May We Be Forgiven

May We Be Forgiven

by A.M. Homes
May We Be Forgiven

May We Be Forgiven

by A.M. Homes

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Overview

Winner of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction—A darkly comic novel of twenty-first-century domestic life by a writer who is always “compelling, devastating, and furiously good” (Zadie Smith)

Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.

Harry finds himself suddenly playing parent to his brother’s two adolescent children, tumbling down the rabbit hole of Internet sex, dealing with aging parents who move through time like travelers on a fantastic voyage. As Harry builds a twenty-first-century family created by choice rather than biology, we become all the more aware of the ways in which our history, both personal and political, can become our destiny and either compel us to repeat our errors or be the catalyst for change.

May We Be Forgiven is an unnerving, funny tale of unexpected intimacies and of how one deeply fractured family might begin to put itself back together. 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781101601143
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/27/2012
Sold by: Penguin Group
Format: eBook
Pages: 496
Sales rank: 578,758
File size: 982 KB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

A. M. Homes is the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the story collections Days of AweThe Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know. She lives in New York City.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

December 18, 1961

Place of Birth:

Washington, D.C.

Education:

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 1985; M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers¿ Workshop

Read an Excerpt

 

“May we be forgiven,” an incantation, a prayer, the hope that somehow I come out of this alive. Was there ever a time you thought—I am doing this on purpose, I am fucking up and I don’t know why.

 

Do you want my recipe for disaster?

The warning sign: last year, Thanksgiving at their house. Twenty or thirty people were at tables spreading from the dining room into the living room and stopping abruptly at the piano bench. He was at the head of the big table, picking turkey out of his teeth, talking about himself. I kept watching him as I went back and forth carrying plates into the kitchen—the edges of my fingers dipping into unnameable goo—cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, a cold pearl onion, gristle. With every trip back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, I hated him more. Every sin of our childhood, beginning with his birth, came back. He entered the world eleven months after me, sickly at first, not enough oxygen along the way, and was given far too much attention. And then, despite what I repeatedly tried to tell him about how horrible he was, he acted as though he believed he was a gift of the gods. They named him George. Geo, he liked to be called, like that was something cool, something scientific, mathematical, analytical. Geode, I called him—like a sedimentary rock. His preternatural confidence, his divinely arrogant head dappled with blond threads of hair lifted high drew the attention of others, gave the impression that he knew something. People solicited his opinions, his participation, while I never saw the charm. By the time we were ten and eleven, he was taller than me, broader, stronger. “You sure he’s not the butcher’s boy?” my father would ask jokingly. And no one laughed.

I was bringing in heavy plates and platters, casseroles caked with the debris of dinner, and no one noticed that help was needed—not George, not his two children, not his ridiculous friends, who were in fact in his employ, among them a weather girl and assorted spare anchormen and -women who sat stiff-backed and hair-sprayed like Ken and Barbie, not my Chinese-American wife, Claire, who hated turkey and never failed to remind us that her family used to celebrate with roast duck and sticky rice. George’s wife, Jane, had been at it all day, cooking and cleaning, serving, and now scraping bones and slop into a giant trash bin.

Jane scoured the plates, piling dirty dishes one atop another and dropping the slimy silver into a sink of steamy soapy water. Glancing at me, she brushed her hair away with the back of her hand and smiled. I went back for more.

I looked at their children and imagined them dressed as Pilgrims, in black buckle-shoes, doing Pilgrim children chores, carrying buckets of milk like human oxen. Nathaniel, twelve, and Ashley, eleven, sat like lumps at the table, hunched, or more like curled, as if poured into their chairs, truly spineless, eyes focused on their small screens, the only thing in motion their thumbs—one texting friends no one has ever seen and the other killing digitized terrorists. They were absent children, absent of personality, absent of presence, and, except for holidays, largely absent from the house. They had been sent away to boarding schools at an age others might have deemed too young but which Jane had once confessed was out of a certain kind of necessity—there were allusions to nonspecific learning issues, failure to bloom, and the subtle implication that the unpredictable shifts in George’s mood made living at home less than ideal.

