THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES
A Novel
Tenth-Anniversary Edition
By Sue Monk Kidd
Penguin/On-sale: November 23, 2011 / $20.00/ISBN: 978-0-14-312026-1
Special edition featuring a slipcase with a matching deluxe paperback
New introduction by Sue Monk Kidd

Thank you to all who stopped by and entered to win a copy of this wonderful boxed edition of Sue Monk’s bestselling novel, The Secret Life of Bees. Today I used Random.org to choose one winner. Congratulations to:

Bonnie at Bonnie’s Books who is planning to gift this book to someone special!

An email is on its way to you, Bonnie – please respond to that and I will let the publisher know where to send your book!

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, read by David Pittu

Macmillan Audio, October 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4272-1308-2, ISBN10: 1-4272-1308-9,
Audio Run Time: 25:00

Thank you to all those readers who entered to win a CD of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. This morning I used Random.org to choose a winner. Congratulations (and Happy Birthday) to:

Les from Lesley’s Book Nook who wrote:

I read (and loved!) Middlesex and have been anxious to get to this new book! I’m listening to so many audio books these days since it’s easy to listen while shelving books at work before we open (and as I’m do chores around the house). I’m too tired to read real books for very long. Maybe after the holidays. So, I’d be quite thrilled if I won. Especially since the 10th is my daughter’s bday. And mine’s on the 13th.

I’ll be sending you an email, Les!

For those who did not win, I hope you’ll still get a chance to read this fantastic book!

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES
A Novel
Tenth-Anniversary Edition
By Sue Monk Kidd
Penguin/On-sale: November 23, 2011 / $20.00/ISBN: 978-0-14-312026-1
Special edition featuring a slipcase with a matching deluxe paperback
New introduction by Sue Monk Kidd

www.suemonkkidd.com

Because of the generosity of the good folks at Penguin, I am absolutely thrilled to be able to offer for give away this gorgeous edition of a modern classic.I have heard so many wonderful things about this novel that I broke my rule to only do giveaways of books I had previously read. I am determined to put this one in my own stacks for 2012. In the meantime, I am happy to put it into the hands of one of my U.S. readers just in time for Christmas!

Since I have not yet read the book, you might want to check out a couple of  bloggers’ reviews of it: A Novel Menagerie, and Bibliohistoria

Now a little about the book…

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

To mark the tenth anniversary of award-winning author Sue Monk Kidd’s debut novel, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES (Penguin; on-sale: November 23, 2011, $20.00), Penguin presents a special edition of this major literary triumph featuring, for the first time ever, Sue Monk Kidd’s intimate reflections on conceiving and writing the novel and on the effect its vast community of readers has had on her life. This new and gorgeous edition of an extraordinary, powerful story will be a keepsake women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Over the past decade, Sue Monk Kidd’s celebrated novel THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES has touched the hearts of countless readers. It has spent more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list, sold more than six million copies in the United States, and has been translated into thirty six languages. It has been nominated for and received numerous awards both here and abroad and was turned into a star-studded, award-winning major motion picture. In addition, this remarkable novel has inspired generations of reading groups and fan clubs, and it has helped shape high school and college curriculums around the country.

In a strong, irresistible voice that catches us up and doesn’t let us go, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES takes us into a world apart— into a mesmerizing story about the divine power of women and the ability of love to change one’s life.

Q & A With Sue Monk Kidd

With the anniversary of The Secret Life of Bees coming up, Kidd put out a call to her intrepid Twitter followers, asking them to send in questions about the novel. Below you’ll find the ten that were selected.

1. Why did you feel the need to write a romantic portion in The Secret Life of Bee? In your imagination, did anything ever come of that?

