The Collector's Apprentice 
B.A. Shapiro, 2017
Algonquin Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203580


Summary
A page-turning historical thriller of art and revenge, of history and love, that will transport readers to 1920s Paris and America.
 
It’s the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris—broke, disowned, and completely alone.

Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiance, George Everard.

To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father’s art collection, prove her innocence—and exact revenge on George.
 
When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates—including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined.

As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives …and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley’s murder.
 
B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector’s Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 28, 1951
• Where—Connecticut, USA
• Education—M.A., Ph.D., Tufts University
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts


Her own words:
I am the author of seven novels (The Murialist, The Art Forger, The Safe Room, Blind Spot, See No Evil, Blameless and Shattered Echoes), four screenplays (Blind Spot, The Lost Coven, Borderline and Shattered Echoes) and the non-fiction book, The Big Squeeze.

In my previous career incarnations, I have directed research projects for a residential substance abuse facility, worked as a systems analyst/statistician, headed the Boston office of a software development firm, and served as an adjunct professor teaching sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. I like being a novelist the best.

I began my writing career when I quit my high-pressure job after the birth of my second child. Nervous about what to do next, I said to my mother, "If I'm not playing at being superwoman anymore, I don't know who I am." My mother answered with the question: "If you had one year to live, how would you want to spend it?" The answer: write a novel and spend more time with my children. And that's exactly what I did. Smart mother.

After writing my novels and raising my children, I now live in Boston with my husband Dan and my dog Sagan. And yes, I'm working on yet another novel but have no plans to raise any more children. (From the author's website.

Book Reviews
[A] clever and complex tale of art fraud, theft, scandal, murder, and revenge.… Shapiro’s portrayal of the 1920s art scene in Paris and Philadelphia is vibrant…; readers will be swept away by this thoroughly rewarding novel.
Publishers Weekly


Shapiro once again successfully combines the work of real artists and the analysis of art movements with a cast of dramatic characters, both fictional and not. Her latest is an absorbing read where what is right and wrong constantly shift. —Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.
Library Journal


Lush, atmospheric.… Shapiro’s romantic and suspenseful art thriller will delight historical- and crime-fiction fans
Booklist


A woman with a shameful past… finds herself… [helping to build] one of the world's great private art collections.… Less might have been more in this increasingly convoluted fusion of history and fantasy centered on an ambiguous central figure.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. One of the themes of the book is that we see only what we want to see, and that we’re easily swayed by outward appearances. Do you think this is true? How does Shapiro develop this theme throughout the novel? Have you had any experiences in which you were fooled by someone pretending to be someone or something they weren’t?

2. The majority of The Collector’s Apprentice takes place in the 1920s and is told from Vivienne’s point of view. However, there are also portions narrated by Paulien that take place before the main storyline, and portions narrated by an older Vivienne that take place after the main storyline. How did this structure affect your reading experience?

3. There are also intermittent chapters from George’s point of view. How different would the story have been without the antagonist’s take? What do we learn about Vivienne/Paulien from seeing her through George’s eyes?

4. The post-Impressionists pushed beyond the work of the Impressionists by shifting focus from what a subject actually looks like to how the artist perceives it. Why do you think Shapiro chose this particular artistic backdrop for her novel? Why was the public so shocked by the post-Impressionists at first, and how do you think their work came to be appreciated over time?

5. As in many of her books, in The Collector’s Apprentice, Shapiro explores the question of what her characters are willing to do to get what they want. Does Paulien cross an ethical line to get what she wants? Does Vivienne? George? Edwin? Do you think any of their morally ambiguous decisions are justified?

6. Another question that arises from the story is: Who owns art? If you purchase a piece of art, does it belong to you forever, and are you free to destroy it or keep other people from enjoying it? Can anyone "own" great art, or is there a cultural obligation to share it with the world? Was Bradley right to control who could see his artwork? Was his real-life counterpart, Albert Barnes?

7. Do you think that either Paulien or George would be able to successfully accomplish their disguises and changes of identity today? Would the internet and social media make it more or less difficult?

8. Do you believe Paulien was in any way responsible for what George did to her family? Why or why not?

9. There are a number of love stories in The Collector’s Apprentice. Do you believe that any of these relationships were "true love"? Did Paulien love George? Did Vivienne? Did Bradley love Vivienne? Did Vivienne love Matisse and did he love her? Did George love either Paulien or Vivienne? Is a man like George capable of love?

10. Shapiro based George on her study of sociopaths, imbuing him with many of the characteristics of this kind of personality disorder, particularly his lack of empathy. Does his inability to put himself in someone else’s shoes hurt him or help; him? Have you ever encountered anyone with these traits in your own life?

11. In The Collector’s Apprentice, Shapiro imagines interactions between persons who actually existed and characters she has created. Does this enhance or detract from the believability of the story?

12. Shapiro included an author’s note that explains some of the discrepancies between the story and historical events. Was this helpful? What are some of the questions you would ask her if you could?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Collectors 
David Baldacci, 2006
Grand Central Publishing
525 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446615631


Summary
Oliver Stone and his Camel Club are in a race to stop a man who is determined to auction off America to the highest bidder: Roger Seagraves is selling America to her enemies, one devastating secret at a time.

On a local level, Annabelle Conroy, the most gifted con artist of her generation, is becoming a bit of a Robin Hood as she plots a monumental scam against one of the most ruthless businessmen on earth. As the killings on both fronts mount, the Camel Club fights the most deadly foes they've ever faced. (From the publisher.)

The two plots intertwine in this Camel Club thriller. One thread follows Annabelle, a who is skillfully planning the casino heist of the century. Meanwhile, Seagraves has set his sights on high-echelon federal officials. Fortunately, the informal Camel Club of crime sleuths reconvenes to stop these dangerous shenanigans. The allure of the story resides in how they do it. A crisp action thriller. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Richmond, Virginia, USA
• Education——B.A., Virginia Commonwealth University; J.D.,
   University of Virginia
• Currently—Northern Virginia


David Baldacci's authoritative legal thrillers operate on the irresistible notion that a sinister undercurrent threads through the country's most powerful institutions.

While his stories hinge on the complex machinations behind the presidency, the FBI, the Supreme Court and other spheres of influence, Baldacci (a former Washington, D.C.-based attorney) finds his way into a mystery through the eyes of the innocents. Semi-innocents, at least: small players who often don't realize they're players at all end up hunting down answers, and their hunt becomes the reader's.

According to Baldacci, reading John Irving's The World According to Garp convinced him that he wanted to be a novelist. Absolute Power—in which a thief finds himself accidentally connected to a murder involving the president and the ensuing coverup—was hardly Irvingesque; but it did begin Baldacci's friendly relationship with the bestseller lists, which has continued over his writing career.

Baldacci's style is brief and plot-driven, but he's not afraid to linger on macabre and vivid details, such as a rosary clenched in a plane crash victim's hand, or hard-learned lessons from a sniper's life (pack your food so you can find it at night, by touch). These small but memorable—indeed, almost cinematic—details give his books another layer that distinguishes them from the average potboiler.

Although the author has occasionally departed from his usual fare (examples include the tenderhearted coming-of-age tale Wish You Well and the holiday-themed adventure The Christmas Train), it is high-octane thrillers that are his true stock in trade. Whether it's a taut stand-alone or a new installment in his "Camel Club" series, readers know when they crack the spine of a new Baldacci book, they're in for an action-packed page-turner.

Extras
• Baldacci was a trial lawyer and a corporate lawyer for nine years in Washington, D.C.

• He worked his way through college as a Pinkerton security guard and by washing and detailing 18-wheel trucks.

• Baldacci writes under his own name except when published in Italy, where he uses a pseudonym because it is the homeland of his ancestors.

• Bill Clinton selected The Simple Truth as his favorite novel of 1998, according to Baldacci's web site. (From Barnes and Noble.)

Book Reviews
In bestseller Baldacci's entertaining if overly long sequel to The Camel Club (2005), renegade CIA agent Roger Seagraves has set himself up in the business of freelance assassination and selling our country's secrets to the highest bidder. The Camel Club, a group of four dysfunctional crime solvers headed by ex-CIA assassin Caleb Shaw, becomes involved with Seagraves through a killing at the Library of Congress, where one of the club members works. Meanwhile, an enigmatic young woman, Annabelle Conroy, is assembling a team to engineer a "long con," a $33 million scam targeting Jerry Bagger, the sleazy owner of an Atlantic City casino. This time around, Baldacci wisely tones down the wackiness of the club members, focusing instead on bringing Seagraves to justice while Annabelle works her ingenious scam. The splicing of the two plots is problematic, but Baldacci sacrifices a bit of believability to cobble together a new cast of characters destined to continue fighting the forces of evil in the next installment.
Publishers Weekly

Helped by a beautiful grifter, the "Camel Club"—the four-man band of conspiracy theorists—returns to battle a threat to national security. Annabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire; Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark; and Roger Seagraves, master assassin. All come straight from central casting. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy's world. She's assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City's most notorious and ruthless casino owner. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east. There's little drama Players act out their part; marks fall. The big score comes off without a hitch. The two plots intersect halfway through. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga. A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.
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)

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The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Wayne Johnston, 1998
Knopf Canada / Knopf Doubleday
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385495431


Summary
A mystery and a love story spanning five decades, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is an epic portrait of passion and ambition, set against the beautiful, brutal landscape of Newfoundland.

In this widely acclaimed novel, Johnston has created two of the most memorable characters in recent fiction: Joey Smallwood, who claws his way up from poverty to become New Foundland's first premier; and Sheilagh Fielding, who renounces her father's wealth to become a popular columnist and writer, a gifted satirist who casts a haunting shadow on Smallwood's life and career.

The two meet as children at school and grow to realize that their lives are irreversibly intertwined, bound together by a secret they don't know they share. Smallwood, always on the make, torn between love of country and fear of failure, is as reluctant to trust the private truths of his heart as his rival and savior, Fielding—brilliant, hard-drinking, and unconventionally sexy. Their story ranges from small-town Newfoundland to New York City, from the harrowing ice floes of the seal hunt to the lavish drawing rooms of colonial governors, and combines erudition, comedy, and unflagging narrative brio in a manner reminiscent of John Irving and Charles Dickens.

A tragicomic elegy for the "colony of unrequited dreams" that is Newfoundland, Wayne Johnston's masterful tribute to a people and a place establishes him as a novelist who is as profound as he is funny, with an impeccable sense of the intersection where private lives and history collide. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 22, 1958
• Where—Goulds, Newfoundland, Canada
• Education—B.A., Memorial University of
   Newfoundland; M.A. University of New
   Brunswick
• Awards—Charles Taylor Prize for Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario


Wayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. After a brief stint in pre-Med, Wayne obtained a BA in English from Memorial University. He worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing.

En route to being published, Wayne earned an MA (Creative Writing) from the University of New Brunswick. Then he got off to a quick start. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was just 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year.

Subsequent books consistently received critical praise and increasing public attention. The Divine Ryans was adapted to the silver screen in a production starring Academy Award winner Pete Postlethwaite—Wayne wrote the screenplay. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoir dealing with his grandfather, his father and Wayne himself was tremendously well received and won the most prestigious prize for creative non-fiction awarded in Canada—the Charles Taylor Prize.

Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York spent extended periods of time on bestseller lists in Canada and have also been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced (for both fiction and non-fiction).

Wayne has always been something of a natural athlete—for example, he was once part of a championship ball-hockey team. Luckily (in retrospect) when he was still in the formative stages of considering future career paths, his ice hockey equipment, which was carefully stowed in a garbage bag in the basement was accidentally put out with the trash. The world of literature benefited; is is possible that the National Hockey League lost a star in the process? (From the author's website & Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
[T]his prodigious, eventful, character-rich book is a noteworthy achievement: a biting, entertaining and inventive saga.... [Its] themes include love and betrayal but also the remorseless contest for power that takes place in both the psychic and the political spheres..... It all adds up to a brilliant and bravura literary performance by Johnston.
Richard Bernstein - New York Times


Johnston...has set out to write the definitive Newfoundland novel, and yes, he is well aware of how that phrase will ring in the ears of outsiders.... [T]he book has about it an aura of something akin to magic realism, or its northern equivalent—nothing remotely supernatural occurs, and yet...causes and effects often seem to have been paired off by a particularly whimsical deity.... A novel of cavernous complexity that nevertheless doesn't overwhelm the reader, who can repose in pure narrative without second thoughts—[an] eloquent anti-epic.
Luc Sante - New York Times Book Review


Throughout Joe's narrative of his unlikely rise, the author interrupts with selections from Fielding's hysterically sarcastic Condensed History of Newfoundland, her brutal newspaper columns, and her emotional diary. The friction between all these voices generates a tremendous degree of light and heat in this icebound story.... Joe says, "Newfoundland stirred in me, as all great things did, a longing to accomplish or create something commensurate with it." Clearly, Johnston has done just that.
Ron Charles - Chistian Science Monitor


Treating the history of Newfoundland as a bad joke—whose punch line is finally delivered on April 1, 1949, when the in-limbo British territory joins in confederation with Canada—Johnston's most compelling character (in a book that teems with eccentrics, drunks, swindlers and snobs), Sheilagh Fielding, writes a condensed version of the classic History of Newfoundland. The terse and mordant chapters of this masterwork, to which she devotes all her energies...are interleaved in the narrative to great effect. The bulk of the book comprises the autobiographical musings of historical figure Joe Smallwood, whose rise through local socialist activism to international political eminence culminates in his orchestration of the treaty with Canada. It is dwarf-sized Smallwood's tireless ambition, as well as his crippling romantic insecurity, that keep him forever at arm's length from his childhood love and best friend Fielding....each harboring the shame and fury of a secret from their school days that has gone unresolved. In a book of this magnitude and inventiveness—some of Fielding's quips are hilarious, and Johnston proves himself cunning at manipulating and animating historical fact—it is perhaps the device of this lifelong secret that most tests the reader's faith: that full disclosure resolves all the complicated mysteries of this book is slightly disappointing. Nonetheless, the variety provided by Fielding's writings is delightful, and this brilliantly clever evocation of a slice of Canadian history establishes Johnston as a writer of vast abilities and appeal.
Publishers Weekly


Angela's Ashes meets Moby Dick meets All the King's Men! Famed and feted in Canada, this fictional biography of Joe Smallwood, Liberal first premier of Britain's former colony of Newfoundland, and his longtime (fictional) love, Shelagh Fielding, is sure to set off sparks here. Smallwood governed for 23 years; the story of how he achieved his elevated position after a childhood of poverty and want, and what he surrendered along the way, is mesmerizing. The central scenes of class warfare are preceded and followed by a beautiful and horrifying set piece about a sealing voyage. Joe's story is interspersed with hilarious excerpts from the Condensed History of Newfoundland by Shelagh Fielding, easily one of the more original characters in fiction. Carrying a "purely ornamental" cane since girlhood, almost constantly sipping from a flask of Scotch, she is a TB victim, a political writer with no visible principles, and a railroad worker who won't join a union to keep her job—and ends up being fascinating whatever she does. Johnston's first novel to be published here, this is recommended for all fiction collections.
—Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY
Library Journal


The subject of this immensely satisfying neo-Victorian is ...the generously imagined fictional biography of a real historical figure, Joseph Smallwood, the self-styled Father of Confederation who shepherded the former British dominion into full union with Canada in 1949. Johnston's rich narrative is presented in three forms: Joe Smallwood's own detailed recall of his life is punctuated by excerpts from the Journal of Shelagh Fielding, his lifelong friend and enemy...and also by snippets from her hilarious Condensed History of Newfoundland, a mock-heroic and episodic chronicle.... Smallwood is a wonderfully convincing tragicomic figure, and Fielding an even better one: an embittered alcoholic enslaved to a secret she withholds throughout the pair's 40-year love-hate relationship. Only in the parallel secret harbored by Smallwood...does Johnston's superb plot deviate from its overall power and originality. As absorbing as fiction can be and a marvelous introduction to the work of one of our continent's best writers.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Both Joe and his father suffer from the fact that their last name adorns a large iron boot hanging at the entrance to the harbor, advertising the family shoe store. Why is the boot so oppressive that both Joe and his father sometimes dream about it? Why does Joe finally take it down?

2. Joe is haunted by the sense of his own insignificance: "It seemed to me that unless I did something that historians thought was worth recording, it would be as if I had never lived, that all the histories in the world together formed one book, not to warrant inclusion in which was to have wasted one's life" [p. 454]. Why does he feel this way? What is the relationship between the ambitions of Joe Smallwood and his paternal heritage of small-time shopkeeping, alcoholism, and failure? How do his experiences at Bishop Feild school affect his ideas about himself?

3. Johnston has created the structure of the book by interspersing Joe Smallwood's first-person narrative with excerpts from Fielding's journal, her History of Newfoundland, and her "Field Day" newspaper columns. What is the effect, as you read, of the interplay of these parts?

4. Smallwood's conversion to socialism takes place after his haunting vision of the frozen bodies of the sealers who died on the ice. Would you say that his walk across the island to unionize the men is Smallwood's most heroic act in the novel? How does the rest of his career compare with the scale of this exploit?

5. Returning to Newfoundland after five years in New York, Joe says, "It was as if I saw, for a fleeting second, the place as it had been while I was away, and as it would be after I was gone, separate from me, not coloured by my past or my perceptions.... A kind of hurt surged up in my throat, a sorrow that seemed to have no object and no cause, which I tried to swallow down but couldn't" [pp. 211-12]. Why is this such a painful moment for him?

6. Johnston has given Joe Smallwood the role of protagonist and the main first-person narrative, but some reviewers have expressed the opinion that Sheilagh Fielding is a more compelling character. Is Fielding ultimately more admirable than Smallwood? Whose life story is more interesting?

7. Joe Smallwood is not mentioned in Fielding's History, which ends in 1923 when Sir Richard Squires is prime minister. Why does Fielding end her history there?

8. Why does Smallwood's marriage proposal to Fielding go awry? When he next sees her, she tells him with her customary irony that she has been "reduced to hermiting because you broke my heart" [p. 228]. How true is this statement? Why does Smallwood marry Clara Oates and not Fielding?

9. Freezing to death on the Bonavista branch line, Smallwood imagines his own obituary [p. 225]. What makes this scene so touching and so comical? Joe is saved by Fielding, who here as at other crucial moments makes herself indispensable. Does Smallwood perform the same function in her life? Is their relationship, on the whole, reciprocal in terms of giving and receiving?

10. Sir Richard Squires tells Joe, "Power is what you want, though I'll never get you to admit it. You picked socialism because you thought it was your best way of getting ahead.... You're not an artist, you're not a scientist, you're not an intellectual. All that's left to you is politics" [p. 270]. How accurate is Sir Richard's assessment of Joe's character? Joe responds that "the distinguishing characteristic of the true socialist...was selflessness" [p. 271]. Do selflessness and self-interest necessarily conflict?

11. Some Canadian readers have been troubled by the liberties that Wayne Johnston has taken with the life of Newfoundland's first premier. Is the book more purely fictional, and therefore more purely enjoyable, for American readers, for whom Smallwood is not a known entity? It appears, for instance, that Johnston created the character of Fielding wholly from his own imagination. Why do you suppose he decided that Fielding was needed as a counterpart to Joe Smallwood? What would the novel have been like without the presence of Fielding? What are the particular complications and pleasures of fiction that is based on, but not entirely true to, historical reality?

12. The mystery of the anonymous letter to The Morning Post is not solved until the end of the novel, and it keeps Smallwood in the dark about some of the motivations of Fielding's character as well as her true feelings for him. How satisfying is the resolution of this issue? Does the revelation about Fielding's father highlight aspects of her character, or explain in part why she has conducted her life as she has?

13. Why does Joe bring Judge Prowse's A History of Newfoundland with him to New York City? What is the symbolic significance of this book for various characters in the novel?

14. Why does Johnston wait until late into the novel to reveal Fielding's secret about what happened when she was sixteen? How does this revelation affect your understanding of Fielding's character and her motivations up to this point? Would you say that Fielding is a selfless character?

15. Is confederation a defeat for Newfoundland? Would it have been possible for such a bleak and economically unpromising land to survive as an independent nation? Was Smallwood right to think that, since socialism had failed, confederation was the only way to improve the lives of the outlanders?

16. How would you compare the political ideals of the young Smallwood to those of the man who becomes premier of the island after confederation? Has his character changed? What about his core ethical beliefs? Why is he so susceptible to people like Valdmanis?

17. Several reviews have commented on the skill with which Johnston has succeed in creating a novel that is reminiscent of the work of Charles Dickens. If you have read David Copperfield or Great Expectations, how does The Colony of Unrequited Dreams compare with them? What aspects of this book make it so compelling and so memorable?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Color of the Sea 
John Hamamura, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307386076


Summary
Growing up in a time between wars, Sam Hamada finds that the culture of his native Japan is never far from his heart. Sam is rapidly learning the code of the samurai in the late 1930s on the lush Hawaiian Islands, where he is slowly coming into his own as a son and a man.

But after Sam strikes out for California where he meets Keiko, the beautiful young woman destined to be the love of his life, he faces crushing disappointment—Keiko's parents take her back to Japan, forcing Keiko to endure their attempts to arrange her marriage. It is a trial complicated by how the Japanese perceive her—as too Americanized to be a proper Japanese wife and mother—and its pain is compounded by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which ignites the war that instantly taints Sam, Keiko, and their friends and family as enemies of the state."

Sam himself is most caught between cultures when, impressed by his knowledge of Japanese, the U.S. Army drafts and then promotes him, sending him on a secret mission into a wartime world of madness where he faces the very real risk of encountering his own brother in combat.

From the tragedies of the camps through to the bombing of Hiroshima, where Sam's mother and siblings live, Sam's very identity both puts his life at risk and provides the only reserve from which he can pull to survive. In this beautifully written historical epic about a boy in search of manhood, a girl in search of truth, and two peoples divided by war, Sam must draw upon his training, his past, and everything he has learned if he's ever to span his two cultures and see Keiko, or his family, again. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1945
• Where—U.S. Army hospital, Minnesota, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Alex Award, American Library Assn.; Honor Book,
   Asian/Pacific American Librarians Assn.;
• Currently—lives in Oakland, California, USA

I was born in the final year of World War II. Mom's parents and sister were interned at Rohwer in southern Arkansas. Dad was a GI training Japanese-American translators. Hiroshima was Dad's hometown. His mother and sister survived the atomic bomb.

My childhood was a puzzle—starting with kindergarten in Grant Heights, just north of Tokyo. An all-American town, complete with miniature white picket fences, where the supermarket was called PX and the surrounding landscape of green and golden rice fields was dotted with low small bowl-perfect hills, each hiding a domed cave in which farmers stored tools and rice. Mom scolded me for playing there, said the hills were old bomb shelters, but never explained what that meant. I spent summer vacations at Grandma’s house in Hiroshima, 2.5 miles from ground zero. Sometimes in dreams I am still that boy standing at the wire fence that separated Grant Heights from Grandma and Aunt Chizuko and all the others who looked like me, but were called Japanese Nationals, while I was a Japanese-American.

I waited years until I was old enough to ask the right questions and to hear the stories the adults would never share with children. I did not choose these stories, I was born into them. And they shaped me, just as my novel, The Color of the Sea, developed out of the puzzle pieces of my family history. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
True and truly felt. Hamamura has produced a valuable corrective to an often one-sided view of Japan and Japanese Americans during the war years.
San Francisco Chronicle

Through beautifully written prose, artful imagery and achingly real characters, John Hamamura sweeps his reader away to a time in history that shook the world and a love story that will resonate long after the final page.
Asian American Press

Hamamura's broad debut follows a Japanese language teacher raised in Hawaii as he finds love and as the U.S. and Japan drift into war. Isamu "Sam" Hamada, born in Hawaii to Japanese parents and raised in Japan until age nine, leaves Japan in 1930 to be reared by a Japanese-American family in Hawaii, before moving to California. A constant for the intense but likable Sam is his dedication to the martial arts, a passion shared by Yanagi Keiko, the American-born young woman he meets in California. Their love is haunted by an earlier liaison of Sam's, but Keiko and Sam press on until she leaves for Japan in the spring of 1940 to finish high school and, it is planned, marry a man chosen by her grandparents. As the war begins, Keiko's family is deported from Japan to the U.S., while Sam is recruited by the U.S. military intelligence, and a slim second chance comes into view. The romantic material is solid if idealized; various martial arts chapters have a clumsily formal quality; Sam's final military adventure at Okinawa strains credibility; an extended passage on the bombing of Hiroshima is motivated only by placing Sam's parents and siblings there. But Hamamura has a real command of the relevant history and packs a great deal of it into several dense but lucid and accessible story lines.
Publishers Weekly

Presented through a series of short chapters and divided into five major sections, this multilayered first novel spans 1930-47 and recounts the Japanese American experience through the life of Isamu "Sam" Hamada, the Hawaiian-born eldest son and descendant of a samurai family. As a nine-year-old, he leaves his mother and siblings in Japan to work on a Hawaiian plantation with his alcoholic father. Upon the older man's return to Japan, he suddenly dies, leaving Sam to fulfill his destiny as the family's "winning lottery ticket." He moves to California to attend college, and a blooming romance is interrupted by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After proudly serving his country, Sam contemplates suicide through the ancient samurai ritual of seppuku (disembowelment) when he learns the fate of his family back in Hiroshima. Overall, these plot highlights hardly delineate Hamamura's fine characterization. His writing honestly portrays the individual struggles of the immigrant experience as well as defines the equally difficult struggles of their American-born offspring. Hamamura shines as a storyteller and is definitely a name to watch. Highly recommended for Asian American fiction collections and for most public and academic libraries. —Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal

To be a Japanese American in mid-twentieth-century America was to be perceived as neither Japanese nor American, and it is this conflict that informs Hamamura's ambitious coming-of-age novel, in which the fate of two people amid the devastation of war reveals how the promises of honor and the security of love can rescue souls and restore faith. —Carol Haggas
Booklist

This is truly a multicultural story of a young man born in Japan, raised in Hawaii and Japan and forced to confront his nationality as he moves between the Japanese and American culture as he comes of age right before Pearl Harbor. At the age of 13, Isamu, or Sam in America, begins his training as a samurai by learning to see the many colors in everything. His intelligence and calm spirit help him when he moves to Hawaii to be with his father and has to deal with the lower status of the Japanese there. Sam is tricked into a relationship with a young woman who is the mistress of her employer, but his true love is Keiko, a girl he has grown up with. When he receives a letter saying the first girl has had his son, his sense of honor forces him to give up his love for Keiko, and he is torn by his conflicting loves. He is also torn between his loyalty to the US, in spite of the maltreatment of the Japanese Americans, including his family and friends, and his love for Japan. The book is beautifully written, drawing the readers into the character of Sam and creating an unusual picture of that difficult time in Japan's and America's history. —Nola Theiss
KLIATT

Before and during WWII, Japanese-Americans find both countries inhospitable in this heartfelt debut. The protagonists are Isamu-later Americanized to Sam-and Keiko, both beautiful, bright and brave, and both tormented by racism. Sam, whose formative years are spent in Hawaii and California, experiences the unvarnished, in-your-face U.S. brand of hate. Keiko, a California girl, suffers the somewhat subtler Japanese variation when she's taken there by her parents in June 1940. In this tale of two countries, it's up for grabs as to which form of the disease Hamamura considers more virulent. On the day Pearl Harbor is bombed, Sam, 20, is arrested as an enemy alien, and, together with stunned friends and neighbors, unceremoniously hauled off to prison. In response to their cry of, "Why are you treating us like this, we're Americans," the FBI retorts, "No, you're not, you're Japs." Transplanted Keiko encounters the kind of arrogance that is the concomitant of nationalistic fervor. Which are you, a teacher demands-American or Japanese? Both, replies a confused, torn 18-year-old, enraging her teacher. For Keiko, challenges to defend boorish America are frequent, and intensifying, of course, when war breaks out. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; the U.S. employs the atom bomb; and Sam and Keiko, star-crossed lovers, lead complicated and troubled lives against a turbulent background, searching for identity and ways they can be together. A poignant, fresh story told with feeling and sincerity.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. How do the characters and plot express the archetypal symbol of the yin-yang? Which scenes play on the opposition or merging of cultures, East and West? Consider the yin and yang of Keiko, raised to be demur and yielding, traveling with her parents to Japan in search of an arranged marriage... how was her femininity and womanhood redefined by practicing with a warrior’s weapon, the naginata? Consider the yin and yang of Sam, raised to be a samurai, trained in the martial arts...and yet what did his final “tests” demand?

2. Discuss the theme of the collision between fantasy and reality, for example in the samurai jitterbug or the wedding night chapters. How do fantasy and reality color the different kinds of love experienced by the characters? How do the characters react when their dreams and expectations regarding romance bump into the limitations and awkwardness of real life? What do they learn, and how does it change them?

3. Discuss some of the deeper conflicts between philosophical ideals, like those expressed in the characters’ easily uttered words, and their subsequent hard-to-live reality. How are the characters shaped and driven by the theme of promises, kept and broken? By the adherence to the samurai code of honor vs. the demands of true love or the horrors of actual warfare? What aspects of Sam’s martial arts training prove most useful at the ravine and the cave or his visit to the temple? What is the cost of Al and Dewey’s loyalty and patriotism in their quest to rescue the Lost Battalion? What is the quality and nature of Sam’s loyalty, patriotism, and sense of honor and duty, juxtaposed against the atomic bombing of his mother and sister?

4. Consider the yin and yang of East and West. Explore the cultural differences and similarities in their definitions of love, home, enemy, loyalty and sacrifice. In what ways does being a good Japanese clash or harmonize with a character’s need to be a good American and vice versa?

5. Use ideas and scenes from the novel to illuminate how differing cultural demands have shaped your own life. Name your own ancestral origins. Then comparing yourself to the characters in the novel, identify some points where your ancestral cultural values conflict or mesh with the definitions and demands of where you now reside. If your ancestors’ nation, religious beliefs or cultural values were so at odds with (the USA or the country where you live) that you and your family were deemed undesirable aliens or a threat to national security, how would you feel? If the two countries you loved most were at war, and you were ordered to pack no more than two suitcases for yourself and each family member, to leave everything else behind, your car, your pets, your homes and businesses, to be sent to an undisclosed location to live for an unspecified length of time, how would you feel, and more importantly, what would you do?

6. If your friends or neighbors were the ones being targeted and sent away, how would feel, what would you do? Would your feelings and reactions depend on the nature and degree of the threat to the nation? At what point would you close your door and turn your back on your friends or neighbors? If you were drafted into the military during a war against the country where your mother and siblings lived, how would you feel? After the war, how might you feel about journeying home to face the surviving members of your family?

7. How do perseverance, acceptance and forgiveness shape the characters? Discuss the scenes in which compassion and forgiveness toward others or self open the gates to spiritual enlightenment.
(Questions from author's website.)

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The Color Purple 
Alice Walker, 1982
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156028356


Summary
Winner, 1983 Pulitizer Prize

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her.

Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—February 9, 1944
• Where—Eatonton, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
• Awards—National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, 1983;The
  Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the
  Arts; The Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of
  Arts & Letters; The Radcliffe    Institute Fellowship, the
  Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim  Fellowship
• Currently—San Francisco, California

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple.

Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth child of sharecroppers. As well as being African American, her family has Cherokee, Scottish and Irish lineage. Although she grew up in Georgia, she has stated that she often felt displaced there.

In her book Alice Walker: A Life, author Evelyn C. White talks about an incident when Walker, who was eight year old at the time, was injured when her brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. She became blinded in one eye as a result. In the book, White suggests this event had a large impact on Walker, especially when a white doctor in town swindled her parents out of $250 they paid to repair her injury. Walker refers to this incident in her book Warrior Marks, a chronicle of female genital mutilation in Africa, and uses it to illustrate the sacrificial marks women bear that allow them to be "warriors" against female suppression.

After high school, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on full scholarship in 1961 and later transferred up north to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, graduating in 1965. Walker became interested in the U.S. civil rights movement in part due to the influence of activist Howard Zinn, who was one of her professors at Spelman College. Continuing the activism that she participated in during her college years, Walker returned to the South where she became involved with voter registration drives, campaigns for welfare rights, and children's programs in Mississippi.

In 1965, Walker met and later married Mel Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They became the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi . This brought them a steady stream of harassment and even murderous threats from the Ku Klux Klan. The couple had a daughter, Rebecca in 1969, divorcing 9 years later.

Walker's first book of poetry was written while she was still a senior at Sarah Lawrence, and she took a brief sabbatical from writing when she was in Mississippi working in the civil rights movement. Walker resumed her writing career when she joined Ms. Magazine as an editor before moving to northern California in the late 1970s. An article she published in 1975 was largely responsible for the renewal of interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who was a large source of inspiration for Walker's writing and subject matter. In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered Hurston's unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Both women paid for a modest headstone for the gravesite.

In addition to her collected short stories and poetry, Walker's first work of fiction, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. The novel dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled some of Walker's own experiences.

In 1982, Walker would publish what has become her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple. The story of a young black woman fighting her way through not only racist white culture but patriarchal black culture was a resounding commercial success. The book became a bestseller and was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie as well as a 2005 Broadway musical.

Walker wrote several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing The Secret of Joy (which featured several characters and descendants of characters from The Color Purple) and has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other published work.

Her works typically focus on the struggles of African Americans, particularly women, and their struggle against a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle.

Additionally, Walker has published several short stories, including the 1973 "Everyday Use: for your grandmama." This story contains Walker's traditional subjects of feminism and racism against African Americans.She has one child, Rebecca Walker, from her marriage to Mel Leventhal. Rebecca is also an author and in 2000 published a memoir entitled Black White and Jewish, chronicling her parents' relationship and how it affected her childhood. Musician/Comedian Reggie Watts is Walker's second cousin;

Walker discussed her love affair with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman in a December 2006 interview with The Guardian, explaining why they did not go public with their relationship, saying "[the relationship] was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody's business but ours."

In 1983, The Color Purple won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Walker the first African-American woman to win, as well as the National Book Award. Walker also won the 1986 O. Henry Award for her short story "Kindred Spirits", published in Esquire magazine in August of 1985. She has also received a number of other awards for her body of work (see above).

Most recently, on December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Alice Walker into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

Existing criticism of Walker's work has centered largely on the depiction of African American men, in particular relating to the novel The Color Purple. When The Color Purple was published, there was some criticism of the portrayal of male characters in the book. The main concern of much of the criticism was that the book appeared to depict the male characters as either mean and abusive (Albert/"Mister") or as buffoons (Harpo). This criticism intensified when the film was released, as the narrative of the film cut a significant portion of the eventual resolution and reconciliation between Albert and Celie.

Walker addressed some of these criticisms in The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult 1996. The book was a semi-autobiography, discussing specific events in Walker's life, as well as the perspective of experiencing reaction to The Color Purple twice, once as a book and then as the movie was made. The book also chronicled her struggle with Lyme disease. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
The cumulative effect is a novel that is convincing because of the authenticity of its folk voice...a striking and consummately well-written novel. Alice Walker's choice and effective handling of the epistolary style has enabled her to tell a poignant tale of women's struggle for equality and independence.
Mel Watkins - The New York Times 


Alice Walker once told an interviewer, "The black woman is one of America's greatest heroes. . . . She has been oppressed beyond recognition."

The Color Purple is the story of how one of those American heroes came to recognize herself recovering her identity and rescuing her life in spite of the disfiguring effects of a particularly dreadful and personal sort of oppression. The novel focuses on Celie, a woman lashed by waves of deep trouble—abandonment, incest, physical and emotional abuse—and tracks her triumphant journey to self-discovery, womanhood, and independence. Celie's story is a pointed indictment of the men in her life—men who betrayed and abused her, worked her like a mule and suppressed her independence—but it is also a moving portralt of the psychic bonds that exist between women and the indestructible nature of the human spirit.

The story of Celie is told through letters: Celie's letters to God and her sister Nettle, who is in Africa, and Nettle's letters to Celie. Celie's letters are a poignant attempt to understand her own out-of-control life. Her difficulties begin when, at the age of fourteen, she is raped by her stepfather, who then apparently sells away the two children born of that rape. Her sister Nettle runs away to escape the abuse, but Celie is married off to Albert, an older man that she refers to simply as "Mr." for most of the novel. He subjects her to tough work on his farm and beats her at his whim. But Celie finds the path to redemption in two key female role models: Sophia, an independent woman who refuses to be taken advantage of by her husband or any man, and Shug, a sassy, independent singer whom Albert loves. It is Shug who first offers Celie love, friendship, and a radically new way of looking at life.

Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I’m still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking about him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?) Not the little wildflowers. Nothing."
"Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ______'s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall.

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightning, floods, and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Finally, Celie leaves Albert to follow her own desires and discover her own talents and abilities. The novel ends in celebration: Celie is reunited with her sister and even the demonic Albert gets a shot at redemption.
 
The Color Purple is one of the most successful and controversial books ever written by a black woman. It was an international bestseller, won both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1985 was made into a much-discussed movie directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie and novel provoked controversy about Walker's portrayal of black men, which many found offensive and one-dimensional. Of course, Walker’s book has outlived both the movie and its critics; its no-holds-barred portrayal of black male-female relations broadened the trail blazed by her hero, Zora Neale Hurston. The novel is a wonderful fulfillment of its author's mission: to tell the untold stories of those black American heroes who withstood the gaudiest abuse a racist, sexist society could offer and emerged triumphant.
Sacred Fire

Discussion Questions 
1. In Celie’s first letter to God, she asks for a sign to let her know what is happening to her. Discuss the way confusion and deception become powerful tools for those characters who want to take advantage of Celie. Unravel the layers of lies that are told to her throughout the novel, perhaps making lists that compare the fiction she is expected to believe with the truth about her world. These canbe concrete (Celie’s impression that Pa is too poor to provide properly for her, and the later realization that he had more resources than he ever lets on) or abstract (the assertion that Celie is unintelligent, though she demonstrates constant intelligence in planning for her safety and that of her sister). Ask the students to recall their own experience with a revelation: when in their lives has the truth set them free?

2. What is the effect of not knowing Albert’s last name? In early novels, it was not uncommon for authors to use a blank in place of a character’s name, to create the illusion that the character was someone the reader might know—someone whose identity had to be kept secret. What does it mean that Celie must call her husband Mr. ____? When does she at last begin calling him by his first name?

3. Why does Albert tell Harpo to begin beating his wife, Sofia? Why is it so important to Harpo that his wife have no will of her own? Is his relationship with Squeak (Mary Agnes) fulfilling? What do these scenes tell us about the nature of abusive cycles? Is cruelty something that is taught—something that is unnatural? In your opinion, what does it take for someone (male or female) to deserve true respect?

4. Just as Celie grew up being told she was inferior, Shug Avery was always told she was evil. What are your impressions of Shug, from the photo Celie sees early on, to the end of the novel, when Celie and Albert have united in their devotion to Shug? What does Shug teach Celie about being loved, and about finding one’s true self? What price does Sofia pay for being her true self?

5. What does it take for Celie to finally reach her boiling point and reject oppression?

6. What is Celie’s opinion of Grady and his haze of addiction?

7. Why is it difficult for Shug to commit to the people who love her? In what ways does Shug bring both pleasure and heartache to them?

8. Nettie’s life with Corrine and Samuel gives her the first semblance of a healthy family life she has ever known, but Corrine’s jealousy taints this. Only the memory of that crucial early scene, when Celie lays eyes on her daughter at the store, absolves Nettie just before Corrine dies. The Color Purple brims with these intricate turns of plot. List the seemingly minor scenes that turn out to be pivotal in the lives of the characters.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage 
Haruki Murakami, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385352109


Summary
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the long-awaited new novel—a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan—from the award-winning, internationally best-selling author Haruki Murakami.

Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 12, 1949
• Where—Kyoto, Japan
• Education—Waseda University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives near Tokyo


Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. Murakami has been translated into 50 languages and his best-selling books have sold millions of copies.

His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, both in Japan and internationally, including the World Fantasy Award (2006) and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (2006), while his oeuvre garnered among others the Franz Kafka Prize (2006) and the Jerusalem Prize (2009). Murakami's most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009–2010). He has also translated a number of English works into Japanese, from Raymond Carver to J. D. Salinger.

Murakami's fiction, often criticized by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness he weaves into his narratives. He is also considered an important figure in postmodern literature. Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his works and achievement.

In recent years, Haruki Murakami has often been mentioned as a possible recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nonetheless, since all nomination records are sealed for 50 years from the awarding of the prize, it is pure speculation. When asked about the possibility of being awarded the Nobel Prize, Murakami responded with a laugh saying "No, I don't want prizes. That means you're finished.

Recognition / Awards
1982 - Noma Literary Prize for A Wild Sheep Chase.
1985 - Tanizaki Prize for Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
1995 - Yomiuri Prize for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
2006 - World Fantasy Award for Kafka on the Shore.
2006 - Franz Kafka Prize
2007 - Kiriyama Prize for Fiction
2007 - honorary doctorate, University of Liege
2008 - honorary doctorate, Princeton University
2009 - Jerusalem Prize
2011 - International Catalunya Prize
2014 - honorary doctorate, Tufts University

Controversy
The Jerusalam Award is presented a biennially to writers whose work deals with themes of human freedom, society, politics, and government. When Murakami won the award in 2009, protests erupted in Japan and elsewhere against his attending the award ceremony in Israel, including threats to boycott his work as a response against Israel's recent bombing of Gaza. Murakami chose to attend the ceremony, but gave a speech to the gathered Israeli dignitaries harshly criticizing Israeli policies. Murakami said, "Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us."

Murakami donated his €80,000 winnings from the Generalitat of Catalunya (won in 2011) to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami, and to those affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Accepting the award, he said in his speech that the situation at the Fukushima plant was "the second major nuclear disaster that the Japanese people have experienced... however, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands." According to Murakami, the Japanese people should have rejected nuclear power after having "learned through the sacrifice of the hibakusha just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/19/2014.)