In the background, two televisions loudly competed among themselves for no one’s attention—one featuring football and the other the film Mighty Joe Young.

“I’m a company man, heart and soul,” George says. “The network’s President of Entertainment. I am ever aware, 24/7.”

There is a television in every room; fact is, George can’t bear to be alone, not even in the bathroom.

He also apparently can’t bear to be without constant confirmation of his success. His dozen-plus Emmys have seeped out of his office and are now scattered around the house, along with various other awards and citations rendered in cut crystal, each one celebrating George’s ability to parse popular culture, to deliver us back to ourselves—ever so slightly mockingly, in the format best known as the half-hour sitcom or the news hour.

The turkey platter was in the center of the table. I reached over my wife’s shoulder and lifted—the tray was heavy and wobbled. I willed myself to stay strong and was able to carry out the mission while balancing a casserole of Brussels sprouts and bacon in the crook of my other arm.

The turkey, an “heirloom bird,” whatever that means, had been rubbed, relaxed, herbed into submission, into thinking it wasn’t so bad to be decapitated, to be stuffed up the ass with breadcrumbs and cranberries in some annual rite. The bird had been raised with a goal in mind, an actual date when his number would come up.

I stood in their kitchen picking at the carcass while Jane did the dishes, bright-blue gloves on, up to her elbows in suds. My fingers were deep in the bird, the hollow body still warm, the best bits of stuffing packed in. I dug with my fingers and brought stuffing to my lips. She looked at me—my mouth moist, greasy, my fingers curled into what would have been the turkey’s g-spot if they had such things—lifted her hands out of the water and came towards me, to plant one on me. Not friendly. The kiss was serious, wet, and full of desire. It was terrifying and unexpected. She did it, then snapped off her gloves and walked out of the room. I was holding the counter, gripping it with greasy fingers. Hard.

Dessert was served. Jane asked if anyone wanted coffee and went back into the kitchen. I followed her like a dog, wanting more.

She ignored me.

“Are you ignoring me?” I asked.

She said nothing and then handed me the coffee. “Could you let me have a little pleasure, a little something that’s just for myself?” She paused. “Cream and sugar?”

From Thanksgiving through Christmas and on into the new year, all I thought of was George fucking Jane. George on top of her, or, for a special occasion, George on the bottom, and once, fantastically, George having her from the back—his eyes fixed on the wall-mounted television—the ticker tape of news headlines trickling across the bottom of the screen. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was convinced that, despite his charms, his excess of professional achievement, George wasn’t very good in bed and that all he knew about sex he learned from the pages of a magazine read furtively while shitting. I thought of my brother fucking his wife—constantly. Whenever I saw Jane I was hard. I wore baggy pleated pants and double pairs of jockey shorts to contain my treasonous enthusiasm. The effort created bulk and, I worried, gave me the appearance of having gained weight.

It is almost eight o’clock on an evening towards the end of February when Jane calls. Claire is still at the office; she is always at the office. Another man would think his wife was having an affair; I just think Claire is smart.

“I need your help,” Jane says.

“Don’t worry,” I say, before I even know what the worry is. I imagine her calling me from the kitchen phone, the long curly cord wrapping around her body.

“He’s at the police station.”

I glance at the New York skyline; our building is ugly, postwar white brick, dull, but we’re up high, the windows are broad, and there’s a small terrace where we used to sit and have our morning toast. “Did he do something wrong?”

“Apparently,” she says. “They want me to come get him. Can you? Can you pick your brother up?”

“Don’t worry,” I say, repeating myself.

Within minutes I’m en route from Manhattan to the Westchester hamlet George and Jane call home. I phone Claire from the car; her voice mail picks up. “There’s some kind of problem with George and I’ve got to pick him up and take him home to Jane. I had my dinner—I left some for you in the fridge. Call later.”

