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The Chalk Man - C.J. Tudor
The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides
The Bone Garden - Tess Garrison
The Quiet Ones - Betsy Reavley

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Holes - Louis Sacher
Walk Two Moons - Sharon Creech
Long Way From Chicago - Richard Peck

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This podcast is for teachers who want to expand their impact beyond the classroom and innovate teaching and learning. I'm hoping to inspire teachers and education stakeholders to be the change they hope to see in education, and to show teachers the many ways they can work in education while having more flexibility, more impact, and more income.

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A Little Bit Culty with Sarah and Nippy.

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A Little Bit Culty with Sarah and Nippy.

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A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side.

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BOB & SHERI - Official site for the Bob & Sheri Show

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Podcast

Miss something? Want to hear something again? Then you'll definitely want to check out our podcasts. And if you're one of those people who can't get enough of Bob Lacey and Sheri Lynch, check out our Oddcast podcast. It's fun, entertaining, and uncensored!

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Podcast Miss something? Want to hear something again? Then you'll definitely want to check out our podcasts. And if you're one of those people who can't get enough of Bob Lacey and Sheri Lynch, check out our Oddcast podcast. It's fun, entertaining, and uncensored! Oddcast Want to hear more Bob & Sheri?

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The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling

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The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art & craft of storytelling. It has presented true & first person stories worldwide.

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Generation X (TV Mini Series 2016) ⭐ 7.5 | Documentary

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After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests. So, he started a podcast to do just that. Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way.

After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests. So, he started a podcast to do just that. Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way.

Arnold

It was the most delightful, spontaneous gem of an interview.
Thank you!

Openings

Thought I was listening to the view..don't think Conan will find a friend.

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‎Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend on Apple Podcasts

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After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests.

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A Podcaster Goes Back to School, Ready to Listen

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In “I Have Some Questions for You,” Rebecca Makkai dispatches her protagonist to a remote campus to teach — and seek justice.

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How Long 'til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin

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I'm Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed - the book that was released at the very start of the pandemic and became a lifeline for millions. I watched in awe from my home while this simple phrase from Untamed - WE CAN DO HARD THINGS - the mantra that saved my life twenty years ago, became a worldwide rally cry.

Because we experienced the hardship of the pandemic collectively, many of us finally acknowledged what was true before COVID and will be true after: That life is freaking HARD. We are all doing hard things every single day - things like loving and losing caring for children and parents; forging and ending friendships; battling addiction, illness, and loneliness; struggling in our jobs, our marriages, and our divorces; setting boundaries; and fighting for equality, purpose, freedom, joy, and peace.

On We Can Do Hard Things, my wife Abby Wambach, my sister Amanda Doyle, and I will do the only thing we've found that has ever made life easier: We will drop the fake and talk honestly about the hard. Each week we will bring our hard to you and we will ask you to bring your hard to us and we will do what we were all meant to do down here: Help each other carry the hard so we can all live a little bit lighter and braver, more free and less alone.

Follow the podcast on Apple, Audacy, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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Home - We Can Do Hard Things - The Podcast

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Listen & Follow Now So you never miss an episode!Listen & Follow Now So you never miss an episode!Episode TranscriptsI'm Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed - the book that was released at the very start of the pandemic and became a lifeline for millions.

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‎Too Dope Teachers and a Mic on Apple Podcasts

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The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year

"A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."-The Washington Post

The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780525559498

Publisher:

Penguin Publishing Group

Publication date:

05/09/2023

Pages:

304

Sales rank:

1,723

Product dimensions:

5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Matt Haig is the author of the instant New York Times Bestseller The Comfort Book; two memoirs, Notes on a Nervous Planet and the internationally bestselling Reasons to Stay Alive; along with six novels, including How to Stop Time, and several award-winning children's books. The Midnight Library, a number one New York Times Bestseller, is his latest novel and has sold more than six million copies world-wide. His work has been translated into more than forty languages.

Read an Excerpt

A Conversation About Rain

Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford. She sat at a low table staring at a chess board.

'Nora dear, it's natural to worry about your future,' said the librarian, Mrs Elm, her eyes twinkling.

Mrs Elm made her first move. A knight hopping over the neat row of white pawns. 'Of course, you're going to be worried about the exams. But you could be anything you want to be, Nora. Think of all that possibility. It's exciting.'

'Yes. I suppose it is.'

'A whole life in front of you.'

'A whole life.'

'You could do anything, live anywhere. Somewhere a bit less cold and wet.'

Nora pushed a pawn forward two spaces.

It was hard not to compare Mrs Elm to her mother, who treated Nora like a mistake in need of correction. For instance, when she was a baby her mother had been so worried Nora's left ear stuck out more than her right that she'd used sticky tape to address the situation, then disguised it beneath a woollen bonnet.

