Salvation
Alyssa Coooper, 2012
Melange Press
236 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781612354866
Summary
Salvation has a bit of everything—young love, Victorian charm, and vampire horror, tied together with unique literary flair.
The story begins with Alec, a young man struggling to accept the brutal loss of his parents and find his place in an unforgiving world.
As his life tumbles in a downward spiral, Alec meets Maya, a girl who seems determined to change his life. With her friendship and support, he finally begins to crawl back towards the light.
But Maya is not what she seems.
She is a vampire, born on a small farm in the nineteenth century and brought into her immortal life by a man who has played the part of guardian angel, father, and lover to her—but who is also her greatest enemy. This foe has chased her for a century and chases her still, putting her and Alec both in mortal danger.
Together, they fight for survival, for life and for love, as they each desperately seek their own salvation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 9, 1990
• Where—Belleville, Ontario, Canada
• Education—Advanced Graphic Design Diploma
• Currently—lives in Belleville, Ontario
Alyssa Cooper is a born wordweaver, swallowing stanzas like sustenance and leaving thumbnails of poetry everywhere she goes. She was born in Ontario, Canada, where she lives with her vintage typewriters and her personal library.
A poet and author with a passion for the literary and experimental, Alyssa writes passionately, viciously, and on any surface she can find. Her poetry has appeared in poetry anthologies and literary magazines since early 2012, including the Revival Literary Journal and Journey to Crone by Chuffed Buff Books. After the release of her novella, Sunshine, her prose began to gain popularity as well, with short stories appearing in Emrys Journal, The Brief Grislys, and Postscripts to Darkness.
Her first novel, a century-long romp through the life of a maladjusted vampire, was released on Halloween of 2012. Salvation was released digitally and in print by Melange Books, LLC. Her second novel, an anthem for the twenty-something lost in an adolescent wasteland, is anticipated for release from Melange Books in late 2013. She is also eagerly awaiting the release of her first poetry collection, Cold Breath of Life, all the while filling her bookshelves to bursting and draining countless pens. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
Salvation is not your typical romance novel. We start knowing that Maya is going to die. She and Alec are together, but she’s dying. He doesn’t know how to let her go or how he will live without her. We see her death. It’s poignant, heartbreaking, and visceral... Alec is a heavily flawed character...[and] I found it hard to sympathize with [him] for a while.... Yet as things progress with Maya, we see a new side to Alec.... Maya is a vampire...[who] is killed by her maker. Merek.... Once Maya appears to die, we’re suddenly seeing her death again, but this time from her perspective. From there, we learn of Maya’s entire story.... The ending was…not happy, but it was perfect... This was a well written, haunting tale that will stick with you.
Patricia Eddy - Mystical Lit Lounge
I was sold instantly. The story follows a vampire girl named Mali. She comes into Alec's life at the perfect moment and helps him piece back together his life. They both fall for each other instantly and enjoy what little time they have together. Mali has a past, that follows her to Alec. Her creator, her past lover, and a dark secret that threatens her immortality. This story was definitely a FOUR STAR read.... I found the end a little depressing, but I honestly can not think of another way to tie this story up. It had to end the way it did.... If you love paranormal romances, this has a romance that crosses the times, filled with conflict and an undying love you can't go wrong with this book.
Kristine Schwartz - Schwartz Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Identify Alec's character flaws in Book One; discuss which have been resolved by Book Three, and which are still existing.
2. What is the significance of Alec's dream sequence in Book One, Chapter Two?
3. Discuss the importance of Jeanne/Mali/Maya's chosen name to her identity through out the novel.
3. In Book Two, Mali is conflicted about her life as a vampire. By the time she meets Alec, she has come to terms with it. Discuss the evolution of her opinion and chose a side.
4. Consider Jeanne/Mali and Marek's relationship. Do you feel that there was ever a true connection between them, or a continuous co-dependent cycle?
5. Consider Mali's role in the deaths of the family members. Do you feel that her actions were justified?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)
The Same Sky
Amanda Eyre Ward, 2015
Random House
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553390506
Summary
A beautiful and heartrending novel about motherhood, resilience, and faith—a ripped-from-the-headlines story of two families on both sides of the American border.
Alice and her husband, Jake, own a barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas. Hardworking and popular in their community, they have a loving marriage and thriving business, but Alice still feels that something is missing, lying just beyond reach.
Carla is a strong-willed young girl who’s had to grow up fast, acting as caretaker to her six-year-old brother Junior. Years ago, her mother left the family behind in Honduras to make the arduous, illegal journey to Texas. But when Carla’s grandmother dies and violence in the city escalates, Carla takes fate into her own hands—and with Junior, she joins the thousands of children making their way across Mexico to America, facing great peril for the chance at a better life.
In this elegant novel, the lives of Alice and Carla will intersect in a profound and surprising way. Poignant and arresting, The Same Sky is about finding courage through struggle, hope amid heartache, and summoning the strength—no matter what dangers await—to find the place where you belong. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Rye, New York
• Education—B.A., William College; M.F.A., University of Montana
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City in 1972. Her family moved to Rye, New York when she was four. Amanda attended Kent School in Kent, CT, where she wrote for the Kent News.
Amanda majored in English and American Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She studied fiction writing with Jim Shepard and spent her junior fall in coastal Kenya. She worked part-time at the Williamstown Public Library. After graduation, Amanda taught at Athens College in Greece for a year, and then moved to Missoula, Montana.
Amanda studied fiction writing at the University of Montana with Bill Kittredge, Dierdre McNamer, Debra Earling, and Kevin Canty, receiving her MFA. After traveling to Egypt, she took a job at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, working in Inter Library Loan.
In 1998, Amanda moved to Austin, Texas where she began working on Sleep Toward Heaven. She wrote for the Austin Chronicle and worked for a variety of Internet startups. In 1999, Amanda won third prize in the Austin Chronicle short story contest with her story "Miss Montana’s Wedding Day."
She published Butte as in Beautiful that same year.
In July, 2000, Amanda married the geologist Tip Meckel in Ouray, Colorado.
They spent a summer in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Amanda wrote the short stories "The Beginning of the Wrong Novel" and "Classified."
During that summer, Amanda finished Sleep Toward Heaven, which was published in 2003. That novel won the Violet Crown Book Award and was optioned for film by Sandra Bullock and Fox Searchlight. To promote Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda, her baby, and her mother Mary-Anne Westley traveled to London and Paris.
Amanda moved to Waterville, Maine, where she wrote in an attic filled with books. Her second novel, How to Be Lost, was published in 2004 and was selected as a Target Bookmarked pick. It has been published in fifteen countries.
After a year in Maine and two years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Amanda and her family returned to Austin, Texas.
To research her third novel, Forgive Me, Amanda traveled with her sister, Liza Ward Bennigson, to Cape Town, South Africa. Forgive Me was published in 2007.
In 2009, she published her short story collection, Love Stories in This Town.
Close Your Eyes, Amanda's fourth novel, was published in 2011, receiving a four-star review in People Magazine and winning the Elle Lettres Readers' Prize for September. It inspired the Dallas Morning News to write, "With Close Your Eyes, Austin novelist Amanda Eyre Ward puts another jewel in her crown as the reigning doyenne of 'dark secrets' literary fiction."
Close Your Eyes was named in Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2011, and won the Elle Magazine Fiction Book of the Year.
Amanda's fifth novel, The Same Sky, was published in 2015. It was considered one of the most anticipated books for 2015 by BookPeople and named a "Book of the Week" by People Magazine. Dallas Morning News wrote, "Ward has written a novel that brilliantly attaches us to broader perspectives. It is a needed respite from the angry politics surrounding border issues that, instead of dividing us, connects us to our humanity."
Amanda currently writes every morning and spends afternoons with her children. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Surprising and deeply satisfying.... Ward has written a novel that brilliantly attaches us to broader perspectives. It is a needed respite from the angry politics surrounding border issues that, instead of dividing us, connects us to our humanity.
Dallas Morning News
A deeply affecting look at the contrast between middle-class U.S. life and the brutal reality of Central American children so desperate they’ll risk everything.
People
It takes a skilled, compassionate writer to craft an authentic, moving page-turner from a complex social issue like immigration, but Ward nails it.
Good Housekeeping
Poignant and bittersweet.... Eyre’s wrenching fifth novel is a study in contrasts.... Carla’s journey is powerfully rendered and will stick with readers long after they close the book.
Publishers Weekly
The Same Sky is a book that works to understand our community; not just our neighborhoods in Austin, but America as a whole. It’s important reading for anyone who has an opinion on immigration.
BookPeople
Ward writes with great empathy.... Earnest and well-told. Heartstrings will be pulled.
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 Same Sweet Girls
Cassandra King, 2005
Hyperion
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780786891092
Summary
"None of the Same Sweet Girls are really girls anymore, and none of them have actually ever been that sweet. But the story of this spirited group of six southern women, who have been holding biannual reunions ever since they were together in college, is nothing short of compelling.
The story of the Same Sweet Girls is told by three of the women who suddenly face middle age and major life changes. First lady Julia Stovall, the perfect political wife, is torn between loyalty to her husband, the governor of Alabama, and an unwelcome attraction to his bodyguard. The fun-loving former jock Lanier Sanders, who always finds a way to mess up her life, has done it yet again. And Corrine Cooper, a renowned gourd artist, battles her controlling ex-husband for the affection of her estranged son.
On an island every summer and in the mountains every fall, the Same Sweet Girls come together to share their stories. When one of the group faces the most difficult challenge of her life, the novel builds to a powerful conclusion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1944
• Where—Lower Alabama, USa
• Education—B.A., M.A., Alabama college
• Currently—lives in the Low Country, South Carolina
Cassandra King is the author of five novels, most recently the critically acclaimed Moonrise (2013), her literary homage to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Moonrise is a Fall 2013 Okra Pick and a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) bestseller. It has been described as “her finest book to date.”
Fellow Southern writers Sandra Brown, Fannie Flagg, and Dorothea Benton Frank hailed her previous novel, Queen of Broken Hearts (2008), as “wonderful,” “uplifting,” “absolutely fabulous,” and “filled with irresistible characters.” Prior to that, King’s third book, The Same Sweet Girls (2005), was a #1 Booksense Selection and Booksense bestseller, a Southeastern Bookseller Association bestseller, a New York Post Required Reading selection, and a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Her first novel, Making Waves in Zion, was published in 1995 by River City Press and reissued in 2004 by Hyperion. Her second novel, The Sunday Wife (2002), was a Booksense Pick, a People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week, a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month selection, a Books-a-Million President’s Pick, a South Carolina State Readers’ Circle selection, and a Salt Lake Library Readers’ Choice Award nominee. In paperback, the novel was chosen by the Nestle Corporation for its campaign to promote reading groups.
King’s short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Alabama Bound: The Stories of a State (1995), Belles’ Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women (1999), Stories From Where We Live (2002), and Stories From The Blue Moon Cafe (2004). Aside from writing fiction, she has taught writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars, worked as a human-interest reporter for a Pelham, Alabama, weekly paper, and published an article on her second-favorite pastime, cooking, in Cooking Light magazine.
A native of L.A. (Lower Alabama), King currents lives in the Low Country of South Carolina with her husband, novelist Pat Conroy, whom she met when he wrote a blurb for Making Waves. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
For 30 years, six Southern college friends—the Same Sweet Girls—have been gathering for a biannual reunion. As King's wry, touching novel begins, the girls are nearing 50 and coming to terms with the life decisions they've made.... [T]he story's gentle Southern humor and warmth shine. It isn't all iced tea and tomato pie—King tackles some troubling issues—but the characters are true to life, and readers will sympathize with their struggles.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Look at the Walt Whitman quote at the beginning of The Same Sweet Girls. Why does King use this here?
2. Why does Corrine state early on that, "The illusion of sweetness, that's all that counts. We don't have to be sincerely sweet, but by God we have to be good at faking it. Southern girls will stab you in the back, same as anyone else, but we'll give you a sugary smile while doing it"? Why is this important to the story? How do Southern women differ from women in other parts of the country?
3. Looking at each chapter, how is the book structured? Why does King utilize this style here? What is the affect of multiple narrators?
4. Briefly describe each of the Same Sweet Girls. Share your impression of the group. Who do you like the most, and why? What are their backgrounds? How did they become a group, and why are they such good friends?
5. Consider Miles, Jesse Phoenix, Joe Ed, Paul and Cal. What are your impressions of these men? What are their roles in the story?
6. Thinking about the couplings of Julia and Joe Ed, Corrine and Miles, and Lanier and Paul, how did these couples get together? What kind of relationships do these Same Sweet Girls have with the men in their lives? What do these relationships reveal, or possibly reflect, about the Same Sweet Girls views of themselves?
7. Focusing on Astor’s and Roseanelle’s role in the book. Why are these unlikely characters accepted and tolerated, even loved, by the rest of the group? How do they influence other characters in the book? Why do others accept and even ignore such obvious flaws in their friends?
8. Lanier keeps a sort of diary, what she calls her Life Lessons notebook. Think about some of Lanier's notebook entries. For example, "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing;" "When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears;" "Seems to me that all males are obsessed with expanding their bodies and females with shrinking theirs, which must have something to do with their self-images." Discuss what they mean and whether or not they are helpful to you.
9. In Chapter 12, what do you make of Julia's saying she "survived life by slow paddling down the river of denial"? What has she been denying? Recount her relationship with her mother. What was her mother's reaction when Bethany was born? Did Julia somehow agree with her mother? How does Julia evolve, and what enables her to do so?
10. Looking at Corrine, what do the gourds represent, both literally and figuratively? Why does King choose gourds instead of canvas or pottery for Corrine's art? Trace Corrine's personal history. Why is she the one who has a terminal disease? What does Miles mean when he says to her, "Your biography becomes your biology?" Is this true in her case? Do you believe this is true in general? Why?
11. What gives Corrine the motivation to stand up to Miles? Share how you reacted when she finally does.
12. In Chapter 18, Lindy confronts Lanier about Lanier's affect on her and others: "Then change, Mama . . ." How did you react do this speech? What would you say to Lindy? What would you say to Lanier?
13. In Chapter 23, there is a discussion of helping a friend die. What would you do if a friend or family member asked you to assist their death? Would you want that kind of help? Knowing what Corrine does about her disease, what you advise her to do about her treatment? Why is Lanier so surprised when she learns Paul might assist someone's death?
14. Why is Cal so attracted to Corrine? What is significant about the timing of his interest? What is the significance of the large kettle gourd that he returns to her? What enables his aged grandmother to understand the purpose of this kettle gourd? Discuss the paragraph in Chapter 26 where Cal says to Corrine, "Damn right you're not like me . . . You've got to finish that one."
15. What resonates, and affects you the most, about The Same Sweet Girls? What stays with you?
(Questions from the author's website.)
The Samurai's Garden
Gail Tsukiyama, 1994
St. Martin's Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312144074
Summary
On the eve of the Second World War, a young Chinese man is sent to his family's summer home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. He will rest, swim in the salubrious sea, and paint in the brilliant shoreside light. It will be quiet and solitary.
But he meets four local residents — a lovely young Japanese girl and three older people. What then ensues is a tale that readers will find at once classical yet utterly unique. Young Stephen has his own adventure, but it is the unfolding story of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo that seizes your attention and will stay with you forever.
Tsukiyama, with lines as clean, simple, telling, and dazzling as the best of Oriental art, has created an exquisite little masterpiece. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., San Francisco State University
• Awards—Academy of American Poets Award;
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
• Currently—El Cerito, California
Readers know Gail Tsukiyama through her best-selling novel The Samurai’s Garden (1994). Her other works include Women of the Silk (1991), Night of Many Dreams (1998), The Language of Threads (1999), The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (2007), Dreaming Water (2002), and A Hundred Flowers (2012).
Born to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, she grew up in San Francisco and now lives in El Cerrito, California. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. With an understanding of her heritage, Tsukiyama explores the sights, sounds and feelings of China and Japan in her novels.
She was one of nine fiction authors to appear during the first Library of Congress National Book Festival in 2001. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
As the title suggests in this charming book, gardens are central to the thematic concerns. They require loving devotion and constant nurturing, the very qualities that heal the human body and soul and provide respite from the world's ills.
A LitLovers LitPick (Nov. '06)
Seventeen-year-old Stephen leaves his home in Hong Kong just as the Japanese are poised to invade China. He is sent to Tarumi, a small village in Japan, to recuperate from tuberculosis. His developing friendship with three adults and a young woman his own age brings him to the beginnings of wisdom about love, honor, and loss. Given the potentially interesting subplot (the story of a love triangle doomed by the outbreak of leprosy in the village) and the fascinating period in which the book is set, this second novel by the author of Women of the Silk (1991) has the potential to be a winner. Unfortunately, it is sunk by a flat, dull prose style, one-dimensional characters who fail to engage the reader's interest, and the author's tendency to tell rather than show. Libraries with comprehensive fiction collections might consider, but others can pass. —Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. The title of the novel obviously alludes to Matsu's garden, but to whom else could the title refer as a "Samurai"? Why?
2. The garden acts as a center or core of the novel. All three central characters (Stephen, Matsu, and Sachi) find some sense of comfort in tending the garden. What are some of the metaphors for the garden and how are they worked out in the novel?
3. Loneliness, solitude, and isolation are all themes that permeate the novel throughout. How do the three central characters' approaches to these feelings vary, resemble each other, and evolve?
4. It appears as though Stephen and Sachi are somehow juxtaposed. How is this connection represented and developed?
5. How is the politically turbulent time at which The Samurai's Garden takes place approached in the novel? Is it a strongly political novel or does the world of Tamuri somehow defy and avoid the political turmoil of the era?
6. How is Stephen and Keiko's relationship represented? Examine it in relation to the courtships of the past—Kenzo and Sachi, as well as Matsu and Sachi.
7. As the novel progresses, Stephen stops longing to return to his home and in fact dreads having to leave Tamuri. What provokes this change of heart? Also, how does this sentiment affect the ending of the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
San Miguel
T.C. Boyle, 2012
Penguin Group USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670026241
Summary
On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue dreams of self-reliance and freedom. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle’s haunting new novel.
Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year’s Day 1888 to restore her failing health. Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her.
Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted. And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression?
Rendered in Boyle’s accomplished, assured voice, with great period detail and utterly memorable characters, this is a moving and dramatic work from one of America’s most talented and inventive storytellers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1948
• Where—Peekskill, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York at Potsdam; Ph.D., Iowa University
• Awards—Pen/Faulkner Award, 1998
• Currently—lives near Santa Barbara, California
T. Coraghessan Boyle (kuh-RAGG-issun) received his doctorate in nineteenth-century English literature from the University of Iowa in 1977. Since 1977, Boyle has taught creative writing at the University of Southern California. While in college, Boyle exchanged his middle name, John, for the unusual Coraghessan (kuh-RAGG-issun), the name of one of his Irish ancestors.
Boyle is the author of Descent of Man (1979), Water Music (1982), Budding Prospects (1984), Greasy Lake (1985), World's End (1987, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), East Is East (1990), The Road to Wellville (1993), which was made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins, and Without a Hero (1994). His work has appeared in major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, Paris Review, and Atlantic Monthly. Boyle lives with his wife, Karen, and their three children near Santa Barbara, California, in a house designed in 1909 by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
More
In the interest of time and space, it might be easier to note the writers that T. C. Boyle isn't compared to. But let's give the reverse a try: Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Evelyn Waugh, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Kingsley Amis, Thomas Berger, Robert Coover, Lorrie Moore, Stanley Elkin, Tom Robbins, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Don DeLillo, Flannery O'Connor. Oh, let's not forget F. Lee Bailey. And Dr. Seuss.
Boyle, widely admired for his acrobatic verbal skill, wild narratives and quirky characters (in one short story, he imagines a love affair between Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev's wife), has dazzled critics since his first novel in 1981.
Consider this example, from Larry McCaffery in a 1985 article for the New York Times:
Beneath its surface play, erudition and sheer storytelling power, his fiction also presents a disturbing and convincing critique of an American society so jaded with sensationalized images and plasticized excess that nothing stirs its spirit anymore.... It is into this world that Mr. Boyle projects his heroes, who are typically lusty, exuberant dreamers whose wildly inflated ambitions lead them into a series of hilarious, often disastrous adventures.
But as much as critics will bow at his linguistic gifts, some also knock him for resting on them a bit too heavily, hinting that the impressive showmanship attempts to hide a shortage of depth and substance. Craig Seligman, writing in the New Republic in 1993, pointed out that...
Boyle loves a mess. He loves chaos. He loves marshes and jungles, and he loves the jungle of language: luxuriant sentences overgrown with lianas of lists, sesquipedalian words hanging down like rare fruits. For all its exoticism, though, his prose is lucid to the point of transparency. It doesn't require much deeper concentration than a good newspaper (though it does require a dictionary).
Reviewing The Tortilla Curtain in 1995, New York Times critic Scott Spencer scratched his head over why Boyle had invited readers along for this particular ride:
Mr. Boyle's fictional strategy is puzzling. Why are we being asked to follow the fates of characters for whom he clearly feels such contempt? Not surprisingly, this is ultimately off-putting. Perhaps Mr. Boyle has received too much praise for his zany sense of humor; in this book, that wit often seems merely a maddening volley of cheap shots. It's like living next door to a gun nut who spends all day and half the night shooting at beer bottles.
Growing up, Boyle had no aspirations to be a writer. It wasn't until his studies at State University of New York, where he as a music student, that he bumped into his muse. "I went there to be a music major but found I really couldn't hack that at the age of 17," he told The Writer in 1999. "I just started to read outside my classes—literature and history. I wound up being a history and English major; when I wandered into a creative writing class as a junior, I realized that writing was what I could do."
He then started teaching, in part to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam War, and later applied to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
After a collection of short stories in 1979, he released his first novel, Water Music, called "pitiless and brilliant" by the New Republic, and has shuttled back and forth between novels and short stories, all known for their explosions of character imagination. Mr. Boyle's literary sensibility...thrives on excess, profusion, pushing past the limits of good taste to comic extremes," McCaffery wrote in his 1985 New York Times piece. "He is a master of rendering the grotesque details of the rot, decay and sleaze of a society up to its ears in K Mart oil cans, Kitty Litter and the rusted skeletons of abandoned cars and refrigerators."
In his review of Drop City, the 2003 novel set in California commune that won Boyle a National Book Award nomination, Dwight Garner joins the chorus of critical acclaim over the years—"Boyle has always been a fiendishly talented writer"—but he also acknowledges some of the criticism that Boyle has faced in these same years:
The rap against Boyle's work has long been that he's a sort of madcap predator drone, raining down hard nuggets of contempt, sarcasm and bitter humor on the poor men and women in his books while rarely giving us characters we're actually persuaded to feel anything about. This is partly a bum rap—and I'd hate to knock contempt, sarcasm and bitter humor—but there's enough truth in it that it's a joy to find, in Drop City that Boyle gives us a lot more than simply a line of bong-addled innocents led to slaughter.
But perhaps the neatest summary of Boyle's work would be from Lorrie Moore, one of the novelists to which he has been compared. In a 1994 New York Times review of Boyle's short story collection Without a Hero, she praised Boyle's "astonishing and characteristic verve, his unaverted gaze, his fascination with everything lunatic and queasy." She continues...
God knows, Mr. Boyle can write like an angel, if at times a caustic, gum-chewing one. And in this strong, varied collection maybe we have what we'd hope to find in heaven itself (by the time we begged our way there): no lessening of brilliance, plus a couple of laughs to mitigate all that high and distant sighing over what goes on below."
Extras
• Boyle changed his middle name from John to Coraghessan ( "kuh-RAGG-issun") when he was 17.
• He is known almost as much for his ego as his writing. "Each book I put out, I think, 'Goodbye, Updike and Mailer, forget it," the New Republic quoted him as saying. "I joke at Viking that I'm going to make them forget the name of Stephen King forever, I'm going to sell so many copies.
• Boyle's philosophy on reading and writing, as told to The Writer: "Good literature is a living, brilliant, great thing that speaks to you on an individual and personal level. You're the reader. I think the essence of it is telling a story. It's entertainment. It's not something to be taught in a classroom, necessarily. To be alive and be good, it has to be a good story that grabs you by the nose and doesn't let you go till The End." (From Barnes and Noble)
Book Reviews
In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s mesmerizing and elegiac 14th novel, “San Miguel,” two utopians from different eras establish their own private idylls on the desolate Channel Islands off the California coast.... The inhabitants find the island pummeled by sandstorms and shrouded by fogs, only infrequently giving way to rare days when it is the paradise they sought.
Small events grow in importance.... For Boyle, a writer known for his maximalist plots, it is a brave stylistic choice that pays off, allowing the reader a visceral experience of what life was like at the time. In “San Miguel,” the main egoist is also the most fully realized character: Herbie Lester.... Herbie’s high-octane, manic energy fuels the ranch. By turns, he is generous, loving and a good father; he is also moody, depressive and selfish.... Thanks to Boyle’s immense talent we come to care deeply about this complicated and difficult man’s fate.... Herbie’s infatuation with Haile Selass...indicate that the idyllic, isolated utopia they sought has become impossible to sustain.... In the pages of this novel, at least, that tantalizing dream is preserved.
New York Times Book Review
Theatrical as he appears in those outrageous shirts and jackets, in his fiction Boyle never steals the spotlight from his characters, from what they're wrestling with. His previous novel, When the Killing's Done (2011), took place on the Channel Islands off the coast of California and managed to make the complex issue of environmental reclamation tremendously exciting. His new novel, San Miguel, is a kind of prequel that again takes place on one of the Channel Islands, but the story's tone and pace are entirely different. Instead of violently dramatizing a contemporary debate, San Miguel is an absorbing work of historical fiction based on the lives of two real families who resided on San Miguel Island in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Throughout his career, Boyle has shown a fascination with remote, forgotten places as a kind of stage where various shadings of the American character are revealed.... As always, he fills his pages with wonderfully precise character studies and lush descriptions of the physical landscape.
Hector Tobar - Los Angeles Times
The story of two families who lived on the windiest and wildest of the Channel Islands…the layering of these isolated lives, the archeology of human habitation, the different responses to self-sufficiency make this one of the most satisfying novels in Boyle’s canon.
Susan Salter Reynolds - Los Angeles Magazine
A saga of women, three women brought to the island by men.... Boyle has carved out a beautiful, damp, atmospheric novel, sharp and exacting…[his] spirited novels are a reckoning with consequence laced with humor, insight, and pathos.
Terry Tempest Williams - San Francisco Chronicle
In T.C. Boyle’s San Miguel, two strong women generations apart are seduced and mistreated by the same powerful entity – not a man but a starkly beautiful, barely inhabited island off the California coast.... Boyle portrays the heartbreaking toll San Miguel takes on these couples in a novel as beguiling as the island itself.
O, The Oprah Magazine
On New Year’s Day 1888, the ailing Marantha Waters sails across San Francisco Bay to remote San Miguel Island with her second husband and adopted daughter in hopes that the fresh air will restore her health. Marantha and her family, city folk by nature, risk the last of her inheritance on a farm lashed by wind and rain; removed from the pleasant distractions of late Victorian society and thrust into primitive living conditions, the Waters find themselves left with little to do but discover the strengths and weaknesses in themselves and in each other. Decades later during the Depression, Elise and Herbie Lester take over the farm and undergo their own transformations. Ripe with exhaustively researched period detail, Boyle’s epic saga of struggle, loss, and resilience (after When the Killing’s Done) tackles Pacific pioneer history with literary verve. The author subtly interweaves the fates of Native Americans, Irish immigrants, Spanish and Italian migrant workers, and Chinese fishermen into the Waters’ and the Lesters’ lives, but the novel is primarily a history of the land itself, unchanging despite its various visitors and residents, and as beautiful, imperfect, and unrelenting as Boyle’s characters.
Publishers Weekly
This latest novel from Boyle (The Women; When the Killing's Done) portrays two families living and working on barren San Miguel Island off the coast of California. In 1888 Marantha Waters leaves her comfortable life on mainland California and moves out to San Miguel with her adopted daughter and husband, a steely Civil War veteran convinced that he'll have success sheep ranching on the island. Marantha is seriously ill, but instead of breathing the clean, restorative air she expected, she must live in a drafty, moldy shack in a damp environment where the sun rarely shines. Years later, in 1930, Elise Lester, newly wed at 38, moves to San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran. Though Herbie has his highs and lows, they are happy, and they have two daughters. The outside world learns of their pioneering ways, and they achieve a celebrity Herbie hopes will translate into additional income. Then World War II arrives, and with war in the Pacific, their insular island location may no longer be a refuge. Verdict: In this absorbing work, Boyle does an excellent job of describing the desperation and desolation of life on the island. Readers can almost feel the cold and damp seeping into their bones. —Shaunna Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
A richly rewarding read.... As ever, Boyle’s prose is vivid and precise, and he imbues his subjects with wonderful complexity. The perils and pleasures of island living, the limits to natural resources, and the echoes of war all provide ample grist for his mill.
Booklist
The prolific author's latest is historical, not only in period and subject matter, but in tone and ponderous theme. The 14th novel from Boyle returns to the Channel Islands off the coast of California, a setting which served him so well in his previous novel (When the Killing's Done, 2011). Some of the conflicts are similar as well- man versus nature, government regulation versus private enterprise- but otherwise this reads more like a novel that is a century or more old.... The novel tenuously connects the stories of two families who move, 50 years apart, to the isolation of the title island, in order to tend to a sheep ranch. For Marantha Waters, the symbolically fraught pilgrimage with her husband and daughter in 1888...is one of disillusionment and determination.... The ravages of the natural world (and their own moral natures) take their toll on the family, who are belatedly succeeded in the 1930s by a similar one, as newlyweds anticipate their move west.... What may seem to some like paradise offers no happy endings in this fine novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Have you ever dreamed of living off the grid? If so, what about the idea appeals to you? If not, how long do you think you could endure the isolation? Did San Miguel change your mind one way or another?
2. What would you find most challenging about life on San Miguel: the limited human companionship, the rudimentary living conditions, the monotony of the landscape, or something else?
3. Marantha’s forgotten box of china plates represents the distant, civilized world. What would represent it for you?
4. Long before the Waterses or the Lesters, a tribe of Native Americans inhabited the island. How might their experiences on San Miguel have compared with those of the homesteaders?
5. After Marantha’s death, Waters withdraws Edith from school and takes her to San Miguel so he can keep an eye on her. Yet it’s on San Miguel that she explores her sexuality with Jimmie and then barters sexual favors in order to escape. Is Waters really concerned with preserving her chastity?
6. Were you surprised to learn that Edith would marry and divorce three times and put her own daughter up for adoption? How, if at all, are Edith’s later actions shaped by her experiences on San Miguel?
7. Both Marantha and Elise are brought to the island by their husbands. Neither woman has much say in the matter. Whether or not you’re married, would you make such a dramatic move at your spouse’s request?
8. During their time on the island, Marantha and Elise both receive unexpected foreign visitors. Chinese abalone collectors visit Marantha, and Japanese fishermen call upon Elise. The women welcome these visitors politely, but their husbands drive them away. Why did Boyle choose to include these incidents?
9. Marantha’s time on San Miguel is pure hardship, but Elise’s is tempered with happiness. If you were Elise, would you have regretted marrying Herbie and moving to San Miguel? Or are her joys sufficient compensation for the tragedy of his suicide?
10. After Herbie’s death, what do you think Marianne and Betsy will find most challenging about adjusting to life off San Miguel?
11. How might modern technology affect the experience of living somewhere like San Miguel Island? Would greater connectivity to the larger world make the isolation easier or more difficult?
12. Ultimately, the government revokes Bob Brooks’s lease on San Miguel, takes away all the sheep, and makes it so that “anyone who wanted to come here or dream here or walk the hills and breathe the air would need to have a permit in hand” (p. 366). Do you agree with the government’s decision? How does Boyle view it?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Sandcastle Girls
Chris Bohjalian, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307743916
Summary
In his fifteenth book, The Sandcastle Girls, Chris Bohjalian takes us to a time and place—Syria, 1915—that left haunting legacies for his Armenian heritage, making this his most personal novel to date.
A sweeping historical love story, The Sandcastle Girls introduces us to Elizabeth Endicott, an adventure-seeking graduate of Mount Holyoke College who travels to Syria just as the Great War has begun to spread across Europe. With only a crash course in nursing, Elizabeth has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the genocide.
She soon befriends a striking Armenian engineer. He is young, but he has already lost his wife and infant daughter to Turkish brutality. When Armen leaves Aleppo to join the British army in Egypt, he and Elizabeth begin a daring correspondence, bridging their very different worlds with words of love and hope.
Interwoven with their tale is the story of Laura Petrosian, a contemporary novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents' ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed “The Ottoman Annex,” Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought.
But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura's grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family's history that reveals love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.
An epic story of love and war, The Sandcastle Girls will captivate your reading group. We hope this guide will enrich your discussion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—White Plains, New York, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Anahid Literary Award, 2000; New England Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Lincoln, Vermont
Christopher Aram Bohjalian, who goes by the pen name Chris Bohjalian, is an American novelist. Bohjalian is the author of 15 novels, including New York Times bestsellers Midwives, Secrets of Eden, The Law of Similars, Before You Know Kindness, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and The Night Strangers.
Bohjalian is the son of Aram Bohjalian, who was a senior vice president of the New York advertising agency Romann & Tannenholz. Chris Bohjalian graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an account representative for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York.
He and his wife lived in a co-op in Brooklyn until March 1986, when the two were riding in a taxicab in which the driver refused to let them out of the car for 45 minutes, ignoring all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight, the driver dropped them off at a near-deserted street in front of a crack house, where the police were conducting a raid and Bohjalian and his wife were forced to drop to the ground for their protection. The incident prompted the couple to move from Brooklyn; Bohjalian said, "After it was all over, we just thought, "Why do we live here?" A few days later, the couple read an ad in The New York Times referencing the "People's Republic of Vermont," and in 1987 the couple moved to Lincoln, Vermont.
Early career
After buying their house, Bohjalian began writing weekly columns for local newspaper and magazine about living in the small town, which had a population of about 975 residents. The Concord Monitor said of Bohjalian during this period, "his immersion in community life and family, Vermont-style, has allowed him to develop into a novelist with an ear and empathy for the common man." Bohjalian continued the column for about 12 years, writing about such topics as his own daily life, fatherhood and the transformation of America. The column has run in the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Bohjalian has also written for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Bohjalian's first novel, A Killing in the Real World, was released in 1988. Almost two decades after it was released, Bohjalian said of the book, "It was a train wreck. I hadn't figured things out yet." His third novel, Past the Bleachers, was released in 1992 and adapted as a Hallmark Channel television movie in 1995.
In 1998, Bohjalian wrote his fifth book, Midwives, a novel focusing on rural Vermont midwife Sibyl Danforth, who becomes embroiled in a legal battle after one of her patients died following an emergency Caesarean section. The novel was critically acclaimed and was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the October 1998 selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which helped push the book to great financial success. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Victoria Blewer has often described her husband as having "a crush" on the Sybil Danforth character. In 2001, the novel was adapted into a Lifetime Movie Network television film starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Spacek said the Danforth character appealed to her because "the heart of the story is my character's inner struggle with self-doubt, the solo road you travel when you have a secret."
Later career
Bohjalian followed Midwives with the 1999 novel The Law of Similars, about a widower attorney suffering from nameless anxieties who starts dating a woman who practices alternative medicine. The novel was inspired by Bohjalian's real-life visit to a homeopath in an attempt to cure frequent colds he was catching from his daughter's day care center. Bohjalian said of the visit, "I don't think I imagined there was a novel in homeopathy, however, until I met the homeopath and she explained to me the protocols of healing. There was a poetry to the language that a patient doesn't hear when visiting a conventional doctor." The protagonist, a father, is based in part on Bohjalian himself, and his four-year-old daughter is based largely on Bohjalian's daughter, who was three when he was writing the book., Liz Rosenberg of The New York Times said the novel shared many similarities with Midwives but that it paled in comparison; Rosenberg said, "Unlike its predecessor, it fails to take advantage of Bohjalian's great gift for creating thoughtful fiction featuring characters in whom the reader sustains a lively interest." Megan Harlan of The Boston Phoenix described it as "formulaic fiction" and said Bohjalian focused too much on creating a complex plot and not enough of complex characterizations. The Law of Similars, like Midwives, made the New York Times bestsellers list.
He won the New England Book Award in 2002, and in 2007 released "The Double Bind," a novel based on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
In 2008, Bohjalian released Skeletons at the Feast, a love story set in the last six months of World War II in Poland and Germany. The novel was inspired by an unpublished diary written by German citizen Eva Henatsch from 1920 to 1945. The diary was given to Bohjalian in 1998 by Henatsch's grandson Gerd Krahn, a friend of Bohjalian, who had a daughter in the same kindergarten class as Bohjalian's daughter. Bohjalian was particularly fascinated by Henatsch's account of her family's trek west ahead of the Soviet Army, but he was not inspired to write a novel from it until 2006, when he read Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, Max Hastings' history of the final years of World War II. Bohjalian was struck not only by how often Henatsch's story mirrored real-life experiences, but also the common "moments of idiosyncratic human connection" found in both. Skeletons of the Feast was considered a departure for Bohjalian because it was not only set outside of Vermont, but set in a particular historical moment.
His 2010 novel, Secrets of Eden, was also a critical success, receiving starred reviews from three of the four trade journals (Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly), as well as many newspapers and magazines. It debuted at # 6 on The New York Times bestseller list.
His next novel, The Night Strangers, published in 2011, represents yet another departure for Bohjalian. The is both a gothic ghost story and a taut psychological thriller.
He has written a weekly column for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since February 1992 called "Idyll Banter." His 1,000th column appeared in May 2011.
Personal comments
In a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview, Bohjalian offered up these personal comments:
I was the heaviest child, by far, in my second-grade class. My mother had to buy my pants for me at a store called the "Husky Boys Shop," and still she had to hem the cuffs up around my knees. I hope this experience, traumatizing as it was, made me at least marginally more sensitive to people around me.
I have a friend with Down syndrome, a teenage boy who is capable of remembering the librettos from entire musicals the first or second time he hears them. The two of us belt them out together whenever we're driving anywhere in a car.I am a pretty avid bicyclist. The other day I was biking alone on a thin path in the woods near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, and suddenly before me I saw three bears. At first I saw only two, and initially I thought they were cats. Then I thought they were dogs. Finally, just as I was approaching them and they started to scurry off the path and into the thick brush, I understood they were bears. Bear cubs, to be precise. Which is exactly when their mother, no more than five or six feet to my left, reared up on her hind legs, her very furry paws and very sharp claws raised above her head in a gesture that an optimist might consider a wave and guy on a bike might consider something a tad more threatening. Because she was standing on a slight incline, I was eye level with her stomach—an eventual destination that seemed frighteningly plausible. I have never biked so fast in my life in the woods. I may never have biked so fast in my life on a paved road.
I do have hobbies—I garden and bike, for example—but there's nothing in the world that gives me even a fraction of the pleasure that I derive from hanging around with my wife and daughter.
He lives with his wife and daughter in Lincoln, Vermont, where he is active in the local church and the Vermont theater community—always off-stage, never on.
Writing style
Bohjalian novels often focus on a specific issue, such as homelessness, animal rights and environmentalism, and tend to be character-driven, revolving around complex and flawed protagonists and secondary characters. Bohjalian uses characteristics from his real life in his writings; in particular, many of his novels take place in fictional Vermont towns, and the names of real New Hampshire towns are often used throughout his stories. Bohjalian said, "Writers can talk with agonizing hubris about finding their voices, but for me, it was in Vermont that I discovered issues, things that matter to me." His novels also tend to center around ordinary people facing extraordinarily difficult situations resulting from unforeseen circumstances, often triggered by other parties. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Bohjalian's powerful novel...depicts the Armenian genocide and one contemporary novelist's quest to uncover her heritage.... His storytelling makes this a beautiful, frightening, and unforgettable read.
Publishers Weekly
Repeatedly (and embarrassingly accurately) referred to here as "The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About," the Armenian genocide of 1915-16 takes center stage in Bohjalian's intergenerational novel. Elizabeth Endicott, a recent Mount Holyoke graduate, accompanies her Bostonian banker father on his philanthropic mission to Aleppo, Syria, to aid Armenian refugees fleeing atrocities committed by the Ottoman government. Her friendship with Armenian engineer Armen, who has lost his wife and baby daughter, flourishes when they are apart and can only communicate in letters. Years later, Laura Petrosian, seeking out a photograph of a woman rumored to be her Armenian grandmother, uncovers these letters among a wealth of documents—a treasure trove for an Armenian American novelist searching for pieces of her family history. Verdict: Bohjalian powerfully narrates an intricately nuanced romance with a complicated historical event at the forefront. With the centennial of the Armenian genocide fast approaching, this is not to be missed. Simply astounding. —Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A powerful and moving story based on real events seldom discussed. It will leave you reeling. —Elizabeth Dickie
Booklist
(Starred review.) An unforgettable exposition of the still too-little-known facts of the Armenian genocide and its multigenerational consequences.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Though The Sandcastle Girls is a novel, author Chris Bohjalian (and fictional narrator Laura Petrosian) based their storytelling on meticulous research. What can a novel reveal about history that a memoir or history book cannot? Before reading The Sandcastle Girls, what did you know about the Armenian genocide? How does this history broaden your understanding of current events in the regions surrounding Armenia?
2. What lies at the heart of Armen and Elizabeth’s attraction to each other, despite their seemingly different backgrounds? What gives their love the strength to transcend distance and danger?
3. The novel includes characters such as Dr. Akcam, Helmut, and Orhan, who take great risks opposing the atrocities committed by their superiors; Bohjalian does not cast the “enemy” as uniformly evil. What do these characters tell us about the process of resistance? What separates them from the others, who become capable of horrific, dehumanizing acts?
4. Discuss the bond between Nevart and Hatoun. What do they demonstrate about the traits, and the trauma, of a survivor? How do they redefine motherhood and childhood?
5. Bohjalian is known for creating inventive, authentic narrators for his novels, ranging from a midwife to a foster child. Why was it important for The Sandcastle Girls to be told primarily from the point of view of a woman? How was your reading affected by the knowledge that the author is a man?
6. In chapter 9, Elizabeth courageously quotes the Qur’an to appeal to the conscience of the Turkish lieutenant. What diplomacy lessons are captured in that moment? For the novel’s characters—from aid workers to Armenians who tried to convert—what is the role of religion?
7. When Laura describes the music of her 1960s youth, her steamy relationship with Berk, her belly-dancing aunt, and other cultural memories, what is she saying about the American experience of immigration and assimilation? Culturally, what did her grandfather sacrifice in order to gain security and prosperity in America?
