Tuesday and Today

[Everyman]

Thanks. I guess I picked up on the new position element of her description here, and not the background, which maynot have been given on this site.

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momgee wrote:

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Everyman wrote:
This may be an unfair. and probably unanswerable, question, but if so, so be it. I think I read that The Sister was one of this editor's first books to select and edit to press. If this is the case, I wonder whether, if she had had ten years more experience under her belt, she would have selected this book to edit and publish.

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Doesn't sound like she is a newbie unless this is yet another Carole Baron

Carole Baron Joins Bookspan as Senior Vice President and Publishing Director

    NEW YORK, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Carole Baron, former president of G.P.
Putnam's Sons and Dutton, is joining Bookspan as Senior Vice President and
Publishing Director, a new position. Ms. Baron is scheduled to join Bookspan,
the premiere direct marketer of general interest and specialty book clubs, on
April 4th and will report to Markus Wilhelm, Bookspan Chief Executive Officer
and President. She will also be a member of Bookspan's Senior Management
Group.
    In her role, Ms. Baron will maintain and build Bookspan's strong
relationships within the publishing community, have a significant role with
club editors in many major negotiations for book club rights, and strengthen
Bookspan's editorial strategy, specifically address new approaches to
promoting books and improving cross-club usage.
    Bookspan, a partnership of Bertelsmann AG and Time Warner Inc., operates
over 30 book clubs, including Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild,
Doubleday Book Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club as well as niche
clubs, including Mosaico, the Mystery Guild, Good Cook and Black Expressions.
Bookspan is a division of Bertelsmann's DirectGroup.
    Ms. Baron has more than 25 years of publishing and senior management
experience and has one of the most impressive lists of best-selling authors,
some of whom she has edited personally. These authors include John Grisham,
Danielle Steel, Thomas Harris, Harlan Coben, Judy Blume, Tracy Chevalier, John
Lescroart, Nicolas Evans, Maeve Binchy and Elmore Leonard.
   "Carole and I have gotten to know each other over years of negotiating
countless book deals and I have enormous respect for her," said Mr. Wilhelm.
"She is a valued executive in the publishing community and will help us
enormously in working with editors, sub rights directors, agents and, most
important, authors."
    She was an early supporter of the DirectGroup's successful initiative, the
International Book of the Month, which was launched in 2003 with Harlan
Coben's "No Second Chance," which became a best seller.
    Ms. Baron joined Penguin Group in 1999 as President of Dutton. She has
been President and Publisher of Dell/Delacorte Publishing, now a division of
Bertelsmann's Random House, since 1987. Prior to joining Dell in 1981, Ms.
Baron held positions at Holt, Dutton, Pocket Books and Crown.
    Ms. Baron said, "I have long considered my role in publishing as a broker
between reader and writer. In these changing times, we have to think of new
ways to reach the reader and by joining Bookspan I will be able to combine its
approach to reaching the book buyer and my publishing experience to do just
that."
    Ms. Baron joins Bookspan as the company moved its New York offices to the
Flatiron district. The new offices are located at 15 East 26th Street, New
York, N.Y. 10010 and the new main number is 212-651-7400.

                             

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[renhair]

I don't know that she does "know."  I think that once again, the story we got was complete as far as Ginny is concerned.  I don't think she knows anything else about the situation.  Now, that doesn't mean that she wasn't there, that she didn't push Vivi, that she didn't watch Vivi jump, but it does mean that it's totally her perspective and if she went to her secret place, she may very well not realize that she's missing a significant part of the story....

I don't know....just my hypothesis

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Everyman wrote:
But she does know what happened on the Bell Tower, and are we sure we got the full story there?

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renhair wrote:

Something you said here just cleared things up for me.....this is why we don't get all the answers. Ginny doesn't have them and she's the one telling us the story. It would be extremely odd for another narrator to come in now with a "What Ginny didn't tell you" chapter.....

Perfectly clear to me now, and in fact, I think it makes me like the book more....

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pa1822 wrote:

I don't necessarily agree that Ginny is an unsatisfactory narrator. Maybe instead we are only meant to witness events as filtered through the mind of someone with some kind of mental deficiency. We aren't told what the deficiency is, or other facts we would like to know, because Ginny herself doesn't know, or ackowledge them.