'I hate the cold and wet,' added Mrs Elm, for emphasis.

Mrs Elm had short grey hair and a kind and mildly crinkled oval face sitting pale above her turtle-green polo neck. She was quite old. But she was also the person most on Nora's wavelength in the entire school, and even on days when it wasn't raining she would spend her afternoon break in the small library.

'Coldness and wetness don't always go together,' Nora told her. 'Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth. Technically, it's a desert.'

'Well, that sounds up your street.'

'I don't think it's far enough away.'

'Well, maybe you should be an astronaut. Travel the galaxy.'

Nora smiled. 'The rain is even worse on other planets.'

'Worse than Bedfordshire?'

'On Venus it is pure acid.'

Mrs Elm pulled a paper tissue from her sleeve and delicately blew her nose. 'See? With a brain like yours you can do anything.'

A blond boy Nora recognised from a couple of years below her ran past outside the rain-speckled window. Either chasing someone or being chased. Since her brother had left, she'd felt a bit unguarded out there. The library was a little shelter of civilisation.

'Dad thinks I've thrown everything away. Now I've stopped swimming.'

'Well, far be it from me to say, but there is more to this world than swimming really fast. There are many different possible lives ahead of you. Like I said last week, you could be a glaciologist. I've been researching and the-'

And it was then that the phone rang.

'One minute,' said Mrs Elm, softly. 'I'd better get that.'

A moment later, Nora watched Mrs Elm on the phone. 'Yes. She's here now.' The librarian's face fell in shock. She turned away from Nora, but her words were audible across the hushed room: 'Oh no. No. Oh my God. Of course . . .'
Nineteen Years Later The Man at the Door
Twenty-seven hours before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat on her dilapidated sofa scrolling through other people's happy lives, waiting for something to happen. And then, out of nowhere, something actually did.

Someone, for whatever peculiar reason, rang her doorbell.

She wondered for a moment if she shouldn't get the door at all. She was, after all, already in her night clothes even though it was only nine p.m. She felt self-conscious about her over-sized ECO WORRIER T-shirt and her tartan pyjama bottoms.

She put on her slippers, to be slightly more civilised, and discovered that the person at the door was a man, and one she recognised.

He was tall and gangly and boyish, with a kind face, but his eyes were sharp and bright, like they could see through things.

It was good to see him, if a little surprising, especially as he was wearing sports gear and he looked hot and sweaty despite the cold, rainy weather. The juxtaposition between them made her feel even more slovenly than she had done five seconds earlier.

But she'd been feeling lonely. And though she'd studied enough existential philosophy to believe loneliness was a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe, it was good to see him.

'Ash,' she said, smiling. 'It's Ash, isn't it?'

'Yes. It is.'

'What are you doing here? It's good to see you.'

A few weeks ago she'd been sat playing her electric piano and he'd run down Bancroft Avenue and had seen her in the window here at 33A and given her a little wave. He had once - years ago - asked her out for a coffee. Maybe he was about to do that again.

'It's good to see you too,' he said, but his tense forehead didn't show it.

When she'd spoken to him in the shop, he'd always sounded breezy, but now his voice contained something heavy. He scratched his brow. Made another sound but didn't quite manage a full word.

'You running?' A pointless question. He was clearly out for a run. But he seemed relieved, momentarily, to have something trivial to say.

'Yeah. I'm doing the Bedford Half. It's this Sunday.'

'Oh right. Great. I was thinking of doing a half-marathon and then I remembered I hate running.'

This had sounded funnier in her head than it did as actual words being vocalised out of her mouth. She didn't even hate running. But still, she was perturbed to see the seriousness of his expression. The silence went beyond awkward into something else.

'You told me you had a cat,' he said eventually.

'Yes. I have a cat.'

'I remembered his name. Voltaire. A ginger tabby?'

'Yeah. I call him Volts. He finds Voltaire a bit pretentious. It turns out he's not massively into eighteenth-century French philosophy and literature. He's quite down-to-earth. You know. For a cat.'

Ash looked down at her slippers.

'I'm afraid I think he's dead.'

'What?'

'He's lying very still by the side of the road. I saw the name on the collar, I think a car might have hit him. I'm sorry, Nora.'

She was so scared of her sudden switch in emotions right then that she kept smiling, as if the smile could keep her in the world she had just been in, the one where Volts was alive and where this man she'd sold guitar songbooks to had rung her doorbell for another reason.

Ash, she remembered, was a surgeon. Not a veterinary one, a general human one. If he said something was dead it was, in all probability, dead.

'I'm so sorry.'

