What does a publisher at the world’s biggest publishing house read for pleasure? (And how does she find the time?) Jane von Mehren is the Senior Vice President and Publisher of Trade Paperbacks at the Random House Publishing Group. Every now and then, she’ll be featuring her favorite reads in her Reader’s Circle column, Jane’s Bookshelf—books that she thinks you’ll love, whether you read them solo or with your club! And if you’re on Twitter, you can follower her tweets at @janeatrandom

I’ve been thinking about historical fiction lately. It seems to me that when I was growing up, there were three kinds of historical novels. First were the classics that might have been written contemporaneously to the time they depicted but were historical to a late 20th century reader, whether it was Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE or Sir Walter Scott’s IVANHOE. Then there were the books that explored life in ancient cultures like Mary Renault’s THE KING MUST DIE or Irving Stone’s THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY. And of course, there were portraits of kings and queens of yore in the novels of Jean Plaidy and Margaret George, among others. Today, the classics remain and writers still write these kinds of novels: just this past year saw the publications of THE SONG OF ACHILLES by Madeline Miller, BRING UP THE BODIES by Hilary Mantel, and LIONHEART by Sharon Kay Penman, for example.

We’ve also seen the flowering of a different kind of historical fiction. Books like LOVING FRANK by Nancy Horan, THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain, and THE 19TH WIFE by David Ebershoff start with the story of real women who have extraordinary men in their lives, whether it be Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway, or Brigham Young. And yet in the hands of these storytellers, you don’t feel you are reading lives recreated in fiction, but rather that you are meeting women whose stories enlighten our understanding of these men and their lives. That these stories are based on real people’s lives makes the reading experience that much more vivid, and gives us a deep understanding of the human condition, of love and betrayal.

It’s not just women romantically involved with famous men whose lives have made for great historical novels. Melanie Benjamin created an indelible, fresh portrait of Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s novels, in ALICE I HAVE BEEN. Her latest novel THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MRS. TOM THUMB brings to life Lavinia Warren Bump, who became a worldwide celebrity after marrying General Tom Thumb. Benjamin portrays 19th century America so vividly I often felt I was reading a painting. Sometimes I think that this new era of historical fiction began with two novels that married imaginary characters and real people: GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE by Susan Vreeland and GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier. Both have Vermeer as the historical figure at their centers; one created the lives touched by an invented painting while the other imagined the life of his servant. I love both—I tried and failed to acquire Tracy Chevalier, but was lucky enough to become first Susan Vreeland’s paperback editor and now work with her from the start of every book.

I’ve found the way novelists intertwine what actually happened with their own fictional worlds adds nuance to a book club discussion. I’ve always loved history and fiction—so historical fiction is perfect for me. I’d love to hear about some of your favorites, I know I’ll want to add them to my T.B.R. pile! Let me know what they are in the comments section below or on Twitter at @JaneatRandom.

A captivating novel of rich spectacle and royal scandal, Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow spans fifteen years in the fateful reign of Marie Antoinette, France’s most legendary and notorious queen.

Paris, 1774. At the tender age of eighteen, Marie Antoinette ascends to the French throne alongside her husband, Louis XVI. But behind the extravagance of the young queen’s elaborate silk gowns and dizzyingly high coiffures, she harbors deeper fears for her future and that of the Bourbon dynasty.

From the early growing pains of marriage to the joy of conceiving a child, from her passion for Swedish military attaché Axel von Fersen to the devastating Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Marie Antoinette tries to rise above the gossip and rivalries that encircle her. But as revolution blossoms in America, a much larger threat looms beyond the gilded gates of Versailles—one that could sweep away the French monarchy forever.

My father-in-law was a pilot. During World War II, he was shot down in a B-17 over Belgium. With the help of the French Resistance, he made his way through Occupied France and back to his base in England. Ordinary citizens hid him in their homes, fed him, disguised him, and sheltered him from the Germans. Many families willingly hid Allied aviators, knowing the risks: They would have been shot or sent to a concentration camp if they were dis- covered by the Germans.

In 1987 the town in Belgium honored the crew by erecting a memorial at the crash site, where one of the ten crew members died. The surviving crew was invited for three days of festivities, including a flyover by the Belgian Air Force. More than three thousand Allied airmen were rescued during the war, and an extraordinarily deep bond between them and their European helpers endures even now.

My father-in-law, Barney Rawlings, spent a couple of months hiding out in France in 1944, frantically memorizing a few French words to pass himself off as a Frenchman, but his ordeal had not inspired in me any fiction until I started taking a French class. Suddenly, the language was transporting me back in time and across the ocean, as I tried to imagine a tall, out-of-place American struggling to say Bonjour. Barney had a vague memory of a girl who had escorted him in Paris in 1944. He remembered that her signal was something blue—a scarf, maybe, or a beret. The notion of a girl in a blue beret seized me, and I was off.
I had my title, but I didn’t know what my story would be. I had to go to France to imagine the country in wartime. What would I have done in such circumstances of fear, deprivation, and uncertainty? What if my pilot character returns decades later to search for the people who had helped him escape?

