eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
A family matriarch—half Medea, half Clytemnestra—calls home her three children, who take turns narrating the story. Quinn, the wonder boy who has become a successful actor in London, must fly in from England, putting a new love interest and a career-boosting role in a BBC production of the Oresteia on hold. Maury, whose life is defined by his Asperger's and a terrible crime committed when he was a teenager, rides in on a bus from his quiet, impoverished life out west. Candy, the eldest at fifty-five and the only one still a devout Catholic, is already in Maryland, where she takes care of her mother and dreams of retiring to North Carolina with her boyfriend. Once the family is reassembled in the childhood home, the pieces of a dark puzzle come together over brilliant and witty exchanges. Mewshaw invites us into the heart of a family dynamic, exploding prejudices about love, religion, and murder.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781590513552 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Other Press, LLC |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2009 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Michael Mewshaw is the author of seventeen novels, including Year of the Gun and Shelter from the Storm, as well as works of nonfiction, including the memoir Do I Owe You Something?, a chronicle of his many and varied encounters with major contemporary American authors.
Read an Excerpt
My neighbors, no kidding, buy tiger shit from the London Zoo and spread it over their flowerbeds. They believe its wild scent scares off animals. But I allow creatures large and small free rein of my property. Squirrels, hedgehogs, voles, and field mice (they mutate into rats and become fair game for traps if they sneak into the house) frolic for my amusement. On clear winter mornings like this one, a tawny fox, regal as a lion on the Serengeti, sometimes stretches out in the deep grass, soaking up the feeble warmth of the sun.
Today, however, I have no time to admire the view or search for the fox. I'm booked for lunch with my agent and a BBC producer. Already late, I nevertheless stroll to the restaurant by a circuitous route, reveling in cold air that rings like crystal. On certain streets, the walls of cottages huddle close, none more than a hand span apart. Each door is a different color–lipstick red, royal green, Della Robbia blue. At Admiral's Walk, in front of the white wooden mansion where Mary Poppins was filmed, a brigade of tourists gape as if expecting to spot Julie Andrews sailing overhead, pulled along by her umbrella.
At Whitestone Pond, the highest point in London, the water is usually like a detergent filled bucket stirred by a grimy mop. Today it glitters with jeweled ice. Convinced I've kept Mal and the man from the Beeb waiting long enough, I turn down Heath Street. The ethnicity of the restaurants along the road switches every month. Indian, Hungarian, Moroccan, Thai, Argentinean–maybe these joints just trade signs and go on serving the same grub. Only La Gaffe never changes. Despite the French name, it has an Italian menu and attracts a clientele divided evenly between those who look like Peter O'Toole and those who crane their necks looking for him.
Reading Group Guide
1. In speaking of the way he compartmentalizes his thoughts and memories, Maury says, "Only two drawers I've never been able to open. The first has to be the day Dad died. The second I don't have any idea what it holds and I'm afraid to find out." What do you suppose is in that second drawer inside Maury's head?
2. Candy states, "Where another person might find strength in a bottle, I naturally depended on God." How does Candy's faith see her through the many troubles she faces in life?
3. When Candy brings her mother Communion she recites the liturgy for the Communion of the Sick where Christ declares, "If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever." Why does Candy feel compelled to symbolically bring eternal life to a mother who never loved her and whom she has wished dead?
4. In discussing the BBC adaptation of the Oresteia, Mal states, "We want the characters to have the dramatic grandeur of archetypes, and yet at the same time human identities." In what way is this also an apt description of the Mitchell siblings and their mother? Quinn refers to playing Agamemnon and Orestes as "the role of a lifetime, the one I was born to play." What does he mean by this? How can this description also be applied to Quinn's role at home in Maryland?
5. Based on Maury's recollections, how would you characterize his relationship with Cole? What is your interpretation of Cole's illness? Do you think Maury understands the nature and implications of Cole's illness?
6. How does Maury's mother justify letting her son take the fall for a crime she knows he did not commit? How does Maury reconcile the constructed story of what happened that night with reality? Does Maury believe he is guilty on some level? Discuss whether Quinn or Candy ever suspected that Maury was not the one who killed their father.
