult. She writes about adult topics with sagacity and authority. Well-worn subjects—adultery, divorce, ennui—become freshly menacing under her gaze.
Heidi Julavits - New York Times Book Review
[A] poised and cerebral novel that has little in the way of straightforward plot yet is transfixing in its unruffled awareness of the ways we love and leave each other, and of what it means to listen to other people…. While little happens in Outline, everything seems to happen. You find yourself pulling the novel closer to your face, as if it were a thriller and the hero were dangling over a snake pit. This is largely because the small conversations and monologues in Outline are, at their best, as condensed and vivid as theater…. Ms. Cusk marshals a lot of gifts in this novel, and they are unconventional ones. With no straightforward narrative to hang onto, no moving in and out of rooms, she's left with the sound of her own mind, and it's a mind that is subtle, precise, melancholy. This is a novel with no wasted motion…Outline is a palate cleanser, an authoritative bit of clarifying acid, here when needed.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Described as a "novel in ten conversations"...it turns out to be a clever, fresh device that dispenses with the need for much of a plot and presents instead more of a lush human collage.... [A] rich, thoughtful read.
Carol Midgley - (London) Times
Outline succeeds powerfully. Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on to the page with both immediacy and depth; an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller.... [A] stellar accomplishment.
James Lasdun - Guardian (UK)
Outline. It defies ordinary categorisation. It is about authorial invisibility, it involves writing without showing your face. The narrator is a writer who goes to teach creative writing in Greece and becomes enmeshed in other peoples’ narratives which Cusk stitches, with fastidious brilliance, into a single fabric.
Kate Kellaway - Guardian (UK)
[T]his has to be one of the oddest, most breathtakingly original and unsettling novels I’ve read in a long time ... [E]very single word is earned, precisely tuned, enthralling. Outline is a triumph of attitude and daring, a masterclass in tone.
Julie Myerson - Observer (UK)
[A work] of great beauty and ambition. Narratives are smoothed, as if by translation and retranslation, into their simplest, barest elements: parents, children, divorces, cakes, dresses, dogs. These elements then build, layer on layer, to form the most complex and exquisitely detailed patterns, swirling and whirling, wheels within wheels.
Jenny Turner - London Review of Books
[A] uniquely graceful and innovative piece of artistic self-possession, which achieves the rare feat of seamlessly amalgamating form and substance.
Lucy Scholes - Independent (UK)
Cusk’s uncompromising, often brutal intelligence is at full power. So is her technique... I can’t think of a book that so powerfully resists summary or review.... Inevitably, the only way to get close to the fascinating and elusive core of Outline is to read it.
Sophie Elmhirst - Financial Times
Never less than compelling...material that might have been ponderous in other hands is, here, magnetic, thanks to the mystery at the heart of Cusk’s book, her exquisite lightness of touch and her glinting wit.
Stephanie Cross - Daily Mail (UK)
The writing is brilliant.... Cusk is always cerebral but I've never noticed her drollery before...absorbing, thought-provoking.
Claire Harman - London Evening Standard (UK)
Cusk confounds expectations.... Outline is full of such wonderful surprises: subtle shifts in power and unexpectedly witty interludes.
Elena Seymenliyska - Telegraph (UK)
A tapestry of different voices, its shape emerging as if by happy accident.... [OutlinOutlinee] is a clever thought experiment that’s far too readable ever to feel like one.
Lidija Haas - Independent on Sunday (UK)
(Starred review.) On an airplane to Athens....Faye strikes up a conversation with the passenger... [and eventually] learns about his multiple marriages and troubled children. Thus begins this brilliant novel from Cusk...structure[d] around a series of dialogues between Faye and those she encounters on her travels.