Writing a novel about World War II and the French Resistance was a challenge both sobering and thrilling. I read many riveting escape-and-evade accounts of airmen and of the Resistance networks organized to hide them and then send them on grueling treks across the Pyrenees to safety. But it was the people I met in France and Belgium who made the period come alive for me. They had lived it.

In Belgium, I was entertained lavishly by the people who had honored the B-17 crew with the memorial, including by some of the locals who had witnessed the crash landing. I was overwhelmed by their generosity. They welcomed me with an extravagant three- cheek kiss, but one ninety-year-old man, Fernand Fontesse, who had been in the Resistance and had been a POW, planted his kiss squarely on my lips.

In a small town north of Paris I met Jean Hallade. He had been only fifteen when Second Lieutenant Rawlings was hidden in a nearby house. Jean took a picture of Barney in a French beret, a photo to be used for the fake ID card he would need as he traveled through France over the next few months, disguised as a French cabinetmaker.

And in Paris I became friends with lovely, indomitable Michèle Agniel, who had been a girl guide in the Resistance. Her family aided fifty Allied aviators, including Barney Rawlings. She takes her scrapbooks from the war years to schools to show children what once happened. “This happened here,” she says. “Here is a ration card. This is a swastika.” She pauses. “Never again,” she says. The characters in The Girl in the Blue Beret are not portraits of actual people, but the situations were inspired by very real individuals whom I regard as heroes.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. Discuss the special bond between Allied aviators and their European helpers. Why did it take so long for many of them to reunite after the war?

2. What does flying mean to Marshall? Discuss Marshall’s failed B-17 mission and the effect it had on his life.

3. Re-read and discuss the images of flight throughout the novel. How does the final sentence tie in with these?

4. What is Marshall’s feeling about the young man he remembers as Robert? Does Marshall romanticize him? Why is finding Robert so important to Marshall?

5. Love and war. There are two main love stories in this novel—the younger couple, Annette and Robert, and the mature couple, Annette and Marshall. How are these relationships different from each other? What does war do to love and romance?

6. Why is Marshall so unprepared for what Annette reveals to him? How does he deal with her story? What possibilities lie ahead for him?

7. The name Annette Vallon is inspired by a historical figure, a woman who was William Wordsworth’s lover during the French Revolution and the mother of his illegitimate child. What suggestions are being made by the use of the name here? What else can you learn about Annette Vallon from further research?

8. What do you make of the epigraph by William Words- worth? Is it appropriate? How does it connect with the use of Annette Vallon’s name?

9. What do mountains mean to Marshall? Trace the importance of mountains at different stages of his life.

10. How does Marshall look back on his war experience? How does his perspective change during the course of the novel?

11. How do the experiences in the book compare with your own experiences of war? Have you ever known anyone captured during wartime?

12. What is meant by second chances in the context of this book?

13. How do you interpret the ending? Review the emotional developments that lead up to the last lines, especially Marshall’s thinking as he falls to sleep the night before. Based on your understanding of the characters and their situation, what do you imagine they are likely to do next? How does the aviation term, “gaining altitude,” apply here?

London, 1760. For Jamie Fraser, paroled prisoner-of-war, life is coming apart at the seams. In the remote Lake District, where he’s close enough to the son he cannot claim as his own, Jamie’s quiet existence is interrupted first by dreams of his lost wife, then by the appearance of an erstwhile comrade still fighting to rally the Irish. But Jamie has sworn off politics, fighting, and war. Until Lord John Grey shows up with a summons that will take him away from everything he loves—again. Lord John is in possession of explosive documents that expose a damning case of corruption against a British officer. But they also hint at a more insidious danger. Soon Lord John and Jamie are unwilling companions on the road to Ireland, a country whose dark castles hold dreadful secrets, and whose bogs hide the bones of the dead.

Anna Quindlen:

Diane Keaton: It kind of goes back to the idea of collage. I had mountains of correspondence, my mother’s endless journals, my father’s few letters, scrapbooks, photo albums, and my own half-baked journals. I didn’t really have an approach. I just randomly started reading one of Mother’s journals. After I finished it, I found one of my own I had written the same year. So I read that too. Then I started editing Mom down, then me, and after that I began to write in response to both of us. I began to compare and contrast our lives. It helped. The book became a kind of editorial process
I felt comfortable with. Of course, the result was a mess, but I sent it to my editor, David Ebershoff, anyway. He would encourage me and always say, “Diane, remember, writing is rewriting.” I took his advice. Rewriting was like memorizing a script; I just kept going over it, and over it and over it again. It was like the old Repetition Game I learned when I was studying acting with Sandy Meisner—you keep repeating until something new comes. Part of the Repetition Game requires spontaneous response to your partner’s behavior. It was easy to respond to my mother. She was the most important person in my life.

AQ: Were you astonished when you realized how much writing your mother had done on her own without any thought of publication or pay?

DK: I think about it all the time. I think, “What would it be like if I had read the journals before she was gone, before I started to write Then Again?” I miss her. Now that I know so much more about her intimate experiences and longings, it breaks my heart.

AQ: Did it make you sad that she had this obviously enormous facility and yet she didn’t get to use it out in the world?

