Lilla's Feast: One Woman's Story of Love and War in the Orient
Frances Osborne, 2004
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345472380
Summary
At the end of her life, Frances Osborne's one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother Lilla was as elegant as ever-all fitted black lace and sparkling-white diamonds. To her great-grandchildren, Lilla was both an ally and a mysterious wonder. Her bedroom was filled with treasures from every exotic corner of the world. But she rarely mentioned the Japanese prison camps in which she spent much of World War II, or the elaborate cookbook she wrote to help her survive behind the barbed wire.
Beneath its polished surface, Lilla's life had been anything but effortless. Born in 1882 to English parents in the beautiful North China port city of Chefoo, Lilla was an identical twin. Growing up, she knew both great privilege and deprivation, love and its absence. But the one constant was a deep appreciation for the power of food and place. From the noodles of Shanghai to the chutney of British India and the roasts of England, good food and sensuous surroundings, Lilla was raised to believe, could carry one a long way toward happiness. Her story is brimming with the stuff of good fiction: distant locales, an improvident marriage, an evil mother-in-law, a dramatic suicide, and two world wars. Lilla's remarkable cookbook, which she composed while on the brink of starvation, makes no mention of wartime rations, of rotten vegetables and donkey meat. In the world this magical food journal, now housed in the Imperial War Museum in London, everyone is warm and safe in their homes, and the pages are filled with cream puffs, butterscotch, and comforting soup. In its writing, Lilla was able to transform the darkest moments into scrumptious escape.
Lilla's Feast is a rich evocation of a bygoneworld, the inspiring story of an ordinary woman who tackled the challenges life threw in her path with an extraordinary determination. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Frances Osborne is a former lawyer, stockbroker, and freelance journalist turned full-time writer. She lives in London with her husband, George Osborne, the youngest Member of Parliament, and her two young children.
Book Reviews
Osborne is amazed by her great-grandmother Lilla, whose remarkable life took her from her birth in 1882 in Chefoo, China, to a "not quite prudent" marriage in India, a WWII Japanese internment camp and the end of her life in an England that didn't want her. Regardless of her surroundings, Lilla created a cozy home for her family, excelling in culinary delights. Osborne, who was 13 when Lilla died at 100, wanted to learn more about the mysteries of her great-grandmother's life: "There was an allusion to a `real father,' who had shot himself.... [T]here was the unheard-of child whom, in a whispered confession, she said she had made herself miscarry." Osborne's research is comprehensive: she draws on family letters, interviews with former colonialists and camp prisoners, historical references and even a recipe book Lilla wrote while interned, and she seamlessly entwines historical events into the narrative. But what stops this biography from being a Far East Out of Africa is the clunky writing. Osborne injects cliched drama into situations and frequently uses sentence fragments to jarring effect. Furthermore, her conjecture and awkward language weaken the memoir's authoritativeness. Lilla, though, is a captivating character; her story rises above the writing's mediocrity. Forecast: Ballantine will target literary and cooking communities; it's possible they'll embrace this.
Publishers Weekly
A bright if modest tale of stiff-upper-lip indomitability against deadly odds. "This is a story of what large-scale history does to the small-scale people caught up in its events," writes London-based journalist Osborne by way of introducing the saga of her great-grandmother Lilla. Born to colonial parents in China in the glory days of the empire, Lilla learned of the tragic side of life early on: her father killed himself when she was just short of three, ostensibly because he had been bitten by a rabid dog, more likely because his wife was in love with another man. Lilla married young and moved with her army officer husband, Ernest Howell, to India, only to learn that the match wasn't quite heaven-made; even so, "in an almost childish way, she seems to have loved Ernie most when he wasn't interested in her." He died when his troop ship was sunk by a German submarine in 1915, and, Osborne writes rather archly, Lilla "played at being Ernie's widow just as she had played at being his wife." Returning to China, she lived comfortably until December 1941, when Japanese troops interned the European residents of Chefoo. Just shy of 60, Lilla had begun writing a cookbook some time earlier; now, imprisoned in Chefoo and later in the frozen northern Chinese city of Weihsien, she returned to it just to have something to do. The recipes aren't much, notable mostly for their absence of any kind of spice, but they clearly must have been challenging to write; as the camp rations were systematically cut as the Japanese began to lose the war, as meat and flour and oil went by the wayside, "bringing herself to type out these recipes must have begun to feel like self-torture," but also a curious exercisein hope. In all events, doing the work kept Lilla alive-indeed, she lived to be 100. A minor story, to be sure, but very well told.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Lilla spends her childhood as a "little princess," but she ends up a strong, independent woman. How much of this change do you attribute to the characteristics she was born with, and how much to the circumstances that she found herself in? To what extent do you think our personalities can be shaped by our experiences rather than what we inherit? Can you identify which traits of your own personality you have inherited, and which have been formed by your experiences?
