The Circle 
Dave Eggers, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
497 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345807298


Summary
When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, famous musicians playing on the lawn, athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge. (From the publisher.)

The book's 2017 film adaptation stars Tom Hanks and Emma Watson.

Author Bio
• Birth—March 12, 1970
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Raised—Lake Forest, Illinois
• Education—University of Illinois (no degree)
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California


Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a novelist and screenwriter.

He is also the founder of McSweeney's, the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His works have appeared in several magazines, most notably The New Yorker. His works have received a significant amount of critical acclaim.

Personal life
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father was John K. Eggers (1936–1991), an attorney. His mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers (1940–1992), was a school teacher. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to the upscale suburb of Lake Forest, near Chicago. He attended high school there and was a classmate of the actor Vince Vaughn. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, intending to get a degree in journalism, but his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both of his parents in 1991–1992—his father in 1991 from brain and lung cancer, and his mother in January 1992 from stomach cancer. Both were in their 50s.

These events were chronicled in his first book, the fictionalized A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At the time, Eggers was 21, and his younger brother, Christopher ("Toph"), was 8 years old. The two eldest siblings, Bill and Beth, were unable to commit to care for Toph; his older brother had a full-time job and his sister was enrolled in law school. As a result, Dave Eggers took the responsibility.

He left the University of Illinois and moved to Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend Kirsten and his brother. They initially moved in with Eggers's sister, Beth, and her roommate, but eventually found a place in another part of town, which they paid for with money left to them by their parents. Toph attended a small private school, and Eggers did temp work and freelance graphic design for a local newspaper. Eventually, with his friend David Moodie, he took over a local free newspaper called Cups. This gradually evolved into the satirical magazine Might.

Eggers lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is married to Vendela Vida, also a writer. They have two children.

He was one of three 2008 TED Prize recipients. His TED Prize wish was for community members to personally engage with local public schools The same year, Utne Reader named him one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World."

In 2005, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Brown University. He delivered the baccalaureate address at the school in 2008.

Literary work
• Egger's first book was a memoir (with fictional elements), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), which focused on the author's struggle to raise his younger brother in San Francisco following the deaths of both of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

• In 2002, Eggers published his first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, a story about a frustrating attempt to give away money to deserving people while haphazardly traveling the globe. He has also published a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry, and three politically themed serials for Salon.com.

• In 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, a book of interviews with former prisoners sentenced to death and later exonerated. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, "a physician specializing in the aftermath of large-scale human rights abuses" and "a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies and a practicing clinician." Lawyer novelist Scott Turow wrote the introduction to Surviving Justice.

• Eggers' 2006 novel What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Eggers also edits the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics.

• In 2009, he published Zeitoun and, as a result, was presented with the Courage in Media Award by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Zeitoun is the account of a Syrian immigrant, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, in New Orleans who was helping neighbors after Hurricane Katrina when he was arrested, imprisoned and suffered abuse. The book has been optioned by Jonathan Demme, who is working on a screenplay for an animated film-rendition of the work. To Demme, it "felt like the first in-depth immersion I’d ever had through literature or film into the Muslim-American family.... The moral was that they are like people of any other faith."

• Eggers published A Hologram for the King in July 2012, which became a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel is the story of one man's struggle to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the new realities of a global economy.

• In 2013, he released The Circle, a satirical novel about the internet's subversive power over citizen privacy. The Circle is a combination of Facebook, Google, Twitter and more, as seen through the eyes of Mae Holland, a new hire who starts in customer service.

McSweeney's
In 1998, Eggers founded McSweeney's, an independent publishing house, which takes his mother's maiden name. Apart from its book list, McSweeney's also publishes the quarterly literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the daily-updated literature and humor site McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the monthly magazine The Believer, the quarterly food journal Lucky Peach, the sports journal Grantland Quarterly (in association with sports and pop culture website Grantland), and the quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin. The publishing house also runs three additional imprints: Believer Books; McSweeney's McMullens, a children's book department; and the Collins Library.

826 National
In 2002, Eggers and educator Nínive Clements Calegari co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids ages 6–18 in San Francisco. It has since grown into seven chapters across the United States: Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Boston, and Washington, D.C., all under the auspices of the nonprofit organization 826 National.

In 2006, Eggers appeared at a series of fund-raising events, dubbed "Revenge of the Book–Eaters Tour," to support his educational programs. The Chicago show featured Death Cab for Cutie front man Ben Gibbard. Other performers on the tour included Sufjan Stevens, Jon Stewart, Davy Rothbart, and David Byrne.

In 2007, the Heinz Family Foundation awarded Eggers a $250,000 Heinz Award (given to recognize "extraordinary achievements by individuals"). In accordance with Eggers' wishes, the award money was given to 826 National and The Teacher Salary Project. In April 2010, under the umbrella of 826 National, Eggers launched ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization that connects donors with students to make college more affordable. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2013.)

Book Reviews
This line between where technology moves from value-adding to tyrannical is the ground Eggers explores: …who has the power to decide what will be done with the endless amounts of information we unwittingly and consistently offer up from our personal devices?  Eggers, successfully I think, argues that whoever has the data will own our hearts. It is a gripping concept to explore. READ MORE …
Abby Fabiaschi - LitLovers


The Circle turns into a story of suspense and the publisher said the work...raises questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy and the limits of human knowledge.
Independent (UK)


[A] stunning work of terrifying plausibility, a cautionary tale of subversive power in the digital age suavely packaged as a Silicon Valley social satire.... Eggers presents a Swiftian scenario so absurd in its logic and compelling in its motives that the worst thing possible will be for people to miss the joke. The plot moves at a casual, yet inexorable pace.... [A] worthy and entertaining read despite its slow burn.
Publishers Weekly


[P]articularly relevant to our current concerns about Internet-facilitated invasion of privacy.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. How does Mae’s behavior during her first days at work foreshadow what happens to her over the course of the novel? In what ways is she an “ideal” employee of the Circle and its aims?

2. The wings of the Circle are named after different regions of the world and time periods, such as Old West, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Machine Age, the Industrial Revolution. What do these names say about the company’s vision of historical innovation versus its future-looking work? Is there an inherent hierarchy in these names, despite their apparent equality?

3. In what ways does Annie inspire and motivate Mae in terms of the level of success that can be achieved at the Circle? Does Mae consider Annie’s position the product of Annie’s own ambition, or something she imbibed from the company’s ethos? How does knowing first about their professional relationship shape your understanding of their shared past?

4. For a company that thrives on order and efficiency, the Circle also seems to endorse—require, even—loose and extravagant socializing. What do these two seemingly opposite values say about what working for them entails? How does Mae’s value set evolve to accommodate these expectations? 

5. Mae’s first serious blunder on the job is failing to respond to and attend a social event, Alistair’s Portugal brunch. How does the meeting in Dan’s office set the tone for Mae’s pushing the Circle’s networks on others?

6. Among the Three Wise Men—Ty, Bailey, and Stenton—who has a vision of what the Circle can—and should—do that seems most viable? In the end, is this trifecta of power able to prevent tyranny? What might the novel’s conclusion say about man’s reaction to power—even when humanity is apparently subsumed under technology?

7. Our first encounter with a shark in the novel is when Mae sees one from a kayak, and she complacently observes, “They were hidden in the dark water, in their black parallel world, and knowing they were there, but not knowing where or really anything else, felt, at that moment, strangely right” (p.83). Later, we see another shark that Stenton brings back from the Marianas Trench, in a cage with other sea life being viewed by Mae’s watchers: “Then, like a machine going about its work, the shark circled and stabbed until he had devoured...everything, and deposited the remains quickly, carpeting the empty aquarium in a low film of white ash” (pp. 476–77). What is essentially different about these two scenarios that garners such different behavior from these wild creatures? Do the humans that watch the shark in the aquarium—“terrified...in awe and wanting more of the same”—seem to learn anything (p.477)?

8. During one of her visits home, Mae tells Mercer, “I guess I’m just so easily bored” by what he considers a normal tempo of speech, but what Mae considers “slow motion” compared with the Circlers’ communication in person and online (p.130); and later that night, going through her Circle account to answer queries and social requests, she feels “reborn” (p.135). How much of this shortened attention span is evident in our society today? In the end, are Mae’s instantaneous relationships more or less gratifying than she expects?

9. The bracelet provided by the health clinic is a remarkable technological feat and would revolutionize health care if it existed. Mae even finds it “beautiful, a pulsing marquee of lights and charts and numbers...[her] pulse represented by a delicately rendered rose, opening and closing” (p.156). But what does this additional form of self-monitoring, along with her three work screens, contribute to Mae’s true knowledge of herself? For example, does watching their pulses rise in anticipation of sex bring Mae and Francis closer together emotionally, or push them further apart?

10. It is both a curse and a blessing that Mae is able to provide her parents with health care: while her father is able to receive the MS treatment he desperately needs, Mae seems to benefit even more from her ability to share his story online through support groups and ultimately drives those groups away. Did you ever feel that her actions became more selfish than selfless, and if so, when?

11. Even though Mae meets Kalden when she is relatively enmeshed in the constant connectivity of the Circle, she is still taken in by his holographic mystery: “his retreating form...[that] she couldn’t get a hold of.... His face had an openness, an unmistakable lack of guile.... [H]aving him out there, at least for a few days, unreachable but presumably somewhere on campus, provided a jolt of welcome frission to her hours” (pp.170–71). Why does she not feel the need to pursue him more aggressively through the knowledge databases she has available? How does this compare with the way she treats Mercer online—Mercer, about whom she presumably knows much more, given their past?

12. We see Mae involved with three very different men throughout the novel: Mercer, Francis, and Kalden. While they are on the surface wildly different, what might you say are traits they share that reveal what Mae is looking for in a relationship—and how do they satisfy these needs in their own ways? Does Mae ever seem truly happy?

13. After her conversation with Dan about skirting her social responsibilities, Mae stays up all night to boost her PartiRank and “felt a profound sense of accomplishment and possibility” (p.191). She is equally ambitious with her CE satisfaction scores, getting the highest average of any employee on the first day. Why, then, is she so offended when Francis asks for a score on his sexual performance? Where is the line between public and private, analog and digital, drawn for Circlers, and what does it mean that Mae eventually gives in to his request?

14. Does the Circle seem concerned with promoting and preserving traditional family life? In what ways does it threaten to replace biological families with a wider human family, including via transparency?

15. Kayaking is for Mae a twofold form of release: not only is it a way to expend physical energy and clear her mind, but when she steals the kayak and is caught on SeeChange cameras, it also leads to a liberation of sorts within the Circle. Does this connection, and Mae’s reaction to being caught, suggest that the Circle’s intentions are well meaning after all, or do they illustrate a more sinister shift in attitude enabled by the Circle?

16. Why do you think Ty felt the need to disguise himself in order to reach out to Mae as he did? How necessary was it for him to preserve his role as one of the Three Wise Men, even as he sought to dismantle the institution he helped create?

17. Is Annie in any sense a martyr of the Circle’s mission? Did you ever feel as if you understood the motives behind her intense devotion to her job?

18. What is the impact of having Mercer’s suicide seen by Mae through cameras—that is, indirectly? Do you think she genuinely believed she was trying to be his friend by launching the drones after him?

19. Many of the technologies the author invents in The Circle seem futuristic, but they are not so far from realities that exist now: myriad social media sites are obviously omnipresent, but the government is also developing facial recognition to screen for terrorists (The New York Times, August 20, 2013) and Google Glass seems not so unlike the camera necklace that allows for Mae’s transparency. After finishing the novel, did you find this overlap between fact and fiction unsettling? Did it affect how you personally engage with technology?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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A Circle of Wives 
Alice LaPlante, 2014
Grove/Atlantic
325 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802122346


Summary
When Dr. John Taylor is found dead in a hotel room in his hometown, the local police find enough incriminating evidence to suspect foul play.

Detective Samantha Adams, whose Palo Alto beat usually covers small-town crimes, is innocently thrown into a high-profile murder case that is more intricately intertwined than she could ever imagine. A renowned plastic surgeon, a respected family man, and an active community spokesman, Dr. Taylor was loved and admired.

But, hidden from the public eye, he led a secret life—in fact, multiple lives. A closeted polygamist, Dr. Taylor was married to three very different women in three separate cities. And when these three unsuspecting women show up at his funeral, suspicions run high. Adams soon finds herself tracking down a murderer through a web of lies and marital discord.

With a rare combination of gripping storytelling, vivid prose, and remarkable insight into character, Alice LaPlante brings to life a story of passion and obsession that will haunt readers long after they turn the final page. A charged and provocative psychological thriller, A Circle of Wives dissects the dynamics of love and marriage, trust and jealousy, posing the terrifying question: How well do you really know your spouse? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., M.B.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—Wallace Stegner Fellowship; Welcome Prize
• Currently—lives in Palo Alto, California


Alice LaPlante is an award-winning fiction writer and university creative writing instructor. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and teaches creative writing at both Stanford and San Francisco State University. The author of both fiction and nonfiction books, Alice includes among her publications a writing textbook, Method and Madness: The Making of a Story (2009), Playing For Profit: How Digital Entertainment is Making Big Business Out of Child's Play (2000); and Passion to Profits: Business for Non-Business Majors (2008).

Her novel, Turn of Mind (2011) became a New York Times, NPR, and American Independent Booksellers Association bestseller within a month of release. Turn of Mind was also designated a New York Times Editors' Choice, an NPR, O Magazine, Vogue, and Globe and Mail Summer Reading Pick, and is featured in Barnes and Noble 2011 Discover Great New Writers program. Turn of Mind was also the first work of fiction to win the Welcome Prize.

Three years later, in 2014, LaPlante published her second novel, A Circle of Wives, about the murder of a respected plastic surgeon, who is later discoverd to have been a polygamist.

Alice also has more than 25 years experience as an award-winning journalist, corporate editorial consultant, writing coach, and university-level writing instructor. She has written for Forbes ASAP, BusinessWeek, ComputerWorld, InformationWeek, Discover, and a host of other national publications. Her corporate clients include some of the best-known brands in the technology industry, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, Deloitte, and HP. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
I finished reading this absorbing novel after 11 last night. That’s the mark of a successful mystery.
Carolyn See - Washington Post


Exhilarating and smart, A Circle of Wives is a wild ride of love, loss, marriage and murder, with a finale that's provocative, thrilling and grand. It all shows that while some deaths are a mystery, so, too, are some loves.
San Francisco Chronicle


Surprising, swift and sure-footed...[LaPlante] has taken an intriguing premise and, having hooked the reader, delivers an equally intriguing book.
Seattle Times


Insightful.... [An] engrossing tale of tangled relationships, unfilled needs, and the endless human talent for self-deception. The question it plants in the reader’s mind is the most chilling of all: How well do I know the person I love?
Washington Independent Review of Books


Marriage is as mysterious as murder in LaPlante’s captivating psychological thriller. . . . a smart, intricate tale about murder and the elusive mysteries of marriage.... In LaPlante’s world knowing who did the deed is never as fascinating as wondering why. (3.5 stars)
People


The pleasures of this novel—as with LaPlante's last, Turn of Mind—lie less in the plot, which is strewn with only a few clues and red herrings, and more in the sharply drawn and carefully shaded characters. (A-)
Entertainment Weekly


Told in the alternating...the novel explores love, loss, control, the influence of past relationships, and passion. The multi-narrator approach may strike some as choppy at first, but LaPlante quickly settles into a captivating rhythm. She paints a sympathetic picture of the enigmatic John while channeling the women’s voices to explore how their separate stories converged on him.
Publishers Weekly


Though a murder mystery serves as the backdrop to LaPlante's tale...[the] investigation of a crime becomes an exploration of the choices these women made and the resulting impact. Fans of character-driven puzzles will find much to like in this psychological novel. —Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI
Library Journal


Plastic surgeon [John] Taylor's passion is reconstructing the faces of damaged children. Taylor was... "competent, straight-talking, yet compassionate," and so there's widespread shock when Taylor's found dead at a local hotel. The confusion's compounded when it's discovered that Taylor was a bigamist.... Love, passion and marriage reflected in a mystery's fun-house mirror.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The book is narrated by four different characters: Detective Samantha Adams and Dr. Taylor’s three wives: Helen, MJ, and Deborah. How does this structure provide a more well-rounded understanding of each character? Which of these characters voices do you connect with most? Why?

2. Detective Samantha Adams’s first lines in the book are: “I am nothing if not irresolute. Excuse the double negative” (p. 1). What do these opening lines tell us about her character? Discuss how this introduction fits with the stereotype of a police detective.

3. Dr. Taylor’s second wife, MJ, is introduced at his funeral mass. What do we initially learn about MJ’s character? Consider how this chapter foreshadows what we ultimately discover about MJ and her path in the book.

4. Dr. Taylor’s third wife, Helen, tells MJ and Deborah that they are “a circle of wives” (p. 33). Why does she use this turn of phrase? Is it accurate? What meanings does this phrase have in addition to its literal one? Discuss the contributions that each wife makes to the “circle.”

5. Detective Adams interviews MJ, Helen, and Deborah in back-to-back chapters. What are the similarities and differences in how each wife responds to learning that her husband was married to two other women? What clues are revealed about each wife’s potential guilt or innocence in their interviews?

6. Helen opens up to a woman she thinks is a neighbor before realizing the woman is a reporter. Then Helen muses on whether modern psychiatry will develop medication to help keep a person’s guard up. “The world will be a healthier place. But even so, despite all that’s happened, I think it will be a far less interesting one” (p. 82). What does she mean by this statement? Discuss whether or not talking to the reporter is cathartic for her. Does she feel more can be gained in her life by letting her guard down, even if the consequences are messy?

7. Samantha’s relationship with her boyfriend, Peter, deteriorates throughout the book. On page 87, Samantha says, “Something about the Taylor case and its web of love and deceit is souring what used to sustain me.” Discuss how the case causes growing dissatisfaction with her relationship. Is she dissatisfied with Peter, herself, or both?

8. On page 95, MJ notes that Samantha is “very professional” despite her pigtails, which MJ had never seen a grown woman wear. Yet when Samantha interviews Helen on page 100, Helen observes that Samantha “seems more nervous than [me],” and notes the “multiple piercings up the sides of both [her] ears” as well as “the remnants of a nose piercing.” What is revealed by these observations about Samantha? Are these observations indicative of MJ and Helen’s values, of Samantha’s personality, or both?

9. Deborah reveals a brief flirtation with a man named Gerald early on in her marriage with John. Gerald, who had a “streak of cruelty,” told her about his recurring temptation to stop the heart of a patient while conducting an operation just because he could. To Deborah this made him “a much more admirable man” than her husband (p. 105). Deborah then reveals that Gerald and his wife were killed when his car crossed over the road’s center line. Deborah says, “Death. Always interrupting things” (p. 106). Does Deborah assume that Gerald’s deadly impulses finally got the better of him? Were Deborah and Gerald a better match for each other? Discuss what else has been interrupted in Deborah’s life by death.

10. MJ reveals that she has a close relationship with her brother Thomas. “[H]e’s my baby brother, and I love him dearly. I would do anything for him, and he knows it” (p. 112). Talk about how MJ’s relationship with her brother compare and contrast with Samantha’s feelings for her deceased brother. How do these relationships inform our understanding of their personalities?

11. When Deborah learns of John’s relationship with MJ, she drives to MJ’s house and, due to stress, vomits outside. MJ comforts Deborah and offers her a glass of water. Deborah drives away because she doesn’t want to be indebted to MJ, and she is incapable of giving/receiving genuine acts of kindness. Later, she says that MJ “saved” her marriage. According to her own belief system, she now owes MJ, and this debt “is not a trivial one” (p. 121). Do you think Deborah’s belief system makes sense, or is it contradictory?

12. Helen discovers she’s pregnant with John’s baby and decides to keep it. She feels guilty for this decision because “if John had lived, this child would not have. It was in our agreement: no children” (p. 154). Why did she decide to keep the baby after John’s death, despite their agreement? What does this decision suggest about their relationship?

13. Samantha asks Peter to role-play as Deborah to prepare for interviewing her. The interview turns cruel as Peter uses the exercise as a way to indirectly express his true feelings about her. Discuss the significance of this role-play. Why does it sting her so much? Examine how this scene foreshadows later events with both Peter and Deborah.

14. As Samantha enters Deborah’s house, she says, “I see a world that will always be out of my reach” and she becomes inexplicably furious (p. 159). In the next chapter, Deborah says that Samantha hungers not for things, “but rather for beauty” (p. 165). Is Deborah correct in her assessment of Samantha? Why or why not? How does Samantha’s fight with Peter from the night before impact her behavior around Deborah?

15. Deborah believes that John’s three wives “added up to the perfect marriage, and he needed all of us in order to have a balanced life” (p. 169). Does she really mean this? Discuss whether or not Deborah is a reliable narrator.

16. Samantha learns that Dr. Taylor had planned to divorce his other three wives and marry Dr. Claire Fanning. Samantha admits that she can’t figure out Claire’s motivation in marrying a man nearly forty years her senior. “I find I’m disappointed by John’s choice. . . . I’ve built an impression of John Taylor, I realize, and it doesn’t have anything to do with marrying young china dolls less than half his age” (p. 208). Why is Samantha disappointed in this revelation? Consider how her “relationship” with Dr. Taylor has evolved since the case began. Has Dr. Taylor “seduced” Samantha?

17. Grady tells Samantha to “ignore the alibis” in trying to figure out Dr. Taylor’s murderer (p. 221). Do you think this is sound advice? Who appears to be the culprit at this point in the book?

18) Samantha confronts MJ with the news that MJ had a strong motive to murder Dr. Taylor, as she would have lost her house. “I see now,” Samantha says, “that any warmth I felt toward MJ was just stupid me wanting to be liked. We are opponents, have been from the start” (p. 229). Why does this news shock Samantha? Has Samantha’s need to be liked impacted her ability to do her job effectively?

19. Samantha feels that her relationship with Peter lacks passion. In their final argument, Peter tells Samantha, “What you don’t understand is that we’ve got what people hope to have after the passion and initial excitement have burned out. We’re best friends” (p. 241). Has Peter misjudged his relationship with Samantha? Do you think Samantha and Peter act like best friends? Consider whether or not passion and friendship are mutually exclusive in a relationship.

20. Samantha acknowledges that Peter is a “sweet man” but that he pales in comparison with John Taylor. She says that Peter “lacks the backbone to forge his way in this world and get what he wants” (p. 254). Discuss how Dr. Taylor represents passion to Samantha. Do you see evidence of Dr. Taylor’s passion toward any of his three wives? Does Samantha esteem the idea of passion to the point that she can excuse bigamy?

21. Deborah’s initial reaction to hearing about Helen’s pregnancy is violent. When she flies to Los Angeles to confront Helen about her unborn child, she learns Helen wants no claim to her estate. Deborah calms down, treating Helen in an almost maternal manner. Why the sudden change in her demeanor? Is it solely related to finances, or does Deborah feel a kinship with Helen that she doesn’t feel with MJ?

22. Helen offers Deborah a place to stay in her apartment, then opens up to Deborah about how she met Dr. Taylor. Are these gestures in line with Helen’s character, or do they reflect a genuine reevaluation of her personality in the wake of her pregnancy and Dr. Taylor’s death?

23. Why does Deborah indulge Samantha’s reenactment of Dr. Taylor’s final moments? Is she paying off a debt she feels she owes Samantha? What is Deborah’s quid pro quo in this scene?

24. Consider whether or not Samantha becomes part of Dr. Taylor’s circle of wives. Why or why not?

25. The “Rashomon effect” occurs when multiple speakers narrate a similar event in a contradictory way. How does the structure of A Circle of Wives affect our understanding of Dr. Taylor’s character? Knowing the outcome of the novel, discuss who was the most reliable and the least reliable narrator.
(Questions written by Brando Skyhorse and issued by the publisher.)

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Circling the Sun 
Paula McLain, 2015
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345534200


Summary
Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s.

Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.

Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance.

But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.

Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules.

But it’s the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl’s truest self and her fate: to fly.

Set against the majestic landscape of early-twentieth-century Africa, McLain’s powerful tale reveals the extraordinary adventures of a woman before her time, the exhilaration of freedom and its cost, and the tenacity of the human spirit. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where— Fresno, California, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Ohio


Paula McLain is an American author best known for her novel, The Paris Wife, a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage. That work became a long-time New York Times bestseller. Her 2015 novel centering on female aviator Beryl Markham was released to excellent reviews in 2015. 

McLain has also published two collections of poetry in 1999 and 2005, a memoir about growing up in the foster system in 2003, and the novel A Ticket to Ride in 2008.

McLain was born in Fresno, California. Her mother vanished when she was four, and her father was in and out of jail, leaving McLain and her two sisters (one older, one younger) to move in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. It was an ordeal described in her memoir, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses.

When she aged out of the system, McLain supported herself by working in various jobs before discovering she could write. Eventually, she received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as the recipient of fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

She lives in Cleveland with her family. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/19/2015.)

Book Reviews
Enchanting.... A worthy heir to Dinesen, McLain will keep you from eating, sleeping, or checking your e-mail—though you might put these pages down just long enough to order airplane tickets to Nairobi.... Like Africa as it’s so gorgeously depicted here, this novel will never let you go.
Boston Globe
 

Richly textured.... McLain has created a voice that is lush and intricate to evoke a character who is enviably brave and independent.
NPR
 

McLain succeeds in bringing the past to life, and by the last pages, readers will hate to say goodbye to such an irresistible narrator.
Miami Herald
 

Markham is a novelist’s dream.... McLain riffs on the facts, creating a wonderful portrait of a complex woman who lived—defiantly—on her own terms. (Book of the Week)
People


(Starred review.) McLain's latest showcases her immersive command of setting and character.... [Beryl] Markham's true life was incredibly adventurous, and it's easy for readers to identify with this woman who refused to be pigeonholed by her gender. Readers will enjoy taking in the rich world McLain has created.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Famed aviator and renowned racehorse trainer Beryl Markham is only one of the subjects of McLain's captivating new novel. The other is Kenya, the country that formed the complicated, independent woman whom Markham would become.... [An] intriguing window into the soul of a woman who refused to be tethered. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A full-throttle dive into the psyche and romantic attachments of Beryl Markham—whose 1936 solo flight across the Atlantic in a two-seater prop plane...transfixed the world.... [T]he young woman McLain explores...is more boxed in by class, gender assumptions, and self-doubt than her reputation as aviatrix, big game hunter, and femme fatale suggests.... [S]parkling prose and sympathetic reimagining.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the book, Beryl reflects that her father’s farm in Njoro was “the one place in the world I’d been made for.” Do you feel this is a fitting way to describe Beryl’s relationship with Kenya, too? Did she seem more suited–more made for–life there than the others in her circle? Is there a place in your life that you would describe the same way?

2. While it is clear he loved his daughter, do you feel Beryl’s father was a good parent? Do you think Beryl would have said he was? Did you sympathize with him at any point?

3. Beryl is forced to be independent from a very young age. How do you think this shaped her personality (for better or for worse)?

4. After Jock’s drunken attack, D fires Beryl and sends her away. Do you understand his decision? Despite all the philandering and indulgent behaviors of the community, do you feel it’s fair that Beryl was being judged so harshly for the incident?

5. How would you describe Beryl and Denys’s relationship? In what ways are they similar souls? How does their first encounter–outside, under the stars at her coming out party–encapsulate the nature of their connection?

6. Karen and Beryl are two strong, iconoclastic women drawn to the same unobtainable man. Do you understand how Beryl could pursue Denys even though he was involved with Karen? Did you view the friendship between the women as a true one, despite its complications?

7. Why do you believe the author chose the title Circling the Sun? Does it bring to mind a particular moment from the novel or an aspect of Beryl’s character?

8. When Beryl is quite young, she reflects that “softness and helplessness got you nothing in this place.” Do you agree with her? Or do you think Beryl placed too much value on strength and independence?

9. When Beryl becomes a mother herself, she is determined not to act as her own mother did. Do you feel she succeeds? How does motherhood spur her decision to exchange horse training for flying? Could you identify with this choice?

10. After Paddy the lion attacks Beryl, Bishon Singh says, “Perhaps you were never meant for him.” Do you think that Beryl truly discovered what she was meant for by the end of the novel?
(Questions from the author's website..)

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Cities of the Plain (Border Trilogy #3)
Cormac McCarthy, 1994
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679747192


Summary
In this last novel of the Border Trilogy, the National Book Award-winning author of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing fashions a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier.

The setting is New Mexico in 1952, where John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands. To the North lie the proving grounds of Alamogordo; to the South, the twin cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. It is a life that is about to change forever, and John Grady and Billy both know it.

The catalyst for that change appears in the form of a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute.  When John Grady falls in love, Billy agrees—against his better judgment—to help him rescue the girl from her suavely brutal pimp. The ensuing events resonate with the violence and inevitability of classic tragedy. Hauntingly beautiful, filled with sorrow, humor and awe, Cities of the Plain is a genuine American epic. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 20, 1933
• Where—Providence, Rhode Island, USA
• Education—University of Tennessee, US Air Force
• Awards— Ingram-Merrill Aware, 1959 and 1960; Faulkner
   Prize, 1965; Traveling Fellowship from American Academy
   of Arts and Letters, 1965; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1969;
   MacArthur Fellowship, 1981; National Book Award, 1992;
   National Book Critics Circle Award, 1992; James Tait Black
   Memorial Prize UK, 2006; Pulitzer Prize, 2007 for The Road.
• Currently—lives in Tesuque, New Mexico (Santa Fe area)


Cormac McCarthy (born Charles McCarthy) is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, ranging from the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He has also written plays and screenplays.

He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He received a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1992 novel, All the Pretty Horses.

His previous novel, Blood Meridian, (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of the best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up in a poll taken in 2006 by the New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years.

Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth. In 2010 the London Times ranked The Road no.1 on its list of the 100 best fiction and non-fiction books of the past 10 years. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. 

Early years
McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island on July 20, 1933, and moved with his family to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1937. He is the third of six children, with three sisters and two brothers. In Knoxville, he attended Knoxville Catholic High School. His father was a successful lawyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority from 1934 to 1967.

McCarthy entered the University of Tennessee in 1951-1952 and was a liberal arts major. In 1953, he joined the United States Air Force for four years, two of which he spent in Alaska, where he hosted a radio show. In 1957, he returned to the University of Tennessee. During this time in college, he published two stories in a student paper and won awards from the Ingram Merrill Foundation in 1959 and 1960. In 1961, he and fellow university student Lee Holleman were married and had their son Cullen. He left school without earning a degree and moved with his family to Chicago where he wrote his first novel. He returned to Sevier County, Tennessee, and his marriage to Lee Holleman ended.

Writing
McCarthy's first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published by Random House in 1965. He decided to send the manuscript to Random House because "it was the only publisher [he] had heard of." At Random House, the manuscript found its way to Albert Erskine, who was William Faulkner's editor until Faulkner's death in 1962. Erskine continued to edit McCarthy for the next twenty years.

In the summer of 1965, using a Traveling Fellowship award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, McCarthy shipped out aboard the liner Sylvania, hoping to visit Ireland. While on the ship, he met Anne DeLisle, who was working on the ship as a singer. In 1966, they were married in England. Also in 1966, McCarthy received a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, which he used to travel around Southern Europe before landing in Ibiza, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark. Afterward he returned to America with his wife, and Outer Dark was published in 1968 to generally favorable reviews.

In 1969, McCarthy and his wife moved to Louisville, Tennessee, and purchased a barn, which McCarthy renovated, even doing the stonework himself. Here he wrote his next book, Child of God, based on actual events. Child of God was published in 1973. Like Outer Dark before it, Child of God was set in southern Appalachia. In 1976, McCarthy separated from Anne DeLisle and moved to El Paso, Texas. In 1979, his novel Suttree, which he had been writing on and off for twenty years, was finally published.

Supporting himself with the money from his 1981 MacArthur Fellowship, he wrote his next novel, Blood Meridian, which was published in 1985. The book has grown appreciably in stature in literary circles. In a 2006 poll of authors and publishers conducted by The New York Times Magazine to list the greatest American novels of the previous quarter-century, Blood Meridian placed third, behind only Toni Morrison's Beloved and Don DeLillo's Underworld.

McCarthy finally received widespread recognition in 1992 with the publication of All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was followed by The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, completing a Western trilogy. In the midst of this trilogy came The Stonemason, McCarthy's second dramatic work. He had previously written a film for PBS in the 1970s, The Gardener's Son.

McCarthy's next book, 2005's No Country for Old Men, stayed with the western setting and themes, yet moved to a more contemporary period. It was adapted into a film of the same name by the Coen Brothers, winning four Academy Awards and more than 75 film awards globally. McCarthy's latest book, The Road, was published in 2006 and won international acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize for literature. A film adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee was released on November 25, 2009. Also in 2006, McCarthy published a play entitled The Sunset Limited.

Extras
• According to Wired magazine in December, 2009, McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter was put up for auction at Christie's. The Olivetti Lettera 32 has been in his care for 46 years, since 1963. He picked up the used machine for $50 from a pawn shop in Knoxville, Tennessee. McCarthy reckons he has typed around five million words on the machine, and maintenance consisted of “blowing out the dust with a service station hose”. The typewriter was auctioned on Friday, December 4 and the auction house, Christie’s, estimated it would fetch between $15,000 and $20,000; it sold for $254,500. The Olivetti’s replacement for McCarthy to use is another Olivetti, bought by McCarthy’s friend John Miller for $11. The proceeds of the auction are to be donated to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit interdisciplinary scientific research organization.

• McCarthy now lives in the Tesuque, New Mexico, area, north of Santa Fe, with his wife, Jennifer Winkley, and their son, John. He guards his privacy. In one of his few interviews (with The New York Times), McCarthy reveals that he is not a fan of authors who do not "deal with issues of life and death," citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples. "I don't understand them," he said. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange." McCarthy remains active in the academic community of Santa Fe and spends much of his time at the Santa Fe Institute, which was founded by his friend, physicist Murray Gell-Mann.

• Talk show host Oprah Winfrey chose McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road as the April 2007 selection for her Book Club. As a result, McCarthy agreed to his first television interview, which aired on The Oprah Winfrey Show on June 5, 2007. The interview took place in the library of the Santa Fe Institute; McCarthy told Winfrey that he does not know any writers and much prefers the company of scientists.

• During the interview he related several stories illustrating the degree of outright poverty he has endured at times during his career as a writer. He also spoke about the experience of fathering a child at an advanced age, and how his now-eight-year-old son was the inspiration for The Road. Cormac noted to Oprah that he prefers "simple declarative sentences" and that he uses capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but "never a semicolon." He does not use quotation marks for dialogue and believes there is no reason to "block the page up with weird little marks." (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
This volume concludes McCarthy's Border Trilogy, the first two books being All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award in 1992, and The Crossing, published to great acclaim in '94. Devoted McCarthy readers will know not to expect any neat or dramatic resolution in Cities of the Plain, for the author is more of a poet than a novelist, more interested in wedding language to experience in successive moments than in building and setting afloat some narrative ark. Cities, like the other books, takes place sometime shortly after WWII along the Texas-Mexico border. John Grady Cole, the young, horse-savvy wanderer from All the Pretty Horses, and Billy Parham, who traveled in search of stolen horses with his younger brother in The Crossing, are now cowhands working outside El Paso. John Grady falls in love with Magdalena, a teenage prostitute working in Juarez, Mexico; determined to marry her, he runs afoul of her pimp, Eduardo. That is basically the narrative. Along the way, McCarthy treats the reader to the most fabulous descriptions of sunrises, sunsets, the ways of horses and wild dogs, how to patch an inner tube. The cowboys engage in almost mythically worldly-wise, laconic dialogues that are models of concision and logic. Although there is less of it here than in the earlier books, McCarthy does include a few of his familiar seers, old men and blind men who speak in prophetic voices. Their words serve as earnest if cryptic instructions to the younger lads and seem to unburden the novelist of his vision of America and its love affair with free will. If a philosophy of life were to be extracted from these tales, it would seem to be that we are fated to be whatever we are, that what we think are choices are really not; that betrayals of the heart are always avenged; and that following one's heart is a guarantee of nothing.
Publishers Weekly

The final volume of the "Border Trilogy" finds John Grady and Billy Parham, the heroes of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, respectively, working side by side on a New Mexico cattle ranch in the early 1950s. Grady is 19, and Billy is just a few years older, but these are two of the toughest, most self-possessed hombres in recent fiction. Their uncanny maturity makes sense only in the context of the previous books. The plot, long in development, is simple: Grady falls in love with an epileptic teenage prostitute across the border in Juarez and vows to rescue her, whatever the cost. Again, Grady's earlier Mexican adventures motivate and inform this desperate romance. McCarthy's prose is mesmerizing, and his descriptions of the Southwest and the vanishing cowboy lifestyle are superb. This work is a strong and satisfying conclusion to a magisterial series, but it is probably advisable to read this installment in its proper sequence. Libraries will want all three volumes, which make up one of the great literary works of the decade. —Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Library Journal

The concluding volume of McCarthy's hitherto lavishly praised Border Trilogy is a long dying fall that brings together the two surviving protagonists of the previous novels, John Cole Grady of All the Pretty Horses (1992) and Billy Pawson of The Crossing (1994). Once again, McCarthy offers an unflinching depiction of the hard lives and complex fates of men ripped loose from the moorings of home and family, pursuing destinies that seem imposed upon them by indifferent external forces. As it begins (in 1952), Billy is still a cowboy with an "outlaw'' heart, and John Grady (with whom he works as a ranch hand in southwestern New Mexico), who's nine years his senior, dreams of finally settling down. The object of the latter's desires, a teenaged Mexican prostitute (and "epileptica") named Magdalena, is the "property'' of a malevolent pimp whose possessiveness will precipitate this increasingly somber story's inevitably violent climax—a one-on-one Gotterdmmerung that McCarthy unaccountably follows with a mystical Epilogue that feels like something lifted from an Ingmar Bergman film. This is the least impressive book of the Trilogy, but it's still a sizable cut above most contemporary novels. McCarthy's magnificent descriptions of landscape, weather, and animals in their relationship to men, and the stripped-down dialogue that perfectly captures his characters' laconic fatalism are as impressive—and unusual—as ever. If his perverse habit of presenting numbingly prolonged conversations between his principal characters and their several reality instructors unfortunately persists, so do his mastery of action sequences (a description of the ranch hands hunting down a pack of cattle-killing dogs very nearly equals The Crossing's sublime opening sequence) and precise thematic statements. Judged, as it must be, in the context of its brother novels, Cities of the Plain is nonetheless, flaws and all, an essential component of a contemporary masterpiece.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
(The publisher has issued two sets of questions: the first for discussion of Cities the Plain, the second set for the Border Trilogy as a whole.)

1. What is the significance of the novel's title? What were the original "cities of the plain," and what do they correspond to within the novel?

2. What role do horses play in the book, and how are they characterized? How are the "souls" of horses seen to differ from those of men?

3. Cities of the Plain is in many respects a novel about the inevitability and tragedy of change. What events and situations has McCarthy used to dramatize that subject? "The war changed everything, " says Billy. "I dont think people even know it yet" [p. 78]. What, precisely, has it changed? Which characters adjust to the changes, and which are unwilling or incapable of doing so?

4. What does the statement "beauty and loss are one" [p. 71] mean, and how does the novel illustrate this contention?

5. Of Magdalena, the old blind man says, "My belief is that she is at best a visitor. At best. She does not belong here. Among us" [p. 81]. What does he mean by this statement, and how is his premonition borne out? Can Magdalena's end be seen as inevitable, within the novel's particular world? What other predictions or auguries are offered in the novel? Do they add to the suspense or detract from it?

6. Which characters in the novel function as archetypes, and what do they represent? Do these archetypal characters keep them from being believable personalities?

7. Which of the characters have been affected by the Mexican Revolution, and in what ways has the Revolution changed their lives and helped to form their world? What are their feelings about the Revolution in retrospect?

8. How do you react to the many instances of violence in the novel? Do they seem gratuitous, or integral to the story? Is the graphic description of individual acts of violence included for mere titillation or shock value, or is it necessary in making the reader truly understand and come to terms with the novel's time and setting?

9. In spite of the widespread violence in the Border country, it is also a place in which people are unusually hospitable, at least by modern urban standards. Archer describes his travels through Mexico after the Revolution: "They didnt have no reason to be hospitable to anybody. Least of all a gringo kid. That plateful of beans they set in front of you was hard come by. But I was never turned away. Not a time" [p. 90]. What other examples of unusual hospitality can you find in the book? Is this hospitality connected in some way with the everyday violence that affects these people's lives?

10. In Cities of the Plain Mexico is characterized as female, the United States as male. What is the reason for this dichotomy, and how has McCarthy achieved the effect? In what ways is the southwestern United States qualitatively different from Mexico, just across the border? What does Mac mean when he reflects that, "In Mexico there is no God. Just her [the Virgin]" [p. 116]?

11. Billy says to John Grady, "You know you been actin peculiar since you had that wreck?" [p. 121] Is that true? If so, what happened during the wreck to alter John Grady's behavior or change his thinking?

12. What does the blind man mean when he tells John Grady, "Your love has no friends. You think that it does but it does not. None. Perhaps not even God" [p. 199]? Why does it have no friends? Why is it impossible that John Grady and Magdalena's love should ever succeed? Is John Grady aware of the impossibility, or does his love blind him to reality?

13. Billy says that Mexico is "another world. Everbody I ever knew that ever went back was goin after somethin" [p. 218]. What is John Grady going after? To what extent is he aware of his needs and his motivations? Eduardo says that John Grady is seeking death. Is he right? Why would John Grady choose death over life? Why is Billy different, opting for life, however diminished?

14. Who is the mysterious stranger that Billy, in old age, meets on the highway? What is the significance of the long story he tells, and what relation does it bear to Billy's life?

15. "In everything that he'd ever thought about the world and about his life in it he'd been wrong" [p. 265], Billy reflects as an old man. Which of his opinions were proved wrong? How does the world differ from the one he had thought he knew, and in what ways is old Billy different from young Billy?

16. Who is the real hero of this story: John Grady or Billy? Does the author play with conventional notions of what makes a hero? How do these young men fit into the chivalric tradition, and which earlier literary heroes do each of them resemble?

__________________

For discussion of The Border Trilogy

17. The Border Trilogy is in many ways a work about the inevitability and tragedy of change. What events in the novels, both personal and historical, dramatize this theme? What has changed or is in the process of changing? Which characters adjust to these changes, and which are unable or unwilling to do so?

18. All three of the novels in the Border Trilogy are extremely violent. At a time when graphic and gratuitous descriptions of mayhem are standard in much popular fiction for purposes of mere shock and titillation, has McCarthy succeeded in restoring to violence its ancient qualities of pity and terror? How has he managed this?

19. There are many different Border crossings in the trilogy, and each crossing is in itself something in the nature of a quest. What, in each case, are the travelers seeking? Do they attain their goal? What do all the crossings have in common?

20. In what ways do John Grady Cole and Boyd Parham resemble one another? How is Billy different from both of them? Does he ever fully understand them? What ways does he find of dealing with them?