8. Discuss the various aid workers depicted in the novel. What motivated them to assist in this particular cause? Do Alicia, Sister Irmingard, and Elizabeth achieve similar outcomes despite their different approaches? What overseas populations would you be willing to support so courageously?
9. Does Ryan Martin use his power effectively? How does Elizabeth gain power in a time period and culture that was marked by the oppression of women?
10. The vivid scenes of Gallipoli bring to life the global nature of war over the past century. As Armen fights alongside Australians, what do we learn about the power and the vulnerabilities of multinational forces? What did it mean for his fellow soldiers to fight for a cause so far removed from their own homelands, and for his own countrymen to rely on the mercy of outsiders?
11. At the end of chapter 19, does Elizabeth make the right decision? How would you have reacted in the wake of a similar tragedy?
12. How do Laura’s discoveries enrich her sense of self? Discuss your own heritage and its impact on your identity. How much do you know about your parents’ and grandparents’ upbringing? What immigration stories are part of your own family’s collective memory?
13. As she tries to explain why so few people are aware of the Armenian genocide, Laura cites the fact that the victims perished in a remote desert. The novel also describes the problem of trying to document the atrocities using the cumbersome photography equipment of the day. Will the Information Age spell the end of such cover-ups? For future generations, will genocide be unimaginable?
14. Which aspects of The Sandcastle Girls remind you of previous Bohjalian novels you have enjoyed?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Sara's Laughter
Tom Milton, 2011
Nepperhan Press
186 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780982990445
Summary
Despite warnings from her mother that if she waited too long to get married she wouldn't be able to find a husband, Sara waited until she found the right man.
But now Sara is thirty-five and she is having trouble getting pregnant. She has tried everything except technologies that are not approved by her religion. Under pressure from her widowed father to give him a grandson, she is tempted to try anything, but she keeps hoping for a miracle.
Her hope is kept alive by a dream in which God told her husband she would have a baby. When her sister Becky, who doesn’t want to have children, gets pregnant accidentally from an extramarital fling, Sara comes up with a solution that would finally make her dream come true. But when things don’t go according to plan she loses her way, and she discovers a side of her nature she never imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 3, 1949
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A. Princeton University; M.A., University
of Iowa (Writers Workshop); Ph.D., Walden University
• Currently—lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Tom Milton was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After completing his undergraduate
degree at Princeton he worked for the Wall Street Journal, and then he was invited to the Writers Workshop in Iowa City, where he completed a novel and a master’s degree. He then served in the U.S. Army, and upon his discharge he joined a major international bank in New York. For the next twenty years he worked overseas, initially as an economic/political analyst and finally as a senior executive. He later became involved in economic development projects.
After retiring from his business career he joined the faculty of Mercy College, where he is a professor of international business. Five years ago he found a publisher for his novels, some of which are set in foreign cities where he lived (Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, and Santo Domingo). His novels are popular with reading groups because they deal with major issues, they have engaging characters, and they are good stories.
His first published novel, No Way to Peace, set in Argentina in the mid-1970s, is about the courage of five women during that country’s war of terror. His second novel, The Admiral’s Daughter, is about the conflict between a young woman and her father during the civil rights war in Mississippi in the early 1960s. His third novel, All the Flowers, set in New York in the late 1960s, is about a gifted young singer who gets involved in the antiwar movement because her twin brother joins the army to prove his manhood to his father. His fourth novel, Infamy, set in Madrid in 2007, is about the attempt of security agents to stop a terrorist attack on New York City that would use weapons of mass destruction. His next novel, A Shower of Roses, set in London in the early 1980s, is about a young nurse who is drawn by love into an intrigue of the Cold War. His next novel, Sara’s Laughter, set in Yonkers, NY in 1993, is about a woman in her mid-thirties who wants a child but is unable to get pregnant. And his latest novel, The Golden Door, is about a young Latina woman in Alabama whose future is threatened by a harsh anti-immigrant law that the state passed in 2011. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
On learning that, though elderly and barren, she’d finally have the child promised to her all those years ago, the Biblical matriarch, Sarah, laughs, surreptitiously. Whether read as a bitter or joyous, nervous or skeptical, it’s in Sarah’s laughter that many have searched for guidance when life fails to deliver on cherished dreams. Taking this Old Testament lesson as inspiration, Sara’s Laughter explores the compromises contemporary Catholics make in an attempt to reconcile the restrictions of their faith WITH the technological advances that make reproductive dreams a possibility. Although Sara, a good “Bronx Irish Catholic,” can’t escape the “voices” of her parents in her head, she resists the pressure to marry right after college and produce a grandson. Instead, she holds out for Mr. Right: Marcelo Solis, a Latino doctor who foregoes lucrative private practice to work at a clinic in the Bronx. However, after overcoming doubt and mistrust early in their relationship, and her father’s reservations about their mixed-race marriage, Sara and Marcelo find themselves facing a new challenge when Sara learns she’s all but infertile. Having already stepped outside the bounds of her faith as a single woman living in Manhattan (pre-marital sex, birth control), Sara must decide how far she’s willing to go “over the line” set by the doctrine of Humanae Vitae in order to have the family she so desperately wants. But when Sara’s troubled sister, Becky, calls, devastated, with news of her own unplanned pregnancy, Sara, misled by her own sense of entitlement (“Well, don’t you think we’d make better parents?”), accepts Becky’s promise to give her the child heedless of the repercussions: while Sara is “born with self-esteem,” Becky is not, and Sara knows Becky’s resentment won’t allow her to give her the one thing she wants. While Milton’s tour of Catholic reproduction issues— birth control, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, abortion—is laudably balanced, the treatment is too cursory and the ending too pat to be of much philosophical interest. Similarly, the doctrine of Humanae Vitae is prodded far too gently to appeal to skeptics or those interested in serious philosophical challenges to the doctrine. Regardless, Milton, author of five novels, including Infamy and The Admiral’s Daughter, is a talented storyteller who has real sympathy for his characters, and the result is an honest tale about relationships—the vicissitudes, the frustrations, the solace—and the enduring power of familial love. .
Devon Shepherd - Foreword Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. To what extent is Sara influenced by the voice of her mother in her head?
2. What’s the difference between the messages Sara gets from her mother and her father about her inability to get pregnant?
3. What issues does Sara confront as she uses the technology available to women who have fertility problems?
4. Evaluate the advice that Sara gets from Dr. Vesely.
5. How would you describe Sara’s relationship with her mother?
6. Does Sara achieve separation from her mother?
7. Sara’s sister accuses her of being daddy’s little girl. Is this a valid accusation?
8. Why is Marcelo the right man for Sara?
9. Marcelo has two complications: he is married, and he isn’t white. Which complication is harder for Sara’s mother to deal with? What does that tell us about her mother?
10. How deep do you think her father’s racism is?
11. Would Becky have been a different person if she had been an only child?
12. Explain Becky’s behavior after she got pregnant.
13. What do you think of Sara’s solution to her sister’s problem?
14. What perspectives do we gain from Sara’s conversations at lunch with her friend Regina?
15. What perspectives do we gain from Sara’s conversations with Father Paul in front of St. Brigid?
16. How does Sara’s view of the local abortion clinic evolve during the story?
17. Would Sara have joined the protesters in front of the clinic solely as a matter of principle?
18. Why is Sara mesmerized by Brother Jeremiah?
19. What did Sara and Becky learn about themselves that changed their relationship?
(Questions issued by the author.)
Sarah Thornhill (Thornhill Trilogy 3)
Kate Grenville, 2012
Cannongate
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802120243
Summary
In the final book of a trilogy that began with her bestselling novel, The Secret River, Commonwealth Prize–winner Kate Grenville returns to the youngest daughter of the Thornhills and her quest to uncover, at her peril, the family’s hidden legacy.
Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, the pioneer at the center of The Secret River. Unknown to her, her father—an uneducated ex-convict from London—has built his fortune on the blood of Aboriginal people. With a fine stone house and plenty of money, Thornhill has re-invented himself. As he tells his daughter, he “never looks back,” and Sarah grows up learning not to ask about the past. Instead her eyes are on handsome Jack Langland, whom she’s loved since she was a child. Their romance seems destined, but the ugly secret in Sarah’s family is poised to ambush them both.
As she did with The Secret River, Grenville once again digs into her own family history to tell a story about the past that still resonates today. Driven by the captivating voice of the illiterate Sarah—at once headstrong, sympathetic, curious, and refreshingly honest—this is an unforgettable portrait of a passionate woman caught up in a historical moment of astonishing turmoil. (From the publisher.)
The first two books in the Thornhill Trilogy are (1) The Secret River ... and (2) The Lieutenant
Author Bio
• Birth—October 14, 1950
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A. University of Sydney; M.A. University of
Colorado
• Awards—Vogel Award (Australia); Orange Prize;
Commonwealth Writers Prize, Short-listed, Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Sydney, Australia
Kate Grenville was born in Sydney, Australia. After completing an Arts degree at Sydney University she worked in the film industry (mainly as an editor) before living in the UK and Europe for several years and starting to write.
In 1980 she went to the USA and completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, where her teachers included Ron Sukenick, Robert Steiner and Steve Katz.
On her return to Australia in 1983 she worked at the Subtitling Unit for SBS Television. In 1984 her first book, a collection of stories—Bearded Ladies—was published.
Since then she's published six novels and four books about the writing process (one co-written with Sue Woolfe).
The Secret River (2005) has won many prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize for Literature and the Christina Stead Prize, and has been an international best-seller. (It also formed the basis for a Doctorate of Creative Arts from University of Technology, Sydney) The Idea of Perfection (2000) won the Orange Prize.
Her other works of fiction have been published to acclaim in Australia and overseas and have won state and national awards. Much-loved novels such as Lilian's Story (1985), Dark Places (1995), and Joan Makes History (1988) have become classics, admired by critics and general readers alike.
Lilian's Story was filmed starring Ruth Cracknell, Toni Collette and Barry Otto. Dream House was filmed under the title Traps, starring Jacqueline MacKenzie.
Kate Grenville's novels have been widely published in translation, and her books about the writing process are used in many writing courses in schools and universities.
She lives in Sydney with her family. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
It is with often marvelous vividness and clarity that Grenville evokes Sarah’s world.... Through the eyes of this young woman, the physical and cultural strangeness of a nation still clambering into existence spring richly to life.
Guardian (UK)
Sarah Thornhill displays [Grenville’s] gift for creating character full blaze.... A great work of truth.... What unfolds is a box of surprises, richly wrapped in language so colorful and lively, you can taste it.... You believe in [Sarah’s] honesty, her perceptiveness, her way of ‘reading’ others.... A wonderful novel.
Scotsman
Grenville’s extraordinary trilogy is a major achievement in Australian literature.
Australian Book Review
A moving piece of fiction.... Powerfully realized.... Sarah Thornhill is the book of a writer of the first rank.... A haunting performance.
Age (Australia)
A powerful saga of colliding histories [that] blends romance and honesty.
Independent (Ireland)
A beguiling love story.... The voice of illiterate Sarah is Grenville’s great triumph.... An imaginatively convincing recreation of history and a celebration of country tenderly and beautifully observed, but above all it is a powerful plea for due acknowledgement and remembrance of the veils of the past.
Adelaide Advertiser
Revisits the fascinating, trouble territory of the history wars.... Grenville’s vivid fiction performs as testimony, memory, and mourning within the collective post-colonial narrative.
Australian
This is a beautiful book, one that pulses with insight and compassion.... Grenville’s descriptions are a delicate fretwork of words.... Not only is Sarah Thornhill gorgeously written, but the love story at its heart is as real and true as it is unexpected. This is a novel that will be treasured by generations to come. It is that rare book that manages to wholly engage both head and heart. Grenville has done a splendid job.
Canberra Times
Grenville's great strength is her sensual fleshing-out of the past.... Her vision of our colonial history is at once compelling and fable-like, as she writes contemporary white self-knowledge back into it.
Monthly (Australia)
A captivating tale of a woman's fight to find an identity of her own in a "new" colony. [Grenville's] wonderful account shows how hard it can be simply to be yourself.... A deeply moving conclusion to a romantic but by no means sentimental story.
Telegraph (UK)
A wrenching conclusion to a tough-hearted trilogy about the colonizing of Australia…With characters whose pasts are as dark and broken as these, it's impossible to trust the local settlers' favorite claim: "Never looked back." In fact, the members of this crew are always looking over their shoulders, sometimes to their detriment. And because of that, Sarah Thornhill is a novel that can't be easily categorized—exuberant, cruel, surprising, a triumphant evocation of a period and a people filled with both courage and ugliness.
Susann Cokal - New York Times Book Review
Sarah Thornhill, the youngest daughter of a wealthy yet provincial British ex-convict, grows up in 19th-century Australia learning not to ask questions about her family's past. When Sarah falls in love with a local man whose mother was Aboriginal, her chance at happiness is shattered by the racial and class prejudice churning within her family and Australia's burgeoning white society.... Verdict: Grenville concludes the Thornhill family saga and her exploration of Australian history begun in The Secret River, winner of the Commonwealth Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker, and continued in The Lieutenant. This is a more subdued but equally exceptional historical novel, with multilayered characters and a beautifully styled plot. Fans of literary fiction will clamor for this final volume. —Kelsy Peterson, Prairie Village, KS
Library Journal
The saga of the Thornhill clan in early-19th-century Australia concludes in the final volume of Commonwealth Writer's Prize winner Grenville's (The Secret River, 2006, etc.) trilogy. Sarah Thornhill is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, a man "sent out" from England in 1806 to New South Wales. Years later, with Sarah on the cusp of womanhood, Thornhill has become a prosperous river freighter, landowner and landlord... While the story is fictional, the book instructs on Australia's early history: the land; the wealth to be made from sheep, seals and whales; the conflict between those who had "worn the broad arrow," arriving as convicts, and those who came from proper society; and the oppressive and often bloody relationship between white settlers and the aboriginal people, termed "blacks." .... Beautifully written, with sufficient backstory to be enjoyed without first reading the previous two installments, this novel can be read as a dissection of a cultural clash or an allegory for colonialism, but at heart, the novel uses fiction to search for reason within history.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “The Hawkesbury was a lovely river, wide and calm, the water dimply green, the cliffs golden in the sun, and white birds roosting in the trees like so much washing. It was a sweet thing of a still morning, the river-oaks whispering and the land standing upside down in the water” (p. 3). How does this sanctity of the land pervade the novel? For which characters is the land most important? When is it desecrated and why?
2. “Three Irish in a house together, can’t go long without some of the old songs.... Paddy...stood in the corner with his eyes closed and out of the fiddle came a wild keening voice.... After a time Maeve lifted up her voice and sang along with the fiddle, the words caressing the music as it went up and down.... And there was Daunt...the tears stand glittering in his eyes.... I was the only one dry-eyed. That was what it was to belong to a place. To be brought undone by the music of the land where you’d been born. Us currency lads and lasses had no feeling like that about the land we call ours. It had no voice that we could hear, no song we could sing. Nothing but a blank where the past was. Emptiness, like a closed room, at our backs” (pp. 196-197). How does this emptiness propel Sarah’s search for meaning in the book?
3. Have you ever read a novel whose characters are complex and subtle, yet totally illiterate? Is it surprising there is no culture of books or schools in the Thornhill family? How does living with Daunt and his books affect Sarah? “Gone away into reading like another country where I could never follow” (p. 197).
4. When there is no written history, how is knowledge of the past further complicated by secrets and tangled suppositions? What are some of these secrets and suppositions?
5. Will Sarah’s compulsion to tell her story and that of her family force her to learn her letters? “But of all the crimes done, the worst would be to let the story slip away. For what it’s worth, mine had best take its place, in with all the others” (p. 304).
6. William Thornhill was a man who “never looked back” (p. 3). He is who he is, someone who has to create his own story and legacy. “As far as some people went, ‘sent out’ meant tainted for all time” (p. 5). How do success and money have a way of blunting the hard shapes of the past? Consider the transformation of “emancipist” into “old colonist.”
7. What is one part of his past that Thornhill cannot ignore? “So what was that terrible twisting across his face? That thing that was like an animal eating away at him from the inside?” (p. 30).
8. What are the varying attitudes toward native people? Mrs. Thornhill? Mrs. Langland? Maeve? And how about Daunt? He says “These are folk too clever to break their backs heaving dirt. I’ve come round to the view that a man shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to judge them. I’d say no more than this, that their ways are not the same as our ways” (p. 211). Is his tolerance shared by others? How has Anglo-Irish history shaped his views? (see p. 218).
9. What draws Sarah and Jack together? What do they have in common in their young childhood? What is Will’s role in their growing closeness?
10. Does Sarah ever grow to see a validation of her parents’ separating her from Jack? How did they accomplish this split?
11. When Sarah makes her extraordinary journey to New Zealand, what motivates her to abandon child and husband for the dangerous sea voyage? Is it expiation? For her? For her father? Sarah goes to give. What does she gain?
12. What is Jack’s role in Sarah’s quest to New Zealand? “Would there never be an end to it, the hole in my life where Jack should of been?” (p. 209).
13. How do the native New Zealand traditions incorporate and pass on events of the past? Consider both the songlines and the visible story lines of the tattoos.
14. What are the ways Jack reclaims his own maternal heritage? Has his own quest, one that required his rejecting the Langland family and the only world he can remember, resulted in peace and belonging for him? Do you think his seafaring years provided him fortitude?
15. Grenville speaks in her acknowledgments notes about “the possibility of a story that was not just about the past, but the present and its unfinished business” (p. 307). What is suggested about the larger world, not only Australia and New Zealand? Does Sarah herself grow to take comfort in feeling like part of a bigger world, one that existed before her and would exist long after?
16. Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore wrote that Britain “had hoped that transportation would do four things: sublimate, deter, reform, and colonize.” From what you know about Australia, was the policy a success?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Sarah's Key
Tatiana de Rosnay, 2007
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312370848
Summary
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 28, 1961
• Where—Suburbs of Paris, France
• Education—B.A., University of East Anglia (UK)
• Currently—lives in Paris
Tatiana de Rosnay, born in the suburbs of Paris, is of English, French and Russian descent. Her father is French scientist Joël de Rosnay, her grandfather was painter Gaëtan de Rosnay. Tatiana's paternal great-grandmother was Russian actress Natalia Rachewskïa, director of the Leningrad Pushkin Theatre from 1925 to 1949.
Tatiana's mother is English, Stella Jebb, daughter of diplomat Gladwyn Jebb, and great-great-granddaughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer. Tatiana is also the niece of historian Hugh Thomas.
Tatiana was raised in Paris and then in Boston, when her father taught at MIT in the 70's. She moved to England in the early 1980s and obtained a Bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich. On her return to Paris in 1984, she was a press officer, then became a journalist and literary critic for Psychologies Magazine.
Since 1992, de Rosnay has published twelve novels in French and three in English. She has also worked on the series Family Affairs for which she has written two episodes with the screenwriter Pierre-Yves Lebert. The series was broadcasted on TF1 during the summer of 2000.
In 2006 de Rosnay published her most popular novel, Sarah's Key, selling over three million copies in French and almost two million in English. In 2009 the book was adapted into French cinema, under the same title by Serge Joncour, with Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia; the movie was converted to English in late 2011. She published A Secret Kept in 2009, Rose in 2011, and The House I Loved in 2012.
In January 2010, several French magazines issued a ranking of the top French novelists, placing de Rosnay at number eight. In January 2011, Le Figaro magazine published a ranking of the top ten most read French authors, positioning de Rosnay at fifth. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Rich in mystery, intrigue and suspense, Sarah’s Key made me wonder and weep.
Roanoke Times
A powerful novel....Tatiana de Rosnay has captured the insane world of the Holocaust and the efforts of the few good people who stood up against it in this work of fiction more effectively than has been done in many scholarly studies. It is a book that makes us sensitive to how much evil occurred and also to how much willingness to do good also existed in that world..
Rabbi Jack Riemer - South Florida Jewish Journal
(Starred Review.) De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. What did you know about France’s role in World War II—and the Vél d’Hiv round-up in particular—before reading Sarah’s Key? How did this book teach you about, or change your impression of, this important chapter in French history?
2. Sarah’s Key is composed of two interweaving story lines: Sarah’s, in the past, and Julia’s quest in the present day. Discuss the structure and prose-style of each narrative. Did you enjoy the alternating stories and time-frames? What are the strengths or drawbacks of this format?
3. Per above: Which “voice” did you prefer: Sarah’s or Julia’s? Why? Is one more or less authentic than the other? If you could meet either of the two characters, which one would you choose?
4. How does the apartment on la rue de Saintonge unite the past and present action—and all the characters—in Sarah’s Key? In what ways is the apartment a character all its own in?
5. What are the major themes of Sarah’s Key?
6. de Rosnay’s novel is built around several “key” secrets which Julia will unearth. Discuss the element of mystery in these pages. What types of narrative devices did the author use to keep the keep the reader guessing?
7. Were you surprised by what you learned about Sarah’s history? Take a moment to discuss your individual expectations in reading Sarah’s Key. You may wish to ask the group for a show of hands. Who was satisfied by the end of the book? Who still wants to know—or read—more?
8. How do you imagine what happens after the end of the novel? What do you think Julia’s life will be like now that she knows the truth about Sarah? What truths do you think she’ll learn about her self?
9. Among modern Jews, there is a familiar mantra about the Holocaust; they are taught, from a very young age, that they must “remember and never forget” (as the inscription on the Rafle du Vél d’Hiv) Discuss the events of Sarah’s Key in this context. Who are the characters doing the remembering? Who are the ones who choose to forget?
10. What does it take for a novelist to bring a “real” historical event to life? To what extent do you think de Rosnay took artistic liberties with this work?
11. Why do modern readers enjoy novels about the past? How and when can a powerful piece of fiction be a history lesson in itself ?
12. We are taught, as young readers, that every story has a “moral”. Is there a moral to Sarah’s Key? What can we learn about our world—and our selves—from Sarah’s story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Sashenka
Simon Montefiore, 2008
Simon & Schuster
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416595557
Summary
Winter 1916: St. Petersburg, Russia, is on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar's secret police.
Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and their dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction.
Twenty years on, Sashenka is married to a powerful, rising Red leader with whom she has two children. Around her people are disappearing, while in the secret world of the elite her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair that will have devastating consequences.
Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heartbreaking tale of betrayal and redemption, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism—and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1965
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge University
• Awards—British Book Award, Costa Book
Award, Bruno Kreisky Award, Prix de la
Biographie Politque (all for Young Stalin).
• Currently—lives in London, England
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore is a British historian and writer.
Biography
Montefiore's father, a doctor, is descended from a famous line of wealthy Sephardic Jews who became diplomats and bankers all over Europe. At the start of the 19th century, by playing the markets based on intelligence about the Battle of Waterloo, Simon's great-great uncle, Sir Moses Montefiore, became a banking partner of N M Rothschild & Sons. By contrast, Simon’s mother, April, a novelist, comes from a Lithuanian Jewish family of poor scholars. Her parents fled the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century. They bought tickets for New York City but were cheated and dropped off at Cork, Ireland. During the Limerick boycott of 1904 they left Ireland, despite offers of hospitality in Irish homes, and moved to Newcastle, England.
Simon was educated at Ludgrove School, Harrow, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read history. He went on to work as a banker and foreign affairs journalist.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.
Writings
Montefiore’s books are world bestsellers, published in 33 languages. His first history book, Catherine the Great & Potemkin, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won History Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the LA Times Book Prize for Best Biography, the Costa Book Award, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Literature, the Prix de la Biographie Politique and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Miramax Films and Ruby Films have bought the rights and are currently developing a movie of Young Stalin.
He also wrote a novel, Sashenka (2008), and his latest history book is Jerusalem: the Biography, a fresh history of the Middle East. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Sashenka is an intriguing portrait of the people who brought down the czars and went on to serve the Soviet state during Stalinism…has some pleasures of the great Russian novels.
New York Times
Simon Montefiore's first novel, is a historical whodunit with the epic sweep of a Hollywood movie. The author of the bestselling biography Young Stalin, Montefiore is a natural storyteller who brings his encyclopedic knowledge of Russian history to life in language that glitters like the ice of St. Petersburg.... Here's hoping we get more spellbinding historical fiction from him.
Washington Post
Despite [some] overblown sex scenes and cartoonish dialogue...Sashenka is an intriguing portrait of the people who brought down the czars and went on to serve the Soviet state during Stalinism.... Much of the novel's interest is the result of the years of prodigious research that Montefiore, a British journalist and author of several widely praised books of nonfiction...has done in once-sealed Russian archives.
Denver Post
(Starred review.) Lauded historian Montefiore (Young Stalin) ventures successfully into fiction with the epic story of Sashenka Zeitlin, a privileged Russian Jew caught up in the romance of the Russian revolution and then destroyed by the Stalinist secret police. The novel's first section, set in 1916, describes how, under the tutelage of her Bolshevik uncle, Sashenka becomes a naive, idealistic revolutionary charmed by her role as a courier for the underground and rejecting her own bourgeois background. Skip forward to 1939, when Sashenka and her party apparatchik husband are at the zenith of success until Sashenka's affair with a disgraced writer leads to arrests and accusations; in vivid scenes of psychological and physical torture, Sashenka is forced to choose between her family, her lover and her cause. But as this section ends, many questions remain, and it is up to historian Katinka Vinsky in 1994 to find the answers to what really happened to Sashenka and her family. Montefiore's prose is unexciting, but the tale is thick and complex, and the characters' lives take on a palpable urgency against a wonderfully realized backdrop. Readers with an interest in Russian history will particularly delight in Sashenka's story.
Publishers Weekly
Despite [Sashenka's] unscathed Stalin’s purges of 1937 and 1938, the revolution’s need to devour its children eventually overtakes even true believers made especially vulnerable by indiscreet love affairs. In 1994 the Soviet Union has collapsed, but Sashenka’s legacy cannot so easily be put to rest. Montefiore’s command of Russian history makes the novel’s details especially vibrant. —Mark Knoblauch
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Sashenka:
1. Why is Sashenka arrested at the age of 16...and why is she released?
2. Why does Sashenka disapprove of her mother, Ariadna?
3. What do you think of Sashenka's uncle Mendel? Is it right that he has the amount of influence over his niece that he has? Is she too young to become involved in such a dangerous undertaking?
4. Talk about the ambiguous position of the Jews during the revolution. What is the Pale of Settlement? In what capacity were some Jews tolerated by the Czar...and in what way were some Jews useful to the Bolsheviks?
5. How does Montefiore portray Stalin in this work? How are other Bolsheviks portrayed? Are they as multilayered or complex in their characterizations as Stalin? Or are they more one-dimensional? Overall, how would you describe the author's attitude toward the Bolsheviks?
5. Why does Sashenka risk all to have an affair?
6. Why does Sashenka's world begin to fall apart after the May Day party at her Dacha?
7. What do you think of Sashenka's husband Vanya's response to the knowledge of her affair?
8. A number of reviewers have singled out the sexual episodes in the book as over-the-top. What do you think? Do you agree with the critics...or do you think the scenes are necessary to further the plot?
9. Were you surprised by the twists and turns of plot? What about the identity of Katinka?
10. Did you come away from this novel having learned something about the history of Russia, especially the Soviet Union and the monstrous cruelty of Stalin's regime? Did you gain an understanding of why the Bolshevik revolution occurred? What inspired it...what driving forces were behind it?
11. Do you feel the novel's three different sections are equal in their ability to engage readers? Do they merge well into a unifying story?
Saturday
Ian McEwan, 2005
Random House
289 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400076192
Summary
From the pen of a master — the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement — comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable.
There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before.
On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne’s day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug.
To Perowne’s professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him — with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 21, 1948
• Where—Aldershot, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Sussex; M.A. University of East Anglia
• Awards—(see blow)
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England
Ian Russell McEwan is an English novelist. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (nee Moore). His father was a working class Scotsman who had worked his way up through the army to the rank of major. As a result, McEwan spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve.
McEwan was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson's pioneering creative writing course.
Career
McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. He achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its alleged obscenity. His second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978.
The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels, both of which were adapted into films. The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed "Ian Macabre." These were followed by The Child in Time (1987), winner of the 1987 Whitbread Novel Award; The Innocent (1990); and Black Dogs (1992). McEwan has also written two children's books, Rose Blanche (1985) and The Daydreamer (1994). His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about the relationship between a science writer and a stalker, was popular with critics and adapted into a film in 2004.
In 1998, he won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam. His next novel, Atonement (2001), received considerable acclaim; Time magazine named it the best novel of 2002, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2007, the critically acclaimed movie Atonement, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, was released in cinemas worldwide. His next work, Saturday (2005), follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon. Saturday won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 2005, and his novel On Chesil Beach (2007) was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize.
McEwan has also written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, an oratorio and a libretto titled For You with music composed by Michael Berkeley.
In 2008 at the Hay Festival, McEwan gave a surprise reading of his then novel-in-progress, eventually published as Solar (2010). The novel includes a scientist hoping to save the planet from the threat of climate change and got its inspiration from a 2005 Cape Farewell expedition. McEwan along with fellow artists and scientists spent several weeks aboard a ship near the north pole.
McEwan's twelfth novel, Sweet Tooth (2012), is historical in nature and set in the 1970. In an interview with the Scotsman newspaper, McEwan revealed that the impetus for writing the novel was a way for him to write a "disguised autobiography." McEwan's 13th novel, The Children Act (2014), is about a high court judge.
Controversy
In 2006 McEwan was accused of plagiarism, specifically a passage in Atonement that closely echoed one from a 2012 memoir, No Time for Romance, by Lucilla Andrews. McEwan acknowledged using the book as a source for his work; in fact, he had included a brief note at the end of the book referring to Andrews's autobiography, among several other works. Writing in the Guardian in November 2006, a month after Andrews' death, McEwan professed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt to the author.
The incident recalled critical controversy over his debut novel The Cement Garden, key plot elements that closely mirrored some of those in Our Mother's House, a 1963 novel by Julian Gloag, which had also been made into a film. McEwan denied charges of plagiarism, claiming he was unaware of the earlier work.
In 2011 McEwan caused controversy when he accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. In the face of pressure from groups and individuals opposed to the Israeli government, specifically British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP), McEwan wrote a letter to the Guardian in which he said...
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics, and for me the emblem in this respect is Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra—surely a beam of hope in a dark landscape, though denigrated by the Israeli religious right and Hamas. If BWISP is against this particular project, then clearly we have nothing more to say to each other.
He announced that he would donate the ten thousand dollar prize money to Combatants for Peace, an organization that brings together Israeli ex-soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters.
Recognition
McEwan has been nominated for the Man Booker prize six times to date, winning the Prize for Amsterdam in 1998. His other nominations were for The Comfort of Strangers (1981, Shortlisted), Black Dogs (1992, Shortlisted), Atonement (2001, Shortlisted), Saturday (2005, Longlisted), and On Chesil Beach (2007, Shortlisted). McEwan also received nominations for the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and 2007.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2005, he was the first recipient of Dickinson College's Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholar and Writers Program Award, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. In 2008, McEwan received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College, London, where he used to teach English literature. In 2008, The Times (of London) featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Personal
McEwan has been married twice. His 13-year marriage to spiritual healer and therapist Penny Allen ended in 1995 and was followed by a bitter custody battle over their two sons. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, was formerly the editor of the Guardian's Review section.
In 2002, McEwan discovered that he had a brother who had been given up for adoption during World War II when his mother was married to a different man. After her first husband was killed in combat, McEwan's mother married her lover, and Ian was born a few years later. The brothers are in regular contact, and McEwan has written a foreword to Sharp's memoir. (Excerpted and adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)
Book Reviews
Though Saturday is too indebted to Mrs. Dalloway to resonate with the fierce originality of the author's last book, Atonement, it's clear that with this volume, Mr. McEwan has not only produced one of the most powerful pieces of post-9/11 fiction yet published, but also fulfilled that very primal mission of the novel: to show how we—a privileged few of us, anyway—live today.
Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times
There's little question that McEwan is supremely gifted and knows all the tricks and sleights of fiction. His latest novel, Saturday, might be a textbook example of how to generate a growing sense of disquiet with the tiniest finger-flicks of detail — a broken mirror, a flash of red, two figures on a park bench. Slowly, readers may start to guess what will happen, but not how or when or to whom. McEwan makes us wait, lulls us into thinking we might be mistaken, and then — just as we're feeling relaxed, bathed in well-being as after a big glass of wine — he springs.
Michael Dirda - The Washington Post
An increasingly mellowed but no less gripping McEwan (Atonement, 2002, etc.) portrays a single day in the life of a well-off upper-middle-class Londoner, blessed in every conceivable way. While crowds mass to protest the coming invasion of Iraq, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon at the top of his game, intelligent and self-aware, goes about a Saturday that's by turns mundane and marvelous. We follow his reflections on surgeries, so well detailed as to be med-porn; lazy lovemaking upon awakening, and restorative sex at the end of the day with smart, devoted, lawyer wife Rosalind (he notes his unusual luck in still wanting no one else); a sometimes savage squash game with friend and partner Jay; a sad visit to his senile mother; and shopping for dinner. A chance encounter with Baxter, an intelligent young thug, provides the small plot; Henry escapes a mugging when he recognizes early signs of Huntington's in the lad and takes control. That evening, at Henry's well-appointed townhouse, in the warm glow of gathered family-father-in-law John Grammaticus, towering poet turned to drink; son Theo, a gifted young blues guitarist; daughter Daisy, a poet visiting from Paris, newly published and newly pregnant-Baxter returns and holds Rosalind at knifepoint. Terrorized and terrified, the family, through their various strengths, overcome Baxter, who lands in the hospital requiring emergency surgery from the forgiving Henry. Comprised by an active awareness of his place in the world, of his love for family and work, and of the contingencies that make his life his own, and that make Baxter's life his own, Henry's thoughts—especially since they're informed also by a matter-of-fact understanding of the neurological processes that emerge as behavior and look like choice—envelop us in a total immersion experience. A sort of middle-class humanist manifesto: when you find yourself fortunate beyond all measure in a random universe, gratitude, generosity, and compassion are a decent response.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Saturday's epigraph comes from Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow, whose novel Herzog features an academic facing the shortcomings of his life. The novel was published in 1964; how might the history of the early Sixties have influenced Bellow's perspective? Forty years later, how does Ian McEwan's protagonist embody current events?
2. At the end of the Saturday's first paragraph, as Henry wakes too early, McEwan writes, "And he's entirely himself, he is certain of it, and he knows that sleep is behind him: to know the difference between it and waking, to know the boundaries, is the essence of sanity." To what else does Henry awaken as the novel progresses? In the book and in the world, who remains asleep (and unaware of their slumber)?
3. When Henry hears about the cargo plane's safe landing, McEwan observes, "Schrödinger's cat was alive after all." How does Schrödinger's thought-experiment, allowing two outcomes to co-exist during a period of uncertainty, apply to Henry's daily life? How does it express the nature of human thought during times of anxiety?
4. Was the collision between Henry's car and Baxter's an accident? What visual cues (the type of car Henry associates with criminals, the "scarecrow" clothes that make him look like something other than a doctor) stoke the fire? What class conflicts are projected as the men argue? What determines who has more power in that situation?
5. Discuss the irony of the novel's title. Henry intended to spend the day relaxing; does the modern world allow for any true respite from worry?
6. In your opinion, what accounts for the bliss between Henry and his wife? When he met her, did her vulnerability (through illness) feed their attraction, or was it merely a means for them to find one another? What accounts for Henry's uneasy relationship with his father-in-law?
7. In researching Saturday, Ian McEwan spent months observing brain surgery. What parallels exist between a writer's craft and a surgeon's? What is the effect of McEwan's decision to cast Henry in the specialty of neurosurgery (as opposed to thoracic or orthopedic surgery, for example)? How does Henry's ease with medical terminology, but discomfort with the vocabulary of literature, influence your reading experience?
8. Jay Strauss moved to the U.K. in part because of his enthusiasm for socialized medicine. How would you describe the healthcare system presented in the novel?
9. Do you think Jay personifies most or few Americans? Is he more competitive than Henry?
10. As Henry watches his mother's dementia worsen, he labels the physiological reasons for her decline. Does his familiarity with science ease or aggravate the sadness of losing her?
11. One of Henry's last errands in the novel is to listen to attend a performance by Theo's band. What does blues music, along with its American flavor, mean to Theo? Does Henry experience this art differently from the way he hears Daisy's work?
12. Why was Baxter's invasion of Henry's house essential to this novel? In what way can this scene be explored as a metaphor for politics, war, even global economics? Why was it also necessary for Henry's security system to be proven ineffective that night?
13. Using an anthology or website, read Matthew Arnold's nineteenth-century masterwork "Dover Beach" in its entirety. What caused it to resonate with Baxter's memories? Can you think of any contemporary poems in free verse that would have served Daisy's purpose so well?
14. What saves Henry's family from Baxter and his cohorts: Poetry? Pregnancy? Bravery? Intelligence? Luck? Divine intervention? Baxter's illness? How would you have reacted in a similar situation?
15. As Henry returns to the hospital that night, he realizes this is where he feels most comfortable—even more so than when he's in the world of alleged leisure. Earlier in the novel, McEwan describes how orderly Henry's mother was; Henry wishes he had just once invited her to the operating theater. Is this sense of order and belonging innate to Henry's profession, or is it something Henry has ascribed to it? In what locale do you personally feel you're at the top of your game? Is this the same locale that puts you at ease?
16. Why is Henry willing to perform surgery on Baxter? What keeps Henry from craving the revenge Rosalind anticipated? Would you be able to drop the charges, as Henry hopes to do? How do you respond to McEwan's questions: "Is this forgiveness? Or is [Henry] the one seeking forgiveness?"
17. Can Henry's surgery on Baxter be called revenge? Is his probing of Baxter's brain a violation? Or, is Henry's magnanimous act a victory of enlightened liberalism over Baxter's primal power politics?
18. During Henry's reunion with Daisy, they waver between words of affection and a rapid-fire ideological debate about Iraq. How would such a debate have unfolded in your household?
19. Four generations are presented in Saturday, including Daisy's child. What does each generation bestow, or hope to bestow, upon the next? What spurred such an exceptional level of accomplishment among the members of the Perowne family?
20. Discuss the element of storytelling itself in Saturday. Do the stories disseminated within this novel-by the broadcasters, the protesters, the lawless, the keepers of family legacy-all describe the same reality? Who or what has the power to influence what we believe? What literary devices did Ian McEwan use to evoke realism in this novel?
21. Examining the works of Ian McEwan as a continuum, how does Saturday enrich the portrait of life he has been crafting throughout his career?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #12)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307378392
Summary
At a remote cattle post south of Gaborone two cows have been killed, and Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s No. 1 Lady Detective, is asked to investigate by a rather frightened and furtive gentleman. It is an intriguing problem with plenty of suspects—including, surprisingly, her own client.
To complicate matters, Mma Ramotswe is haunted by a vision of her dear old white van, and Grace Makutsi witnesses it as well. Is it the ghost of her old friend, or has it risen from the junkyard? In the meantime, one of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s apprentices may have gotten a girl pregnant and, under pressure to marry her, has run away. Naturally, it is up to Precious to help sort things out.
Add to the mix Violet Sephotho’s newly launched run for the Botswana Parliament and a pair of perfect wedding shoes—will wedding bells finally ring for Phuti Radiphuti and Grace Makutsi?—and we have a charming and delightful tale in the inimitable style of Alexander McCall Smith. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 24, 1948
• Where—Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
• Education—Christian Brothers College; Ph.D., University
Edinburgh
• Honors—Commandre of the Order of the British Empire
(CBE); Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE)
• Currently—lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Alexander (R.A.A.) "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues. He has since become internationally known as a writer of fiction. He is most widely known as the creator of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.
Alexander McCall Smith was born in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. His father worked as a public prosecutor in what was then a British colony. He was educated at the Christian Brothers College before moving to Scotland to study law at the University of Edinburgh, where he received his Ph.D. in law.
He soon taught at Queen's University Belfast, and while teaching there he entered a literary competition: one a children's book and the other a novel for adults. He won in the children's category, and published thirty books in the 1980s and 1990s.
He returned to southern Africa in 1981 to help co-found and teach law at the University of Botswana. While there, he cowrote what remains the only book on the country's legal system, The Criminal Law of Botswana (1992).
He returned in 1984 to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he lives today with his wife, Elizabeth, a physician, and their two daughters Lucy and Emily. He was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh at one time and is now Emeritus Professor at its School of Law. He retains a further involvement with the University in relation to the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
He is the former chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee (until 2002), the former vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the United Kingdom, and a former member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO. After achieving success as a writer, he gave up these commitments.
He was appointed a CBE in the December 2006 New Year's Honours List for services to literature. In June 2007, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at a ceremony celebrating the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh School of Law.
He is an amateur bassoonist, and co-founder of The Really Terrible Orchestra. He has helped to found Botswana's first centre for opera training, the Number 1 Ladies' Opera House, for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta.
In 2009, he donated the short story "Still Life" to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project—four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. McCall Smith's story was published in the Air collection. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Mma Ramotswe’s observations not only inevitably expose her suspects, but also reveal much about humanity as a whole.... [McCall Smith] is a master.... There’s beauty and revelation of one kind or another woven expertly into every line.
Christian Science Monitor
Charming and hilarious.... In its own way, McCall Smith’s world is as stylized and hermetic as those created by P.G. Wodehouse or Damon Runyon—a sweet and timeless bubble with its own morality, language and customs. Entering it can be a source of great comfort in these uncertain times.
Seattle Times
The best, most charming, honest, hilarious and life-affirming books to appear in years.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
(Starred review.) [McCall Smith] again makes the sublime look easy…. [He] has few peers in capturing the quiet moments of people’s lives, and his empathetic lead has one of the biggest hearts in modern literature. Even newcomers will quickly be drawn into Mma Ramotswe’s unconventional approach to investigations and rapidly feel that they are with old friends.
Publishers Weekly
Precious Ramotswe dreams that she is driving her dear, departed white van—and then she learns that the van is out there, just waiting for her to find it. Meanwhile, an apprentice has gotten a girl pregnant, cattle are being poisoned, and Violet Sephotho is running for Parliament. A no-brainer for mystery fans.
Library Journal
You’ll never get through the wedding with dry eyes.
Kirkus Reviews<
Discussion Questions
1. The New York Times Book Review has noted, "As always in Alexander McCall Smith s gentle celebrations of life in this arid patch of southern Africa, the best moments are the smallest." Discuss how this is true. Does your reading of these novels inspire you to appreciate the small, precious moments and things in your own life?
