Hello and welcome to the first discussion post on the book Fever by Mary Beth Keane. Today I will be posing questions that concern the setting of the book, the writing style of Mary Beth Keane, and critique of the novel’s strengths and weaknesses. Next week Bonny will tackle the social issues the book addresses and then on February 18th Kym will go deep on the historical fiction basis of the novel.

Before we dive in, though, I have an extra special announcement to make about this month’s discussion posts. We have put together a “book lovers surprise package” to be given to one lucky Fever reader! How do you qualify?  Just leave a comment on any of our book discussion blog posts over the next 3 weeks.  Your name will be placed in a hat EACH time you make a comment — so the more you share, the more chances you have to win the prize.  The winner will be revealed as part of our wrap-up post on February 25. Cool, right?

Okay, let’s discuss Fever!

1. The story is set in New York City in the early years of the 20th century. How does the city play a role in the novel? How does Keane do with describing the setting and making the reader feel like they are actually there . . . in the tenements, at the bakery, in the wealthy homes of the families Mary worked for? Does the setting contribute to the story in a meaningful way?
2. How does the story reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the time in which it was written or set?
3. What do you think of Keane’s writing style? Did it keep you engaged? Were you able to connect with the characters?
4. Discuss how Keane handled incorporating factual information into this fictional account of Mary Mallon’s life. Do you enjoy historical fiction? And how would you compare this book to other historical fiction titles you have read and enjoyed?

Please discuss your thoughts regarding these questions in the comments. I will do my best to reply directly so that we can attempt a sort of discussion despite the limitations of this format. See you in the comments and remember – the more you comment, not just this week but also at Bonny’s and Kym’s in the subsequent weeks, the more chances you have to win our special prize!

We talked about reading yesterday and guess what? We’re talking about it again today! I’m a librarian and I could honestly talk about reading and books all day long but I have a specific task for today and that is to get you excited about our Read With Us winter selection: Fever by Mary Beth Keane.

In the interest of full disclosure I have to tell you that I haven’t started the book in earnest yet. As in, I’m at the 1% mark. But that doesn’t  mean I can’t get you all hyped to get started! If you need a refresher on what it’s about and why we chose it you can find that on this blog post. I think this book will appeal to readers of historical fiction, certainly, but also fans of biofiction, those who enjoy stories of Irish immigrants, medical mysteries, and women’s fiction. In other words, the subject matter itself should be interesting.

 

Certainly the real Mary Mallon is a fascinating historical figure. She never exhibited symptoms of typhoid fever herself yet was eventually identified as the first asymptomatic carrier of the disease in the United States. She is presumed to have infected upwards of 50 people and three of those illnesses resulted in death, although she worked under different names and that number could be higher. Interestingly enough, she was not the most lethal carrier of the germ, that honor goes to Tony Labella, a New Yorker who caused two outbreaks in 1922 that combined for more than 100 cases and five deaths. We know now that germs are spread by poor hygiene and in Mary Mallon’s case it is believed that she passed along typhoid germs by serving ice cream with raw peaches. It was one of her most popular dessert dishes and since it wasn’t cooked the bacteria wasn’t killed in the process.

Mary Mallon was pursued and forced into quarantine on two separate occasions but both times wound up as a domestic worker or food worker again. In the end she spent 26 years in forced isolation on North Brother Island. This was as likely due to public opinion and ridicule as to any real threat of disease since she wouldn’t have spread it if she had stayed out of food service. I can’t help but wonder, and others have speculated on this as well, if Mary Mallon wasn’t pursued and isolated due to the socioeconomic situation at the time. She was female, Irish, difficult, and had no family. Was she justly quarantined or unfairly persecuted?

I’m sure we’ll have so much to discuss in the weeks to come! In the meantime, keep an eye out on Kym’s blog and Bonny’s blog for more posts to get you excited about reading Fever. And also . . . wash your hands!

Hello my reading friends! I am happy to join with Kym and Bonny today and tell you that the next book for Read With Us is Fever by Mary Beth Keane. I haven’t read it yet but I think it sounds terrific. Here, I’ll share the Good Reads summary with you:

Mary Beth Keane, named one of the 5 Under 35 by the National Book Foundation, has written a spectacularly bold and intriguing novel about the woman known as “Typhoid Mary,” the first person in America identified as a healthy carrier of Typhoid Fever.