2. "It is not often that lovers swap roles," writes Osborne. How do Ernie and Lilla change roles in their marriage? Does the love between them change? Lilla has three significant sexual relationships in her life. How do her feelings for each lover—and each for her—differ? Do her relationships improve or worsen? Do you think she was ever really in love?
3. Lilla's Feastis a family memoir. How does the fact that the author both knew and is related to Lilla affect the narrative? And what can the biography of an ordinary woman caught up in world eventsrather than a biography of a famous person orchestrating those events teach us? How different is history when seen from an eye-level point of view, rather than the political point ofview?
4. "Down by the waterfront," writes Osborne of nineteenth-century Shanghai, "the smells of steaming rice and charring meat mingled with traces of opium smoke." Lilla's Feast is marked by its descriptive passages, taking the reader to, inter alia, the mountains of India, Edwardian England, and a Japanese concentration camp. Where do you find Osborne's descriptive style most evocative? How does Osborne primarily create this effect in your chosen passage—through the context of physical surroundings, or calling on the senses? Which ones?
5. Food, to Lilla, is more than nutrition. She "dreams of peeling apples with insides like half-frozen snow." What role, or roles, does food play in the story? How do the attitudes of Alice Eckford, Ernie, and Papa Howell to food reflect their attitudes to life? In the prison camp, how do the inmates' changing circumstances affect their relationship with food? Has your own relationship with food ever been altered by events in your life?
6. Lilla was brought up "to be a wife and nothing else." How do the choices open to Lilla as a woman change during her lifetime? Do you think she takes full advantage of them? What do these changes reveal about the choices available to women today?
7. There is an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Lilla's life took her through world wars and across the world in a time of great political upheaval, leading her to have to turn her life around and start over again and again. Which of her turnarounds do you find the most inspirational? Why?
8. "At the end of 1907, a long-awaited great hand reached down from the sky and plucked Ernie from his dusty desk," writes Osborne, making the point that people's lives can be turned this way or that by events over which they have little control. How much do external circumstances and chance—as opposed to the characters' own choices—change the lives of Lilla and her family members? How might Lilla's life have turned out if her husband's troopship had not been sunk by a U-boat in the Second World War? If she had married Malcolm Rattray, or another man, before the Great Depression of the early thirties? Or if the family firm had not gone bankrupt? At what other points could Lilla's life have gone in another direction—and how? Can you identify any similar turning points for yourself where an external event, or your own choice, has fundamentally changed the course of your life?
9. To what extent do the forceful characters of Lilla's and Ernie's mothers affect their lives? What does the interaction between the Howells and the Eckfords reveal about social and intellectual snobbery between older, educated families and new money at the turn of the twentieth century? Does the same pattern hold true in any way today?
10. What prompted Lilla to start writing her cookbook? What added symbolism did it take on once she had been marched out of her home and imprisoned? How did her relationship to her cookbook change during her years in the camp? Why do you think she hid the book when she was released?