Publishers Weekly
This book about love, loss, memory, and the lies we tell ourselves and others exudes a contemplative, melancholy atmosphere tempered by Britsh author Cusk’s wonderfully astute observations of people and the visual impressions created by her exquisitely strucutred sentences. —Sally Bissell
Library Journal
[T]he most compelling part of Outline is its undercurrent of rage.... [With] polished, analytical language. Cusk’s writing is lovely.... Outline is a smart ascetic exercise. —Hannah Tennant-Moore
Bookforum
(Starred review.) Outline is an expertly crafted portrait that asks readers to look deeply into the text for discovery. Those who accept that challenge will be rewarded for the effort.
Booklist
The individual stories collectively suggest that self-knowledge is a poor substitute for happiness, but perhaps readers can find some hope from the narrator's admission that she can't shake "this desire to be free…despite having proved that everything about it was illusory." Dark, for sure, but rich in human variety and unsentimental empathy..
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.)
Outside Wonderland
Lorna Jane Cook
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312625696
Summary
Alice, Griffin, and Dinah Stenen's mother and father died tragically when they were quite young. It is a loss that haunts them into adulthood.
Alice is a stage actress in New York who can't commit to a relationship. When she meets Ian she's smitten, but suspects it's Ian's four-year-old son that really captivates her. Griffin and his longtime partner are settled into a contented domesticity, however Theo's insistence that they adopt a child throws Griffin into a panic. When he refuses to cooperate, the crack in their relationship widens. Dinah, the youngest, has a short, passionate love affair that leaves her pregnant and alone when she discovers the father is engaged to someone else.
The three look to each other for support during this rough period but they falter. What they don't know is that their parents are watching them from a place outside time and space—worrying, reminiscing, and perhaps guiding their children as each makes their tentative way towards happiness.
In luminous prose, Cook tells the story of these tender souls and a love that knows no boundaries. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—n/a
• Where—Redwood City, California, USA
• Raised—Michigan
• Education—B.A., social work
• Currently—lives in Holland, Michigan
Lorna Jane Cook was born in Redwood City, California, and grew up in Michigan. She graduated from college with a B.A. in social work, and embarked on a career path from Michigan to Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C, working at a runaway shelter; a group home for teenage girls,; an emergency services program; and on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant. Finally, she turned to novel-writing, an obvious trajectory. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
It probably has been written into the Constitution that after The Lovely Bones no book shall be narrated by a character in heaven. There must have been an amendment, though, because the lovely Outside Wonderland by Lorna Jane Cook has two long-dead parents observing their three grown children from the afterlife. The oldest, Alice, is an Off-Broadway actress in her 30s, skittish about finally settling down with a man who has a small child. Griffin bolts a deeply loving, longtime relationship for another man when his partner gets serious about adopting a child. Dinah, who has never left the family home where she lives with her grandmother, becomes pregnant after a very untypical fling. Their lives spill over, their dramas mesh, their mother and father deliver bemused, though affectionate commentary from the other side. One of those nice books.
New York Daily News
When the three very young Stenen children lose their mother in a freak household accident and then, eight years later, their father, the tragedy of their being orphaned has far-reaching consequences, leaving them unmoored and coping with adulthood in wildly different ways. The trick is that the parents are watching over them from the great beyond and telling the story. Alice, the eldest, is an actress, detached from feelings until she meets Ian, a single father who seduces her into a world of family and stability. Griffin has a long-term relationship with partner Theo, but Theo's near obsessive desire to have children drives Griffin into the arms of another man. The youngest, perennial optimist Dinah, unexpectedly pregnant and adrift, returns to the bosom of family to sort through her faith and uncertainty. Overly sentimental, Cook's (Departures) latest suffers from a number of flaws. It is easy to feel instantly sorry for the three orphans, but harder to appreciate their loss when their dead parents are so present. That choice makes for a warm and fuzzy aura that telegraphs the message that everything will turn out fine and eliminates any possibility of drama or meaningful grief. The result is tedious and annoying.
Publishers Weekly
In the manner of Alice Sebold's immensely popular The Lovely Bones (2002), this gentle novel follows what happens to those left behind after a tragic death and what happens to those who have died.... Although following three siblings with multiple relationships can get a little confusing, the characters are never less than engaging and appealing. —Marta Segal Block
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. The scenes and observations of the parents from up Here is a unique way for the writer and reader to share reflections on the unfolding lives of the Stenen siblings. What stood out most for you from the scenes from Here? How does this possibility of an afterlife fit with your beliefs about what lies beyond?