Book Reviews
This is the kind of blah surrealism for which Mr. Murakami is so beloved by his fans, who will go to any lengths to justify why a minor book like Colorless Tsukuru still has the author’s special je ne sais quoi. The dreaminess of the passage is its stylistic trademark, but there are other, less woozy ways to say that bitter experience toughens Tsukuru into a new man
Janet Maslin - New York Times


This is a book for both the new and experienced reader. It has a strange casualness, as if it unfolded as Murakami wrote it; at times, it seems like a prequel to a whole other narrative. The feel is uneven, the dialogue somewhat stilted…Yet there are moments of epiphany gracefully expressed, especially in regard to how people affect one another…The book reveals another side of Murakami, one not so easy to pin down. Incurably restive, ambiguous and valiantly struggling toward a new level of maturation. A shedding of Murakami skin.
Patti Smith - New York Times Book Review


[A] remarkable novel [that] takes us on a spellbinding descent through the rings of hell in Tsukuru Tazaki’s young life.... A virtual symphony of literary and musical referents. Murakami’s wizardry lies in his ability to pack all that cultural and spiritual resonance into a book that is as tightly wound as a Dashiell Hammett mystery. . . . Murakami can herd the troubles of a very large world and still mind a few precious details. He may be taking us deeper and deeper into a fractured modernity and its uneasy inhabitants, but he is ever alert to minds and hearts, to what it is, precisely, that they feel and see, and to humanity’s abiding and indomitable spirit.... A deeply affecting novel, not only for the dark nooks and crannies it explores, but for the magic that seeps into its characters’ subconsciouses, for the lengths to which they will go to protect or damage one another, for the brilliant characterizations it delivers along the way.... A page-turner with intervals of lapidary prose and dazzling human comprehension.
Marie Arana - Washington Post


[A] feeling...lingered with me for days after I read Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, a feeling of having experienced some extreme vividness, some extreme force of emotion. I'm still not sure exactly what it was. "An encounter with genius" may be the answer.... Murakami is like Edward Hopper or Arvo Part, his simplicities earned, his exactingly artful techniques permitting him a higher kind of artlessness.... [Colorless Tsukuru is a] sincere, soft-spoken story.... There is an intoxicating mood of nostalgia.... Tsukuru's pilgrimage will never end, because he is moving constantly away from his destination, which is his old self. This is a narrow poignancy, but a powerful one, and Murakami is its master. Perhaps that's why he has come to speak not just for his thwarted nation, but for so many of us who love art—since it's only there, alas, in novels such as this one, that we're allowed to live twice.
Charles Finch - Chicago Tribune


[Murakamai] has opened his vision, his sensibility, to reflect the distances implicit in being alive. . . . More than just a story but rather a meditation on everything the narrative provokes. How do we connect, or reconnect, to those around us but also to the very essence of ourselves? Where, in the flatness of contemporary society—which in this novel, as in so much of his work, Murakami evokes with a masterful understatement—do we find some point of intersection, some lasting depth? . . . There is a rawness, a vulnerability, to these characters, a sense that the surface of the world is thin, and the border between inner and outer life, between existence as we know it and something far more elusive, is easily effaced.
David L. Ulin - Los Angeles Times


Bold and colorful threads of fiction blur smoothly together to form the muted white of an almost ordinary realism. Like J.M. Coetzee, Murakami smoothly interlaces allegorical meanings with everyday particulars of contemporary social reality. The shadows cast may be larger than life, but the figures themselves feel stirringly human.... This new novel chronicles a spiritual quest that might also be a love story. But here the author strips away the magical quavers of reality and the mind-bending plot structures that have become hallmarks of his work.... Readers find themselves propelled along by the ebb and flow of an internal logic that feels as much like a musical progression as it does an unfolding of events. The steady calm of the prose, the ambient rhythms of recurring motifs like Fraz Liszt's "Le Mal du Pays," and the close attention to repetitive patterns in characters' lives bring readers into a carefully measured cadence like that of Tsukuru's pared-down lifestyle.... Thanks to Philip Gabriel's discerning translation into subtle yet artful language, the novel[‘s]...ease and obviousness convey an internal complexity that you ‘get’ without realizing it.... Tsukuru's situation will resonate with anyone who feels adrift in this age of Google and Facebook.
Christopher Weinberger - San Francisco Chronicle


(Starred review.) This is a book for both the new and experienced reader.... The feel is uneven, the dialogue somewhat stilted… Yet there are moments of epiphany gracefully expressed, especially in regard to how people affect one another…. Incurably restive, ambiguous and valiantly struggling toward a new level of maturation.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Hypnotically fascinating.... A journey of immense magnitude, both physically...and, of course, metaphysically, as Tazaki attempts to make sense of his own inner world and the dreams that shape his other dimension.... In the end, Murakami writes love stories, all the more tender and often tragic for their exploration of the multiple realities in which is lovers live.
Booklist


(Starred review.) Murakami turns in a trademark story that blends the commonplace with the nightmarish in a Japan full of hollow men.... Murakami writes with the same murky sense of time that characterized 1Q84, but this book [is] short and haunting.... The reader will enjoy watching Murakami play with color symbolism down to the very last line of the story.... Another tour de force from Japan’s greatest living novelist.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the name of the novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage? Why is Tsukuru branded "colorless"? Would you say that this an accurate description of him? Is this how Tsukuru sees himself or is it how he is seen by others? What kind of pilgrimage does Tsukuru embark upon and how does he change as a result of this pilgrimage? What causes these changes?

2. Why does Tsukuru wait so many years before attempting to find out why he was banished from the group? How does he handle the deep depression he feels as a result of this rejection and how is he changed by this period of suffering? Is Tsukuru the only character who suffers in this way? If not, who else suffers at what is the cause? Do you believe that their distress could have been avoided? If so, how?

3. Do you consider Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki a realistic work of fiction? Why or why not? What fantastical or surreal elements does Murakami employ in the novel and what purpose do they serve? What do these elements reveal that strictly realistic elements might not? Kuro says, "I do think that sometimes a certain kind of dream can be even stronger than reality" (310). In considering genre, do you believe that this is true?

4.Tsukuru reveals that his father chose his name, which means "to make things." Is this an apt name for Tsukuru? Why or why not? How does Tsukuru’s understanding of his own name affect the way that he sees himself? Where else in the story does the author address making things? Are they portrayed as positive or useful activities?

5. Why is Tsukuru’s friendship with Haida so important? What is the outcome of this relationship? How does the relationship ultimately affect Tsukuru’s perception of himself? Does it alter Tsukuru’s response to the rejection he was subjected to years earlier in any way?

6. Why does Haida share with Tsukuru the story about his father and the strange piano player who speaks of death? What might this teach us about the purpose of storytelling? How does Tsukuru react to this story? Is he persuaded by Haida’s tale? What does the story teach us about belief and the power of persuasion?

7. Sara says that we live in an age where "we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather than information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people" (148). Do the characters in the story know each other very well? Do you believe that technology in today’s world has helped or hindered us in knowing each other better?

8. When Tsukuru finally sees three of his friends again, how have each of them changed? How do they react to seeing one another after all this time? Are their reactions strange and unexpected or predictable? What unexpected changes have taken place over the years, and why are they surprising to Tsukuru? Has anything remained consistent?

9. When Tsukuru visits the pizzeria in Finland, how does he react after realizing he is the only one there who is alone? How is this different from his usual response to isolation throughout the story? Discuss what this might indicate about the role that setting plays in determining Tsukuru’s emotional state.

10. Does Tsukuru’s self-image and understanding of his role within the group align with how they saw Tsukuru and perceived his role in their group? If not, what causes differences in their perceptions? Do Tsukuru’s thoughts about his rejection from the group align with his friends’ understanding of why he was banished? How did Tsukuru’s banishment affect the other members of the group?

11. Why do Tsukuru and Kuro say that they may be partly responsible for Shiro’s murder? Do you believe that the group did the right thing by protecting Shiro? Why or why not?

12. The Franz Liszt song "Le mal du pays" is a recurring motif in the novel. Shiro plays the song on the piano; Haida leaves a recording of it behind; Tsukuru listens to it again and again; Kuro also has a recording. Why might the author have chosen to include this song in particular in the story? What effect does its repetition have on the reader—and the characters in the novel?

13. Sara tells Tsukuru: "You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them" (44). What does she mean by this? Do you agree with her statement?

14. Kuro says that she believes an evil spirit had inhabited Shiro, and as Tsukuru is leaving her home, Kuro tells him not to let the bad elves get him. Elsewhere in the story, the piano player asks Haida’s father whether he believes in a devil. Does the novel seem to indicate whether there is such a thing as evil—existing apart from mankind, or is darkness characterized as an innate part of man’s psyche?

15. While visiting Kuro, Tsukuru comes to the realization "One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds" (322). This, he says, "is what lies at the root of true harmony." What does he mean by this? Do you agree with his statement?

16. Why does Tsukuru seem to be so interested in railroad stations? How does his interest in these stations affect his relationship with his high school friends? Later in his life, how does this interest affect his understanding of friendship and relationships? The author revisits Tsukuru’s interest in railroad stations at the end of the book and refers to the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways in 1995 great disaster of 3/11 in Japan. Why do you think that Murakami makes mention of this incident? Does this reference change your interpretation of the story?

17. Is Tsukuru’s decision with respect to Sara at the end of the story indicative of some kind of personal progress? What is significant about his gesture? How has Tsukuru changed by the story’s end? Do you believe that the final scene provides sufficient resolution of the issues raised at the start of the story? Does it matter that readers are not ultimately privy to Sara’s response to Tsukuru’s gesture?

18. Tsukuru wishes that he had told Kuro, "Not everything was lost in the flow of time" (385). What does he believe was preserved although time has gone by? What did the members of the group ultimately gain through their friendship despite their split?

19. How does Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki compare to Haruki Murakami’s earlier novels? What themes do the works share? What elements of Murakami’s latest novel are different or unexpected?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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A Column of Fire (Kingsbridge Series, 3)
Ken Follett, 2017
Penguin Publishing
928 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781509858200


Summary
International bestselling author Ken Follett has enthralled millions of readers with The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, two stories of the Middle Ages set in the fictional city of Kingsbridge. The saga now continues with Follett’s magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire.
 
In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love.
 
Ned Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the religious conflict dividing the country, Ned goes to work for Princess Elizabeth.

When she becomes queen, all Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country’s first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions, and invasion plans. Over a turbulent half century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva.

Elizabeth clings to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents.
 
The real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else—no matter what the cost.
 
Set during one of the most turbulent and revolutionary times in history, A Column of Fire is one of Follett’s most exciting and ambitious works yet. It will delight longtime fans of the Kingsbridge series and is the perfect introduction for readers new to Ken Follett. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 5, 1949
• Where—Cardiff, Wales, UK
• Education—B.A., University College, London
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Hertfordshire, England


Kenneth Martin Follett is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels who has sold more than 150 million copies of his works. Many of his books have reached number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, including Edge of Eternity, Fall of Giants, A Dangerous Fortune, The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, Triple, Winter of the World, and World Without End.

Early years
Follett was born in Cardiff, Wales, the first child of four children, to Martin Follett, a tax inspector, and Lavinia (Veenie) Follett. Barred from watching films and television by his Plymouth Brethren parents, he developed an early interest in reading but remained an indifferent student until he entered his teens. His family moved to London when he was ten years old, and he began applying himself to his studies at Harrow Weald Grammar School and Poole Technical College.

He won admission in 1967 to University College London, where he studied philosophy and became involved in center-left politics. He married his wife Mary in 1968, and their son was born in the same year. After graduating in the autumn of 1970, Follett took a three-month post-graduate course in journalism, working as a trainee reporter in Cardiff on the South Wales Echo.  A daughter was born in 1973.

Career
After three years in Cardiff, Follett returned to London as a general-assignment reporter for the Evening News. He eventually left journalism for publishing, having found it unchallenging, and by the late 1970s became deputy managing director of the small London publisher Everest Books.

During that time, Follett began writing fiction as a hobby during evenings and weekends. Later, he said he began writing books when he needed extra money to fix his car, and the publisher's advance a fellow journalist had been paid for a thriller was the sum required for the repairs. Success came gradually at first, but the 1978 publication of Eye of the Needle, became an international bestseller and sold over 10 million copies, earning Follett wealth and international fame.

Each of Follett's subsequent novels, some 30, has become a best-seller, ranking high on the New York Times Best Seller list. The first five best sellers were fictional spy thrillers. Another bestseller, On Wings of Eagles (1983), is a true story based on the rescue of two of Ross Perot's employees from Iran during the 1979 revolution.

Kingsbridge series
For the most part, Follett continued writing spy thrillers, interspersed with historical novels. But he usually returned to espionage. Then in 1989, Follett surprised his readers with his first non-spy thriller, The Pillars of the Earth (1989), a novel about building a cathedral in a small English village during the Anarchy in the 12th century.

Pillars was wildly successful, received positive reviews, and stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 18 weeks. All told, (internationally and domestically), it has sold 26 million copies and even inspired a 2017 computer game by Daedalic Entertainment of Germany.

Two sequels followed a number of years later — in 2007 and 2017. World Without End (2007) returns to Kingsbridge 200 years after Pillars and focuses on lives devastated by the Black Death. A Column of Fire (2017), a romance and novel of political intrigue, is set in the mid-16th century — a time when Queen Elizabeth finds herself beset by plots to dethrone her.

Century trilogy
Follett initiated his Century trilogy in 2010. The series traces five interrelated families — American, German, Russian, English and Welsh — as they move through world-shaking events, beginning with World War I and the Russian Revolution, up through the rise of the Third Reich and World War II, and into the Cold War era and civil-rights movements.

Adaptations
A number of Follett's novels have been made into movies and TV mini series. Eye of the Needle was made into an acclaimed film, starring Donald Sutherland. Seven novels have been adapted as mini-series: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, On Wings of Eagles, The Third Twin (rights were sold for a then-record price of $1,400,000), The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, and A Dangerous Fortune.

Follett also had a cameo role as the valet in The Third Twin and later as a merchant in The Pillars of the Earth.

Awards
2013 - Grand Master at the Edgar Awards (New York)
2012 - Que Leer Prize-Best Translation (Spain) - Winter of the World
2010 - Libri Golden Book Award-Best Fiction (Hungary) - Fall of Giants
2010 - Grand Master,  Thrillerfest (New York)
2008 - Honorary Doctor of Literature - University of Exeter
2007 - Honorary Doctor of Literature - University of Glamorgan
2007 - Honorary Doctor of Literature - Saginaw Valley State University
2003 - Corine Literature Prize (Bavaria) - Jackdaws
1999 - Premio Bancarella Literary Prize (Italy) - Hammer of Eden
1979 - Edgar Award-Best Novel - Eye of the Needle

Personal life
During the late 1970s, Follett became involved in the activities of Britain's Labour Party when he met the former Barbara Broer, a Labour Party official. Broer became his second wife in 1984.

Follett, an amateur musician, plays bass guitar for Damn Right I Got the Blues. He occasionally plays a bass balalaika with the folk group Clog Iron. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/4/2017.)

Book Reviews
Deeply researched… compelling.…  A Column of Fire is absorbing, painlessly educational, and a great deal of fun.
Washington Post
 

Follett’s historical epics, including this one, evoke the Romantic adventures of Alexandre Dumas. Derring-do and double-crosses.…  A Column of Fire burns bright throughout.
Christian Science Monitor


English-history mavens will find much to savor in Follett’s third Kingsbridge novel.
AARP


[A]n immersive journey through the tumultuous world of 16th-century Europe and some of the bloodiest religious wars in history. Follett’s sprawling novel is a fine mix of heart-pounding drama and erudite historicism.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Several climactic scenes — including a truly horrific execution and massacres in the streets of Paris — dramatize the vast social and religious divide of the era. Verdict: …Follett has written another masterly historical novel. —Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage P.L., AK
Library Journal


A fiery tale set in the latter half of the sixteenth century.… As always, Follett excels in historical detailing, transporting readers back in time with another meaty historical blockbuster.
Booklist


lIt's all a bit overwrought for what is, after all, a boy-loves-girl, boy-swashbuckles-to-win-girl yarn, but it's competently done. Follett's fans will know what to expect — and they won't be disappointed.
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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Come Back to Me
Melissa Foster, 2011
Greenforge Books
316 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780984716517


Summary
Tess Johnson has it all: her handsome photographer husband Beau, a thriving business, and a newly discovered pregnancy. When Beau accepts an overseas photography assignment, Tess decides to wait to reveal her secret—only she's never given the chance. Beau's helicopter crashes in the desert.

Tess struggles with the news of Beau's death and tries to put her life back together. Alone and dealing with a pregnancy that only reminds her of what she has lost, Tess is adrift in a world of failed plans and fallen expectations. When a new client appears offering more than just a new project, Tess must confront the circumstances of her life head on.

Meanwhile, two Iraqi women who are fleeing honor killings find Beau barely alive in the middle of the desert, his body ravaged by the crash. Suha, a doctor, and Samira, a widow and mother of three young children, nurse him back to health in a makeshift tent. Beau bonds with the women and children, and together, with the help of an underground organization, they continue their dangerous escape.

What happens next is a test of loyalties, strength, and love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Melissa Foster is the award-winning author of three International bestselling novels, Megan's Way, Chasing Amanda, and Come Back to Me. She has also been published in Indie Chicks, an anthology.

She is the founder of the Women's Nest, a social and support community for women, and the World Literary Cafe (previously WoMen's Literary Cafe), a cross-promotional site for authors, reviewers, bloggers, and readers. Melissa is currently collaborating in the film production of Megan's Way.

Melissa hosts an annual Aspiring Authors contest for children, she's written for Calgary's Child magazine and Women Business Owners magazine, and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her family. Melissa's interests include her family, reading, writing, painting, friends, helping women see the positive side of life, and visiting Cape Cod. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Come Back To Me is passionate, romantic, and moving. A vivid story of loss and hope—a fine read for a wide audience.
Diane Donovan -Midwest Book Review

Foster's writing captures the complexity of life, and keeps you flipping the pages till the end—surprising you all the way through.
Kathleen Shoop - Author (The Last Letter)

A story of dark realities and faith in the future—validation of love and friendship—a love story with twists and turns that will keep you reading to the end.
Kaira Rouda - Author (Here, Home, Hope)

Discussion Questions
1. What was unique about the setting of the book and how did it enhance or take away from the story?

2. What specific themes did the author emphasize throughout the novel? What do you think he or she is trying to get across to the reader?

3. How do characters change or evolve throughout the course of the story? What events trigger such changes?

4. When Beau is unable to reach Tess to alert her to his safety, he makes the decision to surprise Tess, and requests that Kevin not tell her. Do you think that was a romantic or an unfair gesture?

5. Kevin is in a difficult position between knowing Tess is seeing Louie and wanting to be a supportive friend to Beau. Do you think he should have told Beau right away about Tess and Louie, or did he do the right thing by not being the barer of bad news?

6. Tess and Alice connect as friends outside of their work dealings, yet their personalities differ in many ways. List the differences and how you think it increased or decreased your likeability in them as separate characters, and their friendship together.

7. How does Come Back To Me change or enrich your view on death? Does the novel make you believe that there can be something positive following death?

8. Does Tess' attitude in dealing with grief reflect how people in life would deal with similar tragic events? If so, what aspects of her personality reflect this.

9. How does the change between Tess' story at home in the U.S. and Beau's story in Afghanistan increase tension? What features of the transition worked best for you?
(Questions kindly provided by author.)

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Come Home
Lisa Scottoline, 2012
St. Martin's Press
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250023292


Summary
With her new novel, Come Home, Lisa Scottoline ratchets up the suspense with the riveting story of a mother who sacrifices her future for a child from her past.

Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter's lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her job as a pediatrician fulfills her—though it is stressful—and her daughter, Megan, is a happily over-scheduled thirteen-year-old juggling homework and the swim team.

But Jill’s life is turned upside down when her ex-stepdaughter, Abby, shows up on her doorstep late one night and delivers shocking news: Jill’s ex-husband is dead. Abby insists that he was murdered and pleads with Jill to help find his killer. Jill reluctantly agrees to make a few inquiries and discovers that things don’t add up. As she digs deeper, her actions threaten to rip apart her new family, destroy their hard-earned happiness, and even endanger her own life. Yet Jill can’t turn her back on a child she loves and once called her own.

Come Home reads with the breakneck pacing of a thriller while also exploring the definition of motherhood, asking the questions: Do you ever stop being a mother? Can you ever have an ex-child? What are the limits to love of family? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 1, 1955
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling author and Edgar award-winning author of some two dozen novels and several nonfiction books. She also writes a weekly column with her daughter Francesca Serritella for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled "Chick Wit" which is a witty and fun take on life from a woman's perspective.

These stories, along with many other never-before-published stories, have been collected in four books including their most recent, Have a Nice Guilt Trip, and the earlier, Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim, Best Friends, Occasional Enemies, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, which has been optioned for TV, and My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space.

Lisa reviews popular fiction and non-fiction, and her reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. Lisa has served as President of Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, "Justice and Fiction" at The University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater.

Lisa is a regular and much sought after speaker at library and corporate events. Lisa has over 30 million copies of her books in print and is published in over 35 countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Lisa's books have landed on all the major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and Look Again was named "One of the Best Novels of the Year" by the Washington Post, and one of the best books in the world as part of World Book Night 2013.

Lisa's novels are known for their emotionality and their warm and down-to-earth characters, which resonate with readers and reviewers long after they have finished the books. When writing about Lisa’s Rosato & Associates series, Janet Maslin of the New York Times applauds Lisa's books as "punchy, wisecracking thrillers" whose "characters are earthy, fun and self-deprecating" and distinguishes her as having "one of the best-branded franchise styles in current crime writing."

Recognition
Lisa's contributions through her writing has been recognized by organizations throughout the country. She is the recipient of the Edgar Award, the Mystery Writer's of America most prestigious honor, the Fun, Fearless, Fiction Award by Cosmopolitan Magazine, and named a PW Innovator by Publisher's Weekly.

Lisa was honored with AudioFile's Earphones Award and named Voice of the Year for her recording of her non-fiction book, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. The follow up collection, My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space has garnered both Lisa and her daughter, Francesca, an Earphones Award as well. In addition, she has been honored with a Distinguished Author Award from Scranton University, and a "Paving the Way" award from the University of Pennsylvania, Women in Business. 


Personal
Lisa's accomplishments all pale in comparison to what she considers her greatest achievement, raising, as a single mom, her beautiful (a completely unbiased opinion) daughter, an honors graduate of Harvard, author, and columnist, who is currently working on her first novel.

Lisa believes in writing what you know, and she puts so much of herself into her books. What you may or may not learn about Lisa from her books is that...
♦ she is an incredibly generous person
♦ an engaging and entertaining speaker
♦ a die-hard Eagles fan
♦ a good cook.
♦ She loves the color pink, her Ipod has everything from U2 to Sinatra to 50 Cent, she is proud to be an American, and nothing makes her happier than spending time with her daughter. 



Dogs
Lisa is also a softie when it comes to her furry family. Nothing can turn Lisa from a professional, career-minded author, to a mushy, sweet-talking, ball-throwing woman like her beloved dogs. Although she has owned and loves various dog breeds, including her amazing goldens, she has gone crazy for her collection of King Charles Spaniels.

Lisa first fell in love with the breed when Francesca added her Blehneim Cavalier, Pip, to the mix. This prompted Lisa to get her own, and she started with the adorable, if not anatomically correct (Lisa wrote a "Chick Wit" column about this), Little Tony, her first male dog. Little Tony is a black and tan Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

But Lisa couldn't stop at just one and soon added her little Peach, a Blehneim King Charles Cavalier. Lisa is now beyond thrilled to be raising Peach’s puppies, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson, and for daily puppy pictures, be sure to follow Lisa on Facebook or Twitter. Herding together the entire pack is Lisa’s spunky spit-fire of a Corgi named Ruby. The solitude of writing isn't very quiet with her furry family, but she wouldn't have it any other way.

Cats
Not to be outshined by their canine counterparts, Lisa's cats, Vivi and Mimi, are the princesses of the house, and have no problem keeping the rest of the brood in line. Vivi is a grey and white beauty and is more aloof than her cuddly, black and white partner, Mimi. 

When Lisa’s friend and neighbor passed, Lisa adopted his beloved cat, Spunky, a content and beautiful ball of fur.

Chickens
Lisa loves the coziness of her farmhouse, and no farm is complete without chickens. Lisa has recently added a chicken coop and has populated it with chicks of different types, and is overjoyed with each and every colorful egg they produce. Watching over Lisa's chicks are her horses, which gladly welcomed the chicks and all the new excitement they bring. (Author bio adapted from the author's website.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow Lisa on Facebook.

Book Reviews
Jill Ruspoli's divorce nearly destroyed her, but now, this hard-working pediatrician is back on her feet, happier than ever, and newly engaged to a kind and thoughtful medical researcher. All that is put implicitly in jeopardy when her ex-stepdaughter Abby arrives at her front door frantic with the news of her former husband's demise. Abby is convinced that her father has been murdered, but even seriously entertaining that question threatens to destabilize everything that Jill has built since her disastrous breakup. Lisa Scottoline's new mystery knots together heart-wrenching personal issues and whodunit suspense. Finely plotted and well-written; a worthy crossover read.
Jules Herbert - Barnes & Noble Reviews


Mary is a serious lawyer, married with two kids, whose husband is a perennial mama's boy incapable of grocery shopping on his own. Mixed in with the trials and tribulations of the protagonists are humorous vignettes from the lives of some of their other friends and acquaintances—many of whom
Library Journal


With a light touch and utterly believable characters, Close’s...appealing debut manages to capture the humor, heartache and cautious optimism of her protagonists.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Come Home, at its heart, is the story of family, and more specifically, the blending of families. What are the dynamics in your own family like? What do you think the greatest challenge is in blending two families?

2. One of the main themes in this book is leaving home and “coming home.” In which ways have each of the main characters Jill, Abby, Megan, Victoria) left home or come home?

3. Do you understand Jill’s emotional response to Abby when she first sees her after several years? Why or why not?

4. Describe Sam’s response to the dynamics between Abby and Jill. Do you agree with him? Do you relate to his response? Do  you feel he acted appropriately?

5. Have you ever had a situation where you were forced to be estranged from someone you cared about?

6. How do you think Abby’s and Victoria’s separation from Jill affected them? What do you think Jill could have done differently,  given the circumstances?

7. How would you describe William? Why do you think Jill was so easily fooled by him?

8. What rights do you think a person should have if he or she was instrumental in helping raise a child? What do you think is better for the child? How do you think the legal system will deal with this issue in the future given the growing number of blended families?

9. Oftentimes a parent must give the majority of their attention to the child that needs it the most. Do you feel like Jill was neglecting Megan in favor of helping Abby? What would you have done if you were Jill?

10. Now, for fun: Would you help solve the murder of your ex-husband? Go easy—at least until the second glass of wine has  been served.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Come Sundown 
Nora Roberts, 2017
St. Martin's Press
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250123077


Summary
A novel of suspense, family ties, and twisted passions from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obsession...

The Bodine ranch and resort in western Montana is a family business, an idyllic spot for vacationers. A little over thirty thousand acres and home to four generations, it’s kept running by Bodine Longbow with the help of a large staff, including new hire Callen Skinner.

There was another member of the family once: Bodine’s aunt, Alice, who ran off before Bodine was born. She never returned, and the Longbows don’t talk about her much. The younger ones, who never met her, quietly presume she’s dead. But she isn’t. She is not far away, part of a new family, one she never chose—and her mind has been shattered…

When a bartender leaves the resort late one night, and Bo and Cal discover her battered body in the snow, it’s the first sign that danger lurks in the mountains that surround them. The police suspect Cal, but Bo finds herself trusting him—and turning to him as another woman is murdered and the Longbows are stunned by Alice’s sudden reappearance.

The twisted story she has to tell about the past—and the threat that follows in her wake—will test the bonds of this strong family, and thrust Bodine into a darkness she could never have imagined. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Also known as—J.D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March
• Birth—October 10, 1950
• Where—Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
• Awards—Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame (more below)
• Currently—lives in Keedysville, Maryland

Nora Roberts (born Eleanor Marie Robertson) is an American bestselling author of some 215 romance novels. She writes as J. D. Robb for the In Death series, and has also written under the pseudonyms Jill March and for publications in the U.K. as Sarah Hardesty.

Nora Roberts was the first author to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. As of 2011, her novels had spent a combined 861 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, including 176 weeks in the number-one spot.

Early years
Robertson was the youngest of five children in a family of avid readers. From the time she was little, reading books and making up her own stories were a favorite outlet. Her years at a Catholic school, she says, instilled a sense of discipline, through she transferred during her sophomore year to a public school. It was there, at Montgomery Blair High School, that she met her first husband, Ronald Aufdem-Brinke, and the two married — against her parents wishes — after graduation.

They settled in Blumpkin, Maryland, where Roberts gave birth to two sons, Dan and Jason. She later referred to this period as her "Earth Mother" years, spending much of her time doing crafts, including ceramics, and sewing her children's clothes. She also began writing. In 1983, after 15 years, the marriage ended in divorce.

Two years later, Roberts hired a carpenter to build a set of bookshelves. His name was Bruce Wilder, and Roberts fell in love. The two got married. Wilder owns and operates a bookstore in Boonsboro, Maryland, called Turn the Page Books. He also works as a photographer and videographer.

The Wilders own the nearby historic Inn BoonsBoro. Once known as the Boone Hotel, it was renovated following a 2008 fire, reopening in 2009. During the makeover, Roberts decided to name the inn's suites for literary romantic couples (but only those with happy endings).

Beginning to write
Roberts' career as an author began inauspiciously enough when a blizzard hit Maryland in early 1979. Roberts had been immersed in Harlequin romances, and that day, housebound with her small boys, she decided to try her hand at writing her own stories. She picked up a pen and began jotting down ideas for a romance. She was hooked on writing and kept at it. Despite rejections, one of her manuscripts was eventually accepted by Silhouette, a new imprint created specifically to scoop up Harlequin rejections.

In 1981 Roberts' first book, Irish Thoroughbred, was released. Twenty-two more romance novels followed under the Silhouette imprint, all using the pseudonym Nora Roberts. After switching to Putnam in 1992, the publishers told her they couldn't keep up with her output and suggested she write under another pseudonym. And so she began writing suspense romances under the name J.D. Robb (J and D are her sons' first initials).

Success and Awards
Since 1999, every one of Roberts's novels has been a New York Times bestseller, and 124 of her novels have ranked on the Times bestseller list, including 29 that debuted in the number-one spot. As of January 24, 2013, her novels spent a combined 948 weeks on the Times list, including 148 weeks in the number-one spot. Over 400 million copies of her books are in print, published in 35 countries.

Roberts is a founding member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and was the first inductee in the organization's Hall of Fame. In 1997 she was awarded the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, which in 2008 was renamed the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. As of 2012, she has won an unprecedented 21 of the RWA's RITA Awards, the highest honor given in the romance genre.

Two of Roberts' novels, Sanctuary and Magic Moments, have been made into TV movies. In 2007, Lifetime Television adapted four Roberts novels into TV movies: Angels Fall starring Heather Locklear, Montana Sky starring Ashley Williams, Blue Smoke starring Alicia Witt, and Carolina Moon starring Claire Forlani. This was the first time that Lifetime had adapted multiple works by the same author. Four more films were released on four consecutive Saturdays in March and April, 2009. The 2009 collection included Northern Lights starring LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian, Midnight Bayou starring Jerry O'Connell, High Noon starring Emilie de Ravin, and Tribute starring Brittany Murphy.

Time magazine named Roberts one of their 100 Most Influential People in 2007, noting that she "has inspected, dissected, deconstructed, explored, explained and extolled the passions of the human heart." Roberts was one of only two authors on the list, the other was David Mitchell. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/19/2017.)

Book Reviews
The resort sections — complete with family banter and cozy meals — showcase the kind of writing in which Roberts shines.… Admittedly, some of the writing can be inane: descriptions of someone's red lipstick, which matches her boots, which match her dress…. But the punch to the gut are those scenes with Alice in captivity and, later, surrounded by her family. They impart a depth not normally found in standard romance. The question we're left with is this: Is Alice … still Alice? Can she ever be?  READ MORE ……
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers


Roberts takes the reader on a journey to western Montana to a family ranch and the story of how one of their own disappeared.… [W]hat makes this novel most engaging is Roberts’s ability to suffuse her story with rich details of one family’s life, as well as sizzling doses of romance and mystery.
Publishers Weekly


Years before Bodine Longbow was born, her rebellious Aunt Alice left home to seek her fortune and…has not been heard from since.… Drawing on current events, Roberts has penned a horrifying tale of abduction, abuse, and resilience intertwined with a sweet romance that will keep the night-lights burning.
Library Journal


(Rave review.) With its take-no-guff heroine, who understands the importance of family and friends, and a compelling plot peppered with domestic details and composed of equal measures of spine-tingling suspense and sexy romance, this is quintessential Roberts
Booklist


(Starred review.)  Roberts always tells a good story that balances romance and suspense, but in this title, the narrative is deeper, the mystery is more layered, and with Alice, Roberts moves into another level of exploring physical and emotional trauma…into more complex and darker storytelling, to terrific effect.
Kirkus Reviews

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 Come Sundown…then take off on your own:

SPOILER ALERT: If you've not read the book, proceed at your own risk.

1.. Come Sundown has two plotlines: Alice's ordeal and that of the present day Bodine Ranch. Did you find one story more engaging than the other?

2. Is Bo typical of a romantic heroine? Why or why not? What do you think of her response to Cal when he proposes?

3. How would you describe the Bodine Family, all four generations? Do you have a favorite? What makes them click and work together so successfully? Want to hazard any comparisons to your own family!

4. Some readers find the detailed descriptions of the ranch operations tiresome. Others appreciated the inside view of a family business fascinating. Where do you stand?

5. When the first dead woman turns up, the police turn their suspicions on Cal. Why? Were you suspicious?

6. Alice's ordeal is horrific. Talk about her abduction and imprisonment, and especially the man who captured and raped her. What was your experience reading Alice's chapters?

7. How does the book's title relate to the story?

8. Did you see the end coming? Had you figured out the identity of the villain? Or were you taken by surprise?

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

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The Comfort of Lies
Randy Susan Meyers, 2012
Atria Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451673012


Summary
Happiness at someone else’s expense came at a price. Tia had imagined judgment from the first kiss that she and Nathan shared. All year, she’d waited to be punished for being in love, and in truth, she believed that whatever consequences came her way would be deserved.

Five years ago, Tia fell into obsessive love with a man she could never have. Married, and the father of two boys, Nathan was unavailable in every way. When she became pregnant, he disappeared, and she gave up her baby for adoption.

Five years ago, Caroline, a dedicated pathologist, reluctantly adopted a baby to please her husband. She prayed her misgivings would disappear; instead, she’s questioning whether she’s cut out for the role of wife and mother.

Five years ago, Juliette considered her life ideal: she had a solid marriage, two beautiful young sons, and a thriving business. Then she discovered Nathan’s affair. He promised he’d never stray again, and she trusted him.

But when Juliette intercepts a letter to her husband from Tia that contains pictures of a child with a deep resemblance to her husband, her world crumbles once more. How could Nathan deny his daughter? And if he’s kept this a secret from her, what else is he hiding? Desperate for the truth, Juliette goes in search of the little girl. And before long, the three women and Nathan are on a collision course with consequences that none of them could have predicted.

Riveting and arresting, The Comfort of Lies explores the collateral damage of infidelity and the dark, private struggles many of us experience but rarely reveal. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1952-53
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—City College of New York (no degree)
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts


The dark drama of Randy Susan Meyers' debut novel, The Murderer's Daughters is informed by her years of work with batterers, domestic violence victims, and at-risk youth impacted by family violence.

The Murderer's Daugher was published in 2010; 2013 saw the publishing of her second, The Comfort of Lies. Meyers’ short stories have been published in the Fog City Review, Perigee: Publication for the Arts, and the Grub Street Free Press.

In her words
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, where I quickly moved from playing with dolls to incessantly reading, spending most of my time at the Kensington Branch Library. Early on I developed a penchant for books rooted in social issues, my early favorites being Karen and The Family Nobody Wanted. Shortly I moved onto Jubilee and The Diary of Anne Frank.

My dreams of justice simmered at the fantastically broadminded Camp Mikan, where I went from camper to counselor, culminating in a high point when (with the help of my strongly Brooklyn-accented singing voice), I landed the role of Adelaide in the staff production of Guys and Dolls.

Soon I was ready to change the world, starting with my protests at Tilden High and City College of New York...until I left to pursue the dream in Berkeley, California, where I supported myself by selling candy, nuts, and ice cream in Bartons of San Francisco. Then, world weary at too tender an age, I returned to New York, married, and traded demonstrations for diapers.

While raising two daughters, I tended bar, co-authored a nonfiction book on parenting (Couples with Children), ran a summer camp, and (in my all-time favorite job, other than writing) helped resurrect and run a community center. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
An absorbing tale about lies and their emotional fallout in the lives of three women. Meyers creates psychologically complex protagonists by imbuing them with contradictions. This combination of positive and negative traits renders the characters all the more intriguing, for we are never quite sure what they will do until the end.
Winnipeg Free Press


An affair between bright young student Tia and Nathan, a charismatic married sociology professor, ends when Tia becomes pregnant. After urging her to get rid of the baby, Nathan tells his wife, Juliette, about the affair and never sees Tia again. Tia has a daughter and then gives her up for adoption to workaholic pathologist Caroline and her husband, Peter, who dotes on the child. Five years later, Juliette intercepts a letter from Tia that starts, “Dear Nathan, This is our daughter.” Inside is a photo of the girl, Savannah, and a promise to “help her get in touch” with Nathan in the future. Her trust in Nathan strained once more, Juliette goes in search of Caroline, who regrets neglecting Savannah. There’s a lot of regret here: Nathan regrets the affair; Tia regrets giving up her baby. And in the middle of all the regret, there’s a convoluted power struggle over little Savannah. Meyers (The Murderer’s Daughter) alternates between the perspectives of the three sympathetic women, giving access to their thoughts but short shrift to Nathan, the focal point of at least two of them. There’s much quiet family turmoil on display but not enough drama.
Publishers Weekly


One child given up for adoption ultimately brings together not only the birth mother, Tia, and the adoptive mother, Caroline, but also Juliette, the wife of the man who walked away from his affair upon learning of the pregnancy.... Verdict: In her successful outing after The Murderer's Daughters, Meyers enriches her character development with class and career differences, as well as by settings involving far differing neighborhoods of Boston. Readers who enjoyed Kim Edwards's The Memory Keeper's Daughter or Jeanette Halen's Matters of Chance will feel right at home in the anxious pages of Meyers' captivating novel. —Keddy Ann Outlaw, formerly with Harris Co. P.L., Houston
Library Journal


An affair changes the lives of three women in the second novel by the author of The Murderer's Daughters. Meyers has crafted an absorbing and layered drama that explores the complexities of infidelity, forgiveness, and family.
Booklist


Although the reader may find some of the choices made by the characters hard to understand, this is still a believable tale, and the characters crackle with both intelligence and wit. Meyers' women resonate as strong, complicated and conflicted, and the writing flows effortlessly in this sweet yet sassy novel about love, women and motherhood.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the epigraph of the novel, and whether you agree with this statement. Over the course of the novel, are lies shown to be a comfort to the person telling them or to the person hearing them? In general, do you think that there are situations in which telling the truth provides more comfort to the person delivering it, rather than the person hearing it?

2. Of the three female protagonists, which did you most identify with, and why?

3. As you were reading, did you feel compelled to take sides between Juliette or Tia? Did you empathize more with one or the other?

4. On page 82, Caroline describes her experience of her father’s love, saying, “No one in the family resented that his deepest energies were saved for his work. They didn’t confuse his love and his energy.” Do you think the same kind of parenting style  can be as effortlessly achieved by a mother? Must one parent be “stay-at-home” for this to work?

5. As a group, read aloud Juliette and Nathan’s argument on p. 129-130. Who did you identify with more in this scene? How is  the way that each character handles confrontation illustrative of their personality?

6. Discuss the role of religion in the novel. How does it affect Tia and Nathan, in particular?

7. Compare and contrast Juliette’s relationship with her mother and her parents’ marriage with what we know about Tia’s mother and father. How does each woman’s model of a romantic partnership affect what they seek in men?

8. Why, in his own words, does Nathan cheat? (You might turn to p. 219 and 252-253.) Do you believe that women cheat for the same reasons as men? Consider Caroline’s relationship with Jonah. Why do you think she stops herself when she does–and did she still cross a boundary she should not have?

9. Do you think that “emotional cheating" is ultimately different from physical cheating? What about lying versus “lying by omission”?

10. How does each woman respond to stress? Look at specific examples in the text. Who did you most relate to in this way?

11. Forgiveness is an undercurrent throughout the novel. Who is seeking forgiveness from whom?

12. Consider Nathan’s assessment on p. 252 that, “Juliette never let go of the why, which seemed to bother her more than the actuality. She searched for a reason that would put his infidelity into a paradigm she could understand and thus prevent from happening ever again. As though if he revealed the truth, she’d then understand how to prevent him from straying.” Do you think that understanding why something happened is necessary to fully forgive what actually happened?

13. Turn to Caroline and Peter’s conversation on p. 262. Does the fact that Savannah is adopted affect how Caroline thinks about being a mother–does it make it seem more like a daily choice she must make, rather than a state of being?

14. Legality aside, do you believe that Tia should have had any right to claim custody of Honor/Savannah? Does Juliette have a right to know Savannah?

15. Consider where Tia, Juliette, and Caroline are at the novel’s close. Do they seem some how better off than they were at the novel’s beginning? Does the old saying, “The truth will set you free” apply to these three women?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Commencement 
J. Courtney Sullivan, 2009
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307454966


Summary
A sparkling debut novel: a tender story of friendship, a witty take on liberal arts colleges, and a fascinating portrait of the first generation of women who have all the opportunities in the world, but no clear idea about what to choose.

Assigned to the same dorm their first year at Smith College, Celia, Bree, Sally, and April couldn’t have less in common. Celia, a lapsed Catholic, arrives with her grandmother’s rosary beads in hand and a bottle of vodka in her suitcase; beautiful Bree pines for the fiancé she left behind in Savannah; Sally, pristinely dressed in Lilly Pulitzer, is reeling from the loss of her mother; and April, a radical, redheaded feminist wearing a “Riot: Don’t Diet” T-shirt, wants a room transfer immediately.

Together they experience the ecstatic highs and painful lows of early adulthood: Celia’s trust in men is demolished in one terrible evening, Bree falls in love with someone she could never bring home to her traditional family, Sally seeks solace in her English professor, and April realizes that, for the first time in her life, she has friends she can actually confide in.

