A Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guide from One-Minute Book Reviews, www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com
This reading group to The Birthday Party was not authorized by the author, publisher, or anyone connected to the book. The guide is copyrighted by Janice Harayda, and its sale or reproduction in any form is illegal. Reading groups that wish to use these questions should link to this site or use the “Contact” page on One-Minute Book Reviews to learn how to request permission to reproduce the guide.
The Birthday Party is a memoir by Stanley N. Alpert, a former federal prosecutor who was kidnapped on a Manhattan street in 1998 and held for 25 hours by armed captors. You can find a review of this book archived in the “Memoirs” category on One-Minute Book Reviews.
Discussion Questions Reading for The Birthday Party:
1. This memoir falls into the category known as “true crime.” Critics often fault true-crime books for being lurid or sensationalized. Would either of those terms fit The Birthday Party? Why or why not? Do books seem lurid or sensationalized because of their tone, content, publicity, or something else?
2. The suspense in true crime books frequently comes from not knowing whether the victim(s) will live. In that sense, Stanley Alpert was at a disadvantage in writing the book: We know from the start that he survived. How does Alpert maintain suspense, anyway?
3. The Birthday Party was published nine years after the author was kidnapped. How do you think this relatively long interval between the crime and publication affected the book? What are the advantages and disadvantages of telling a crime story right away versus waiting years to tell it?
4. True crime books can be contemporary or historical (involving events that took place before the author was born). One of the most popular historical true crime books of 2006 was James L. Swanson’s Manhunt, which deals with the U.S. government’s efforts to capture John Wilkes Booth. What challenges do the authors of contemporary true crime face that the authors of historical true crime don’t? What challenges do authors of historical true crime face that the authors of contemporary true crime don’t?
5. Why is Chapter 29 of the book called “Rashomon”? How does it relate to the movie with the same title?
6. Alpert says that he doesn’t know whether God punished him by having him kidnapped or rewarded him for good behavior by keeping him alive. He adds in his blog on Amazon.com that the more important question is: What do we learn from such experiences and how do we use them to improve our lives? Alpert says that his kidnapping “woke me up and made me more willing to take risks, and quicker to jump in to enjoying life.” Much research has shown that, in fact, people generally don’t make the lasting changes they think they will after catclysmic events. That’s true whether the events involve bad things (like heart attacks) or good things (like winning the lottery). People make changes for a while and then revert to their former ways. Did Alpert persuade you that he had changed his life? If so, how did he do this? Does it matter to the book whether or not he changed his life?
7. Alpert makes use of metaphor by dividing his book into sections called “Mouse” and “Cat.” But he doesn’t belabor this device by referring repeatedly to himself or others with those terms. How does his use of metaphor affect the book? Who were the “cat” and “mouse”? Could these terms apply to more than one person?
8. At times, The Birthday Party is very funny. For example, when the ringleader of the kidnappers says he can’t understand why the author single (page 26), Alpert says his parents wonder the same thing. Humor can be risky in true-crime books, because it can make it appear that the author is making light of law-breaking. How does Alpert avoid appearing to trivialize what happened to him?
9. True-crime writers often use some of the same techniques that mystery novelists do, such as periodically recapping previous events so you can keep track of what’s happened. What techniques does Alpert use that you’ve also seen in the mysteries?
10. True crime books traditionally have red and black covers (symbols of blood and death) and go straight to paperback. Putnam’s has packaged this book in different way. Why do you think it did that? Do we judge books by their covers? How might your perception of this book have been affected if you hadn’t read any reviews and saw it in a bookstore with a typical red and black cover?
Vital statistics:
The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival. By Stanley N. Alpert. Putnam, 306 pp., $24.95. Published: Jan. 2007.
Your book group may also want to read:
Manhunt The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (Morrow, 2006) By James L. Swanson. Reading the book would allow your group to compare Alpert’s contemporary true crime story with Swanson’s historical one. Compare how the authors build suspense, weave in background information, and set the story in a social and political context.
Links: You can find Stanley Alpert’s blog and comments on his book by going to www.amazon.com and checking the listing for The Birthday Party.
© 2007 By Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
Janice Harayda is an award-winning journalist who has been the book columnist for Glamour, the book editor of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, and a vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle. She also wrote the comedies of manners The Accidental Bride (St. Martin’s, 1999) and Manhattan on the Rocks (Sourcebooks, 2004). Please visit www.janiceharayda.com for more information about her novels.