2. How likely is it that the siblings feel some of the love and concern that their parents are showing for them from the great beyond?
3. The siblings are drawn very sympathetically; their shared experience of loss shapes them each in different ways. How does that loss affect each of them?
4. Which of the three main characters—Alice, Dinah and Griffin—do you relate to most?
5. The parents say that although the children have changed they are still the same, “earnestly making their way in a fractured life.” Discuss how resilience and love binds them.
6. Each of the Stenens deals with the fact that bad things can happen at any time in a unique way. Alice braces herself for what might come next and escapes into acting to let herself be free. Dinah discovers a strong religious faith in Greece and her belief in fate and purpose makes her put family first yet she longs for love and romance. Griffin knows that families are fragile and he loves his partner Theo deeply but feels parenthood is for other people—it’s tempting fate. What drives each of them to take the risks that they do to create families of their own as adults?
7. How do each of the siblings define family? How do the living arrangements that evolve over the course of the story reflect their desires and fears about family? How do you define family?
8. Dinah acts out of character by having an impetuous affair on the cruise. Why do you think she threw caution to the wind?
9. As Dinah screams at the falls, filled with disappointment and doubt after finding that Eduardo is to be married, she waits for a sign from God. Her mother comments “Now she’ll have to shake up her life and change things.” How do you think Dinah handles the consequences of her actions? What do you think of how heavily she leans on her family to help her through?
10. Why did Griffin adopt Holly, the dog, when Theo was so clearly against it? Why couldn’t Griffin talk to Theo about his fears about parenthood and family? How unreasonable was it to expect Theo to understand without really being told?
11. Why was Griffin drawn to Ray? What need did Ray fulfill for him? Why do you think Griffin was willing to give up his relationship with Theo for someone he barely knew?
12. Alice becomes entranced by Adam, the three year old son of her neighbor and lover Ian. She thinks perhaps her fantasy of belonging in their lives could be real, perhaps it’s where she’s meant to be. What is Alice looking for in Ian and Adam? How do her doubts sabotage her desires especially after she loses Adam for a few minutes in the park one day?
13. Alice notes “when she was around Neil, she kept reaching for her old self.” What do you make of Alice being drawn to being wanted by Neil at the same time she wishes that Ian would ask to make their relationship permanent? What do you think about her parents’ reflection that: “Alice may love them all (and she does) but still do the wrong thing. And not even intentionally. Just because she’s restless, and, yes, a little blue.”
14. What do you think about Dinah and Theo and Eva pretending to be the happy family? And Griffin sneaking around watching them, stalking the old homestead?
15. After Holly is gone and Griffin moves back in, Dinah feels like she doesn’t fit anymore, and she is surprised that Theo can so easily forgive Griffin. What do you think of the shift back for Theo and Griffin?
16. What do you think the title of the book means? Where do you imagine the three main characters' lives going from here?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Outsider (Kate Burkholder Series-12)
Linda Castillo, 2020
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250142894
Summary
Linda Castillo follows her instant New York Times bestseller, Shamed, with Outsider, an electrifying thriller about a woman on the run hiding among the Amish.
While enjoying a sleigh ride with his children, Amish widower Adam Lengacher discovers a car stuck in a snowdrift and an unconscious woman inside. He calls upon Chief of Police Kate Burkholder for help, and she is surprised to recognize the driver: fellow cop and her former friend, Gina Colorosa.
Years before, Kate and Gina were best friends at the police academy and patrol officers in Columbus, but time and distance have taken them down two very different paths.
Now, Gina reveals a shocking story of betrayal and revenge that has forced her to run for her life. She’s desperate for protection, and the only person she can trust is Kate—but can Kate trust her?
Or will Gina’s dark past put them all in danger?
