Object Lessons Part 20

"Give it a break, Ce," Connie said.

"Are you moving?" Celeste asked.

"I think so. It's funny how I just lost all my upset about it. My mother-in-law needs us over there. The question is whether to move into her house or the one down the street. Tommy says they may need to sell the other one to pay some of the bills from the business."

"We really might move?" Maggie said.

"I don't know," Connie replied. "Let's wait and see how your grandmother does."

"Grandmother, Schmandmother," said Celeste. "You'll have five kids soon, and you've got four bedrooms. You'll have to start hanging them from the chandeliers. That's a nice big house the old lady's got."

"Give it a break," Connie repeated.

"How's being married, Aunt Celeste?" Maggie asked.

"It's better this time," Celeste said thoughtfully. "But still it's the same. It's not natural, having someone else telling you what to do all the time. But at least we're not arguing about how much I spend on my clothes. When I was married to your Uncle Charlie, one little blouse and-pow! He broke my nose once over a winter coat."

"Don't tell her things like that, Cece," Connie said. "It'll make her think all marriages are like that."

Celeste lifted her eyebrow again.

"They're not. Look at my mother-in-law. She's a changed person since her husband got sick."

"Probably dancing in the aisles," said Celeste, lighting a cigarette.

"You know that's not true. That man was her whole life. That's the thing the kids don't understand. I was looking at Monica yesterday and thinking, she has no idea she has no idea. It's not just a man. It's your house, your kids, your family, your time, everything. Everything in your life is who you marry."

"That's the longest speech I've ever heard you make, Con," said Celeste somberly.

Connie stared across the fields, her lips still red with a trace of lipstick from the day before. "Somebody moved into one of those houses yesterday," she finally said. "I saw the truck from the upstairs window when I was getting ready to go out."

Celeste shrugged. "Big deal. You know what Sol always says. The more things are different, the more they're the same."

"That doesn't make any sense," Maggie said.

"Yeah it does," said her aunt. "Think about it."

Upstairs a screen was lifted with a sound like fingernails on a blackboard. "Connie," came Tommy's tortured voice. "I need tomato juice."

Celeste laughed. "I'll come in with you," she said as Connie rose. "Put some vodka in it. That'll make him feel better."

Maggie stayed out on the patio and thought about what her aunt had said. The more she thought about.i.t, the more she thought it was ridiculous. She thought about life with her grandfather gone, her grandmother alone, perhaps her entire family living in the big stone house and hanging out in the gazebo. She thought of Monica with a baby and a husband, never again to go to a dance with one boy and dump him halfway through the evening for someone better looking, and of Helen perhaps getting a part on Broadway and having strange men spend the night at her apartment. She thought of Debbie being Bridget Hearn's best friend, or maybe thinking she was until Bridget dumped her, and she tried to think they deserved each other, but instead she got a feeling in her chest as though a rib was broken.

She thought of her mother driving her around during the winter months, while the dark outside and the dashboard lights within made a little oasis of the front seat of the car. She knew that even a week from now things would be different. School would start, and she would spend her days in her green uniform blazer and her plaid skirt, her saddle shoes raising blisters on the joints of her toes and the back of her heels after three months in sneakers and flip-flops. On Tuesday they would shop for school supplies, copy books with their spines still closed tight and pencil boxes that smelled as freshly plastic as Christmas morning. There would be no more nights in the development because she wasn't allowed out on school nights. Soon all the windows of the new houses would be filled with yellow light and the spindly saplings they were planting along Sh.e.l.ley Lane and d.i.c.kens Street would grow up to be trees. And soon it would seem as if Tennyson Acres had always been there, and only the older kids would say "Do you remember before they built the development?" and would know what was inside each of those walls. Maggie wondered if someday the people in the last house by the woods would rip up their wall-to-wall carpeting and find the old Playboys Playboys beneath the floor. beneath the floor.

The gold of her locket was warm beneath her fingers. She took a letter from the pocket of her shorts. "Dear Maggie," she read, "I am really glad you are willing to write to me even though we are in the same place and school is starting. I have a lot of things to ask you which are easier to write in a letter than to say to your face. Your face is great but my conversation is not. (HA HA!)" Even now, after reading the letter at least six times, Maggie's breathing felt funny when she got to that part: your face is great. She wondered if Bruce could dance. He had never asked her for anything but the silly line dances at the wedding, perhaps because his father was there. Each time she had looked at him he had looked away and cracked his knuckles. When his father told him it was time to go, he had pressed the letter into her hand, but before he moved away, he had squeezed it hard.