7. Quinn's life seems to be an exercise in performance. Consider his initial approach to writing his memoir and his interactions with those close to him-Monsignor Dade, his agent, Dr. Rokoko, Tamzin, his mother and siblings-and discuss ways in which Quinn appears to be acting out a role rather than living honestly and authentically. How does he change by the end of the novel?
8. Quinn recalls the French playwright Jean Genet, who once said, "If everybody were savagely punished in youth, there'd be far more beauty and poetry in the world." Does this theory hold true in the adult lives of the three Mitchell siblings after their tormented childhood? Do you envision a life of greater beauty for Quinn, Maury, and Candy after their mother's death? Why or why not?
9. As Quinn confronts the revelation that he has a different biological father than Candy and Maury, he describes living in the shadow cast by his presumed father's absence and then having to confront an even murkier absence when he learns he had a stranger for a father all along. How much of Quinn's identity was wrapped up in his role as a biological member of the Mitchell family? Does it help him to know the truth at this point in his life? Why does his mother share this information with him?
10. At one point or another, Mom asks all three of her children to kill her. How do you suppose she justifies burdening her children with such a request? Why is it Quinn who ultimately obliges rather than Candy or Maury? In what ways is her death both a burden and a relief to Quinn? To Maury? To Candy?
11. What is the significance of smothering in this novel? Who is smothered by whom, in both a figurative and a literal sense?
12. Discuss the various possible meanings for the book's title.
Foreword
1. In speaking of the way he compartmentalizes his thoughts and memories, Maury says, "Only two drawers I've never been able to open. The first has to be the day Dad died. The second I don't have any idea what it holds and I'm afraid to find out." What do you suppose is in that second drawer inside Maury's head?
2. Candy states, "Where another person might find strength in a bottle, I naturally depended on God." How does Candy's faith see her through the many troubles she faces in life?
3. When Candy brings her mother Communion she recites the liturgy for the Communion of the Sick where Christ declares, "If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever." Why does Candy feel compelled to symbolically bring eternal life to a mother who never loved her and whom she has wished dead?
4. In discussing the BBC adaptation of the Oresteia, Mal states, "We want the characters to have the dramatic grandeur of archetypes, and yet at the same time human identities." In what way is this also an apt description of the Mitchell siblings and their mother? Quinn refers to playing Agamemnon and Orestes as "the role of a lifetime, the one I was born to play." What does he mean by this? How can this description also be applied to Quinn's role at home in Maryland?
5. Based on Maury's recollections, how would you characterize his relationship with Cole? What is your interpretation of Cole's illness? Do you think Maury understands the nature and implications of Cole's illness?
6. How does Maury's mother justify letting her son take the fall for a crime she knows he did not commit? How does Maury reconcile the constructed story of what happened that night with reality? DoesMaury believe he is guilty on some level? Discuss whether Quinn or Candy ever suspected that Maury was not the one who killed their father.
7. Quinn's life seems to be an exercise in performance. Consider his initial approach to writing his memoir and his interactions with those close to him-Monsignor Dade, his agent, Dr. Rokoko, Tamzin, his mother and siblings-and discuss ways in which Quinn appears to be acting out a role rather than living honestly and authentically. How does he change by the end of the novel?
8. Quinn recalls the French playwright Jean Genet, who once said, "If everybody were savagely punished in youth, there'd be far more beauty and poetry in the world." Does this theory hold true in the adult lives of the three Mitchell siblings after their tormented childhood? Do you envision a life of greater beauty for Quinn, Maury, and Candy after their mother's death? Why or why not?
9. As Quinn confronts the revelation that he has a different biological father than Candy and Maury, he describes living in the shadow cast by his presumed father's absence and then having to confront an even murkier absence when he learns he had a stranger for a father all along. How much of Quinn's identity was wrapped up in his role as a biological member of the Mitchell family? Does it help him to know the truth at this point in his life? Why does his mother share this information with him?
10. At one point or another, Mom asks all three of her children to kill her. How do you suppose she justifies burdening her children with such a request? Why is it Quinn who ultimately obliges rather than Candy or Maury? In what ways is her death both a burden and a relief to Quinn? To Maury? To Candy?
11. What is the significance of smothering in this novel? Who is smothered by whom, in both a figurative and a literal sense?
12. Discuss the various possible meanings for the book's title.