The Language of Flowers March 2015

March 2015 Book Selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, March 12th at 7 p.m. to discuss our March book The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.

Discussion questions prepared by NoveList are below.

Here are some links for additional background and information:

Author website

A song that played in my head while I read this book

Info and statistics about California foster care

SFCASA’s pre-emancipation program for foster youth

How to become a foster parent in Marin County

Coming up, we have the following books to look forward to reading:

Thurs. Apr 9              At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón (OBOM choice)

Thurs. May 14           The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

NOVELIST DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

What does the quote that precedes The Language of Flowers add to the novel?

Diffenbaugh’s novel opens with a quote from Henrietta Dumont’s 19th century classic, The Floral Offering: “Moss is selected to be the emblem of maternal love, because, like that love, it glads the heart when the winter of adversity overtakes us, and when summer friends have deserted us.” Although the language of flowers is generally perceived as a vehicle for romantic communication, Diffenbaugh uses this quote to remind readers that a central theme of her novel is maternal love. Diffenbaugh constructs several parallel maternal relationships in her novel. Elizabeth and Catherine’s own mother was cold and distant, and Catherine thus took on the role of mothering Elizabeth (p. 40). The relationship between Catherine and her son, Grant, suffers considerably from the tension between Catherine and Elizabeth. Although Catherine and Elizabeth fail to repair the bond between themselves and between themselves and their mother, Victoria and Grant learn from their mistakes. Throughout the novel, Victoria is learning to accept maternal love by mending her relationship with Elizabeth; at the same time, she must also learn to give maternal love by building a relationship with Hazel. In order to do so, Victoria must learn to love herself and to accept romantic love from Grant. Repairing her relationships, both with herself and with Grant, ultimately prepares her to receive Elizabeth’s love and gain the confidence necessary to provide for her own daughter. Through Victoria and Grant, maternal love at last finds its place in the Anderson-Hastings-Jones family tree.

What is the significance of the novel’s structure?

Victoria’s story unfolds in parallel story lines. In roughly alternating chapters, Victoria’s first-person narrative describes her relationship with Grant and her relationship with Elizabeth.

The novel is furthermore divided into four parts: “Part One: Common Thistle,” “Part Two: A Heart Unacquainted,” “Part Three: Moss,” and “Part Four: New Beginnings.” In the language of flowers, common thistle is associated with “misanthropy;” fittingly, the first part of the novel details Victoria’s misanthropic relationships. In part two, Victoria begins working on her flower dictionary by photographing white roses, which denote “a heart unacquainted with love.” This section also describes Victoria’s fledgling forays into love, as her relationships with both Elizabeth and Grant deepen. Moss, meanwhile, symbolizes maternal love in the language of flowers. The third part of the novel likewise describes Victoria’s past rejection of Elizabeth’s love and her preparation for the birth of Hazel. In part four, Victoria uses postage stamps bearing daffodils—representing new beginnings—on the letter of apology that she sends to Elizabeth. New beginnings abound in this section of the novel, as Victoria is reunited with Elizabeth, Hazel, and Grant. In this way, the four parts of the novel correspond with four flowers that come to have special meaning to Victoria, and the events within each section embody the spirit of these meanings.

How does the foster care system shape Victoria’s personality?

Victoria has difficulty developing close relationships. She is strong-willed and defiant because, as she observes, “Doing as I was told had never been a guarantee that I would get what I was promised” (p. 38). These characteristics make Victoria difficult to get along with. In addition, Victoria can recall having lived in 32 homes by the time she is ready to be emancipated (p. 39). As a result of this lack of consistency and of her transient upbringing, Victoria has difficulty forming close ties with others. She keeps others at a distance, both physically and emotionally. When Elizabeth tries to arrange a playdate for Victoria with Perla, Victoria confides to the reader that she has “never, in nine years, had a friend” (p. 65). This inability to form close ties with others continues to plague Victoria throughout the string of group homes that comprise her adolescence. Upon being emancipated from the foster care system, Victoria has no close friends.

Furthermore, Victoria has difficulty maintaining the relationships that she does have. When faced with a complicated relationship, such as her relationships with Elizabeth and Grant, her instinct is to give up on the relationship and “let go” of the connection altogether. As she listens to the problems of her customers in Bloom, Victoria is thus moved to observe, “if it were me I would have let go: of the man, of the child, and of the women with whom I discussed them” (p. 166).

Elizabeth urges young Victoria to reconsider these actions. “I believe you can prove everyone wrong . . . Victoria,” Elizabeth says. “Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are” (p. 41). But years of living according to this pattern have already caused Victoria to internalize a sense of isolation. Victoria carries this need for emotional distance with her into adulthood, inspiring Renata to observe that she believes herself to be “unforgivably flawed” (p. 278).

Victoria ultimately learns, however, that change and growth are possible. Although Victoria builds walls around herself, her desire to be unattached and independent is challenged by her relationships with Elizabeth, who tries to mother her, and Grant, who tries to love her. Elizabeth is the first to bridge this divide, pulling nine-year-old Victoria into her lap for a tearful embrace (p. 133). Later, Victoria allows herself to get physically close to Grant, and is surprised to admit, “I not only permitted his touch, I craved it, and I started to wonder if, perhaps, change was possible for me. I began to hope my pattern of letting go was something that could be outgrown, like a childhood dislike of onions or spicy food” (p. 166). Psychological closeness follows in time, as Victoria at last allows herself to be emotionally vulnerable with Elizabeh and Grant  by telling them the truth about the fire (pp. 275, 296).

What do Victoria’s relationships with others imply about her personality?

Victoria’s relationships with others are driven by a fear of intimacy, which is manifested in both physical and emotional detachment.