Nora had a familiar sense of grief. Only the sertraline stopped her crying. 'Oh God.'

She stepped out onto the wet cracked paving slabs of Bancroft Avenue, hardly breathing, and saw the poor ginger-furred creature lying on the rain-glossed tarmac beside the kerb. His head grazed the side of the pavement and his legs were back as if in mid-gallop, chasing some imaginary bird.

'Oh Volts. Oh no. Oh God.'

She knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend - and she was - but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaire's still and peaceful expression - that total absence of pain - there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness.

Envy.
String Theory
Nine and a half hours before she decided to die, Nora arrived late for her afternoon shift at String Theory.

'I'm sorry,' she told Neil, in the scruffy little windowless box of an office. 'My cat died. Last night. And I had to bury him. Well, someone helped me bury him. But then I was left alone in my flat and I couldn't sleep and forgot to set the alarm and didn't wake up till midday and then had to rush.'

This was all true, and she imagined her appearance - including make-up-free face, loose makeshift ponytail and the same second-hand green corduroy pinafore dress she had worn to work all week, garnished with a general air of tired despair - would back her up.

Neil looked up from his computer and leaned back in his chair. He joined his hands together and made a steeple of his index fingers, which he placed under his chin, as if he was Confucius contemplating a deep philosophical truth about the universe rather than the boss of a musical equipment shop dealing with a late employee. There was a massive Fleetwood Mac poster on the wall behind him, the top right corner of which had come unstuck and flopped down like a puppy's ear.

'Listen, Nora, I like you.'

Neil was harmless. A fifty-something guitar aficionado who liked cracking bad jokes and playing passable old Dylan covers live in the store.

'And I know you've got mental-health stuff.'

'Everyone's got mental-health stuff.'

'You know what I mean.'

'I'm feeling much better, generally,' she lied. 'It's not clinical. The doctor says it's situational depression. It's just that I keep on having new . . . situations. But I haven't taken a day off sick for it all. Apart from when my mum . . . Yeah. Apart from that.'

Neil sighed. When he did so he made a whistling sound out of his nose. An ominous B flat. 'Nora, how long have you worked here?'

'Twelve years and . . .' - she knew this too well - '. . . eleven months and three days. On and off.'

'That's a long time. I feel like you are made for better things. You're in your late thirties.'

'I'm thirty-five.'

'You've got so much going for you. You teach people piano . . .'

'One person.'

He brushed a crumb off his sweater.

'Did you picture yourself stuck in your hometown working in a shop? You know, when you were fourteen? What did you picture yourself as?'

'At fourteen? A swimmer.' She'd been the fastest fourteen-year-old girl in the country at breaststroke and second-fastest at freestyle. She remembered standing on a podium at the National Swimming Championships.

'So, what happened?'

She gave the short version. 'It was a lot of pressure.'

'Pressure makes us, though. You start off as coal and the pressure makes you a diamond.'

She didn't correct his knowledge of diamonds. She didn't tell him that while coal and diamonds are both carbon, coal is too impure to be able, under whatever pressure, to become a diamond. According to science, you start off as coal and you end up as coal. Maybe that was the real-life lesson.

She smoothed a stray strand of her coal-black hair up towards her ponytail.

'What are you saying, Neil?'

'It's never too late to pursue a dream.'

'Pretty sure it's too late to pursue that one.'

'You're a very well qualified person, Nora. Degree in Philosophy . . .'

Nora stared down at the small mole on her left hand. That mole had been through everything she'd been through. And it just stayed there, not caring. Just being a mole. 'Not a massive demand for philosophers in Bedford, if I'm honest, Neil.'

'You went to uni, had a year in London, then came back.'

'I didn't have much of a choice.'

Nora didn't want a conversation about her dead mum. Or even Dan. Because Neil had found Nora's backing out of a wedding with two days' notice the most fascinating love story since Kurt and Courtney.

'We all have choices, Nora. There's such a thing as free will.'

'Well, not if you subscribe to a deterministic view of the universe.'

'But why here?'

'It was either here or the Animal Rescue Centre. This paid better. Plus, you know, music.'

'You were in a band. With your brother.'

'I was. The Labyrinths. We weren't really going anywhere.'

'Your brother tells a different story.'

This took Nora by surprise. 'Joe? How do you-'

'He bought an amp. Marshall DSL40.'

'When?'

'Friday.'

'He was in Bedford?'

'Unless it was a hologram. Like Tupac.'

He was probably visiting Ravi, Nora thought. Ravi was her brother's best friend. While Joe had given up the guitar and moved to London, for a crap IT job he hated, Ravi had stuck to Bedford. He played in a covers band now, called Slaughterhouse Four, doing pub gigs around town.