Inside the house she could hear her aunt and her mother laughing. She wasn't sure whether her aunt Celeste was wrong about things changing and staying the same, or whether it was one of those differences between children and adults, like the way they were always saying that time went by so quickly when just to get from June to September seemed to take a lifetime.

Maggie walked through her own backyard to the beginning of the development. The soft ground sagged beneath her feet, and she could see in the cement of the curbs that Terence and his friends had been there, putting in hand and footprints, and leaving their initials: TSS, KAK, RVQ. The asphalt for the roads had not been laid yet, and she could feel the pebbles through the soft thin soles of her sneakers. Up ahead of her was the first house to be finished, a ranch house with sliding picture windows in almost every room. Maggie remembered that Richard and Bruce had written their names inside the doors of the kitchen cabinets the day they'd been installed.

Maggie approached soundlessly, close enough to see into the living-room window. A man and a woman sat on a couch against one wall. He was bald, with his s.h.i.+rt sleeves rolled to the elbow, and she had a short cap of black hair, like a bathing cap, and tiny black eyes. They held round gla.s.ses, almost like bowls, filled with dark amber liqueur, and they sipped at it as they looked around them. Their furniture looked as if it had elbows, it was so angular, and on the wall above the couch was what Maggie was sure must be modern art, a soaring splash of fuschia dotted with black and gray. It was pretty, really, and the gray matched the couch. The man rose and Maggie leapt back, her heart pounding, but when she looked in again she could see that he was only adjusting the picture, and she imagined they had just hung it, hung it before they unpacked any of the cardboard boxes stacked at the far end of the room, before they began putting away their dishes and discovering names written in pencil inside their brand-new cabinet doors.

The woman rose and stared at the picture, a hand on her hip, and then she said something to the man and stood tapping her foot while he made the smallest adjustment. A voice in Maggie's head said stridently, "I'd bet my bottom dollar they're Jews," even though Maggie herself was thinking that they looked mostly Italian, and Maggie recognized it as her grandfather's voice. And she knew that for the rest of her life, from time to time she would hear that voice within her head.

She wondered if this was what it was like to be haunted. Or perhaps that was what heaven was, the eternal life of your own point of view fired off, every now and then, inside the skulls of unsuspecting friends and relatives. Maggie thought that her grandfather would live that way in her mind, until the day when she died herself, when there would be other people around to remember her. She looked back at the houses of Kenwood, old and familiar, and she looked around her at Tennyson Acres, and the two seemed to her to be the past and the future. She heard her grandfather's voice again, saying, "There's the here, and then there's the hereafter." That was how it looked to her, the two parts of the neighborhood, like here and hereafter, like what had been and what was to come. Her grandfather was finally having his hereafter, but he was here, too, inside her head, and she was glad of that.

It wasn't only the dead that lived with you that way. When she closed her eyes she could hear Helen say "Not to decide is to decide," and her mother saying, with a great throb in her quiet voice, "Not good or bad. Things just are." She knew that twenty years from now she would still hear all those voices in her head, and she knew that as long as they stayed there she would be able to do all the things she had to do, to make all the choices she had to make. But yesterday, as she had walked down the aisle, looking into the curled heart of the pink rose at the center of her bouquet, she had heard another voice, telling her to lift her chin, to keep her shoulders square, to walk slowly. And suddenly it had come to her, as she was dancing with her father, the stars of darkness exploding inside her closed lids, that the voice she was hearing was her own, for the first time in her life.

OBJECT LESSONS A Reader's Guide

ANNA QUINDLEN

A CONVERSATION WITH A ANNA Q QUINDLEN Jennifer Morgan Gray is a writer and editor who lives in New York City is a writer and editor who lives in New York City.

Jennifer Morgan Gray: Was there a particular image or idea that inspired you to write Was there a particular image or idea that inspired you to write Object Lessons? Object Lessons? Did you begin with a vision of a particular character, a plot occurrence, both, or neither? Did you begin with a vision of a particular character, a plot occurrence, both, or neither?