2. Why is Precious Ramotswe so attached to her little white van, even after it is long gone? What is it about certain physical objects for us? Do you have one particular object, large or small, that you are especially attached to? Why? Is it the object itself that you cling to or is it to the memories that you have associated with it?
3. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is always referred to as "that fine man" or "that excellent man," proprietor of Tloweng Road Speedy Motors. What makes him fine and excellent? And why is his job always attached to his name, even by his wife?
4. How much importance do you put on efficiency? Why does Mma Ramotswe think that, if efficiency were the only value in this life, then we would be content to eat bland, but nutritious food everyday. (p. 5) What other values are equally, if not more important in this life in work and in play?
5. It is very clear, over the course of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, that Charlie (Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni s apprentice) did not follow the old Botswana ways. (p. 19) What does this mean? What are the old Botswana ways ? Who does follow them?
6. In The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, Mma Ramotswe says, Each of us had something that made it easier to continue in a world that sometimes, just sometimes, was not as we might wish it to be. (p. 54) What is that you need to get your mind off anxieties or problems in your own life a drive in the country...a quiet cup of tea ? Why do we all need these small pleasures to release us from looming problems and issues?
7. Mma Ramotswe remembers witnessing with her father a group of birds being attacked by a snake, and he encouraged her not to do anything. Why? What lesson was he teaching young Precious?
8. Mma Ramotswe periodically quotes from Clovis Anderson's The Principles of Private Detection. One she particular believes in and repeats is "the more you listen, the more you learn" (p. 110). What is it about this book and the pithy sayings it offers that appeals to Mma Ramotswe in moments of indecision? Do you have a book you turn to when you need reassurance or pleasure?
9. There is much talk of beef stews and pumpkins and cake in these novels, and in one instance in The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, Mma Ramotswe thinks about dinner and says, Life was very full. Describe some of the dishes you remember in the novel.
10. Do you think Mma Ramotswe makes the right decision to turn to Mpho s mother when the little boy shares the secret of the crime he committed? What would you have done in this predicament?
11. Discussions about the differences between men and women come up quite a bit in the novels, and in this novel in particular. What are some of the stereotypes that various characters discuss? Do you agree with them?
12. Mma Ramotswe appreciates the people in her life: her husband, her assistant detective/friend, her father. That we have the people we have in this life, rather than others, is miraculous, she thought, a miraculous gift. Discuss the people in your life that you are most thankful for and why.
13. Discuss how Grace Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe react differently to Charlie and his problem. Why is Grace more judgmental that her boss? Why do you think Mma Ramotswe is more successful in dealing with Charlie?
14. Mma Ramotswe tells Charlie she likes him, and she reflects that all humans need to hear that others like them, need to have the pleasure of knowing and hearing that others care about them. Why is she so kind to Charlie after all he has done?
15. The Christian Science Monitor has written that in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels," Kindness is paramount." Do you agree with this? And what do you think Alexander McCall Smith is trying to promote by writing these kind novels?
16. Discuss the titles of each of the chapters and the title of the book. What do these offer to the experience of reading the novel? Do you think Alexander McCall Smith has fun coming up with these titles?
17. Mma Ramotswe walks around her garden every morning and evening, noticing the flowers, trees, and birds. She also revels in the beauty of the Botswana countryside. Discuss the importance of nature in this novel.
18. Alexander McCall Smith is clearly a master wordsmith. Why do you think he chooses to use relatively simple language and plot lines in his novels? How does the language and rhythm correspond to the message of the novels? Connect this to one of the final sentences of the novel, simple questions and simple answers were what we needed in life. What is Alexander McCall Smith saying about life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives
Becky Aikman, 2013
Crown Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307590435
Summary
In her forties—a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role—Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world.
In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas. Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.
Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.
The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen. They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down.
Through it all runs the story of Aikman's own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again. In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1954-55
• Raised—Brookville, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Bucknell College;
M.A. Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
A graduate of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, former reporter for Newsday and writer and editor at Buisness Week. She formed the Saturday Night Widows with five other women who lost their husbands at a young age. They set out to reinvent themselves through friendship, laughter and shared adventure. Becky currently lives in New York City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Their stories of loss are touching, and the wisdom they gain is a testament to the durability of the human spirit.
People
[Aikman] and five other young widows reenter the world of the living, laughing, and – gulp – dating, all the while sharing frank talk, insight, and hope from the trenches.
Good Housekeeping
Often desperate, sometimes feisty, partly hilarious, and warm as a fleecy blanket, Saturday Night Widows is a surprisingly feel-good, girl-bonding, which-role-will-Meryl-Streep-play-in-the-movie kind of a book. And I loved it….It’s sad, it’s happy, and, in fact, once you start Saturday Night Widows, you won’t be able to part with it.
Terri Schlichenmeyer - Independent News
Hoping to shatter the myth of the widow as a black-clad elderly lady of perpetual sorrows, New York Newsday reporter Aikman resolved to organize her own group of “renegade widows” and record their spirited monthly meetings as an unscientific grief study framed within her cautious memoir of having lost her own husband.... All the women had complicated stories of their husbands’ death, feelings of guilt and insecurity, and more or less healthy libidos. Indeed, dating and finding new partners prove the leitmotif, especially for the author, who had remarried a year before she even organized the group. As a result, the work feels stifled and lacking emotional drive, resulting in a kind of detached, academic tome.
Publishers Weekly
Compelling…. Along with the stories of six remarkably resilient and admirable women (ranging from an entrepreneur to a housewife), the book offers an arresting analysis of the literature of grief…. A compassionate, inspirational and deeply personal read, Saturday Night Widows is relevant for a wider audience than the grieving. This book is for anyone who has faced adversity but refuses to let it define them.
BookPage
(Starred review.) Aikman tells this life-affirming tale with compassion and candor.
Booklist
How to cope with tragedy with the help of good friends.... In this debut memoir, Aikman brings together the sad yet optimistic stories of...women, who were widowed at far too early an age...and were ready to take new steps toward a different way of being.... Engaging and entertaining but not maudlin, Aikman shows a side of life that many readers probably don't think about. A compassionate narrative about how one group of friends helped each other thrive after the deaths of their spouses.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When Becky first convenes her group of “renegade widows,” she worries that they won’t feel a bond because their personalities are so different. Which is more important in forging friendships, similar personalities or shared experiences?
2. Becky and the other Saturday Night Widows hold preconceptions about how they would live after losing their husbands. How do they reconsider those assumptions over the course of the story?
3. How do you think you would proceed if you lost someone close to you? Did your own views change as the story progressed?
4. Becky’s visit to psychological researchers introduces her to the idea that there can be more to grief than sadness and pain. Grief can be a process of finding comfort, she is told. “The process can even bring new insight and new joy.” Are these ideas illustrated in Becky’s journey, and in the journeys of the others in her group?
5. Saturday Night Widows is a true story. What storytelling techniques does Becky use to integrate the narrative of the women’s lives and the material she learned from outside research?
6. “I had been half of a whole,” Becky says of her marriage, “and now, without that other half, I wasn’t certain what was left.” She and the others question their identities now that they are alone. To what extent are we defined by the people we know and love? How would we be different without them?
7. The people the group encounters during the course of the story hold varying views about how widows think, act, and feel. An official from the museum suggests that the group would want to view art that depicts death and dying, while the guide Becky hires presents beautiful images like lotus blossoms because they bloom in the mud. How do you think the various characters formed their attitudes?
8. The group tries to reach some “highly invalid and unscientific conclusions” about how widows and widowers differ by inviting a group of men for an evening. What can the men and women learn from each other?
9. The women in the group often talk about feeling guilty when they make choices to move ahead in their lives. “Should you feel liberated?” Tara asks the group. “That you got a second chance? Or should you feel guilty for the sense of liberation you feel?” What is the role of guilt in their progress? Does guilt serve a purpose in recovery from loss, or is it merely destructive, inhibiting any impulse toward growth or pleasure?
10. Becky’s dream, in which she is choking on a beautiful bee and then sees her departed husband, makes her aware of the value of memory, both painful and joyful. What is the value of finding this balance after someone has died?
11. Widowhood reminds Becky of adolescence, “a time of uncertainty, of transformation, of trying on new identities.” Is this concept frightening? Does it introduce enticing possibilities?
12. The women soon learn that complications—children, careers, habits—make it harder to reinvent themselves at midlife. How do these complications alter the course of each woman’s transformation?
13. “This has made me totally fearless,” says Lesley. “Because the worst thing that could happen has already happened.” Does an awareness of mortality affect the attitudes and decisions of the women in the group?
14. Dawn would like to remarry. “I want my life to be settled!” she says. “No more uncertainty!” Tara resists marriage, saying, “I’m trying to appreciate the lack of knowing.” This tension between seeking certainty and embracing the unknown is present for all the women, not only in matters of love. Which way would you lean?
15. When Becky meets a new man, she explains that she is afraid of involvement. “Maybe I am a coward,” she tells him. “But cowards are safe.” How does falling in love differ for someone experiencing it for the first time versus someone suffering from a devastating loss, whether through death or a broken relationship?
16. Becky takes two trips to places she has never visited before—one on her own, on the water to the Galapagos Islands, and one with the group, through a desert. What contributions do new experiences, including travel, make to her recovery?
17. Would you treat someone who has lost a spouse differently after reading Saturday Night Widows?
18. The book begins with a sad time in the characters’ lives. By the end, how did it make you feel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Saturday Wife
Naomi Ragen, 2007
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312352394
Summary
With more than half a million copies of her novels sold, Naomi Ragen has connected with the hearts of readers as well as reviewers who have met her work with unanimous praise. In The Saturday Wife, Ragen utilizes her fluid writing style—rich with charm and detail—to break new ground as she harnesses satire to expose a world filled with contradiction.
Beautiful, blonde, materialistc Delilah Levy steps into a life she could have never imagined when in a moment of panic she decides to marry a sincere Rabbinical student. But the reality of becoming a paragon of virtue for a demanding and hypocritical congregation leads sexy Delilah into a vortex of shocking choices which spiral out of comtrol into a catastrophe which is as sadly believeable as it is wildly amusing.
Told with immense warmth, fascinating insight, and wicked humor, The Saturday Wife depicts the pitched and often losing battle of all of us as we struggle to hold on to our faith and our values amid the often delicious temptations of the modern world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 10, 1949
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Brooklyn College; M.A., Hebrew University
of Jerusalem
• Currently—lives in Jerusalme, Israel
Naomi Ragen is the author of seven novels, including several international bestsellers, and her weekly email columns on life in the Middle East are read and distributed by thousands of subscribers worldwide. An American, she has lived in Jerusalem for the past thirty-nine years and was recently voted one of the three most popular authors in Israel. (From the publisher.)
More
Ragen’s first three novels, which described the lives of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel and the United States, dealt with themes that had not previously been addressed in that society's literature: wife-abuse (Jephte’s Daughter: 1989), adultery (Sotah: 1992) and rape (The Sacrifice of Tamar: 1995). Reaction to these novels in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities was mixed. Some hailed her as a pioneer who for the first time exposed and opened to public discussion problems which the communities had preferred to pretend did not exist, while others criticized her for “hanging out the dirty laundry” for everyone to see, thus embarrassing the rabbis who were believed by many to be effectively dealing with these problems “behind the scenes” and also putting “ammunition in the hands of the anti-Semites.”
Her next novel (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: 1998) told the story of a Sephardic family brought back from the abyss of assimilation by the spirit of their ancestor Gracia Mendes (a true historical figure), a 16th century Portuguese crypto-Jew who risked her life and her considerable fortune to practice her religion in secret.
Chains Around the Grass (2002) is a semi-autobiographical novel of the author’s childhood which dealt with the failure of the American dream for her parents.
In The Covenant (2004) Ragen dealt with the contemporary theme of an ordinary family sucked into the horror of Islamic terrorism.
The Saturday Wife (2007), the story of a rabbi's wayward wife, is loosely based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and is a satire of modern Jewish Orthodoxy.
Ragen is also known as a playwright. Her 2001 drama, Women’s Minyan, tells the story of an ultra-Orthodox woman who, upon fleeing from her adulterous and abusive husband, finds that he has manipulated the rabbinical courts to deprive her of the right to see or speak to her twelve children. The story is based on a true incident. Women’s Minyan ran for six years in Israel's National Theatre and has been staged in the United States, Canada and Argentina. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Review
Like Emma Bovary, Delilah Goldgrab longs for a better life. A Queens yeshiva girl, Delilah is prayerfully remorseful after fornicating with young, opportunistic Yitzie Polinsky, and quickly marries mediocre rabbinical student Chaim Levi, who is unable to provide her with a house, much less the glossy upper-middle-class life she longs for. When Chaim accepts a position as the rabbi of an affluent Connecticut congregation, Delilah has the opportunity to indulge her ideas about happiness as the congregation's rebbitzin, with deliciously disastrous consequences. It's hard to like selfish, clueless Delilah or anyone else here: the pleasure of this novel is in its mercilessness, with Ragen (The Covenant) raising the stakes until the very end.
Publishers Weekly
The adventures of Delilah and Chaim provide a cautionary tale about the difficulties faced by those attempting to maintain traditional values while struggling with the temptations of the outside world. Ragen tells this story with insight and humor, vividly illustrating the consequences of lashon hara (gossip). This is Jewish chick lit with a message. —Barbara Bibe
Booklist
Conniving rebbitzin topples a wealthy Jewish community. Delilah Goldgrab is as acquisitive as they come. As a young girl, she sets her sights on living in a Woodmere Tudor mansion with a large household staff. When she fails to ensnare a wealthy husband from Bernstein Rabbinical College, Delilah settles for the noble dullard, Chaim Levi. Chaim's grandfather is a prominent Rabbi in the Bronx, and Chaim is heir to a tiny synagogue. When Delilah senses she's getting locked into a lower-class life, she tramples on Chaim's unsuspecting congregants and begins her mad grab at affluence. Doltish Chaim refuses to acknowledge Delilah's sins. Instead, he surrenders to her prodding and applies for a position at the notorious Swallow Lake temple. Swallow Lake's members are fabulously wealthy and famously divided in their faith. Chaim knows he's signing on for an impossible task when he accepts the Rabbi position, but he's helpless. Delilah, now pregnant, calls all the shots in this family. The community quickly sours on Delilah's lackadaisical piety. Delilah tries to distract her critics by luring a fabulously wealthy Russian Jew and his wife into the fold and succeeds in dismantling the congregation. Ragen (The Covenant, 2004, etc.) does an apt job illustrating the numerous demands upon a rabbi and his wife (the rebbitzin). But she fails to make the job appear to be an unbearable burden—these guys are the equivalent to middle management in a large corporation. The book would be far more entertaining if Delilah possessed admirable traits; alas, she is bland in her depravity. Endowed with blonde hair, a voluptuous figure, the first name of a "wicked whore" and a surname that is synonymous with money grubbing, she does not come across as a morally upstanding member of the shul. For the non-Orthodox crowd, the scandals will seem tame, but the culture exotic. For those enmeshed in Ragen's culture, this book may stir up some controversy: Have rabbis become too beholden to their benefactors? Revealing, if long-winded, examination of contemporary Orthodox Judaism.
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 Saturday Wife:
1. What's to like about Delilah...anything? How would you describe her? If you can't identify with the heroine, is it possible to enjoy a book? If so, how? Or...do you actually like Delilah?
2. What about the good rabbi? Some find it difficult to sympathize with his passivity in the face of his wife. What do you think?
3. How do Delilah's high school experiences affect her ethical and spiritual development? Think about those experiences in light of the social pressures many teenage girls face.
4. Talk about how Orthodox Judaism views the role of women? Do those attitudes and practices explain, perhaps even excuse, Delilah's actions?
5. Why was the Swallow Lake synagogue blacklisted from the Orthodox community? What does that banishment say about the congregants...or about the tenets of Orthodox Judaism?
6. What is Ragen getting at in this book? What aspects of the Jewish faith is she satirizing? How, for instance, has the author used names in the novel to further her satire?
7. Talk about the Shammanovs and their over-the-top bar mitzvah. At what point did your sham-o-meter kick in...when did you become suspicious? Or did you?
8. Do you agree with this excerpt from the book's end?
Fences just gave certain people the urge to climb over or crawl under. FORBIDDEN, KEEP OUT! was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. If you thought you might get away with it... then fences simply become a welcome challenge.
9. Does Delilah learn anything by the end of the novel?
10. Did you learn anything—or gain insights into Orthodox Judaism? What did you find most interesting, surprising, or disturbing?
11. Talk about parts of the book you found funny.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Savage Girl
Jean Zimmerman, 2014
Penguin Group USA
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670014859
Summary
A riveting tale from the author of The Orphanmaster about a wild girl from Nevada who lands in Manhattan’s Gilded Age society.
Jean Zimmerman’s new novel tells of the dramatic events that transpire when an alluring, blazingly smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society.
Bronwyn hits the highly mannered world of Edith Whartonera Manhattan like a bomb. A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl’s illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered.
Zimmerman’s tale is narrated by the Delegate’s son, a Harvard anatomy student. The tormented, self-dramatizing Hugo Delegate speaks from a prison cell where he is prepared to take the fall for his beloved Savage Girl. This narrative—a love story and a mystery with a powerful sense of fable—is his confession. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1957
• Raised—Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Ossining, New York
Jean Zimmerman is an American author, poet and historian. A graduate of Barnard College, Jean Zimmerman earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the Columbia University School of the Arts, and was awarded a New York State Fine Arts grant in 1983.
Zimmerman's first book, Breaking With Tradition: Women and Work, the New Facts of Life (1992), was coauthored with Felice N. Schwartz. It was based on the Harvard Business Review article that ignited the "mommy track" debate. Her first solo work was Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook (1995) which focused on the Tailhook Association scandal and the crucial link between sexual harassment and the role of women as warriors.
With husband Gil Reavill as co-author, Zimmerman published Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls’ Lives (Doubleday, 1998), which was a Finalist for the 1999 Books for a Better Life Award sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Zimmerman's next book, Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth (2003), was an exploration of homemaking from a feminist perspective.
Another book, The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty (2006), offers a historical portrait of women in pre-Revolutionary New York, with specific reference to Philipse Manor Hall and Philipsburg Manor House. Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance is a dual biography of Edith Minturn Stokes and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, a nineteenth-century couple known for philanthropy, architecture and documenting New York City history.
In 2012, Zimmerman published her first historical novel The Orphan Master, set in 17th century New Amsterdam. The book has been optioned for a film. Her 2014 novel, Savage Girl, is about a ferral girl, reputedly raised by wolves, who is adopted by a couple living in New York during the Gilded Age. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/24/2014.)
Book Reviews
Sooner or later, a historical crime novel is bound to drag you down some dark alley and into the nastiest, most lawless precincts of the period. Jean Zimmerman followed this tradition in her first novel, The Orphanmaster, a descent into the hellish criminal haunts of 17th-century New Amsterdam. In Savage Girl, this canny author puts all that aside and turns to the Gilded Age for a sweeping narrative, set within the cloistered ranks of high society in 19th-century Manhattan, that raises touchy questions about what it means to be civilized.
New York Times Book Review
Zimmerman’s second novel takes us on an over-the-top romp through 1870s America...consider this the compulsively readable love child of Edith Wharton and Edgar Allen Poe.
Oprah.com
(Starred review.) The prologue of Zimmerman’s superior historical thriller will suck most readers in instantly.... Hugo, a Harvard student...becomes fascinated with...the so-called Savage Girl, allegedly raised by wolves. Hugo’s parents decide to civilize the girl, and introduce her into society on their return to New York. Zimmerman... combin[es] suspense with an unsettling look into a tormented mind.
Publishers Weekly
Wealthy socialite Hugo Delegate and his family rescue the "Savage Girl" from a carnival...[and she] instantly captivates Hugo with her boldness and energy.... Most of the novel is narrated by Hugo recounting events in an extended flashback, which feels jarring and out of place. More successful are the action-packed final chapters. —Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib.
Library Journal
Suffused with a gothic aura of dark suspense, this is a finely wrought psychological work, rich with historical detail. Zimmerman’s settings spring off the page.... Immensely readable, Savage Girl takes the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go.
Booklist
A formal, measured tempo only heightens the tension.... Is Bronwyn, with her animallike instincts, the killer? Or is it Hugo...? Neither Hugo nor the reader is sure right up to the satisfying if melodramatic end. Zimmerman's dark comedy of manners is an obvious homage to Edith Wharton, a rip-roaring murder mystery...and a wonderfully detailed portrait of the political, economic and philosophical issues driving post–Civil War America.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. From the first moment he hears of her, Hugo is conflicted about the concept of a "savage girl." What draws him to her and what troubles him specifically?
2. How does Bronwyn benefit, if at all, from being adopted by the Delegates?
3. Hugo is an anatomy student at Harvard. What role does this knowledge play throughout the story?
4. Freddy Delegate is said to "collect" people. Who does he collect and for what purpose?
5. How does the Delegates’ wealth protect them? How does it hurt them?
6. There are overt references in Savage Girl to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. What other literary parallels could you draw between this story and others?
7. Delegate is not sure whether he committed the murder of Bev Willets because of his memory lapses, diagnosed as neurasthenia. What sort of diagnosis might he be given today?
8. Zmmerman finds contemporary themes in her historic story, such as the concentration of wealth among the select few and a tabloid celebrity culture. What are some other themes that might resonate with today’s readers?
9. One of the great moments of the Gilded Age was the emergence of Darwin’s theory and the question of nature versus nurture. How does the book explore this issue, and what is your own personal belief?
10. Hugo’s mental health issues make him something of an unreliable narrator at times. Where in the story did you most question his version of reality?
11. What does the future hold for Hugo and Bronwyn at the book’s end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Save Me
Lisa Scottoline, 2011
St. Martin's Press
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312380793
Summary
Rose McKenna volunteers as a lunch mom in her daughter Melly’s school in order to keep an eye on Amanda, a mean girl who’s been bullying her daughter. Her fears come true when the bullying begins, sending Melly to the bathroom in tears.
Just as Rose is about to follow after her daughter, a massive explosion goes off in the kitchen, sending the room into chaos. Rose finds herself faced with the horrifying decision of whether or not to run to the bathroom to rescue her daughter or usher Amanda to safety. She believes she has accomplished both, only to discover that Amanda, for an unknown reason, ran back into the school once out of Rose's sight.
In an instance, Rose goes from hero to villain as the small community blames Amanda’s injuries on her. In the days that follow, Rose's life starts to fall to pieces, Amanda’s mother decides to sue, her marriage is put to the test, and worse, when her daughter returns to school, the bullying only intensifies. Rose must take matters into her own hands and get down to the truth of what really happened that fateful day in order to save herself, her marriage and her family.
In the way that Look Again had readers questioning everything they thought they knew about family, Save Me will have readers wondering just how far they would go to save the ones they love. Lisa Scottoline is writing about real issues that resonate with real women, and the results are emotional, heartbreaking and honest. (From the publisher.)
Read an excerpt
Author Bio
• Birth—July 1, 1955
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling author and Edgar award-winning author of some two dozen novels and several nonfiction books. She also writes a weekly column with her daughter Francesca Serritella for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled "Chick Wit" which is a witty and fun take on life from a woman's perspective.
These stories, along with many other never-before-published stories, have been collected in four books including their most recent, Have a Nice Guilt Trip, and the earlier, Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim, Best Friends, Occasional Enemies, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, which has been optioned for TV, and My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space.
Lisa reviews popular fiction and non-fiction, and her reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. Lisa has served as President of Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, "Justice and Fiction" at The University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater.
Lisa is a regular and much sought after speaker at library and corporate events. Lisa has over 30 million copies of her books in print and is published in over 35 countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Lisa's books have landed on all the major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and Look Again was named "One of the Best Novels of the Year" by the Washington Post, and one of the best books in the world as part of World Book Night 2013.
Lisa's novels are known for their emotionality and their warm and down-to-earth characters, which resonate with readers and reviewers long after they have finished the books. When writing about Lisa’s Rosato & Associates series, Janet Maslin of the New York Times applauds Lisa's books as "punchy, wisecracking thrillers" whose "characters are earthy, fun and self-deprecating" and distinguishes her as having "one of the best-branded franchise styles in current crime writing."
Recognition
Lisa's contributions through her writing has been recognized by organizations throughout the country. She is the recipient of the Edgar Award, the Mystery Writer's of America most prestigious honor, the Fun, Fearless, Fiction Award by Cosmopolitan Magazine, and named a PW Innovator by Publisher's Weekly.
Lisa was honored with AudioFile's Earphones Award and named Voice of the Year for her recording of her non-fiction book, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. The follow up collection, My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space has garnered both Lisa and her daughter, Francesca, an Earphones Award as well. In addition, she has been honored with a Distinguished Author Award from Scranton University, and a "Paving the Way" award from the University of Pennsylvania, Women in Business.
Personal
Lisa's accomplishments all pale in comparison to what she considers her greatest achievement, raising, as a single mom, her beautiful (a completely unbiased opinion) daughter, an honors graduate of Harvard, author, and columnist, who is currently working on her first novel.
Lisa believes in writing what you know, and she puts so much of herself into her books. What you may or may not learn about Lisa from her books is that...
♦ she is an incredibly generous person
♦ an engaging and entertaining speaker
♦ a die-hard Eagles fan
♦ a good cook.
♦ She loves the color pink, her Ipod has everything from U2 to Sinatra to 50 Cent, she is proud to be an American, and nothing makes her happier than spending time with her daughter.
Dogs
Lisa is also a softie when it comes to her furry family. Nothing can turn Lisa from a professional, career-minded author, to a mushy, sweet-talking, ball-throwing woman like her beloved dogs. Although she has owned and loves various dog breeds, including her amazing goldens, she has gone crazy for her collection of King Charles Spaniels.
Lisa first fell in love with the breed when Francesca added her Blehneim Cavalier, Pip, to the mix. This prompted Lisa to get her own, and she started with the adorable, if not anatomically correct (Lisa wrote a "Chick Wit" column about this), Little Tony, her first male dog. Little Tony is a black and tan Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
But Lisa couldn't stop at just one and soon added her little Peach, a Blehneim King Charles Cavalier. Lisa is now beyond thrilled to be raising Peach’s puppies, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson, and for daily puppy pictures, be sure to follow Lisa on Facebook or Twitter. Herding together the entire pack is Lisa’s spunky spit-fire of a Corgi named Ruby. The solitude of writing isn't very quiet with her furry family, but she wouldn't have it any other way.
Cats
Not to be outshined by their canine counterparts, Lisa's cats, Vivi and Mimi, are the princesses of the house, and have no problem keeping the rest of the brood in line. Vivi is a grey and white beauty and is more aloof than her cuddly, black and white partner, Mimi.
When Lisa’s friend and neighbor passed, Lisa adopted his beloved cat, Spunky, a content and beautiful ball of fur.
Chickens
Lisa loves the coziness of her farmhouse, and no farm is complete without chickens. Lisa has recently added a chicken coop and has populated it with chicks of different types, and is overjoyed with each and every colorful egg they produce. Watching over Lisa's chicks are her horses, which gladly welcomed the chicks and all the new excitement they bring. (Author bio adapted from the author's website.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Lisa on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Scottoline, so attentive to plot, is indifferent to character.... [C]haracters exist chiefly to present Rose with exactly the information she needs just when she needs it. But, in truth, who cares when there is one thrill after another, particularly when the plot moves into the legal and investigative realms where Scottoline excels?
Caroline Leavitt - New York Times Book Review
The Scottoline we love as a virtuoso of suspense, fast action and intricate plot is back in top form in Save Me, manipulating pulse rates and heartstrings with all the ruthlessness she showed in Look Again…Here, as elsewhere in her work, Scottoline is exceptionally good at depicting the feral, pack mentality of public opinion and the impotence of decency and dignity before it.
Katherine A. Powers - Washington Post
In Save Me Lisa Scottoline walks readers into this charged moral dilemma and then takes them on an intense, breathless ride. You won't be able to put this one down.
Jodi Picoult - Author (Sing You Home and House Rules)
An emotionally riveting novel that explores the depths of one mother's love for her daughter.... Powerful, provocative, and page-turning!
Emily Giffin - Author (Heart of the Matter and Something Borrowed)
Heart-pounding! Scottoline provides the perfect combination of explosive action, twisting turns, and genuine emotion in this exciting novel of an ordinary mom going to extraordinary lengths for her daughter. Open up SAVE ME, and save yourself with a great book.
Lisa Gardner - Author (Love You More)
At the start of this gut-wrenching stand-alone from bestseller Scottoline (Think Twice), an explosion rips through the nearly empty cafeteria of Reesburgh, Pa., Elementary School. Lunch mother Rose McKenna leads two girls to safety before racing to rescue her own daughter, Melly, but Rose soon learns that she may face both civil and criminal charges for her heroics because one of the girls she saved was seriously injured in the resulting fire that killed three school staff members. The tension rises as the united front presented by Rose and her lawyer husband, Leo Ingrassia, begins to disintegrate in the face of media demands, legal maneuverings, and social pressures. Rose must also deal with school bullying (Melly has a noticeable facial blemish), difficult legal problems, and her husband's reaction when a secret from her past is revealed. Scottoline melds it all into a satisfying nail-biting thriller sure to please her growing audience.
Publishers Weekly
What begins as an ordinary day for lunch mom volunteer Rose McKenna quickly morphs into a harrowing event that will spiral her life out of control. When a tragedy occurs at her daughter's elementary school, Rose transforms from heroine to villain in a matter of hours after she is forced to make a life-changing moral decision. As the media seeks to vilify her and her community shuns her, Rose continues on an intense weeklong search for the truth. Suspecting foul play led to the tragic event, she dedicates herself to unraveling the mystery. Rose's dogged determination exposes a high-profile scandal and threatens to endanger her life and her family. In another departure (after Look Again) from her Bernie Rosato courtroom thrillers (Think Twice), Scottoline crafts a heartfelt emotional novel with the intensity of a thriller. Verdict: This stand-alone work will mesmerize readers at the first page and hold them spellbound until the final word. Jodi Picoult fans may crown a new favorite author. —Mary Todd Chesnut, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Library Journal
At the quick pace of a thriller, Scottoline masterfully fits every detail into a tight plot chock-full of real characters, real issues, and real thrills. A story anchored by the impenetrable power of a mother's love, it begs the question, just how far would you go to save your child? —Annie McCormick
Booklist
The creator of Philadelphia lawyer Bennie Rosato (Think Twice, 2010, etc.) pens another white-hot crossover novel about the perils of mother love. One minute catalog model–turned–lunchroom mom Rose McKenna is keeping third-grade bully Amanda Gigot from leaving the Reesburgh Elementary cafeteria while she tells Amanda that she shouldn't make fun of Rose's daughter, Melinda Cadiz, because of the port wine birthmark on her cheek; the next, she's agonizing over which child to save first from an explosion that's ripped through the school cafeteria. Rose's reflexes make what she ends up deciding were the best decisions at the time: She led Amanda and her friends to the door to safety, then went back to look for Melly, who'd hidden in a rest room. But Eileen Gigot and her many friends in the school don't agree. They accuse Rose of detaining Amanda, now lying in a hospital in a coma, then leaving her in the care of another 8-year-old so that she could rescue her own daughter, who's making a full recovery. Rose is stung by shock, then guilt, and finally outrage when she realizes that Eileen may file both civil and criminal actions against her. Worse, she learns that her one ally in Reesburgh Elementary, gifted teacher Kristen Canton, is leaving. Worse still, the hardball litigator her understanding husband, attorney Leo Ingrassia, has dug up for her, is anticipating possible prosecution by taking an aggressive stand on his client's behalf, positioning Rose as exactly the sort of bully she's been trying to protect her daughter from. So when Kurt Rehgard, a carpenter who'd hinted that the explosion was an extremely suspicious accident, is killed together with the contractor friend he'd confided in, Rose parks Melly with some sympathetic neighbors for a few days and takes it upon herself to discover exactly what happened and why. Scottoline, who shifts gears at every curve with the cool efficiency of a NASCAR driver, expertly fuels her target audience's dearest fantasy: "Every mom is an action hero.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Save Me explores the mother and child relationship, at its heart. What do you think defines a mother? How is a mother and child relationship different than any other relationship? Look at other forms of culture, like art, for example. How many depictions are there of mother and child? And how many of father and child? Are we discriminating against fathers, or diminishing them, by all this talk of the mother-child bond? And by doing so, do we create a self-fulfilling prophecy?
2. In Save Me, Melly is the victim of bullying because of a birthmark on her face. Do you think bullying is different today than years ago? Do you think that the bullying is getting worse, or are we just hearing more about it because of the Internet? What do you think parents and schools should do to help curb bullying? What kind of punishment do you think is appropriate for the child who is doing the bullying? What about those who watch and say nothing? Are they, or aren’t they, equally as culpable? Do you think that school programs and curricula that build up self-esteem and a sense of community will really make a difference?
3. Rose experienced her own bullying at the hands of the angry parents, which gave her new perspective on what Melly was going through. Do you have any experience with bullying between adults? In what ways are adults better equipped to deal with bullying than children? What impact can bullying have on adults, and what can an adult do if they are faced with a bully? What impact does being a bully, or being a bully as an adult, have on their children?
4. Rose steps in to defend Melly against her bully. Do you think it was a good idea? Why or why not? How do you think a parent's involvement hurts or helps the situation? At what point do you think a parent needs to involve themselves in the situation? What steps would you take to help your child if they were being bullied, and how far would you be willing to go?
5. What impact do you think a physical blemish has on a child, and how do you think it effects their identity, their relationship with their family, and their relationship with the outside world? Take it a step further – like how about physical differences, like a child in a wheelchair? Or learning challenges, that aren’t so visible? Or how about discriminations based on race, religion or sexual orientation? Melly's father reacted very badly to Melly's birthmark. What did his reaction make you feel about him?
6. Many of Lisa's books center on single mothers or blended families. Do you think the love of one great parent is enough to sustain a child through life? Does it take a husband, too? Or a village?
7. As Rose found out, volunteering comes with risks. The book makes clear that this is a problem in the law of many states, maybe even where you live. What do you think of the laws in terms of protecting those who volunteer their time? What changes, if any, would you make to the laws to protect volunteers? Should we expand the Good Samaritan statues to include volunteers and to encourage even more people to volunteer?
8. How did you feel about Rose keeping her secret past from Leo? Did you understand her reasoning? Did you agree or disagree with it? What impact do you think Rose's past will have on her marriage as she moves forward? Do you think she will ever really be able to escape what happened? Will he forgive her not telling him? How do secrets impact intimacy in our lives?
9. Rose was called a "helicopter" parent, a term often used in today's society with a negative connotation. What separates helicopter parenting from good parenting? What kind of parent do you think Rose was? What mistakes do you think she made? Do you think she was a good mother? Do you think she favors Melly, or the baby? Or treats them equally?
10. How did you feel about Amanda in the beginning of the book? How, if at all, did your opinion of her change by the end of the book? What do you think causes children to be bullies? Under what circumstances would you ever feel bad for the bully? In punishing a bully, do you think their personal circumstances should be taken into account?
11. What did you think of Rose's lawyers' strategy? Did you agree or disagree with it? Why or why not? Do you think they were just passing the blame, or do you think the school had a responsibility in what happened? Do you think that litigation is another form of bullying? Do you know anybody who is sue-happy?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
Beth Hoffman, 2010
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143118572
Summary
Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom
Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen.
But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell. In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women.
From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.
Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, "packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart." It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Ohio, USA
• Currently—lives in Newport, Kentucky
Beth Hoffman was president and co-owner of a major interior design studio in Cincinnati, Ohio, before selling her business to write full time. (From the publisher.)
More
In her own words:
I was born on an elevator during a snowstorm, a story my father often enjoyed telling whenever the opportunity arose. For the first five years of my life, I lived (along with my mom, dad, and older brother) on my grandparents’ farm in northern Ohio. It was a rural area, and other than a few tolerant garden toads, a highly social chicken, and Midnight, our family dog, there wasn’t anyone to play with. So I created imaginary friends. I’d draw pictures of them and build them homes out of shoeboxes—replete with interiors furnished by pictures I’d cut from a Sears & Roebuck catalog. Eventually I wrote stories about my friends, giving them interesting names and complex lives.
From earliest memory, there were two things I loved above all else: writing and painting. I wrote my first short story when I was eleven and sold my first painting at the age of fourteen. I believed the sale of the painting was a sign of what direction I should take in life. So I chose a career in art that eventually segued into interior design, but I still kept writing and dreaming of becoming a novelist. Life sent me on many creative journeys and I ultimately landed in Cincinnati, Ohio, becoming the president and co-owner of an interior design studio.
Years went by, long hours and hard work brought success, and with it came the inevitable stresses of business ownership. During the busiest year of my professional life, I nearly died from the same infection that took puppeteer Jim Henson’s life—group A streptococcal infection that resulted in septic shock. After finally being discharged from the hospital, I returned home to convalesce. I spent weeks reevaluating my life—the good, the bad, and the downright painful. As I struggled to regain my health and find spiritual ballast, my dream of writing a novel resurfaced. But no matter how I looked at it, there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to fulfill the demands of my career and write a novel. So I let the dream go.
Then, on a snowy morning in January of 2004, a complete stranger said something to me. And like an unexpected gust of fresh air, his words blew the door wide open. In an eye-blink I knew if I were to write a novel, it had to be now or never. I chose now. I sold my portion of the design business, and after a month of sleeping and meditating and realigning my energies, I plunked down at my computer. Day after day my fingers blazed over the keyboard, and I didn’t come up for air until I typed “The End” nearly four years later.
If there’s a moral to my story, it’s this: take a chance, embrace your dreams, forgive, let go, move on. And if life gives you a big smackdown, there’s a reason—and it just might lead toward your own little piece of the rainbow.
Oh, and there’s one more thing: be mindful of the words of strangers. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Hoffman's debut, a by-the-numbers Southern charmer, recounts 12-year-old Cecelia Rose Honeycutt's recovery from a childhood with her crazy mother, Camille, and cantankerous father, Carl, in 1960s Willoughby, Ohio. After former Southern beauty queen Camille is struck and killed by an ice cream truck, Carl hands over Cecelia to her great-aunt Tootie. Whisked off to a life of privilege in Savannah, Ga., Cecelia makes fast friends with Tootie's cook, Oletta, and gets to know the cadre of eccentric women who flit in and out of Tootie's house, among them racist town gossip Violene Hobbs and worldly, duplicitous Thelma Rae Goodpepper. Aunt Tootie herself is the epitome of goodness, and Oletta is a sage black woman. Unfortunately, any hint of trouble is nipped in the bud before it can provide narrative tension, and Hoffman toys with, but doesn't develop, the idea that Cecelia could inherit her mother's mental problems. Madness, neglect, racism and snobbery slink in the background, but Hoffman remains locked on the sugary promise of a new day.
Publishers Weekly
In Hoffman's charming debut, Cecelia Rose (CeeCee) Honeycutt tells the story of her tragic life and the strong women who stepped in to save her. At age 12, CeeCee realizes her mother, flouncing around Willoughby, OH, in prom dresses and matching shoes, is crazy and the town's laughingstock. Her father is never home, and nothing is going to change so CeeCee buries herself in books as an escape. But her true liberation comes after her mother's tragic death when great-aunt Tootie sweeps CeeCee off to Savannah. There, a group of powerful, independent women offer the young girl love, laughter and a new chance at life. Readers who enjoy strong female characters will appreciate CeeCee, a survivor despite her heartbreaking childhood, and Aunt Tootie and her friends, all of them steel magnolias. Verdict: Exemplifying Southern storytelling at its best, this coming-of-age novel is sure to be a hit with the book clubs that adopted Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. Interestingly enough, both novels share the same editor.
Library Journal
Sunshine enters an unhappy child's life in a Southern getting-of-wisdom novel as uncomplicatedly sweet as one of Oletta's famous cinnamon rolls. A fairy tale with streaks of psychology and social conscience, CeeCee Rose Honeycutt's odyssey unfolds mainly in Savannah, Ga. The 12-year-old moves there in the late 1960s to live with her kindly, wealthy Great-Aunt Tootie after the death of CeeCee's increasingly deranged mother and with the encouragement of her neglectful, distant father. Tootie's cook Oletta-big, black and stern, but with a heart of gold-exerts a growing influence on the girl, fattening her up with delicious food while offering life lessons, reassurance and companionship. The novel's society is almost exclusively female and generally quirky, ranging from Tootie's eccentric elderly friends to her feuding neighbors. Male characters are rare and generally flawed: layabouts, crooks and emotional black holes. Race issues supply the strongest story line (a robbery on the beach) in a narrative more episodic than linear. Mainly, CeeCee comes to terms with her feelings of shame, guilt and loss over her mother; hears about slavery, segregation and the KKK; encounters a wide range of human behavior, from generosity to mean-spiritedness; makes a friend; and above all finds a new, all-female family. Humor, wish-fulfillment and buckets of sentiment bulk out an innocent, innovation-free debut that would work well for teenage readers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. CeeCee tries to escape from the harsh reality of her life by turning to books. When did your own love of reading develop? Did a particular person or event inspire it? What were some books you loved as a child?
2. Camille’s illness left CeeCee filled with shame and despair. Do you think if she had told Mrs. Odell more of what went on inside the house that the elderly woman could have done something? If so, what? Were there any incidents in your youth that brought you shame or that you were afraid to discuss with an adult?
3. This book highlights comparisons between the North and South. What do you think accounts for the differences—perceived or otherwise—between people who live on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line?
4. As the story unfolds, a remarkable relationship develops between Oletta and CeeCee—Oletta becomes the stable and wise mother CeeCee never had, and CeeCee fills the place in Oletta’s heart left vacant by the untimely death of her daughter. Has anyone ever unexpectedly arrived in your life and filled a void? Have you ever filled a void in someone else?
5. After the attack at the beach, Oletta tells CeeCee she must “reclaim her power” to overcome her fears. What are some times in your life when you had to stand up to reclaim your own power? How did you go about it?
6. Forgiveness is an underlying theme in CeeCee’s story. By eventually forgiving her parents, she frees herself to begin a new life. What people have you forgiven, and how hard was it to do? What were the rewards?
7. Aunt Tootie and all her friends make an art out of making people feel welcome. How do the various women welcome CeeCee into their ranks? What about their welcome for Mrs. Odell? What are some particular times when you’ve received a warm welcome? What about the opposite?
8. The incident at the peach farm followed by the days CeeCee spends in recovery mark a poignant turning point in her life. Has there ever been a time when you faced your own turning point? Was there anyone who helped you? What gifts were waiting for you at the end of your journey?
