Empty Mansions: A Matter of Choice and "Will"

Huguette Clark lived her long life the way she wanted, never according to convention or expectation, and not at the command of others. Whether she was in some way controlled in her latter years by her caretakers is a matter of discussion as well as legal settlement. While readers may be perplexed by her choices, Huguette seemed to have successfully navigated a world she deliberately isolated herself from, acquiring the collections that fascinated her, giving lavish gifts to those she trusted, and turning her back on her great wealth to live a circumscribed life, not of luxury, but of remarkable simplicity. To learn more about Huguette Clark, her upbringing, and the book Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.,  please refer to this website: http://www.emptymansionsbook.com/.

Could You Defend Jacob?

To learn about the author of Defending Jacob, please refer to William Landay's website: http://www.williamlanday.com/books/defending-jacob/.

Here is The New York Times book review by Janet Maslin: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/books/defending-jacob-by-william-landay.html.

And, for your convenience, I have copied below a Boston Globe review by Hallie Ephron. This is the link for it: http://bit.ly/1QvEpfB.

By Hallie Ephron   FEBRUARY 19, 2012

Many crime fiction writers have imagined the horror of losing a child. William Landay’s “Defending Jacob’’wades into similarly dark territory, exploring the anguish of parents who discover that their child may be a murderer.

The setting is Newton. The father is Andy Barber, chief trial attorney in the Middlesex DA’s office. He’s among the first at the scene where 14-year-old Ben Rifkin is found dead with stab wounds to the chest, “as if he’d been forked by a trident.’’ Ben was a classmate of Andy’s son Jacob, and Andy’s decision to take charge of the case comes under scrutiny when evidence mounts, implicating his son.

Haunted by the knowledge that violence runs in families, Andy gets busy doing what he calls “lawyering away at the evidence.’’ He has no illusions that criminal justice delivers just verdicts. Jacob’s mother Laurie shoulders the blame, dredging up incidents from Jacob’s childhood that she can no longer rationalize.

In riveting courtroom procedure, opposing counsel - Jacob’s unflappable defense attorney Jonathan Klein and prosecutor Neal Logiudice who’s gunning for Andy’s job - match wits. Meanwhile Jacob, in his faded hoodie, droopy jeans, and bangs covering his eyes slouches along, impervious to concern.

One story line dramatizes the murder and its aftermath. A second presents grand jury proceedings a year later, the subject of which the reader only gradually comes to understand. Even with unexpected twists and turns, the two narratives interlock like the teeth of a zipper, building to a tough and unflinching finale. This novel has major motion picture written all over it.

 

The Art of Racing in the Rain Man

Garth Stein is the author of four published novels, but The Art of Racing in the Rain is his standout best seller. It has been adapted into young adult and children's editions as well as a stage production. Currently, the book is being developed into a major motion picture by Universal Studios. The Art of Racing in the Rain has the distinction of landing on The New York Times best seller list for three years. The author is a long-time resident of Seattle, the setting for this book, and, along with a wife and three sons, he has a dog named Comet.  Here is a review of the book by The Bark magazine because, why not?!  http://thebark.com/content/art-racing-rain

Rosie-Colored Glasses

Graeme Simsion's debut novel, The Rosie Project, has proven to be a very successful breakout for him from his earlier career in information technology. (The author earned a PhD in 2006 with his thesis on data-modelling for information systems.) Simsion clearly understands the potential for technical minds to discount the value of human emotion, and he fashions just such a main character in Don, a geneticist with Asperger's syndrome. Don is so socially remote and self-unaware that he doesn't even recognize his own symptoms. Enter Rosie, the personification of human emotions, then add a wacky genetics projects, thwarted attempts at romance, and you have an enjoyable book!

Below are two book reviews to consider, if you wish, before our book group discussion:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/05/rosie-project-graeme-simsion-review

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/books/review/graeme-simsions-rosie-project.html?_r=0

Inspiration for The Human Stain

In the open letter linked below, Philip Roth revealed the true-life incident that inspired his novel, The Human Stain, which we will discuss at our meeting.

