Page 87
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor can be found in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (Harcourt).
Page 88
“The top one in the pile is a young-adult fantasy novel in which the main character is dead.” – There are several possibilities here. It could be Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver, for instance. But I strongly suspect A.J. is referring to Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin.
Page 93-95
“Pequod’s… the second nicest seafood restaurant on Alice Island” is also the name of Ahab’s whaler ship in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. The Queequeg, Pequod’s signature cocktail, takes its name from the character who saves Ishmael’s life.
Page 96
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Page 97
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Page 101
The television show, True Blood, is based on the Sookie Stackhouse Novels by Charlaine Harris.
Page 102 – 103
“a charming memoir about motherhood, scrapbooking, and the writing life, written by a Canadian poet.” — This is invented. However, an excellent memoir that partially fits this description is Paradise Piece By Piece by Molly Peacock.
Page 104
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
Page 106
Juiced by Jose Canseco
Page 107
“a latter-period Philip Roth novel” – for example, Everyman.
Page 108
The name Olenska comes from the novel, The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton.
Page 113
The Children in the Apple Tree by Daniel Parish is as real as its author. However, for a time, it was the working title of my second adult novel The Hole We’re In.
Page 115
Caligula is an infamous biopic about the Roman emperor Caligula.
Page 117
“a bobblehead of Hermione Granger,” the heroine of Harry Potter, can be purchased at various online retailers, though she is getting hard to find.
The OED is the Oxford English Dictionary.
Page 120
“a picture book with topiary animals” is Grandpa Green by Lane Smith.
Page 123
From the Mixed-Up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg.
Page 125
Puddleglum, Amelia’s one-eyed tabby cat, gets his name from the marsh-wiggle in the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis.
Children in the Apple Tree is an image from T.S. Eliot’s poem, “Little Gidding.”
“And the children in the apple- tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half- heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.