I could answer that I put everything into Bees but the kitchen sink, that is, everything the story could naturally hold—coming of age, the mother-daughter bond, race, sisterhood, the feminine divine, death, abandonment, forgiveness, the search for belonging—so why not a little romance, as well? But I did have a larger reason. Lily’s experience of ‘first love’ with Zach is in the story because she’s white and he’s black. The novel is set in 1964. I was about Lily’s age at the time, and where I lived, interracial romance was as taboo as it got. Putting that taboo into the novel gave me yet another way to explore the complex history of racial divide. And hopefully, it gave the reader another way to experience the pain of racial separation and cruelty. There’s a scene in the book in which Lily and Zach wrap their arms around each. What happens next is best described by Lily: “He unwound his arms and said, ‘Lily, I like you better than any girl I’ve ever known, but you have to understand, there are people who would kill boys like me for even looking at girls like you.’ “ He was right. In the end, I agree with novelist Margaret Atwood who said, “Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.” Lily’s and Zach’s romance is one of those knots. The question also asks whether anything ever came of Lily and Zach’s romance in my imagination. Surprisingly it did, but I’ll get to that in my answer to question 8.

2. What has surprised you the most about how people responded to The Secret Life of Bees? Did you expect it to be so popular?

Beside the fact that so many people responded, I would say my biggest surprise has been the diversity of the book’s readers. It is read by 90 year olds and 12 year olds, by women and men, by Americans, Chinese, Brazilians, Germans, as well as people who speak 32 other languages. I couldn’t have imagined it in a million years. When the novel was first published, I had three pragmatic hopes: first, that the book would find a modicum of respect in the literary world; second, that my publisher had not been overly optimistic in commissioning a first printing of 68,000 copies; and third, that my family and friends, who might possibly number as many as 500, if I really stretched it, would read my book along with 67,500 other people who were not related to me and who had no idea who I was. In my mind, these seemed to be very large hopes. After all, Bees was a debut novel by an unknown author. Indeed, early on, some of my events drew so few people they might have been canceled were it not for store employees who rallied from behind the counters to fill seats. Gradually, however, actual customers showed up, and a quaint and vintage form of social networking called Word-of-Mouth kicked in, slower than Electronic Virus, but like the Pony Express, very reliable. Thanks to the goodness of readers, my pragmatic hopes were eventually realized, and then some. Today, no one feels more incredulous about the novel’s popularity than I. The only proper response is gratitude, and that I feel every day.

3. Have you ever been to a church service like the one at the Boatwright’s house? If so, where? I want to go.

In The Secret Life of Bees, August refers to her religious affiliation as “Orthodox Eclectic.” Lily is not sure what it is, only that it’s not like the Baptists and Methodists. As Lily says, “We didn’t have many Orthodox Eclectics back in Sylvan.” The church service that the sisters held in the pink house is an eclectic blend, for sure. It’s a fusion of black politics, old time gospel religion, Catholicism, and feminine spirituality. To answer your question: No, I’ve never attended a service like that. It all sprang from my imagination, but I suspect I was creating something I’d like to attend. The service was organized around the icon of a Black Madonna. She had an oral history that could be traced back to the time of slavery, so naturally her story is recited during the service. That is followed by a conga line. I’m not sure why, except the women felt a lot of exuberance hearing the story and needed to get up and dance. The service also includes a ritual in which the women press their hands to the Black Madonna’s heart. Her icon embodies ideals of feminine strength, power, autonomy, love, and consolation, and by touching her heart, the women are connecting with these qualities in themselves. I should also mention the service featured big hats. Again, that may be because I’ve always wanted to attend a service where everybody wore elaborate hats, kind of like a royal wedding.

4. How did you come up with the names for the sisters?

I named one of the sisters August for the unremarkable reason that I’d always wanted to give that name to a character. With her named, I then began to try out names for the other two sisters. Everything I came up with sounded wrong. Their proposed names seemed too mundane, or too forgettable, or too incompatible with the era and the culture, etc. Then one day, I happened to hear my mother refer to my three great aunts: Aunt Rose, Aunt Lily, and Aunt Violet. I immediately knew the Boatwright sisters would have a similar sort of threefold naming. But not flowers, months. Thus, came August, May, and June.