To me, it is interesting trying to figure it out, she doesn't feel normal emotion, but isn't a sociopath. She thinks she knows right from wrong, but what she's really feeling is a need for structure and order. Structure and order is right to her and anything else is wrong. When her sister started to tell the truth about Ginny's "peculiarities" and how they affected the family, that disrupted what Ginny knew about the structure and order of her whole life. I think it was intolerable to her, and that was the catalyst for her deciding to kill Vivien.

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[blkeyesuzi]

Tasses wrote:
Herein lies another issue with the story. Perhaps nothing Ginny told us was correct. Perhaps there was no arrangement between the sisters to surrogate a baby. Perhaps Ginny had an affair with Vivi's husband or perhaps she had an incestuous relationship with her father. Perhaps there never was a baby.... See where this is headed?

If we are to believe Ginny capable of distorting the truth to the degree we see from the final chapters, then we must also assume that everything else she told us is unreliable.

Then ... we must assume the whole tale a convoluted mess of nothing. It's one thing for an author to take on an unreliable narrator, but there's usually a voice of reason somehow located within the telling to balance what's really happening. At the end of The Sister, we're left not knowing anything at all. And that makes a reader's investment in the story worthless.


http://manyaquaintandcuriousvolume.blogspot.com/

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I could not have said this better myself!!! You are spot-on, in my opinion.

Message Edited by Jessica on 03-17-2008 02:54 PM

[maryfrancesa]

I agree with what you said.  I know nothing about the family.  Is Ginny really slow witted or not.  I am not sure, I think that her whole life her mother decided what she was to do without any reguard for what Ginny wanted. Everyone Vi included decided for her.  Is this hole story oh her imagination.  I do not think much of Vi and the rest of the family.  If she was retarded then everyone took advantage of her surgoate mother for Vi. 

I liked the book to some degree but it left alot of unanswered questions about the family.

Who knows in the end Ginny got what she really wanted out of the house and someone to take care of her.

[dhaupt]

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Carmenere_lady wrote:

I think the author wants us, the reader, to see and experience  everything from Ginney's point of view.  Ginney was pretty much left in the dark, so to speak.  She too had no idea why Vivi returned home and neither do we.  Ginney is really ignorant to everything except what she has fabricated in her head so we are left to be ignorant too.  If that was indeed the author's objective, it seems like she has done one heckofa job.   Remember too that, was it her great great grandfather, who had the stained glass window made in the house with family crests that had nothing to do with his family at all!  It was just fabricated.  He just made it all up.  So has Ginney.  I think we're fortunate that there are no Stones left to be unturned

Message Edited by Carmenere_lady on 03-16-2008 07:13 AM

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After I posted my comments on the chapters I began to rethink them and I think I agree with you, however, by doing this I think the author makes this book go right over the heads of just the enjoyment of reading reader like myself. I can understand seeing everything from the narrator's standpoint but somewhere in the text I'd also like to know what's really going on.

[BookSavage]

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Everyman wrote:
This may be an unfair. and probably unanswerable, question, but if so, so be it. I think I read that The Sister was one of this editor's first books to select and edit to press. If this is the case, I wonder whether, if she had had ten years more experience under her belt, she would have selected this book to edit and publish.

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I think any editor would choose this book.  Although I found parts of the book to be difficult to read, overall I think it brings a very new touch to modern fiction.  I don't believe there is another book out on the market like this one.  It is so unique that I think most editors would jump to publish this book.

[suzi966]

I have to say I am sorry that I wasted the time reading this book.  I read for entertainment and don't like trying to figure out what they author might have been trying to say.  I struggled to get through the book hoping for the answers to all the questions but got no answers at all.

[KxBurns]

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CAG wrote:

I think Ginny is in a mental hospital but locked on a ward for the criminally insane. I think we are left wondering if she is tried for murder, maybe she spaced out some events that followed Vivi's death. Anyway, I liked the ending.  For me it fit with the whole novel.

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bookhunter wrote:

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Everyman wrote:
I'm unclear why Ginny was apparently put into a mental ward and not tried for murder. Based on what we've seen, she certainly doesn't seem to me to meet the legal standard of not guilty by reason of insanity.

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Everyman (or someone else), what are prisons like in England?  The description at the beginning of the chapter says there are bars on the window.  She doesn't have a bathroom.  I thought she probably WAS in a prison  (we don't know how much time has passed from Monday until "Today"), but one that has special care for her. 

Ann, bookhunter

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 I agree - I found the ending fitting, and I'm not sure I really need to know where exactly Ginny ended up or whether she was tried for murder. It's enough for me to know that she ended up in sort of an endless now because this is her psychological fate, and I thought the book was more about her psychological journey/experience over this short time period than about the external events. To me, the external events mattered only insofar as they were a cause or result of her mental state.