9. When Aunt Tootie tells CeeCee that she’s “a very popular lady,” it has a profound effect on her. What are some other times in the book when CeeCee takes an adult’s words to heart—good and bad? What are some particularly memorable things that were said to you as a child—positive or negative?
10. At several key moments in the story, CeeCee finds that her Life Book is being revised. Are there any other words or terms for “Life Book” that you’ve heard? What are some moments in your life when you knew an indelible memory was being made? When was the last time you recall thinking, “I’ll remember this forever”?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Saving Fish from Drowning
Amy Tan, 2005
Penguin Group USA
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345464019
Summary
A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes." — Anonymous
Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China—dubbed the true Shangri-La—and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers as they come to discover that the Burma Road is paved with less-than-honorable intentions, questionable food, and tribal curses.
And then, on Christmas morning, eleven of the travelers boat across a misty lake for a sunrise cruise — and disappear.
Drawing from the current political reality in Burma and woven with pure confabulation, Amy Tan's picaresque novel poses the question: How can we discern what is real and what is fiction, in everything we see? How do we know what to believe? Saving Fish from Drowning finds sly truth in the absurd: a reality TV show called "Darwin's Fittest," a repressive regime known as SLORC, two cheroot-smoking twin children hailed as divinities, and a ragtag tribe hiding in the jungle—where the sprites of disaster known as Nats lurk, as do the specters of the fabled Younger White Brother and a British illusionist who was not who he was worshipped to be.
With her signature "idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery" (Los Angeles Times), Amy Tan spins a provocative and mesmerizing tale about the mind and the heart of the individual, the actions we choose, the moral questions we might ask ourselves, and above all, the deeply personal answers we seek when happy endings are seemingly impossible. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Also named—En-Mai Tan
• Birth—February 15, 1952
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., San Jose State University
• Currently—San Francisco, California
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer, many of whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989) brought her fame and has remained one of her most popular works. It was adapted to film in 1993.
Early yeaars
Tan is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her father was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who traveled to the US to escape the Chinese Revolution. Although she was born in Oakland, California, her family moved a number of times throughout her childhood.
When she was fifteen, her father and older brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other. Tan subsequently moved with her mother and younger brother, John Jr., to Switzerland, where she finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa in Montreux.
It was during this period that Tan learned about her mother's previous marriage in China, where she had four children (a son who died in toddlerhood and three daughters). Her mother had left her husband and children behind in Shanghai — an incident that became the basis for Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club. In 1987, she and her mother traveled to China to meet her three half-sisters for the first time.
Tan enrolled at Linfield College in Oregon, a Baptist college of her mother's choosing. After she dropped out to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California, she and her mother stopped speaking for six months. Tan ended up marrying the young man in 1974 and subsequently earned both her B.A. and M.A. in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. She began her doctoral studies in linguistics at University of California-Santa Cruz and Berkeley, but abandoned them in 1976.
Career
While in school, Tan worked odd jobs — serving as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker. Eventually, she started writing freelance for businesses, working on projects for AT&T, IBM, Bank of America, and Pacific Bell, writing under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms.
In 1985, she turned to fiction, publishing her first story in 1986 in a small literary journal. It was later reprinted in Seventeen magazine and Grazia. On her return from the China trip with her mmother, where she had met her half-sisters, Tan learned her agent had signed a contract for a book of short stories, only three of which were written. That book eventually became The Joy Luck Club and launchd Tan's literary career.
Extras
In addition to her novels (see below), Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot encouraging children to write.
Tan is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band consisting of published writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Matt Groening, Dave Barry and Stephen King, among others. In 1994 she co-wrote, with the other band members, Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude.
In 1998, Tan contracted Lyme disease, which went undiagnosed for a few years. As a result, she suffers from epileptic seizures due to brain lesions. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment, and wrote about her life with Lyme disease in a 2013 op-ed piece in the New York Times.
Tan is still married to the guy she ran off with from Linfield College and married in 1974. He is Louis DeMattei, a lawyer, and the two live in San Francisco.
Books
1989 - The Joy Luck Club
1991 - The Kitchen God's Wife
1995 - The Hundred Secret Senses
2001 - The Bonesetter's Daughter
2003 - The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (Essays)
2005 - Saving Fish from Drowning
2013 - The Valley of Amazement
2017 - Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Amy Tan is among our great storytellers. In each of her previous novels, she has seduced readers with the intimate magic of her tale.... Her newest novel, Saving Fish from Drowning...is well paced, as one would expect from Tan. Her lovely and evocative images add charm to the ordinary observation of landscape, in passages that might be dull in lesser hands. The emphasis of Saving Fish from Drowning seems to be humor [and while] the book has clever moments and some good one-liners,...humor is not [Tan's] forte. She has a clunky way with irony, and the sprawling slapstick set pieces at the core of this effort are draggy and inept....The deliberately absurd plot, not moving enough for the kind of elegiac fiction that has made Tan famous and not meaningful enough to pass for allegory, appears to be satire.
Andrew Solomon - New York Times
A superbly executed, good-hearted farce that is part romance and part mystery....With Tan's many talents on display, it's her idiosyncratic wit and sly observations...that make this book pure pleasure.
San Francisco Chronicle
With humor, ruthlessness, and wild imagination, Tan has reaped [a] fantastic tale of human longings and (of course) their consequences.
Elle
(Starred review.) Tan delivers another highly entertaining novel, this one narrated from beyond the grave. San Francisco socialite and art-world doyenne Bibi Chen has planned the vacation of a lifetime along the notorious Burma Road for 12 of her dearest friends. Violently murdered days before takeoff, she's reduced to watching her friends bumble through their travels from the remove of the spirit world. Making the best of it, the 11 friends who aren't hung over depart their Myanmar resort on Christmas morning to boat across a misty lake—and vanish. The tourists find themselves trapped in jungle-covered mountains, held by a refugee tribe that believes Rupert, the group's surly teenager, is the reincarnation of their god Younger White Brother, come to save them from the unstable, militaristic Myanmar government. Tan's travelers, who range from a neurotic hypochondriac to the debonair, self-involved host of a show called The Fido Files, fight and flirt among themselves. While ensemble casting precludes the intimacy that characterizes Tan's mother-daughter stories, the book branches out with a broad plot and dynamic digressions. It's based on a true story, and Tan seems to be having fun with it, indulging in the wry, witty voice of Bibi while still exploring her signature questions of fate, connection, identity and family.
Publishers Weekly
With each successive novel, Tan gets further away from the autobiographical element of her early work. Unfortunately, the characters with whom she replaces friends and ancestors end up shallow and unbelievable. That's especially true in this exasperating saga, where 12 fictional American tourists missing in Burma spar, bond, and have exhibitionist love affairs with all the delicacy of characters in a soap opera. The first-person narration, by the ghost of a Chinese American socialite who planned to lead this art and culture expedition, adds to the listener's frustration, as does the ghost's constant reference to "my friends." While Tan's seriocomic look at American tourists interacting with primitive culture rings true and has one laughing out loud at times, the same effect could have been achieved in a much tighter novel. Even elements that might have heightened awareness and suspense end up suffocated by the idiosyncrasies of characters we'd just as soon forget. Everything has to be neatly ordered, including nearly an hour of tying things up, telling what every character goes on to do with his or her life.
Library Journal
(Adult/High School) Saving Fish from Drowning is based on the real-life disappearance of 12 American tourists in Myanmar. The narrator is Bibi Chen, dealer in Chinese antiquities, who had arranged an art-oriented tour for her friends. When she dies under mysterious circumstances, the others decide to proceed, saying that Bibi will join them "in spirit" —an invitation she accepts. Mostly well-meaning, but ignorant and naive, the group lands in one hilarious situation after another due to cultural misunderstandings. On a lake outing, they are kidnapped and taken to a hidden village where a rebel tribe waits for the Younger White Brother, who will make them invisible and bullet-proof and enable them to recover their land. They believe that they've found him in 15-year-old Rupert, an amateur magician. The tour group consists of 10 adults and 2 adolescents, some pillars of the community and some decidedly not, but all rich, intelligent, and spoiled. Bibi, feisty and opinionated, uncovers their fears, desires, and motives, and the shades of truth in their words. As the novel progresses, they become more human and less stereotypical, changing as a result of their experiences. Although Tan also satirizes the tourist industry, American Buddhism, and reality TV, her focus is on the American belief that everyone everywhere plays by the same rules. An extremely funny novel with serious undercurrents. —Sandy Freund, Richard Byrd Library, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Journal
Tan's ambitious fifth novel is a ghost's story (though not a ghost story), about an American tourist party's ordeal in the Southeast Asian jungles of Myanmar (formerly Burma). Its narrator is Bibi Chen (whose relation to the story's complex provenance is discussed in a brief prefatory note): a 60-ish California art collector/dealer and sometime travel guide, whose unexplained violent death limits her to joining the members of an American art tour "in spirit" only. She's a major presence, however, among such varied traveling companions as Chinese-American matron Marlena Chu and her preadolescent daughter Esme; biologist Roxanne Scarangello and her younger husband Dwight Massey (a behavioral psychologist); a florist who produces specially bred tropical plants and his teenaged son, an ardently liberal rich girl and her sexy lover, a gay designer pressed into service as de facto tour master, and several others-the most interesting of whom is TV celebrity dog-trainer Harry Bailley (who has eyes for Marlena, and whose name slyly alludes to that earlier portrayal of motley travelers who discover one another's unbuttoned humanity: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). The strength here is Tan's clever plot, which takes off when 11 of the dozen tourists (sans Harry, who's ill) enter the jungle, cross a rope bridge that subsequently collapses and find themselves stranded among a "renegade ethnic tribe" who mistake 15-year-old Rupert Moffett for a "god" capable of rendering them invisible to Myanmar's brutal military government. Their disappearance becomes an international cause celebre, cultural misunderstandings entangle and multiply, and some fancy narrative footwork brings the tale to a richly ironic conclusion. Alas, Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter, 2001, etc.) offers much more-ongoing discursive commentary from Bibi's post-mortem perspective, and scads of historical and ethnographic detail about Burma's storied past and Myanmar's savage present. The author's research ultimately smothers her story and characters. A pity, because this vividly imagined tale might very well have been her best yet.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Saving Fish from Drowning begins, "It was not my fault."How is the concept of personal responsibility important in the novel?
2. How does Vera's experience in the jungle influence her book on self-reliance?
3. In what sense do the tourists feel culpable for the suffering they see in Burma? Does Amy Tan offer a solution to their feelings of guilt?
4. Bibi is not necessarily always a reliable or likable narrator. Can we always take her observations at face value?
5. Tan prefaces Saving Fish from Drowning with "A Note to the Reader" that is mostly fictitious, and also invents the accompanying newspaper article. Why do you think she made this choice? How did it shape your impression of the story?
6. The novel takes its title from a euphemism for fishing. In what ways are names and "brands" important to the story? How are words used to conceal truth in Burma and among the travelers?
7. What are Bibi's attitudes toward sex and the human body? How do her observations reflect her own psychology and background?
8. The first time in her adult life that Bibi feels "unmindful" passionate love results in her accidental death. Is her demise tragic? Comic? Ironic? Why does Tan leave us to assume for most of the novel that Bibi was murdered?
9. How does the tour group's behavior reinforce or rebut stereotypes of the "ugly American"?
10. If you are familiar with Tan's other novels, what parallels can you draw between the mother-daughter relations in her previous stories and Bibi's impressions of her mother and stepmother?
11. Is this an optimistic story?
12. Have you ever been in a situation in which you came to have mixed feelings about the volunteer or charitable work that you were doing? If so, how did this experience affect your beliefs about charity?
(Questions issued by publishers.)
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Saving Grace
Jane Green, 2014
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250047335
Summary
Grace and Ted Chapman are widely regarded as the perfect literary power couple. Ted is a successful novelist and Grace, his wife of twenty years, is beautiful, stylish, carefree, and a wonderful homemaker.
But what no one sees, what is churning under the surface, is Ted’s rages. His mood swings. And the precarious house of cards that their lifestyle is built upon. When Ted’s longtime assistant and mainstay leaves, the house of cards begins to crumble and Grace, with dark secrets in her past, is most vulnerable. She finds herself in need of help but with no one to turn to…until the perfect new assistant shows up out of the blue.
To the rescue comes Beth, a competent young woman who can handle Ted and has the calm efficiency to weather the storms that threaten to engulf the Chapman household. Soon, though, it’s clear to Grace that Beth might be too good to be true. This new interloper might be the biggest threat of all, one that could cost Grace her marriage, her reputation, and even her sanity. With everything at stake and no one to confide in, Grace must find a way to save herself before it is too late.
Powerful and riveting, Jane Green's Saving Grace will have you on the edge of your seat as you follow Grace on her harrowing journey to rock bottom and back. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 31, 1968
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—University of Wales
• Currently—lives in Westport, Connecticut, USA
Jane Green is the pen name of Jane Green Warburg, an English author of women's novels. Together with Helen Fielding she is considered a founder of the genre known as chick lit.
Green was born in London, England. She attended the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and worked as a journalist throughout her twenties, writing women's features for the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and others. At 27 she published her first book, Straight Talking, which went straight on to the Bestseller lists, and launched her career as "the queen of chick lit".
Frequent themes in her most recent books, include cooking, class wars, children, infidelity, and female friendships. She says she does not write about her life, but is inspired by the themes of her life.
She is the author of more than 15 novels, several (The Beach House, Second Chance, and Dune Road) having been listed on the New York Times bestseller list. Her other novels Another Piece of My Heart (2012), Family Pictures (2013), and Tempting Fate (2014) received wide acclaim.
In addition to novels, she has taught at writers conferences, and writes for various publications including the Sunday Times, Parade magazine, Wowowow.com, and Huffington Post.
Green now lives in Connecticut with her second husband, Ian Warburg, six children, two dogs and three cats. Actively philanthropic, her foremost charities are The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp (Paul Newman's camp for children with life-threatening illnesses), Bethel Recovery Center, and various breast cancer charities. She is also a supporter of the Westport Public Library, and the Westport Country Playhouse. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/20/2014.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [A] memorable novel probing the flimsy facade of one woman's seemingly perfect life.... Green has imbued her story with realistic, imperfect characters. The lure of the novel lies in Green's ability to create a consistently evolving story that entices from the very first page.
Publishers Weekly
Grace Chapman knows better than most how a perfect-looking life can be anything but.... Fans of Green get everything they have come to expect and love in this psychological domestic drama: it's fast paced and emotionally satisfying if a little rushed and downbeat in the conclusion. —Amy Brozio-Andrews, Albany P.L., NY
Library Journal
The perfect personal assistant can make even the most accomplished wife dispensable.... Grace must devise a plan to save herself and snare the culprit. A rather uncertain resolution suggests a sequel may be in the works. Green spins a dark romance, recalling All About Eve, where intimacy masks betrayal.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Grace’s complex relationship with her mother has a profound influence on the relationships she goes on to cultivate throughout her life. How is Grace’s relationship with and reaction to Ted influenced by that which she had with her mother? In what was are her relationships with Ted and her mother similar? In addition, how has Grace’s guilt over the circumstances of her mother’s death influenced her relationships, including those she has with Beth as well as the women at Harmont House?
2. Did you find anything about Beth to be suspicious at first? If you were Grace, at what point would you begin to suspect that something was not quite right about Beth and/or her motives?
3. Grace has lived her life propelled by the belief that, "If she just keeps running and running, keeps being the perfect wife, mother, cook, the past will surely disappear." Why does this ultimately not work? What does Grace come to realize about her goal of perfecting the illusion so that "her secrets will recede"?
4. Where in the story do we see examples of how cooking has served as a sort of sanctuary for Grace throughout her life? Do you have something in your own life that plays a similar role?
5. What manipulative tactics does Beth use to reel in Ted and Grace? How does she take advantage of their weaknesses?
6. Women are known for our intuition, that little voice that tells you when something is wrong, and we like to think that as we grow older, we learn to listen to it. Do you think intuition increases or decreases as we get older? Do you find that you are relying on your intuition more or less? In what circumstances have you let your head overrule those feelings, and then been proven right?
7. Grace repeatedly has a feeling or an instinct that things are off—for example with Beth and later with Dr. Ellery’s diagnosis. Where do we see examples of this? What factors in both Grace’s present and past have caused her to mistrust, question, or ignore her instincts?
8. As it relates to heath, should you trust your intuition or the facts as presented by doctors? Should you research your own health issues and inform yourself as much as possible or is too much information a dangerous thing?
9. Grace notes the differences in the treatment and view of medicine by society in the United States versus in England. How does the position of power and authority associated with a medical degree affect Grace’s experience with Dr. Frank Ellery?
10. When Lydia asks Grace what it is that she wants, Grace tells her that she wants her life back the way it was before, including Ted. What was your reaction to this? If you were in Grace’s shoes would you have said the same thing? If not, how would you have responded?
11. How did you react to the scene at Ted’s reading when Grace first encounters Beth after returning from England? What would you have said to Beth?
12. How did you react to the ending of the novel? What do you imagine the future holds for Beth? What about for Grace and also for Ted?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Saving Sophie
Ronald H. Balson, 2015
St. Martin's Press
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250065858
Summary
A powerful story of the lengths a father will go through to protect his daughter and an action-packed thriller that will take you on an unforgettable journey of murder and deception, testing the bonds of family and love.
Jack Sommers was just an ordinary attorney from Chicago. That is, until his wife passed away, his young daughter was kidnapped, and he became the main suspect in an $88 million dollar embezzlement case.
Now, Jack is on the run, hoping to avoid the feds long enough to rescue his daughter, Sophie, from her maternal grandfather, a suspected terrorist in Palestine.
With the help of the investigative team who first appeared in Once We Were Brothers, Liam and Catherine, and a new CIA operative, a secret mission is launched to not only rescue Sophie, but also to thwart a major terrorist attack in Hebron.
But will being caught in the crossfires of the Palestine-Israeli conflict keep their team from accomplishing the task at hand, or can they overcome the odds and save countless lives, including their own?(From the publisher.)
Once we Were Brothers (2009) is the prequel to Saving Sophie.
Author Bio
Ronald H. Balson is an attorney practicing with the firm of Stone, Pogrund and Korey in Chicago. The demands of his trial practice have taken him into courts across the United States and into international venues.
An adjunct professor of business law at the University of Chicago for twenty-five years, he now lectures on trial advocacy in federal trial bar courses.
Travels to Warsaw and southern Poland in connection with a complex telecommunications case inspired his first novel, Once We Were Brothers. His second novel, a sequel, Saving Sophie, was published in 2015. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Chicago PI Liam Taggart and his fiancee, lawyer Catherine Lockhart, investigate an act of embezzlement complicated by links to a child kidnapping and terrorist activity in Hebron, Israel.... Balson succeeds in illuminating the personal side of the Middle Eastern conflict through his deeply human, psychologically credible characters.
Publishers Weekly
A Chicago lawyer resorts to embezzlement and negotiation with terrorists after his daughter is kidnapped.... After wading through lengthy chunks of superfluous background exposition, including trial and deposition transcripts, readers may not care how the puzzle is ultimately resolved. Complex where it should be simple and vice versa.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did Jack confront the conflict between his legal and moral principles and his desperate need to rescue his daughter? Was Jack too quick to trust people? Was that his character flaw?
2. Having washed his hands of Aline, why was al-Zahani so possessive of Sophie, the child of the union he despised?
3. Do you fault Jack for overruling the judge and giving the al-Zahanis liberal visitation? Would you have done the same?
4. What do you think would have become of Sophie had she not been rescued?
5. How did Arif al-Zahani perceive and process Sophie's exclusion from Jamila's playgroup?
6. What do you think drove Liam and Catherine to suspect a lack of commitment? Do you think there was a moment of indecisiveness?
7. Given the history of the region and how many times the land has changed hands, what is your feeling about al-Zahani and his group's claims for exclusive possession of the country as "Sons of Canaan"?
8. When it came time, at the critical moment, do you think al-Zahani was prepared to sacrifice Sophie?
9. Does the prospect of fame and wealth of a professional basketball career create a surreal world of impossible expectations for young athletes? Are you critical of Violet McCord?
10. What would you do with a child who shows gifted talents? Does the lure of success encourage parental exploitation?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Sawkill Girls
Claire Legrand, 2018
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062696601
Summary
A breathtaking and spine-tingling novel about three teenage girls who face off against an insidious monster that preys upon young women.
Who are the Sawkill Girls?
Marion: The newbie. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find.
Zoey: The pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is.
Val: The queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives; a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.
Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 2, 1986
• Where—Irving, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., M.L.S, North Texas University
• Currently—lives in Princeton, New Jersey
Claire Legrand is a librarian and the author of fantasy novels, as well as short stories, for young readers. She was raised in Texas, received her B.A. in English Literature followed by a Master's in Library Science, both from North Texas University. She now lives in Princeton, N.J., where she both writes and works as a librarian. (Adapted from various sources online.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) An idyllic island hides a deadly secret in this atmospheric, Gothic-flavored chiller, which mingles elements of dark fairy tales and outright horror.… [I]ncludes an asexual character and a beautifully wrought queer romance, focuses on the power of female friendship (Ages 14-up).
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Girls have gone missing on Sawkill Island for so long that the wealthy residents have learned to carry on with a stiff upper lip when it happens.… Rich and earthy horror (Grade 9-up). —Beth McIntyre, Madison Public Library, WI
Library Journal
(Starred review) Through this dank, atmospheric, and genuinely frightening narrative, Legrand weaves powerful threads about the dangerous journey of growing up female.… [A]n intensely character-driven story about girls who support… betray… [and] love each other…. [U]nforgettable.
Booklist
[A] fast-paced… and creepy feel… part spine-chilling horror story and part coming-of-age lesbian romance. There is a feminist message in the way the girls refuse to be manipulated by those with ulterior motives, banding together to fight the monster (Age14-adult).
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 SAWKILL GIRLS … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe the island of Sawkill Rock? How well does the author do in terms of creating an immersive atmosphere? Does the island seem to change during the course of the novel?
2. What are your thoughts about giving the Rock, an inanimate object, its own perspective? Why might the author have done so? What does the following passage mean? "It did not relish tying an innocent to the burden of its ancient might. But the Rock required an infantry"
3. Talk about your experience reading The Sawkill Girls. How did you get through it: did you read with bated breath, with relish … or did you just want it to be over? Reviewers use descriptions like creepy, gory, genuinely frightening, spine-tingling, horrifying. Care to add an adjective or two of your own?
4. Each of the three girls, Zoey, Marion, and Val, is dealing with her own set of problems. Discuss those the girls and the way their separate stories intertwine.
5. How would you describe each of the girls. Is there one whose story you find more sympathetic than the others? Or does one of the girls appeal to you more than the others?
6. One of the concerns of the book is competition: the way society pits girls against one another, manipulating them into butting heads. Talk about how that operates in The Sawkill Girls and how Zoe, Marion, and Val manage to overcome this competitiveness.
7. What are your thoughts about the Collector when you finally meet him? Did he meet the expectations of mystery surrounding him at the beginning of the novel?
8. What is your take on the fact that the three girls each represented some aspect of LGBTQIA?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Say Goodbye for Now
Catherine Ryan Hyde, 2016
Lake Union Publishing
358 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781503939448
Summary
On an isolated Texas ranch, Dr. Lucy cares for abandoned animals. The solitude allows her to avoid the people and places that remind her of the past. Not that any of the townsfolk care.
In 1959, no one is interested in a woman doctor. Nor are they welcoming Calvin and Justin Bell, a newly arrived African American father and son.
When Pete Solomon, a neglected twelve-year-old boy, and Justin bring a wounded wolf-dog hybrid to Dr. Lucy, the outcasts soon find refuge in one another.
Lucy never thought she’d make connections again, never mind fall in love. Pete never imagined he’d find friends as loyal as Justin and the dog. But these four people aren’t allowed to be friends, much less a family, when the whole town turns violently against them.
With heavy hearts, Dr. Lucy and Pete say goodbye to Calvin and Justin. But through the years they keep hope alive…waiting for the world to catch up with them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Buffalo, New York, USA
• Education—High School
• Currently—lives in Cambria, California
Catherine was born into a family of writers, and lived during her early life in the Buffalo, New York. (She points to a favorite teacher, Lenny Horowitz, for helping her change from being "the last kid picked" for a team to finally becoming a writer.) After an accelerated graduation from high school at 17, she headed to New York City planning to do something other than writing—anything that might provide a steadier paycheck. Over the years, she worked as a baker, pastry chef, auto mechanic, dog trainer, and tour guide.
Then, in the early 1980s Hyde decided to dedicate herself to becoming a full-time writer. By the mid-'80s, she had moved to a small town on California’s Central Coast, where she decided to come to terms with her alcohol and drug addiction. Twenty-five years on, Hyde is clean and sober—and now the author of nearly 25 novels, as well as numerous short stories.
She has won literary accolades throughout the world. Her bestselling novel Pay it Forward was adapted into a major motion picture starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, and translated into 23 languages for distribution in over 30 countries.
When not writing, Hyde hikes, kayaks, and visits national parks. The research for Take Me With You was all done from her own little twenty-two-foot motorhome. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/10/2016.)
Book Reviews
Catherine Ryan Hyde delivers once again with this feel-good story guaranteed to be a hit.
Redbook
Catherine Ryan Hyde is a most discerning and gifted writer. She writes quietly yet powerfully, with words chosen and placed carefully, words that enfold and pull the reader deeply into her story.
Bookreporter
A moving story about patience, trust, the families we choose, and the love it takes to let somebody go.
Booklist
[A] moving family story that tackles broad themes of racism, compassion, abuse, and love. Readers will be hoping that the characters find true love and justice. Includes book group questions. —Jan Marry, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA
Library Journal
Hyde captures the determination of Justin and Pete's friendship as well as the wistfulness of Pete's love for the injured dog. Yet the love between Lucy and Calvin is rushed, underdeveloped, and difficult to believe.... A sentimental yet heartwarming tale of transgression and redemption.
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.)
Say You're One of Them
Uwem Akpan, 2008
Little, Brown & Company
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316086370
Summary
Uwem Akpan's first published short story, "An Ex-mas Feast," appeared in The New Yorker's Debut Fiction issue in 2005. The story's portrait of a family living together in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya, and their attempts to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday, gives a matter-of-fact reality to the most extreme circumstances—and signaled the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer.
"My Parents' Bedroom" is a Rwandan girl's account of her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. In "Fattening for Gabon," a brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery. "Luxurious Hearses" creates a microcosm of Africa within a busload of refugees and introduces us to a Muslim boy who summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride through Nigeria. "What Language Is That?" reveals the emotional toll of the Christian-Muslim conflict in Ethiopia through the eyes of childhood friends. Every story is a testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing situations our planet can offer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1970-71
• Where—Ikot Akpan Eda, Nigeria
• Education—Creighton and Gonzaga Universities; Catholic
University of Eastern Africa; M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Harare, Zimbabwe
Uwem Akpan was born in southern Nigeria. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. In 2007, he began a teaching assignment at a seminary in Harare, Zimbabwe. (From the publisher.)
More
In his own worrds:
I was born under a palm-wine tree in Ikot Akpan Eda in Ikot Ekpene Diocese in Nigeria. I studied philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities and theology at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. I have taught English and Literature in English in Nigerian high schools.
Also, I have lived and worked with lepers, played the banjo, and served as a DJ of classical music. I have worked with street kids in Tanzania and volunteered in Chicago's Cabrini Green.
I was inspired to write by the people who sit around my village church to share palm wine after Sunday Mass, by the Bible, and by the humour and endurance of the poor. My grandfather was one of those who brought the Catholic Church to our village. I was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and I like to celebrate the sacraments for my fellow villagers. Some of them have no problem stopping me in the road and asking for confession! I received my MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006.
I have very fond memories of my childhood in my village, where everybody knows everybody, and all my paternal uncles still live together in one big compound. Growing up, my mother told me folktales and got me and my three brothers to read a lot.
I became a fiction writer during my seminary days. I wrote at night, when the community computers were free. Computer viruses ate much of my work.
Finally, my friend Wes Harris believed in me enough to get me a laptop. This saved me from the despair of losing my stories and made me begin to see God again in the seminary. The stories I saved on that first laptop are the core of Say You're One of Them.
I always look forward to visiting my village. No matter how high the bird flies, its legs still face the earth. When I get back to Ikot Akpan Eda, my people will celebrate this book in our own way—with lots of tall tales, spontaneous prayers, and palm wine! (From the book's website.)
Book Reviews
A startling debut collection…[Akpan] fuses a knowledge of African poverty and strife with a conspicuously literary approach to storytelling, filtering tales of horror through the wide eyes of the young. In each of the tales in Say You're One of Them a protagonist's childlike innocence is ultimately savaged by the facts of African life.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
It is not merely the subject that makes Akpan's...writing so astonishing, translucent, and horrifying all at once; it is his talent with metaphor and imagery, his immersion into character and place....Uwem Akpan has given these children their voices, and for the compassion and art in his stories I am grateful and changed.
Susan Straight - Washington Post Book World
Nigerian-born Jesuit priest Akpan transports the reader into gritty scenes of chaos and fear in his rich debut collection of five long stories set in war-torn Africa. "An Ex-mas Feast" tells the heartbreaking story of eight-year-old Jigana, a Kenyan boy whose 12-year-old sister, Maisha, works as a prostitute to support her family. Jigana's mother quells the children's hunger by having them sniff glue while they wait for Maisha to earn enough to bring home a holiday meal. In "Luxurious Hearses," Jubril, a teenage Muslim, flees the violence in northern Nigeria. Attacked by his own Muslim neighbors, his only way out is on a bus transporting Christians to the south. In "Fattening for Gabon," 10-year-old Kotchikpa and his younger sister are sent by their sick parents to live with their uncle, Fofo Kpee, who in turn explains to the children that they are going to live with their prosperous "godparents," who, as Kotchikpa pieces together, are actually human traffickers. Akpan's prose is beautiful and his stories are insightful and revealing, made even more harrowing because all the horror—and there is much—is seen through the eyes of children.
Publishers Weekly
With the intensity of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Say You're One of Them tells of the horrors faced by young people throughout Africa. Akpan uses five short stories (though at well over 100 pages, both "Luxurious Hearses" and "Fattening for Gabon" are nearly stand-alone novels in their own right) to bring to light topics ranging from selling children in Gabon to the Muslim vs. Christian battles in Ethiopia. The characters face choices that most American high school students will never have to-whether or not to prostitute oneself to provide money for one's homeless family, whether to save oneself, even if it means sacrificing a beloved sibling in the process. The selections are peppered with a mix of English, French, and a variety of African tongues, and some teens may find themselves reading at a slower pace than usual, but the impact of the stories is well worth the effort. The collection offers a multitude of learning opportunities and would be well suited for "Authors not born in the United States" reading and writing assignments. Teens looking for a more upbeat, but still powerful, story may prefer Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One (1989). —Sarah Krygier, Solano County Library, Fairfield, CA
School Library Journal
Redemption is in short supply in these five stories by a Nigerian priest about children caught in the crossfire of various African countries' upheavals. The opener of this debut collection, "An Ex-mas Feast," is one of the more upbeat entries-which isn't saying much, since its eight-year-old narrator describes sniffing shoe glue to ward off hunger in a Nairobi shanty town while his 12-year-old sister proudly moves from street prostitution to a brothel. In "Fattening for Gabon," a morbid variation on Hansel and Gretel, an uncle literally fattens up his nephew and niece to sell them into slavery. Although he genuinely loves them, his repentance comes too late and with not-unexpected tragic results. The least arresting story is the slight and familiar "What Language Is That?" Their families profess liberal, inclusive attitudes, but a Christian child and her Muslim best friend are prohibited from communicating when rioting breaks out in Addis Ababa, although the girls do find, perhaps briefly, "a new language." That miniscule glimmer of hope for humanity disappears in "Luxurious Hearses," an emotionally exhausting encapsulation of the devastation caused by religion. Baptized as an infant by his Catholic father, raised in a strict Muslim community by his mother, adolescent Jubril is targeted by extremists who happen to be his former playmates. Fleeing religious riots in northern Nigeria on a luxury bus full of Christians, he keeps his right wrist in his pocket; if they see that his hand has been amputated (for stealing, under Sharia law), they will know he is Muslim. Jubril comes close to finding acceptance among his fellow passengers, which only makes their ultimate violence against him that much more disturbing. The final story, "My Parents' Bedroom," goes beyond disturbing toward unbearable as the children of a Tutsi mother and Hutu father in Rwanda witness the unspeakable acts their decent parents are forced to commit. Haunting prose. Unrelenting horror. An almost unreadable must-read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Each of the stories in Say You’re One of Them is told from the perspective of a child. Do you think this affected your reaction? If the narrators had been adults, might you have felt differently about the stories? Why do you think Akpan chose to depict these events through children’s eyes? How do Akpan’s young characters maintain innocence in the face of corruption and pain?
2. In “An Ex-mas Feast,” Maisha leaves her family to become a full- time prostitute. Do you think she chose to depart, or did her family’s poverty force her to flee? Is it possible to have complete freedom of will in such a situation? Is it reasonable to judge a person for her actions if her choice is not entirely her own?
3. In “Fattening for Gabon” the children’s uncle and caretaker,Fofo Kpee, sells them into slavery. How does Fofo’s poverty and vanity contribute to his unthinkable actions? Do his pangs of conscience redeem him for you? Why or why not?
4. In “What Language is That?” Hadiya and Selam are kept apart by their parents after the escalation of religious conflict. Have you ever experienced a situation in which friends and family have objected to someone in your life for reasons you didn’t understand? What did you do? How did you feel?
5. The bus in “Luxurious Hearses” is a microcosm not only of African hierarchies and religions but also of the continent’s numerous languages and dialects. Discuss how speech is related to class, culture, religion, and heritage. How does dialogue function in the other stories? Do we hold similar attitudes about language in our own culture? What are some examples?
6. This book takes its title from instructions given to a Rwandan girl by her mother in “My Parents’ Bedroom.” Did the familiar domestic detail in this story — Maman’s perfume, little Jean’s flannel pajamas, toys like Mickey Mouse in the children’s room — intensify for you the horror of what ensued? Is there comparable detail in any of the other stories that helped you to identify with Uwem Akpan’s characters?
7. Although the stories in Say You’re One of Them are fictitious, the situations they depict have a basis in reality. How do the emotions you feel when reading these stories compare to your emotions when reading accounts in the news media of similar atrocities? Has reading Say You’re One of Them changed the way you think about these issues?
8. Uwem Akpan addressed his other vocation in an interview, saying, “A key Vatican II document makes it very clear that the joys and anguish of the world are the joys and anguish of the Church.” While reading these stories, were you ever reminded that this writer is also a Jesuit priest? Does Akpan’s subject matter seem to you to be imbued with religious values? In what ways? Do the drama and power of Akpan’s fiction call forth any biblical stories for you? If so, which ones?
9. Some of the children in Say You’re One of Them are not poor. What are the particular obstacles these children face that are not issues in your own country? Are there challenges other than poverty with which you can identify? Do the family dynamics feel familiar to you?
10. The poet and memoirist Mary Karr wrote that Uwem Akpan “has invented a new language — both for horror and for the relentless persistence of light in war-torn countries.” Did you find any beauty or goodness in these tragic tales? If so, offer some examples.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Saying Grace
Beth Gutcheon, 1995
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060927271
Summary
Rue Shaw has everything—a much loved child, a solid marriage, and a job she loves. Saying Grace takes place in Rue's mid-life, when her daughter is leaving home, her parents are failing, her husband is restless and the school she has built is being buffeted by changes in society that affect us all. Funny, rich in detail and finally stunning, this novel presents a portrait of a tight-knit community in jeopardy, and of a charming woman whose most human failing is that she wants things to stay the same.
Saying Grace is about the fragility of human happiness and the strength of convictions, about keeping faith as a couple whether it keeps one safe or not. Beth Gutcheon has a gift for creating a world in microcosm and capturing the grace in the rhythms of everyday life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1945
• Where—Sewickley, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—New York, NY
Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She attended the Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Harvard College, where she took an honors B.A. in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine.
In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living as a full-time storyteller (novels and occasional screenplays) since then. Gutcheon's novels have been translated into 14 languages (if you count the pirated Chinese edition of Still Missing), plus large-print and audio formats. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace and was also published in a Reader's Digest Condensed version, which particularly pleased the author's mother. (From the author's website.)
More
From a 2005 Barnes and Noble interview:
"When my second novel was in manuscript, a subsidiary rights guy at my publisher secretly sent a copy of it to a friend who was working in Hollywood with the producer Stanley Jaffe, who had made Goodbye Columbus, The Bad News Bears, and Kramer v. Kramer, run Paramount Pictures before he was 30, and met the queen of England. My agent had an auction set up for the film rights of Still Missing for the following Friday, with some very heavy-hitter producers and such, which was exciting enough. Two days before the auction, Stanley Jaffe walked into my agent's office in New York and said,
"I want to make a pre-emptive bid for Beth Gutcheon's novel."
"But you haven't read it," says Wendy.
"Nevertheless," says Stanley.
"There's an auction set up. It'll cost a lot to call it off," says Wendy.
"I understand that," says Stanley.
Wendy named a number.
Stanley said, "Done," or words to that effect.
To this day, remembering Wendy's next phone call to me causes me something resembling a heart attack. When, several weeks later, Stanley called and asked me if I had an interest in writing the screenplay of the movie that became Without a Trace, I said, ‘No.' He quite rightly hung up on me.
I then spent twenty minutes in a quiet room wondering what I had done. A man with a shelf full of Oscars, on cozy terms with Lizzie Windsor, had just offered me film school for one, all expenses paid by Twentieth Century Fox. He knew I didn't know how to write screenplays. He wasn't offering to hire me because he wanted to see me fail. Who cares that all I ever wanted to see on my tombstone was ‘She Wrote a Good Book?' The chance to learn something new that was both hard and really interesting was not resistible. I spent the rest of the weekend tracking him from airport to airport until I could get him back on the phone. (This was before we all had cell phones.)
I was sitting in my bleak office on a wet gray day, on which my newly teenaged son had shaved his head and I had just realized I'd lost my American Express card, when the phone rang. "Is this Beth Gutcheon?" asked a voice that made my hair stand on end. I said it was. ‘This is Paul Newman,' said the voice.
It was, too. The fine Italian hand of Stanley Jaffe again, he'd recommended me to work on a script Paul was developing. Paul invited me to dinner to talk about it. My son said, "For heaven's sake, Mother, don't be early and don't be tall." I was both. We did end up writing a script together; it was eventually made for television with Christine Lahti, and fabulous Terry O'Quinn in the Paul Newman part, called The Good Fight."
Extras
• I read all the time. My husband claims I take baths instead of showers because I can't figure out how to read in the shower, and he's right.
• I started buying poetry for the first time since college after 9/11, but wasn't reading it until a friend mentioned that she and her husband read poetry in the morning before they have breakfast. She is right — a pot of tea and a quiet table in morning sunlight is exactly the right time for poetry. I read the New York Times Book Review in the bath and on subways because it is light and foldable. I listen to audiobooks through earphones while I take my constitutionals or do housework. I read physical books for a couple of hours every night after everyone else is in bed—usually two books alternately, one novel and one biography or book of letters.
• I have a dog named Daisy Buchanan. She ran for president last fall; her slogan was ‘No Wavering, No Flip-flopping, No pants.' She doesn't know yet that she didn't win, so if you meet her, please don't tell her.
• When I was in high school I invented, by knitting one, a double-wide sweater with two turtlenecks for my brother and his girlfriend. It was called a Tweter and was even manufactured in college colors for a year or two. There was a double-paged color spread in Life magazine of models wearing Tweters and posing with the Jets football team. My proudest moment was the Charles Addams cartoon that ran in The New Yorker that year. It showed a Tweter in a store window, while outside, gazing at it in wonder, was a man with two heads.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is her answer:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Dickens often manages to be both dramatic and funny, while telling a thundering great story, but in Great Expectations, in spite of the unforgettable gargoyles like Miss Havisham and charming Wemmick with his Aged P, it's a very human story about the difference between how things look and how they really are. When Pip recognizes how he has fooled himself, and what he must accept about reality, you see that while Dickens has been amusing you with any number of major and minor melody lines that all seemed to be tripping along by themselves, he has in fact been in perfect control, building up to a major chord, every note right and every instrument contributing at just the right moment. I understood that to make a novel pay off like that, you have to know from the get-go what story you are telling, how it ends, what it means, and exactly what you want the reader to feel and know when it's over. It was the book that made me start thinking like a writer, not just as a passionate reader, about how stories are made. (From Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
I was more surprised to see the extent of Gutcheon's work (7 novels)...and even more surprised, now that I've read some of her books...that she isn't more widely talked about in book club circles. She's an extremely intelligent, gifted writer. Where's Oprah?
A LitLovers LitPick (May '08)
In her lively and engaging fourth novel, Saying Grace, Beth Gutcheon takes a look at the day-to-day workings of a small private day school in California. Under the direction of Rue Shaw, the school has thrived, but a disruptive new board president lessens Rue's delight in her job, as well as her support from the faculty. Both at home and at school, she experiences a series of disturbing events that test her character and resilience. As it follows Rue's trials, Saying Grace provides a realistic portrait of both a good school and its gifted leader. Ms. Gutcheon knows private schools, and she knows her craft — and that's a winning combination.
Constance Decker Thompson - New York Times
In her mid-40s, Rue Shaw, the head of a country day school in a small California town, has much to be thankful for: satisfying and meaningful work; a warm and loving marriage; a talented 19-year-old daughter who has never caused her a moment's worry. Yet in Gutcheon's elegiac fourth novel (after Domestic Pleasures), even a life as well composed and stable as this is vulnerable to unexpected changes. Rue is depicted as a warm, wise woman able to navigate school politics and to accept bravely the changes for her family when her daughter leaves home to attend Julliard. But when an unthinkable disaster occurs, even Rue cannot cope. After an absorbing if slow-paced setup, Gutcheon errs in focusing the denouement too closely on Rue, abandoning the points of view of crucial minor characters (such as the secretary who plays an important role in Rue's marriage) who added dimension to the first half of the story. By relying too heavily on the perspective of a character who responds to heartbreak primarily with dignified composure, this quiet novel fails to deliver sufficient emotional impact.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. When Bonnie describes to Rue the Zoroastrian system for recognizing personality types, she defines a "helper" as a person so focused on being Good that she doesn't see the big picture. Is this true of Rue? If so, how?
2. One of the most prominent conflicts in this novel involves the clash of values represented by Rue Shaw and Chandler Kip. What are those values and do you believe that they are irreconcilable? Do you think that Rue was politically savvy in dealing with Chandler?