5. What was your inspiration for the book?

When I was growing up, bees lived inside a wall of our house— an entire hive-full of them, that is to say, 50,000 or so. They lived with us, not for a summer, but for eighteen years. Occasionally, they squeezed through cracks in the wall and flew about. My mother, genius that she is, turned the room into a guest bedroom. Over the years, I more or less forgot about the bees, until one evening when my husband, Sandy told our dinner guests about the first time he visited my home and was put in the guest bedroom. He was awakened in the middle of the night to find bees flying about the room. His telling of this rather unique part of my family history coincided with a new desire I harbored to write fiction. I began to picture a girl lying in bed, while bees slipped through crevices in her bedroom wall and flew laps around the room. The image stuck in my head. It caused me to ask: Who is this girl? What does she want as she lies there, watching the bees fly around? I decided the character in my head was a 14 year old motherless girl named Lily Owens. What she wanted was her mother, along with all a mother might imply, namely love and home. So, we could say the book was inspired by a memory, that turned into an image, that sparked questions I felt compelled to answer.

6. Why did Lily never tell August about the bees in her room at the peach farm? And who placed the paper bag in the attic?

In ten years, I’ve not been asked either of these questions. In fact, I don’t even know the answer to the first one. Why didn’t Lily tell August about the bees in her room on the peach farm? I have no idea—it just never occurred to me. I’m suddenly thinking this could’ve been an oversight. Where were you, asker, when I was writing this? I could have used a prompt back then. Who placed the paper bag in the attic? Fortunately, I did think of this. I did not spell out the answer in the story because I liked the subtlety of inference. In my mind, it was T.Ray, Lily’s father, who placed the bag containing his wife’s possessions in the attic. He was both wounded and embittered by her leaving, and while he had wiped out all traces of Lily’s mother in the house, he couldn’t quite throw these last remnants of her away: her white gloves, a photograph of her leaning against a car fender, and the wooden picture of black Mary that would lead Lily to the Boatwright sisters.

7. Are any of the Boatwright sisters modeled after people you know or have met in your own life? 

I did not model August or May or June on any one individual person, but I was drawing on recollections of growing up in the fifties and sixties around a number of African American women in Georgia. No doubt I borrowed some traits and qualities from these women, along with their manner of talking. Each Boatwright sister, then, may possess a small mix of features from numerous women, but they also possess features that spring straight from my imagination. Most characters are a combination of conjuring and remembering.

8. Will there be a sequel for your amazing book which my class is currently reading, The Secret Life of Bees?

When I finished the book, I was sure that I would never revisit the story. I didn’t want to risk tampering with the world I’d created. I felt that way for years. Then in 2008, while watching the film adaptation of Bees of the first time, I had a kind of moment. It came during a scene near the end in which Zach gives Lily his dog tag and they share a first kiss. The dialogue is very close to that in the book: “We can’t be together now,” Zach says, “but one day, after I’ve gone away and become somebody, I’m gonna find you, and we’ll be together then.” Watching this, I really wanted to know how that might play out. How would things turn out for these two? I would still like to know. So, maybe I’ll just write it one of these days.

9. Lily was made to kneel on grits. Did this ever happen to you? How much of the story is autobiographical?

The book had not been out very long when I discovered that some readers hold to the idea that when a novelist writes fiction, she is writing surreptitiously about her own life. During the last ten years, countless strangers have consoled me on my wretched childhood. For the record, my childhood was not like Lily’s. Unlike her, my mother did not die when I was four. She is alive, well, and living in Georgia. At no time did she desert me. Indeed, she was once presented a Mother of the Year award. Likewise, my father is nothing like T.Ray. He, too, is alive and well in Georgia and no doubt wants me to make it abundantly clear that he never once forced me kneel on grits, and that he is well aware Shakespeare’s first name is not Julius. I can further attest that I did not break anyone out of jail or ever run away from home. Now, to muddy the water: Lily and I do have similarities. We both grew up in houses with bees in the wall. We both come from tiny Southern towns. And there are other small resemblances, too, but while Lily’s life is a little like mine around the edges, at heart, it is nothing like mine.