When they reunite for Sally’s wedding four years after graduation, their friendships have changed, but they remain fiercely devoted to one another. Schooled in the ideals of feminism, they have to figure out how it applies to their real lives in matters of love, work, family, and sex. For Celia, Bree, and Sally, this means grappling with one-night stands, maiden names, and parental disapproval—along with occasional loneliness and heartbreak. But for April, whose activism has become her life’s work,it means something far more dangerous.

Written with radiant style and a wicked sense of humor, Commencement not only captures the intensity of college friendships and first loves, but also explores with great candor the complicated and contradictory landscape facing young women today. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—near Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—Brooklyn, New York, New York


Julie Courtney Sullivan, better known as J. Courtney Sullivan, is an American novelist and former writer for the New York Times. She comes from an Irish-Catholic family where many of the women go by their middle rather than first names.

Sullivan grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she majored in Victorian literature and received the Ellen M. Hatfield Memorial Prize for best short story, the Norma M. Leas prize for excellence in written English, and the Jeanne MacFarland Prize for excellent work in Women's Studies.

She graduated in 2003, then moved to New York and began working at Allure. Sullivan later moved to the New York Times, where she worked for over three years. Her writing has since appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, New York Observer, Men's Vogue, Elle, and Glamour.

In 2007, her first book was published, a dating guide titled Dating Up: Dump the Shlump and Find a Quality Man; she has since stated that she wrote the book for money and that "fiction was always [her] passion."

She self-identifies as a feminist, a stance that has been reflected in both her fiction and nonfiction work. In 2006, she wrote a piece for the New York Times "Modern Love" column about her experiences in the dating world, and in 2010 she co-edited a feminist essay collection titled Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Her novels often deal prominently with relationships between female characters.

Currently, Sullivan serves on the advisory board of Girls Write Now, a nonprofit organization that pairs young and professional female writers in mentoring partnerships. She has also been involved with GEMS, a New York organization dedicated to ending child sex trafficking.[6]

Novels
• Commencement
In 2010, Sullivan published her first novel, Commencement, which focuses on the experiences of four friends at Smith College, Sullivan's alma mater. She wrote 15 different drafts of the book before sending it to her editor, after which it underwent two or three more revisions.

Commencement received positive reviews from many major publications and became a New York Times bestseller. After the book's publication, feminist icon Gloria Steinem called Sullivan personally to offer her praise. Steinem described the novel as "generous-hearted, brave...Commencement makes clear that the feminist revolution is just beginning". In 2011, Oprah's Book Club included Commencement in a list of "5 Feminist Classics to (Re)read as a Mom, Wife and Writer."

• Maine
Sullivan's second novel, Maine, deals with four women from three different generations of the same family spending the summer at a beachfront cottage in New England. Though Sullivan did not base the fictional Kellehers directly on her own Irish-Catholic family, she drew on her own childhood experiences while writing the novel. Maine received reviews that were slightly more mixed than those for Commencement, but that were ultimately postitive. It was named one of the top ten fiction books of 2011 by Time magazine.

• The Engagements
Sullivan's third novel, The Engagements, came out in 2013 to solid reviews. The novel traces four different marriages. Ron Charles of the Washington Post called it, "a delightful marriage of cultural research and literary entertainment." (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/11/2013.)

Book Reviews
One of this year's most inviting summer novels. It tells of four Smith College dorm mates who reunite for a wedding four years after graduation, and it manages to be so entertaining that this setup never feels schematic.... Ms. Sullivan introduces strong, warmly believable three-dimensional characters who have fun, have fights and fall into intense love affairs.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

Sullivan…excels at close-up portraits. She alternates among the four friends' points of view chapter by chapter, giving each a believable particular personality and background…Sullivan's gifts are substantial.
Maria Russo - New York Times Book Review

Sullivan writes fiction you might expect from a journalist: Her clean, precise prose stays carefully neutral and balanced, even as she shifts points of view from chapter to chapter… skillfully blending their stories…. Their struggles, reactions and decisions feel real. How they pull through–and pull together–proves inspiring.
Philadelphia City Paper

It isn't quite love at first sight when Celia, Sally, Bree and April meet as first-year hall mates at Smith College in the late 1990s. Sally, whose mother has just died, is too steeped in grief to think about making new friends, and April's radical politics rub against Celia and Bree's more conventional leanings. But as the girls try out their first days of independence together, the group forms an intense bond that grows stronger throughout their college years and is put to the test after graduation. Even as the young women try to support each other through the trials of their early twenties, various milestones-Sally's engagement, Bree's anomalous girlfriend, April's activist career-only seem to breed disagreement. Things come to a head the night before Sally's wedding, when an argument leaves the friends seething and silent; but before long, the women begin to suspect that life without one another might be harder than they thought. Sullivan's novel quickly endears the reader to her cast, though the book never achieves the heft Sullivan seems to be striving for.
Publishers Weekly

Graduating from college and moving into the "real world" is a rite of passage for many people. For Celia, Bree, April, and Sally, it's bittersweet to leave the confines of Smith College, where they all met. As first years, they bonded not only because they were new but because they lived together in the worst rooms in King House, third-floor maids' quarters. Celia's a Catholic schoolgirl, April an angry young feminist, and Bree the Southern belle who is already engaged, while Sally has just lost her mother to cancer. Despite these differences, they become best friends, and what they share at Smith carries them into their later lives-even as they go on to very different realities. Sullivan's first novel is a coming-of-age tale of young women in contemporary society where some of the battles of the women's movement have been won-but not all. The characters still face issues about sexuality, equality, and cultural expectations, and Sullivan's intriguing treatment partly refreshes the novel's familiar concept. For fans of contemporary women's fiction.
Robin Nesbitt - Library Journal

Introducing feminist chick lit in the form of first-time novelist Sullivan’s diverting parody of life at Smith College.... Sullivan’s debut crackles with intelligent observations about the inner sanctum of the all-women’s elite (yet scholarship-laden) college life. —Emily Cook
Booklist

Four women meet at an all-female college and predictably remain constant allies as their lives unfold. Sullivan's unswervingly formulaic debut introduces Celia, April, Bree and Sally, united by their rooms on a shared hallway in King House at Smith. They instantly strike up enduring relationships despite their disparities. April, daughter of a radical single mother and the most overtly political, will later fall under the spell of a manipulative filmmaker. Bree, the Southern belle who arrives wearing an engagement ring, ends up an ambivalent lesbian with a lover named Lara. Celia, the most colorless, has a Catholic upbringing, aspires to write and gets a job at a minor Manhattan publisher. Neat-freak Sally, still grieving her mother's death, becomes the lover of a promiscuous professor of poetry but later marries happily, the ceremony reuniting the women four years after graduation. In among the boyfriends, confessions and aspirations, Sullivan tosses descriptions of Smith culture (lesbianism, food disorders), meditations on mothers and a strong dose of feminism. But the narrative is a monotone, rising to a few late peaks with Sally's pregnancy, Bree and Lara's break-up and an implausible development surrounding April, who disappears and is feared murdered during an investigation of child prostitution. Readable, but dated and lackluster.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. What are your thoughts on single-sex education?

2. Do you think Commencement presents an accurate description of a women's college?

3. In the novel the character Sally becomes involved with a professor. Do you think student/teacher relationships are more common at women's colleges? Or is that a myth of the old days?

4. This book has a strong feminist message. What do you take away from this?

5. Commencement's protagonists graduate from Smith in 2002. Gloria Steinem compares Commencement to Mary McCarthy's The Group, which depicts a group of eight young women who graduate from Vassar in 1933. And Gloria Steinem, herself, graduated from Smith College in 1956. How do you think the experience of women's colleges would have been different in these three generations and how do they remain the same?

6. Each character thought they had a very clear notion of who they were entering college. How did each grow and change during college and what impact did their unique friendships have on each other?

7. Do you think all of the protagonists in Commencement are feminists?

8. On page 119, Sally feels her friends have not celebrated her engagement enough and she remarks “The real sting in it came from the fact that the same women who had counseled her through her grief for four years at college wanted nothing to do with her joy. Perhaps it took more to feel truly happy for a friend than it did to feel sympathy for her.” Do you think Sally is right, or do you think other emotions are at play for her friends?

9. When Bree and Lara visit Lara's boss's house, they meet Nora and Roseanna and their son, Dylan. Bree seems to find them ridiculous while Lara embraces their lifestyle. How does this incident speak to their roles in their relationship and how does Bree's family situation color her perceptions of this afternoon?

10. Each of the four women in Commencement has a different kind of mother and a different kind of relationship with hers. How is each girl a reflection of her mother and how do their bonds (or severed bonds) influence their decisions?

11. Poet John Malcolm Brinnin once said, “Proximity is nine-tenths of friendship.” How true is that for these women?

12. What is your favorite college memory?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Commoner 
John Burnham Schwartz, 2007
Knopf Doubleday
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400096053


Summary  
It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir.

After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.

Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1965
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Harvard
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, USA


John Burnham Schwartzis the author of the novels The Commoner, Claire Marvel, Bicycle Days, and Reservation Road, which was made into a motion picture based on his screenplay, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, and Jennifer Connelly.

His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages, and his writing has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times and The New Yorker. He lives with his wife and their son in Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)

See author's website for interviews.

Book Reviews 
Out of this heart-wrenching history, Schwartz has woven a delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing. He has imaginatively reconstructed the private story while remaining largely true to the scant details that have been reported to the public…Schwartz has clearly done extensive research into the lives of the empress and the crown princess and seems, as well, to have had extraordinary access to the Imperial Household Agency, whose members are the strictly traditional guardians of Japan's royal family and its elaborate court life. He vividly evokes the secrets and ceremonies of the imperial palace, including the wedding of Haruko and the crown prince and the ritual called the Daijosai, which takes place on the occasion of the new emperor's coronation and is performed by him alone and unseen. It's magical to have the curtain imaginatively lifted on these mysteries.
Lesley Downer - New York Times Book Review


[R]eaders should be delighted. Schwartz has written a mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion, one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress's voice with all the nuance it demands.
Kunio Francis Tanabe - Washington Post


(Audio version.) Schwartz's novel of the young woman, not of royal heritage, chosen to marry Japan's crown prince after WWII, is a delicate portrait of a simultaneously blessed and circumscribed existence. The book is written in the first person, making a female reader the obvious choice, and Janet Song rises to the occasion. Song's voice-hushed, placid, deeply gentle-lends a minimalist beauty to Schwartz's novel. Song thankfully skips the accents and stylized voices, choosing to emphasize a careful, vigorous reading that conveys a (perhaps stereotypically Western) sense of Japanese calm. The result is a deeply soothing reading.
Publishers Weekly


Inspired by real stories of the Japanese imperial family, Schwartz's intimate and striking novel fictionalizes the life of Haruko, empress of Japan, who narrates a touching and complicated tale of breaking traditions and facing the reality of living as royalty. Raised in an upper-class family, Haruko attends private school and plays tennis at the nearby country club. In 1959, she is selected as the first nonaristocratic woman to marry into the Japanese monarchy, which she discovers to be an oppressive world of mysterious rules and regulations. The strains caused by constant breaches in protocol and betrayals by the royal family and the staff cause Haruko to suffer a nervous breakdown and lose her voice. But she soon recovers with a new view of her duties and responsibilities. Thirty years later, Haruko is now the empress, and she faces the duty of marrying her son to a young woman who is a rising star in the foreign ministry. While she persuades the modern commoner to accept her son's proposal, Haruko also tries to right the wrongs of her past, with tragic results. With a strong narrative voice and well-researched historical background, this is strongly recommended for all fiction collections.
Library Journal


Schwartz bases his finely wrought fourth novel on the life of Empress Michiko of Japan, the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. Haruko Tsuneyasu grows up in postwar rural Japan and studies at Sacred Heart University, where she excels-particularly and fatefully-at tennis, which provides her entree to the crown prince, whom she handily beats in an exhibition match. After more meetings on and off the court, the prince asks Haruko to marry him. Persuaded by their mutual attraction and by assurances that the break with tradition will usher in a modern era, Haruko ultimately agrees, against her father's wishes, to become the first commoner turned royal. But, as her father had feared, her freedom and ambition suffer under the stifling rituals of court life. Eventually, Haruko succumbs to the inescapable judgment of the empress and her entourage, falling mute after the birth of her son, Yasuhito. Though the narrative loses some of its life after Haruko marries-perhaps mirroring Haruko's experience within the palace walls-urgency returns after Haruko chooses a wife for Yasuhito; the marriage tests Haruko's dedication to the crown. Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.
School Library Journal


Schwartz taps into the increasingly popular trend of blurring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction with this imagining of the lives of the current Empress and Crown Princess of Japan, both alive but seldom seen or heard from in public. Although the names of the Empress and Crown Princess have been changed, Schwartz holds close to the basic facts of their lives for most of his novel. Haruko is the beloved only child of a wealthy sake manufacturer, a serious student of art. She meets the Crown Prince while playing tennis, winning the doubles match against him and his heart almost simultaneously. Soon the Crown Prince, through his primary advisor/aide Dr. Watanabe, approaches the family with a marriage proposal. At first Haruko's parents resist, sending her away to Europe, but they soften under Watanabe's pressure while the Crown Prince woos Haruko in telephone conversations. Haruko, the first commoner to marry into the royal family, must relinquish her past, including her family, upon her marriage. The empress turns out to be the royal mother-in-law from hell and Haruko finds herself a prisoner of the royal protocol. Shortly after her son's birth, she has a nervous breakdown. Although she eventually recovers, she never truly enjoys her life as Crown Princess and then Empress. Years later, Haruko's son falls in love with another commoner, Harvard-educated Keiko, who has already begun a promising diplomatic career. Haruko empathizes with the young woman even as she manipulates her into marrying the prince. But when the strains of the Imperial Court endanger Keiko's mental health, Haruko helps her escape. The details of life for upper-class Japanese during and after World War II are fascinating, as are the rituals of the Imperial court, but readers may be put off by the way Schwartz creates thoughts and feelings for his thinly veiled characterizations of living people. Not likely to go over well with the Japanese royals.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Because Haruko is a commoner, not a peeress, the Crown Prince chooses to break with tradition in selecting her to be his bride. Why does Haruko’s father tell Dr. Watanabe that Haruko would be a “humiliation to Japan”? What is Dr. Watanabe’s response? How is this break with tradition later echoed in the marriage of Haruko’s own son?

2. Before her wedding, Haruko stares at her own face in a mirror that once belonged to her grandmother. When she light–heartedly asks her father if he will be happy when she is gone, he replies with great seriousness. Later, when Haruko returns to her parents’ home for a visit, Haruko’s father excuses himself from the table. Haruko finds him staring at the mirror she has left behind. Why does Haruko state, “We both understood that an evening like this was impossible and would never happen again”? What is the significance of the mirror Haruko chose not to include in her trousseau?

3. As Haruko prepares for her wedding, she observes, “At every turn, sometimes subtly and sometimes crudely, the same lesson was driven home: the world would greet me with abject deference not because I deserved it or wished it but because of my station, which in all things would stand above me, and indeed would outlast me.” What is Haruko’s attitude toward assuming her position in the royal family? Why do her parents ultimately urge her to accept her new life with courage?

4. How does Haruko experience the wedding ceremony inside the Kashikodokoro? How does she feel as she joins the Crown Prince in the shrine? Why does Haruko believe the crows on the roof of the shrine mock “the foolishness of men”?

5. What causes Haruko’s “breakdown”? Why is Yasu kept from her during this time? How does Haruko’s visit at her parents’ home affect her?

6. When Yasu first proposes marriage to the accomplished Keiko Mori, she refuses him. Haruko meets with Keiko and tells her that if Keiko marries Yasu, Haruko will do everything she can to protect her within the royal family. Haruko relates, “Riding home alone from our secret meeting late that afternoon, some gathering sense of responsibility for this young woman’s future happiness clung to me; and it felt not like triumph, but already, somehow, like remorse.” Describe Haruko’s inner conflict over Keiko’s decision. Feeling as she does about her own life, why do you suppose Haruko is willing to persuade Keiko to accept Yasu’s proposal?

7. How does Miko’s visit affect Haruko? Why does Miko confess that after seeing Haruko’s photograph in a magazine years ago, Miko had been a coward? Why does Haruko say, “Talking with you now is like remembering how to eat”?

8. As they watch their son’s wedding ceremony on television from their residence, how do Shige’s and Haruko’s reactions differ? How does Haruko feel about her husband’s indifference? Do you believe she truly loves him?

9. After the birth of her daughter, Keiko takes refuge in Karauizawa. When Yasu undertakes a trip to Europe without her, the royal family claims Keiko is suffering from an “adjustment disorder.” How does Keiko respond when Haruko visits her at Karauizawa and tells her, “You must take Reiko away from here and never come back.” Do you believe this is good advice? After convincing Keiko to marry Yasu in the first place, why is Haruko now suggesting Keiko flee? What does this tell you about Haruko’s state of mind?

10. In the closing pages, Haruko’s driver Okubo hands her an envelope marked with two cranes in flight. What does Haruko learn about where her daughter–in–law and granddaughter have gone? How does she feel about their disappearance? Describe the significance of this event for Haruko. To what degree does the book’s ending resolve Haruko’s own internal conflict?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Commonwealth 
Ann Patchett, 2016
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062491831


Summary
The enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families’ lives.

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly—thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved.

Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.

When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.

Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1963
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Raised—Nashville, Tennessee
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Guggenheim Fellowship; PEN/Faulkner Award; Orange Prize
• Currently—lives in Nashville, Tennessee


Ann Patchett is an American author of both fiction and nonfiction. She is perhaps best known for her 2001 novel, Bel Canto, which won her the Orange Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award and brought her nationwide fame.

Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray. Her father, Frank Patchett, who died in 2012 and had been long divorced from her mother, served as a Los Angeles police officer for 33 years, and participated in the arrests of both Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan. The story of Patchett's own family is the basis for her 2016 novel, Commonwealth, about the individual lives of a blended family spanning five decades.

Education and career
Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She managed to publish her first story in The Paris Review before she graduated. After college, she went on to the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa

For nine years, Patchett worked at Seventeen magazine, writing primarily non-fiction; the magazine published one of every five articles she wrote. She said that the magazine's editors could be cruel, but she eventually stopped taking criticism personally. She ended her relationship with the magazine following a dispute with one editor, exclaiming, "I’ll never darken your door again!"

In 1990-91, Patchett attended the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was there she wrote The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in 1992 (becoming a 1998 TV movie). It was where she also met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken—whom Patchett refers to as her editor and the only person to read her manuscripts as she is writing.

Although Patchett's second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994, her fourth book, Bel Canto, was her breakthrough novel. Published in 2001, it was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and won the PEN/Faulkner Award and Britain's Orange Prize.

In addition to her other novels and memoirs, Patchett has written for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue. She is the editor of the 2006 volume of the anthology series The Best American Short Stories.

Personal
Patchett was only six when she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and she lives there still. She is particularly enamored of her beautiful pink brick home on Whitland Avenue where she has lived since 2004 with her husband and dog. When asked by the New York Times where would she go if she could travel anywhere, Patchett responded...

I've done a lot of travel writing, and people like to ask me where I would go if I could go anyplace. My answer is always the same: I would go home. I am away more than I would like, giving talks, selling books, and I never walk through my own front door without thinking: thank-you-thank-you-thank-you.... [Home is] the stable window that opens out into the imagination.

In 2010, when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she co-founded Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes; the store opened in November 2011. In 2012, Patchett was on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is a vegan for "both moral and health reasons."

In an interview, she once told Barnes and Noble that the book that influenced her writing more than any other was Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow.

I think I read it in the tenth grade. My mother was reading it. It was the first truly adult literary novel I had read outside of school, and I read it probably half a dozen times. I found Bellow's directness very moving. The book seemed so intelligent and unpretentious. I wanted to write like that book.

Books
1992 - The Patron Saint of Liars
1994 - Taft
1997 - The Magician's Assistant
2004 - Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
2001 - Bel Canto
2007 - Run
2008 - What Now?
2011 - State of Wonder; The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life
2013 - This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
2016 - Commonwealth
2019 - The Dutch House
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/5/2016.)

Book Reviews
In her gorgeous, masterly new novel, Ann Patchett examines how the heavy weight of the past hangs on the present—the effect of a single action barreling down the decades, shaping lives for better or worse. The event might be as innocent as dancing with a priest at a party, simply because no other man is available. Or it might be far less innocent but no less surprising—a stolen kiss between two otherwise married people. It's that stolen kiss we're concerned with… 
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers

Patchett’s language is generally plain but occasionally soars satisfyingly; her observations about people and life are insightful; and her underlying tone is one of compassion and amusement. If Commonwealth lacks the foreign intrigue of Bel Canto or State of Wonder, both of which took place in South America and contained more suspense, this novel, much of which unfolds in American suburbs, recognizes that the passage of time is actually the ultimate plot.... Patchett also skillfully illustrates the way that seemingly minor, even arbitrary deci­sions can have long-lasting conse­quences and the way that we often fear the wrong things.
Curtis Sittenfeld - New York Times Book Review


Commonwealth bursts with keen insights into faithfulness, memory and mortality.… [An] ambitious American epic.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution


(Starred review.) [A] funny, sad, and ultimately heart-wrenching family portrait: a collage of parents, children, stepchildren, siblings, and stepsiblings.... Patchett elegantly manages a varied cast of characters....[showing] her at her peak in humor, humanity, and understanding.
Publishers Weekly


In this new novel by the beloved New York Times best-selling Patchett, Bert Cousins arrives uninvited at Franny Keating's christening party, recalling Sleeping Beauty's bad fairy and wreaking just as much havoc.
Library Journal


Indeed, this is Patchett’s most autobiographical novel, a sharply funny, chilling, entrancing, and profoundly affecting look into one family’s "commonwealth," its shared affinities, conflicts, loss, and love.
Booklist


(Starred review.) The prose is lean and inviting, but the constant shifts in point of view, the peripatetic chronology, and the ever growing cast of characters will keep you on your toes. A satisfying meat-and-potatoes domestic novel from one of our finest writers.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How is each child—Cal, Caroline, Holly, Jeanette, Franny, and Albie—affected by the divorce and neglect that results?

2. What does it mean to become a family again in the wake of divorce? How does each child grow to respond to the family difficulties?

3. In what ways are the siblings good for and to each other?

4. Bert believes that his divorce, all the difficulties for the children, and his marriage to Beverly were inevitable.
"We’re magic," he says to her. In what ways might this be true? To what extent does romantic love justify their decision?

5. What influence did the time periods, especially the '60s and '70s, have on the behavior and decisions of the characters?

6. What’s added to the novel by the presence of Lomer, Fix’s first partner on the police force?

7. How does the ageing of the four parents—Beverly, Fix, Teresa, and Bert—affect their feelings and behavior regarding each other and the children?

8. Franny falls for Leon Posen because of "the brightness in him." What might this mean? Why do you think Franny and Leo were willing to overlook their age difference?

9. As adults, Jeanette suggests to Albie, perhaps in jest, that they create a family therapy plan for Holly and their mother. What does it take to repair and rebuild family relationships after so much division and tragedy?

10. What do the various literary allusions (David Copperfield, The Return of the Native, The English Patient, T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) bring to the novel?

11. After writing his novel based on the life stories of the siblings, Leon Posen says "it’s my book," while Albie asks, "how did he end up with my life?" What are the ethical and legal issues of the situation? Should there be regulations for writing about others without their consent?

12. Fix believes, "There’s no protecting anyone…keeping people safe…is a story." To what extent is this true? Why does he believe this?

13. Holly chooses meditation over medication as a way of dealing with her suffering and stress. In what ways is this a healthy response to her life? What of her mother’s question of whether it’s "a real life"?

14. Among other things, Holly is attempting to find inner peace. To what extent does childhood experience determine who we become? How can an unsatisfying or unhealthy self be transformed?

15. Beverly admits late in her life that "other people’s children are too hard." What does she mean? In what ways is this true or not?

16. Discussing their difficult past, Holly says to Teresa, "you got through it." What’s the value of this? In what ways does each character go beyond this to remake his or her life?

17. Bert and Beverly’s kiss sets everything in motion for a lot of people who had no choice in the matter. How does that single decision shape everyone else’s life?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Compass Rose 
John Casey, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375410253


Summary
It’s been more than two decades since Spartina won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being “possibly the best American novel... since The Old Man and the Sea” (The New York Times Book Review), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical landscape of salt ponds and marshes in John Casey’s fictional Rhode Island estuary.

Elsie Buttrick, prodigal daughter of the smart set who are gradually taking over the coastline of Sawtooth Point, has just given birth to Rose, a child conceived during a passionate affair with Dick Pierce—a fisherman and the love of Elsie’s life, who also happens to live practically next door with his wife, May, and their children. A beautiful but guarded woman who feels more at ease wading through the marshes than lounging on the porches of the fashionable resort her sister and brother-in-law own, Elsie was never one to do as she was told.

She is wary of the discomfort her presence poses among some members of her gossipy, insular community, yet it is Rose, the unofficially adopted daughter and little sister of half the town, who magnetically steers everyone in her orbit toward unexpected—and unbreakable—relationships. As we see Rose grow from a child to a plucky adolescent with a flair for theatrics both onstage and at home during verbal boxing matches with her mother, to a poised and prepossessing teenager, she becomes the unwitting emotional tether between Elsie and everyone else. “Face it, Mom,” Rose says, “we live in a tiny ecosystem.”

And indeed, like the rugged, untouched marshes that surround these characters, theirs is an ecosystem that has come by its beauty honestly, through rhythms and moods that have shaped and reshaped their lives.

With an uncanny ability to plunge confidently and unwaveringly into the thoughts and desires of women— mothers, daughters, wives, lovers—John Casey astonishes us again with the power of a family saga. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1939 
• Where—Worcester, Massachusetts, USA 
• Education—B.A., L.L.B., Harvard University; M.F.A.,
   University of Iowa
• Awards—National Book Award
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia

John D. Casey is an American novelist and translator. He graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. cum laude in 1962, Harvard Law School with a LLB in 1965, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa with a M.F.A. in 1968.

Casey's work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Harpers, Esquire, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah.

He and his current wife, artist Rosamond Casey, live with their two daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia. His papers are held at University of Virginia library.

His has two adult daughters from his first marriage to novelist Jane Barnes: Nell Casey and Maud Casey. Maud Casey is a published author in her own right, with two well-reviewed novels and a collection of short stories to her credit. Nell Casey is the editor of the best-selling essay collection "Unholy Ghost" on depression and creativity, including essays by herself and her sister, and editor of a second essay collection "An Uncertain Inheritance" by contributors caring for family through illness and death. (Adpated from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
[B]eautiful, elegiac…Like the love affair that is the novel's magnetic pole, Compass Rose gathers its quiet strength from a slow accretion of instants of intimacy "both ferocious and serene," moments that bubble up, collapse and decompose in the natural order of things, on their way to becoming the history of a place…Casey's portrayal of that patch of South County is carefully observed, lovingly rendered and delicately parsed—a full-throated celebration of the natural world.
Dominique Browning - New York Times Book Review

Much of the enjoyment of this novel is derived from the unobtrusive skill with which Casey charts the entanglements, convergences, repulsions, and compromises of life in a close-knit community…Perhaps the greatest achievement of Casey’s unadorned, clear, and flexible writing is its setting [of] rare moments of individual displacement and transcendence within a narrative that dramatically relates the complex procedures of human relations both public and intimate.
Boston Globe

Casey tepidly returns to characters orbiting Rhode Island fisherman Dick Pierce, the lynchpin of his 1989 National Book Award-winning novel, Spartina, in this uneven outing. Game warden Elsie Buttrick has just given birth to Dick's illegitimate daughter, Rose, and over the next 16 years the fiercely independent Elsie grapples with motherhood, aging, and love, and throws herself into a crusade to stop her land-grabbing brother-in-law from expanding his seaside resort. Meanwhile, Dick's wife, May, reconciles a public humiliation with an intense love for Rose. As Elsie's lust flares, May sinks deeper into her devotion to her children and Rose. Though the lyrical narrative has strong roots in the women's interiors, it's the connectedness of their "tiny ecosystem" that the book best evokes. Yet plodding moments—clearing a field of stones, for example—slow the pace, and the omission of many potentially dramatic scenes—a father admitting his infidelities to his sons, a woman capitulating to a landowner's demands—limit the story's emotional range. While fans of Casey's previous books will enjoy this encore, many readers will be left lukewarm by the lack of narrative consequence.
Publishers Weekly

With its emotionally intricate interior monologues and many complicated relationships among multiple characters, this is a novel best suited to those who have read Spartina. They will most readily appreciate Casey’s rich paean to the prideful seaside residents of a Rhode Island community and their long and tangled history with the land and each other. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist

Casey writes old-fashioned novels in the best sense—character driven, thick with dialogue, nuanced and multilayered as they reveal relationships.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Have you read Spartina? How did your knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the characters affect your reading experience?

2. A compass rose is the circular design on a nautical chart, with directional points resembling the petals of a flower. What is the metaphor of the title? In what ways is Rose like a compass?

3. Miss Perry compares the end of her life to the last days of Rome (page 62). Where else might that metaphor apply?

4. Which characters care the most about class distinctions? How does that enhance or detract from their lives?

5. Elsie seems to relish being an observer. What does that say about her as a character? Where does it lead her?

6. On page 96, Johnny says, “Shame is a group thing. When a group mistrusts the outside, they have to trust the inside.” Where else does this play out in the story? Are there characters who should feel shame but don’t?

7. Reread Dick’s monologue on pages 100–101. What message is he sending to his sons? How do they use the insights he’s sharing?

8. On page 124, Miss Perry says, “It is disconcerting that someone I don’t much care for, I mean Phoebe Fitzgerald, has taken a wider interest in everyday life than Jack has.” What is she talking about? Compare and contrast the ways in which Phoebe and Jack interact with the other characters.

9. Discuss the triangles in the novel: Rose, Elsie, Mary; Rose, Elsie, May; Elsie, May, Dick. How do the characters benefit from these relationships?

10. On page 161, Phoebe quotes Deirdre: “It was a metaphor for how to deal with anything—you just start taking care of little things and pretty soon you’re feeling better about everything.” Which characters in the novel behave this way? How does it affect the others?

11. What is the significance, both metaphorical and to the characters, of the loss of Spartina?

12. On page 264, Mary talks about heroism and what men and women perceive as heroic. Which characters do you consider to be heroic, and why?

13. Discuss the passage on pages 286–89 in which Elsie watches a snake raid a bluebirds’ nest. What is its significance?

14. “It wasn’t fair that men got the verbs and she ended up with adjectives” thinks Elsie (page 305). What does she mean by this? Are there women in the novel who “get the verbs”?

15. Rose is a natural-born singer, while Elsie has a tin ear. What does this signify about their relationship?

16. Which of her three mother-figures is most influential for Rose: Elsie, Mary, or May?

17. Discuss Rose’s relationship with Dick. Do you think he regrets that she was born?

18. Why does Elsie seek out Dick for a sexual encounter after so many years?

19. Miss Perry once said to Elsie, “Do we stand outside of nature, or do we stand inside it? Is nature everything but us? Or is it simply everything?” (page 352). What is the role of nature in the novel? How does Casey use nature as a metaphor?

20. The last line of the novel is “Here we are. We live in South County.” Why is this such an important notion? What does it mean to live there?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Condition 
Jennifer Haigh, 2008
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060755799


Summary
The Condition tells the story of the McKotches, a proper New England family that comes apart during one fateful summer. The year is 1976, and the family has embarked on their annual vacation to Cape Cod. One day, Frank is struck by his thirteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, standing a full head shorter than her younger cousin. At that moment he knows something is terribly wrong with his only daughter.

Twenty years after Gwen's diagnosis with Turner's Syndrome—a genetic condition that traps her forever in the body of a child—all five family members are still dealing with the fallout. Frank and Paulette are acrimoniously divorced. Billy is dutiful but distant. His brother, Scott, awakens from a pot-addled adolescence to a soul-killing job and a regrettable marriage. And Gwen is silent and emotionally aloof, until she falls in love for the first time. And suddenly, once again, the family's world is tilted on its axis.

Compassionate yet unflinchingly honest, witty and almost painfully astute, The Condition explores the power of family mythologies. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 16, 1968
• Where—Barnesboro, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Dickenson College; M.F.A., Iowa Writers'
   Workshop
• Awards—2002 James A. Michener Fellowship; 2003;
   PEN/Hemingway Award for Outstanding First Fiction, Mrs.
   Kimble; 2006 PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book
   by a New England author, Baker Towers
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts


The daughter of a librarian and a high school English teacher, Jennifer Haigh was raised with her older brother in the coal-mining town of Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. Although she began writing as a student at Dickinson College, her undergraduate degree was in French. After college, she moved to France on a Fulbright Scholarship, returning to the U.S. in 1991.

Haigh spent most of the decade working in publishing, first for Rodale Press in Pennsylvania, then for Self magazine in New York City. It was not until her 30th birthday that she was bitten by the writing bug. She moved to Baltimore (where it was cheaper to live), supported herself as a yoga instructor, and began to publish short stories in various literary magazines. She was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop and enrolled in their two-year M.F.A. program. While she was at Iowa, she completed the manuscript for her first novel, Mrs. Kimble. She also caught the attention of a literary agent scouting the grad school for new talent and was signed to a two-book contract. Haigh was astonished at how quickly everything came together.

Mrs. Kimble became a surprise bestseller when it was published in 2003. Readers and critics alike were bowled over by this accomplished portrait of a "serial marrier" and the three wives whose lives he ruins. The Washington Post raved, "It's a clever premise, backed up by three remarkably well-limned Mrs. Kimbles, each of whom comes tantalizingly alive thanks to the author's considerable gift for conjuring up a character with the tiniest of details." The novel went on to win the PEN/Hemingway Award for Outstanding First Fiction.

Skeptics who wondered if Haigh's success had been mere beginner's luck were set straight when Baker Towers appeared in 2005. A multigenerational saga set in a Pennsylvania coal-mining community in the years following WWII, the novel netted Haigh the PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author. (Haigh lives in Massachusetts.) The New York Times called it "captivating," and Kirkus Reviews described it as "[a]lmost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying." High praise indeed for a sophomore effort.

In fact, Haigh continues to produce dazzling literary fiction in both its short and long forms, much of it centered on the interwoven lives of families. When asked why she returns so often to this theme, she answers, " In fact, every story is a family story: we all come from somewhere, and it's impossible to write well-developed characters without giving a great deal of thought to their childhood environments, their early experiences, and whose genetic material they're carrying around."

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

• All my life I've fantasized about being invisible. I love the idea of watching people when they don't know they're being observed. Novelists get to do that all the time!

• When I was a child, I told my mother I wanted to grow up to be a genie, a gas station attendant, or a writer. I hope I made the right choice.

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

Light Years by James Salter. Probably the most honest book ever written about men and women—sad, gorgeous, unflinching.

• Favorite authors: James Salter and Vladimir Nabokov. For a writer, reading them is like taking vitamins. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Haigh has demonstrated in her previous two novels, Mrs. Kimble and Baker Towers, an unerring ability to chronicle the ways people delude themselves—those lies we tell ourselves daily to survive. And in The Condition her touch with characterization is usually sure. Occasionally, Paulette's monumental repression and Billy's gay domesticity feel a tad cliched, but generally Haigh's characters are layered and authentic. Moreover, one would have to have a heart of stone not to care for them and follow their small sagas…I cared so much for each member of the McKotch clan that I was…happy to have spent time with them, and to have witnessed them growing up and old and, finally, learning to accept who they are.
Chris Bohjalian - Washington Post


Haigh's third novel relates the heartbreaking story of Gwen McKotche, a young woman inflicted with Turner's syndrome, which will forever trap her in the body of a child, and her family's trials and tribulations. With flawed yet honest and caring characters, Jennifer Van Dyck relates the story in a believable voice drenched in sadness without editorializing. Van Dyck delivers a solid reading that displays her knack for emotional storytelling while still allowing her audience the privilege of commanding their own emotions for the majority of the tale. Van Dyck never tries to force sympathy and tears from her audience, but will have no problem bringing them to the surface of each listener.
Publishers Weekly


PEN/Hemingway Award winner Haigh's third novel focuses on the now disconnected members of a once close-knit New England family. The summer of 1976 is the last Paulette and Frank McKotch and their three children will spend together as a family at her parents' Cape Cod cottage before the house is sold and Frank and Paulette are divorced. Cold but needy Paulette, who dropped out of Wellesley to marry, and warm but self-centered Frank, a scientist and professor at MIT, are sexually incompatible-he wants more and she wants less. Their already shaky marriage falls apart when their 13-year-old daughter Gwen is diagnosed with a chromosome deficiency that keeps her from developing physically in puberty; Frank wants to pursue medical solutions while Paulette wants to protect Gwen from pain. Cut ahead 20 years to the mid-'90s. Frank and Paulette have never remarried. Both are painfully lonely. Bill, their oldest son, has become a cardiologist in Manhattan. He is in a genuinely loving relationship with another man, but he keeps his sexuality a secret from his parents, and completely avoids Frank, who always favored him. Youngest son Scott, the family black sheep, has fallen into marriage with a woman whose coarseness is portrayed almost as a moral deficiency. At 30, teaching at a mediocre private school, he barely supports her and their two children. Although he lives in nearby Connecticut, he too rarely sees his parents or siblings. At 34, Gwen still has a child's body. She lives a lonely life working in a museum. On a vacation in the Caribbean, Gwen falls in love with her guide. Paulette, a conventional snob and overly protective mother, sends Scott to find Gwen, settingin motion a chain of reactions that ultimately force each of the McKotches to reexamine their relationships with each other and with themselves. After the lovely opening, filled with genuine insight and touching lyricism, Haigh overly orchestrates her characters' lives.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Discuss the significance of the book's title. What else might it refer to other than Gwen's Turner's syndrome?

2. In what ways does Gwen's condition reverberate throughout the McKotch family? What do Frank and Paulette's differing opinions about how to treat Gwen's condition reveal about their personalities and also about their relationship?

3. Paulette and Frank's marriage was rife with misunderstandings on both sides. Was one person more to blame than the other for their break-up? Of the two, who did you find to be more sympathetic? Why does Billy blame his father for the divorce?

4. What was your impression of Paulette? Do you suppose the author meant for her to be a likeable character?

5. Discuss Paulette's relationship with Donald and her infatuation with Gil Pyle. What did Paulette find in her relationship with Donald that she did not with Frank?

6. Frank often compares his working-class background in a Pennsylvania mining town with Paulette's pedigreed family, musing that everything comes down to upbringing. How does his children's upbringing affect the paths they take in life? Was Frank a bad father, as Paulette seemed to believe?

7. On the surface the three McKotch children are extremely different. In what ways, if any, are they alike?

8. Why does Gwen distance herself from her family both physically and emotionally? Why does she ultimately decide to forgive Rico and Scott but not her mother?

9. Do you agree with Paulette's decision to send Scott to St. Raphael to bring Gwen home? Why is it so difficult for Paulette to believe that a man might be attracted to Gwen? Is she merely being a protective mother?

10. Gwen ends up living on St. Raphael, worlds away from her isolated life in Pittsburgh and Concord before that. What does she find on the Caribbean island that she hasn't anywhere else? Why does she reconcile with Rico?

11. What prompts Billy to finally reveal to his family that he's gay? How do Paulette and Frank each react to the news?

12. By the time the family reconvenes at the Captain's House, what realizations has Scott come to about his life—professionally and romantically, as well as his role as a father? In what ways have the others changed by the time of the reunion?

13. Sense of place is an important theme in The Condition. How do the opening scenes at the Captain's House set the tone for the rest of the novel? What do the main characters' living spaces, from Paulette's 200-year-old Concord house to Billy's meticulously decorated New York City apartment, reveal about them?

14. What do you suppose the future holds for the five members of the McKotch family?

15. Jennifer Haigh unfolds the narrative from the alternating perspectives of Frank, Paulette, and their three children. In what ways did this enhance your reading of the story?

16. Overall, what are your thoughts about the way the author presents the McKotches? Did you find their story to be a realistic and believable one?

17. If you have read Jennifer Haigh's previous novels, Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, discuss the similarities and differences between those two books and The Condition.
(Questions issued by publishers.)

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A Confederacy of Dunces 
John Kennedy Toole, 1980
Grove/Atlantic
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802130204


Summary
Winner, 1981 Pulitzer Prize

“When a true genius appears in the world,
You may know him by this sign, that the dunces
Are all in confederacy against him.”
—Jonathan Swift, “Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting”

“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once.”

So enters one of the most memorable characters in American fiction, Ignatius J. Reilly. John Kennedy Toole’s hero is one, “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans’ lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures” (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Ignatius J. Reilly is a flatulent frustrated scholar deeply learned in Medieval philosophy and American junk food, a brainy mammoth misfit imprisoned in a trashy world of Greyhound Buses and Doris Day movies. He is in violent revolt against the entire modern age.  Ignatius’ peripatetic employment takes him from Levy Pants, where he leads a workers’ revolt, to the French Quarter, where he waddles behind a hot dog wagon that serves as his fortress.

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece that outswifts Swift, whose poem gives the book its title. Set in New Orleans, the novel bursts into life on Canal Street under the clock at D. H. Holmes department store.

The characters leave the city and literature forever marked by their presences—Ignatius and his mother; Mrs. Reilly’s matchmaking friend, Santa Battaglia; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levy Pants; inept, bemused Patrolman Mancuso; Jones, the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses. Juvenal, Rabelais, Cervantes, Fielding, Swift, Dickens—their spirits are all here. Filled with unforgettable characters and unbelievable plot twists, shimmering with intelligence, and dazzling in its originality, Toole’s comic classic just keeps getting better year after year.

Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980 and published in paperback in 1981 by Grove Press, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author’s mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, there are over 1,500,000 copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—December 17, 1937
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Death—March 26, 1969
• Where—Biloxi, Mississippi
• Education—B.A., Tulane University; M.A., Columbia
  University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize

Toole, known throughout his life to friends and family as "Ken", lived a sheltered childhood in Uptown New Orleans. His mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole, was a charmingly flamboyant but narcissistic woman, who doted on her only child. Toole's father worked as a car salesman and mechanic before succumbing to deafness and failing health, while his mother supplemented the family income with music lessons.

After earning an undergraduate degree from Tulane University, Toole received a master's degree at Columbia University, and spent a year as assistant professor of English at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana Lafayette) in Lafayette, Louisiana. Toole's next academic post was in New York City, where he taught at Hunter College. Although he pursued a doctorate at Columbia, his studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961. Toole served two years in Puerto Rico teaching English to Spanish-speaking recruits.

