The News from Spain (26 page)

And to the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

And to Gordon Lish and George Andreou.

And to Jay.

About the Author

Joan Wickersham was born in New York City. She is the author of two previous books, most recently
The Suicide Index
, a National Book Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in
The Best American Short Stories
and
The Best American Nonrequired Reading
. Her op-ed column appears regularly in
The Boston Globe;
she has published essays and reviews in the
Los Angeles Times
and the
International Herald Tribune;
and she has contributed on-air essays to National Public Radio. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two sons.

Visit Joan Wickersham:
www.joanwickersham.com

Friend:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joan-Wickersham/415735861811826

For more information, please visit
www.aaknopf.com

The News from Spain

by Joan Wickersham

Reading Group Guide

ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

The questions, discussion topics, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of
The News from Spain
and of Wickersham’s near magical ability to capture the mystery and complexity of love.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In seven beguiling stories Joan Wickersham explores the passion and vulnerability, cruelty and tenderness of love in all its forms.
The News from Spain
presents a fascinating array of characters, settings, and perspectives: a long-married couple struggles with the repercussions of the husband’s infidelity; a woman caring for her dying mother reconsiders their bond—and her own romantic relationships; a young girl discovers that the search for connections and affection can lead to selfish and reckless acts; a paralyzed dancer weighs the cost of her dependence on her adored, unfaithful husband; and a widow and a young mother develop a surprisingly deep sense of trust and understanding during a brief afternoon conversation. In two clever and engaging stories Wickersham travels back in history. In one, she weaves vignettes about Mozart and his librettist into the story of two close friends and their love affairs; in the other, she imagines a love triangle among a journalist, a doctor, and the wife of a president.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The book opens with a succinct yet palpable description of the motel Susanne and John are staying in: “The rooms smelled of disinfectant and of bodies.… Outside, the wind was dazzling and salty” (
this page
). How does this establish an emotional backdrop to the narrative that follows? Which physical details in the descriptions of the wedding party (
this page
) and the meeting between Susanne and Barnaby (
this page
) offer insights into the psychological state of the characters?

2. Compare Barbara and Barnaby’s reasons for getting married (
this page
) to Susanne’s reflections on her marriage (
this page
). Do their points of view represent the real choices open to them or are they based on compromise and rationalization? Why are Barnaby and Susanne reluctant to share their thoughts with each other? Are there limits to the trust enjoyed between friends? If so, why?

3. Harriet and Rebecca know that between them “love has always had to be proved. It is there; and it gets proved, over and over” (
this page
). In what ways does Harriet’s illness become a testing ground for both of them? Is it surprising or unusual that “they were having, in the middle of all this dire stuff, a good time together” (
this page
)? Why does their intimacy deteriorate during the periods Harriet when enjoys relatively good health?

4. How do the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship affect Rebecca’s approach to the men in her life and influence the course of her affairs with Peter and with Ben?

5. The third story in the book, told in the second person, presents the point of view of an unnamed young girl; it is also the only story divided into distinct sections. What effect do these
techniques have on the reader’s impressions of the protagonist, the events described, and the other characters?

6. The narrative of the third story captures the awkwardness and excitement of becoming a teenager—of finding a place within a school’s social structure, discovering the opposite sex, flourishing under a special teacher’s care, and observing often puzzling adult behavior. In what ways do each of the mini-chapters in this story set the stage for scandalous revelation and the girl’s reaction to it (
this page
)? Why is the summation (“The Rest of the Story” and “The End”) related from an adult point of view?

7. What part do memories and dreams play in the dancer’s attempts to reconcile herself to her physical helplessness? When her husband leaves for the tour, “They kiss—familiar, fond, nothing more, except she thinks there is a careful brightness between them, an implicit understanding that to regret, or even acknowledge any awareness of, their mutual unerotic kindness would be pointless and unwise” (
this page
). Is this the best (or only) way for these characters to deal with their situation, or would they benefit from more openness and honesty?

