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There Your Heart Lies: A Novel

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There Your Heart Lies: A Novel

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Overview

From the award-winning novelist Mary Gordon, here is a book whose twentieth-century wisdom can help us understand the difficulties we face in the twenty-first: There Your Heart Lies is a deeply moving novel about an American woman’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, the lessons she learned, and how her story will shape her granddaughter’s path.

Marian cut herself off from her wealthy, conservative Irish Catholic family when she volunteered during the Spanish Civil War—an experience she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties, she shares her Rhode Island cottage with her granddaughter Amelia, a young woman of good heart but only a vague notion of life’s purpose. Their daily existence is intertwined with Marian’s secret past: the blow to her youthful idealism when she witnessed the brutalities on both sides of Franco’s war and the romance that left her trapped in Spain in perilous circumstances for nearly a decade. When Marian is diagnosed with cancer, she finally speaks about what happened to her during those years—personal and ethical challenges nearly unthinkable to Amelia’s millennial generation, as well as the unexpected gifts of true love and true friendship.

Marian’s story compels Amelia to make her own journey to Spain, to reconcile her grandmother’s past with her own uncertain future. With their exquisite female bond at its core, this novel, which explores how character is forged in a particular moment in history and passed down through the generations, is especially relevant in our own time. It is a call to arms—a call to speak honestly about evil when it is before us, and to speak equally about goodness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307907943
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Mary Gordon is the author of eight novels, including Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

December 8, 1949

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

A.B., Barnard College, 1971; M.A., Syracuse University, 1973

Read an Excerpt

PREFACE
THE SS NORMANDIE, 1937

(Continues…)

Excerpted from "There Your Heart Lies"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Mary Gordon.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Reading Group Guide

The questions and discussion topics provided here are designed to enhance your reading group’s focus on some of the main concepts in There Your Heart Lies and to enable readers to explore and share different perspectives. Feel free to wander in your discussion, and use this as a guideline only!

1. An emphasis is put on houses and homes throughout the story: Marian’s parents’ cold mansion, Beech Haven; the stifling, dark house in Spain; Amelia’s mother’s modern, minimalist house; Marian’s current warm and inviting home. Even Johnny weighs in: “Houses only seem safe,” he says. “Houses can be blown up. Burned down” (p. 26). Do you think houses have personalities?

2. Have you lived in a house that you adored or abhorred? Was it the circumstances, other residents, or the location that made you feel strongly? What makes a house a home?

3. Marian, Helga, and Rosa are very different personalities. Describe how their interactions make them stronger.

4. Marian has completely different relationships with her older siblings than with her brother Johnny. Many people are closer to one particular sibling in a family. Do you think this is the result of age, personality, or experience? Or a mix of each?

5. What was your reaction to the death of Johnny? How does this change Marian?

6. Nineteen-year-old Marian leaves for Spain with hope and fervor for her cause. “[I]t’s the most wonderful feeling in the world: to know that you’re doing exactly the right thing” (p. 5). Have you ever felt such dedication to a cause? Do you think it has something to do with her age?

7. Describe Marian’s relationship with Russell. Do you suppose they would have gotten married if Johnny hadn’t written her the letter asking them to take care of each other? How does Marian’s and Russell’s relationship change throughout the book? What accounts for the changes?

8. After Russell leaves and Marian is transferred to Malvarosa, she feels more freedom than at her previous nursing station in Spain. She is by the sea, finds a friend, meets Rámon. Though still exhausted, hungry, and horrified by the war, Marian finds a modicum of stability. Discuss what causes these changes.

9. On discovering Marian’s pregnancy: “They know this to be a disaster. They face it with a dull resolution. There is not one second in either of their minds or hearts of the slightest joy” (p. 103). Discuss this reaction, and how it is reflective of Marian’s future relationship with her son.

10. After her short but passionate relationship with Rámon, widowed, pregnant Marian is forced to go to his parents home. The mother is religious yet cruel, the father completely overshadowed by his wife. How does Marian deal with her situation? What happens to her in that house?

11. How are the Ortiz family and Marian’s own family similar?

12. In what ways does meeting Isabel and Tomas change Marian’s life?

13. Describe the characters’ different relationships with religion.

14. Tomas says, after hearing horrific confessions: “Forgetfulness would be the greatest betrayal. I must remember” (p. 240). How does this statement apply to other characters in the book?

15. When Theo comes into Marian’s life, she quickly falls in love with him. How much of her love is driven by the opportunity to escape, and does that make it less pure? Is all love an escape?

16. Amelia is a bit lost in life. The early death of her father and her mother’s busy lifestyle are just some causes. She is sensitive and a bit withdrawn (completely different from the young Marian), but feels a strong bond with her grandmother, despite not knowing her history. “[S]he knows that when you live with someone, it’s important to know what not to ask” (p. 58). Are/were you more like Marian or Amelia?

17. Naomi says that Amelia lacks “force” (p. 43). Do you agree? How is that different from lacking strength?

18. How does Marian’s revelation of her past change the relationship between Marian and Amelia?

19. Why is it so important to Amelia to bring Ignacio and Marian together, when Marian has never expressed any interest in her son?

20. Discuss the character of Pepe. How does he show us more about Amelia and her character?

21. Describe the meeting between Ignacio and Amelia. What does it reveal to Amelia?

22. “I think I begin to understand, I think I have at least begun to understand who you are. And now I must begin to understand who I am. I must begin to understand how to live a life” (p. 316). How has Amelia changed throughout the course of the book?