10. In Traveling with Pomegranates we got a glimpse into your Bees writing process. Which piece of the storyline was most challenging to write?

  There really wasn’t a particular story line in Bees that was harder to write than another. If I had to choose one, I might say the most challenging story line was Lily’s relationship with her father, T. Ray. I do know this, however: the hardest part of Bees to write was the beginning. There was just so much to be accomplished in a short space of time, and it must not look as if you’re trying to accomplish anything. In the opening of Bees, I was trying to introduce Lily, reveal her character and motivation, set up the problems and agendas of the story, and describe the setting, all while keeping the action and plot moving along. The first 30-40 pages took me a disproportionate amount of time to write compared to the rest of the book. The beginning was the uphill part. Then there was a long plateau in the middle. And the end was the downhill part. Saying that my ending went “downhill” could be a poor choice of words, but you know what I mean.

ENTER TO WIN

• Contest open from December 3rd through December 12th at 5:00 pm PST
• Contest open only to US mailing addresses only.
• To enter leave me a comment on this post – tell me, if you win, will you keep the book or give it away to someone special.
• I will draw ONE winner randomly on December 13th and announce their name here on my blog. I will also contact the winner by email. They will have five days to respond with their snail mail address and phone number (for the UPS label) – if I do not hear from the winner within five days, I’ll draw a new name.
• The winner will receive their book directly from the publisher.

Good luck!!!!

FTC Disclosure: I was not compensated in any way for hosting this giveaway on my blog.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, read by David Pittu

Macmillan Audio, October 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4272-1308-2, ISBN10: 1-4272-1308-9,
Audio Run Time: 25:00

Thanks to the good folks at Macmillan, I am pleased to be able to offer an Unabridged Compact Disc version of The Marriage Plot to one US reader of my blog. Regular visitors here will know that I just finished reading the physical book…and loved it (read my review) – so when I was offered the opportunity to share an audio version of The Marriage Plot, I jumped at the chance. Even if you’ve already read the book, this would make a terrific Christmas gift!

Before I tell you how you can enter for a chance to win, let me tell you a little more about the book and author.

From the publisher:

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

(Please be aware that by clicking on the link below you will be downloading/opening an mp3 audio clip to your computer):
Listen to an audio clip of the book

Check out this fantastic piece on NPR where Jeffrey Eugenides talks about the book.

A conversation with Jeffrey Eugenides – NY Times:

About the Author:

About the Reader:

David Pittu is an American actor from Fairfield, Connecticut. He was nominated for the Tony award in Is He Dead? and Lovemusik and won a Drama Desk award for Stuff Happens. He’s also narrated a variety of audiobooks including The Devotion of Suspect X, The Nearest Exit, and Generosity.

Now…I bet you want to know how to enter, right?

ENTER TO WIN

• Contest is open from December 1st, 2011 through December 9th, 2011 at 5:00 pm PST
• United States mailing addresses only, please.
• Leave any comment on this post. Although it is not required, I would love to know if you have read anything else by this author, and/or why you’d like to read this book. Also, if you prefer audio books over physical books, please tell me why!!

I will draw one winner randomly on December 10th and announce their name here on my blog. At that time, I will also email the winner who will have 5 days to respond with their physical mailing address – if I don’t hear from you within 5 days, I’ll draw another winner.

Thanks for entering…and good luck!!!

FTC Disclosure: I am not being compensated in any way for hosting this giveaway on my blog.

Chronicle Books is once again hosting their annual Happy Haul-idays event – only this time there is an added twist which truly captures the spirit of the holiday season. They write:

This year, we’re not only giving away up to $500 worth of Chronicle books to one lucky blogger and one commenter on the winning blog post—we’re also asking the winning blogger to choose one charity to receive up to $500 of books from us. You can choose your favorite charity, non-profit, reading room, literacy program, or library.