"An Open Letter to Wikipedia"

Memories, Stories, and Fiction: Tim O'Brien

Book Group Members, please refer here for a biography of Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried. This entry, by Literary Reference Center, also includes summaries of his books as well as a brief literary analysis of them (see item below for our book.) In addition, I am including a PBS interview for background on his time in Vietnam.

The Things They Carried First published: 1990

Type of work: Short stories

A composite work of intertwining stories narrates the experiences of Alpha Company in Vietnam through the voice of character Tim O’Brien.

When The Things They Carried appeared in 1990, critics were overwhelmingly positive in their responses. Indeed, this work continues to be O’Brien’s most studied and applauded. Another Vietnam War book, The Things They Carried does not fit neatly into any conventional generic distinction. Scholars are divided over whether to treat the book as a collection of interwoven short stories, as a novel, or as a fictionalized memoir. O’Brien calls the book simply “A Work of Fiction,” refusing to corral the book into one genre or another.

Many of the chapters of the book were at one time published as short stories in a variety of periodicals; five of the stories first appeared in Esquire. The title story, “The Things They Carried,” and “How to Tell a True War Story” are perhaps the most frequently anthologized of O’Brien’s short stories. Something happens in this book, however, that seems to push it beyond a simple collection of stories. The juxtaposition of the stories along with the additional material O’Brien wrote for the book work together synchronistically, and the effect of reading The Things They Carried as a complete work is very different from reading the stories individually. The characters, events, and memories swirl through the stories, turning back on themselves, self-revising as they go. What the reader learns in one story opens possibilities for the later stories.

The first story is, fittingly enough, “The Things They Carried.” On first reading, the story seems to be just a list of the things that Alpha Company carries with them as they trudge through the Vietnamese countryside. However, O’Brien’s attention to both the physical and emotional weight of the items demonstrates that this is not just a catalog of things but rather an inventory of trauma, something short-story writer Charles Baxter notes in a 1999 article in the journal Ploughshares. The items structure both the story and the book; they introduce a cast of characters, and a list of events that the following stories detail.

Although The Things They Carry is not a book that can easily be discussed in terms of plot, it is a book in which a great deal happens. It is essentially the stories of the men (or boys, as they might more appropriately be called) of Alpha Company, generally filtered through the voice of the narrator, a character named Tim O’Brien, who shares with the author not only his name but also his age and his profession. The stories, then, produce a sort of double vision: that of a forty-three-year-old writer, considering the Vietnam War from a distance, and the impressions of a young soldier who finds himself in the middle of war he does not believe in for reasons he does not understand.

The Versatile Jussi Adler-Olsen

Pacifist, editor, comic book collector, bookshop owner, entrepreneur, and author, Jussi Adler-Olsen has secured a spot in the hearts of Nordic crime fans everywhere. His popular Department Q series introduces memorable, believable main characters facing tense and thrilling crime dilemmas. The author's own knowledge of mental illnesses informs the motivations of his criminals and murderers; it's interesting to note that this knowledge is an outgrowth of his childhood spent growing up in various Danish mental hospitals where his father was a resident psychiatrist. Our book, The Keeper of Lost Causes, is the initial one in the Department Q series, but Adler-Olsen has since added four more titles to the series. Here's a little taste of the author's personality below.

Garcia Marquez Archives

The archives of the late Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez have just been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Collections of other notable authors are also housed at this research library and museum, including those of Hemingway, Lessing, Luis Borges, Faulkner, and T.S. Eliot. In the article linked below, University bibliographer Jose Montelongo nicely sums up the author's literary contribution:  

"Heir and admirer of literary innovators like Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, García Márquez experimented with intricate narrative structures, with lush and winding long sentences, with the clash of the ordinary and the impossible," said José Montelongo, interim Latin American bibliographer at the university's Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. "He was a master of the short form in novellas that read like Greek tragedies set in the Caribbean, as well as a consummate long-distance literary runner, master of the sprawling, genealogic novel in which everything fits, including history and crime and love and miracles. Above all, he was an intoxicating stylist with the primal instincts of a storyteller. As one literary critic has put it, García Márquez's imagination was so powerful and original that he will be remembered as a creator of myths, a Latin American Homer."