As a blizzard bears down on Painters Mill, Kate helps Gina go into hiding on Adam’s farm. While the tough-skinned Gina struggles to adjust to the Amish lifestyle, Kate and state agent John Tomasetti delve into the incident that caused Gina to flee.
But as Kate gets closer to the truth, a killer lies in wait. When violence strikes, she must confront a devastating truth that changes everything she thought she knew not only about friendship, but the institution to which she's devoted her life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Linda Castillo is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kate Burkholder novels, including Sworn to Silence, which was adapted into a Lifetime Original Movie starring Neve Campbell as Kate Burkholder.
Castillo has received numerous industry awards including a nomination by the International Thriller Writers for Best Hardcover, the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence, and a nomination for the RITA. In addition to writing, Castillo’s other passion is horses. She lives in Texas with her husband. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[S]uspenseful…. In spite of Kate’s desire to believe Gina is innocent, Kate knows her too well to trust she’s telling the truth. Amid all the mayhem, Castillo presents a loving, realistic portrait of Amish life. Readers will hope Kate has a long career.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] fast-paced, suspense-building ride, showing the character development and sensitivity to the Amish culture that mark Castillo’s masterful crime fiction.
Booklist
(Starred review) A white-hot case reunites old friends who'd been estranged for years…. A pulse-pounding Amish thriller (really!) that’s all too relevant to our time.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our GENERIC MYSTERY QUESTIONS to start a discussion for OUTSIDER … 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.)
Outtakes from a Marriage
Ann Leary, 2008
Crown Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307405883
Summary
Julia and Joe Ferraro are living the good life in Manhattan now that Joe’s finally made it; he’s the star of a hit TV show and has just been nominated for a Golden Globe award. After many lean years, they’ve got a grand Upper West Side apartment and an Amagansett beach house, and their two kids go to elite private schools.
Even better, Julia and Joe are still madly in love.
Or so Julia thinks until the fateful evening when she accidentally hears a voice mail on Joe’s phone—a message left by a sultry-sounding woman who clearly isn’t just a friend. Suddenly Julia is in a tailspin, compulsively checking Joe’s messages, stalking him in cyberspace, and showing up unannounced on his sets, wondering all along if she should confront him.
Julia’s search forces her to consider the possibility that in the long process of helping Joe become something, she has become a bit of a “nothing,” as her daughter once described her to her class on career day. A big husband-stalking nothing.
When Julia and Joe first met, she was an edgy East Village girl who wrote music reviews for the Village Voice and threw famed parties in a gritty downtown loft with her friends. Joe was a shy, awkward drama student who followed her around like a lovesick spaniel.
After he won her heart, Julia helped Joe evolve into a roguishly handsome charmer who became increasingly obsessed with his looks and his career. Julia, meanwhile, settled into doting motherhood and a new life of comfy clothes and parenting associations.
Now, faced with the looming awards show and the possibility of a destroyed marriage, Julia embarks on an accelerated self-improvement routine of Botox, hair extensions, and erotically charged shrink sessions while dodging the sancti-mommies who lie in wait for her at her son’s preschool each day.
A unique take on the perennially popular issue of women trying not to lose themselves in matrimony and motherhood, Outtakes from a Marriage is expertly and humorously set against the Manhattan preschool mafia, the Hollywood machine, and the ticking clock of a waiting red carpet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1962
• Where—Syracuse, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Connecticut
Ann Leary is the author of the memoir An Innocent, A Broad (2004) and three novels, Outtakes From a Marriage (2008) and The Good House (2013), and The Children (2016).
She has written fiction and nonfiction for various publications and media outlets, including New York Times, Ploughshares, National Public Radio, Redbook, and Real Simple, among other publications
Leary was born in Syracuse, N.Y., but moved around with her family, living in various parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Wisconsin. She finally landed in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where she graduated from high school.
With short-lived friendships in so many places, Anne turned to books early on. She especially loved stories about animals—A Jungle Book, Black Beauty, Lassie come Home, My Friend Flicka, and all the Black Stallion books (her love for all things equestrian continues to this day).