8. What do the details about Malcolm’s private life add to the central portrait of the dancer’s troubled marriage? Are there similarities between the two relationships? Between the dancer and Malcolm, the choreographer and Tim? What do the scene in the bathtub and the story the dancer tells Malcolm illustrate about the power of illusion and fantasy in our lives?

9. Do the sketches of Charlie and Liza (
this page
) and Alice (
this page
) establish a sense of how their meeting will unfold? Does the interview belie or conform to your expectations? What particular moments or comments transform the dynamics of the encounter and why?

10. What inspires Liza to confess her secret to Alice? What qualities, experiences, or beliefs unite Liza and Alice despite the differences in their ages and situations? Why do people often tell a relative stranger something they have hidden from those closest to them?

11. Discuss the parallels between the lives and loves of Elvira and Rosina and their namesakes in the Mozart and Da Ponte operas. (If you are not familiar with
Le Nozze di Figaro
and
Don Giovanni
, brief summaries are readily available online). How do the playful yet pointed echoes of the classic operas (and the legendary adventures of Don Juan) set a tone and enrich the atmosphere of the contemporary stories? What do they convey about the universal complications, pain, and pleasures of love?

12. Da Ponte writes “But I have learned that memory is inconstant, which is perhaps its greatest danger and yet also its greatest virtue” (
this page
). What light does this cast on Elvira’s attachment to Johnny and its effect on her life and her work? To what extent is the friendship between Elvira and Rosina built on the sharing and preserving of their personal and perhaps faulty versions of the past?

13. A happily married woman unsettled by a sudden rush of love for a colleague sums up her emotional turmoil with both wit and poignancy: “My feelings—let’s hold on to this idea of them as shuffling Victorians, let’s make them servants, an entire uniformed household staff—were fresh, raw, perpetually startled. They weren’t sensible” (
this page
). Why is this metaphor so effective? What does it say about the battle between emotions and reason, between heart and head?

14. The final story begins with a simple pronouncement: “Some of this is fiction, and some isn’t” (
this page
). To what extent does the appeal of the story about the doctor, the journalist, and the president’s wife stem from the combination of fact and fiction? Why does Wickersham leave the “famous woman” unnamed although her identity is quite clear? What draws the woman to the
doctor and him to her? In what ways do her public and her private identities overlap, and how do they differ? What effect does this have on the way she conducts herself with the doctor? Why does the discovery of the journalist’s affair with the doctor affect her so deeply (
this page
)? Does the narrator present each character in an objective way or does her own situation color her opinions and speculations about them?

15. Linking her two stories, the narrator of the last story says, “I am writing about women, about love and humiliation. Men do it to us, but mostly we do it to ourselves. We love the wrong people; we love at the wrong time. We think we can make it right, reconcile the irreconcilable” (
this page
). Which other stories feature women who struggle to explain, justify, or simply make the best of difficult relationships? Are there male characters who find themselves in similar situations?

16. Infidelity and betrayal play a central role in
The News from Spain
. Many of the characters are involved in or are considering an affair; friendships and family relationships are also betrayed, either intentionally or as a consequence of carelessness or self-interest. Discuss the various forms of unfaithfulness and deception depicted in these stories and what they reveal about the unpredictable, often uncontrollable passions that underlie acts of transgression.

17. “A love story—your own or anyone else’s—is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined. It is all dreams and invention. It’s guesswork” (
this page
). How does this insight shape and inform
The News from Spain
?

18. What is the significance of the subtitle “Seven Variations on a Love Story”? Do you see these stories as parts of a whole or as separate entities? In what ways do the stories amplify one another? Does the arrangement create a unifying thread and forward momentum?

SUGGESTED READING

Charles Baxter,
Gryphon;
Raymond Carver,
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love;
Junot Díaz,
This Is How You Lose Her;
Mary Gaitskill,
Don’t Cry;
Alice Munro,
Too Much Happiness;
Antonya Nelson,
Some Fun;
Ann Packer,
Swim Back to Me;
Tobias Wolff,
Our Story Begins

ALSO BY JOAN WICKERSHAM

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order

The Paper Anniversary