On the eve of the twentieth century, Mary Mallon emigrated from Ireland at age fifteen to make her way in New York City. Brave, headstrong, and dreaming of being a cook, she fought to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic-service ladder. Canny and enterprising, she worked her way to the kitchen, and discovered in herself the true talent of a chef. Sought after by New York aristocracy, and with an independence rare for a woman of the time, she seemed to have achieved the life she’d aimed for when she arrived in Castle Garden. Then one determined medical engineer noticed that she left a trail of disease wherever she cooked, and identified her as an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid Fever. With this seemingly preposterous theory, he made Mallon a hunted woman.

The Department of Health sent Mallon to North Brother Island, where she was kept in isolation from 1907 to 1910, then released under the condition that she never work as a cook again. Yet for Mary, proud of her former status and passionate about cooking, the alternatives were abhorrent. She defied the edict.

Bringing early-twentieth-century New York alive, the neighborhoods, the bars, the park carved out of upper Manhattan, the boat traffic, the mansions and sweatshops and emerging skyscrapers, Fever is an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. In the imagination of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes a fiercely compelling, dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable heroine.

We picked this book for a number of reasons, carefully considering the length and availability from the library, as well as the subject matter and discussion topics and I think we have chosen well. As for the timeline, you have December and January to get this read and we will discuss it in February. You can expect us to mention it now and again before then but we are mindful that this is a busy time of year for everyone and we don’t want to overwhelm you with book stuff when you might not have the time to consider it.

I hope you’ll join us for part two of our online book club, it’s definitely a group effort and we need YOU to make this a success.

 

Hello and welcome to the 3rd week of our book discussion of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. The coverage for this week is for chapters 12 through 16 and the epilogue. As Kym and Bonny have both explained, please join the discussion by leaving a comment here on the blog. I’ll be responding to your comments directly IN the comments, so please do check back once in a while to see how the discussion is going. Please feel free to respond to other commenters as well. We realize that this is not the most ideal discussion format and that it’s somewhat cumbersome and a little awkward but it’s the most reasonable way we could think of for our beta test and it has worked out okay the last two weeks.

So. Welcome! Let’s pretend that it’s Friday night and you’re all gathered in my living room enjoying Friday Night Snacks as we begin to discuss . . .

The book focuses primarily on the case of Walter McMillian but there are other cases presented as well, most dealing with women and juveniles. Which of those other cases were memorable for you and why? What emotions did they bring up for you? Were there any moments of satisfaction?

The title of Chapter 15 is Broken and Stevenson writes quite a bit about how we are all broken by something. The things that break us and hurt us may be different but our shared brokenness connects us. He further theorizes that hiding the most broken among us by locking them away in prison only serves to reinforce the cycle and that perhaps instead we should acknowledge our brokenness: if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears . . . maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable. If you’re comfortable, share the ways that you or those around you are broken and discuss how being vulnerable about the things that have hurt us can make the world better for everyone.

This final question is my big bold question, the one that might make some people really uncomfortable but I’m going to put it out there anyway. Stevenson concludes that there are four periods in American history that have shaped our approach to race relations and justice: slavery, the period following the collapse of Reconstruction until World War II, Jim Crow, and now mass incarceration which shows us statistically that while people of color make up 30% of the population of our country, they account for 60% of those imprisoned. What do you think about the statement that mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow? Can you think of ways that we can work against this and bring about change?

This week it’s my turn to promote the Read With Us Collaboration going on between Kym, Bonny, me and . . . well . . . hopefully many of YOU. In case you need a refresher, we are currently reading the book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. I actually finished it last week and I’m eager to discuss it but that will have to wait because our timeline is that we all read it in October and then we all discuss it in November. You know what that means, right? You’ve still got plenty of time to read the book and join us because our first week of discussion isn’t until November 5th.

Speaking of the discussion end of things, here’s how it going to work: we’ve divided the book into thirds so that each of us can host the discussion one week. On November 5th it will be Kym and she will cover the 1st third of the book. On November 12th it will be Bonny and she will cover the 2nd third of the book. On November 19th (I bet you know what’s coming!) it will be me and I will cover the final third of the book. Finally, on November 26th, we will do a wrap up and summary of the journey we all took with this book. For this time that’s going to be done by Kym because, frankly, this whole thing was her idea but going forward (assuming this works and we do it again) we will take turns with the summary and wrap up.

Each week of discussion will include some questions in the blog post to get us all talking. And, for now anyway, the talking will happen in the comments. You know I’m a big proponent of answering every comment you leave with an email but for the sake of this project, and so that it feels like an actual conversation, I’m going to try and answer your comments in . . . the comments. We’ll just have to see how I do with that!

So. Keep reading if you haven’t finished. Start reading if you haven’t started. And sit back and ponder if, like me, you’re already done. There’s a lot to unpack from this book and I’m very excited about diving into it with all of you.