DK: Oh, totally, and it made me feel guilty too, because I had an opportunity to help her, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t. I was, let’s just say, consumed with my own career choices and worries and romances.

AQ: I’d like to talk a little bit about the differences and the expectations for women in their lives when your mother was a girl, as opposed to those today for Dexter, your daughter.

DK: I was thinking about your mother, Prudence, in Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake. Our mothers were very different. Dorothy grew up near Hollywood. It had an effect on her fantasies and expectations. But she kept it a secret. She didn’t talk about her dreams. As a mother she encouraged us to realize ours. Being the oldest of four, I was most susceptible. And Mom did nothing but support me every step of the way.

AQ: So, do all of us feel as though somehow we’re living out our mother’s dreams?

DK: I do.

AQ: I don’t think my mother had those kind of dreams exactly, but I do feel as though I’m paying forward for the life that she couldn’t have, the college education she couldn’t have, the work she couldn’t have, and that I got. But, what’s really powerful here is over the years, and with all my work, I’ve always felt like one of the greatest gifts of writing is that you can bring the beloved dead back to life. And I felt like your mother was so completely alive and present in this book, and I wonder if that was a kind of a solace to you, that Dorothy Hall is alive on those pages?

DK: Almost. Not really. I wish she could have experienced it. But then I worry if she might have felt betrayed. She was a complicated woman who wasn’t encouraged to be independent. I worry about the choices I made on her behalf. She revealed so much to her silent audience. Would she have written it down if she knew it would be read? We all try to protect ourselves. We all try to hide our darker side. I know I do. Would I have liked it if my mother wrote about the more ugly aspects of my life? My mother endured a lot of pain. I included some of it in the book. So, is there solace? I don’t know. One thing, though: I think she would have been proud of how well she wrote.
In her fifties she looked back and wrote about her youth in such a heartbreaking way. She wasn’t allowed to wear lip- stick or go to dances. She was taught to follow the restrictions of the Methodist Church. She ruminated on the blood of Christ, and the sacrifice, but what she really wanted was to go to the movies, and have fun, and just be a girl. I think she would have liked to know her thoughts on being a girl in the 1930s were given an audience.

AQ: How did your siblings respond to the book?

DK: They’ve gotten used to the fact that I’m the performer in the family. I don’t think it’s been easy for them, but they love me, and I love them very much. My brother, Randy, could care less. He’s living in another kind of world—his own world. He has no competitive feelings or a sense of loss over the fact that in my family I got, well, an inordinate amount of attention.

AQ: What about your kids? Did they read it?

DK: They don’t really have any interest. Which, by the way, I think is perfectly normal. I wouldn’t expect them to.

AQ: How old are they now?

DK: Duke is eleven, and Dexter is sixteen. Dexter is a very different kind of person than I am.

AQ: Do you like that about her, that she’s different from you?

DK: It’s one of the great things in my life. My siblings and I share many similarities. We’re too sensitive, too easily hurt, and insecure. This is not true of Dexter. She’s nothing at all like me, which is a kind of a blessing. The choice to adopt Dexter was the best decision in my life. It opened up new possibilities with regards to love.

AQ: I wrote a novel published several years ago called Every Last One, which is largely about motherhood, and I dedicated it to my three children and said, “To my children, who saved my life.” And a lot of people said to me, “What did you mean by that?” and I was astonished that they didn’t understand. And then I get to this sentence in your book, “They’ve saved me and I know what from: myself.” And I thought, “Well, here’s a kindred spirit.”

DK: Don’t you think most people feel that way?

AQ: Well, I hope so.

DK: Your audience does. Of which I am part—your audi- ence. Your memoir, Lots of Candles, is a very moving teaching experience. One of the things that really stood out to me was your chapter on girlfriends. It made me reflect and also worry about how little time I have for nurturing friendships. I’m so busy. It’s odd to be this busy at an age when I’m supposed to be toning things down. The value of friendship is immeasurable. I really have to try to make more of an effort.

AQ: I didn’t have time for my girlfriends when I was in my thirties because of Quin, Chris, and Maria, but now that they’re in their twenties and working and dropping in whenever, I have much more time for my girlfriends.

DK: So much of Lots of Candles was inspirational, and thought-provoking too. I loved the Henry James quote. “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”

AQ: Isn’t that amazing, because you wouldn’t think that Henry James was the guy who would figure out that that was the point of life. One of the things I found when writing this book was that I kept surprising myself. I kept learning things about myself and my life that hadn’t occurred to me, really, until that moment, and I kept wondering whether you felt the same way about Then Again. Whether there was an element of discovering yourself as you were writing this down.

DK: Oh, yes, because it forced me to think about the choices I made. You talk about self-discovery in your book. But you also focus on the great privilege women were given from the feminist movement. You talk about the choices we were given. I had all but forgotten. I took them for granted. In any event, I did discover things about myself in the process of having made the choice to write a memoir. Writing gave me the feeling that time lingered. I let myself slow down and rework what I wanted to say instead of being impulsive like I am in “real” life—whatever that means.

AQ: Did you find it pleasurable?