A fight. On the way to the police station, that’s what I’m thinking. George has it in him: a kind of atomic reactivity that stays under the surface until something triggers him and he erupts, throwing over a table, smashing his fist through a wall, or…More than once I’ve been the recipient of his frustrations, a baseball hurled at my back, striking me at kidney level and dropping me to my knees, a shove in my grandmother’s kitchen hurling me backwards, through a full-length pane of glass as George blocks me from getting the last of the brownies. I imagine that he went out for a drink after work and got on the wrong side of someone.

Thirty-three minutes later, I park outside the small suburban police station, a white cake box circa 1970. There’s a busty girlie calendar that probably shouldn’t be in a police station, a jar of hard candy, two metal desks that sound like a car crash if you accidentally kick them, which I do, tipping over an empty bottle of diet Dr. Pepper. “I’m the brother of the man you called his wife about,” I announce. “I’m here on behalf of George Silver.”

“You’re the brother?”

“Yes.”

“We called his wife, she’s coming to get him.”

“She called me, I’m here to pick him up.”

“We wanted to take him to the hospital but he wouldn’t go; he kept repeating that he was a dangerous man and we should take him ‘downtown,’ lock him up, and be done with it. Personally, I think the man needs a doctor—you don’t walk away from something like that unscathed.”

“So he got into a fight?”

“Car accident, bad one. Doesn’t appear he was under the influence, passed a breath test and consented to urine, but really he should see a doctor.”

“Was it his fault?”

“He ran a red light, plowed into a minivan, husband was killed on impact, the wife was alive at the scene—in the back seat, next to the surviving boy. Rescue crew used the Jaws of Life to free the wife, upon release she expired.”

“Her legs fell out of the car,” someone calls out from a back office. “The boy is in fair condition. He’ll survive,” the younger cop says. “Your brother’s in the rear, I’ll get him.”

“Is my brother being charged with a crime?”

“Not at the moment. There’ll be a full investigation. Officers noted that he appeared disoriented at the scene. Take him home, get him a doctor and a lawyer—these things can get ugly.”

“He won’t come out,” the younger cop says.

“Tell him we don’t have room for him,” the older one says. “Tell him the real criminals are coming soon and if he doesn’t come out now they’ll plug him up the bung hole in the night.”

George comes out, disheveled. “Why are you here?” he asks me.

“Jane called, and besides, you had the car.”

“She could have taken a taxi.”

“It’s late.”

I lead George through the small parking lot and into the night, feeling compelled to take his arm, to guide him by his elbow—not sure if I’m preventing him from escaping or just steadying him. Either way, George doesn’t pull away, he lets himself be led.

“Where’s Jane?”

“At the house.”

“Does she know?”

I shake my head no.

“It was awful. There was a light.”

“Did you see the light?”

“I think I may have seen it but it was like it didn’t make sense.”

“Like it didn’t apply to you?”

“Like I didn’t know.” He gets into the car. “Where’s Jane?” he asks again.

“At the house,” I repeat. “Buckle your belt.”

Pulling into the driveway, the headlights cut through the house and catch Jane in the kitchen, holding a pot of coffee.

“Are you all right?” she asks when we are inside.

“How could I be,” George says. He empties his pockets onto the kitchen counter. He takes off his shoes, socks, pants, boxers, jacket, shirt, undershirt, and stuffs all of it into the kitchen trash can.

“Would you like some coffee?” Jane asks.

Naked, George stands with his head tilted as if he’s hearing something.

“Coffee?” she asks again, gesturing with the pot.

He doesn’t answer. He walks from the kitchen through the dining room and into the living room, and sits in the dark—naked in a chair.

“Did he get into a fight?” Jane asks.

“Car accident. You’d better call your insurance company and your lawyer. Do you have a lawyer?”

“George, do we have a lawyer?”

“Do I need one?” he asks. “If I do, call Rutkowsky.”

“Something is wrong with him,” Jane says.

“He killed people.”

There is a pause.

She pours George a cup of coffee and brings it into the living room along with a dish towel that she drapes over his genitals like putting a napkin in his lap.