Keeping herself physically separated from others is one way that Victoria expresses her fear of intimacy. We learn early on that Victoria dislikes being touched. Touch, in fact, often produces physical illness in Victoria. As she recalls:

As a child I had vomited from closeness: from touch or the threat of touch. Foster parents towering over me, shoving my uncooperative arms into a jacket, teachers ripping hats from my head, their fingers lingering too long on my tangled hair, had forced my stomach into uncontrollable convulsions. Once, shortly after moving in with Elizabeth, we had eaten a picnic dinner in the garden. I had overeaten, as I did at every meal that fall, and, unable to move, I had allowed Elizabeth to pick me up and carry me back to the house. She had barely set me down on the porch before I threw up over the side of the railing. (pp. 176-177)

As an adult, Victoria maintains a physical distance between herself and others by “living in a closet with six locks” and always “working on the opposite side of the table from Renata” (p. 166). When speaking with customers at Bloom, Victoria makes a point of “standing behind the cash register” (p. 166). “Whenever possible,” she confesses, “I separated my body from those around me with plaster walls, solid wood tables, or heavy metal objects” (p. 166).

In addition to literally holding the world at arm’s length, Victoria maintains emotional distance in her relationships. She carries her secrets in silence, failing to divulge the meanings behind her actions and allowing Catherine to take the blame for a fire she set. Most importantly, she severs contact with individuals who threaten to break down the walls she has built around her, cutting ties with Elizabeth in her youth, abandoning Grant and Renata (by quitting her job at Bloom) when she becomes pregnant, and subsequently deserting her child after birth. Occasionally Victoria goes to extreme lengths to break these ties, as in the case of Elizabeth, where false accusations of abuse and arson terminate the relationship.

As her relationship with Grant intensifies, Victoria is incapacitated by inner conflict. She is falling in love with Grant, awakening both physically and emotionally to his affection, but she does not feel worthy of the deepening relationship. Victoria expresses this by responding unpredictably to Grant’s advances.

After dinner he would kiss me, only once, and wait to see my reaction. Sometimes I kissed him back, and he would pull me to him, and we would stand intertwined in the doorway for half an hour; other times my lips remained cold and unmoving. Even I didn’t know how I would react on any given day. About our deepening relationship, I felt fear and desire in equal, unpredictable parts. (p. 164)

This fear is induced by guilt. Victoria alone knows the truth about that long-ago fire at Elizabeth’s: the flames originated from her hands, not Catherine’s. She is responsible for the pain and misery that consumed Catherine in the final years of her life; she, not Catherine, is responsible for ruining her own life as well as that of Elizabeth and Grant. Victoria believes that revealing these truths to Grant would eradicate his affection for her. As she confides, “Grant loved me. His love was quiet but consistent, and with each declaration I felt myself swoon with both pleasure and guilt. I did not deserve his love. If he knew the truth, he would hate me. I was surer of this than I had ever been of anything in my life” (p. 174).

Through her work at Bloom and Message, Victoria has a precious opportunity to do something she has never given herself an opportunity to do before: she has a chance to build relationships and help them flourish, in direct opposition to the destructive nature of her past actions. The notion that she is making the world around her a better place by sharing her knowledge of flowers with others is a difficult concept for Victoria to embrace. “. . .I tried to take solace in this small, intangible contribution to the world,” Victoria reflects. “I told myself that someone, somewhere, would be less angry, less grief-stricken, because of the rampant success of Message. Friendships would be stronger; marriages would last. But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t take credit for an abstract contribution to the world when in every tangible human interaction I’d ever had I’d caused only pain: with Elizabeth, through arson and a false accusation; with Grant, through abandonment and an unnamed, unsupported child” (p. 270).

What does the language of flowers tell us about Victoria?

At eighteen, Victoria is bitter because of the events in her past. She knows she is responsible for the fire that devastated Elizabeth’s vineyard, and she knows that she wrongly accused Elizabeth of having abused her. Although she had her own reasons for committing these acts, this does not change the fact that she is ultimately unhappy with the outcome and with having to tote around the burden of these secrets. She feels stuck and helpless to make amends. Likewise, although Victoria is well-schooled in the language of many flowers, she finds herself communicating the same messages over and over again. As she recalls:

For most of a decade I’d spent every spare moment memorizing the meanings and scientific descriptions of individual flowers, but the knowledge went mostly unutilized. I used the same flowers again and again: a bouquet of marigold, grief; a bucket of thistle, misanthropy; a pinch of dried basil, hate. Only occasionally did my communication vary: a pocketful of red carnations for the judge when I realized I would never go back to the vineyard, and peony for Meredith, as often as I could find it. (p. 5)

The red carnations, symbolizing “my heart breaks,” communicated Victoria’s displeasure with the judge’s ruling. The peony, symbolizing anger, communicated Victoria’s displeasure with her own situation.

As Victoria grows older, she comes to believe that thistle summarizes her personality (p. 83). Victoria first made this association in her youth, when she was living with Elizabeth. Elizabeth asked her to describe exactly how she was feeling, so that she could find just the right flower to convey the message. 

“I don’t like you,” I said. “I don’t like you locking me out of the house or throwing me into the kitchen sink. I don’t like you touching my back or grabbing my face or forcing me to play with Perla. I don’t like your flowers or your messages or your bony fingers. I don’t like anything about you, and I don’t like anything about the world, either.”

“Much better!” Elizabeth seemed genuinely impressed by my hate-filled monologue. “The flower you’re looking for is clearly the common thistle, which symbolizes misanthropy. Misanthropy means hatred or mistrust of humankind.” (p. 77)

As Victoria enters adulthood, her relationships with others are plagued by these negative perceptions and emotions.

Later, Victoria uses the language of flowers to build relationships rather than to destroy them. She does this first and foremost through her work at Bloom and Message, and then applies her knowledge to her personal relationships by preparing a special bouquet for Elizabeth to celebrate their reunion at the end of the novel. The bouquet contains flax (I feel your kindness), forget-me-not (don't forget me), hazel (reconciliation), white roses (a heart unacquainted with love), pink roses (grace), helenium (tears), periwinkle (tender recollections), primrose (childhood), bellflower (gratitude), moss (maternal love), and sage (good health and long life) (pp. 299-300).

What does the language of flowers offer Victoria?