DK: I did. Like I said before, I like working, in this case writing. I like expression in any form, but writing is different. It’s almost like you let your mind wander, drift, and sometimes take you to new places. It’s quietly riveting.

AQ: In the book Sandy Meisner, the acting teacher, says to you, “Someday you’re going to be a good actress.” Do you feel like a good actress now?

DK: I think the life lessons Sandy gave me are more important than my acting skills. He kept saying, “When you get older, you’re going to know more, you’re going to feel more, you’re going to understand life more.” I remember listening to him and thinking, “What the heck is he talking about?”
Now that I’m the age he was, I understand. But I also understand it’s not something audiences are drawn to. The beauty of youth is powerful, but so is youthful talent. The newness of it is incomparable.  Anyway, I don’t know if I’m a better actress. But I do know that the things Sandy Meisner taught me are substantial. He taught me to listen. He taught me that listening is a way of enlarging your life. My mom was an active listener. She was a brilliant listener. She was not judgmental, and she never gave advice. On the one hand I could have used more advice, but on the other she encouraged me to find my own way. Now it’s my turn to listen.

AQ: Are you good at that? Do you look at yourself and say, “I’m a good mother”?

DK: The jury is out. I don’t know. I hope I am. I surely love them. But I’ll tell you something, I don’t like it when I hear parents say they’re doing the best they can. What does that mean? To me it means they’re not questioning what they need to examine. I don’t know what “best” is, but I do know—here we go back to the same old thing, bear with me, Anna—anyway, I do know listening without judgment is in- valuable. I feel good about finally taking that lesson from my mother and Sandy. I really believe Dexter and Duke have to learn to think for themselves.

AQ: Do you feel like you’re trying to channel your own mother?

DK: No, not really. But I do think she was a great mother. I do.

AQ: There’s a great gift to having had a good mother, and I say that not just as woman who did, but as a woman who has many friends who didn’t. And you see a clear difference in how they think about themselves and how their mothering is affected by it.
I want to go into a little cul-de-sac here. Have you heard anything from your former lovers about the book?

DK: Not one thing. I don’t think they’ve read the book. Why would they? It’s a mother-daughter story. And anyway, like me, they are late-age parents. I know they’re caught up with their kids and their lives. We were together such a long time ago. I really loved my experiences with them, but I have to say, I wasn’t marriage material. You talk about marriage in your book, how marriage is about the two of you. I never thought about a lifelong partnership, or how to manage the reality of such a commitment. I was enthralled by the romance, but it didn’t bring out the best in me. And anyway I was at the height of my so-called fame. Fame didn’t bring out the best in me either.
I was in my early teens when I began to sense that some- thing was going on quietly between my mother and father. That scared me. Mother’s world was us kids. When Dad came home after work, the atmosphere changed, and it wasn’t for the better. As much as I think Mom was in love with Dad for the forty-some years of their marriage, and even more after he died, I knew their relationship was fragile. I knew men and women were very different, and I knew Mom got the short end of the stick.

AQ: There’s one point in the book where you talk about how—I laughed out loud—how Blythe Danner and Jill Clay- burgh would get the parts you wanted because they weren’t, in your words, “too nutty.”

DK: I always heard that they liked me, but I was too nutty.

AQ: I wondered, because you were so young when all this was happening, did you ever think about or try to massage your personality into some more universally acceptable shape, or was that just a complete no-go?

DK: It was a complete no-go. I didn’t know how to trans- form myself into someone else, and I didn’t want to either.

AQ: You do seem very specific.

DK: Yes, I’m sorry to say.

AQ: No, why are you sorry to say? And you mentioned earlier that people may be more interested in younger actresses, but you made one of the most widely seen, most popular movies about what it’s like to be a mature human being, Something’s Gotta Give.

DK: Well, that was because of Nancy Meyers, the writer and director. Through various periods of my life she saved my career. The studio didn’t want me for Baby Boom because I’d appeared in a series of unsuccessful movies, yet somehow Nancy and her husband, Charles Shyer, managed to cast me anyway. When Disney didn’t want me after the fiasco of The Little Drummer Girl, they both insisted I play Steve Martin’s wife in the Father of the Bride series. More time passed, I was in my mid-fifties. I was no longer a movie actress, at least not a viable one, when Nancy saved me one last time with Something’s Gotta Give.
I remember sitting across from her, swear to God, when she said, “I’m going to go to Jack Nicholson.” I thought she was out of her mind, because I knew Jack Nicholson was never going to act in a chick flick. Cut to . . . The point is, when Nancy makes up her mind, there’s no stopping her.

AQ: It’s a movie about people who are grown-ups, and that’s not something we see in the movies very often.

DK: No, not in that romantic-comic way.

AQ: Are there other people that you feel that way about, as though they saved your life?

DK: Well, Woody. I mean, clearly Woody. He gave me my acting life. He’s the reason for everything and always will be.

AQ: And it also sounds like he was personally good to you.

DK: Oh, I love him. The thing about Woody is he’s almost impossible to get to know. After I was cast in Play It Again, Sam, I was around him every day for nine months. If he walked out of rehearsals I was there. If he went to lunch I was there. I was unavoidable. The truth is, in my own way . . .I pursued him. After the play opened I had another good nine months of being in his face. Finally he succumbed. Who would have ever thought that one audition for a play would lead to Annie Hall? Luck, pure luck.