Click on this link to learn more about the Garcia Marquez archive and about the author.

Purple Hibiscus Takes Root

Here are several interesting websites to explore for more information about our latest author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  Included among them is her TED talk of 2012. Please note that Bernardsville Public Library has all her novels and her short story collection on our shelves!

http://www.vibevixen.com/2013/12/10-things-to-know-about-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/

http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/index.html

Book to Movie, Duh

"A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail" is to become a movie starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson. Link here for the article.

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."

In October, Bernardsville Public Library will host a month-long community reading event known as One Book Bernardsville.  A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson has been selected as our One Book.  To become better acquainted with the author, please view the enjoyable video posted below.

Bill Bryson’s 1989 book, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, begins with the words “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.”  That opening line also kicks off this video about the author’s childhood.  Aired in the United Kingdom on Melvyn Bragg’s The South Bank Show in 2006 (South Bank Show – Bill Bryson itv.com/southbank,) the video features Bryson’s recent return visit to his hometown to discuss what it was like growing up in Iowa. Included in it are numerous charming clips from home movies his father took.  Bryson’s mother appears in it as well as high school friend, “Katz,” who accompanied Bryson on part of his Appalachian Trail hike. That attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail is recounted in our One Book Bernardsville selection, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, to be read and discussed by the community during the month of October. Please click here for information about A Walk in the Woods and about the One Book Bernardsville events our library has planned throughout October. Now, enjoy the video! 

Today's Read

Jonathan Lethem has an interesting website to explore. In it, he provides several published interviews, one of which is linked here.  Motherless Brooklyn, his childhood, and his writing style are all discussed. Feel free to learn more about him and his other books at this website: http://www.jonathanlethem.com/index.html.

Cooking Up Trouble

Here's a recent review of Nick Reding's book Methland, which we will discuss on Saturday, July 12.  The author's website for the book also provides a number of reviews including this New York Times review from 2009.  Further, there is an interview with the author and biographical information to explore.

Finished Reading?

For those who have finished our next book, What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty, you might want to look through the reviews and discussion questions posted by LitLovers on the link below.

http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/8588-what-alice-forgot-moriarty

Some Secrets Revealed

Refer to this 30 minute CBC-Radio Canada interview between Alice Munro and Peter Gzowski for some background insights into the germination of Ms. Munro's story ideas in her collection, Open Secrets. For a short clip about this charming 2013 Nobel Prize winning author, link here.

Adventurous Writing

In Robert Sullivan's Author Statement for the NEA, he notes that "I especially love researching the history of people, places and things that are situated in close proximity to swamps, dumps, alleys, tidal areas, brackish waters, or really water of any kind. Alongside a river, for instance, especially a river near a city, you can get a good idea of what people have done in the past and what they are currently up to."  For him, writing is an adventure, indicated by the subject matter of his previous books, The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City (Anchor), and A Whale Hunt: Two Years with the Makah and their Canoe (Scribner).  For an in-depth interview with our author, refer to this 2011 article in The Awl. Mr. Sullivan also maintains an active Twitter feed, @RESullivanJr.

The "Dickens of Detroit"

To learn more about Elmore Leonard's biography and books, scroll through his website. There you'll even find the video of a local news broadcast featuring his home, which was up for sale following his death in 2013. (Fascinating tidbit: the house had ivy-patterned wallpaper.)  The website also posts recent news about the television show "Justified" which is based on one of his short stories. 

You may also refer to The Atlantic's article for more information about other Leonard stories that were made into movies. Further, The Guardian's article discussing Elmore Leonard's body of work offers high praise for this great American novelist. "The beauty of Leonard's novels can be achieved at the expense of any kind of moral judgment. It's often been said that it is hard to tell who the good guys and who the bad guys are in his novels. Sometimes, as in Freaky Deaky, you only work out who you might have been rooting for when you see who is left alive at the end. In a world of unbridled criminality, the criminal who carries out his robbery or murder with style and wit is the object of our admiration. Above all, the allure of intelligence and of articulacy carries the day: we tend to like the man who speaks best and most wittily in Leonard, the one who says "motherfucker" with the best timing."