21. Who is the real hero of the trilogy, John Grady or Billy? Does the author play with conventional ideas of what makes a hero? How do these young men fit into the chivalric tradition, and which earlier literary heroes do each of them resemble?

22. The cowboys or vaqueros abide by an age-old moral code. Is this moral code viable in the new world in which they find themselves? Is it merely anachronistic, or are its values still alive and essential? What moral code exists in the modern world, and how does it correspond to the older one?

23. The culture on both sides of the Border as described in this trilogy is essentially a masculine one, some would say a macho one. Does this fact alienate you from the world described, or is the machismo an important, even a vital and necessary, part of a noble ethos?

24. How does the Border Trilogy exploit, and play against, the classic myth of the American West? What is its place within the tradition of the Western, alongside prototypes like The Virginian? Does it uphold, or subvert, the traditional values of the genre?

25. Who in the trilogy can be seen as archetypes, rather than as fully-fleshed characters? Which characters succeed both as personalities and as archetypes? Why has the author chosen to rely so heavily on archetypal figures to tell his story?

28. How has the history of the Border region, from the Alamo to the Mexican Revolution to the nuclear tests at Alamogordo, affected the lives of the Border Trilogy's characters and helped to form their world? How do historical events and tragedies continue to resonate in the narrative's present?

29. What well-known myths, legends and fairy tales can you discern within the Border Trilogy? Does the fact that it is a very "literary" piece of work distance you from it, or does it serve to draw you in more completely?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The City & the City 
China Mieville, 2009
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345497529


Summary
New York Times bestselling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other–real or imagined.

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 6, 1972
• Where—Norwich, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University; Ph.D., London
  School of Economics
• Awards—Arthur C. Clarke Award (twice); British Fantasy
   Award (twice); Locus Award (twice)
• Currently—teaches at Warkwick University


China Tom Miéville is an award-winning English fantasy fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" (after early 20th century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird who consciously attempt to move fantasy away from commercial, genre clichés of Tolkien imitators. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He has stood for the House of Commons for the Socialist Alliance, and published a book on Marxism and international law. He teaches creative writing at Warwick University.

Miéville was born in Norwich and brought up in Willesden, a neighbourhood in northwest London, and has lived in the city since early childhood. He grew up with his sister and his mother, a teacher; his parents separated soon after his birth, and he has said that he "never really knew" his father. He is an alumnus of the public school Oakham School, where he studied for two years. In 1990, when he was eighteen, he lived in Egypt teaching English for a year, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics.

Miéville acquired a B.A. in social anthropology from Cambridge in 1994, and a Master's with distinction and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, the latter in 2001. Miéville has also held a Frank Knox fellowship at Harvard. A book version of his Ph.D thesis, titled Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, was published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by Brill in their "Historical Materialism" series, and in the United States in 2006 by Haymarket Books.

Miéville has indicated that he hopes to write a novel in every genre, and to this end has constructed an oeuvre that is indebted to genre styles ranging from classic American Western (in Iron Council) to sea-quest (in The Scar) to detective noir (in The City & the City). Yet Miéville's various works all describe worlds or scenarios that are fantastical or supernatural and thus his work is generally categorized as fantasy: Miéville has listed M. John Harrison, Michael de Larrabeiti, Michael Moorcock, Thomas Disch, Charles Williams, Tim Powers, and J.G. Ballard as literary "heroes"; he has also frequently discussed as influences H. P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, and Gene Wolfe. He has said that he would like his novels "to read for [his imagined city] New Crobuzon as Iain Sinclair does for London."

Miéville played a great deal of Dungeons & Dragons and similar roleplaying games in his youth, and includes a specific nod to characters interested "only in gold and experience" in Perdido Street Station as well as a general tendency to systematization of magic and technology which he traces to this influence. In fact, in the February 2007 issue of Dragon Magazine, the world presented in his books was interpreted into Dungeons & Dragons rules and on February 19, 2008 it was announced that Adamant Entertainment will be developing an RPG based on the Bas-Lag universe.

Miéville has explicitly attempted to move fantasy away from J. R. R. Tolkien's influence, which he has criticized as stultifying and reactionary (he once described Tolkien as "the wen on the arse of fantasy literature"). This project is perhaps indebted to Michael de Larrabeiti's Borrible Trilogy, which Miéville has cited as one of his biggest influences and for which Miéville wrote an introduction for the trilogy's 2002 reissue. The introduction was eventually left out of the book, but is now available on de Larrabeiti's website. Miéville's position on the genre is also indebted to Moorcock, whose essay "Epic Pooh" Miéville has cited as the source off of which he is "riffing" or even simply "cheerleading" in his critique of Tolkien-imitative fantasy.

Miéville's left-wing politics are evident in his writing (particularly in Iron Council, his third Bas-Lag novel) as well as his theoretical ideas about literature; several panel discussions at conventions about the relationship of politics and writing which set him against right-wingers ended up in heated arguments. He has, however, stated that:

I’m not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I’m a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have... I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that’s fantastic. But if not, isn’t this a cool monster? (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
In the cleverly altered present-day of China Miéville's The City & the City, Inspector Tyador Borlú is tracking a murder case that takes him from his home town of Beszel to the city of Ul Qoma... two city-states [that] sit literally on top of each other, "crosshatching" and overlapping in a complicated tracery.... Miéville, the acclaimed author of "Un Lun Dun," clearly takes pleasure in working out the details of his audacious premise, placing a somewhat old-fashioned police procedural into an obsessively imagined world complete with its own history, anthropology and linguistics. And yet perhaps because this construct is so very intellectual...the novel requires more than a bit of suspended disbelief.
Sara Sklaroff - Washington Post

Better known for New Weird fantasies, bestseller Miéville offers an outstanding take on police procedurals with this barely speculative novel. Twin southern European cities Beszel and Ul Qoma coexist in the same physical location, separated by their citizens' determination to see only one city at a time. Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad roams through the intertwined but separate cultures as he investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, who believed that a third city, Orciny, hides in the blind spots between Beszel and Ul Qoma. As Mahalia's friends disappear and revolution brews, Tyador is forced to consider the idea that someone in unseen Orciny is manipulating the other cities. Through this exaggerated metaphor of segregation, Miéville skillfully examines the illusions people embrace to preserve their preferred social realities.
Publishers Weekly

Miéville tells vivid stories in the borderlands of literary fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and here he adds noir crime to the mix. Fittingly, his tale is set in the borderlands, creating a mysterious pair of cities somewhere on Europe's eastern edge. Beszel and Ul Qoma share the same ground, but their citizens are not allowed to react to one another, learning to "unsee" the other city and its inhabitants from a young age. Enforcing this division is a mysterious power called Breach. When an archaeology student is found dead, Inspector Tyador Borlu gets caught up in a case that forces him to navigate precariously between the cities, perhaps into the sinister worlds that straddle them. It's a fascinating premise. Unfortunately, the cities, protagonist, and case remain stubbornly in the haze. For all genre fiction collections because Miéville is a trailblazer with a dedicated following, but this work is more an existential thought piece than a reading pleasure.
Neil Hollands - Library Journal

A blend of near-future science fiction and police procedural, this novel is a successful example of the hybrid genre so popular of late. In a contemporary time period, two fantastical cities somewhere between Europe and Asia exist, not adjacent to one another, but by literally occupying the same area. Forbidden to acknowledge the existence of one another—a discipline imposed by the shadowy and terrifying entity known as Breach—residents in both cities have honed the ability to "unsee" people, places, and events existing in the other realm. This ticklish balance ruptures when Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad must investigate the murder of a foreign archaeological student. Long after the book's satisfying conclusion, astute readers will have much to ponder, such as the facility with which Authority can manipulate and repress a population and the attendant ills that life in such a society inevitably generate. Add in the novel's highly effective cover art and the result is a book that may appeal as much to a young, new-to-Mieville audience as it will to his loyal fans. —Dori DeSpain, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal

Fantasy veteran Mieville adds a murder mystery to the mix in his tale of two fiercely independent East European cities coexisting in the same physical location, the denizens of one willfully imperceptible to the other. The idea's not new—Jack Vance sketched something similar 60 years ago—but Mieville stretches it until it twangs. Citizens of Beszel are trained from birth to ignore, or "unsee," the city and inhabitants of Ul Qoma (and vice versa), even when trains from both cities run along the same set of tracks, and houses of different cities stand alongside one another. To step from one city to the other, or even to attempt to perceive the counterpart city, is a criminal act that immediately invokes Breach, the terrifying, implacable, ever-watching forces that patrol the shadowy borders. Summoned to a patch of waste ground where a murdered female has been dumped from a van, Beszel's Detective Inspector Tyador Borlu learns the victim was a resident of Ul Qoma. Clearly, the Oversight Committee must invoke Breach, thus relieving Borlu of all further responsibility. Except that a videotape shows the van arriving legally in Beszel from Ul Qoma via the official border crossing point. Therefore, no breach, so Borlu must venture personally into Ul Qoma to pursue an investigation that grows steadily more difficult and alarming. Grimy, gritty reality occasionally spills over into unintelligible hypercomplexity, but this spectacularly, intricately paranoid yarn is worth the effort.
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 City and the City:

1. Mieville provides no overall exposition in this book, leaving it up to readers to piece together the strange co-existence of Beszel and Ul Qoma. Do you appreciate the way in which the story gradually unfolds? Or, finding it confusing, would you have preferred an explanation early on?

2. Many critics and readers—but not all—have talked about Mieville's imagined world, a world constructed so thoroughly that readers were easily absorbed in the two cities. Was that your experience as you read the book...or were you unable to suspend your belief, finding the whole foundation too preposterous?

3. What does it mean to "unsee" in this novel...and what are the symbolic implications of unseeing? In other words, do we "unsee" one another in our own lives? Who unsees whom?

4. Talk about the absurdities that result from the two cities ignoring one another's existence—for instance, the rules put in place for picking up street trash.

5. What theory was the murdered graduate student investigating and what makes Borlu begin to think the theory is more than just theory—that it might be closer to truth?

6. Do you feel Mieville's characters are well developed in this work...or under-developed? Defend your answer...to the death. What about the book's dialogue? Does it sound realistic—the way individuals actually converse? Or do you find it stilted, tiresome...or perhaps overly ambitious? Does it matter?

7. Point out some of the strange word-usage Mieville incorporates in The City and the City: words/phrases like... crosshatching, grosstopically, the alter, and so on.

8. What is the "Breach" and why it's required to maintain control over the two populations? What does the Breach suggest about authoritarianism in general—its origins, purpose, enforcement, corruption...?

9. Was the crime/mystery solved to your satisfaction by the end of the book? Was the crime the book's central focus...or tangential? If the latter, what was the real focus?

10. Have you read other works by Mieville? If so, how does this compare? If not, are you inspired to read more of his books?

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

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The City Baker's Guide to Country Living 
Louise Miller, 2016
Penguin Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101981207


Summary
A full-hearted novel about a big-city baker who discovers the true meaning of home—and that sometimes the best things are found when you didn’t even know you were looking

When Olivia Rawlings—pastry chef extraordinaire for an exclusive Boston dinner club—sets not just her flambeed dessert but the entire building alight, she escapes to the most comforting place she can think of—the idyllic town of Guthrie, Vermont, home of Bag Balm, the country’s longest-running contra dance, and her best friend Hannah.

But the getaway turns into something more lasting when Margaret Hurley, the cantankerous, sweater-set-wearing owner of the Sugar Maple Inn, offers Livvy a job. Broke and knowing that her days at the club are numbered, Livvy accepts.

Livvy moves with her larger-than-life, uberenthusiastic dog, Salty, into a sugarhouse on the inn’s property and begins creating her mouthwatering desserts for the residents of Guthrie. She soon uncovers the real reason she has been hired—to help Margaret reclaim the inn’s blue ribbon status at the annual county fair apple pie contest.
 
With the joys of a fragrant kitchen, the sound of banjos and fiddles being tuned in a barn, and the crisp scent of the orchard just outside the front door, Livvy soon finds herself immersed in small town life.

And when she meets Martin McCracken, the Guthrie native who has returned from Seattle to tend his ailing father, Livvy  comes to understand that she may not be as alone in this world as she once thought.
 
But then another new arrival takes the community by surprise, and Livvy must decide whether to do what she does best and flee—or stay and finally discover what it means to belong. Olivia Rawlings may finally find out that the life you want may not be the one you expected—it could be even better. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Rasied—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—Maine College of Art
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts


Louise Miller is a writer and pastry chef who lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.

Born to two Teamsters, she was raised in urban Boston until the age of eight, when she moved to a posh suburb and quickly learned that in order to survive she would have to lose her thick Boston accent. She still drops her r’s when tired or angry.

Louise attended Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art) where she studied photography. She left art school when she ran out of money, and still dreams of going back someday. Louise started her first baking job in 1994, at a little bakery in Cambridge, MA. She hated her first job, gave notice and had vowed never to work in a kitchen again, when on her last day she met her baking mentor, who talked her into staying on by offering to teach her the art of pastry.

Louise has been a baker/pastry chef for over twenty years. She has worked in an exclusive golf club, the private kitchen of a major investment firm, a macrobiotic restaurant where she could only use maple syrup and barley malt as sweeteners, and a kosher gourmet shop. She is currently the pastry chef of The Union Club of Boston, a historic private club formed in 1863, where she has worked for the past thirteen years.

A lifelong lover of reading, Louise began her first attempt at novel writing in 2009. She received a scholarship in 2012 to attend GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, a year-long workshop for novelists, where she worked on the final revisions of her novel. The City Baker's Guide to Country Living was published in 2016.

Louise loves stories in all forms. In addition to books, she is a great lover of movies and an avid theatregoer. She and her partner hold subscriptions to two theatres in Boston, and they frequently travel to New York to see plays. 

When she is not consuming stories in some form, Louise loves to be outside. She is a happy member of her community garden where, though as a lifelong vegetarian she eats a ton of vegetables, she is only interested in growing flowers.

Louise is also a mediocre old-time banjo player, and loves all animals, especially dogs. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Sometimes novels about food, cooking and/or baking seem to me insubstantial, too full of pink frosting and improbable recipes. Not so with Louise Miller’s debut novel. This is heartier fare.... Livvy moves to Guthrie, Vermont, and takes a job at the Sugar Maple Inn. Here her life begins to shift towards deeper connections with the folks around her....[which] gave me many reasons to root for her, to hope against hope she would transform into a more fully realized human being.... All in all, a satisfying, dare I say—tasty read.  READ MORE.
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers


[E]ndearing.... Miller, a pastry chef herself, writes about food with vivid detail...[and]  excels at characterization.... Throughout, the novel’s empathetic spirit and unhurried pace allow it to grapple with grief, family, and belonging, while keeping the focus on Olivia’s difficult decisions.
Publishers Weekly


Mix in one part Diane Mott Davidson's delightful culinary adventures with several tablespoons of Jan Karon's country living and quirky characters, bake at 350 degrees for one rich and warm romance.... [A] lighthearted love story that's as homey as a slice of prized crumb apple pie. —Julia M. Reffner, North Chesterfield, VA
Library Journal


[Miller] initially succeeds in making these small-town concerns engaging with her witty writing. But...the book becomes treacly. A promising author who doesn't have the recipe quite right yet.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Food and its role in tradition, community, and family is a theme that is threaded throughout the story. What are the culinary traditions in your family? Discuss how food can be an equalizer—among friends, enemies, strangers, etc.
 
2. Margaret and Dottie have been lifelong friends. How do you think their friendship evolved during that time? Have you had friendships that have spanned decades? How have they changed? How have they stayed the same?
 
3. At first, Livvy observes Guthrie from an outsider’s perspective, yet she soon warms to country life. Do you think Livvy does anything to hold her back from fully engaging in daily life in Guthrie? Have you ever had a limiting belief about yourself that has held you back from pursuing something you wanted?
 
4. Margaret and Livvy have a contentious relationship from the minute they meet. What is the turning point where they soften toward each other? Does it happen at the same time for both of them?
 
5. Food plays an integral part in the novel—New England treats such as sugar on snow and maple creemees are featured throughout. Is there a food or a food memory in your own life that you associate with a special place or time?
 
6. The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living is a story about belonging—to a person, to a place, to a community, to a family. What is it about Margaret, the McCrackens, and the community of Guthrie that makes Livvy feel like she has finally found home? What gives you a sense of belonging?
 
7. Fidelity is a running theme in the book. In the opening, Livvy is having an affair with a married man and alludes to other affairs. Why do you think Livvy engages in these kinds of relationships? How do they help or hurt her? How do they shape her experiences in Guthrie?
 
8. There are many unconventional families who appear in The City Baker—from Margaret’s relationship to the McCrackens to the staff at The Sugar Maple to Livvy’s relationship to Hannah to Livvy and Margaret’s relationship to each other. How do you define family? Do you have a chosen family as well as your birth family? Do you have people in your life whom you consider family who are not technically related to you?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The City Center  (The New Agenda Series, 1)
Simone Pond, 2013
Ktown Waters
322 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780615889115


Summary
During the man-made apocalypse in the 21st century, a group of elites killed off a majority of the population. Only two groups of survivors remained––those selected to reside inside the Los Angeles City Center and the rebels, relegated to live on the Outside.

Centuries later, Ava Rhodes is one of five potential successors competing to become the next Queen of the City Center. A week prior to the final competitions she encounters Joseph, a rebel from the Outside, and discovers her utopian home is actually a prison and breeding facility aimed at designing the perfect human. She escapes with Joseph to the Outside world, sending the City Center’s leader, Chief Morray, into an obsessive pursuit for his property.

Along the journey, Ava falls in love with Joseph and discovers an even darker secret about the fate of her people. She must decide whether to stay with Joseph, or save her people from destruction. (From the publisher.)

This is the first book of The New Agenda series. The second is The New Agenda (2014), and Mainframe, the third, is due out in 2015.

Author Bio
• Birth—August 21, 1970
• Where—Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—B.A., University of Maryland, College Park
• Currently—Los Angeles, California


I grew up in a town just outside Washington D.C. On my 7th birthday I got a Hello Kitty diary and I've been 'journaling' ever since. Writing saved my life and got me through some tough times (and still does). I spent years scribbling notes and random thoughts, but after reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton the world of writing opened up. I was blown away that a woman could write so convincingly from a teenaged boy's perspective. I knew I had to become a writer.

I've written many essays, blogs and songs, but after a strange conversation with my husband about what cities might be like in the future, I decided to write a full-length novel about a supposed utopian city that's actually a prison.

As far as the boring technical information, I graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a BA in Communications and a minor in English. I moved out west a week after graduation and I've been working in advertising ever since––to pay the bills.

While I love writing about the future, I live in current day Los Angeles with my husband and our Boston Terrier. This is my first speculative fiction novel. I'm working on the second in the series—The New Agenda—that will launch sometime in 2014. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
(A few things people are saying about the book.)

Looking for a new page turner? My eyes are burning because I couldn't put it down. I skipped meals, sleep, yoga, I HAD to finish it. You can thank or hate on me later."

"You will whip through this book, it is a fast and easy read, and Ava and other characters are fully imagined and instantly enthralling. Can't wait for the next one (there HAS to be a next one, right?!?)"

"I just finished The City Center and I loved it. I started it on Sunday, brought it to work with me on Monday to read during my lunch hour and finished it Monday night. I was quickly caught up in the characters and had a hard time putting it down until I knew how everything played out. I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series!"

"You had me up reading much later than I wanted to stay up last night."

"A friend turned me on to this book, and I couldn't be happier she did. I usually take a long time to finish a book, but blew through The City Center in 2 days. Great story with really good writing. I highly recommend this book."

"Fantastic first book in what I hope is a long series. I thoroughly enjoyed this imaginative journey. Ms. Pond struck a great balance between story and character development. Can't wait for more!"

"The City Center got me thinking about all the great possibilities our future could hold for us, good and bad and that should be a true goal of the fiction writer. Well done Ms. Pond."

Discussion Questions
1. How do you think The City Center differs from other dystopian novels?

2. In The City Center, each Successor Candidate is working toward Graduation Day so they can become a member of Royal Court, yet they don't know what achieving that position fully entails. Is the author trying to say something here?

3. On the Outside, the people are so much more aware of who they are and connected with nature and God. The characters even quote Ecclesiastes. Does this inspire you or bother you? What are things you do to keep your hope alive?

4. Inside the city everything is dependent on technology, including the residents. They're all plugged into the mainframe. What do you think the author is saying about technology?

5. Chief Morray and his team of Planners design and manipulate DNA coding to create humans for specific needs and vocations. What do you think the author is saying about human rights?

6. The story looks at both sides of society—the "haves" and the "have nots." Who decides what is superior? Who decides what is right for the masses? Do you feel that society today (thoughts, ideas, food, purchases, career choices, place in society) is under attack?

7. Ava's journey is to seek the truth about her city, but along the way she discovers herself. Where do you see this transformation beginning to occur?

8. When Ava discovers the even darker secret about her people, were you surprised? What are your thoughts on that subject matter?

9. What are some of the books that have inspired you in the speculative fiction genre?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)

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The City in the Middle of the Night  
Charlie Jane Anders, 2019
Tor Books
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780765379962 


Summary
If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams... And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives.

January is a dying planet—divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk.

But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal.

But fate has other plans—and Sophie's ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Manchester, Connecticut, USA
• Education—Cambridge University
• Awards—Nebula Award, Hugo Award
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California

Charlie Jane Anders is a website co-creator and editor, a short story writer, and author of sci-fi / fantasy novels—All the Birds in the Sky (2016) and The City in the Middle of the Night (2019).

Anders was raised in Mansfield, Connecticut. She went to Cambridge University in England where she studied English and Asian literature, prompting her to study abroad in China. Following college, she spent time in Hong Kong and Boston and now makes her home in San Francisco, California.

Career
In 2007, along with Annalee Newitz, Anders helped co-found the popular Gawker Media site, io9—a blog devoted to science fiction and fantasy. She worked as editor-in-chief until 2016 when she left to concentrate on her writing.

In 2016 Anders published her debut sci-fi / fantasy novel, All the Birds in the Sky. The book earned her the 2017 Nebula Awards for Best Novel, was a finalist for the year's Hugo Best Novel category, and climbed to the number five spot on Time magazine's top 10 novels list. An earlier novelette, "Six Months, Three Days," published in 2013 on Tor.com, also won a Hugo Award.

Anders has been publishing short stories since 1999—more than 100—in a variety of genres. Her fiction has been published by McSweeney's, Lightspeed, and ZYZZYVA. Her journalism has appeared in Salon, Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Atlantic Monthly, and other outlets.

Events
In addition to writing, Anders has spent years as an event organizer. She organized a "ballerina pie fight" in 2005 for other magazine; co-organized the "Cross-Gender Caravan," a national transgender and genderqueer author tour; and a "Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl" in San Francisco. Anders also emcees an award-winning monthly reading series "Writers with Drinks," a San Francisco-based event begun in 2001 that features authors from a wide range of genres.

Personal
Since 2000, Anders has been partnered with Annalee Newitz. In addition to the io9 blog, the couple co-founded other magazine and hosted the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

Anders is transgender. In 2007, she brought attention to a discriminatory policy of San Francisco bisexual women's organization, The Chasing Amy Social Club, that specifically barred pre-operative transgender women from membership. (Adapted from Wikipedia and other online sources. Retrieved 2/26/2019.)

Book Reviews
★ Intricate, embracing much of what makes a grand adventure: smugglers, revolutionaries, pirates, camaraderie, personal sacrifice, wondrous discovery, and the struggle to find light in the darkness. Breathlessly exciting and thought-provoking.
Publishers Weekly


★ The planet of January was colonized long ago, but now it is dying.… [A]n intricate tale of colonialism and evolution on both physical and social levels. The harsh world and well-developed characters combine with stunning storytelling that will capture readers' minds and hearts. —Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton
Library Journal


★ An even stronger novel than Anders’ Nebula Award–winning All the Birds in the Sky; a tale that can stand beside such enduring works as Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.
Booklist


★ [A] sweeping work of anthropological/social sf.… Anders contains multitudes; it's always a fascinating and worthwhile surprise to see what she comes up with next.
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 CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT … then take off on your own:

1. Of course we are meant to like Sophie, and we do. What characteristics does she possess that make her likeable, admirable even? What do you see as her flaws?

2. Follow-up to Question 1: Discuss Bianca's theft and Sophie's willingness to take the blame for her? Why to both actions? What is it about Sophie that leads her to cling to, indeed to sacrifice herself for, Bianca? As she herself says, "I can't stop throwing away my life for Bianca. It's all I ever do."

3. Follow-up to Questions 1 and 2: In what way do Sophie and Bianca reflect the caste system of this world. To what degree is it reflective of our own: the same, somewhat better, or worse?

4. Consider the following passage about the city of Xiosphant…

The founders of that city had a valid theory of human nature, but they took it too far. That's the problem with grand social ideas in general, they break if you put too much weight on them.

A lot to unpack in those two sentences:

• What is the "valid theory" the city's founders propound, and how do they "take it too far"?
• How would you describe living in Xiosphant—the individual daily life, social structure and interactions between citizens, laws and punishments? What is the overall quality of life?

5. Follow-up to Question 4: what is meant by the passage's "grand social ideas" and why do they break? How might that statement apply to our own world's history of grand ideas: monarchy, democracy, capitalism, socialism, communism, religion?

6. Overall, which city would you choose to live in (if you had to choose!)—Xiosphant or Argelo?

7. Then, of course, there are the crocodiles, which (whom?) Sophie calls the Gelet. Describe them: are you able to overcome the fact that they look like giant lobsters? Talk about the connection that Sophie develops with them and what she learns from them.

8. Humans—who hate the Gelet, see them as prey, and eat them—display the worst possible qualities of humanity. Clearly Charlie Jane Anders is offering serious social commentary. What is the author suggesting about the human race, especially our treatment of the environment and of one another? Do you consider her view overly harsh or spot on?

9. Talk about Mouth and her trials. Do you like her—initially, later, or never? In other words, does your attitude toward her change?

10.  What does Mouth reveal about the planet itself—its backstory and the impact of human habitation.

m. Mouth sums up her own struggle and that of many of the book's characters: "The dead were just like the living: they all wanted something they could never have." What does she mean by that? Is that our fate as human beings: to want what we can never have? If so, what is it we want?

11. The technology keeping January's citizens alive is crumbling, but no one seems capable of dealing with change. Sound familiar?

12. The book suggests that humans can never be brought to care about the plight of those whom they find repulsive or to show concern about the damage they have caused the to the planet. Do you find this trait realistic? Or is the novel's view of humanity too dark and fatalistic?

13. By the end of the book, how do you see Sophie? In what way has she changed, grown, become wiser or stronger?

14. How do you feel about the book's ending? Does it end too abruptly for you? Or is its conclusion a logical outcome? How would you end the novel?

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

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The City of Brass 
S.A. Chakraborty, 2017
HarperCollins
500 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062678102


Summary
An imaginative tale in which the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts.

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent.

But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, and a mysterious gift for healing—are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive.

But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass — a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In Daevabad, within gilded brass walls laced with enchantments and behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments run deep. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, her arrival threatens to ignite a war that has been simmering for centuries.

Spurning Dara’s warning of the treachery surrounding her, she embarks on a hesitant friendship with Alizayd, an idealistic prince who dreams of revolutionizing his father’s corrupt regime. All too soon, Nahri learns that true power is fierce and brutal.

That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences. After all, there is a reason they say to be careful what you wish for. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
S. (Shannon) A. Chakraborty is an American writer of speculative fiction, whose debut novel, The City of Brass, was published in 2017. Chakraborty was born in New Jersey and now makes her home with her husband and daughter in Queens, New York City, New York.

The City of Brass, the first book in the planned "The Daevabad Trilogy," takes place in the 18th-century Middle East. The manuscript made news when it was purchased for somewhere in the "high six-figures" by HarperCollins. The publisher admitted to haven been taken by Chakraborty's ability to create "this wonderfully rich world" of the "Mughal Empire, the Sunni-Shia conflict, and Persian and Indian folklore." While "relevant to current events … it’s action-packed, delicious escapist storytelling at its best."

When she's not pouring over books on Mughal portraiture or Omani history, Chakraborty is active in the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group as one of its organizers. Hiking, knitting, and cooking "unnecessarily complicated medieval meals" at home, occupy whatever spare time is left. (Adapted from the Bath Novel Award and the author's website)

Book Reviews
The familiar fantasy theme of a young person learning of a hidden supernatural legacy is given new life in this promising debut novel.… [A] feisty, independent lead searching for answers … and a richly imagined alternate world.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) This lyrical historical fantasy … a swiftly moving plot, richly drawn characters, and a beautifully constructed world that will entrance fantasy aficionados. —KC
Library Journal


Vivid descriptions percolate the lush prose, and a final twist leaves room for a sequel. Recommend this scintillating, Middle Eastern fantasy to fans of thoughtful, mystical adventures.
Booklist

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The City of Brass … then take off on your own:

1. Describe Nahiri: she has special abilities but also lacks authentic healing powers. As the novel develops what do we come to learn about those powers, as well as Nihiri's unfolding history and personality?

2. What does the ifrit see in Nahiri, and what does Dara see in her? What brings both of them forth during Nihir's attempted exorcism?

3. How much do you know about Djinns (also spelled Jinn)? How fully does the book explain their beginnings (and parallels to Judeo-Christianity), their functions and powers?

4. Who was Suleiman and what was his seal?

5. Discuss Daevabad? What are its many amazements that dazzle Nihiri? More pertinent to the novel's plot, what are the political, religious, and racial divides in the city? What injustices are evident to Nihiri?

6. Were you confused by Daevabad's numerous tribes, families, and their alliances? If so, did you eventually come to understand the multiple factions?

7. Talk about Dara's own tangled past? What was his role as an Afshin warrior?

8. What is Alizyd's role in fueling violence in Daevabad? What does he hope his efforts will accomplish?

9. Talk about S.A. Chakraborty's ability at world building. Has she been successful in creating a vibrant yet credible parallel world in The City of Brass? Are you looking forward to the next installment in the series?

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

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City of Dark Magic 
Magnus Flyte, 2012
Penguin Group USa
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143122685


Summary
Cosmically fast-paced, wildly imaginative, and the perfect potion of magic and suspense.

Once a city of enormous wealth and culture, Prague was home to emperors, alchemists, astronomers, and, as it’s whispered, hell portals. When music student Sarah Weston lands a summer job at Prague Castle cataloging Beethoven’s manuscripts, she has no idea how dangerous her life is about to become. Prague is a threshold, Sarah is warned, and it is steeped in blood.

Soon after Sarah arrives, strange things begin to happen. She learns that her mentor, who was working at the castle, may not have committed suicide after all. Could his cryptic notes be warnings? As Sarah parses his clues about Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” she manages to get arrested, to have tantric sex in a public fountain, and to discover a time-warping drug. She also catches the attention of a four-hundred-year-old dwarf, the handsome Prince Max, and a powerful U.S. senator with secrets she will do anything to hide. (From the publisher.)

The sequel to this work is City of Lost Dreams (2013).

Author Bio
Meg Howrey
A classically trained dancer, Meg performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Ballet of Los Angeles. She made her theatrical debut at Lincoln Center, and toured with the Broadway production of Contact, for which she won the 2001 Ovation Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Her novels are Blind Sight and The Cranes Dance, and her non-fiction has appeared in Vogue. She currently lives in Los Angeles. (From the author's website.)

Christina Lynch
There is an actual part of your brain ( I believe it is in the hippocampus) that keeps a record of your life story. Of course, it's not an accurate record. My hippocampus claims that I grew up mostly in Chicago, graduated from Harvard College, and have my MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. I was at one time the Milan correspondent for W magazine, and lived in Italy for 7 years, where I ate a lot of wonderful meals and  won the Tuscan Endurance Championship on my horse Camelia. I moved to L.A. to write television, which I still do, though now I spend most of my time in a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada with a couple of lazy horses and a very wonderful dog. I write novels and television (and too many emails), and teach writing. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A comical, rollicking and sexy thriller.
Huffington Post

An entertaining mix of magic, mystery and romance, it’s one of the most original novels released this year.
CNN

Cleverly combining time travel, murder, history, and musical lore, this is a breezy, lighthearted novel. Sarah Weston is researching her Ph.D. in neurological musicology in Boston when a letter arrives summoning her to Prague....to establish the relationship between one of the first Lobkowicz princes and Ludwig von Beethoven. Sarah is warned that Prague is "a threshold" to "dark magic," passion and violence, and she suspects that mysteries await.... [A] story that abounds in mysterious portents, wild coincidences, violent death, and furtive but lusty sexual congress.
Publishers Weekly


With the introduction of legends that Prague is home to portals to hell, the reader is dropped into a confusing entanglement of plots, personalities, and mysteries that involve alchemical elements.... Verdict: While this novel may well find its own niche of faithful followers, it is, unfortunately, a miss for this reviewer. Readers looking for a fast-paced, historically rich, romantic adventure with paranormal elements would be better directed to Deborah Harkness’s “All Souls Trilogy” (A Discovery of Witches; Shadow of Night).
Library Journal


Sometimes you want a book that simply entertains, and City of Dark Magic does just that. There’s a bit of everything, and when one scene seems impossible, know that the next will top it. Go with it. It’s a good ride and a great way to escape reality for a bit.
Bookreporter


The darkly charming and twisted streets of Prague provide the deliciously dramatic backdrop for this paranormal romp that fires on all cylinders, masquerading by turns as a romance, a time-travel thriller, and a tongue-in-cheek mystery.... [A] pulse-pounding adventure, as Sarah, with the aid of a powerful mind—and time-bending drug—zips through the centuries in search of clues that will unlock a timeless musical mystery. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist


The riddle of Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved," alchemy and clandestine love fuse in this fast-paced, funny, romantic mystery.... Brilliant musicologist Sarah Weston has been summoned to Prague to catalog Beethoven manuscripts at the Lobkowicz Palace.... Yet Prague is a dangerous place, a place where the walls between worlds have thinned to precariously fragile layers.... Even the minor characters are drawn ingeniously in this exuberant, surprising gem.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions

1. Though the novel is humorous, there are some serious themes under all that fun. What are Sarah’s thoughts on the idea that some people inherit huge wealth and are considered “noble,” while others have to earn their keep, and how does Max feel about his inheritance?

2. There are people from many cultures, backgrounds, and with various physical strengths or disabilities in the book. How does this book deal with stereotypes?

3. How are the themes of loss, fatherhood, and longing explored in this novel?

4. Characters in the novel have differing religious beliefs. How does Sarah’s time in Prague affect her beliefs?

5. Sarah’s ambition puts her in the crosshairs of Charlotte Yates’s ambitions. How does the novel address issues of ambition?

6. Nicolas Pertusato claims he’s four hundred years old. In what ways does the novel explore different aspects of immortality for him, for Beethoven, and for Sherbatsky?

7. Sarah Weston is approached out of the blue to go to Prague for the summer to help catalog Beethoven’s papers. What convinces her to take the job?

8. At the castle, Sarah is introduced to her fellow housemates, most of whom are there to do their own respective research. What do her initial impressions of the other residents tell us about her, and them?

9. Sarah notices early on that Prague has a “vibe” (p. 55). How do Sarah’s feelings about things like “vibes” and magic change in the course of the novel?

10. Who is Charlotte Yates, what is her connection to the Lobkowicz family, and what does her story tell us about the history of Prague?

11. Dr. Sherbatsky is an important mentor for Sarah. What has she learned from him and what does his unfortunate death mean for her?

12. Sarah is, by her own admission, a highly sexual person. Which qualities draw her to potential partners, and how does she feel about love as it is conventionally portrayed in books and movies? Do we judge female characters that are openly sexual differently than we do male characters with the same trait?

13. Nicolas gives Sarah a strange drug. What does the drug do and what is its connection to the mysteries of the castle? What does it awaken in Sarah?

14. What is Prince Max looking for, and why? How do his and Sarah’s ambitions at first keep them apart, then bring them together?

15. Sarah and Max learn they knew each other as young children. What effect does this strange coincidence have on their relationship?

16. Sarah ultimately discovers the “truth” about Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved. What does she find out, and how does it change her feelings about the composer?

17. In the epigraph, there is a quote from Beethoven: “Of Princes there have and will be thousands—of Beethovens there is only one.” Why do you think the authors chose this quote to open the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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City of Girls 
Elizabeth Gilbert, 2019
Penguin Publishing
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594634734


Summary
"Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are."

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.

In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse.

There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager.

But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves—and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it.

It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.

Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life—and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time," she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is."

Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 18, 1969
• Raised—Litchfield, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., New York University
• Awards—Pushcart Prize
• Currently—Frenchtown, New Jersey


Elizabeth M. Gilbert is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which spent 200 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was also made into a film by the same name in 2010.

Gilbert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father was a chemical engineer, her mother a nurse. Along with her only sister, novelist Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Gilbert grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. The family lived in the country with no neighbors, and they didn’t own a TV or even a record player. Consequently, they all read a great deal, and Gilbert and her sister entertained themselves by writing little books and plays.

Gilbert earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from New York University in 1991, after which she worked as a cook, a waitress, and a magazine employee. She wrote of her experience as a cook on a dude ranch in short stories, and also briefly in her book The Last American Man (2002).

Journalism
Esquire published Gilbert's short story "Pilgrims" in 1993, under the headline, "The Debut of an American Writer." She was the first unpublished short story writer to debut in Esquire since Norman Mailer. This led to steady—and well paying—work as a journalist for a variety of national magazines, including SPIN, GQ, New York Times Magazine, Allure, Real Simple, and Travel + Leisure.

Her 1997 GQ article, "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon", a memoir of Gilbert's time as a bartender at the very first Coyote Ugly table dancing bar located in the East Village section of New York City, was the basis for the feature film Coyote Ugly (2000). She adapted her 1998 GQ article, "The Last American Man: Eustace Conway is Not Like Any Man You've Ever Met," into a biography of the modern naturalist, The Last American Man, which received a nomination for the National Book Award in non-fiction. "The Ghost," a profile of Hank Williams III published by GQ in 2000, was included in Best American Magazine Writing 2001.

Early books
Gilbert's first book Pilgrims (1997), a collection of short stories, received the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. This was followed by her novel Stern Men (2000), selected as a New York Times "Notable Book." In 2002 she published The Last American Man (2002), a biography of Eustace Conway, a modern woodsman and naturalist, which was nominated for National Book Award.

Eat, Pray, Love
In 2006, Gilbert published Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Viking), a chronicle of her year of "spiritual and personal exploration" spent traveling abroad. She financed her world travel for the book with a $200,000 publisher's advance.

The memoir was on the New York Times Best Seller List of non-fiction in the spring of 2006, and in October 2008, after 88 weeks, the book was still on the list at number 2. Gilbert appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007, and has reappeared on the show to further discuss the book and her philosophy, and to discuss the film. She was named by Time as among the 100 most influential people in the world. The film version was released in 2010 with Julia Roberts starring as Gilbert.

After EPL
Gilbert's fifth book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, was released in 2010. The book is somewhat of a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love in that it takes up Gilbert's life story where her bestseller left off. Committed also reveals Gilbert's decision to marry Felipe, the Brazilian man she met in Indonesia as recounted in the final section of EPL. The book is an examination of the institution of marriage from several historical and modern perspectives—including those of people, particularly women, reluctant to marry. In the book, Gilbert also includes perspectives on same-sex marriage and compares this to interracial marriage prior to the 1970s. Gilbert and Felipe are still married and operate a story called Two Buttons.

In 2012, she republished At Home on the Range, a 1947 cookbook written by her great-grandmother, the food columnist Margaret Yardley Potter. Apply

Gilbert returned to fiction in 2013 with The Signature of All Things, a sprawling 19th-century style novel following the life of a young female botonist. The book brings together that century's fascination with botany, botanical drawing, spiritual inquiry, exploration, and evolution. Kirkus Reviews called it "a brilliant exercise of intellect and imagination," and Booklist a "must read."

Literary influences
In an interview, Gilbert mentioned The Wizard of Oz with nostalgia, adding, "I am a writer today because I learned to love reading as a child—and mostly on account of the Oz books..." She is especially vocal about the importance of Charles Dickens to her, mentioning his stylistic influence on her writing in many interviews. She lists Marcus Aurelius' Meditations as her favorite book on philosophy. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/16/2013.)

Book Reviews
[The] open-endedness, [the] refusal of received literary templates, is what makes City of Girls worth reading. It's not a simple-minded polemic about sexual freedom and not an operatic downer; rather, it's the story of a conflicted, solitary woman who's made an independent life as best she can. If the usual narrative shapes don't fit her experience—and they don't fit most lives—neither she nor her creator seems to be worrying about it.
David Gates - New York Times Book Review


Unfortunately, what should have been a mere 300-page novel became a 470-page tome. The best and worst thing that can be said about City of Girls is that it’s perfectly pleasant.… [I]t demands only stamina from its readers. Not that it’s without charm.… [Gilbert's] got a good ear for the arch repartee of 1940s comedy.… Novels so rarely get better [so] I was shocked to discover that the ending of City of Girls is genuinely moving.… [I]t’s a delight to see Gilbert finally invest these characters with some real emotional heft and complexity.
Ron Charles- Washington Post


[A] sometimes maddening, something frothy, and ultimately a punch-to-the-heart reminiscence.… [I]t’s hard to avoid growing impatient… [feeling] as though the best part of the story is waiting in the wings.… But the wait is not without its delights.… [T]he whole tone and texture of the novel dramatically change, becoming a more moving, haunting, and absolutely profound meditation on love, loss, friendship, and all the extraordinary ways people manage to live their lives.… [D]eliciously refreshing as a fizzy summer drink, but truly, in its second half, it’s also more like fine wine, thoughtfully crafted to be savored for its benefits.
Boston Globe


In other hands, this novel could have had all the adventure and enjoyment, but none of the depth; instead [Gilbert] makes it into a glorious, multilayered, emotionally astute celebration of womanhood. It would be easy to dismiss City of Girls as joyous escapism, and God knows there’s little enough of that around right now. But look more closely and what you’ll see is an eloquently persuasive treatise on the judgment and punishment of women, and a heartfelt call to reclaim female sexual agency.
Guardian (UK)


Gilbert spares her heroine anything resembling trauma.… I won’t spoil the dramatic fulcrum of the plot. But I will say that… some of the most dramatic moments in the novel may feel overly mechanistic. Is Vivian’s faux pas fully motivated? Likewise, is the pathos of the late-in-life love relationship convincing, or does it feel more like an idea grafted into the story to prove the Gilbert ethos that love is good even when unconventional? Still,… lush prose and firm belief in love… suffuses City of Girls.
San Francisco Chronicle


[A]n uneven yet decadently told tale about being a woman in a time when there was only one acceptable way to behave.… [T]he narration falters… [a]s the novel speeds up, allowing years of Vivian’s life to flash by, [and] the story-telling can’t keep up with the emotional weight it’s meant to carry. By fleshing out the journey of Vivian’s life, Gilbert distracts from the strength of the coming-of-age story and the descriptive power of her prose when she lingers on a moment.
Time


City of Girls, Gilbert's latest novel, has the faint whiff of the expected.… Still, Gilbert pulls off a breezy, entertaining read—and really, something better: a lively, effervescent, and sexy portrait of a woman living in a golden time. We just have to get past the somewhat ponderous, overly familiar framing device.… Passion, Gilbert never tires of informing us, that's the stuff of life.
Jean Zimmerman - NPR


[T]he glamorous greasepainted swirl of 1940s New York’s theater-world bohemia.… Girls takes a few darker turns as [the protagonist] stumbles toward adulthood, though Gilbert stays true to her pledge that she won’t let her protagonist’s sexuality be her downfall, like so many literary heroines before her. That may be the most radical thing about a novel that otherwise revels in the old-fashioned pleasures of storytelling—the right to fall down rabbit holes, and still find your own wonderland.
Entertainment Weekly


City of Girls is a testament to Gilbert's restless curiosity. She spent years researching the artistic scene of the city in the 1940s.… Their effect on the book is clear.… For anyone familiar with the lightness and the buoyancy of Gilbert’s own voice, the clunkiness of the period vernacular becomes a barrier to investing in the community at the heart of the novel.… Because Gilbert has a bewitching voice that comes through even when she is trying to mask it, though, City of Girls remains a vibrant novel about a woman balancing her desires with the age in which she lives.
Vanity Fair


(Starred review) [A] beguiling tale.… Vivian—originally reckless and selfish, eventually thoughtful and humane—is the perfect protagonist for this novel, a page-turner with heart complete with a potent message of fulfillment and happiness.
Publishers Weekly


The first half of Gilbert's historical novel is a rollicking coming-of-age delight, vividly capturing the spirit of the era. But the melancholy second half feels flat, owing to the awkward narrative structure that has.… Vivian reflecting on her life in a letter. —Wilda Williams, New York
Library Journal


(Starred review) Reading City of Girls is pure bliss, thanks to its spirited characters, crackling dialogue, rollicking yet affecting story lines, genuinely erotic scenes, and sexual intelligence, suspense, and incisive truths
Booklist


(Starred review) Vivian Morris.… [is a] delightful narrator.… Whatever Eat Pray Love did or did not do for you, please don't miss out on her wonderful novels any longer. A big old banana split of a book, surely the cure for what ails you.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
 1. Narrative: Elizabeth Gilbert chooses to tell Vivian’s story in the form of a letter to a younger woman, Angela. How do you think the story benefits from being told in the voice of 89-year-old Vivian, looking back? What did you learn from this vantage? How did it influence your reading experience?