11. "Every aspect of the inmates' lives in Weihsien [prison camp] was ordered by layer upon layer of ruthlessly efficient committees," writes Osborne. What does the formation of these committees reveal about humans' innate desire to organize themselves into hierarchies? Why do you think this is? Have you ever been a founding member of any club or organization? How did its hierarchy evolve?
12. Even though none of Lilla's family had any Chinese ancestry, and they had come to China as "colonials," many of her family felt that China was their real home, the only place to which they belonged. What was it about China that made it home to Lilla? What does this tell us about the meaning of home? What made Lilla turn down the chance to escape after Pearl Harbor? Does this help to explain why, even today, people living in war zones appear to fail to flee until it is too late?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
Gail Collins, 2003
HarperCollins
608 pp.<
ISBN-13: 9780061227226
Summary
America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America.
By culling the most fascinating characters — the average as well as the celebrated — Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times, charts a journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and the early southern "tobacco brides" who came looking for a husband and sometimes — thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate — wound up marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable shoes mattered a lot, too.
"The history of American women is about the fight for freedom," Collins writes in her introduction, "but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's roles that wasaccepted by almost everybody of both genders."
Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 25, 1945
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Marquette University; M.A., University of
Massachusetts
Gail Collins was the editorial page editor of the New York Times from 2001 to January 1, 2007. She was the first female Editorial Page Editor at the Times. Prior to that, she was an editorial board member and an op-ed columnist.
In January 2007 Collins stepped down as Editor to write a book; she returned to the Times to reprise her role as columnist six months later. Her column presently runs every Thursday and Saturday and usually covers contemporary American politics and other current events in a humorous or satirical light.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Gail Gleason, Collins has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to the New York Times, Collins wrote for the New York Daily News, Newsday, Connecticut Business Journal, United Press International, and the Associated Press in New York City.
Collins also founded the Connecticut State News Bureau which operated from 1972 to 1977 and provided coverage of the state capital and Connecticut politics. When it was sold, the company served more than thirty weekly and daily newspaper clients.
Beyond her work as a journalist, Collins has published several books; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics; America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines; The Millennium Book which she co-authored with her husband, CBS News producer Dan Collins; and most recently When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.
She also has been a journalism instructor at Southern Connecticut State University. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
It is in grappling with that contortionism that Collins, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, reveals her evenhandedness. The 19th-century obstetrician bungled as much because of women's modesty as because of the constraints of his profession. If there is a villain in this tale she may just wear a skirt; as Collins sees it, we have repeatedly tripped ourselves up. The enemy is not so much the other half of the human race as the mixed messages, our love-hate relationship with hearth and home.
Stacy Schiff - New York Times
In her lively and readable survey of women in America, Gail Collins shows how ideology about gender roles always gives way to economic necessity. Women who are considered constitutionally unable to do men's work do men's work as soon as war comes and men are needed to fight it...Collins has an eye for such ironies and a good-humored way of presenting them.
Phyllis Rose - Washington Post
The basis of the struggle of American women, postulates Collins, "is the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it." Today's issues—should women be in the fields, on the factory lines and in offices, or should they be at home, tending to hearth and family?—are centuries old, and Collins, editor of the New York Times's editorial page, not only expertly chronicles what women have done since arriving in the New World, but how they did it and why. Creating a compelling social history, Collins discovers "it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." These confusing messages are repeated over 400 years and are typified in the 1847 lecture of one doctor who stated that women's heads are "almost too small for intellect and just big enough for love" (ironically, around this time Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from an American medical school). The narratives are rich with direct quotes from both celebrated and common women, creating a clear picture of life in the 16th through 20th centuries, covering everyday (menstruation, birth control, cooking, cleanliness) and extraordinary (life during war, the abolition movement, fighting for the right to vote) topics. Beginning with Eleanor Dare and her 1587 sail to the colonies and ending with the 1970s, Collins's work is a fully accessible, and thoroughly enjoyable, primer of how American women have not only survived but thrived.... Her book deserves a wide readership and is smooth enough to engage almost any kind of reader, academic or not.
