— A U T H O R B I O — — R E A D A L I K E S — The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman Peter Taylor, American The daughter of Jewish refugees, Rachel short-story writer, Pomie grows up on the Caribbean island novelist, and of St. Thomas, but dreams of traveling to playwright known for Paris, the home of her ancestors. Instead, his portraits of her father arranges for her to marry Isaac, Tennessee gentry a local widower with three children. caught in a changing When the much-older Isaac dies, his society. From 1936 to nephew Frederic arrives to settle the 1937 Taylor estate. Despite community disapproval, attended Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, Rachel and Frederic fall in love. Inspired then the center of a Southern literary renaissance led by by the life of the woman who would poets Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and John Crowe become the mother of Impressionist painter Camille Ransom. He transferred to Southwestern College Pissarro, this novel offers a lush, lyrical depiction of 19th- in Memphis to study with Tate in 1937, then completed century Jewish life in the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. his B.A. in 1940 under Ransom at Kenyon College, Ohio. Virgin Islands). After serving in the army during World War II, Taylor Swing Time by Zadie Smith taught at a number of schools until 1967, when he joined Two brown girls dream of being dancers the faculty of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. -but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, Taylor is best known for his short stories, which are about black bodies and black music, about usually set in his contemporary Tennessee and which what constitutes a tribe, or makes a reveal conflicts between old rural society and the rough, person truly free. It's a close but industrialized “New South.” Much of Taylor’s fiction was complicated childhood friendship that "We finish the novel first published in magazines, notably The New Yorker. His ends abruptly in their early twenties, first collection, A Long Fourth, and Other Stories (1948), never to be revisited, but never quite feeling we've not only contains subtle depictions of family disintegration, a forgotten, either. Dazzlingly energetic and come to know his concern that continues to surface in his subsequent deeply human, Swing Time is a story work. In his 1950 novella A Woman of Means, regarded about friendship and music and stubborn roots, about how characters, but also by many as his finest work, a young narrator recalls his we are shaped by these things and how we can survive them. wealthy stepmother’s nervous collapse and reveals the Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders come to share their tension between her city ways and his father’s rural On February 22, 1862, two days after his values. The Widows of Thornton (1954), Happy Families death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a inner truths." Are All Alike (1959), and Miss Leonora When Last Seen marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. and Fifteen Other Stories (1963) secured the author’s That very night, shattered by grief, Michiko Kakutani, reputation as a master of short fiction. His later works Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery The New York Times include In the Miro District and Other Stories (1977), The under cover of darkness and visits the Old Forest and Other Stories (1985), the Pulitzer crypt, alone, to spend time with his son’s Prize-winning novel A Summons to Memphis (1986), body. Set over the course of that one and The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court (1993), a collection of night and populated by ghosts of the short stories and three plays. recently passed and the long dead, Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief, the powers of good and evil, a novel - in its form and voice - completely unlike anything you have read before. (Source: Emilymandel.com, 2016) (Source: Novelist Plus, 2017) — D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S — — S U M M A R Y — 1) Were Josephine and Betsy truly acting out by dressing 10) Was Clara Price driven away so Phillip would feel the One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the wildly and inappropriately at middle age? What was the same pain as the sisters or did Father find her unworthy in Pulitzer Prize winner A Summons to Memphis introduces real reason the ladies never married? How did Josephine some way? the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with and Betsy justify their interference in their father’s life, the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee. and would you consider it fair? 11) Does where you are from really make a difference as to who you will be? During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, 2) Why did Georgie Carver run away to the war? New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent 12) Why is it important to learn the past in order to phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. 3) Why did Phillip Carver never marry? understand the present? They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father's impending remarriage to a younger woman. 4) To whose "side" did Alex belong? Was there anything 13) Further discuss the overall theme of this novel; the Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he unusual about their friendship? How did it impact the familial strife that arises in the face of change. The move reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the relationship between Phillip and his Father? affected the lives of the narrator’s sisters severely enough true motivation behind his sisters' concern. While there, to limit their chances of making good marriages, eventually Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a 5) Did George Carver get what he deserved by not leaving them unmarried and dissatisfied. Do you believe the controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from this remarrying? families move is fully to blame for the outcome of the troubled past. sister’s lives, or should the sisters take responsibility for 6) What did the Clara Price situation do between their own actions and outcomes? Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern Josephine, Betsy and Phillip? literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora 14) “The courtship and remarriage of an old widower is Walty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to 7) Why does Phillip Carver keep protesting that his always made more difficult when middle-aged children are Memphis, he composed a richly evocative story of family's move from Nashville to Memphis, when he was involved – especially when there are unmarried daughters.” revenge, resolution, and redemption, and gave us a 13, was a trauma from which he and his 19- and 20-year Is this a fair statement? Why or why not? classic work of American literature. old sisters were never able to recover? 15) The statement, “That was the day when she said she 8) Is Phillip a reliable narrator? feared our move was going to be like the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears” compared the family’s move to one of the worst 9) At the Owl Mountain Inn, when Mr. Shackleford walks human rights disasters to afflict Native American peoples in over to Father and they embrace without a word, it is a US History. Is this an accurate comparison? Why or why demonstration that forgetting and forgiving can happen. not? Phillip is at first overcome by emotion, but then offended by this. How could he forget or forgive so easily when the betrayal by that man changed the outcome of all of their lives? (Source: (Source: LitLovers.com, 2016) (Source: Goodreads.com, 2017) .