Object lessons (29 page)

JMG
:
In a commencement address at Mount Holyoke, you said, “Listen to that small voice from inside you that chooses to go the other way.” Who in this novel truly takes this advice to heart? How does it represent a struggle for them? How do you try to heed your own advice?

AQ
: I never made the connection before, but of course that line in the Holyoke speech describes precisely the moment at the end of
Object Lessons
when Maggie first hears her own voice in her head. So I would say it would be her, first and foremost. As for me, I have the opposite problem. Because of my life as a novelist and as a columnist, I’m always hearing voices in my head. It’s getting them to shut up and give me a little peace that’s the problem! Usually I have to write it all down first—then I get to watch some TV!

JMG
: Object Lessons
was your first published novel. Do you have a particular fondness for it because of that designation?
As
you look back at it after more than a decade has passed, is there anything that you’d approach differently? Has your writing process changed over that span of time?

AQ
: I’m more sure-handed as a novelist now. You hope that’s true, after publishing four novels and beginning work on the fifth. You just know your way around a fictional
misc-en-scène
better than you did the first time out. I had to do three full drafts of this book. On my last novel,
Blessings
, I did a draft and a fairly light reworking and then it was fine. So I suppose it’s like anything else; the more you do it, the better you become. I can’t tell you whether I’d do anything differently because I’ve never reread
Object Lessons
. The last time I read it was the day I handed the final draft in. Reading my own work makes me sweat; all I can see are the mistakes and the clunks, never the felicitous phrase or the apt characterization. So I just keep pushing on.

JMG
:
What are you working on now, either fiction or nonfiction in nature?

AQ
: I’m writing a novel about two sisters in New York City at the turn of the century. One’s famous, the other’s not. More than that will have to become clear when the thing’s actually done.

R
EADING
G
ROUP
Q
UESTIONS AND
T
OPICS FOR
D
ISCUSSION

1.   
Object Lessons
unfolds mostly through the eyes of twelve-year-old Maggie. In which ways is Maggie older and more perceptive than her age would suggest? How is she naive? How do you envision Maggie’s evolution as she grows older and away from her family?

2.   Does the book have the elements of a traditional coming-of-age novel? If so, what are they? Do you agree with Connie’s assessment at the end of the book that her daughter has become a woman? In what ways is Maggie still a little girl?

3.   What does the development being built near Tommy and Connie’s house represent to the various Scanlans? To the neighborhood kids, including Maggie, Debbie, Bruce, and Richard? To the town of Kenwood as a whole? How does it represent a larger theme or symbol in the novel?

4.   How do Maggie and Connie have a typical mother-daughter rapport? An atypical one? How is Connie’s attitude toward Maggie influenced by the attitudes of her parents toward her?

5.   What factors motivated Tommy and Connie to marry? What initially draws one to the other? How are they well-matched? What causes their marriage to flounder?

6.   Why is it significant that Joey Martinelli appears on Connie’s doorstep when he does? How has she become a different person from the girl he once knew? What attributes would she like to bring to the surface once again?

7.   When he learns of Connie’s driving lessons, Tommy thinks that he “could take her anywhere she needed to go.” Why does he view her learning to drive as a betrayal? Are Connie’s driving lessons symbolic? If so, how?

8.   What role does the Roman Catholic Church play in
Object Lessons?
How does the Church and its rituals represent a spiritual force for the characters? In which ways is it a business entity?

9.   At the beginning of
Object Lessons
, John Scanlan rules over the family as an indomitable patriarch. What about his personality is so arresting, both to those within the family and outside of it? How does he inspire emotion—whether it’s fear, respect, or loathing? Why do he and Maggie get along so well? How do you see the family evolving as they adjust to his death?

10.   Whom does Maggie look up to as a role model, both within her family and outside of it? What attributes do these people have in common? Why does she so dislike her cousin Monica?

11.   The friendship between Maggie and Debbie Malone evaporates during the course of the book. Why do you think that Debbie turns on Maggie? How is their friendship different from the relationship Connie has with Celeste?

12.   What does the Malone family represent to Maggie? Why does Debbie’s sister, Helen, take a liking to Maggie?

13.   After his stroke, John Scanlan says, “It’s not the dying I mind, it’s the changing.” How is this statement typical of his character? Which members of his family would agree with him; who in this novel would disagree?

14.   How do Maggie’s two grandfathers compare and contrast with each other? Which attributes from each does Maggie seem to have? To which one does she seem most similar? Why?

15.   Debbie decries always being known as “Helen Malone’s sister;” Maggie counters that she’s always “John Scanlan’s granddaughter.” How do the two girls grapple with the idea of identity, especially as it relates to their relationship to other family members? How does each girl try to form her own individuality? How do names and nicknames play a part in identity in
Object Lessons?

16.   “Until this horrible sweaty summer, lines had been drawn,” Maggie recalls sadly. What connections and boundaries are erased from Maggie’s life during the course of the book? Which fissures are the most apparent? How does Maggie handle the disintegration of these connections?

17.   In your opinion, why do the kids begin setting fires in the development? Why does Maggie initially participate? At the last fire, are Maggie’s actions heroic or cowardly, or a combination of the two? Why? Do you think that her behavior hastens the end of her friendship with Debbie?

18.   In which ways does John’s death free Mary Frances? Why is she consumed by the memory of her dead daughter, and why does she want to be buried with her? Why does Mary Frances prefer Connie and Tommy living with her to her other children?

19.   At the beginning of
Object Lessons
, Maggie “listens too much;” by the end of the novel, she’s found her voice. Why did it take so long for her true self to emerge? How do you think she’ll merge her newfound consciousness with the competing voices of her past influences?

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

A
NNA
Q
UINDLEN
is the author of three bestselling novels,
Object Lessons, One True Thing
, and
Black and Blue
. Her
New York Times
column “Public & Private” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and a selection of those columns was published as
Thinking Out Loud
. She is also the author of a collection of her “Life in the 30’s” columns,
Living Out Loud;
a book for the Library of Contemporary Thought,
How Reading Changed My Life;
the bestselling
A Short Guide to a Happy Life;
and two children’s books,
The Tree That Came to Stay
and
Happily Ever After
. She is currently a columnist for
Newsweek
and lives with her husband and children in New York City.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright © 1991 by Anna Quindlen
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2003 by Anna Quindlen and The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Cherio Corporation for permission to reprint excerpts from “Daddy’s Little Girl,” words and music by Bobby Burke and Horace Gerlach. Copyright 1949 by Cherio Corp. Copyright renewed 1977 by Cherio Corp. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-90393

eISBN: 978-0-307-76353-2

This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.

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