2. Character perspective: In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian’s introduction to life in New York City and within the Lily Playhouse is a shock after her world at Vassar and her family outside of the city. What is so different about it all? What elements of this new city and world shape her the most, do you think? And how might they have struck her differently if she’d come from a different kind of family and class background?

3. Sexuality: Vivian receives an atypical sexual education from her new friends, the showgirls, and from her time with Anthony. How does her time at the Lily shape Vivian’s ideas about sex and love and desire and appetite as a young woman, and how do these ideas sustain and evolve later in her life? How much do you think her adult ideas about female desire are due to her personality or experience? How typical do you think Vivian’s attitudes about sex and love would have been for someone of her age and time?

4. Female friendship, part 1: Consider the portrayal of Vivian’s friendship with Celia Ray, the smoldering showgirl at the Lily Playhouse. How does it compare to her previous experiences of female friendship from school. How much does this friendship influence what happens next for Vivian? Which of these two women, Vivian or Celia, do you think holds the power in their friendship, and why? How do you imagine their friendship would have played out over the years if certain events had not intervened?

5. Female friendship, part 2: How does Vivian’s later friendship with Marjorie compare with her younger friendship with Celia Ray? Would Vivian’s life with Marjorie and her other friends later in life have been possible if not for knowing Celia and the other women at the Lily when she was younger? Do you see her applying any lessons learned by observing the relationship between Peg and Olive and Uncle Billy?

6. Men: Consider the different male characters in the book—Vivian’s father, Walter, Uncle Billy, Mr. Herbert, Arthur, Anthony, Jim, Frank—and their different ideas expectations of women. What accounts for the differences between these men and how they relate to women? In what ways does Vivian meet their expectations or challenge / change them?

7. Fashion: City of Girls is full of descriptions of fantastic costumes and characters with truly original senses of style. What does Vivian learn about fashion and style from the showgirls? From her grandmother? From Edna? Even from Peg and Olive? Consider the role that fashion plays in Vivian’s story and in the various relationships and stages of her life: in boarding school, at the Lily Playhouse, at the Navy Yards, at L’Atelier with Marjorie, and in meeting Angela.

8. Generations: Edna, Olive, and Peg represent an older generation of women. Their views and relationships (with Billy, with Arthur) and behaviors influence Vivian in different ways. Consider what Vivian learns from Peg, Olive, and Billy’s domestic / professional arrangement. What about the dynamics she observes between Edna and Arthur? Think about how Edna treats Vivian after Vivian’s betrayal is revealed. Do you think Edna is justified in her behavior? Ultimately Edna decides to stay with Arthur even after what he has done. Do you think Vivian would have stayed with Arthur if she were in Edna’s position? Would Arthur have stayed with Edna if the positions were reversed?

9. Family: Were you surprised by the kind of life that Vivian builds with Marjorie and Nathan? In what ways can you see it growing out of her experiences at the Lily Playhouse in her twenties, and the lifestyle and values she adopts during and after the war? How does Vivian’s adult family life compare to the family she grew up with? Do you think Vivian ever wants more than the life she attains?

10. Love: What kind of love does Vivian have for Frank, and how does this love change the course of her life? How does Vivian’s love for Frank differ from her youthful love of Anthony? How does it compare with any of her other friendships or romantic relationships? How do you think Vivian would describe the difference between a "love" and a "lover"? Can you imagine Frank and Vivian having a physical relationship? How might that have changed Vivian’s life and story?

11. Values: On page 377, Vivian states: "I could have spent the rest of my life trying to prove that I was a good girl—but that would have been unfaithful to who I really was. I believed that I was a good person, if not a good girl." What does this quote mean to you? Is there a difference between being a good girl and being a good person? Does Vivian live up to this ideal in your opinion?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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City of Light 
Lauren Belfer, 1999 
Random House
503 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385337649


Summary
It is 1901 and Buffalo, New York, stands at the center of the nation's attention as a place of immense wealth and sophistication. The massive hydroelectric power development at nearby Niagara Falls and the grand Pan-American Exposition promise to bring the Great Lakes "city of light" even more repute. Against this rich historical backdrop lives Louisa Barrett, the attractive, articulate headmistress of the Macaulay School for Girls. Protected by its powerful all-male board, "Miss Barrett" is treated as an equal by the men who control the life of the city. Lulled by her unique relationship with these titans of business, Louisa feels secure in her position, until a mysterious death at the power plant triggers a sequence of events that forces her to return to a past she has struggled to conceal, and to question everything and everyone she holds dear. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Rochester, New York, USA
• Reared—Buffalo, New York
• Education—B.A., Swarthmore College; M.F.A., Columbia
   University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Lauren Belfer is an American author from Buffalo, New York, where she attended the Buffalo Seminary, which would later become the girls boarding-school depicted in her debut novel, City of Light, about Buffalo, NY during the Pan-American Exposition.

At Swarthmore College, she majored in Medieval Studies. After graduating, she worked as a file clerk at an art gallery, a paralegal, an assistant photo editor at a newspaper, a fact checker at magazines, and as a researcher and associate producer on documentary films. She has an M.F.A. from Columbia University.

Her debut novel, City of Light, published in 1999, was a New York Times bestseller and a bestseller in Great Britain. It has been translated into seven languages.

Her second novel, A Fierce Radiance, is a romantic historical thriller which follows the development of penicillin during World War II in New York City. The novel was published in June, 2010.

Belfer's fiction has also been published in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, and Henfield Prize Stories. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, the Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere.

Belfer is interviewed as an author/historian for the PBS documentary on Elbert Hubbard entitled Elbert Hubbard: An American Original. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
What matters...is the vivid sense of the time and place that Ms. Belfer has created...[including] the weight of a social order in which commerce alone conferred power....Whether we've progressed from those times remains highly debatable. But in her powerfully atmospheric book Ms. Belfer makes them seem real and very far away, and at the same time eerily familiar and relevant to the present.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times

[A] huge, sprawling portrait of the United States at the turn of the last century....At its heart is a brilliantly realized set piece that is wickedly relevant to the headlines of that era, as well as to this one....An ingenious first novel.
Ellen Feldman - The New York Times Book Review

City of Light is like the Niagara River, which is so central to the story. All appears calm as the book begins. By the time you realize you've been pulled into its swift currents, the story moves urgently through its 518 pages. It is long but fast...[I]t's breathtaking in its achievement. Belfer's first novel is a remarkable blend of murder mystery, love story, political intrigue and tragedy of manners.
Eriak Brady - USA Today

This book is part mystery and part historical melodrama, fluently mixing fact and fiction, with the sort of Victorian plot devices that gaurantee a straight-through, sleepless read. The novel is no Ragtime, but it's close-an operatic potboiler, fat with romance, politics and scandal. Even the considerable length of Lauren Belfer's City of Light can't prepare the reader for all the novel holds. In turn-of-the-century Buffalo, she illuminates (among other concerns) the struggles of women, blacks, immigrants and lesbians, labor unions and socialists; the birth of environmentalism; the back-room dealings of industrialists; and the illegitimate children of predatory U.S. Presidents.
Time

An ambitious, vividly detailed and stirring debut novel offering a panorama of American life at the beginning of the 20th century. Louisa Barrett, the bright, outspoken, handsome but rigidly proper headmistress of the exclusive (and progressive) Macaulay School for Girls in Buffalo, where the city's elite send their daughters, seems at first an unlikely heroine. In fact, she harbors an astounding secret: she's been the mistress of a powerful national politician and has given birth to a daughter. The child was adopted by a wealthy local couple, Louisa's best friends, and Louisa owes her position partly to political influence: the elite have joined to protect the President's reputation by sheltering Louisa. All of that is threatened, though, when the adoptive father, Tom Sinclair, is implicated in the death of the chief engineer at the new Niagara power station. Tom, a technological visionary, is director of that same electricity-generating station. Louisa, in an attempt to save him (and her daughter, an affectionate child who assumes that her mother is simply a good family friend), begins to investigate. Louisa's persistent inquiries offer Belfer an opportunity to create a cross-section of American society in a turbulent time; ranging from the slums to the grand houses of a city then very much in the ascendant, her narrative encompasses everything from labor turmoil and the struggles being waged by minorities (women, immigrants, blacks) for a voice, to the dazzling dreams of visionaries like Tom Sinclair, who imagines that technology will bring equality in its wake. Belfer keeps a large, fascinating, exuberant cast well in motion, and Louisa, who manages to resolve the murdermystery but loses much in the process, is a vulnerable, complex, and believeable heroine. Belfer's portrait of the nation at a hard if ebullient time, while likely to remind some readers of Doctorow's Ragtime, is less chilly and more subtle than that work, and very gripping. A remarkably assured and satisfying first novel.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. In City of Light, the upper echelons of Buffalo society all get what they want by cultivating an "acceptable" image under which they can do what they want, regardless of its moral implications. How does this rationalize their behavior, as well as hide it?

2. Faced with a social order that demanded this "acceptable" behavior, was there any other way Louisa could react when faced with a crisis—such as Millicent's abduction or the vandalization of her school?

3. Are there any main characters in this story who don't follow society's code? Who and why?

4. Louisa likes to think of her students as "a generation of subversives who took up their expected positions in society and then, day by day, bit by bit, fostered a revolution." Do you think that this is what she achieved with her students? Was it the best way she had to help the social progress of women?

5. Why do none of the members of Buffalo society become involved with the faction that is worried about the affects of the power plant on the environment?

6. In protecting Grace, was Louisa doing the right thing? Did her focus on the little girl blind her, impairing her judgement, as with her decision to not turn Susannah Riley in?

7. Would Louisa have been better off moving away from Buffalo and merely keeping in touch with the Sinclair family? Would Grace have been better off?

8. If Abigail's mother wanted to keep her daughter's child far away from Abigail and from scandal, why didn't she have him adopted in a family far away, instead of sending it to the asylum?

9. Why does Mr. Rumsey let Louisa know that he planned her meeting with Cleveland? Would she have been better off never knowing?

10. Why does Mr. Rumsey seem surprised that Louisa might have suffered from her experience of conceiving Grace—or that she feels badly about her "loss of innocence?"

11. In 1901, Buffalo is one of the richest, most sophisticated cities in the nation. How does this influence Louisa's life, and the lives of the wealthy citizens of the city? What do they hope to achieve on the brink of a new century?

Bonus questions:

12. What motivates Tom Sinclair's dreams of electrical power? Is it the vision of industrial progress, the hope of personal fame and wealth, or something else?

13. Why was Francesca Coatsworth able to maintain her "alternative" lifestyle and still be such an influential member of society?

14. Why do you think Francesca allowed Sarah to disappear into Singapore after she confessed her crimes?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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City of Lost Dreams 
Magnus Flyte, 2013
Penguin Group (USA)
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143123279


Summary
In this action-packed sequel to City of Dark Magic, we find musicologist Sarah Weston in Vienna in search of a cure for her friend Pollina, who is now gravely ill and who may not have much time left. Meanwhile, Nicolas Pertusato, in London in search of an ancient alchemical cure for the girl, discovers an old enemy is one step ahead of him. In Prague, Prince Max tries to unravel the strange reappearance of a long dead saint while being pursued by a seductive red-headed historian with dark motives of her own.

In the city of Beethoven, Mozart, and Freud, Sarah becomes the target in a deadly web of intrigue that involves a scientist on the run, stolen art, seductive pastries, a few surprises from long-dead alchemists, a distractingly attractive horseman who’s more than a little bloodthirsty, and a trail of secrets and lies. But nothing will be more dangerous than the brilliant and vindictive villain who seeks to bend time itself. Sarah must travel deep into an ancient mystery to save the people she loves. (From the publisher.)

The first book in this two-part series is City of Dark Magic (2012).

Author Bios
Meg Howrey
A classically trained dancer, Meg performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Ballet of Los Angeles. She made her theatrical debut at Lincoln Center, and toured with the Broadway production of Contact, for which she won the 2001 Ovation Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Her novels are Blind Sight and The Cranes Dance, and her non-fiction has appeared in Vogue. She currently lives in Los Angeles. (From the author's website.)

Christina Lynch
There is an actual part of your brain ( I believe it is in the hippocampus) that keeps a record of your life story. Of course, it's not an accurate record. My hippocampus claims that I grew up mostly in Chicago, graduated from Harvard College, and have my MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. I was at one time the Milan correspondent for W magazine, and lived in Italy for 7 years, where I ate a lot of wonderful meals and  won the Tuscan Endurance Championship on my horse Camelia. I moved to L.A. to write television, which I still do, though now I spend most of my time in a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada with a couple of lazy horses and a very wonderful dog. I write novels and television (and too many emails), and teach writing. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A comical, rollicking and sexy thriller.
Huffington Post
 
An entertaining mix of magic, mystery and romance, it’s one of the most original novels released this year.
CNN

Never fails to shimmer exotically, erotically, on the page.
Slate

(Starred review.) Musicologist Sarah Weston arrives in Vienna hoping to find a cure for her friend.... [B]iochemist Bettina Müller may have formulated a treatment...[but] proves peculiarly elusive.... Sensual, witty and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, set forth in sparkling prose and inhabited by characters well-worth getting to know. Wunderbar!
Kirkus Reviews

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

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

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

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City of Thieves 
David Benioff, 2008
Penguin Group USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452295292

Summary  
As wise and funny as it is thrilling and original-the story of two young men on an impossible adventure.

A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won't talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds.

Lev Beniov considers himself "built for deprivation." He's small, smart, and insecure, a Jewish virgin too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter with friends from his building. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible.

A search that takes them through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and the devastated surrounding countryside creates an unlikely bond between this earnest, lust-filled teenager and an endearing lothario with the gifts of a conman. Set within the monumental events of history, City of Thieves is an intimate coming-of-age tale with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Aka—David Friedman
• Birth—ca. 1970
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A., Trinity College of
   Dublin, Ireland

David Benioff is an author and screenwriter. His first novel, The 25th Hour, was adapted into a popular feature film. His short story collection, When the Nines Roll Over, received critical acclaim (From the publisher.)

More
Born David Friedman, he changed his name to David Benioff, his mother's maiden name. He worked as a club bouncer and high school English teacher at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, NY, until he won recognition for his book, The 25th Hour. He later adapted the book into a film, starring Edward Norton and directed by Spike Lee.

Benioff is a Dartmouth College alumnus. Additionally, he attended the University of California Irvine and received a Masters from Trinity College, Dublin. Thus began his career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

He adapted a screenplay of the mythological epic Troy (2004). He also penned the script for the psychological thriller Stay (2005). 20th Century Fox reportedly paid Benioff $2 million for the script. The film was released on October 21, 2005, and was directed by Marc Forster and starred Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. His most recent screenplay, The Kite Runner, marked his second collaboration with director Marc Forster.

Besides The 25th Hour, Benioff published a collection of short stories titled When the Nines Roll Over (And Other Stories) in 2004. His second novel, City of Thieves, was released in 2008. Benioff is married to actress Amanda Peet; they have one child. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
The novel tells a refreshingly traditional tale, driven by an often ingenious plot…. He shifts tone with perfect control—no recent novel I’ve read travels so quickly and surely between registers, from humor to devastation….
New York Times Book Review

City of Thieves is a coming-of-age story brilliantly amplified by its war-torn backdrop…At times Lev and Kolya seem too free from the strictures of Soviet ideology: They each come equipped with an improbably deep understanding of their society. But for the most part, they and the minor characters satisfyingly inhabit the historical wreckage, and Kolya and Abendroth are especially memorable. But Benioff's finest achievement in City of Thieves has been to banish all possible pretensions from his novel, which never wears its research on its sleeve, and to deliver a rough-and-tumble tale that clenches humor, savagery and pathos squarely together on the same page.
Thomas Meaney - Washington Post

In the six years since his critically praised debut, The 25th Hour, Benioff has produced a story collection and a handful of screenplays, including the blockbuster Troy. The imprint of his film work is evident in this novel, a finely honed but too easily sentimental adventure story set during the siege of Leningrad. Lev, the mousy, virginal son of a disappeared Jewish poet, is jailed by the Russian Army for looting; in prison and awaiting execution, he shares a cell with a blowhard blond infantryman accused of desertion. When a strange colonel offers the pair an impossible task in exchange for their lives, they set off on a journey that takes them through a series of nightmarish war zones, populated by cannibals, prostitutes, starving children, and demonic Nazi chess enthusiasts. Benioff finds a good deal of humor amid the grisly absurdities of wartime, but does so at the expense of real emotional engagement.
The New Yorker

A deft storyteller, Benioff writes about starvation, cannibalism, and Nazi atrocities with poise and cinematic flair. If Thieves were a movie, it would start out like Schindler’s List and end up like Raiders of the Lost Ark.
People

Author and screenwriter Benioff follows up The 25th Hour with this hard-to-put-down novel based on his grandfather's stories about surviving WWII in Russia. Having elected to stay in Leningrad during the siege, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught looting a German paratrooper's corpse. The penalty for this infraction (and many others) is execution. But when Colonel Grechko confronts Lev and Kolya, a Russian army deserter also facing execution, he spares them on the condition that they acquire a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. Their mission exposes them to the most ghoulish acts of the starved populace and takes them behind enemy lines to the Russian countryside. There, Lev and Kolya take on an even more daring objective: to kill the commander of the local occupying German forces. A wry and sympathetic observer of the devastation around him, Lev is an engaging and self-deprecating narrator who finds unexpected reserves of courage at the crucial moment and forms an unlikely friendship with Kolya, a flamboyant ladies' man who is coolly reckless in the face of danger. Benioff blends tense adventure, a bittersweet coming-of-age and an oddly touching buddy narrative to craft a smart crowd-pleaser.
Publishers Weekly

Looking for the feel-good World War II book of the year? This tale of two miscreants in Soviet Leningrad might be the one, as Lev and Kolya bumble their way toward locating a dozen eggs for a stern Soviet colonel who needs them for his daughter's wedding cakes. The city is at the gates of starvation (achingly portrayed in realistic detail), so the boys set out into the enemy-occupied countryside. Delivering the eggs will release them from their death sentences, as Lev was caught looting the body of a downed German paratrooper and Kolya deserted his unit to visit girlfriends. Coming upon partisan cadres and Germans, they find little success in their perilous saga. With deftly sly humor, respect for the agony of warfare, and dialog that elevates the boys-to-men story beyond its typical male ribaldry, this second novel (after The 25th Hour) by screenwriter Benioff (The Kite Runner) deserves a bright spotlight in most libraries to attract readers young and old to its compelling pages.
Barbara Conaty - Library Journal
 

Novelist and screenwriter Benioff's glorious second novel is a wild action-packed quest, and much else besides: a coming-of-age story, an odd-couple tale and a juicy footnote to the historic World War II siege of Leningrad. It's New Year's Eve, 1941, and Lev Beniov is alone in Leningrad. (Note that last name: This novel was sparked by tape-recorded memories of author Benioff's grandfather.) The 17-year-old's mother and sister were evacuated before the siege began in September; his father, a respected poet, was "removed" by the NKVD in 1937. Lev's real troubles begin when a German paratrooper, frozen to death, lands on his street. Lev deserts his firefighter's post, steals the German's knife, is arrested by soldiers and jailed. His cellmate is 20-year-old Kolya, a boastful Cossack deserter, dazzlingly handsome in contrast to scrawny Lev, who hates his telltale big nose (he's half-Jewish); their initial hostility turns into the closest of bonds. Sparing their lives, for now, NKVD Colonel Grechko gives them a near-impossible assignment in this starving city: five days to find a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake. There's nothing doing on the black market. Then Kolya hears of a poultry collective...behind German lines. That's where they must go, decides Kolya, and Benioff makes his boundless self-confidence entirely credible. Over half the novel happens in enemy territory. Lev and Kolya stumble on a farmhouse where four pretty Russian girls are being kept as sex slaves by a Nazi death squad. (The connection between sex and death is a major theme.) The slave-owners are killed by Russian partisans, one of whom is the deadly sniper Vika, a young tomboy who steals Lev's heart. Despite a "parade of atrocities," the pace will keep your adrenaline pumping right up to the climactic chess game between Lev and a fiendish Nazi officer. This gut-churning thriller will sweep you along and, with any luck, propel Benioff into bestseller land.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. David wants to hear about his grandfather's experiences firsthand. Why is it important for us to cultivate and preserve our oral histories? Do you have a relative or friend whose story you believe should be captured for posterity?

2. Lev's father is taken—and almost certainly killed—by the NKVD, yet Lev himself stays behind to defend Leningrad. How do you think he reconciled his patriotism to his love for his father?

3. In the midst of a major historical moment, Lev is preoccupied with thoughts of food and sex. What does this tell us about experiencing history as it unfolds?

4. From the cannibals in the market to the sex slaves in the farmhouse, there are numerous illustrations of the way in which war robs us of our humanity. In your opinion, what was the most poignant example of this and why?

5. Kolya tells Lev that the government should "put the famous on the front lines" (p. 67) rather than use them as the spokespeople for patriotic propaganda. Do you agree or disagree? Can you think of any contemporary instances of this practice?

6. Aside from the sly pride that Lev notices, are there any other clues that give Kolya away as the true author of The Courtyard Hound?

7. Do you think Markov's denouncer should have remained silent about the partisan's presence? Did either of them deserve to die?

8. Even moments before Lev pulls his knife on the Sturmbannführer, he thinks: "I had wanted him dead since I'd heard Zoya's story. . . . [But] I didn't believe I was capable of murdering him" (p. 228). Do you think everyone—given the right motivation—is capable of killing another human being? Could you?

9. Lev takes an instinctive dislike to Kolya yet comes to consider him his best friend. What was the turning point in their relationship?

10. Lev says that Vika "was no man's idea of a pinup girl," (p.149) but he is instantly infatuated. Would he have been drawn to her had they met in different—safer—circumstances?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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City of Tranquil Light
Bo Caldwell, 2010
Henry Holt : Macmillan
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805092288


Summary
Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century.

There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng—City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love—and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?

Told through Will and Katherine's alternating viewpoints—and inspired by the lives of the author's maternal grandparents — City of Tranquil Light is a tender and elegiac portrait of a young marriage set against the backdrop of the shifting face of a beautiful but torn nation.

A deeply spiritual book, it shows how those who work to teach others often have the most to learn, and is further evidence that Bo Caldwell writes "vividly and with great historical perspective" (San Jose Mercury News). (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1955
• Rasied—suburban Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Northern California

Bo Caldwell is the author of the national bestseller The Distant Land of My Father and City of Tranquil Light. Her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Story, Epoch, and other literary journals. A former Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University, she lives in Northern California with her husband, novelist Ron Hansen (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[P]lainspoken and tender...makes for a lovely sustained chant.
San Francisco Chronicle

Caldwell (The Distant Land of My Father) draws from the biographies of missionaries in northern China during the turbulent first half of the 20th century in this mixed second novel. It traces the story of two young, hopeful Midwesterners—shy, bright Oklahoma farmer Will Kiehn and brave Cleveland deaconess Katherine Friesen—as they journey to the brink of China's civil war in the isolated town of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng: the "City of Tranquil Light." In the unforgiving "land of naught," they live the joys and perils of missionary life, including famine, spiritual rejection, the dramatic 1926 rise of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, and the forcible, often violent, exile of fellow missionaries. Throughout the unrelenting hardship, the remarkably stable couple remain in China, bound to their newfound roots and to the ideals of their larger mission. At times this novel seems more about rhetoric than relationships—the couple's unwavering dedication to each other and their mission is unbelievable at times—but Katherine's diary entries are emotionally deft, capturing the romance and anxiety of cultural estrangement.
Publishers Weekly


Caldwell (The Distant Land of My Father) draws on the lives of her grandparents for source material for her second novel. The story is told in two voices. In 1966, Will, who has been widowed for 20 years, remembers his former life with his wife, Katherine, starting with their meeting as young Mennonite missionaries on a ship headed for China in 1906. Interspersed through his tale are excerpts from the journal Katherine kept during their three decades in China. Katherine had nursing training, but Will had only his love for the Lord and his desire to share it. The two worked side by side, healing bodies and engaging souls through famines, earthquakes, civil war, encounters with bandits, and winters that were "five coats cold." They realize the many ways in which their neighbors enriched their lives as they see them through good times and bad, including the birth and death of their only child. Verdict: This is a sweet tale of an enduring love between this couple, their love of China and its people, and their love for their God. The novel will probably find its strongest readership among devotees of Christian fiction. Recommended for public libraries. —Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll.
Library Journal


Caldwell perceptively explores the deepening faith shared by her grandparents while at the same time painting a vivid portrait of the country they came to love more deeply than their own. —Deborah Donovan
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. City of Tranquil Light is framed at both ends by an elderly Will narrating from California. What does this structure lend to the novel? What is the effect of having key information early on about the story to follow—that Katherine predeceases Will, for example, and that they do not live out their lives in China—instead of learning it at the end?

2. Will and Katherine both note that they feel they are returning home, rather than leaving it, when they depart the United States for China for the very first time. What do you think makes them feel this way? Have you ever experienced a similar sensation? In what ways does the novel talk about home?

3. Edward and Will have a close bond; Katherine and Naomi do as well. What makes these connections so strong? Since we don't see the characters together that often, how are these ties shown? How do Edward, Will, Katherine, and Naomi lend support to one another?

4. Consider Chung Hao and Mo Yun, Will's first converts. Will and Katherine intend to help both of them, which they do. But how do Chung Hao and Mo Yun end up helping them? What about the rest of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng? Are Will and Katherine surprised to be the beneficiaries of this assistance? How are the themes of giving and debt dealt with?

5. In what ways are the American missionaries a modernizing force? How do they alter the ways of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng? Is it always for the better?

6. How does Lily's death test Will and Katherine's faith? What enables them to recover? Do you believe that they do fully recover? Do they ever give in to despair entirely?

7. What were your initial impressions of Hsiao Lao? What does his treatment of Will as a prisoner indicate about his character? What do you think of the assistance he gives to Will and Katherine later on? By the end of the novel, in what ways has he changed, and in what ways has he remained the same?

8. How are cultural differences portrayed? Certainly many of the Chinese people Will and Katherine encounter do things that would be considered odd—or outright wrong—in the West. Do you think the novel passes judgment on these differences? Do Will and Katherine? Does the novel help you to understand why things were the way they were in China at this time?

9. What role does fate play? Do Will and Katherine believe that in some sense, their destinies have already been laid out for them? What lends support to that idea?

10. What is it that ultimately pushes Will and Katherine to leave China? They consider it their home—how do they deal with the transition?

11. When Katherine passes away, Will finds himself distraught and asks, "What had been the point of all my years of believing if my trust faltered when I needed it most?" What do you think? Has Will's faith failed him? How is he able to find solace?

12. Upon their final departure for the United States, Will notes, "We had tried to dress up for our journey, but I saw how shabby we looked, how bereft, and what a contrast our appearances were to the rich lives we had led in Kuang P'ing Ch'eng." Would you agree that Will and Katherine led rich lives, despite their poverty? Were their lives ultimately happy ones, in spite of the sadness and many trials they faced?

13. Does Will and Katherine's faith change in the course of the novel? In what ways?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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City of Women
David R. Gillham, 2012
Amy Einhorn/Putnam
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399157769


Summary
Who do you trust, who do you love, and who can be saved?  

It is 1943—the height of the Second World War—and Berlin has essentially become a city of women. Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model German soldier’s wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime. But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former lover, now lost in the chaos of the war. Her lover is a Jew.

But Sigrid is not the only one with secrets.

A high ranking SS officer and his family move down the hall and Sigrid finds herself pulled into their orbit.  A young woman doing her duty-year is out of excuses before Sigrid can even ask her any questions.  And then there’s the blind man selling pencils on the corner, whose eyes Sigrid can feel following her from behind the darkness of his goggles.

Soon Sigrid is embroiled in a world she knew nothing about, and as her eyes open to the reality around her, the carefully constructed fortress of solitude she has built over the years begins to collapse. She must choose to act on what is right and what is wrong, and what falls somewhere in the shadows between the two.

In this page-turning novel, David Gillham explores what happens to ordinary people thrust into extraordinary times, and how the choices they make can be the difference between life and death. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—
• Where—
• Education—University of Southern California
• Currently—lives in Western Massachusetts


David R. Gillham’s writing reflects his lifelong love of history.  “My connection to history has always been palpable, especially to certain times and places.  When I write about a place like Berlin in the 1940′s, I feel like I am walking around its streets.  I feel at home there, at least in my head. 

I think I’m especially drawn to dark periods of the past, when people were forced to make choices about whether or not they would live their lives in fear.  And in particular, I write about women in the past.  We have all read about how men go to war, for instance, but what about the experience of women?  What wars have they fought on a daily basis?  That is what lead me to begin City of Women with the character of Sigrid—an ordinary woman forced to make an extraordinary choice—and then not only live with the dangerous consequences, but also rise above them.”

Early in Gillham's career, he was trained as a screen writer at University of Southern California, and then moved irrevocably into fiction.  After relocating to New York City, he spent over a decade in the book business, and now lives with his family in Western Massachusetts. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) In this stunning debut about the battle between good and evil, Gillham puts a fresh spin on the horrors of WWII by focusing on civilian German women to reveal that, amid the many adherents of the party line there were a handful of unsung heroes.... The line between what is “right” and “wrong” becomes harder to define as Sigrid, confronted with increasingly more horrifying realities, finds her resolve constantly tested. Gillham’s transcendent prose..., powerfully drawn characters, and the multilayered dilemmas make his first literary effort a powerful revelation.
Publishers Weekly


During World War II, a large portion of Germany’s male population were off serving their Führer and Fatherland, leaving behind legions of women to continue alone on the home front.... The complex relationships that develop among women, men, family, and lovers are at the core of what drives this debut novel, which captures both heart and mind from the start and does not let go until the riveting end. Verdict: This is an exemplary model of historical fiction generously laced with romance, suspense, and exciting plot twists. Readers who enjoy the grim side of historical fiction or who prefer romance infused with eroticism will find this novel appealing. —Amy M. Davis, Parmley Billings Lib., MT
Library Journal


(Starred review.) In his debut about 1943 Berlin, Gillham uses elements common to the many previous movies and books about World War II—from vicious Nazis to black marketeers to Jewish children hiding in attics to beautiful blond German women hiding their sexuality inside drab coats—yet manages to make the story fresh.... [With its] hold-your-breath suspense ending, World War II Germany may be familiar ground, but Gillham's novel—vividly cinematic yet subtle and full of moral ambiguity, not to mention riveting characters—is as impossible to put down as it is to forget.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Sigrid helps Ericha at the cinema in the opening of the book? If you had been in Sigrid’s situation, would you have helped Ericha? Would you have become as involved as Sigrid does? With the advantage of hindsight, our perspective is no doubt skewed; since we know the truth behind what was happening in Nazi Germany, how do our answers compare with Sigrid’s bold decisions?

2. As the story progresses, Sigrid grows more and more involved and takes more and more risks. How does her reasoning for doing so later differ from the reasoning behind her first risky decision in the cinema? What is her motivation for making these increasingly dangerous choices? Desire? Excitement? Conscience?

3. Discuss the theme of betrayal in City of Women. Many of the characters are guilty of double-crossing and treachery. In what ways do they deceive one another? What about Egon? Is his betrayal portrayed differently from that of others, such as Renate or Ericha?

4. Sigrid’s relationships are numerous and varied—with her mother-in-law, her neighbors, her coworkers, her husband, her lovers, the so-called U-boats. How does each of them define who Sigrid is? How is she reflected in the various relationships? How have these bonds been altered by the extraordinary circumstances of war?

5. Were you surprised by the depiction of Berlin during World War II? Before reading the novel, had you thought about what life was like on the German home front as the tide turned and defeat loomed on the horizon?

6. Countless times throughout the novel, characters risk their lives to help others—to protect the value of human life, spurred on by their own integrity. Conversely, there is the scene on the bus where no one does anything as a Jewish woman is arrested and brutalized. Which do you think is typical of human behavior? Are people more inclined to avert their eyes and try to stay out of trouble, or risk their own safety and get involved? Why?

7. If one simply observes the facts at surface value, Sigrid would probably not be considered a righteously moral individual. Nonetheless, she manages to be a very sympathetic character. How does the author accomplish this?

8. Sigrid’s coworker Renate seems to have a sensibility similar to hers. Yet when Renate discovers that Sigrid’s lover may be Jewish, her response shocks Sigrid. Was it naive of Sigrid to expect anything different? Were you surprised by how deep-seated Renate’s anti-Semitism was?

9. Often in the novel, people are not actually who they appear to be. Consider Frau Obersturmführer Junger, the SS officer’s pregnant wife who moves in down the hall: were you shocked to find out her secret? Do you feel that everyone in the book is hiding something?

10. How would you characterize Sigrid’s relationship with Ericha Kohl? Antagonistic? Trusting? Maternal? What do you think Sigrid gets from her relationship with Ericha? What does Ericha get from Sigrid?

11. What did you think about Kaspar? Egon? Wolfram? All are on the wrong side of history. Did you find any of them appealing? Are they very different from one another?

12. At one point Sigrid flirts with the idea of turning in Anna Weiss and her two daughters so that she can have Egon to herself. Do you feel she seriously considers this?

13. How important is amorous passion in the novel? Is that the driving force that motivates Sigrid? Is it emblematic of something else?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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City on Fire
Garth Risk Hallberg, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
944 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385353779


Summary
New York City, 1976.

Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor—and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.

The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever.

City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock 'n' roll: about what people need from each other in order to live … and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978-79
• Rasied—Greenville, South Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Washington University (St. Louis)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Garth Risk Hallberg was born in Louisiana and grew up in North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Best New American Voices 2008, and, most frequently, The Millions; a novella, A Field Guide to the North American Family, was published in 2007. He lives in New York with his wife and children. This is his first novel. . (From the publisher.)

Learn more about the author on Vulture.com.

Book Reviews
[A] big, stunning first novel and an amazing virtual reality machine, whisking us back to New York City in the 1970s…with bravura swagger and style and heart. [Hallberg] captures the city's dangerous, magnetic allure—for artists, for dreamers, for kids eager to escape the platitudes of suburbia. And he also captures what it's like to be young in New York, propelled by the dizzying adrenaline-rush of possibility and frightened, too, by the fragility of urgent ambitions…The ghosts of New York memorialized by earlier writers—F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Richard Price—hover over City on Fire…But this novel is defiantly and indelibly Mr. Hallberg's own: a symphonic epic…drawing upon his XXL tool kit as a storyteller: a love of language and the handsprings he can make it perform; a bone-deep knowledge of his characters' inner lives that's as unerring as that of the young Salinger; an instinctive gift for spinning suspense not just out of dovetailing plotlines and odd Dickensian coincidences but also from secrets buried in his characters' pasts…[City on Fire is] a novel of head-snapping ambition and heart-stopping power—a novel that attests to its young author's boundless and unflagging talents.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


The question of whether City on Fire is good does not lend itself to a glib answer. But no one can say it isn't ambitious, and exceptionally so for a first novel. Hallberg devotes more than 900 pages to his own effort to recreate the face of an entire city in all its confounding complexity, complete with collagelike inserts replicating a coffee-stained manuscript by one character and the dense East Village zines of another. His talent is as conspicuous as the book's heft. There's rarely a less than finely honed sentence or a moment when you don't feel that a sophisticated intelligence is at work. Hallberg expertly manages the gear-shifting of multiple narratives and time frames (some back stories date to 1960) while keeping his present-tense New York in sharp relief…Hallberg delivers a fresh vision of New York that is more dreamscape than reportage.
Frank Rich - New York Times Book Review


Dazzling.... City on Fire is an extraordinary performance.... Hallberg inhabits the minds of whites and blacks, men and women, old and young, gay and straight with equal fidelity . . . making every one of them thrum with real life.... And what endlessly fascinating characters they are!.... [The novel’s] Whitmanesque arms embrace an entire city of lovers and strivers, saints and killers.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


To a person who did live in New York in the nineteen-seventies—to wit, this person—Hallberg’s powers of evocation are uncanny.... It’s not the facts that bring the nineteen-seventies to life in City on Fire. What Hallberg is after is an atmosphere, and he gets it.
Louis Menand - The New Yorker


Thrilling...brings gritty 1970s Manhattan to life.... A kind of punk Bleak House.... An exuberant, Zeitgeisty New York novel, like The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Emperor’s Children, or The Goldfinch.
Vogue


Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so—one that everyone who’s read it roots for.... An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious.
Elle


It’s hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city’s punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge.
Entertainment Weekly


A soaring debut.... Over the course of Hallberg’s magisterial epic, distinctions of class, race, geography, and generation give way to an impression of the human condition that is both ambitious and sublime.
Vanity Fair


Hallberg’s maniacally detailed, exhaustingly clever depiction of 1970s New York is packed with urban angst, intellectual energy, and sinister pitfalls, much like the city it evokes. This epic of drugs, sex, and rock and roll combines fiction and new journalistic accounts of real events.... [An] occasionally overwritten effort, but others will be left to wonder how so much energy could generate so little light.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) This epic, well-written, and highly entertaining first novel is set in New York City from around Christmas 1976 to the blackout of July 1977.... Throughout, Hallberg expertly handles the multiple shifts in perspective, vibrantly portraying a specific time and place and creating memorable characters—especially Charlie and Regan, a complicated mess of a poor little rich girl who manages to be heroic in her own way—all wandering the vast, ongoing American dreamscape that is New York City. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Completely engrossing.... This magnificent first novel is full to bursting with plot, character, and emotion, all set within an exquisitely grungy 1970s New York City.... Graceful in execution, hugely entertaining, and most concerned with the longing for connection, a theme that reaches full realization during the blackout of 1977, this epic tale is both a compelling mystery and a literary tour de force.
Booklist


Engrossing.... When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Manhattan edition.... As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg’s heroes are theorists of their own universe.... Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . . The story itself is dramatic, intermixing a police procedural with a terrorist plot, an addiction plot, an art plot, various adultery plots.... The result is a narrative that is immense.
Bookforum


(Starred review.) Rough-edged mid-1970s New York provides the backdrop for an epic panorama of musicians, writers, and power brokers and the surprising ways they connect.... [T]his novel becomes an ambitious showpiece for just how much the novel can contain without busting apart. The very-damn-good American novel.
Kirkus Reviews

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

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

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

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The City We Became 
N.K. Jemisin, 2020
Orbit Books
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316509848


Summary
N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City.

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.

In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her.

In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.

And they're not the only ones.

Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 19, 1972
• Where—Iowa City, Iowa, USA
• Raised—New York City, New York; Mobil, Alabama
• Education—B.S., Tulane University; M.Ed., University of Maryland
• Awards—(below)
• Currently—New York City, New York


Nora K. Jemisin is an American author, whom The New York Times has called "the most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writer of her generation." Her fiction explores a wide variety of themes, including cultural conflict and oppression.

Jemisin has won numerous awards, including Hugo Awards for Best Novel in 2016, 2017, and 2018— for her entire Broken Earth trilogy—making her the only author to have won a Hugo Best Novel for three consecutive years. She was also the first African-American writer to have won in the Hugo best novel category.

Background
Jemisin was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in New York City and Mobile, Alabama. She attended Tulane University from 1990 to 1994, where she received a B.S. in psychology. She went on to study counseling and earn her M.Ed. from the University of Maryland.

Jemisin worked for years as a psychologal counselor while writing on the side. In 2016, she mounted a fund-raising campaign on Patreon, earning enough to enable her to quit her work as a therapist and devote herself to writing fulltime.

In January of that same year, Bustle called Jemisin "the sci-fi writer every woman needs to be reading." In 2017, Jemisin started writing "Otherworldly," a bimonthly column for The New York Times.

Major Sci-Fi Works
— Inheritance Trilogy
2010 - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
2010 - The Broken Kingdoms
2011 - The Kingdom of Gods
2014 - The Awakened Kingdom (sequel to trilogy, novella)
2015 - Shades in Shadow (prequel to trilogy, short stories)

— Dreamblood Duology
2012- The Killing Moon
2012 -The Shadowed Sun

— Broken Earth series
2015 - The Fifth Season
2016 - The Obelisk Gate
2017 - The Stone Sky

Awards
2010 - Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award, Best Fantasy Novel  (The Broken Kingdoms)
2011 - Locus Award, Best First Novel (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms)
2011 - Sense of Gender Award (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms)
2012 - Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award, Best Fantasy Novel 2012 (The Shadowed Sun)
2016 - Hugo Award, Best Novel (The Fifth Season)
2017 - Hugo Award, Best Novel (The Obelisk Gate)
2018 - Nebula Award, Best Novel (The Stone Sky)
2018 - Locus Award, Best Fantasy (The Stone Sky)
2018 - Hugo Award, Best Novel (The Stone Sky)
2019 - American Library Association's Alex Award (How Long 'til Black Future Month?)
(Author Bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/12/2020.)