How to Enter

1. Write a blog post with a list of Chronicle books valued at up to $500 that you’d like to haul in. Please post about which charity you’d choose and why.
2. Remind your readers that if you win, you get to choose one lucky commenter on your entry post to win the same haul of books.
3. Fill out the quick form on the Chronicle Books giveaway page.
4. Want to increase your chances? Tweet about the giveaway using #happyhaulidays and get one extra entry per day.

So here is the way it is going to work on my blog…this post will be open for comments through December 1st, at which time comments will be closed. Every person who comments will be entered to win my haul (if I should win), but they MUST go to the Chronicle Books site and tell me which ONE book they would most like to read there. If you don’t provide that information, your comment will be ineligible. One randomly chosen eligible commenter will win my haul IF I am lucky enough to win the event.

The Charity I Have Chosen:

First Book is a nonprofit, US and Canadian organization which provides new books to children in need. They have distributed more than 85 million free and low cost books in thousands of communities since the organization was founded in 1992. You can learn more about First Book by visiting their FAQ page.

Check out this video of the Story of First Book as told by a collection of authors and supporters.

I hope you’ll consider donating to this worthy organization – 97 cents of every dollar donated to First Book supports their efforts to provide new books to children in need.

The Books I Would Love to Win:

*click on the graphic of each book to learn more about it

Potpies: Yumminess in a Dish, by Elinor Klivans (Photographs by Scott Peterson) – $18.95

Thanks to all who stopped by to enter to win a DVD/Book bundle of Water for Elephants. This morning I used Random.org to choose a winner…Congratulations to:

Christina @ Confessions of a Book Addict

I am sending your mailing information to Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Christina. They will be sending you your bundle! Enjoy!

Thank you to all who entered to win a copy of The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer.

Before I announce the winner (which I chose randomly), I wanted to share with you some of the answers from the survey to win a copy of the book.

• 25 people completed the survey (18 from the United States, 4 from Canada, and 3 from other countries).
• By far, the favorite genre from which to read was literary fiction (13), with a mix of other genres including women’s fiction, speculative/science fiction/fantasy, historical fiction, YA, mystery/suspense/thriller, and “everything.”
• Most people found the giveaway by being a subscriber to my blog (17), but other sources included Stumble Upon, Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-thon linkies, Sunday Salon, Twitter, and reading my blog regularly (but not subscribing). Only one person discovered the giveaway through chance (a Google search for a book review).

A couple of people indicated they did not know how to subscribe to this blog…so I thought I would remind readers that subscribing to my feed is easy. Simply click on the “Subscribe to my feed vis RSS” button at the top right hand corner of the blog. This will take you to a page where you can add my feed to your feed reader of choice.

So, with no further adieu, here is who won the book:

Andi from Estella’s Revenge

Congratulations, Andi – your book is on its way to you!!

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Academy Award® Winner Reese Witherspoon and
Robert Pattinson On Blu-ray and DVD November 1

LIFE IS THE MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH

Thanks to the generosity of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, I am thrilled to be able to offer one lucky reader to my blog a DVD/book bundle of Water for Elephants. Recently I was able to view an early release of the film and loved it (read my review). Those readers who have already read the book will find that the movie closely parallels the novel (read my review of the book).

Summary of the Movie:

Take a journey back in time with the romantic tale based on Sara Gruen’s New York Times #1 Best-Seller novel of the same name, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, coming to Blu-ray and DVD on November 1st from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.  Starring Academy Award®-winner Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line), Robert Pattinson (Twilight series) and Oscar®-winner Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), the film presents an epic tale of forbidden love in a magical place filled with adventure, wonder and great danger. Showcasing the decadence of a bohemian circus and the majesty of its animals against the backdrop and beauty of a bygone era, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS makes the ideal holiday gift idea for your favorite film buff, fashionista or book-lover!