'Right. That's interesting.'

Nora was pretty certain her brother knew Friday was her day off. The fact prodded her from inside.

'I'm happy here.'

'Except you aren't.'

He was right. A soul-sickness festered within her. Her mind was throwing itself up. She widened her smile.

'I mean, I am happy with the job. Happy as in, you know, satisfied. Neil, I need this job.'

'You are a good person. You worry about the world. The homeless, the environment.'

'I need a job.'

He was back in his Confucius pose. 'You need freedom.'

'I don't want freedom.'

'This isn't a non-profit organisation. Though I have to say it is rapidly becoming one.'

'Look, Neil, is this about what I said the other week? About you needing to modernise things? I've got some ideas of how to get younger peo-'

'No,' he said, defensively. 'This place used to just be guitars. String Theory, get it? I diversified. Made this work. It's just that when times are tough I can't pay you to put off customers with your face looking like a wet weekend.'

'What?'

'I'm afraid, Nora' - he paused for a moment, about the time it takes to lift an axe into the air - 'I'm going to have to let you go.'
To Live Is to Suffer
Nine hours before she decided to die, Nora wandered around Bedford aimlessly. The town was a conveyor belt of despair. The pebble-dashed sports centre where her dead dad once watched her swim lengths of the pool, the Mexican restaurant where she'd taken Dan for fajitas, the hospital where her mum had her treatment.

Dan had texted her yesterday.

Nora, I miss your voice. Can we talk? D x

She'd said she was stupidly hectic (big lol). Yet it was impossible to text anything else. Not because she didn't still feel for him, but because she did. And couldn't risk hurting him again. She'd ruined his life. My life is chaos, he'd told her, via drunk texts, shortly after the would-be wedding she'd pulled out of two days before.

The universe tended towards chaos and entropy. That was basic thermodynamics. Maybe it was basic existence too.

You lose your job, then more shit happens.

The wind whispered through the trees.

It began to rain.

She headed towards the shelter of a newsagent's, with the deep - and, as it happened, correct - sense that things were about to get worse.

Reading Group Guide

Warning: this section contains spoilers

1. The Midnight Library is different for each person who enters it. Nora experienced it as a library because of the meaningful relationship she had with Mrs. Elm, her childhood school librarian. Later, we learn that Huge experienced it as a video store, with a cherished uncle instead of a librarian. What do you think your Midnight Library would be? And who would be there?

2. Nora experiences a number of alternate lives in which she achieves a great deal of success in one area of her life at the expense of all the rest, be it in music, swimming, or polar exploration. Do you think it's possible to reach fame and fortune in a single field and still maintain balance with other areas of your life?

3. In the library, Nora learns that the life she gave her cat was one of the best he could have experienced. Are there any parts of your life that you feel could not be improved by living it differently

4. In her life before she finds herself in the Midnight Library, Nora gave up many of the pursuits that brought her joy because she didn't feel like she could be the best at them. Do you think it's understandable that she would have given these things up? Do you think that wanting to be the best at something can inhibit us from enjoying it?

5. Mrs. Elm showed Nora the Book of Regrets when she first entered the library, and Nora was overwhelmed by it when she first looked in. But as she experienced more and more lives, her list of regrets began to shrink. Do you think by considering the ways in which our lives might have turned out differently our regrets truly go away, or do we simply learn to live with them?

6. In the world of the Midnight Library, the books take on the role of portals into alternate realities. Do you think the role books played in the Midnight Library is similar to the role they play in your own life?

7. As the story progresses, Nora finds herself in lives that she could be more satisfied with than others that proved more difficult. Do you think you would be able to live as an alternate version of yourself? Would you want to?

8. Over the course of the book, Nora lives a whole spectrum of lives, some for minutes and some for months, but only at the end does time actually pass, and by the time she wakes up in her root life it is one minute and twenty-seven seconds past midnight and her outlook on life has changed entirely. What do you think this says about the speed at which we decide things about our lives and ourselves? Does it take a lifetime or a just few seconds?

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The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year "A feel-good book guaranteed to...