3. In Saying Grace, the purpose of education is a subject of continuous debate. For Chandler, the mission of education is to equip a person to compete and win. How would you define Rue's beliefs? Whose arguments do you feel are more compelling? How does the world of this school resemble current political thinking in the world at large?
4. Catherine Trainer is a perpetually vulnerable character and important catalyst to the major events in this story. Is she a comic figure or a tragic one? If she had behaved differently, would the story have had a different ending?
5. Hints about Henry's relationship with Emily percolate in the course of this story. Do you think Rue's reaction to it shows strength or weakness? Do you feel Henry deserves blame or sympathy?
6. At Chandler Kip's Christmas party Rue talks about the "spiritual gestation" each person undergoes. Why did Chandler's mother find Rue's statement so offensive?
7. Henry and Rue have different views about the meaning and purpose of work in their individual lives. While Henry had chosen a traditional high-stress high-income career path, Rue chose to be an educator, an altruistic occupation compared to one of the more highly paid professions that the Chandler Kips of the world find impressive. Do you feel that Henry is disillusioned, at mid-life, about the beliefs and expectations he had when he was younger? What about Rue? How does it make you feel about the career choices you've made and where they have brought you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
200-300 pp. (varies by publisher)
Summary
A passionate young woman, her cowardly lover, and her aging, vengeful husband are the central characters in this stark drama of the conflict between passion and convention in the harsh world of seventeenth-century Boston.
Tremendously moving and rich in psychological insight, this tragic novel of sin and redemption addresses our Puritan past. Depicting the struggle between mind and heart, Hawthorne fashioned a masterpiece of American fiction. (From Penguin Signet Classics.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 4, 1804
• Where—Salem, Massachusetts, USA
• Death—May 19, 1864
• Where—Plymouth. New Hampshire
• Education—Bowdoin College
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th-century American novelist and short story writer.
Short overview
Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem Witch Trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne."
He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honors society. He published his first work anonymously, the novel Fanshawe, in 1828. He also published several short stories in various periodicals, which in 1837 he collected and published as Twice-Told Tales. For several years, he worked at a Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Sophia Peabody in 1842.
The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died in 1864, survived by his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend Franklin Pierce.
Early years
William Hathorne, the author's great-great-great-grandfather, a Puritan, was the first of the family to emigrate from England, first settling in Dorchester, Massachusetts before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held various political positions, including magistrate and judge, who was infamous for his harsh sentencing. William's son and the author's great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. Having learned about this, the author may have added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.
Hawthorne's father, Nathaniel Hathorne, Sr., was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in what is now Suriname in South America. After his death, young Nathaniel, his mother and two sisters moved in with maternal relatives, the Mannings, in Salem, where they lived for 10 years. In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers before moving to a home in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake. It had been recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning. Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods." In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters. For fun, and in spite of his homesickness, he distributed to his family seven issues of his homemade newspaper, The Spectator. Written by hand in August and September, 1820, his newspaper included essays, poems, and news showcasing the young author's developing adolescent humor.
Despite young Hawthorne's protests, his uncle Robert Manning insisted that he attend college. With financial support from his uncle, he was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition. On the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, Hawthorne met future Franklin Pierce, the future U.S. president, and the two became fast friends. Once at the school, he also met the future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge. Years after his graduation with the class of 1825, he would describe his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard:
I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.
Early career
In 1836 Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. During this time he boarded with the poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in Boston. He was offered an appointment as weighter and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year, which he accepted in January, 1839. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." He contributed short stories, including "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil", to various magazines and annuals, though none drew major attention to the author. Horatio Bridge offered to cover the risk of collecting these stories in the spring of 1837 into one volume, Twice-Told Tales, which made Hawthorne known locally.
While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne bet his friend Jonathan Cilley a bottle of Madeira wine that Cilley would get married before him. By 1836 he had won the wager, but did not remain a bachelor for life. After public flirtations with local women Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody, he began pursuing the latter's sister, illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Seeking a possible home for himself and Sophia, he joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia. He paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine." He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure would prove an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance. Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in July, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. His neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent when at gatherings. At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.
Sophia, like Hawthorne, was also reclusive. Throughout her early life, she had frequent migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments. She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. Of his wife, whom he referred to as his "Dove," Hawthorne wrote that she is,...
in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!
Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. In one of her journals, she wrote:
I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the ... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts.
On the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage, the poet Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat, Pond Lily, was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror... She was the very image of death-agony." The incident later inspired a scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance.
The Hawthornes had three children. Their first, a daughter, was born March 3, 1844. She was named Una, a reference to The Faerie Queene, to the displeasure of family members. Hawthorne wrote to a friend,
I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it.
In 1846, their son Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846, with the news: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew".[39] Their final child, Rose, was born in May 1851. Hawthorne called her "my autumnal flower."
Middle years
In April 1846, Hawthorne was officially appointed as the "Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem" at an annual salary of $1,200. He had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow:
I am trying to resume my pen... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.
Like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, this employment was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. A Democrat, Hawthorne lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. Hawthorne wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser which was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England. Hawthorne was deeply affected by the death of his mother shortly thereafter in late July, calling it, "the darkest hour I ever lived." Hawthorne was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests that came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Agassiz and Theodore Parker.
Hawthorne returned to writing and in early 1850 published The Scarlet Letter, which included a preface referring to his three-year tenure in the Custom House and makes several allusions to local politicians, who did not appreciate their treatment. One of the first mass-produced books in America, it sold 2,500 volumes within ten days and earned Hawthorne $1,500 over 14 years. The book was immediately pirated by booksellers in London and became an immediate best-seller in the United States; it initiated his most lucrative period as a writer. One of Hawthorne's friends, the critic Edwin Percy Whipple, objected to the novel's "morbid intensity" and its dense psychological details, writing that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them," though 20th century writer D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter.
Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts at the end of March 1850. Hawthorne became friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection, titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", was printed in The Literary World on August 17 and August 24. Melville, who was composing Moby-Dick at the time, wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black." A year later, in 1851, Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne.
Hawthorne's time in The Berkshires was quite productive. The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which poet and critic James Russell Lowell said was better than The Scarlet Letter and called "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made" and The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person, were written here. He also published in 1851 a collection of short stories retelling myths, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, a book he had been thinking about writing since 1846. Nevertheless, the poet Ellery Channing reported that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place". Though the family enjoyed the scenery of The Berkshires, Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small red house. They left on November 21, 1851, with the author noting, "I am sick to death of Berkshire... I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence."
The Wayside and Europe
In 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord. In February, they bought The Hillside, a home previously inhabited by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, and renamed it The Wayside. Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. That year Hawthorne wrote the campaign biography of his friend Franklin Pierce, depicting him as "a man of peaceful pursuits" in the book, which he titled The Life of Franklin Pierce. Horace Mann said, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote". In the biography, Hawthorne depicted Pierce as a statesman and soldier who had accomplished no great feats because of his need to make "little noise" and so "withdrew into the background." He also left out Pierce's drinking habits despite rumors of his alcoholism and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like a dream." With Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool shortly after the publication of Tanglewood Tales. The role, considered the most lucrative foreign service position at the time, was described by Hawthorne's wife as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London." In 1857, his appointment ended at the close of the Pierce administration and the Hawthorne family toured France and Italy. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne grew a bushy mustache.
The family returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun, his first new book in seven years. Hawthorne admitted he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble".
Later years and death
At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with William D. Ticknor to Washington, D.C.. There, he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862.
Failing health prevented him from completing several more romances. Suffering from pain in his stomach, Hawthorne insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott was concerned Hawthorne was too ill. While on a tour of the White Mountains, Hawthorne died in his sleep on May, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Pierce sent a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody to inform Hawthorne's wife in person; she was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself. Hawthorne was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. Pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Alcott, James Thomas Fields, and Edwin Percy Whipple. Emerson wrote of the funeral: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered,—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it."
His wife Sophia and daughter Una, originally buried in England, were re-interred in adjacent plots to Hawthorne in 2006.
Literary style and themes
Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism, cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England, combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.
Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales, however, he noted, "I do not think much of them", and he expected little response from the public. His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience. In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture."
Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, The Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A Collection of Wax Figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Criticism
Edgar Allan Poe wrote important and somewhat unflattering reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Poe's negative assessment was partly due to his own contempt of allegory and moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism, though he admitted, "The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth." Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man." Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it." Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he admired the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales. Evert Augustus Duyckinck said of Hawthorne, "Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind."
Contemporary response to Hawthorne's work praised his sentimentality and moral purity while more modern evaluations focus on the dark psychological complexity. Beginning in the 1950s, critics have focused on symbolism and didacticism.
The critic Harold Bloom has opined that only Henry James and William Faulkner challenge Hawthorne's position as the greatest American novelist, although he admits that he favours James as the greatest American novelist. Bloom sees Hawthorne's greatest works to be principally The Scarlet Letter followed by The Marble Faun and certain short stories including "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", "Young Goodman Brown", "Wakefield" and "Feathertop." (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
The Scarlet Letter, a romantic work of fiction in a historical setting is considered Nathaniel Hawthorne's magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.... The book's immediate and lasting success are due to the way it addresses spiritual and moral issues from a uniquely American standpoint. In 1850, adultery was an extremely risque subject, but because Hawthorne had the support of the New England literary establishment, it passed easily into the realm of appropriate reading. It has been said that this work represents the height of Hawthorne's literary genius; dense with terse descriptions. It remains relevant for its philosophical and psychological depth, and continues to be read as a classic tale on a universal theme.
Literary Classics Press
The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.
Edgar Allan Poe (said of Hawthorne generally)
It is beautiful, admirable, extraordinary; it has in the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of as the mark of Hawthorne's best things--an indefinable purity and lightness of conception...One can often return to it; it supports familiarity and has the inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art
Henry James
If we have a national heroine of our version of the Protestant will in America, then it must be Hester Prynne, Hawthorne's triumph.
Harold Bloom
Discussion Questions
Below are two sets of discussions questions: the first from Random House US and the second from Vintage Classics (a division of Random House UK):
1. Hawthorne came from a long line of Puritans (one of his forefathers was a judge during the Salem witch trials), and Puritan beliefs about subjects like guilt, repression, original sin, and discipline inform the book on every level. What is your impression of how the Puritan worldview is taken up and treated by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter?"
2. Kathryn Harrison, in her Introduction to this volume, asserts that Hester Prynne can be seen in many ways as the first great modern heroine in American literature. Do you agree?
3. Dimmesdale is in many ways as central a character as Hester in the novel; for you as a reader, is he equally important to the story?
4. The highly charged symbolism of The Scarlet Letter is one of its most distinctive features. Discuss the central symbol of the story—the scarlet letter itself. What does it signify? How does it function in the novel? How does its meaning change over time?
5. Critics have sometimes disagreed about whether Hawthorne condones or condemns the adultery of Hester and Dimmesdale in the novel. Can either view be supported? Which do you feel is the case?
6. Describe and discuss the character of Roger Chillingworth in the novel. What does he represent in terms of the larger themes explored by the book?
7. How does Hester change over time in the novel—and how does she change in the eyes of the society around her?
8. The final scaffold scene brings the various themes, characters, and plotlines woven throughout the novel to a powerful conclusion. Describe your response to this scene, and to the disputed event that occurs near its end.
(Questions issued by Random House US.)
1. Critics are divided over Hawthorne’s attitude to Hester’s affair, and whether the novel ultimately condemns or condones her actions. What do you think Hawthorne’s views are? What are your own?
2. Where Hawthorne does seem to uncritically hold Hester up for our admiration is in her steadfast refusal to name Pearl’s father. Why do you think this is? Do you share his admiration for this action?
3. As noted in the biography section, Hawthorne changed his name in his early 20s, adding a W to the original Hathorne. Some critics have suggested this was to distance himself from famous Puritan ancestors, particularly one forebear who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. From your reading of the book, do you think this could be true? How does Hawthorne depict the Puritan community and their leaders?
4. The priest in the story, Dimmesdale, is a figure of hypocrisy who preaches virtue from the pulpit and refuses to take his daughter’s hand in public—but pays a terrible personal price for his actions. What points do you think Hawthorne is trying to make about organised religion? How far is Dimmesdale responsible for his own actions and how much are the townsfolk responsible for forcing him into his position?
5. The critic Kathryn Harrison has written that Hester is "the herald of the modern American heroine, a mother of such strength and stature that she towers over her progeny much as she does the citizens of Salem." Do you agree?
6. Because the novel is set before the time in which he is writing, Hawthorne deliberately uses an old-fashioned style with some archaic language. Do you find this effective or a distraction?
7. The novel contains hints, early on, that Hester is descended from an impoverished but formerly noble family in England: "She saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility." There is a suggestion, toward the end, that Pearl may have returned to these roots by marrying into a wealthy European family, possibly nobility. What role, more generally, does class play in the novel?
8. How does Hawthorne describe the scarlet letter itself and in what different forms does it appear in the novel?
9. "Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil." What role does the character of Hester’s estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth play? Do you think he is morally more degenerate than Hester and her lover, or do you have sympathy for his campaign of revenge? Do you think he redeems himself at all with his bequest to Pearl at the end of the story?
(Questions issued by Vintage Classics.)
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Sister Scarlet Mary
Julia Peterkin, 1928
University of Georgia Press
376 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780820323770
Summary
Winner, 1929 Pulitizer Prize
Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness.
In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 31, 1880
• Where—Laurens County, South Carolina, USA
• Death—August 1961
• Where—near Fort Motte, South Carolina
• Education—Converse College (South Carolina)
• Awards—Pulitizer, 1929
Julia Peterkin was a white American fiction writer, who wrote about the African-American experience in the American South.
Her father was a physician, of whom she was the youngest of four children. Her mother died soon after her birth. In 1896, at age 16, Julia graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from which she received a master's degree a year later. She taught at the Forte Motte, South Carolina, school for a few years before she married William George Peterkin in 1903. He was a planter who owned Lang Syne, a 2,000-acre (8.1 km2) cotton plantation near Fort Motte.
Julia began writing short stories, inspired by the everyday life and management of the plantation.
She was audacious as well as gracious, an ambiguity attested to by Elizabeth Robeson in her 1995 scholarly essay about Peterkin in the Journal of Southern History. Peterkin sent highly assertive letters to people she did not know and had never met, such as Carl Sandburg and H.L. Mencken, and included samples of her writing about the Gullah culture of coastal South Carolina.
Essentially sequestered on the plantation, she invited Sandburg, Mencken and other prominent people to the plantation. Sandburg, who lived nearby in Flat Rock, North Carolina, made a visit. While Mencken did not visit, he nevertheless became Peterkin's literary agent in her early career, a possible testament to her persuasive letters. Eventually, Mencken led her to Alfred Knopf, who published her first book, Green Thursday, in 1924.
In addition to a number of subsequent novels, her short stories were published in magazines and newspaper throughout her career. She was one of very few white authors to specialize in the Negro experience and character. But her work was not always praised, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Scarlet Sister Mary was called obscene and banned at the public library in Gaffney, a South Carolina town. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the complete book.
In addition to the controversy over the obscenity claim, there was another problem with Scarlet Sister Mary. Dr. Richard S. Burton, the chairperson of Pulitzer's fiction-literature jury, recommended that the first prize go to the novel Victim and Victor by Dr. John B. Oliver. His nomination was superseded by the School of Journalism's choice of Peterkin's book. Evidently in protest, Burton resigned from the jury.
As an actress and possible dilettante, she played the main character to some acclaim in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Town Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina, from February 1932.
In 1998, the Department of English and Creative Writing at her alma mater, Converse College, established The Julia Peterkin Award for poetry, open to everyone. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon or Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Peterkin is a southern white woman, but she has the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth.
W. E. B. Du Bois
[N]early everything that Mrs. Peterkin's characters did and said was interesting. She has a great talent for creative observation and description, for realistic folklore.
Time Magazine (6/10/1929)
Pulitzer Prize winner Peterkin was a pioneer in writing candidly, yet unsentimentally, about black women, including their sensuality.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Scarlet Sister Mary:
1. How do you see Mary Pinesett? Do you admire her...do you like her? Or does she irritate and anger you? Is she an early feminist, defining her own sexuality and identity while defying the social order? Is she a "primitivist" who uses sexuality and child-bearing to connect with the natural cycle of life? Is she a victim of spousal abuse, struggling to regain self-esteem? Is she an immoral, immature, self-centered woman? All...some... none of the above...or something else?
2. As a white writer, does Julia Peterkin play into racial stereotypes for African-Americans? Or, as W.E.B. Dubois said of her, does she have "the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth" whether black or white?
3. Talk about the rat and the wedding cake as symbolizing the future prospects of Sister Mary and July's marriage.
4. What role does magic and superstition play in the Gullah community and in Sister Mary's life?
5. Do you care about this book's characters? Does Peterkin fully develop them—providing them with emotional and psychological complexity? Or do you find them flat and one-dimensional?
6. In what way might Killdee Pinesett be considered, in the words of one critic/reviewer, "one of the most moving, one of the most admirable characters is modern fiction"?
7. What kind of family does Mary create...what affect does her promiscuity have on her children? Is she a good mother?
8. How does the church view Sister Mary? And how do you view the church with its concepts of sin and grace? What about Brer Dee lining out the hymns?
9. At the end, when the church has accepted her back into its fold, does Sister Mary repent? Why does she keep the charm when Daddy Cudjoe asks her to return it? What does she mean when she tells Daddy Cudjoe, "E's all I got now to keep me young"?
10. Is this book a morality tale?
11. Are you at all familiar with the Gullah culture along the Carolina coasts, its unusual patois, the beautiful sweet grass baskets? You might do a little research into the area and its history. There's a Gullah cultural and educational center not far from Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina—take a look at its website.
12. Overall, what do you think of this book? Is it a good read...a disappointing one? Did it hold your interest?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
A Scattered Life
Karen McQuestion, 2010
AmazonEncore
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781935597063
Summary
In A Scattered Life, Karen McQuestion proves to be an adept chronicler of unforgettable female characters. Poignantly written, she thoughtfully examines how women love, learn, and come to accept themselves and others, as well as life’s often harsh realities of deception and loss.
Skyla Plinka has all she could ask for—at least that’s what her mother-in-law Audrey thinks. On most days, Skyla agrees, yet there’s a part of her that longs for her free-spirited days before husband, child, and the humdrum life of rural Wisconsin.
Close friend Roxanne (and the five sons she can’t seem to keep tabs on), offers a reprieve, but it isn’t until Skyla takes a part time job at her local bookstore that she starts to feel at home in her own skin. Her growing independence causes conflicts with her husband, her in-laws, and even her best friend, but in the end, Skyla learns what it means to love and be loved in this unsure journey called life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Karen McQuestion’s essays have appeared in Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Christian Science Monitor and several anthologies. Originally self-published as a Kindle e-book, A Scattered Life became the first self-published Kindle book to ever be optioned for film. McQuestion lives with her family in Hartland, Wisconsin (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
McQuestion’s debut novel focuses on three women in a peaceful Wisconsin suburb.... A late-in-the-game tragedy feels engineered to invoke tears, but readers looking for a quiet tale about women learning to manage their expectations and find joy in unexpected places will enjoy this sweet read. — Kristin Huntley
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Scattered Life:
1. What drew Thomas and Skyla together—and keeps them together—as a couple. Is it their differences or similarities that form their attraction to one another? What does each offer the other?
2. What is it about her life with Thomas that makes Skyla content? How has her childhood affected the way in which she thinks about her current life—about the things that bring her happiness, as well as the things she wants for her daughter?
3. From the first, how do Skyla and Thomas view the new neighbors? How do you view them, especially Roxanne? How would you describe Roxanne, and why does Skyla see Roxanne as the friend she had been looking for?
4. How does the job in Mystic Books change Skyla? What about Thomas's and Audrey's reactions—fair...or not?
5. What about Audrey, Skyla's mother-in-law? Is she interfering...or justifiably desirous of a closer relationship with her granddaughter? What kind of a mother has she been...and what kind of a mother-in-law is she?
6. McQuestion's book explores what it means to be a mother. What are the differing styles of motherhood that the three women—Skyla, Audrey, and Roxanne—represent. Which appeals to you...which fits you...or fits the way you were raised?
7. Do you believe, as Skyla says, that "most people have everything they need to be happy"? Does Skyla actually believe it?
8. Were you prepared for the tragedy at the heart of the story? Talk about the ways in which each character copes and learns from what happens.
9. How, by the end of the novel, are the characters changed? What do they learn about themselves and the world around them?
10. What is the significance of the book's title, "a scattered life"?
11. A Scattered Life as achieved some notoriety as the first self-published Kindle book to be optioned as a film. Does knowing that affect your reading of the story in any way? How would you cast the film—what actors would you like to see play which characters?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Scattered Links
M. Weidenbenner, 2014
Random Publishing, LLC
257 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781494366957
Summary
Scattered Links is a novel that pulls its characters from the gutters and, in the end, celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit.
Thirteen-year-old Oksana lives on the streets of Russia with her pregnant mama and abusive aunt—both prostitutes. When Mama swells into labor, Oksana makes a decision to save herself from abandonment, a decision that torments her forever. But when her plan fails, her aunt dumps her in an orphanage before she has the chance to say goodbye to her mama or tell her the secret that haunts her.
Scattered Links is a story of family and the consequences that come from never learning how to love. It’s a story of a girl’s inability to bond with her adopted family and the frustrations that follow. How can a child understand the mechanics of forming a healthy relationship when she never had a mother who answered her cries, held her when she was frightened, fed her when she was hungry, or loved her unconditionally?
Only when the child meets a rescued abused horse, and recognizes the pain in his eyes, does she begin to trust again.
Watch the book trailer.
Author Bio
• Birth—July 1, 1957
• Where—Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.S., Taylor University
• Currently—lives in Warsaw, Indiana
Michelle is a fulltime employee of God's kingdom, writing and encouraging writers every day. She's often a sucker for emotional stories, her sensitive side fueling the passion for her character's plights, often giving her the ability to show readers the "other" side of the story. Her sensitive side hears the emotional, pain-filled stories that plague people in the world, their shouts and secrets wake her from sleep, cause her to miss turns in the road, and interrupt unrelated conversations.
She grew up in the burbs of Detroit with five brothers. No sisters. Each time her mom brought the boy bundle home Michelle cried, certain her mom liked boys better than girls. But when her brothers pitched in with the cooking, cleaning, and babysitting--without drama, Michelle discovered having brothers wasn't so bad. They even taught her how to take direct criticism without flinching, which comes in handy with book reviews.
Michelle is living her dream—writing every day and thanking God for the stories He puts in her path. When Michelle isn't writing she's winning ugly on the tennis court. She's known as "Queen of the Rim Shots." No joke. It's ugly. (From author's website.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Michelle on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Captivating. Scattered Links takes you down the street of nearly any Eastern European town, arm-in-arm with the orphaned. Michelle has captured the beauty and horror millions of children live everyday. The attention to detail is impressive. Having lived in a post-Soviet country for a time, visiting orphaned children, this fictional account rings with truth, from the heart-wrenching pain of abandonment to the realization of self-worth, and the love family and faith brings. Thank you for such an uplifting book, appropriate for the young reader, as well as adult. May your heart be encouraged, as mine was.
Kim de Blecourt, author of Until We All Come Home: A Harrowing Journey, a Mother's Courage, a Race to Freedom
This story rings so true and close that it is sometimes hard to remember that it is fiction. This book is good for all ages and opens your eyes as you follow the journey of the main character, a Russian orphan. The story is written very well, researched and edited with added attention to details. The entire story is constructed to make it an experience for the reader and it is one I enjoyed. From the very first page until the last, I was riveted. This is a read-again story and even with the emotional charge in it, I recommend it. (5 stars.)
Kathryn Bennett - Reader's Favorite
This was one of the best books I've edited, and that's saying a lot. I critique and edit more than 200 books a year for writers. I can easily say Scattered Links is one of the best books I've worked on and read in years. Perfectly written, full of heart and soul, this is a story for teens and adults. I cried many times, so moved, and I rarely experience that kind of power in a novel. I absolutely love these characters, and the relationship Oksana has with Boris the horse is so terrific. Michelle's use of metaphor and symbolism in the book is beautiful, and her story is the kind that will endure for generations and should move hearts all over the world. Don't miss this book. It should win all the big awards.
Susanne Lakin - Amazon Customer Reviews (also, an author, editor, blogger at Live Write Thrive)
Discussion Questions
1. Describe how Oksana’s life was different in Russia than in the US.
2. Therapeutic horses have been proven to help special-needs children. What do you think contributes to the success of this theory?
3. Do you think RAD, reactive attachment disorder, is more prevalent in post-institutionalized children or foster children?
4. What did Oksana leave Ruzina in the orphanage?
5. How many children are being re-homed as a result of RAD? (Re-homed is when parents place their RAD children in other homes because they can’t cope with this disorder.)
6. What does our country do with unwanted children versus other countries? Is there a better way?
7. What were the emotional scenes? Did you cry? Why/why not?
8. If Oksana were a real character alive today how would her past affect who she is as a mother, employee, or wife?
9. What did you learn from reading this novel?
10. What genre would you say this book fits? Is it for young adults or women?
11. What tense was the book written in?
12. Would you have preferred to read it from Katie’s point-of-view too?
13. Do you think children with RAD can become well-functioning adults? Why/why not?
14. Why do you think Oksana was closer to Laura than Katie?
15. Were the characters believable? Why/why not?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Scent Keeper
Erica Bauermeister, 2019
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250622624
Summary
A moving and evocative novel about childhood stories, families lost and found, and how a fragrance conjures memories capable of shaping the course of our lives.
Emmeline lives on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses.
What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in glass bottles that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them.
As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world—a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.
Captivating and emotional, The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Pasadena, California, USA
• Education—Ph.D., University of Washington
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
In her words:
I was born in Pasadena, California in 1959, a time when that part of the country was both one of the loveliest and smoggiest places you could imagine. I remember the arching branches of the oak tree in our front yard, the center of the patio that formed a private entrance to our lives; I remember leaning over a water faucet to run water across my eyes after a day spent playing outside. It’s never too early to learn that there is always more than one side to life.
I have always wanted to write, but when I read Tillie Olsen’s "I Stand Here Ironing" in college, I finally knew what I wanted to write – books that took what many considered to be unimportant bits of life and gave them beauty, shone light upon their meaning. The only other thing I knew for certain back in college, however, was that I wasn’t grown up enough yet to write them.
So I moved to Seattle, got married, and got a PhD. at the University of Washington. Frustrated by the lack of women authors in the curriculum, I co-authored 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide with Holly Smith and Jesse Larsen and Let’s Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14 with Holly Smith. In the process I read, literally, thousands of books, good and bad, which is probably one of the best educations a writer can have. I still wrote, but thankfully that material wasn’t published. I taught writing and literature. I had children.
Having children probably had the most dramatic effect upon how I write of anything in my life. As the care-taker of children, there was no time for plot lines that couldn’t be interrupted a million times in the course of creation. I learned to multi-task, and when the children’s demands were too many, we created something called the "mental hopper." This is where all the suggestions went — "can we have ice cream tonight?" "can we take care of the school’s pet rat over the summer?" "can I have sex at 13?" The mental hopper was where things got sorted out, when I had time to think about them. What’s interesting about the mental hopper is that when something goes in there, I can usually figure out a way to make it happen (except sex at 13).
And that is how I write now. All those first details and amorphous ideas for a book, the voices of the characters, the fact that one of them loves garlic and another one flips through the pages of used books looking for clues to the past owner’s life, all those ideas go in the mental hopper and slowly but surely they form connections with each other. Stories start to take shape. It’s a very organic process, and it suits me. So when people say being a mother is death for writers, I disagree. Yes, in a logistical sense, children can make writing difficult. In fact, I don’t think it is at all coincidental that my first novel was published after both my children were in college. But I think differently, I create the work I do, because I have had children.
It’s been more than thirty years since I first read Tillie Olsen. My children are now mostly grown. I’ve been married for three decades to the same man; I’ve lived in Italy; I’ve stood by friends as they faced death. I’ve grown up a bit, and I’ve returned, happily and naturally, to fiction.
Novels
The first result was The School of Essential Ingredients, a novel about eight cooking students and their teacher, set in the kitchen of Lillian’s restaurant. It’s about food and people and the relationships between them – about taking those "unimportant" bits of life and making them beautiful. The response to School has been a writer’s dream; the book is currently being published in 23 countries and I have received letters and emails from readers around the world.
My second novel, Joy For Beginners came out two years later (see how much more quickly you can write when the children are in college?). Joy For Beginners follows a year in the life of seven women who make a pact to each do one thing in the next twelve months that is new, or difficult, or scary – the twist is that they don’t get to choose their own challenges. It has been a marvelous experience to watch this book become a catalyst for readers and entire book clubs, and to read the letters of those who have decided to change their lives or who have simply gained insight through the characters.
My third novel was published in early 2013. The Lost Art of Mixing returns to some of the characters from The School of Essential Ingredients whose stories simply weren’t finished (although I have to say, even I was surprised to learn where those stories went). It begins one year later, and throws four completely new characters into the mix, in an exploration of miscommunication, serendipity, ritual, and (well, of course) food. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A] magical novel…. Blending fantasy with a realist family drama, Bauermeister’s novel will enchant fans of Katherine Paterson.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Woven through [Emmeline's] life's journey is a multi-layered story of fragrance and its evocative power, as strong and tenacious as this sensuous novel's plucky heroine.
Shelf Awarenes
[D]elights the senses, immersing the reader in the sights, sounds, and scents of the wilderness and city life. Fans of… Jennifer Close will fall in love with Bauermeister's plucky heroine, the layers of family secrets, the lush settings, and the painfully tender relationships.
Booklist
[In] lyrical, haunting prose, the story provides fascinating information about the ways… different fragrances can impact human behavior….. An artfully crafted coming-of-age story… [and] exquisite olfactory adventure.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
—General questions
1. What is the smell of childhood for you?
2. If you could preserve one scent, what would it be?
3. If technology was not an issue, what invention would you create?
4. In the course of the book, Emmeline lives on the island, in Secret Cove, and in the city. Each location affected her profoundly and differently. How have the places you’ve lived affected you?
—Nightingale/scent questions:
5. What do you think the story of the Nightingale means to John? To Emmeline? Why do you think John cut it from the book?
6. The Nightingale machine is a fictional invention. Discuss its role in the book.
7. Both John and Victoria have a wall of scents. What do you think they mean to each of the characters?
8. Emmeline’s father strives to preserve memories through scent. Emmeline’s mother uses scent to influence others. Rene is trying to re-create scents that are disappearing in the modern world. What are the up and downsides to their actions?
9. What do you think about Emmeline’s relationship with scent? How does it change as she grows older?
—Emotional Arc questions/Parents:
10. Secrets are an important element in The Scent Keeper. Which secrets do you think the characters were right to keep? Which should they have told and when?
11. What do you think about John’s decision to take Emmeline to the island? How do you feel about their relationship?
12. What do you think was the most important lesson that Emmeline learned on the island?
13. At one point, Emmeline comes to understand her father has been revealing his past through stories. What do you think he’d been trying to tell her?
14. Emmeline experiences the deaths of Cleo, her father, and Dodge. How does her reaction to each differ? What does each one tell us about her?
15. How do you see Emmeline’s relationship with her parents change throughout the book?
16. What do you think happens at the end of the book?
—Fisher:
17. What role does Fisher plays in Emmeline’s life? How does that change?
18. What do you think about Emmeline’s decision to take Fisher to the island? How does it compare to her father’s decision to take her there as a baby?
19. Emmeline blames herself for her father’s death, and for the confrontation between Fisher and his father. Do you think she was right to do so?
20. Fisher chose to leave his abusive father (and Emmeline). His mother chose to stay. What do you think about each of their decisions?
21. At one point in the book, Fisher’s mother says: "Martin used to tell me how salmon always return to the same stream to spawn. They say it’s the smell that draws them upstream. Maybe we’re more like fish than we think." How does this apply to the characters in the book? Do you agree with the statement?
—Literary questions:
22. Several chapter titles are repeated in the book. Why do you think that is?
23. The Scent Keeper is told through Emmeline’s perspective. Imagine if it had been told through the varying perspectives of the major characters—Emmeline, Fisher, John, and Victoria. How would that change the book?
24. How does the prologue affect your reading of the rest of the novel? How would the book have been different if it had come at the end?
25. Fairy tales and stories are present throughout the book. What is their role in the book? In our lives?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Scent of Rain and Lightning
Nancy Pickard, 2010
Random House
211 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345471017
Summary
One beautiful summer afternoon, from her bedroom window on the second floor, Jody Linder is unnerved to see her three uncles parking their pickups in front of her parents’ house—or what she calls her parents’ house, even though Jay and Laurie Jo Linder have been gone almost all of Jody’s life. “What is this fearsome thing I see?” the young high school English teacher whispers, mimicking Shakespeare. Polished boots, pressed jeans, fresh white shirts, Stetsons—her uncles’ suspiciously clean visiting clothes are a disturbing sign.
The three bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody’s father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody’s uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents’ ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night.
Now Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father’s innocence. As Jody lives only a few doors down from the Crosbys, she knows that sooner or later she’ll come face-to-face with the man who she believes destroyed her family.
What she doesn’t expect are the heated exchanges with Collin. Having grown up practically side by side in this very small town, Jody and Collin have had a long history of carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. Now Jody discovers that underneath their antagonism is a shared sense of loss that no one else could possibly understand. As she revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family’s tragic past.
Engrossing, lyrical, and suspenseful, The Scent of Rain and Lightning captures the essence of small-town America—its heartfelt intimacy and its darkest secrets—where through struggle and hardship people still dare to hope for a better future. For Jody Linder, maybe even love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1945
• Where—N/A
• Education—University of Missouri-Columbia
• Awards—Anthony Award, Macavity Awards (5), Agatha
Christie Award (4), Shamus Award
• Currently—lives in Prairie Village, Kansas
Nancy Pickard is Nancy Pickard is the author of eighteen popular and critically acclaimed novels, including the Jenny Cain and Marie Lightfoot mystery series. She is also the author of The Virgin of Small Plains (2006). The Scent of Rain and Lightning is her most recent novel.
She has won the Anthony Award, two Macavity Awards, and two Agatha Awards for her novels. She is a three-time Edgar Award nominee, most recently for her first Marie Lightfoot mystery, The Whole Truth, which was a national bestseller. With Lynn Lott, Pickard co-authored Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path.
She has been a national board member of the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the president of Sisters in Crime. She lives in Prairie Village, Kansas (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Mississippi had William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, and Maine's Stephen King has made that state known to readers the world over. Now, with two solid, literary mysteries — and more to come — Pickard bids to become the literary Baedeker to Kansas, and The Scent of Rain and Lightning seems certain to earn her a much-deserved larger audience.
Dorman T. Shindler - Denver Post
A "literary"novel in every sense of that word. Well-plotted, clearly written mystery novels are always welcome. A novel that simultaneously qualifies as a gripping read, a master character study and as literary is more than welcome — it is exceedingly rare. Although anxious to read the final chapter to learn the identity of the murderer, I put the novel aside for three days because I did not want it to end. Now that it has ended, Jody and the other well-crafted characters continue to live in my mind.
Steve Weinberg - Kansas City Star
This stand-alone story—set in rural Kansas--is a dramatic view into the lives of the Linder family.... Highlighting the ripple effect of people's actions, The Scent of Rain and Lightning is an in-depth tale of unraveling lies and deceit in perfect Pickard fashion.
Shannon Raab - Suspense Magazine
(Starred review.) With exquisite sensitivity, Edgar-finalist Pickard (The Virgin of Small Plains) probes a smoldering cold case involving the Linders, a cattle ranching family that's ruled the small, tight-knit community of Rose, Kans., for generations. One stormy night in 1986, someone shoots Hugh-Jay Linder dead, and Laurie, his discontented young wife, disappears. The authorities arrest Billy Crosby, a disgruntled ex-employee of High Rock Ranch with a drunk-driving record, in whose abandoned truck Laurie's bloodied sundress is found. In 2009, Billy's lawyer son, Collin, who's certain of his dad's innocence, secures Billy's release from prison and a new trial. Father and son return to Rose, where 25-year-old Jody Linder, the victims' daughter, works as a teacher. Collin's pursuit of justice will force Jody and other members of her family, including her three uncles and her grandparents, to finally confront what really happened on that long ago fatal night and deal with the consequences.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A worthy successor to the author’s much-acclaimed The Virgin of Small Plains. Pickard’s superb storytelling transports the reader into the characters’ world, making all too real their dilemmas, their choices, and their willingness to believe the unlikely. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
Pickard shows her storytelling skills, weaving elements of deception, revenge, and romance into a novel with full-bodied characters who deal with tragedy as best they can; Annabelle Linder’s encounter with Crosby’s wife is particularly moving. From an award-winning author, this is engrossing fiction with an eminently satisfying denouement. —Michele Leber
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Pickard chose to title her novel The Scent of Rain and Lightning? How does she use weather and landscape as symbols in her writing?
2. How does Jody's place in the community change after her father's murder?
3. How is Collin's life affected?
4. What role do the residents of Rose have in Billy Crosby's conviction?
5. The Linders are portrayed as the most influential family in the county. What responsibility comes with such influence? Do any of the Linders abuse their power, despite their good intentions?
6. Though Hugh Linder Sr. is clearly the patriarch of the family, is he really the most powerful figure in the clan?
7. The Scent of Rain and Lightning revolves around the theme of revenge. What does this novel tell us about the nature of revenge?
8. The theme of forgiveness also plays a large role in the novel. How does the story reveal the challenges of forgiveness? Are the characters clearly in one camp or the other (revenge or forgiveness)? If so, how would you divide them? And which characters, if any, bridge these emotions?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Scent of Rosa's Oil
Lina Simoni, 2008
Kensington Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780758219244
Summary
Set in the beautiful port city of Genoa, Italy, at the turn-of-the-century, The Scent of Rosa's Oil is a magical story that attests to the strength of longing, the consequences of betrayal, and the nostalgic memories only a one-of-a-kind fragrance can evoke .
The only home Rosa has ever known is the Luna brothel, where she's lovingly cared for by Madam C and all the women who work there. Madam C shelters Rosa from what really goes on at the Luna by telling her they play a game with the men who visit. Naturally, Rosa is curious and can't wait until she grows up so she can also play the game.
But when a twist-of-fate forces Rosa to leave the Luna after her sixteenth birthday, she goes to stay with her new friend Isabel, an old woman who distills oils. The strange smells and smoke that emanate from Isabel's shack have deemed her a witch to the locals, but only Rosa sees a lonely, tender woman with a passion for making beautifully-scented oils. Enchanted by the intoxicating fragrances around her, Rosa becomes Isabel's apprentice, learning the art of extracting a flower's essence and selling the oils in the town square.
Soon everyone in Genoa is talking about the pretty, young girl with the lush locks of red hair who sells aromatic oils in the piazza. Some say she has the oil to cure whatever ailment one has, while others say her oils will capture the heart of a special person. Indeed, Rosa has learned Isabel's secret for creating her own "perfect oil"—a unique fragrance that holds a mysterious power.
Now Rosa needs a miracle to make Renato, the man she has fallen in love with, see past the ugly rumors he's heard about her and the Luna brothel. Disguising herselfwith a black wig and dabbing her special fragrance on her wrists, Rosa sets out to win Renato. But how long can Rosa keep her true identity hidden? And when destiny intervenes, challenging their love in unforeseeable ways, they'll need a magic even greater than the scent of Rosa's oil. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Genoa, Italy
• Education—B.S., engineering; Ph.D., computer science;
training in neuroscience—all US schools
• Currently—lives in Palm Spring, California USA
Lina Simoni was born in Genoa, Italy and moved to the US in 1988 to pursue an academic career. With a B.S. in Engineering, a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and training in Neuroscience, she did research and taught for 12 years at major American institutions (MIT, Northwestern University, McGill University) in the field of Computational Neuroscience, studying and modeling the functions of the human brain. She abandoned her scientific endeavors in 2000, when she decided to turn her lifelong hobbies (literature and art) into full-time professional activities. Trained at the Art Insitute of Chicago and the Evanston Art Center, she showed her paintings and photographs in galleries in the Midwest, Northeast, Florida, and the South of France.
On the literary front, she is a graduate of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Santa Fe Writers' Conference, and other literary/screenwriting events. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women. Simoni authored two novels, award-winning The Scent of Rosa's Oil and Villa Serenata, published in the US and Europe; one children's book, Sofia's Rainbow; and numerous short stories and screenplays. Her son, Tommaso, is a talented actor/musician as well as a scholar of the cultures (languages, history, philosophy) of the Mediterranean basin. Simoni lives in Palm Springs, CA. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Scent of Rosa's Oil has an atmosphere as unusual as its title. It reads almost like an allegory where one accepts less than reality for a higher cause, though I'm not positive I've plumbed its lesson. The obvious one, of course, is that one shouldn't judge the worth of a person without walking in his or her shoes. But is there also the lesson that perfectly good people may live happy and comfortable lives outside the normal ethos of one's society? The Luna is a world of its own where its inhabitants are loving towards a child and kindly to each other. It's only with the unknowing hurt Rosa causes at her party that ill will explodes at Luna. All that aside, The Scent of Rosa's Oil is a captivating reading experience with an original plot and an unusual setting. —Jane Bowers
Romance Review Today.com
Simoni's juicy debut is the story of Rosa, a young Genoan woman born to a prostitute and orphaned at birth in the late 19th century. Her guardian is Madam C, the proprietor of a much-loved brothel called the Luna, who shields Rosa from "the game" played on the second floor of her house. But for Rosa's 16th birthday party, she wears a special perfume distilled by her peculiar friend Isabel, and before the evening's over, the mayor, enchanted by the scent, ends up playing "the game" with Rosa. (Rosa, unbelievably, doesn't realize what's going on nor has she ever seen a naked man before.) When their tryst is discovered, Madame C, who has pined for the mayor for years, hurls Rosa onto the street. The orphan seeks refuge with Isabel and hides her born-in-a-brothel past from her new beau, longshoreman Renato (who is also susceptible to Isabel's perfume), but when Renato's life and their love are threatened, Rosa must decide what truths are worth the risk of losing him. Though parts of the story feel pat and the dialogue is often stiff, most of this light, whimsical romance's flaws are forgivable.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Scent of Rosa's Oil:
1. In what way does Simoni turn the conventional assumption about prostitues and "witches" on its head?
2. Should Madam C have kep Rosa from understanding the real "game" / business of Luna? Is there a difference between naivete and innocence? Can you have one without the other? Today, we try to protect our children from adult "knowledge" of the world. Is it possible to over protect them?
