Blame

by Michelle Huneven

Overview

A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

A woman faces the many complicated consequences of a drunk-driving accident in Michelle Huneven's gripping third novel, Blame.

Patsy MacLemoore, a twenty-eight-year-old history professor with a brand-new Ph.D. and a wild streak, wakes up in jail—yet again—after another epic alcoholic blackout. This time, though, a mother and daughter are dead, run over in Patsy's driveway. Patsy will the next decades of her life atoning for this unpardonable act. She goes to prison, sobers up, marries a much older man she meets in AA, and makes ongoing amends to her victims' family. Then, another piece of news turns up, casting her crime, and her life, in a different and unexpected light. Brilliant, morally complex, and often funny, Blame is a breathtaking story of contrition and what it takes to rebuild a life from the bottom up.

A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year | O, the Oprah Magazine Best Book of the Year | Washington Post Best Book of the Year | Kansas City Star Best Books of the Year

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312429850
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/25/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.72(w) x 8.58(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Michelle Huneven is the author of the novels Blame, Round Rock and Jamesland. She has received a General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers and a Whiting Writers’ Award for fiction. She lives in Altadena, California.

Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussion

1. How were you affected by the shift from Joey's world to Patsy's? What does the closing line of part one (capturing Joey's belief that her mother had not died but was alive and well at the Bellwood Hotel) say about the nature of hope, illusion, and grief?

2. How did your impressions of Patsy change throughout Blame? What cultural shifts does she experience over the novel's two decades?

3. Were you surprised that Patsy was a high achiever in academia? What makes history an appropriately ironic field for her?

4. When you first read about Patsy's sentencing, did you think it was just? Did prison seem like an appropriate consequence? Given today's drunk driving laws and treatment options, does her sentence seem light or extreme?

5. Behind bars, what version of a family does Patsy find? How do her tenuous friendships there compare to her relationships with her mother, father, and brother?

6. Why is it noteworthy that Jane and Jessica Parnham were Jehovah's Witnesses? How does Mark seem to feel about their faith?

7. What is Mark Parnham's motivation in visiting Patsy? How are they affected by each other?

8. How do Patsy's days with the firefighting crew serve as a metaphor for her life? What does Martin's crayon drawing of a stick figure dousing burning trees (described near the end of part two) indicate about his understanding of Patsy?

9. What is ideal about the support provided by Brice and Gilles? How do Gilles and Patsy bond, and why do they become such good friends? What is the role of Alcoholics Anonymous in Patsy's life?

10. Discuss the other approaches to sobriety Patsy experiences, including deprivation in prison; accountability to her parole officer, Jeffrey Goldstone; and sessions with Mrs. Silver. Why does she succeed in staying sober?

11. How is Patsy influenced by her ESL students? What common ground does she share with them?

12. How does Patsy's marriage to Cal compare to her earlier relationship with Ian? What does she want in a relationship? How does her understanding of love change throughout the novel?

13. At the end of chapter 26, Cal tells Patsy that no matter what the truth is about the Parnham deaths, "what happened got you to where you needed to be." Ultimately, what did it take for her to get sober?

14. Much of Patsy's adult life has been spent in atoning for the deaths of Jane and Jessica Parnham. What were the various aspects of her atonement? Were any aspects regrettable or unnecessary?

15. How did the revelations about Bill Hogue transform your understanding of the novel? What does his crime indicate about the way society handles retribution and other morality-based "debts"?

16. Discuss the novel's title. Why was Patsy so willing to accept the blame for the accident? How much blame is she willing to relinquish? Where should the blame for the Parnham deaths lie?

17. How does Blame amplify the themes explored in Michelle Huneven's previous novels? What are the hallmarks of her storytelling style?

Editorial Reviews

Michelle Huneven's novel Blame [is] one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in years.” —Jennifer Weiner, CBS's Sunday Morning

“A novel that combines the compulsive pleasures of a page-turner and the deeper satisfaction of true, thoughtful literature.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Unfolds like a thriller, creating a sense of urgency and mystery even about everyday matters. . . . Huneven's prose moves like a hummingbird, in small bursts that are improbably fast and graceful.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Smart, deep, addictive . . . Huneven's language hums, her dialogue jumps. . . . There are so many eye-popping scenes I would need to take my shoes off to count them.” —GQ

“Wonderful . . . How do you build lasting relationships when the world insists on crumbling around you? That's Huneven's theme here, and she does a lovely job with it.” —The Washington Post

“An elegant, hair-raising novel . . . Huneven's prose is flawless.” —The New Yorker

“The satisfactions Blame offers readers are elegant prose and, deeper than that aesthetic pleasure, the intelligence and compassion Huneven brings to her characters. She holds them all with the utmost tenderness.” —Los Angeles Times

“Michelle Huneven's new novel, Blame, is a lovely, shimmering tour de force, full of an astonishing sense of the beauty of the world, the inestimable complexity of moral consequences, and the bright pleasures of Huneven's prose. Read it.” —Roxana Robinson, author of Cost

“In Blame, a guilty protagonist strives for the good and achieves the beautiful—and, eventually, the truth. Huneven's supple, world-loving prose elevates small gestures into redemptive acts and everyday objects into restorative gifts, rewarding the reader on every page.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint It Black

“Huneven turns complicated moral issues into utterly riveting reading in this beautifully written story of remorse and redemption.” —Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist (starred review)

“This book is a pleasure, on every level.” —Sue Miler, Bookforum

“Michelle Huneven is a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent, and Jamesland is a marvel.” —Richard Russo on Jamesland

“Like that other West Coast chronicler of struggling Americans, Raymond Carver . . . [Huneven] is not interested in literary pretension or postmodern razzle-dazzle, but in achieving a measure of truth—and her generous, engaging novel does just that.” —Valerie Sayers, The New York Times Book Review, on Round Rock

From the Publisher

Huneven makes Patsy's story unfold like a thriller, creating a sense of urgency and mystery even about everyday matters…Huneven's prose moves like a hummingbird, in small bursts that are improbably fast and graceful.
—The New York Times

Maria Russo

Huneven (Jamesland, 2003, etc.) tracks a 20-year-old burden of guilt with supple technique. Alcoholism and integrity drive her novel, which is narrated with flashes of irony, appealing warmth and dry judgment. Patsy MacLemoore plays only a bit part in the opening scene, during which 12-year-old Joey, whose mother is dying in the hospital, spends a bizarre night in the care of her attractive, wastrel Uncle Brice and his girlfriend Patsy, an alcoholic history professor who gets drunk, gives Joey pills and beer and pierces her ears unevenly. The story proper begins a year later, in May 1981, and Patsy takes center-stage. During her latest blackout, she drives into and kills two Jehovah's Witnesses, mother and daughter. Prison follows, two harsh years from which Patsy emerges stripped to the emotional bone. She rebuilds her life assisted by Brice, his boyfriend Gilles (Patsy's not too surprised by that revelation) and the forgiveness of the husband and father of her victims. Seeking "a way to be good," she finds it caring for AIDS patients, starting with Gilles. She takes sanctuary in marriage to Cal, an older, richer man with a long history of helping the troubled. Patsy's resolution to be a better person means that she chooses not to act on her powerful attraction to a fellow academic. Twenty years after the killings, a stunning revelation forces her to recast her identity and her relationships. Grace, insight and seemingly effortless narration distract from the odd pacing and sometimes meandering progress of this empathetic tale.

Kirkus Reviews