Publishers Weekly
Illuminating cultural history of American women from the first colonists to the present day. New York Times editorial page editor Collins has turned a veritable mountain of research into an exceptionally readable, lively account of the contradictions and conflicts that have shaped women’s roles in the US. Her central theme is "the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it." Both sexes, she states, have accepted mixed messages about women’s proper role, and our history is full of about-faces on the subject. In an anecdote-laden text often relying on diaries and other contemporary records, she recounts how colonial women were not just housewives, midwives, and innkeepers, but religious dissidents (Anne Hutchinson) and Indian fighters (Hannah Dustin). During the Revolution, some donned men’s clothing and joined the army, but more traveled with their soldier husbands, doing the cooking and washing, or stayed home and ran the family farm. Juliette Brier, who walked 100 miles through Death Valley carrying one child on her back and another in her arms while leading a third, epitomizes the endurance and spirit of pioneer women. But it’s not all heroics and hardship. Collins fills her pages with fascinating details of everyday life over four centuries, including how women dressed, managed personal hygiene, and raised children. The roles they played in the temperance, abolition, and suffrage movements, the effects of the Civil War on southern women, white and black, the lives of 19th-century immigrant women are all explored. Collins shows how women, kept out of the workplace during the Depression, were brought into it by necessity duringWWII. Their retreat to the home in the ’50s, the subsequent sexual revolution, and the rise of feminism may be more familiar dramas than the earlier history, but the details are no less absorbing. Informative and entertaining, full of vivid stories that reveal not only what women were doing but how they felt about it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book says that for American women "the center of our story is the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it." Do you agree?
2. Were the early colonial women very brave or easily led? If you had lived in 17th century England, would you have opted to stay home or brave the journey? Where would you have wanted to end up—in New England or Virginia?
3. America's Women seems to attribute the witch craze in Salem to "teenage girls in crisis who stumbled on a very bad but very effective way of trying to take control of their unhappy environment." Do you agree? The story can be told from any number of perspectives: economic, religious, social, psychological. Is any one, or combination, satisfactory?
4. When families moved from farms to the city after the Revolutionary War, women's role changed and their status fell. The whole concept of the True Woman who radiated goodness was an effort to raise their stature again. Was it a satisfactory strategy? Can you come up with alternatives?
5. There are two role models for women who wanted to have public lives in the early 19th centur—Sarah Josepha Hale and Elizabeth Blackwell. How did they differ? If you had been alive then, which would you have been like?
6. Women were the best clients for the growing medical profession in the period before the Civil War. Why do you think that was? How did it work out for them?
7. Some white Southern women had different views of slavery than their husbands. Why was that?
8. The book says the "emotional burden on middle-class black women in the 19th century was stupendous." Has this burden been duplicated in the 21st century?
9. The rise of department stores at the turn of the century meant a huge change for women—both as consumers and as workers. Why was that?
10. If you had been an immigrant around the turn of the century, what country would you have wanted to come from? Why?
11. Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to serve in Congress, and she wound up voting against not one, but both world wars. Do you approve or disapprove?
12. In the Twenties, women won freedom in areas like dress, dating and drinking but many lost interest in politics and "feminism" fell totally out of fashion. All in all, would you regard the decade as a step forward or back?
13. When women got the vote, the first president they helped elect was one of the worst—Warren Harding. How, if at all, does this reflect on suffrage?
14. Do you agree that Eleanor Roosevelt was the most important woman in American history? If not, who would you nominate?
15. Speaking about the American civilians during World War II, John Kenneth Galbraith said "Never in the long history of human combat have so many talked so much about sacrifice with so little deprivation." Do you agree?
16. In the 1950s, less than 10 percent of the population felt a person could live a happy life without being married. The status of single women seems to have gone up and down several times in our history. Why is that? Where do you think it is now?
17. Things changed so fast for women in the late 1960s. Why do you think that was? Will we ever go back to the way things were in the 1950s, when the full-time housewife was the universal American ideal?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle, 1999
New World Library
235 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781577314806
In Brief
A spiritual teaching of rare power and clarity, presented in the form of dialogue between teacher and seeker. Profound insights are gained—we are not our mind; we can find our way out of psychological pain; authentic power is found in surrendering to the now. More than a book—a precious gift, a loving companion, a guide to enlightened living.
