Fortunate Lives

by Robb Forman Dew

Overview

The Howells family are revisited in the summer of 1991. David, 18, is preparing to go to Harvard and Sarah is now 13. A young woman, Netta Breckenridge, enters the family's lives and creates a fragile domesticity for the Howells.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316090346
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	11/29/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	488 KB

About the Author

Robb Forman Dew was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For the past thirty years she has lived in Williamstown, MA, where she lives with her husband, who is professor of history at Williams College.

The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Dew is the author of the novels Dale Loves Sophie to Death, for which she received the National Book Award; The Time of Her Life; Fortunate Lives; The Evidence Against Her; and, most recently, The Truth of the Matter; as well as a memoir, The Family Heart.

Reading Group Guide

1. The novel opens as Dinah Howells is sitting down to respond to the Harvard Freshman Dean's request for a letter describing her son David. How do Dinah's attempts at drafting letters change in the course of the novel, and what insight do these attempts afford us about Dinah's state of mind and her feelings towards her son? What do you think she is feeling as she confronts the impending departure of her oldest child?

2. David himself undergoes a transforming summer. What prompts the changes in his attitude, his shifts in perception and perspective on his life and his family and friends? How do you think his first year at Harvard will unfold?

3. Dinah and Martin responded to the death of their son Toby by grieving in very different ways. Can you explain how their respective methods of coping affected their lives and personalities? Do you think one way of coping is "healthier" than another?

4. Owen Croft is a sad but dramatic figure in Martin Howells's life. How does he act as a catalyst for Martin's grief, pain, and rage? Do you think Martin's experience would have been different had someone other than Owen been responsible for Toby's death?

5. How did Toby Howells's death alter the relationships between Dinah and Martin Howells and their two surviving children, David and Sarah? Do you think Toby's death altered the way Dinah and Martin thought about their role and their responsibilities as parents?

6. Netta Breckenridge evokes diverse reactions from the various members of the Howells family. Why do you think the Howellses accept this stranger and her daughter into their home so easily, and what is it about Netta that prompts such strong emotion from each of them? How does Netta alter the dynamic of the family?

7. The title of the novel is Fortunate Lives. Do you think the Howellses' lives are more or less fortunate than most other people's? Do the physical circumstances of their lives influence the effects of the losses that the Howellses must cope with?

Editorial Reviews

The perilous shoals of domesticity--in particular, the tensions, misunderstandings and frustrations on which communication between parents and children founder--are addressed with consummate delicacy, grace and skill in Dew's third novel, which revisits the characters of Dale Loves Sophie to Death . The Howells family--Dinah and Martin and their children, 18-year-old David and preadolescent Sarah--have gingerly resumed normal life six years after the accidental death of the middle child, Toby. During one summer in their small college town in the Berkshires, the family prepares for David's departure for Harvard and copes with the intrusion into their daily routines of Netta Breckenridge, a seemingly needy but highly manipulative divorcee, and Owen Croft, the young man whose car killed Toby and whom Martin, a professor and editor of a literary magazine, has agreed to employ. During this transitional time, Dinah dreads David's leaving the tight family unit and puzzles over why he has become surly, cold and aloof; David experiences a wrenching rite of passage; and Martin finally comes to terms with the circumstances of Toby's death. Dew's gift is to write simply yet eloquently of the deep-flowing currents of domestic life, the barely acknowledged emotions that color even ordinary encounters and that glimmer under the surface of routine family activities. Though the events recounted in this narrative are minimal and mundane (except for a charming scene in which a puppet called Moonflower makes her annual appearance at a Fourth of July party), the narrative brims with insights about the parent-child relationship and the ``chemistry of families.'' Thoughtful, often provocative and radiant with understanding, the novel resonates with honest feeling. First serial to McCall's; BOMC selection. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Dew continues the story of the New England Howell family in this sequel to the prize-winning Dale Loves Sophie to Death ( LJ 5/15/81). The story centers around a summer six years after the death of the oldest son, Toby, when his surviving brother David is readying himself for Harvard. Parents Martin and Dinah are thus forced to come to grips with the death of one son and the departure (another sort of family ``death'') of the other. Ordinary People is at times suggested, but here it is Martin who must overcome his guilt and anger. During this one summer both he and Dinah learn that life goes on and that it is good. This is the kind of novel one doesn't find much anymore--featuring a sophisticated, Cheever-like town and people centered around a college and its subculture (Martin is a professor and editor of a literary magazine), where nothing much happens but the reader has a certain satisfaction in savoring the prose itself. A nice haven in the midst of the usual best-seller dreck. BOMC selection; serial rights to McCall's ; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/91.-- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Bay Area Cooperative Lib. System, Cal.

Library Journal