~*~Jan Book Club Discussion Time~*~
Find a Conversation
~*~Jan Book Club Discussion Time~*~
| Wed, 01-17-2007 - 8:35am |
For those of you who are participating in our January Book Club----we are discussing today, the first half of the book!

Pages
Okay, I'm not sure I can get up to speed here because I'm so far behind today but I'll try. I'm cutting and pasteing from my other post.
When David hands his baby girl over to Caroline and tells Norah that she has died, what was your immediate emotional reaction? At this early point, did you understand David’s motivations? Did your understanding grow as the novel progressed?
My immediate response was what a jerk, how dare he make a decision for her. I tried to remember that this was happening in 1964 when men did make the decisions for their wives and for the most part the wives accepted it. However I did not understand his motivation at all, I have no patience for the mind-set of "if I would react in one way then everyone would". Just because his mother lost it when his sister died (and I'm not saying it would be easy) he just assumed that all women would react the same way or that everyone would feel the way he did. He didn't give his wife enough credit for being an individual and having her own ideas and thoughts, it was a case of "women" can't deal with that so I'll protect her. As the book went on he still didn't seem to get it (until maybe near the end) that all women were not like his mother (especially his wife) and that not everyone reacted the way he did to emotional situations.David describes feeling like "an aberration" within his own family (p. 7) and describes himself as feeling like "an imposter" in his professional life as a doctor (p. 8). Discuss David’s psyche, his history, and what led him to make that fateful decision on the night of his children’s birth.
Throughout the novel, the characters often describe themselves as feeling as if they are watching their own lives from the outside. For instance, David describes the moment when his wife is going into labor and says "he felt strangely as if he himself were suspended in the room . . . watching them both from above" (p. 10). What do you think Edwards is trying to convey here? Have you ever experienced similar feelings in your own life?
Okay, confession, I'm not someone who thinks about my feelings and that very much. So I don't really get him. Okay we all have moments where we go "holy crap, I can't believe this is happening to ME" either for good or bad. But we don't sit and ponder it for years on end. Get over it.
After Norah has successfully destroyed the wasps’ nest, Edwards writes that there was something happening in Norah’s life, "an explosion, some way in which life could never be the same" (p. 139). What does she mean, and what is the significance of Norah’s "fight" with these wasps?
The secret that David keeps is enormous and ultimately terribly destructive to himself and his family. Can you imagine a circumstance when it might be the right choice to shield those closest to you from the truth?
Yes I can, but I don't think he was very good at it. There are people who have secrets just as large but they don't let it rule their life, they are able to lock it in that compartment and literally forget about it. He was useless at that and everything he did was a result of thinking about it, ruminating on it.
What do you think Norah’s reaction would have been if David had been honest with her from the beginning? How might Norah have responded to the news that she had a daughter with Down’s Syndrome? How might each of their lives have been different if David had not handed Phoebe to Caroline that fateful day?
I think she would have accepted the baby immediately. I get the sense that he could not have convinced her to send it to an institution. How might their lives have been different? Its impossible to say. Maybe they would have been happier, but maybe he married her for the wrong reasons anyway. Raising a Downs Syndrome child at that time was very very difficult and they talk about Caroline's stuggle with getting education and help so maybe that challenge would have driven them apart anyway. Strong marriages have been destroyed by the stresses of handicapped children before. Would David have been more accepting of Paul's music choices? Not likely, he was a product of his upbringing and the time he was raised. So its impossible to say if their life would have been "better" or ended on a better note. It would have been different obviously.
Pages