Following his military service, Ken Toole returned to New Orleans to live with his parents and teach at Dominican College. He spent much of his time hanging around the French Quarter with musicians and, on at least one occasion, helped a musician friend with his second job selling tamales from a cart. While at Tulane University, Toole had worked briefly in a men's clothing factory. Both of these experiences inspired memorable scenarios in his comic novel A Confederacy of Dunces.

Toole sent the manuscript of his novel, written during the early 60's, to Simon and Schuster and, despite initial excitement about the work, the publisher eventually rejected it, commenting that it "isn't really about anything." Toole's health began to deteriorate as he lost hope of seeing his work – which he considered a masterpiece – in print. He stopped teaching at Dominican, quit his doctoral classes and began to drink heavily while being medicated for severe headaches.

Toole's biographers, Rene Pol Nevils and Deborah George Handy, have suggested that a factor in Toole's depression was confusion about his sexuality and identity. In their biography, Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole, they tracked down and interviewed many of Ken Toole's acquaintances. While one friend suggested that his domineering mother left no emotional room for any other woman in Toole's life (although he did date some women exclusively in his lifetime), others have disputed the suggestion that he was a homosexual, including David Kubach, a longtime friend who also served with Toole in the army. The authors of his biography, Ignatius Rising, were not personally acquainted with him, and "not knowing him makes a big difference", Kubach said.

Toole disappeared on January 20, 1969, after a dispute with his mother. Receipts found in his car show that Toole drove to the west coast and then to Milledgeville, Georgia. Here he visited the home of then deceased writer Flannery O'Connor. It was during what is assumed to be a trip back to New Orleans that Ken Toole stopped outside Biloxi, Mississippi, and committed suicide by putting one end of a garden hose into the exhaust pipe of his car and the other into the window of the car in which he was sitting. He died due to self-induced asphyxiation on March 26, 1969. An envelope was left on the dashboard of the car and was marked "to my parents". However, the suicide note inside the envelope was destroyed by his mother, who made conflicting statements as to its general contents. He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans.

After his death, Thelma Toole in 1976 insisted that author Walker Percy, by then a faculty member at Loyola University New Orleans, read the manuscript for Dunces. Percy was hesitant at first, but eventually gave in and fell in love with the book. A Confederacy of Dunces was published in 1980, and Percy provided the foreword.

The first printing was only 2500 copies by LSU Press. A number of these were sent to Scott Kramer, an executive and producer at 20th Century Fox, to pitch around Hollywood, but the book generated little initial interest there. However, the novel attracted much attention in the literary world. A year later, in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies in 18 languages.

Toole's only other novel is The Neon Bible, which he wrote at age 16 and considered too juvenile a writing attempt to submit for publication while he was alive. However, due to the great interest in Toole, The Neon Bible was published in 1989. The novel was made into a feature film of the same name in 1995. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
A masterwork of comedy.... The novel astonishes with its inventiveness, it lives in the play of its voices. A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing less than a grand comic fugue
New York Times Book Review


The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredible true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures
Henry Kisor - Chicago Sun-Times


The episodes explode one after the other like fireworks on a story night. No doubt about it, this book is destined to become a classic.
Baltimore Sun

Discussion Questions 
1. Walker Percy (in the Introduction) uses the words gargantuan and Falstaffian to describe Ignatius.  Is it only his size that makes Ignatius seem larger than life?  Percy likens him to the late screen comic Oliver Hardy.  To which more recent personalities could Ignatius be compared?

2. The first chapter of A Confederacy of Dunces is generally thought to be among the funniest in American literature. Do you agree?  What other comic novels remind you of A Confederacy of Dunces and why?

3. Ignatius constantly criticizes and deprecates his mother while relying on her to keep his life together. Does she feel the same way about her son?  What does she need from him and what does she get for her pains?

4. The city of New Orleans plays a central role in the novel, seeming to be a character in and of itself. ould this novel have been set in another American city?  Elaborate. 

5. Project Ignatius and Myrna into the future. They are supposed to be in love, but find themselves fighting before ever leaving the city.  Will they make it to New York? Can New York survive Ignatius?   What possibilities do you see for them?

6. Ignatius is a virgin, but Myrna declares herself to be sexually uninhibited. Is each telling the truth?  Can you see them becoming intimate?  Discuss this in light of your own experience or that of a friend’s.

7. Ignatius thinks of himself as a knight errant seeking to set the modern world in line with his theories of good taste and solid geometry. Are his efforts doomed to failure?  Has he chosen his quests unwisely or does the fault lie in his personality?  Is the way he views the world askew?

8. Is Ignatius purely lazy or does his attitude toward work reflect his disdain for the modern world of commerce?  Ignatius feels he is an anachronism.  Where would he fit in? 

9. Although the book is longer than the average novel, Walker Percy fought against it being severely edited.  What do you think of his decision?  If you were to expand or cut something, what would it be?

10. The book is elaborately plotted, but does it work?  What do you find unbelievable or improbable?

11.  In the forty years since A Confederacy of Dunces was written our attitudes toward what constitutes pornography have changed.  Given the same circumstances, would Lana Lee be arrested today for her bird show?  Develop a scenario suitable for today’s more permissive times.  

12. It is unusual for a current novel to use written dialect.  Would A Confederacy of Dunces be the same if characters like Burma and Santa spoke in standard English? 

13.  In the twenty-plus years since its publication A Confederacy of Dunces has become a cult novel.  What does that mean to you? Give examples of other cult novels you may have read.  Have you joined in slavish devotion to any of these works?

14. In a letter dated March 5, 1965, Toole critiques his own novel writing that he “was certain that the Levys were the book’s worst flaw” and “that couple kept slipping from my grasp as I tried to manipulate them throughout the book”  (Nevils and Hardy, page 139).  What did he mean?  And do you agree?  Are they the only characters who don’t come to life?  Toole lauds other characters as being representative of New Orleans.  Who do you think they might be?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Confession
John Grisham, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
418 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780739377895

Summary 
An innocent man is about to be executed. Only a guilty man can save him.

For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn’t understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn’t care. He just can’t believe his good luck. Time passes and he realizes that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He is relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed.

Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donte Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.

Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donte is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess.

But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia

John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.

Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.

As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.

Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.

As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.

It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.

His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.

He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.

He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.

Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.

With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.

Writing
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.

Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.

Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.

In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.

In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.

Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.

Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."

Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.

Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.

In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)

Book Reviews 
[T]he kind of grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story that demands to be inhaled as quickly as possible. But it's also a superb work of social criticism in the literary troublemaker tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.... For more than a decade, in his novels...and on editorial pages, Grisham has ruminated over the efficacy and morality of the death penalty. The Confession bangs the gavel and issues a clear verdict. As an advocacy thriller, it will rile some readers, shake up conventional pieties and, no doubt, change some minds. Whatever your politics, don't read this book if you just want to kick back in your recliner and relax.
Maureen Corrigan - Washiangton Post

Grisham's recent slump continues with another subpar effort whose plot and characters, none of whom are painted in shades of gray, aren't able to support an earnest protest against the death penalty. In 2007, almost on the eve of the execution of Donte Drumm, an African-American college football star, for the 1998 murder of a white cheerleader whose body was never found, Travis Boyette, a creepy multiple sex offender, confesses that he's guilty of the crime to Kansas minister Keith Schroeder. With Drumm's legal options dwindling fast and with the threat of civil unrest in his Texas hometown if the execution proceeds, Schroeder battles to convince Boyette to go public with the truth—and to persuade the condemned man's attorney that Boyette's story needs to be taken seriously. While the action progresses with a certain grim realism, Schroeder's superficial responses to the issues raised undercut the impact. As with The Appeal, the author's passionate views on serious flaws in the justice system don't translate well into fiction.
Publishers Weekly

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

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

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

1. How is your reading of this novel affected by the knowledge that much in the book is based on actual events, not just in Texas but in other states as well?

2. What evidence is used to charge and convict Donte Drumm of Nicole Yarber's murder?

3. Enumerate the flaws in the justice system that Grisham's book illuminates, starting with the police officers and their technique of attaining Drumm's confession.

4. What other parts of the system come under Grisham's criticism?

5. What are the pressures that come to bear on the legal system when a murder takes place—pressures that might force an indictment and conviction unfairly?

6. Do you find the sections dealing with Drumm's years on death row believable? Talk about this revealing passage:

You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half....

But Drumm's thoughts end with "no one really wants to die," even if his life is so miserably confined. Talk about the will to live despite life's circumstances.

7. What role does race play in this story?

8. Was this book suspenseful? Was the ending—with all the twists & turns along the way—surprising or predictable? Did you have an idea of how it would end? (Okay, be honest: did you skip ahead to read the ending?)

9. At one point, Schroeder wonders whether he would believe in the death penalty if Boyette rather than Drumm were scheduled for execution. What do you think?

10. Grisham has received criticism that his characters are one-dimensional—either all good or all bad, depending on which side of the death penalty issue they fall on. Do you agree? Or do you feel his characters are fully drawn? What about Keith Schroeder?

11. Grisham has also been criticized for straying from his signature suspense fiction to push his views on the death penalty. Do you agree with those critics? Should Grisham, as a writer of fiction, stay away from hot button political issues? Or should he to use his popularity as a fiction writer to speak out? Does your answer to that question align with your attitude toward the death penalty?

12. Have you learned anything new about the working of the legal system in this country? Do you see it in a different light because of Grisham's book?

13. What are your views regarding the death penalty? Has your perspective been changed by reading this book? Do you see Grisham's book as a fair—or unfair—portrayal of the legal system and death penalty issue?

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

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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict 
Laurie Viera Rigler, 2007
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452289727


Summary
After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up and finds herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom or even in her own body but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy?

Not only is Courtney stuck in another woman’s life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. But not even her love of Jane Austen has prepared Courtney for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England, let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones, condomless seducers, and marriages of convenience. Enter the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, who fills Courtney’s borrowed brain with confusing memories that are clearly not her own.

Try as she might to control her mind and find a way home, Courtney cannot deny that she is becoming this other woman—and being this other woman is not without its advantages: especially in a looking-glass Austen world. And especially with a suitor who may not turn out to be a familiar species of philanderer after all. (From the publisher.) 

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1957
• Where—N/A
• Education—State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California

When not indulging herself in re-readings of Jane Austen’s six novels, Laurie Viera Rigler is a freelance book editor who teaches writing workshops, including classes in storytelling technique at Vroman’s, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore.

After many years of keeping her Austen addiction largely to herself, Laurie decided to come out of the Janeite closet when the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) decided to hold their annual general meeting in Los Angeles. Who knew there were other obsessed souls out there, a whole community of them, as a matter of fact? Now she has people she can talk to about what’s most important in life, Jane Austen, Jane Austen, and Jane Austen. When she’s not talking about Austen, reading about Austen, or writing books inspired by Austen, she’s tinkering with the website of JASNA’s Southwest Region, where she serves as webmaster.

Prior to writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie teamed with Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper to write a humorous, gender-specific guide to movie rentals entitled He Rents, She Rents: The Ultimate Film Guide to the Best Women’s Films and Guy Movies. She also coauthored Popping the Question: Real-Life Stories of Marriage Proposals, From the Romantic to the Bizarre with Sheree Bykofsky.

Before she began writing and editing books, Laurie spent several years on and around film sets in various capacities, from production coordinating features to producing short films; and from reading screenplays to rewriting and cowriting scripts. Then one day, she saw in her mind a twenty-first-century L.A. Janeite waking up in the body and life of a woman in Austen’s time. She knew this one had to be a book, and she started writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. She still loves film, but finds watching it much more fun than making it. Especially if it stars Colin Firth or Matthew MacFadyen.

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” Oh, yeah. Education. Laurie graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a B.A. in Classics. That good enough for you, Mr. Darcy? (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A devotee of all things Austen… discovers the reality of life in Regency England: rampant body odor, sexual and class repression and a style of medical care involving bloodletting.... Despite the smells, little in [her] current lifestyle—including most of the men—can compete with the erotic charge of dancing in a candlelit ballroom.
USA Today


A delightful comic romp… Jane Austen makes a cameo appearance that is pure pleasure.
Times Picayune


(Audio version.) Orlagh Cassidy is delightfully fun as Courtney Stone, a modern Los Angeles girl nursing a heartbreak who wakes up to find herself inhabiting the body and life of a Jane Austenesque Regency girl. Cassidy is spot-on with Courtney's California accent, modern-day moaning about men, self-analysis and doubt, and sarcasm—and then, without missing a beat, flips easily into the proper, upper-class English tones of Jane (the Regency girl Courtney has replaced, whose accent came with the body), her pompous, controlling mother, her desperate suitor and her sympathetic best friend. Orlagh's lively narration makes Courtney even more endearing and brings the colorful story to life. Fans of Austen, chick lit, and romantic comedies should definitely put this one on their listening list.
Publishers Weekly


Waking up in early 19th-century Britain is not a common occurrence for a 21st-century gal from L.A. Yet Courtney Stone, just having dumped her womanizing fiancé, does wake up during the Regency era in the home and body of Jane Mansfield (yes, she acknowledges the irony), a woman of 30 who has just fallen from a horse. As Courtney realizes that she is not dreaming, she becomes attuned to the thoughts, feelings, and memories of her host. First novelist Rigler has taken her own love of author Austen and superimposed it onto Courtney, a repeat reader and viewer of all things Jane. Aside from the obvious, there are other complications afoot, including a possible dalliance with a footman and the confused emotions regarding Charles Edgeworth, a prospective suitor and the brother of Jane's dearest friend, Mary. Throw in Jane's stern mother, her back-stabbing cousin, and a fortune-teller, and it's one wild time-traveling ride. Or is it? At book's end, it isn't quite clear where (or who) Courtney/Jane is. The voice of our heroine isn't well established either. She quotes from her favorite author's novels at will, but her tone and behavior are more that of a recalcitrant Valley Girl. What began as a charming premise becomes downright irritating. Perhaps exhaustive Austen collections would be interested.
Library Journal


Talk about an out-of-body experience. One moment Courtney Stone is a modern-day L.A. career woman lamenting a lost love; the next she is Jane Mansfield, a well-to-do, willowy (though not particularly buxom, unlike her twentieth-century namesake) lady in nineteenth-century England....This frothy take on literary time travel will appeal most to readers well versed in the celebrated author's memorable characters and themes.—Allison Block.
Booklist


An Austen addict who's been having romantic trouble in contemporary Los Angeles finds herself transported to early-19th-century England living a life that seems lifted from a compilation of the Austen novels. One morning shortly after Courtney has broken with her fiance Frank-he's been carrying on with the wedding-cake decorator-she mysteriously wakes up inside the body of Miss Jane Mansfield in 1813. Thirty-year-old Jane is recovering from an equine accident and resisting her unpleasant mother's attempts to push her into marriage. At first Courtney thinks her time travel is a dream, but when she begins talking defiantly, Mrs. Mansfield threatens to put Jane into an asylum. Courtney/Jane slides into the life of an Austen heroine, resisting the charms of handsome Mr. Edgeworth, who reminds her too much of not only Frank but his best friend Wes, to whom Courtney has been feeling drawn despite herself. She confides her confusing identity to Edgeworth's sister Mary, Jane's true friend who has dissuaded her from marrying Edgeworth because she thinks he fathered a housemaid's illegitimate child. Mary also resents that he broke off her romance with a man he found unsuitable. Mary and Jane/Courtney travel the Austen map, first to Bath, then to London, along the way encountering men and women who will be familiar to the most casual Austen reader. First-time novelist Rigler jumbles names and pieces of plot line from the novels into an Austenian dream (or nightmare). Mary and Jane/Courtney learn that Mary's former beloved was a cad and that Edgeworth acted nobly with the maid, not sexually. How Courtney entered Jane's body, through the ministrations of a magical fortuneteller, is almost an afterthought. Jane/Courtney's 21st-century urges offer provocative possibilities, but Courtney's world is a pale sketch, and Jane's so laden with Austen references that it has no life. Even the most diehard Austen fans may find this work to be too much.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Would you have handled things differently if you found yourself in Courtney’s/Jane’s situation? Which things would you have done differently? Which things would you have done the same?

Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly suppose you would ever have thought well of me again.— Frank Churchill, in Jane Austen’s Emma

2. How does Courtney/Jane use Jane Austen’s novels as a means of making sense of her world? Have you ever turned to your favorite books or films for inner strength, guidance, or comfort?

Oh! it is only a novel!” replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is . . . in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.— Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

3. How do you interpret the ending of the book?

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.— From Mansfield Park

4. Aside from the societal restrictions on a woman’s mobility, career choices, and living arrangements that Courtney/Jane faced in 1813, have parental, peer, and personal attitudes toward unmarried women fundamentally changed since Jane Austen’s day?

Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.— Lydia Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

5. One of the ways in which Courtney/Jane defines herself is by what she reads. To what extent do we define ourselves by what we read? To what extent do we form our opinions of others based on what they read?

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. — Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

6. Like Courtney/Jane, have you ever found yourself in a situation where your very concept of who you are was fundamentally challenged?

Till this moment, I never knew myself.— Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

7. What are the things you think you would enjoy the most about being in Jane Austen’s world? What are the things you might find particularly challenging? Is there anything in the contemporary world that you absolutely could not do without?

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.— Emma Woodhouse, in Jane Austen’s Emma

8. If it were possible for you to be someone in Jane Austen’s world, who would you wish to be? Would you prefer a round-trip ticket to that world, or one-way only?

The distance is nothing, when one has a motive...— Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Confessions of a Shopaholic 
Sophie Kinsella, 2001
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440241416


Summary
Millions of readers have come to adore New York Times best-selling author Sophie Kinsella’s irrepressible heroine. Meet Becky Bloomwood, America’s favorite shopaholic—a young woman with a big heart, big dreams…and just one little weakness.

Becky has a fabulous flat in London's trendiest neighborhood, a troupe of glamorous socialite friends, and a closet brimming with the season's must-haves. The only trouble is that she can't actually afford it—not any of it.

Her job writing at Successful Savings not only bores her to tears, it doesn't pay much at all. And lately Becky's been chased by dismal letters from the bank—letters with large red sums she can't bear to read—and they're getting ever harder to ignore.

She tries cutting back. But none of her efforts succeeds. Becky's only consolation is to buy herself something ... just a little something....

Finally a story arises that Becky actually cares about, and her front-page article catalyzes a chain of events that will transform her life—and the lives of those around her—forever.

Sophie Kinsella has brilliantly tapped into our collective consumer conscience to deliver a novel of our times—and a heroine who grows stronger every time she weakens. Becky's hilarious schemes to pay back her debts are as endearing as they are desperate. Her "confessions" are the perfect pick-me-up when life is hanging in the (bank) balance. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Aka—Madeleine Wickham
• Birth—December 12, 1969
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University, M.Mus., King's College,
   London
• Currently—lives in London, England


Madeleine Sophie Wickham (born Madeleine Sophie Townley) is an English author of chick lit who is most known for her work under the pen name Sophie Kinsella.

Madeleine Wickham was born in London. She did her schooling in Putney High School and Sherborne School for Girls. She studied music at New College, Oxford, but after a year switched to Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She then worked as a financial journalist (including for Pensions World) before turning to fiction.

While working as a financial journalist, at the age of 24, she wrote her first novel. The Tennis Party (1995) was immediately hailed as a success by critics and the public alike and became a top ten bestseller. She went on to publish six more novels as Madeleine Wickham: A Desirable Residence (1996), Swimming Pool Sunday (1997), The Gatecrasher (1998), The Wedding Girl (1999), Cocktails for Three (2000), and Sleeping Arrangements (2001).

Her first novel under the pseudonym Sophie Kinsella (taken from her middle name and her mother's maiden name) was submitted to her existing publishers anonymously and was enthusiastically received. She revealed her real identity for the first time when Can You Keep a Secret? was published in 2005.

Sophie Kinsella is best known for writing the Shopaholic novels series, which focus on the misadventures of Becky Bloomwood, a financial journalist who cannot manage her own finances. The series focuses on her obsession with shopping and its resulting complications for her life. The first two Shopaholic books—Confessions of a Shopaholic (2000) and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (2001) were adapted into a film in February 2009, with Isla Fisher playing an American Becky and Hugh Dancy as Luke Brandon. The latest addition to the Shopaholic series, Mini shopaholic came out in 2010.

Can you Keep a Secret (2004), was also published under the name Sophie Kinsella, as were The Undomestic Goddess (2006),  Remember Me (2008), Twenties Girl (2009), I've Got Your Number (2012), and Wedding Night (2013). All are stand-alone novels (not part of the Shopaholic series).

A new musical adaptation by Chris Burgess of her 2001 novel Sleeping Arrangements premiered in 2013 in London at The Landor Theatre.

Personal life
Wickham lives in London with her husband, Henry Wickham (whom she met in Oxford), the headmaster of a boys' preparatory school. They have been married for 17 years and have five children. She is the sister of fellow writer, Gemma Townley. (From Wikipedia.)

Extras
Excerpts from a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:

• "I am a serial house mover: I have moved house five times in the last eight years! But I'm hoping I might stay put in this latest one for a while.

• "I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face. Or maybe they think I'm J. K. Rowling!

• "If my writing comes to a halt, I head to the shops: I find them very inspirational. And if I get into real trouble with my plot, I go out for a pizza with my husband. We order a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea and start talking—and basically keep drinking and talking till we've figured the glitch out. Never fails!"

• Favorite leisure pursuits: a nice hot bath, watching The Simpsons, playing table tennis after dinner, shopping, playing the piano, sitting on the floor with my two small boys, and playing building blocks and Legos.

• Least favorite leisure pursuit: tidying away the building blocks and Legos.

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

My earliest, most impactful encounter with a book was when I was seven and awoke early on Christmas morning to find Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in my stocking. I had never been so excited by the sight of a book—and have possibly never been since! I switched on the light and read the whole thing before the rest of my family even woke up. I think that's when my love affair with books began. (Interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Add this aptly titled piffle to the ranks of pink-covered girl-centric fiction that has come sailing out of England over the last two years. At age 25, Rebecca Bloomwood has everything she wants. Or does she? Can her career as a financial journalist, a fab flat and a closet full of designer clothes lessen the blow of the dunning letters from credit card companies and banks that have been arriving too quickly to be contained by the drawer in which Rebecca hides them? Although her romantic entanglements tend toward the superficial, there is that wonderful Luke Brandon of Brandon Communications: handsome, intelligent, the 31st-richest bachelor according to Harper's and actually possessed of a personality that is more substance than style. Too bad that Rebecca blows it whenever their paths cross. Will Rebecca learn to stop shopping before she loses everything worthwhile? When faced with the opportunity to do good for others and impress Luke, will she finally measure up? Rebecca is so unremittingly shallow and Luke is so wonderful that readers may find themselves rooting for the heroine not to get the man—although, since Shakespeare's time, there's rarely been any doubt concerning how romantic comedies will end. There's a certain degree of madcap fun with some of Rebecca's creative untruths; when she persuades her parents that a bank manager is a stalker, some very amusing situations ensue. Still, this is familiar stuff, and Rebecca is the kind of unrepentant spender who will make readers, save those who share her disorder in the worst way, pity the poor bill collector.
Publishers Weekly

We had quite the debate over this fun, frothy debut from the U.K. It was abundantly clear that Sophie Kinsella has chops— she's quite the writer, and has crafted an amusing page-turner in the voice of a woman with whom many of our readers can identify. But was the writing new and original enough—or was it yet another Bridget Jones wannabe? This review is proof positive that Sophie Kinsella has written a work and created a character wholly her own, and one that will leave readers howling with mirth in her wake. For 25-year-old Rebecca Bloomwood, the protagonist in Confessions of a Shopaholic, is every responsible woman's worst nightmare. A smart woman with a quick wit, she lets her insecurities run amok, only feeling in charge with her credit card in hand and a date lined up. Her career as a financial journalist feels like a sham, so she glams herself up with the latest find from the fashionistas and is momentarily diverted from taking action. As she dreams of the perfect scarf in the middle of meetings and steals away to buy trinkets in pricey boutiques, Rebecca's high-living lifestyle eventually catches up with her, when the dreaded letters arrive from creditors demanding payment on her delinquent accounts. We won't spoil the surprise ending (think romance, not drudgery!), but Sophie Kinsella is sure to delight Americans with her savvy debut novel, a main line into the heartbeat of consumerism today.
Barnes & Noble Editors

Kinsella's novel, though antic, would be more compelling if Becky were even slightly more self-aware. Does Kinsella sustain an entire novel with a 25-year-old writer addicted to clothes and makeup? Perhaps, if readers love clothes and makeup just as much. —Suzanne Young
Booklist

Discussion Questions 
1. Becky has a serious shopping addiction! Clothes, makeup, shoes—you name it, she loves it! Do you have a shopping addiction? Where is your favorite place to go shopping? What store can’t you walk by without “just taking a peek” at the fabulous merchandise!

2. At the beginning of Confessions of a Shopaholic, Becky just had to have the Denny & George scarf. Have you ever made a crazy impulsive purchase like that? What’s the most fun purchase you’ve ever made? Have you ever had to borrow money for a shopping spree?

3. Becky is obviously addicted to shopping, but she’s got other things going for her as well. What are some of your favorite characteristics about Becky? Do you have friends that remind you of any of the characters in Confessions of a Shopaholic?

4. Becky decided to follow David E. Barton’s Controlling Your Cash in order to reduce her spending. Do you think the tactics listed in the story were reasonable? How could Becky have better managed her financial situation? What ways do you budget yourself and save up for special things you want to splurge on?

5. When Becky was a store assistant at Ally Smith, she hid a pair of zebra print jeans from a customer—then got fired! Do you have a funny or embarrassing dressing room story? Have you ever done something extreme like Becky to “stake your claim” on a piece of clothing?

6. Becky’s relationship with Luke constantly changes throughout Confessions of a Shopaholic. Hot and cold, on and off, you never know what you’re going to get with the two of them. How do you think the development of their relationship enhances the story?

7. Zebra print jeans, pink boots, and a shimmering gray-blue scarf—it seems that Becky has a style all of her own! How does Becky’s shopping obsession add to the story? What’s your style like? Do you have a favorite outfit?

8. Tarquin and Becky’s date was quite interesting to say the least. Pizza and champagne, a $5,000 check to a made-up organization, and some sneaking around on Becky’s part! Do you think Becky handled herself appropriately? What’s the most memorable date you’ve ever been on?

9. Becky seems to tell a lot of “little white lies,” from lying about a broken leg, to making up a dead aunt, and even telling her parents she has a stalker! How does her lying affect her relationships to her friends, family and colleagues in the story? What’s the most exaggerated “little white lie” you’ve ever made up to get yourself out of trouble?

10. Do you think that Becky can serve as a role-model for young women? What lessons did you learn about relationships, responsibility, friendship and honesty?

11. Becky lands a front page news article, a spot on a morning television show, and a date with her dream guy all in the course of a couple days. Is this too good to be true? Can you believe Becky’s luck? Do you think Becky has changed by the end of the story? Have you ever had a perfect day like Becky’s?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

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The Confessions of Catherine de Medici 
C.W. Gortner, 2010
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345501868


Summary
The truth is, none of us are innocent. We all have sins to confess.

So reveals Catherine de Medici in this brilliantly imagined novel about one of history’s most powerful and controversial women. To some she was the ruthless queen who led France into an era of savage violence. To others she was the passionate savior of the French monarchy. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter into the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power.

 The last legitimate descendant of the illustrious Medici line, Catherine suffers the expulsion of her family from her native Florence and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an enraged mob. While still a teenager, she is betrothed to Henri, son of François I of France, and sent from Italy to an unfamiliar realm where she is overshadowed and humiliated by her husband’s lifelong mistress. Ever resilient, Catherine strives to create a role for herself through her patronage of the famous clairvoyant Nostradamus and her own innate gift as a seer. But in her fortieth year, Catherine is widowed, left alone with six young children as regent of a kingdom torn apart by religious discord and the ambitions of a treacherous nobility.

Relying on her tenacity, wit, and uncanny gift for compromise, Catherine seizes power, intent on securing the throne for her sons. She allies herself with the enigmatic Protestant leader Coligny, with whom she shares an intimate secret, and implacably carves a path toward peace, unaware that her own dark fate looms before her—a fate that, if she is to save France, will demand the sacrifice of her ideals, her reputation, and the passion of her embattled heart.

From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—southern Spain 
• Education—M.F.A., (university unknown)
• Currently—lives in northern California, USA

Half-Spanish by birth, C.W. Gortner was raised in southern Spain, where he developed a lifelong fascination with history. After holding various jobs in the fashion industry, he earned a MFA in Writing with an emphasis in Renaissance Studies. He has taught university seminars on the 16th century and women in history, as well as workshops on writing, historical research, and marketing.

Acclaimed for his insight into his characters, he travels extensively to research his books. He has slept in a medieval Spanish castle, danced in a Tudor great hall, and explored library archives all over Europe.

His debut historical novel The Last Queen gained international praise and has been sold in ten countries to date. His new novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, his second, was published in 2010. He is currently at work on The Princess Isabella, his third historical novel, and The Tudor Secret, the first book in his new Tudor suspense series, The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles.

C.W. lives with his partner in northern California. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Catherine de Medici uses her natural and supernatural gifts to protect the French throne in Gortner's (The Last Queen) portrait of a queen willing to sacrifice happiness and reputation to fulfill her family's royal destiny. Orphan Catherine has her first vision at age 10, and three years later is betrothed to Henri d'Orleans, brother of the sickly heir to the French throne. She heads to France with a vial of poison hidden among her possessions, and after negotiating an uneasy truce with her husband's mistress, she matures into a powerful court presence, though power, she learns, comes at a price. Three of her sons become king in succession as the widow Catherine wields ever-increasing influence to keep the ambitious de Guise clan at bay and religious adversaries from murdering each other. Gortner's is not the first fictional reinterpretation of a historical villainess—Catherine's role in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, for instance, is recounted in a way sympathetic to her—but hers is remarkably thoughtful in its insight into an unapologetically ruthless queen.
Publishers Weekly

History has depicted Catherine de Medici (1519–89), wife of one king and mother of three, as a grotesque monster, poisoning and murdering to gain and maintain control over the French throne. After the death of Henri II, she began the struggle of her life—keeping one son after the other on the throne through the religious wars that threatened to tear France apart. In this meticulously researched novel, Gortner (The Last Queen) gives us a Catherine who is passionate yet sometimes naive. Most of her decisions following her husband's death are made to keep peace in France or safeguard her children. Yet she is still held responsible for the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in which thousands of French Protestants were slaughtered. Verdict: While the Catherine depicted here is in some ways similar to Jeanne Kalodigris's protagonist in The Devil's Queen, Gortner breathes more life into his queen. Historical fiction fans will appreciate the vivid details of Renaissance France.—Pamela O'Sullivan, Coll. of Brockport Lib., SUNY
Library Journal

Gortner...fleshes out the notorious Catherine de Medici centuries after her death. Was she a victim of historical, political, and social circumstances or merely a ruthlessly ambitious power seeker? ... Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory fans will devour this smashing fictonal biography of a complex woman whose legend has withstood the test of time. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist

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

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

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Confessions of Catherine de Medici:

1. In Confessions, C.W. Gortner is determined to present a sympathetic picture of Catherine de Medici, a figure much maligned in history. His goal is to flesh her out as a complex and multi-faceted human being—one who will gain readers' sympathy. Does he succeed?

2. Some historians believe that France would have toppled into revolution 200 years earlier than it did—had Catherine not been at the helm. In what ways was she instrumental in preserving the Valois line and the stability of her country?

3. How do you see Catherine: as a murderess, victim, opportunist, or savior? Would you consider her means of survival ruthless...or pragmatic?

4. Talk about Catherine's early life in Florence, her imprisonment, and rescue. What must it have felt like to be a prisoner, then find yourself bride of a prince of France, Europe's most powerful state?

5. What about Catherine's arrival in France? What kind of reception does she receive? What are her expectations...and what does she find? What kind of prejudice does she face as an Italian in France?

6. Say, what about that mistress? How would you describe Diane de Poitiers, her hold over Henri, her status at court, and her position vis-a-vis Catherine? In what way does that change?

7. Discuss the religious strife that infected most of Europe. What would it have been like to live through such violent turmoil? (Any parallels we can draw today?) Talk about the ways in which Catherine seeks to keep peace between the Catholics and Huguenots?

8. How does Gortner present the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre—events leading up to it, misjudgments and missteps, provocations, the spark that set it off...and Catherine's role?

9. Discuss Catherine's relationship with Coligny. What brought them together...and what led them to the final tragic moment between them? Was that moment inevitable?

10. How does Gortner treat Catherine's belief in the occult? How strong an influence is it on her? What do you feel about her visions?

11. Talk about Catherine's children. Are any of them worthy of her devotion? Are any admirable...likeable?

12. Is there regret in Catherine's account for the actions she's taken....the sacrifices she's made?

13. How do you account for Catherine's bad reputation in history?

14. Catherine's life was not her own. Talk about the role throughout history of young high-born women—who were used as pawns in male games of power. Catherine is only one in a long line of pubescent girls married off to seal the deal, either geopolitical or financial...can you think of others?

15. Having finished, what part of this book most surprised you? Which part most engaged you...or did you find most interesting? What have you learned from reading The Confessions...about the 16th century, the religious wars, French monarchy, about Catherine herself? Do you feel smarter?

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

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The Confessions of Young Nero 
Margaret George, 2017
Penguin Publishing
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451473387


Summary
New York Times bestselling author, Margaret George, turns her gaze on Emperor Nero, one of the most notorious and misunderstood figures in history.

Built on the backs of those who fell before it, Julius Caesar's imperial dynasty is only as strong as the next person who seeks to control it. No one is safe from the sting of betrayal: man, woman, or child.

While Nero idealizes the artistic and athletic principles of Greece, his very survival rests on his ability to navigate the sea of vipers that is Rome, including his own mother, a cold-blooded woman whose singular goal is to control the empire.

But as Agrippina's machinations earn her son a title he is both tempted and terrified to assume, Nero's determination to escape her thrall will shape him into the Emperor he was fated to become.

Filled with impeccable research and captivating prose, The Confessions of Young Nero is the story of a boy's ruthless ascension to the throne and the lengths to which man will go in the ultimate quest for power and survival. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—Nashville, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., Tufts University; M.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Madison, Wisconsin

Margaret George is an American historian and historical novelist, specializing in epic fictional biographies. She is known for her meticulous research and the large scale of her books.

She is the author of the bestselling novels Elizabeth I (2011), The Autobiography of Henry VIII (1986), Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles (1992), and The Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997). The latter novel was adapted into an Emmy-nominated TV miniseries. Other bestselling novels include Mary Called Magdalene (2002) and Helen of Troy (2006). She co-authored a children's book about tortoises called Lucille Lost. George plans to write a novel about Boudicca, highlighting her conflict with Rome and Nero.

George, whose father joined the U.S. Foreign Service when she was four, lived all over the world—Taiwan, Israel, and Germany—before she was thirteen. Exposed early to historical sites, she learned that legends might have historical bases: she attended school in Jaffa, Israel, where Jonah set sail (en route to meeting the whale), and she lived on the Rhine in Germany across from the Drachenfels, where Siegfried of the Nibelungenlied killed the dragon.

She graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. and Stanford University with an M.A., co-majoring in biological science and English literature. She worked as a science writer for several years at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Since then she has lived in El Salvador and Sweden, and now calls Madison, Wisconsin, home.

Writing
She began writing at a very early age, composing on yellow lined tablets and illustrating them herself. By middle school, she had begun writing novels, but did not show them to anyone except a few close friends. Only when a book was completely finished did she try for publication. Although she is now known exclusively for historical tomes, she wrote in many genres—science fiction, teen, humor, chick lit (although it wasn’t called that then), action-adventure, before finding what suited her best.

Her first published novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII, 1986, set the pattern. It successfully defended the notorious king’s honor and argued his case. Twenty-five years after its publication, it is still influential and was at the top of the fans’ recommended Henry VIII fiction list for “The Tudors” TV miniseries.

Her other books show the same key characteristics: careful research almost qualifying for non-fiction standards, enough length to give perspective to the subject’s life, and colorful imagery.

She has been interviewed on A & E’s Biography Series on Henry VIII (Henry VIII: Scandals of a King, 1996) and Elizabeth I (Elizabeth : The Virgin Queen, 1996), as well as a special about Cleopatra (Cleopatra’s World: Alexandria Revealed, 1999). She was also a consultant for the CNN special “The Two Marys” in 2004.

Her knowledge of ancient medicine, acquired through her research on Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, and Helen of Troy, led to being an invited lecturer at The American Glaucoma Society (San Diego, 2009), The Glaucoma Foundation (New York City,1997) and the International Congress of Glaucoma Surgery (Luxor, Egypt, 2003).  (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
George’s reconstruction of the man, in terms both of his public life and private character, is more than a revisiting of fact: It’s a subtle exploration of identity and the insidious effects of power…Confessions is all about identity: How is it made, lost, reinvented?… Margaret George occupies that blurry space between history and fiction. And between Tacitus and Margaret George, I rather think it’s George’s account that is not only most sympathetic but most truthful.
Diana Gabaldon - Washington Post


Highly acclaimed for the detail and personality she gives to epic subjects, George's heavily researched novel flows dynamically among multiple points of view. Verdict: Historical fiction devotees…will quickly devour this first volume of a duology. —Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.
Library Journal


George's revisionist novel makes hefty use of its research, yet the emperor himself, shorn of his bad-boy reputation, emerges as oddly pallid.… [T]his workmanlike saga redeems Nero while simultaneously rendering him rather less fascinating.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What if Nero had refused to compete for the crown? Could he have had a quiet life and pursued his art in peace? Later in life, he expressed the idea that he could support himself by his art if he were deposed. Was that at all realistic? Or just another of his romantic dreams?

2. Two living emperors (Caligula and Claudius) are in the book, and the earlier ones are a constant psychological presence. What effect does Nero’s awareness of his lineage and of the expectation that he live up to it have on him from an early age?

3. Nero’s descent from Augustus meant that he was always in a spotlight but at the same time obscure, as there were many other descendants of Augustus. In the book he says, "I was, as always, solitary and singled out." He was both watched and ignored. What did he do in response to this?

4. There were rumors that Nero and his mother had an incestuous relationship, instigated by her as a means of controlling him. Of all the forms of incest, mother-son is the rarest. But it is the easiest to conceal, because mothers normally lavish affection on their children, including physical affection. In what ways do you see Agrippina’s seductive behavior affecting him in the novel?

5. How would you sum up Nero’s feelings toward his mother? Was the matricide at all justified? At what level? Political or psychological?

6. Did Nero really have no choice but to go along with Agrippina’s plans to murder Claudius so he could become emperor? What if he had refused?

7. Murder abounded in Nero’s family, but in the novel he wants to think he is different. At the same time, he fears he isn’t. Is there such a thing as "the blood of murderers" that is inherited?

8. There were four important women in Nero’s life: his mother; his first love, Acte; his first wife, Octavia; and his second wife, Poppaea. With the exception of Octavia, who was his arranged-marriage wife, the others were all older than he was and very strong characters. Acte and Poppaea he was madly in love with. Was he seeking a mother figure/surrogate in the older, beautiful, and strong-willed women he loved?

9. Nero was a romantic about marriage and exotic adventure. In what ways was this his undoing?

10. Nero was only sixteen when he became emperor and held supreme power in many spheres. At an age when people now just become eligible to drive and are too young to serve in the military, he commanded the entire Roman army and empire. Considering this, how well did he perform?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Conjure Women 
Afia Atakora, 2020
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780593230336


Summary
A mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing—and for the conjuring of curses—are at the heart of this dazzling first novel.

Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life.

Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina.

The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.
 
Magnificently written, brilliantly researched, richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Afia Atakora was born in the United Kingdom and raised in New Jersey, where she now lives. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was the recipient of the De Alba Fellowship. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review) [H]aunting, promising debut explores the legacy of a Southern plantation in the years leading up to and following the Civil War.… Through complex characters and bewitching prose, Atakora offers a stirring portrait of the power conferred between the enslaved women.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Deftly interwoven and emotionally involving…. Atakora effectively handles the before-during-and-after structure, enriching her story. If its center is the vibrant Rue, the entire community finally feels like the main character. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Atakora paces her novel beautifully, slowly unwinding the plot in unexpected ways as she examines a relatively unexplored aspect of American history.
Booklist


(Starred review) [E]ngrossing…. Using frequent flashbacks to "slaverytime" and "wartime" and occasional jumps to the future, Atakora structures a plot with plenty of satisfying twists. Life in the immediate aftermath of slavery is powerfully rendered in this impressive first novel.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our talking points to help start a discussion for CONJURE WOMEN … then take off on your own.

1. Afia Atakora has said in an interview with her publisher (Random House) that one of the central takeaways from her novel is that "our past isn't as far back or as well buried as we want to believe." What are the ways that the past haunts the present (and the future) in Conjure Women?

2. (Follow-up to Question 2) Consider how racial issues have continually resurfaced in this country: the shooting unarmed black men, the Black Lives Matter movement, football players kneeling before the flag, or the divisiveness over Confederate statues and flags. To what extent are our own present issues tied to the very theme of a past that never dies in Conjure Women?

3. Atakora refers to Rue as "one lone person in a vast history who does not think of herself as part of history at all, who has no knowledge of the ramifications of the world changing around her." In other words, Rue lives her life, day by day. Do you, in our own life, have a sense of history all around you, of being present in a moment of time in which actions will echo down into the future?

4. Have you read other works in the genre referred to as "slave novels," which creates, as Atakora puts it, "art from a legacy of horror." Atakora wanted her story to move beyond the "legacy of whippings" to consider what the years were like after the war and before the dawn of Jim Crow. Do you think she succeeded? How does her novel differ—or does it?—from others set during the Civil War era, and after?

5. Rue is one of the figures at the center of this story. How does she learn to navigate the post-slavery world? In what way has her mother prepared her for the way the world has changed?

6. Talk about Bean? What does he represent to the community? Why does he so unnerve the townspeople?

7. Describe the relationship, post war, between Rue and Varina? How has their power relation changed? Or has it?

8. Religion figures prominently in Conjure Woman, for both slaves and their masters. How is it that they both adhere to the same religious beliefs? In other woerds, how does Christianity serve the purposes of blacks and whites?