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Editorial Reviews

"The most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writer of her generation... Jemisin seems able to do just about everything."-New York Times

"Jemisin's phenomenal success has been something like an earthquake ripping through the traditional order of fantasy itself."-New York/Vulture

"The most critically acclaimed author in contemporary science fiction and fantasy."-GQ

"Jemisin's stories are discerning, thought-provoking, and beautifully crafted, showcasing a master at work."-Pen America

"Marvelous and wide-ranging."-Los Angeles Times

"One line from [Jemisin's introduction] has tattooed itself on my mind, a sort of manifesto for her ongoing work and all the fiction I love: 'Now I am bolder, and angrier, and more joyful.' I felt, after reading these stories, that I was too."-NPR Books

"N. K. Jemisin is a powerhouse of speculative fiction. So, obviously, you need to read this new short story collection."-Bustle

"Read her books-they're probably better than whatever else you were going to read next."-Literary Hub

"Jemisin is now a pillar of speculative fiction, breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold."-Entertainment Weekly

"Nora Jemisin is a writer of uncanny gifts who is to a moral certainty one of the five best we have right now."-Sci-Fi

"Powerful and mind-expanding...Jemisin pushes boundaries, experiments with format and theme, and challenges expectations."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[E]loquently develops a series of passionately felt themes... one of speculative fiction's most thoughtful and exciting writers."-Kirkus (starred review)

"Each of the [stories] is masterfully written and beautifully imagined, making the book difficult to put down...Anyone who appreciates Jemisin's work, speculative fiction, or simply the art of the short story shouldn't miss this collection."-BookPage

"Whether she's exploring alien life forms or political machinations, self-sacrifice or monsters in New Orleans, Jemisin's characters are boldly drawn, complex, and so engaging. This is a great gift for any long-time fan and a solid introduction to her work for the curious, and I highly recommend you grab yourself the gorgeous hardcover version."-Book Riot/Swords & Spaceships

"Jemisin... is a writer of uncanny gifts who is to a moral certainty one of the five best we have right now. ... How inadequate these brief synopses are to convey the sheet beauty to be found in these stories."-Sci-Fi

"There are so many things in How Long 'Til Black Future Month-from firebirds to Megacops, from truffles to hurricanes, from utopias (maybe) to civil rights marches-that it's impossible to describe. Except to say that every single story here is riveting, provocative, and remarkable. An extraordinary story collection from an extraordinary writer!"-Connie Willis, Hugo and Nebula Award winner

"Energizing in the way the best science fiction aims to be, forcing readers to look back on the 'real' world with new and eager eyes."-Shelf Awareness (starred review)

"Established fans of Jemisin's work and general fantasy and sf readers alike should check out this collection of diverse and exciting new speculative fiction."-Booklist

"These stories are wonderful. In worlds both invariably cruel and brilliantly imagined, heroism thrives in the margins."-Nicky Drayden, author of The Prey of Gods

Jemisin's body of work already spans an extraordinary and "astonishing terrain. Science fiction and fantasy have always been the genres of my heart, and Jemisin is an absolute master. Like Ursula K. Le Guin, she is a visionary who shows us our world by remaking it in stories."-Kelly Link

"A brilliant example of how we in the present are making the future with our actions and how the future may exist in our past... What is also evident in this short story collection is that Ms. Jemisin can write anything. Her prose, sometimes pulsing, encourages you to read at different tempos as if she is conducting an orchestra. Slow moving tension and suspense make you fearful, but then entices you into reading the next sentence. Lush descriptive passages conjure cinematic vistas."-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The true breadth of [Jemisin's] talent ... comes through to grand effect in her first collection of short fiction... Jemisin is an essential voice in modern-day SFF."-B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

From the Publisher

There is...much...to love in this collection. Some of the stories are good old-fashioned science-fiction yarns shot from new angles, like "Walking Awake," a response to Robert A. Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters," in which a middle-aged caregiver raising human children whose bodies will eventually be taken over by parasitical aliens experiences a moment of revolutionary awakening. "The Trojan Girl," a fleet-footed cyberpunk thriller, conjures a gang of digital entities, artificial intelligences gone rogue, roaming a virtual universe and seeking access to a greater reality. "Valedictorian," a follow-up set in the same world but much later, after the AIs have merged with some of humanity, features one of the determined, defiant girls that often turn up in Jemisin's work, then flips her view of her society upside down. Any fan of the Broken Earth novels will eagerly seize upon "Stone Hunger," set in that series' universe, in which another fierce girl, an "orogene" with the power to stoke or subdue geological tensions, pursues the man who destroyed her city.