3. Was it smart or right of Rosa to deceive Renato by with-holding her upbringing from him and disguising herself? Or did she do it out of necessity? Are we less judgmental today, or do we continue to judge others according to their back-grounds. In other words, do we still believe that that the sins of the parent are visited upon the child? (Be honest, now.)
4. How is this book similar to those that center on food and its magical properties? Have you read, or know of, other works comparable to The Scent of Rosa's Oil? What might all these works be saying about the power of the senses as opposed to the intellect? Think of it this way: historically, Western culture has considered reason superior to passion—the intellect must control pleasure, i.e., the desire to indulge the senses. How does Simoni's work (and others) challenge that way of thinking?
5. This novel is partly a coming-of-age story, in which the heroine attains maturity and finds her way into the adult world. What does Rosa come to learn by the end of the story? What about Renato?
6. Can you discern the ways in which Simoni portrays the winds of change in this work—a more modern way of viewing the world?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Schroder
Amity Gaige, 2013
Twelve, Inc.
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455512133
Summary
A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit.
Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder—a first-generation East German immigrant—adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course.
Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand—and maybe even explain—his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father.
Alternately lovesick and ecstatic, Amity Gaige's deftly imagined novel offers a profound meditation on history and fatherhood, and the many identities we take on in our lives—those we are born with and those we construct for ourselves. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in West Hartford, Connecticut
Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007), and Schroder (2013), and Sea Wife (2020).
Schroder, Gaige's third novel, was short-listed for the Folio Prize in 2014. Published in eighteen countries, it was named one of best books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Cosmopolitan, Denver Post, Buffalo News, and Publisher's Weekly, among others.
Gaige is the recipient of many awards for her other novels, including Foreword Book of the Year Award for 2007; and in 2006, she was named one of the "5 Under 35" outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation.
She has a Fulbright and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, Literary Review, Yale Review, and One Story. She lives in Connecticut with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[The book's previoius] escapades are so unthreatening that it’s genuinely jolting when Schroder tilts toward a police chase and criminal prosecution. To her credit, Ms. Gaige has delicately mentioned the plot point that could potentially destroy Eric. But she hasn’t harped on it, so it resurfaces as a terrible surprise. And the reader is left to dissect a book that works as both character study and morality play, filled with questions that have no easy answers.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Fiction is all about experimental selves, so it’s not hard to see what drew Amity Gaige to the title character of her third novel, Schroder.... The essence of the ersatz Rockefeller/Kennedy character is of course an epic, pathological narcissism, and this Gaige gets impressively right.... The novel’s climactic chapter is also its best conceived: the item that brings about Schroder’s downfall is perfect, both dramatic and mundane. The reader will realize that he or she has been given every detail necessary to see what was coming, yet didn’t, which is plot-making of the highest order.
Jonathan Dee - New York Times Book Review
The entire book is a testimony, written in prison, by a divorced dad to his ex-wife. Equal parts plea, apology and defense, this enthralling letter rises up from a fog of narcissism that will cloud your vision and put you under his spell…Gaige displays an unnerving insight into the grandiosity and fragility of the middle-aged male ego…With its psychological acuity, emotional complexity and topical subject matter, [Schroder] deserves all the success it can find.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
On occasion...a novel will provoke a host of tangled and disconcertingly conflicted reactions—revulsion and affection; blame and understanding; a connection that goes beyond surface sympathy to a deeper, and possibly unwanted, emotional recognition. These were among the things I experienced while reading Amity Gaige's astoundingly good novel Schroder.
Wall Street Journal
Brilliantly written....What could be a hackneyed novelistic trope--the confessional letter--is completely transformed in Gaige's sure and insightful hands....Schroder is a haunting look at the extreme desire for love and family, and how the mind can justify that need to possess what it cannot have. Almost, just almost, Schroder has us rooting for him.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
(Four stars.) Like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, Schroder is charming and deceptive, likable and flawed, a conman who has a clever way with words. Schroder's tale is deeply engaging, and Gaige's writing is surprising and original, but the real pull of this magnetic novel is the moral ambiguity the reader feels.
People
Gaige (The Folded World) revisits the fragility of family life in her newest, based broadly on the Clark Rockefeller child custody kidnapping case. The book—written as an apology (in both the Socratic and emotional sense) to the narrator’s ex-wife as he awaits trial—is quiet and deeply introspective. Erik Schroder was born in East Berlin, but escaped with his father to working-class Boston. Recreating himself as Eric Kennedy, raised in a fictional town by a patrician family, the narrator distances himself from his past to gain entree into American aristocracy. But his marriage—based on lies—goes sour, and in the midst of the resultant unfavorable custody arrangement, Eric takes his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, on an unsanctioned road trip through New England, seizing the opportunity to reconnect with her, even as he realizes that this idyllic time is as illusory as his past. Although Eric is often unreliable, Gaige conjures a groundswell of sympathy for an otherwise repugnant character. Tender moments of observation, regret, and joy—all conveyed in unself-consciously lyrical prose—result in a radiant meditation on identity, memory, and familial love and loss
Publishers Weekly
Gaige creates a fascinating and complex character in Erik, as he moves from the eccentric and slightly irresponsible father to a desperate man at the end of his rope...[an] expert exploration of the immigrant experience, alienation, and the unbreakable bond between parent and child.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Have you ever told a lie that grew beyond your control? What did you decide to do when the lie became more than you could handle?
2. Schroder is written as a confessional letter from Eric to his wife, Laura. Have you ever written a confession? About what and to whom?
3. In the novel, Eric tells his first lie when he is five years old. Do you remember your first lie or a time when you witnessed a young child lie? Why do you think you—or the child you witnessed—told this lie?
4. If you could change something about your family history, what would it be?
5. Which famous family might you pretend to be part of? Why?
6. Eric and Laura’s marriage began with a lie about Eric’s identity. How much of ourselves do we keep from our loved ones? Can omissions ultimately doom a relationship? Or is there room for secrets between spouses and in families?
7. Meadow is often the only voice of reason in the novel. What about a child’s mind allows Meadow to trust her father, but to be honest with him at the same time?
8. Were you ever worried for Meadow’s safety? If not, why not?
9. How does Eric’s immigrant status shape the way he sees the world—and the specific parts of his world, such as Laura, Meadow, and Albany?
10. Do you think Eric is mentally ill or just a confused man who doesn’t want to lose his daughter? How far would you go to hold on to someone you love?
11. Can someone who has made mistakes or done bad things in one part of their life still be a good parent?
12. Are you able to forgive the flaws in your own parents? Do you think Meadow will be able to?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt
Caroline Preston, 2011
HarperCollins
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061966903
Summary
For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father’s old Corona typewriter. Despite Frankie’s dreams of becoming a writer, she must forgo a college scholarship to help her widowed mother. But when a mysterious Captain James sweeps her off her feet, her mother finds a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of her unsuitable beau.
Through a kaleidoscopic array of vintage postcards, letters, magazine ads, ticket stubs, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, fashion spreads, menus, and more, we meet and follow Frankie on her journey in search of success and love. Once at Vassar, Frankie crosses paths with intellectuals and writers, among them “Vincent” (alumna Edna St. Vincent Millay), who encourages Frankie to move to Greenwich Village and pursue her writing.
When heartbreak finds her in New York, she sets off for Paris aboard the S.S. Mauritania, where she keeps company with two exiled Russian princes and a “spinster adventuress” who is paying her way across the Atlantic with her unused trousseau. In Paris, Frankie takes a garret apartment above Shakespeare & Company, the hub of expat life, only to have a certain ne’er-do-well captain from her past reappear. But when a family crisis compels Frankie to return to her small New England hometown, she finds exactly what she had been looking for all along.
Author of the New York Times Notable Book Jackie by Josie, Caroline Preston pulls from her extraordinary collection of vintage ephemera to create the first-ever scrapbook novel, transporting us back to the vibrant, burgeoning bohemian culture of the 1920s and introducing us to an unforgettable heroine, the spirited, ambitious, and lovely Frankie Pratt. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 25, 1953
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A.,
Brown University
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia
As a girl growing up in Lake Forest, Illinois, Caroline Preston used to pore through her grandmother’s and mother’s scrapbooks and started collecting antique scrapbooks when she was in high school. She majored in American Studies at Dartmouth College, and received a master’s in American Civilization from Brown University. Inspired by her interest in manuscripts and ephemera, she worked as an archivist at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard’s Houghton Library.
Preston is the author of three previous novels. Jackie by Josie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was drawn from her (brief) researching stint for a Jackie O. biography. Gatsby’s Girl chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan. In The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, she has drawn from her own collection of vintage ephemera to create a novel in the unique form of a scrapbook.
Preston has been awarded a Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale, where she is a Distinguished Artist. She lives with her husband, the writer Christopher Tilghman, in Charlottesville, Virginia and has three mostly grown-up sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a retro delight. Meticulously assembled and designed by the author from her own huge collection of memorabilia, it turns scrapbooking into a literary art form. Fans of the Roaring ’20s, Nick Bantock and modernism will all find something of value in Preston’s nostalgic ephemera.
Washington Post
Somehow, Preston manages to make this scene feel fresh—partly because [this] really is a scrapbook, each page composed of artifacts: advertisements, yearbook photos, ticket stubs, menus from the automat, and paper dolls modeling their finest.... [I]ts vintage graphics and sweet, sincere storytelling make it a pure pleasure.
Boston Globe
Literal, literary and lovely....Preston’s book is a visual journey unlike any other novel out there right now....Can be devoured in the course of a pot of tea on a cold day [but] pick [it] up the next day just to look at the images.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In her whimsical mash-up of historical fiction and scrapbooking, Caroline Preston uses vintage images and artifacts, paper ephemera and flapper-era souvenirs.... Apparently no junk shop or eBay seller was spared in Preston’s search for ways to bring her fictional heroine to life.
O Magazine
The epistolary novel is ages old, the Twitter novel a la mode, but...The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt—to my knowledge—is the first scrapbook novel....[A] charming and transporting story, a collage of vintage memorabilia...and other ephemera depicts the adventures of an aspiring flapper-era writer.
Vanity Fair
When she graduates from high school in 1920, Frankie gets a scrapbook and her father's old Corona, which keeps her busy at Vassar and thereafter, as she pursues a writing career and sails for France on the SS Mauritania. Her story is illustrated with various memorabilia appropriate to scrapbooking: vintage postcards, magazine ads, ticket stubs, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, menus, and more.
Library Journal
Selecting from her own collection of period mementos, Preston (Gatsby's Girl, 2006, etc.) creates a literal scrapbook for a young New Hampshire woman coming of age in the 1920s. Frankie receives a blank scrapbook and her deceased father's typewriter as high-school graduation gifts and begins to record her adventures with the keepsakes she collects. Although Vassar offers Frankie a scholarship, Frankie still can't afford to attend college. Instead she takes a job caring for elderly Mrs. Pingree (see old debutante picture). The dowager's visiting nephew Jamie, a dashing, emotionally damaged World War I vet in his 30s, emotionally seduces 17-year-old Frankie (see his scribbled notes). When the not-yet-sexual affair is discovered, Mrs. Pingree gives Frankie a $1,000 check (see society-pages article about Jamie's wife). Soon Frankie heads off to Vassar, a haven of socialites and bluestockings (see bridge score card, pack of bobbed hair pins). Her rich, intellectual but neurotic Jewish roommate Allegra is a supportive friend until Frankie wins the literary prize (read snippet of Frankie's story about Jamie romance). After graduation, Frankie moves to Greenwich Village and finds a job at True Story. Allegra's brother Oliver, working at a new magazine called the New Yorker, becomes her constant companion. Though smart, kind and attentive (see admission tickets to movies, dancehalls, ballgames), he doesn't propose. When Frankie realizes why, she goes to Paris (see Cunard baggage sticker), where the past catches up with her and a whole new chapter of life starts. Lighter than lightweight but undeniably fun, largely because Preston is having so much fun herself.
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 Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (Caution—spoilers ahead):
1. What can you glean of Frankie Pratt's personality and character from her scrapbook? How would you describe her? Is there depth to Frankie—both as a fictional character and a human being? In other words, does the scrapbook medium lend itself to character development? If so, how has the author achieved it?
2. What takes place—what is said—between Frankie's mother and Mrs. Pingree? Exactly what kind of "deal" is struck? What do you make of the check for $1,000?
3. How does Frankie differ from her Vassar roommate? How would you describe Allegra Wolf? What influence does she have on Frankie—is it a healthy influence or not? Why does Allegra cultivate Frankie's friendship? What does Frankie gain from the relationship?
4. What about the types of literature the two roommates are drawn to? How do their literary preferences differ...and what do those differences suggest about the young women?
5. During Christmas break of her freshman year, Frankie realizes her mother has "taken on extra nursing jobs to make ends meet." Mrs. Pratt says to her daughter, "I'm so glad you escaped." How does Frankie feel about the sacrifice her mother is making? What are your thoughts?
6. Throughout the book, Frankie is exposed to people of wealth and privilege—with Mrs. Pingree, at Vassar, in New York, on the Mauritania, and in Paris. To what extent do these class distinctions shape Frankie's approach to life?
7. Why is Frankie drawn to Edna St. Vincent Millay? Talk about Millay's poem, "Lament," and its expression of loss. Why does the poem appeal to Frankie?
8. Why does Allegra Wolf not want to introduce Frankie to her brother Oliver? What is Oliver's reasoning?
9. What do you make of Captain Pingree? What are his feelings toward Frankie during the summer she works for his mother and during her stay in Paris? Are his intentions "honorable"? Why does he wish her to leave Paris?
10. In what way is Frankie a sort of Forrest Gump figure?
11. Would you say that Frankie exemplifies the typical woman of her time...or does she challenge accepted mores?
12. Talk about your experience reading the scrapbook-as-novel. What do you think of using such as a medium as the basis for a novel? Does it work? Is it as rich an experience as reading a novel of words? Richer? Have you read other graphic novels before? What about other modes of literary "text"—letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, email, PowerPoint (Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad), or Twitter? How successful are these mediums, particularly the newer ones? Why do authors attempt them—what do you think they want to accomplish?
13. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is considered historical fiction as well as a graphic novel. Does Caroline Preston's use of memorabilia—photos, ads, book jackets, ticket stubs, buttons, menus, and more—enhance your understanding of the 1920s and '30s? What have you learned about the era that you didn't know before?
14. What does Frankie Pratt learn by the end of the novel? Has she matured or grown? If so, in what ways?
15. Are you satisfied with the ending? Has Frankie sacrificed her dreams by returning to New Hampshire? Has she given up...or has she gained something more valuable? Will her life as a wife exclude life as a writer?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis, 1941
HarperCollins
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060652937
Summary
In this humorous and perceptive exchange between two devils, C. S. Lewis delves into moral questions about good vs. evil, temptation, repentance, and grace.
Through this wonderful tale, the reader emerges with a better understanding of what it means to live a faithful life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 29, 1898
• Where—Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
• Death—November 22, 1963
• Where—Headington, England
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Fellow, British Academy; Carnegie Medal for The
Last Battle
C. S. Lewis was famous both as a fiction writer and as a Christian thinker, and his biographers and critics sometimes divide his personality in two: the storyteller and the moral educator, the "dreamer" and the "mentor." Yet a large part of Lewis's appeal, for both his audiences, lay in his ability to fuse imagination with instruction. "Let the pictures tell you their own moral," he once advised writers of children's stories. "But if they don't show you any moral, don't put one in. ... The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author's mind."
Storytelling came naturally to Lewis, who spent the rainy days of his childhood in Ireland writing about an imaginary world he called Boxen. His first published novel, Out of the Silent Planet, tells the story of a journey to Mars; its hero was loosely modeled on his friend and fellow Cambridge scholar J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis enjoyed some popularity for his Space Trilogy (which continues in Perelandra and That Hideous Strength), but nothing compared to that which greeted his next imaginative journey, to an invented world of fauns, dwarfs, and talking animals—a world now familiar to millions of readers as Narnia.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book of the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia, began as "a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood," according to Lewis. Years after that image first formed in his mind, others bubbled up to join it, producing what Kate Jackson, writing in Salon, called "a fascinating attempt to compress an almost druidic reverence for wild nature, Arthurian romance, Germanic folklore, the courtly poetry of Renaissance England and the fantastic beasts of Greek and Norse mythology into an entirely reimagined version of what's tritely called 'the greatest story ever told.'"
The Chronicles of Narnia was for decades the world's bestselling fantasy series for children. Although it was eventually superseded by Harry Potter, the series still holds a firm place in children's literature and the culture at large. (Narnia even crops up as a motif in Jonathan Franzen's 2001 novel The Corrections). Its last volume appeared in 1955; in that same year, Lewis published a personal account of his religious conversion in Surprised by Joy. The autobiography joined his other nonfiction books, including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce, as an exploration of faith, joy and the meaning of human existence.
Lewis's final work of fiction, Till We Have Faces, came out in 1956. Its chilly critical reception and poor early sales disappointed Lewis, but the book's reputation has slowly grown; Lionel Adey called it the "wisest and best" of Lewis's stories for adults. Lewis continued to write about Christianity, as well as literature and literary criticism, for several more years. After his death in 1963, The New Yorker opined, "If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels."
Extras
• The imposing wardrobe Lewis and his brother played in as children is now in Wheaton, Illinois, at the Wade Center of Wheaton College, which also houses the world's largest collection of Lewis-related documents, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
• The 1994 movie, Shadowlands, based on the play of the same name, cast Anthony Hopkins as Lewis. It tells the story of his friendship with, and then marriage to, an American divorcee named Joy Davidman (played by Debra Winger), who died of cancer four years after their marriage. Lewis's own book about coping with that loss, A Grief Observed, was initially published under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk.
• Several poems, stories, and a novel fragment published after Lewis's death have come under scrutiny as possible forgeries. On one side of the controversy is Walter Hooper, a trustee of Lewis's estate and editor of most of his posthumous works; on the other is Kathryn Lindskoog, a Lewis scholar who began publicizing her suspicions in 1988. Scandal or kooky conspiracy theory? The verdict's still out among readers. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
C.S. Lewis has been hailed as the...true successor of Dean [Jonathan] Swift .... Screwtape is the name of a diabolical being ranking in intellectual ability with Milton's Beelzebub, and ... Wormwood is his agent on earth whose instructions are to prevent people getting converted to Christianity....[the two] make no secret that human misery is their aim in life....
P.W. Wilson - New York Times (3/28/43)
If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.
The New Yorker
Lewis, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century writer, forced those who listened to him and read his works to come to terms with their own philosophical presuppositions.
Los Angeles Times
(Audio version.) Lewis's satire is a Christian classic. Screwtape is a veteran demon in the service of "Our Father Below" whose letters to his nephew and protege , Wormwood, instruct the demon-in-training in the fine points of leading a new Christian astray. Lewis's take on human nature is as on-target as it was when the letters were first published in 1941. John Cleese's narration is perfect as he takes Screwtape from emotional height to valley, from tight control to near apoplexy. This will be a popular in most libraries. —Nann Blaine Hilyard, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Much of the appeal The Screwtape Letters derives from Lewis's startlingly original reversal: telling a story about Christian faith not from a Christian point-of-view but from the perspective of a devil trying to secure the damnation of one's man's soul. Why is this strategy so effective? What does it allow Lewis to accomplish that would have been impossible in a more straightforward approach?
2. In the first of Screwtape's letters, he instructs Wormwood not to attempt to win the patient's soul through argument, but rather by fixing his attention on "the stream of immediate sense experiences" (p. 2). Why is immersion in the particulars of "real life" fertile ground for temptation? Why is argument a risky strategy for devils to employ? Where else do you find this opposition between the particular and the universal—between materialism and spiritual faith—in The Screwtape Letters?
3. While Screwtape allows that war is "entertaining" and provides "legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers," (p. 18) he fears that "if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Enemy, while tens of thousands who do not go so far will nevertheless have their attentions diverted from themselves to causes which they believe to be higher than the self" (p. 19). Why would war have this effect? How does war alter human consciousness in a way unfavorable to temptation? How would you relate Lewis's own experience in WWI, which apparently confirmed his youthful atheism, to his position in The Screwtape Letters?
4. In describing the differences in how God and the Devil view men, Screwtape says: "We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons" (p. 30). What is it about God's relationship to man that Screwtape finds so unfathomable?
5. Why is Screwtape so pleased when the patient becomes friends with a group of people who are "rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world"? (p. 37). What influence does Screwtape hope they will have on him? Why should their "flippancy" build up an "armor-plating" against God? In what ways does Lewis merge theology and social satire in this and other passages throughout The Screwtape Letters?
6. Screwtape assures Wormwood that although some ancient writers, such as Boethius, might reveal powerful secrets to humans, they have been rendered powerless by "the Historical Point of View," which regards such writers not as sources of truth but merely as objects of scholarly speculation. "To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge-to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior-this would be regarded as unutterably simple-minded" (p. 108). Why would Screwtape delight in this situation? How would he turn it to his advantage? How does this view of reading parallel post-modern approaches to literature? Where else does Screwtape encourage Wormwood to persuade humans that truth is irrelevant?
7. Lewis exhibits throughout his writings an uncanny sense of human nature and a style capable of brilliant aphorism: "Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury" (p. 81); "Gratitude looks toward the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead" (p. 58), to cite just two examples. Where else in The Screwtape Letters do you find universal statements about human nature? Do these statements accurately reflect not just a Christian ethos but the workings of human psychology more generally?
8. The sub-plot of The Screwtape Letters turns on Screwtape's relationship with his nephew Wormwood, the apprentice tempter and demonic understudy in charge of carrying out Screwtape's instructions. How do Screwtape and Wormwood regard each other? How does their relationship change over the course of the book? In what ways does their relationship offer an inverted reflection of God's relationship to man? What is Lewis suggesting by having the story end with Screwtape preparing to devour a member of his own family?
9. In discussing time, change, and pleasure, Screwtape asserts that "just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty" (p. 98). Why is the demand for novelty necessarily destructive? What natural balance does such a demand disrupt? In what areas do you find this insistence on change, or overvaluation of the new, operating today?
10. Love is an important theme in The Screwtape Letters. Describing the human idea of love and marriage, Screwtape tells Wormwood: "They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life as something lower than a storm of emotion" (p. 72). Screwtape is also confounded by God's love for man, which he grants as real but irrational. What is Lewis saying, in the book as a whole, about human and divine love?
11. Over the course of The Screwtape Letters, the state of the patient's soul fluctuates as he experiences a conversion, doubt, dangerous friendships, war, love, and finally, in death, oneness with God. What major strategies does Screwtape use to tempt the patient into the Devil's camp? Why do these temptations fail? In what ways can the patient be seen as an everyman?
12. In spite the patient's triumph over temptation, his glorious entrance to Heaven-"the degradation of it!-that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits" (p.122)—Screwtape does not lose faith in his own cause. Why do you think Lewis chose to end the book in this ambiguous light? Why is Screwtape sustained by "the conviction that our Realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end"? (p. 124). What warning is implied in the book's ending? In what ways does The Screwtape Letters speak to contemporary moral and spiritual issues both within and outside of the Christian Church?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Scribe
Alyson Hagy, 2018
Graywolf Press
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781555978181
Summary
A haunting, evocative tale about the power of storytelling
A brutal civil war has ravaged the country, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated mountain valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been reduced to barter and trade.
In this craggy, unwelcoming world, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end.
She lets a migrant group known as the Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy peace with her cagey neighbors and the local enforcer.
She has learned how to make paper and ink, and she has become known for her letter-writing skills, which she exchanges for tobacco, firewood, and other scarce resources.
An unusual request for a letter from a man with hidden motivations unleashes the ghosts of her troubled past and sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events that culminate in a harrowing journey to a crossroads.
Drawing on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy has crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted novel that touches on pressing issues of our time—migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism—and makes a compelling case for the power of stories to both show us the world and transform it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1959-60
• Raised—Franklin County, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Williams College; M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Laramie, Wyoming
Alyson Hagy is an American author of short fiction and novels. She grew up on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and is a graduate of Williams College where she twice won the Benjamin Wainwright Prize for her fiction. She completed her Honors thesis under the direction of Richard Ford.
Hagy went on to earn her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan working with George Garrett, Alan Cheuse, and Janet Kauffman. While at Michigan, she was awarded a Hopwood Prize in Short Fiction and a Roy Cowden Fellowship. Early stories were published in Sewanee Review, Crescent Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. In 1986, Stuart Wright published her first collection of fiction, Madonna On Her Back.
Hagy taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, and the Stonecoast Writers Conference before moving to the Rocky Mountains and joining the faculty at the University of Wyoming in 1996.
She is the author of eight works of fiction, including Hardware River (1991), Keeneland (2000), Graveyard of the Atlantic (2000), Snow, Ashes (2007), Ghosts of Wyoming (2010), Boleto ( 2012), and Scribe (2018).
Awards and recognition
Hagy has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. Her work has won a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, the High Plains Book Award, the Devil’s Kitchen Award, the Syndicated Fiction Award, and been included in Best American Short Stories. Recent fiction has appeared in Drunken Boat, The Idaho Review, Kenyon Review, INCH, and Michigan Quarterly Review.
Personal
HGY'S Abiding interests and transgressions include hiking, fishing, tennis, cohabitating with Labrador Retrievers, college athletics, and making artist’s books. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming with her husband Robert Southard. They have one son, Connor (Adapted from the author's website. Retrieved 11/26/2018.)
Book Reviews
Scribe, which begins with the baying of hounds and ends with silence, reminds us on every page that humans remain the storytelling animal, and that therein might lie our salvation.… In this brave new world, a woman with a pen may prove mightier than a man with a sword.
Lydia Peele - New York Times Book Review
setting, identity and motivations are shrouded in Blue Ridge mist, Hagy’s language is intense and crisp.… Hagy does a splendid job of intertwining the strange threads in her novel, and readers with a taste for magical doings will not be disappointed.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
An original addition to the post-apocalyptic genre, Scribe reaffirms the power of the pen and the surviving quality of the human spirit.
Arkansas International
It’s a hungry book—one where every sentence seems to imply a second that it never offers; where every page and every paragraph offers the ghost of a feast, but never lets you eat.
NPR.org
Fans of Fiona Mozley’s Elmet will revel in this genre-busting feminist folktale of a novel, which is as rooted in its own particular, peculiar time as it is relevant to the concerns of 2018.
Vanity Fair
[An] eerie, artfully etched post-apocalyptic tale.
BBC Culture
Hagy probes the weight of responsibility and the desperation of survival in a deteriorated society in this evocative, opaque tale.… The vagueness of setting, supernatural elements, and only partially revealed histories amp up the eeriness of this disquieting novel.
Publishers Weekly
[A] postapocalyptic world.… [I]s this the Civil War unfolding or a future cataclysm that resembles it?… More epic prose poem than sf, this [is a] slender, affecting meditation on grief and death, with a flavoring of Appalachian folklore stirred in. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review) [S]et in a world ravaged first by civil war and then by fever.… Taut and tense, with both a dreamlike quality and a strong sense of place, Hagy’s brief but powerful tale will indelibly haunt readers long after the final page is turned. — Kristine Huntley
Booklist
(Starred review) A slim and affecting powerhouse.… Hagy is a careful writer; each sentence feels as solid and sturdy as stone.… Timely and timeless; a deft novel about the consequences and resilience of storytelling.
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.)
The Scroll
Miriam Feinberg Vamosh, 2016
Menorah Books
290 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781940516462 - print
9789655556186 - e-book
Summary
A sensational but little known archaeological find, the divorce document of a woman named Miriam issued at the desert fortress of Masada is the basis for this new historical page turner.
Beginning with a fateful decision by Miriam, a strong-willed survivor on Masada's final, horrific day, the tale spans three generations of her descendants.
This saga extends from the depths of her despair on a barren desert plateau to the glittering city of Alexandria where Miriam sought love and a future, and back to the Holy Land, where, amid the clashing cultures at Beit Guvrin, the storied city of Zippori and, finally, at the emerald oasis of Ein Gedi, the past continues to stalk her, threatening to devour her children.
The Scroll is an adventure-rich voyage through the ancient customs and beliefs of Judaism and early Christianity and the challenges both faced in a hostile world. Readers are transported to the very roads and markets, palaces and hovels, synagogues and village squares of ancient Judea, where The Scroll's characters choose between nation and family, and finally, between life and death.
Will Miriam's descendants learn the lessons of her life, or will enemies—within and without—rob those lessons from them? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 30, 1953
• Raised—Trenton, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Hebrew College Boston; M.A., Leicester University (UK)
• Currently—lives in Har Adar, Israel
Miriam Feinberg Vamosh grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, and has lived in Israel since 1970.
An author, editor and translator, Miriam started her love affair with the Bible and ancient sources as a tour educator in 1975, when she began specializing in weaving together Jewish literary sources, traditions and beliefs with the origins of Christianity and teaching about them on-site throughout Israel.
Miriam writes, translates and edits articles and books about Jewish and Christian heritage and archaeology. She holds a master's degree in Archaeology and Heritage from Leicester University in the U.K. She wrote her M.A. thesis on the subject of the presence of women in the archaeological record at the ancient site of Megiddo (the traditional site of Armageddon).
Books
Miriam's books include Daily Life at the Time of Jesus (2000, Palphot), an illustrated, lively, wide-ranging exploration of everyday life during Second Temple times, which has been translated into over 30 languages.
She has also authored Food at the Time of the Bible and Women at the Time of the Bible (both in 2007, by Palphot) and Teach it to Your Children: How Kids Lived in Bible Days (2012, Avimedia). Together with Eva Marie Everson, she wrote the award-winning Reflection of God's Holy Land: A personal Journey Through Israel (2008, Thomas Nelson).
Other works include Israel, Land of the Bible (2004, Palphot) and Pathways Through the Land of the Hart (1996, Gefen).
Miriam is on the editorial staff of the English edition of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. She is married to Arik, has two married daughters and three grandchildren, and lives near Jerusalem. (From the author.)
Visit Miriam's website.
Follow Miriam on Facebook.
Book Reviews
A special book that crosses the miles and the years. While Miriam Feinberg Vamosh weaves together an ancient story of community disunity, the book provides us with much to learn and apply to the challenges of contemporary community strife. This intriguing volume includes subtle textual references that provide the reader with insights into the daily lives of this historical Jewish people
Dr. Kerry M. Olitzky - Big Tent Judaism:
How can we possibly understand the present? How can we do better, be better, in the future if we don't know the past? In a story based on one woman's survival of Masada, Miriam Feinberg Vamosh has done what few writers can: bring the past to life, determined to make us all think: What would I do if ?? This story is not only for today's Jewish community, but for Christians as well so that we may all reflect on the meaning of the years that comprised the first century of our Common Era.
Eva Marie Everson - President, Word Weavers International; Best Selling, Award-winning Author
Discussion Questions
A Note from the Author:
The Scroll shows how ancient Jews and the first Christians responded to Rome’s heavy heel on the Holy Land around the time of Jesus. By reading this book, you’ll learn through the eyes of Miriam, a survivor of Masada, and her descendants about the cultures and beliefs of both faiths and how they faced some of their greatest challenges.
While writing the book, I placed myself in that time to discover how I might face those challenges. How would you? I believe there are important lessons for today’s Jews and Christians tucked within this story. As you read The Scroll on your own—or in your book club—I hope you’ll find the questions below thought-provoking and enriching.
Thematic Questions
1. Which group of people presented in The Scroll did you identify with the most and why—Pharisees, Sadducees, Rebels, or Early Christian Believers?
2. When Elazar decided to have his followers take their own lives, he may have thought they were the only Jews left on the face of the earth. Put yourself in Elazar’s sandals to imagine other reasons for him to decide as he did. Are there any circumstances in which you would consider his solution?
3. "The ancient Jewish sages ask, "Why was the first Sanctuary destroyed?" What is your answer?
4. Three [evil] things prevailed there: idolatry, immorality, and bloodshed. So why do you think the second Sanctuary was destroyed, seeing that in its time they were occupying themselves with Torah, [observance of] precepts and the practice of charity? Could it be that groundless hatred is considered even in gravity with the three sins of idolatry, immorality, and bloodshed?
5. The ancient Jewish sources also present a story epitomizing "baseless hatred" called "Kamza and Bar Kamza." You can download and read this story in the articles section of my website. Every year on the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction, the relevance today of "hatred without cause" or "baseless hatred" is discussed widely in Israel, even in opinion pieces in daily newspapers. How can this discussion be applied to your community or country?
Application Questions
1. Here are some junctions where characters in The Scroll acted or made fateful decisions. What were their other options? What would you have done differently?
- Mordechai of Tekoa rejects Miriam.
- Miriam decided to return to Judea.
- Jacobides rejects his son Menachem.
- Gabriel allows his daughter to leave with Samuel.
- The families of Ein Gedi follow Itamar and Rebecca to the caves.
2. Read my article on "baseless hatred" and the story of Kamza and Bar Kamza. The wealthy man in the feast was not the only "bad guy" in the story and it is not always action that leads to disastrous results. Sometimes it is inaction. Who do you think are the "bad guys" in The Scroll? What were their actions or inactions?
3. Find the places in The Scroll where early Christians interact with Jews. What do these encounters say about Christians at the time? What do they say about Jews?
4. What do you imagine happened to Judith and the baby after the book ends?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Sea
John Banville, 2005
Knopf Doubleday
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400097029
Summary
Winner, 2005 Man Booker Prize
In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife.
It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Benjamin Black
• Birth—December, 1945
• Where—Wexford, Ireland, UK
• Education—St. Peter's College, Wexford
• Awards—Booker Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland
John Banville is an Irish novelist and journalist. His novel The Book of Evidence (1989) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.
Banville is known for his precise and cold prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. His stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".
Background
Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties; his mother was a housewife. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.
Banville was educated at a Christian Brothers school and at St Peter's College in Wexford. Despite having intended to be a painter and an architect he did not attend university. Banville has described this as "A great mistake. I should have gone. I regret not taking that four years of getting drunk and falling in love. But I wanted to get away from my family. I wanted to be free."
After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply-discounted rates. He took advantage of this to travel in Greece and Italy. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at the Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970.
Early career
After the Irish Press collapsed in 1995, he became a sub-editor at the Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left.
Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990. In 1984, he was elected to the Irish arts association Aosdana, but resigned in 2001 so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the annuity. He described himself in an interview with Argentine paper La Nacíon, as a West Brit. Banville also writes hardboiled crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black, beginning with Christine Falls (2006).
Banville has two adult sons with his wife, the American textile artist Janet Dunham. They met during his visit to San Francisco in 1968 where she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Dunham described him during the writing process as being like "a murderer who's just come back from a particularly bloody killing". Banville has two daughters from his relationship with Patricia Quinn, former head of the Arts Council of Ireland.
Banville has a strong interest in animal rights, and is often featured in Irish media speaking out against vivisection in Irish university research.
His writing
Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of the English language, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling. David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls Banville "one of the great stylists writing in English today"; Don DeLillo called his work "dangerous and clear-running prose;" Val Nolan in the Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious" [10]; The Observer described his 1989 work, The Book of Evidence, as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Banville himself has admitted that he is "trying to blend poetry and fiction into some new form." He is also known for his dark humour, and sharp wit.
Banville has written two trilogies; "The Revolutions Trilogy", consisting of Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter and a second unnamed trilogy consisting of The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena.
Banville is highly scathing of all of his work, stating of his books "I hate them all ... I loathe them. They're all a standing embarrassment. Instead of dwelling on the past Banville is continually looking forward; "You have to crank yourself up every morning and think about all the awful stuff you did yesterday, and how how you can compensate for that by doing better today". He writes only about a hundred words a day for his literary novels, versus several thousand words a day for his Benjamin Black crime fiction. He appreciates his work as Black as a craft while as Banville he is an artist, though he does consider crime-writing, in his own words, as being "cheap fiction."
Banville is highly influenced by Heinrich von Kleist, having written adaptations of three of his plays (including Amphitrion) and having again used Amphitrion as a basis for his novel The Infinities. One of Banvilles earlier influences was James Joyce—"After I'd read the Dubliners, and was struck at the way Joyce wrote about real life, I immediately started writing bad imitations of the Dubliners."
Awards
Booker Prize, James Tail Black Memorial Prize, Irish Book Awards, Guiness Peat Aviation Award, Guardian Ficiton Award, Franz Kafka Prize, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Banville's achievement seems remarkable to me. Banville appears to be fining down his writing to the central impulse of all his mature work, which he stated long ago in the extravagant Gothic tale Birchwood : "We imagine that we remember things as they were, while in fact all we carry into the future are fragments which reconstruct a wholly illusory past. The first death we witness will always be a murmur of voices down a corridor and a clock falling silent in the darkened room, the end of love is forever two cigarettes in a saucer and a white door closing."
John Crowley - Washington Post
With his fastidious wit and exquisite style, John Banville is the heir to Nabokov.... The Sea [is] his best novel so far.
Sunday Telegraph (UK)
A gem.... [I]ts ceaseless undulations echoing constantly in the cadences of the prose. This novel shouldn't simply be read. It needs to be heard, for its sound is intoxicating.... A winning work of art.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Banville's novel, which won this year's Man Booker Prize, is narrated by an art historian, whose grief at the death of his wife has stalled his work on a "Big Book on Bonnard." In retreat at an Irish seaside town where he vacationed as a child, he sifts through memories of his entanglement with an upper-class family who stayed nearby. The plot is minimal; instead, the novel's drama takes place in Banville's remarkable imagery—a thunderstorm is "the sky stamping up and down in a fury, breaking its bones," and distant breakers are "like a hem being turned endlessly by a sleepy seamstress." Banville's technique generates a kind of supercharged sparseness, forcefully conveying the narrator's anguish, as he comes to an understanding that "we are defined and have our being through others" and must realign ourselves when those closest to us disappear.
The New Yorker
Banville’s language is captivating. Critics (unless you’re Michiko Kakutani, who found little to like) frequently compare his intricate, powerful imagery to that of Nabokov. It is the intense beauty of his language that allows readers to work through the often discomforting characters and stories he renders.
Bookmarks Magazine
(Starred review.) Irishman Banville's new book does more than simply explore a life. It explores life. This splendidly profound and beautifully written novel offers lessons aplenty about how the shadow of the past does not necessarily cast darkness over the present but certainly leaves its imprint.... In a word, this novel is brilliant. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
Banville's magnificent new novel, which won this year's Man Booker Prize and is being rushed into print by Knopf, presents a man mourning his wife's recent death—and his blighted life. "The past beats inside me like a second heart," observes Max Morden early on, and his return to the seaside resort where he lost his innocence gradually yields the objects of his nostalgia. Max's thoughts glide swiftly between the events of his wife's final illness and the formative summer, 50 years past, when the Grace family—father, mother and twins Chloe and Myles—lived in a villa in the seaside town where Max and his quarreling parents rented a dismal "chalet." Banville seamlessly juxtaposes Max's youth and age, and each scene is rendered with the intense visual acuity of a photograph ("the mud shone blue as a new bruise"). As in all Banville novels, things are not what they seem. Max's cruelly capricious complicity in the sad history that unfolds, and the facts kept hidden from the reader until the shocking denouement, brilliantly dramatize the unpredictability of life and the incomprehensibility of death. Like the strange high tide that figures into Max's visions and remembrances, this novel sweeps the reader into the inexorable waxing and waning of life.
Publishers Weekly
"I have carried the memory of that moment through a whole half century, as if it were the emblem of something final, precious and irretrievable," says the narrator of Banville's Booker Prize-winning novel of a relatively trivial moment. But when he recalls the mother and daughter whom he first loved as a barely pubescent child-whose presence pulled him out of the shadow of his paltry self-he observes, "The two figures in the scene, I mean Chloe and her mother, are all my own work." Memory, then, is the subject of this brief but magisterial work, a condensed teardrop of a novel that captures perfectly the essence of irretrievable longing. After the death of his wife, Max has retreated to the seashore where he spent his childhood summers, staying at an inn that was once the home of a magnificent, careless family called the Graces. It's as if reawakening the pain of his first, terrible loss-that high-strung and volatile Chloe-will ease his more recent loss. The novel is written in a complex, luminous prose that might strike some as occasionally overblown, and Chloe's final act didn't entirely persuade this reviewer. The result? A breathtaking but sometimes frustrating novel. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. The Sea is made up of three temporal layers: the distant past of Max’s childhood, the recent past of his wife’s illness and death, and the present of his return to Ballyless. Instead of keeping these layers distinctly separated, Banville segues among them or splices them together, sometimes within a single sentence. Why might he have chosen to do this, and what methods does he use to keep the reader oriented in his novel’s time scheme?
2. Morden frequently refers to the Graces as gods, and of course the original Graces were figures in classical mythology. What about these people makes them godlike? Does each of them possess some attribute that corresponds, for instance, to Zeus’s thunderbolt or Athena’s wisdom? What distinguishes the Graces from Max’s own unhappily human family? Are they still godlike at the novel’s end?
3. When Max first encounters the Graces, he hears from the upstairs of their house the sound of a girl laughing while being chased. What other scenes in the book feature chases, some playful, some not? Is Morden being chased? Or is he a pursuer? If so, who or what might he be pursuing?
4. Morden is disappointed, even “appalled” [p. 4], to find the Cedars physically unchanged from what it was when the Graces stayed there. Yet he is also disappointed that it contains no trace of its former occupants [p. 29]. What might explain his ambivalence? Has he come to Ballyless to relive his past or to be free of it? Given the shame and sadness that suffuses so much of his memory, how is one to interpret his sense of the past as a retreat [pp. 44–45]?
5. “How is it,” Maxwonders, “that in childhood everything new that caught my interest had an aura of the uncanny, since according to all the authorities the uncanny is not some new thing but a thing known returning in a different form, a revenant?” [p. 8]. What might account for this sense of déjà vu? What episodes in this novel seem to echo earlier ones, and are there moments when the past seems to echo the future, as if time were running backward? In this light, consider Max’s realization that his childhood visions of the future had “an oddly antique cast” [p. 70], as if “what I foresaw as the future was in fact . . . a picture of what could only be an imagined past” [p. 71].
6. How does Banville depict the other characters in this novel? To what extent are they, as Max suggests, partial constructs, as Connie Grace was “at once a wraith of my imagination and a woman of unavoidable flesh and blood” [p. 65]? Does Max’s voice, wry, self-reflexive, and resplendently vivid, give these characters an independent life or partially obscure them? Are there moments when they seem to peek out from beneath its blanket and show themselves to the reader?