Anna Quindlen: Object Lessons Object Lessons is my most autobiographical novel-like Maggie Scanlan, I am the daughter of an Irish father and an Italian mother-and so the motivating principle was more overarching than it has been in subsequent books, when I've often begun with a single character, image, or theme. But I would say that my initial impulse had a good deal to do with the construction of the second-stage suburbs during the 1960s. As much as the counterculture, that sprawl of split-levels and ranch houses changed America and how Americans saw themselves. And it was a metaphor, I think, for taking a good, hard look at the old ways and mores. That's an important theme of the book. is my most autobiographical novel-like Maggie Scanlan, I am the daughter of an Irish father and an Italian mother-and so the motivating principle was more overarching than it has been in subsequent books, when I've often begun with a single character, image, or theme. But I would say that my initial impulse had a good deal to do with the construction of the second-stage suburbs during the 1960s. As much as the counterculture, that sprawl of split-levels and ranch houses changed America and how Americans saw themselves. And it was a metaphor, I think, for taking a good, hard look at the old ways and mores. That's an important theme of the book.

JMG: Was there a mood you hoped to evoke by calling the novel Was there a mood you hoped to evoke by calling the novel Object Lessons? Object Lessons? Were there any other t.i.tles you considered and then abandoned? What are the "object lessons" that you think the characters-Maggie and Connie in particular-learn in the book? Were there any other t.i.tles you considered and then abandoned? What are the "object lessons" that you think the characters-Maggie and Connie in particular-learn in the book?

AQ: Oy. Do I have to tell the truth about this? I am terrible with t.i.tles, although I've gotten better and better over the years. But Object Lessons Object Lessons was my first book, and so I found it particularly difficult to reduce this one to a handful of words. I remember saying, "t.i.tles are so reductionist," and having my editor reply, sensibly, "Yes, but a book needs to have one." In fact I dithered so persistently that we dummied up one version of the cover with the line was my first book, and so I found it particularly difficult to reduce this one to a handful of words. I remember saying, "t.i.tles are so reductionist," and having my editor reply, sensibly, "Yes, but a book needs to have one." In fact I dithered so persistently that we dummied up one version of the cover with the line t.i.tle TK t.i.tle TK, which means "t.i.tle to come." Then the director of publicity at Random House read the book and said, "Well, I think it's all about object lessons, about those central tenets we learn from experience." It was kind of a kaboom kaboom moment. I only wish it had been my moment. I only wish it had been my kaboom kaboom moment! moment!

JMG: You frame the book from its very first pages as taking place in a summer that's "the time of changes." Why did you decide to mention explicitly the events that take place later in the novel, like John Scanlan's stroke and the demise of Maggie and Debbie's friends.h.i.+p, in the first chapter of the book? Did you know what would happen in You frame the book from its very first pages as taking place in a summer that's "the time of changes." Why did you decide to mention explicitly the events that take place later in the novel, like John Scanlan's stroke and the demise of Maggie and Debbie's friends.h.i.+p, in the first chapter of the book? Did you know what would happen in Object Lessons Object Lessons when you started writing, or were you surprised along the way? when you started writing, or were you surprised along the way?

AQ: I always know what will happen at the end when I begin a novel. The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging. Besides, I don't think the trajectory of Object Lessons Object Lessons is about John Scanlan, or even Debbie. It's about that moment when Maggie can think of herself as an individual separate from others. That's the ending. is about John Scanlan, or even Debbie. It's about that moment when Maggie can think of herself as an individual separate from others. That's the ending.

JMG: Object Lessons is set in the 1960s as sweeping social changes are beginning to take hold in the United States, but these changes are slow to creep into the town of Kenwood. In what ways did you intend to depict the town as an idyllic place in which to grow up? How did you picture it as being "frozen in time"? How do you think that Kenwood's reaction to altering the status quo mirrored the reality of the world at that time? is set in the 1960s as sweeping social changes are beginning to take hold in the United States, but these changes are slow to creep into the town of Kenwood. In what ways did you intend to depict the town as an idyllic place in which to grow up? How did you picture it as being "frozen in time"? How do you think that Kenwood's reaction to altering the status quo mirrored the reality of the world at that time?