Tolle has evolved a philosophy that has parallels in Buddhism, relaxation techniques, and meditation theory but is also eminently practical. In The Power of Now he shows readers how to recognize themselves as the creators of their own pain, and how to have a pain-free existence by living fully in the present. Accessing the deepest self, the true self, can be learned, he says, by freeing ourselves from the conflicting, unreasonable demands of the mind and living present, fully, and intensely, in the Now. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—1948
• Where—Germany
• Education—Universities of London and Cambridge
• Currently—lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada
Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany in 1948. He spent his teenage years living with his father in Spain, then moved in his early 20s to England where he attended the Universities of London and Cambridge. Following a period of intense personal crisis, he underwent a profound spiritual awakening at the age of 29. He embarked on a long, transformative inner journey that effectively dissolved his old identity and changed the course of his life. Today he is recognized as a great spiritual counselor and an author of inspirational self-help guides. He remains unaffiliated with any organized religion or specific philosophical tradition.
In his first book, The Power of Now (1999), Tolle stressed the importance of living, fully present, in the moment. His powerful message of active self-awareness resonated with millions of readers—including kingmaker Oprah Winfrey—and launched a range of related literature and teaching materials. In 2008, Winfrey selected another Tolle title, A New Earth, for her influential Book Club, joining the author for an online workshop. A sought-after public speaker, Tolle travels extensively, taking his teachings throughout the world. (From Barnes & Noble.)
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Critics Say . . .
This is not just another candy-ass elementary level celestine prophetic conversation supposedly with God clone. It is fresh, revealing, current, new inspiration. Power of Now is written from a depth of a person who has considered suicide, gone through his dark night of the soul and has come out the other side into his very personal and ecstatic enlightenment. If you are considering getting back in touch with your soul this book is a great companion.
Common Ground
Now and then, time cultivates these perfect jewels. You find one and think nothing better is possible. Such is The Power of Now. A regular customer at our store, and student of Chi Gong said, "It not only synthesizes everything i've delved into, but it does it so clearly and simply." Many customers report back literally "thrilled" to have come across the book.
Library Journal
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Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Power of Now:
1. Try to sum up as cogently as possible Tolle's premise for self-enlightenment.
2. What are the ways in which Tolle believes people suffer spiritually? In what ways do individuals create their own pain? What does Tolle mean by the false-created self?
3. Is there a single point—or multiple points—in the book in which you felt an "ah-ah!" Did you experience a moment of revelation or major insight into your life?
4. What role do relationships play in Tolle's path to spiritual awakening? To what extent are they hindrances...or aids...or part of the goal?
5. How helpful do you find Tolle's book as it applies to your own life?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus With a Will of Its Own
Doreen Orion, 2008
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780767928533
Summary
A pampered Long Island princess hits the road in a converted bus with her wilderness-loving husband, travels the country for one year, and brings it all hilariously to life in this offbeat and romantic memoir.
Doreen and Tim are married psychiatrists with a twist: She’s a self-proclaimed Long Island princess, grouchy couch potato, and shoe addict. He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman. When Tim suggests “chucking it all” to travel cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen asks, “Why can’t you be like a normal husband in a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?” But she soon shocks them both, agreeing to set forth with their sixty-pound dog, two querulous cats—and no agenda—in a 340-square-foot bus.
