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In this beautifully written tour de force of a novel, Beth Gutcheon takes readers back to the coastal village of Dundee, Maine. There, in a Victorian summer house called Leeway Cottage, we witness the scenes of a long 20th century marriage.
In April of 1940, a rich girl of the Dundee summer colony named Sydney Brant marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. But almost at once, their vows of the world and their marriage begin to diverge. When Laurus chooses to leave Sydney in the falloff 1941 to help build a Danish Resistance from London, Sydney is dismayed. By the time they are reunited four years later, Laurus's family and the reader have been through one of the most stirring stories of the war, Denmark's courageous grass-roots rescue of virtually all 7000 of the country's Jews.
In the decades to come, many people, especially their three grown children, will wonder how these two very different people understand each other at all. If they do, how do they stay together? Laurus likes to claim that in heaven you get to see the movie of your life, with all the blanks filled in. In their old age Sydney fears what he might see and why he wants to know; their children fear he'll die and there won't be any movie.
But there will be.
Biography courtesy of the author's official web site.
"When my second novel was in manuscript, a subsidiary rights guy at my publisher secretly sent a copy of it to a friend who was working in Hollywood with the producer Stanley Jaffe, who had made Goodbye Columbus, The Bad News Bears, and Kramer v. Kramer, run Paramount Pictures before he was 30, and met the queen of England. My agent had an auction set up for the film rights of Still Missing for the following Friday, with some very heavy-hitter producers and such, which was exciting enough. Two days before the auction, Stanley Jaffe walked into my agent's office in New York and said, ‘I want to make a pre-emptive bid for Beth Gutcheon's novel.'
‘But you haven't read it,' says Wendy.
‘Nevertheless,' says Stanley.
‘Well, I have this auction set up. You're going to have to pay a lot to have me call it off,' says Wendy.
‘I understand that,' says Stanley.
Wendy named a number.
Stanley said, ‘Done,' or words to that effect.
To this day, remembering Wendy's next phone call to me causes me something resembling a heart attack.
When, several weeks later, Stanley called and asked me if I had an interest in writing the screenplay of the movie that became Without a Trace, I said, ‘No.'
He quite rightly hung up on me.
I then spent twenty minutes in a quiet room wondering what I had done. A man with a shelf full of Oscars, on cozy terms with Lizzie Windsor, had just offered me film school for one, all expenses paid by Twentieth Century Fox. He knew I didn't know how to write screenplays. He wasn't offering to hire me because he wanted to see me fail. Who cares that all I ever wanted to see on my tombstone was ‘She Wrote a Good Book?' The chance to learn something new that was both hard and really interesting was not resistible. I spent the rest of the weekend tracking him from airport to airport until I could get him back on the phone. (This was before we all had cell phones.)
I was sitting in my bleak office on a wet gray day, on which my newly teenaged son had shaved his head and I had just realized I'd lost my American Express card, when the phone rang. ‘Is this Beth Gutcheon?' asked a voice that made my hair stand on end. I said it was. ‘This is Paul Newman,' said the voice.
It was, too. The fine Italian hand of Stanley Jaffe again, he'd recommended me to work on a script Paul was developing. Paul invited me to dinner to talk about it. My son said, ‘For heaven's sake, Mother, don't be early and don't be tall.' I was both. We did end up writing a script together; it was eventually made for television with Christine Lahti, and fabulous Terry O'Quinn in the Paul Newman part, called The Good Fight."
"I read all the time. My husband claims I take baths instead of showers because I can't figure out how to read in the shower, and he's right."
"I started buying poetry for the first time since college after 9/11, but wasn't reading it until a friend mentioned that she and her husband read poetry in the morning before they have breakfast. She is right -- a pot of tea and a quiet table in morning sunlight is exactly the right time for poetry. I read The New York Times Book Review in the bath and on subways because it is light and foldable. I listen to audiobooks through earphones while I take my constitutionals or do housework. I read physical books for a couple of hours every night after everyone else is in bed -- usually two books alternately, one novel and one biography or book of letters."
"I have a dog named Daisy Buchanan. She ran for president last fall; her slogan was ‘No Wavering, No Flip-flopping, No pants.' She doesn't know yet that she didn't win, so if you meet her, please don't tell her."
"Last little-known fact: When I was in high school I invented, by knitting one, a double-wide sweater with two turtlenecks for my brother and his girlfriend. It was called a Tweter and was even manufactured in college colors for a year or two. There was a double-paged color spread in Life magazine of models wearing Tweters and posing with the Jets football team. My proudest moment was the Charles Addams cartoon that ran in The New Yorker that year. It showed a Tweter in a store window, while outside, gazing at it in wonder, was a man with two heads."