AQ: I rewatched Annie Hall about three months ago.

DK: How does it hold up? I haven’t seen it in a while.

AQ: Oh, it holds up so well.

DK: Still?

AQ: Astonishing how well it holds up. Really, I have to stop using that word in this conversation, but it really holds up well. But one of the things that struck me when I was reading the book is there’s a specific way that she speaks in the world. It’s a kind of—I think of it as kind of a stutter-stop. Two words forward, one word back, a silence, a bobbed head, you know? And in some ways you describe the trajectory of your career that way, a couple of good movies, and then a drought, and then a couple of good movies, and then a bad movie, and then a drought.
So there’s this stutter-stop quality, and the scariest thing for anybody who’s watched you on-screen and been taken by your talent is the moment in the book where you say, “Well, you know, this isn’t going very well. Maybe I’ll just make a career out of buying houses, fixing them up, and flipping them.” To which any audience member wants to say, “Are you insane?”

DK: I remember Warren used to always say, “You wanted to be a movie star. Now that you’re a movie star, what are you going to do about it?” But I’d be off onto yet another project that consumed me, like making a photography book on hotel lobbies, or planning an exhibition on religious paintings I’d commissioned from a sign painter in Kansas. (Don’t ask.) I didn’t listen to Warren. This is where I do have to say that my mother’s influence came in. I wanted to try a lot of things, real estate definitely being one of them. I’m building my first house from the ground up. It’s going to be an interesting project. My father—who, by the way, did quite well in real estate—I remember holding his hand and going to see $15,000 model homes in Santa Ana, California, back in 1955. These were my fondest memories of him.

AQ: Do you cook?

DK: No, I don’t cook. But from your book, I know you do.

AQ: I do cook. I think the thing with the cooking and the domesticity and everything, it all goes back to what we were discussing before. To some extent I’m channeling my mother. My mother was a good cook, she was kind of house-proud, and I think that one of the ways we keep them alive is by trying to channel them.

DK: I believe that.

AQ: Were you surprised by the reception of the book? It got
universally glowing reviews. I have to tell you that my best friend is Janet Maslin of The New York Times, who put it on her ten best books of the year list.

DK: Really?! I wanted to write to her. I wanted to thank her, but I knew that that’s not proper protocol. You’re best friends? I just can’t get over that.

AQ: She loved it. We tend to like a lot of the same books. But this is a first book. Were you sort of gobsmacked by how in love with it people were?

DK: I had the same response I have for everything I do: I was terrified. I didn’t know what to expect. I remember reading Janet’s review, and actually I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. I think you put it best, gobsmacked. I owe it all to Mom. She was the sounding board for everything. And she held up her end of the deal, and she wrote it with me.

AQ: I have to say, as insightful as she is throughout, for me in some ways the most poignant entries that she makes are the ones near the end where she’s having so much difficulty. I found that enormously touching. That last journal must be difficult for you to look at.

DK: She kept at the cutting and pasting too, but the images became cuddly cut-out photographs of things like kittens playing with pink balls of yarn. That really tore me up. Kittens? That’s what it came to? Kittens. In Lots of Candles, you talk about being nineteen when your mother died of cancer. You talk about your response. It centered on how vibrant the gift of life became after you lost her. That I worry about.

AQ: Worry about how?

DK: Leaving my kids too early.

AQ: Sometimes I say to my kids, it’s like the end of E.T. when E.T. puts his finger out and touches Elliott’s forehead and says, “I’ll be right here.” That’s what I think happens with a good and present mother, even if she has to leave a little sooner than she ought—that she’s right there.

DK: That’s something to hold on to. I also loved what your mother said to you about your writing, how her death was going to improve your writing, and it did.

AQ: How do you want your daughter’s life to be different from your life? Do you want her to have different first principles than you had or a different sense of herself in the world?

DK: Yes, because for me it was just too much about wanting to be adored. I was single-minded in my pursuit of applause.

AQ: Was it too much about men?

DK: I was afraid of men. I like the fact that Dexter is openly flirtatious, as opposed my penchant for secretly waiting for someone to choose me. There’s that word again. Choose. Choice. With men I was a pleaser, but not really, not after I got to know them. I had my own agenda. My career came first. With that choice, I cut out opportunities to compromise and understand what real relationships are. I wouldn’t want that for Dexter.

AQ: And what about for your son, Duke? I think one of the great challenges of my life has been raising egalitarian men.

DK: How did you do it?

AQ: I don’t know, day by day, comment by comment, refusal
to play sometimes. It’s hard.

DK: Duke is, I would say, an exciting eleven. He’s still such a kid and he still loves me so much. I never imagined having a son would be such a love-fest. He loves me but he can also get very angry with me at the same time. Never for a second do I question his love. Every morning he loves me. Every evening he loves me. Every night he tells me he loves me. I’ve never had an experience like Duke’s love.