Two Books In An Hour

For background information on the Japanese-American experience in American internment camps, please refer to the following PBS link for the documentary, "Children of the Camps:" http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/index.html.  This site has many resources for you to explore as you wish. 

For author biography and information, here's Julie Otsuka's webpage - http://www.julieotsuka.com/ - as well as The New York Times book review of The Buddha in the Attic: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/the-buddha-in-the-attic-by-julie-otsuka-book-review.html?_r=0.

Two Cups of Tea

I thought it would be helpful for Saturday Samplers to read the short story, A Cup of Tea, by Katherine Mansfield before we discuss Amy Ephron's book which is based on this short story.  Katherine Mansfield, born in 1888, left her New Zealand homeland to live and write in London as well as other European cities. She was considered to have led a bohemian lifestyle, cut short by tuberculosis from which she died at the age of 34.  Mansfield is classified as a modernist writer of the early 20th century. Here is the full text of her short story, A Cup of Tea, published in 1922.

The Ghost Map

For more videos and information on the story behind the book, go to http://www.theghostmap.com/.

Cathy Day: Know Your Place

Indiana author Cathy Day knows her place, writes about it, and urges her creative writing students at Ball State University to know their places, too. And yes, we're talking about place or setting in a novel, not one's station in life. In a faculty interview on the Ball State English Department webpage, she notes "That's been a big thing for my writing and teaching: trying to encourage people to look at the places they're from for their material. It's usually all there."

By happenstance, her latest teaching blog entry deals with the importance of place or setting to the success of a good story and is quite interesting to read by itself. Ms. Day admits she didn't appreciate that her hometown of Peru, Indiana, was any different from any other place until she moved away from it as a young adult. The fact that Peru had been the winter quarters for a circus for many years seemed extraordinary only when outsiders remarked about it.

In deciding to write a fictionalized account of Peru's relationship with this traveling circus, she found herself naturally culling out the historical facts and bits that fascinated her, and these became the elements of her first book, The Circus in Winter. What gives her book its heart is the way the author anchors her story in a setting so well described as to be known and felt by the reader. Chapters of the book, like short stories in themselves, move backward and forward through time, taking the characters (and their descendants) away from Lima (the fictionalized town of Peru), but then bringing them back to it again, over and over. In this way, we get to know the town as if it were one of her main characters.  For more information about Cathy Day, please refer to her website http://cathyday.com/.

Tony Horwitz

Here's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Tony Horwitz, whose book Confederates in the Attic will be discussed today.  We'll surely need more than an hour to cover even some of the many interesting, perplexing and vexing attitudes the author encountered on his odyssey into the Civil War's lasting pull on late 20th century American minds and hearts. To learn more about Mr. Horwitz, please use these links to explore his publications and biography.  His website provides examples of his stories and other items of interest about the author.

If You Missed The Netsuke...

In regard to The Hare with Amber Eyes, I think we all would say, "Where are the netsuke?" Perhaps the next edition of the book will include some photographs of the Ephrussi  netsuke collection, particularly the pieces often mentioned by the author, Edmund de Waal.  Meanwhile, feast your eyes on the revolving slideshow of gorgeous netsuke on the homepage of the International Netsuke Society.  Enjoy!

We're YouTubing It!

British author Jason Goodwin is a visual writer who employs beautifully described images of Istanbul and its notable features for the setting of his mystery, The Snake Stone: Investigator Yashim Returns.  Nonetheless, we are a YouTube generation, so here's another way to visualize "Yashim's Istanbul."  In this author-produced video, you'll even see the Snake Stone!  For further images, google "basilica cistern" for some great photos.