Book Reviews
The book is rich and generous…. The Enemy is white supremacy, police brutality, gentrification, but the book doesn’t waste time arguing that those things are evil…. Instead, its main project is one of bridge-building, knitting communities togethet…. While the whole project is enjoyably looser, faster, jokier than Jemisin’s other novels, [some] passages… make it feel less disciplined or anchored in its rhetoric than her fantasy worlds…. Mostly, though, my experience of this book was of a white-knuckled grip…. It’s a joyful shout, a reclamation and a call to arms.
Amal El-Mohtar - New York Times Book Review

[S]heer moxie and sly humor…. The City We Became ends on a high note, but it makes no concession that the fight for a more equitable world is over. In both fiction and reality, it’s barely started.
Elizabeth Hand - Washington Post


What is most remarkable, given the pulp energy of this classic struggle against eldritch evils, is that The City We Became is also an astute interrogation of the realities of New York life.… Jemison’s characters are far more than allegories, although each rather cleverly reflects their respective boroughs…. [The novel] is meticulously grounded in the familiar, but is just as wildly imaginative and thought-provoking and a lot of fun along the way.
Gary K. Wollfe - Chicago Tribune


The City We Became… is, in a way, a metaphor for Jemisin's success… at redefining the science fiction and fantasy genre—a genre that has long been defined by the tastes and stories of mostly white men…. My only real issue with the book is that it comes to a relatively abrupt end. I want to binge on the entire series right now, which is the ultimate magic and allure of Jemisin's work. She pulls you into her world and makes you want more; she makes you want to stay there forever.
Steve Mullis - NPR


(Starred review) [S]staggering contemporary fantasy…. Blending the concept of the multiverse with New York City arcana, this novel works as both a wry adventure and an incisive look at a changing city. Readers will be thrilled.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Jemisin writes a harsh love story to one of America's most famous places. As raw and vibrant as the city itself, the prose pushes the boundaries of fantasy and brings home what residents already know—their city is alive. —Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton
Library Journal


(Starred review) Some of the most exciting and powerful fantasy writing of today... Jemisin's latest will attract ... even those who don't typically read genre fiction.
Booklist


(Starred review) This extremely urban fantasy… The novel is a bold calling out of the racial tensions dividing not only New York City, but the U.S. as a whole…. Although the story is a fantasy, many aspects of the plot draw on contemporary incidents.… Fierce, poetic, uncompromising.
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 CITY WE BECAME … then take off on your own:

1. Start by considering the unusual form this alien force takes in attacking New York City. What do you make of it: how does it operate? What is its intent?

2. (Follow-up to Question 1) What urban weaknesses does the monster exploit? What is it about city-life that makes it vulnerable, as opposed to, say, small-town or rural life?

3. Jemisin writes that "Great cities are like any other living things": they gestate and then are born and eventually die. In between a city can cohere, coming together like a living organism. What is Jemisin's vision here? What does she mean?

4. The author also writes:

A city is never alone, not really—and this city seems less solitary than most. More like a family: many parts, frequently squabbling … but in the end, against enemies, they come together to protect one another. They must, or die.

  Is "coming together" possible? Do divisions in our society and culture allow for mutuality? What does it take? If threats unite us in action, will the union last once the threat has passed?

5. Why are the particular five avatars in The City We Became chosen to square off against the White Woman? What qualities do they bring, or not bring, to the fight? If you're familiar with New York City, how does each of the Avators reflect the borough they come from?

m. Metaphorically, what does the enemy represent?

6. Jemisin states one of the themes of her work: "There ain't no one way to be a part of this city." Consider the meaning of this remark and why it is so central to Jemisin's story.

7. Manhattan avatar's "construct" to fight the woman in the park is "money talks, bullshit walks." What is his meaning?

8. Jemisin weaves into her plot the history and demography of each of the boroughs. Did you find the information interesting, did it enhance the story for you? Or did you find that it slowed the pace and distracted you from the action?

9. Jemisin tackles social issues that plague urban environments: gentrification, rising rents, corporatization of neighborhoods, and racism. How does she demonstrate each of these issues in The City We Became?

10. What was your sense of the book's ending: one of hope and possibility … or one of dismay and fear?

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

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Claiming Jeremiah
Missy B. Salick, 2013
Self-published
204 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780989150804


Summary
On the same night that twenty four-year-old Jordyn Sims has a miscarriage, her sister-in-law Tori Sims conceives a child. Nine months later, Tori, a long term heroin addict, abandons her two-hour-old drug addicted newborn Jeremiah, in a hospital stairwell.

Jordyn receives the news and pursues foster adoption. However, Oscar, Tori's possessive drug-addicted boyfriend, is not about to give Jeremiah up so easily.

While in confrontation with Tori and Oscar, Jordyn seeks help from the Administration of Children Services (ACS), only to discover she is faced with a maze of departments regulations, legalities and overworked social workers. Jordyn, however, remains strong and continues to push through the uphill battle, even after she discovers she's pregnant.

With all odds against her adoption of Jeremiah, and her pregnancy at high risk from increasing stress, will Jordyn win this tough battle, or will her world crumble before her? (From the author.)

Author Bio
Missy B. Salick is a new author who has written her first novel, Claiming Jeremiah. Her fictional memoir on foster adoption has been drawing a hefty buzz, with both online and paperback released in 2013 (May 4 for paperback). The novel is small in size, but contains a powerful message. "Children in foster care need a place to call home." Salick, a foster care advocate, wrote this book based on her personal journey of foster adopting her four-year-old son.

Before self-publishing, Claiming Jeremiah, Salick spent several years as a freelance business writer for Fortune 500 companies including, Shearman & Sterling, KPMG, Deloitte and many more. She also had a stint with song ghost writing. Salick's experience in the entertainment industry stems from working with entertainment companies and media including Violator, MBK, Village Voice and more. As the founder of J.J. Autumn Publishing, her publishing company is geared towards highlighting urban fiction dedicated to special causes and community awareness projects.

When Missy is not promoting foster adoption, she can be found volunteering at Junior Achievement, being a Big Sister and counseling young girls through Journal Writing or helping to save the Polar  Bears with WWF. (From the author.)

Book Reviews
Missy is a talented writer with a keen social conscience. She’s an advocate for foster adoption, and in this capacity, has written a gripping, entertaining, and informative bookabout the foster and adoption processes. She writes in a manner where the distinctive voices of each character are not only colorful but interesting. I recommend Missy as an author, a speaker, and an informed and experienced advocate.
Dr. Margaret Brito - Louverture Arts Facilitator


We’ve all heard stories or seen made-for-television movies about dealing with children going through the adoption an exceptional piece, written by a prolific author. She was able to write in a manner that the distinctive voices of each character were not only colorful but interesting. Claiming Jeremiah is astounding, both entertaining and informative. Missy Salick writes in a style that allows the reader to connect with the characters and share the emotional roller coaster ride through the adoption process. I would recommend this book to novice and seasoned readers alike. It is a story worth reading.
J. Tremble, Author, Foster Advocate - Life-Changing Books

Discussion Questions
1. For much of the novel, Jordyn tends to be very strong-minded about what she wants even after Julian disagrees. Do you think she is being fair to him or their relationship?

2. In what ways do you think Tori’s path would have been altered if her brother, Julian, would have stayed in New York?

3. Do you think Julian should have had a stronger voice in expressing his beliefs?

4. Jordyn’s family was not thrilled about her bringing Jeremiah into her life—did they go too far with their comments? What would have been your reaction if your family had said those things to you?

5. Do you feel Tori has any type of resentment toward her brother because of how their mother puts him on a pedestal? Do you think their mother loves Tori as much as she loves Julian or less? Does her love for Tori seem non-existent because of Tori’s constant mishaps?

6. Should Jordyn have stopped fighting for Jeremiah after she learned of her pregnancy? Should she have stopped after her first health scare?

7. What do you think about Oscar’s character and his actions toward Tori’s? At any point and time do you think he cared for her?

8. After Jordyn spilled her secret to the women in her family, were they able to understand her more? Or do you think they still looked at her the same?

9. From the early stages of the story, what do you think was at the root of the reason Jordyn chose to foster and then adopt Jeremiah? Was it just to prevent Jeremiah from heading to foster care or was there an ulterior motive?

10. Mr. Henderson seems to have a certain view of the foster care system that led him to make his final decision. Do you think he made the right choice? Or is he just another caseworker who has given up hope?

11. Do you think Oscar’s actions toward the end of the story are justifiable? Was he right in the sense that Jeremiah won’t understand his ethnic background and its culture being raised in a middle-class lifestyle?

12. Jordyn evidently has a lot of emotional issues related to how her mother was not a strong maternal figure when Jordyn was growing up. Do you think the birth of her child and having Jeremiah will heal those scars?

13. After reading Claiming Jeremiah, what are your views on the foster care system? Do you believe the system works (as-is) or is designed to run as a business, without taking into account the welfare of the children at stake? If you could fix the system, what would you change?
(Questions kindly provided by author.)

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Clair DeWitt and the City of the Dead
Sara Gran, 2011
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547428499

Summary
Claire DeWitt is not your average private investigator. She has brilliant deductive skills and is an ace at discovering evidence. But Claire also uses her dreams, omens, and mind-expanding herbs to help her solve mysteries, and relies on Détection — the only book published by the late, great, and mysterious French detective Jacques Silette.

The tattooed, pot-smoking Claire has just arrived in post-Katrina New Orleans, the city she’s avoided since her mentor, Silette’s student Constance Darling, was murdered there. Claire is investigating the disappearance of Vic Willing, a prosecutor known for winning convictions in a homicide- plagued city. Has an angry criminal enacted revenge on Vic? Or did he use the storm as a means to disappear? Claire follows the clues, finding old friends and making new enemies—foremost among them Andray Fairview, a young gang member who just might hold the key to the mystery.

Littered with memories of Claire’s years as a girl detective in 1980s Brooklyn, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is a knockout start to a bracingly original new series. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1971
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Tufts University
 • Currently—lives in Northern California

Sara Gran is the author of the novels Dope, Come Closer, Saturn's Return to New York, and the Claire DeWitt detective series (2011). Her work has been published in over a dozen countries in nearly fifteen languages.

Born in Brooklyn in 1971, Ms. Gran lived in Brooklyn until 2004. Since then she has traveled widely and lived throughout the US including Miami and New Orleans. She now resides in the state of California.

Before making a living as a writer, Ms. Gran had many jobs, primarily with books, working at Manhattan bookstores like Shakespeare & Co, The Strand, and Housing Works, and selling used & rare books on her own.  (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[T]he exotic person of Claire DeWitt [is] a supremely confident detective who reads the clues she finds in dreams, the I Ching and scraps of garbage that float up from the street. ... Claire prowls the darkest corners of [New Orleans], eyes wide open to the suffering and despair of its shell-shocked residents. Claire is a charmer, but there’s nothing cute about her paranormal visions of a city living in torment.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times


(Starred review.) As brash and bold as Sherlock Holmes himself, Claire DeWitt arrives in still-chaotic New Orleans 18 months after Katrina. She's been hired to investigate the disappearance of Vic Willing, a local prosecutor, who's not been heard from since the hurricane. Claire surprises the local gangtsa set with her unique bravado. One of them, Andray, is compelled to help her tap into the darkness of Katrina's aftermath. From there, Claire finds her answers. Mentored and deeply inspired by a famous French detective, the I Ching, and profoundly illuminating dreams, a complex Claire leads us into her own nightmares as well. Verdict: This is not to be missed—Claire is a moody, hip, and meticulous investigator. Gran (Dope; Come Closer) builds an addictive sense of anticipation with a fantastical frame. Alternately gritty and dreamy, this would appeal to those who liked Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist and readers of Charlie Huston (e.g., The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death). Highly recommended.
Library Journal


If there isn’t yet a subgenre called funky noir, this wacky PI novel could be a fragrant first...lots of fun.
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 Clair DeWitt and the City of the Dead:

1. How would you describe Claire DeWitt? Do you find her endearing...or frustrating and irritating? What kind of emotional baggage does she carry around with her?

2. Talk about Claire's unorthodox detection methods—her use of dreams, omens and the I-Ching? How does drug use, according to Claire, enhance her investigatory powers? Talk about some of the clues Claire uncovers—the business card, for one. Could you follow her reasoning or intuitions? Did they make sense to you?

3. Silette's Detection claims that detective work has more to do with introspection into the detective's own life than with standard investigatory procedures. Is that true? How does the statement relate to Claire DeWitt? How does her investigation into Vic Willing's disappearance become an investigation into her own psyche?

4. More from Stilette's Detection: "The client already knows the solution to his mystery. But he doesn't want to know. He doesn't hire a detective to solve his mystery He hires a detective to prove that his mystery can't be solved." How is this passage from Detection relevant to the mystery at hand? Are there other passages in Detection that struck you?

5. Are Claire's frequent references to Detection—and its philosophical commentary—illuminating? Or are they distracting and overly digressive?

6. What did you make of Claire's relationship with Andray and Terrell? Like Claire, were you suspicious of Andray as the possible murderer?

7. New Orleans might be considered a character in its own right. Why would Gran have decided to use the city, post-Katrina, as a setting for her mystery? In what way is the city significant—thematically and atmospherically—as a backdrop for the story? What have you learned about New Orleans that you were previously unaware of?

8. Were you able to follow the novel's structure as it jumped back and forth from Claire's past to the present? At what point did the various elements begin to pull together for you?

9. Is the clue that ultimately breaks the case plausible? Or does it require too large a leap in logic to be credible?

10. Overall, what are your impressions of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead? Is it a compelling read? A despressing one? Does it deliver as a suspenseful, engaging murder mystery? Or did it fail to get off the ground for you? Will you be following new books as they appear in the series?

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Claire of the Sea Light 
Edwidge Danticat, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307271792


Summary
A stunning new work of fiction that brings us deep into the intertwined lives of a small seaside town where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing.

Claire Limye Lanme—Claire of the Sea Light—is an enchanting child born into love and tragedy in Ville Rose, Haiti. Claire’s mother died in childbirth, and on each of her birthdays Claire is taken by her father, Nozias, to visit her mother’s grave. Nozias wonders if he should give away his young daughter to a local shopkeeper, who lost a child of her own, so that Claire can have a better life.

But on the night of Claire’s seventh birthday, when at last he makes the wrenching decision to do so, she disappears. As Nozias and others look for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed among the community of men and women whose individual stories connect to Claire, to her parents, and to the town itself.

Told with piercing lyricism and the economy of a fable, Claire of the Sea Light is a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores what it means to be a parent, child, neighbor, lover, and friend, while revealing the mysterious bonds we share with the natural world and with one another. Embracing the magic and heartbreak of ordinary life, it is Edwidge Danticat’s most spellbinding, astonishing book yet. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., Brown University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City


Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short-story writer. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, she was two years old when her father Andre immigrated to New York, to be followed two years later by her mother Rose. This left Danticat and her younger brother, also named Andre, to be raised by her aunt and uncle. Although her formal education in Haiti was in French, she spoke Kreyol at home.

Early years
While still in Haiti, Danticat began writing at 9 years old. At the age of 12, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, to join her parents in a heavily Haitian American neighborhood. As an immigrant teenager, Edwidge's disorientation in her new surroundings was a source of discomfort for her, and she turned to literature for solace.

Two years later she published her first writing in English, "A Haitian-American Christmas: Cremace and Creole Theatre," in New Youth Connections, a citywide magazine written by teenagers. She later wrote another story about her immigration experience for the same magazine, "A New World Full of Strangers". In the introduction to Starting With I, an anthology of stories from the magazine, Danticat wrote, “When I was done with the [immigration] piece, I felt that my story was unfinished, so I wrote a short story, which later became a book, my first novel: Breath, Eyes, Memory…Writing for New Youth Connections had given me a voice. My silence was destroyed completely, indefinitely.”

After graduating from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, Danticat entered Barnard College in New York City. Initially she had intended on studying to become a nurse, but her love of writing won out and she received a BA in French literature in translation. In 1993, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Brown University—her thesis, entitled "My turn in the fire—an abridged novel," was the basis for her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, which was published by Soho Press in 1994. Four years later it became an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Career
Since completing her MFA, Danticat has taught creative writing at the New York University and the University of Miami. She has also worked with filmmakers Patricia Benoit and Jonathan Demme, on projects on Haitian art and documentaries about Haïti. Her short stories have appeared in over 25 periodicals and have been anthologized several times. Her work has been translated into numerous other languages, including French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Danticat is a strong advocate for issues affecting Haitians abroad and at home. In 2009, she lent her voice and words to Poto Mitan: Haitian Women Pillars of the Global Economy, a documentary about the impact of globalization on five women from different generations.

Edwidge Danticat is married to Fedo Boyer. She has two daughters, Mira and Leila.

Books and Awards

• 1994 - Breath, Eyes, Memory (novel)—Granta's Best Young American Novelists; Super Flaiano Prize
• 1996 - Krik? Krak! (stories)
• 1998 - The Farming of Bones (novel)—American Book Award
• 2002 - Behind the Mountains (young adult novel)
• 2002 - After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (travel book)
• 2004 - The Dew Breaker (novel-in-stories) The Story Prize
• 2005 - Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 (young adult novel)
• 2007 - Brother, I'm Dying (memoir/social criticis ) National Book Critics Circle Award; Dayton Literary Peace Prize
• 2010 - Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (essay collection,) OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
• 2011 - Tent Life: Haiti (essay contributor)
• 2011 - Haiti Noir (anthology editor)
• 2011 - Best American Essays, 2011 (anthology editor)
• 2013 - Claire of the Sea Light (novel)

 (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/15/13.)

Book Reviews
The images in Edwidge Danticat's haunting new novel…have the hard precision and richly saturated colors of a woodblock print or folk art painting…[T]his book uses overlapping tales to create an elliptical but propulsive narrative…There is something fablelike about these tales; the reader is made acutely aware of the patterns of loss and redemption, cruelty and vengeance that thread their way through these characters' lives, and the roles that luck and choice play in shaping their fate…Writing with lyrical economy and precision, Ms. Danticat recounts her characters' stories in crystalline prose that underscores the parallels in their lives.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


At first, I resisted what appeared to be the fablelike delicacy of…Claire of the Sea Light. Was it going to be too precious? Would [Danticat's] lyricism camouflage or ennoble Haiti's life-or-death struggles? But it quickly became apparent that her hypnotic prose was perfectly suited to its setting, the tragic and yet magical seaside town of Ville Rose…In and out of bedrooms, graveyards, restaurants and bars, even the local radio station, Danticat creates rich and varied interior lives for her characters.
Deborah Sontag - New York Times Book Review


[I]n her rich new novel, Claire of the Sea Light, Danticat continues to speak in a captivating whisper. Claire of the Sea Light [is] a collection of episodes that build on one another, enriching our understanding of a small Haitian town and the complicated community of poor and wealthy, young and old, who call it home. From the first page to the last covers only a single day, but Danticat dips into the past to illuminate the recurring coincidence of life and death among these people.... The apparently disparate parts of the story knit together in surprising ways that seem utterly right.... One of Danticat’s most entrancing talents is her ability to capture conflicted feelings with a kind of aching sympathy.... Danticat has perfected a style of extraordinary restraint and dignity that can convey tremendous emotional impact. But in celebration of Claire, the life force of this novel, she delivers a kind of incantation that repels the rising tide of despair.... That’s a tall order for a name—or a novel. But it’s not beyond Danticat’s power.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Rising above the sea, Ville Rose is a place of immense beauty and overwhelming poverty, and where only the very few live comfortably . . . The imperative to do right by the next generation is at the center of Danticat’s tale, set in the fictional town she sketched in Krik? Krak!, [which] here gets a fuller portrait.... The book shifts backward and forward over a decade but is not set at a moment of particular peril; the danger Danticat shows us is plentiful in the everyday: the sea that drowns a fisherman, the gangs that rule by bloodshed, the droit du seigneur that results in a maid bearing the child of one of the town’s wealthy young men . . . Danticat’s language is unadorned, but she uses it to forge intricate connections—the story stealthily gains in depth and cumulative power. The dexterity of Danticat’s sympathy is an even match for her unflinching vision.
Laura Collins-Hughes - Boston Globe


In Danticat’s luminous new novel, the search for [a] missing 7 year-old girl serves as a way of re-examining what we overlook and undervalue in life. Set on a single day, Danticat tells the story through a kaleidoscope of perspectives that illuminate life in the island nation where the roles of ex-pats, gangs, radio journalists and shopkeepers crisscross the landscape. In a voice tuned to the frequency of sorrow, with a calmness that neither apologizes nor inflames, [Danticat] lays out the terrible choice that many in Haiti have faced: Keep a child in deepest poverty or offer the child to someone with better prospects.... Danticat is a beautiful storyteller who doesn’t shy from the brutalities...but she also applies a finely tuned sensibility to the beauty that surrounds the pain.... The search [for Claire] provides the vehicle to examine the lives of the perpetually unseen, the less-than, the lost. In the final chapter, we see the story through [Claire’s] eyes with an unexpected burst of clarity that wows the reader. The day comes to an end in much the same place where it started. But the village—and readers—are changed. Danticat’s determination to face both light and dark brings the story to life. But her skill as a writer makes the balancing act a pure pleasure to read.... A remarkably well-plotted combination of mystery and social critique.
Amy Driscoll - Miami Herald


Fiercely beautiful.... Ville Rose is a fictional place, but it’s described here with the precision and detail of a work of literary.... The landscape of Ville Rose is as rich and varied as the Macondo of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.... Danticat is a prose stylist with great compassion and insight. And by shifting seamlessly in time and point of view, the sensational turns in her novel quickly lead us back to people who are struggling with concerns that are all too real. Danticat’s characters are caught between the hurt a poor country can inflict on its citizens, and the love those citizens feel for their birthplace.... Claire of the Sea Light brims with enchantments and surprises. Danticat finds a way, in the book’s final pages, to convincingly bring her diverse cast of back to the Ville Rose seaside on the same fateful night at which the novel opens. That final feat of writing brilliance brings Claire of the Sea Light to a place few novels reach: an ending that is at once satisfying and full of mystery.... Impressive.
Hector Tobar - Los Angeles Times


Gorgeous, arresting, profoundly vivid.... Danticat once again tells a story that feels as mysterious and magical as a folk tale and as effective and devastating as a newsreel.... The book begins on the morning of [Claire's] birthday, before winding back to tell the story of every previous birthday, and who lived, and died, each year. For some time, Claire’s father has considered giving her [away], and the heartbreaking question of Claire’s fate adds to the novel’s suspense, as both the past, and this single day, unfold.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A new offering from National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Danticat is always cause for celebration. She has the ability to conjure up the rarified air of Haiti as she manages to pull tightly at one's heartstrings; this novel is no exception. Highly recommended. —Susanne Wells, Indianapolis
Library Journal


[M]otivations are never simple in Danticat's nuanced presentation. Her prose has the shimmering simplicity of a folk tale and the same matter-of-fact acceptance of life's cruelties and injustices. Yet, despite the unsparing depiction of a corrupt society in which the police are as brutal and criminal as gang members, there's tremendous warmth in Danticat's treatment of her characters, who are striving for human connection in a hard world. Both lyrical and cleareyed, a rare and welcome combination
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The opening chapter of Claire of the Sea Light moves backward chronologically through each of Claire’s birthdays, ultimately returning to the present day of the narrative. How does this structure contribute to the book’s sense of time overall, and to its weaving of past and present as more characters are introduced?

2. What does it mean that Albert Vincent is both the town of Ville Rose’s undertaker and its mayor? How are these dual roles reflected in his relationship with Claire Narcis, Nozias’s wife and Claire’s mother, when she works for him preparing bodies for burial?

3. That Claire visits her mother’s grave on her birthdays brings poignantly to the fore the notion that life and death are intertwined. In what other ways does that happen in the book? Do ghosts—or chime—have a positive or negative influence over the living?

4. The sea both opens and closes the book, offering powerful images of its destructive and restorative force: the fisherman Caleb is drowned at the book’s beginning when “a wall of water rise[s] from the depths of the ocean, a giant blue-green tongue” (3), and at the book’s end, Max Junior is spat back from the sea that had “taken [him] this morning” (237). What roles does the sea play in the fates of all the characters in the book? What other myths, stories, and fables come to your mind by this book’s evocation of water?

5. At one point in the story, Nozias recalls another watery scene, when he and wife Claire Narcis went night fishing, and Claire slipped into the moonlit water to observe a school of shimmering fish. It is from this moment that their daughter, and Danticat’s book, get their name. How does this important memory shape your impression of Claire Narcis, including in what we learn about her by the book’s conclusion?

6. The relationships between parents and children take many forms in the book’s three main families. Claire and Nozias remain at the center, showing how both parent and child experience joy and fear, trust and wariness. How is this theme expanded upon by bonds between Max Sr. and Max Junior, Max. Junior and Pamaxime, Madame Gaelle and Rose, and even Odile and Henri? In each of these, who, if any, suffers more: parent or child?

7. Madame Gaelle’s story (“The Frogs,” 41) opens with a description of a sudden explosion of frogs that has plagued Ville Rose, which her husband Laurent explains “is surely a sign that something more terrible is going to happen” (44). The smell of the frogs’ corpses at first nauseates the pregnant Gaelle, yet the act of putting a frog in her mouth seems to save her baby from risk. How does this miracle, along with the simultaneous death of Laurent, reflect the town’s mythic culture and one woman’s sense of her fate?

8. Much of the lyricism and power of Claire of the Sea Light derives from the descriptions of its Haitian setting: of the sea, the mountains, the flowers, the “sparkly feathers from angel wings” that Claire searches for after her waking dreams (236). Would the book work in any other place, either in the Caribbean or beyond? How might things change if so?

9. Although this is fiction, Danticat vividly evokes present-day Haitian culture and society, including its poverty (5), gangs, and restavèk children—the child-servitude that Nozias fears for Claire. How do these realities affect your reading of the book and the sense of authenticity of Claire’s story? Of Bernard’s?

10. The radio is a major form of communicating stories throughout the novel, and the radio station is a place where confessions and revelations are spoken, but also where betrayals, and even murder, occur. Why do you think Danticat chose to set so many key scenes at the radio station? Louise George is the host of a radio show called Di Mwen, which translates to “Tell Me.” Does honest speech come more naturally in this medium where the speaker’s face is hidden? In what ways is Danticat’s book in and of itself like a radio show?

11. Claire of the Sea Light is rich with secrets: of paternity, of sexual identity, of crimes, of lies that unfold in the course of the narrative. How do the multiple voices of the book help withhold the truth, yet also expose it at key moments? In what cases does not knowing the entire truth of a situation—such Nozias’s plan to have a vasectomy, Max Junior’s love for Bernard, and Albert Vincent’s for Claire Narcis—hurt or protect the person keeping the secret, and the person from whom the truth is kept?

12. Danticat chooses to tell her story through multiple voices and points of view, which provides the reader with a kaleidoscopic view of the past. How does this also affect the book’s presentation of memory, and of our ability to shape certain memories that may not be our own?

13. In the scene where Nozias leaves his goodbye letter for Claire with Madame Gaelle, both characters seem to hesitate in their willingness to participate in Nozias’s decision to leave. How do their interactions in this moment reflect their unique understandings of their responsibilities, and also of death and the future? What makes Nozias turn to Gaëlle in particular, and what motivates Gaelle to take in a new daughter after she’s lost her own? Is money the most important thing to have, in raising a child, in offering him or her security and love?

14. Although Claire Limye Lanme is the book’s fulcrum, her point of view does not appear until the final chapter. Does it seem that Claire accepts her fate and her father’s decision? How does placing those other stories before Claire’s affect your feelings about her in the final scene? What do you imagine will happen to Claire in the future?

15. The choice Nozias faces—whether or not to leave his child in the care of another—is one that many real parents in Haiti struggle with today. Does this knowledge change your understanding of the book, or your sympathies with Nozias? What would you do if you were in Nozias’s position?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Clara and Mr. Tiffany 
Susan Vreeland, 2011
Random House
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400068166


Summary
Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the twentieth century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, bestselling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which brings a woman once lost in the shadows into vivid color.

It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows, which he hopes will honor his family business and earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division. Publicly unrecognized by Tiffany, Clara conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which he is long remembered.

Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman, which ultimately force her to protest against the company she has worked so hard to cultivate. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces to a strict policy: he does not hire married women, and any who do marry while under his employ must resign immediately. Eventually, like many women, Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 20, 1946
• Where—Racine, Wisconsin, USA
• Death—August 23, 2017
• Where—San Diego, California
• Education—San Diego State University
• Awards—Inkwell Grand Prize, Fiction, 1999; San Diego Book Awards' Theodore Geisel Award and Best Novel of the Year, 2002.


Susan Vreeland's short fiction has appeared in journals such as The New England Review, The Missouri Review, Confrontation, Calyx, Manoa, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her first novel, What Love Sees, was broadcast as a CBS Sunday night movie in 1996. Ms. Vreeland is the recipient of several awards, including a Women's National Book Association First Place Award in Short Fiction (1991) and a First Place in Short Fiction from New Voices (1993). Inkwell Magazine for her short story, "Gifts". She teaches English literature, creative writing, and art in San Diego public schools, where she has taught since 1969. (From the publisher.)

More
"When I was nine, my great-grandfather, a landscape painter, taught me to mix colors," Susan Vreeland recalls in an interview on her publisher's web site. "With his strong hand surrounding my small one, he guided the brush until a calla lily appeared as if by magic on a page of textured watercolor paper. How many girls throughout history would have longed to be taught that, but had to do washing and mending instead?"

As a grown woman, Vreeland found her own magical way of translating her vision of the world into art. While teaching high school English in the 1980s, she began to write, publishing magazine articles, short stories, and her first novel, What Love Sees. In 1996, Vreeland was diagnosed with lymphoma, which forced her to take time off from teaching—time she spent undergoing medical treatment and writing stories about a fictional Vermeer painting.

Creative endeavor can aid healing because it lifts us out of self-absorption and gives us a goal," she later wrote. In Vreeland's case, her goal "was to live long enough to finish this set of stories that reflected my sensibilities, so that my writing group of twelve dear friends might be given these and know that in my last months I was happy—because I was creating."

Vreeland recovered from her illness and wove her stories into a novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue. The book was a national bestseller, praised by the New York Times as "intelligent, searching and unusual" and by Kirkus Reviews as "extraordinarily skilled historical fiction: deft, perceptive, full of learning, deeply moving." Its interrelated stories move backward in time, creating what Marion Lignana Rosenberg in Salon called "a kind of Chinese box unfolding from the contemporary hiding-place of a painting attributed to Vermeer all the way back to the moment the work was conceived."

Vreeland's next novel, The Passion of Artemisia, was based on the life of the 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, often regarded as the first woman to hold a significant place in the history of European art. "Forthright and imaginative, Vreeland's deft recreation ably showcases art and life," noted Publishers Weekly.

Love for the visual arts, especially painting, continues to fire Vreeland's literary imagination. Her new novel, The Forest Lover, is a fictional exploration of the life of the 20th-century Canadian artist Emily Carr. She has also written a series of art-related short stories. For Vreeland, art provides inspiration for living as well as for literature. As she put it in an autobiographical essay, "I hope that by writing art-related fiction, I might bring readers who may not recognize the enriching and uplifting power of art to the realization that it can serve them as it has so richly served me."

Extras
• Two other novels relating to Vermeer were published within a year of Girl in Hyacinth Blue: The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.

• Vreeland taught high school English and ceramics for 30 years before retiring to become a full-time writer. She lived in San Diego, California, and died in 2017. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews 
Clara and Mr. Tiffany is about art and commerce, love and duty. Peopled with characters both imagined and historic, it is also a study of New York's ultra-rich and desperate poor, its entitled men and its disenfranchised women. And it is the story of one extraordinary woman's passion and determination…Vreeland's ability to make this complex historical novel as luminous as a Tiffany lamp is nothing less than remarkable.
Eugenia Zuckerman - Washington Post


Vreeland (Luncheon of the Boating Party) again excavates the life behind a famous artistic creation--in this case the Tiffany leaded-glass lamp, the brainchild not of Louis Comfort Tiffany but his glass studio manager, Clara Driscoll. Tiffany staffs his studio with female artisans—a decision that protects him from strikes by the all-male union--but refuses to employ women who are married. Lucky for him, Clara's romantic misfortunes--her husband's death, the disappearance of another suitor—insure that she can continue to craft the jewel-toned glass windows and lamps that catch both her eye and her imagination. Behind the scenes she makes her mark as an artist and champion of her workers, while living in an eclectic Irving Place boarding house populated by actors and artists. Vreeland ably captures Gilded Age New York and its atmosphere—robber barons, sweatshops, colorful characters, ateliers—but her preoccupation with the larger historical story comes at the expense of Clara, whose arc, while considered and nicely told, reflects the times too closely in its standard-issue woman-behind-the-man scenario.
Publishers Weekly


Vreeland (Luncheon of the Boating Party) creates another affecting story of artistic vision and innovation, this time set within the crafts movement around the turn of the 19th century. She tells the story of Clara Driscoll, who ran the women's workshop at the New York studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany. In Vreeland's account, it was Clara who had the idea to create lampshades from stained glass; Mr. Tiffany, unconcerned with profits, gave her the freedom to follow her creative instincts. While Clara had her share of personal struggles, she lived happily among artists and bohemians during a time of great social change; settlement houses, women's suffrage, and trade unions were among the nascent progressive movements that influenced her life and times. Verdict: In trademark style, Vreeland adds depth to her novel by incorporating details about the artistic process. Her descriptions highlight the craftsmanship behind the timeless beauty of Tiffany's glass, and the true story of Clara Driscoll's life serves as a colorful canvas. Recommended for historical fiction readers; likely to become a favorite on the book club circuit. —Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty
Library Journal


In her sixth work of fiction about the inter-penetration of life and art, Vreeland (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 2007, etc.) celebrates the putative designer of Tiffany's leaded-glass lampshades. That would be Clara Driscoll. Some art historians now believe that it was Clara, unacknowledged in her lifetime, who conceived the lampshades. What is indisputable is that, encouraged by Louis Tiffany, she was a major creative force at his Glass and Decorating Company. (This was separate from the jewelry company, run by his father Charles.) From 1892 to 1908, she oversaw the Women's Department; many of her workers were from poor immigrant families and still in their teens. Louis would not employ married women. Clara had returned to the company after her much older husband Francis died, omitting her from his will. Vreeland's account of the marriage is sketchy; her primary focus is on the workplace. Here Clara is a commanding figure: a mother hen to the Tiffany Girls, a feminist challenging the rampant sexism of the Men's Department and an imaginative innovator marrying glass to flowers and insects. Her greatest triumph was the dragonfly lamp at the Paris Exposition, though even there she was not given credit. However, she did find consolation in her bohemian downtown boardinghouse, especially in the company of the madcap painter George Waldo (gay, like several of their fellow lodgers) and his straight brother Edwin, a prospective husband until his mysterious disappearance. Vreeland guides us conscientiously through the world of glass, of cames and cabochons, though the detail can be overwhelming. More damagingly, she has let the stifling propriety of the time infect Clara as narrator; though prim among her peers, she could surely have unbuttoned to us, her readers. Louis, cocooned in reverence, suffers too. His one memorable scene comes after his wife's death when, a remorseful drunk, his language turns salty. A novel that reads like a labor of love. Unfortunately, the labor is as evident as the love.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. How do Clara’s yearnings and goals change during the course of the novel. What personal growth is revealed, and what experiences prompt that growth?

2. At the first Tiffany Ball with Edwin in chapter nine, Clara says, “We straddled a double world.” How does that play out in Clara’s experience? What did she learn from Edwin?

3. Of all of the adjectives Clara and Alice heap on Tiffany in chapter twenty-seven, which ones do you believe are justified and which are exaggerations? In spite of their accusations, Clara says in the same scene that she adores him. How can that be? Did she truly love him? What kind of love was it?

4. How was Clara’s love different for each of the five men in her life? Given that love can sometimes be an indefinable thing, in each case, what prompted her love and how did it change, if at all?

5. Is George Waldo a tragic character? Is Edwin? Is Wilhelmina? How do you define tragic character?

6. Throughout the novel there are social contrasts–rich and poor, suffering and insouciance. Speculate on how these serve to make Clara a more well-rounded or deeper person, as well as how they serve to make the novel transcend the period depicted.

7. Mr. Tiffany makes a surprising final concession in chapter forty-seven. What was it based on? In light of it, should Clara have stayed working at Tiffany Studios? How was her decision right or wrong for her?

8. How is the Brooklyn Bridge an icon or symbol of the time? Consider its style, the construction process, the men and woman who worked on it. You may have to do a little research. Why was Edwin so moved by it? What other material things were symbols of the time? In what way were Tiffany lamps icons of the time?

9. The style and sensibility that had no name at the turn of the century came to be known as camp, one element of which is seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon and then exaggerating it. Another element of it is the playful duplicity of which Henry Belknap speaks. What art movements, artists, or pieces of art in your lifetimes reflect the camp sensibility? Do you own anything with camp sensibility? Oscar Wilde, spokesperson of high camp, said, “In matters of great importance, the vital element is not sincerity, but style.” To what extent do you hold this to be true? Was he just being flippant by making this statement or is there any truth to it?

10. The protagonists of two other novels of mine are female artists. How do Clara’s goals, obstacles, and attitudes compare with those of Artemisia Gentileschi and Emily Carr? Has anything changed for women in the arts?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Clasp 
Sloane Crosley, 2015
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374124410


Summary
Part comedy of manners, part treasure hunt, the first novel from the writer whom David Sedaris calls "perfectly, relentlessly funny."

Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor are reunited for the extravagant wedding of a college friend. Now at the tail end of their twenties, they arrive completely absorbed in their own lives—Kezia the second-in-command to a madwoman jewelry designer in Manhattan; Nathaniel the former literary cool kid, selling his wares in Hollywood; and the Eeyore-esque Victor, just fired from a middling search engine.

They soon slip back into old roles: Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel.

In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor passes out in the mother of the groom's bedroom. He wakes to her jovially slapping him across the face. Instead of a scolding, she offers Victor a story she's never even told her son, about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France.

And so a madcap adventure is set into motion, one that leads Victor, Kezia, and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A. to Paris and across France, until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story "The Necklace."

Heartfelt, suspenseful, and told with Sloane Crosley's inimitable spark and wit, The Clasp is a story of friends struggling to fit together now that their lives haven't gone as planned, of how to separate the real from the fake.

Such a task might be possible when it comes to precious stones, but is far more difficult to pull off with humans. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 3, 1978
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Connecticut College
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Sloane Crosley is an essay and fiction writer living in New York. She has worked as a publicist at the Vintage Books division of Random House and as an adjunct professor in Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts program. She graduated from Connecticut College in 2000.

Career
Crosley's collection of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, became a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for The Thurber Prize, one of Amazon.com's best books of the year and optioned for series by HBO.

Her second essay collection, How Did You Get This Number (2010) also became a New York Times bestseller, and her e-book, Up The Down Volcano (2011), became a #1 Amazon Kindle bestseller.

The Clasp (2015), Crosley's debut novel, received high marks from the New York Times, as well as from Vogue, Elle, Time, and People.

Crosley was a has also been a weekly columnist for The Independent in the UK and editor of The Best American Travel Writing 2011. Her essays have appeared in 2011's The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The Library of America's The 50 Funniest American Writers According to Andy Borowitz.

She was the founding columnist for the New York Times "Townies" Op-Ed series, a columnist for the New York Observer Diary, a columnist for the Village Voice, a contributing editor at BlackBook Magazine, and she continues to be a regular contributor to the New York Times, GQ, Elle and NPR.

Crosley has also written cover stories and features for Salon, Spin, Bon Appetit, Vogue, Esquire, Playboy, W Magazine and AFAR.

Other
Crosley is co-chair of The New York Public Library's Young Lions Committee and serves on the board of Housingworks Bookstore.

Crosley is also a model for eyeglass company Warby Parker. In 2012, she appeared on the TV series Gossip Girl as herself and she was a regular fixture on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2016.)

Book Reviews
[A] shrewd exploration of the modern-day late-quarter-life crisis, disguised as a caper…[Crosley's] signature wit is sharp as ever here. She is startlingly good at portraying comically awful characters who would seem cartoonish if they weren't also so recognizable…Crosley is an incisive observer of human nature in general and of a generation in particular—people circling the age of 30 who foster undue fondness for the retro culture of their youth…For all its humor, Crosley's prose is equally sharp in delineating her characters' despair…in this highly comic, highly affecting novel.
Julia Pierpont - New York Times Book Review


[The Clasp is] a love-triangle-comedy-of-manners told in Crosley’s signature irreverent style.
Washington Post


Crosley has achieved a rare feat: a complex and clever work of homage that deepens the original by connecting it to contemporary life. The Clasp is a gentle, astute, funny, smart, and very entertaining book.
Julia Holme - New Republic


Crosley is best known for her comic essays, some of which were collected in I Was Told There’d Be Cake, but her gifts–keen observation, mordant humor, an affinity for the bittersweet–translate surprisingly seamlessly into fiction.
Lev Grossman - Time


Crosley, with her quirky cleverness, seems more in league with the doohickeys of the world than with the emeralds. She’s interested not so much in transcendent beauty as in the small gears that hold people together and sometimes force them apart; when the objects you cherish could easily turn out to be fake, what matters is not what you cling to but the fact that you cling to it.... Crosley’s stylishness as a writer never tips over into shtickiness or stifles her warmth—it only makes the flowering of genuine emotion more powerful .
Katy Waldman - Slate


A novel with more verve and imagination than much of the plot-light fare that typically gets the high-literary treatment, a story that shares at least some DNA with ambitious capers like Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics.
Vogue


Those who love Crosley's essays for the way they straddle the line between slapstick humor and essential truths will love her fiction too. Each sentence builds upon the last, toward one big wink: Isn't life weird? And isn't that great?
Elle


With mordant wit and an ear for millennial patois, Crosley dissects the pretensions of Los Angeles and New York, then sends her characters to France on a madcap adventure. It's fun to tag along.
People


[A] mix of smarts and sarcasm to commemorate some of life’s more mortifying moment.... Victor’s harebrained attempts at tracking the necklace down, culminating in a French chateau break-in with a mildly concerned Kezia and Nathaniel in hot pursuit, make not only for fun reading but hint at the surprisingly poignant extent of just how far old acquaintances will go to save one another’s hides.
Publishers Weekly


This is not Crosley's first book;.... But it is her first novel. While attending a college friend's splashy wedding, twentysomethings...learn about a valuable necklace that vanished in Nazi-occupied France, and they're off on a crazy chase that leads them to the estate of Guy de Maupassant, beloved for his classic short story "The Necklace."
Library Journal


Crosley is an innate storyteller and writes with her signature wit and flair.... The Clasp speaks to flaws in humanity and friendships in a charming and realistic way. This novel entertains even as it provokes internal examination of one’s own relationships.
BookPage


Crosley, of the smart, humorous essay collections I Was Told There'd Be Cake (2008) and How Did You Get This Number? (2010) writes her three-dimensional characters' thoughts and dialogue with a clever crispness her fans would hope for, and she further stuns with a mastery of her first novel's setting and frame: a lavish Florida wedding, a crotchety Parisian jewelry designer's offices, a drive through enchanting-and disturbing-provincial France.
Booklist


[A] quest to find a priceless necklace and regain an even rarer treasure: a genuine connection. [T]renchant.... [A]n interconnected circle of friends from college who, like beads on a broken necklace, have dispersed and rolled off on different paths.... [S]mart, sardonic, sometimes-zany, yet also sensitive.... A real gem.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions

Class Mom 
Laurie Gelman, 2017
Henry Holt & Co.
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250124692


Summary
Laurie Gelman’s clever debut novel about a year in the life of a kindergarten class mom—a brilliant send-up of the petty and surprisingly cutthroat terrain of parent politics.

Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom—or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it’s her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max — this time with a husband and father by her side.

Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the “wisest” candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.

From recording parents’ response times to her emails about helping in the classroom, to requesting contributions of “special” brownies for curriculum night, not all of Jen’s methods win approval from the other moms.

Throw in an old flame from Jen’s past, a hyper-sensitive "allergy mom," a surprisingly sexy kindergarten teacher, and an impossible-to-please Real Housewife-wannabe, causing problems at every turn, and the job really becomes much more than she signed up for.

Relatable, irreverent, and hilarious in the spirit of Maria Semple, Class Mom is a fresh, welcome voice in fiction—the kind of novel that real moms clamor for, and a vicarious thrill-read for all mothers, who will be laughing as they are liberated by Gelman’s acerbic truths.(From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 4, 1964
• Where—Canada
• Education—B.S., Ryerson University (Toronto)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA


Laurie Hibberd Gelman is a Canadian television personality and entertainment news reporter. Her debut novel, Class Mom, was published in 2017. Gelman is married to Michael Gelman (executive producer of Live with Kelly and Ryan); they have two children.

Gelman graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto with a bachelor's degree in journalism. Her first job in broadcasting, from 1987-1992, was as a traffic reporter, news writer, entertainment reporter and host on CKFM in Toronto. During that time, (the late 80s and early 90s), she also served as a host on YTV for Rocks and Rock'n'Talk.

Then, from 1992-1994, she became an entertainment reporter for WSVN-TV in Miami, Florida. For the next two years, from 1994-1996, she co-hosted, along with Tom Bergeron, the FX cable network's morning show, Breakfast Time.

Later, in 2007, Gelman worked on two Canadian-based talk shows, The Mom Show and Doctor in the House. She has also appeared on Good Morning America and Good Morning America Sunday. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/10/2017.)

Book Reviews
Class Mom exposes the underside of room parenting…. [But] Gelman's novel gives readers a lot to laugh about, including some very, very funny emails.… In the end, it's impossible not to root for Jen as a fellow foot soldier in the guerrilla war against so-called perfect mothers.
Katherine Heiny - New York Times Book Review


Irreverent and hilarious.
New York Post


Jen Dixon, a mom with two college-age daughters (been there, done that) brings zest, impatience and irreverence to her role as kindergarten mom for her 5-year-old son.
Columbus Dispatch


Don’t miss this hilarious send-up of parental politics (a Best New Books).
People


[A] funny, charming debut novel.… With its appealing tone and a sweet mystery at its core, Class Mom offers up refreshingly likable characters in relatably goofy situations.
Good Housekeeping


Jen's first-person narration is sassy yet vulnerable as she faces motherhood with panache and her midlife crisis with uncertainty. Her e-mails to the other parents will elicit cackles of glee. Class Mom provides mom-raderie to those who still feel 20 but aren't.
Shelf Awareness


Class Mom is wicked fun. I will forever have a secret smile at school drop off having read this book. Thank you, Laurie Gelman, for this well-written, deviously funny viewpoint on motherhood today.
Katie Brown - Lifestyle TV


In Class Mom, Laurie Gelman's titular character is the perfect class mom's alter ego, with wit and just enough snark to make it a really fun read.
Victoria Rose, Publisher - Us Weekly


Warning: Do not read Class Mom in the quiet car on the train because you will LOL! (Sorry, not sorry, fellow commuters.) Laurie Gelman’s HI-larious debut novel is a must-read for anyone with small people at home!
Meaghan Murphy, Executive Editor - Good Housekeeping


When Jen Dixon is asked by her best friend…to be kindergarten class mom…, she begrudgingly agrees. With her first email, full of snark, wit, and charm, Jen sets the stage for how things will be in Miss Ward's class. Moms, trying to hold back tears of laughter, will relate.
Library Journal


Gelman’s debut draws a delightfully snarky character in Jen Dixon, kindergarten-class mom and purveyor of jaw-dropping but spot-on class updates.… Snappy dialogue and quick pacing make this a fast and fun read…fans of Jen Lancaster and Maria Semple will love meeting Jen Dixon.
Booklist


Miss Ward's Kansas City kindergarten class has a room parent with major attitude.… Gelman's debut is a literary stand-up routine, and you might as well just give in: this woman is going to get a laugh out of you.
Kirkus Reviews

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

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

(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)

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Claude & Camille
Stephanie Cowell, 2010
Crown Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307463210


Summary
In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father’s nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father’s will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

But once there he is confronted with obstacles: an art world that refused to validate his style, extreme poverty, and a war that led him away from his home and friends. But there were bright spots as well: his deep, enduring friendships with men named Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, Manet—a group that together would come to be known as the Impressionists, and that supported each other through the difficult years. But even more illuminating was his lifelong love, Camille Doncieux, a beautiful, upper-class Parisian girl who threw away her privileged life to be by the side of the defiant painter and embrace the lively Bohemian life of their time.

His muse, his best friend, his passionate lover, and the mother to his two children, Camille stayed with Monet—and believed in his work—even as they lived in wretched rooms, were sometimes kicked out of those, and often suffered the indignities of destitution. She comforted him during his frequent emotional torments, even when he would leave her for long periods to go off on his own to paint in the countryside.

But Camille had her own demons—secrets that  Monet could never penetrate, including one that when eventually revealed would pain him so deeply that he would never fully recover from its impact. For though Camille never once stopped loving the painter with her entire being, she was not immune to the loneliness that often came with being his partner.

A vividly-rendered portrait of both the rise of Impressionism and of the artist at the center of the movement, Claude & Camille is above all a love story of the highest romantic order. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—American Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York City

In her words
I was born in New York City to a family of artists and fell in love with Mozart, Shakespeare and historical fiction at an early age. I began printing stories in a black and white school notebook at about nine years old and in my teens wrote several short novels which remain in a dark box. I learned something though, because by twenty, I had twice won prizes in a national story contest.

Then I left writing for classical singing. I sang in many operas and appeared as an international balladeer; I formed a singing ensemble, a chamber opera company, and so on. The translation of a late Mozart opera returned me to writing once more and I now mostly sing while washing the dishes!

My first published novel was Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest. That work was followed by two other Elizabethan 17th-century novels: The Physician of London (American Book Award 1996) and The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare. In 2004, I returned to my musical background and wrote Marrying Mozart; it has been translated into seven languages and optioned for a movie.

I am married to poet and reiki practitioner Russell Clay and have two grown sons (one in computer systems design and one a filmmaker). I was born in New York City and am still living here, a short walk away from all the impressionist paintings at the Metropolitan Museum. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Historic verisimilitude cuddles with bodice-ripping fancy in this diverting fictional representation of the Impressionist maverick Claude Monet.... [T]he narrative derives more energy from Monet’s mercurial muse than from an account of his rocky ascent as he endures poverty, disappointment and disapproving parents.... The novel seems convincingly researched, even as it indulges a quaint notion of embryonic genius in which male artists fantasize about fame: “One day our paths will cross on one of the great boulevards or perhaps at the annual Salon. I will be famous then and she will arrive on the arm of her husband and lower her eyes when she sees me.”
Jan Stuart - New York Times


Cowell is nothing short of masterful in writing about Claude Monet’s life and love.... An enthralling story, beautifully told.
Boston Globe


Once again the acclaimed novelist Stephanie Cowell deftly takes us into the world of the classical arts with her well researched and beautifully written novel of historical fiction, Claude & Camille. (5 Stars.)
LA Times Book Examiner


Behind every great artist stands a woman driving him to inspiration, aspiration, and desperation, according to Cowell (Marrying Mozart), who bases her latest novel about an artist and his muse on the life of Claude Monet. Beautiful bourgeoise Camille Doncieux leaves her family and fiancé for Monet, whom Cowell depicts early on as a rebellious young man trying to capture in his paintings fleeting moments of color and light before he matures into the troubled genius whose talent exceeds his income. In an art world resistant to change, Camille remains Monet's great love as he and fellow unknowns Renoir, Pissarro, and Bazille struggle to make ends meet, but, eventually, parenthood, financial pressure, long separations, career frustrations, and romantic distractions take their toll, and even after Monet finally achieves commercial success, the couple still faces considerable difficulty. While glimpses of great men at work make absorbing reading, it's Camille who gives this story its heart. A convincing narrative about how masterpieces are created and a detailed portrait of a complex couple, Cowell's novel suggests that a fabulous, if flawed, love is the source of both the beauty and sadness of Monet's art.
Publishers Weekly


One winter's day, a young, frustrated Claude Monet waits for a train on his way to boot camp; through the crowd, he spies a lovely young woman in tears. Captivated, he sketches her face before she disappears with her mother and sister into the bustle of the station. A few years later, he has not forgotten the girl's beauty and is stunned to meet her again in a Paris bookshop. Her name is Camille Doniceaux, and she is destined to become Monet's first wife and greatest muse. Moving through war, illness, prosperity, and poverty, Cowell (Marrying Mozart) writes the couple's love story with an eye for perspective as skilled as any painter's. By novel's end, readers are left with not only the satisfying drama of life among the Impressionists but also a greater appreciation for Monet's art and the driving bforces behind it. Verdict: Though the plot occasionally cries out for greater detail, the story of [a] complex and engrossing relationship compensates.... Rich, artsy read. —Leigh Wright, Bridgewater, NJ
Library Journal


Fleshing out the artist’s biographical outline with fresh imagery, well-paced dramatic scenes and carefully calculated dialogue, Cowell presents a vivid portrait of Monet’s remarkable career. She writes with intelligence and reverence for her subject matter, providing a rich exploration of the points at which life and art converged for one of history’s greatest painters. —Carol Haggas
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 Claude and Camille:

1. Claude Monet first glimpses Camille Doncieux at a train station...and quickly sketches her. What initially attracts him to her? And in what way does she become his muse? (What does it mean to become someone's "muse"?)

2. How does Stephanie Cowell present her two main characters, Claude and Camille? Are they fleshed out as real people, emotionally and psychologically complex? Or are they drawn more superficially? How would you describe the two individuals as the author portrays them?

3. What is at stake for Camille in defying her parents and choosing to live openly with Claude Monet? Do you think she realizes how difficult her life will become as the wife of an unknown young artist? If she had known, do you think she would have changed her mind? Would you have taken the risks she does?

4. What takes priority in Claude's life—his wife or his career? What do you make of his choice of priorities? Does an artist have a choice?

5. What is the nature of Claude and Camille's relationship? How do they nearly destroy one another...and yet manage to remain together? In one unhappy scene, Claude tells Camille to take their son and leave him. "Minou, all the things you thought about me, all the bright, wonderful things, are wrong." What does he mean? Could that passage be true of any marriage?

6. How familiar were you with the Impressionists and their paintings before reading this novel? What have you learned about impressionism as a movement? What is "Impressionism," and how does it differ from the accepted painting style of the 19th-century art world? Why was Impressionism so disparaged by its contemporary critics?

7. Talk about the other Impressionist painters, the group of artists who meet, along with Monet, in the cafes around Paris. How do they inspire and support one another? What do they learn from each other. What do you make of Frederic Bazille—what role does he play in Monet's life?

8. What do you make of the book's opening quotation by Monet:

I had so much fire in me and so many plans. I always want the impossible. Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It's wonderful to look at, but to try and paint it is enough to make one insane.

What does that statement suggest about the artistic endeavor and the nature of art? Can the same be said regarding a writer or musician—or any artist?

9. Monet and company never realized the full worth of their creations. How does it make you feel that the price of Monet's paintings—the paintings of all the impressionists—are now high up in the stratosphere?

10. Did you enjoy the framing of the novel, with Claude Monet looking back on his life from the vantage of an older man? Or did the time frames confuse you and disrupt the narrative flow? Why might Cowell have structured her novel the way she did?

11. Have you read other historical novels about the lives of painters—Susan Vreeland's The Luncheon of the Boating Party...or Tracy Chevalier's The Girl with the Pearl Earring? If so, how does this book compare to the others?

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

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Cleo McDougal Has No Regrets 
Allison Winn Scotch, 2020
Amazon Publishing
328 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781542021227


Summary
Politics is a test of wills in a sharp, funny, and emotional novel about truth and consequences.

Cleo McDougal is a born politician. From congresswoman to senator, the magnetic, ambitious single mother now has her eye on the White House—always looking forward, never back.

Until an estranged childhood friend shreds her in an op-ed hit piece gone viral.

With seven words—"Cleo McDougal is not a good person"—the presidential hopeful has gone from in control to damage control, and not just in Washington but in life.

Enter Cleo’s "regrets list" of 233 and counting. Her chief of staff has a brilliant idea: pick the top ten, make amends during a media blitz, and repair her reputation.

But there are regrets, and there are regrets: like her broken relationship with her sister, her affair with a law school professor… and the regret too big to even say out loud.

But with risk comes reward, and as Cleo makes both peace and amends with her past, she becomes more empowered than ever to tackle her career, confront the hypocrites out to destroy her, and open her heart to what matters most—one regret at a time. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 12, 1973
• Where—Charlottesville, Virginia; Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A. University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Allison Winn Scotch is an American author with six books to her name. She grew up with a school-teacher mother who loved to read and passed her passion for books onto her children.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Allison worked as a freelance writer for popular magazines (a lot of "10 best ways to…" columns), but all the while she was honing her skills as a novelist. First one novel (awful), then another (not as bad), until finally in 2007 she published The Department of Lost and Found.

Since then, she has followed with, Time of My Life (2008), The One That I Want (2010), The Song Remains the Same (2012). The Theory of Opposites (2013), In Twenty Years (2016), Between You and Me (2018), and Cleo McDougal Has No Regrets (2020).

Allison lives in Los Angeles with her family and dogs. When not novel writing, she writes celebrity interviews and profiles, which she says indulges her obsession with pop culture. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A heartfelt tale of hypocrisy, ambition, love and more.
Good Morning America (online)


Scotch’s trademark humor and heart are on full display in this expertly plotted and characterized outing. The author’s fans will devour this, and it will win her new readers as well.
Publishers Weekly


Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing is a rousing anthem to the power of womanhood. Cleo is an eminently relatable character who finds redemption and empowerment over the course of her journey.
Authorlink

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for CLEO MCDOUGAL HAS NO REGRETS … then take off on your own:

1. Describe Cleo McDougal. Prickly, yes, but does that make her unlikable in your eyes? Does your opinion of Cleo change over the course of the novel? If so, how and why? Same for "no"—if your opinion of Cleo doesn't change, why not?

2. (Follow-up to Question 1) Consider Cleo's rise, at the age of 37, to the position of a U.S. Senator and possible presidential contender. What does it take to reach those heights, not just as a male but, more to the point, as a female?

3. (Follow-up to Question 2) While this book isn't explicitly political, it takes place in the political arena. What are the double-standards in the political world that author Allison Winn Scotch explores? Is the sexism in politics different from, say, the corporate, professional, academic, or scientific worlds?

4. Cleo refuses to accept offers of help from others. Why? Is it because of her idea of self-reliance… or perhaps it has to do with the power dynamics involved in allowing others to help, at least according to Cleo? Do you know people like that? Are you yourself prone to decline someone's offer of help?

5. Talk about Cleo's familial relationships. How would you describe her as a mother? What about Lucas—do you find his teenage snark funny? What about the fact that Cleo has not dealt with the matter of Lucas's father? Then there is Georgie, Cleo's younger sister. What's the history behind their relationship which makes it so difficult?

6. What do you make of Cleo's list of 233 regrets? Why has she compiled such a list and kept it up over all these years? What is the purpose of the list?

7. Talk about your own regrets: do you have your own list? Maybe your regrets tend to be simply vague, uneasy memories that occasionally (or frequently?) crop up to remind you of your missteps. Or perhaps they're more pronounced. Have you ever made attempts to repair the missteps in your life which you regret?

8. Gaby decides that Cleo should addreess the top 10 regrets at the top of her list in order to repair her reputation. Does that mean that Cleo's regrets—and her desire for reparations—are inauthentic? Discuss Cleo's journey as she goes about attempting to atone for her missteps.

9. By the end of her journey, what does Cleo learn about what it takes to become a truly good person? In fact, how would you define the qualities of a "truly good person"—what is required to be one? Does Cleo become that good person?

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

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Clever Girl 
Tessa Hadley, 2014
HarperCollins
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062270399


Summary
Like Alice Munro and Colm Toibin, Tessa Hadley possesses the remarkable ability to transform the mundane into the sublime—an eye for the beauty, innocence, and irony of ordinary lives that elevates domestic fiction to literary art.

In Clever Girl, she offers the indelible story of one woman's life, unfolded in a series of beautifully sculpted episodes that illuminate an era, moving from the 1960s to today.

Written with the celebrated precision, intensity, and complexity that have marked her previous works, Clever Girl is a powerful exploration of family relationships and class in modern life, witnessed through the experiences of an Englishwoman named Stella. Unfolding in a series of snapshots, Tessa Hadley's involving and moving novel follows Stella from childhood, growing up with her single mother in a Bristol bedsit, into the murky waters of middle age.

It is a story vivid in its immediacy and rich in drama—violent deaths, failed affairs, broken dreams, missed chances. Yet it is Hadley's observations of everyday life, her keen skill at capturing the ways men and women think and feel and relate to one another, that dazzles, pressing us to exclaim with each page, Yes, this is how it is. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 28, 1956
• Where—Bristol, England, UK
• Education—B.A.,  Cambridge University
• Currently—lives in London, England


Tessa Hadley is a British author born and raised in Bristol, England. Her father was a teacher who loved jazz, and her mother, a homemaker who loved painting. Her family was not devoid of literary chops: Hadley's uncle is the noted London playwright Peter Nichols.

As a girl, Tessa read extensively. She studied literature at Cambridge, which she found a "chilly, funny, odd place. Nursing idealistic dreams of changing lives, she decided to become a teacher.

It was a complete disaster. I was 23. I went to a rough comprehensive. I was political: I wanted to bring light where there was darkness. All that rubbish. I was hopeless. The kids ran rings around me. I cried on my way to school every morning.

Her misfortunes as a teacher sapped Hadley of her confidence to become an author. Additionally, two other major life events took over: marriage and children. Having attempted a book early on, it took another 23 years, plus three children and three stepchildren, before publishing her first novel in 2002. That book, Accidents in the Home, was longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award.

In addition to six novels (see below) she has two volumes of short stories, both of which were New York Times Notable Books. Her stories appear regularly in The New Yorker.

Hadley lives in London.

Books
2002 - Accidents in the Home
2003 - Everything Will Be All Right
2007 - The Master Bedroom
2007 - Sunstroke: and Other Stories
2011 - The London Train
2012 - Married Love: and Other Stories
2013 - Clever Girl
2016 - The Past
2018 - Late in the Day
(Author bio adapted from interview in the Independent, 5/25/2013, and from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Hadley is an immaculate stylist…Clever Girl isn't plot-driven and isn't a character study and isn't preoccupied with language, but its elements work in patient harmony. It is what could be called a "sensibility" novel—a story that doesn't overreach, about a character who feels real, told in prose that isn't ornate yet is startlingly exact. The effect is a fine and well-chosen pileup of experiences that gather meaning and power.
Meg Wolitzer - New York Times Book Review


Masterful, understated….Clever Girl, like the fiction of V.S. Pritchett or Alice McDermott, is devoted to capturing personality through small actions and expressions, to sparking characters into a vivid flame with a few exact descriptions and to distilling domestic settings into precious, even exalted significance.
Wall Street Journal


Looking for the next Kate Atkinson or Alice Munro? Pick up this lovely novel about a smart Englishwoman who’s also prickly and prone to misfortune.
People


Quietly brilliant….Hadley has always been adept at drawing out the unrecognisable from the everyday…. Domestic fiction is often disparaged as less than serious, but Hadley demonstrates admirably that the genre can carry weight.
Sunday Times (UK)


Lives which are unsophisticated yet experienced intensely, and gorgeously erudite prose are the distinguishing features of Tessa Hadley’s writing.
Daily Telegraph (UK)


Like Munro, Hadley is a writer both exact and lyrical, and there are many pleasures to be found along the way, particularly her sensual descriptions of nature, adolescence, and maternity.
Guardian (UK)


Compelling…. For all Stella’s spikiness and grittiness, there is a sensuousness to Hadley’s writing which revels in richly prolix descriptions of sights and states of mind…. Hadley has a genius for pithy analysis….The result consistently rings true despite its very literary artistry.
Times (UK)


Tessa Hadley is a clever writer who likes to play with form. Like Amish quilts, her novels are made up of homespun, domestic material, delicately worked over. Then you step back and see the bold structural decisions behind their composition.
New Statesman (UK)


It’s this very ordinariness that makes Hadley’s book so captivating. Clever Girl is one of those glorious novels about nothing in particular and everything there is in life, all at the same time.
National (UK)


This is Hadley’s extraordinary skill as a novelist: to navigate and narrate the fleeting moments in an individual’s life when the future crystallises, by choice and circumstance, for good or for bad.... Clever Girl is a remarkable novel by one of this country’s finest, if most unassuming talents.
Literary Review (UK)


Accomplished, elegant.... This novel is the life story of an ordinary, middle-aged woman-Stella. Only that she is not ordinary because Tessa Hadley is writing her into existence and is behind her like a following wind…. Hadley writes as a masterly illustrator might draw.
Observer (UK)


Hadley remains so fixed in Stella’s viewpoint that whatever this stubborn, lonely, eloquent character has to tell us, we accept....Subtle, intelligent, and realistic storytelling.
Evening Standard (UK)


An intimate, engrossing and eminently English coming of middle-age story from one of Britain’s finest writers….The narrative is episodic and deeply personal, but slowly coalesces to form a mosaic of British life over the past 50 years.
Independent (UK)


Involving…. Intrigues and engages…. The smooth narrative echoes Hadley’s cool and precise prose.... There’s plenty of family drama (including murder) but Hadley’s strength is in describing what is often left unnoticed.
Financial Times (UK)


Tessa Hadley is wonderful at surprising us with the domestic dramas that stir the embers of everyday life….Her reminiscences can resemble little bombs…. Hadley can make even English weather seem enthralling.
Toronto Star


(Starred review.) Hadley’s latest is told from the point of view of Stella, a lower-middle-class British girl born in the 1950s, whose experiences coming of age mirror the broader cultural development of her times.... [T]his carefully wrought novel transcends mere character study, offering up Stella’s story as a portrait of how accidents and happenstance can cohere into a life.
Publishers Weekly


Hadley, who's captured the imagination of the well-read everywhere with books like Married Love, returns with a book that vivifies a life typically lived, as we follow Stella from childhood with a single mum in a 1960s Bristol bedsit to the ups and downs of middle age. Not a huge first printing, but watch this one, especially for book clubs.
Library Journal


Growing up in Bristol with a single mother, Stella first realizes she’s clever...[but] not clever enough to avoid becoming pregnant at 16.... Hadley displays the keen insight and masterful portrayal of the domestic life for which she has become known. But this story...is more likely to be admired for Hadley’s sheer skill than embraced. —Michele Leber
Booklist


One relatively ordinary life, chronicled from the 1950s to the 1990s in England, mirrors enormous shifts in style, attitude and choice, especially for women. Domesticity...forms the connective tissue... Hadley is a fine, insightful writer, but this memoir of a restless, bookish woman coping with a sequence of variable male figures while playing the hand life has dealt her lacks momentum.
Kirkus Reviews

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

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

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

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Clock Dance 
Anne Tyler, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525521228


Summary
A delightful novel of one woman's transformative journey, from the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life.

In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother but isn't sure she ever will be.

Then, one day, Willa receives a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to look after a young woman she's never met, her nine-year-old daughter, and their dog, Airplane.

This impulsive decision will lead Willa into uncharted territory—surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places. A bewitching novel of hope, self-discovery, and second chances, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers. (From the publisher.)

• Birth—October 25, 1941
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Duke University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize (see below)
• Currently—lives in Baltimore, Maryland


Anne Tyler  is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published 20 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the third won it.

She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" (New York Times), and her "rigorous and artful style" and "astute and open language" (also, New York Times). While many of her characters have been described as quirky or eccentric, she has managed to make them seem real through skillfully fleshing out their inner lives in great depth.

Her subject in all her novels has been the American family and marriage: the boredom and exasperating irritants endured by partners, children, siblings, parents; the desire for freedom pulling against the tethers of attachments and conflicted love; the evolution over time of familial love and sense of duty. Tyler celebrates unremarkable Americans and the ordinary details of their everyday lives. Because of her style and subject matter, she has been compared to John Updike, Jane Austen, and Eudora Welty, among others.

Childhood
The eldest of four children, she was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father, Lloyd Parry Tyler, was an industrial chemist and her mother, Phyllis Mahon Tyler, a social worker. Both her parents were Quakers who were very active with social causes in the Midwest and the South.  Her family lived in a succession of Quaker communities in the South until they settled in 1948 in a Quaker commune in Celo, in the mountains of North Carolina near Burnsville.

The Celo Community settlement was founded by conscientious objectors and members of the liberal Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends, with community labor needs shared by the residents. Tyler lived there from age 7 through 11 and helped her parents and others with caring for livestock and organic farming. While she did not attend formal public school in Celo, lessons were taught in art, carpentry, and cooking in homes and in other subjects in a tiny school house. Her early informal training was supplemented by correspondence school.

Her first memory of her own creative story-telling was of crawling under the bed covers at age 3 and "telling myself stories in order to get to sleep at night." Her first book at age 7 was a collection of drawings and stories about "lucky girls...who got to go west in covered wagons." Her favorite book as a child was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. Tyler acknowledges that this book, which she read many times during this period of limited access to books, had a profound influence on her, showing how the years flowed by, people altered, and nothing could ever stay the same."

This early perception of changes over time is a theme that reappears in many of her novels decades later, just as The Little House itself appears in her novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Tyler also describes reading Little Women 22 times as a child. When the Tyler family left Celo after four years to move to Raleigh, NC, 11-year-old Anne had never attended public school and never used a telephone. This unorthodox upbringing enabled her to view "the normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise."

Raleigh, North Carolina
It also meant that Tyler felt herself to be an outsider in the public schools she attended in Raleigh, a feeling that has followed her most of her life. She believes that this sense of being an outsider has contributed to her becoming a writer:

I believe that any kind of setting-apart situation will do [to become a writer]. In my case, it was emerging from the commune…and trying to fit into the outside world.

Despite her lack of public schooling prior to age 11, Anne entered school academically well ahead of most of her classmates in Raleigh. With access now to libraries, she discovered Eudora Welty, Gabriel García Márquez, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. Welty remains one of her favorite writers, and she credits Welty with showing her that books could be about the everyday details of life, not just about major events.

During her years at N. B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, she was inspired and encouraged by a remarkable English teacher, Phyllis Peacock. Peacock had previously taught the writer Reynolds Price, under whom Tyler would later study at Duke University. She would also later teach the writer Armistead Maupin. Seven years after high school, Tyler would dedicate her first published novel to "Mrs. Peacock, for everything you’ve done."

Education
Tyler won a full scholarship to Duke University, which her parents urged her to go accept it because they also needed money for the education of her three younger brothers. At Duke, Tyler enrolled in Reynolds Price's first creative writing class, which also included a future poet, Fred Chappell. Price was most impressed with the sixteen-year-old Tyler, describing her as "frighteningly mature for 16," "wide-eyed," and "an outsider." Years later Price would describe Tyler as "one of the best novelists alive in the world,… who was almost as good a writer at 16 as she is now."

While an undergraduate, Tyler published her short story "Laura" in the Duke literary journal Archive, for which she won the newly created Anne Flexner award for creative writing. She wrote many short stories, one of which impressed Reynolds Price so that he later stated that it was the "most finished, most accomplished short story I have ever received from an undergraduate in my thirty years of teaching." "The Saints in Caesar’s Household" was published in Archive also and won her a second Anne Flexner award. This short story led to her meeting Diarmuid Russell, to whom Price had sent it with kudos. Russell, who was an agent for both Reynolds Price and for Tyler’s "crowning influence" Eudora Welty, later became Tyler’s agent.

Tyler majored in Russian Literature at Duke—not English—and graduated in 1961, at age 19, having been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. With her Russian Literature background she received a fellowship to graduate school in Slavic Studies at Columbia University although she left after a year without her master's degree. She returned to Duke where she got a job in the library as a Russian bibliographer. It was there that she met Taghi Modarressi, a resident in child psychiatry in Duke Medical School and a writer himself, and they were married a year later (1963).

Early writing
While working at the Duke library—before and after marrying Modarressi—Tyler continued to write short stories, which appeared in The New Yoker, Saturday Evening Post, and Harpers. She also started work on her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, eventually published 1964, followed by The Tin Can Tree in 1965. Years later she disowned both of these novels, as well as many of the short stories she wrote during this period, going so far as to say she "would like to burn them." She feels that most of this early work suffers from the lack of thorough character development and her failure to rework material repeatedly.

After the birth of two children (1965 and 1967), followed by a move from Montreal, Canada, to Baltimore in the U.S., Tyler had little time or energy for writing. She published nothing from 1965 to 1970. By 1970, however, she began writing again and published three more novels by 1974—A Slipping-Down Life, The Clock Winder, and Celestial Navigation. In her own opinion, her writing improved considerably during this period; with her children entering school, she was able to devote more time—and focus more intensely—than at any time since her undergraduate days.

National recognition
With Celestial Navigation, Tyler began to get wider recognition. Morgan's Passing (1980) won her the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction and was nominated for both the American Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

With her next novel (her ninth), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Tyler truly arrived as a recognized artist in the literary world. (She considers Homesick her best work.) Her tenth novel, The Accidental Tourist, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1985. It was also made into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. The popularity of this well-received film further increased the growing public awareness of her work. Her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989 and was Time magazine’s "Book of the Year." It was adapted into a 1994 TV movie, as eventually were four other of her novels.

Since her Pulitzer Prize with Breathing Lessons, Tyler has written 9 more novels, all of favorably reviewed, many Book of the Month Club Main Selections and New York Times Bestsellers.

Analysis
In Tyler’s own words, the characters are the driving forces behind the stories and the starting point for her writing:

I do make a point of writing down every imaginable facet of my characters before I begin a book, trying to get to know them so I can figure out how they’ll react in any situation…..My reason for writing now is to live lives other than my own, and I do that by burrowing deeper and deeper….till I reach the center of those lives.

The magic of her novels starts with her ability to create those characters in the reader’s mind through the use of remarkably realistic details. The late Canadian author Carol Shields, writing about Tyler's characters, observes:

Tyler has always put her characters to work. Their often humble or eccentric occupations, carefully observed and threaded with humor, are tightly sewn to the other parts of their lives, offering them the mixed benefit of tedium and consolation, as well as a lighted stage for the unfolding of their dramatic selves. She also allows her men and women an opportunity for redemption.

Tyler has clearly spelled out the importance of her characters to her stories: "As far as I’m concerned, character is everything. I never did see why I have to throw in a plot, too."

Stylistically, Tyler's writing is difficult to categorize or label. Novelist Cathleen Schine describes how her "style without a style" manages to pull the reader into the story:

So rigorous and artful is the style without a style, so measured and delicate is each observation, so complex is the structure and so astute and open the language, that the reader can relax, feel secure in the narrative and experience the work as something real and natural.

The San Francisco Chronicle made a similar point: "One does not so much read a Tyler novel as visit it.

While Tyler herself does not like to think of her novels in terms of themes, numerous reviewers and scholars have noted the importance of family and marriage relationships to her characters and stories. Reviewing Noah's Compass, New York Times' Mitchiko Kakutani noted that

The central concern of most of this author’s characters has always been their need to define themselves in terms of family—the degree to which they see themselves as creatures shaped by genetics, childhood memories and parental and spousal expectations, and the degree to which they are driven to embrace independent identities of their own.

Tyler is not without her critics. The most common criticism is that her works are "sentimental," "sweet," and "charming and cosy." Even Kakutani has also occasionally bemoaned a "cloying cuteness," noting that "her novels—with their eccentric heroes, their homespun details, their improbable, often heartwarming plots—have often flirted with cuteness." In her own defense, Tyler has said,

For one thing I think it is sort of true. I would say piss and vinegar for [Philip] Roth and for me milk and cookies. I can’t deny it…. [However] there’s more edge under some of my soft language than people realize.

Also, because almost all of Tyler’s work covers the same territory—family and marriage relationships—and are located in the same setting, she has come under criticism for being repetitive and formulaic.

Tyler’s advice to beginning writers:

They should run out and buy the works of Erving Goffman, the sociologist who studied the meaning of gesture in personal interactions. I have cause to think about Erving Goffman nearly every day of my life, every time I see people do something unconscious that reveals more than they’ll ever know about their interiors. Aren’t human beings intriguing? I could go on writing about them forever."

Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/2015.)

Book Reviews
Anne Tyler is the most dependably rewarding novelist now at work in our country.
Wall Street Journal


Delightfully zany.… Charming.… Tender.
Washington Post


A psychologically astute study of an intelligent, curious woman.… A triumph.
Boston Globe


What’s so amazing about Tyler’s novels is the way she makes ordinary people and ordinary things so fascinating.… In Tyler’s hands, life’s mundane activities feel vital.… Revelatory.… Unwrapping the story is a delight.
Chicago Tribune


Anne Tyler is one of this country’s great artists.… She has lost none of the inspired grace of her prose, nor her sad, frank humor, nor her limitless sympathy for women who ask for little and get less.… Beautiful, understated, humane.
USA Today


Tyler writes with enormous warmth about all her characters.
Baltimore Sun


Tyler’s stirring story celebrates the joys of self-discovery and the essential truth that family is ours to define.
People
 

Clock Dance pulls you right in and keeps on ticking.… Tyler’s novels reassure us that the possibilities for meaningful connection—which so often seem lost in our hectic world—are still out there.
Newsday

 
Full of wisdom about relationships, delivered in gorgeous language and with considerable charm.
San Francisco Chronicle


Clock Dance is Anne Tyler at her best.… An entertaining, heartwarming story about second chances and the real meaning of family.… Full of the sorts of eccentric yet totally believable characters that Anne Tyler is a genius at creating.… Captivating.… A delight.
Greensboro News & Record (NC)


Anne Tyler is one of America’s very best living novelists and one of the world’s most loved.… Her stories about family life—beautifully written, forensically insightful, sometimes laugh out loud funny—are cherished by all ages.… She sheds light on the secret bits of yourself, the parts no one knows about, and her skill is writing compassionately about our so-called ordinary lives with an apparent effortlessness that conceals great art.
Times Magazine (UK)


She is one of our greatest living fiction writers and if I were in charge, she’d have a Nobel by now.
Observer (UK)
 

If you want to understand the everyday life of Americans, read Anne Tyler.… There is no one better at taking the ordinary person—the one we don’t even notice in the supermarket queue—and showing us what lies beneath.… Clock Dance is a marvelous frog-leap of a book.… Sequel please!
Times (UK).


(Starred review) Stellar.… A bittersweet, hope-filled look at two quirky families that have broken apart and are trying to find their way back to one another.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Tyler does not disappoint. Her characters are distinctly drawn and their stories layered.… The result is a compelling look at the need for relevance, being offered a second chance, and deciding whether to take it. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Brilliant, charming, and book-club-ready.… Tyler’s bedazzling yet fathoms-deep feel-good novel is wrought with nimble humor, intricate understanding of emotions and family, place and community—and bounteous pleasure in quirkiness, discovery, and renewal.
Booklist


Tyler’s characteristic warmth and affection for her characters are engaging as eve.… [They are] all vibrantly portrayed with her usual low-key gusto and bracingly dark humor.… Power dynamics are never simple in Tyler’s portraits of marriage.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Questions to help start a discussion for CLOCK DANCE … then take off on your own:

1. What was your initial take of the passenger who threatens Willa on the airplane: "This is a gun, and it's loaded. Move and I shoot"? Why might Anne Tyler have incorporated the plane incident—placing it early on—in the novel? What does it reveal, if anything, about Willa's character? Do you wish Tyler had returned to it… or done more with it?

2. Talk about Willa's relationship with her histrionic mother and her mild-mannered father? How have her parents' personalities shaped Willa's own personality and approach to life?

3. What makes Willa agree to head to Baltimore in order to take care of almost complete strangers?

4. Talk about the bond that develops between Willa and nine-year-old-soon-to-be-double-digit-Cheryl and Cheryl's mother, Denise, who has no difficulty depending on Willa's generosity. And how is Willa's personality perfectly shaped to fall in with this little family of two?

5. Willa confides to Denise that, while she's not asked him, she hoped her son would have offered to pick her up before dinner. Denise responds with "But why just hope? Why do you go at things so slantwise?" What does Denise mean—and where else does Willa "go at things slantwise"?

6. Discuss how Willa's real family treats her, especially, say, her son Sean?

7. A neighbor tells Willa: "Figuring out what to live for. That's the great problem at my age." Care to unpack that statement, say, in terms of this novel or in terms of real life (maybe even your own)?

8. What does Willa find—in life and within herself—in Baltimore?

9. In her review of Clock Dance, Julie Myerson of the UK's Guardian writes that Anne Tyler is an author "who focuses so unapologetically on the quotidian ache of human experience." What do you think that observation means, and how might it apply to Tyler's novels—not only this latest but also her earlier novels (if you've read any)?

10. The book's title, "Clock Dance," comes from the game young Cheryl plays with two friends. What might the thematic significance of the title be?

11. The plot of Clock Dance contains little in the way of conflict. Did you find that refreshing, even a bit of a relief? Were you engaged as you read the book? Or did you find the novel's lack of conflict and suspense uninteresting?

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

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The Clockmaker's Daughter 
Kate Morton, 2018
Atria Books
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451649390


Summary
A rich, spellbinding new novel from the author of The Lake House—the story of a love affair and a mysterious murder that cast their shadow across generations, set in England from the 1860s until the present day.

My real name, no one remembers.
The truth about that summer, no one else knows.

In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity.

But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe’s life is in ruins.

Over one hundred and fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items: a sepia photograph of an arresting-looking woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist’s sketchbook containing the drawing of a twin-gabled house on the bend of a river.

Why does Birchwood Manor feel so familiar to Elodie? And who is the beautiful woman in the photograph? Will she ever give up her secrets?

Told by multiple voices across time, The Clockmaker’s Daughter is a story of murder, mystery, and thievery, of art, love, and loss.

And flowing through its pages like a river, is the voice of a woman who stands outside time, whose name has been forgotten by history, but who has watched it all unfold: Birdie Bell, the clockmaker’s daughter. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Where—Berri, South Australia
• Education—B.A., and M.A., University of Queensland
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Australia


Kate Morton is the eldest of three sisters. Her family moved several times before settling on Tamborine Mountain where she attended a small country school. She enjoyed reading books from an early age, her favourites being those by Enid Blyton.

She completed a Licentiate in Speech and in Drama from Trinity College London and then a summer Shakespeare course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Later she earned first-class honours for her English Literature degree at the University of Queensland, during which time she wrote two full-length manuscripts (which are unpublished) before writing the story that would become the 2006 novel The House at Riverton.

Following this she obtained a scholarship and completed a Master's degree focussing on tragedy in Victorian literature. She is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program researching contemporary novels that marry elements of gothic and mystery fiction.

Kate Morton is married to Davin, a jazz musician and composer, and they have two sons.
Works & recognition

Works and recognition
Morton's novels have been published in 38 countries and have sold three million copies.

♦ The House at Riverton was a Sunday Times #1 bestseller in the UK in 2007 and a New York Times bestseller in 2008. It won General Fiction Book of the Year at the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards, and was nominated for Most Popular Book at the British Book Awards in 2008.

♦ Her second book, The Forgotten Garden, was a #1 bestseller in Australia and a Sunday Times #1 bestseller in the UK in 2008.

♦ In 2010, Morton's third novel, The Distant Hours, was released, followed by her fourth, The Secret Keeper, in 2012. He rmost recent novel, Lake House, came out in 2015. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/23/2015.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
(Starred review) Morton explores the tangled history of people and place in her outstanding, bittersweet sixth novel.… At the novel’s emotional core …is the intersection of lives across decades, united …by a shared experience.… [B]rilliantly told.
Publishers Weekly


Elodie Winslow gets shivers when she discovers the photograph of a woman in Victorian garb…. What's her connection to Oxfordshire's Birchwood Manor, where in 1862 …a summer of creative fun… ended tragically? [M]ultilayered, sink-in-it appeal.
Library Journal


The ratcheting between eras… [is] challenging, while the powerful theme of bereft childhood gets lost…. [A] leisurely and meditative read, with lush settings, meticulous period detail, and slowly unfurling enigmas …[but] overpopulated and overworked.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Clockmaker’s Daughter begins with the assertion that "We came to Birchwood Manor because Edward said that it was haunted. It wasn’t. Not then." (p. 3) Who is narrating this passage? How does it create a sense of mystery surrounding Birchwood Manor? What are your initial impressions of the ground and house at Birchwood Manor?

2. Birdie describes Lily Millington as "her salvation." (p. 99) How does Lily help Birdie adjust to life at Mrs. Mack’s? What survival skills does Lily teach Birdie? How else does Lily impact Birdie’s life and legacy?

3. Birchwood Manor feels like another character in the book. Edward writes "it has called to me for a long time, you see, for my new house and I are not strangers." (p. 210) Discuss the connection that Edward feels to the house. What other characters feel a strong connection? Have you ever felt an attachment to a house where you’ve lived or visited?

4. Why do you think Kate Morton chose to title her novel The Clockmaker’s Daughter? Who is she? How does her story tie the other plotlines in the novel together? Did you find any of the connections surprising?

5. One of Edward’s most famous paintings is View from the Attic Window. Describe the painting? Birdie says that when she views the painting, "I do not associate it with the fields outside Birchwood Manor …it makes me think instead of small dark spaces, and stale air." (p. 337) Why does View from the Attic Window make her feel claustrophobic? Describe the inspiration behind the painting.

6. Describe Elodie’s relationship with Alastair. She "had been flattered when [he] asked her to marry him." (p. 24) Explain this statement. Why do you think that Elodie says yes to Alastair’s proposal? When does Elodie begin to realize they’re not well suited?

7. Why do you think that Pale Joe shows Birdie kindness? Describe their friendship. What does each offer the other? Were you surprised to realize who Pale Joe is? Why do you think Birdie is willing to share her nickname with Pale Joe?

8. Storytelling is a central theme in the novel. When Elodie asks her father about the bedtime story from her childhood, he tells her that he thought it might be too scary for a child but that Lauren, Elodie’s mother, felt that "childhood was a frightening time and that hearing scary stories was a way of feeling less alone." (p. 20) Do you agree with Lauren? What other purposes does storytelling serve? How does Kate Morton connect the characters within The Clockmaker’s Daughter?