9. What are the "haints," and how do they rule the lives of the townspeople?

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

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The Conjurer (A Martha Beale Mystery)
Cordelia Frances Biddle, 2007
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312383381


Summary
Intrigue, passion and murder surround the suspicious disappearance of Philadelphia financier, Lemuel Beale, in the winter of 1842.

A victim of accidental drowning, according to the local constabulary, Beale's legacy is a sinister web of political and financial machinations, and a troubling relationship with his daughter, his only child. Unmarried at twenty-six in an era when women were expected to become brides before turning twenty, Martha Beale's conflicted search for her father eventually emboldens and frees her, bringing her love in the person of Thomas Kelman, an assistant to Philadelphia's mayor—and a man whose business is homicide investigation.

The inquiry into Beale's disappearance uncovers connections between the city's most affluent and its most destitute: an escaped inmate from the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary; the freed African-American prisoner, Ruth; the ritual slayings of several young girl prostitutes; and Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and necromancer who claims to communicate with the dead. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Other name—Nero Blanc (with her husband Steve Zettler)
   —pseudonym for the Crossword Mystery series
• Birth—outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Miss Porters; Vassar College
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia


Her own words:
I grew up in the nearby suburbs, a member of the branch of the Biddle family that historians refer to as “The Romantics”. The term denotes a predilection for spectacular, if chancy, careers. The other side is known as “The Solids”. Enough said.

The earliest “Romantic” of note was Nicholas, a captain in the fledgling American navy; he was killed when his frigate exploded during an engagement with a British warship. Nicholas was twenty-eight; the battle made him the country’s first naval hero. Until fairly recently, the United States Navy maintained a guided missile destroyer named in his honor. Nicholas’s brother, Charles, served as Vice President of the State of Pennsylvania when his friend, Benjamin Franklin, was President; a nephew, James, became a hero of the War of 1812, and later negotiated the first commercial treaty with the Chinese Empire.

The next “Romantic” Biddle to gain nationwide attention was another Nicholas, a brother of James. He edited The Journals of Lewis and Clark, and later became president of the Second Bank of the United States. The church Nicholas attended and where he’s buried is St. Peter’s Episcopal Church where I serve on the vestry. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

The other half of my Philadelphia ancestry are Drexels. My great-great grandfather, Anthony Drexel, established Drexel University; his niece, Katharine Drexel, was made a saint in the Roman Catholic Church for her humanitarian efforts in establishing schools for the poorest of the poor. Inspiring models, but difficult to follow

My career path first took me first to New York where I acted on stage and tv, playing a small recurring role in the daytime drama, One Life to Live, and being fortunate to be cast in Gemini, a play directed by award-winning Jerry Zaks.

Drama remains with me in my writing. I inhabit my characters when working; I see the settings I describe in cinematic terms. I hear the sounds of the street, touch the fabrics, smell and taste the food prepared in either spacious or cramped kitchens. Yes, I love existing in the past. My first novel, Beneath the Wind (Simon & Schuster) was inspired by a Drexel “grand tour” aboard a family yacht in 1903. I added an illicit romance and murder to spice things up, and named the heroine after my Biddle grandmother because she hadn’t led the exotic life she wished.

The Conjurer grew out of my love of Philadelphia. Some of the novel was inspired by family lore; the rest was assiduously researched. When I write about poverty during the 1840’s, I’m often envisioning current volunteer work I do with Episcopal Community Services (ECS).

I feel I’m straddling two worlds: one in the twenty-first century section of the city known as Society Hill where I live with my husband and sometime co-author, Steve Zettler, and our curly gray bundle of canine energy named Gabby; the other an era of carriages and gas lamps when Philadelphia was at once intensely crowded with humanity and rimmed with bucolic fields and virgin woods. My title character isn’t the only conjurer of spirits." (From the author's website.)

Book Review
The inquiry into Beale's disappearance uncovers connections between the city's most affluent and its most destitute: an escaped inmate from the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary; the freed African-American prisoner, Ruth; the ritual slayings of several young girl prostitutes; and Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and necromancer who claims to communicate with the dead. Biddle knows her manners and her city, and shows both to great advantage. The reader, as in all good historical mysteries, learns as much about a time and place as about the crime, and Biddle's characters are fresh and believable. I hope she continues the series.
Cleveland Plain Dealer


Biddle successfully uses 19th-century Philadelphia, mining the landscape for the kinds of jewels that illuminate a good mystery, and shaping characters that ring true to the elements of their creation. The Conjurer is a worthy inclusion in the genre, and I hope there are many more Martha Beale mysteries to come.
Philadelphia Inquirer


Sordid secrets of the rich and powerful drive the plot of Biddle's unconvincing Philadelphia historical, the first of a new series. One morning in 1842, Main Line financier Lemuel Beale fails to return from a routine hunting trip; his capable but coddled daughter, Martha, and Thomas Kelman, assistant to the mayor of Philadelphia, set out to track him down. At the same time, a brutal serial killer of young prostitutes is stalking the inner-city slums, and traveling mesmerist Eusapio Paladino is chilling aristocratic audiences with performances in which the dead appear to be calling out through his trances. These disparate yet interrelated story threads combine in an intricately orchestrated narrative that implicates the Brahmin class and the corruption that comes with their absolute power. Biddle wonderfully evokes the color and culture of the time, but her overstocked tale ends hastily and unbelievably. Biddle is the coauthor with her husband, Steve Zettel, of Death on the Diagonal and other Nero Blanc crossword puzzle mysteries.
Publishers Weekly


When wealthy financier Lemuel Beale vanishes from his country estate while hunting, his daughter Martha, now exceedingly rich but alone in the world, joins with Thomas Kelman, a special investigator for the mayor of Philadelphia, in probing his disappearance. At the same time, a killer of young girls is prowling the City of Brotherly Love. One possible suspect is Eusapio Paladino, a famous clairvoyant and conjurer. Set in 1842 Philadelphia and juggling multiple plot lines and narrators, this debut entry in a new historical crime series by the coauthor of 11 Nero Blanc crossword puzzle mysteries is a feast for those fans who enjoy engaging characters and historical periods that have not been done to death. This may also attract readers who loved Caleb Carr's attention to detail in The Alienist and Jacqueline Winspeare's appealing sleuth, Maisie Dobbs.
Library Journal


As a serial killer stalks child prostitutes, a wealthy financier vanishes in 1842 Philadelphia. Martha Beale is a cosseted spinster, subservient first to her financier father, and then, when he's presumed drowned, to Owen Simms, his secretary. Beneath her quiet exterior, however, are ripples of defiance ready to break through. Soon enough, she's drawn to Thomas Kelman, an assistant to the mayor of Philadelphia, who's unwilling to write off her father's death as an accident. In his investigations of the Beale disappearance and the child murders, he discovers some disturbing connections to a woman in an insane asylum who was repeatedly raped by the brother who visits her under a false name. Meanwhile, Eusapio Paladino, a conjurer and clairvoyant, has been appearing at private parties delivering scandalous utterances about the crimes. Society beauty Emily Durand, who falls under his spell, is ruined when her husband is shot and Paladino is arrested. Learning that the late Durand was bankrupt, Emily rescues Martha from a drugged stupor brought on by Simms, who wants to marry her but can control her only with opium. Not till the end will defiant Martha and patient Kelman solve the sordid crimes hidden by the wealth and patina of high society. Biddle's debut offers some appealing characters, but a wealth of intriguing period detail ultimately overwhelms the mystery.
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 Conjurer:

1. Consider the difference between societal codes today vs. the mid-1800's—women, economic class, prostitution.

2. What do you know...and when do you know it? Mystery/ thriller stories create suspense by withholding information (see LitCourse 6) then letting it out at the right time. Along the way, the author usually drops subtle clues so the ending doesn't pop out of nowhere. A skillful writer does this deftly—without a heavy, controlling hand. How does Biddle deal with revelation and suspense?

3. What type of mystery is The Conjurer? Classic mysteries depend on a world in which reason and logic uncover truth. (See LitCourse 2). In this story, when Martha is informed that her father is missing, she utters, "there must be a logical explanation." To what extent does this story stay within the bounds of the rational world? Are there other ways, less rational, of uncovering truth?

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

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Connections 
Jacqueline Wein, 2016
Two Harbors Press
406 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781635050172


Summary
When their beloved pets are threatened, a group of ordinary New Yorkers find surprising new connections.

Contrary to the dazzling wealth, glitz and glamour portrayed in the media, the Upper East Side of Manhattan is not only glass penthouses, hedge fund managers, and $500 dinners. There are also ordinary side streets where hard-working singles rent, where roommates split expenses, where elderly women live orderly lives.

For many of them, home means a loving animal, the steadfast presence that shares a life, hears a secret, heals a hurt, claims the heart.

Manhattanite senior citizen Rosa Bassetti is determined to find out who is behind an anonymous note threatening Princess, the arthritic poodle who has claimed her heart. And her neighbors are ready to help. Manhattan’s Upper East Side isn’t all glitz and glamour.

Wein shows us the unique Connections that are made in Manhattan’s aging brownstones, tree-lined streets and pre-war buildings, where an intriguing cast of New Yorkers—a same-sex couple, a tough social worker finding love, a troubled boy, a lonely office manager—come together through their love for animals. By joining forces, can they stop a terrifying menace? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 29, 1938
• Born—The Bronx, New York City; raised in Queens, New York City
• Education—Queens College
• Currently—lives in New York City and Florida


Jacqueline Wein spent a long and hectic career in a New York City advertising agency. Outside the office, she penned her first book, Roommate, a suspense novel published by Crown. Since retiring, she has written Connections, about a different kind of roommate—the animals we love.

Jacqueline enjoys splitting her time between New York City and Florida. So does her beautiful cat, Asia. (From the publisher.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
Wein creates a varied and well-developed casts of characters in this Manhattan-set novel with a mystery element.… [T]he book’s strength lies in Wein’s portrayal of her characters’ deep connections with the animals in their lives.
Publishers Weekly


Connections crisscrosses New York City as it takes us into the lives of its half dozen or so beautifully developed characters...and her skill at suspense and pacing is on full display here, as well. This is a special treat for anyone who loves animals (5-Stars).
Amazon Customer Review

Discussion Questions
1. How strong are the bonds between people and their pets?

2. How do pets fill lonely lives, especially in the elderly?

3. How can seniors remain active and interested in their community and still have FUN?

4. What provision(s) can single people make for their pets for when they’re no longer here to take care of them?

5.  What can be done to re-home and save local shelter animals?

6.  How can people get involved in changing all shelters to no-kill facilities?

7.  What are some ways that people can and do use animals for emotional support and therapy?

8.  What can individuals do to protect the world’s wildlife?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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The Consequences 
Colette Freedman, 2014
Kensington Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780758281029


Summary
The end of an affair may be only the beginning. . .

Over the course of one tumultuous Christmas Eve, Kathy Walker confirmed her suspicions about her husband's affair, confronted his mistress, Stephanie, and saved her marriage. She and Robert have eighteen years, two teenagers, and a film production business between them—plus a bond that Kathy has no intention of giving up on. Yet though Robert is contrite, Kathy can't quite silence her doubts.

While Robert reels from his wife's ultimatum and his mistress's rejection, Stephanie makes a discovery: she's pregnant. Her resolve to stay away from Robert wavers now that they could make a real family together.

In the days that follow, Stephanie, Robert, and Kathy must each reckon with the intricate realities of desire, the repercussions of betrayal, and the secrets that, once revealed, ripple through lives and relationships in thoroughly unexpected ways. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Colette Freedman is the author of The Affair (2013) and The Consequences (2014). She is also an internationally produced playwright with over 15 produced plays, including Sister Cities, which was the hit of the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe. She has co written, with international bestselling novelist Jackie Collins, the play Jackie Collins Hollywood Lies. In collaboration with the author Michael Scott, she has co-written the thriller The Thirteen Hallows. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Freedman's new novel picks up where her previous [The Affair, 2013] left off: Now that the wife has confronted the mistress, can a marriage survive?... Although dissecting an affair in a split narrative can be illuminating..., Freedman too often repeats scenes, offers clunky comparisons...and lacks new insights into the world of extramarital affairs to make the narrative experiment worthwhile. Familiar ground that's been done better before.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Stephanie asks herself, “What attracted a thirty-three-year-old, single, unattached, attractive woman, with her own mortgage and car, to a man with the ultimate baggage: a wife, two teens, and a struggling business?” Why do you think she’s attracted to a man with so many complications? Have you ever been in her position? What does she see in Robert that makes him so attractive to her?

2. Stephanie says, “All men lie. But let’s be honest, we wouldn’t want them to tell us the truth about everything, would we?” She similarly believes that all women lie as well. When is it okay to lie to a spouse or partner? Have you ever lied to your spouse? Can a lie be justified?

3. As technology changes, so too does the nature of an affair and, indeed, all relationships. Stephanie checks her e-mail and finds an urgent message from Robert. She also gets an instant message from him. How do you think technology has played a role in affairs? Are relationships stronger or weaker now because we are almost always connected?

4. Stephanie’s father advises her that “love is the only thing worth fighting for.” Is love always worth fighting for—even if it’s with the wrong person?

5. Are you surprised by Stephanie’s coldness when she learns about Jimmy’s death? Does it make her a bad friend that she did not immediately console Robert? How would you react if your lover’s best friend had just died?

6. Should Stephanie tell Robert she is pregnant with his child or should she keep that information to herself? Why?

7. Maureen tells Robert that it is time for him to choose between Stephanie and Kathy. Yet, do you think the choice is still his to make? Is it really now the women who are making the decisions in this situation?

8. When Kathy confronts Robert, she accepts some responsibility for what happened. How culpable do you feel Kathy was? Can you fault her for his affair?

9. Robert worries that Kathy will spy on him for the rest of their relationship. When trust is broken, how long do you feel it takes for that trust to be rebuilt? Indeed, is it ever possible for trust to be rebuilt? Could you trust your partner if he or she had betrayed you by having an affair?

10. Kathy wonders if a man and a woman can have a purely platonic relationship. Do you think it’s possible? Do you know any male-female friendships that are completely devoid of sexual tension?

11. Kathy’s sister Julia immediately rushes to judgment over their sister Sheila’s affair. Have you ever jumped to a conclusion about a relationship before hearing both sides of the story?

12. When the truth about an affair comes out, women usually side with women and men with men. Have you ever stuck with a friend even though you knew he or she was behaving in an inappropriate manner?

13. Sheila says, “In an affair, there are no blacks and whites, only shades of gray.” But is that true? Or is an affair always black and white and simply wrong? Where are the shades of gray in Robert’s affair?

14. Robert and Kathy’s children are present throughout the book and are a major factor in both Kathy’s and Robert’s thoughts. We never get to see their side of the story. How perceptive would teenage children be to a situation like this unfolding around them? Whose side do you think they would take?

15. Until Kathy discovers Robert’s ultimate betrayal of lies, she still has hope that they can rebuild their relationship. Can you understand her actions and is she right to fight for Robert even after the betrayal of the affair? Do you agree with her?

16. At the end of the book, the two women discuss going into business together. Given that they are very alike in many ways (Stephanie has acknowledged that she is a younger version of Kathy), do you think the women would be good business partners?

17. Statistically, men often have affairs with women who look like a younger version of their present partners. Women never have affairs with men who look like their partners. Why is this, and what does this tell us about the sexes?

18. Where do you think Robert will be in a year’s time? He is about to lose his wife and family, his home, and probably his business. Can he start again or will he end up like Jimmy Moran?

19. All affairs begin in the mind. But at what point does an affair begin? Is it with flirtation, a kiss that is more than a peck on the cheek, sexual texting or salacious e-mails? Or does the affair really begin the moment the couple end up in bed together?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Consequences 
Aleatha Romig, 2011
Romig Works
572 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780988489134


Summary
Anthony Rawlings had a plan-to teach Claire Nichols to behave.

Claire Nichols had a plan-to survive!

In an unfamiliar bedroom within a luxurious mansion, Claire Nichols wakes to memories of a brutal abduction. All of her recollections have one common denominator, the man she just met-Anthony Rawlings. Unbeknownst to Claire, Anthony has had her in his sights for a long time. Every action has consequences-and his actions resulted in their chance meeting.

Facing incomprehensible circumstances, Claire must learn to survive as she comes to terms with her new reality-every aspect of her livelihood is now dependent upon the tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed tycoon. Anthony may appear to the world as a prosperous, benevolent, kind businessman, but in reality Claire learns he is also a menacing, controlling captor with very strict rules: do as your told, public failure is not an option, and don't divulge private information. Failure to follow these rules and more, are met with serious consequences.

In an effort to earn her freedom, Claire learns her lessons well and before long, she unknowingly captivates her captor. Anthony/ Tony reluctantly becomes enthralled with Claire's beauty, resilience and determination. Their interaction instigates strong emotions, including-fear, anger, love, and lust-as their journey flows into uncharted waters of intrigue and passion.

From the opening criminal abduction, through the twists and turns, to the unlikely romantic thrills, the suspense climaxes as Aleatha Romig utilizes vivid detail, allowing this novel to unfold like a movie.

Can you put the pieces of the puzzle together? Claire Nichols abduction wasn't a random act-did she learn her lessons well enough? Will these unlikely lovers remain true-or will she learn the truth before it's too late?

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Mishawaka, Indiana, USA
• Education—Indiana University
• Currently—lives in Indianapolis, Indiana


Aleatha Romig is a bestselling author, who has been voted #1 "New Author to Read" on Goodreads, July 2012! She was also #9 most followed author on Goodreads, July / August 2013.

Aleatha has lived most of her life in Indiana growing up in Mishawaka, graduating from Indiana University, and currently living south of Indianapolis. Together with her high-school sweetheart and husband of twenty six years, they've raised three children.

Before she became a full-time author, she worked days as a dental hygienist and spent her nights writing. Now, when she's not imagining mind-blowing twists and turns, she likes to spend her time with her family and friends. Her pastimes include exercising, reading and creating heros/ anti-heros who haunt your dreams!

Aleatha enjoys traveling, especially when there is a beach involved. In 2011 she had the opportunity to visit Sydney, Australia to visit her daughter studying at the University of Wollongong. Her dream is to travel to places in her novels and around the world.

Consequences, her first novel, was first released August 2011 by Xlibris Publishing. Truth, the sequel, was released in 201,2 and Convictd, the final installment of the Consequences Series released in 2013. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
This was a good book, a book that makes you think how strong the persuasive powers of control and dependency are to a person's well-being. There is a lot that goes on and I can probably write an essay about all the psychological implications they produce but I'll just say it's worth reading and hopefully there will be sequel.
Didi Hassan - Choice Book Reviews


Consequences isn’t what I would call a romance novel. There are sex scenes but they aren’t done in a typical romance way. For me, the book would be more of a psychological thriller or straight up suspense. The book is about one relationship, Tony and Claire, but it does not follow the typical relationship pattern. Bravo to Ms. Romig for shocking the heck out of me.
Jen- Fiction Vixen Book Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Consider Claire and Tony as characters. What were your initial thoughts and feelings about them? When (if ever) did those feeling change?

2. What do you believe Claire should have done differently when she was first kidnapped? How does Anthony use “Operant Conditioning” to alter Claire’s way of thinking? When do you believe Claire changed from “victim of abuse” to “victim of Stockholm Syndrome”?

3. How does Claire’s “compartmentalization” save/ hurt her?

4. What do you believe was Anthony’s motivation at the beginning of our story? Why would a man of his wealth, looks and status jeopardize everything to kidnap a woman like Claire? What theories did you have in the beginning? When did you change your mind? Did the backstories help you see the truth?

5. Although Claire was completely isolated within Anthony’s estate for many months, his employees were present and saw her predicament. What were your feelings regarding their acceptance of Claire’s forced imprisonment and obvious duties?

6. Claire’s unconsciousness showed the readers much about Claire’s past. What did her “visions” tell you?

7. Was Claire’s acceptance of Tony’s marriage proposal due to love or victimization? Why? What clues did the author give you to support your answer?

8. Do you believe Tony would have released Claire from her “debt”, if she’d accepted that option at his proposal?

9. Why did the author provide the Vanity Fair article in its entirety? What was Ms. Romig showing the readers?

10. While Claire and Tony’s life was “positive” and they’re in Europe, did you find yourself telling Claire to “follow the rules”? What were your emotions as she rushed back to the hotel in Italy, knowing she’s late? How did it make you feel, wanting her to “tow the line”?

11. A skillful romantic thriller writer knows which details to reveal and when to reveal them. How much do you know...and when do you know it? In other words, how good was Ms. Romig at burying her clues in plain sight? Now that you know the end of this book, go back and find the clues she left for you.

12. Each chapter is preceded by quotations. Did you read the quotations, and what did they tell you about the chapter?

13. When Claire notices the open key cabinet and decides to drive away...what did you anticipate would happen? Were you correct?

14. Anthony offers Claire an “out” to jail. Did you agree with her decision to refuse his offer? Why?

15. As Marcus Evergreen displays his evidence of Claire’s privileged life with Anthony Rawlings, how do you think she felt? What emotions did you feel?

16. The “box” explains so much. Why do you think the box was sent to Claire?

17. Critics have said this book contains too much description. Do you agree? Could you visualize the scenes in Consequences? At the end, did those vivid scenes come back, with a new understanding of why they were all there?

18. In chapter one Claire made a vow to herself. It began: I am not sure how or when. But I will... Did Claire accomplish her goal?

19. Movie time: Who would you like to see play what part?

(Questions from the author's website.)

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Constance
Patrick McGrath, 2013
Bloomsbury USA
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608199433


Summary
The cool, beautiful Constance Schuyler lives alone in Manhattan in the early 1960s. At a literary party, she meets Sidney Klein, a professor of poetry twenty years her senior.

Sidney is a single father with a poor marital record, and he pursues Constance with relentless determination. Eventually she surrenders, accepts his marriage proposal, and moves, with some dread, into his dark, book-filled apartment.

She can't settle in. She's tortured by memories of the bitterly unhappy childhood she spent with her father in a dilapidated house upstate. When she learns devastating new information about that past, Constance's fragile psyche suffers a profound shock. Her marriage, already tottering, threatens to collapse completely.

Frightened, desperate, and alone, Constance makes a disastrous decision and then looks on as her world rapidly falls apart. Her only consolation, as the city swelters in an interminable heat wave, is the friendship of Sidney's son, Howard, a strange, delicate child, not unlike Constance herself.

The story of a marriage in crisis and a family haunted by trauma, Constance is also a tale of resilience and loyalty, and of the moral inspiration that can lead even the most lost of souls back to the light. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 7, 1950
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Stonyhurst College
• Awards—Premio Flaiano Prize (Italy)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA


Patrick McGrath is a British novelist whose work has been categorized as gothic fiction. He was born in London, grew up near Broadmoor Hospital where his father was Medical Superintendent, and was educated at Stonyhurst College.

He is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Asylum (1996), Martha Peake (2000), Port Mungo (2004), Trauma (2008), and Spider (1990), which was adapted into a 2002 David Cronenberg film. His fiction is principally characterised by the first person unreliable narrator, and recurring subject matter in his work includes mental illness, repressed homosexuality and adulterous relationships. His novel Martha Peake won the Premio Flaiano Prize in Italy.

He is married to actress Maria Aitken and lives in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6//4/2013.)

Book Reviews
[T]he novel's effects are oddly, cumulatively hypnotic. As a piece of monomaniacal writing, McGrath's strange narrative never fails to grip and startle. But as a study of emotional and sexual anesthesia, of marital numbness, of the ways in which family obsession and love—or the lack of it—can wreak havoc on a person's psychological and sexual development, it's a tour de force…[an] unforgettable book.
Julie Meyerson - New York Times Book Review


McGrath demonstrates the power of his craft with a thoroughly unlikable protagonist, hell bent on not only her own destruction but also that of everyone around her, escalating a pattern of familial dysfunction that she has the power to stop, yet chooses not to. ... [I]t’s difficult to understand [her stepson] Sidney’s motivations for wanting to save her; she doesn’t seem worth saving. Despite McGrath’s demonstrable skill, the reader will be left with mild irritation rather than catharsis.
Publishers Weekly


Unhappy families being unhappy in their own way...again. McGrath's hyperanalytical approach to traumatic family relationships runs deep. Constance Schuyler, a cool, iconic blonde in a Hitchcock-ian mold, lives in New York.... Although Constance seems to hate her father...her marriage to Sidney suggests she's looking for a father replacement.... Throughout the novel, McGrath moves us from Constance's to [her stepson] Sidney's point of view, sometimes lurching the novel forward by having them use the same words to characterize what's happening in their lives. A novel of fierce rages and great tenderness, exhausting in its emotional intensity.
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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A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra, 2013
Crown Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780770436421


Summary
A resilient doctor risks everything to save the life of a hunted child, in this majestic debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together.
 
In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels.

Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa’s house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.

For the talented, tough-minded Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. And she has a deeply personal reason for caution: harboring these refugees could easily jeopardize the return of her missing sister.

But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weave together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.F.A.,
   Iowa Writers Workshop
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; Narrative Prize; Whiting Writers' Award
• Currently—lives in Oakland, California


Anthony Marra is an American writer, whose debut novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was published in 2013.

Marra attended the Landon School in high school, and he would go on to graduate from the University of Southern California with a BA and the Iowa Writers Workshop with an MFA.  He is 2011-2013 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

He has contributed pieces to The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, and MAKE Magazine.

His short story "Chechnya" won a 2010 Pushcart Prize and the 2010 Narrative Prize. He won a 2012 Whiting Writers' Award. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/31/2013.)

Book Reviews
The strange and invigorating thing about Mr. Marra's novel...is how much human warmth and comedy he smuggles, like samizdat, into his busy story. At heart he's a satirist, a lover not a fighter, a prose writer who resembles the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 and the Jonathan Safran Foer of Everything Is Illuminated.... A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is ambitious and intellectually restless. It's humane and absurd, and rarely out of touch with the Joseph-Heller-like notion that, as Mr. Marra puts it, "stupidity was the single abiding law of the universe.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


This novel is, among other things, a meditation on the use and abuse of history, and an inquiry into the extent to which acts of memory may also constitute acts of survival.... While reminding us of the worst of the war-torn world we live in, Marra finds sustainable hope in the survival of a very few, and in the regenerative possibility of life.... [T]that image is the textbook definition: “a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
Madison Smartt Bell - New York Times Book Review


Marra is trying to capture some essence of the lives of men and women caught in the pincers of a brutal, decade-long war, and at this he succeeds beautifully....his storytelling impulses are fed by wellsprings of generosity....[the] ending is almost certain to leave you choked up and, briefly at least, transformed by tenderness.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


Anthony Marra's first novel...is a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles…a testament to the vibrancy of contemporary fiction. Here, in fresh, graceful prose, is a profound story that dares to be as tender as it is ghastly, a story about desperate lives in a remote land that will quickly seem impossibly close and important.... I haven't been so overwhelmed by a novel in years…you simply must read this book.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


A powerful tale.... The moment Akhmed walks into the hospital with Havaa…rivals anything Michael Ondaatje has written in its emotional force.... There are many reasons to read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. To enter the tragedy of Caucasus history that has been dishonored by the Boston Marathon bombings, allegedly committed by two ethnic Chechen immigrants; to marvel at the lack of fear in a writer so young. To read a book that can bring tears to your eyes and force laughter from your lungs.... But the one I kept returning to, the best reason to read this novel, is that this story reminds us how senseless killing often wrenches kindness through extreme circumstances.
John Freeman - Boston Globe


This beautiful work will matter long after Chechnya has disappeared from our headlines.... The sense of connectedness is as meaningful as the particulars of it.... Over and over again, this is an examination of the ways in which many broken pieces come together to make a new whole. In exquisite imagery, Marra tends carefully to the twisted strands of grace and tragedy.... Everything in A Constellation of Vital Phenomena...is dignified with a hoping, aching heartbeat.
Ramona Ausubel - San Francisco Chronicle


Remarkable.... [A] novel about love as much as war.... In the aftermath of Boston, in a world where all our lives are linked more closely than ever before, these are words to hold close.
Tricia Springstubb - Cleveland Plain Dealer


Amazing...brilliant...one of the most accomplished and affecting books I've read in a very long time.... Though the lives lived in this novel can seem unbearable, what Anthony Marra has done is to diligently describe them in passionate, extraordinary prose.
Meg Wolitzer - NPR


With remarkable pathos and a surprising amount of humor, Marra keeps the focus on the relationships, struggles, and tiny triumphs of an unforgettable group of characters.... Marra creates a specific and riveting world around his characters, expertly revealing the unexpected connections among them. While Marra doesn’t shy away from the very real conflict of the region....this novel, full of humanity and hope, ultimately leaves you uplifted. Constellation deserves to be on the short list for every major award. It’s an absolute masterpiece.
Sarah Jessica Parker - Entertainment Weekly


(Starred review.) A complex debut…[Marra writes] with elegant details about the physical and emotional destruction of occupation and war.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) An authentic, heartbreaking tale of intertwining relationships during wartime.... As he shifts in time through the years of the two Chechen wars, Marra confidently weaves those plots together, and several more besides, giving each character a rich backstory that intersects, often years down the line, with the others.... [T]he novel’s tone remains optimistic, and its characters retain vast depths of humanity (and even humor) in spite of their bleak circumstances.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Extraordinary...Marra collapses time, sliding between 1996 and 2004 while also detailing events in a future yet to arrive, giving his searing novel an eerie, prophetic aura. All of the characters are closely tied together in ways that Marra takes his time revealing, even as he beautifully renders the way we long to connect and the lengths we will go to endure.
Booklist


A decade of war in Chechnya informs this multivalent, heartfelt debut, filled with broken families, lost limbs and valiant efforts to find scraps of hope and dignity. Marra's vision of Chechnya in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union is inevitably mordant.... But he's a careful, intelligent stylist who makes the most of his omniscient perspective; one of his favorite tricks is to project minor characters' fates into the future; by revealing their deaths, he exposes how shabbily war treats everybody and gives the living an additional dose of pathos. The grimness is persistent, but Marra relays it with unusual care and empathy for a first-timer. A somber, sensitive portrait of how lives fray and bind again in chaotic circumstances.
Kirkus Reviews

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

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

Also, consider using these LitLovers talking poinst in discussing A Vital Constellation of Phenomena:

1. Talk about each of the characters—Akhmed, Haava, Sonja, Natasha, Khassan, and Ramzan. Do you care about any of them? Whom do you find particularly sympathetic? Do your opinions of any of the characters change over the course of the novel?

2. One of the book's themes is our inability to know the depths of another being. In a beautiful paragraph (end of Chapter 3) Sonja ponders Haava who is lying next to her—Haava possesses 206 bones, 606 muscles, 2.5 million sweat glands, and 100 billion cerebral neurons; all this Sonja can know. She cannot fathom, however, "the dreams crowding [Havva's] skull" or "the mystery the girl would spend her life solving." Do you find that to be true in real life—how deeply can we know another being? Does fiction, perhaps, allow us insights into other beings that we cannot attain in our own lives? Do you feel you know the loved ones closest to you?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: The narrator frequently jumps ahead by years, even decades, to inform readers of what happens to various characters—whether they live...or die...or grow senile.... What effect does this create on you, the reader?

4. A emphasis on art runs throughout the novel. Akhmed draws portraits and posts them throughout the village; Haava "rebuilds" the body of her childhood nemesis, Akim, using Akhmed's portrait of him; Natasha recreates the view of a cityscape blown away by shelling, and Maali is nearly as invested in Natasha's project as Natasha herself. Why is art so significant in this book? What role does art play in Akhmed's and Natasha's lives—and in the lives of others.

5. Talk about the characters' religious beliefs or lack of beliefs? How does the war affect the faithful...and nonfaithful alike? How would your faith be affected?

6. In interviews author Anthony Marra has said he chose to write about Chechnya after spending his junior year in St. Petersburg during the time of the Chechnyan war. While there, he was fascinated by accounts of how ordinary people behaved in extraordinary situations—the kinds of moral choices they had to make. Talk about the characters in A Constellation of vital Phenomena who dramatize the tough moral choices Marra refers to...especially Ramzan and Khassan. Are there others? What choices do they make and why? How might you have responded in such horrific circumstances? Does morality change depending on the context?

7. SPOILER ALERTS! Follow-up to Question 6: Should Khassan have killed his son—is such an action just or moral? Does learning Ramzan's backstory, change your opinion of him...perhaps justify his later actions?

8. Trace the six-degrees-of-separation between the characters, their actions, and final consequences. In other words, how are the characters interconnected? What might the author be suggesting by such connectedness—both within the confines of the novel and, perhaps, in the real world outside the scope of the novel? What kind of worldview does Marra seem to project? Do the coincidences feel contrived? Or do you see them as organic, part of the gradual unfolding of the novel?

9. A great deal is made in the novel of the desire for characters to be buried at home. Notes with names and addresses are sewn into clothing so families can be notified and thereby claim the body of the loved one. Why is burial at home so important? Is it a tradition peculiar to that culture...or a universal desire?

10. The book contains a fair amount of humor—the banter between Akhmed and the nurse Deshi, the reference to Barbie Doll's emaciated waistline, Akhmed's confusion over Ronald Reagan and Ronald MacDonald, and his astonishment at how the U.S. elections transfer power from one president to the next—"It makes me wonder how [Russia] lost the Cold War." Where else do you find humor...and why do you suppose the author included such moments in an otherwise dark story?

11. Think about the structure of the novel, as it moves back and forth through time, and the inclusion of timelines at the head of each chapter. Why might Marra have devised a disjointed structure for his story? What might it suggest about the fractured lives of his characters? What do you, as a reader, think is gained—or lost—using such a structure?

12. Why are the Feds so intent on finding Haava? What do they want with her?

13. What drove the two Chechnyan wars? What were the conflicts involved? What have you learned about the war that you were unaware of before reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena? While the Chechnyan war was ongoing, how much attention did you pay to it?

14. What do you find most shocking in the account of the war? What is most horrifying or disturbing? Where do you find displays of human kindness to counteract the brutality? Is there anything hopeful in the book?

15. What is the meaning and/or significance of the book's title?

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

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Convenience Store Woman 
Sayaka Murata, 2016 (2018, U.S.)
Grove Atlantic
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802128256


Summary
 Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world.

So when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her.

For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers’ style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person.

However, eighteen years later, at age 36, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and has only few friends. She feels comfortable in her life, but is aware that she is not living up to society’s expectations and causing her family to worry about her.

When a similarly alienated but cynical and bitter young man comes to work in the store, he will upset Keiko’s contented stasis—but will it be for the better?

Sayaka Murata brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much part of life in Japan. With some laugh-out-loud moments prompted by the disconnect between Keiko’s thoughts and those of the people around her, she provides a sharp look at Japanese society and the pressure to conform, as well as penetrating insights into the female mind.

Convenience Store Woman is a fresh, charming portrait of an unforgettable heroine that recalls Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, and Amélie. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 14, 1979
• Where—Inzai, Chiba Prefecture, Japan
• Education—Tamawaga University
• Awards—Akutagawa Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Tokyo, Japan


Sayaka Murata is one of Japan’s most exciting contemporary writers. She has worked for 18 years in a convenience store, which was the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman, her English-language debut and winner of one of Japan’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Akutagawa Prize.

She was named a Freeman’s "Future of New Writing" author, and her work has appeared in Granta and elsewhere. In 2016, Vogue Japan selected her as a Woman of the Year. (From the publisher.)

Awards
2016 - Akutagawa Prize
2013 - Mishima Yukio Prize
2009 - Noma Literary Prize
2003 - Gunzo Prize for New Writers

Book Reviews
(Starred review) Murata’s smart and sly novel …is a critique of the expectations and restrictions placed on single women in their 30s. This is a moving, funny, and unsettling story about how to be a “functioning adult” in today’s world.
Publishers Weekly


[Murata…uses the characters of Keiko and Shiraha to deliver a thought-provoking commentary on the meaning of conforming to the expectations of society. While Murata’s novel focuses on life in Japanese culture, her storytelling will resonate with all people and experiences.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Murata, herself a part-time "convenience store woman," makes a dazzling English-language debut… rich in scathingly entertaining observations on identity, perspective, and the suffocating hypocrisy of "normal" society.
Booklist


A sly take on modern work culture and social conformism.… Murata provides deceptively sharp commentary on the narrow social slots people—particularly women—are expected to occupy…. A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.
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 CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN … then take off on your own:

1. Describe Keiko Furukura. Talk about the various aspects of her behavior that make her an oddball.

2. In what way does Keiko view Small Mart as an almost-utopia. How does her job there lend purpose to her life? Consider, for example, the manual that prescribes how she is to conduct herself with customers. How does she think of her fellow employees?

3. (Follow-up to Question 3) What does it suggest about Keiko's internal life (her soul, her personality) that she can "hear the store's voice telling what it wanted, how it wanted to be." She goes on to say, " I understood it perfectly." What does she mean that she understands the store "perfectly."

4. What is Keiko's relationship with Shiraha? What do you think of him, especially his lectures on the Stone Age—about the men who hunt and those who don't.

5. When Shiraha complains about the convenience store job, Keiko tells him, "Shiraha, we’re in the twenty-first century! Here in the convenience store we’re not men and women. We’re all store workers." What do you think of that statement? What do you think she means by it?

6. What in Japanese society is Convenience Store Woman taking aim at? Does the satire have relevance to our own culture? How would you describe the author's attitude toward Keiko? Is it one of condescension, disapproval, acceptance, admiration? Or does Murato view her heroine in a neutral fashion?

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

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Conversations with Friends 
Sally Rooney, 2017
Crown/Archetype
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451499059


Summary
A sharply intelligent novel about friendship, lust, jealousy, and the unexpected complications of adulthood in the 21st century

Frances is a cool-headed and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin.

Her best friend and comrade-in-arms is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi.

At a local poetry performance one night, Frances and Bobbi catch the eye of Melissa, a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into Melissa's world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband, Nick.

However amusing and ironic Frances and Nick’s flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy, and Frances’s friendship with Bobbi begins to fracture. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally, terribly, with Bobbi.
 
Desperate to reconcile her inner life to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and marked by a sly sense of humor, Conversations with Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth, and the messy edges of female friendship. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1991
• Where—Mayo, Ireland
• Education—M.A., Trinity College
• Awards—Costa Novel Award, An Post Irish Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland


Sally Rooney is an Irish author, who grew up in Mayo. She earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Trinity College in Dublin. While at Trinity she was a champion debater, becoming the No. 1 debater on the European continent.

Rooney's debut novel, Conversations with Friends, was published in 2017. Her second novel, Normal People, released in 2019, won both the Costa Novel Award and the An Post Irish Award. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Dylan Thomas Prize, The Women's Prize for Fiction, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award.

Rooney's work has appeared in Granta, Dublin Review, White Review, Stinging Fly, and the Winter Pages anthology. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Rooney writes so well of the condition of being a young, gifted but self-destructive woman, both the mentality and physicality of it. She is alert to the invisible bars imprisoning the apparently free. Though herself young – she was born in 1991 – she has already been shortlisted for this year’s Sunday Times EFG short story award. Her hyperarticulate characters may fail to communicate their fragile selves, but Rooney does it for them in a voice distinctively her own.
Guardian (UK)


A novelist to watch: An addictive debut, with nods to Tender is the Night, heralds a bright new talent.
Sunday Times (UK)


A writer of rare confidence, with a lucid, exacting style… [O]ne wonderful aspect of Rooney’s consistently wonderful novel is the fierce clarity with which she examines the self-delusion that so often festers alongside presumed self-knowledge.… But Rooney’s natural power is as a psychological portraitist. She is acute and sophisticated about the workings of innocence; the protagonist of this novel about growing up has no idea just how much of it she has left to do.
New Yorker


Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high stakes.… [A] novel of delicious frictions.
Christian Lorentzen - New York Magazine


The self-deceptions of a new generation are at the core of Sally Rooney’s debut, Conversations With Friends, which captures something wonderfully odd-cornered and real in the story of an Irish millennial (10 Best Books of 2017).
Megan O'Grady - Vogue


A very funny, very humanly messy tale of sexual and artistic self-discovery in which every page reveals shrewd emotional insight. Caught between laser-eyed irony and heart-melting sincerity, the book is a masterclass in narrative tone that left me desperate to read whatever Rooney writes next.… ​An addictive, funny and truthful first novel about love and literature​.​
Metro


(Starred review.) [S]earing, insightful…. Rooney lets readers glimpse the rich interior of Frances's life — capturing the tension and excitement of her attraction to Nick…. Rooney's descriptive eye lends beauty and veracity to this complex and vivid story.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [T]races the emotional intricacies that draw people together as well as … complicate these connections. Frances is a tricky narrator, brilliant and analytical yet somehow unknowable to herself and others.… Exceptional. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A smart, sexy, realistic portrayal of a woman finding herself.
Booklist


[Rooney] deftly illustrates psychology's first lesson: that everyone is doomed to repeat their patterns. A clever and current book about a complicated woman and her romantic relationships.
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 Conversation with Friends … then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe the two protagonists at the heart of Conversations With Friends — Francis, the narrator, and Bobbi, her best friend. Start, say, with this observation from Francis:

[Bobbi] could be abrasive and unrestrained in a way that made people uncomfortable, while I tended to be encouragingly polite. Mothers always liked me a lot, for example.

2. How has her past shaped Frances, especially, say, her father's angry bouts of drinking? What has she carried with her from childhood?

3. What was Francis and Bobbi's relationship early on … and how has it evolved? Who has the power in the relationship and in what way? Does the power equation change?

4. What does Francis mean when she declares herself anti-love?

5. Bobbi told Francis that she thought Francis lacked a "real personality," but that she meant it as a compliment. what do you think Bobbi meant by that?

6. In what way would you describe the banter between the two as competitive, almost like playing badminton or tennis?

7. What do the conversations between Frances and Bobbi do — do they provide enlightenment ...  entertainment ... or emotional connection? In other words, what purpose, if any, do the conversations serve?

   Consider, for instance, the exchange between the two young women over love —  variously defined as an "interpersonal phenomenon," a "social value system," or a "discursive practice" whose effect is "unpaid labor." During the course of the novel, how are those definitions turned on their heads? (Or are they?) How would do you define love?

8. Capitalism and its failure with the 2008 financial collapse is at the root of the two women's concerns. How do they view capitalism? How has the system failed them, their generation, and/or their country?