The language of flowers presents Victoria with a unique opportunity to communicate with others, develop close relationships, and help others do the same.

Through the language of flowers, Victoria gains insight into herself and learns to be emotionally vulnerable with others. Flowers soon become Victoria’s sole connection to the world. After a lifetime of guarding herself against closeness to anybody, Victoria finds communication with others to be difficult. She is initially drawn to the precision of the language of flowers, and like Elizabeth she comes to appreciate the clandestine nature of this language. Working with flowers challenges Victoria to understand her own emotions from the inside out in order to communicate the correct message.

And because Victoria’s education in the language of flowers is dependent upon Elizabeth’s instruction, learning the art of floral communication challenges Victoria to let down the walls she has built to protect herself. Over time, she learns to communicate her feelings to Elizabeth. “I can teach you the flower for hate, if you like,” Elizabeth says to Victoria early on in the novel, “but the word hate is unspecific. Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear. If you’ll tell me exactly how you’re feeling, I’ll be able to help you find the right flower to convey your message” (p. 77).

Gradually, Victoria discovers that the language of flowers has limitations. Elizabeth’s message-laden flowers fail to bring Catherine back to her, and Victoria is surprised to learn that the language itself is not as consistent as Elizabeth had taught her. The meaning of each flower varies widely from one dictionary to another. She and Grant work together to create a special dictionary of agreed-upon meanings in order to prevent misunderstandings. In this way, the language of flowers once again challenges fiercely independent Victoria to develop a close relationship.

Initially, Victoria believes the messages of the flowers to be imbued by the sender’s intent. But after working with Grant and learning more of the history and biology of the blooms, Victoria finds herself wondering if there isn’t a bit of magic in the language of flowers after all. After sharing passionate kisses with Grant between pots of jonquil (which symbolize desire), Victoria concludes: “Maybe I was wrong, I thought, watching the clusters sway in the breeze. Maybe the essence of each flower’s meaning really was contained somewhere within its sturdy stem, its soft gathering of petals” (p. 158).

Victoria’s apt understanding of the magical language of flowers is a gift that enables her to help others build and maintain relationships. Through her work at Bloom and Message, Victoria helps others find the flowers that transform their lives.

Why does Victoria lie to Meredith and claim that Elizabeth abuses her?

Victoria knows that Elizabeth is her last chance to find a permanent home. When Elizabeth fails to bring Victoria to court for her adoption hearing on the appointed date, the hearing is rescheduled. Victoria, however, destroys this opportunity by falsely accusing Elizabeth of abuse. As a result of Victoria’s accusation, the judge rules that Elizabeth is unfit to adopt Victoria, and Victoria is placed in the first of many group homes.

Although it is Victoria’s own lies that determine this outcome, she is not happy with the judge’s ruling. Victoria expresses her unhappiness at being separated from Elizabeth through flowers, giving the judge “a pocketful of red carnations” that denote the sentiment “my heart breaks” (p. 5). But if Victoria’s heart breaks at the thought of being separated from Elizabeth, why does she accuse Elizabeth of mistreatment in the first place?

Victoria’s pride lies at the heart of these decisions. After Elizabeth fails her on the adoption hearing date, she finds herself doubting that Elizabeth truly wants to adopt her, love her, and mother her:

“I’m really sorry,” Elizabeth said quietly. She had said it hundreds of times in the previous weeks, and I believed her. She seemed sorry. What I didn’t believe, though, was that she still wanted to be my mother. Pity, I knew was different from love. From what I’d heard of their conversation in the living room, Meredith had made my options clear to Elizabeth. I had her or I had no one. It was out of a sense of obligation, I decided, that Elizabeth hadn’t given notice. (pp. 196-197)

Not wanting to be rescued only for the sake of pity and obligation, Victoria creates a situation that liberates Elizabeth from this duty.

Why does Victoria give Grant the baby?

Victoria becomes overwhelmed by the needs of her infant, and believes that she does not have what it takes to raise the child well. “Good mothers did not let their babies cry,” she observes. “Good mothers put the needs of their babies first, and I wanted, more than anything, to be a good mother” (p. 233). Victoria, however, does let her baby cry, prompting her to conclude, “I had failed my daughter. Less than three weeks after giving birth and making promises to us both, I had failed, and failed again. The cycle would continue. Promises and failures, mothers and daughters, indefinitely” (p. 250). In order to break this cycle, Victoria resolves that she must surrender her role as Hazel’s mother; by doing so, she hopes to protect her daughter. As she confesses, “I had hurt every person I had ever known; I wanted, desperately, to save her from the dangers of being my daughter” (p. 254).

Victoria leaves the baby in her basket on Grant’s bed when he is not home. Although she is physically separated from her daughter, Hazel is never from far Victoria’s thoughts: “Miles and miles away, I felt my daughter changing, each day growing and developing, without me. I longed to be with her, to witness her transformation. But as much as I wanted to be reunited, I would not go to her. My desire for my daughter felt selfish” (p. 271).

Because she believes herself to be unfit for motherhood, she comes to perceive the abandonment of her child as the ultimate act of love. “Leaving her with Grant had been the most loving act I had ever accomplished, and I did not regret it,” Victoria reflects. “Without me, my daughter would be safe. Grant would love her like he had loved me, with unearned devotion and tender care. It was everything I wanted for her” (p. 271).

What does Victoria learn about the nature of love?

As Victoria becomes fluent in the language of flowers, she finds that love has many subtle facets, each symbolized by a different bloom. “Victoria’s Dictionary of Flowers,” which appends to the novel, captures the various flavors of feeling. Love can be humble (as the fuchsia) or secret (as the acacia). It can bind lovers (as symbolized by the linden tree) and mothers to children (as symbolized by the moss). It is an emotion too large to be expressed by a single flower, being denoted by the dogwood and the myrtle, as well as the ever-famous red rose.

Victoria learns that love, as it relates to families, is stable, though the people within these trees of relationships may change and grow over time. As Elizabeth reflects upon her relationship with Catherine, “People change. . . . Love doesn’t. Family doesn’t” (p. 199).

