Characters |
James Lee Marilyn Lee –
wife, briefly disappeared Lydia Nathan Hannah Jack Wolff Dr. Janet
Wolff – single mother Louisa Chen –
James TA Marilyn’s
mother – Home Economics teacher, disapproved of marriage James’
parents – maintenance man and cafeteria lady at prestigious school, James got
free tuition |
For Discussion:
NOTE: Page numbers are from hardback edition.
- What did you think when
you read the first sentence and paragraph?
Did it grab your interest?
- Discuss Marilyn and her
mother and their relationship. Why
didn’t they have any contact for eight years after Marilyn’s
marriage? Do you think her mother
regretted this?
- Did you feel sorry for
Marilyn’s mother? How did her
expectations influence Marilyn?
- When Marilyn left the
family, why did Lydia hide her grandmother’s cookbook when she knew
Marilyn was returning home? Why
did Marilyn stop cooking?
- How did Marilyn’s
relationship with her mother influence her relationship with her daughter,
Lydia?
- What effect did Marilyn’s
attention have on Lydia and her future?
- What effect did the focus
on Lydia by both James and Marilyn have on Nathan and Hannah?
- Why did Lydia never write
in any of the yearly journals her mother gave her?
- Why didn’t Lydia have any
friends? Would Marilyn and James
have noticed this if they had really paid any attention to her? Do you think James really knew what was
happening when he gave her the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People?
- Discuss Jack. He didn’t really care about school or
the fact that he was failing physics for the second time. Would he have turned out differently if
his mother had paid attention to him?
What do you think happened to him after the story ended?
- Hannah was more perceptive
than anyone realized. Were you
surprised at what Hannah noticed about Jack when everyone was swimming in
chapter 8? Watching Jack sitting
next to Nathan, she “recognized it at once: love” (page 211). How did this influence the ending of
the novel?
- Both Marilyn and James
blamed what happened on Lydia being biracial. Marilyn said, “If she were a white
girl, they’d keep looking” and James said “If he were a white girl…none of
this would ever have happened” (page 202).
Do you think this is true?
- Do you think the family will
change? At the end of the novel, James plays with
Hannah the way he used to with Lydia and Marilyn and James seem to
reconnect (pages 279 – 285).
- What do you think will
happen to Nathan?
- How do you think the story
would have ended if Lydia had made it to the shore as she expected?
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