AQ: I remember at a certain point looking at my two sons and thinking, “Hello, Dr. Freud.” I have three children, and the only one who’s ever told me that she hated me was my daughter. And when she did, her two brothers went nuts, be- cause to them it’s unthinkable to say that you hate me, be- cause, as I like to say sometimes, “If they could they would carry me around on a litter.” My sons are twenty-eight and twenty-six now, and that’s still true. It’s very different from the relationship you have with a daughter, I think, the relationship you have with a son.

DK: Oh, yes. There’s a lot of heaven in there.

AQ: Is there going to be another book?

DK: I don’t know. But I’m going to continue to write in my journals and enjoy watching my kids. I’m documenting everything as usual. I don’t want any details to disappear. The details really make it all come to life for me. Or rather, almost. You’re a genius with details. Your details are not exclusive. They are universal.

AQ: Any new movies coming?

DK: I have a couple. One was directed by Larry Kasdan. It’s called Darling Companion. Can you guess what it’s about? That’s right, a dog. The other, The Wedding, is with Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Topher Grace, Amanda Seyfried, and Ben Barnes. All family stories. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know if I’m interested any- more.

AQ: Because it doesn’t interest you so much anymore, or be- cause Hollywood is uninterested?

DK: I love movies, but they need to combine every aspect of filmmaking in order to be really engaging. Who likes a mediocre film? I don’t want to watch if it’s just “Cut to your line, cut to mine.” There’s nothing unique or exciting or alive about the ordinary. I want to be part of something off-the- charts. I want to play something crazy, or crazy-funny, but that’s hard to find for a person like me—I don’t want to just be kind of okay. But who does?

AQ: Is that something that you found really satisfying about the book, that even though you worked very closely with your editor, at some level a book is not collaborative? It really is about your work.

DK: It’s personal and, yes, I do think that ultimately in some way it’s more satisfying. But as always, it was a collaboration. David Ebershoff guided me. Bill Clegg, my agent, helped as well. Mom co-wrote it, and many other voices contributed. I need other people. I’m not a lone wolf. I’ve tried to direct, but there too I needed to learn more. I needed more guidance. I wish I could have done better, because I really love the visual medium.

AQ: You’re good at it in the book. The word pictures are so powerful. When you were talking about making your own clothes and things, oh, that so took me back to those Simplicity patterns and that certain sort of way we wanted to look and be and—

DK: Oh, heartbreaking.

AQ: You wanted to wear a bowler hat to your high school
graduation. And didn’t your mother say—

DK: “Save it for later.”

AQ: “Save it for later,” and boy did you.

DK: There was no stopping me. I knew I had landed on something.
This is a condensed version of a conversation that took place on February 13, 2012.

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From the moment of her ascension to the throne in 1952 at the age of twenty-five, Queen Elizabeth II has been the object of unparalleled scrutiny. But through the fog of glamour and gossip, how well do we really know the world’s most famous monarch? Drawing on numerous interviews and never-before-revealed documents, acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith pulls back the curtain to show in intimate detail the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II, who has led her country and Commonwealth through the wars and upheavals of the last sixty years with unparalleled composure, intelligence, and grace.

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Deborah Moggach is the author of sixteen successful novels including most recently

I’ve written many novels but this one started somewhat differently. Usually my books are triggered by some conversation, by a painting, by the sight of somebody in the street. This one originated in a big, almost political idea: Who’s going to care for us when we get older? We all know that the developed world has an ageing population and there’s not enough money to pay for us all – we’re living too damn long and we’re going to bankrupt our economy. Mulling this over, I had an idea: We outsource everything else, so why not outsource the elderly? India struck me as the perfect place. It’s warm – very good for arthritic bones; it’s cheap; English is widely spoken; old people are treated with respect there and are part of society, not shunted off into care homes; flights are now very affordable and families are so globalized that grandchildren are just as likely to visit us in India as anywhere else – more so, in fact, as India is so exotic and interesting. Really, what’s not to like?

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Discussion Questions for LOTS OF CANDLES, PLENTY OF CAKE

1. In the opening lines of the book, Anna Quindlen says about the arc of her life: “First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone, and became her.” Looking back over your own life, do you identify with Quindlen’s experience? Do you think you’ve “invented” yourself as you’ve grown older, or become who you always were? And how would you differentiate between the two?

2. Anna Quindlen loves everything about books—from the musty smell of old bookstores, to the excuse reading provides to be alone. Books, she writes, “make us feel as though we’re connected, as though the thoughts and feelings we believe are singular and sometimes nutty are shared by others, that we are all more alike than different.” What do you most love about books? Be specific: Is it the entertainment, the escape, the sense of connection? Something else entirely?

3. Anna writes hilariously about the small white lies—the cost of a kitchen renovation, for example—that can keep a marriage healthy. Do you agree? If so, fess up: Which of your innocent fibs do you think has spared your relationship the most grief?

4. Anna tells her children that “the single most important decision they will make…[is] who they will marry.” Do you agree? Why or why not?

5. Anna calls girlfriends “the joists that hold up the house of our existence,” and believes that they become more and more important to us as we grow older. Have you found this to be true? If so, why do you think that’s the case? What do you think close girlfriends offer that a spouse cannot?