Fittingly, it is maternal love, not romantic love, which is the central theme of the novel, as implied by the quote that prefaces The Language of Flowers. Over the course of the novel, Victoria learns to accept love from a mother figure (Elizabeth), and to give love as a mother (to her daughter, Hazel). Having neither flowers nor fragrance, moss is not the most desirable plant. And yet it flourishes in unexpected places and harsh terrains, and its soft web accentuates the beauty of other buds. These qualities render it an apt symbol of maternal love in general, and Victoria’s maternal love in particular. As Victoria learns from Grant, “moss grows without roots” (p. 291). The love that binds a mother to a child is therefore not confined to a place, a location, or a home. It reaches beyond time and space, drawing people together with a softness that can sustain the heart through Dumont’s “winter of adversity.” Through this example Victoria comes to acknowledge, “Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else” (p. 308).

What tasks lie in Victoria’s future?

The Language of Flowers concludes on a hopeful note, with a warm scene that reunites Victoria with Grant, Elizabeth, and Hazel. "Elizabeth’s hand inched toward mine on the table. She offered it to me, and in doing so it felt like she was offering me a path back into the family, the family in which I was loved, as a daughter, as a partner, as a mother. I reached for her hand. Hazel slipped hers, sticky and warm, between our palms" (p. 303).

Victoria also begins to make plans for the future, noting, “It would be possible, someday, to have a business and a family, both” (p. 306). In the meantime, she has made arrangements to take a temporary leave from Message in order to focus on her family. The challenges that loom on her horizon are daunting; as she explains, “I needed to accept Grant’s love, and Elizabeth’s, and earn the love of my daughter” (p. 306). Victoria knows that this will not be easy, but as she prepares to spend her first night alone with her daughter, she voices a willingness to work hard to achieve this goal. “Maybe she [Hazel] would be scared, and maybe I would feel overwhelmed,” Victoria admits, “but we would try again the next week and the one after that. Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots” (p. 308).

About the Author

Vanessa Diffenbaugh was born in San Francisco in 1978 and grew up in Chico, California. In her youth, Diffenbaugh aspired to be a writer and began telling stories at an early age. She went on to study creative writing and education at Stanford University. After receiving her degree, Diffenbaugh took a job teaching art and writing to young people in low-income communities. At the age of 23, she began mentoring foster kids. Ultimately, she and her husband, PK, became foster parents themselves.

These experiences informed the plot of her first novel, The Language of Flowers, which was published in 2011.

“Though Victoria [the protagonist of The Language of Flowers] is entirely fictional, I did draw inspiration in bits and pieces from foster children I have known,” Diffenbaugh explains. “One young woman in particular, whom my husband and I mentored many years ago, was fiery and focused and distrusting and unpredictable in a manner similar to Victoria. Her history was intense: a number on her birth certificate where a name should have been; more foster homes than she could count” (qtd. in “First Fiction 2011: Vanessa Diffenbaugh: Say It with Flowers,” Publishers’ Weekly, 01 July 2011).

Diffenbaugh began drafting the novel that was to become The Language of Flowers in September of 2007. With two babies and two teens at home, finding time to write was a challenge, but the initial draft of the story came out, in her words, “quickly and easily.” The Language of Flowers was originally written in chronological order, and then refined and restructured to smooth out pacing and character development.

In addition to writing fiction, Diffenbaugh has published nonfiction essays, including a piece for Good Housekeeping about her personal experiences as a foster mother. She is also a passionate advocate for young adults. Shortly before the publication of The Language of Flowers, Diffenbaugh joined forces with friend and brand strategist Isis Dallis Keigwin to found the Camellia Network. The network strives to instigate a national movement to support young adults who have recently been emancipated from the foster care system. “[Starting a nonprofit]’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” comments Diffenbaugh, “but so worthwhile.”

Diffenbaugh resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their children. A second novel is in the works.

The quotes from the author come from an interview conducted directly with her by Ms. Amirante.

Tenth of December February 2015

February 2015 Book Selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, February 12th at 7 p.m. to discuss our February book Tenth of December by George Saunders.

Discussion questions are below.

Here are some links for additional background and information:

New Yorker interview with George Saunders

Discussion of the writing process with George Saunders and his editor

Brief video review and analysis of title story, Tenth of December

Coming up, we have the following books to look forward to reading:

Thurs. Mar. 12          The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Thurs. Apr 9              At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón (OBOM choice)

Thurs. May 14           The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Tenth of December by George Saunders

"Victory Lap":

1. Why do you think the story is called "Victory Lap"?
2. Did you find each character's train of thought to be believable? Why or why not?
3. How would you characterize Alison and her parents? Kyle and his parents?
4. What made Kyle run?
5. Did you like the way Saunders had the action unfold in the story, and especially how the end jumped to months later and Alison waking from a dream?

"Sticks":

6. "Sticks" is short even by short story standards. What do you think Saunders accomplished (or was trying to accomplish) in this one to two pages?

7.       Do any difficult people in your life have something equivalent to the poles -- a way of showing unusual affection or enthusiasm?

8.       Why do you think it is called "Sticks"? What are the sticks?

"Puppy":

9.       Do you think Marie, the woman looking for apuppy, was a good parent? Was Callie, the woman selling the puppy? Do you think they both loved their kids? Was one parenting method better than the other?

10.   Do you think Marie called social services about the situation with Bo chained in the yard? Do you think that would be the appropriate response? Was Callie a fit parent?

11.   Marie thinks, after leaving without the puppy, "it was a nice pup, but Marie was not going to contribute to a situation like this in even the smallest way" (41). In the end, though, her actions led to Callie abandoning the puppy in the cornfield. What does it mean to "contribute" and has Marie already done so? What do you think an appropriate reaction to the situation would be?