7. Throughout the novel Max suffers from an overpowering, all-pervasive sense of guilt. Is this guilt justified? What are his crimes, or using another moral language, his sins? Has he managed to atone for any of his failures or redeem any of his spoiled relationships by the novel’s end? Is such redemption possible in this novel’s view of human nature?
8. On learning that she is fatally ill, both Max and Anna are overcome by something he recognizes as embarrassment, an embarrassment that extends even to the inanimate objects in their home. Why should death be embarrassing? Compare the grown Max’s shame about death to his childhood feelings about sex, both his sexual fantasies about Connie Grace and their subsequent fulfillment with her daughter.
9. Significantly, Max’s fantasies about Mrs. Grace reach a crescendo during an act of voyeurism. What role does watching play in Max’s sense of others? Has observing people been his substitute for engaging with them? How does he feel about other people watching him? And what are we to make of the fact that Max is constantly watching himself—sometimes watching himself watching others, in an infinite regress of surveillance and alienation?
10. Max is a poor boy drawn to a succession of wealthy women, culminating in his very wealthy wife. Was his attraction to them really a screen for social climbing? In loving Connie and Chloe and Anna, was he betraying his origins? Are there moments in this novel when those origins reassert themselves?
11. Why might Max have chosen the painter Bonnard as the subject for a book? What episodes from the painter’s life parallel his own or illuminate it metaphorically? Note the way the description of the Graces’ picnic recalls Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe. What other scenes in the novel allude to works of art or literature, and what is the effect?
12. The Sea has a triple climax that features two deaths and very nearly a third. In what ways are these deaths linked, and to what extent is Max responsible for them? Do you interpret his drunken night walk on the beach as an attempt at suicide? How does your perception of Max change in light of Miss Vavasour’s climactic revelation about the events that precipitated Chloe’s drowning?
13. Just as the critical trauma of Max’s life grew out of a misapprehension, so the entire novel is shrouded in a haze of unreliable narrative. Max’s memories are at once fanatically detailed and riddled with lapses. He freely admits that the people in his past are half real and half made up. “From earliest days I wanted to be someone else,” he tells us [p. 160], and a chance remark of his mother’s suggests that even his name may be false [p. 156]. Can we accept any part of his account as true? Are there moments in this novel in which reality asserts itself absolutely? What effect do these ambiguities have on your experience of The Sea?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, 1)
Amitav Ghosh, 2008
Macmillan Picador
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312428594
Summary
Turning his eye to the nineteenth-century opium trade, the acclaimed author Amitav Ghosh has crafted a novel that is by turns witty and provocative, while delivering a magnificent historical adventure. An intricate saga, Sea of Poppies brings together a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts, who have embarked on a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Opium Wars between Britain and China.
This panorama of characters, including a mulatto freedman from America, a bankrupt raja, a beautiful, free-spirited French orphan, a widowed tribeswoman, and other disparate members of society, brings to life a period of colonial upheaval that caused seismic cultural shifts throughout the globe.
The events transpiring aboard the Ibis (a former slave ship) provide a rich tapestry of a time when the world stood poised to witness some of the most profound destruction—and most sweeping liberation—in the history of humanity. From the lush poppy fields of the Ganges to the crowded backstreets of Canton, across a rolling high sea that beckons throughout the narrative, this is a portrait of fateful events you will not soon forget. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Where—Kolkata, India
• Education—St. Stephen's College, Deli; Delhi University;
Ph.D., Oxford University.
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in New York City; Kolkata and Goa, India
Amitv Ghosh is the internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Glass Palace, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Ghosh divides his time between Kolkata and Goa, India, and Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)
More
Ghosh was born in Kolkata (Calcutta) and was educated at The Doon School; St. Stephen's College, Delhi; Delhi University; and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology.
Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan.
He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh has recently purchased a property in Goa and is returning to India.
Sea of Poppies (2008), the first installment of a planned trilogy, is an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. The second in the trilogy, River of Smoke, was published in 2011.
His previous novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), In an Antique Land (1992), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). Ghosh's fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with postcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements into more serious themes.
In addition to his novels, Ghosh has written The Imam and the Indian (2002), a large collection of essays on different themes such as fundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature).
In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.
Amitav Ghosh's literary awards include:
• Prix Medicis Etranger (French; for Circle of Reason)
• Sahitya Akademic and Ananda Pursaskar Awards (Indian;
for The Shadow Lines)
• Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK; for The Calcutta Chromosome)
• Grand Prize-Fiction, Frankfurt International e-Book Awards
(for The Glass Palace)
• Hutch Crossword Book Prize (Indian; for The Hungry Tide)
• Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italian)
• Shortlisted for Man Booker (UK; for Sea of Poppies)
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
During the course of this novel, the first installment in his projected "Ibis Trilogy," Mr. Ghosh turns the ship into something robustly, bawdily and indelibly real…home to Mr. Ghosh's sparkling array of eccentrics, blowhards, runaway lovers and people seeking new leases on life.... Sea of Poppies works well as a free-standing novel. But it also lays the groundwork for Mr. Ghosh's larger project. By the time this book ends, the reader has been caught up in a plot of Dickensian intricacy, the Ibis readied for whatever its mission may be, and the characters firmly enveloped in new, self-created identities.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
One does not need the impressive bibliography of sources at the end to be struck by the wealth of period detail the author commands. His descriptions bring a lost world to life, from the evocatively imagined opium factory, the intricacies of women's costumes and the lovingly enumerated fare on the opulent dining tables of the era, to the richly detailed descriptions of the Ibis and its journey. At times, Sea of Poppies reads like a cross between an Indian Gone with the Wind and a Victorian novel of manners. And yet Ghosh has managed a sharp reversal of perspective. His ship, with the author's fine feel for nautical niceties, sails in Joseph Conrad territory, through waters since romanticized by the likes of James Clavell. But whereas those writers and so many others placed the white man at the center of their narratives, Ghosh relegates his British colonists to the margins of his story, giving pride of place to the neglected subjects of the imperial enterprise: colonialism's impoverished, and usually colored, victims…his novel is also a delight. I can't wait to see what happens to these laborers and seamen, the defrocked raja and the transgendered mystic in the next volume.
Shashi Tharoor - Washington Post
Rich and panoramic, Amitav Ghosh's latest novel—the first of a promised trilogy—sees this Indian author on masterly form.... Sea of Poppies is a sprawling adventure with a cast of hundreds and numerous intricate stories encompassing poverty and riches, despair and hope, and the long-fingered reach of the opium trade.... Lustrous.
The Economist
India in the 1830s is wonderfully evoked—the smells, rituals and squalor.... Coarseness and violence, cruelty and fatalism, are relieved with flashes of emotion and kindness. This is no anti-colonial rant or didactic tableau but the story of men and women of all races and castes, cooped up on a voyage across the 'Black Water' that strips them of dignity and ends in storm, neither in despair nor resolution. It is profoundly moving.
Michael Binyon - Times (London)
Ghosh's best and most ambitious work yet is an adventure story set in nineteenth-century Calcutta against the backdrop of the Opium Wars. On the Ibis, a ship engaged in transporting opium across the Bay of Bengal, varied life stories converge. A fallen raja, a half-Chinese convict, a plucky American sailor, a widowed opium farmer, a transgendered religious visionary are all united by the "smoky paradise" of the opium seed. Ghosh writes with impeccable control, and with a vivid and sometimes surprising imagination: a woman's tooth protrudes "like a tilted gravestone"; an opium addict's writhing spasms are akin to "looking at a pack of rats squirming in a sack"; the body of a young man is "a smoking crater that had just risen from the ocean and was still waiting to be explored."
The New Yorker
(Starred review.) Diaspora, myth and a fascinating language mashup propel the Rubik's cube of plots in Ghosh's picaresque epic of the voyage of the Ibis, a ship transporting Indian girmitiyas (coolies) to Mauritius in 1838. The first two-thirds of the book chronicles how the crew and the human cargo come to the vessel, now owned by rising opium merchant Benjamin Burnham. Mulatto second mate Zachary Reid, a 20-year-old of Lord Jim–like innocence, is passing for white and doesn't realize his secret is known to the gomusta (overseer) of the coolies, Baboo Nob Kissin, an educated Falstaffian figure who believes Zachary is the key to realizing his lifelong mission. Among the human cargo, there are three fugitives in disguise, two on the run from a vengeful family and one hoping to escape from Benjamin. Also on board is a formerly high caste raj who was brought down by Benjamin and is now on his way to a penal colony. The cast is marvelous and the plot majestically serpentine, but the real hero is the English language, which has rarely felt so alive and vibrant.
Publishers Weekly
Deeti has a vision of the former slave ship long before she spies its sails billowing up the Ganges, intuiting that her fate will inexplicably be tied to this vessel. In fact, the Ibis represents a microcosm of the Middle East during the 19th century, carrying a crew of displaced pilgrims to resettlement in Mauritius, where their lives may no longer be circumscribed by caste, religion, or ancestry. Learning how these disparate characters—a Bengali widow, a French orphan, a deposed rajah, and an American freedman among them—come to be on the Ibis will require some fortitude from readers, who may be distracted by the author's fascination with word origins and liberal use of colloquial forms of speech. A prolific author, anthropologist, and past recipient of an ALA Notable Book Award, Ghosh (The Hungry Tide) offers history buffs a devastating and well-researched look at the business of opium manufacturing, along with the politics that led to the Opium Wars between China and Great Britain. Unfortunately, this first entry in a proposed trilogy is uneven, trying to combine historical fiction with a comedy of manners, a maritime adventure, and a treatise on class/gender discrimination and ending abruptly with no resolution for those who may not want to wait for the sequel. For larger public library collections.
Library Journal
A historical novel crammed almost to the bursting point with incidents and characters, but Ghosh (The Hungry Tide, 2005, etc.) deftly keeps everything under control. It's 1838, and Britain is set on maintaining the opium trade between India and China as a buttress of its economic, political and cultural power. Ghosh orchestrates his polyphonic saga with a composer's fine touch. He lays out multiple narrative lines, initially separate, that eventually conjoin on the Ibis, a schooner bound from Calcutta to China across the much-feared "Black Water." Neel, the sophisticated raja of Raskhali, is convicted of a trumped-up forgery charge. Kalua, a prodigiously strong member of the lower caste, rescues the higher-caste Deeti from ritual burning on the death of her egregious husband. Paulette, a feisty French orphan, stows away on the Ibis to escape the restricted life of a white woman in India. It also might have something to do with the attractions of Zachary Reid, the ship's mixed-race second mate from Baltimore. He's commanded by brutal first mate Jack Crowle, who has no sympathy for anyone of any color, and by Captain Chillingworth, who warns passengers and crew, "at sea there is another law, and...on this vessel I am its sole maker." Ghosh could be accused of using coincidence a bit too freely, but a more charitable view will judge the inevitability of these characters' intertwinings as karma—and part of the pleasure of reading the novel. The density of settings, from rural India to teeming Calcutta to the Sudder Opium Factory, is historically convincing, and the author pays close attention to variations in speech, from the clipped formality of the educated class to a patois ("the kubber is that his cuzzanah is running out") that definitely requires the glossary that Ghosh provides. Planned as the first of a trilogy, this astonishing, mesmerizing launch will be hard to top.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss how the relationships between the various classes of people aboard the Ibis change throughout the novel. To what extent does the caste system affect these relationships? Which characters undergo the most significant changes?
2. How are women's roles different from men's in Sea of Poppies? What common ground do Deeti, Paulette, and Munia share?
3. What does the Ibis represent to Zachary at various points in the novel? How does his perception of the ship change as his perception of himself changes?
4. Many of the lives Ghosh depicts are shaped by social and political forces beyond their control. What are some of these forces? Describe some of the individual acts of bravery, defiance, or deception that enable his characters to break free from what they see as their fate.
5. How do those involved in the opium trade, from British factory owners to frontline harvesters, justify their work in Sea of Poppies? How does their industry compare to modern-day drug trafficking versus the pharmaceutical industry?
6. When Mr. Burnham gives religious instruction to Paulette, what does he reveal about his mindset in general? How does he balance his shame with his attitudes toward suffering, including his notion that slavery somehow yields freedom?
7. Discuss the power of love as it motivates the characters. Does obsession strengthen or weaken Baboo Nob Kissin? What kind of love is illustrated when Deeti gives up her child? What kinds of love does Neel experience in the presence of his loyal wife and his fickle mistress?
8. What gives Neel the ability to endure Alipore Jail and his subsequent voyage? Does he feel genuine compassion for his cell mate, or is he simply trying to make conditions more livable for himself? Ultimately, who is to blame for Neel's conviction?
9. How did Paulette's free-spirited upbringing serve her later in life? What advantages and disadvantages did she have?
10. What does Zachary teach Jodu about loyalty and survival? How is trust formed among the suspicious Ibis crew?
11. To what degree is Mr. Crowle powerless? What does the future hold for those who defied him?
12. Which historical aspects of the Opium Wars surprised you the most? What did you discover about colonial India by reading Sea of Poppies?
13. Sea of Poppies makes rich use of Asian-influenced English. Some of the words, such as bandanna, loot, and dinghy, are still used frequently, but many others, like bankshall, wanderoo, and chawbuck, are now rare, although they were once common and are included in The Oxford English Dictionary. Discuss the "Ibis Chrestomathy," which appears at the end of the book. What do Neel's observations suggest about language and culture? Why do you think some words disappear from usage, while others endure? Can a culture's vitality be measured by how eagerly its language absorbs outside influences?
14. In an interview with TheBookseller.com, Ghosh stated that "oil is the opium of today." Do you agree or disagree?
15. How does Sea of Poppies reflect themes you have observed in Amitav Ghosh's previous works? What new issues does he explore in this novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Sea Wife
Amity Gaige, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525656494
Summary
From the highly acclaimed author of Schroder, a smart, sophisticated page literary page-turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a yearlong sailing trip that upends all of their lives.
Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat.
With their two kids—Sybil, age seven, and George, age two—Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them.
The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea.
Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve—until they are tested by the unforeseen.
Sea Wife is told in gripping dual perspectives:
Juliet’s first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea;
Michael’s captain’s log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions.
Sea Wife is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in West Hartford, Connecticut
Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007), and Schroder (2013), and Sea Wife (2020).
Schroder, Gaige's third novel, was short-listed for the Folio Prize in 2014. Published in eighteen countries, it was named one of best books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Cosmopolitan, Denver Post, Buffalo News, and Publisher's Weekly, among others.
Gaige is the recipient of many awards for her other novels, including Foreword Book of the Year Award for 2007; and in 2006, she was named one of the "5 Under 35" outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation.
She has a Fulbright and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, Literary Review, Yale Review, and One Story. She lives in Connecticut with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Gaige has been towing you to tragedy with the graceful crawl of a poet and the motorboat intensity of a suspense author.… [She] tells the story of a family adrift, spun so thoroughly and vigorously out of their comfort zone that they eventually lose sight of the horizon. Finding out how… makes you appreciate the firm, familiar ground under your feet.
Jennifer Egan - New York Times Book Review
Sea Wife is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage. It nods to, but does not fully embrace, the conventions of suspense…. To Gaige’s credit, the final resolution of the Partlow’s differences is achieved in a fashion that even the most sharp-eyed reader won’t be able to spot.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
Gaige here fractures a single, suspenseful plot into… two first-person narratives…. Cutting between storylines generates narrative suspense…. Gaige is a superb maritime writer. She writes beautifully about water and sky… [and] makes sailing seem both an existential drama (when a storm hits, it’s like Lear on the heath) and a complex technical enterprise.
Boston Globe
Gaige's razor-sharp novel is wise to marital and broader politics. But it's also such gripping escapism that it feels like a lifeboat.
People
Cuts to the heart of mundane marital strife and the legacy of trauma.
Elle
(Starred review) [A] splendid, wrenching novel…. Gaige balances …a profound depiction of the weight of depression and the pains of a complicated relationship. Every element of this impressive novel clicks into a dazzling, heartbreaking whole.
Publishers Weekly
This book's unusual structure is effective once you figure out what Gaige is up to. There are multiple layers to explore for… literary scholars or a… book club, as Gaige has much to say about… marriage, particularly in our current political/cultural climate. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
[T]he challenges of two people finding themselves on opposite ends of the political spectrum to Juliet’s depression, which leads her to give up on her dissertation, and the challenges of life at sea, this surprising novel is stunning and deep.
Booklist
Gaige sometimes strains to keep the couple’s parrying going… and a late-breaking murder mystery that feels tacked-on. None of which sinks the story, but it does dampen its power. A powerful if sometimes wayward take on a marriage on the rocks.
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 SEA WIFE … then take off on your own:
1. What is wrong with this marriage? What pulls Juliet and Michael together … and what drives them apart?
2. Why does Michael decide to embark on the sailing adventure? What does he hope the sea voyage will accomplish, for himself, for Juliet, and for their marriage?
3. The novel's first sentence is a question posed by Juliet: "Did my mistake begin with the boat? Or my marriage itself?" What do you think—the boat, the marriage … or something else entirely?
4. Juliet is a complex woman: how would you describe her? Talk about the childhood trauma that continues to haunt her? What role does it play in her marriage, in her overall life?
5. Talk about Michael's political grievances. How do they affect the marriage?
6. What insights does Juliet gain by reading through Michael's log?
7. Did you revel, along with the Partlows, in the early part of the journey, once the the family got its sea legs? What might you have found particularly enchanting?
7. Once the weather and the Partlows' lack of experience catches up with them, did you wonder what they were doing on a 44-foot boat—with their little children—to begin with?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Searching for Tina Turner
Jacqueline E. Luckett
Grand Central Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446542951
Summary
On the surface, Lena Spencer appears to have it all. She and her wealthy husband Randall have two wonderful children, and they live a life of luxury. In reality, however, Lena finds that happiness is elusive. Randall is emotionally distant, her son has developed a drug habit, and her daughter is disgusted by her mother's "overbearing behavior."
When Randall decides that he's had enough of marriage counseling, he offers his wife an ultimatum: "Be grateful for all I've done for you or leave." Lena, realizing that money can't solve her problems and that her husband is no longer the man she married, decides to choose the latter. Drawing strength from Tina Turner's life story, Searching for Tina Turner is Lena's struggle to find herself after 25 years of being a wife and mother. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jacqueline Luckett is a former sales representative for Xerox. After leaving the corporate world, Jacqueline took a creative writing class on a dare (from herself) and began writing short stories and poetry and never looked back.
Jacqueline loves living in Oakland, California, but travels frequently to nurture her passion for photography and learning to cook exotic foods. She is currently hard at work on her next novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Fiftyish Lena Spencer asks, "What's love got to do with it?" when a midlife crisis forces her to make a choice between her current comfort as the wife of a wealthy but distant husband and the dream of opening a photo gallery she gave up 26 years ago. The road to self-discovery is frightening and painful, as Lena risks losing the love and affection of her family and friends in order to regain her faded self-respect. Using singer Tina Turner's bold journey to independence and success as an inspiration, Lena pushes herself to discover the peace of mind for which so many often hunger. Readers are left to question whether true happiness is defined by the life that we experience or the dream that burns within us. Verdict: Readers relishing a quick and entertaining read will be disappointed, but fans of Terry McMillan's insightful dissections of love and life will appreciate debut novelist Luckett's similar writing style. —Lisa Jones, Birmingham P.L., AL
Library Journal
In her debut novel Luckett delivers a strong, likable heroine who comes through her crisis by recognizing her true worth and empowering herself. Luckett’s triumphant tale will rally readers of all backgrounds. —Patty Engelmann
Booklist
Wealthy California matron in midlife crisis uses the veteran entertainer as her role model in Luckett's debut. While husband Randall is on an extended business trip, Lena stews in their Oakland mansion and reads Tina's autobiography about life after Ike. Randall is no abusive Ike Turner. But he is a self-absorbed businessman who won't go back to marriage counseling and has told Lena to figure out on her own what she wants. Lena put her ambitions as a photographer on hold in order to support Randall in his climb up the corporate ladder. Now he takes her for granted and can't understand why she doesn't appreciate the expensive lifestyle he's provided. She tells him: She wants his attention, not his gifts (although readers might notice she does seem to relish the expensive trappings described in loving detail). When Randall gets home, the marriage goes from bad to worse. He may or may not be fooling around with his assistant, but he definitely resents what he considers Lena's disloyalty as much as she resents his high-handed arrogance. When the two separate, their bratty college-age kids are with Randall all the way. Soon Lena is comfortably ensconced in her new luxury apartment with a dream gallery job starting in two weeks. She takes off for southern France, hoping to meet Tina and see her perform in concert. Wouldn't you know it, shortly after arriving in Nice she runs into an old flame at the hotel pool. Years ago, Harmon chose another woman and has regretted it ever since. Soon he's wining, dining and bedding Lena—not to mention proposing. When Randall shows up, full of apologies, she is understandably torn. Then she learns that her beloved mother has died and cuts her trip short. Even though Lena never actually sees Tina Turner perform, her self-affirming spirit carries the day. The fact that the characters happen to be African-American adds nothing to this standard woman's empowerment romance.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the beginning of SFTT, Lena is scattered and no longer able to manage her life. Were there other ways that Lena could have maintained balance in her life? If she had, do you think her marriage would have fallen apart?
2. What can a younger woman gain from Lena’s experience? Does age have anything to do with Lena’s situation?
3. Lena chose one aspect of Tina Turner’s life as a role model for strength. Were there other aspects of Tina’s life that helped her as well?
4. Are role models important? Who are your role models? How have their lives inspired you?
5. What lessons can women learn from Lena’s experience?
6. Lena chose to leave the life she and Randall built together. What other ways can women regain “self” without giving up what they worked so hard to gain?
7. Lena and Randall talk to their children separately about their divorce. If the four of them had discussed the situation together, do you think Kendrick and Camille would have been less bitter toward Lena?
8. Lena tries to explain how she feels about her life to Camille. Can Lena be a role model for Camille? What is it about her mother that Camille should be proud of ?
9. Why do you think that Candace comes to Lena’s aid at the dinner party? What did Lena learn about friendship from that situation?
10. When Lena picks up Randall from the airport, what could each have done differently to connect with the other? Or was their marriage already over?
11. Lulu offers this advice to Lena: " make it enough. Make it enough to last until death do you part. I hope you’re not thinking about doing something foolish. There’s no way you could live like you do without Randall." Given the generational difference between the two women, what could Lena take from this advice and pass on to Camille?
12. Do you think that Randall was aware that his best friend was flirting with his wife? If so, why didn't he do anything about it?
13. If Lena understood the differences between her and Cheryl, why do you think Lena agreed to go with her to France?
14. How do the differences between Cheryl and Lena help Lena? What does Lena learn from Cheryl?
15. What does Lena learn from her relationship with Harmon? Is he good for her?
16. Lena forgives Harmon for past behavior. Is there an old flame in your past like Harmon? What would it take for you to reconnect with that person?
17. Did Lena do anything that hints to what her future with Harmon could be?
18. What does Bobbie’s support mean to Lena? What are the differences between the sisters?
19. Why do you think Bobbie decided to visit Lulu?
20. What, if anything, did Bobbie learn from Lena?
21. If Lena had gone with Randall in Paris, would he have accepted the “new” Lena? How would the two of them have reconciled the changes in Lena?
22. If Lena had accepted Randall’s offer in Paris and reunited with him, do you think she would have fallen back into the pattern of their old relationship?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead, 2012
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307743954
Summary
Maggie Shipstead’s irresistible social satire, set on an exclusive New England island over a wedding weekend in June, provides a deliciously biting glimpse into the lives of the well-bred and ill-behaved.
Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be overrun by tipsy revelers as Winn prepares for the marriage of his daughter Daphne to the affable young scion Greyson Duff.
Winn’s wife, Biddy, has planned the wedding with military precision, but arrangements are sideswept by a storm of salacious misbehavior and intractable lust: Daphne’s sister, Livia, who has recently had her heart broken by Teddy Fenn, the son of her father’s oldest rival, is an eager target for the seductive wiles of Greyson’s best man; Winn, instead of reveling in his patriarchal duties, is tormented by his long-standing crush on Daphne’s beguiling bridesmaid Agatha; and the bride and groom find themselves presiding over a spectacle of misplaced desire, marital infidelity, and monumental loss of faith in the rituals of American life.
Hilarious, keenly intelligent, and commandingly well written, Shipstead’s deceptively frothy first novel is a piercing rumination on desire, on love and its obligations, and on the dangers of leading an inauthentic life, heralding the debut of an exciting new literary voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1983
• Where—Orange County, California, USA
• Education—M.A. Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Stegner Fellowship
• Currently—Not sure where she lives (but is open to suggestions).
Maggie Shipstead was born in 1983 and grew up in Orange County, California. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House, VQR, Glimmer Train, The Best American Short Stories, and other publications. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead's smart and frothy debut novel, is set on a perfect John Cheever island—the kind where old-money families gather to drink gin and nurture loyalties. Beneath the surface of this summery romp, however, lie animosities, well-paced sexual suspense and a clash between appearances and authenticity…. Frequent shifts in point of view give the book a waltzlike rhythm, with beats of startling beauty.
Dylan Landis — New York Times Book Review
At just 28 years old, Shipstead captures the bride's forlorn sister in all her wounded disappointments…What's more surprising is Shipstead's unnerving insight into the comic-tragedy of middle-aged men, that mixture of smothered envy, aspiration and lust that mutates into irritated superiority…. The sea breeze blowing through Seating Arrangements is Shipstead's affection for these spoiled people, her tender handling of their sorrows and longings, which you'll respond to even if you don't summer on Nantucket. She's already producing the kind of humane comedy we expect from Richard Russo and Elinor Lipman…. Shipstead's weave of wit and observation continually delights.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
This is one of those rare debut novels that neither forsakes plot for language nor language for plot. It is gratifying on every scale…. The novel is teeming with the sort of casual philosophizing that encourages passage-underlining and earnest recommendation.”
Boston Globe
Seating Arrangements delightfully and poignantly upends the WASP idyll, poking holes into the studiously shabby carpets to reveal the limitations of a privileged world that revolves around the same plummy prep-school pedigrees, club memberships and summer havens…through prose that sparkles while it slays.
USA Today
This debut answers the question of whether the rich are different from you and me. The answer is yes, because we wouldn't be caught dead in slacks with whales embroidered on them. Like so many recent movie comedies, the novel takes us into the home—and then the summer home—of a wealthy New England family in the days leading up to a daughter's wedding. We have misbehaving bridesmaids and the bumbling father of the bride, who, in this case, is lusting after one of the bridesmaids. Oh, and the bride is seven months pregnant. But never mind that, her father is beside himself because he can't get a membership in the local country club. The characters are an accumulation of over-the-top WASP-like traits: Harvard educations, social clubs, old money, bigotry, family secrets, and funny nicknames like Winn and Biddy. Shipstead's yeoman prose describes the family's mishaps in cinemagraphic detail. Verdict: A hilarious, if somewhat tasteless, escapist read.—Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
Zestful yet acerbic…for all its madcap quirkiness, Shipstead’s adroit escapade artfully delivers a poignant reflection on the enduring if frustrating nature of love, hope, and family.
Booklist
New England blue bloods suffer through three days of wedding festivities in Shipstead's debut, a bleak comedy of manners—think a modern-day Edith Wharton on downers. Winn Van Meter (Deerfield, Harvard), a banker apparently oblivious to the recession, and his stoic wife Biddy (ancestors on the Mayflower) are throwing a wedding for daughter Daphne (Deerfield, Princeton).... The one outsider, bridesmaid Dominique (Deerfield, U. of Mich., but Egyptian!!), observes their escapades with a jaundiced eye. Despite Shipstead's flair for language and scene setting, her characters are worse than cartoonishly unlikable—they are, with the exception of Dominique, yawn-provokingly uninteresting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends / Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. / And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors; / Departed, have left no addresses.” This is the novel’s epigraph, from “The Wasteland,” T. S. Eliot’s epic poem of ruin and desolation. How does this verse relate to Seating Arrangements? Why has the author elected to place it at the front of her novel?
2. Winn is obsessed with status, with matters of appearance and pedigree and joining all the right clubs. What do you think the author thinks of Winn? What did you think of him? Is he sympathetic? Does your view of him change over the course of the novel? Do you think Winn himself changes or grows over the course of the novel?
3. How is Daphne different from her father? Is her world view different or is it the same? How do Daphne’s and Livia’s values differ?
4. Discuss Dominique’s role in Seating Arrangements. How is she different from the other characters in the novel, and how does this alter the reader’s perspective?
5. Discuss the scene where the whale explodes. What do you think the whale symbolizes for the author? What do you think the explosion is meant to dramatize or represent?
6. On page 164, Biddy draws herself a bath and spends a quiet moment reflecting on her predicament and her marital expectations after Winn’s inescapably obvious attentions to Agatha following her fall from the deck. “The obviousness was what she could not tolerate. She had known what she was when she married him, had expected to be the kind of wife who looked the other way from time to time, but she had also expected him to be discreet. And he had been. She assumed there had been other women, but she had never come across any evidence of them, which was all she asked. A simple request, she had thought: cheap repayment for her forbearance, her realism, her tolerance. At times his discretion had been so complete she had allowed herself to believe maybe there hadn’t been others, but she didn’t like to risk being foolish enough to believe in something as unlikely as her husband’s fidelity.” What is Biddy’s view of marriage? Does the author share this view? Do you? Is fidelity essential to a good marriage? What exactly is a good marriage, in your view? In Shipstead’s?
7. Aunt Celeste brings levity, acerbic wit, and a rather dark personal history to a host of subjects that are often treated sanctimoniously, among them, romantic love and the possibility of living happily ever after. What is Celeste’s contribution to the Van Meter family, and to the novel as a whole? What is your opinion of her? The author’s?
8. In what way does the Duff family differ from the Van Meter family? How are they aware of their differences, whether social, financial, or historical? Do you think the author is pointing out their differences primarily, or their similarities?
9. On page 170, Winn recollects a story he was told one night at the Vespasian, while still a young man, about his grandfather’s inheritance. How is this story significant, and how has it informed the truths and myths of his family history?
10. In chapter eleven, Livia and Francis have a fascinating conversation in which the author provides several nuanced reflections on varieties of love: maternal, filial, familial, romantic. How do these ruminations embody—or shape—our perception of love and its obligations, in the world of Seating Arrangements and in the world at large?
11. Following the aforementioned conversation, Francis says to Livia, “Another reason I like you is that I think we have similar roles in our families. We’re the critical ones. We represent a threat to their way of life, a new order.” What does he mean? How, in particular, might Livia be perceived as a threat to her family’s way of life? Is she more or less of an iconoclast than her aunt Celeste?
12. Discuss the debacle of Winn’s bridal toast in which he equates marriage with death. Do you think the author intends the reader to perceive this as farcical or tragic?
13. Look at the end of chapter seventeen, which closes with Livia listening to her parents in their bedroom and the line, “Their door shut behind them, and she heard the murmur of their voices, the unknowable language they spoke only to each other.” How does this recast our sense of Winn and Biddy’s marriage?
14. Discuss the epilogue and, in particular, the final image of Daphne and Winn dancing. What note does the author strike at the novel’s conclusion? How has the novel, and the family, recovered from its various catastrophes and regained its balance after the tawdriness of the events that preceded it and the spectacularly deflating effect of the patriarch’s wedding toast? Is this a happy ending? Do you think the author intends it to be so?
15. Is it surprising, given the novel’s themes and its central voice—an older, patrician male—to discover that its author is a twenty-eight-year-old woman? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Second Home
Christina Clancy, 2020
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250239341
Summary
Some places never leave you...
After a disastrous summer spent at her family’s home on Cape Cod when she is seventeen, Ann Gordon is very happy to never visit Wellfleet again.
If only she’d stayed in Wisconsin, she might never have met Anthony Shaw, and she would have held onto the future she’d so carefully planned for herself.
Instead, Ann ends up harboring a devastating secret that strains her relationship with her parents, sends her sister Poppy to every corner of the world chasing waves (and her next fling), and leaves her adopted brother Michael estranged from the family.
Now, fifteen years later, her parents have died, and Ann and Poppy are left to decide the fate of the beach house that’s been in the Gordon family for generations.
For Ann, the once-beloved house is forever tainted with bad memories. And while Poppy loves the old saltbox on Drummer Cove, owning a house means settling, and she’s not sure she’s ready to stay in one place.
Just when the sisters decide to sell, Michael re-enters their lives with a legitimate claim to a third of the estate. He wants the house. But more than that, he wants to set the record straight about what happened that long-ago summer that changed all of their lives forever.
As the siblings reunite after years apart, their old secrets and lies, longings and losses, are pulled to the surface. Is the house the one thing that can still bring them together––or will it tear them apart, once and for all?
Told through the shifting perspectives of Ann, Poppy, and Michael, this assured and affecting debut captures the ache of nostalgia for summers past and the powerful draw of the places we return to again and again.
It is about second homes, second families, and second chances. Tender and compassionate, incisive and heartbreaking, The Second Home is the story of a family you'll quickly fall in love with, and won't soon forget. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Education—Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Currently—lives in Madison, Wisconsin
Christina Clancy grew up Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and summered in her grandparents' home in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The Second Home is her first novel; her second is on the way.
Clancy's work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Sun Magazine and in various literary journals, including Glimmer Train, Pleiades and Hobart. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] florid, beach-ready debut…. While the Shaw characters can be disappointingly flat in a way that borders on cartoonish, Clancy’s affectionate descriptions of Wellfleet are transporting. This is sure to be a favorite with book clubs.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) A riveting family saga…, Clancy's debut novel is a delight. With nostalgia as thick as the scent of coconut-scented sunscreen, The Second Home explores the consequences of emotional decisions and the strength needed to set things right.
Booklist
Clancy’s novel rests heavily on… a not-entirely-solid structure that raises questions of credibility…. While matters head toward not unexpected resolutions, the immersiveness of this holiday read remains hobbled by cool characters and an implausible plot.
Kirkus Reviews
[A] pitch-perfect summer novel with a scintillating combination of drama, heart and lovely prose that will stay with you long into autumn…. Masterfully plotted…, The Second Home is a riveting and dark family saga.
Bookreporter
Discussion Questions
1. "Cape Cod felt like a hazy dream the rest of the year, a place suspended forever in beach days filled with sunshine and warmth" (1). Do you have a place from your younger years that inhabits your memory in this way? How does the youthful memory compare to the reality?
2. "Upon returning to their home in Wellfleet, Ann felt her parents’ radiant energy in everything she saw as she paced the house to stay warm: the chipped wine glass left in the sink, the sloppily folded beach towels and stained pillowcases, in her mother’s cookbooks, her father’s telescope, even in the bulb digger where they’d always hidden the skeleton key that unlocked the back door" (1). Imagine walking into a house—what would "tell" of your own parents, what would signal that they were the most recent inhabitants? When you are gone, what objects might reflect your presence?
3. "It smelled like rotten eggs at low tide, but that was a smell she loved in the same primal way that she’d loved the smell of Noah’s sweet bald head when he was a baby… every molecule in her body seemed to change" (3). What senses are activated by a special place or person? What powers can smell have?
4. How do each of the Gordon children explore and deal with the loss of their parents? Did you consider any of their reactions healthy or unique?
5. Michael’s background is very different from that of Ann and Poppy. What intense experiences has he already had before joining the Gordon family? What misconceptions did outsiders hold about what Michael might bring into their lives?
6. "She loved Michael, so why did she feel so selfish? She wanted to tell Michael that the house was theirs, and summer was her time with her father." (45) Can you track Poppy’s emotions in this adolescent outburst? What is she wrestling with here? How do Ann’s complicated feelings toward Michael manifest over the course of the novel?
7. What role does family—the ones we’re born into and the ones we create—serve? What are some assumptions w emight make about families like the Shaws?
8. "He signed quickly, before he could change his mind. And just like that, he became a nobody" (138). What does this mean, for Michael to become a "nobody"? Did you feel empathy for Michael’s choice? Which adults could have handled the situation differently?
9. "Just look at us. One of your kids is missing, the other is a burn out, and I’m a teenage mom. Great job, you guys"(153)! What did you make of the Gordon family? Are their secrets and struggles commonplace?
10. The Shaw family is, on its surface, quite different from the Gordons. Do they share any similarities? Did you feel sympathy for Maureen? What about for the Shaw boys?
11. Discuss the role and impact of secrets in this novel. Are they inherently destructive, or are some secrets worth keeping? Why do Ann and Michael hold on to their secrets, and why is Connie’s illness not openly shared with Poppy?
12. How is Anthony able to manipulate both Ann and Michael? What kind of power does he hold over each of them?
13. "She felt like a part of her drowned in that pond" (110). As a reader, what was it like to read Ann’s rape scene and the unraveling that followed? Why does Ann blame herself for what happened that night, and everything that came after?
14. "Poppy was the victim of collateral damage" (267). Discuss Poppy’s trajectory from unsupervised teen with risky behaviors to globe-traveling yoga teacher and commitment phobe, to mother. What makes Poppy resist responsibility and returning home? What changes for her?
15. In what ways do children and grandchildren change the dynamics of a family?
16. How does Ann’s confrontation of Anthony affect her? Discuss the emotion and drama of this scene, and the impact on you as a reader. Did this meeting play out as you expected?
17. Explore what Wellfleet means to each of the main characters in the novel—what did it represent for Connie and Ed, for Michael and, ultimately, for the sisters? Why are they drawn to it? What are they nostalgic for?
18. "We should have figured this out. Should have assumed the best about each other, not the worst." (330) Why is Ann so late to forgive or welcome Michael back into her life? In what specific ways did they each feel betrayed?
19. "Is that what houses really were, containers for families? And once the containers were gone, the people inside were just set loose in the world, particles" (239). A theme throughout the novel is that houses hold our histories. How does this play out on the page, and has it proven true in your life?
20. "It was still theirs, still in the family, still vulnerable to the elements, still requiring upkeep. It was an anchor, yes ,but one that held her in place" (337). How is a house an "anchor" and what does that mean for these characters moving forward?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
The Second Mrs. Hockaday
Susan Rivers, 2017
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616205812
Summary
All I had known for certain when I came around the hen house that first evening in July and saw my husband trudging into the yard after lifetimes spent away from us, a borrowed bag in his hand and the shadow of grief on his face, was that he had to be protected at all costs from knowing what had happened in his absence. I did not believe he could survive it.
When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride Placidia is left to care for her husband’s three-hundred-acre farm and infant son.
A mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, Placida must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his absence and murdering it. What really transpired in the two years he was away?
Inspired by a true incident, this saga conjures the era with uncanny immediacy. Amid the desperation of wartime, Placidia sees the social order of her Southern homeland unravel as her views on race and family are transformed.
A love story, a story of racial divide, and a story of the South as it fell in the war, The Second Mrs. Hockaday reveals how that generation—and the next—began to see their world anew. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Shingle Springs, California, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Queens College (Charlotte, North Carolina)
• Awards—for playwrighting (see below)
• Currently—lives in Blacksburg, South Carolina
Susan Rivers is an American playwright and, most recently, author of the Civil War era crime novel, The Second Mrs. Hockaday (2016). Rivers was raised in Shingle Springs, California, outside of Sacramento.
It was a high school librarian who first piqued Rivers' interest in southern culture and southern women in particular. Southern women, said the librarian, were schizophrenic—sugary sweet and soft on the outside but tough as a bear on the inside. River's English teachers further opened her eyes to the pleasures of literature, the way storytelling explores ordinary people, in their approach life and love and ideas. And so, as Rivers says in her website, she came to love language: "Language is my life."
Rivers started off as a playwright. At the age of 24, she wrote her first play, Maude Gonne Says No the the Poet, based on the British actress who had enthralled 19th-century poet W.B. Yeats. When it was performed in San Francisco, Rivers' play jump-started what came to be a fairly successful career in the theater.
Working as a National Endowment for the Arts Writer-in-Residence in San Francisco, Rivers received the Julie Harris Playwriting Award and the New York Drama League Award. She was named a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award for British and American Women Playwrights. She is also a veteran of the Playwrights Festival at Sundance Institute for the Arts and the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference. She has crossed the country working on productions and workshops of my plays.
Rivers married a stage actor and director. As she tells it, however, after witnessing the divorces and split families of so many of her colleagues, she realized life in the theater might not lead to a healthy marriage or family life. After talking with her husband, the two quit the theater and eventually, with their seven-year-old daughter in tow, decided to move. They ended up clear across the country, in North Carolina, where her husband took a corporate job and Susan wrote nonfiction and short stories. That was 20-some years ago.
Since then, the family has moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Rivers got her M.F.A., and then to a small town in South Carolina, where they live now. With their daughter grown, she and her husband collect stray animals (none, she says, are turned away).
Rivers also teaches English at a university in the upstate region of South Carolina, a job she says that allows her "daily interactions with bright young men and women crafting their own relationships with language." (Adapted from the author's website and from Greensboro News & Record.)
Book Reviews
Based on true events...[and told] old through gripping, suspenseful letters, court documents, and diary entries, Rivers’s story spans three decades to show the rippling effects of buried secrets.
Publishers Weekly
[I]nitially slow paced, [it] accelerates as the story evolves and the protagonists' roles in the scandal unfold. Most of the story line is set against the stark realities of wartime survival....[and] as with all wartime tales, brutality toward women and slaves occurs with depressing frequency .—Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT
Library Journal
(Starred review.) With language evocative of the South ('craggy as a shagbark stump') and taut, almost unbearable suspense, dramatized by characters readers will swear they know, this galvanizing historical portrait of courage, determination, and abiding love mesmerizes and shocks.
Booklist
Rivers is adept at doling out information in teaspoon-sized increments, which makes the book hard to put down.... A compulsively readable work that takes on the legacy of slavery in the United States, the struggles specific to women, and the possibilities for empathy and forgiveness.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider using our LitLovers talking points for The Second Mrs. Hockaday...then take off on your own:
1. The Second Mrs. Hockaday is told through letters and diary entries. Did you find this method of storytelling engaging or confusing or off-putting? Is the format sufficient in fleshing out the characters...or does it lead to rather sketchy or thin character development? What about the change in time frames between later generations?
2. What do we learn of Placidia and Millie through their correspondence. What do their letters reveal about themselves, personally, and especially about southern life for women during the Civil War? What do you think of Placidia? Do you sense a touch of Scarlett O'Hara in her...or not?
3. Why is Placidia so evasive in response to Millie's questions?
4. What role does Achilles Fincher Hockaday play? His nine-page letter doesn't make an appearance until Part 2 and readers have no clue as to who he is. Were you confused?
5. What do you think of Major Hockaday? One reviewer described him as Bronte-esque, i.e., Mr. Rochester or Heathcliff, perhaps. Do you see any resemblance?