The phone rings.

“Don’t answer it,” George says.

“Hello,” she says.

“I’m sorry, he’s not home right now, may I take a message?” Jane listens. “Yes, I hear you, perfectly clear,” she says and then hangs up. “Do you want a drink?” she asks no one in particular, and then pours one for herself.

“Who was it?” I ask.

“Friend of the family,” she says, and clearly she means the family that was killed.

For a long time he sits in the chair, the dish towel shielding his privates, the cup of coffee daintily on his lap. Beneath him a puddle forms.

“George,” Jane implores when she hears what sounds like water dripping, “you’re having an accident.”

Tessie, the old dog, gets up from her bed, comes over, and sniffs it.

Jane hurries into the kitchen and comes back with a wad of paper towels. “It will eat the finish right off the floor,” she says.

Through it all George looks blank, like the empty husk left by a reptile who has shed his skin. Jane takes the coffee cup from George and hands it to me. She takes the wet kitchen towel from his lap, helps him to stand, and then wipes the back of his legs and his ass with paper towels. “Let me help you upstairs.”

I watch as they climb the steps. I see my brother’s body, slack, his stomach sagging slightly, the bones of his hips, his pelvis, his flat ass—all so white they appear to glow in the dark. As they climb I see below his ass and tucked between his legs his low, pinkish-purple nut sack swaying like an old lion.

I sit on their couch. Where is my wife? Isn’t Claire curious to know what happened? Doesn’t she wonder why I am not home?

The room smells like urine. The wet paper towels are on the floor. Jane doesn’t come back to clean up the pee. I do it and then sit back down on the sofa.

I am staring through the dark at an old wooden tribal mask made with hemp hair and a feather and laced with tribal beads. I’m staring at this unfamiliar face that Nate brought back from a school trip to South Africa, and the mask seems to be staring back as though inhabited, wanting to say something—taunting me with its silence.

I hate this living room. I hate this house. I want to go home.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for May We Be Forgiven

“An entertaining, old-fashioned American story about second chances…A.M. Homes is a writer I’ll pretty much follow anywhere because she’s indeed so smart, it’s scary; yet she’s not without heart…May We Be Forgiven [is] deeply imbued with the kind of It’s A Wonderful Life-type belief in redemption that we Americans will always be suckers for, and rightly so.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

“Cheever country with a black comedy upgrade…Homes crams a tremendous amount of ambition into May We Be Forgiven, with its dark humor, its careening plot, its sex-strewn suburb and a massive cast of memorable characters...its riskiest content, however, is something different: sentiment. This is a Tin Man story, in which the zoned-out Harry slowly grows a heart.” —Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

“Darkly funny…the moments shared between this ad hoc family are the novel’s most endearing…Homes’ signature trait is a fearless inclination to torment her characters and render their failures, believing that the reader is sophisticated enough – and forgiving enough – to tag along.” —Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Time Magazine

“Homes, whose masterful handling of suburban dystopia merits her own adjective, may have just written her midcareer magnum opus with this portrait of a flawed Nixonian bent on some sort of emotional amnesty.” —Christopher Bollen, Interview

“At once tender and uproariously funny…one of the strangest, most miraculous journeys in recent fiction, not unlike a man swimming home to his lonely house, one swimming pool at a time: it is an act of desperation turned into one of grace.” —John Freeman, The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A big American story with big American themes, the saga of the triumph of a new kind of self-invented nuclear family over cynicism, apathy, loneliness, greed, and technological tyranny…this novel has a strong moral core, neither didactic nor judgmental, that holds out the possibility of redemption through connection.” –Kate Christensen, Elle

“Heartfelt, and hilarious…Although Homes weaves in piercing satire on subjects like healthcare, education, and the prison system, her tone never veers into the overly arch, mostly thanks to Harold – a loveably earnest guy who creates his own kind of oddball, 21st century family.” –Leigh Newman, O The Oprah Magazine

