The Taste of Salt
Page 18
7. The characters in the Henderson family have wildly varying reactions to the culture and tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous. What do you think of their range of responses? Are you familiar with the organization? If you are, what are your feelings about it?
8. The Taste of Salt is very much a story of family shame and acceptance. Does Tick ever arrive at that state of acceptance? Does Josie? Ray? Sarah?
9. What impact do you think race has on the alcoholism of the addicted characters in the novel?
10. If Josie had been able to make a life with Ben, do you think it would have been successful or would it have failed? Why? What do you think of her adulterous behavior?
11. How does the author portray her alcoholic characters—sympathetically or unsympathetically? How do those portrayals affect how we feel about everyone in the family?
12. When the author is from the same town as the protagonist, the tendency is to assume autobiography. What is gained and what is lost when the reader makes this assumption? How does it alter, enrich, or diminish your experience of the work?
13. At the novel’s end, there is a strong sense of hope for a kind of reconciliation between father and daughter. What do you think would have to happen to make this a lasting reconciliation? Are you convinced by Ray’s change in behavior and lifestyle? Do you think it’s harder for women to make peace with deeply flawed mothers or deeply flawed fathers?
MARTHA SOUTHGATE is the author of three acclaimed previous novels, most recently The Fall of Rome and Third Girl from the Left, and other works that have been widely anthologized. She has written for Essence, Premiere, the New York Daily News, and the New York Times. A graduate of Smith College, she has an MFA in creative writing from Goddard and has taught at Brooklyn College and the New School. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
Other Algonquin Readers Round Table Novels
A Friend of the Family, a novel by Lauren Grodstein
* * *
Pete Dizinoff has a thriving medical practice in suburban New Jersey, a devoted wife, a network of close friends, an impressive house, and a son, Alec, now nineteen, on whom he’s pinned all his hopes. But Pete never counted on Laura, his best friend’s daughter, setting her sights on his only son. Lauren Grodstein’s riveting novel charts a father’s fall from grace as he struggles to save his family, his reputation, and himself.
“Suspense worthy of Hitchcock … [Grodstein] is a terrific storyteller.” —The New York Times Book Review
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-61620-017-6
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, a novel by Heidi W. Durrow
* * *
In the aftermath of a family tragedy, a biracial girl must cope with society’s ideas of race and class in this acclaimed novel, winner of the Bellwether Prize for fiction addressing issues of social justice.
“Affecting, exquisite … Durrow’s powerful novel is poised to find a place among classic stories of the American experience.” —The Miami Herald
“Like Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird, Durrow’s debut features voices that will ring in the ears long after the book is closed.” —The Denver Post
Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-61620-015-2
Pictures of You, a novel by Caroline Leavitt
Two women running away from their marriages collide on a foggy highway. The survivor of the fatal accident is left to pick up the pieces not only of her own life but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman left behind. As these three lives intersect, the book asks, How well do we really know those we love and how do we open our hearts to forgive the unforgivable?
“An expert storyteller … Leavitt teases suspense out of the greatest mystery of all—the workings of the human heart.”
— Booklist
“Magically written, heartbreakingly honest … Caroline Leavitt is one of those fabulous, incisive writers you read and then ask yourself, Where has she been all my life?” —Jodi Picoult
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-631-2
The Ghost at the Table, a novel by Suzanne Berne
* * *
When Frances arranges to host Thanksgiving at her idyllic New England farmhouse, she envisions a happy family reunion, one that will include her estranged sister, Cynthia. But as Thanksgiving Day arrives, the tension between Frances and Cynthia mounts, as each struggles with a different version of the mysterious circumstances surrounding their mother’s death twenty-five years earlier.
“Wholly engaging, the perfect spark for launching a rich conversation around your own table.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“A crash course in sibling rivalry.” —O: The Oprah Magazine
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-579-7
In the Time of the Butterflies, a novel by Julia Alverez
* * *
In this extraordinary novel, the voices of Las Mariposas (The Butterflies), Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and Dedé, speak across the decades to tell their stories about life in the Dominican Republic under General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred butterflies live again in this novel of valor, love, and the human cost of political oppression.
A National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection
“A gorgeous and sensitive novel … A compelling story of courage, patriotism, and familial devotion.” —People
“A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.”
—St. Petersburg Times
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-976-4
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,
a novel by Julia Alvarez
* * *
In Julia Alvarez’s brilliant and buoyant first novel, the García sisters, newly arrived from the Dominican Republic, tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home—and not at home—in America.
“A clear-eyed look at the insecurity and yearning for a sense of belonging that are part of the immigrant experience … Movingly told.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Subtle … Powerful … Reveals the intricacies of family, the impact of culture and place, and the profound power of language.” —The San Diego Tribune
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-975-7
A Reliable Wife, a novel by Robert Goolrick
* * *
Rural Wisconsin, 1907. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt stands alone on a train platform anxiously awaiting the arrival of the woman who answered his newspaper ad for “a reliable wife.” The woman who arrives is not the one he expects in this New York Times #1 bestseller about love and madness, longing and murder.