6. Mystery stories ratchet up suspense by withholding information, releasing it bit by bit—until the big revelation at the end. Does Susan Rivers keep you in the dark? Is this story a page-turner? Were you surprised when you got to the end? Or had you figured out what happened beforehand?
7. Talk about the outfall of the buried secret on fututre generations. How do Placidia's offsprings come to grips with the damage left in the wake of the scandal—and the war?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Secrecy
Rupert Thomson, 2013
Other Press
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781590516850
Summary
A sorcerer in wax. . . A fugitive. . . Haunted by a past he cannot escape: Threatened by a future he cannot imagine.
Zummo, a Sicilian sculptor, is summoned by Cosimo III to join the Medici court. Late seventeenth-century Florence is a hotbed of repression and hypocrisy. All forms of pleasure are brutally punished, and the Grand Duke himself, a man for whom marriage has been an exquisite torture, hides his pain beneath a show of excessive piety.
The Grand Duke asks Zummo to produce a life-size woman out of wax, an antidote to the French wife who made him suffer so. As Zummo wrestles with this unique commission, he falls under the spell of a woman whose elusiveness mirrors his own, but whose secrets are far more explosive. Lurking in the wings is the poisonous Dominican priest, Stufa, who has it within his power to destroy Zummo’s livelihood, if not his life.
In this highly charged novel, Thomson brings Florence to life in all its vibrant sensuality, while remaining entirely contemporary in his exploration of the tensions between love and solitude, beauty and decay. When reality becomes threatening, not to say unfathomable, survival strategies are tested to the limit. Redemption is a possibility, but only if the agonies of death and separation can be transcended. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— November 5th 1955
• Where— Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Currently—lives in London, England
Rupert Thomson is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels. He was once described by the critic James Wood as "one of the strangest and most refreshingly un-English voices in contemporary fiction," and has been compared to writers as various as Franz Kafka, J. G. Ballard, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Charles Dickens, Elmore Leonard, and Mervyn Peake.
Background
Following the sudden death of his mother, Thomson was educated as a boarder at Christ's Hospital School. At the age of seventeen, he was awarded a scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he studied Medieval History and Political Thought. He worked as a copywriter in London from 1978 to 1982, before abandoning his job to write full-time. Thomson has lived in many cities throughout the world, including New York, Sydney and Barcelona. He currently lives in South London.
Novels
• 1987 - Dreams of Leaving
• 1991 - The Five Gates of Hell
• 1993 - Air and Fire
• 1996 - The Insult
• 1998 - Soft
• 1999 -The Book of Revelation
• 2005 - Divided Kingdom
• 2007 - Death of a Murderer
• 2013 - Secrecy
The Insult, Thomason's fourth novel, was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and was chosen by David Bowie as one of his "100 Must-Read Books of All Time." The Book of Revelation, his sixth novel, was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos. His 2007 novel, Death of a Murderer, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year.
With This Party's Got to Stop, Thomson ventured into non-fiction for the first time, exploring events surrounding his father's death and his complex relationships with his brothers and his extended family. The memoir won the Writers' Guild Non Fiction Book of the Year. Secrecy, his 2013 novel, is based on the life and work of the eccentric Sicilian wax artist, Gaetano Giulio Zumbo. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/5/2014.)
Book Reviews
Chillingly brilliant and sinister…masterly.
Financial Times (UK)
Bewitching…Intensely atmospheric…Superb.
Daily Mail (UK)
Scene after scene trembles with breath-stopping tension on the edge of bliss or dread. No one else writes quite like this in Britain today.
Observer (UK)
Beautifully evocative prose...makes this unusual historical novel truly memorable. In 1691, a mysterious artist known as Zummo...is summoned to Florence by Cosimo III, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.... [P]lot twists take a back seat to the complex picture Thomson gives of his oddball protagonist, a man given to wandering around carrying “little theaters filled with...the dead and dying” in the name of art.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Thomson...sets his new work in 17th-century Florence, drawing on the life of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, a Sicilian sculptor granted patronage by the grand duke of Tuscany to create a replica of his wife in wax. Given the cultural climate of Florence and the looming threat of the Roman Inquisition, it is a dangerous commission.... A page-turning historical thriller by one of Britain's finest writers. —Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH
Library Journal
Thomson brings Renaissance-era Florence to life with rich descriptions and scenic locales. Readers who have toured Florence will enjoy revisiting the sites in the mind’s eye, and historical fiction fans in general will relish the virtual trip brimming with mystery and intrigue.
Booklist
Thomson takes us to 17th-century Florence, which by definition seems to be full of corrupt politicians, unscrupulous clergy and aspiring artists—and this, of course, long after the Renaissance has ended. We begin with a dialogue between Italian sculptor Gaetano Zummo...[whose] reminiscences take him back some 25 years.... Thomson succeeds on a number of levels here, for the novel works as a mystery, as a love story, as a historical novel and, more abstractly, as an exploration of aesthetic theory.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you regard Secrecy as a work of historical fiction, literary fiction, suspense, or a mixture of all three? Have you read anything similar to this before?
2. What is unusual about Florence in the late 17th century and why does Thomson choose to set the novel in this time period? What do you think about Thomson’s portrait of post-Renaissance Italy?
3. What is it about Zummo's work that divides people? How do you feel about Zummo’s morbid fascination with death and disease? What could be the source of this fascination?
4. What is Zummo's attitude towards love? Do you think Faustina changes Zummo, or do you feel that he has always been capable of loving someone in such a way? What do you think draws them so close to one another?
5. What might Thomson be trying to say about evil and taking people at face value? Can Zummo be described as evil in any way? What can be said about the relationship between Stufa and Zummo?
6. Is there something that Earhole, Fiore, Faustina, Mimmo, and Zummo have in common? Is Thomson looking to give a voice to the marginalized?
7. Why does Thomson mingle real historical figures with fictional characters? Can you distinguish between them?
8. What do the Grand Duke’s confidants have against Zummo? Why are they so distrustful of him?
9. As Marguerite explains towards the end, “Secrecy had many faces. If it was imposed on you, against your will, it could be a scourge—the bane of your existence. On the other hand, you might well seek it out. Nurture it. Rely on it. You mind life impossible without it. But there was a third kind of secrecy, which you carried unknowingly, like a disease or like the hour of your death. Things could be kept from you, maybe forever.” How does this relate to the structure of the novel?
10. Why does Thomson give Marguerite d'Orleans a voice in the novel?
11. Why does Zummo make the decision he does at the end of the novel? Do you think the reasons he gives Marguerite d’Orelans for his decision are convincing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Secret Between Us
Barbara Delinsky, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616839451
Summary
Nothing will break this mother-daughter bond. Not even the truth.
Deborah Monroe and her daughter, Grace, are driving home from a party when their car hits a man running in the dark. Grace was at the wheel, but Deborah sends her home before the police arrive, determined to shoulder the blame for the accident. Her decision then turns into a deception that takes on a life of its own and threatens the special bond between mother and daughter.
The Secret Between Us is an unforgettable story about making bad choices for the right reasons and the terrible consequences of a lie gone wrong. Once again, Barbara Delinksy has delivered a riveting study of family and a superbly crafted novel, perfectly targeted to reading groups and fans of provocative fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Ruth Greenberg, Billie Douglass, Bonnie Drake
• Birth—August 9, 1945
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Tufts University; M.A., Boston College
• Awards—Romantic Times Magazine: Special Achievement
(twice), Reviewer's Choice, and Best Contemporary
Romance Awards; from Romance Writers of America:
Golden Medallion and Golden Leaf Awards.
• Currently—lives in Newton, Massachusetts
Barbara Delinsky (born as Barbara Ruth Greenberg) is an American writer of twenty New York Times bestsellers. She has also been published under the pen names Bonnie Drake and Billie Douglass.
Delinsky was born near Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother died when she was only eight, which she describes on her website as the "defining event in a childhood that was otherwise ordinary."
In 1963, she graduated from Newton High School, in Newton, Massachusetts. She then went on to earn a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University and an M.A. in Sociology at Boston College.
Delinsky married Steve Delinsky, a law student, when she was very young. During the first years of her marriage, she worked for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. After the birth of her first child, she took a job as a photographer and reporter for the Belmont Herald newspaper. She also filled her time doing volunteer work at hospitals, and serving on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and their Women's Cancer Advisory Board.
In 1980, after having twins, Delinsky read an article about three female writers, and decided to try putting her imagination on paper. After three months of researching, plotting, and writing, she sold her first book. She began publishing for Dell Publishing Company as Billie Douglass, for Silhouette Books as Billie Douglass, and for Harlequin Enterprises as Barbara Delinsky. Now, she only uses her married name Barbara Delinsky, and some of her novels published under the other pseudonyms, are being published under this name. Since then, over 30 million copies of her books are in print, and they have been published in 25 languages. One of her novels, A Woman's Place, was made into a Lifetime movie starring Lorraine Bracco. Her latest work, Sweet Salt Air, is published by St. Martin's Press.
In 2001, Delinsky branched out into nonfiction with the book Uplift: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors. A breast cancer survivor herself, Barbara donates the proceeds of that book and her second nonfiction work to charity. With those funds she has been able to fund an oncology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital that trains breast surgeons.
The Delinsky family resides in Newton, Massachusetts. Steve Delinsky has become a reputed lawyer of the city, while she writes daily in her office above the garage at her home. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2013.)
Visit Barbara Delinsky's website.
Book Reviews
One of her best.... Delinsky is a first-rate storyteller who creates believeable, sympathetic characters who seem as familiar as your neighbors.
Boston Globe
Delinsky may be as adept at chronicling contemporary life in New England as any writer this side of John Updike.
Albany Times Union
Delinsky is out there with the Anita Shreves and Elizabeth Bergs, perpetually bestselling authors who wrestle with bigger themes.
Lexington Herald-Ledger
Provocative.... Delinsky is interested in how the lies we tell for love can destroy us instead—and she lays out this particular deception so painstakingly that even the most honest reader will sympathize.
People
(Starred review.) Relationships are brought to the limit in Delinsky's splendid latest exploration of family dynamics. On a rainy night, Deborah Monroe and her teenage daughter, Grace, are driving home when their car hits a man. The victim, who turns out to be Grace's history teacher, is unconscious but alive. Although Grace was driving, Deborah sends her home and takes responsibility for the accident when the cops show up. Deborah is juggling a lot: as a family doctor, she is in private practice with her über-demanding widower father, who is trying to hide a drinking problem; her son, Dylan, is vision impaired; her mother's death continues to affect the family; Deborah is still dealing with her ex-husband's new, separate life; and her unmarried sister, Jill, has just announced she's pregnant. Grace's guilt about not taking responsibility for the accident makes her withdraw from friends and family, and the accident victim turns out to have a more complex private life than anyone imagined. The author seamlessly resolves relationship issues without sentiment, throws in a promising romance for Deborah and offers a redemptive scene between Grace and her grandfather. Delinsky combines her understanding of human nature with absorbing, unpredictable storytelling—a winning combination.
Publishers Weekly
Small-town physician Deborah Monroe has a plethora of family problems on her plate. Her husband has left, her teenage daughter Grace is angry, her young son Dylan has eye problems, her mother passed away, and her father drinks and passes judgment. Things get decidedly worse one rainy night when a man runs in front of her car, and Deborah makes a decision that has serious and rippling effects on herself and her family. So begins best-selling author Delinsky's (Family Tree) latest page-turner, which deftly and realistically addresses family issues like parental expectations and disapproval, divorce and secrets, as well as small-town issues like preferential treatment and gossip. The concept of lying is also explored from multiple angles. In addition to being immensely readable, Delinsky's latest is thought-provoking; readers will inevitably pause to consider what they would do if they found themselves in Deborah's situation. Highly recommended for public libraries.
Samantha J. Gust - Library Journal
(Adult/High School.) Secrets, responsibilities, truths, lies, and justice are some of the issues woven into this story, which begins with Deborah Monroe and her daughter, Grace, driving home in the rain. They are arguing and Grace is at the wheel when out of nowhere a man appears and she hits him. Deborah immediately decides to take responsibility for the accident and sends Grace running home. Being a doctor, she quickly checks for vitals and waits for the police and EMTs. When they arrive, Dr. Monroe answers all their questions and, although she never really lies, she does neglect to tell the sheriff that it was Grace who was driving. Her lies continue as she lets the entire close-knit community and her family believe that she was responsible for the accident. Grace suffers for her mother's well-intended lie, and circumstances become more complicated when the victim is identified as her history teacher. As the investigation gets underway, it is discovered that Mr. McKenna's life wasn't all it appeared to be. As the story continues, readers meet more people whose lives and secrets are exposed. This novel will have teens considering their own moral compass and asking just how honest, dishonest, and secretive anyone can be. —Joanne Ligamari, Rio Linda School District, Sacramento, CA
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What did the scenes depicting the accident reveal about the family dynamics between Deborah and Grace? How would you or your parents have reacted in a similar situation?
2. How does Deborah reconcile her role as a mother with her role as a daughter? What aspects of her upbringing does she try to avoid repeating? How did your perception of her family shift throughout the novel?
3. Do Jill and Deborah remember their mother the same way? How is their family affected by her absence? What accounts for the distinctions between Jill’s and Deborah’s paths in life?
4. Discuss the power and lack of power created by the many secrets woven throughout the novel. Which deceptions (including self-deceptions) harm the characters the most? Which deceptions are unavoidable?
5. Compare Grace and Dylan. How do they cope with their vulnerabilities? Do they respond to their parents’ divorce in essentially the same way, or are their temperaments distinct?
6. Why was Calvin so secretive during his lifetime? What do his brother’s observations about their childhood tell us about Calvin’s outlook on life? How did your initial theories compare to the truth of Calvin’s death?
7. Why was it difficult for Karen to realize the truth about Hal’s infidelity? What sustains marriages such as theirs?
8. In what way do Deborah and her father view their role as physicians differently? How do they define the keys to healing?
9. What does it take for Deborah to trust Tom? How might their relationship have unfolded without the tension of a possible lawsuit on the part of Calvin’s widow? In Tom’s case, did the law help or hinderhis quest for the truth?
10. Is Grace’s wish to take responsibility for the accident related to her feelings about her parents’ divorce? Or is she simply an honest young woman who wants to do the right thing? Does Greg respond appropriately to her self–destructive behavior?
11. What was Greg looking for when he married Rebecca? How was his perception of himself and his family transformed in the novel’s closing chapters?
12. Why does Grace give Danielle the cold shoulder when she so badly needs someone to talk to? What do their fathers have in common?
13. What is it like to live in a close-knit community such as Leyland? On what basis do the residents judge one another? Who determines who the power brokers will be? How would Deborah and Grace’s situation have changed if the accident had taken place in a large city?
14. In the end, was justice served by John’s decision? What was his share of the responsibility in perpetuating the secret?
15. What makes the rain an appropriate sign for representing transformations, both when Deborah is with Tom and in the final images of Grace?
16. In what way does The Secret Between Us underscore dilemmas of truth and dishonesty explored in Barbara Delinsky’s previous works? What distinguishes this novel from the other Delinsky fiction you have read?
17. What is the most significant secret you have ever tried to keep? What led you to reveal the truth?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Secret Cardinal
Tom Grace, 2007
Vanguard Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781593154844
Summary
Inspired by true events, masterful storyteller Tom Grace delivers his most provocative novel yet.
When Ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny is invited to Rome to consult on the functioning of the Vatican Library, he is still grieving the death of his wife and son and welcomes the distraction of the seemingly simple assignment.
But Pope Leo XIV has a startlingly different task in mind for him. In a private audience, Kilkenny learns of an unreported atrocity committed against the underground Church in China and its link to Yin Daoming, the long-imprisoned Bishop of Shanghai who has served thirty years of a life sentence in a Chinese laogai for refusing to renounce the Church of Rome. The aging pope then reveals the dangerous truth about Bishop Yin, a secret that he has kept for over twenty years. Decades of diplomacy have failed to end China’s persecution of the Catholics loyal to the pope, or to free Bishop Yin. The pope wants Yin free and asks Kilkenny to devise a plan to accomplish this seemingly impossible task.
With help from the U.S. president, American Special Forces, and the C.I.A., he assembles a team of ten men and one woman that will use some of the most advanced weapons, aircraft, and computer technology to execute this extraordinary mission. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Southeastern Michigan, USA
• Education—University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Southeastern Michigan
Tom Grace was born, raised, and presently resides in Southeastern Michigan. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan, earning two degrees in the field. In just over twenty years of practice, Grace has worked on projects ranging from modest home renovations to major urban designs for Chicago and London. Much of his work has involved scientific and engineering research facilities, cutting-edge technologies that invariable find their way into his novels.
Grace credits his second career as a writer in equal parts to a voracious appetite for books, an overactive imagination, and a compulsive desire to set challenging long-term goals for himself. He wrote the first draft of his debut novel over a year’s worth of lunch hours. Spyder Web was published in 1999, and his writing earned favorable comparisons to Ian Fleming and Clive Cussler. Grace’s hero, Nolan Kilkenny, returned in Quantum (2000), Twisted Web (2003), Bird of Prey (2004), and The Secret Cardinal (2007).
In addition to intricately woven plots and break-neck pacing, Grace’s novels are infused with technology that is either state-of-the-art or just over the horizon. His scenarios often seem eerily prescient, so much so that Bird of Prey was cited in a National Security Briefing on the Chinese space program and space-based weaponry.
As both an author and architect, Grace lives by Mies van der Rohe’s famous aphorism: "God is in the details." Painstaking research underpins each of his novels, creating the factual foundations that support the stories.
Tom Grace resides in Michigan with his wife, five children and a yellow Labrador in a modernist home of his own design. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Secret Cardinal is a deft blend of fact and fiction…a suspenseful tale rich with intrigue, unexpected turns and gritty characters.
National Catholic Register
Like The Da Vinci Code, this story features plenty of Vatican intrigue and several gory murders. But in The Secret Cardinal those representing the Catholic Church are the good guys.
US Catholic (Editor's Choice.)
Grace's latest featuring series hero ex-navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny spins a complicated fugue around papal succession. After the tragic loss of his beloved wife and unborn son, Kilkenny arrives at the Vatican and is soon called to the side of the dying pope Leo XIV. The pope discloses that more than 20 years earlier he made Yin Daoming—who has been a religious prisoner in China for longer than that—a secret cardinal. He asks Kilkenny to head up a team to go to China, free Yin and bring him back to the Vatican. Standing in Kilkenny's way is intelligence agent Liu Shing-Li of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a very serious fellow indeed. Interspersed with rescue mission chapters are detailed descriptions of the Vatican's inner workings and the details of the process of pope selection, which thrills—only readers may find distracting. But Grace (Bird of Prey) builds a suspenseful head of steam as Kilkenny and friends overcome twists and obstacles in a dangerous race against Liu's forces.
Publishers Weekly
One is the most powerful man in the Catholic Church. The other is a man the Chinese government wants to destroy but fears turning into a martyr. Both are men of peace. Grace's fifth thriller (after Bird of Prey) featuring former Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny begins with Kilkenny on assignment in Rome helping an old family friend improve Vatican Library operations. Soon Kilkenny is swept up in Pope Leo's dying wish—to save the long-imprisoned Yin Daoming, the bishop of Shanghai, whose only crime is practicing his faith. As Kilkenny and his elite team plan to rescue Yin and smuggle him out of China, covert forces try to thwart the rescue effort and prevent any chance of the bishop becoming the next pope. Grace's spinning web of international intrigue makes for a gripping read, and the character of Yin provides a look at the power of one man of faith against incredible obstacles. Recommended for all popular fiction collections.
Susan O. Moritz - Library Journal
[The author] doesn't give us a lot of time to slow down and ponder the story's many imponderables; we're too busy running around after Kilkenny...on a mission to save the Catholic Church. Fans of high-flying adventure yarns will enjoy the romp, even if they find themselves rolling their eyes now and then. —David Pitt
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Secret Cardinal:
1. Be sure to read the Author's Note at the end of the story. Also visit the author's website to read some of the posted news clips regarding Chinese imprisonment of Catholic bishops. How does the fact that The Secret Cardinal is based on real-life events affect your reading?
2. Talk about Nolan Kilkenny? What kind of character is he? What skills does he bring to his mission? What about his moral code: does he have one? How does he differentiate which actions are acceptable, or unacceptable, in accomplishing his goal?
3. One reader notes that Kilkenny's mission demonstrates the adage that we are not alone in the world: Kilkenny's survival and success depend on teamwork and "help from unexpected quarters." What does the reader mean by that observation—and do you agree with it?
4. What about the technology devised by the military? Eye-popping? Which was most impressive? Think also about the consequences, in real life, of the U.S. military becoming involved in such a mission? Should it?
5. How has Yin Daoming survived his years of imprisonment? What special strengths does he exhibit? How has he...how does anyone...maintain faith in the face of isolation and torture?
6. What is your reaction to the torture scenes? Overly graphic...or powerful and necessary to the storyline?
7. Talk about the Vatican sections of the book, especially those regarding the papal selection: did you find them interesting and enlightening...or a dull and unnecessary digression?
8. How different do you find this book in its treatment of the Catholic church from, say Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons?
9. Does this book deliver in terms of a thriller: is it fast-paced with surprising twists and turns? Or is it plodding and predictable? Is the ending satisfying...or lacking in someway?
10. Should more attention be paid to the Chinese treatment of Catholics? Should more international efforts be directed toward achieving the bishops' release? Why has this issue not reached the scandalous proportions of any sex-charged political story that has captured public attention? Does the US, or any Western country, have the necessary leverage to affect change in China's behavior?
11. Is this book a religious book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Secret Chord
Geraldine Brooks, 2015
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670025770
Summary
A rich and utterly absorbing novel about the life of King David, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of People of the Book and March.
Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.
The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected.We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age.
Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans. (From the publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 14, 1955
• Raised—Ashfield, New South Wales, Australia
• Education—B.A., Sydney University; M.A. Columbia University (USA)
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Virginia, USA
Geraldine Brooks s an Australian American journalist and author whose 2005 novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. While retaining her Australian passport, she became an United States citizen in 2002.
Early life
A native of Sydney, Geraldine Brooks grew up in its inner-west suburb of Ashfield, where she attended Bethlehem College, a secondary school for girls, and the University of Sydney.
Following graduation, she became a rookie reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and, after winning a Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholarship, moved to New York City in the United States, completing a Master's at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1983. The following year, she married American journalist Tony Horwitz in the Southern France village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup and converted to his religion, Judaism.
Career
As a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, she covered crises in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, with the stories from the Persian Gulf which she and her husband reported in 1990, receiving the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for "Best Newspaper or Wire Service Reporting from Abroad." In 2006, she was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Brooks's first book, Nine Parts of Desire (1994), based on her experiences among Muslim women in the Middle East, was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages. Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over (1997), which won the Nita Kibble Literary Award for women's writing, was a memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them.
Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, became an international bestseller. Set in 1666, the story depicts a young woman's battle to save fellow villagers as well as her own soul when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes her small Derbyshire village of Eyam.
Her next novel, March (2005), was inspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which her mother had given her. To connect that memorable reading experience to her new status in 2002 as an American citizen, she researched the Civil War historical setting of Little Women and decided to create a chronicle of wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls.
Some aspects of this chronicle were informed by the life and philosophical writings of the Alcott family patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott, whom she profiled under the title "Orpheus at the Plow", in the 10 January 2005 issue of The New Yorker, a month before March was published. The parallel novel was generally well received by the critics. It was selected in December 2005 selection by the Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published that year. In April 2006, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In her next novel, People of the Book (2008), Brooks explored a fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This novel was inspired by her reporting (for The New Yorker) of human interest stories emerging in the aftermath of the 1991–95 breakup of Yugoslavia. The novel won both the Australian Book of the Year Award and the Australian Literary Fiction Award in 2008.
Her 2011 novel Caleb's Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag convert to Christianity who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, an achievement of the seventeenth century.
Her next work, The Secret Chord (2015) is a historical novel based on the life of the biblical King David in the period of the Second Iron Age.
Awards
2006 - Pulitzer Prize for March
2008 - Australian Publishers Association's Fiction Book of the Year for People of the Book
2009 - Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
2010 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award
(From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/14/2015.)
Book Reviews
A page turner.... Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive...in [her]skillful hands the issues of the past echo our own deepest concerns: love and loss, drama and tragedy, chaos and brutality.
Alice Hoffman - Washington Post
There’s something bordering on the supernatural about Geraldine Brooks. She seems able to transport herself back to earlier time periods, to time travel. Sometimes, reading her work, she draws you so thoroughly into another era that you swear she’s actually lived in it. With sensory acuity and a deep and complex understanding of emotional states, she conjures up the way we lived then.... .Brooks has humanized the king and cleverly added a modern perspective to our understanding of him.... [Her] vision of the biblical world is enrapturing.
Boston Globe
Deeply sympathetic.... Brooks offers new perspectives on a character whose story has captured the Western imagination for millennia.... [S]he breaks from the biblical version by giving voice to the voiceless women in David’s life: wives and lovers, a daughter, a mother—the beloved and the scorned.
Chicago Tribune
The David that bursts off the page in this chronicle is a larger-than-life commixture of virtues and flaws.... I may be late to the party on the amazing Ms. Brooks, but The Secret Chord won me over. Its storytelling magic is as timeless as the tale it tells.
San Francisco Chronicle
Rich and imaginative.... Thanks to Brooks, David is as compelling as he is contradictory, with the writing in The Secret Chord as lyrical as the lyre that David plays.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] deeply imaginative exploration of this once powerful but deeply flawed ruler.... Brooks is a gifted, engrossing storyteller. Like March and People of the Book, The Secret Chord is studded with action, interesting characters, sweeping timelines and moving scenes filled with drama and conflict.... [A] timely and universal exploration of the limits of loyalty, the seductive and corrupting influence of power, and the intersections between sin and faith, punishment and redemption.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A compelling read, contemporary in its relevance.... The Secret Chord is powerful storytelling, its landscape and time evoked in lyrical prose.
Guardian (UK)
The best historical fiction.... Brooks gives the whole king his due.... It’s a tall order to breathe life into such a human being, and she manages it admirably.
NPR
Brooks’s interest in religious commitment accrues rich rewards in this ambitious and psychologically astute novel about the harp-playing, psalm-singing King David of the bible.... [E]vents provide plenty of melodrama and considerable suspense.... [Told with] the verve of an adroit storyteller.
Publishers Weekly
Brooks has given us a portrait of a monarch who is despicable, heartless, and cruel and yet can inspire and reciprocate passionate love and fierce loyalty. The author's use of archaic language, including the Hebrew spelling of names...slows down the narrative, but her writing is insightful and impeccably researched. —Susan Santa, Syosset P.L., NY
Library Journal
[G]orgeously written....The language, clear and precise throughout, turns soaringly poetic when describing music or the glory of David’s city.... [T]aken as a whole, the novel feels simultaneously ancient, accessible, and timeless.
Booklist
"He was big enough, but no giant." With that gently dismissive allowance, spoken by the biblical King David, Brooks continues to explore the meaning of faith and religion in ordinary life.... A skillful reimagining of stories already well-known to any well-versed reader of the Bible gracefully and intelligently told.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Natan’s first prophecy spares him from certain death but also sets him apart from other men. Is his ability a gift or a curse?
2. How does David’s childhood inform your understanding of the man he will become?
3. What might it mean that God chose to bestow so much upon a man as imperfect as David?
4. Do you believe that some people are chosen to speak in God’s name? What role do prophets play in the events of man?
5. Would David make a good leader today? Why or why not?
6. What is David’s worst crime? His greatest achievement?
7. Which of David’s wives do you believe suffered the most at his hands? Did he love Yonatan more than any of them? If so, why might that be?
8. How well does Geraldine Brooks capture David’s era and his essence?
9. David is a man driven by passion and violence, but he loves God with equal fervor. How would you explain this?
10. Are you familiar with the psalms attributed to David? If so, do you have a favorite?
11. What might David have done if he had known that Natan was hiding what he knew about his sons’ futures? Would David hesitate to kill Natan if he felt the prophet had betrayed him?
12. What is the nature of Natan’s feelings toward David? Would you be able to serve a man like him?
13. What is “the secret chord”? Why did Brooks choose this phrase as the novel’s title?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Secret Daughter
Shilpi Somaya Gowda, 2010
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061928352
Summary
On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl but faces a heartbreaking choice. In a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son.
Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to adopt a child after making the wrenching discovery that she will never have one of her own. When she and her husband Krishnan see a photo of the baby with gold-flecked eyes from a Mumbai orphanage, they are convinced the love they feel will overcome all obstacles.
Interweaving the stories of Kavita, Somer, and the daughter they both love, Secret Daughter is a deeply moving family drama that poignantly explores the emotional terrain of love, loss and identity, witnessed through the lives of two families, worlds apart, and the child who binds their destinies. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December, 1970
• Where—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina;
M.B.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California, USA
Shilpi Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto to parents who migrated there from Mumbai. She holds an MBA from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1991, she spent a summer as a volunteer in an Indian orphanage. A native of Canada, she has lived in New York, North Carolina, and California. She now lives in Dallas with her husband and children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Shilpi Somaya Gowda strikes a pleasing balance in her first novel, which draws upon the hot-button issues of female infanticide and overseas adoption…Secret Daughter tells a nuanced coming-of-age story that is faithful to the economic and emotional realities of two very different cultures…Gowda doesn't neaten up the messy complications of family life as she warmly affirms the power of love to help people grow and change.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post
A debut novel from [a] fresh, vibrant voice portraying a heroine straddling two cultures ... offers readers cause of celebration ... A page-turning dual narrative.
Charlotte Observer / Raleigh News & Observer
This story about motherhood, loss, family and forgiveness is authentic in every way. The prose is so achingly touching, it draws the reader in with every description and emotion of the characters.
Associated Press
Gowda’s debut novel opens in a small Indian village with a young woman giving birth to a baby girl. The father intends to kill the baby (the fate of her sister born before her) but the mother, Kavita, has her spirited away to a Mumbai orphanage. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Somer, a doctor who can’t bear children, is persuaded by her Indian husband, Krishnan, to adopt a child from India. Somer reluctantly agrees and they go to India where they coincidentally adopt Kavita’s daughter, Asha. Somer is overwhelmed by the unfamiliar country and concerned that the child will only bond with her husband because “Asha and Krishnan will look alike, they will have their ancestry in common.” Kavita, still mourning her baby girl, gives birth to a son. Asha grows up in California, feeling isolated from her heritage until at college she finds a way to visit her birth country. Gowda’s subject matter is compelling, but the shifting points of view weaken the story.
Publishers Weekly
Responding to poverty and a cultural preference for boys, an Indian mother hides her newborn daughter in an orphanage. The girl is adopted by an Indian-born doctor and his American wife, who live in California. Parallel stories are told of young Asha's life in America, where she is distanced from her native culture, and the growing rift between her adoptive parents, along with the fate of her birth parents and their son, who leave their small village for Mumbai and gradually rise out of poverty. After a slow start and some trite dialog, the book becomes more engrossing, as Asha takes a journalism fellowship in Mumbai and seeks a greater connection to her roots. First novelist Gowda offers especially vivid descriptions of the contrasts and contradictions of modern India. Verdict: Rife with themes that lend themselves to discussion, such as cultural identity, adoption, and women's roles, this will appeal to the book club crowd. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
In her engaging debut, Gowda weaves together two compelling stories. In India in 1984, destitute Kavita secretly carries her newborn daughter to an orphanage.... That same year in San Francisco...two doctors...adopt Asha, a 10-month-old Indian girl from a Bombay orphanage. Yes, it’s Kavita’s daughter. In alternating chapters, Gowda traces Asha’s life in America...and Kavita and Jasu’s hardships...in Dharavi, Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) infamous slum.... Gowda writes with compassion and uncanny perception from the points of view of Kavita, Somer, and Asha, while portraying the vibrant traditions, sights, and sounds of modern India. —Deborah Donovan
Booklist
Fiction with a conscience, as two couples worlds apart are linked by an adopted child.... A lightweight fable of family division and reconciliation, gaining intensity and depth from the author's sharp social observations.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. On the way to the orphanage in Bombay, Kavita reflects on "what power there is in naming another living being." She gives her daughter the name Usha at birth, but she is later raised by her adoptive parents as Asha. Kavita's name changed when she was married, and her given name reappears again later in the story. Even Krishnan becomes known as "Kris" in America. What is the significance of these changing names throughout the story? How are names intertwined with your own sense of identity and belonging?
2. Kavita faces a difficult choice at the beginning of the novel. Did she make the right decision? What would you have done if you were in Kavita's place? What would the repercussions be of making a different choice?
3. Why do you think Somer made the decision to adopt a child from India, and do you believe her reasons were sound? Are there any parallels between how she made this decision, and her previous decision to marry Krishnan?
4. Both families in the novel leave their home in search of better life—the Merchants leave their village for Bombay, and Krishnan leaves India for America—and this act of migration creates longing for home and feelings of displacement. Do you think their migrations were driven more by wanting to leave home or being attracted to a new place? Would the characters have made different choices if they knew what the consequences would be?
5. The novel explores the issue of how gender affects one's role in society, both in India and the United States. Despite much of the obvious discrimination women face in India, Sarla Thakkar believes, "you can't always see the power women hold, but it is there..." In what ways is this true? What are the benefits and drawbacks of being a woman in each of these countries? Are there any similarities in the female experience across the two cultures?
6. An overarching theme of the novel is motherhood, and how that experience can change a woman. Both Somer and Kavita have powerful experiences and emotions around pregnancy, childbirth and mothering. What are the differences in how they experience motherhood, and are there any similarities? Are there universal aspects to motherhood or is it an individual experience?
7. Both marriages portrayed in the novel, despite different circumstances and origins, face significant challenges. How did Kavita and Jasu's marriage recover from the dramatic conflict they faced at the beginning? What caused the estrangement between Krishnan and Somer, and how did each spouse contribute to it? Do you believe one marriage is fundamentally stronger than the other? What do you believe the future holds for each couple?
8. Asha grows up with a deep curiosity about her biological family in India. Could her parents have done anything to lessen the sense of feeling incomplete Asha had as an adolescent? Can her conflict with Somer be chalked up to that experienced in all mother-teenage daughter relationships, or was it more complicated? What does Asha learn about the true meaning of family, and could she have learned it without going to India?
9. This story turns on a twist of fate that changes the life path of Asha, and follows the parallel lives of Asha and her brother in India. Do you believe Asha was better off being taken to the orphanage as a baby than she would have been with her birth parents? Could Vijay have had a different life? How much of our lives are destined for us, and how much is within our power to change? Reflecting on your own life, what have been the turning points that have been made for you, and those made by you?
10. The importance of relationships across generations echoes through the novel, particularly at the end, with the deaths of Krishnan's father and Kavita's mother. What role do elder relatives play in the story? What hopes and expectations are passed down? What did you think of the relationship that develops between Sarla (Dadima) and Asha? How are these ideas complicated or resolved in the rituals of the cremation ceremonies at the end?
11. What do you believe Kavita and Jasu are feeling and thinking at the end of the novel? Were you surprised at the ending? Did you find it satisfying? How did your view of Jasu's character change from the beginning, and why? What do you imagine happens to these families next?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Secret History
Donna Tartt, 1992
Knopf Doubleday
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400031702
Summary
Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.
Richard Papen arrives at Hampden College in New England and is quickly seduced by an elite group of five students, all Greek scholars, all worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, all highly unapproachable. As Richard is drawn into their inner circle, he learns a terrifying secret that binds them to one another...a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life...and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning.... (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 23, 1963
• Where—Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
• Education—B.A., Bennington College
• Awards—WH Smith Literary Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Donna Tartt is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.
Early life
Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, and raised in the nearby town of Grenada.
Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted eighteen-year-old Tartt into his graduate short story course. "She was deeply literary," says Hannah. "Just a rare genius, really. A literary star."
Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, where she was friends with fellow students Bret Easton Ellis, Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan Lethem, and studying classics with Claude Fredericks. She dated Ellis for a while after sharing works in progress, her own The Secret History and Ellis's Less Than Zero.
Novels
• Secret History
Tartt began writing her first novel, originally titled "The God of Illusions" and later published as The Secret History, during her second year at Bennington. She graduated from Bennington in 1986. After Ellis recommended her work to literary agent Amanda Urban, The Secret History was published in 1992, and sold out its original print-run of 75,000 copies, becoming a bestseller. It has been translated into 24 languages.
The Secret History is set at a fictional college and concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group.
The murder, the location and the perpetrators are revealed in the opening pages, upending the familiar framework and accepted conventions of the murder mystery genre. Critic A.O. Scott labelled it "a murder mystery in reverse." The book was wrapped in a transparent acetate book jacket, a retro design by Barbara De Wilde and Chip Kidd. According to Kidd, "The following season acetate jackets sprang up in bookstores like mushrooms on a murdered tree."
• The Little Friend
Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend, was published in October 2002. It is a mystery centered on a young girl living in the American South in the late 20th century. Her implicit anxieties about the long-unexplained death of her brother and the dynamics of her extended family are a strong focus, as are the contrasting lifestyles and customs of small-town Southerners.
• The Goldfinch
Tartt's long-awaited third novel, The Goldfinch, was published in 2013. The plot centers on a a young boy in New York City whose mother is killed in an accident. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends’ apartments and on the city streets. He becomes enthralled by a small, mysteriously captivating painting of a goldfinch, which reminds him of his mother...and which soon draws him into the art underworld. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/14/13.)
Book Reviews
A thinking-person's thriller.... Think Lord of the Flies, then The Rules of Attraction.... The Secret History combines a bit of both—the unmistakable whiff of evil from William Golding's classic and the mad recklessness of priviledged youth from Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the '80s.... As stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed.
New York Newsday
Tartt's voice is unlike that of any of her contemporaries. Her beautiful language, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and intellectual energy make her debut by far the most interesting work yet from her generation.
Boston Globe
A long tale of friendship, arrogance, and murder knit together with the finesse that many writers will never have.... Her writing bewitches us.... The Secret History is a wonderfully beguiling book, a journey backward to the fierce and heady friendships of our school days, when all of us believed in our power to conjure up divinity and to be forgiven any sin.
Philadelphia Inquirer
One of the best American college novels to come along since John Knowles's A Seperate Peace.... Immensely entertaining.
Houston Chronicle
Donna Tartt is clearly a gifted writer.... The cadence of her sentences, the authority with which she shaped 500-plus pages of an erudite page-turner indicate she has the ability to leave her literary contemporaries standing in the road.... The decision to murder has about it the inevitability of classical Greek tragedy.
Miami Herald
Tartt's much bruited first novel is a huge, rambling story that is sometimes ponderous, sometimes highly entertaining. Part psychological thriller, part chronicle of debauched, wasted youth, it suffers from a basically improbable plot, a fault Tartt often redeems through the bravado of her execution.... [T]he plot's many inconsistencies, the self-indulgent, high-flown references to classic literature and the reliance on melodrama make one wish this had been a tauter, more focused novel. In the final analysis, however, readers may enjoy the pull of a mysterious, richly detailed story told by a talented writer.
Publishers Weekly
This well-written first novel attempts to be several things: a psychological suspense thriller, a satire of collegiate mores and popular culture, and a philosophical bildungsroman. Supposedly brilliant students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) are involved in two murders.... The book's many allusions, both literary and classical...fail to provide [a] deeper resonance.... Ultimately, it works best as a psychological thriller. —Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MA
Library Journal
[P]recious, way-too- long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods.... Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking...seems dated, formulaic.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Richard states that he ended up at Hampden College by a"trick of fate." What do you think of this statement? Do you believe in fate?
2. When discussing Bacchae and the Dionysiac ritual with his students Julian states, "We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people--the ancients no less than us--have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self" (p. 38). What is your opinion of this theory? Are we all atracted to that which is forbidden? Do we all secretly wish we could let ourselves go and act on our animal instincts? Is it true that "beauty is terror"?
3. "I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever: for me, it was that first fall term spent at Hampden" (p. 80). Did you have such a "crucial interval" in your life? What/when was it?
4. In the idyllic beginning it is easy to see why Richard is drawn to the group of Greek scholars. It is only after they begin to unravel that we see the sinister side of each of the characters. Do you think any one of the characters possesses true evil? Is there such a thing as "true evil, " or is there something redeeming in everyone's character?
5. In the beginning of the novel, Bunny's behavior is at times endearing and at others maddening. What was your initial opinion of Bunny? Does it change as the story develops?
6. At times Bunny, with his selfish behavior, seems devoid of a conscience, yet he is the most disturbed by the murder of the farmer. Is he more upset because he was "left out" of the group or because he feels what happened is wrong?
7. Henry says to Richard, "...my life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless. Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me. I was incapable of enjoying even the simplest things. I felt dead in everything I did.... But then it changed.... The night I killed that man" (p. 463). How does Henry's reaction compare to that of the others involved in the murder(s)? Do you believe he feels remorse for what he has done?
8. Discuss the significance of the scene in which Henry wipes his muddy hand across his shirt after throwing dirt onto Bunny's coffin at the funeral (p. 395).
9. List some of the signs that foreshadowed the dark turn of events. Would you have seen all the signs that Richard initially misses? Or do you believe Richard knew all along and just refused to see the truth?
10. Would you have stuck by the group after learning their dark secret?
11. The author states that many people didn't sympathize with Richard. Did you find him a sympathetic character?
12. What do you make of Richard's unrequited love for Camilla? Do you feel that she loved him in return? Or did she use his love for her as a tool to manipulate him?
13. Do you feel the others used Richard as a pawn? If so, how?
14. What do you feel is the significance of Julian's toast "Live forever" (p. 86)?
15. The author mentions a quote supposedly made by George Orwell regarding Julian: "Upon meeting Julian Morrow, one has the impression that he is a man of extraordinary sympathy and warmth. But what you call his 'Asiatic Serenity' is, I think, a mask for great coldness" (p. 480). What is your opinion of Julian?
16. Do you think that Julian feels he is somewhat responsible for the murder of Bunny? Is that why he doesn't turn the group in when he discovers the truth from Bunny's letter?
17. What causes Julian to flee? Is it because of disappointment in his young protegees or in himself?
18. While the inner circle of characters (Richard, Charles, Camilla, Henry, Francis, and the ill-fated Bunny) are the center of this tale, those on the periphery are equally important in their own ways (Judy Poovey, Cloke Rayburn, Marion, and so on). Discuss the roles of these characters.
19. The rights for The Secret History were initially purchased by director/producer/screenwriter Alan J. Paluka (All The President's Men, The Pelican Brief), and they are currently with director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars). What are your feelings about making the novel into a movie? Who would play the main characters if you were to cast it?
20. What is the meaning of Richard's final dream?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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