Devastated by the sudden death of his parents at the height of The Depression, a young dreamer from the wrong side of the tracks, Jacob Jankowski (Pattinson), abandons his veterinary studies at Cornell University. With no other family, no house, and no money, Jacob stows away on a train carrying the circus performers of The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.  Hired as a veterinarian to care for the troupe’s animals, Jacob is temporarily filled with the promise of an exciting life that comes with a traveling circus troupe. However, as he builds a rapport and falls in love with the star of the show, Marlena (Witherspoon), they become prey to the circus’s owner, Marlena’s violent and abusive husband August (Waltz). As the circus begins to crumble from within and against all odds, Jacob and Marlena come together and fall in love through their compassion for a special elephant. With their love on the line, Jacob and Marlena come to a crossroads that will forever change their destiny.

Directed by critically-acclaimed filmmaker Francis Lawrence (Constantine), WATER FOR ELEPHANTS features fantastic supporting performances from Paul Schneider (Lars and the Real Girl), Jim Norton (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), Mark Povinelli (The Polar Express), Richard Brake (Batman Begins), and Academy Award®-nominee Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild).

U.S. Rating: PG-13
Total Run Time: 2 hours, 29 minutes

The DVD includes the following:

• Feature Film
• Special Features
• Robert Pattinson Spotlight
• Feature Performer Reese Witherspoon
• The Traveling Show: From Page to Screen
• Audio Commentary with Director Francis Lawrence and Writer Richard LaGravenese
• Theatrical Trailer

How to Enter to Win this Bundle:

• You must have a US/Canada mailing address to be eligible.
• Click here to take survey to enter through November 1st at 5:00 pm PST.
• I will randomly draw one winner and announce their name on my blog on November 2nd.

Good luck!!

When he thought of Wind, when he thought of Aleksandra, when he thought of his father – when Daniel thought of anyone he had known who was now dead – what survived of them was not only love. What survived also were the echoes of all the resistance they had thrown up to life (and therefore to death). Sure the love, but also the rage, the refusal, the running, the shouting, the punching, the probing, the flailing, the crying, the sprint of sex, the furious hunger to be. When Aleksandra and Wind had hit the pavement, it was the releasing of resistance. – from The Marriage Artist, page 148-9

Daniel Lichtmann is a New York art critic married to a beautiful Russian immigrant and photographer named Aleksandra. When Aleksandra plunges to her death from a rooftop, she does not go alone. The body of Benjamin Wind, an artist who has taken the world by storm and received accolades from Daniel, is found next to her. Their deaths are sudden and unexplainable. Although it seems apparent that the two committed suicide in some lover’s pact, Daniel cannot accept his wife’s death at face value.

Josef Pick is only ten years old and living in pre-WWII  Austria, the son of Jewish parents who deny their faith, when he discovers a hidden talent: the ability to draw ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts which are an integral part of the Jewish faith). Josef’s contracts are so astonishingly beautiful and intricate that they belie his lack of artistic training. His gift draws him to his maternal grandfather, a Rabbi living in the Jewish section of Vienna. Josef will come to manhood as Hitler’s troops invade the city – forced to reconcile his confused view of marriage, his faith and belief in God, and what it means to love another.

These two characters – Daniel and Josef – are separated by half a century, but are astonishingly connected. As Daniel searches for truth in the death of his wife, he will discover the answers hidden in history, religious belief, and the elusive threads of family.

Andrew Winer has written a multi-layered, brilliant novel about identity, marriage, love, and our connections to each other through our shared histories. The book is narrated through the parallel stories of Daniel and Josef, moving back and forth from the present to the past. Winer’s characters are richly developed – real, flawed, complex, and wholly believable. The result is a stunning and haunting novel which pulls the reader through its pages and doesn’t let her go until the emotional ending.

Winer weaves the historical elements seamlessly through the novel, setting the reader down in Vienna during the terror of Nazi invasion. But, Winer does more than just give us history…he uses history to show us the importance of identity ( a strong theme in the novel). When Hitler’s troops rounded up Jewish people, forced them into cattle cars and murdered them in mass numbers, he essentially stole the identities of individuals. By shaving their captives’ heads, the Nazis neutralized their gender. They tore families apart, disconnecting individuals from their shared pasts. They used mass graves to dispose of remains. They stole people’s futures. They even negated their names by labeling them with the letter “J”.