The New York Times Book Review - Laura Miller

★ 11/15/2018

In this career-spanning collection, Jemisin ("The Broken Earth" trilogy) delivers 22 thrilling stories of black strength in the face of worldly and otherworldly adversity. In "The Ones Who Stay and Fight," guardians of a thriving world parallel to ours watch over humans and toil with ruthless compassion to avoid falling prey to common prejudices or repeating mistakes. In "The Valedictorian," a girl who has always defied convention to pursue greatness in the shadow of war learns the true cost of failure and the terrifying burden of success. In "The Storyteller's Replacement," an unnamed narrator tells of a foolish king who consumes a dragon's heart in the hope of siring sons and the cunning, dragon-hearted daughters he fathers instead. In "The Effluent Engine," a Haitian spy infiltrates slavery-shackled America in search of technology to safeguard free Haiti against threatening French influence. There she meets a beautiful Creole chemist who could secure Haiti's future and steal her heart in the process. VERDICT This robust collection is a worthy introduction to three-time Hugo Award winner Jemisin's powerful work for curious newcomers and is sure to delight the author's many fans. -Idris Grey, Houston

Library Journal

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Notes From Your Bookseller

Hello Beautiful is a compelling family story with echoes of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. A story about how love (as well as the lack thereof) shapes us, the Padavano family is one you won't soon forget.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * From the author of Dear Edward comes a "powerfully affecting" (People) family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?
"Another tender tearjerker . . . Napolitano chronicles life's highs and lows with aching precision."-The Washington Post
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him-so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it's as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family's dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos.

But then darkness from William's past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia's carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters' unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott's timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780593243732

Publisher:

Random House Publishing Group

Publication date:

03/14/2023

Pages:

400

Sales rank:

1,006

Product dimensions:

6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

Read an Excerpt

William

February 1960-December 1978

For the first six days of William Waters's life, he was not an only child. He had a three-year-old sister, a redhead named Caroline after John F. Kennedy's daughter. There were silent home movies of Caroline in which William's father looked like he was laughing, a sight William never saw again. His father's face looked open, and the tiny redhead, who pulled her dress over her face and ran in giggling circles in one of the movies, was apparently the reason. Caroline developed a fever and a cough while William and his mother were in the hospital after his birth. When they came home, the little girl seemed to be on the mend, but the cough was still bad, and when her parents went into her room to get her one morning, they found her dead in her crib.

William's parents never mentioned Caroline while William was growing up. There was one photograph of her on the end table in the living room, which William traveled to occasionally in order to convince himself that he'd actually had a sister. The family moved to a navy-shingled house on the other side of Newton-a suburb of Boston-and in that house, William was an only child. His father was an accountant who worked long hours downtown. With his daughter gone, the man's face never opened again. William's mother smoked cigarettes and drank bourbon in the living room, sometimes alone and sometimes with a female neighbor. She had a collection of ruffled aprons that she wore while preparing meals, and she became agitated whenever one became stained or messy.

"Maybe you shouldn't wear the aprons while you cook," William said once, when his mother was red-faced and on the verge of tears over a dark blotch of gravy on the fabric. "You could tuck a dish towel in your belt instead, like Mrs. Kornet does."

His mother looked at him as if he'd spoken in Greek. William said, "Mrs. Kornet, who lives next door? Her dish towel?"

From the age of five, William would walk to the nearby park most afternoons with a basketball, because basketball, unlike baseball or football, was a game he could play alone. There was a neglected outdoor court that usually had a hoop free, and he would shoot for hours, pretending he was a Celtics player. Bill Russell was his favorite, but to be Russell you needed someone else to block or defend against. Sam Jones was the best shooter, so William was usually Jones. He tried to imitate the guard's perfect shooting form while pretending the trees that surrounded the court were cheering fans.

One afternoon when he was ten years old, he showed up at the court and found it occupied. Boys-maybe six of them, about William's age-were chasing one another and a ball between the hoops. William started to back away, but one of the boys called, "Hey, wanna play?" And then, without waiting for William to answer: "You're on the blue team." Within seconds, William was swept into the game, his heart pounding in his chest. A kid passed him the ball, and he passed it right back, afraid to shoot and miss and be told he was terrible. A few minutes later, the game broke up abruptly because someone needed to get home, and the boys spilled off the court in different directions. William walked home, his heart still rattling in his chest. After that, the boys were occasionally on the court when William showed up with his ball. There was no discernible schedule to their appearances, but they always waved him into the game as if he were one of them. This never stopped being shocking to William. Kids and adults had always looked past him, as if he were invisible. His parents hardly looked at him at all. William had accepted all of this and thought it was understandable; he was, after all, boring and forgettable. His primary characteristic was pallor: He had sand-colored hair, light-blue eyes, and the very white skin shared by people of English and Irish descent. On the inside, William knew, he was as uninteresting and muted as his looks. He never spoke at school, and no one played with him. But the boys on the basketball court offered William a chance to be part of something for the first time, without having to talk.

In fifth grade, the gym teacher at his elementary school said, "I see you out there shooting baskets in the afternoons. How tall is your father?"

William stared at the man blankly. "I'm not sure. Normal height?"

