The Great Husband Hunt (44 page)

5. The twentieth century is viewed through Poppy's particular point of view. How would you describe her “voice”? What colors the way she perceives events? Choose another character and discuss how he or she might have seen an event. You might want to consider a classic philosophical question: Is there an objective “reality” that is true and universal, or is reality a slippery concept, wholly dependent on the viewer?

6. Poppy says of her daughter Sapphy: “It wasn't me who ruined her life, of course.” But did she? If not, what contributed to Sapphy's fate? What do you think the author is saying about free will? Do we make our life choices, or are our choices made for us?

7. The great mythologist Joseph Campbell calls Judaism an “ethnic religion.” He contrasts it with Christianity by pointing out that one must be born a Jew to be a Jew, whereas anyone can become a Christian by adopting Christianity's beliefs. Poppy and her family are non-practicing Jews; in fact, they try to escape their Jewishness. What steps do they take to assimilate into American culture and lose their ethnicity? Are they successful? Can one stop being a Jew by renouncing Judaism? What about other ethnic groups such as Italians or, as depicted in this book, “The Irish”?

8. The “outsiders” from mainstream culture in this book include homosexuals. Who are the homosexual characters? Is Reggie gay? How is this outsider status depicted? Why do you think these characters play such a big part in Poppy's life?

9. Art, artists, and the art world also have a major role in Poppy's life. She particularly champions avant garde artists. Is the author poking fun at art created from macaroni or pubic hair? At trend-setting galleries? Or is Laurie Graham, by making Poppy its champion, indicating that this art is legitimate? What does “innovative” art contribute to society? What does it say about it?

10. Is Poppy a woman ahead of her time? Contrast her with Vera Farber, Sherman's wife. The book also touches on the rise of the women's movement. Who would you say is more a feminist, Poppy or Vera?

11. Overall, do you think the book advocates that a person's background and family are factors to be escaped from or embraced? Can they be oppressive and harmful? If so, is the wiser course to recreate oneself? Is that possible?

12. What is the purpose of the haikus in the book? Pick out a few and discuss them, particularly the book's final haiku on the very last page.

13. How do you feel about the book's ending? Why do you think these three characters end up together? Would you call them survivors?

Q&A with Laurie Graham

Q.
What inspired you to write a seventy-year saga covering most of the twentieth century, beginning with the sinking of the
Titanic,
covering two world wars, and stretching from America to Europe? What kind of research did this require? You include historical characters side by side with your fictional ones. What made you choose some of these specific people for inclusion?

A.
There was no master plan. As with all my novels, I heard the voice of a potential character—that of Poppy—and everything else followed. Poppy placed herself; she really couldn't have lived in any other location or any other era, and I was more than happy to go along with this. My own interest in the twentieth century tails off after 1959. I guess I was born fifty years too late. This was my first attempt at writing about a period of history I never experienced personally. I don't do a lot of research. I'm more interested in conveying the flavor of a place and time than I am of providing carefully authenticated details. And when I occasionally introduce the ghostly presence of someone real, like Madame Paderewski or Queen Mary, it's with the same motive.

Q.
How did you create the Minkel/Minton family? Did you have a specific family in mind? And why an American Jewish family?

A.
No, no specific family. I know many American Jewish families, but they're all far too nice to have modeled for the Minkels. But Poppy's family had to be American and Jewish, in order for the book to raise some of the points that interested me: the powerful drive toward assimilation among nineteenth-century immigrants to America; the rigid social code of Manhattan in the early twentieth century; the pecking order of immigrant Jews and the revulsion felt by the assimilated German and long-established Sephardi Jews for the more recently arrived and unapologetically Jewish Jews from the stetls.
I create my families the same way any writer does. I have the idea of a character, I give him a name, and then, if I'm lucky, he gets to his feet and starts taking on a life of his own.

Q.
Poppy is surely an extraordinary woman and unforgettable character. In some respects she may remind readers of the real-life Peggy Guggenheim—with perhaps a tip of the hat to Fielding's fictional Moll Flanders or Tom Jones. What or who contributed to the creation of her character and her adventures?

A.
Yes, behind Poppy there is a faint biographical outline of Peggy Guggenheim, and also of Barbara Hutton, but I followed neither life story in detail. I was simply interested in trying to create a character that was both monstrous and sympathetic. My feeling is that Poppy escapes the curse of inherited wealth in better shape than either of those two poor little rich girls.

Q.
You became a published author at the age of forty, after you had your children. The women in
The Great Husband Hunt
either happily focus on being a wife and mother or feel stifled or conflicted by that role. Do you feel that women today, who are expected to have a career and family at the same time, are being put in a difficult spot? Or is having the choice to do both emotionally healthy?

A.
I think to have the choice at all is fortunate, and it should not be the occasion of whining and putting the quality of one's emotional health under the microscope. It was possible for me to stay with our young children provided we lived modestly: no car, no vacations, secondhand furniture, secondhand clothes. Neither was I troubled by the pull of a brilliant career, because I didn't have one. The women who get my sympathy are the ones who don't have the luxury of endless self-examination. The ones who simply have to punch in every morning in order to put food on the table.

Q.
If there is a message in
The Great Husband Hunt
or a theme that is near and dear to your heart, what is it?

A.
Roots. I grew up in a loving family, hard working, ambitious, but without any sense of where we'd come from or what we stood for. Vast swatches of family history lay blank out of sheer indifference. I inherited nothing that belonged to my grandparents, except my genes. We lived in the suburbs and kept the very little religion and politics we had politely under wraps. I used to envy my Jewish school friends because they had things like Yom Kippur and Shabbat. They, of course, would have traded with me in a heartbeat.

Q.
Would you tell us something about how you write your novels? Do you schedule a certain period each day to write? What is your routine? Can you briefly describe how you go from an idea for a novel to a finished book?

A.
I write every day except Sunday, and aim to be at my desk by nine o'clock. I start a book once I'm receiving the voices loud and clear, and then I just plod on till it's finished. No fevered midnight scribbling, no pyrotechnic bursts of inspiration. It would make a very boring spectator sport, I fear. Toward the end, I long for it to be finished. When it is finished I have mixed feelings: regrets that it hasn't turned out to be the brilliant book I'd imagined, sadness at saying goodbye to the characters I've lived with for months.

Q.
You have become an expatriate, as did many writers in the 1920s and 1930s. You have chosen to live in Venice. Why? Is there, today, in your opinion, a country or city that is particularly congenial to artists? Where creative people can find a welcoming climate?

A.
Venice simply because it's a city my husband and I both love, and we're fortunate enough to be able to make a living here. I don't know that it's particularly congenial to creativity, though God knows, plenty of people congregate here with that in mind. For me the expatriate life works in various ways: There is a certain loneliness to it (friendships conducted in a second language, for instance) that I think may be beneficial for writers. Also, life is lived here with beautiful simplicity, and at a walking pace, which is, I believe, how humans are meant to live. But I also believe that people who truly want to write will do it wherever they are.