12.   How do the flashbacks to Marie's childhood influence your opinion of her generally and as a parent?

"Escape from Spiderhead":

1. "Escape from Spiderhead" could be classified as a different genre than the preceding stories since its premise is science fiction. Did you enjoy that change?
2. If minds and emotions could be manipulated through a drip, as in the story, how would that affect human freedom and responsibility?
3. Abnesti justifies his experiments by saying he is working for the greater good and that the people harmed have done very bad things in the past. Do you think he is justified? If prisoners had a choice between regular prison and Spiderhead, then would the experiments be justified?
4. Why did Jeff kill himself?

"Exhortation":

5. What sort of work do you imagine the workers Todd is addressing do? Can you imagine situations where his exhortation is good advice or are there some underlying flaws?
6. What did Saunders accomplish by leaving the type of work a mystery?

"Al Roosten":

7. Did you like or sympathize with Al Roosten? Why or why not?

"The Semplica Girl Diaries":

8. How long did it take you to figure out what an "SG" was?
9. The Semplica Girls provided a science fiction element in an otherwise realistic, domestic story. Why do you think Saunders chose to use science fiction? Did you like that?
10. Do you think Saunders is trying to draw parallels between the Semplica Girls and any situations in our current culture? If so, what?
11. One of the last things the main character writes is, "What could she want so much, that would make her pull such desperate stunt?" (167). Consider the irony of this statement in light of the desperate stunts that the main character has pulled throughout the story. What did he want so much? What are the different levels of poverty and social ambition considered in this story?

"Home":

12. What do you think Saunders is trying to convey in "Home"?

"My Chivalric Fiasco":

13. Once again Saunders uses a science fiction pharmaceutical drug as a key element in the story. Why do you think he does this? Does the use of the drug allow him to express something about human nature that would be harder to show in a realistic story?
14. This story, and many of the others, deals with families in very difficult financial situations. Discuss how that thread runs through the book and whether you think Saunders has captured the humanity and struggles within that socioeconomic class well.

"Tenth of December":

15. Why do you think the title of this story was chosen as the title for the book?
16. In what ways do the boy and old man save each other?
17. What do you think happens after the end of the story?

Overall:

18. What did you think about the science fiction in several of the stories?
19. What themes do you think link the stories in this collection?
20. . Most of the characters in these stories touch, in some way, on relationships with their parents or their children. How are these relationships generally portrayed?
21. Issues of class are at the core of many of these stories. What does Saunders seem to be trying to convey by using narrators that come from lower economic status? How do people regard those in upper or lower classes than themselves?
22. Saunders has often been called a science fiction writer, as well as a satirist. Would you say that is a fair assessment? Do you feel that the stories in Tenth of December skew towards a certain genre of fiction? If so, why do you think Saunders would choose to write in such a manner?
23. Each of the stories is written from a character’s point of view, sometimes alternating between multiple figures. What effect does that have in how you view the narrator? Can you identify with some; why or why not?

My Antonia January 2015

January 2015 Book Selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, January 8th at 7 p.m. to discuss our January book My Antonia by Willa Cather.

Discussion questions are below.

Here are some links for additional background and information:

Willa Cather Archives

Willa Cather Foundation with links to info about Red Cloud, NE and the prairies

Willa Cather’s letters have only been opened to the public since 2013. Read a review of those letters here.

Coming up, we have the following books to look forward to reading:

Thurs. Feb. 12          Tenth of December by George Saunders

Thurs. Mar. 12          The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Thurs. Apr 9              At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón (OBOM choice)

Thurs. May 14           The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

My Antonia by Willa Cather

1. Why might Willa Cather begin her novel with an introduction from an unnamed female acquaintance of Jim Burden? What effect does this device have on the reader?
2. Why does Jim title his manuscript "My Ántonia"? What does he mean when he states, "It's through myself that I knew and felt her"?
3. This book is often seen as a coming-of-age novel. How does Ántonia challenge Jim's growing masculinity?
4. When does Ántonia's father call her "My Ántonia"? How deeply does his death change her life? Why does it affect Jim so much?
5. Do you feel the stories narrated by others—such as the story of the young bride and the wolves—are essential to the novel? Why or why not?
6. How is the land a character in this novel? Is it the hero?
7. What qualities do Ántonia and Lena share? How do they differ? Why does Jim pursue a romance with Lena and not Ántonia?
8. Jim's family is low-church Protestant; the Shimerda family is Roman Catholic. What role does religion play in the novel?
9. Is Ántonia triumphant at the end? Is Jim?
10. Why do you suppose the image of the plough in the setting sun has become one of Cather's most memorable symbols?
11. Cather once said that "one's strongest emotions and one's most vivid mental pictures are acquired before one is fifteen." How is this true for Jim Burden and his view of Ántonia?
12. The novel's epigraph, "Optima dies ... prima fugit," is cited by Jim later in the novel: "the best days are the first to flee." How is this a fitting summation of the novel's theme?
13. Why is getting "a picture" of Ántonia important enough to Jim and the narrator of the introduction that they decide to write about her? (p. 5
14. When Jim and Ántonia meet as children, why do they become such close friends?
15. Why does Pavel's story about the wolves and the wedding party affect Jim and Ántonia so deeply?
16. Who or what does Cather intend us to see as responsible for Mr. Shimerda's suicide?
17. Why does Cather repeatedly include images of people and objects silhouetted against the sun? What does the vision of the plough mean to Jim?
18. Why does Jim prefer "the hired girls" to the Black Hawk girls? Is Frances right when she says that Jim puts "a kind of glamour" over the hired girls? (p. 175)
19. What is Cather suggesting about gender roles with the characters Frances, Antonia, and Lena?
20. Why is Antonia so determined to keep going to the dancing tent that she would rather leave her job with the Harlings than stop dancing?
21. Why does the incident at Wick Cutter's house make Jim feel that he never wants to see Ántonia again and that he hated her almost as much as he hated Cutter
22. Why does Jim leave Lena Lingard in the end, despite how much he enjoys being with her?
23. Why does Jim tell Antonia, "I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister—anything that a woman can be to a man"? (p. 240)
24. What does Jim mean when he says that "Cuzak had been made the instrument of Ántonia's special mission" (p. 270)? What is her mission?
25. How have immigrants enriched American culture? How have they been transformed by it?
26. Would you agree with Virgil and Jim that the earliest days are the best and the most quickly gone?
27. Do you agree that happiness consists of being "dissolved into something complete and great" (p. 20)?