She believes that the first non-animal book she ever read was while babysitting at age thirteen, when she picked up Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. From that point she switched her allegiance from books about four-legged creatures to books about two-legged ones, in particular inspiring stories about beautiful, opium-addicted nymphomaniacs!
Leary attended Bennington College in Vermont for two years then switched to Emerson College in Boston. It was there that she met her to-be husband, actor-comedian Dennis Leary, who was teaching a comedy-writing course. The two married in 1989 and have two now grown children.
Leary competes in equestrian sports and has been a volunteer EMT. She and her husband live with dogs, cats, and horses on their farm in northwestern Connecticut. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and Freshfiction.com.)
Book Reviews
After years as a struggling actor, Joe Ferraro is starring on a hit TV show—and has a Golden Globe nod. But when his stay-at-home mom wife Julia hears a sexy-voice phone-message congratulations from a woman clearly more than a pal, her life is turned upside down. Leary, wife of actor Denis Leary, mines the laughs with her knowing New York-set story. She insists it's all fiction.
New York Post
[S]parkling debut novel…. Keenly observant of celeb culture,...Leary pens a bittersweet tale about love, marriage and the perils of fame.
People
The prose is sprightly...you’ll keep reading.
Entertainment Weekly
Memoirist Leary (An Innocent, a Broad) follows in her fiction debut the unraveling of Julia Ferraro after she accidentally discovers a racy message in her Golden Globe—nominee husband's voice mail. As the doubts about her husband, Joe, mount, Julia begins examining other areas of her life with closer scrutiny, and her behavior becomes increasingly erratic as her paranoia grows: she dabbles in Restylane and Botox, attempts to seduce her shrink and plants rumors about her husband on Gawker. In addition to Julia's marital angst, she is also managing a shaky relationship with her entitled, adolescent daughter, Ruby, and is wracked with anxiety over her own lack of a career. Julia is a sharp and self-aware narrator, though there are moments when she seems too much a romantic, particularly for someone with otherwise worldly and wry sensibilities. Leary, the wife of actor Denis Leary, has an eye for the comedy of manners of the rich and idle. As Julia's daughter observes, "You don't really have to do anything." Julia responds: "I know. You have no idea how stressful that is."
Publishers Weekly
How does a free spirit turned wife and mother cope with her actor husband's infidelity?.... Julia Ferraro's husband Joe has been nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor in a TV series. Weeks before the ceremony, Julia innocently uses Joe's phone to check her messages and punches in his code by mistake. The raunchy, suggestive message she hears sends her near-perfect world into a tailspin.... As the Golden Globes near, Julia plunges into a maelstrom of insecurities about her marriage, her parenting skills and her weight, and she struggles to steer a course between pushover and avenging First Wife. The outcome is satisfying without being sappy. A witty take on marital survival in Manhattan-with heart.
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 specfic questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
Kelly Harms, 2019
Amazon Publishing
332 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781542040570
Summary
Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break.
So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.
Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates.
When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.
But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kelly Harms is an author, a mother, and a big dreamer. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her sparkling son, Griffin; her fluffy dog, Scout; and her beloved Irishman, Chris.
Before this midwestern life, she lived in New York, New York, and worked with many of her author-heroes as an editor at HarperCollins and then as a literary agent.
When she’s not lost in a book that she’s either writing or reading, you can find her on the water, in the water, or near the water. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Readers will be rooting for Amy as she navigates the dating world and makes friends who will stick with her…. [Readers] will fall for Amy… [and Harms's] great light read full of tears, laughter, and charming, relatable characters. —Jane Blue, Davie Cty. P.L., NC
Library Journal
In [an]easygoing, character-driven style…, Harms’s warm and witty novel will tickle fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.
Booklist
The story is unevenly paced and has some cliched characters and a contrived setup. In the end, convenient compromises make everyone happy…. Worn-out moms might enjoy this escapist story of a runaway mother's fantasy "momspringa."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)