Driving With Monica Holloway

Monica Holloway is an advocate for the letting go of shame.  Perhaps it is by force of personality that she has come to grips with horrible and dismaying acts of betrayal and abuse experienced in her lifetime, enabling her to put them all out there. For instance, when questioned about how her memoir Driving With Dead People was received by her home town, she states, “I’m not sure. I get reports from my hometown and it is a conservative place. This is a town that I never heard of sexual abuse come up, ever, when I was young. They are talking about this subject now and whether they believe or they don’t believe me. That’s OK with me. It is a huge triumph (for me) that these people are discussing this topic. I almost feel like I have climbed Mount Everest. My sister and I don’t have the shame anymore. We gave the shame back in a way, not to the public, but to the people who can accept responsibility — and that is why I wrote the book.” 

A book blogger who knew her and who grew up in the same town gives another view of Monica Holloway after introducing the author this way, "It isn't often that someone you went to high school with grows up, marries someone involved with the longest-running show on TV, and writes a memoir." Here we learn about the very negative reaction of at least one townsperson to her portrayal of him, but he died before the author could discuss it with him.

Monica continues the act of shedding shame in a new project she is involved with, Dancing at the Shame Prom, in which 27 authors tell their true stories.  In this excerpt, Monica begins to share details about her husband's infidelity, "My husband cheated on me. I'm just going to say it up front because it's so cliche and stupid sounding.  And while I'm at it, I might as well say that it broke my heart."  Apparently she has a lot to say and is not ashamed to say it.

The Last Newspaperman

Saturday Samplers book group will be present for author Mark Di Ionno's talk on Saturday, April 6th, in the Community Room of Bernardsville Public Library.  Mr. Di Ionno, an award-winning reporter for The Star-Ledger, has authored The Last Newspaperman, an acclaimed piece of historical fiction set entirely in New Jersey. The Last Newspaperman recounts the life and journalistic exploits of fictional reporter Fred Haines, now elderly, who reminisces about the years he spent working in tabloid journalism of the 1930's.

Four sensational episodes in New Jersey history become the framework by which Fred comes to judge the nature of journalism and his own lack of scruples therein. Among those episodes were the Morro Castle fire and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. In covering these events, Fred must face a number of moral dilemmas which tear away at his reporter's distance and dispassion.  The reader is left to compare this era of celebrity and disaster-driven journalism with that of today's reporting, be it by newspaper or other medium.

My Cousin Rachel

Daphne du Maurier's spellbinding novels, Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel,  assured her a place in 20^th century notable English literature.  Along with Rebecca, her 1951 book, My Cousin Rachel, must be counted among du Maurier’s best works.  My Cousin Rachel is memorable for its moody narrator, Philip Ashley, who drives the reader’s feelings first one way, then another, forcing us to weigh what’s real against what is fantasized.  “Philip Ashley tells the story of his cousin Ambrose Ashley, the man who had raised him and who had somewhat mysteriously acquired a wife, Rachel, shortly before he died. Philip is convinced that Rachel has killed Ambrose. But when she appears at his home he becomes less certain. He is both attracted and repelled by Rachel. By the time she dies, readers do not know whether Rachel killed Ambrose, tried to kill Philip, or was even guilty of any criminal intent. The book is ambiguous to the end, leaving the reader to judge Rachel.” - "Daphne du Maurier." Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Feb. 2013.

My Cousin Rachel is far more than a suspense novel, although many people will simply be happy to  puzzle over the novel’s ending and the motivation of the title character. The author stated that she was "not so much interested in people as in types--types who represent great forces of good or evil. I don't care very much whether John Smith likes Mary Robinson, goes to bed with Jane Brown and then refuses to pay the hotel bill. But I am passionately interested in human cruelty, human lust and human avarice--and, of course, their counterparts in the scale of virtue." - "Daphne du Maurier." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. The story of My Cousin Rachel is rooted in suspicion, desire, and misunderstanding.  It details a feverish infatuation with what is unattainable, exotic and self-possessed, all  in the guise of cousin Rachel.  Philip, naively provincial, foolish and jealous, finds himself to be no match for her. 