“[A] chillingly engrossing plot … Good to the riveting end.”
— USA Today
“Deliciously wicked and tense … Intoxicating.”
—The Washington Post
“A rousing historical potboiler.” —The Boston Globe
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-977-1
Water for Elephants, a novel by Sara Gruen
* * *
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski is tossed by fate onto a rickety train, home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Sh
ow on Earth. Amid a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, Jacob becomes involved with Marlena, the beautiful young equestrian star; her husband, a charismatic but twisted animal trainer; and Rosie, an untrainable elephant who is the great gray hope for this third-rate show. Now in his nineties, Jacob at long last reveals the story of their unlikely yet powerful bonds, ones that nearly shatters them all.
“[An] arresting new novel …With a showman’s expert timing, [Gruen] saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale.” —The New York Times Book Review
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-560-5
Breakfast with Buddha, a novel by Roland Merullo
* * *
When his sister tricks him into taking her guru, a crimson-robed monk, on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Ringling, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he’d planned. But along the way, Otto is given the remarkable opportunity to see his world—and more important, his life—through someone else’s eyes.
“Enlightenment meets On the Road in this witty, insightful novel.” —The Boston Sunday Globe
“A laugh-out-loud novel that’s both comical and wise … balancing irreverence with insight.” —The Louisville Courier-Journal
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-616-9
Between Here and April,
a novel by Deborah Copaken Kogan
* * *
When a deep-rooted memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend April Cassidy.
“The perfect book club book.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“[A] haunting page-turner … [A] compelling look at what it means to be a mother and a wife.” —Working Mother
“Extraordinary … This is a story that needs to be told.” —Elle, #1 Reader’s Pick
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-932-0
Every Last Cuckoo, a novel by Kate Maloy
* * *
In the tradition of Jane Smiley and Sue Miller comes this wise and gratifying novel about a woman who gracefully accepts a surprising new role in life just when she thinks her best years are behind her.
Winner of the ALA Reading List Award for Women’s Fiction
“Truly engrossing … An excellent book club selection.”
—Library Journal
“A tender and wise story of what happens when love lasts.” —Katharine Weber, author of Triangle
“Inspiring … Grabs the reader by the heart.”
—The New Orleans Times-Picayune
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-675-6
Mudbound, a novel by Hillary Jordan
* * *
Mudbound is the saga of the McAllan family, who struggle to survive on a remote ramshackle farm, and the Jacksons, their black sharecroppers. When two men return from World War II to work the land, the unlikely friendship between these brothers-in-arms—one white, one black—arouses the passions of their neighbors. In this award-winning portrait of two families caught up in the blind hatred of a small Southern town, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and ruthless.
“This is storytelling at the height of its powers …
Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm.” —Barbara Kingsolver
Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-677-0
Saving the World, a novel by Julia Alverez
* * *
While Alma Huebner is researching a new novel, she discovers the true story of Isabel Sendales y Gómez, who embarked on a courageous sea voyage to rescue the New World from smallpox. The author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies captures the worlds of two women living two centuries apart but with surprisingly parallel fates.
“Fresh and unusual and thought-provokingly sensitive.” —The Boston Globe
“Engrossing, expertly paced.” —People
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-558-2
Coal Black Horse, a novel by Robert Olmstead
* * *
When Robey Childs’s mother has a premonition about her husband fighting in the Civil War, she sends her only son to find him and bring him home. At fourteen, Robey thinks he’s off on a great adventure. But it takes the gift of a powerful and noble coal black horse to show him how to undertake the most important journey in his life.
“A remarkable creation.” — Chicago Tribune
“Exciting … A grueling adventure.” —The New York Times Book Review
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-601-5
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England,
a novel by Brock Clarke
* * *
The past catches up with Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, when after spending ten years in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson’s house, the homes of other famous new England writers go up in smoke. To prove his innocence, he sets out to uncover the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.
“Funny, profound … A seductive book with a payoff on every page.” —People
“Wildly, unpredictably funny … As cheerfully oddball as its title.” —The New York Times
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-56512-614-5
A Blessing on the Moon, a novel by Joseph Skibell
* * *
Hailed by the New York Times as “confirmation that no subject lies beyond the grasp of a gifted, committed imagination,” this highly acclaimed novel is a magical tale about the Holocaust—a fable inspired by fact. Not since Art Spiegelman’s Maus has a work so powerfully evoked one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century with such daring originality.
“As magical as it is macabre.” —The New Yorker
“Hugely enjoyable … A compelling tour de force, a surreal but thoroughly accessible page-turner.” —Houston Chronicle
* * *
An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-61620-018-3