9. Penelope suggests that Elodie walk down the aisle at her wedding accompanied by a video of her mother, Lauren Adler, playing the cello. Why do you think that Penelope makes the suggestion? What does Pippa think? Do you agree with her? Why or why not? Were you surprised by Elodie’s final decision with regard to the videos? Explain your answer.

10. Elodie handles the archives of James Stratton. Who is he and why are his archives significant? Were you surprised to learn of his connection to Birchwood Manor? Based on James’s romantic history, "[i]t seemed to Elodie almost as if he’d set our purposely to choose women who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—make him happy." (p. 16) Do you agree? Why do you think that James chose the partners that he did?

11. According to Birdie, Fanny "has become a tragic heroine, impossible though that is for one who knew her in life to believe." (p. 131) What did you think of Fanny? Describe her relationship with Edward. Compare his relationships with Fanny and Birdie. How is Edward different when he is with Birdie?

12. What did you think of Mrs. Mack? What kind of activities does she require Birdie to take part in to earn her keep? Why do you think that Mrs. Mack takes pains to remind Birdie that her mother had been a proper lady? Do you think she takes good care of Birdie?

13. When Ada learns that she is going to be staying at Miss Radcliffe’s School for Young Ladies, the narrator writes "School. Young ladies. Welcome. Ada liked words—she collected them—but those four hit her like bricks." (p. 159) What do you think of Ada’s school and how her parents told her that she would be attending?

14. "Ada’s parents had left her at Miss Radcliffe’s School for Young Ladies in the misguided expectation that she would be magically transformed into a proper English schoolgirl." (p. 164) Do you agree that this is the mission of Miss Radcliffe’s school? Does she achieve it? Explain your answer.

15. What did you think of Jack? How does his life intersect with Elodie? What do they discover together? How does their chance encounter affect their lives?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Cloister 
James Carroll, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385541275


Summary
 From National Book Award-winning writer James Carroll comes a novel of the timeless love story of Peter Abelard and Heloïse, and its impact on a modern priest and a Holocaust survivor seeking sanctuary in Manhattan.

Father Michael Kavanagh is shocked to see a friend from his seminary days named Runner Malloy at the altar of his humble Inwood community parish .

Wondering about their past, he wanders into the medieval haven of The Cloisters, and begins a conversation with a lovely and intriguing museum guide, Rachel Vedette.
 
Rachel, a scholar of medieval history, has retreated to the quiet of The Cloisters after her harrowing experience as a Jewish woman in France during the Holocaust. She ponders her late father's greatest intellectual work: a study demonstrating the relationship between the famously discredited monk Peter Abelard and Jewish scholars.

Something about Father Kavanagh makes Rachel think he might appreciate her continued studies, and she shares with him the work that cost her father his life.

At the center of these interrelated stories is the classic romance between the great scholar Peter Abelard and his intellectual equal Heloïse. For Rachel, Abelard is the key to understanding her people's place in intellectual history. For Kavanagh, he is a doorway to understanding the life he might have had outside of the Church.

The Cloister is James Carroll at his best. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 22, 1943
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., USA; Wiesbaden, Germany
• Education—B.a., M.A, St. Paul's College (Seminary)
• Awards—National Book Award-Nonfiction; PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award-Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts


James P. Carroll is an American author, historian, and journalist. A Roman Catholic reformer, he has written extensively about his experiences in the seminary and as a priest, and has published books on religion and history, as well as works of fiction.

Early years and priesthood
Carroll was born in Chicago, Illinois, the second of five sons of late Air Force General Joseph Carroll (DIA), and his wife Mary. At the time, his father was a Special Agent of the FBI, which he remained until being seconded to, and later commissioned by, the US Air Force as an Intelligence Officer in 1948.

After this, Carroll was raised in the Washington, D.C. area and in Germany. He was educated at Washington's Priory School (now St. Anselm's Abbey School) and at an American high school, the H. H. Arnold, in Wiesbaden, Germany. He first attended Georgetown University before entering St. Paul's College, the Paulist Fathers' seminary, where he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1969. Carroll served as Catholic chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974. During that time, he studied poetry with George Starbuck and published books on religious subjects and a book of poems.

He was also a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter (1972–1975) and was named Best Columnist by the Catholic Press Association. For his writing on religion and politics he received the first Thomas Merton Award from Pittsburgh's Thomas Merton Center in 1972.

Literary career
Carroll left the priesthood and the Paulist Fathers in 1974 to become a writer, and, in the same year, was a playwright-in-residence at the Berkshire Theater Festival. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Carroll's plays have been produced at the Berkshire Theater Festival and at Boston's Next Move Theater. In 1976 he published his first novel, Madonna Red, which was followed by nine others.

He has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, and his op-ed column appears weekly in The Boston Globe. He won the 1996 National Book Award for Nonfiction for An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us—a memoir about the Vietnam War and his relationships with his father, the American military, and the Catholic Church.

In a November 14, 1996 New York Times interview, Carroll explained why he wrote it:

I thought I would feel better. One of the effects of telling the story as I experienced it was for it to be redeemed, made meaningful. At the end, I found myself deeply in touch with the tragic aspect of the life we live. It's a highfalutin word, but there's something tragic to the story I told.

Nevertheless, after completing it, he said, instead of feeling relief, "I put my head down, and I wept."

He is the author of other books on religion and politics, including House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (2006), which won the first PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for non-fiction. Mr. Carroll's other works include the novels The Cloister (2018), Secret Father (2003), The City Below (1994), Memorial Bridge (1991), Prince of Peace (1984), Mortal Friends (1978), and Madonna Red (1976)

He has also written various plays and a book of poetry, Forbidden Disappointments (1974). Carroll's work has received the Melcher Book Award, the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award, and National Jewish Book Award in History, and has been frequently been named among the Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times.

Academic recognition
Carroll has been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School.

He is a trustee of the Boston Public Library, a member of the Advisory Board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University, and a member of the Dean's Council at the Harvard Divinity School.

Carroll is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the Academy's Committee on International Security Studies. He worked on his 2006 history of the Pentagon, House of War, as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Academy. Carroll is also a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University in Boston, where he wrote his latest book, Practicing Catholic, published in 2009.

Carroll married the novelist Alexandra Marshall in 1977. They have two grown children and live in Boston, Massachusetts. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/30.2018.)

Book Reviews
The Cloister poetically pingpongs between Abelard’s abbey in Saint-Denis in the 1100s, elsewhere in France during and after World War II, and Upper Manhattan in the early 1950s.… Carroll weaves a patchwork of disparate threads, threads unraveled from clerical vestments, that, when quilted together, spell out the single word that the book embodies.… Incandescent.
New York Times

In The Cloister, Carroll has produced a sweeping, beautifully crafted book–perhaps his best yet.
Wall Street Journal


A literary detective game.… In pushing his readers–in both his fiction and nonfiction–to ponder tough religious topics.… Carroll is continuing the important discussions made famous by Peter Abelard.
New York Journal of Books


James Carroll’s latest novel vibrates with deep compassion and religious intensity.
Christian Science Monitor


[A] heartbreaking blend of history and fiction. In 1142… the aging Abbess Heloïse finds the dead body of her former lover, Peter Abelard. This story line is woven together with the 1950 story of Father Michael Kavanagh…and Rachel Vedette, a museum docent.… [A] very magnetic, satisfying novel.
Publishers Weekly


The connection between the moral dilemmas of the two ages is muddy, and the alternating narratives slow the momentum. Still, this is a book of heart, with serious questions asked about faith, obedience, and love. —David Keymer, Cleveland
Library Journal


Fascinating in its evocation of the twelfth-century Catholic Church in France, this lavishly detailed historical novel serves as an education in historical philosophy, a poignant tale of devoted love, and a portrait of a postwar human crisis influenced heavily by both.… [T]hought-provoking.
Booklist


Of faith, doubt, and sorrow: Carroll delivers another religiously charged novel, and a fine one at that..… You don't have to be Catholic—or Jewish, for that matter—to appreciate Carroll's story, though it probably helps. A rich, literate tale well told.
Kirkus Reviews


A novel that shifts seamlessly between epic love story, the anatomy of a crisis of faith, family tragedy and trauma survival saga.… Both moving and enlightening, The Cloister will engross readers.
Shelf Awareness

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.)

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Clonmac's Bridge 
Jeffrey Perren, 2014
ClioStory Publishing
428 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781496179913


Summary
Inspired by a real discovery, Clonmac’s Bridge revolves around the effort to raise Ireland’s earliest major span. But, far from a naturalistic depiction of a maritime archaeology project, it is a dramatic exploration: the story of two men who struggle against envy and mediocrity—a millennium apart.

One is Griffin Clonmac, archaeologist and professor at the University of Virginia. For 14 years he has researched a medieval bridge near Clonmacnoise Monastery in Ireland, supposed to lie beneath the River Shannon. Yet, he soon discovers the bridge is perfectly intact—after 12 centuries underwater.

What could account for this astounding longevity? And why are his colleagues, the Church, and the Irish government so desperate to prevent him finding out? Drawing the reader back to the early 9th century—and the life of the original builder—provides important clues. Moving between these two periods, the reader is immersed in the conflicts—then and now—between creators and the envious mediocrities who want to stop them at all costs. Fortunately, each man had his allies.

In the 9th century, architect Riordan finds a few willing to help him realize his vision. At the monastery, a wise friend; in the nearby town, a dashing giant as eager to build as the medieval monk himself. When the Abbot is called away on Church business to the court of Carolus Magnus—Charlemagne—Riordan and his friends will have their chance. In the 21st century, Griffin Clonmac is first saddled with an assistant—Peruvian archaeologist Mari Quispe—intended to hinder him at every turn. Being impossible to work with is, after all, her reputation on a dig. But the scheming academics who foist her on him at the price of supporting the project have a surprise in store. Not only has she admired Dr. Clonmac for years, she very quickly finds herself willing to help him raise more than a 9th century platform.

What happens next enmeshes the reader in everything from down-and-dirty academic politics to Machiavellian corporate machinations to the headlines of contemporary Irish social controversy. Flashing back to Dark Ages Ireland shows that, in many ways, very little has changed in the past 1,200 years. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Independence, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., Univerisity of California, Los Angeles
• Currently—Sandpoint, Idaho


Jeffrey Perren is an American novelist, educated in philosophy at UCLA and in physics at UC Irvine. He wrote his first short story at age 12 and went on to win the Bank of America Fine Arts award at age 17. Since then he has published at award-winning sites and magazines from the U.S. to New Zealand. He has had short stories published at the award-winning sites Apollo's Lyre and Mystericale.

His debut novel was Cossacks In Paris, an historical adventure set in Napoleonic Europe, inspired by a real soldier of the Battle of Paris in 1814. His second, Death is Overrated, a romantic mystery, had its genesis in an old film called DOA. The protagonist is poisoned and has 48 hours before dying to discover who gave him the fatal dose. His third is Clonmac's Bridge, an archaeological thriller and historical mystery set in contemporary and 9th century Ireland.

He was born in Independence, Missouri, right around the corner from Harry Truman's house. But then, at the time, everything there was right around the corner from Harry Truman's house. He now lives in Sandpoint, Idaho with his wife, an economist. (From the author.)

Visit the author's blog.
Check out the book on Facebook.

Book Reviews
An excellent and engrossing historical tale. Seamlessly told through the eyes of those in the 9th century and modern day, it was a real pleasure to read. The style of writing really grabbed me from the first few pages to the end. This is a long novel but my personal view is that not a word is wasted. Really, really good.
Bodicia, A Woman's Wisdom Blog

A wonderful archaeological fiction that grabs your attention and keeps it. Shows a lot about archaeological digs as well as being a great piece of fiction.
Jamie, Goodreads

Jeffrey Perren has created some fine, odious villains for his protagonists to contend with. The result is a tale of suspense and romance that will appeal to a range of readers as a good page turner.
James Ellsworth, Vine Voice, Amazon

Discussion Questions
1. What was life like in a 9th century Irish monastery and how did it differ from, say, the 14th century?

2. Why, with so many monasteries in Ireland, was it intellectually behind compared with much of Europe?

3. How did Riordan and Griffin Clonmac face similar situations?

4. Did you find the main characters clearly holding values you consider important? Or, did you find someone with no clear definition of his/her inner self?

5. What do you think of Franken Twissle and Prof. Daley Garvey? Is there any supporting character you found charming, enigmatic, boring, dreadful? Who and why?

6. Mari Quispe is a female archaeologist from Peru. What special challenges did she face there? Do you think females in Latin-america have to strive the way she did to get a career? The patriarchal model is stronger there than, say, in Europe or America. Can be that considered as a mark of a different culture?

7. Did she differ from the Latin type presented in movies, TV shows or popular culture trends? If yes, in what way? Did you enjoy her personality?

8. How do you characterize Leslie Armandson? What would be your reaction if you met a woman like her?

9. With the election of Pope Francis, the Catholic Church seems to have a boost in popularity. What do you think of Father Yadiel, from Puerto Rico?

10. Did the novel spark some interest in archaeology? Is there any one aspect you found particularly interesting?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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Close Enough to Touch
Colleen Oakley, 2017
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501139291


Summary
From the author of Before I Go comes an evocative, poignant, and heartrending exploration of the power and possibilities of the human hear.

Love has no boundaries...

Jubilee Jenkins has a rare condition: she’s allergic to human touch. After a nearly fatal accident, she became reclusive, living in the confines of her home for nine years.

But after her mother dies, Jubilee is forced to face the world—and the people in it—that she’s been hiding from.

Jubilee finds safe haven at her local library where she gets a job. It’s there she meets Eric Keegan, a divorced man who recently moved to town with his brilliant, troubled, adopted son. Eric is struggling to figure out how to be the dad—and man—he wants so desperately to be.

Jubilee is unlike anyone he has ever met, yet he can't understand why she keeps him at arm's length. So Eric sets out to convince Jubilee to open herself and her heart to everything life can offer, setting into motion the most unlikely love story of the year. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Colleen Oakley is the author of three novels, You Were There Too (2020), Close Enough to Touch (2017), and Before I Go (2015).

Oakley is also the former senior editor of Marie Claire and editor in chief of Women's Health & Fitness. Her articles, essays and interviews have been featured in the New York Times, Ladies' Home Journal, Marie Claire, Women's Health, Redbook, Parade and Martha Stewart Weddings. She lives in Georgia with her husband, four kids and the world's biggest lapdog. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
If you overlay The Rosie Project onto one of Jodie Picoult’s medical crisis novels, you might end up with something like Close Enough to Touch, Colleen Oakley’s new rom-com. Her novel combines a dash of screwball for laughs, a tad of woe for pathos, and a certain predictability for comfort. You know the broad outlines of where it’s headed — but you’ll have a delightful time getting there.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers


This novel is the ideal pick for book clubs or just for curling up with a rainy day read… [a] sweet story of love and life.
Romance Times Book Reviews


Heart wrenching and humorous, Oakley delivers an out-of-the-ordinary love story with steady quips and endearing characters.… [Jubilee's] journey from recluse to recovery is fascinating, aided by supportive and supporting characters.
Publishers Weekly


Long a recluse in her New Jersey home, deathly allergic Jubilee Jenkins must finally venture forth and meets troubled, new-in-town Eric. You can't go wrong—a People Best New Book Pick, a US Weekly "Must" Pick, and a Publishers Lunch Buzz Book
Library Journal


Oakley has produced an affecting work that, while avoiding maudlin sentimentality, makes the reader care about Daisy and her determination to live while dying.
Booklist


Oakley masterfully creates a high-stakes story that still feels solidly real. All of her characters are well-rounded and charming.… A romantic, sweet story about taking chances and living life fully.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What effect does the alternating narrative between Jubilee’s and Eric’s perspectives have on your understanding of the events and characters in the book? How would the story have been different if it was just from Jubilee’s point of view?

2. Do you think Eric is a good dad to Aja? To Ellie? Why or why not? Compare and contrast his parenting style with that of Jubilee’s mother, Victoria. Consider the challenges each parent faces.

3. Why do you think Eric agreed to adopt Aja? How did that change his relationship with Stephanie? With Ellie?

4. How does Jubilee’s relationship with her mother affect her outlook on life? What would you do in her mother's shoes, having a child with a unique condition like Jubilee’s?

5. How is Jubilee affected by each of the people she interacts with as she reenters the world? How do they affect her perspective about her condition? Consider her interactions with Madison, Eric, Aja, Michael the pillow-golfer, and Louise.

6. Is Eric’s long-distance father-daughter book club experiment a success? What is so powerful about the shared reading experience? How has a book brought you closer to another family member or friend?

7. Why do you think Jubilee resists pursuing treatments or management for her condition? Why wouldn’t she want to see a doctor for an Epipen prescription?

8. Consider this quote: “People did stare at me in high school—like I was a curiosity—but I didn't think anyone ever noticed me. It’s a strange feeling, to be seen but invisible at the same time.” (p. 94) What is the difference between being seen and being noticed? Why is the difference important to Jubilee?

9. How has Jubilee’s nine-year seclusion affected her emotional maturity?

10. Discuss the importance of female friendship. How does Madison and Jubilee’s relationship affect each of the women?

11. Why is Jubilee the only adult who is able to get through to Aja? How do their shared experiences link them?

12. How does the truth about Jubilee’s condition change her relationship with Eric? With Madison?

13. Throughout the book, Jubilee starts to understand that her biggest fear isn’t actually physical touch but having emotional connections, only to be let down or disappointed by them. How does each character experience and deal with their own fears of vulnerability throughout the book?

14. Did the letter Jubilee found from her mother change your view of her? How so?

15. In the end, Jubilee asks Madison “if love is worth the risk.” How would you have answered that?

16. What was your reaction to the epilogue? Do you think Jubilee and Eric end up together for good? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Close Range: Wyoming Stories (incl. Brokeback Mountain)
Annie Proulx, 1999
Simon & Schuster
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684852225


Summary
Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx is one of the literary greats of her generation. Bestselling novels like The Shipping News and Postcards have been unmatched successes with critics and readers alike.

Her latest is Close Range , a collection of award-winning tales of the Western frontier, of desolate expanses of land and the vast spaces between people, of love and loss set against the endless sky.

Like The Shipping News, it's sure to make an indelible impression on each of millions of readers. Includes the award-winning stories "The Half-Skinned Steer" and "Brokeback Mountain." (From the publisher.)

"Brokeback Mountain" from this story collection, was adapted to film in 2005, starring jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. The film won 3 Academy Awards (director, adapted screenplay, and musical score).

Author Bio
• Birth—August 22, 1935
• Where—Norwich, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Vermont; M.A., Sir George Williams University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, 1994; PEN/Faulkner, 1993
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington

 
Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx did not set out to be a writer. She studied history in school, acquiring both her bachelor's and her master's degrees and abandoning her doctorate only in the face of a pessimistic job market. Something of a free spirit, she married and divorced three times and ended up raising three sons and a daughter single-handedly. She settled in rural Vermont, living in a succession of small towns where she worked as a freelance journalist and spent her free time in the great outdoors, hunting, fishing, and canoeing.

Although she wrote prolifically, most of Proulx's early work was nonfiction. She penned articles on weather, farming, and construction, and contracted for a series of rural "how tos" for magazines like Yankee and Organic Gardening. She also founded the Vershire Behind the Times, a monthly newspaper filled with colorful features and vignettes of small-town Vermont life. All this left little time for fiction, but she averaged a couple of stories a year, nearly all of which were accepted for publication.

Prominent credits in two editions of Best American Short Stories led to the publication in 1988 of Heart Songs and Other Stories, a first collection of Proulx's short fiction. Set in blue-collar New England, these "perfectly pitched stories of mysterious revenges and satisfactions" (the Guardian) received rapturous reviews.

With the encouragement of her publisher, Proulx released her first novel in 1992. The story of a fractured New England farm family, Postcards went on to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. She scored an even greater success the following year when her darkly comic Newfoundland set piece, The Shipping News, scooped both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. One year before her 60th birthday, Proulx had become an authentic literary celebrity.

Since then, the author has alternated between short and long fiction, garnering numerous accolades and honors along the way. Giving the lie to the literary adage "write what you know," her curiosity has led her into interesting, unfamiliar territory: Before writing The Shipping News, she made more than seven extended trips to Newfoundland, immersing herself in the culture and speech of its inhabitants; similarly, she weaved staggering amounts of musical arcana into her 1996 novel Accordion Crimes. She is known for her keen powers of observation—passed on, she says, from her mother, an artist and avid naturalist—and for her painstaking research, a holdover from her student days.

In 1994, Proulx left Vermont for the wide open spaces of Wyoming—a move that inspired several memorable short stories, including the O. Henry Award winner "Brokeback Mountain." First published in The New Yorker and included in the 1999 collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories, this tale of a doomed love affair between two Wyoming cowboys captured the public imagination when it was turned into an Oscar-winning 2005 film by director Ang Lee.

Lionized by most critics, Proulx is, nevertheless, not without her detractors. Indeed, her terse prose, eccentric characters, startling descriptions, and stylistic idiosyncrasies (run-on sentences followed by sentence fragments) are not the literary purist's cup of tea. But few writers can match her brilliance at manipulating language, evoking place and landscape, or weaving together an utterly mesmerizing story with style and grace.

Extras
• Proulx was the first woman to win the prestigious Pen/Faulkner Award. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Powerful....[W]hat drives Mr. Proulx's people mainly is lust and lechery, itch and obsession....[R]ead [these stories] for their absolute authenticity, the sense they convey that you are beyond fact or fiction in a world that could not be any other way....Besides, you have little choice about reading [them] once you've begun them....bleak but expressive.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times

Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms. Her people not only "stand" the bad luck and heartbreak that comes their way; they stare it down with astonishing strength.
Michael Knight - Wall Street Journal

Give yourself about 10 days to read this new collection of short stories by Annie Proulx. She has the mantle of American realism about her in style and vision, yet in this book she has broken new ground. It's a book with the best qualities of long-lasting, salty beef jerky. Some things shouldn't be rushed, but savored.
Steven C. Ballinger - The Bloomsbury Review

Annie Proulx's Close Range is the strongest attempt since Richars Ford's Rock Springs to capture a place that started as a fairy tale sold to gullible adventurers, flourished as a national matinee, and lives on as an existential broken promise that its people cant quite stop believing in...[Her] folksy stoicism isn't a pose. Her stories are solid oak...Her style is all substance, with very little air in it, as though she's learned to use fewer vowels, somehow, and banish articles and prepositions...At its best, Proulx's drawl is better than perfect....If God talked cowboy, he'd sound like Proulx. She's brilliant.
Walter Kirn - New York Magazine

Proulx hits and maintains a stunning narrative pitch whenever she details the Wyoming wilderness....[P]eople try their best against often insurmountable odds, but she imbues their efforts with a genuine sense of tragedy.
Book Magazine

A vigorous second collection from Proulx: eleven nicely varied stories set in the roughhewn wasteland that one narrator calls a "97,000-square-miles dog's breakfast of outside exploiters, Republican ranchers and scenery.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
The Half Skinned Steer

1. In the story told by Mero's old man's girlfriend, the half-skinned steer becomes a terrible fate Tin Head knows he can't escape. What is Mero's half-skinned steer? How was he marked by it and by his Wyoming origins? What is the nature of Mero's journey?

The Mud Below

2. What drives Diamond, raised in town and meant for better things, to make himself into a rodeo bull rider? Are rodeo performers real cowboys? Does not knowing who his father is force him to invent a persona for himself? What are his feelings toward his mother, his young brother?

3. Do you agree with Pake when he says that Diamond sees the bulls he rides as role models rather than opponents? What did Pake mean when he told Diamond, "you can't have a fence with only one post"?

4. A fleeting clue to the identity of Diamond's father is in the story "Pair a Spurs." Does knowing that identity change your perception of the impasse relationship between Diamond and his mother?

Job History

5. Does the title, "Job History" hold any irony? What do the jobs the members of this rural family hold tell us about their lives and opportunities? Do we learn more about them than the story's brevity and matter-of-fact style would suggest?

6. What does this story say about the power of the home place over us?

The Blood Bay

7. This story is a twist on an old folk tale, but here given a Wyoming setting and characters. What does Proulx's adaptation of this tale tell you about the collection as a whole? Are you supposed to read these stories as a literal reflection of life in the west?

People in Hell Just Want A Drink ofWater

8. Compare the Dunmires and the Tinsleys—each family's character and sensibilities, what each values, how they see the world, etc. What do their differences say about the error of stamping all rural people as similar in nature?

9. Ras Tinsley falls victim to brutal vigilante action at the hands of the Dunmires. The Dunmires are stockmen. Is what the Dunmires do to Ras justifiable from their point of view as stockmen in this time and place? How is castrating Ras similar to culling an inferior animal from a herd? What is the flaw in that logic? 10. Discuss the final line of this story.

The Bunchgrass Edge of the World

11. Ottaline feels trapped in a world that seems to have nothing to offer her, and finds escapes by listening in on other people's conversations on a scanner. Discuss the options women have in isolated rural areas. Low population density and lack of public transportation are two background factors in this story. What are others?

12. After the tractor begins to talk to her, Ottaline learns that an accident that killed a ranch hand was intentional—an effort, the tractor claims, committed to "save" Ottaline from the young man. Ottaline replies, "I could a saved myself, if I wanted to." Do you agree? Is that what she accomplishes later by marrying Flyby Amendinger? What places, or whose place, does Ottaline claim for herself?

13. As the story develops Old Red seems pushed to the sidelines, yet he is never silenced by advanced age or the marginalization of his role in the family. Were you surprised that Old Red, along with Ottaline, is a survivor in this story?

Pair a Spurs

14. This story concerns complex relationships between men and women in a small community and prompts questions on the nature of love. The magic spurs infect Scrope with a strange and inescapable obsession. How does his changed behavior affect the other characters? What do the spurs represent?

A Lonely Coast

15. The world does not lack for women like Josanna Skiles who accept bad treatment from the men in their lives. Why cannot Josanna break out of the pattern? She sometimes thinks that she lives in "a miserable place." Why doesn't she leave and make a new life for herself somewhere else? How does the place she lives in define her sense of self?

16. Josanna has close female friends, yet Palma throws herself at Josanna's boyfriend, Elk. Why don't these women have more respect for each other?

17. Did this story's depiction of contemporary small-town Wyoming surprise you? Do you think of drugs as a rural problem? What are the hungers, behaviors, and social factors that drive this story?

The Governors of Wyoming

18. Why did Shy, a lifelong rancher, get involved with Wade Walls when it meant betraying his own community? What is the significance of the man stumbling through the waist-high grass who grants Shy his evil wish?

19. In what ways do Shy and Wade represent fringe positions on the complex issue of cattlemen versus environmentalists? Which characters in the story do you think represent current contemporary Wyoming ranching practice? Why does Roany make a success of her business while Shy fails?

55 Miles to the Gas Pump

20. What does this story say about the role imagination can play in lives defined by a remote setting and repetitive work? How does this brief story illuminate the collection as a whole?

Brokeback Mountain

21. Both Ennis and Jack convince themselves that they aren't gay, and tell one another lies about the women in their lives. Is either man threatened by the other's relationships with women? Why is it so hard for Ennis to ask Jack if he was with other men in Mexico? How does Jack's disclosure affect their relationship?

22. How can Jack and Ennis—both gay men—be homophobic? Does it seem possible to you that the two men might ever have lived together in rural Wyoming the way Jack wanted? How important is Ennis's tie to place and a rural life in this story?

23. Discuss the symbolism of Jack placing Ennis' shirt inside his own on a hanger—and Ennis's reaction to finding them after Jack's death. Why did Jack and Ennis never go back to Brokeback Mountain after the first summer?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Close Your Eyes
Iris Johansen & Roy Johansen, 2012
St. Martin's Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312611613


Summary
Blind for the first twenty years of her life, Kendra Michaels honed her other senses to almost superhuman perfection—and unintentionally became a secret weapon for the FBI. Her uncanny ability to pick up the most subtle audio, olfactory, and tactile cues in the world around her made her a law-enforcement legend. Today, her expertise is called for once again.

When Kendra is approached by a dubious source about a serial murder investigation, her instincts tell her to steer clear. This time, however, the case is personal: The next name to turn up on the killer’s hit list is Kendra’s own ex-lover, an FBI agent who disappeared without a trace. Now it’s up to Kendra to pick up the trail—or close her eyes again…forever. (From the publisher.)

See the video.

Author Bio
Iris Johansen is the New York Times bestselling author of Eight Days to Live, Shadow Zone, Blood Game, Deadlock, Dark Summer, Silent Thunder (with Roy Johansen), Pandora’s Daughter, Quicksand, Killer Dreams, On the Run, Countdown, Firestorm, Fatal Tide, Dead Aim, No One to Trust, and more.

Johansen began writing after her children left home for college. She first achieved success in the early 1980s writing category romances. In 1991, Johansen began writing suspense historical romance novels, starting with the publication of The Wind Dancer. In 1996 Johansen switched genres, turning to crime fiction, with which she has had great success. She had seventeen consecutive New York Times bestsellers as of November 2006.

Johansen and her husband live near Atlanta, Georgia. Her son, Roy Johansen, is an Edgar Award-winning screenwriter and novelist. Her daughter, Tamara, serves as her research assistant. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Bestseller Johansen and son’s gripping fourth collaborative effort (after 2010’s Shadow Zone) stars Dr. Kendra Michaels, a music therapist with some amazing talents. Born blind, Kendra developed her other senses to an extraordinary degree until her sight was restored at age 20. As a modern-day Sherlock Homes, Kendra is invaluable to the FBI, who pull her into the case of six fatal stabbings in the San Diego area in 45 days that was earlier investigated by her former lover, Jeff Stedler, who’s gone missing. All six victims had the same as yet unidentified substance in their bodies. Despite not being a team player and friction with her co-worker, Adam Lynch, Kendra picks up some almost invisible clues that put them on the right track. Now someone is determined to kill her. The authors combine idiosyncratic yet fully realized characters with dry wit and well-controlled suspense that builds to a satisfying conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


Mind-blowing…The scenes with Adam and Kendra ooze sexual tension, making this thriller a titillating delight.
Booklist


Johansen and her son, Roy, team up for their fourth collaborative effort (Shadow Zone, 2010, etc.). Dr. Kendra Michaels, a music therapist, doesn't seem like your average crime fighter, but Kendra's track record is impressive.... [W]hen someone starts killing random people, former FBI agent Adam Lynch, who is now investigative freelancing, ropes her into helping the feds find the killer.... The law enforcement agents are all either corrupt or inept, and the supposed heat that builds between Kendra and Adam is tepid and uninteresting. While the foray into music therapy is compelling, the writers strain credulity with the premise that any federal agency would put up with someone as unpleasant and rude as Kendra, much less let her call the shots. A not-so-thrilling thriller that leaves readers wishing that the bad guys were better shots.
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 will add specific Discussion Questions when they are made available by the publisher.

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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands 
Chris Bohjalian, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307743930


Summary
A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed.

Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger.

So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself—an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson.

When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever—and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.

A story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is one of Chris Bohjalian’s finest novels to date—breathtaking, wise, and utterly transporting. (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
A chilling and heartbreaking suspense novel for readers who like the poetry of Emily Dickinson.... Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is ambitious and poignant thanks to the voice of its teen narrator.... It’s a novel about survival and the power of literature and poetry.
Bob Minzesheimer  - USA Today


Bohjalian delivers a thoroughly engrossing and poignant coming-of-age story set against a nightmarish backdrop as real as yesterday's headlines from Fukushima and Chernobyl. And in Emily he's created a remarkable and complicated teenager, a passionate, intelligent girl equally capable of cutting herself with a razor blade and quoting Emily Dickinson, then explaining it all to us in a wry, honest voice as distinctive as Holden Caulfield's.
Ann Levin - Associated Press


Heartbreaking....scrupulously realistic....Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is a novel for adults...but readers of any age who love John Green’s novels might also find Shepard’s story, sobering as it is, an awesome one.
Jim Higgins - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


A "must read’ book.... [A] brilliant story of a young woman living an unexpected life, making difficult decisions and dealing with an ugly aftermath.
Amanda St. Amand - St. Louis Post Dispatch


A masterful storyteller...Bohjalian hits every note. His characters have depth, his story sings. It’s a book that works well for either teens or adults.
Beth Colvin - New Orleans Advocate


Bohjalian’s inventive latest imagines a nuclear meltdown in Vermont. Sixteen-year-old Emily loses her father—the plant’s chief engineer—in the accident, and she flees the town to escape its vitriol. Though she ends up homeless, she never gives up on home. Emily’s voice is droll, her journey enthralling and indelible (Best New Books).
People Magazine


Bohjalian’s impressive 16th novel charts the life of a teenage girl after a nuclear disaste.... Through her first-person narration, readers become intimately familiar with Emily.... Her admiration for kindred spirit Emily Dickinson serves to humanize her plight, as does an epiphany in the books’ bittersweet conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


Emily Shepard is hiding out in a shelter made of ice and trash bags after a nightmarish meltdown at a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.... More heartfelt, engaged work from relentlessly best-selling, best-book author Bohjalian, and how can you not love a heroine who identifies with Emily Dickinson?
Library Journal


Bohjalian once again reveals an uncanny talent for crafting a young female protagonist who is fatally flawed, but nevertheless immensely likable...resonates with a message of hope, truth and the fragility of life. —Karen Ann Cullotta
Bookpage


The versatile Bohjalian has Emily tell her harrowing, tragic story retrospectively, under medical care. If only this well-meant and compelling tale offered more scenes depicting the shocking aftermath of a nuclear disaster to provide an even more arresting and significant context for traumatized yet tough and resilient young Emily’s sad, brave saga. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


After a nuclear meltdown, a Vermont teen flees to the mean streets of Burlington.... Readers hoping for a futuristic novel imagining the aftermath of a Fukushima-type disaster in the United States may be disappointed—Bohjalian’s primary focus is on examining, in wrenching detail, the dystopia wrought by today’s economy. Emily’s voice is a compelling one, however, and hers is a journey readers will avidly follow
Kirkus Reviews

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

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

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

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Closed Doors 
Lisa O'Donnell, 2014
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062271891


Summary
In this tense and brilliant tale, a young boy on a small Scottish island, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, discovers that a secret can be a dangerous thing.

Eleven-year-old Michael Murray is the best at two things: hacky sack and keeping secrets. His family thinks he's too young to hear grown-up stuff, but he listens at doors—it's the only way to find out anything. And Michael's heard a secret, one that may explain the bruises on his mother's face.

When the whispers at home and on the street become too loud to ignore, Michael begins to wonder if there is an even bigger secret he doesn't know about. Scared of what might happen if anyone finds out, and desperate for life to return to normal, Michael sets out to piece together the truth. But he also has to prepare for the upcoming talent show, keep an eye out for Dirty Alice—his archnemesis from down the street—and avoid eating Granny's watery stew.

Closed Doors is the startling new novel from Lisa O'Donnell, the acclaimed author of The Death of Bees. It is a vivid evocation of the fears and freedoms of childhood and a powerful tale of love, of the loss of innocence, and of the importance of family in difficult times. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Bute, Island of the Firth of Clyde, Scotland
• Education—B.A.,Glasgow Caledonian University
• Awards—Orange Prize (screenwriting); Commonwealth Book Prize
• Currently—lives Scotland


Lisa O’Donnell winner of The Orange Prize for New Screenwriters with her screenplay The Wedding Gift in 2000. Lisa was also nominated for the Dennis Potter New Writers Award in the same year.

Her first novel, The Death of Bees, published in 2012, won the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. Her second novel, Closed Doors, was released in 2014. Lisa had moved to Los Angeles, California, as a screenwriter but has since returned to live in Scotland. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
[D]azzling.... O’Donnell won the prestigious Commonwealth Book Prize last year with The Death of Bees, a first novel that deftly balanced the morbid with the mundane, a talent that remains on full display here.... O’Donnell’s great talent is most apparent in her depiction of the gap between Michael’s thoughts and his actions.... It’s not revealing too much to say that O’Donnell wraps up Closed Doors in a way that feels both unpredictable and inevitable. It’s a fitting end to a moving story that stakes a lasting, and disturbing, emotional claim on her readers.
Andrew Ervin - New York Times Book Review


There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shattered family can remake itself, and Michael’s narrative voice is delightful—observant, thoughtful, comical, and thoroughly believable.
Sunday Times (London)


O'Donnell has created a resourceful, scabby-kneed character who is both believably childish and knowingly perceptive. Yet the novel never feels as blisteringly original as its predecessor.... [Closed Doors] relies on the first-person testimony of Michael—which, while admirably direct, sometimes seems a little bald on the page: "'My da is sad, my granny is sad. We are all afraid and I pray for my ma to get better."
Alfred Hickling - Guardian - (UK)


[O’Donnell] has fashioned yet another humane and compulsive read, grounded in a realism which, depicted through a child’s eyes—with that hint of a child’s surreal perception—gathers together violence, humor, and love in a most believable way.
Scotland on Sunday


Though O’Donnell creates a powerful voice for her young protagonist, she is less than fair to Rosemary, whose fear that telling the truth would open her up to victim blaming is presented as simply a source of pain to others, rather than as a legitimate concern.
Publishers Weekly


As in The Death of Bees, a 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize winner, O'Donnell looks at adult misbehavior through the eyes of a child. Eleven-year-old Michael Murray has peered behind enough doors to know why his mother's face is often bruised, but he suspects that more secrets await him
Library Journal


(Starred review.) The novel asks (and possibly answers) two important questions—to what extent should children be protected from the truth, and does silence do more harm than good? While it deals with disturbing subject matter, this is an engaging page-turner that effectively explores the trials and tribulations of childhood with warmth and humor. —Kerri Price
Booklist

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

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

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

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Cloud Atlas 
David Mitchell, 2004
Random House
509 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375507250


Summary 
In this audacious and dazzling novel, Mitchell weaves history, science, humor, and suspense through six separate but related narratives, each set in a different time and place, each written in a different prose style, and each broken mid-action only to be concluded in the second half of the book.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation—the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 12, 1969
• Where—Southport, Lancashire, UK
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of Kent
• Awards—John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
• Currently—lives in County Cork, Ireland

David Mitchell is an English novelist, the author of several novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has lived in Italy, Japan and Ireland. Mitchell currently lives with his wife Keiko Yoshida and their two children in Ardfield, Clonakilty in County Cork, Ireland.

Early life
Mitchell was born in Southport in Merseyside, England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire. He was educated at Hanley Castle High School and at the University of Kent, where he obtained a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature. He lived in Sicily for a year, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England, where he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his pregnant wife.

Work
Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

In 2012 his novel Cloud Atlas was made into a film. In recent years he has also written opera libretti. Wake, based on the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster and with music by Klaas de Vries, was performed by the Dutch Nationale Reisopera in 2010. For his other opera, Sunken Garden, he collaborated with the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa. It premiered in 2013 with the English National Opera.

Mitchell's sixth novel, The Bone Clocks, was released on September 2nd, 2014. In an interview in The Spectator, Mitchell said that the novel has "dollops of the fantastic in it", and is about "stuff between life and death." The book was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

Personal
In a Random House essay, Mitchell wrote:

I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last six years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself.

Mitchell has the speech disorder of stammering and considers the film The King's Speech (2010) to be one of the most accurate portrayals of what it's like to be a stammerer: "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."

One of Mitchell's children is autistic, and in 2013 he and wife Keiko translated into English a book written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy with autism, The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism.

List of works
Novels
    Ghostwritten (1999)
    number9dream (2001)
    Cloud Atlas (2004)
    Black Swan Green (2006)
    The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
    The Bone Clocks (2014)
    Slade House (2015)
    Utopia Avenue (2020)
(Bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)

Book Reviews 
To write a novel that resembles no other is a task that few writers ever feel prepared to essay. David Mitchell has written such a novel—or almost has. In its need to render every kind of human experience, Cloud Atlas finds itself staring into the reflective waters of Joyce's Ulysses. Just as Joyce, in the scene that takes place in the cabman's shelter, found the hidden beauty of cliche-filled prose, so Mitchell does with his Luisa Rey story.
Tom Bissell - New York Times

Hopscotching over centuries, Cloud Atlas likewise jumps in and out of half a dozen different styles, all of which display the author's astonishing talent for ventriloquism, and end up fitting together to make this a highly satisfying, and unusually thoughtful, addition to the expanding "puzzle book" genre.
Jeff Turrentine - Washington Post

Mitchell’s virtuosic novel presents six narratives that evoke an array of genres, from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy. There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel. Only after this do the second halves of the stories fall into place, pulling the novel’s themes into focus: the ease with which one group enslaves another, and the constant rewriting of the past by those who control the present. Against such forces, Mitchell’s characters reveal a quiet tenacity. When the clerk is told that his life amounts to “no more than one drop in a limitless ocean,” he asks, “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
The New Yorker

At once audacious, dazzling, pretentious and infuriating, Mitchell's third novel weaves history, science, suspense, humor and pathos through six separate but loosely related narratives. Like Mitchell's previous works, Ghostwritten and number9dream (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize), this latest foray relies on a kaleidoscopic plot structure that showcases the author's stylistic virtuosity. Each of the narratives is set in a different time and place, each is written in a different prose style, each is broken off mid-action and brought to conclusion in the second half of the book. Among the volume's most engaging story lines is a witty 1930s-era chronicle, via letters, of a young musician's effort to become an amanuensis for a renowned, blind composer and a hilarious account of a modern-day vanity publisher who is institutionalized by a stroke and plans a madcap escape in order to return to his literary empire (such as it is). Mitchell's ability to throw his voice may remind some readers of David Foster Wallace, though the intermittent hollowness of his ventriloquism frustrates. Still, readers who enjoy the "novel as puzzle" will find much to savor in this original and occasionally very entertaining work. Lots of buzz and a friendly paperback price will ensure strong sales, but like other fashionable tomes (think Pynchon's Mason & Dixon) Mitchell's novel may be more admired than read.
Publishers Weekly

In what must rank among the year's more ambitious novels, Mitchell (Ghostwritten) presents six quasicliffhanger stories in six different time periods. Beginning with a mid-19th-century Pacific voyage, the book then vaults to an early 20th-century composer who cuckolds his mentor, a 1970s reporter pursued by hitmen when she joins forces with a company whistleblower, a put-upon editor trapped inside a home for the aged, a servant clone interrogated about her travels to the outside world, and, finally, a return to the Pacific, only centuries later in a post-civilization world. Got it? Now tie up the cliffhangers in reverse order, going backward in time. The stories have a loose connecting theme of pursuing freedom and justice, and Mitchell has a gift for creating fully realized worlds with a varied cast of characters. However, there are patches of rough sledding; while the clever construction serves to highlight the novel's big ideas, the continual interruptions may distance the average reader. After slogging through five half-stories, the author has the bravery (or foolishness?) to relate the sixth in an invented dialect for a long stretch. The book has received good press in the United Kingdom, but perhaps sensing a smaller audience, the U.S. publisher offers a trade paperback original at a "try me" price. Libraries may wish to do so for their more adventurous readers of literary fiction. —Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA
Library Journal

Critics on both sides of the Atlantic rave over Cloud Atlas.... Many of the accolades focus on his flair for setting and character.... [T]he technical expertise that allows Mitchell to adopt a different genre for each of his six storylines—gets him into a little trouble. The New York Times Book Review complains that Mitchell’s writing...[can] render his work coldly impressive rather than “fallibly human.” However, most reviewers found Mitchell’s unorthodox structure captivating.
Bookmarks Magazine

Great Britain's answer to Thomas Pynchon outdoes himself with this maddeningly intricate, improbably entertaining successor to Ghostwritten (2000) and Number9Dream (2002). Mitchell's latest consists of six narratives set in the historical and recent pasts and imagined futures, all interconnected whenever a later narrator encounters and absorbs the story that preceded his own. In the first, it's 1850 and American lawyer-adventurer Adam Ewing is exploring endangered primitive Pacific cultures (specifically, the Chatham Islands' native Moriori besieged by numerically superior Maori). In the second, "The Pacific Diary of Adam Ewing" falls (in 1931) into the hands of bisexual musician Robert Frobisher, who describes in letters to his collegiate lover Rufus Sixsmith his work as amanuensis to retired and blind Belgian composer Vivian Ayrs. Next, in 1975, sixtysomething Rufus is a nuclear scientist who opposes a powerful corporation's cover-up of the existence of an unsafe nuclear reactor: a story investigated by crusading reporter Luisa Rey. The fourth story (set in the 1980s) is Luisa's, told in a pulp potboiler submitted to vanity publisher Timothy Cavendish, who soon finds himself effectively imprisoned in a sinister old age home. Mitchell then moves to an indefinite future Korea, in which cloned "fabricants" serve as slaves to privileged "purebloods"-and fabricant Sonmi-451 enlists in a rebellion against her masters. The sixth story, told in its entirety before the novel doubles back and completes the preceding five (in reverse order), occurs in a farther future time, when Sonmi is a deity worshipped by peaceful "Valleymen"-one of whom, goatherd Zachry Bailey, relates the epic tale of his people's war with their oppressors, the murderous Kona tribe. Each of the six stories invents a world, and virtually invents a language to describe it, none more stunningly than does Zachry's narrative ("Sloosha's Crossin' and Ev'rythin' After"). Thus, in one of the most imaginative and rewarding novels in recent memory, the author unforgettably explores issues of exploitation, tyranny, slavery, and genocide. Sheer storytelling brilliance. Mitchell really is his generation's Pynchon.
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 Cloud Atlas:

1. What is Cloud Atlas about? What are the questions the book explores—its primary thematic concerns?

2. Is this a cautionary tale...a prognosis...a diagnosis? In Mitchell's tales, what do humans seem bent on doing to one another...and why? With little left at the end, what, if anything, remains?