“A.M. Homes has long been one of our most important and original writers of fiction. May We Be Forgiven is her most ambitious as well as her most accessible novel to date; sex and violence invade the routines of suburban domestic life in a way that reminded me of The World According to Garp, although in the end it’s a thoroughly original work of imagination.” –Jay McInerney
“This novel starts at maximum force — and then it really gets going. I can't remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black-comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing.” —Salman Rushdie

“I started this book in the A.M., finished in the P.M., and couldn’t sleep all night. Ms. Homes just gets better and better.” —Gary Shteyngart

“What if whoever wrote the story of Job had a sense of humor? Nixon is pondered. One character donates her organs. Another tries to grow a heart. A seductive minefield of a novel from A.M. Homes.” —John Sayles

“I started reading A.M. Homes twenty years ago. Wild and funny, questioning and true, she is a writer to go travelling with on the journey called life.” —Jeanette Winterson

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION

May We Be Forgiven is a meditation on the meaning of family in the twenty–first century. Harold Silver finds his life turned upside down when his volatile brother, George, commits an act of violence that changes their lives forever, leaving Harold as the guardian of George’s two children. Meanwhile, Harold’s marriage is disintegrating and his career as a Nixon scholar is in danger when the department chair informs him that history is becoming more “future forward—instead of studying the past, the students will be exploring the future—a world of possibility.”

Grasping for something to hold his life together, Harold loses himself temporarily as he tumbles hilariously down the rabbit hole of Internet sex and George’s prescription medications. But when confronted by his own mortality, Harold begins to open up to the world around him, let go of the past, and begin taking some risks, including assembling a blended family out of those who need him most. As his relationships change to something deeper and more emotionally satisfying, Harold establishes a new closeness with his niece and nephew, who reveal themselves to be far more complex than anyone had ever noticed.

If there is such a thing–as a midlife coming–of–age novel, this is it; the world of Harold Silver exists between the virtual and the physical, the excruciatingly public and the preciously private. As a Nixon scholar, Harold is all too wary of the dangerous trail technology can leave behind, particularly when trying to lead a life of discretion and, occasionally, deceit. As Harold tries to pull himself together and lead a respectable life, he grows increasingly more fascinated with the human side of Nixon and sets out to find a new understanding of the mercurial former president.

May We Be Forgiven is a dark comedy about the potential for personal transformation and emotional growth. A.M. Homes delivers some of her most complicated and fascinating characters yet, exploring themes of justice, family, history, and community, along with faith, ritual, and our social and emotional obligations and connections to one another. May We Be Forgiven is a road map for assembling a life out of the ashes. It is a novel that examines how we become who we are, and how much control we have over the process.

ABOUT A.M. HOMES

A.M. Homes is the author of the novels Jack, In a Country of Mothers, The End of Alice, Music for Torching,and This Book Will Save Your Life, plus two collections of stories, The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know. She also writes nonfiction; her memoir, The Mistress’ Daughter, was published in 2007. Homes has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Cullman Center fellowship from the the New York Public Library. She has taught writing at Columbia University, New York University, and The New School and is currently on the faculty at Princeton University.

A CONVERSATION WITH A.M. HOMES

Q. What kind of historical research did you do on Richard Nixon and the era of his administration for the novel?

I did a lot of research, everything from reading books by and about Nixon, of which there are hundreds, to visiting the Nixon Library—which has a great Web site as well—and enormous amounts of information/documents available. What’s really interesting is that more information, more documents keep being released. The White House Special Files Unit was created in 1972 to provide secure storage for politically and personally sensitive materials—those files are still slowly being uncorked. Also, I grew up in Washington D.C. during Nixon’s time, so my childhood was very much influenced/affected by his presidency. Among what people forget about Nixon is that he opened our relationship with China—and it so happens that I was among those at the National Zoo the day Pat Nixon welcomed the first panda bears to this country.

Q. What are your thoughts on alternative criminal reform programs? How did you come up with The Woodsman program that George takes part in?