A Tale of Two Cities, Wherein Two Is Significant

Dualities, alter egos, two cities, twins, opposing halves...yes, duos are an essential aspect of Charles Dickens' novel,  A Tale of Two Cities.  Characters are paired or opposed according to their nature and roles, law and disorder starkly contrasted, and literary themes and motifs neatly matched up in sets of two's.  Let's see what we make of all this in a book so unlike his other works. An hour's book discussion may not be enough time...

Under the Banner of Heaven

Saturday Samplers will discuss Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer this Saturday, Dec. 1, at 3:30 p.m.  Under the Banner of Heaven is an examination of an extremist religion born and bred in America, that of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, an outgrowth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise know as the Mormon Church.  Centering on a savage murder by two Fundamentalist brothers in 1984, the narrative of this fascinating nonfiction book follows the Mormon faith from its inception to the splintering off of polygamous sects which have spread throughout the American southwest, Canada and Mexico.  Mormonism as practiced by the modern LDS  is also brought under the glare of Krakauer's far-reaching, well-researched book.  The intertwining of faith, zealotry and delusion makes Under the Banner of Heaven a very compelling and thought-provoking book.

Steve Hamilton

"Hello! I hope you'll come in and look around, warm up by the fire, and have a cold Canadian."  So begins the website of award-winning Michigan author Steve Hamilton.  Garnering acclaim for his Alex McKnight series featuring a Detroit ex-cop who has moved to the Upper Peninsula, the author continues to write to favorable reviews. His stand-alone book, The Lock Artist, was selected for the 2011 Edgar Award.  A graduate of the University of Michigan, Hamilton is a Detroit native (now living in upstate New York) who brings a sense of place and character to his Michigan-based stories.  So why not cozy up to his website and learn more about him before we discuss The Lock Artist?

Daniel Woodrell

Here's a litreactor.com interview done last year with Daniel Woodrell, author of The Bayou Trilogy, in which he graciously and frankly discussed his career, writing style and life in the Ozarks.  Movie projects and future books were also discussed as was his break-out book, Winter's Bone.

Since characters are so important to the success of the stories in The Bayou Trilogy, you'll be interested to know that he stated, "I always start with character, I never start with plot. I like to muse on a character and see where they go in my imagination and then follow them and begin to see what they’re up to. Which is a slower way of doing things, but it’s the only way it’s fun for me. And if this racket isn’t fun, there are a lot of things where you can make a lot more money. So it’s got to be fun or I’m not doing it."  Read on to learn how the three Shade novels came about and what he thought of them. Interesting reading.

Christie Hodgen

Christie Hodgen, author of Elegies for the Brokenhearted,  is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an award-winning writer. Her father (shown above with her daughter) is John Hodgen, a poet and college teacher.  A 2006 interview by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with Christie and her father can be read here.  As John Hodgen notes, Christie has always been quite observant, and that quality stands out as a strength in her writing.  

Certainly the characters in Elegies for the Brokenhearted are beautifully observed portraits of flawed or wounded individuals leading marginal lives, lives most of us might overlook or ignore.  Her narrator, Mary Murphy, does not overlook them, but rather speaks to the ways, large and small, each of five dead people have shaped her own life. These five people may have known her for only a brief time (a college roommate) or all her life (her mother), but each one has impacted Mary's own course through a difficult upbringing. 

While never having experienced a scatter shot life of poverty and marginalization herself, Hodgen creates such memorable, well-formed characters existing on the fringes of society that the reader might think otherwise. The voices given her characters are embued with as much depth as her descriptions of them, each character perfectly identifiable by dialogue and cadence of speech.  Perhaps it was the influence of poetry in her upbringing that gave Hodgen the ability to lift heavy topics to a lyrical, captivating sphere, a place where the reader will not want to look away, but rather savor each story, each elegy.

~review by Evelyn Fischel~

Broken for You

Published in 2004, Broken for You is the debut novel of Seattle-based writer Stephanie Kallos. The book received numerous positive reviews, and she was named Best First Novelist in 2005 by Library Journal.  Her second book, Sing Them Home, also garnered praise for its development of characters in a physical and spiritual landscape of loss and healing.  While her stories deal with death and loss, sadness and broken lives, the author's use of humor and whimsy lightens the load, reminding us that what is damaged (in life or in the physicality of things) might come to be mended in unexpected ways. To get a taste of the author's whimsical humor, visit Kallos's Web site for her charming, chatty biography, not the official bio, but the one entitled Directions To Where I Live.  The author also includes a lengthy question and answer posting for book groups, so I hope our group will explore away here.