In the back of a closet in the upstairs hall, Eleanor opens an ancient garment bag and finds a shapeless and tarnished handful of ribbons and tulle. She gives a shriek.
Monica and Jimmy emerge from back bedrooms. "What is that?"
"It's The Dress!"
"She kept it all these years?"
The three of them stare at it, the debutante dress of legend. It is more of a rag than the couture dream they had imagined. Eleanor puts it back on the hanger and zips it back up in its bag, where it will wait, ready to be called as evidence in a yet-to-be-settled case of outrage in which all the principal parties are now dead.
Although none of them has said so, what each of them most wants to take home is the houseguest book.
Monica finds it.
"I've decided," she calls from the dining room.
Eleanor comes in from the big living room where she has been scanning the bookshelves, and sees her sister holding the very thing she was looking for.
"Finders keepers," says Monica.
"Where was it?"
Jimmy is coming down the stairs.
"In there," says Monica, pointing to an antique tavern table their parents used as a sideboard. "In the drawer."
Jimmy walks in holding a framed picture of their father and mother sitting in the stern of The Rolling Stone. They are at anchor in some island cove, Burnt Coat, or Pretty Marsh. The sunset flares gold on the water behind them, and they are tanned and happy, holding cocktails and wearing sunglasses and smiles. Jimmy has been about to announce this as his choice when he sees the guest book in Monica's hand.
"I was looking for that!" he says.
"It turns out we all were," says Eleanor.
"Where was it?"
The sisters point to the tavern table.
"I say 'finders keepers,' " says Monica.
"Unless one of us owns the table." Their mother has employed her sunset years in wandering around the house promising things to people, often the same thing two or three times, and applying stickers delivering her orders from beyond the grave.
Eleanor kneels down to peer under the table. She pulls her head out and reaches for the glasses on a cord around her neck. She pokes her head under again and reads, " 'Property of James Brant Moss.' " She stands up and looks at her sister, and they both say, "Oh, surprise."
The funeral is over. The ashes, in matching urns, are on the mantelpiece. There is no way to know whose last will or testament is in force, so they have decided to close the house as always, and leave it for the winter. Next summer, when the flood tides of memories and mourning currently swamping them have receded, they will be better able to cope.
They have decided that each of them will take home one thing from Leeway for the winter, for comfort. They are going through the house somberly, saying their goodbyes in their different ways, each looking for one object that will keep the dead alive and close a little longer.
In the back of a closet in the upstairs hall, Eleanor opens an ancient garment bag and finds a shapeless and tarnished handful of ribbons and tulle. She gives a shriek.
Monica and Jimmy emerge from back bedrooms. "What is that?"
"It's The Dress!"
"She kept it all these years?"
The three of them stare at it, the debutante dress of legend. It is more of a rag than the couture dream they had imagined. Eleanor puts it back on the hanger and zips it back up in its bag, where it will wait, ready to be called as evidence in a yet-to-be-settled case of outrage in which all the principal parties are now dead.
Although none of them has said so, what each of them most wants to take home is the houseguest book.
Monica finds it.
"I've decided," she calls from the dining room.
Eleanor comes in from the big living room where she has been scanning the bookshelves, and sees her sister holding the very thing she was looking for.
"Finders keepers," says Monica.
"Where was it?"
Jimmy is coming down the stairs.
"In there," says Monica, pointing to an antique tavern table their parents used as a sideboard. "In the drawer."
Jimmy walks in holding a framed picture of their father and mother sitting in the stern of The Rolling Stone. They are at anchor in some island cove, Burnt Coat, or Pretty Marsh. The sunset flares gold on the water behind them, and they are tanned and happy, holding cocktails and wearing sunglasses and smiles. Jimmy has been about to announce this as his choice when he sees the guest book in Monica's hand.
"I was looking for that!" he says.
"It turns out we all were," says Eleanor.
"Where was it?"
The sisters point to the tavern table.
"I say 'finders keepers,' " says Monica.
"Unless one of us owns the table." Their mother has employed her sunset years in wandering around the house promising things to people, often the same thing two or three times, and applying stickers delivering her orders from beyond the grave.
Eleanor kneels down to peer under the table. She pulls her head out and reaches for the glasses on a cord around her neck. She pokes her head under again and reads, " 'Property of James Brant Moss.' " She stands up and looks at her sister, and they both say, "Oh, surprise."