A Visit From the Goon Squad

November 2014 Discussion

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, November 13th at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our November book, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Discussion questions are below.

Here are some links for additional background and information:

Character list and timelines

Jennifer Egan’s favorite non-fiction title: The Image

Video interview with Jennifer Egan (long!)

Coming up, we have the following book to look forward to reading:

Thurs. Dec. 11^th        Where’d You Go, Bernadette?  by Maria Semple

Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

NoveList Discussion Questions

A Visit from the Goon Squad
by  Jennifer Egan

---

Author:

Raised in San Francisco, Jennifer Egan studied at the University of Pennsylvania and St. John's College, Cambridge. During her student years, Egan traveled extensively, exploring Europe, the USSR, China, and Japan. These locales and the adventures she had would inspire much of her later work. Moving to New York City in 1987, she worked a wide variety of jobs while beginning her career as a writer. Her first forays into the world of literature were short stories, which appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta and McSweeney’s, among others. These were included in her first book, a short story collection entitled Emerald City (1993).

Egan's first novel, The Invisible Circus (1995), was well received by both critics and readers. Again the novel drew from Egan's life experience, and it was adapted into a movie in 2001. Her second novel, Look at Me (2001), was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her next book, The Keep (2006) was a national best seller. Her most recent novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, was a concept years in the making:

I knew as far back as 2001 that I would write a book called A Visit from the Goon Squad, though I had no idea what kind of book it would be. As I worked on it, I kept wondering, 'Who is the goon?' I liked the sense that there were many answers. And then I found myself writing 'Time is a goon,' and realized that of course that's true — time is the stealth goon, the one you ignore because you are so busy worrying about the goons right in front of you.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-29/jennifer-egan-interview-a-visit-from-the-goon-squad/

A Visit from the Goon Squad is an unconventional novel that pushes the boundaries of both metanarrative and format — part of the story is told as a PowerPoint presentation. Egan uses this iconoclastic approach to explore ideas of time, aging, music, and identity through the lives of a handful of vivid characters.

Egan's literary and journalistic work has been honored with a number of awards and fellowships, including the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, Outstanding Media Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, A Guggenheim Fellowship, and most recently a fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Egan's journalism frequently appears in The New York Times Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two sons.

Summary:

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a thoroughly postmodern novel, offering a disjointed narrative and elements of speculative fiction, as well as unconventional format for parts of the narration. It follows a handful of characters as their lives intertwine over several decades. Sasha leaves home as a teenager, parties with rock stars, indulges her kleptomania, and travels abroad as a poor, disaffected youth, before returning to the US and getting a job as a executive assistant, eventually achieving a kind of stability. Alex, a relatively normal young man and Sasha's would-be suitor, deals with his own life as well as her eccentricities. Bennie Salazar, a music producer, deals with the changes in his own field, his own aging, and his complicated relationship with Sasha, whom he employs for a time. Stephanie, working in PR, tries to rehabilitate both an aging rocker's career and her own brother Jules, a former journalist who was imprisoned for assaulting a teenage star. Dolly, a former PR guru herself, struggles to support her daughter after her career takes a disastrous turn, and is forced into an alliance with an unsavory third world dictator. Ted, Sasha's uncle, attempts to find his niece at her mother's request, travelling to Naples to search for her.

These stories all take place around the present day. The final portions of the novel, however, move into the near future. A PowerPoint presentation written in the 2020s by Sasha's daughter, Alison, reveals Sasha's future as a married woman with a family, still dealing with the specter of her own past. Her husband Drew is a doctor; her daughter precociously snoops through her parents' histories; while her son Lincoln develops an obsession with pauses in classic rock songs. It also reveals the changes that time has brought to the world, including major environmental shifts and economic collapse. The final portion of the novel takes place at the same time, in a very different New York City from ours. Bennie, showing his age, calls upon his old friend Scotty to perform one last concert. Despite Scotty's concerns about age, he delivers an amazing performance. The novel ends with Bennie and Alex reminiscing about the past, dealing with the many changes in their own lives, and wondering what became of Sasha.

Questions:

While answers are provided, there is no presumption that you have been given the last word. Readers bring their own personalities to the books that they are examining. What is obvious and compelling to one reader may be invisible to the next. The questions that have been selected provide one reasonable access to the text; the answers are intended to give you examples of what a reflective reader might think. The variety of possible answers is one of the reasons we find book discussions such a rewarding activity.

How does the novel approach social trends and fads?

Taking place over the adult life of its central character, A Visit from the Goon Squad reflects on social trends and how they change. Many of the characters in the chronologically earlier parts of the novel pride themselves on their appearance and how it sets them apart from mainstream life. Stephanie reflects on this after she and her husband move into an upper middle class neighborhood that emphasizes appearance and conformity:

She'd noticed one or two blonde heads pausing by the court to watch and had been proud of how different she looked from these women: her cropped dark hair and tattoo of a Minoan octopus encompassing one calf, her several chunky rings. Although it was true that she'd bought a tennis dress for the occasion, slim and white, tiny white shorts underneath: the first white garment Stephanie had owned in her adult life. (p. 87)

Stephanie's appearance challenges the conventional notions of beauty that surround her. Her tattoo is a sign of her nonconformity. Her dark hair, close-cut, contrasts sharply with the carefully styled blondes around her. However, she is not immune to the desire to fit in, as her acquisition of a tennis dress shows. She may pride herself on her individuality, but Stephanie, like all of us, experiences a desire to belong, and will even break a lifelong habit to do so.