Sneakers Advised

The merry month of May is just the perfect time to read and discuss Phillip Lopate's Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan.  Our improving weather offers a suitable kick to get us out the door, feet on the street, and heads craned in search of great vistas. We're primed and ready for new adventures - to paraphrase Mr. Lopate, well, that's Spring for you!  

And, of course, Phillip Lopate's book offers innumerable possibilities for day hikes and strolls in neighboring New York.  Coincidentally, there are several walking events taking place in Manhattan this weekend which are referenced by the author.  One is the Great Saunter sponsored by the Shorewalkers which takes place tomorrow.  You'll recall that Mr. Lopate participated (to some extent) in this 35 mile organized walk around Manhattan's shores.  Here is their Web site.  The other notable walking event is sponsored by the Municipal Art Society of New York and is entitled Jane's Walk NYC, in honor of urban booster Jane Jacobs who was discussed numerous times in Waterfront.  There will be over 70 guided, free walking tours throughout the boroughs on both Saturday and Sunday.  Roosevelt Island is featured in one of the tours, and another one is entitled "An Accessible Waterfront for East Harlem."  Link to their Web site here for more information.

In no case are you to pay any attention to these!  Your duty is to show up and discuss the book, right?! Well, I hope to see many of you for our discussion tomorrow; if not, I'll know where you've been. If you wish, please refer to my commentary on Waterfront in Book News and More, also.

Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff is an award-winning biographer and the author of Saturday Samplers next book, Cleopatra: a Life.  Her biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupery published in 1994 became a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Schiff's biography of Vera Nabokov won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.  A biography of Benjamin Franklin preceded her latest publication, Cleopatra.  (Link here for a list of her books and essays.)  Born in 1961, Schiff attended Williams College and worked for Simon and Schuster as a writer and editor until 1990, at which point she appears to have settled into the steady work of an acclaimed biographer. The video interview below from Borders touches on her writing plans for the future, but is primarily directed to questions about Cleopatra - the person and the book.
~Evelyn Fischel~

Orange or Khaki?

Piper Kerman's prison memoir Orange is the New Black will be discussed tomorrow by our Saturday Samplers group.  Perhaps we should start with the title?  Can't wait to hear what you think of both Kerman and her story.  Here's a Slate review which sentences the author to thirty lashes, while The Book Lady's Blog would vote to commute her sentence.  You be the judge!

Human Nature, Capote-Style

Yes, we did meet in December, didn't we, and we discussed The Complete Stories of Truman Capote.  Our group had mixed feelings about these stories, but that would be natural considering his oeurvre ranged from the 1940's to the 1980's.  Capote's understanding of human nature was remarked upon, even though some members thought he dwelt heavily on its darker side, as exemplified by "A Tree of Night."  The dreamlike inability of the young character, Kay, to help herself stood out in this short story as Kay rode a night train back to college, forced to share seating with strangely unsavory passengers. Victims abound in his stories, many of them young, but Capote also made the victimizer a young person in "The Walls are Cold."  The group enjoyed the ease of Truman Capote's southern storytelling and admired his literary style very much.  The sentimental favorite "A Christmas Memory" and the charming  "Jug of Silver" counterbalanced  more deeply imagined character explorations in such stories as "Master Misery" and "Children on their Birthdays."

We Passed the Test!

S.O.S. The Help

Kathryn Stockett's first novel, The Help, has bloomed into a mega-hit regardless of criticism for its historical inaccuracies and racial insensitivity.  One blog in particular, "A Critical Review of the novel The Help," is just loaded with interesting critical commentary. Nonetheless, many readers seem to adore it for the dialogue and punchy characters inhabiting a story the author thought would never be published.  In fact, according to Stockett, the manuscript was rejected by 60 literary agents before hitting pay dirt in 2009.  Since that time, The Help has enjoyed a great run on the book club circuit, has been released as a major motion picture, and will now be discussed this Saturday by our book group, Saturday Samplers.