3. Why does Mitchell use the structure he does? What might he be hoping to achieve through the six (or twelve) interrelated stories, each based on a specific genre: epistolary, mystery, farce, sci-fi, post-apocolyptic? What is the effect, then, of reversing the tales and going backward?

4. How do each of the tales fit together...forward and backward. Put the pieces of the puzzle together—showing how one story links to another. How, for instance, is Luisa Rey in t connected to Frobisher?

5. What is the significance of the title, "Cloud Atlas"?

6. What are some of the neologisms used in the sci-fic chapters on Sonmi~451—and how do they reflect our use of language today?

7. Which was your favorite tale...and least favorite?

8. What was your experience reading the work: did you find the structure disruptive and confusing...and did you enjoy picking up the linkage between the stories and seeing how it played out by the end?

8. Have you read other dystopian...or post-apocolytpic works? If so, how do they compare with Cloud Atlas?

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

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Coal River 
Ellen Marie Wiseman, 2016
Kensington Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781617734472


Summary
This vibrant historical novel explores one young woman's determination to put an end to child labor in a Pennsylvania mining town.

As a child, Emma Malloy left isolated Coal River, Pennsylvania, vowing never to return. Now, orphaned and penniless at nineteen, she accepts a train ticket from her aunt and uncle and travels back to the rough-hewn community

Treated like a servant by her relatives, Emma works for free in the company store. There, miners and their impoverished families must pay inflated prices for food, clothing, and tools, while those who owe money are turned away to starve.

Most heartrending of all are the breaker boys Emma sees around the village—young children who toil all day sorting coal amid treacherous machinery. Their soot-stained faces remind Emma of the little brother she lost long ago, and she begins leaving stolen food on families' doorsteps, and marking the miners' bills as paid.

Though Emma's actions draw ire from the mine owner and police captain, they lead to an alliance with a charismatic miner who offers to help her expose the truth. And as the lines blur between what is legal and what is just, Emma must risk everything to follow her conscience.

An emotional, compelling novel that rings with authenticity—Coal River is a deft and honest portrait of resilience in the face of hardship, and of the simple acts of courage that can change everything. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1961-62
• Where—Three Mile Bay, New York, USA
• Education—Lyme Central School
• Currently—lives on Lake Ontario in upstate New York


Ellen Marie Wiseman discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in upper New York State.

Her debut novel The Plum Tree—a WWII story about a young German woman trying to save the love of her life, a Jewish man—was inspired by her mother's childhood in Germany during the Second World War. The book was published in 2013.

Wiseman's second novel, What She Left Behind, published in 2014, centers on the now-shuttered Willard Asylum for the Insane in Ovid, near Seneca Lake, New York, and involves a woman wrongly committed.

Coal River, Wiseman's 2016 novel, revolves around the efforts of a young woman to help at-risk workers in the Pennsylvania col mines.

The Life She Was Given, released in 2017, tells the story of two sisters: Lilly who is sold to the circus in 1931, and the other, years later, who inherits the family farm.

Originally from Three Mile Bay, New York, Wiseman lives on Lake Ontario with her husband. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
Wiseman (What She Left Behind) offers heartbreaking and historically accurate depictions of the dangerous mines, the hopeless workers, and their improbable fight for justice. The richly developed coal town acts as a separate, complex character; readers will want to look away even as they're drawn into a powerful quest for purpose and redemption.
Publishers Weekly


[A] picture of the struggles mining families faced in the early 1900s. Emma is a strong, likable character...supported by a cast of equally unlikable characters who are easy to hate. Although the dialogue and narrative can be simplistic and overly explanatory, the plot of Coal River sweeps the reader along (Ages 15 to Adult). —Deanne Boyer; .
VOYA

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

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

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

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Coal Run 
Tawni O'Dell, 2004
Penguin Group USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451215123


Summary
With her eagerly awaited second novel, after Back Roads, Tawni O'Dell takes readers back to the coal-mining country of western Pennsylvania.

Set in a town ravaged and haunted by a mine explosion that took the lives of 96 men, Coal Run explores the life of local deputy and erstwhile football legend, "The Great Ivan Z.," as he prepares for a former teammate's imminent release from prison.

As the week unfolds and Ivan struggles to confront his demons, he reveals himself to be a man whose conscience is burdened by a long-held and shocking secret. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Indiana, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A. Northwest University
• Currently—lives in Pennsylvania

Tawni O'Dell is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Fragile Beasts, Sister Mine, Coal Run, and Back Roads, which was an Oprah's Book Club pick and a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. She is also a contributor to several anthologies including Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female. Her work has been translated into 8 languages and been published in 20 countries.

Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, O'Dell graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism. She lived for many years in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania, where she now lives with her two children and her husband, literary translator Bernard Cohen. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A work of stark grandeur with powerful emotional links to the under-appreciated masterpieces of John Steinbeck and Clifford Odets, yet with a tender empathy all her own...It's a pleasure to see such a gifted, ambitious writer reinvigorating the tradition of social conscience combined with personal passion that has illuminated some of the finest, most moving works in American literature.
Los Angeles Times


Ivan is the proverbial angry young man, only he's not so young anymore…Ivan's sister, Jolene, who works as a waitress and is raising three children who have three different fathers is that fictional rarity, the believable working-class character…O'Dell has an ear for the telling detail.
Chicago Times


O'Dell is an accomplished writer; assured and perceptive, she is especially good with quick dialogue that captures the anger and disappointment these characters carry.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Utterly compelling…O'Dell illuminates timeless issues with keen insight…this is a smart book filled with sympathetic, opinionated characters who may be victims of circumstance but are never victims of ignorance or self-pity.
Denver Post


O'Dell explores the dynamics of a tiny Pennsylvania coal-mining town in her probing, heartbreaking second novel, which centers on the fortunes of former college football hero Ivan Zoschenko. The novel literally opens with a bang in a flashback that recalls the tragic underground explosion that took the life of Zoschenko's father and killed 96 other men from Coal Run. Some 15 years later, just after Zoschenko is drafted by the Chicago Bears, his knee is crushed in an accident in the same mines. His subsequent fall from grace is long and hard; he moves to Florida, hits the bars and works as an exterminator. He returns home only when he hears that Reese Raynor, a former schoolmate who beat his wife, Crystal, into a coma, is being released from prison. Despite his drinking problem, Zoschenko is hired as a deputy by the local sheriff, getting back in touch with his gorgeous sister, a single mom and career waitress; his boyhood hero, now a reclusive Vietnam vet; Reese's troubled twin brother, Jesse; and Crystal, who is still comatose and reminds Zoschenko of a shameful incident in his past. That past is linked to Reese Raynor's, and the novel builds to the inevitable brutal collision of the two men. O'Dell's portrait of Zoschenko is deep and penetrating, but even more moving is her portrayal of the coal-town community. Ravaged by disaster and callous corporate treatment, the citizens of Coal Run still can't imagine any other life. As Zoschenko puts it, "Long before [the mine] became the site of so much death, it had been a source of life for all of us. For me it was the closest thing I had to God." Though it occasionally flirts with sentimentality, this is a fierce, sharply drawn and richly sympathetic tribute to working-class America.
Publishers Weekly


As she did in her acclaimed debut, Back Roads, O'Dell displays a marvelous gift for serving up eccentric, believable characters and vividly captures the bleakness and harshness of coal-mining country…Captivating.
Library Journal


Triumphantly fulfilling the promise of her bestselling debut (Back Roads), O'Dell examines the tangled, enduring bonds of family and community in a Pennsylvania mining town…Once again, O'Dell inhabits a male mind with sensitivity and acuity…[a] searing, tragic vision of working-class people…Powerful and uncompromising, yet radiant with love, this one's pretty close to a masterpiece.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Lost identity is a recurring theme in this book, both locally, in the Pennsylvania boys’ forgetting their hometowns, and in a larger sense, in Americans’ forgetting their ethnic identities. From tales of Magadan to the portrait of Volodymyr that sits above the Zoschenko dinner table, allusions to Ivan’s father’s former life in Ukraine and Russia are made throughout the novel. Discuss what Ivan’s heritage means to him.

2. The land of Coal Run is inexplicably, irrevocably part of each character, drawing back those who leave it. Discuss each of the very different homecomings of the book—those of Val, Reese Raynor, Ivan, and John Harris. What is it that ties each character to the town?

3. Compare Ivan as a little boy to Ivan as the narrator of the novel. How does his voice change? How are his relationships to Val and Eb similar?

4. Ivan loses his father, uncle, and grandfather in the Gertie mine explosion and Val to the Vietnam War, then denies the existence of his own son. None of Jolene’s three sons have any kind of relationship with their fathers. Discuss the lack of male role models and father figures throughout the book. How does this affect the men of each generation?

5. The loss of Ivan’s knee, his heroic self, and his chance to forever leave Coal Run all occur at Gertie. Discuss the significance of his choice to self-destruct at that location. 

6. The burning land of Coal Run, with its simmering unstoppable fires beneath the surface, literally sucks down people, homes, and objects to its fiery depths. The festering rage of each character similarly manifests itself with violence. Discuss how the violence and anger of Bobbie, Reese, and Ivan differ.

7. Discuss the role of women in this town that is defined by mining, a very male profession. Ivan’s mother, his sister Jolene, Zo—are they better at coping with tragedy? Are they stronger?

8. In many ways Zo and Dr. Ed mastermind the fates of several of the characters, guiding their fates, yet without reprimand or condemnation. Dr. Ed anonymously sends the clipping to Ivan. Zo leaves her home to Jolene and her grandson, forever tying Randy to Coal Run. Discuss the silent but strong (and effective) techniques of this generation. 

9. Ivan’s father is able to separate the profession of coal mining from the fact that he learned it while in Siberia at a work camp. Reese, though an abusive husband and a murderer, at one time behaved honorably by marrying Crystal when Ivan would not. But Ivan cannot separate his identity as a football hero and town figure from who he is inside as a person. Discuss how profession and the ability to provide shape male identity. How is male identity tied to duty?

10. The demons of the past haunt several characters, most notably Ivan. How does the past literally and figuratively cripple him and prevent him from embarking on a future of any kind?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Cockroach
Rawi Hage, 2009
W.W. Norton & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393337877


Summary
One of the most highly anticipated novels of the year, Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage’s critically acclaimed first book, De Niro’s Game.

The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal’s restless immigrant community, where a self-described “thief” has just tried but failed to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naïve therapist.

This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator’s violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky emigre cafes where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen nighttime streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but willfully blind, citizens who surround him.

Cockroach combines an uncompromising vision of humanity with razor-sharp portraits of society's outsiders, and a startling, poetic sensibility with bracing jolts of dark humor. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Beirut, Lebanon
• Raised—Lebanon and Cyprus
• Education—Dawson College; Concordia University (Montreal)
• Awards—Paraqgraphe Huge MacLennan Prize; McAuslan First
   Book Prize; Prix des Libraires du Quebec; IMPAC Dublin
   Literary Award
• Currently—lives in Montreal, Canada


Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992.

He is a writer, a visual artist, and a curator. His writings have appeared in Fuse Magazine, Mizna, Jouvert, the Toronto Review, Montreal Serai, and Al-Jadid. His visual works have been shown in galleries and museums around the world including the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Musée de la civilisation de Québec.

Rawi's debut novel, De Niro's Game (2006), was a finalist for numerous prestigious national and international awards, and rights to the book have been sold around the world. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Hage's look at the underbelly of organized religion and immigrant life in Canada is unflinching and grim; what's even more remarkable is that he has transformed that material into a page-turner. Cockroach's finely wrought scenes build in tension toward a conclusion that's fitting and yet unpredictable... Readers are bound to be seduced.
Kevin Chong - CBC

Hage has done it again. He has produced an amazingly original and brilliant novel that shows he is no one-hit wonder, but a major force in Canadian literature.
Ottawa Citizen

The things that make Rawi Hage a major literary talent—and Cockroach as essential reading as its predecessor [De Niro's Game]—include freshness, gut-wrenching lyricism, boldness, emotional restraint, intellectual depth, historical sense, political subversiveness and uncompromising compassion.
Globe and Mail (Canada)

Cockroach echoes Hage's trademark concern for life's losers, for the dispossessed, the troubled and the despairing.... In a novel laced with dark humour and scorn for the complacency toward suffering in contemporary society, Hage dissects the immigrant experience with incisiveness and a good degree of aplomb.
London Free Press (Ontario)

[A] tour de force novel of fearsome wit, skilled prose, and impressive imagination... A beautiful, compelling, original work, one of the finest novels this year.
Edmonton Journal

Cockroach is a literary achievement of the best kind: it's imaginative and musical, psychologically layered and page-by-page suspenseful, about a character whose position we can all appreciate, though we'd rather not be there ourselves, on the edge of oblivion. Along with the best of the lowlife masterpieces—Hunger, The Outsider, Nadja, Notes from Underground, we now have Cockroach.
Quebec Writers' Federation - Hugh MacLennan Prize Jury

With a surprising degree of humor, Hage's second novel explores the peculiar politics of Montreal's immigrant communities through the bleak obsessions of a misanthropic thief. After trying and failing to kill himself, an unnamed narrator who believes himself to be part cockroach is compelled to attend counseling sessions with an earnest and alluring therapist. As he unspools his personal history—from his apprenticeship with the thief Abou-Roro to the tragic miscalculation that led him to flee his home country—the narrator, reluctant to tell his story (we never learn where the narrator is from, and inconsistencies in his tale cast doubt upon his honesty), scuttles through the stories of others, recounting secrets both confidentially shared and invasively discovered. Unable to support himself on burglary alone, the narrator takes a job as a busboy, but runs into complications after discovering his lover's connection to the restaurant's most prominent customer. The novel's gritty back-alley world gives rise to a host of glorious rogues, each swindling the others at every opportunity, and yet each is capable of great empathy under just the right circumstances.
Publishers Weekly

A disturbed Arab immigrant in Montreal tries to insinuate himself into a strange new world. Hope and survival are not the same thing, indeed can often be mutually exclusive, Hage (De Niro's Game, 2007) demonstrates. The nameless narrator has landed in Quebec with little more than memories of his sister's murder to keep him company. In the wake of a failed suicide attempt (a jogger spotted him hanging from a tree and called the park police), he's thieving his way through an outlandish netherworld of immigrants like himself trying to make it by hook or by crook. The struggle has stripped away much of his humanity. "The underground, my friend, is a world of its own," he declares. "Other humans gaze at the sky, but I say unto you, the only way through the world is to pass through the underground." Wrath against his fellow man is largely undiminished by his tenuous subterranean connections, but he holds his temper for the two women in his life: Genevieve, his psychologist, and Shoreh, an Iranian waitress who shares his bed. Hage's certainly unreliable, possible deranged narrator is only the most noticeably unsettling ingredient in a stew of stylistic experimentation that emulates not only the tangled threads of immigrant fiction but also the dystopian visions of Kafka and Burroughs. (The protagonist imagines himself an insect and occasionally converses with a six-foot albino cockroach.) If the novel has a drawback, it's that Hage can't quite commit to the strangeness of his story, hastily tying up loose ends with a more conventional plotline involving Shoreh's torturers reemerging from the past. Messy but sophisticated, odd and decidedly interesting.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. The main character says, "I am drawn to dark places like a suicidal moth to artificial lights." What does he mean by this statement?

2. Besides the obvious one of the main character turning into an insect, do you see any parallels between Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Cockroach?

3. Genevieve, the therapist, tries to chide the main character into co-operating with her saying she has a responsibility to the taxpayers. How does she approach her responsibility to her patient?

4. The main character says: "As a kid, I was fascinated by drains. I'm not sure if it was the smell, or the noises and echoes that were unexpectedly released after the water was gobbled, or if it was simply the possibility of escape to a place where the refuse of stained faces, infamous hands, dirty feet, and deep purple gums gathered in a large pool for slum kids to swim, splash, and play in." What childhood preoccupations are still with you as an adult?

5. The main character is without many of the ordinary items that we take for granted—soap, toilet paper, socks, shoes, food, warm clothing. Which descriptions or aspects of the main character's life shocked you the most?

6. Which aspects of Hage's writing engage you the most? Why?

7. "Primitive and uneducated as I was, I instinctively felt trapped in the cruel and insane world saturated with humans. I loathed grown-ups who were always hovering above me and looking down on me. They, of course, ruled the heights.... But I was the master of the underground." What aspects of the main character's upbringing do you think made him identify most with a cockroach? What advantages does this identification bring him?

8. Only cockroaches shall inherit the earth, according to the main character. What relationship does he have with God or religion?

9. What parts do the minor characters play in the novel? Lebanon: Souad (sister), Rima (sister's friend); Montreal: Genevieve (therapist), Sylvie and friends (rich), Shohreh Sherazy (lover), the Professor, Sehar (boss's daughter), the Pakistani family downstairs, the landlord, his Russian wife, and the old lady she steals from, Reza the musician, Farhoud, Majeed (Shohreh's uncle's friend), and Mr. Shaheed (the torturer).

10. How does the main character express his contempt for middle class Canadians, poor immigrants, formerly rich immigrants, the Professor, his therapist, and a good many of the people with whom he interacts? Is there anyone or anything that escapes his righteous indignation? If so, why?

11. What does the main character mean when he says: "Impotent, infertile filth!... Your days are over and your kind is numbered. No one can escape the sun on their faces and no one can barricade against the powerful, fleeting semen of the hungry and the oppressed."

12. The main character says, "It is my greed that I regret. Humans are creatures of greed." In what ways is he greedy?

13. "I am just doing it for history's sake," says the main character as he helps the landlord's wife steal from the old lady. How do his actions benefit history?

14.) What does the main character gain from his relationships with Shohreh and Genevieve? Do either of them offer him healing or redemption? If so, how?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Code Name Helene 
Ariel Lawhon, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385544689


Summary
Based on the thrilling real-life story of Socialite spy Nancy Wake, comes the newest feat of historical fiction from the author of I Was Anastasia, featuring the astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII.

Told in interweaving timelines organized around the four code names Nancy used during the war, Code Name Helene is a spellbinding and moving story of enduring love, remarkable sacrifice and unfaltering resolve that chronicles the true exploits of a woman who deserves to be a household name.

It is 1936 when Nancy Wake, an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper, meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca.

No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name.

As LUCIENNE CARLIER Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border and earns a new nickname from the Gestapo for her remarkable ability to evade capture: THE WHITE MOUSE.

With a five million franc bounty on her head, Nancy is forced to escape France and leave Henri behind. When she enters training with the Special Operations Executives in Britain, she is told to use the name HELENE with her comrades.

Finally, with mission in hand, Nancy is air-dropped back into France as the deadly MADAM ANDREE, where she claims her place as one of the most powerful leaders in the French Resistance. She becomes known for her ferocious wit, her signature red lipstick, and her ability to summon weapons straight from the Allied Forces.

But no one can protect Nancy if the enemy finds out these four women are one and the same, and the closer to liberation France gets, the more exposed she—and the people she loves—will become. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Ariel Lawhon is co-founder of the popular online book club, She Reads, a novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus).

Lawhon's first novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014) is centered around the still-unsolved disappearance of New York State Supreme Court Judge, Joseph Crater. Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

Her second novel, Flight of Dreams (2016) is a fictional exploration of the mystery behind the the 1937 Hindenberg blimp explosion. I Was Anastasia (2018), Lawhon's third novel, follows Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia Romonov, the lone survivor of the execution of the Czar of Russia and his family. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Lawhon’s vivid, fast-paced narrative will keep readers turning the pages, and a detailed afterword makes plain how much of the account is factual. This entertaining tale does justice to Lawhon’s larger-than-life subject.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Wake's heroism, alongside the bravery and sacrifice of all who fought, [give] hope that even in the darkest times there are real-life heroes. Readers will be transfixed by this story of a woman who should be a household name. —Susan Santa, Shelter Rock P. L., Albertson, NY
Library Journal


(Starred review) Magnificent…. Lawhon carries us into the heart of the French resistance [and] into the mind of a badass heroine with uncanny instincts…. Even long after the last page is turned, this astonishing story of Wake’s accomplishments will hold readers in its grip.
Booklist


(Starred review) [P]lenty of fireworks and heroism as they converge to explain all. The author begs forgiveness in an informative afterword for all the drinking and swearing. Hey! No apologies necessary! [C]ompulsively readable… Lawhon's best book to date.
Kirkus Reviews


(Starred review) A spellbinding work of historical fiction… [and] one of the most sensual romance novels you’ve ever read.… She is real, this really did happen is the mantra you may find yourself repeating, in awe of every page.
BookPage

Discussion Questions
1. Nancy’s argument with her Hearst editor takes place in 1936, but is probably not all that different from challenges that face women in the workforce today. We later learn that Nancy agreed was told that her work for Hearst would be published without not carry a byline … unless she took a male pen name, which she refused to do. What would you have done?

2. "Men don’t know what to do with a woman who can clip her own cigar." What are the implications of Stephanie’s statement? And does it still hold true today?

3. Nancy is accused of using "profanity as a weapon" to gain her male colleagues’ respect. Do you think this is true?

4. What are your thoughts regarding the shift of perspective from first person to third person? Did it result in a more multi-dimensional portrait of Nancy?

5. Discuss the shift back and forth in time between Nancy’s life before and during the war. Did it give you a different view at the ways in which war alters lives, both great and small?

6. "The thing about lipstick, the reason it’s so powerful, is that it is distracting." Nancy’s beloved red lipstick also gives her confidence. Is there a product or accessory that does something similar for you?

7. Had you heard of Nancy Wake prior to reading Code Name Helene? Did the novel inspire you to learn more about her?

8. Did the dynamic of Nancy and Henri’s relationship surprise you? In what ways does it differ from other stories of love in wartime that you have read before?

9. The consequences of Marceline’s betrayal are staggering. Do you think her obsession with Henri is the only reason for her choices? Or is her decision deeper and more complex?

10. Nancy’s trek across the Pyrenees and her 72-hour bike ride are harrowing. Her grit and stamina are awe-inspiring. Do you think you could endure the physical and mental stress of such a journey?

11. What is the one thing about Nancy that you found the most surprising

12. If Code Name Helene were made into a movie, who would you like to see cast in the roles of Nancy and Henri?

13. Did you read the Author’s Note before or after finishing the novel? How did it change your feelings about the novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Coincidence of Coconut Cake 
Amy E. Reichert, 2015
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501100710


Summary
You’ve Got Mail meets How to Eat a Cupcake in this delightful novel about a talented chef and the food critic who brings down her restaurant—whose chance meeting turns into a delectable romance of mistaken identities.

In downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lou works tirelessly to build her beloved yet struggling French restaurant, Luella’s, into a success. She cheerfully balances her demanding business and even more demanding fiance…until the morning she discovers him in the buff—with an intern.

Witty yet gruff British transplant Al is keeping himself employed and entertained by writing scathing reviews of local restaurants in the Milwaukee newspaper under a pseudonym. When an anonymous tip sends him to Luella’s, little does he know he’s arrived on the worst day of the chef’s life.

The review practically writes itself: underdone fish, scorched sauce, distracted service—he unleashes his worst.

The day that Al’s mean-spirited review of Luella’s runs, the two cross paths in a pub: Lou drowning her sorrows, and Al celebrating his latest publication. As they chat, Al playfully challenges Lou to show him the best of Milwaukee and she’s game—but only if they never discuss work, which Al readily agrees to.

As they explore the city’s local delicacies and their mutual attraction, Lou’s restaurant faces closure, while Al’s column gains popularity. It’s only a matter of time before the two fall in love…but when the truth comes out, can Lou overlook the past to chase her future?

Set in the lovely, quirky heart of Wisconsin, The Coincidence of Coconut Cake is a charming love story of misunderstandings, mistaken identity, and the power of food to bring two people together. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Amy Reichert earned her MA in English Literature while teaching two freshman writing classes. A wife, mom, amateur chef, Fix-It Mistress, and cider enthusiast, she currently spreads her passion for books as a member of the local library’s board. The Coincidence of Coconut Cake is her first novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Well-developed secondary characters and detailed descriptions of the Milwaukee food scene will leave readers hungry for more. Fans of Stacey Ballis and Erica Bauermeister will find lots to love
Booklist

Highly recommended that you eat before reading this book…a light, fun read that feels a bit like eating dessert for dinner.
RT Book Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. It’s clear from the opening chapter of the book that Devlin and Lou have divergent plans for the future. What do you think drew them together in the first place? Did you find Devlin, with his good looks and promise of financial stability, alluring or stifling?

2. Lou considers the following quote: “Delight is indeed born in the heart. It sometimes also depends on its surroundings.” Do you think this holds true throughout the book? How do Al and Lou’s surroundings impact their happiness? Do you think that your surroundings dictate your own happiness? Or is your perception and attitude more important?

3. Both Al and Lou have fond memories of their grandmothers’ cooking, from Luella’s famous coconut cake to the rusty cast iron skillet that Al still holds dear. What are some of your favorite culinary memories or traditions? How have they evolved—or not—over the years?

4. As Lou plays tour guide to Al and opens him up to a wealth of new experiences, she gradually smooths over his gruff exterior. How does your perception of Al change throughout the book? Was there a specific moment where you started to find him more likeable?

5. The Coincidence of Coconut Cake is as much a love letter to Milwaukee as it is the love story of Lou and Al. What is your favorite stop on Lou’s tour of the city? Which of their meals are you most eager to try?

6. Devlin says to Lou, “I may shape and bend the facts in my favor or make tactful omissions, but I don’t lie.” Were you surprised to hear Devlin’s explanation for the scantily clad intern in his apartment? Do you think he was telling the whole truth?

7. What do you think about Al’s decision to keep his identity a secret from Lou, particularly after he learns that Luella’s is her restaurant? Are his lies more forgivable than Devlin’s behavior? How would you have handled the situation if you were in Al’s shoes?

8. Lou reflects on the fate of Luella’s: “The fault was hers and hers alone. Taking responsibility gave her the control. Taking responsibility gave her hope she would find happiness again.” What do you make of this sentiment? Do you think that Lou is being too hard on herself—that she’s just the victim of circumstance—or is she to blame for the restaurant’s closure?

9. The Coincidence of Coconut Cake features a vibrant cast of secondary characters, from John, the fashionista in disguise, to Harley, the loveable, tattooed pastry chef. Who is your favorite secondary character? How does he or she influence events or help to move the story along?

10. Gertrude emphasizes the importance of second chances to Lou. “Don’t let your heart get too hard,” she says. “[Al] made you happy. That was not an act. Try to forgive him, promise me.” Do you agree with Gertrude’s belief that a person deserves forgiveness as long as his or her intentions are good? What personal experiences have shaped your own attitude toward second chances?

11. What do you think the future holds for Lou’s new restaurant? What important lessons has she learned from Luella’s?

12. While the story of Luella’s is fictional, it’s not uncommon for a new restaurant to fail because of negative press—particularly in the age of crowd-sourced online reviews. Did the book make you more sympathetic to the plight of struggling business owners and the impact of online reviews?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Cold Cold Heart 
Tami Hoag, 2015
Penguin Publishing Group
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525954545


Summary
Dana Nolan was a promising young TV reporter until a notorious serial killer tried to add her to his list of victims. Nearly a year has passed since she survived her ordeal, but the physical, emotional, and psychological scars run deep.

Struggling with the torment of post-traumatic stress syndrome, plagued by flashbacks and nightmares, Dana returns to her hometown in an attempt to begin to put her life back together. But home doesn’t provide the comfort she expects.

Dana’s harrowing story and her return to small-town life have rekindled police and media interest in the unsolved case of her childhood best friend, Casey Grant, who disappeared without a trace the summer after their graduation from high school.

Terrified of truths long buried, Dana reluctantly begins to look back at her past. Viewed through the dark filter of PTSD, old friends and loved ones become suspects and enemies. Questioning everything she knows, refusing to be defined by the traumas of her past, Dana seeks out a truth that may prove too terrible to be believed. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 20, 1959
• Where—Cresco, Iowa, USA
• Raised—Harmony, Minnesota
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Malibu, California, and Wellington, Florida


Tami Hoag is an American novelist, best known for her work in the romance and thriller genres. More than 22 million copies of her books are in print.

Early years
Hoag was born in Cresco, Iowa and raised in the small town of Harmony, Minnesota. Because her siblings were more than ten years older than she, and there were not a lot of other children nearby, Hoag developed an active imagination, making up stories to entertain herself.

In 1977 she married her high school sweetheart, Daniel Hoag, shortly before he finished college. However, she never had the opportunity to go to college herself, as they moved to a town without easy access to higher education. The couple were later divorced.

Before publishing her first novel, Hoag held varying jobs, including a stint as a photographer's assistant, training show horses, working at the circulation desk at a newspaper, and even selling designer bathroom accessories.

Writing career
She began her career as an author in 1988, writing category romances for the Bantam Books Loveswept Line. After several years of success in that field, Hoag switched her focus to single-title suspense novels. She has had fifteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers, including five in a 20-month span. Her novel Night Sins became a TV miniseries starring Valerie Bertinelli and Harry Hamlin. Hoag has been invited to do a reading at one of Barbara Bush's literacy functions, and then had lunch with former President George H.W. Bush and Mrs. Bush at their home.

Hoag and three other authors who made the leap from romance to thrillers at roughly the same time (Eileen Dreyer, Elizabeth Grayson and Kimberly Cates) have formed a group they call the Divas. The group provides support and encouragement for each other, and Hoag often thanks them in the acknowledgement section of her books.

Personal
Hoag currently lives in Malibu, California, and Wellington, Florida. She owns horses and often goes for a ride to combat writer's block. She has competed in dressage at a national level, but stopped competing after breaking five vertebrae in her back during a fall while trying out a horse for a friend. Hoag is fully recovered from her accident, and has returned to the competition arena. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/24/2015.)

Book Reviews
Ms. Hoag weaves the intensifying plot in Cold Cold Heart with the expertise of a master seamstress blind stitching the facts, moving through multiple characters' voices, taking readers on a journey into the inner depths of her characters' minds, and in Hoag style, deliveri
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Chilling and satisfying.
People


An unforgettable read.
RT Book Reviews


Dana Nolan, the heroine of this chilling psychological thriller from bestseller Hoag...was captured by the serial killer known as Doc Holiday, who tortured and raped her. Dana managed to escape her tormentor, but she suffers from PTSD as well as a traumatic brain injury.... Hoag fans will appreciate the cameo appearances of detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac from earlier books.
Publishers Weekly


TV news reporter Dana Nolan, who escaped from a serial killer, still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Is that why everyone looks suspect when she reopens the investigation of her best friend's disappearance after high school graduation?
Library Journal


[T]alented young newscaster Dana Nolan is left to navigate a psychological maze after escaping a serial killer.... Tense, tightly woven, with every minor character...ratcheting up the tension, Hoag's narrative explodes with an unexpected but believable conclusion. A top-notch psychological thriller.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The prologue of Cold Cold Heart opens with a chilling scene as Dana is poised to try and fight her captor for her life. Imagine yourself in that situation. Do you think you could summon the courage to do what she did? Do some people have more of a survivor’s instinct than others?

2. As the only surviving victim of a serial killer, Dana’s scars are both physical and emotional. Consider the differences between the two types of pain. Which would be the worst for you to live with? How would you cope with each?

3. In chapter 1 Dr. Rutten explains Dana’s brain injury to her mother, saying every brain is different but there’s one thing he does know to be true in every case: "the person you love will be changed from this, and that will be the hardest thing of all to accept." This indeed plays out throughout the novel. Discuss old Dana and new Dana.

4. Dana’s mom and stepdad deal with Dana’s ordeal and recovery in very different ways. Discuss their coping mechanisms, both healthy and unhealthy. Does one deal better than the other?

5. Tami Hoag never goes into too much detail about what happened to Dana during her captivity. Why do you think that is?

6. When Dana’s brain injury results in memory loss she must learn about her best friend’s disappearance all over again, essentially reliving it. Can you imagine having to relive a traumatic event all over again and experience it anew?

7. How does Dana’s perception of her teenage self differ from how others viewed her at that time? Are you the same person you were in high school? How would someone perceive you differently today from your teenage self?

8. If you were the victim of a horrific crime would you want to remember what happened?

9. Discuss John Villante. Do you find him to be a sympathetic character?

10. What about Tim Carver? Did your opinion of him evolve as the story went on?

11. Discuss post-traumatic stress disorder and the different ways Dana and John both experience it. Do any of the other characters exhibit signs of PTSD?

12. How is the stray dog an important figure in the story? What effect does the dog have on John and his life?

13. What were your thoughts about Dan Hardy when he was first introduced into the story? Did those thoughts evolve?

14. John Villante has a complex relationship and history with his father. Dana has difficulty in her present-day relationship with her stepfather. Discuss the father/child dynamics and how the parents’ lives impact their children’s lives in this story.

15. Through the tragedy of Dana’s experience, she gets an opportunity to reinvent her life. If you could reimagine your life, would you do things differently?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Cold Mountain 
Charles Frazier, 1997
Grove/Atlantic
449 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802142849


Summary 
Winner, 1997 National Book Award

Based on local history and family stories passed down by the author's great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada.

Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered.

Charles Frazier reveals marked insight into man's relationship to the land and the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great nineteenth-century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks eloquently to our time. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1950
• Where—Asheville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill;
  M.A., Ph.D., Appalachian State University
• Awards—National Book Award for Fiction, 1997
• Currently—lives in Raleigh, North Carolina

Charles Frazier grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. Cold Mountain, his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, and won the National Book Award in 1997. In 2006 Mr. Frazier published Thirteen Moons.

Frazier had been teaching University-level literature part-time when he first became spellbound by the story of his great-great uncle W. P. Inman. Inman was a confederate soldier during the Civil War who took a harrowing foot-journey from the ravaged battle fields back to his home in the mountains of North Carolina. The specifics of Inman's history were sketchy, indeed, but Frazier's father spun his tale with such enticing drama that Frazier began filling in the gaps, himself. Bits of the life of Frazier's grandfather, who also fought in the Civil War, helped flesh out the journey of William Pinkney Inman.

He also looked toward the legendary epic poem The Odyssey for inspiration. Slowly, a gripping tale of devotion, faith, redemption, and love coalesced in Frazier's mind. For six or seven years, he toiled away on the story that would ultimately become Cold Mountain, and with the novel's publication in 1997, the first-time author had a modern classic of American literature on his hands.

In Cold Mountain, Inman is a wounded confederate soldier who abandons the war to venture home to his beloved Ada. Along the way, he is confronted by various obstacles, but he journeys on valiantly, regardless. Frazier cleverly divides the narrative between Inman's trek and Ada's story as she struggles to make due in the wake of her father's death and the absence of her love.

When Frazier was only half finished with the book, he passed it along to friend and novelist Kaye Gibbons (Ellen Foster; A Virtuous Woman), who then got it into the hands of her agent. Much to his disbelief, Frazier's novel went on to become the smash sensation of the late-‘90s. Winning countless laudatory reviews from publications throughout the nation, Cold Mountain also became a must-read commercial smash. The novel ultimately won the coveted National Book Award for fiction and was adapted into an Oscar-winning motion picture starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and best supporting actress Renee Zellweger.

Nearly ten years after the publication of Cold Mountain, Frazier published Thirteen Moons. While Thirteen Moons returns to a 19th century setting, 12-year old Will is quite a different protagonist from Inman. With only a horse, a key, and a map, the boy is prodded into Indian country with the mission of running a trading post. In this dangerous environment, Will learns to empathize with the Cherokees, who open his mind to a much broader world than he had ever seen before.

In 2011 Frazier published Nightwoods, the story of a young woman living alone in the Appalachians who takes on the care of her murdered sisters young children, traumatized, violent and mute.

Extras
• Frazier grew up not far from the mountain he immortalized in Cold Mountain in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. Although the actual Cold Mountain exists, the town after which it is named in the novel is entirely fictional.

• Reportedly, Frazier was offered a whopping $8 million advance for Thirteen Moons. Sadly, the book never reached the sales potential Random House had expected.  (From Widkipedia.)

Book Reviews 
The story involves two related strands of plot: Inman, wounded during a Civil War battle, makes his way home to Cold Mountain and to his love, Ada Monroe; Ada, in the meantime, struggles to cultivate her failing farmland. Cold Mountain is usually tied to Odysseus and his journey home. But it's also a failed return to Eden; after all, Odysseus makes it back to Penelope and Ithaca while Inman, poor boy, is out.  His loss of innocence and experience of evil mean he can never gain re-entrance to paradise. (Ada specifically tells us her name is pronounced with a short, not long, vowel sound. Add the first initial of her last name, and you get AdaM. A little schematic, but there it is.
LitLovers - Great Adaptations
 

Rich in evocative physical detail and timeless human insight, this debut novel set in the Civil War era rural South considers themes both grand (humanity's place in nature) and intimate (a love affair transformed by the war) as a wounded soldier makes his way home to the highlands of North Carolina and to his pre-war sweetheart. Shot in the neck during fighting at Petersburg, Inman was not expected to survive. After regaining the strength to walk, he begins his dangerous odyssey. Just as the traumas of life on the battlefront have changed Inman, the war's new social and economic conditions have left their mark on Ada. With the death of her father and loss of income from his investments, Ada can no longer remain a pampered Charleston lady, but must eke out a living from her father's farm in the Cold Mountain community, where she is an outsider.Frazier vividly depicts the rough and varied terrain of Inman's travels and the colorful characters he meets, all the while avoiding Federal raiders and the equally brutal Home Guard. The sweeping cycle of Inman's homeward journey is deftly balanced by Ada's growing sense of herself and her connection to the natural world around the farm. In a leisurely, literate narrative, Frazier shows how lives of soldiers and of civilians alike deepen and are transformed as a direct consequence of the war's tragedy. There is quiet drama in the tensions that unfold as Inman and Ada come ever closer to reunion, yet farther from their former selves.
Publishers Weekly
 

This monumental novel is set at the end of the Civil War and follows the journey of a wounded Confederate soldier named Inman as he returns home. Interwoven is the story of Ada, the woman he loves. Ada, who was raised in genteel society, cannot cope with the rigors of war until a woman called Ruby arrives to help her. Inman comes across memorable characters like the goatwoman, who lives off the secret herbs in the woods and Sara, a woman stranded with an infant who is assaulted by Yankee soldiers whom Inman later kills. After a long, threatening journey, Inman finally arrives home to Ada, 'ravaged, worn ragged and wary and thin.' A remarkable effort that opens up a historical past that will enrich readers not only with its story but with its strong characters. —David A. Beron, University of New England, Biddeford, ME.
Library Journal

A grim story about a tough, resourceful Southern family in the Civil War is somewhat submerged by the weight of lyrical detail piled on the tale, and by the slow pace of the telling. There's no doubt that Frazier can write; the problem is that he stops so often to savor the sheer pleasure of the act of writing in this debut effort. Inman, seeing that the end of the war is near, decides to leave his regiment and go back home to Ada, the bright, stubborn woman he loves. His adventures traversing a chaotic, impoverished land, Ada's struggles to preserve her father's farm, and the harsh, often powerful tales of the rough-hewn individuals they encounter take up most of the narrative. The tragic climax is convincing but somewhat rushed, given the many dilatory scenes that have preceded it. Frazier has Cormac McCarthy's gift for rendering the pitch and tang of regional speech, and for catching some of the true oddity of human nature, but he doesn't yet possess McCarthy's ferocious focus. A promising but overlong, uneven debut.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. How would you describe the style, or the voice, in which Charles Frazier tells his story? Do you find it realistic or stylized? What does it add to the overall effect of the story?

2. Charles Frazier seems to imply that, because of the moral barrenness of the Civil War and the crimes committed on the battlefield in the name of honor, there is no moral onus attached to the act of desertion? Do you agree with him? Why has Frazier chosen to portray the deserters as good, the Home Guard as evil?

3. How have Inman's views on secession, slavery, and war changed by the time he finds himself in the military hospital? What has he come to believe of both sides, the Federals and the Confederates, their leaders, and their motivations for fighting? Is he being overly cynical? How does the fighting and the level of blind violence in the Civil War compare with other, more recent wars?

4. Inman remembers a conversation he had with a boy he met after the battle of Fredericksburg, when he pointed out Orion's principal star. The boy replied, "That's just a name we give it.... It ain't God's name." We can never know God's name for things, the boy continues; "It's a lesson that sometimes we're meant to settle for ignorance" [p. 117]. How does this statement correspond with the lessons learned by Ada and Ruby? What point does Cold Mountain make about the nature and limitations of human knowledge?