"Okay, so you'll probably be a point guard. You need to work on your handle. You know Bill Bradley? That gawky guy on the Knicks? When he was a kid, he taped cardboard to his glasses so he couldn't look down, couldn't see his feet. And then he dribbled up and down the sidewalk wearing those glasses. He looked crazy, no doubt, but his handle got real tight. He has a perfect feel for how the ball will bounce and how to find it without looking."

William sprinted home that afternoon, his entire body buzzing. This was the first time a grown-up had looked directly at him-noticed him, and noticed what he was doing-and the attention threw him into distress. William had a sneezing fit while he was digging for a pair of toy glasses in the back of his desk drawer. He visited the bathroom twice before he carefully taped rectangular pieces of cardboard to the bottom of the glasses.

Whenever William felt sick or odd, he worried he was going to die. At least once a month he would crawl under his covers after school, convinced he was terminally ill. He wouldn't tell his parents, because illness wasn't permitted in his house. Coughing, in particular, was treated as a horrific betrayal. When William had a cold, he allowed himself to cough only in his closet with the door closed, his face muffled by the row of hanging button-down shirts he had to wear for school. He was aware of that familiar worry tickling his shoulders and the back of his head while he ran outside with the ball and glasses. But William had no time for illness now, no time for fear. This felt like the final click of his identity falling into place. The boys on the court had recognized him, and the gym teacher had too. William might have had no idea who he was, but the world had told him: He was a basketball player.

The gym teacher gave him additional tips that allowed William to develop more skills. "For defense: Push kids away with your shoulder and your butt. The refs won't call those as fouls. Do sprints: Get a quick first step and beat your man off the dribble." William worked on his passing too, so he could feed the ball to the best players in the park. He wanted to keep his place on the court, and he knew that if he made the other boys better, he had value. He learned where to run to provide space for the shooters to cut in to. He set screens so they could take their favorite shots. The boys slapped William on the back after a successful play, and they always wanted him on their side. This acceptance calmed some of the fear William carried inside him; on the basketball court, he knew what to do.

By the time William entered high school, he was a good-enough player to start for the varsity team. He was five foot eight and played point guard. His hours of practice with the glasses had paid off; he was by far the best dribbler on the team, and he had a nice midrange jumper. He'd worked on his rebounding, which helped offset his team's turnovers. Passing was still William's best skill, and his teammates appreciated that they had better games when he was in the lineup. He was the only freshman on the varsity team, and so when his older teammates drank beer in the basement of whoever's parents were willing to look the other way, William was never invited. His teammates were shocked-everyone was shocked-when, in the summer after his sophomore year, William grew five inches. Once he started growing, his body seemed unable to stop, and by the end of high school he was six foot seven. He couldn't eat enough to keep up with his growth and became shockingly thin. His mother looked frightened when he lurched into the kitchen every morning, and she'd hand him a snack whenever he passed nearby. She seemed to think his skinniness reflected badly on her, because feeding him was her job. His parents sometimes came to his basketball games, but at odd intervals, and they sat politely in the stands, appearing not to know anyone on the court.

His parents weren't there for the game when William went for a rebound and was shoved in the air. His body twisted while he fell, and he landed awkwardly on his right knee. The joint absorbed all of the impact, and all of his weight. William heard his knee make a noise, and then a fog descended. His coach, who seemed to have only two registers-shouting and mumbling-was yelling in his ear: "You okay, Waters?" William generally responded to both the shouts and the mumbles by phrasing everything he said as a question; he never felt sure enough to lay claim to a statement. He cleared his throat. The fog around him, and inside him, was dense and laced with pain that was radiating from his knee. He said, "No."

Editorial Reviews

01/16/2023

Napolitano ( Dear Edward) explores the meaning of love and family with this striking story of four Chicago sisters and the young man who enters their lives. William Waters, a basketball player from outside Boston, enrolls at Northwestern in 1978 on an athletic scholarship. After he starts dating fellow student Julia Padavano, he's embraced by Julia's three younger sisters-Sylvie, a romantic searching for a great love affair; Cecelia, an aspiring artist; and Cecelia's earnest and quiet twin, Emeline-and is delighted to find a loving and loud family so different from his own, his parents having grown taciturn after his older sister's death years before. William and Julia marry, while the unmarried Cecelia gets pregnant at 17, Sylvie presses on with a job at a library, and Emeline works at a daycare where she fosters a crush on a coworker. After one character attempts suicide, the bonds of the expanding family are tested, and the Padavano women reexamine the limits of how much they're willing to sacrifice. The author breathes great life into her characters, and brings insight into their quiet moments as they gradually come into their own. This will move readers. Agent: Julie Barer, Book Group. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Radiant and brilliantly crafted . . . Napolitano's [work] resists the easy satisfactions of the sentimental and never settles for simple answers to emotional predicaments faced by her characters."-The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"This sumptuous family saga is one of those rare novels whose singular characters are so beautifully rendered, it's as if they're your best friends, and you're grateful to be in their orbit." -Oprah Quarterly