9. Why is Melissa drawn to the Bobbi and Francis, and what makes Melissa so appealing to them?

10. How would you describe the marriage between Melissa and Nick? Is Nick the intellectual equal of his wife?

11. When Frances enters upon an affair with Nick, how does she feel about her role as an adulteress? Does she see it as a cliche? She tells Nick that she's only doing it "ironically." What does she mean? Would you say that Frances is deluding herself … in possession of self-knowledge … or vacillating between the two?

12. Bobbi comes from wealth. How do you view her scorn for money?

13. When her husband and Frances's affair comes to light, what do you think of Melissa's willingness to share Nick with Frances? Is she self-deluded? Or clear-eyed? Do Nick's feelings for either woman invalidate his feelings for the other? Can love be shared?

14. How is the friendship between Frances and Bobbi affected by the affair between Frances and Nick?

15. This novel might be seen as a coming-of-age story. What does it have to say about innocence and growing up? How are the characters, especially Frances, changed over the course of the novel?

16. What do you think the title means? Is it ironic? Are the young women friends? Do they hold conversations?

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

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A Convoluted Defense (The de'Conte Series, 2)
Nicholas Borelli, 2012
CreateSpace
220 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781478119722


Summary
The former United States Attorney had become the most prominent defense counsel in New York City. His law firm, The Union and Metropolitan, had carefully cultivated their superstar. He moved from United States Attorney to the other side to defend high profile corporate executives from federal prosecution at exorbitant hourly rates.

But the biggest case in world history was foisted upon him in a high velocity whirlwind of events. Nick de‘Conti is defending the President of the United States for the highest of high crimes: Treason!

Shuttling between New York and Washington D.C., the case, the politics, the culture clash, the impromptu love affair with the opposing federal prosecutor and the trial of the millennium provide a backdrop for a once in a lifetime test of conscience.

Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.M.E., Pratt Institute; M.B.A., Fordham University
• Currently—Wilton, Connecticut


Nicholas Borelli, a New England based author, has and continues to write the de'Conti series.

The novels currently include Let No Man Be My Albatross, A Convoluted Defense, The Machiavelli Imperative, FATA! The Act of the Vengeance, At Last Reconciled and IRAN. Mr. Borelli is writing two more novels: Dahij and A Special Prosecution.

These works feature the protagonist Niccolo Cervantes de'Conti. Mr. Borelli has conceived and developed a central character based on his knowledge of and first-hand experience with the gritty New York inner city of his youth. Nick de'Conti is an ethnic mixture of Basque and Southern Italian. He has a penchant for independent thought and action, and a passion with which he approaches everything in his life. He is a prominent lawyer, an aristocrat. The arc of his life is developed from the depths of his childhood poverty in East Harlem in the cruel, inner city streets of New York City to his unimagined success—albeit troubled, conflicted and, at times, ethically bereft.

These novels are edgy, raw, graphic and thought-provoking.

Although de'Conti is a former New York City prosecutor and United States Attorney, his hard life as a child in the inner city of East Harlem sometimes causes him to mete out as much street justice as he does the legal kind. He abhors the abuse of women, his own college-age daughter having been murdered at the hands of male predators. He will revert to instincts he developed as an inner city kid, even though he lives in a Fifth-Avenue penthouse on a high floor across from New York's Central Park. (From the author.)

Visit borellibooks.com.
Follow Nicholas on Instagram.

Book Reviews
[E]ven more exciting as the story continues.... I could not put the book down.
Joy, Amazon Cstomer Review

[N]othing short of excellent. The many twists and turns of the plot grab you and don't let go.
Paul H., Amazon Customer Review

[G]reat read!... [A] beautiful, vivid, yet effortless writing style. The book reads like a movie....you’ll absolutely love this book!
JC, Amazon Customer Review

Discussion Questions
1. Were you shocked by the ending?

2. Was de’Conti’s relationship with Rebecca Pallard ethical? Did it affect his judgment?

3. What do you think of the president?

4. Was de’Conti’s behavior as an attorney vis a vis his client ethical? Did he do the right thing?

5. Would you have done what Nick de'Conti did, if you were in his position?

7. What did you think of de’Conti’s courtroom performance?

8. What do you think of the book’s cover?

9. Would this novel make for a good feature film?

10. Would you invest time to read the sequel: The Machiavelli Imperative? It begins the day after the president’s trial.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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The Cookbook Collector 
Allegra Goodman, 2010
Random House
394 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385340854


Summary 
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.

Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much—as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• Education—A.B., Harvard University; Ph.D., Stanford
   University
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Goodman was raised a Conservative Jew in Honolulu, Hawaii. She graduated from Punahou School in 1985. Her mother, the late Madeline Goodman, was a genetics and women's studies professor then assistant vice president at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for many years before moving on to Vanderbilt University in the 1990s. Her father, Lenn E. Goodman, is a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt.

Goodman attended Harvard University, where she earned an A.B. degree and met her husband, David Karger. Both were regulars at Harvard Hillel, and prayed in Harvard Hillel Orthodox Minyan. They then went on to do graduate work at Stanford University, where Goodman earned a Ph.D. degree in English literature.

Goodman's younger sister, Paula Fraenkel, is an oncologist. Fraenkel's experience in research labs is one of the inspiratons for Goodman's 2006 novel Intuition.

Goodman and Karger live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Karger is a researcher in computer science at MIT. They have four children, three boys and a girl.

Writings
Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven, which was an instant hit in the Goodman family. She is, however, more widely known for her adult writings, which include The Family Markowitz (1996); Kaaterskill Falls (1998); Paradise Park (2001); Intuition (2006); The Other Side of the Island (2008); The Cookbook Collector (2010). She as also written a short story collection, Total Immersion (1989) and other assorted short stories. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
Allegra Goodman's new novel has so many appealing ingredients. Where, then, to start the list? Perhaps, as with food labels, it would be best to begin with the biggest: an irresistible story. Then add four strong characters: two sisters, and the two men who orbit them. Then there's the narrative voice: sweet but not cloyingly so, nourishing but not heavy, serving up zesty nuggets of truth. And the spicing is piquant but not too assertive…If you're hankering for a feast of love, let yourself fall under the spell of Allegra Goodman's abundantly delicious tale. You won't leave hungry.
Dominique Browning - New York Times

Fans of Goodman's lovely, nuanced novels have a treat in store with this tale of two sisters.
Entertainment Weekley

(Starred review.) If any contemporary author deserves to wear the mantel of Jane Austen, it's Goodman, whose subtle, astute social comedies perfectly capture the quirks of human nature. This dazzling novel is Austen updated for the dot-com era, played out between 1999 and 2001 among a group of brilliant risk takers and truth seekers. Still in her 20s, Emily Bach is the CEO of Veritech, a Web-based data-storage startup in trendy Berkeley. Her boyfriend, charismatic Jonathan Tilghman, is in a race to catch up at his data-security company, ISIS, in Cambridge, Mass. Emily is low-key, pragmatic, kind, serene—the polar opposite of her beloved younger sister, Jess, a crazed postgrad who works at an antiquarian bookstore owned by a retired Microsoft millionaire. When Emily confides her company's new secret project to Jonathan as a proof of her love, the stage is set for issues of loyalty and trust, greed, and the allure of power. What is actually valuable, Goodman's characters ponder: a company's stock, a person's promise, a forest of redwoods, a collection of rare cookbooks? Goodman creates a bubble of suspense as both Veritech and ISIS issue IPOs, career paths collide, social values clash, ironies multiply, and misjudgments threaten to destroy romantic desire. Enjoyable and satisfying, this is Goodman's (Intuition) most robust, fully realized and trenchantly meaningful work yet.
Publishers Weekly

(Starred review.) Crisp, accomplished Emily Markowitz is CEO of a data-storage startup in late 1990s California. Her sister, Jessica, is a messy, passionate graduate student in philosophy who's involved with the charismatic leader of Tree Savers and works in a rare-books store owned by the older, slightly grumpy George. George got rich off of Microsoft and now follows his first love, and he's impressed when Jess manages something brilliant with a woman who wants but doesn't want to part with an astonishing cookbook collection. Frantically different, the sisters are still bound by memories of the mother they lost as children; Emily strains to persuade Jess to invest in her startup even as Jess strains to see what Emily sees in her fiancé, go-getter Jonathan, who has his own startup back East. Meanwhile, their father, who appreciates techie overachiever Emily more than wise Jess, is strangely resistant to the Bialystokers moving in next door. Alas, 9/11 brings not just family tragedy but the revelation of some uncomfortable truths and a realignment of relationships. Verdict: Do these folks sound like types? They absolutely are not. Goodman (Kaaterskill Falls) is remarkably successful in creating rich, engaging characters and a complex story of love and identity that reads like life itself. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal

Goodman asks the big questions about what money can—and cannot—buy, and how we should live our lives. To those questions, of course, she provides no easy answers.
Bookmarks Magazine

(Starred review.) From mysticism to algorithms, IPOs, and endangered trees and souls, Goodman spins a glimmering tale, spiked with hilarious banter, of ardent individualists, imperiled love, and incandescent interpretations of the mutability and timelessness of the human condition. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

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

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

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

1. Start with the obvious: the two sisters, Emily and Jess Bach. How are they different? Do they share any traits in common? How would you describe their relationship to one another? Do you identify or sympathsize with one over the other?

2. What do you think about George Friedman, a man who tells "his life history with objects"? What does this regard for beautiful objects—and his need to collect them—suggest about his priorities in life?

3. What about the other love interests—especially Jonathan and Leon? Describe them, their obvious differences, and their respective relationships with Emily and Jess?

4. Much has been made, by reviewers and the author herself, of this novel's likeness to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Have you read S & S? If so, what similarities do you see? Have you also read The Three Weissmanns of Westport (2010), another sendup of Sense and Sensibility? If so how does Cookbook compare with Weissmanns?

5. On her website, author Allegra Goodman makes this comment about her inspiration for the novel:

I don't cook, but I love to read cookbooks. I know I'm not alone in this, and I began to think about this phenomenon of reading instead of cooking, and dreaming instead of living. I thought—what would it be like to write a novel about hunger? Hunger to taste, to build, to collect, to profit, to love.

How do the ideas expressed here—dreaming rather than living and fulfilling the hunger for life—get played out in the novel?

6. Dismissing the benefit of hindsight, what do you think of Emily's offer to Jess to purchase Veritech's IPO stock at a reduced rate?

7. Emily, again: why does she confide Veritech's secret project to Jonathan? What consequences does sharing that secret have on their relationship? What does it suggest about trust and doubt between two people?

8. How does Jess go about attaining the remarkable cookbook collection? What makes the books so desirable? What is their symbolic significance to the theme (and title)?

9. The novel uses shifting narrators. Why might the author have used such a structure? Do you enjoy the different perspectives...or would you have prefered a single narrative voice?

10. Some readers felt Goodman tries to weave too many subjects into the plotline—IPO's and dot-coms, 9/11, Jewish mysticism, environmentalism, cookbooks, parent-child relationships, materialism, doubt, secrets.... Do you feel the author was successful in pulling all the plot strands together? Or do you agree that too much is, well...too much?

11. How does Goodman's use of co-incidence sit with you? Are the coincidences too blatant, too impossible (i.e., wouldn't the sisters know their mother's maiden name)...or do they work?

12. Do Emily and Jess become more similar by the end of the book—do their differences begin to fade? What does each character learn through the course of the novel? How do they change or grow?

13. Are you satisfied with how the book ends?

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

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The Copper Beech 
Maeve Binchy, 2007
Random House
391 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440213291


Summary
n the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young people carve their initials-and those of their loves—into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.

Unexpected passions and fear are bringing together the lives of so many, such as the sensitive new priest and Miss Ross, the slight, beautiful schoolteacher... Leonora, the privileged daughter of the town's richest family and Foxy Dunne, whose father did time in jail...and Nessa Ryan, whose parents run Ryan's Hotel, and two very different young men.

For now the secrets in Shancarrig's shadows are starting to be revealed, from innocent vanities and hidden loves to crimes of the heart...and even to murder. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—May 28, 1940
• Where—Dalkey (outside Dublin), Ireland
• Death—July 30, 2012
• Where—Dalkey, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College, Dublin
• Awards—see below

Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. She is best known for her humorous take on small-town life in Ireland, her descriptive characters, her interest in human nature and her often clever surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the passing of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writer.

Her books have outsold those of other Irish writers such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien and Roddy Doyle. She cracked the U.S. market, featuring on the New York Times best-seller list and in Oprah's Book Club. Recognised for her "total absence of malice" and generosity to other writers, she finished ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Stephen King in a 2000 poll for World Book Day.

Early life
Binchy was born in Dalkey, County Dublin (modern-day Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown), Ireland, the oldest child of four. Her siblings include one brother, William Binchy, Regius Professor of Laws at Trinity College, Dublin, and two sisters: Renie (who predeceased Binchy) and Joan Ryan. Her uncle was the historian D. A. Binchy (1899–1989). Educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history), she worked as a teacher of French, Latin, and history at various girls' schools, then a journalist at the Irish Times, and later became a writer of novels, short stories, and dramatic works.

In 1968, her mother died of cancer aged 57. After Binchy's father died in 1971, she sold the family house and moved to a bedsit in Dublin.

Israel
Her parents were Catholics and Binchy attended a convent school.[12] However, a trip to Israel profoundly affected both her career and her faith. As she confided in a Q&A with Vulture:

In 1963, I worked in a Jewish school in Dublin, teaching French with an Irish accent to kids, primarily Lithuanians. The parents there gave me a trip to Israel as a present. I had no money, so I went and worked in a kibbutz — plucking chickens, picking oranges. My parents were very nervous; here I was going out to the Middle East by myself. I wrote to them regularly, telling them about the kibbutz. My father and mother sent my letters to a newspaper, which published them. So I thought, It’s not so hard to be a writer. Just write a letter home. After that, I started writing other travel articles.

Additionally, one Sunday, attempting to locate where the Last Supper is supposed to have occurred, she climbed a mountainside to a cavern guarded by a Brooklyn-born Israeli soldier. She wept with despair. The soldier asked, “What’ya expect, ma’am—a Renaissance table set for 13?” She replied, “Yes! That’s just what I did expect.” Binchy was no longer a Catholic.

Marriage
Binchy, described as "six feet tall, rather stout, and garrulous", confided to Gay Byrne of the Late Late Show that, growing up in Dalkey, she never felt herself to be attractive; "as a plump girl I didn't start on an even footing to everyone else", she shared. After her mother's death, she expected to a lead a life of spinsterhood, or as she expressed: "I expected I would live at home, as I always did." She continued, "I felt very lonely, the others all had a love waiting for them and I didn't."

She ultimately encountered the love of her life, however; when recording a piece for Woman's Hour in London, she met children's author Gordon Snell, then a freelance producer with the BBC. Their friendship blossomed into a cross-border romance, with her in Ireland and him in London, until she eventually secured a job in London through the Irish Times. She and Snell married in 1977 and after living in London for a time, moved to Ireland. They lived together in Dalkey, not far from where she had grown up, until Binchy's death. She told the Irish Times:

[A] writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers.

Ill health...and death
In 2002, Binchy "suffered a health crisis related to a heart condition", which inspired her to write Heart and Soul. The book about (what Binchy terms) "a heart failure clinic" in Dublin and the people involved with it, reflects many of her own experiences and observations in the hospital.

Towards the end of her life, Binchy had the following message on her official website: "My health isn't so good these days and I can't travel around to meet people the way I used to. But I'm always delighted to hear from readers, even if it takes me a while to reply."

She suffered with severe arthritis, which left her in constant pain. As a result of the arthritis she had a hip operation.

Binchy died on 30 July 2012 after a short illness. She was 72.] Gordon was by her side when she died in a Dublin hospital. Immediate media reports described Binchy as "beloved", "Ireland's most well-known novelist" and the "best-loved writer of her generation". Fellow writers mourned their loss, including Ian Rankin, Jilly Cooper, Anne Rice, and Jeffrey Archer. Politicians also paid tribute. President Michael D. Higgins stated: "Our country mourns." Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, “Today we have lost a national treasure.” Minister of State for Disability, Equality and Mental Health Kathleen Lynch, appearing as a guest on Tonight with Vincent Browne, said Binchy was, for her money, as worthy an Irish writer as James Joyce or Oscar Wilde, and praised her for selling so many more books than they managed.

In the days after her death tributes were published from such writers as John Banville, Roddy Doyle, and Colm Tóibín. Banville contrasted Binchy with Gore Vidal, who died the day after her, observing that Vidal "used to say that it was not enough for him to succeed, but others must fail. Maeve wanted everyone to be a success." Numerous tributes appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Guardian and CBC News.

Shortly before her death, Binchy told the Irish Times:

I don't have any regrets about any roads I didn't take. Everything went well, and I think that's been a help because I can look back, and I do get great pleasure out of looking back ... I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

Just before dying, she read her latest short story at the Dalkey Book Festival.

She once said she would like to die "... on my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain." She was cremated that Friday in Mount Jerome. It was a simple ceremony, as she had requested.

Journalism
The New York Times reports: Binchy's "writing career began by accident in the early 1960s, after she spent time on a kibbutz in Israel. Her father was so taken with her letters home that "he cut off the ‘Dear Daddy’ bits,” Ms. Binchy later recounted, and sent them to an Irish newspaper, which published them." Donal Lynch observed of her first paying journalism role: the Irish Independent "was impressed enough to commission her, paying her £16, which was then a week-and-a-half's salary for her."

In 1968, Binchy joined the staff at the Irish Times, and worked there as a writer, columnist, the first Women's Page editor then the London editor, later reporting for the paper from London before returning to Ireland.

Binchy's first published book is a compilation of her newspaper articles titled My First Book. Published in 1970, it is now out of print. As Binchy's bio posted at Read Ireland describes: "The Dublin section of the book contains insightful case histories that prefigure her novelist's interest in character. The rest of the book is mainly humorous, and particularly droll is her account of a skiing holiday, 'I Was a Winter Sport.'"

Literary works
In all, Binchy published 16 novels, four short-story collections, a play and a novella. Her literary career began with two books of short stories: Central Line (1978) and Victoria Line (1980). She published her debut novel Light a Penny Candle in 1982. In 1983, it sold for the largest sum ever paid for a first novel: £52,000. The timing was fortuitous, as Binchy and her husband were two months behind with the mortgage at the time. However, the prolific Binchy—who joked that she could write as fast as she could talk—ultimately became one of Ireland's richest women.

Her first book was rejected five times. She would later describe these rejections as "a slap in the face [...] It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either".

Most of Binchy's stories are set in Ireland, dealing with the tensions between urban and rural life, the contrasts between England and Ireland, and the dramatic changes in Ireland between World War II and the present day. Her books were translated into 37 languages.

While some of Binchy's novels are complete stories (Circle of Friends, Light a Penny Candle), many others revolve around a cast of interrelated characters (The Copper Beech, Silver Wedding, The Lilac Bus, Evening Class, and Heart and Soul). Her later novels, Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road, feature a cast of recurring characters.

Binchy announced in 2000 that she would not tour any more of her novels, but would instead be devoting her time to other activities and to her husband, Gordon Snell. Five further novels were published before her death—Quentins (2002), Nights of Rain and Stars (2004), Whitethorn Woods (2006), Heart and Soul (2008), and Minding Frankie (2010). Her final work, A Week in Winter, was published posthumously in 2012.

Binchy wrote several dramas specifically for radio and the silver screen. Additionally, several of her novels and short stories were adapted for radio, film, and television.

Awards and honours

• In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer.
• A 1993 photograph of her by Richard Whitehead belongs to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (London) and a painting of her by Maeve McCarthy, commissioned in 2005, is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland.
• In 1999, she received the British Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.
• In 2000, she received a People of the Year Award.
• In 2001, Scarlet Feather won the W H Smith Book Award for Fiction, defeating works by Joanna Trollope and then reigning Booker winner Margaret Atwood, amongst other contenders.
• In 2007, she received the Irish PEN Award, joining such luminaries as John B. Keane, Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern and Seamus Heaney.
• In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.
• In 2012, she received an Irish Book Award in the "Irish Popular Fiction Book" category for A Week in Winter.
• There have been posthumous proposals to name a new Liffey crossing Binchy Bridge in memory of the writer Other writers to have Dublin bridges named after them include Beckett, Joyce and O'Casey.
• In 2012 a new garden behind the Dalkey Library in County Dublin was dedicated in memory of Binchy. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
Ms. Binchy writes with a journalist's disciplined simplicity, strong narrative drive and knowledge of human behavior. She tells the sort of tale that's almost impossible to abandon. Even if you guess what will happen next, you keep right on reading to make sure....The Copper Beech is an airport book with a difference: you read it for pleasure, but you probably will not leave it in your seat. Instead, you'll take it home to lend to your best friend. And what best friend wouldn't welcome the new Maeve Binchy, knowing it will never disappoint?
Anna Tolstoi Wallach - New York Times

Binchy makes you laugh, cry, and care. Her warmth and sympathy render the daily struggles of ordinary people heroic and turn storytelling into art.
San Francisco Chronicle

Binchy (Circle of Friends; The Lilac Bus) is a consummate storyteller with a unique ability to draw readers into her tales of Irish life. Here again she mines sources rich in plot and character to produce a captivating narrative. The eponymous copper beech is a huge tree that shades the tiny schoolhouse in the village of Shancarrig. For generations, graduating pupils have carved their initials on the massive trunk, and the book examines what has become of some of them. Though each of the 10 chapters offers the perspective of a single character, Binchy adroitly indicates the ways in which their lives intersect. Thus, the allegedly stolen jewels that are discovered and stolen again in one early chapter become significant in later chapters. Long after two adulterous characters sneak into a Dublin hotel, it emerges that they were spotted by a small soul from Shancarrig, who passes on the information—with unforeseen consequences. A priest's dalliance with the sweet young schoolteacher is shown to have been been suspected by others in the village. The result is a charming and compelling series of interlocking stories about ordinary people who are given dimension through Binchy's empathetic insight. While this book is more fragmentary in structure than some of her previous novels, it should leave Binchy's fans wholly satisfied.
Publishers Weekly

So familiar is the style of this tale, it could be called another trip on The Lilac Bus, Binchy's last collection of interrelated stories set in Ireland, except that the townsfolk stay home this time.... Binchy's characters are fresh and their fates intriguing in this episodic tale.
Booklist

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

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

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Copper Beech:

1. Start with the beech tree, the central image of the book. How might the tree serve as a symbol for Shancarrig? Think how branches, trunk and deep roots suggest people and their lives. And how might the structure of the book itself (a series of connected stories) mimic a tree?

2. Binchy's book depicts characters who attempt to "carve" lives out of difficult situations. Whose story or stories among the 12 do you find most compelling or engaging—Maura's, Maddy's, Dr. Jims and Declan's...? Whose story is most sympathetic?

3. Point to some of the book's comedy. For instance, to what or whom does the tree carving "Gloria in Escelsis" refer to? What does its carver eventually consider adding to it?

4. Which characters find themseles altered—either in life circumstance...or in their inner emotional/psychological core? In what ways, for instance, do Foxy Dunne and Richard Hayes change?

5. Binchy uses a narrative technique called "suspended revelation," as a way to withhold and later reveal information. It allows writers to create a sense of mystery and suspense. When and why does Binchy hold back...then release information from the reader?

6. Given our degree of unknowingness created by suspended revelation (see question #5), what does it suggest about our ability, in real life, to fully know an individual and his/her motivations. In what way might this make it more difficult to form judgments about people?

7. Does Binchy wrap-up loose ends by the end? Are questions answered...the jewel theft and murder?

8. Binchy presents us with individual stories. In all, however, do you come away from this work feeling you know the essence of Shancarrig and its villagers as a whole? How would you describe the village?

9. If you've read other Binchy books, how does this one compare to, say, Quentins and The Lilac Bus...or to Heart and Soul, Circle of Friends, Tara Road, or Glass Lake?

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

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Coral Glynn
Peter Cameron, 2012
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250024138


Summary
Coral Glynn arrives at Hart House, an isolated manse in the English countryside, early in the very wet spring of 1950, to nurse the elderly Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer.

Hart House is also inhabited by Mrs. Prence, the perpetually disgruntled housekeeper, and Major Clement Hart, Mrs. Hart’s war-ravaged son, who is struggling to come to terms with his latent homosexuality.

When a child’s game goes violently awry in the woods surrounding Hart House, a great shadow—love, perhaps—descends upon its inhabitants. Like the misguided child’s play, other seemingly random events—a torn dress, a missing ring, a lost letter—propel Coral and Clement into the dark thicket of marriage.

A period novel observed through a refreshingly gimlet eye, Coral Glynn explores how quickly need and desire can blossom into love, and just as quickly transform into something less categorical.  Borrowing from themes and characters prevalent in the work of mid-twentieth-century British women writers, Peter Cameron examines how we live and how we love—with his customary empathy and wit. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Pequannock Township, New Jersey, USA;  London, England, UK
• Education—B.A. from Hamilton College
• Currently—Lives in New York City, New York, USA

Cameron grew up in the Pompton Plains section of Pequannock Township, New Jersey, and in London, England. He spent two years attending the progressive American School in London, where he discovered the joys of reading, and began writing stories, poems, and plays. Cameron graduated from Hamilton College in New York State in 1982 with a B.A. in English literature.

Non-writing career
After arriving in New York City in 1982, Cameron worked for a year in the subsidiary rights department of St. Martin’s Press. Upon realizing he did not want to pursue a career in publishing, he began doing administrative work for non-profit organizations. From 1983 to 1988, he worked for the Trust for Public Land, a land-conservation organization, and from 1990 to 1998 he worked for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a legal organization that protects and extends the civil rights of gay men, lesbians, and people with HIV/AIDS. In 1987 he taught writing at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and from 1990–1996 he taught in the MFA program at Columbia University's Graduate School of the Arts. From 1998 to 2005 he taught in Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program. He taught at Yale University in the fall of 2005.

Writing career
Cameron sold his first short story to The New Yorker in 1983, and published ten more stories in that magazine during the next few years. This exposure facilitated the publication of his first book, a collection of stories titled One Way or Another, published in 1986. One Way or Another was awarded a special citation by the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Book of Fiction.

In 1988, Cameron was hired by Adam Moss to write a serial novel for the just-launched magazine, 7 Days. This serial, which was written and published a chapter a week, became Leap Year, a comic novel of life and love in New York City in the twilight of the 1980s. It was published in 1989 and was followed by a second collection of stories, Far-flung, in 1991.

Beginning in 1990, Cameron stopped writing short fiction and turned his attention toward novels. His second novel, The Weekend, was published in 1994 and his third, Andorra, in 1997. The City of Your Final Destination, came out in 2002. Another novel, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in September 2007. His latest novel, Coral Glynn, was also published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2012. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

Cameron counts among his strongest influences the novels of British women writers such as Rose Macaulay, Barbara Pym, Penelope Mortimer, and Elizabeth Taylor. He admires these writers for their elegant and accomplished use of language and their penetrating and sensitive exploration of personal life. He also admires the writing of the late William Maxwell for its natural elegance and deeply felt humanity. Shirley Hazzard, James Salter, and Denton Welch are also revered.  (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
There is an ancient class of vessels, found in Roman tombs, called lachrymatories: tiny glass flasks, often shaped like tears, into which mourners are said to have collected the spill of their weeping eyes. This entrancing image flitted through my mind as I read Peter Cameron's new novel, Coral Glynn. By the end of this sad, beautiful, absorbing story of love missed, love lost, love found, I was thinking that this must be what it's like to slip into a bath of hot tears.
New York Times Book Review


Like its packaging, Peter Cameron’s Coral Glynn is spare and unassuming. Mr. Cameron announces his talent in the way that matters: by telling a riveting tale with an often heartbreakingly pure prose style.... Though American, Mr. Cameron is presenting an updated version of the classic English novel of manners, with its themes of balked love and painfully polite misunderstandings. Every timorous gesture points to some profound psychological fear.... Scenes unfold with the exquisite design of a one-act play, with props skillfully deployed to comic and poignant effect.... [Cameron’s] writing...is bracingly unvarnished and unsentimental, stripped of pity or condescension. It is as though he has set an X-ray machine before the traditional English drawing room, leaving its demure occupants exposed in their loneliness and well-meant follies—and revealing them as movingly human.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


Peter Cameron [is] an elegantly acute and mysteriously beguiling writer.... The plots, the ventures, the encounters of his characters, instead of taking them from point A to point B, abduct them into unintended and more expansive itineraries.
Richard Eder - Boston Globe


A big, dark house in the English countryside, with its brooding, damaged master; the pretty but gawky young woman who comes to work there—and to stumble over secrets in gloomy hallways: These are the elements of an old-fashioned gothic tale, and also of Peter Cameron’s lovely, enigmatic new novel, Coral Glynn.... There’s a way stories like this are supposed to go, and Coral Glynn both does and doesn’t play by the old rules.... Coral Glynn is a tribute to a certain breed of novel most often written by British women in the mid-20th century: astringently unsentimental, disciplined, replete with half-acknowledged emotions moving like the shadows of alarmingly large fish deep beneath the surface of the sea. Because their own time preferred to valorize a more chest-thumping sort of writer, their brilliance has been almost forgotten. Some, like Muriel Spark, never entirely slipped from view. Others, like Elizabeth Taylor, are just now being revived. There’s a dash of Daphne du Maurier here, too, and a touch of the sublime Barbara Pym.... Like Cameron’s novels, these books have won a following that makes up in tenacity for what it lacks in size. The audience for both keeps on growing, one devoted reader at a time.
Laura Miller - Salon


Coral comes across a young girl tied to a tree. She’s being pelted with pinecones by a young boy in a game they call Prisoner. Though she insists they stop, Coral takes no other action; the young girl is later murdered in the same forest; and suspicion—bizarrely—falls upon Coral. The book is suffused with a lonely sadness and an aura of the surreal, and the many dramatic events in Coral’s life are entirely plausible thanks to Cameron’s skill as a storyteller.
Publishers Weekly


With its atmospheric Fifties setting and stylish writing, this is one of Cameron’s...finest novels.
Library Journal


Cameron’s shimmering and expectant prose infuses this deceptively simple novel with an incandescent depth.... The decidedly somber and gothic tone of the narrative rings the perfect warning note as the reader begins to suspect that a standard fairy-tale ending is highly unlikely for a cast of lost souls forlornly muted by unrequited longings.
Booklist


[Cameron’s] chief literary virtues are wit, charm, and lightness of touch, qualities infrequently found in contemporary American fiction.... Cameron is above all a novelist of manners, building his effects from the drama and comedy of human relationships, working always on a small scale.
Christopher Beha - Bookforum


Shortly after World War II, Coral Glynn, a nurse, shows up at Hart House to take care of an elderly woman dying of cancer, and thus begins a series of unfortunate events.... A slowly unfolding novel that paradoxically contains both engaging characters and wooden dialogue.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Coral Glynn:

1. What do you think of Cora—how would you describe her? Are there times when you find her frustrating? In what ways does her past affect her? For instance, she compares physical affection to hearing someone speak a foreign language. Why?

2. What about Major Hart—how would you describe him? Why does he ask Coral to marry him? Do you think he loves her? Why does Clement rebuff the attentions of Robin, his childhood lover? Is he no longer attracted to, or in love with, Robin? Is there another reason?

3. A reviewer has described Coral, a live-in-nurse, as an "adjunct" to the lives of others. What does that mean? Do you agree?

4. Talk about some of the wonderful symbolism the author uses: the episode in which Coral tries on her wedding dress; the wedding night during which Coral sits on the bed of a dead woman, wearing the nightgown of a suicide; the copse of holly in the woods with its prickly thorns.

5. How do we learn about Coral's past—the way in which the author gradually reveals snippets of information about her. What do we learn...and when do we learn it? Were you surprised by the disclosures?

6. Why doesn't Coral stop the children's "game" in the woods...or at the very least tell Major Hart what she saw? Does what she later tells Clement and Inspector Hoke make sense?

7. In what ways does Coral's life change once she gets to London? What, for instance, is the significance of the luncheon table in Guildford when she looks back through the cafe window—"the remnants of her meal remained there as blatant as evidence: she was a person in the world. She existed, and she was free."

8. (A follow-up to Question 7) At the beginning of Part Three, Coral thinks to herself that she has found happiness, "even if it is not exactly happiness." Comment on her state of mind in this passage:

But it was a sort of freedom: there had been so many problems—it had all been problems, eveything had been a problem for such a long time—and to be released from that perpetually increasing darkness was a kind of joy.

9. What were your feelings when Coral rejected Clement once he visits her in London? Were you disappointed...or relieved? Why does Coral refuse Clement? Might they have been happy together?

10. Talk about social class in this book? How does it manifest itself? Consider to the two conversations Coral has regarding the wedding luncheon guests, one with Clement and one with Dolly. Dolly,for instance, insists that class doesn't matter anymore when it comes to Coral marrying Clemment. Is she right?

13. There is some very funny writing in this book, pensive as it is—the dialogue when Coral first walks into the dress shop, the pastry bun Mrs. Pence tries to give to the inspector, Clement's reaction to the grasshopper cocktail and coral's to the canapes at Dolly and Robin's. What else did you find humorous.

12. Were you surprised by the end? Do you find it satisfying...or would you have preferred a different ending? And why does Clement walk to the woods after Dolly tells him of Coral's visit? Why does he seem melancholy?

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

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Corelli's Mandolin 
Louis de Bernieres, 1994
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679763970


Summary
The Greek island of Cephallonia—peaceful, remote, famed for its beauty, its light, its mythic history—and only just beginning to enter the twentieth century when the tide of World War II rolls onto its shores. This is the setting for Louis de Bernieres's lyrical, heartbreaking, and hilarious chronicle of the days and nights of the island's inhabitants over fifty tumultuous years.

"It was an island filled with gods," writes Dr. Iannis, Cephallonia's healer and fledgling historian. And though the people who fill the island in 1940 may be less divine than their Olympian forebears, they are nonetheless divinely human, and none more so than the doctor's daughter, Pelagia. Willful, proud, independent, and beautiful, Pelagia finds herself between two men: Mandras, a handsome young fisherman, besotted with love for her but determined to permanently secure her love (and a dowry from her father) by finding "something to get to grips with" when he joins the resistance; and Captain Corelli, a charming, mandolin-playing, exceedingly reluctant officer of the Italian garrison that establishes the Axis presence on the island.

Corelli is thought slightly mad in his passion for music and the gentleness of his troops' "occupation" of Cephallonia. Yet his madness quickly begins to make life seem more "various, rich, and strange" for everyone who encounters him—especially, and most confusingly, for Pelagia...

But with the arrival of the Germans and then of the Communists, life on the island becomes more chaotic and barbaric, more certainly a part of the process by which "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then again as tragedy." Pelagia's life, once rife with possibility, an idyll of time, becomes a long search for something fine and lasting amid loss and separation, deprivation and fear.

Her story of love found and changed and misplaced, and the story of the life she shares with the people of Cephallonia—a life permanently altered by the war and its brutal aftermath. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 8, 1954
• Where—London
• Education—Bradfield College; Victoria University of
   Manchester; University of London
• Awards—Commonwealth Writers Prize, 1994.
• Currently—London


Louis de Bernieres is a British novelist most famous for his fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. In 1993 de Bernières was selected as one of the "20 Best of Young British Novelists", part of a promotion in Granta magazine. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. It was also shortlisted for the 1994 Sunday Express Book of the Year. It has been translated into over 11 languages and is an international bestseller.

In 2008 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in the Arts by the De Montfort University in Leicester, which he had previously attended when it was known as Leicester Polytechnic.

De Bernières-Smart was born near Woolwich and grew up in Surrey, the first part of his surname being inherited from a French Huguenot forefather. He was educated at Bradfield College and joined the army when he was 18, but left after four months of service at Sandhurst. He attended the Victoria University of Manchester and the Institute of Education, University of London.

Before he began to write full-time he held a wide variety of jobs, including being a mechanic, a motorcycle messenger and an English teacher in Colombia. He now lives near Bungay in Suffolk with his partner, Cathy and two children, Robin and Sophie. De Bernières is an avid musician. He plays the flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, though considers himself an “enthusiastic but badly-educated and erratic” amateur. His literary work often references music and composers he admires, such as the guitar works of Villa-Lobos and Antonio Lauro in the Latin American trilogy, and the mandolin works of Vivaldi and Hummel in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

Books
Latin American trilogy
It was his experiences in Colombia (as well as the influence of writer Gabriel García Márquez, describing himself as a "Marquez parasite") that, he says, profoundly influenced his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992).

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
De Bernieres' most famous book is his fourth, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which the eponymous hero is an Italian soldier who is part of the occupying force on a Greek island during the Second World War. In the US it was originally published as Corelli's Mandolin.

In 2001, the book was turned into a film. De Bernieres strongly disapproved of the film version, commenting, "It would be impossible for a parent to be happy about its baby's ears being put on backwards." He does however state that it has redeeming qualities, and particularly likes the soundtrack.

Since the release of the book and the movie, Cephalonia (the island on which the book is set) has become a major tourist destination; and as a result the tourist industry on the island has begun to capitalise on the book's name. Of this, de Bernieres said: "I was very displeased to see that a bar in Agia Efimia has abandoned its perfectly good Greek name and renamed itself Captain Corelli's, and I dread the idea that sooner or later there might be Captain Corelli Tours, or Pelagia Apartments."

Red Dog
His book Red Dog (2001) was inspired by a statue of a dog he saw during a visit to the Pilbara region of Western Australia and has been filmed in 2011.

Birds Without Wings
Set in Turkey this 2004 novel portrays the people in a small village toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Kemal Atatürk, and the outbreak of the First World War.

A Partisan's Daughter
His 7th novel, published in 2008 tells of the relationship between a young Yugoslavian woman and a middle-aged British man in the 1970s, set in London.

Notwithstanding
Published in 2009, Notwithstanding is a collection of short stories revolving around a fictional English village, Notwithstanding, and its eccentric inhabitants. Many of the stories were published separately earlier in de Bernieres's career and are based on the village where he grew up, Wormley, Surrey, and he muses whether this is, or is no longer, the rural idyll. The author reflects in the Afterword:

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations...We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough...Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree.

(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Heartbreaking, beautiful and deeply moving—if not always entirely believable—de Bernieres's extraordinary novel is based on a historic episode: the Nazis' occupation of the sleepy Greek island of Cephallonia and their slaughter of thousands of occupying Italian troops who turned against fascism in solidarity with the native Greeks. The novel's central love story, pairing willful Greek beauty Pelagia and jesting Italian captain Antonio Corelli, a mandolin player, reluctant soldier and despiser of Mussolini, veers toward sentimentality until their idyll is shattered by the German invasion. Pelagia's immature fiance, Greek fisherman Mandras, becomes a fanatical Communist, commits atrocities and later returns from battle to beat Pelagia, who shoots him. By this time, Corelli—saved from a Nazi firing squad by his driver, Carlo, a closet homosexual who unrequitedly loves him--has left to fight the Germans. Pelagia narrowly survives, but her father, an erudite widowed doctor, is killed by Greek Communists. De Bernieres follows the fortunes of his resilient heroine and the war orphan she adopts through 1933, when we learn that Corelli, presumed dead, has absented himself for decades due to a calamitous misunderstanding. Swinging between antic ribaldry and criminal horror, between corrosive satire and infinite sorrow, this soaring novel glows with a wise humanity that is rare in contemporary fiction.
Publishers Weekly


 Set on the Greek island of Cephallonia, this splendid novel spans five decades beginning in the late 1930s just before the Axis forces occupy the island. Using myriad voices to chronicle the horrors of combat and the boredom of occupation, it is by turns funny, sad, and cruel. Corelli is an Italian army captain, a member of the first extraneous forces to occupy Cephallonia, and the lover of Pelagia Iannis. It is through Pelagia's voice that much of the story is revealed, but the chorus includes her father, various Greek villagers, Italian and Greek soldiers, and a goatherd. Besides showing considerable knowledge of historical events and of stringed instruments, the author reveals a keen ability to switch perspectives from young to old, monarchist to Communist, combat soldier to passive peasant, male to female. It doesn't matter that the plot becomes a bit sappy in the last 20 pages because most readers will have already guessed the conclusion and are reveling in the glitter of all that precedes it.
Library Journal


A felicitous change of setting to Greece after an epic trilogy set in Latin America (The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, 1993, etc.) seems to have liberated de Bernieres's particular brand of intelligent satire. Dr. Iannis, a wise-father figure of the sort familiar from de Bernieres's other books, plays choric host to a portrait of life on the island of Cephallonia as Greece is invaded by Italian and German troops during WW II. His brilliant and beautiful daughter, Pelagia, is the story's heroine. Swirling around them are de Bernieres's trademark crowd: earth mother, feral girl-child, village strongman, drunkard priest, politically argumentative old man, inarticulate goatherder, and Mandras, an illiterate fisherman who feeds dolphins. They are joined by the soldiers: Carlo Piero Guercio, a tightly closeted homosexual; Captain Antonio Corelli, his clown of a commanding officer, who is a virtuoso mandolin player; and Gunter Weber, a German who carries around a gramophone so that everyone can enjoy "Lili Marlene." Beginning with Dr. Iannis removing a 60-year-old pea from the ear of one of the villagers and miraculously restoring his hearing, the narrative features one scene of biting political satire after another, although excerpts from Dr. Iannis's historical writings sometimes slow the pace. De Bernieres has toned down his predilection for magical realism; there is just enough of it here, used in just the right way and at the right time, to enhance the sense of wonder and horror intertwined throughout the book. The horror comes from the immediacy of war, the starvation, illness, and madness it brings with it, and the insidious way it changes the innocent Mandras from haunting merman to haunted, sadistic beast. The wonder comes from moments like Pelagia's spying on young Mandras while he frolics with dolphins and the antics of Corelli, Pelagia's fascist lover. Good, thoughtful reading: a black comedy in the Vonnegut tradition.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What understanding does Pelagia have of love as a young girl? How do her ideas come to change during the course of the novel? What is Carlo Guercio's definition of love? How does it guide his actions throughout the story? What is the difference between the love he feels for Francisco and that which he feels for Corelli? How might the other characters define love? Which of them lives up to his or her conception of it?

2. Why do you think de Bernieres chose to make his romantic hero a musician? Why is music, of all the arts, a potential healer of international folly and strife? What significance does Corelli's composition "Pelagia's March" carry within the narrative?

3. After Mandras tries to rape Pelagia, he is very decisively rejected not only by Pelagia but by his own mother. Does Drosoula's rejection of her son strike you as reasonable or heartless? As natural or unnatural? Was Mandras irredeemably lost at this point, or might he perhaps have been saved?

