The Girls From Corona Del Mar (33 page)
As we rode out past the waves, our little yacht, sweetly called
The Quiet Place
, jogged up and down with the swells. It was cold, but Franklin and Grant stayed on the aft deck with me, while most of the group huddled inside the main cabin with its long, cream leather couches. I felt happy for Zach that he had died and gotten free of his body. I did not worry about him at all, but I did get weird prickles of sadness that we hadn’t gotten to finish the whole trilogy, but had stopped halfway through
The Two Towers
. He had loved the books so much, it seemed a shame that he didn’t get to find out how they ended.
As we rode, our faces pressed into the wind, I mostly thought of Lorrie Ann. Against my will, I missed her. I hoped she had let go of trying to be the good one, the untouchable one, the goddess, just as much as I had stopped trying to make her be that. I hoped she could feel my love, somehow, just as Grant and Franklin and I could feel the sun on our faces, despite the wind.
While Mia and Lorrie Ann are entirely fictional, the Sumerian poetry about the goddess Inanna is very real. To find out more about the true story of how Inanna was translated and to read the full version of the poems quoted in this book, please refer to
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer
by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. It is an incredible volume, and I would not have written this book if not for that translation, which ensnared my mind and made me fall in love with Inanna in all her ancient strangeness.
Thank you to the brilliant Molly Friedrich, for being crazy enough to agree to read my novel in the first place and for making this book what it is today, teaching me about novel writing, motherhood, and friendship in the process. Thank you too to my editor, Jennifer Jackson, who always knows better than me, but never forces me to be aware of this, and whose grace, strength, and insight are an inspiration. Thank you to my readers: Lucy Carson, Matthew Ducker, Simone Gorrindo, David Isaak, Joe Kertes, Nichole LeFebvre, and Molly Schulman. Thanks to Erinn Hartman and to all the people at Knopf who have made this process like a dream. Thank you to my husband, Sam, who is my lettuce planted by the water, my reader when the ink on the pages isn’t even dry, my best friend and co-creator of weird kitchen dance moves, the love of my life, my lion, my Dumuzi. But the biggest thank-you of all these goes to my mother, Kimberly, who bought me the chance to be a writer with her blood and sweat, who believed in me so much she tricked me into believing too. You taught me what love was and how to live a life that honored truth and beauty. You taught me tenacity and laughter. When I was a little girl, I believed you were the most beautiful woman who had ever lived, and I still think that today. Thank you for all of this, for everything you gave me.
The Girls from Corona del Mar
by Rufi Thorpe
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of
The Girls from Corona del Mar
, Rufi Thorpe’s magnificent debut novel about friendships made in youth, and how the intimacies and complexities of those relationships can reverberate throughout life in unexpected ways.
Deeply heartfelt and rich with emotional resonance,
The Girls from Corona del Mar
is an unflinchingly realistic portrayal of friendships made in childhood, and of how the bonds of these relationships flare and flail as life’s challenges present themselves.
Mia and Lorrie Ann have been best friends since childhood, their relationship built on the familiar foundations of youth: laughing at inexplicable inside jokes, gossiping about boys and teachers, and harboring each other’s secrets. Yet, despite these intimacies, they couldn’t be more different: as a teen, Mia is hardened to the world, forced to raise
her brothers and herself as her alcoholic mother becomes absorbed in her own romantic endeavors, while kindhearted Lorrie Ann comes from a loving, stable home. But when tragedy strikes Lorrie Ann, her life is forever changed, and she goes down a dark path that Mia never could have anticipated. As their lives move in separate directions and geography separates them, their friendship waxes and wanes, yet Mia always holds a special place in her heart for her best friend. When Lorrie Ann shows up unexpectedly in Istanbul, where Mia is living at the time, the dynamics of their friendship are tested as never before, leading Mia to question whether Lorrie Ann is the same person she has always known.
With brilliantly drawn characters and prose that jumps off the page,
The Girls of Corona del Mar
is an incisive look at friendship, motherhood, and loyalty—a remarkable debut from a talented new voice on the literary scene.
1.
The Girls from Corona del Mar
opens with a scene in which Mia asks Lorrie Ann to break her toe. How does this scene echo throughout the novel? Can this scene, and other scenes in which feet and toes appear, be read symbolically?
2. How does Mia characterize herself in her youth? How does she characterize Lorrie Ann? Which aspects of their personalities re- main the same over the course of the novel? What are some notable changes?
3. Discuss how Mia defines motherhood throughout the novel. How do Mia’s interactions with her own mother affect her understanding of what it means to be a mother? Why do you think Mia is so hesitant to become a mother?
4. Discuss the scene in which Mia hits her brother with a hanger. Did it change your perception of Mia?
5. What is the significance of the anecdote that opens the chapter “
Dead Like Dead-Dead
,” in which Mia’s dog gets hit by a car? Discuss the phone call that Mia makes to Lorrie Ann afterward. How does this incident change the dynamics of their relationship? Why do you think the author choose to juxtapose the death of Mia’s dog with the death of Jim?
6. Mia and Lorrie Ann’s friendship is rooted in the common experiences of youth, but their lives take completely different paths after high school. Why do you think Mia holds on to the friendship? Is it because of nostalgia? Familiarity? Loyalty? Discuss the moments in which Mia doubts the validity of their friendship. By the end of the novel, how has she come to view their relationship?
7. Lorrie Ann’s romantic relationships are sometimes judged harshly by Mia. Discuss Mia’s first meeting with Arman. What are her impressions of him? How do her assumptions about him change? By the end of the novel, does Mia see Arman in a different light?
8. Consider Mia’s upbringing in Corona del Mar and her surprise when she is admitted into Yale. What value does she place on education, and why? Why do you think Mia chose to study classics? How do her studies shape her worldview?
9. How does Mia describe her relationship with Franklin? Why do you think she is so hesitant about commitment in their relationship? How do her feelings about the topic shift after Lorrie Ann’s visit?
10. On
this page
, Mia says that her father “never felt like family.” How does the absence of her father affect her? Discuss the scene in which Mia, Franklin, and her father meet. After Franklin defuses the tense conversation between Mia and her father, how does Mia’s perception of her father change?
11. Discuss the significance of the tea set that Mia purchases at the beginning of the novel. What does her contentious relationship with Bensu symbolize? When Mia discovers the where the tea set has ended up at the end of the novel, how does she react?
12. How does Mia’s anxiety about financial stability manifest throughout the novel? Discuss how wealth and poverty are explored by the author. How does Mia’s relationship with Franklin change these concerns?
13. On
this page
, Mia states that “I feared the Inanna in myself.” How does the mythology of Inanna factor in
The Girls of Corona del Mar
? How does Mia use the story of Inanna to explore her feelings about motherhood? Parental relationships? Lorrie Ann’s behavior?
14. Discuss the emails that Mia sends to Lorrie Ann after Lorrie Ann leaves Istanbul. Why do you think she sent those notes?
15. On
this page
, Mia mentions that “the Corona del Mar in which Lorrie Ann and I grew up actually ceased to exist almost at the exact moment we left it.” What is the significance of this statement? Does she mean that the town physically changes or that her connection to the town has changed over time? Or both?
Amanda Boyden,
Pretty Little Dirty
Jennifer Close,
Girls in White Dresses
Ann Packer,
The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
Ann Patchett,
Truth & Beauty
J. Courtney Sullivan,
Commencement
Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer,
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer
Rufi Thorpe received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. A native of California, she currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son.
The Girls from Corona del Mar
is her first novel.