Queen of the Road is Doreen’s offbeat and romantic tale about refusing to settle; about choosing the unconventional road with all the misadventures it brings (fire, flood, armed robbery, and finding themselves in a nudist RV park, to name just a few). The marvelous places they visit and delightful people they encounter have a life-changing effect on all the travelers, as Doreen grows to appreciate the simple life, Tim mellows, and even the pets pull together. Best of all, readers get to go along for the ride through forty-seven states in this often hilarious and always entertaining memoir, in which a boisterous marriage of polar opposites becomes stronger than ever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Great Neck, Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—Cornell University; M.D., George Washington
University
• Currently—lives in Boulder, Colorado
Doreen Orion is a triple-boarded psychiatrist on the faculty of the University of Colorado Health Science Center. She is an award-winning author, has lectured throughout the U.S. and has appeared on major national media such as Larry King Live, 48 Hours, Good Morning America and been interviewed by the New York Times, People Magazine and many others. Still, she considers her greatest accomplishment that her bus was the centerfold for Bus Conversions magazine (which she is the travel writer for), thus fulfilling a life-long ambition of being a Miss September (From the publisher.)
Extras
Her own words:
• I loved to write and could always be counted on to take creative license where none was called for. (To whit, the Ode to Geometry I foisted on my eighth grade math teacher.)
• My literary agent suggested I write a screenplay based on I Know You Really Love Me and I found that I immensely liked that form, so much so, I wrote many more and even had a few optioned. ("Extras" From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The subtitle indicates all the makings of a funny account of a cross-country romp, but Orion (I Know You Really Love Me) doesn't deliver. Her humor is forced, and there's a terminally cute quality to her writing. The author and husband Tim are practicing psychiatrists. While she enjoys a "couch potato" existence, he longs for a life on the open road. After some convincing on Tim's part, the two agree to take a year's leave from their careers to ride cross-country in an RV. Doreen's cocktail recipes (e.g., "Phobic Friar," containing Frangelico, raspberry liqueur, and Baileys) begin most chapters. Her accounts of their travels have a similar flavor. Doreen and Tim's adventure begins with a shake-down cruise from the couple's home in Boulder, CO, passes through several Western states, then heads east (the "real" part of the trip), making a convoluted circuit of the country. The book ends with lists of "Special Places and People" and books the authors read on the trip—as well as the author's request to be invited to speak at book groups. An easy read, though maps or photos might have helped; for libraries with patrons likely to appreciate such a work.
Library Journal
How to get away from it all while taking it all with you. A self-described Jewish princess from Long Island, Orion (Psychiatry/Univ. of Colorado; I Know You really Love Me: A Psychiatrist's Account of Stalking and Obsessive Love, 1997) grudgingly accompanied her gung-ho husband on a yearlong trek around the country in a converted bus, despite her addiction to designer couture and general disinterest in leaving the house. A series of minor setbacks ensued (malfunctioning door, difficulties parking, etc.), but the journey passed pleasantly enough, as the author learned to prioritize relationships and experiences over material things and engage with the world beyond her television set. Mildly amusing situations and observations abound; Orion is relentlessly quippy, making the book resemble a low-impact remake of the screwball road-trip comedy The Long, Long Trailer with Rita Rudner playing the Lucille Ball role. It's difficult, however, to sustain interest in the author's many anecdotes concerning the cute antics of her pets or her beloved husband's zeal for DIY projects. The material is simply too mundane, and while Orion tries gamely, her employment of goofy puns, warmed-over self-deprecatory shtick and Erma Bombeckian wry homilies fails to transform the proceedings into comic gold. Her spiritual epiphanies likewise grate: Grand renunciation of material pleasures is a bit much coming from someone who can afford to take a year off work and seek out "authentic" experiences from the comforts of a diesel-guzzling luxury recreational vehicle. The book is also unsatisfying as a travelogue, since Orion's interest remains stubbornly focused on her cozy domestic concerns. The surprising paucity of reportage on local color and customs or the variations in landscape, architecture and cuisine contributes to an overriding atmosphere of self-congratulation as the author announces her newfound willingness to hike a mountain path or cut back on her television consumption. Charming enough in small doses, but ultimately irritating and inconsequential.