Then, the futuristic sections of the novel delve into the ways in which social trends change over time, in part as a result of the characters' aging. Lulu, in her twenties and the assistant to an aging Bennie, serves as an example of this. Her generation has embraced a new fashion sense, a rebellion against that of their parents:

She was "clean": no piercings, tattoo, or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses? (p. 258)

The trends of youth often become the embarrassments of old age. In this case, traditional signs of rebellion and individuality in the form of body modification have become repugnant, as the young now associate them with their aging parents and grandparents. This detail is a commentary on the ephemeral nature of social trends, particularly among the young.

How does the natural environment transform over the course of the story?

The novel portrays how the physical world changes over the course of the narrative. The story begins in the present day, when contemporary environmental issues are a prominent concern. The final sections of the novel, taking place 15 or so years in the future, show that these environmental worries were justified.

The weather has changed, as Alex notes just before the concert in the final section of the novel, which takes place in early spring in New York City:

The concert day was unseasonably warm: eighty-nine degrees and dry, with an angled golden light that stabbed their eyes at intersections and stretched their shadows to absurd lengths. The trees, which had bloomed in January, were now in tentative leaf. (p. 265)

The climate has changed in the Big Apple, become more tropical. Trees bloom in mid-winter, when in New York of the present day they are still covered in snow. By the end of the novel, it seems that the threat of global warming has been realized, driving temperatures worldwide toward extremes. Alex and his family are forced to use mosquito netting at home: apparently, an increase in the number of those pests has come along with warmer temperatures.

Alison's part of the story, told as a PowerPoint presentation, explores this a bit further. She notes the changes that have come to New York in her own brief lifetime:

When I was little, there were lawns.
Now, you need a lot of credits for a lawn, or else a turbine, which is expensive.
Our house is next to the desert. Two months ago, a lizard laid eggs in the sand by our deck. (p. 184)

Further details, revealed in her presentation, indicate that climate change has led rapidly to energy and water shortages, ending the lawn as New York knew it. The local golf course, where her father used to play, is now abandoned and overrun by desert (p. 231). However, Alison also notes that steps have been taken to address these problems, most notably an immense stretch of solar panels, presumably there to provide clean energy:

The panels go on for miles.
It's like finding a city or another planet.
They look evil.
Like angled oily black things.
But they're actually mending the earth. (p. 233)

Even with this strange, transformed landscape, there are reasons to hope that things may get better as people correct some of the environmental damage that has been done.

What is the role of music?

Music appears over and over throughout the story. Bennie's career has been spent in the music industry. Sasha has been part of the music scene as well. Their experiences and the music itself shape and permeate the novel. And like so much else in A Visit from the Goon Squad, music and the people who make it are the victims of the ravages of time.

These come in a variety of forms. When discussing one of the acts they represent, Sasha and Bennie voice a great truth about the music industry: it is ephemeral. Musicians and musical trends rise and fade very quickly. "Sasha turned and stared at him. She looked angry. 'Who am I talking to?' she asked. 'You're Bennie Salazar! This is the music business. "Five years is five hundred years" — your words'" (p. 26).

Bennie is aware how fast thing can change in the music world, and has passed that wisdom on to Sasha, who can in turn remind him of it when he forgets. Interestingly enough, throughout the novel Bennie endures as part of the music industry, suggesting that the generalization may not be entirely true.

Bennie also reflects on how changes in society and technology have affected the business of music. Things have changed, and contemporary music is a victim of rapid technological advancement:

But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust! Bennie knew better than to say this stuff aloud. (p. 18)

Bennie's point is that digitization has robbed many art forms of the minor flaws and human qualities that gave them their heart and soul in the first place. In turn, this "aesthetic holocaust" may foreshadow the environmental and economic holocausts portrayed at the end of the novel. It also connects with Sasha's future son Lincoln and his obsession with pauses in music. He seems to focus on older songs — Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, the Four Tops — and the organic qualities pauses bring to the music. As he says in his notes on the pause in Hendrix's "Foxy Lady": "Another great early pause: 2 seconds long, coming 2:23 seconds into a 3:19-minute-long song. But this one isn't total silence: we can hear Jimi breathing in the background" (p. 186). More than just a sign of Lincoln's mild autism, his interest in pauses may reflect a desire to return to the human and organic in a damaged, digitized world.

What is the significance of the title?

The phrase "a visit from the goon squad" may recall bad gangster movies and threats of violence from the repo man. However, as the novel unfolds, it reveals a different take on that expression, which actually refers to a very different goon with a unique but equally destructive agenda.

The goon squad of this novel is a thug from whom no one can escape. Stephanie, working as a PR agent, is charged by her aging former rock star boss with reinvigorating his image. Bosco offers his own ideas for how to approach his comeback:

"I want interviews, features, you name it," Bosco went on. "Fill up my life with that shit. Let's document every fucking humiliation. This is reality, right? You don't look so good twenty years later, especially when you've had half your guts removed. Times's a goon, right? Isn't that the expression?"
Jules had time to drift across the room. "I've never heard that," he said. "'Time is a goon'?"
"Would you disagree" Bosco said, a little challengingly.
There was a pause. "No," Jules said. (pp. 96-97)

Years later, at the end of the novel, a parallel conversation happens with another aging rock star. A well worn Scotty Hausmann doubts his ability to perform one last time. Bennie pushes him forward, using an argument similar to Bosco's.

"You can, Scotty — you have to," Bennie said, with his usual calm, but through his thinning silver hair Alex caught a shimmer of sweat on his crown. "Time's a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?"
Scotty shook his head. "The goon won." (p. 269)

Despite this apparent concession of defeat, Scotty goes on to deliver an amazing performance. Time is a goon, bullying, beating, and mauling many of the characters. However, each of them gets to choose their response. Some age gracefully, like Sasha, moving into better lives. Some, like Bosco, Bennie, and a reluctant Scotty, refuse to give in and instead rage against the dying of the light. The novel leaves us with the message that time changes all things, and our only choice is in how we react to the changes.

How does the novel approach aging and old age?