6. The difference between male friendships and female friendships, Anna writes, is that “all male phone conversations were designed to make plans,” while phone calls between girlfriends “were intended to deconstruct the world.” What other differences between male and female friendships does Anna illuminate in the chapter “Girlfriends”? What other differences and/or similarities do you think exist between male friendships and female friendships?

7. In the chapter “Older”, Anna writes: “Perhaps if we think of life as a job, most of us finally feel that after fifty we’ve gotten good at it.” Do you think you’ve gotten good at life? What aspects do you think you could improve? And better yet, which have you nailed?

8. “One of the amazing, and frightening things about growing older,” Anna writes, is that you become aware of “how many times it could have gone a different way, the mistakes that you averted, not because you were wise, perhaps, but because you were lucky.” Can you think of an example in your own life, of when you might have gone another way? How might things have been different? Are you grateful you ended up on the path you’re on?

9. Anna writes about our attitude toward aging and our looks: “Women were once permitted a mourning period for their youthful faces; it was called middle age. Now we don’t even have that. Instead we have the science of embalming disguised as grooming.” How does she think that our society’s love of youth, and youthful looks, affect the way women lead their lives? Do you agree?

10.  At her age, Anna writes, she’s stopped trying to figure out why she does what she does. “I fear heights, love liver and onions, prefer big dogs over small ones, work best between the hours of ten and two. Who knows why? Who cares?” What are some of the quirks you’ve stopped fighting, the eccentricities you’ve come to embrace in yourself? In your friends, your family?

11.  “Those little stories we tell ourselves,” Anna writes, “make us what we are, and, too often, what we’re not. … I can’t cook. I’m not smart. I’m a bad driver. I’m no jock.” Anna recounts her own story of overcoming one of these “little stories,” and doing something she once thought impossible: a headstand. Do you have “little stories you tell yourself” about who you are, and what you can do? Are there times when you, or a friend or family member, have overcome one of these “mythic” obstacles and done something you thought impossible?

12.  Anna calls her body a “personality-delivery system.” She doesn’t require a “hood ornament”—what she really needs “are four tires and an engine.” Do you find this notion comforting? Or do you feel appearance is more important than that? Discuss.

13.  Anna draws some meaningful distinctions between parenting young children and parenting young adults. As she puts it, “It is one thing to tell a ten-year-old she cannot watch an R-rated movie; it is another to watch her, at age 30, preparing to marry a man you are not convinced will make her happy.” What do you think are some of the biggest challenges in parenting young and older children? Some of the greatest joys? What has parenting taught you about yourself?

14.  The “alchemy of parenthood” is watching “so much scut work”—dinners, sports, school, doctors’ offices—manifest itself in “unique and remarkable human beings.” Why do you think it’s so difficult to see the end product on the horizon—the “Sistine Chapel,” as Anna writes—during the day-to-day routines? Or, do you think there are moments within the daily routines when parents can catch glimpses of the larger thing they are helping to build?

15.  In the beginning of Part I, Anna’s daughter asks her what message she would give to her 22-year-old self. Anna has two answers: first, that her younger self should “stop listening to anyone who wanted to smack her down,” and second, that the bad news was that “she knew nothing, really, about anything that mattered. Nothing at all.” Did this advice ring true to you, too? If you were to give a message to your younger self, what would you say?

Dawn Tripp on Game of Secrets

My novels  start  in pieces—on the  page  for months—fragments of character, story, scene. I write longhand, in notebooks  or on scraps of paper, the backs of receipts, the leftover white space of a grocery list—which I then  transcribe into  my  laptop.  Some  of those  first thoughts are imagined, some are stripped from  real life. But out of those pieces of raw material, I begin to map a story. I don’t polish up my early drafts. I leave some passages entirely without punctuation. I leave things untidy, open to change. That  openness, I feel, is criti- cal. I find  that  when  I can let myself stay open  to possibilities in a story  that  I may not  yet have uncovered, when  I can let myself be driven by what I do not yet know, the story often turns,  deepens, in un- expected, revelatory ways.

Game of Secrets started with four primary fragments—the real-life story of a skull that surfaced out of gravel fill with a bullet hole in the temple, and three images: a fourteen-year-old boy driving fast down an unfinished highway; two lovers meeting in an old cranberry barn; and two women playing Scrabble. I did not know their names. I did not know the details specific to their lives, but I could feel the under- currents of tension between them.

The image of the Scrabble game hit me especially hard. Not just because the unfolding of the mystery in the novel mirrors the play- ing of a Scrabble  game:  clue after  clue is revealed,  the  story  comes together  piece by piece like a puzzle, as in Scrabble, disparate letters are arranged into words, which in turn are arranged into a larger co- gent  grid.  That image  hit  me  hard  because  I  have  always  loved Scrabble. I grew up playing with my grandmother. She taught  me cards  as well—pitch, gin,  poker,  bridge.  But it was Scrabble  that  I loved. I remember the thrill I felt when I was old enough to keep my own letters,  to have my own rack. We  would play with my father after lunch and, after a game or two, my father would drift off to something else. “You want  to  play again,  Nana?”  I’d ask. And my grandmother would  nod,  light  another cigarette, and start  flipping over the tiles. We would play game after game. Until it was time for her to fix supper. Then  we’d eat, clear the table, wash the dishes, I would dry them for her, then I’d ask to play again.