The reaction to this particular book is all in one's point of view, but let's start with the book cover. The British book cover shows two black domestics caring for a white toddler in the 1950's or 60's.  The U.S. book cover consists of a muted, pretty illustration of three tiny birds set against a golden background.  What does this suggest?  I don't know, but clearly you are meant to feel good about picking up this novel and going with the flow.  If you read the first edition, would you notice that Medgar Evers's death was inaccurately attributed to a bludgeoning rather than a gunshot?  In several interviews, one with Barnes and Noble on their Web site, the author repeats this error.  Subsequent editions were corrected, but here is a screenshot of the mistake.

Stockett states in a Daily Mail UK interview that the story came about from her memories of her own family's black maid, Demetrie.  Demetrie worked for the author's Mississippi family for 32 years, raising Kathryn and her siblings, and accompanying the family on vacations.  Still, Demetrie was never allowed to use the family toilet, tub or dinnerware, and it never occurred to a young Stockett that this was unusual.  

In an NPR interview with Michele Norris, Kathryn Stockett states about her book, "It's fiction, but some of the facts and the settings and the backdrops - sure, that was Southern life.  Having a separate bathroom for the black domestic was just the way things were done.  Certainly, in my grandmother's time and when I was growing up, yeah, Demetrie's bathroom was on the side of the house.  It was a separate door.  Still, to this day, I've never been in that room."  Regardless, Stockett expresses her love for Demetrie and says, "Demetrie was treated like a queen, in my mind growing up, I should say."  As I said, it's all in your perspective.    

Elizabeth and Maeve

Elizabeth Cunningham, author of our September book, The Passion of Mary Magdalen, was "called" by her main character through the medium of magic markers. 

Yes, Cunningham possesses a delightful, fruitful, and fanciful imagination which she let wander one day after writing an earlier book.  She decided to pick up markers and start drawing.  What appeared on her sketchpad was a voluptuous naked woman whom she named Madge.

"Madge" had bright orange hair and an attitude.  It wasn't long before Cunningham decided Madge would make a great book character, perhaps a retired prostitute who moves to Maine to take up painting.  From there the idea morphed into a book about Mary  Magdalen, imagined as a flame-haired Celt named Maeve, prostitute, healer and true love of Jesus. 

Now that you are tantalized, read more about Elizabeth Cunningham, her series of Maeve books called "The Maeve Chronicles," and her interesting upbringing as an Episcopalian who became an interfaith minister and counselor. Check her Web site, http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/, and, if you like, follow her on Twitter as EliznMaeve.

Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist whose first novel, Year of Wonders: a novel of the plague (2001), will be discussed this Saturday at our book meeting.  Brooks grew up outside of Sydney, Australia, and resides there today with her family.  She is a graduate of the University of Sydney and reported for a Sydney newspaper in the early part of her career. After attending a master's program at Columbia University, she also worked for The Wall Street Journal. Her writing demonstrates a wide-ranging interest in historical and cultural topics of an international scope.  Among her books are Nine Parts of Desire: the hidden world of Islamic women,  the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March, as well as People of the Book, a fictional piece based on the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.  The latest novel, Caleb's Crossing, has just been published to excellent reviews and concerns the interplay of cultures, Native American and English, during the American colonial period.  Please visit the author's Web site for more information.  You might also enjoy reading here The Guardian's July 14, 2001 review of Year of Wonders.

An Immortal Hit in Narrative Nonfiction

Rebecca Skloot, author of our next discussion book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, has a very comprehensive Web site on which you can explore her biography, news and articles concerning her science writing career and her award-winning book, and other interesting avenues of information.  Among the articles under the tab, About Rebecca, is an interview she did for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.  Here she discusses how she structured her complicated narrative of Henrietta Lack's story. Shown in the photo below are her colored cards for storyboarding this book.  Enjoy exploring the many interesting links on the site.