The classic model of putting people behind bars and throwing away the key seems pointless. People serving time in prison should be given an education, job training, and skills to enable them to succeed outside of prison. I think of crime as a social issue in many ways and wonder whether if we better prepared people to work and care for themselves we’d have less crime. I am in favor of prisons that have working farms where inmates learn to grow their own food and places where families can gather. The isolation of the prison experience isn’t helpful in the long run if you’re expecting inmates to return as functioning members of society.

Q. This novel is full of wonderful moments of physical comedy. Is it difficult to write physical comedy? Who are your comedic influences?

Would it be too ironic to say Harold Pinter?

Q. When you’re working on a project, do you think of the book or story you’re writing as a “foul thing” you need to expel (as Harold says of his own book on Nixon)? Or do you think of it in gentler terms, like a child you’re bringing into the world? Do you experience the writing process as an act of cathartic release?

I wish I experienced it as a cathartic release. It took me seven years to write this book—if it was cathartic, I think I’d be either ecstatic or dead at this point! I think of writing fiction as a wonderful kind of travel experience—I get to inhabit people who are very different from me and move through their lives and explore ideas that I find interesting—but often from very different points of view. The truth is I love being in the middle of a novel. It’s the beginning that’s difficult. In the case of this book, writing about Harry, a man who doesn’t know himself well, was hard until Harry literally began to open up, and then it all got a lot easier.

Q. Early on in the novel, Harold wishes he could talk to Don DeLillo about Nixon. Later Harold spots DeLillo around town on a couple of occasions, finally working up the courage to speak to him. How much of an influence has DeLillo been on your writing?

Don DeLillo appears in the novel for several reasons—the first being because he’s an amazing writer, and I especially admire his ability to blend fact and fiction, something that I attempted to do in this novel on a larger scale than I ever have before. Also, because DeLillo in reality lives not far from where I imagine the novel to be set, it’s plausible within the frame of the book for DeLillo to literally pass through. And in some ways the irony of DeLillo as both a writer and a character appeals to me. DeLillo himself is quite shy, slightly cryptic in conversation and affect, and I just am in awe of him—so it’s a tip of the hat to a master.

Q. I noticed the repeated use of the word “downloading” to refer to characters in conversation, such as on p. 467 when Harold is on the phone with Amanda: “She’s downloading information, letting each bit go . . .” Why this use of tech language to depict human interactions?

We have adapted tech talk as human talk—we go to dinner and download our friends on the state of our lives. When informing others of things, we say I’m going to upload you. . . . The real question is when and how we’ll find words for emoticons. . . .

Q. How do you get inside the head of a character like Harold? How much does character development steer the plot in your work?

I always spend a lot of time thinking about a character’s history: their life up until the moment the book begins, what’s been won or lost over the years, their view of themselves and their own lives. Harry always seemed to me like someone waiting for his life to begin—not fully realizing that in fact he is responsible for his own success or failure. I don’t really think about plot, I think about my characters and their lives and the journey they’re on—and off we go on an adventure. . . .

Q. How did you go about developing the voice and style for Nixon’s fiction?

I thought a lot about Nixon’s background, his Quaker history and his values—including the fact that he came from a family where two of his brothers died when he was quite young. There is so much about Nixon’s success anddownfall that is specifically related to the time period in which he lived—Nixon’s life span is an interesting one in terms of the social/cultural/economic and technological development it encompasses, from the tape recorder to the television. Also, there are many stories about Nixon having a bit of a drinking problem and perhaps not being very nice to Pat. So I was able to thread some of the more difficult material into fiction rather that putting it in the body of the book and perhaps distracting the reader.

Q. Your novel offers both a state of the union on the Great American Novel and a commentary on the state of the American nuclear family—where do you think we are and where are we going?

Ahh, the big questions. Curiously, I am often asked about the difference between fiction written by men and by women—the assumption being that only men can write the Great American Novel. And while perhaps traditionally men have written the larger social and political novels while women have tended towards exploring the domestic and more interior experience,May We Be Forgiven does both: it asks big questions about social structure, health care, education, and the prison system, and also explores the domestic world of raising children and maintaining relationships. Grace Paley, my teacher and mentor, once said to me, “Women have done men the favor of reading their work and men have not returned that favor.” I think in many ways she was right—women read books by men and women and yet fewer men read books by women. Anyway, the point is, the American Novel is alive and well and being written by a broad range of talented writers.