[Oldesq]

I saw the Met's production of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" this weekend - a work written in 1945, based on poems from the early 1800s.  The opera leaves it to the audience to decide whether Peter Grimes is guilty of the crimes against children that the Borough gossips charge him with.  So this is not a new literary technique, but a difficult and sophisticated path to walk the reader along without having them go over the edge of the bell tower. 

[Everyman]

Excellent comment.

Someone suggested, I think on this thread, that we can't know certain things (such as Ginny's mental diagnosis) because she didn't know herself and so couldn't tell us.

On reflection, I find this unsatisfying. There are many ways the author could have gotten around this easily enough. One would have been to have Ginny retreat into her away place after, not before, Vivian told her what the family though was wrong with her. Another would have been to have her overhear and report a conversation which doctors held outside her room discussing her condition. These are only two easy ways; there could be many others. It would have been an easy "barrier' to overcome if the author had chosen to; the apparent reality (a word I hesitate to use anywhere in connection with this book) is that Ms Adams doesn't want us to know. Or more accurately, perhaps, she doesn't us to know what she thinks; she wants us to decide for ourselves, and if some of us think bipolar and some thing autism and some think schizophrenia and some think OCD, we may all be equally right and equally wrong.

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Oldesq wrote:

I saw the Met's production of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" this weekend - a work written in 1945, based on poems from the early 1800s. The opera leaves it to the audience to decide whether Peter Grimes is guilty of the crimes against children that the Borough gossips charge him with. So this is not a new literary technique, but a difficult and sophisticated path to walk the reader along without having them go over the edge of the bell tower.

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[MsMorninglight]

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Everyman wrote:
Maybe the problem is that we old fuddy-duddies were brogut up to believe that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that it should make sense.

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I guess I'm a fuddy-duddy then, because I enjoy a book with beginning, middle & end.  I like all avenues of the book to lead somewhere.  Not just take me to so many dead-ends & then expect me to decide where to go from there. 

I'm not an author, but an avid reader  & when I'm reading a book  I don't want to have to be the one who decides where the story should go..  In a good mystery or suspense novel, I do love trying to figure out who-done-it & why, but I want real answers by the end of the book.  Not just a bunch of speculation on my part.

I think the author was good at drawing me in and did a good job of brining her characters to life. But, I believe there was too much detail about Moths & not enough detail about the plot.  Why bring things up to the reader if you're not going to give them the answers somewhere down the line?  I just felt the storyline was much too choppy & it left me wanting too much by the end

So,  though I did appreciate the opportunity to have a pre-read of this book, and I do respect this author and all authors who have the moxie to sit down & write a novel;  I can't in all honesty or fairness, say that I enjoyed it.

[LizzieAnn]

Someone else actually entered the house & saw the way Ginny was living and how she acted.  I'm sure her demeanor and her reputation came into play as well.  She pretty much had managed to avoid contact with the outside world until it came into her home.

Everyman wrote:

But though it wasn't an environment you or I would have wanted to live in, she was taking care of herself for the past thirty years. What changed just because Vivi came and went?

[Everyman]

Not sure how that really changes the dynamic. She had been able to feed herself, clothe herself, house herself (not in conditions we would want, perhaps, but in conditions apparently acceptable to her) for many years. She had apparently not needed social services. If she had needed medical help, she had gotten it and recovered. (Did she never have a broken bone, a serious bout of flu, an infection needing antibiotics, a dental cleaning in all those years? How realistic, when we think about it carefully, was her lifestyle as implied in the book? If she had gone to a doctor or dentist at all in those years, and they had thought she needed services, wouldn't they have been legally obligated to report her need to social services?) Certainly she knew about doctors and their services -- she talks about Dr. Moyse treating the refugee children.

Since we know that the lights work, she had obviously been able to pay the electric bill, and whatever other bills she had a needed to pay. She had a digital watch, which must have been a reasonably recent purchase, and she was able to obtain batteries to keep it running.

Food, clothing, shelter -- the essentials of life, and she was handling them okay. She had been able (if we believe her) to travel with her father to a variety of places, and to visit him in his home (did she have a car and drive herself, or did Michael take her each time, or did she take taxis, or go some other way?)

It seems to me that there was no clear reason why she shouldn't be able to go on living on her own, other than her being confined as a result of the murder investigation and legal action (you can't just lock somebody up and keep them confined, even for their own good, without legal process).