AQ: I don't think most of what we call the '60s actually took place in the '60s. In San Francisco and New York and on some college campuses, sure. But if you go back and look at photos in most places, of most people, you don't see long hair or tie-dyes. My high school yearbook, circa 1970, has a handful of hippie looks, but mostly people are pretty straight. But the fault lines were beginning to subtly appear. The changes in the Catholic Church. The growing political disenchantment in the years after the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination. The peace movement and women's liberation. The earth was rumbling during the time covered by this novel. It hadn't opened yet.

JMG: Some reviewers have wondered if Maggie is, in some ways, a young stand-in for you. How much of your own character is in Maggie? Why do you think that readers are so intrigued by trying to figure out how much autobiography exists in a writer's fictional works? Some reviewers have wondered if Maggie is, in some ways, a young stand-in for you. How much of your own character is in Maggie? Why do you think that readers are so intrigued by trying to figure out how much autobiography exists in a writer's fictional works?

AQ: Oh, I think everyone wants to disbelieve the notion of fiction. It's too much to think that someone could invent an entire believable world from scratch. And that goes double if you've been a newspaper reporter as I was, trained to deal in something approaching literal truth. There are certainly similarities between Anna and Maggie, although she is preternaturally wise and a little judgmental in a way I was not at her age. I find her a bit of a pain.

JMG: The struggle between parent and child is paramount in this book-from Maggie and Connie, to Tommy and John, to Connie and Angelo. Which parent-child pairing comes the closest to understanding each other? Is there any element that you view as an "irreconcilable difference" in any of the relations.h.i.+ps? The struggle between parent and child is paramount in this book-from Maggie and Connie, to Tommy and John, to Connie and Angelo. Which parent-child pairing comes the closest to understanding each other? Is there any element that you view as an "irreconcilable difference" in any of the relations.h.i.+ps?

AQ: The most irreconcilable of those relations.h.i.+ps is the one between Tommy Scanlan and his dad, mainly because it's not really a loving relations.h.i.+p on the part of the elder man. It's one of dominance. That's always doomed to failure. I think Connie and her father have a genuinely loving bond, although he comes from a culture that likes to keep its children close, and so he is distressed about the obvious ways in which she has pulled away. It's too soon to know how the relations.h.i.+p between Maggie and Connie will develop, but I will say that of all the characters in the book Connie has the greatest capacity for unconditional love. And that carries you a long way in the long run.

JMG: In which ways is Connie a renegade, and in which ways does she want to fit in? How does her relations.h.i.+p with Joey break boundaries? How does it put her in closer touch with herself? In which ways is Connie a renegade, and in which ways does she want to fit in? How does her relations.h.i.+p with Joey break boundaries? How does it put her in closer touch with herself?

AQ: I don't think she means to be a renegade. She's not born to it the way Celeste is. She's just wound up in this role because of the ethnic tensions in her marriage. Reading this book in the early '90s, people thought I had exaggerated that. Someone said to me, "You made it sound almost interracial." At the time in which these people were growing up, that's exactly what it was like. (Maybe now that everyone has seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding My Big Fat Greek Wedding they'll understand the intractability of certain groups about having their kids marry outside the clan!) It gets tiring always being the outsider. The relations.h.i.+p with Joey is all about spending time with someone who speaks your language and doesn't see you as the other. they'll understand the intractability of certain groups about having their kids marry outside the clan!) It gets tiring always being the outsider. The relations.h.i.+p with Joey is all about spending time with someone who speaks your language and doesn't see you as the other.

JMG: It's interesting that John Scanlan loathes the Kennedys, as he seems such a Joe Kennedy type in many ways. Did you have any inspiration for this larger-than-life personality? Why do you think he and Maggie have such an affinity toward each other? It's interesting that John Scanlan loathes the Kennedys, as he seems such a Joe Kennedy type in many ways. Did you have any inspiration for this larger-than-life personality? Why do you think he and Maggie have such an affinity toward each other?

AQ: A lot of Irish-Catholic patriarchs of a certain age loathed the Kennedys. It was jealousy, pure and simple. They couldn't break through with the WASPs of their own communities. Somehow, to a limited extent, Kennedy had managed to do so. And these men had as many sons, but none of them fledgling senators or presidents. Some of them felt the same way about the Kellys of Philadelphia. "Who do you think you are?" might as well be tattooed into the forehead of certain old Irish Catholics, they ask it so much. "Too big for your britches," too. I think at some level Maggie likes the old man because he is strong and sure of himself. And that's what she wants to be. And he likes her because she's smart.