Due to the timespan covered by the story, we get to see some of the characters change as they age. This happens most prominently with Sasha. We know of Sasha's youth, her kleptomania, how she left home to travel the world, the things she resorted to in order to support herself. However, when her daughter, Alison, encounters Sasha's past through a photo in an old book, of her mother with a rock star outside of a club, the young girl discovers a new perspective:

Mom's mouth is smiling, but her eyes are sad.
She looks like someone I want to know, or maybe even be. (p. 200)

Intrigued by this new view of her mother, Alison asks about her past. Sasha refuses to talk about it for her own reasons:

"I don't trust my memories."
"It feels like another life."
"It's all so imbued with my own struggles."
"What struggles?" I asked her once.
"Nothing you need to think about," Mom said. (p. 201)

There is more to this than a mother shielding her daughter from her own unsavory past. Sasha has become a different person: settled, more or less happily married, exploring her creative side. She is the mother of two children. This new Sasha is a different character from the Sasha we meet in the first part of the novel. By refusing to discuss her past with her daughter, she is protecting them both from reliving some of her more difficult years.

After the concert in New York City in the last section of the novel, Alex and Bennie reminisce about the old days. When Sasha comes up in conversation, they remember that they are near her old apartment. They decide to visit and see if she's home. Alex finds himself reacting strongly to this encounter with the past:

Alex imagined walking into her apartment and finding himself still there — his young self, full of schemes and high standards, with nothing decided yet. The fantasy imbued him with a careening hope. He pushed the buzzer again, and as more seconds passed, Alex felt a gradual draining loss. The whole crazy pantomime collapsed and blew away.
"She's not here," Bennie said. "I'm betting she's far away." He tipped his gaze at the sky. "I hope she found a good life," he said at last. "She deserves it."
They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. "I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't."
Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us." (p. 274)

Alex's brief encounter with the lingering ghost of his past leaves him drained, for reasons he has difficulty articulating without Bennie's help. Here, on its final page, we may have reached the real point of the novel: time passes, people grow up, and you can't go home again.

How do relationships between men and women appear in the story?

A Visit from the Goon Squad presents relationships — of all kinds — between men and women as complex affairs. Their origins and the shapes they take as in real life, are often difficult to understand.

Though we only see them together briefly, Bennie and Sasha have a complex emotional relationship. She is ostensibly his assistant, but they share a much deeper bond. This comes to the surface during one scene, when Bennie is dropping Sasha off at her apartment:

"Listen," he said. "Listen, Sasha."
She looked up. Bennie felt no lust at all — he wasn't even hard. What he felt for Sasha was love, a safety and a closeness like what he had with Stephanie before he'd let her down so many times that she couldn't stop being mad. "I'm crazy for you, Sasha," he said. "Crazy."
"Come on, Bennie," Sasha chided lightly. "None of that."
He held her hand between both of his. Sasha's fingers were trembly and cold. Her other hand was on the door.
"Wait," Bennie said. "Please."
She turned to him, somber now. "There's no way, Bennie," she said. "We need each other." (p. 29)

There are a number of ways this can be interpreted. Bennie's feelings for Sasha might be a way to fill an emotional void left by his previous romantic failures, or they might be a misinterpretation of an important friendship. Sasha may reject Bennie out of reluctance to risk her career or their friendship, or as an acknowledgement that anything romantic between them would be bound to fail. Relationships are ambiguous: they're complicated, open to interpretation, and often the victims of communication breakdowns.

Relationships also bear the weight of the past, the emotional baggage accrued throughout a lifetime. When we meet Sasha through the eyes of her daughter Alison as a married adult and a mother, we get a glimpse into a marriage that is haunted by a past event: the death of a close college friend. Rob's death pushed Drew to become a doctor, as he admits to Alison (p. 214). It also has a lasting effect on Sasha, who "keeps his picture in her wallet," according to Alison (p. 215). Alison, ever inquisitive, asks her mother about their relationship:

"Did you love him?" I asked Mom.
"Yes. As a friend."
"What was he like?"
"He was sweet and confused, like a lot of kids." (p. 215)

Alison's part of the story indicates that Rob's death pushed Drew and Sasha together, and is at least partially responsible for some of the tensions in their marriage, even years later and after having two children. Relationships are invariably complicated by the emotional history of two people, though sometimes the source of the emotions is unclear.

Why does the novel focus on Sasha?

Sasha is an engaging character, displaying the most personal changes of any figure in the novel. Like all the characters, Sasha grows and develops in response to the world around her. Her background, world events, social change: all are reflected in Sasha and the course her life takes.

Sasha has a fairly normal early 21st century family life: middle class upbringing, absentee father, mother remarried. She rejects the relative normality of this life and runs away from home as a teenager, diving headfirst into the seedy world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll:

Sasha had resurfaced periodically, requesting money wires in several far-flung locales, and twice Beth and Hammer had flown wherever it was and tried in vain to intercept her. Sasha had led an adolescence whose catalogue of woes had included drug use, countless arrests for shoplifting, a fondness for keeping company with rock musicians (Beth had reported, helplessly), four shrinks, family therapy, group therapy, and three suicide attempts . . . . (p. 161)

The novel does not romanticize Sasha's time abroad; rather it shows the gritty desperation of poverty while away from one's family, in contrast to the normalcy of life at home. Sasha seeks out an aggressively different path than that of her parents, in response to what she sees as their failings.

Reflections show reversed images, and Sasha's life is often a reflection of the larger world in which she lives. Sasha's adulthood in the mid-2020s, as seen through her daughter's PowerPoint presentation, is surprisingly normal and stable. She belatedly married her college boyfriend, has a home, and is successfully raising two children. Her life is not devoid of problems: she and her husband still carry some guilt over the death of a college friend, her son Lincoln has some mental health problems, and her husband's work puts a strain on their marriage. Nevertheless, these are normal issues of the sort that many married adults must address. Sasha is leading a normal life; however, the world around her has gone mad. Global climate change has drastically altered the weather in many parts of the world. A large stretch of solar panels covers the desert in the US in an attempt to provide clean energy. The US has suffered economic and social collapse as a result of years of war and recession. In this dramatically transformed setting, Sasha emerges as stable and normal, in direct contrast to her early rejection of both those qualities.