Are picture of Ginny as she presents herself, and the realities we have to infer from the fact of her remaining alive and reasonably healthy in the house for many years, consistent?

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LizzieAnn wrote:

Someone else actually entered the house & saw the way Ginny was living and how she acted. I'm sure her demeanor and her reputation came into play as well. She pretty much had managed to avoid contact with the outside world until it came into her home.

Everyman wrote:

But though it wasn't an environment you or I would have wanted to live in, she was taking care of herself for the past thirty years. What changed just because Vivi came and went?

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[LizzieAnn]

The thing is we don't know how well she was capable of taking care of herself in recent years.  I would assume that she would be examined both physically & mentally, and perhaps was found to be in need.  We don't know if she needed social services - just that she refused to have anything to do with "outsiders," with the exception of Michael, who probably provided her with things she needed.  The authorities may have discovered her stash as well as, if I recall correctly, the broken window in her bedroom that had never been fixed.  The house may have been in worse state than we know. 

She didn't visit her father for several years before he died, and he's been dead for quite a while.  Digital watches aren't that new that her having one means that she's gone out recently.  She doesn't have a phone -so even if she had difficulty, she'd be unable to contact anyone.  The authorities probably noticed that as well.  She seems rather frail for 70 years - as she herself remarks on Vivi's abilities.  

She has no family left, so isn't it possible that the state or whatever it is in England takes guardianship of her?  It seemed to me that she hadn't been taking as good a care of herself in recent years as she'd done earlier.  We do know she has money problems - she's been selling off furniture & stuff for an income.  We know she's wearing older clothes (such as Clive's sweater), could it be because she can't afford new ones.  The money she does get seems to go to the barest minimums.

Everyman wrote:

Not sure how that really changes the dynamic. She had been able to feed herself, clothe herself, house herself (not in conditions we would want, perhaps, but in conditions apparently acceptable to her) for many years. She had apparently not needed social services. If she had needed medical help, she had gotten it and recovered. (Did she never have a broken bone, a serious bout of flu, an infection needing antibiotics, a dental cleaning in all those years? How realistic, when we think about it carefully, was her lifestyle as implied in the book? If she had gone to a doctor or dentist at all in those years, and they had thought she needed services, wouldn't they have been legally obligated to report her need to social services?) Certainly she knew about doctors and their services -- she talks about Dr. Moyse treating the refugee children.

Since we know that the lights work, she had obviously been able to pay the electric bill, and whatever other bills she had a needed to pay. She had a digital watch, which must have been a reasonably recent purchase, and she was able to obtain batteries to keep it running.

Food, clothing, shelter -- the essentials of life, and she was handling them okay. She had been able (if we believe her) to travel with her father to a variety of places, and to visit him in his home (did she have a car and drive herself, or did Michael take her each time, or did she take taxis, or go some other way?)

It seems to me that there was no clear reason why she shouldn't be able to go on living on her own, other than her being confined as a result of the murder investigation and legal action (you can't just lock somebody up and keep them confined, even for their own good, without legal process).

Are picture of Ginny as she presents herself, and the realities we have to infer from the fact of her remaining alive and reasonably healthy in the house for many years, consistent?

[bookhunter]

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KxBurns wrote:

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FrankieD wrote:

I think that Ginny is much happier "Today" since she has everything she needs in one place and less responibilities. At home she had much of the house closed off and lived her life in a minimal amount of space, and never bothered with the unused areas...now she had only a single room to deal with...and she had "servants" to do the work...not a bad

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Your comment brings me back to the idea of consequences and whether or not we believe each of the main characters deserved the fate they met. What do you all think?

I'm just wondering because, to me, Clive's fate seems particularly fitting. In life, he neglected his family and went about his research sort of blissfully, and at all but the most crucial times, willfully unaware of them. And in the end he suffered from dementia and truly did lose the ability to know what was going on around him. I actually think this is more sad than just. But do you see any other parallels between each character's failings and their fate?

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Clive may have been lacking in the good husband category, but I think he was protective of Ginny.  He tells Maud not to worry when she cries about Ginny's lack of response at Vivi's fall and not having a "normal family."  He also takes Ginny as his apprentice/assistant and gives her life a focus.  He protects Ginny by killing Maud.  Vivi tells Ginny that Clive was always protective and telling people they could not upset Ginny's equilibrium.  (Given how Ginny reacts when Vivi tells her, he was right!)  