4. What is the role of the Church in Cephallonian life? What does pragmatic toleration of the drunken Arsenios say about the islanders' culture, their character, and their religion? How does Arsenios repay their tolerance? Does the palpable presence of the ancient deities alongside the Orthodox ceremonial enrich the Greeks' faith or dilute it? What importance does the cult of Saint Gerasimos have for the islanders? What interpretation do individual characters such as Dr. Iannis and Pelagia give to the saint's miraculous "cures"?

5. Dr. Iannis writes that the island of Cephallonia is "so immense in antiquity that the very rocks themselves exhale nostalgia and the red earth lies stupefied not only by thesun, but by the impossible weight of memory" [p. 5]. How does their awareness of the island's history and prehistory color the way the Cephallonians see themselves? Does it help them to come to terms with their traditional roles in life? What attitude does it give them toward their recent conquerors?

6. "Honour and common sense; in the light of the other, both of them are ridiculous" [p. 320]. What does de Bernieres mean by this? How do the novel's events confirm or illustrate this statement? Do you find that in certain of the novel's characters these two qualities are not, in fact, mutually exclusive?

7. Carlo Guercio memorably describes the war as "frivolous" [p. 116]. What does he mean by this? How is the quality of frivolity exemplified in the actions of the military leaders and those who follow them? Do you find the adjective an appropriate one for the war described in these pages?

8. What message does this book deliver on the nature of political ideology and political passion? What is the role of political ideology in the lives of Mandras, Kokolias, Stamatis, Hector, Weber, Alexi? How do their actions support or refute their stated political creeds? What political or antipolitical ideals inspire the novel's most noble characters, Carlo and Dr. Iannis?

9. During World War II, atrocities and betrayals were committed on an unprecedented scale. De Bernieres explores the psychology of those who committed those atrocities through several of his characters. Mandras's justification that "it was Hector who was the executioner and he was only the hand" [p. 193] was a common one among Nazi, Fascist, and Communist executioners. How does this justification differ from Gunter Weber's traumatic decision to obey Hitler's order for the massacre of Italian soldiers? Why is Gunter characterized as a "good Nazi"? Is this appellation entirely ironic?

10. Do you find de Bernieres's use of national stereotypes to be effective within his fictional scheme? To what degree can Dr. Iannis be seen as the personification of Greece, Corelli as the spirit of Italy? Do they succeed as three-dimensional characters as well? Do Pelagia's and Corelli's guilt-induced decisions to refute their own nationalities make them any the less "Greek" or "Italian"?

11. Dr. Iannis finds that in writing his history, "objectivity seemed to be quite unattainable" [p. 4]. Carlo says that history tends to be "the propaganda of the victors" when it should consist "only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it" [p. 33]. Does de Bernieres confront these problems in the way he writes his own historical novel? What narrative techniques does he employ in telling his story? In his Author's Note, de Bernieres describes history as "hearsay tempered with myth and hazy memory" [p. 436], yet he himself has in fact remained very faithful to the historical facts as we know them. Why, then, does he offer this apology? Are myth and history significantly differentiated by de Bernieres? By Iannis? By Pelagia?

12. Did Pelagia believe that Corelli died during the war? If not, why does she not leave Cephallonia and try to find him? Does her remaining at home denote passivity or ambivalence about their relationship? What about Pelagia's initial rage at Corelli when they meet again—do you feel that her anger is excessive, or that possibly she is not angry enough?

13. In Pelagia's youth no woman was allowed to enter a kapheneia; thirty years later, the elderly Drosoula runs her own taverna and young Antonia is a successful businesswoman. Changes in social mores might not have manifested themselves as dramatically on Cephallonia during the postwar years as they did in more cosmopolitan areas, but they were in fact radical and profound. How does everyday life on Cephallonia reflect these changes? What role, if any, did the 1953 earthquake play in changing the island, and in the shift in generations? Does de Bernieres imply that the changes are for the better, or for the worse? Or, perhaps, that in essence life has not changed very much at all?

14. Does the happy ending conform with the plot and spirit of the entire novel, or does it represent a shift into a more fantastic, less realistic mode? Do you find it to be an appropriate or an inappropriate conclusion to Pelagia's and Corelli's story?

15. In what way are the novel's characters directly or indirectly compared with figures from Greek mythology? Among the Cephallonians, what modern manifestations do we find of Apollo, Aphrodite, Penelope, Odysseus, Hercules, and other mythological figures? What message about time and change does de Bernieres convey through these parallels?

16. De Bernieres chooses his characters' names with care. What significance can you ascribe to particular names, such as Pelagia, Mandras, Hector, Corelli, Weber?

17. Why do you think de Bernieres has chosen the Humbert Wolfe poem "The Soldier" to launch his narrative? Which themes in the poem are explored in the novel itself? Perhaps the most famous war poem in the English language, by Rupert Brooke, is also called "The Soldier." How does Wolfe's poem comment upon Brooke's? How might the various soldiers in Corelli's Mandolin respond to the assertions made by both poets? Is the kind of idealism glorified by Brooke finally meaningless, as many of his contemporaries, physically and emotionally crushed by World War I, came to find it? Or is it in fact a valuable characteristic, at least within de Bernieres's moral scheme?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Corrections 
Jonathan Franzen, 2001
Macmillan Picador
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312421274


Summary
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.

The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man-or so her mother fears.

Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 17, 1959
• Where—Western Springs, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Swarthmore College; Fulbright Scholar at Freie Universitat in Berlin
• Awards—National Book Award; Whiting Writer's Award; James Tait Memorial Prize;
  American Academy's Berlin Prize
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, and Boulder Creek, California

Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel, The Corrections, a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earning Franzen a National Book Award. His next two novels, Freedom (2010) and Purity (2015) garnered similar high praise. Freedom led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine, and both novels continue to elicit the epithet "Great American Novelist." 

His next two novels, Freedom (2010) and Purity (2015) garnered similar praise. Freedom led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine, and both novels continue to elicit the epithet "Great American Novelist."

In recent years, Franzen has been recognized for his blunt opinions on contemporary culture:

• social networking, such as Twitter ("the ultimate irresponsible medium")
• the proliferation of e-books ("just not permanent enough")
• the disintegration of Europe ("The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people.")
• the self-destruction of America ("almost a rogue state").

Early life and education
Franzen is the son of Irene Super and Earl T. Franzen. He was born in Western Springs, Illinois, but grew up in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.

He majored in German at Swarthmore College, studying in Munich during his junior year. (While there he met Michael A. Martone, on whom he would later base the Walter Berglund character in Freedom.) After his 1981 graduation, Franzen became a Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universitat in Berlin. He speaks fluent German as a result of these experiences.

Franzen married Valerie Cornell in 1982 and moved to Boston to pursue a career as a novelist. Five years later, the couple moved to New York where, in 1988, Franzen sold his first novel The Twenty-Seventh City.

Early novels
The Twenty-Seventh City is set in St. Louis and follows the city's decline from what had been its place in the late 19th century as the country's "fourth city." The novel was well received and established Franzen as an author to watch. In a conversation with novelist Donald Antrim for Bomb Magazine, Franzen described the book as "a conversation with the literary figures of my parents' generation[,] the great sixties and seventies Postmoderns." In a Paris Review article, he referred to himself as

...a skinny, scared kid trying to write a big novel. The mask I donned was that of a rhetorically airtight, extremely smart, extremely knowledgeable middle-aged writer.

Strong Motion (1992), Franzen's second novel, focuses on the dysfunctional Holland family and uses seismic events on the U.S. East Coast as a metaphor for quakes that can disrupt the veneer of family life. Franzen has said the book is based on the ideas of "science and religion—two violently opposing systems of making sense in the world."

The Corrections
The Corrections, Franzen's third novel, came out in 2001. A novel of social criticism, it garnered considerable acclaim, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The book was also a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (won by Richard Russo for Empire Falls).

The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club in 2001. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah, but later expressed unease. In an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, he worried that the Oprah logo on the cover would dissuade men from reading the book:

So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry—I'm sorry that it's, uh—I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking.

Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced,

Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book.

These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen thanked Winfrey "for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of The Corrections."

In 2011, it was announced that Franzen would write a multi-part television adaptation of The Corrections for HBO in collaboration with director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and The Whale). The project was canceled, however, because it was feared that the "challenging narrative, which moves through time and cuts forwards and back" might make it "difficult...for viewers to follow."

Freedom
After the release of Freedom in 2010, Franzen appeared on Fresh Air. He had drawn what he described as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he agreed with.

While promoting the book, Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Stephen King in 2000. The photo appeared alongside the headline "Great American Novelist."

In an interview in Manchester, England, in October 2010, Franzen talked about his choice of a title for the book:

I think the reason I slapped the word on the book proposal I sold three years ago without any clear idea of what kind of book it was going to be is that I wanted to write a book that would free me in some way. And I will say this about the abstract concept of "freedom"; it’s possible you are freer if you accept what you are and just get on with being the person you are, than if you maintain this kind of uncommitted I’m free-to-be-this, free-to-be-that, faux freedom.

On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of The Oprah Winfrey Show. On December 6, 2010, he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Freedom where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking The Corrections and what that would entail.

Purity
Purity, released in 2015, is described by the publisher as a multigenerational American epic that spans decades and continents. The novel centers on a young woman named Purity Tyler, or Pip, who sets out to uncover the identity of her father, whom she has never known. The narrative stretches from contemporary America to South America to East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall; it hinges on the mystery of Pip's family history and her relationship with a charismatic hacker and whistleblower.

Like Franzen's two previous novels, Purity was published to strong reviews: New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote that it was Franzen's "most intimate novel yet" and that the author "has added a new octave to his voice." Time called it "magisterial," while Ron Charles of the Washington Post referred to Franzen's "ingenious plotting" and perfectly balanced fluency." Sam Tannenhaus of the New Republic said of Franzen that "his vision unmasks the world in which we actually live."

Other works
In 2002, following The Corrections, Franzen published How to Be Alone, a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream," his 1996 Harper's article about the state of the novel in contemporary culture. In 2006, he published his memoir The Discomfort Zone (2006), recounting the influence his childhood and adolescence have had in his creative life.

In 2012, two years after his release of Freedom, Franzen published Farther Away, another collection of essays on such topics as his love of birds, his friendship with David Foster Wallace, and his thoughts on technology.

Philosophy
In various lectures given while on tour, Franzen has mentioned four perennial questions often asked of him that he finds annoying:

1. "Who are your influences?"
2. "What time of day do you work, and what do you write on?"
3. "I read an interview with an author who says that, at a certain point in writing a novel, the characters 'take over' and tell him what to do. Does this happen to you, too?"
4. "Is your fiction autobiographical?"

Personal life
Franzen and Valerie Cornell separated in 1994 and are now divorced. Franzen still lives part of the year in New York City but also spends time in Boulder Creek, California. While in California, he lives with his girlfriend, writer Kathy Chetkovich.

In 2010, Franzen's glasses were stolen, then ransomed for $100,000, at an event in London celebrating the launch of Freedom. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/7/2015.)

Book Reviews 
You will laugh, wince, groan, weep, leave the table and maybe the country, promise never to go home again, and be reminded of why you read serious fiction in the first place
New York Review of Books


We were rocking: I only put the book down again when my life needed tending to . . . I can't scrape together much outrage when I'm basically having a good time . . . If you don't end up liking each one of Franzen's people, you probably just don't like people . . . It's often the microfelicities that keep you barreling through The Corrections toward its larger satisfactions. Wordplay worthy of Nabokov . . . Tiny, revelatory gestures . . . Magically precise images . . . Knowing one-liners . . . Franzen writes with convincing authority about the minutiae of railroads, clothing, medicine, economics, industry, cuisine, and Eastern European politics, and he knows just when to push his conceits over the top . . . But he also knows his way around more intimate territory . . . No one book, of course, can provide everything we want in a novel. But a book as strong as The Corrections seems ruled only by its own self-generated aesthetic: it creates the illusion of giving a complete account of a world, and while we're under its enchantment it temporarily eclipses whatever else we may have read. But I guess that is everything we want in a novel—except, when it's rocking along, for it never to be over. In that respect, The Corrections ends as disappointingly as it began. And in that respect only.
New York Times Book Review


Let's not mince words or pussyfoot with fancy lit-crit lingo. This is a great book. It needs to be read . . . A panoramic work that frequently zeroes in, with almost claustrophobic clarity, on human foibles . . . A huge, ambititious, powerful, funny, imaginative yet realistic novel. This book is a gift.
Philadelphia Inquirer


A big, showy powerhouse of a novel, revved up with ideas but satisfyingly beholden to the traditions of character and plot.... Smart and boisterous and beautifully paced . . . Franzen's epic study in irony suggests Wolfe running into Don DeLillo .... The greatest strength of The Corrections, and there are many, is its skillful narrative relativism, the way it delivers one version of the truth about a character, then fleshes out that reality over time into something larger and more complex.... His rendering [of the autumnal prairie of millennial America] is frighteningly, luminously authentic.
Boston Globe 


More engaging and readable than other chilly magnum opuses in the same league . . . Unlike his Big Book peers, [Franzen] wants things tidy—not in the middle, maybe, but at the end. The chaos-theory math wizards of antimatter fiction don't often show such good manners, such politeness, and it's touching to find it here. Not just dazzle—warmth. Novels dealing with domestic crises and familial dysfunction are part of a long and honorable tradition. (As Tolstoy said in 1877, "All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.") Jonathan Franzen, gifted author of The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion, now claims a place in that tradition with The Corrections, his funny, desolating, unsparing account of a divided, deeply unhappy American family.
Miami Herald 


If some authors are masters of suspense, others postmodern verbal acrobats, and still others complex-character pointillists, few excel in all three arenas. In his long-awaited third novel, Franzen does. Unlike his previous works, The 27th City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992), which tackled St. Louis and Boston, respectively, this one skips from city to city (New York; St. Jude; Philadelphia; Vilnius, Lithuania) as it follows the delamination of the Lambert family Alfred, once a rigid disciplinarian, flounders against Parkinson's-induced dementia; Enid, his loyal and embittered wife, lusts for the perfect Midwestern Christmas; Denise, their daughter, launches the hippest restaurant in Philly; and Gary, their oldest son, grapples with depression, while Chip, his brother, attempts to shore his eroding self-confidence by joining forces with a self-mocking, Eastern-Bloc politician. As in his other novels, Franzen blends these personal dramas with expert technical cartwheels and savage commentary on larger social issues, such as the imbecility of laissez-faire parenting and the farcical nature of U.S.-Third World relations. The result is a book made of equal parts fury and humor, one that takes a dry-eyed look at our culture, at our pains and insecurities, while offering hope that, occasionally at least, we can reach some kind of understanding. This is, simply, a masterpiece. Franzen has always been a writer's writer and his previous novels have earned critical admiration, but his sales haven't yet reached the level of, say, Don DeLillo at his hottest. Still, if the ancillary rights sales and the buzz at BEA are any indication, The Corrections should be his breakout book.
Publishers Weekly


Here's a family that will never be mistaken for the Royal Tennenbaums. Meet the Lamberts: Dad is a retired railroad man who is slipping into dementia; Mom is still trying to believe in the rosiest possible marriage and family life; and their grown children are each living out a catastrophe. The youngest son is failing miserably as a sort of screenwriter in Lithuania, the daughter is a chef of some accomplishment who can't seem to keep out of bed with just about anyone, and the oldest son is yelling at and withholding affection from his family just as his father did before him. The family home is in St. Jude (aptly named for the patron saint of hopeless causes). Enid, the wife and mother, wants the whole family together for one last Christmas before her husband, Alfred, slips beyond reach. Getting them all under the same roof even for a few hours is a massive undertaking. Franzen is a keen observer of the way the world works, and it is a tribute to his skill as a novelist that the listener remains interested in the craziness of these lives. Reader Dylan Baker brings these quirky characters to life. Recommended for fiction collections in public libraries. —Barbara Valle, El Paso P.L., TX
Library Journal


The recent brouhaha about the death of realistic fiction may well be put to rest by Franzen's stunning third novel: a symphonic exploration of family dynamics and social conflict and change that leaps light-years beyond its critically praised predecessors The Twenty-Seventh City (1998) and Strong Motion (1992). The story's set in the Midwest, New York City, and Philadelphia, and focused on the tortured interrelationships of the five adult Lamberts. Patriarch Alfred, a retired railroad engineer, drifts in and out of hallucinatory lapses inflicted by Parkinson's, while stubbornly clinging to passe conservative ideals. His wife Enid, a compulsive peacemaker with just a hint of Edith Bunker in her frazzled "niceness," nervously subverts Alfred's stoicism, while lobbying for "one last Christmas" gathering of her scattered family at their home in the placid haven of St. Jude. Eldest son Gary, a Philadelphia banker, is an unhappily married "materialist"; sister Denise is a rapidly aging thirtysomething chef rebounding from a bad marriage and unresolvable relationships with male and female lovers; and younger son Chip-the most abrasively vivid figure here-is an unemployable former teacher and failed writer whose misadventures in Lithuania, where he's been impulsively hired "to produce a profit-making website" for a financially moribund nation, slyly counterpoint the spectacle back home of an American family, and culture, falling steadily apart. Franzen analyzes these five characters in astonishingly convincing depth, juxtaposing their personal crises and failures against the siren songs of such "corrections" as the useless therapy treatment (based on his own patented invention) that Alfred undergoes, the "uppers" Enid gets from a heartless Doctor Feelgood during a (wonderfully depicted) vacation cruise, and the various panaceas and hustles doled out by the consumer culture Alfred rails against ("Oh, the myths, the childish optimism of the fix"), but is increasingly powerless to oppose. A wide-angled view of contemporary America and its discontents that deserves comparison with Dos Passos's U.S.A., if not with Tolstoy. One of the most impressive American novels of recent years.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Consider the atmosphere of suburban St. Jude (named for the patron saint of hopeless causes) in comparison to the more sophisticated surroundings of Philadelphia and New York. Why has the Lamberts' neighborhood evolved into a gerontocratic refuge? "What Gary hated most about the Midwest was how unpampered and unprivileged he felt in it." What negative and positive qualities are attributed to the Midwest? How are the characters shaped by the cities or towns they live in?

2. What is the significance of "one last Christmas"? Is Enid's obsession with the holidays predictable for a mother of her generation or is it, as Gary fears, "a symptom of a larger malaise" ?

3. Why does it take so long for the Lamberts to acknowledge the seriousness of Alfred's illness? Is Al's deteriorating mental health solely a result of Parkinson's disease? How are his physical deterioration and mental decline linked? "Irresponsibility and undiscipline were the bane of his existence, and it was another instance of that Devil's logic that his own untimely affliction should consist of his body's refusal to obey him." Why are these ailments especially humiliating for Alfred?

4. What is the source of Gary and Caroline's marital problems? Whose version of the truth do you believe? Why does Gary feel so alienated from Caleb and Aaron? What draws him to Jonah? Compare this family with the glimpses we have of the young Lamberts. In what ways is Gary different, as a father, from Alfred?

5. What is your impression of Enid and Alfred's marriage? Which version of their marriage do you believe-Enid's image of Al as a pessimistic brooder or Al's image of Enid as an unrealistic optimist? In what ways do Enid's capacity for hope and Alfred's low expectations manifest themselves? How do their temperamental differences play out in the course of the narrative?

6. Discuss the alliances that formed in the Lambert family after the children left home. What occurrences might account for Denise's loyalty to Al and for Chip and Gary's sympathy for Enid? How do these alliances shift during the course of the novel?

7. Why does Denise choose to lose her virginity to Don Armour? Which qualities of her co-worker simultaneously attract and repel her? Why does Al sacrifice his job for Denise's privacy?

8. What is the significance of the title The Corrections? How does the idea of "corrections" play out during the course of the story? What does "What made correction possible also doomed it" mean?

9. What is revealed about the dynamics of the young Lambert family during the liver dinner? When Al finds Chip asleep at the dinner table, what upsets him more: concern for his son or disgust with Enid? Do we know the source of Enid's neglect? "There was something almost tasty and almost sexy in letting the annoying boy be punished by her husband." To what extent are the book's children shaped by their upbringing, and to what extent is their character predetermined?

10. What do Chip's relationships with women reveal about his character? How does his attitude toward women change over the course of the novel? Considering the details of his earlier relationships, does it seem probable that his marriage to Alison Schulman will survive? How did his time in Lithuania prepare Chip to deal with Alfred's decline and death?

11. Is Alfred's death the key to Enid's happiness? How does the quality of her life change once Al is hospitalized? What reaction do his children have to his death? Are we meant to believe that their father's death is the catalyst for their "corrections" ? For how much of the unhappiness in the Lambert household was Al responsible?

12. Are elements of the Lambert family universal characteristics of the American family? How do the world in general and family life in particular change during the half century that the novel spans? In what ways is life better now than when the Lambert children were young? In what ways is it worse?

13. Which character has undergone the most fundamental change? Is the change positive or negative? Have any of the characters evolved enough for their "corrections" to endure? Are these corrections deliberate, or are they the result of outside occurrences that force the characters to change?

14. Discuss the different moral codes members of the Lambert family adhere to. Consider Enid's fear of her children's "immorality," Gary's obsession with Caroline's dishonesty, Alfred's refusal to engage in insider trading, Denise's rage at Gary for having betrayed the sibling code of honor, and Chip's animus against the W Corporation and big business in general. Which of these judgments seem most valid? Does the book favor one moral view over another?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Cost 
Roxana Robinson, 2008
Macmillan Picador
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312428464


Summary
Julia Lambert, an artist, is spending the summer in her old Maine farmhouse. During a visit from her elderly parents, she hopes to mend complicated relationships with her domineering father, a retired neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into the fog of Alzheimer's.

But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son, Jack, has spiraled into heroin addiction. In her attempts to save him, Julia marshals help from her loosely knit clan, but Jack's addiction courses through the family with a devastating energy, sweeping them all into a world of confusion, fear, and obsession. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Pine Mountain, Kentucky, USA
• Raised—New Hope, Pennsylvania
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in New York City

Roxana Robinson is an American novelist and biographer whose fiction explores the complexity of familial bonds and fault lines. Her 2013 novel, Sparta, was published to wide acclaim, and her 2008 novel, Cost, was named one of the Five Best Novels of the Year by the Washington Post. She is also the author of Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, and has written widely on American art and issues pertaining to ecology and the environment.

Life and Work
Robinson was born in Pine Mountain, Kentucky, and raised in New Hope, Pennsylvania, the child of educators and the great-great-granddaughter of social reformer Henry Ward Beecher. She graduated from Buckingham Friends School, in Lahaska, and from The Shipley School, in Bryn Mawr. She studied writing at Bennington College with Bernard Malamud and received a B.A. degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan. She worked in the American painting department at Sotheby's and wrote about American art until she began to successfully publish short fiction in the 1980s.

Equally skilled in both long and short form fiction, Robinson is the author of several novels, three story collections and a biography. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic, and Best American Short Stories, and been widely anthologized and broadcast on National Public Radio. Four of her works have been chosen as Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times, and Cost won the Maine Fiction Award and was long-listed for the Dublin Impac Prize for Fiction. She was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, and currently serves on the board of PEN American Center and the Authors Guild. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Robinson has taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Houston and at the New School. Since 1997, she has taught at the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, and is currently teaching in the Hunter College MFA Program.

Robinson is also a biographer and scholar of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American art. Her articles have appeared in Arts, ARTnews, and Art & Antiques, as well as in exhibition catalogues for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Katonah Museum of Art and others. Her biography of Georgia O'Keeffe was deemed by Calvin Tomkins, of The New Yorker, "without question the best book written about O'Keeffe,” and named a New York Times Notable Book. Robinson lectures frequently on Georgia O'Keeffe, and appeared in the BBC documentary on the artist.

She reviews books for the New York Times and Washington Post, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Harper's, Vogue, Real Simple, and More. She has also written about travel for the New York Times, Travel and Leisure, and elsewhere.

Robinson is passionate about environmental concerns, explored in her novel Sweetwater, and has published numerous op-eds in the Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She has also been a guest blogger for the National Resource Defense Council. She also writes about gardening for publications such as House and Garden, Horticulture, and Fine Gardening. Her garden is listed in the Garden Conservancy Open Days, and has been written about in the New York Times, House and Garden, Traditional Homes, Atlantic, and Gardens Illustrated. She serves on the council of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which promotes the conservation of natural places statewide.

She lives in New York, Maine and Connecticut with her husband. Her daughter is a painter whose work appeared on both the hardcover and paperback editions of Cost.

Critical Reception
Hailed as “one of our best writers” by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post, and “John Cheever’s heir apparent” by the New York Times Book Review, Robinson has also been said, by Time, to be in the “august company” of Edith Wharton, Louis Auchincloss and Henry James.

With Cost, Robinson moved into a larger arena, and, as critic Ron Charles of the Washington Post has said, she “has crept into corners of human experience [that] each of us is terrified to approach ... the implacable tragedies that shred our sense of how the world should work.” In a New York Times interview on the extensive research she did, Robinson said, “Cost has a larger reach than my previous books, both in terms of emotional risk and experience. Alzheimer's and heroin addiction are things I found both very threatening and compelling. They seemed like things I needed to explore."

Spotlighted for her short fiction in the New York Times Book Review, Robinson compared writing a story to

like doing a cliff dive, the kind that only works when the wave hits just right. You stand on top, poised and fearful, looking at what lies below: you must start your dive when the wave has withdrawn, and there's nothing beneath you but sand and stone. You take a deep breath and throw yourself over, hoping that, by the time you hit, the wave will be back, wild and churning, and full of boiling energy. It's kind of terrifying. It's unbelievably fun.

Robinson has written introductions to The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Matter of Prejudice and Other Stories by Kate Chopin, and a forthcoming edition of the English novelist Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek. She edited and wrote the introduction to The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, published by NYRB Classics, as well the introduction to Wharton’s The Old Maid: The Fifties, published by Modern Library Classics. Robinson was also a guest on the recent WAMC/Northeast Public Radio program “American Icons,” on which she discussed House of Mirth. She is also on the Advisory Council at The Mount, Wharton’s historic home in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Commenting on her affinity with Wharton, Robinson notes,

Wharton and I come from similar backgrounds. I grew up with the rules that governed her: emotions were to be strictly controlled, pain was not to be acknowledged, and the rules of decorum were to be obeyed. I’ve always been fascinated by her unblinking exegesis of all this, the way you are when someone breaks the rules, the way you are when you read something and think, “What? Are you allowed to write about this?” Wharton wrote about her world in a way that made it possible for me – and for all of us who come after her—to go into our own worlds still further, and to tease out the innermost reaches of pain and passion from the decorous woven fabric of our lives.

Her work is increasingly used for teaching purposes, and the University of Connecticut has taught a course called, “The Works of Roxana Robinson.”A. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/26/2013.)

Book Reviews
Robinson has been perennially and somewhat reductively tagged a chronicler of WASP life. This designation, while factually accurate—as is the observation that her stories regularly address parenting and marital issues—doesn't do her justice. These subjects—WASP life, domestic life—are often used as code for "small," in the sense of both trivial and mean, and Robinson's fiction is neither. In writing about characters whose lives are constrained, she makes them loom large. Cost is unusual for being as plot-driven as it is character-driven, and the assured manner in which Robinson builds toward the inevitable train wreck is matched by her acuity in bringing us inside the characters' minds.
Leah Hager Cohen - New York Times

Cost is unsparing but not bleak. There is urgency in the narrative; you keep hoping for a rescue and you care about these complex people even when you want to shake them for behaving badly. There is bitter humor in the family's uneasy alliance with the rehab counselor. You could learn a lot from this novel about the family dynamics of addiction. But what makes Ms. Robinson much more than a very good reporter is her searching compassion for these flawed people.... Cost is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane--summer reading of uncommon stature.
Wall Street Journal

Loss, grief and regret are the central subjects of Roxana Robinson's harrowing new novel, which applies the writer's trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life to the darkest subject matter she has tackled to date.... Robinson achieves a truly Shakespearean breadth of vision in this final scene, acknowledging that suffering can sharpen our understanding without minimizing the lasting damage it inflicts. Bleak though it undeniably is, Cost is also a warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author.
Chicago Tribune

Gripping...Robinson paints a chilling portrait of addiction, depicting heroin junkies in particular as ruthless in pursuit of their highs and rehab as hardly more than a crapshoot. There's little solace here, except in the accumulation of wisdom and softening of old resentments at the book's appealing, astutely drawn characters come together. We can't always save each other, but there's a kind of redemption in the fight.
People

Julia Lambert is a New York art professor spending the summer in Maine with her elderly father, a domineering neurosurgeon, and mother, a gentle soul succumbing to Alzheimer's. Julia's oldest son, Steven, joins the clan as tragic news surfaces: her second son, Jack, is addicted to heroin. Ex-husband Wendell, Julia's distant sister Harriet and Jack himself soon arrive, and intervention is on the agenda. Jack refuses to go quietly, and Robinson, who has worked in multiple genres (including penning a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe), engulfs the clan in a sea of resentment and repressed hostility, spiked with the intermittent need to feel close. Her unrelenting look at the deep physical and mental distress involved in heroin abuse is not for the faint of heart, with key portions of the drama unfolding through descriptions of Jack's perpetually itching skin, twitching muscles, heaving stomach, needle-tracked arms and addled brain. While the omniscient narration sometimes loses focus, Robinson offers adept closeups of family trauma.
Publishers Weekly

The mildly strained Lambert family is in terrible trouble. New York art professor Julia is spending the summer in her ramshackle Maine home with her very elderly parents. Julia's older son, Steven, arrives for a visit and shatters the surface serenity with his suspicion that his younger brother, Jack, is a heroin addict spiraling out of control. When Steve's worst fears are confirmed, Julia's ex-husband, Wendell, brings Jack to Maine for an intervention, conducted by Ralph Carpenter, a tough ex-addict who runs a Florida recovery program. Robinson's fourth novel (after Sweetwater) spares her fictional family nothing in this tale of hell. Each of the Lamberts is forced to look down the wrong end of the heroin needle, one horrific, sordid, heartbreaking detail after another. With exquisitely raw honesty, Robinson offers no hope for this nearly always-deadly addiction. As Jack's descent picks up speed toward the end, the Lamberts are drowning in the kind of intolerable grief borne of having to mourn the loss of a loved one before the heart stops beating. Highly recommended.
Beth E. Andersen - Library Journal

Robinson offers the unrelentingly pessimistic story of a woman coming to grips with her son's heroin addiction. Julia, a divorced artist and art professor in Manhattan, has two grown sons: responsible Steven, who has been working as a conservation activist in Seattle but is returning east to attend law school, and his younger brother Jack, an erstwhile musician who has always been the family risk-taker and troublemaker. The novel opens on the glum scene of Julia attempting to entertain her difficult, aging parents at her Maine vacation house. Already tense from trying to be a dutiful daughter despite her resentment toward her rigid father Edward and her impatience with her placid mother Katharine, who is actually losing her memory, Julia falls to pieces when Steven arrives and admits his suspicion that Jack has become a heroin addict. She immediately calls her ex-husband Wendell who goes to Jack's squalid apartment and drags him to Maine for a family intervention including distraught Edward and clueless Katharine. Before any real conversation can take place, Jack goes into withdrawal. A desperate Wendell calls 911, and Jack is hospitalized. The family now rally around professional interventionist Ralph Carpenter, who arrives shortly before Jack, having escaped from the hospital, is arrested while attempting to rob a drug store. After Julia unwisely puts up her cottage as security that Jack will show up for his trial, he is allowed to enter Ralph's rehab program in Florida. At first Julia remains in partial denial, unable to grasp how grave Jack's condition is, but the "hypnotic and dreadful" Ralph gives Julia and readers a full course in the horrors and hopelessness of heroin addiction, so no one is surprised when Jack shoots up and is kicked out of the rehab program Ralph runs. Meanwhile, family dynamics are deeply affected for better and worse until Jack hits the inevitable bottom. A fictional case study, at once pedantic and riveting.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Discuss the novel's title. What are the many costs—emotional and material—associated with Jack's addiction? What other circumstances lead the characters to consider their self-worth, or the "worth" of others?

2. How does Julia's relationship with her sister compare with Steven's relationship with his brother? What leads siblings to become estranged despite having been close during childhood?

3. What does the house in Maine represent to Julia at various points in her life? How does the house set the tone for the novel: picturesque, laden with memories, and in need of repair?

4. What does Cost tell us about the nature of marriage? What enabled Edward and Katharine to sustain their marriage? How does Wendell justify his affair? Is Harriet wise to avoid marriage, pursuing long-term relationships instead?

5. What are the repercussions of the parenting styles presented in the novel? Was Julia harmed by Edward's judgmental nature? To what extent was Jack's life a response to the way he perceived his parents?

6. Does Carpenter change Julia's family, or are they unaffected by his talk of loving interactions? What is captured in the moment when Edward mentally corrects Carpenter, asserting that addiction is not an illness (chapter twenty-seven)? Does Edward have different standards for the ill? Where does he believe self-determination ends and nature begins?

7. Steven is haunted by his parents' infidelity. Why does he blame his mother more easily than his father? How do Julia's memories of Eric shape the way she sees herself?

8. What accounts for the difference between Jack and Steven, who uses his rebellion for noble causes (such as protesting against loggers)? Would Steven have been an achiever if his brother had not been so troubled?

9. What portraits of the mind are offered in Cost? How does Edward feel about his memories of being a pioneering surgeon? What remains of Katherine despite her fading memory? What realities does each character create in the face of a disorienting world?

10. In chapter thirty-two, Julia tells Jack that he has to try harder. Is Julia naïve or simply afraid of what lies in store for her son? How do the other members of the family respond to both the psychological and the neurological fallout of his addiction? Why is it easier for Julia to acknowledge her parents' faltering health, while Harriet wants to believe that they are just fine?

11. What aspects of Julia's life emerge during her gallery opening? What is the significance of Harriet's presence there?

12. What were you thinking as you read the novel's closing scenes? Which characters had changed the most, along with your impressions of them?

13. How would you and your family have responded to a situation like Jack's? What do you believe can or should be done to address the needs of those with such severe addictions?

14. What themes are woven throughout this and other novels and stories by Roxana Robinson? What is unique about the approach she uses in bringing Julia's situation to life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Count of Monte Cristo 
Alexander Dumas, 1844
400-600 pp. (varies by publisher)


Summary 
Marseille, France, 1815. It is Edmond Dantes' wedding day. But his enemies have other plans, and Edmond is arrested and sent to the terrible island prison of Chateau d'If. For fourteen long years he waits for the right moment to escape. And now Edmond is a rich man, with many disguises, and a new name. The count of Monte Cristo begins his revenge. (From Bantam Books edition.)

A popular bestseller since its publication in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great page-turning thrillers of all time. Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, Dumas’s grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantès, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason.

The story of his long imprisonment, dramatic escape, and carefully wrought revenge offers up a vision of France that has become immortal. As Robert Louis Stevenson declared, “I do not believe there is another volume extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance." (From the Modern Library Classics edition.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 24, 1802
• Where—Villers-Cotterets, France
• Death—December 5, 1870
• Where—Belgium

Alexandre Dumas (père) lived a life as romantic as that depicted in his famous novels. He was born on July 24,1802, at Villers-Cotterêts, France, the son of Napoleon’s famous mulatto general, Dumas.

His early education was scanty, but his beautiful handwriting secured him a position in Paris in 1822 with the du’Orléans, where he read voraciously and began to write. His first play, Henri III et sa cour (1829), scored a resounding success for its author and for the romantic movement. Numerous dramatic successes followed (including the melodrama Kean, later adapted by Jean-Paul Satre), and so did numerous mistresses and adventures.

He took part in the revolution of 1830 and caught cholera during the epidemic of 1832, fathered two illegitimate children by two different mistresses, and then married still another mistress. (The first of these two children, Alexandre Dumas, [fils], became a famous author also,) His lavish spending and flamboyant habits led to the construction of his fabulous Château de Monte-Christo, and in 1851 he fled to Belgium to escape creditors. He died on December 5, 1870, bankrupt but still cheerful, saying of death, “I shall tell her a story, and she will be kind to me.”

Dumas’s overall literary output reached over 277 volumes, but his brilliant historical novels made him the most universally read of all French novelists. With collaborators, mainly Auguste Maquet, Dumas wrote such works as The Three Musketeers (1843-44); its sequels, Twenty Years After (1845) and the great mystery The Man in the Iron Mask (1845-50); and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844).

L’action and l’amour were the two essential things in life and his fiction. He declared he “elevated history to the dignity of the novel” by means of love affairs, intrigues, imprisonments, hairbreadth escapes, and duels. His work ignored historical accuracy, Psychology, and analysis, but its thrilling adventure and exuberant inventiveness continue to delight readers, and Dumas remains one of the prodigies of nineteenth-century French literature. (From the Modern Library Classics edition.)

Book Reviews 
As a classic work, no online mainstream reviews exist for this work. See Amazon or Barnes & Noble for helpful customer 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 Count of Monte Cristo:

1. The central issue in The Count of Monte Cristo is the question of revenge. In the case of this book, is Dantes' quest for vengeance morally just? Can vengeance ever stand in for justice?

2. Discuss Villefort's decision to imprison Dantes. He believes Dantes has been unfairly accused, but at the same time he fears for his own father's life.

3. Talk about the role that the Abbe Faria plays in Dante's development. Why does Dantes consider him a second father?

4. Why does Dantes treat Caderrouse more lightly than he does Danglars and Mondego?

5 What truths do Julie and Emmanuel reveal to Dantes? What does he learn from them?

6. As he takes his leave from Maximillian, Dantes claims that "there is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more.” What does that statement mean—in the context of the story and in real life—and how does it reverberate throughout the novel?

7. Talk about Dantes' profound alienation when he escapes from prison and his gradual movement back into reconciliation with humanity. How does that development take place: what and the plot benchmarks who are characters who help him regain his humanity.

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

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The Coup 
John Updike, 1978
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449242599


Summary
In his freewheeling satire, Updike dissects government disfunction in Kush, a fictionalized, modern African state. He also skewers America's hapless compulsion to dispense its largesse.

Narrated tongue-in-cheek by Kush's exiled president, Colonel Felix Ellellou, Updike proves he is an equal opportunity employer when it comes to slicing up hypocrisy, whether black or white, first world or third. He that concerns in the fictional African nation of Kush, as well as America's compulsion. (Adapted from the publishers and Answers.com.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1932
• Where—Reading, Pennsylvania, USA
• Death—January 27, 2009
• Where—Danvers, Massachusetts 
• Education—A.B., Harvard University; also studied at the
   Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England
• Awards—National Book Award for The Centaur, 1964;
   Pulitzer Prizer, National Book Critics Circle Award, and
   National Book Award for Rabbit Is Rich, 1982; Pulitzer Prize
   and National Book Critics Circle Award for Rabbit at Rest,
   1990


With an uncommonly varied oeuvre that includes poetry, criticism, essays, short stories, and novels, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike has helped to change the face of late-20th-century American literature.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Updike graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1954. Following a year of study in England, he joined the staff of The New Yorker, establishing a relationship with the magazine that continues to this day. Since 1957, he has lived in two small towns in Massachusetts that have inspired the settings for several of his stories.

In 1958, Updike's first collection of poetry was published. A year later, he made his fiction debut with The Poorhouse Fair. But it was his second novel, 1960's Rabbit, Run, that forged his reputation and introduced one of the most memorable characters in American fiction. Former small-town basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom struck a responsive chord with readers and critics alike and catapulted Updike into the literary stratosphere.

Updike would revisit Angstrom in 1971, 1981, and 1990, chronicling his hapless protagonist's jittery journey into undistinguished middle age in three melancholy bestsellers: Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest. A concluding novella, "Rabbit Remembered," appears in the 2001 story collection Licks of Love.

Although autobiographical elements appear in the Rabbit books, Updike's true literary alter ego is not Harry Angstrom but Harry Bech, a famously unproductive Jewish-American writer who stars in his own story cycle. In between—indeed, far beyond—his successful series, Updike has gone on to produce an astonishingly diverse string of novels. In addition, his criticism and short fiction remain popular staples of distinguished literary publications.

Extras
• Updike first became entranced by reading when he was a young boy growing up on an isolated farm in Pennsylvania. Afflicted with psoriasis and a stammer, he escaped from his into mystery novels.

• He decided to attend Harvard University because he was a big fan of the school's humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon.

• Updike has basically won every major literary prize in America, including the Guggenheim Fellow, the Rosenthal Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the O. Henry Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award, the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and the National Medal of the Arts. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
The narator of The Coup is Colonel Ellellou, dictator of Kush, and this may be the first mistake. It isnecessary for Mr. Updike to disarticulate himself, to renounce his redoubtable sytle, in order to let the colonel speak. As is often the case in such conceptions, the author splits the difference. Sometimes the colonel sounds like Mr. Updike and sometimes he sounds like nothing in this world. His habit of speaking in the first and the third person, often on the same page, is not one of the author's happier innovations.... Mr. Updike is swamped by distractions.
Anatole Broyard - New York Times

[The Coup] views with ... humor current African tensions between tradition and modernity. Updike's American-educated Marxist dictator of a small Sahelian satrapy sounds remarkably like the author himself at his best and worst—and his four wives embody, variously, the earthy virtues and ornery independence of vintage Updike women.... The resulting depiction of cultural mésalliance is a comic delight.
Jennifer Seymour Whitaker, Foreign Affairs

Updike is one of the most exquisite masters of prose style produced by 20th century America. Yet, his novels have been faulted for lacking any sense of action or character development. It appears at times that his ability to spin lovely phrases of delicate beauty and nuance overwhelm his desire to tell a simple, important story in the lives of his characters. Updike's novels raise the question of whether beauty of expression, the lyrical telling of a captured moment of human time is, itself, enough to justify a great work of art.

In contrast, his short stories are seen by many as masterful in every respect, both for their prose style that approaches poetic expression and for the stories they convey. Some critics believe that had Updike produced only short stories and poems, his role in American letters would be even more celebrated. But it is Updike's novels that have brought him the greatest fame and attention and which resulted in his appearance on the covers of Time magazine two times during his career.
Wikipedia

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

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

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The Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena, 2016
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735221086


Summary
It all started at a dinner party. . .

A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors—a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora.