" Hello Beautiful will make you weep buckets because you come to care so deeply about the characters and their fates. . . . [Napolitano] compels us to contemplate the complex tapestry of family love that can, despite grief and loss, still knit us together. She helps us see ourselves-and each other-whole."-The Washington Post

"A sprawling, hugely affecting novel [filled with] empathetic characters and rich writing . . . [ Hello Beautiful] has rightfully earned comparisons to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, with its four close, vibrant sisters and the lonely outsider who infiltrates their circle." -Shondaland

"This is a warm blanket of a book, one that reminds you of the enveloping power of literature and leaves you very grateful to have encountered it." -Vogue

" Little Women fans will be endeared by Hello Beautiful's homage to the March siblings, in the form of the four Padavano sisters. Any lover of a sweeping family saga will be moved by the Padavanos' unraveling." -Harper's Bazaar

"Napolitano's novel will make you think deeply about sisterhood and what we choose to share with those we love." -Town & Country

"Can love make a broken person whole? That is the simple but compelling question at the center of . . . this engrossing and emotional family drama." -E! Online

"Absorbing." -AARP

"Napolitano is a master of examining what binds us to family, what makes family, and how to love in difficult times." -Literary Hub

"A family drama with echoes of classics and characters who are distinctly written. As a reader, you'll laugh and grieve with William and the Padavanos as they go through life-soaring as much as they stumble." -Book Riot

"Ann Napolitano's new novel, Hello Beautiful, is exactly that: beautiful, perceptive, wistful. It's a story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it." -Miranda Cowley Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace

"A rich, complex family saga, Hello Beautiful is a portrait oflove and grief in equal measure. Napolitano's prose is so lovely, so keenly perceptive, that it held me captive until I finished. A lot of people are going to love this story." -Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
" Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving and propulsive novel about the deepest connections of family and love, trauma and healing. In intricately elegant prose, Ann Napolitano explores both the cost and power of loyalty and honesty. This is a book to treasure and share with friends and loved ones." -Angie Kim, bestselling author of Miracle Creek

" Hello Beautiful is the work of a great author at the height of her powers. Equally immersive, emotional, and brilliantly crafted, this is an early contender for best novel of the year." -J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

"This is a story about family and sisters and storytelling, but it's also an examination of identity and the consequences of doing love badly and how love can be redeemed. Read this book! You'll be glad you did." -Therese Anne Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of It All Comes Down to This

"This is a richly woven story about family, but it's also a unique take on Little Women. There are no heroes or villains here, only people-flawed and loving and striving like the rest of us. 'Generosity' is the word that comes to mind when I reflect on this gorgeous novel." -Allegra Goodman, New York Times bestselling author of The Cookbook Collector and Sam

From the Publisher

2022-12-24
Who do we deserve to love and be loved by?

Drawn into the orbit of a tightknit family upon falling for Julia, the eldest of the four Padavano sisters, William Waters experiences the kind of family solidarity, affection, and sense of belonging he never had with his own dysfunctional parents. William developed an (initially) effective coping strategy during his lonely childhood and devotes his energies toward succeeding in the only place he feels comfortable: the basketball court. College sweethearts, Julia and William marry and begin a life together directed mostly by Julia's wishes for stability and status; the plan and relationship are derailed by William's gradual decline into a crippling depression. Julia and William divorce, and William distances himself from their infant daughter, Alice, too. Relationships between and among William and all of the Padavanos rupture and realign over the ensuing decades as Napolitano spins a saga of familial love, deception, and hope for healing while adeptly highlighting each family member's unique position in the narrative. Each of the Padavano girls is finely described-there's Julia, who's straightforward and driven; Sylvie, dreamy and romantic; and twins Cecelia (artistic) and Emeline (the sensitive moral compass of the group)-and it is entirely plausible that the girls envision themselves from time to time as the March sisters from Little Women. (Rounding out that parallel is the presence of a dreamy, poetic father and a hardworking, long-suffering mother.) More subtly, the influence of Walt Whitman is felt throughout the book, from epigraph to end, as characters come to terms with their roles in an evolving universe. As in Napolitano's recent Dear Edward (2020), heartbreaking circumstances shatter the lives of relatable human characters who are unprepared for the task of building a meaningful life.

Napolitano's characters can break your heart as they work to mend their own.

Kirkus Reviews

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From the author of Dear Edward comes a “powerfully affecting” (People) family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?“Another tender...