The idea  for  Game  of Secrets came  to  me  years  after  she  was gone.  The story  has nothing to do with her  life; the  women  in the story are not modeled after her, but the sense of my time with her— generational,  intimate,  lost—is strung  all through  it. As I wrote, I remembered  those long childhood hours: the stillness of the house, the light tick-tack as she lay down her tiles, the smell of her cigarette balanced   on  the  ashtray,   just  resting   there   untended,  dwindling down.

And I remembered, too, things she had taught me over the years as we played. She played Scrabble for the words, as many women in her generation  did. I always played for the numbers.  How we play that game can reveal so much about how we tick, how we live, who we are. In Scrabble,  some play to keep the board  open,  some play to shut it down. Some play with an eye to the sum of the total scores of all players;  some  play,  simply,  to  maximize  their  own  score.  Most players will look at the board  and see the words that  fill it. But a really good player, a canny player—and she was one of those—will also see opportunity in the skinny spaces still left open  in between.

As I wrote the scenes for Game of Secrets, the game for me became the  perfect  lens  for  a story  about  two  women  and  their  families bound  together  and divided by unspeakable secrets—a brutal past, a murder, a love story. Because what are words if not a bridge—in a game of Scrabble  or in a novel? Between  one person  and another. Thought and reality. Past and present,  present  and future.  Words bridge  silence. Words, and the stories  they comprise, bridge  time.

Questions and Topics for Discussion:

1. Discuss the role of love in Game of Secrets, particularly the role it plays in the  lives of the  three  women.  How  does love relate  to the other themes in the  novel,  such  as longing, absence,  violence,  and memory?

2. Consider the  differences among  the  three  women  in the  novel, and how these  qualities  affect their  interactions and the  courses  of their  individual  lives. How  does the  friendship  between  Ada and Jane impact Marne’s relationship with her mother? In what ways are Jane and Marne similar and in what ways are they different? What do the  women  learn  about  themselves through one  another? Does this reflect  dynamics  in the female relationships in your own life?

3. What are the  secrets  that  are kept  in the  novel,  and  who  keeps them?  What are the  secrets  that  are told,  and how does the  telling impact the story? Are there mysteries that still remain at the novel’s end? If so, what are they and why do you think the author left them unresolved?

4. Discuss the role of silence in the novel. How do Jane and Ada, as well as the  other characters, use—or  refuse—language in order  to build their  lives and their  relationships  with others?  Are there  silences in your family and in your friendships that are necessary to keep? What do those  silences represent? Discuss.

5. Luce, and the mystery surrounding  his death, plays a pivotal role in the story, yet he is little more than a ghost.  How  does the absence of this man—rather than  his presence—drive  the  story? How  do other forms  of loss function in the  novel?  Do  you believe  that  ab- sence can propel us as much as or more than presence? Discuss.

6. The  bridge that  joins the small town of Westport to the world outside  is a significant metaphor in Game of Secrets. To Jane and Ada, the bridge  and the new highway  also mark a distinct  separation be- tween  the past and the present. Discuss.  In what sense does the past keep these characters together  and in what sense does it break them apart?

7. Game of Secrets is a “mosaic”  narrative, in that  it is told  from  the perspective of several  different characters. It  also moves  back  and forth in time. Why do you think Tripp chose to tell the story this way? What do we learn that we might not know otherwise?

8. One  central  motif in the novel is the Scrabble  game that  Ada and Jane play every Friday.  Why  do you think  Tripp chose this particu- lar game? Discuss the ways the structure  of the narrative echoes the game that Jane and Ada play.

9. Ada and Jane have very different  styles of play. What  do these styles reveal about  how each woman  has chosen  to live her  life? Is your style of play more  closely aligned with Jane’s  or with Ada’s? What do you think  this says about  you, if anything? Tripp has said that  Scrabble was an important game in her family while she was growing up. Are there  games that have been essential in your life, and in the life of your family?

10. Marne’s hatred for Huck is overt and palpable in the novel’s early stages. Discuss what Huck  represents to Marne. Are there  common- alities between them as well as differences that breed Marne’s loathing? How do her feelings for him change over the course of the novel?  Why?  How  did  your understanding of Huck  evolve  in the course of the novel?

11. Both Jane and Marne have a particular, almost secretive relation- ship with books in Game of Secrets. Jane writes in the margins of her books of poetry, conversing in a way she doesn’t  seem to do in life, while Marne excises passages from  books,  a habit  that  then  evolves into  her work with origami. What do Marne’s origami  birds  repre- sent to you? How do the birds inform  her character, her life, and her relationships?

12. At the end of the novel, several essential secrets are revealed.  Do these revelations change the way you understand Jane and the story? Looking back over the  novel, do you now see clues you didn’t  pick up on the first reading?

13.  At one  point,  toward  the  end  of the  game,  Jane  says to  Ada: “Love  is only this: A tiny nothing, a slip of the  tongue, a glance.  A world can be built on a glance.”  Do you agree? Discuss.