But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family—a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Before turning to writing fiction, Shari Lapena worked as a lawyer and as an English teacher. She has written two award-winning literary comedies: Things Go Flying (2008) and Economic Happiness (2011). Tired of comedy, she decided to try her hand at writing a thriller, and in 2016 she published The Couple Next Door. The book became an immediate bestseller. Lapena lives in Toronto, Canada. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
The tale of a child stolen from its cot is full of suspense but promises more than it delivers.... [T]he set-up is fantastic – it’s just when Lapena has to deliver on the answers that the novel starts to slip. Without giving anything away, the big reveal feels like a bit of a letdown. Although I continued at a breakneck pace to the end, keen to see if Lapena would recover the tension she’d built up so well, it never quite recovered.
Alison Flood - Guardian (UK)


The twists come as fast [as] you can turn the pages.
People


[S]uspenseful, heart-wrenching.... Could the couple be covering up a kidnapping? Rasbach and Jennings suspect that they’re withholding something.... After numerous twists and turns, just when everything appears to be resolved, Lapena delivers one final, deftly crafted surprise.
Publishers Weekly


Brisk prose style and character development are almost beside the point in Lapena’s suspense-fiction debut; this is a plot-driven page-turner, and even the most character-focused readers will find it hard to put down.
Booklist


[A] paint-by-numbers police investigation, led by the personality-free Detective Rasbach, who seems to cycle through potential theories...the same way Lapena must have in her early plotting stages, except it all ended up on the page. When it's clear, or at least partially clear, what happened...any remaining tension hisses out like a pricked balloon.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Imagine yourself in Anne’s position—would you have left your infant at home while going next door for dinner? Do you believe Anne is a good mother? How do you define that?

2. Why does Anne stay with Marco, even after everything she’s learned? Would you? Is it possible to build trust again after that type of betrayal?

3. Marco and Richard hate each other. How would each describe the other? Thinking about the way the story ends, how accurate are their opinions?

4. Rasbach says "It’s much easier to make money if you don’t care who you hurt. If you have scruples, it’s much harder to get rich" (p.284). Do you agree?

5. The press hound Anne and Marco, camping outside their door and assaulting them with questions. Do you think these kinds of media circuses are justified in the name of "news"?

6. At one point, Anne thinks that she killed her own child. Why? Do you believe she’s capable of that?

7. What was your reaction to the last line of the novel? What did Anne do? What will happen next for Anne and Marco?

8. What is the title of the novel meant to suggest?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)

top of page (summary)

Couples 
John Updike, 1968
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780449911907


Summary
Couples focuses on a promiscuous circle of married friends in the fictional Boston suburb of Tarbox. Much of the novel (which takes place in 1963) concerns the efforts of its characters to balance the pressures of Protestant sexual mores against increasingly flexible American attitudes toward sex in the 1960s.

The book suggests that this relaxation may have been driven by the development of birth control and the opportunity to enjoy what one character refers to as "the post-pill paradise." Its publication created a mild scandal and elicited a cover story in Time magazine. (From Wikipedia.)

Couples has been assailed for its complete frankness and praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrait of love, marriage, and adultery in America. But be it damned or hailed, Couples drew back the curtain forever on sex in suburbia in the late twentieth century. A classic, it is one of those books that will be read — and remembered — for a long time to come. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 18, 1932
• Where—Reading, Pennsylvania, USA
• Death—January 27, 2009
• Where—Danvers, Massachusetts 
• Education—A.B., Harvard University; also studied at the
   Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England
• Awards—National Book Award for The Centaur, 1964;
   Pulitzer Prizer, National Book Critics Circle Award, and
   National Book Award for Rabbit Is Rich, 1982; Pulitzer Prize
   and National Book Critics Circle Award for Rabbit at Rest,
   1990


With an uncommonly varied oeuvre that includes poetry, criticism, essays, short stories, and novels, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike has helped to change the face of late-20th-century American literature.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Updike graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1954. Following a year of study in England, he joined the staff of The New Yorker, establishing a relationship with the magazine that continues to this day. Since 1957, he has lived in two small towns in Massachusetts that have inspired the settings for several of his stories.

In 1958, Updike's first collection of poetry was published. A year later, he made his fiction debut with The Poorhouse Fair. But it was his second novel, 1960's Rabbit, Run, that forged his reputation and introduced one of the most memorable characters in American fiction. Former small-town basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom struck a responsive chord with readers and critics alike and catapulted Updike into the literary stratosphere.

Updike would revisit Angstrom in 1971, 1981, and 1990, chronicling his hapless protagonist's jittery journey into undistinguished middle age in three melancholy bestsellers: Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest. A concluding novella, "Rabbit Remembered," appears in the 2001 story collection Licks of Love.

Although autobiographical elements appear in the Rabbit books, Updike's true literary alter ego is not Harry Angstrom but Harry Bech, a famously unproductive Jewish-American writer who stars in his own story cycle. In between—indeed, far beyond—his successful series, Updike has gone on to produce an astonishingly diverse string of novels. In addition, his criticism and short fiction remain popular staples of distinguished literary publications.

Extras
• Updike first became entranced by reading when he was a young boy growing up on an isolated farm in Pennsylvania. Afflicted with psoriasis and a stammer, he escaped from his into mystery novels.

• He decided to attend Harvard University because he was a big fan of the school's humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon.

• Updike has basically won every major literary prize in America, including the Guggenheim Fellow, the Rosenthal Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the O. Henry Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award, the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and the National Medal of the Arts. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotics, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death. Adultery, says Updike, has become a kind of 'imaginative quest' for successful hedonism that would enable man to enjoy an otherwise meaningless life....The couples of Tarbox live in a place and time that together seem to have been ordained for this quest.
Time Magazine

I can think of no other novel, even in these years of our sexual freedom, as sexually explicit in its language...as direct in its sexual reporting, as abundant in its sexual activities.
Atlantic Monthly

Updike is one of the most exquisite masters of prose style produced by 20th century America. Yet, his novels have been faulted for lacking any sense of action or character development. It appears at times that his ability to spin lovely phrases of delicate beauty and nuance overwhelm his desire to tell a simple, important story in the lives of his characters. Updike's novels raise the question of whether beauty of expression, the lyrical telling of a captured moment of human time is, itself, enough to justify a great work of art.

In contrast, his short stories are seen by many as masterful in every respect, both for their prose style that approaches poetic expression and for the stories they convey. Some critics believe that had Updike produced only short stories and poems, his role in American letters would be even more celebrated. But it is Updike's novels that have brought him the greatest fame and attention and which resulted in his appearance on the covers of TIME magazine two times during his career.
Wikipedia

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 Couples:

1. Updike's novel was considered scandalous in 1968. Do you find it as shocking today, considering the popularity of TV serials such as "Desperate Housewives" or "Sex in the City"? Did Couples reflect or alter societal values?

2. The novel centers around Piet Hanema. What prompts his infidelity? Does he actually have motivations, or are they merely rationalizations? Do you find Piet a sympathetic character or not?

3. Is Couples, with its depiction of boredom and infidelity, a fair or accurate portrayal of suburban life?

4. What is meant by the phrase "post-pill paradise"?

5. Does Updike seem to be championing human freedom through the relaxation of sexual mores? Or is he using the novel's infidelity as symptomatic of a larger societal decline?

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

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A Case of Identity_________________________back to LitCourse 2 by Arthur Conan Doyle "My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man can invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. "If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions, most stale and unprofitable." "And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic." "A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid perhaps upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace." I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking so," I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here,"--I picked up the morning paper from the ground--"let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to his wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the unsympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude." "Indeed your example is an unfortunate one for your argument," said Holmes, taking the paper, and glancing his eye down it. "This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which you will allow is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story teller. Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example." He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the center of the lid. Its splendor was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it. "Ah!" said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia, in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers." "And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled upon his finger. "It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems." "And have you any on hand just now?" I asked with interest. "Some ten or twelve, but none which present any features of interest. They are important, you understand, without being interesting. Indeed I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, that I may have something better before very many minutes are over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken." He had risen from his chair, and was standing between the parted blinds, gazing down into the dull, neutral-tinted London street. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess-of-Devonshire fashion over her ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp clang of the bell. "I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man, she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed or grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts." As he spoke, there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him. "Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?" "I did at first," she answered, "but now I know where the letters are without looking." Then, suddenly realizing the full purport of his words, she gave a violent start, and looked up with fear and astonishment upon her broad, good-humored face. "You've heard about me, Mr. Holmes," she cried, "else how could you know all that?" "Never mind," said Holmes, laughing, "it is my business to know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?" "I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege, whose husband you found so easily when the police and everyone had given him up for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel." "Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked Sherlock Holmes, with his finger tips together, and his eyes to the ceiling. Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," she said, "for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr. Windibank-- that is, my father--took it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he would do nothing, and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away to you." "Your father?" said Holmes. "Your stepfather, surely, since the name is different." "Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself." "And your mother is alive?" "Oh, yes; mother is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased, Mr. Holmes, when she married again so soon after father's death, and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the foreman; but when Mr. Windibank came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveler in wines. They got four thousand seven hundred for the good-will and interest, which wasn't near as much as father could have got if he had been alive." I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention. "Your own little income," he asked, "does it come out of the business?" "Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate, and was left me by my Uncle Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying four and half per cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest." "You interest me extremely," said Holmes. "And since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt travel a little, and indulge yourself in every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds." "I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course that is only just for the time. "Mr. Windibank draws my interest every quarter, and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day." "You have made your position very clear to me," said Holmes. "This is my friend, Doctor Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel." A flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket. "I met him first at the gasfitters' ball," she said. "They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. " He would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday School treat. But this time I was set on going, and I would go, for what right had he to prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all father's friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing fit to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much as taken out of the drawer. "At last, when nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the firm; but we went, mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel." "I suppose," said Holmes, "that when Mr. Windibank came back from France, he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball?" "Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and shrugged his shoulders, and said there was no use denying anything to a woman, for she would have her way." "I see. Then at the gasfitters' ball you met, as I understand, a gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel?" "Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if we had got home all safe, and after that we met him--that is to say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that father came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house any more." "No?" "Well, you know, father didn't like anything of the sort. He wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle. But then, as I used to say to mother, a woman wants her own circle to begin with, and I had not got mine yet." "But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see you?" "Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he had gone. We could write in the meantime, and he used to write every day. I took the letters in the morning, so there was no need for father to know." "Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?" "Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we took. Hosmer—Mr. Angel—was a cashier in an office in Leadenhall Street--and--" "What office?" "That's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes; I don't know." "Where did he live, then?" "He slept on the premises." "And you don't know his address?" "No--except that it was Leadenhall Street." "Where did you address your letters, then?" "To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, to be left till called for. He said that if they were sent to the office he would be chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady, so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn't have that, for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come from me, but when they were typewritten he always felt that the machine had come between us. That will just show you how fond he was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think of." "It was most suggestive," said Holmes. "It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?" "He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare." "Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, returned to France?" "Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again, and proposed that we should marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest, and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever happened I would always be true to him. Mother said he was quite right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion. "Mother was all in his favor from the first, and was even fonder of him than I was. Then, when they talked of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father; but they both said never to mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards and mother said she would make it all right with him. I didn't quite like that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as he was only a few years older than me; but I didn't want to do anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the wedding." "It missed him, then?" "Yes, sir, for he had started to England just before it arrived." "Ha! that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for the Friday. Was it to be in church?" "Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour's, near King's Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras Hotel. Hosmer came for us in a hansom, but as there were two of us, he put us both into it, and stepped himself into a four-wheeler, which happened to be the only other cab in the street. We got to the church first, and when the four-wheeler drove up we waited for him to step out, but he never did, and when the cabman got down from the box and looked, there was no one there! The cabman said that he could not imagine what had become of him, for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him." "It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated," said Holmes. "Oh, no, sir! He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all the morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was to be true; and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separate us, I was always to remember that I was pledged to him, and that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed strange talk for a wedding morning, but what has happened since gives a meaning to it." "Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?" "Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he would not have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw happened." "But you have no notion as to what it could have been?" "None." "One more question. How did your mother take the matter?" "She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter again." "And your father? Did you tell him?" "Yes, and he seemed to think, with me, that something had happened, and that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said, what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the door of the church, and then leaving me? Now, if he had borrowed my money, or if he had married me and got my money settled on him, there might be some reason; but Hosmer was very independent about money, and never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet what could have happened? And why could he not write? Oh! it drives me half mad to think of, and I can't sleep a wink at night." She pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff, and began to sob heavily into it. "I shall glance into the case for you," said Holmes, rising, "and I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the weight of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind dwell upon it further. Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel vanish from your memory, as he has done from your life." "Then you don't think I'll see him again?" "I fear not." "Then what has happened to him?" "You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an accurate description of him, and any letters of his which you can spare." "I advertised for him in last Saturday's Chronicle," said she. "Here is the slip, and here are four letters from him." "Thank you. And your address?" "No. 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell." "Mr. Angel's address you never had, I understand. Where is your father's place of business?" "He travels for Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importers of Fenchurch Street." "Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will leave the papers here, and remember the advice which I have given you. Let the whole incident be a sealed book, and do not allow it to affect your life." "You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be true to Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back." For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled our respect. She laid her little bundle of papers upon the table, and went her way, with a promise to come again whenever she might be summoned. Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his finger tips still pressed together, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his gaze directed upward to the ceiling. Then he took down from the rack the old and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a counselor, and, having lighted it, he leaned back in his chair, with thick blue cloud wreaths spinning up from him, and a look of infinite languor in his face. "Quite an interesting study, that maiden," he observed. "I found her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather a trite one. You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in Andover in '77, and there was something of the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is the idea, however, there were one or two details which were new to me. But the maiden herself was most instructive." "You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite invisible to me," I remarked. "Not invisible, but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important. I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot lace. Now, what did you gather from that woman's appearance? Describe it." "Well, she had a slate-colored, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads sewed upon it and a fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her dress was brown, rather darker than coffee color, with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were grayish, and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn't observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and a general air of being fairly well-to-do, in a vulgar, comfortable, easygoing way." Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled. "'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for color. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. " My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you observe, this woman had plush upon her sleeve, which is a most useful material for showing traces. The double line a little above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table, was beautifully defined. The sewing machine, of the hand type, leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side of it farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the broadest part, as this was. " I then glanced at her face, and observing the dint of a pince-nez at either side of her nose, I ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed to surprise her." "It surprised me." "But, surely, it was very obvious. I was then much surprised and interested on glancing down to observe that, though the boots which she was wearing were not unlike each other, they were really odd ones, the one having a slightly decorated toe cap and the other a plain one. One was buttoned only in the two lower buttons out of five, and the other at the first, third, and fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly dressed, has come away from home with odd boots, half-buttoned, it is no great deduction to say that she came away in a hurry." "And what else?" I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by my friend's incisive reasoning. "I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving home, but after being fully dressed. You observed that her right glove was torn at the forefinger, but you did not, apparently, see that both glove and finger were stained with violet ink. She had written in a hurry, and dipped her pen too deep. It must have been this morning, or the mark would not remain clear upon the finger. " All this is amusing, though rather elementary, but I must go back to business, Watson. Would you mind reading me the advertised description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?" I held the little printed slip to the light. "Missing," it said, "on the morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman named Hosmer Angel. About five feet seven inches in height; strongly built, sallow complexion, black hair, a little bald in the center, bushy black side-whiskers and mustache; tinted glasses; slight infirmity of speech. Was dressed, when last seen, in black frock-coat faced with silk, black waistcoat, gold Albert chain, and gray Harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters over elastic-sided boots. Known to have been employed in an office in Leadenhall Street. Anybody bringing," etc., etc. "That will do," said Holmes. "As to the letters," he continued, glancing over them, "they are very commonplace. Absolutely no clue in them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There is one remarkable point, however, which will no doubt strike you." "They are typewritten," I remarked. "Not only that, but the signature is typewritten. Look at the neat little 'Hosmer Angel' at the bottom. There is a date, you see, but no superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is rather vague. The point about the signature is very suggestive--in fact, we may call it conclusive." "Of what?" "My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it bears upon the case?" "I cannot say that I do, unless it were that he wished to be able to deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were instituted." "No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters which should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the other is to the young lady's stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking him whether he could meet us here at six o'clock to-morrow evening. It is just as well that we should do business with the male relatives. "And now, doctor, we can do nothing until the answers to those letters come, so we may put our little problem upon the shelf for the interim." I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers of reasoning, and extraordinary energy in action, that I felt that he must have some solid grounds for the assured and easy demeanor with which he treated the singular mystery which he had been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and the Irene Adler photograph, but when I looked back to the weird business of the "Sign of the Four," and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the "Study in Scarlet," I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel. I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the conviction that when I came again on the next evening I would find that he held in his hands all the clews which would lead up to the identity of the disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary Sutherland. A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention at the time, and the whole of next day I was busy at the bedside of the sufferer. It was not until close upon six o'clock that I found myself free, and was able to spring into a hansom and drive to Baker Street, half afraid that I might be too late to assist at the denouement of the little mystery. I found Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin form curled up in the recesses of his armchair. A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent, cleanly smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the chemical work which was so dear to him. "Well, have you solved it?" I asked as I entered. "Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta." "No, no; the mystery!" I cried. "Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon. There was never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said yesterday, some of the details are of interest. The only drawback is that there is no law, I fear, that can touch the scoundrel." "Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss Sutherland?" The question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet opened his lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and a tap at the door. "This is the girl's stepfather, Mr. James Windibank," said Holmes. "He has written to me to say that he would be here at six. Come in!" The man who entered was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty years of age, clean shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a bland, insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and penetrating gray eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of us, placed his shiny top hat upon the sideboard, and, with a slight bow, sidled down into the nearest chair. "Good evening, Mr. James Windibank," said Holmes. "I think this typewritten letter is from you, in which you made an appointment with me for six o'clock?" "Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official police, but it is not pleasant to have a family misfortune like this noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless expense, for how could you possibly find this Hosmer Angel?" "On the contrary," said Holmes, quietly, "I have every reason to believe that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel." Mr. Windibank gave a violent start, and dropped his gloves. "I am delighted to hear it," he said. "It is a curious thing," remarked Holmes, "that a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting. Unless they are quite new no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one side. "Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring over the e, and a slight defect in the tail of the r. There are fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious." "We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no doubt it is a little worn," our visitor answered, glancing keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes. "And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr. Windibank," Holmes continued. "I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the e's slurred and the r's tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well." Mr. Windibank sprung out of his chair, and picked up his hat. "I cannot waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes," he said. "If you can catch the man, catch him, and let me know when you have done it." "Certainly," said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the door. "I let you know, then, that I have caught him!" "What! where?" shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips, and glancing about him like a rat in a trap. "Oh, it won't do--really it won't," said Holmes, suavely. "There is no possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too transparent, and it was a very bad compliment when you said that it was impossible for me to solve so simple a question. That's right! Sit down, and let us talk it over." Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face, and a glitter of moisture on his brow. "It--it's not actionable," he stammered. "I am very much afraid that it is not; but between ourselves, Windibank, it was as cruel, and selfish, and heartless a trick in a petty way as ever came before me. Now, let me just run over the course of events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong." The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his breast, like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up on the corner of the mantelpiece, and, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, than to us. "The man married a woman very much older than himself for her money," said he, "and he enjoyed the use of the money of the daughter as long as she lived with them. It was a considerable sum, for people in their position, and the loss of it would have made a serious difference. It was worth an effort to preserve it. "The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition, but affectionate and warmhearted in her ways, so that it was evident that with her fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would not be allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would mean, of course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what does her stepfather do to prevent it? He takes the obvious course of keeping her at home, and forbidding her to seek the company of people of her own age. " But soon he found that that would not answer forever. She became restive, insisted upon her rights, and finally announced her positive intention of going to a certain ball. What does her clever stepfather do then? He conceives an idea more creditable to his head than to his heart. With the connivance and assistance of his wife, he disguised himself, covered those keen eyes with tinted glasses, masked the face with a mustache and a pair of bushy whiskers, sunk that clear voice into an insinuating whisper, and doubly secure on account of the girl's short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer Angel, and keeps off other lovers by making love himself." "It was only a joke at first," groaned our visitor. "We never thought that she would have been so carried away." "Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very decidedly carried away, and having quite made up her mind that her stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery never for an instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the gentleman's attentions, and the effect was increased by the loudly expressed admiration of her mother. "Then Mr. Angel began to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as far as if would go, if a real effect were to be produced. There were meetings, and an engagement, which would finally secure the girl's affections from turning toward anyone else. But the deception could not be kept up forever. These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous. "The thing to do was clearly to bring the business to an end in such a dramatic manner that it would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's mind, and prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and hence also the allusions to a possibility of something happening on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not listen to another man. "As far as the church door he brought her, and then, as he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of a four-wheeler and out at the other. I think that that was the chain of events, Mr. Windibank!" Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his pale face. "It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes," said he; "but if you are so very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing actionable from the first, but as long as you keep that door locked you lay yourself open to an action for assault and illegal constraint." "The law cannot, as you say, touch you," said Holmes, unlocking and throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. "By Jove!" he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man's face, "It is not part of my duties to my client, but here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat myself to--" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road. "There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!" said Holmes, laughing as he threw himself down into his chair once more. "That fellow will rise from crime to crime until he does something very bad and ends on a gallows. The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest." "I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning," I remarked. "Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr. Hosmer Angel must have some strong object for his curious conduct, and it was equally clear that the only man who really profited by the incident, as far as we could see, was the stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never together, but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice, which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My suspicions were all confirmed by his peculiar action in typewriting his signature, which, of course, inferred that his handwriting was so familiar to her that she would recognize even the smallest sample of it. "You see all these isolated facts, together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same direction." "And how did you verify them?" "Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I knew the firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed description, I eliminated everything from it which could be the result of a disguise,--the whiskers, the glasses, the voice,--and I sent it to the firm with a request that they would inform me whether it answered to the description of any of their travelers. "I had already noticed the peculiarities of the typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at his business address, asking him if he would come here. As I expected, his reply was typewritten, and revealed the same trivial but characteristic defects. The same post brought me a letter from Westhouse & Marbank, of Fenchurch Street, to say that the description tallied in every respect with that of their employee, James Windibank. Voila tout!" "And Miss Sutherland?" "If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatcheth a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world."

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Courting Mr. Lincoln 
Louis Bayard, 2019
Algonquin Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616208479 


Summary
A page-turning novel about the brilliant, melancholic future president and the two people who knew him best: his handsome and charming confidant (and roommate), Joshua Speed, and the spirited young debutante Mary Todd.

When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in the winter of 1840, he is on no one’s short list to be president. A country lawyer living above a dry goods shop, he is lacking both money and manners, and his gift for oratory surprises those who meet him.

Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with an interest in debates and elections, at first finds him an enigma. “I can only hope,” she tells his roommate, the handsome, charming Joshua Speed, “that his waters being so very still, they also run deep.”

It’s not long, though, before she sees the Lincoln that Speed knows: an amiable, profound man who, despite his awkwardness, has a gentle wit to match his genius, and who respects her keen political mind.

But as her relationship with Lincoln deepens, she must confront his inseparable friendship with Speed, who has taught his roommate how to dance, dress, and navigate the polite society of Springfield.

Told in the alternating voices of Mary Todd and Joshua Speed, and inspired by historical events, Courting Mr. Lincoln creates a sympathetic and complex portrait of Mary unlike any that has come before; a moving portrayal of the deep and very real connection between the two men; and most of all, an evocation of the unformed man who would grow into one of the nation’s most beloved presidents.

Louis Bayard, a master storyteller, delivers here a page-turning tale of love, longing, and forbidden possibilities. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1963
• Raised—Springfield, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.A., Northwestern University
• Currently— Washington, D.C.


Louis Bayard is an author of 9 novels, many of which draw their inspiration from history. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Bayard grew up in Northern Virginia. He earned his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.A. in journalism from Northwestern University.

Bayard's most recent work, Courting Mr. Lincoln, was published in 2019. His historical mysteries include Mr. Timothy (2003), The Pale Blue Eye (2006), The Black Tower (2008), The School of Night (2010), and Roosevelt's Beast (2014). The Pale Blue Eye, a fictional mystery set at West Point Academy during the time Edgar Alan Poe was enrolled, was shortlisted for both the Edgar and the Dagger Awards. His works have been translated into 11 languages.

Bayard has also written book reviews and essays for The Washington Post, New York Times, Salon and Nerve. He has appeared at the National Book Festival, and he has written the New York Times recaps for Downton Abbey and Wolf Hall.

Earlier Bayard worked as a staffer at the U.S. House of Representatives for D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. He also served as press secretary for former Representative Phil Sharp of Indiana. He continues to live in Washington where, in addition to his own writing, he teaches fiction writing at George Washington University (Adapted from online sources, including Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/9/2019.)

Book Reviews
Bayard has written eight other novels, and he’s extraordinarily gifted at blending provocative fiction with history. The details of [Mary Todd and Lincoln’s] courtship are lovely to read, but Lincoln’s time with Speed is much more riveting. At book’s end, who’s courting Lincoln remains an enticing mystery.
Washington Post


A rich, fascinating and romantic union of fact and imagination about young Lincoln, the woman he would marry and his beloved best friend. Bayard’s compelling take on this question is not academic, nor is it a polemic; Courting Mr. Lincoln is intimate, warm and, above all, compassionate. Bayard is concerned with the possibilities of the human heart, and he presents an enigmatic Lincoln seen—and loved—from two other points of a romantic triangle…. [T]he greatest triumph of Courting Mr. Lincoln is how effectively Bayard creates suspense, even when we know how the story ends. Love is love is love, after all, and he invests us deeply in the moving journey of three extraordinary people.
Newsday


Thoroughly researched and thrillingly plotted…. Filled with rich historical detail and compulsively readable, Courting Mr. Lincoln is a story of a best friend, a future wife, and the political legend that they came together to create, each leaving an indelible mark on the man that would one day become president. Fans of historical fiction will be up late into the night to uncover the next chapter of this fascinating time in history.
New York Journal of Books


A wildly clever imagining of Honest Abe's complicated personal life. In Courting Mr. Lincoln, Louis Bayard, an accomplished historical novelist, breathes life into the massive cultural icon whom we know so well, but really don’t have much of a clue about. Read the book. You’ll thank me.
Washington Independent Review of Books


[T]he early days of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln’s relationship [is a] delightful embellishment of American history.… This charming love story delicately reveals the emotional roller coaster of two inexperienced adults… trying to meet the… expectations of society.
Publishers Weekly


Mary falls for an ungainly young lawyer with a golden tongue, and their interest in politics cements the deal. In the background is Joshua Speed, Abraham Lincoln's friend, roommate, and possible lover, and he shares narration responsibilities with Mary.
Library Journal


With a richly imagined setting and complex characters…this [is] a worthy addition to the fiction-about-Lincoln bookshelf.
Booklist


(Starred review)  Mary Todd… gets a welcome contemporary reappraisal as a woman of spirit and will… rather than [a] needy hysteric…. Not a lot of action, but in Bayard’s skilled hands, three complicated people groping toward a new phase in their lives is all the plot you need.
Kirkus Reviews


[E]nchants and thrills… [Bayard's] meticulous, almost otherworldly, understanding of his historical subject awes and inspires.… He offers more reasons to love one of the most admired presidents in U.S. history and proves yet again why he is one of the nation's greatest literary gems.
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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Cover of Snow
Jenny Milchman, 2013
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345534217


Summary
Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton instantly knows that something is wrong.

When her fog of sleep clears, she finds her world is suddenly, irretrievably shattered: Her husband, Brendan, has committed suicide. The first few hours following Nora’s devastating discovery pass for her in a blur of numbness and disbelief. Then, a disturbing awareness slowly settles in: Brendan left no note and gave no indication that he was contemplating taking his own life.

Why would a rock-solid police officer with unwavering affection for his wife, job, and quaint hometown suddenly choose to end it all? Having spent a lifetime avoiding hard truths, Nora must now start facing them. Unraveling her late husband’s final days, Nora searches for an explanation—but finds a bewildering resistance from Brendan’s best friend and partner, his fellow police officers, and his brittle mother.

It quickly becomes clear to Nora that she is asking questions no one wants to answer. For beneath the soft cover of snow lies a powerful conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep its presence unknown...and its darkest secrets hidden. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1970-71
• Raised—Montclair, New Jersey, USA
• College—B.A., Barnard College
• Currently—lives in Morristown, New Jersey


Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer, whose debut novel, Cover of Snow, was published in 2013. Her short story "The Closet" appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and another story, "The Very Old Man," has been an Amazon bestseller. The short work "Black Sun on Tupper Lake" was chosen to appear in the anthology Adirondack Mysteries II.

Jenny is the Chair of the International Thriller Writers Debut Authors Program, and the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, which was celebrated in all 50 states and four foreign countries in 2011.

Jenny also hosts the Made It Moments forum on her blog, which has featured more than 200 international bestsellers, Edgar winners, and independent authors, co-hosts the literary series Writing Matters, which attracts guests coast-to-coast and has received national media attention, and teaches writing and publishing for New York Writers Workshop and Arts By The People. Jenny lives in New Jersey. (From the author's website.)

Watch a video interview.

Book Reviews
…quietly unnerving…Milchman reveals an intimate knowledge of the psychology of grief, along with a painterly gift for converting frozen feelings into scenes of a forbidding winter landscape.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times


When house restorer Nora Hamilton finds that her policeman husband, Brendan, has hanged himself, her image of their idyllic life in Brendan’s Adirondacks hometown of Wedeskyull, N.Y., is shattered in Milchman’s evocative debut. Yet Nora is not content to accept her husband’s death as a suicide. As she tries to make sense of the tragedy and investigate, Brendan’s mother and his police co-workers stonewall her. Refusing to simply move on, Nora discovers more and more things about Brendan that don’t add up. Why did he get a prescription for sedatives a week before committing suicide? What does the death of his brother exactly 25 years before have to do with anything? The townsfolk’s reticence to answer these questions only further compels her to uncover the truth about Brendan’s past. Milchman expertly conveys Nora’s grief in a way that will warm hearts even in the dead of a Wedeskyull winter.
Publishers Weekly


Well-defined characters take us on an emotional roller-coaster ride through the darkest night, with blinding twists and occasionally fatalturns. This is a richly woven story that not only looks at the devastating effects of suicide but also examines life in a small town and explores the complexity of marriage. Fans of Nancy Pickard, Margaret Maron, and C. J. Box will be delighted to find this new author.
Booklist


Milchman's debut novel follows Nora Hamilton as she puzzles through the inexplicable and sudden suicide of her young husband, Brendan.... The clues with which Nora pieces together the mystery of what's actually happening in Wedeskyull and why a happily married man like Brendan would kill himself are so obscure and easily overlooked that it's difficult to believe a grieving widow would zero in on them with such unerring precision. The ensuing investigation seems illogical and disjointed with the introduction of characters whose only apparent function is to take up literary space. Nice writing, but Nora's meandering investigation only makes a confusing plot even more so in a tale populated by irrelevant details and vague side journeys.
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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Cracking India 
Bapsi Sidhwa, 2006
Milkweed Editions
296 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781571310484


Summary
Young Lenny is kept out of school because she suffers from polio, and so spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws. Thrilled with the attention that comes with her invalid status, Lenny manipulates the activities of courtship to better spoil herself.

It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, comes to recognize religious intolerance, and provides a lense into the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her.

As a Parsee, Lenny is separate from these groups and their conflicts, though they play a tremendous role in her life. The Ice-Candy-Man, a popsicle vendor and the title character in the British edition, initially the most aggressive of Ayah’s suitors, transforms several times over the course of the novel, symbolically representing the subcontinent's own transformations.

Sidhwa humanizes the violence and strife caused by religious intolerance by putting the innocence of a child, an outside narrator due to both her age and her ethnicity, on the line, caught in the crossfire of political unrest. The story depicts the planting of the seeds of religious intolerance and political violence that remains to this day in India and Pakistan, and much of the rest of the Middle East.

Cracking India provides a timely reminder that contemporary American rhetoric of the “War on Terror” and post-9/11 politics echoes eerily that which is recorded in this novel. Sidhwa personalizes the history of political unrest in South Asia and the Middle East, an issue as pertinent today as it was in 1980, when the novel was first published. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1938
• Raised—Lahore, Pakistan
• Education—Kinnaird College
• Awards—Bunting Fellowship; Sitara-i-Imtiaz; Lila Wallace-Reader's
   Digest Writer's Award; Premio Mondello
• Currently—lives in Houston, Texas, USA


Born in Karachi, Pakistan and raised in Lahore, Bapsi Sidhwa has been lauded as “Pakistan’s finest English-language novelist.” Sidhwa is the author of four novels: The Bride, Crow Eaters, An American Brat, and Cracking India (Ice-Candy-Man), which was a New York Times Notable Book, nominated by the American Library Association as Notable Book, and won the Literature Prize in Germany in 1991, and was made into the award-winning film Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta in 1999.

Sidhwa was the recipient the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest honor in the arts in 1991, and was inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame in 2000. She has been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and the Bunting Fellowship from Radcliffe, among other honors.

Her novels have been published abroad in India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, Greece, and Italy. She has taught at several universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Though she currently resides with her husband in Houston, Texas, Sidhwa travels often to Pakistan, seeking the inspiration of Lahore and working as an activist for women’s and minority rights. (From the publisher.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
Cracking India is a novel in which heartbreak coexists with slapstick, where awful jokes about forefathers and foreskins give way to lines of glowing beauty ("The moonlight settles like a layer of ashes over Lahore"). The author’s capacity for bringing an assortment of characters vividly to life is enviable.
New York Times Book Review


[Sidhwa] has told a sweet and amusing tale filled with the worst atrocities imaginable; she has concocted a girlishly romantic love story which is driven by the most militant feminism; above all, she has turned her gaze upon the domestic comedy of a Pakistani family in the 1940s and somehow managed to evoke the great political upheavals of the age.
Washington Post Book World


With understated prose and a seemingly simple narrative, Sidhwa’s novel conveys the human suffering of Partition far more effectively than a dozen history books.... Cracking India illustrates the power of good fiction: a historical tragedy comes alive, yielding insight into both the past and the subcontinent’s turbulent present.
USA Today


The spirited daughter of an affluent Parsee family narrates the story of the cracking of India, as she witnesses Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Parsees, and Sikhs fight for their land and their lives.
London Review of Books


Sidhwa's novel Cracking India is on of the finest responses made to the horror of the division of the subcontinent.
Salman Rushdie - The New Yorker


Sidhwa tempers Lenny’s hyper-awareness by capturing the whole range of her fears and joys as her innocence becomes another casualty of the violence among Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus.
Publishers Weekly

Discussion Questions
1. On page 30, Lenny says about her cousin’s upcoming tonsillectomy: "I visualize a red, scalloped scar running from ear to ear. It is a premonition." What do you think she means by this?

2. On page 125, Lenny says, "Now I know surely. One man’s religion is another man’s poison." Do you believe this? Given the violence that breaks out and the fact that India is “cracked” along religious lines, can you understand why Lenny feels this way?

3. Chapter 21 takes the reader back into Lenny’s family world, characterized by humor, joy, and a "regular life." Why do you think the author shows us Lenny’s family here?

4. How does Lenny use her handicap? How does she feel about it? Find examples of her taking delight in her handicapped status.

5.Throughout section two, Lenny steals and hides bottles. Finally her godmother discovers the theft on page 93. Are some people bet ter at lying than others? Is Ice-candy-man a good liar? Is Ayah?

6. Lenny has finally betrayed her ayah. What scenes in the earlier sections of the book led up to this betrayal? How were we prepared for Lenny’s inability to lie? After the betrayal, what does she do?
(Questions issued by publisher).

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The Cradle
Patrick Somerville, 2009
Little, Brown & Co.
204 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316036115


Summary 
Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again.

Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know—does not want to know—where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister near by and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner.

Only as Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known.

Elegant and astonishing, Patrick Somerville tells the story of one man's journey into the heart of marriage, parenthood, and what it means to be a family. Confirming the arrival of an exuberantly talented new writer, The Cradle is an uniquely imaginative debut novel that radiates with wisdom and wonder. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—University of Wisconsin, Madison; M.F.A., Cornell    University
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois

Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He is the author of the story collection Trouble (Vintage, 2006), and his writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007.

He lives with his wife in Chicago, and is currently the Blattner Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University. This is his first novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[M]magical…Mr. Somerville has the chops to keep this story from softening into the generic mush suggested by his premise…In a streamlined 200-page book that works as a fully conceived novel, he tells an endearing story full of genuinely surprising turns.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

One gets the sense that somewhere, near Patrick Somerville's writing desk, hundreds of unpublished pages of his first novel, The Cradle, litter the floor. The scope of the story indicates that many hours of imaginative sweat went into the production of this lean, moving tale. Happily, The Cradle emerges swift and cinematic, an epic story told in a series of artfully curated, wonderfully rendered scenes.
Dean Bakopoulosis - New York Times Book Review

Somerville builds a road narrative that gradually accumulates the mythic echoes and dreamlike inevitability of allegory…What gives The Cradle its potent emotional resonance, however, is the way Somerville's prose calmly, relentlessly pulls at the Gothic skein of family tragedies that lurks behind the peeling paint and sagging porches, where a sense of inherited sin settles like a thick fog.
Michael Lindgren - Washington Post

A lovely, finely wrought tale of unlikely redemption. In prose that floats so lightly as to seem effortless, Somerville takes the reader on unlikely journeys that results in unexpected consequences.... The Cradle is a slim volume, with prose that slides down easily—so easily that the emotions it explores can sneak up on the reader...The final pages of the novel are surprisingly satisfying and right. Somerville has many gifts, not the least of which is the ability to sketch his characters with firm strokes that leave no doubt as to their distinct and varied humanity. The resulting work is nothing short of a surprising treat.
Robin Vidimos - Denver Post

An elusive heirloom cradle symbolizes childhood's pains and possibilities in Somerville's spare, elegant first novel (after a story collection, Trouble ). Marissa, pregnant with her first child, becomes obsessed with tracking down the antique cradle her mother took when she abandoned the family a decade earlier. Marissa's husband, Matt, is sure he's been dispatched on a fool's errand, but his journey soon connects him to Marissa's family and his own history of abandonment, neglect and abuse amid a string of foster homes and orphanages. Matt's quest through four states is interwoven with another drama that takes place 11 years later, in 2008, in which poet and children's author Renee Owen is haunted by memories of war and a lost love as she prepares to send her son off to fight in Iraq. Again, long-buried secrets come to the surface, one of which poignantly links the two story lines. Though the connection will not shock, Somerville's themes of a broader sense of interconnectivity and the resultant miracles of everyday existence retain their strength and affirm the value of forming and keeping families.
Publishers Weekly

It's 1997, and 25-year-old Marissa Bishop could be a bit crazy, or perhaps it's just pregnancy that makes her send her adoring husband, Matt, on an impossible quest: find her own childhood cradle, which was removed from her home ten years earlier when her mother left Marissa and her dad. To appease the woman he loves, Matt leaves their Wisconsin home to traverse the Midwest on a journey that might leave the geographically challenged running for an atlas. In 2008 Chicago, children's book author and sometime poet Renee Owen is dealing with her 19-year-old son's enlistment in the military, with the likelihood of his shipping out to Iraq. The stories alternate chapters and eventually come together in this satisfyingly sweet tale of love, commitment, and self-discovery. First novelist Somerville keeps us engaged in this slim novel from the outset. Though readers might guess the connections, they will want to see how the author provides the perfect denouement. Highly recommended for public libraries.
Bette-Lee Fox Library Journal

With highly charged lyricism and dramatic concision, Somerville gracefully illuminates what children need, all that war demands, and how amends are made and sorrows are woven into the intricate tapestry of life.
Booklist

Critics uniformly praised Somerville’s moving debut about the meaning of family and its power to heal. Somerville’s spare but buoyant prose strikes the right emotional balance, expressive without being sentimental.
Bookmarks Magazine

In this first novel by the author of the story collection Trouble (2006), a young man and, separately, a middle-aged woman test their capacity to love and be loved. As a favor to his pregnant wife, Matt takes a few days off from the plant where he works to try to find the cradle Marissa had as a baby. She wants it for their son. The cradle dates back to the Civil War, and it was stolen when Marissa was 15, around the same time Marissa's mother walked out. Neither has been seen since. With a relative's former address as his only clue, Matt sets off, traveling through towns large and small, from Green Bay, Wis., to Walton, Minn., to Rensselaer, Ind., with a brief detour (via Internet video hook-up) to Antarctica. Along the way, Matt finds much more than he anticipated, including how his own childhood—18 years of foster homes and state agencies—shaped his feelings about family. Ten years later, in a well-heeled neighborhood of Chicago, Renee and her husband Bill prepare to say goodbye to their only son Adam, a Marine who is leaving for Iraq in a matter of days. Affable and bright, Adam believes he has a duty to serve his country—a position not shared by Renee, a children's-book author turned poet who passionately protested the Vietnam War when she was in college. As the family works to keep their last days together normal—they go out for donuts; watch a football game on television-Renee's feelings about Adam's impending departure threaten to tear from her lips a long-buried secret. One not even her husband knows. Somerville's two story lines unfold and ultimately dovetail with a quiet confidence. This meditative novel dignifies small gestures, which bring to life the compelling characters. A bonus is the fresh regional sensibility the author brings to Matt's road trip through the Northern Middle West states. Fresh turf for American fiction from a talented young writer.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. What does Matt mean when he tells Joe, "You’re free," as they eat breakfast in the diner?

2. In your opinion, what is the significance of the cradle?

3. Renee’s story occurs more than a decade after Matt’s, and in many ways the two characters exist in different worlds. How are their respective quests similar? How are their journeys different?

4. Why does Marissa cry on her wedding day?

5. Why do you think Matt rips the showerhead out of the wall?

6. In the novel’s first chapter, Marissa claims, "There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who understand that everything matters  and people who don’t understand that everything matters" (page 6). What does she mean by this? Is she serious? Use her statement as a way to think about the various characters in the book.

7. How is writing poetry different for Renee than her work writing children’s books? Why do you think she struggles so much with the former, and how  does that struggle change in the course of the novel? How does Renee’s understanding of Walt Whitman’s work play a role?

8. Matt comes to the realization that "the world never just happened but rather was made by people, each and every aspect of it" (page 157). How does this realization affect his sense of personal responsibility?

9. Who was the character you most identified with at the beginning of the novel? Did that change by the conclusion of the story?

10. Why do you think that, following Matt’s return, Marissa never again asked about the cradle?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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