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 Queen of the Road:
1. What was the impetus behind Orion and her husband's bus trip? Why did Orion agree to go along?
2. What particular anecdotes, experiences, or adventures did you find intreresting...or funny?
3. What did Orion learn during her year? What kind of personal growth or transformation did she undergo?
4. Talk about the relationship between Tim and Doreen during the year and how they resolved their differences.
5. Could you see yourself in Orion's shoes, doing what she and Tim did?
6. Some criticism of the book (above) is that Orion's focus was not on the sights and experiences of the journey itself, but on the narrow concerns of domesticity. Do you agree? If so, did you want more from the book? Or do you feel the book is precisely about those concerns, rather than the larger world the two traveled through?
(Questions from LitLovers. Please feel free to use them online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage
Edith B. Gelles, 2009
HarperCollins
338 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061354120
Summary
The story of Abigail and John Adams is as much a romance as it is a lively chapter in the early history of this country.
The marriage of the second president and first lady is one of the most extraordinary examples of passion and endurance that this country has ever witnessed. And it is a drama peopled with a pantheon of eighteenth-century stars: George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, his daughter Patsy, Ben Franklin, and Mercy Otis Warren.
Abigail and John were a uniquely compatible duo, and in their remarkable union we can see the strength of a people determined to achieve full independence in the face of daunting odds. Yet while much has been written about each as an individual, Abigail and John provides, for the first time, the captivating story of their dedication and sacrifice that helped usher in the founding of our country, a time that fascinates us still.
Married in 1764 by Abigail's reverend father, the young couple worked side by side for a decade, raising a family while John's status as one of the most prosperous, respected lawyers in Massachusetts grew. As his duties within the new republic expanded, the Adamses endured a long period of sporadic separations. But their loyalty and love kept their bond firm across the distance, as is evident in their tender letters. It's in this correspondence that Abigail comes into her own as a woman of politics, offering words of advice and encouragement to a husband whose absences were crucial to the independence they both cherished. And it's also in these exchanges that they worked through the familial tragedies that tested them: the death of their son Charles from alcoholism and the impoverishment and early death of their daughter Nabby.
Through its fifty-four years, the union of John and Abigail Adams was based on mutual respect and ambition, intellect and equality, that went far beyond the conventional bond. Abigail and John is an inspirational portrait of a couple who endured the turmoil and trials of a revolution, and in so doing paved the way for the birth of a nation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Edith B. Gelles, Ph.D., holds degrees from Cornell, Yale, and the University of California-Irvine. She has taught at several universities and is a Senior Scholar at Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She lives in Palo Alto, California (From the publisher.)
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Edith B. Gelles is the author of Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage, published in 2009 by HarperCollins. She recently edited and wrote an extended biographical introduction to The Letters of Abigail Levy Franks (1733-1748), published by Yale University Press in 2004.
A historian of colonial America, Gelles has written two biographies of Abigail Adams. Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (1992), which was co-winner of the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award. First Thoughts: Life and Letters of Abigail Adams (1998) was published in paperback by Routledge with the title, Abigail Adams: A Writing Life.
Gelles wrote the centennial catalogue for the Libraries of Stanford University: "For Instruction and Research." She has published many articles and reviews and has taught in the Humanities as well as the Continuing Studies Programs at Stanford. (From Stanford University, Institute for Gender Research.)
Book Reviews
There have been numerous biographies, scholarly works, and even novels on the lives of both John Adams, the second President of the United States, and his wife, Abigail. However, few of these works treat the Adamses fully as a couple, struggling together to make it through revolutionary times. Gelles is no stranger to Abigail Adams, having previously written Abigail Adams: A Writing Life and Portia: The World of Abigail Adams. But what is most striking about her latest work is not only that it treats the two formative founding figures together but that it reads much like fiction. Gelles culled her research from the couple's letters, using their words to tell the story of their marriage. By intertwining the stories of John and Abigail, Gelles re-creates the world of revolutionary Boston and New England with marked success. She also reminds us that while the founding of the United States may have been a male enterprise, women were also involved, though their influence was private. Recommended for both lay readers and scholars.