Leeway CottageIn April of 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, a rich girl of the Dundee summer colony named Sydney Brant marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well-matched, as young lovers do, but almost at once, their views of the world and their marriage begin to diverge. Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring, especially as his mother is Jewish. When Laurus chooses to leave Sydney in the fall of 1941 to help build a Danish Resistance from London, Sydney is dismayed. By the time they are reunited four years later, Laurus's family and the reader have been through one of the most stirring stories of the war, Denmark's courageous grass-roots rescue of virtually all 7000 of the country's Jews. Sydney in America has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.
In the decades to come, many people, especially their three grown children, will wonder if these two very different people understand each other at all. If they do, how do they stay together? Laurus likes to claim that in heaven you get to see the movie of your life, with all the blanks filled in. In their old age Sydney fears what he might see and why he wants to know; their children fear he'll die and there won't be any movie.
But there will be.
We hope that the following questions and discussion topics will enhance your experience of this stirring epic. For more information about Beth Gutcheon and her previous works, visit www.bethgutcheon.com. For additional William Morrow reader's guides, visit us at www.harpercollins.com.
Discussion Questions
1. How would you characterize the narrator's voice, which sometimes echoes the sentiments of the characters? Describe the storyteller you envision as the novel unfolds. How does this narration compare to that of the many contributors to the Leeway Cottage Guest Book?
2. What do you make of the fact that Sydney's musical talent does not evolve into a profession for her, despite her desire for an unconventional role in the world? Do she and Laurus have a similar appreciation for the arts? In what way does she embody a shifting chapter in American cultural history?
3. From joining the Resistance to integrating his local YMCA, Laurus is willing to be an agent for justice at every turn. From where does he derive this courage? How does his understanding of compassion compare to that of the other men in Sydney's life, including her father, her son, and Neville?
4. Leeway Cottagecaptures the jealousy Candace feels regarding Sydney's relationship with her father, an emotion Sydney comes to understand when she is a mother herself. Do you believe this dynamic is common or rare? What factors contribute to it?
5. What theories do you have about the reason for Berthe Brant's suicide? Did her marriage to James mirror Sydney's marriage to Laurus in any way?
6. Discuss the role of Gladdy and her family in Sydney's life. What is the significance of Sydney and Laurus making their home at Leeway Cottage, rather than the house built by Sydney's ancestors?
7. Were you surprised by Sydney's infidelity with Neville? How do you interpret the scene in which she and Anselma have an awkward run-in with Gladdy? Do you consider Laurus to have been unfaithful to Sydney during the war?
8. What is the effect of Nina's closing chapter and its position in the novel? Why did Sydney so dislike Nina? What is your understanding of the bequest Nina made to Hans Katz?
9. The novel focuses on many little-known aspects of Nazi occupation, such as Niels Bohr's ultimatum and the Rosh Hashanah plot against Danish Jews. What history did you learn from Gutcheon's telling of it? In what way is this history the centerpiece of the novel?
10. What was your reaction to the death of Sydney and Laurus? Do you believe their deaths were due to dementia and accident, or would it have been in character for them to take their own lives? Why do you think Laurus' "movie" was about his sister, rather than about events that came later in his life?
11. In the last paragraph of her notes regarding the novel's historical inspiration, the author writes "their marriage lasts, as did so many in their generation, but whether it actually worked, and if so, how, becomes the mystery at the heart of their family." Gutcheon also reminds us of how little Sydney understands about her husband's inner life. Is the Moss marriage a product of its generation? Do contemporary couples have different expectations of love and relationships?
12. How does Gutcheon's use of Dundee in this novel compare to her use of it in More Than You Know? What makes Maine an appropriate setting for both books?
About the Author
Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania and earned a bachelor's degree with honors in English literature from Harvard. Her six previous novels include Still Missing, which was made into the feature film Without a Trace. She has also written several film scripts, and the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine.
Anonymous
Posted May 8, 2008
This is a book I recommend without hesitation to fellow book lovers. It explores the complexities of human relationships and brings in history in an interesting way. It's a good story, but not one for readers looking to find only lovable, one-dimensional characters. The author's characters will evoke many emotions in the reader, some negative. It's not challenging to read, but provokes thoughtful review of one's own relationships and how better to deal with them.
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Posted July 16, 2009
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Overview
In this beautifully written tour de force of a novel, Beth Gutcheon takes readers back to the coastal village of Dundee, Maine. There, in a Victorian summer house called Leeway Cottage, we witness the scenes of a long 20th century marriage.
In April of 1940, a rich girl of the Dundee summer colony named Sydney Brant marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. But almost at once, their vows of the world and their marriage begin to diverge. When Laurus chooses to leave Sydney in the falloff 1941 to help build a Danish Resistance from London, Sydney is dismayed. By the time they are reunited four years later, Laurus's family and the reader have been ...