5. Inman has little use for conventional religion, but he liked one sermon of Monroe's: "That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decrease forever" [p. 77]. What notion of "God" does this quotation endorse? What about the voice that spoke to Ruby when, as a child, she was in despair: Was this God's voice, and if so, in what does God consist? What do you conclude Frazier's ideas to be, and how do they differ from conventional Christianity?

6. How, finally, does Frazier portray the natural world: as benign, treacherous, cruel, or indifferent? Famous contemporaries of Inman and Ada--thinkers like Darwin, Wordsworth, and Emerson—were expressing new ideas, in poetry and prose, about nature. How do these ideas influence Monroe's thinking? "Monroe had commented that, like all elements of nature, the features of this magnificent topography were simply tokens of some other world, some deeper life with a whole other existence toward which we ought aim all our yearning" [p. 144]. What very different conclusions does Ada come to? How do Inman and Ruby view the natural world?

7. Remembering his friend Swimmer, Inman reflects that Swimmer's spells "portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, constantly under attack and in need of strength, always threatening to die inside you. Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies" [p. 20]. Which version of the soul seems to be borne out during the course of the book? Does Inman come to change his ideas during his journey?

8. Throughout Cold Mountain, the author works with the idea of the search for the soul. Inman, Ada, Ruby, Stobrod, Veasey, and the slaveholder's runaway son Odell are all in some way engaged upon this search. Which of them is, in the end, successful, and why?

9. Both Ada and Inman reflect, at different times, that they are living in a "new world" [p. 33].... What changes is nineteenth-century America undergoing, and how do Ada and Inman's experiences, and the people they meet, reflect those changes? How, and why, is the ideal of womanhood changing?

10. Both Ada and Ruby were motherless children from the time they were born. How has that state affected their characters and formed their ideas? How has it molded their relationships with their fathers? Do both women reconcile themselves to their fathers in the end, and if so, why?

11. Was Monroe, overall, a good father to Ada? In what ways did he fail her, and in what ways did he contribute to her strength of character? In what ways did he deceive himself?

12. Several of Cold Mountain's characters meet their death during the course of the novel. How do these characters' deaths reflect, or redeem, their lives? What points are made by the particular deaths of Veasey, Ada's suitor Blount, Pangle, Monroe, and others?

13. Stobrod claims not to be Ruby's true father; his wife, he says, was impregnated by a heron. What other mythical or animistic images does the book offer, and what is their purpose? How does Frazier view, and treat, the supernatural?

14. What is the significance of the Cherokee woman's story about the Shining Rocks? What does it mean to Inman, and why is Ada skeptical? What does her reaction tell us about her character?

15. Charles Frazier has based his novel loosely on Homer's Odyssey. If you are familiar with The Odyssey, which incidents from it do you find reproduced in Cold Mountain, and how has Frazier reimagined them? Why do you think he might have chosen this structure for a Civil War novel? What similarities do the two works have in the way they deal with war? With love and marriage? With fidelity? With home? With spiritual growth? How is Inman like Odysseus?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Cold Sassy Tree 
Olive Ann Burns, 1984
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618919710


Summary
The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around—fast.

When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson—a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward—the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal.

Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperon, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too.

Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel—about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style. 

Cold Sassy Tree is the undeniably entertaining and extraordinarily moving account of small-town Southern life in a bygone era. Olive Ann Burns’s classic bestseller is a timeless, funny, and resplendent treasure. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Aka—Amy Larkin
• Birth—July 17, 1924
• Where—Banks County, Georgia, US
• Death—July 4, 1990
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia
• Education—University of North Carolina 


Olive Ann Burns was an American writer from Georgia best known for her single completed novel, Cold Sassy Tree, published in 1984.

She was born in Banks County, Georgia. Her father was a farmer but was forced to sell his farm in 1931 during the Great Depression. The Burns family then moved to Commerce, Georgia. Burns attended Mercer University, where she wrote for the college magazine. Her sophomore year she transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in journalism.

Burns worked for the Atlanta Journal and wrote under the pseudonym "Amy Larkin". She married Andy Sparks, a fellow journalist. In 1971 Burns began writing down family stories as dictated by her parents. In 1975 she was diagnosed with lymphoma and began to change the family stories into a novel that would later become Cold Sassy Tree.

The novel was finally published eight years after it was begun, in 1984. Burns received so many letters pleading for a follow-up novel that she began writing Leaving Cold Sassy. Burns died of heart failure in 1990, at age 65, in a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, before finishing the manuscript, and the uncompleted novel was published in 1992 along with her notes.  (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
(Pre-internet books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Ann Burns has cast her narrative in a dialect voice, which is always a gamble....The result is a narrative riddled with cliches.
New York Times

Rich with emotion, humor and tenderness.
Washington Post

One of the best portraits of small-town Southern life ever written.
Pat Conroy

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 Cold Sassy Tree:

1. How would you describe Rucker? Do you consider him a shallow human being? What possess him to marry Miss Love so soon after burying Mattie Lou?

2. Do the reactions of family and friends toward Rucker's new marriage seem genuine to you...or do they ring hollow? What was your initial reaction...did it change over the course of the novel?

3. What is your attitude toward Miss Love? Do you find her, a Yankee living in the South, sympathetic?

4. How would you describe the relationship between Rucker and Miss Love? Do they love one another...at first...eventually...never?   

5. The story is seen through the eyes of Will Tweedy. Why would the author have chosen a bare adolescent as narrator? Is Will's voice believable?

6. How would you describe life in Cold Sassy...especially the relationships among its citizens? Do you find small-town living, as described in the novel, appealing, even enviable...or judgmental and claustrophobic? 

7. Do small towns, like Cold Sassy, exist today...is it possible given the speed, ubiquity, and distractions of modern telecommunications and travel?

8. Which episodes do you find most humorous...the Christmas play? What else?

9. What do you think of Burns's use of dialect? Does it enhance the novel's sense of place for you? Or do you find it distracting and irritating?

10. How does Burns present Christianity as practiced in a small town in Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century? What do you think of Grandpa Rucker's sermon from his sick-bed?

11. Cold Sassy Tree is generally viewed as a coming-of-age story? What does Will come to learn, about the adult world and his place in it, by the end of the novel? In what way does he change? Do any other characters change?

12. What is the relationship between blacks and whites in Cold Sassy? Does Burns present African-Americans as fully developed characters...or stereotypes? Talk specifically about Queenie.

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

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The Cold Song
Linn Ullmann, 2011 (Eng. trans., 2013)
Other Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781590516676


Summary
Ullmann’s characters are complex and paradoxical: neither fully guilty nor fully innocent

Siri Brodal, a chef and restaurant owner, is married to Jon Dreyer, a famous novelist plagued by writer’s block. Siri and Jon have two daughters, and together they spend their summers on the coast of Norway, in a mansion belonging to Jenny Brodal, Siri’s stylish and unforgiving mother.

Siri and Jon’s marriage is loving but difficult, and troubled by painful secrets. They have a strained relationship with their elder daughter, Alma, who struggles to find her place in the family constellation. When Milla is hired as a nanny to allow Siri to work her long hours at the restaurant and Jon to supposedly meet the deadline on his book, life in the idyllic summer community takes a dire turn. One rainy July night, Milla disappears without a trace. After her remains are discovered and a suspect is identified, everyone who had any connection with her feels implicated in her tragedy and haunted by what they could have done to prevent it.

The Cold Song is a story about telling stories and about how life is continually invented and reinvented. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 9, 1966
• Where—Oslo, Norway
• Education—B.A., New York University
• Awards—Readers' Prize; Amalie Skram Award; Golden Pen (all Norwegian)
• Currently—lives in Oslo, Norway


Linn Ullmann (originally Karin Beate Ullmann) is a Norwegian author and journalist. She is the daughter of actress, author and director Liv Ullmann and director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman. She graduated from New York University, where she studied English literature and began work on her Ph.D. A prominent literary critic, she also writes a column for Norway's leading morning newspaper and has published four novels.

Writing
When her first and critically acclaimed novel Before You Sleep was published in 1998, she was already known as an influential literary critic. Her second novel, Stella Descending was published in 2001 and her third novel Grace was published in 2002. For Grace, Ullmann received the literary award The Readers' Prize in Norway, and the book was named one of the top ten novels that year by the prestigious newspaper Weekendavisen in Denmark. In 2007, Grace was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the United Kingdom, and in March the same year, the Norwegian theater Riksteatret played a successful run of the theatrical play Grace, based on the novel.

Ullmann's fourth novel A Blessed Child was published in Norway in 2005 and shortlisted for the prestigious Norwegian literature prize—the Brage Prize. In 2007, she was awarded the Amalie Skram Award for her literary work, and she received Gullpennen (the Golden Pen) for her journalism in Norway's leading morning newspaper Aftenposten. In 2008, A Blessed Child was named Best Translated novel in the British newspaper The Independent, and in 2009 the novel was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in the UK. Her fifth novel, The Cold Song, was published in Norway in late 2011. It was translated into English in 2013 by Barbara J. Haveland and published in the U.S. in 2014.

Ullmann's novels are published throughout Europe and the United States and are translated into 30 languages.

Literary awards
Gold Pen (Norwegian) (2007)
Amalie Skram Prize (Norwegian) (2007)
Norwegian Readers' Prize (Norwegian) (2002)

Other
Ullmann is co-founder (2009) and former Artistic Director of the international artist residency foundation The Bergman Estate on Faro. She served on the jury for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Ullmann is married to Niels Fredrik Dahl, a novelist, playwright and poet. They live in Oslo. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/16/2014.)

Book Reviews
Although a vicious crime serves as the grain of sand around which this pearl of a novel is formed, Linn Ullmann's The Cold Song is not a crime story…Yet the novel…is steeped in dread the way a fruitcake is steeped in rum: Every page, every line, seems to glisten with vapors of sumptuous, intoxicating unease.
Leah Hager Cohen - New York Times Book Review


Ullmann’s rural Norway is an unfussy place, eloquent for its starkness, much like the spare language she paints it with. Her stage is less about physical place than mood and one’s place in the familial symmetry. While much happens in this novel, the events feel secondary. The prose is taut, yet the pace is languid as summer in that before-the-storm tension…The real achievement of this novel is Ullmann’s gift to imbue the tension of a thriller via the unease of the mundane…Yes, a murder occurs, but The Cold Song is more a mystery in the way most families tend to be mysteries unto themselves.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


The discovery of a corpse...serves mostly as a basis for the author’s subtle and menacing look at family dynamics.... Ullmann teeters between dark comedy of manners and genuine psychological thriller, but she consistently captures the telling moments in everyday encounters, and writes seductively complex characters.
Publishers Weekly


In her fifth novel, Ullman demonstrates her expertise in inhabiting the minds of complex characters, including Milla’s grieving parents; a neighbor who may have been the last to see Milla alive; Siri’s aging mother; Siri’s elder daughter, who has a violent temper; and, of course, the beleaguered couple, Siri and Jon. Readers who appreciate an unconventional narrative flow will find this a deeply moving story of troubled relationships and unsettled memories.
Booklist


(Starred review.) The fifth novel by an award-winning Norwegian author and critic deserves to win her a much larger stateside readership. The latest and best from Ullmann (A Blessed Child, 2008, etc.) resists categorization, except as a literary page-turner.It's a murder mystery. It's a multigenerational psychodrama of a dysfunctional family. And it's a very dark comedy of manners. Yet the authors command is such that it never reads like a pastiche or suffers from jarring shifts of tone.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Cold Song takes its name from the eponymous aria in Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur. Jon Dreyer, plagued by writer’s block, listens repeatedly to the late Klaus Nomi’s rendition of “The Cold Song.” What role does wasted talent play in The Cold Song?

2. Why does Milla’s mother send Jon text messages about Milla’s death instead of confronting him directly? What other instances of indirect confrontation do you find in The Cold Song, and why do you think they occur?

3. Examine K.B.’s role in the novel. Why does he remain a minor character, even though his actions spark the central conflict of the story? What other important characters/conflicts arise and then fade into the periphery of the narrative?

4. Jon Dreyer writes to-do lists, e-mails, and text messages in his study, but rarely chapters of his novel. What role do different forms of storytelling play in The Cold Song? How do the stories Siri, Jon, and Jenny tell themselves and each other differ from reality?

5. Alma and Milla share a special relationship. Why doesn’t Alma mention that she’d seen Milla in the woods on the night of her murder?

6. Siri tries to maintain an appearance of calm, despite the chaos she experiences all around her. Why are appearances so important to her? Why does Siri insist on throwing the party for her mother when Jenny doesn’t want one at all? Consider their relationship and her mother’s anger. In what other ways does Jenny “divide” herself (p. 70)? How does this habit influence her other relationships?

7. From the outset of the novel, Siri feels uncomfortable around Milla. Jon feels uncomfortable around his daughter, Alma, and at one point even expresses the worry that his daughter does not understand him. How does Siri’s unease differ from Jon’s?

8. Many characters in the novel are denied a sense of resolution or closure—Jon never completes his novel, Jenny never successfully defeats her alcoholism, and Siri never resolves her uncertain relationship with Milla. At the end of the novel, Amanda tells Siri and Jon, “We can’t move on.” Does the final scene promise resolution for Milla’s parents, or do you think that closure is impossible?

9. The mother-daughter bonds in The Cold Song are tense and riven with secret wounds and grievances. Jenny and Siri, Siri and Alma, even Milla and Amanda have troubled relationships. What significance do these relationships hold for you?

10. Throughout the novel, Milla is depicted from the perspective of many different characters—Simen, Siri, Jon, her parents, etc.—and yet readers rarely gain access into her own mind. She is remembered through photographs, newspaper articles, and other frozen images created by others. In what ways is Milla objectified, viewed as a spectacle more than an autonomous human being? Why is this important?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Cold Storage Alaska 
John Straley, 2014
Soho Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616953065


Summary
An offbeat, often hilarious crime novel set in the sleepy Alaskan town of Cold Storage from the Shamus Award winning author of the Cecil Younger series.
 
Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the town is withering.

Clive “The Milkman” McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother. But Clive doesn’t realize the trouble he’s bringing home. His vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State Trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything, Clive might be going insane—lately, he’s been hearing animals talking to him.

Will his arrival in Cold Storage be a breath of fresh air for the sleepy, depopulated town? Or will Clive’s arrival turn the whole place upside down? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Redwood, California, USA
• Rasied—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., University of Washington
• Awards—Shamus Award; Spotted Owl Award
• Currently—lives in Sitka, Alsaka


John Straley is a poet and author of detective fiction. He currently resides in Sitka, Alaska.

Born in Redwood City, California, Starley grew up in the Seattle, Washingon, area and attended high school in New York City. Straley trained, with encouragement from his parents, to be a horseshoer He attended Grinnell College before transferring to the University of Washington for a degree in writing.

After college and a stint in Eastern Washington, he followed his wife to Sitka, Alaska in 1977. After moving through a number of jobs he became a private investigator and, in 1985, a staff investigator for the Alaska Public Defender. As an investigator, he continued to write.

After being turned down by publishers numerous times, in 1991 he received a tip from friend and anthropologist Richard Nelson that New York City-based Soho Press was interested in detective fiction novels. Upon submitting his manuscript for The Woman Who Married a Bear, Soho Press expressed interest in his work. After a successful run of mysteries that has garnered critical acclaim, he is now looking outside of his trademark Cecil Younger series for future books.

In 2006, he was named writer laureate for the State of Alaska; he served in that position until 2008.

In 2008, Alaska Northwest Books published Straley's The Big Both Ways, a historical fiction work based in the Pacific Northwest. Since then his work has been primarily in creating poetry, except for his 2014 crime story, Cold Storage, Alaska.

Writing
Cecil Younger series
• 1992 - The Woman Who Married a Bear, Shamus Award
• 1993 - The Curious Eat Themselves
• 1996 - The Music of What Happens, Spotted Owl Award
• 1997 - Death and the Language of Happiness
• 1998 - The Angels Will not Care
• 2001 - Cold Water Burning

Later books
• 2008 - The Big Both Ways   
• 2008 - The Rising and the Rain
• 2014 - Storage, Alaska

Short stories
• "Life Before the War" - published in Men from Boys
• "Finding Lou" - published in The Mysterious North
   
Essays
• Numerous essays, published in The Nation and Alaska magazine
• "Love, Crime and Joyriding on a Dead-End Road"—published in The Book of the Tongass (1999) (Author bio rom Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/26/2014.)

Book Reviews
Straley strikes the perfect balance of humor and pathos in this story about the McCahon brothers.
New York Times Book Review


[Straley] writes crime novels populated by perpetrators whose hearts are filled with more poetry than evil.
Wall Street Journal


An in-depth look at small-town life… If you think winter in St. Louis is uncomfortable, try winter in Cold Storage, Alaska.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch


Straley isn’t prolific, but when he does publish a book it’s a gem... The crime aspect of Cold Storage, Alaska is pretty casual. Straley’s mostly interested in his characters and how they interact on a personal level.... It’s always a pleasure to read Straley’s vivid studies of these folks—the slightly cracked, rugged and very funny characters of the Far North.
Seattle Times


[Cold Storage, Alaska] is part crime story, part screwball comedy, peopled with characters you long to spend more time with.
Daily Mail (UK)


Surprisingly moving.... Straley’s lean prose and snappy dialogue—not to mention the book’s few scenes of swift, hard-boiled violence—will likely remind many readers of Elmore Leonard’s classic crime novels.
Richmond Times-Dispatch


Kind, smart and deeply moving… Cold Storage, Alaska is certainly a wild mystery in the vein of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty years or all of Carl Hiaasen, it is just as much an homage to small towns and the people who fill them. What elevates Straley above so much of the competition is how very much he cares about the people and places he writes about.
Alaska Dispatch


Straley reveals his characters with unflinching pride and doesn’t mock or belittle their unique take on life… His description of the human condition as played out by his band of characters ranges from pathetic to amazingly humorous… A joy to read.
Durango Herald


[A]fter serving seven years of a 10-year sentence for drug dealing... [Clive McCahon's] problems are far from over. Aspiring Hollywood screenwriter Jake Shoemaker, his violent partner in crime, wants the large sum that Clive has squirreled away, and Jake won’t take no for an answer.... While there’s little actual mystery, most readers will enjoy spending time with the eccentric residents of Cold Storage.
Publishers Weekly


The nature of small-town life is perfectly rendered here, as are the wonders of coastal Alaska. Not quite as madcap as Carl Hiassen..., Straley's latest adventure in America's last frontier should appeal to those authors' fans as well as those who appreciate an unusual location and set of characters in their mysteries. —Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green
Library Journal


A story of a town with nothing much to offer but rain, salmon fishing, drink and gossip--but that's plenty for Straley to work with. Cold Storage may be "a town that gloried in [its] bad habits... clinging to the side of the mountains with no roads, no cars, and virtually no sense of the outer world," but in Straley's hands, it is rich in character, music, humor and compassion.
Shelf Awareness


Straley, author of The Big Both Ways, has created a wonderfully evocative place in Cold Storage. His evocation of nature and human nature approaches the lyrical, and he seems guided by Faulkner’s dictum that the only thing truly worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
Booklist


The cast of eccentric characters, the sharp, witty dialogue, and the chaotic, frenzied pace of the narrative would do Preston Sturges proud. Readers looking for edge-of-your-seat suspense should look elsewhere, but those who like their crime with a healthy side of humor could hardly do better. Quirky, funny and compulsively readable.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Straley is often identified as a crime novelist, but he is quick to self-identify as an “oddball” of the genre. Is Cold Storage, Alaska crime fiction? Why or why not?

2. While in prison, Clive finds religion, but also picks up the unusual ability to hear animals speak. Do you think Clive is actually able to communicate with animals or is it an expression of something else? How does your response and its counterpoint affect your reading of the book?

3. Straley is often praised for his ability to infuse a sense of place into his novels, especially when he writes about Alaska. Did his descriptions of Cold Storage and rural Alaska feel true? Was it the Alaska you expected?

4. The popular joke in the town about the doctor who offers to boil an egg for his soon-to-be-dead patient displays a certain fatalism, a key part of Cold Storage’s identity and a central theme in the novel. Where else is this acquiescence to fate or destiny on display in the book?

5. If Cold Storage, Alaska were made into a movie, who would you cast as Miles and Clive?

6. Miles and Clive both left town and returned for different reasons: Clive for his fresh start and Miles for a life of quiet, but of course, neither gets what they are looking for. Even so, do you think the brothers ever seem to settle on a notion of “home?”

7. Of small Alaskan villages and the alcoholism and isolation they often engender, Straley’s writes, “In any northern village there is a darkness lurking.” Is Cold Storage ultimately a place of darkness or light?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Collected Stories 
Carol Shields, 2004
HarperCollins
693 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060762049


Summary
With the profound maturity and exquisite eye for detail that never failed to capture readers of her prize-winning novels, Carol Shields dazzles with these remarkable stories. Generous, delightful, and acutely observed, this essential collection illuminates the miracles that grace our lives; it will continue to enchant for years to come. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1935
• Where—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Death—July 16, 2003
• Where—Toronto, Canada
• Education—B.A., Hanover College; M.A., Ottawa University
• Awards—Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction for Larry’s Party,
  1998; Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries, 1995; National
  Book Critics Circle Award for The Stone Diaries, 1994


Carol Shields's characters are often on the road less traveled, and the trip is never boring. She has written about a folklorist, a poet, a maze designer, a translator, even other writers—appropriate professions in novels in which characters struggle to find their own paths in life.

Shields often focused on female characters, most notably in The Stone Diaries, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel documenting the birth, death, and everything in between of Daisy Goodwill. Goodwill's story is told over a century, in various voices, featuring Shields's wry humor and her ability to convey what she has called "the arc of human life."

But don't pigeonhole Shields as a "women's writer." "I have directed a fair amount of energy and rather a lot of rage into that particular corner [of the] problem of men and women, particularly men and women who write and how women's novels are perceived differently from men's," Shields said in a 2001 interview. In 1997's Larry's Party, she swapped genders, writing from the perspective of a male floral designer who discovers a passion for mazes.

Unafraid to experiment with genres, Shields wrote an epistolary novel (A Celibate Season, coauthored with Blanche Howard), a sort of "literary mystery" about the posthumous discovery of a murdered poet's genius (Swann), and short stories (collected in Dressing for the Carnival and other titles). Though she often covered serious topics, she rarely did so without humor. Her novel of mid-life romance, Republic of Love, was called by the New York Times a "touching, elegantly funny, luscious work of fiction," an assessment that could be applied to the bulk of her work.

Shields changed her viewpoint yet again for Unless, but the circumstance was a tragic one. The book, which resurrects the main character from Dressing Up for the Carnival's "A Scarf," was written during the author's battle with breast cancer. "I never want to sound at all mystical about writing,'' she said in a 2002 interview, ''but this book—it just came out." Though not touching on her own illness, Shields did what she had always done—took her own questions and lessons, then used them to produce a story that speaks its own truth.

Shields passed away on July 16, 2003; she was 68.

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is how she responded:

• When I was home sick as a child I used to take several volumes of the Encyclopedia to bed with me. We had a World Book Encyclopedia, which had quite a few pictures in color. I read the volumes randomly, browsing my way through them. I loved the hugeness of the world they confirmed for me, and the notion that that vastness could be organized and identified. You might think I would be humbled by the fact that people—individual intelligences—could become familiar with arcane material, but, in fact, I was deeply encouraged.

Here is Shields on were her favorite books (a fascinating list):

• Emma by Jane Austen. This book was written at the height of Austen's powers, when she felt secure in her footing.

• The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul. The subject is so complex and the approach so original, that I didn't think he'd make it to the end, but he did.

• The Rabbit novels by John Updike. You might think of this as the four books it is, or you might see it as one long novel of the life of an American male in the middle of the 20th century. It is a great accomplishment, this emotional documentation of a human life and the other lives that accompany him.

• Independent People by Halldor Laxness, the Icelandic Nobel Prize winner. This novel has an epic range, looking at the world sometimes through a giant telescope, then concentrating with a magnifying lens on the rambling thoughts of one particular child.

• I love all the books by Alice Munro, who has given the world new ways of looking at the lives of women. She has, in fact, reinvented the shape of the short story.

• Possession by A. S. Byatt captures what many novels leave out: the life of the mind and the excitement of intellectual reflection.

• Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. This book, published in the last year, is about family, about the delicacy and strength that weaves the family into a web.

• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond made me believe (for about ten minutes) that I understood how the world was made. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Taken together, Shields's stories risk seeming like curiously weightless exercises—lightly parodic postmodern turns. Yet this eclectic bundle of fragments also serves to highlight her novelistic gift and heft. When Shields stitches together such vivid patchworks of lives in her longer fiction, she manages to convey the inadequacy, and also the urgent necessity, of words to give us a grip on our discontinuous selves—and a glimpse into the ultimately unknowable worlds of others. Shields's novels do tend to end happily. But they are also haunting because she has made us aware that ''the arabesque of the unfolded self'' (a very Shieldsian phrase from ''Absence'') is always a dance over an abyss.g
Ann Hulbert - New York Times Book Review


Shields, who died in 2003, was best known for her novels (The Stone Diaries; Unless), though she published three collections of stories over as many decades, here elegantly gathered and introduced by fellow Canadian and friend Margaret Atwood. Appearing first is her last unpublished tale, "Segue," about an aging couple in failing health-he a famous novelist, she a writer of sonnets-who grow apart as they take "responsibility for [their] own dying bodies." The story serves as a poignant tribute. Overall, Shields's touch is gorgeously light, her tales capturing brief, evanescent moments in the busy lives of couples, mothers and lonely wives. If a few entries seem too brief or lack development, "Hazel" demonstrates all the elements of Shields's mastery: an ordinary widow, perhaps too polite for her own good, finds a satisfying job as an itinerant kitchen demonstrator and discovers that her timidity and self-effacement can actually be turned to her advantage. From the same collection, the story "Collision" draws on Shields's extended travels and is set in a "small ellipsoid state in eastern Europe," where two lonely people of exotically different background and language collide on a rainy night; the story pursues a separate "biography" of each of the lovers with "every narrative scrap... equally honored." In "Edith-Esther," a story from Shields's last collection, the author prophetically portrays the eponymous protagonist, an 80-year-old novelist, as a "rare bird," pestered by her biographer for "some spiritual breeze" he can put into his book about her. She resists, but the biographer reworks her life the way he wants and in the end, to her dismay, refashions her work as uplifting—the last thing she intended it to be. Uplifting or not, this is a volume full of grace and wisdom.
Publishers Weekly


This author received wide notice during her lifetime, through both healthy sales and critical recognition, the latter including the Pulitzer Prize (for The Stone Diaries). This posthumous publication of her complete short fiction will be welcomed by her many readers and will provide a good introduction for those not familiar with her work. The collection opens with "Segue," the only story not published previously, in which a thoughtful woman maintains balance in the post-9/11 world by composing a sonnet every two weeks, one line per day. Writing's solaces and frustrations appear often: in the amusing "Absence," a sticky keyboard forces a writer to produce a complete piece without the letter i; in "A Scarf," a successful author learns an ironic lesson about being true to one's inner self. Many stories examine the quirks of everyday life, where mystery may lie just behind the ordinary ("Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass," "Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls"). Others explore the seemingly minor domestic crises that can discombobulate relationships ("Accident," "Dressing Down," "Hinterland"). All depict distinctive moments in a variety of settings, with moods ranging from nostalgic to farcical. A moving introduction by Margaret Atwood honors Shields's life and writing. Recommended for most collections.—Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Library Journal


The collected contents of the late (1935-2003) Canadian author's three published story volumes. Various Miracles (1985) showcases Shields's affectionate scrutiny of marital and familial experience, in deft portrayals of a woman's life understood by assembling random "Scenes," a violinist who escapes through music her family's claustrophobic embrace ("A Wood"), a lengthy friendship traced through exchanged Christmas card messages ("Others") and a house-hunting couple's willed flight from the memory of a child's death ("Fragility"). The Orange Fish (1989) focuses mostly on women's imaginative responses to quotidian dilemmas, notably in the tale of a middle-aged couple's Parisian second honeymoon ("Hinterland"), which brings them separate visions of their individual and shared vulnerability and mortality. Shields's fondness for fabulism ("The Harp") and explorations of writers' lives dominates Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000), distinguished chiefly by revelations of how significant meanings inhere in mundane things (the title piece, "Soup du Jour"), and by the comic tale of a resolute nudist ("Dressing Down"): a rich story displaying the rangy inventiveness more prominent in her popular novels (the 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning Stone Diaries, etc.). Shields the storyteller is a somewhat lesser writer, but she's always worth reading.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Carol Shields spoke of becoming a writer because there weren’t enough books that examined women’s friendships and women’s inner lives — or, as she put it, “the kind of book I wanted to read but couldn’t find.” In what ways does Shields’s fiction bring the lives of women to the surface, or into our understanding? What sorts of female experiences does she illuminate?

2. In her novels and stories, Shields often experiments with using different voices. The Stone Diaries shifts between first-, second-, and third-person narrative; one section of Larry’s Party is recorded almost entirely in dialogue; Happenstance is a novel in two parts, one narrated by the husband, one by the wife; the stories in Various Miracles come from a wide variety of narrative standpoints. Discuss point-of-view in Shields’s works, and the importance of telling one’s own stories — as characters or in real life. Also, what is the role of the writer in telling other people’s stories for them?

3. Though she’s lauded as a writer who brought the lives of ordinary people to the page and made them extraordinary, Carol Shields took some exception to the idea in one interview: “I have never known what ‘ordinary’ people means! I don’t think I quite believe in the concept.... There’s no one who isn’t complicated, who doesn’t have areas of cowardice or courage, who isn’t incapable of some things and capable of great acts. I think everyone has that capability. Either we’re all ordinary or else none of us is ordinary.” Discuss the role of ordinary life in Shields’s fiction. How do her above views come across in her writing? Is there a respect for the everyday that you don’t see in works by other writers?

4. Shields once commented that she’d often set up the structure of a novel, determining such elements as how many chapters there would be, and how long they’d be, before she even set out to write. “I need that kind of structure,” she explained. “[S]ometimes I change it. But mostly I don’t.... I love structures, and I love making new structures for novels.” Discuss the overall structures of different novels and how they relate to the content. For example, does Larry Weller’s love of garden mazes say anything about the twenty years of his life covered by Larry’s Party? What meaning can be found in the one-word chapter titles of Unless? How does Shields use, or even undermine, the biography format in The Stone Diaries?

5. “I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people,” Shields once said. “That's why I love biography and the idea of the human life told or shown. Of course, this is why I love novels, too. In novels, you get to hear how people are thinking. That’s why I read fiction.” How does Shields expose and often celebrate the inner lives of her characters? Can you find examples of characters who aren’t really known to those around them? How do their relationships suffer, or thrive, or even just survive, in the face of such distance?

6. How does what you know about Carol Shields as a person affect your reading of her books? Are you able to separate the author from her work? Do you feel the need to? What parallels can you draw between her approach to life and those of her characters? For instance, most of her main characters are women at mid-life, and many of her characters are writers or work in other areas of book publishing (translators, editors, etc.).

7. In interviews about Larry’s Party, Carol Shields commented more than once that men were “the ultimate mystery” to her. Discuss the male characters in Shields’s fiction — both those in prominent roles, like Larry Weller in Larry’s Party or Tom Avery in The Republic of Love, and the many husbands and lovers that seem to populate the sidelines of other stories and novels. How successfully does Shields portray the world of men in her work? Are there common characteristics you can trace between books? Are some of her male characters defined by the women they love? Or is it more often the other way around?

8. Many of Carol Shields’s works explore the ways individuals interact with their communities. Some characters are defined by their loneliness, while others struggle with their responsibilities to the people around them, whether it’s their family or a larger group. Discuss the roles of family and community in Shields’s fiction.

9. Carol Shields has always been well-known for her love of language, and its slipperiness. In what ways does her writing call attention to itself as writing? Are there particular stories or novels that you find playful? Or linguistically complex?

10. Author and literary journalist James Atlas, who edited the series for which Shields wrote her Austen biography, once said about Carol Shields, “she is our Jane Austen.” Compare Shields’s fiction to that of Austen — are there common themes or techniques? What other major authors would you compare Shields to, and why? Where does her work fit into our literary canon?
(Questions found on Barnes & Noble site.)

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The Collection  (The DeWitt Agency Files, 1)
Lance Charnes, 2016
Wombat Media Group
ISBN-13: B01LXEL3PW (Kindle); 2940156957736 (Nook)



Summary
Four years ago, what Matt Friedrich learned at work put him in prison. Yesterday, it earned him a job. Tomorrow, it may kill him.

Matt learned all the angles at his old Los Angeles gallery: how to sell stolen art, how to "enhance" a painting’s history, how to help buyers hide their purchases from their spouses or the IRS. He made a load of money doing it—money he poured into the lawyer who worked a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney.

Matt’s out on parole and hopelessly in debt with no way out... until a shadowy woman from his past recruits him to find a cache of stolen art that could be worth millions.

Now Matt’s in Milan, impersonating a rich collector looking for deals. He has twenty days to track down something that may not exist for a boss who knows a lot more than she’s telling. He’s saddled with a tough-talking partner who may be out to screw him and up against a shady gallerist whom Matt tried to send to prison.

His parole officer doesn’t know he’s left the U.S. Worse yet, what Matt’s looking for may belong to the local branch of the Calabrian mafia.

Matt’s always been good at being bad. If he’s good enough now, he gets a big payday with the promise of more to come. But one slip in his cover, one wrong word from any of the sketchy characters surrounding him, could hand Matt a return trip to jail...or a long sleep in a shallow grave. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A. University of California, Berkeley; M.S.,California State University, Long Beach
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California


Lance Charnes has been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer and Jeopardy! contestant, and is now an emergency management specialist. He’s had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. His Facebook author page features spies, archaeology and art crime.

Lance is the author of the international thriller DOHA 12, the near-future thriller SOUTH, and the DEWITT AGENCY FILES series of international art-crime novels. All are available in trade paperback and digital editions. He's also a frequent contributor to Macmillan's Criminal Element website. (From the author.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow Lance on Facebook.

Discussion Questions
1. Matt is a cheat and liar. On the other hand, so were many of his gallery clients, except what they did was (usually) legal. Matt only conned people he thought could easily afford it. Discuss Matt’s past and present actions in relation to the hierarchy of criminal behavior. How bad do you think he is?

2. Matt stayed with and tried to care for his severely bipolar wife even as it caused him to slowly destroy his own life. Have you ever had to care for an incurably ill loved one? What sacrifices did you have to make? How far would you go morally or legally in order to keep a sick loved one safe and his/her condition stable? At what point do you say "enough"?

3. How does the depiction of art-related crime in The Collection square with what you’ve seen on television and in films? The use of stolen art as collateral for drug deals is a real phenomenon. What other uses do you think criminals have for stolen or looted artworks?

4. Who was your favorite character, and why? Who was your least-favorite character, and why? Who was the strongest character, and what made him/her seem that way to you?

5. Is Carson’s brusque, profane manner a defensive front or a moral defect? Why do you think she’s this way? Use examples from the text to support your conclusion.

6. In their first dinner in Milan, Matt says to Carson, "I’ve never been around a woman like you. You don’t know how to talk to me? I don’t know how to talk to you either" (p. 83 of the print edition). How much do cultural norms and expectations color your interactions with other people? Think back to the last time you met or worked with someone who, like Matt and Carson, didn’t fit his/her gender stereotypes. How did it affect your interaction with him/her?

7. What do you think really happened to Belknap? Why?

8. Matt accepts Allyson’s job offer because the high pay can help him get rid of his massive debts. However, the work’s potentially dangerous, and he’ll be helping people he finds distasteful or holds in contempt. Have you ever had to make that kind of personal or professional tradeoff—payoff vs. risk or conscience? Was it worth it? What would you have done in Matt’s place?

9. Is Gianna a victim or opportunist (or both)? Why? Whose side do you think she’s really on? Do you agree with Matt that "Gianna’s the nearest thing we’ve got to an innocent in this story" (p. 265 in the print edition)?

10. With which character do you identify with most closely? Why?

11. Would you have a relationship with someone like Matt or Carson? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Collector
John Fowles, 1963
Little, Brown & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316290234

Summary
Hailed as the first modern psychological thriller, The Collector is disturbing, engrossing, unforgettable—the story of a lonely young man, who collects butterflies, and the girl he kidnaps and holds prisoner in his cellar.

This brilliant tale of obsessive love is John Fowles' debut novel and immediately established him as a major contemporary novelist. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic were dazzled by its simplicity and power, calling it a "remarkable tour de force" (The New Yorker) and "a haunting and memorable book" (Times Literary Supplement). (Adapted from the publisher.)

The novel was adapted to film in 1965 and starred Terence Stamp and Samanatha Eggar.

Author Bio
• Birth—March 31, 1926
• Where—Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, UK
• Death—November 5, 2005
• Where—Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK
• Education—University of Edinburg; B.A. Oxford University
• Awards—Silver Pen Award

John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times (of London) named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945."

Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the son of Gladys May Richards and Robert John Fowles. Gladys Richards belonged to an Essex family originally from London as well. The Richards family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea during 1918, as Spanish Flu swept through Europe, for Essex was said to have a healthy climate. Robert met Gladys Richards at a tennis club in Westcliff-on-Sea during 1924. Though she was ten years younger, and he in bad health from the World War I, they were married a year later on 18 June 1925. Nine months and two weeks later Gladys gave birth to John Robert Fowles.

Fowles spent his childhood attended by his mother and by his cousin Peggy Fowles, 18 years old at the time of his birth, who was his nursemaid and close companion for ten years. Fowles attended Alleyn Court Preparatory School. The work of Richard Jefferies and his character Bevis were Fowles's favorite books as a child. He was an only child until he was 16 years old.

Education
During 1939, Fowles won a position at Bedford School, a two-hour train journey north of his home. His time at Bedford coincided with the Second World War. Fowles was a student at Bedford until 1944. He became Head Boy and was also an athletic standout: a member of the rugby-football third team, the Fives first team and captain of the cricket team, for which he was bowler.

After leaving Bedford School during 1944, Fowles enrolled in a Naval Short Course at Edinburgh University. Fowles was prepared to receive a commission in the Royal Marines. He completed his training on 8 May 1945 — VE Day. Fowles was assigned instead to Okehampton Camp in the countryside near Devon for two years.

During 1947, after completing his military service, Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he stopped studying German and concentrated on French for his BA. Fowles was undergoing a political transformation. Upon leaving the marines he wrote, "I ... began to hate what I was becoming in life—a British Establishment young hopeful. I decided instead to become a sort of anarchist."

It was also at Oxford that Fowles first considered life as a writer, particularly after reading existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Though Fowles did not identify as an existentialist, their writing, like Fowles', was motivated from a feeling that the world was wrong.

Teaching Career
Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher. His first year after Oxford was spent at the University of Poitiers. At the end of the year, he received two offers: one from the French department at Winchester, the other "from a ratty school in Greece," Fowles said, "Of course, I went against all the dictates of common sense and took the Greek job."

During 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetsai, a critical part of Fowles's life, as the island which would later serve as the setting of his novel The Magus. Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside of the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow exiles. But during 1953 Fowles and the other masters at the school were all dismissed for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.

On the island of Spetsai, Fowles had grown fond of Elizabeth Christy, who was married to one of the other teachers. Christy's marriage was already ending because of the relationship with Fowles, and though they returned to England at the same time, they were no longer in each other's company.

It was during this period that Fowles began drafting The Magus. His separation from Elizabeth did not last long. On 2 April 1954 they were married and Fowles became stepfather to Elizabeth's daughter from her first marriage, Anna. After his marriage, Fowles taught English as a foreign language to students from other countries for nearly ten years at St. Godric's College, an all-girls in Hampstead, London.

Writing Career
During late 1960, though he had already drafted The Magus, Fowles began working on The Collector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a year making revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, the publisher at Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book was published during 1963 and when the paperback rights were sold in the spring of that year it was "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel," according to Howard. The success of his novel meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to a literary career. The Collector became a film in 1965.

Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second book published be The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, he set about collating all the drafts he had written of what would become his most studied work, The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences in Greece.

During 1965 Fowles left London, moving to a farm, Underhill, in Dorset, where the isolated farm house became the model for "The Dairy" in the book Fowles was then writing, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farm was too remote, "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, and during 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he lived in Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema.

The film version of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allen was asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus."

The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by the British playwright Harold Pinter (who would later receive a Nobel laureate in Literature) and was nominated for an Oscar.

Later Years
Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. His works The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1981), and A Maggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. His wife Elizabeth died in 1990.

Fowles became a member of the Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from 1979–1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild stroke. Fowles was involved occasionally in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote letters to the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles was generally considered reclusive. In 1998, he was quoted in the New York Times Book Review as saying, "Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation."

Fowles, with his second wife Sarah by his side, died in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles from Lyme Regis on 5 November 2005. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
 There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller.
Alan Bryce-Jones - New York Times Book Review

The Collector is a work of art .It both stirs the mind and satisfies.
Honor Tracy - New Republic

What happens is both symbolic and all too real, beautiful and sickening at once as resonant as a myth.
Guy Davenport - National Review

A bravura first novel. As a horror story, the book is a remarkable tour de force.
Whitney Balliett - New Yorker 

Discussion Questions
1. Miranda considers herself an aesthete and often discusses her fondness for beauty in her journals. Why do you think art and beauty are so important to her? What did you make of Miranda’s frequent references to literature, art, and pop culture throughout the novel? Did these cultural touchstones help establish the novel’s timeframe and setting? Were any of them unfamiliar to you? What were some of your favorites?

2. Why do you think John Fowles decided to alternate between two narrators in The Collector? How might the novel have been different if told from just one point of view? Who do you think is a more reliable narrator, Frederick or Miranda?

3. In reference to the kidnapping, Frederick says that a lot of people would do the same thing, given the money and the opportunity (page 20). Do you think this is true? Do you think that money can change the way a person behaves within society? Or is Frederick delusional?

4. What do you think happened to Frederick to makehim the way he is? Do you think he was born a sociopath? Is Frederick evil, or just misguided?

5. Clegg finds it easier to fantasize about Miranda when she is asleep or not in front of him, and finds it especially difficult when she is talking to him. Why do you think this is?

6. How do you think Clegg’s experiences with women before he kidnaps Miranda affect the way he treats her while she is his captive? Why do you think Clegg is so confused about his sexuality?

7. Feminism was a burgeoning social issue at the time that John Fowles wrote The Collector. How do you think it infl uenced him?

8. Miranda relates in her journals a somewhat stormy relationship with an older artist whom she refers to as G.P. He never becomes a larger part of the plot, though. Why do you think Fowles chose to include him in the narrative?

9. Clegg and Miranda are often struggling to gain power over each other, even though she is his prisoner. What do you think this says about their respective personalities?

10. Miranda is convinced that, should she escape, she should like to “be somebody” and make something of herself in the world. Do you feel that this makes her death ultimately more poignant?

11. There are a few points in the novel where a reader might reasonably think Miranda would be rescued. Did you imagine that she eventually would be?

12. Do you think Frederick will kidnap the girl he alludes to near the end of the book? Were you upset that Miranda did not see her family again before she died? If you could write a postscript to The Collector, what would it be?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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