Susan Alteri - Library Journal
Gelles’ focus here is on the relationship, even partnership, between two highly intelligent, strong-willed individuals.... [A] fine, well-documented examination of a long, successful partnership. —Jay Freeman
Booklist
A dual biography spotlighting one of the most remarkable partnerships in American history. The United States has had only a few First Couples in which the historical significance of the wife has approached that of the husband. John and Abigail Adams share this status almost entirely because of Abigail's letters, a correspondence Gelles (Gender Studies/Stanford Univ.; Abigail Adams: A Writing Life, 2002, etc.) rightly terms the revolutionary era's "best historical record written by a woman." In letters to her husband, children and friends like Mercy Warren, James Lovell and Thomas Jefferson, Abigail revealed her liveliness, strong affections, abiding faith and keen intelligence, all crucial to maintaining a marriage marked by frequent forced separations. Certain passages from this epistolary treasure have become famous: Abigail's eyewitness description of the Battle of Bunker Hill, her disquisition against slavery, her proto-feminist plea to her husband, occupied with theories of government at the Continental Congress, to "Remember the Ladies." Gelles uses these letters and many more including John's to Abigail to construct a moving picture of a marriage whose terms required constant renegotiation as events forced each partner to assume or relinquish tasks commonly ascribed to the other sex. Both subscribed to what the author terms their "family myth." From Braintree to Boston, Paris to London, Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., where they became the first occupants of what would later become known as the White House, the Adams's story is one of politics interwoven with family life. Notwithstanding some occasional, unfortunate academic locutions (e.g., "gender" used as a verb), Gelles pushes their marriage and family life vividly to the fore. She examines the couple's shared sorrows: a daughter's miserable marriage, an alcoholic son, as well as the many triumphs that would have been impossible, but for Abigail's wise management of her household and solicitous care for her brilliant, deeply insecure husband. A revealing exploration of an exceptional marriage marked by mutual understanding, empathy and deep love.
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 Abigail and John:
1. What did John Adams mean when he referred to his and Abigail's attraction to one another as "the Steel and the Magnet"? Who was the steel...and who the magnet?
2. How does one explain this remarkable 54-year-marriage between two strong and independent personalities? To what do you attribute it? What gave it the relationship strength? Was their marriage unique—was it typical of the 18th century? Is it unique by today's standards?
3. What were some of the worst hardships the couple endured? How, dear readers, would any of us have withstood those difficulties?
3. What can you discern of each personality through their letters? How would you describe Abigail...and how would you describe John? Have you learned anything new about either of them? What surprised you the most...or increased your admiration for them...or disappointed you?
4. Gelles says that both partners bought into "the family myth." What does she mean by that...what was the myth, and how did it work (according to the author) to keep them together? In fact, was it a myth—or was it as much truth as fiction?
5. Talk about the affect of the Alien and Sedition Acts on John Adams's reputation...and on the country. How influential was Abigail in their passage? What was her attitude toward them?
6. Discuss Abigail's relationships/friendships with others: Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and his daughter Patsy? What was Abigail's relationship with James Lovell? Why did she refer to him as "a dangerous man"?
7. What is Gelles' theory for why Adams picked up his pen (quill) and wrote to Jefferson—thus resuming their friendship after a bitter, protracted dispute?
8. Was Abigail a proto-feminist? (There is disagreement on the answer to this question. What do you think?)
9. Select one of your favorite letters, by either John or Abigail, and read it out loud. Why does it stand out to you?
10. How did Abigail define the role of First Lady? Is her version of First Lady relevant today—or has it changed?
11. As First Lady, how influential was Abigail in developing national policy?
12. Talk about the Adams's long separation when John was in Paris. How difficult would it have been to maintain their marriage over time and distance—without the ease of modern communications?!
13. Talk about John and Abigail as parents...and their relationships with their children.
14. What other works have you read about the Adamses? How does this compare with them?
15. Have you watched John Adams, the 2008 miniseries with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney? You might consider playing segments of it during your meeting...and comparing film and book. (The series was based on David McCullough's 2001 biography, John Adams.)
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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