The officer examines her child’s documents first, meticulously transcribing HERMAN JOHANNES PICK in his notebook, along with the rest of the two-year-old’s particulars. As she watches the officer finish with a practiced flourish by setting down in bold ink the letter “J” beside her son’s information (just like he did for the other Jews registered by his hand on the same page), she is stirred by everything that is annihilating about identification…the reek of human inventory, the chilling exactitude of a street address, the futurelessness of any single person’s name. – from The Marriage Artist, page 226 -

But it is perhaps the examination of life’s meaning intertwined with the connections we have with others which elevates this novel to something extraordinary. The Marriage Artist makes salient and honest observations of marriage, love, death, and the binds that connect families from generation to generation.

Perhaps the boy was seeking instructions of a much weightier kind, answers to questions for which there are no easy answers: What does one do with a life? Which path should one take? How might one live each moment? What will happen to us? – from The Marriage Artist, page 53 -

And so it is, that Josef experiences his first conscious recognition of the deep, the thorny, the bizarre pull between family members that most people call love but, more often than they would care to admit, resembles tolerance. – from The Marriage Artist, page 101 -

Aleksandra may have married him, but she had died with Benjamin Wind. Could he accept that death was the stronger bond, or worse, that his marriage had not been what he had believed it to be – not necessarily a lie, but something narrower than love? – from The Marriage Artist, page 14 -

As Daniel struggles to reconcile the affair between his wife and Benjamin – that then led to their demise – he begins to question why people are drawn together. What are we looking for when we choose another person with whom to share our life? Are we perhaps, only looking for ourselves reflected through another person’s eyes?

[...] if there was any truth to the notion that when we love we are not really looking to see something new, but rather our own ideas embodied in the other person – qualities that awaken echoes already resounding in us. – from The Marriage Artist, page 256 -

Winer was formerly an artist who wrote art criticism, and he is clearly in his element when he explores how art forms our impressions not only of the external world, but as also a reflection of who we are. Some of the most moving passages in the novel show art as self-expression and a means to touch others.

The Marriage Artist is so beautifully rendered that I found myself moved almost to tears at its conclusion. What Andrew Winer does with his words is paint a portrait of his characters’ lives against the backdrop of history. And yet, although history is certainly important in the novel, it does not define it. Winer’s gift is his ability to demonstrate the timeless nature of our ruminations about life, death and faith.

I was blown away by this novel. Very few authors are able to explore such complex themes with such brilliance. I was carried away by the prose, enraptured by the characters, and felt compelled to keep turning the pages. The Marriage Artist is a must read for those readers who love literary fiction. It will certainly be one of the best books I have read this year.

Highly recommended.

• Quality of Writing:
• Characters:
• Plot:

Overall Rating:

View images of Ketubot

Don’t take my word for it – read other reviews:

• Mostly Fiction
• Luxury Reading
• The Crowded Leaf
• Devourer of Books

FTC Disclosure: Many thanks to Picador for sending me a copy of this book as part of BOOK CLUB (this book will be discussed on Nicole’s blog on October 25, 2011).

  BOOK GIVEAWAY

I am really excited to have an extra copy of this book to give away to one lucky reader of my blog. When I read a book I love as much as this one, I just want to share it with others. To enter, follow the instructions below:

• Contest is open through October 31st at 5:00 pm PST.
• Contest is open INTERNATIONALLY.
• Click here to take survey
• One entry per person.
• One winner will be chosen randomly and announced on my blog on November 1st, 2011.

Good luck!

Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos
368 pages
ISBN 978-0061670879
William Morrow (October 4, 2011)

Thank you to all who stopped by and entered to win a copy of Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos. I used Random.org to choose two winners….

Congratulations to:

Dianne Mongelli

AND

Kelli Cleaver

I have forwarded your mailing information to the publisher who will be sending you your books.

For those of you who entered but did not win, I hope you will considering purchasing the book!