The American nuclear family is also clearly a subject close to my heart. So many people feel disappointed by their own families and are increasingly building families of choice—constructing social/ familial units made of friends and extended family that they choose to spend time with. One of the things that I like about this novel is how Harry manages to build a life that includes everyone, from children to older people to the couple that own the local Chinese restaurant—it truly takes a village.

Q. Your work is often described as “dark” and “controversial.” Do you like to write within this sort of territory because that’s where you feel most comfortable, or is it that you’re most interested in writing about things that frighten and disturb you?

My work is also often described as both transgressive and deeply moral—which I think is what’s both interesting and confusing for some people. I think work described as shocking or controversial means that it touches a nerve, and I can’t imagine wanting to write anything that didn’t touch a nerve. What would be the point of spending years writing a book only to have people say, Oh, that’s nice, and not be prompted to talk about the ideas in the book, to debate the subject matter? I have no interest in specifically frightening or disturbing anyone, but I do very much always want to write fiction that encourages people to look at themselves and the world around them differently.

More interestingly, I think, is to point out that all of my books have at their center a rather traditional moral core. In the end it always comes down to talking about what kind of a person are you—what do you expect of yourself and others and what role do you play in your community? I’m a big fan of people being able to do for others what they might not be able to do for themselves.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  • An overarching theme of this novel is the concept of the institution, be it a mental hospital, a marriage, a family, or academia. As the institutions in this novel are re–evaluated—forced upon some, rejected or clung to by others—does your view of the institution change? Are these places/relationships safe havens? Prisons? How does each character experience each institution differently?
  • Religion and ritual are interwoven as important aspects in the Silvers’ lives. Traditional religion seems to cause stress for Harold, and yet he takes great comfort in his daily rituals. What are some of these rituals? Are they healthy or signs of addiction?
  • What is the difference between tradition and religion in this novel?
  • There is a lot of physical comedy in this story, ranging from slapstick to the scatological. Harold takes the majority of the pratfalls, sometimes delivering self–inflicted blows. How do these moments symbolize Harold’s internal loss of control? Do they make him seem more cartoonish or more human?
  • For which of the Silver brothers is President Nixon used as a foil?
  • Illness is a consistent theme throughout the book, encompassing mental illness, a stroke, sex addiction, and more. Do any of the characters in this novel make a full recovery?
  • After the tragic incidents at the start of the novel, Harold is left to assemble a life from what’s been left to him. He steps in as guardian for his brother’s children and later as primary caretaker for an elderly couple. Through this process of assembling (or reassembling) a family he can truly call his own, Harold finds something close to contentment. What kind of case doe this book make for or against the traditional nuclear family vs. the modern blended family?
  • Harold exhibits a general mistrust of modern technology. He is frustrated by his students using their cell phones during class and downloading their final papers online. His foray into online dating goes terribly awry. And yet he learns to Skype with Nate, transfers money to a South African village with the click of a button, sends an iPad to his brother in prison, and manages multiple relationships via text message. Does Harold’s skepticism of technology stem from his immersion in Nixon’s era and the former president’s unfortunate turn with technology? Is it a generational thing? How does technology help and/or hinder Harold’s journey throughout the novel?
  • There are a number of violent and disturbing crimes committed in this story: murder, sexual abuse, child abuse, arms dealing, theft. Is any justice brought to the perpetrators of these crimes? Does any criminal reform take place?
  • Communities play a large role in this novel: online communities, Nate’s and Ashley’s boarding schools, the town Harold lives in, his mother’s nursing home, The Lodge where George is undergoing treatment. How is the idea of fitting into one’s community explored throughout the novel? In contrast, how is the concept of the foreigner examined?
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