23. Consider the title of the book. To what (or to whom) do you think it refers?

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

Gordon's fiction traverses the Catholic world like a submarine, diving to the depths of its monstrosities and surfacing into the secular world to reveal intimate knowledge of what lies beneath. Many of her novels and stories face the risk that's encountered by all philosophically and politically inclined literary endeavors—a feeling that the characters are stand-ins for particular ideas, that plots are schematic frameworks for particular arguments. Yet in her exceptional new novel, Gordon animates the contradictions and subtleties of her outsider Catholicism, setting them within a dramatic panorama that reads—improbably—as swiftly as an airport paperback…Throughout, Gordon illuminates her scenes with kinetic precision.

The New York Times Book Review - Lorraine Adams

03/20/2017
In 1937, Marian Rabinowitz (née Taylor) is 19 years old and newly married—in name only—to a Jewish doctor who had been her brother’s lover. She has left behind Vassar and her bitter, Catholic Park Avenue family and is on her way to Spain with her husband to tend to the wounded fighting against Franco. Their marriage is a ticket out of Dodge for Marian and a respectable cover for Russell, and Marian in particular is giddy with the possibilities she hopes her courageous new life will allow. Her idealism, however, doesn’t last long. Working in hospitals, she quickly comes to face the grim reality of both war and the limitations of her own circumstances. In this commendable new novel, Gordon (The Liar’s Wife) presents Marian both at the beginning of her adult life and at the end, a woman in her 90s, living in Rhode Island with her 20-something granddaughter Naomi, who knows nothing of her grandma’s earlier escapades until, not quite on her deathbed, Marian begins to tell the story of how, after her first husband left Spain, she fell in love with a Spanish doctor who died suddenly. Marian went on to spend 12 years in Spain, finding both despair and resilience. Marian’s story eventually compels Naomi to begin an adventure of her own, hoping to understand more of the loss and renewal that shaped her grandmother. While much of the novel relies on heavy exposition and a structure that feels somewhat artificial, Marian is a delightful, absorbing character, illuminating both a period and a place. (May)

Publishers Weekly

02/15/2017
Who are you? Who am I? Those are the questions that echo throughout Gordon's (Final Payments; Pearl) latest novel. In 1937, Marian enters into a marriage of convenience with Russell, her late brother's lover, and goes with him to Spain, where he works as a doctor in support of the Republicans opposing Franco's Fascist regime. Both Marian and Russell are horrified and disillusioned by the infighting between the communists and anarchists, and by the atrocities committed on all sides of the struggle. In 2009, Marian's granddaughter, Amelia, stays with Marian while she tries to find direction, and eventually hears the stories of Marian's turbulent past. While this novel's structure of building a narrative across alternating timeframes is common in contemporary fiction, an unusual element here is that we sometimes get the same events depicted twice: first through the third person, and then through Marian telling her story to Amelia. This way, we see Marian's attempts to attach meaning and significance to particular events, and Amelia's disinterest or boredom with parts of the story, as well as her interpretations of her grandmother's meaning. VERDICT As Amelia explores her grandmother's story in this sharply observed text, her misguided attempt to bring closure flirts with, but thankfully doesn't succumb to, a Hollywood ending. All Gordon fans will appreciate. [See Prepub Alert, 11/7/16.]—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Library Journal

★ 2017-02-21
Shifting points in time and points of view reveal a young woman shaped by the zealotry that can emanate from family, faith, or war.In the late 1930s, Marian Taylor breaks with her wealthy New York family after their righteous Roman Catholic persecution forces her beloved gay brother to hang himself. She sails off to Spain with his lover, Russell, a medical doctor she has married for mutual convenience, to join the forces fighting Franco by caring for the wounded. She is 19 and uncommonly naïve, prey to "the vague ideas of a privileged girl," while her new friends, who are fiercely debating fascism and communism, "are the most wonderful people in the world." Gordon (The Liar's Wife, 2014, etc.) writes from within the character's fledgling sensibility to provide a baseline for innocence soon to be broken, as is the narrative. The chapters on Spain alternate with others in which Marian is 92 and living on Rhode Island's coast with her granddaughter, Amelia. Back in Spain, Marian loses Russell as he flees the war's horrors and returns to the U.S. She marries a Spanish doctor and soon loses him to sepsis. She has their baby and loses him to her domineering mother-in-law. Gordon touches often on the sadism of soldiers, clerics, and citizens under Franco, encapsulating it in a devastated priest, Father Tomas, emerging from a confessional after three hours of listening to—and perforce absolving—penitents and their litanies of cruelty. The narrative lightens considerably with the shifts to older Marian in 2009 as she gives Amelia an elderly woman's perspective on that terrible time in Spain—before Gordon sends the younger woman off on her own little crusade, a nice parallel without much point. An emotionally and historically rich work with a strong character portrait holding together its disparate parts.

Kirkus Reviews

Exceptional. . . . Magnetically realized. . . . Gordon illuminates her scenes with kinetic precision.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Radiant. . . . Gordon journeys deep into the hearts and minds of women, still yearning, even at the last.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Intellectually and emotionally involving. . . . [There Your Heart Lies] translates inexplicable and inexpressible experience into understanding.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“An emotionally and historically rich work with a strong character portrait holding together its disparate parts.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[An] astute and powerful variation on the Jamesian theme of American innocents abroad. . . . Gordon’s masterful pairing of passionately descriptive, stunningly revelatory action scenes with . . . churning interior monologues conveys with arresting insights and startling immediacy the intersection of brutality and faith.” —Booklist (starred review)

From the Publisher