I think he already knew he was having problems with dementia because all the notebooks he gave Ginny had to be prepared in advanced.  Ginny notices his dementia a few months later, but knowing Ginny, she didn't see oncoming symptoms that Clive may have been aware of himself.

To me Clive is not such a bad guy, (except for the whole pushing his wife down the stairs thing!) and it is sad that he ends up dying alone and plagued by demons.  I do think it is ironic that this man who believed our purpose is determined by our biology thinks himself a servant of the devil and plagued by demons.

Ann, bookhunter

Message Edited by bookhunter on 03-17-2008 03:05 PM

[Fozzie]

I guess this is the spot to comment on the book as a whole.

I think there were many positive things about the book, including all the ambiguity.  This style is becoming more prevalent, I think, because I know I have read a couple of books like this in the past couple of years, ones in which I finished the book knowing what I think happened, but not being absolutely sure that was what actually happened.  Personally, I like this type of book.

For the record, I thought Vivien fell from the bell tower and that Clive gave Maude a helping hand of some sort down the stairs, not necessarily a push, but even maybe a suggestion to open a particular door.  I think the police thought that Vivien committed suicide.  Ginny's living situation was not a secret to those living in her town.  Vivien's death, in Ginny's mind, completed her life in that house and she was then wiling to go somewhere else and the social service people took her to a care facility of some sort.

I think the weakness in the book was in the connection of the moth analogy to the story.  It did become clearer toward the end, but I would have liked to have seen better integration of the analogy throughout the book.  Chapter 9 was especially disconnected from the rest of the book.

Ultimately, I enjoyed reading about Ginny and hers is a voice that will remain with me.

[fordmg]

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Thayer wrote:

Am I the only one who felt that the relationship between Ginny and Michael wasn't quite developed enough throughout the book for it to be "the saddest day" of Ginny's life when she had to "leave Michael and the house?" The house, I understand, but I felt there wasn't enough basis for this strong of an emotion for Michael here.   Am anxious to hear your thoughts.  Dawn

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I

[fordmg]

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Thayer wrote:

Am I the only one who felt that the relationship between Ginny and Michael wasn't quite developed enough throughout the book for it to be "the saddest day" of Ginny's life when she had to "leave Michael and the house?" The house, I understand, but I felt there wasn't enough basis for this strong of an emotion for Michael here.   Am anxious to hear your thoughts.  Dawn

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I agree Thayer.  I don't see much of a relationship between Ginny and Michael.  He doesn't come around at all when Vivi is there.  We know he sold off her belongings and brought her food.  There is no character development here.

MG

[fordmg]

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BethD wrote:

I guess I shouldn't say I don't understand the role of the dead baby - Vivi's walking by his grave without any notice was the catalyst that set into motion her murder, but it just didn't feel authentic to me. 

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I wondered if that really was the baby's grave.  She states that the ground never settled.  This doesn't make sense to me.  Maybe it is something else.  That is why Vivi walked past it.

MG

[jmcauliffe]

I totally agree with what you all have said about the ending.  I think it is a perfect fit for the progression we see Ginny go through.    The ending, as it is from Ginny's perspective, was consistent with the earlier descriptions of her living situation.    There were certain things she came to rely on, certain details that others may not have thought would be important.  But in her mental state, it was important for her to focus on the little details, while leaving the reader not knowing where she really is.

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KxBurns wrote:

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CAG wrote:

I think Ginny is in a mental hospital but locked on a ward for the criminally insane. I think we are left wondering if she is tried for murder, maybe she spaced out some events that followed Vivi's death. Anyway, I liked the ending.  For me it fit with the whole novel.

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bookhunter wrote:

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Everyman wrote:
I'm unclear why Ginny was apparently put into a mental ward and not tried for murder. Based on what we've seen, she certainly doesn't seem to me to meet the legal standard of not guilty by reason of insanity.

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Everyman (or someone else), what are prisons like in England?  The description at the beginning of the chapter says there are bars on the window.  She doesn't have a bathroom.  I thought she probably WAS in a prison  (we don't know how much time has passed from Monday until "Today"), but one that has special care for her. 

Ann, bookhunter

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 I agree - I found the ending fitting, and I'm not sure I really need to know where exactly Ginny ended up or whether she was tried for murder. It's enough for me to know that she ended up in sort of an endless now because this is her psychological fate, and I thought the book was more about her psychological journey/experience over this short time period than about the external events. To me, the external events mattered only insofar as they were a cause or result of her mental state.

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