JMG: You set up a marked contrast between Monica and Maggie. Why do you think Monica harbors such vitriol toward her younger cousin? Why does John Scanlan see through her, while few others do? Are they cut from the same cloth, so to speak? You set up a marked contrast between Monica and Maggie. Why do you think Monica harbors such vitriol toward her younger cousin? Why does John Scanlan see through her, while few others do? Are they cut from the same cloth, so to speak?

AQ: In some ways Monica and Maggie are protoypes of two very different types of women who will do battle over and over in the decades after the action of this novel ends. One is the woman who will play by all the rules in order to win, who will dress correctly, pretend to be tractable, make herself alluring to men and do whatever it takes to succeed, although the standard of her time is that success comes only through a man. She is basically a hard case, and she is about to get harder because all the rules of what makes a successful woman are about to change on her. Maggie is the kind of girl who will be the beneficiary of those changes in the years to come. She is intelligent and thoughtful. She is interested in prospering on her own terms, and the old ways of female manipulation either don't interest or don't occur to her. The Monicas and the Maggies will always have a hard time getting along. John Scanlan is amused by the combat. He sees Monica for what she is because he, too, is a hard case.

JMG: How is Maggie's desire for order tested by the events of the summer? How is she similar to Tommy, who is a self-admitted "slave to routine"? Will his status as a creature of habit change? How is Maggie's desire for order tested by the events of the summer? How is she similar to Tommy, who is a self-admitted "slave to routine"? Will his status as a creature of habit change?

AQ: The change of that summer is the catalyst Maggie needs to become herself. It tears her apart, but at the end she can put herself back together. In that way I think she is prototypically female in some sense, and her father prototypically male in that he is quite pa.s.sive and likely to remain so. The one upheaval he has allowed himself in his life was to marry Connie. But I don't think he'll see the like of that moment again.

JMG: Maggie is drawn toward unconventional female figures, like Helen Malone and her aunt Margaret. What about these women appeals to Maggie? Was there a particular female character whom you most enjoyed writing? Maggie is drawn toward unconventional female figures, like Helen Malone and her aunt Margaret. What about these women appeals to Maggie? Was there a particular female character whom you most enjoyed writing?

AQ: Helen Malone is actually based on an older girl that I saw and knew in my own neighborhood growing up, the kind who had the self-a.s.surance of physical attractiveness and the allure of s.e.xual experience. Those girls suffered. They were golden one day and cast out the next, almost always because of pregnancy. It's one of the ways in which the world has changed for the better since I was young; you don't have to pay, all the rest of your life, for a mistake you made when your hormones were in overdrive. I was mesmerized by those girls growing up, because they had so much, and because it was so fleeting. It made me very suspicious of those things that came to you because of your physical allure, and I was very determined to develop my intellect and my will.

JMG: There's a constant theme of artifice in There's a constant theme of artifice in Object Lessons. Object Lessons. Who do you think is the most masked person in the story? Who's the most true to his or herself? How do you seek to strip away artifice as a writer? Who do you think is the most masked person in the story? Who's the most true to his or herself? How do you seek to strip away artifice as a writer?

AQ: That's something I've never thought about. I suppose it's the neighborhood, actually, that's most artificial, because everyone collectively pretends that life is one way when deep underneath there are all sorts of fissures. It's like that moment near the end when Maggie can see this couple who has moved into one of the new houses. It seems a tableau of success and contentment, but she intuits that there are endless fault lines. And that's correct.

JMG: Object Lessons touches on social issues-divorce, infidelity, and teenage pregnancy, among others. Did you consciously set out to write a novel that included social commentary? Or did these issues emerge while you were writing? touches on social issues-divorce, infidelity, and teenage pregnancy, among others. Did you consciously set out to write a novel that included social commentary? Or did these issues emerge while you were writing?

AQ: My feeling is that things become social policy issues because they are happening in life, not the other way around. So if you set out to write a realistic novel about America, social issues will inevitably arise in the text. It would be almost impossible to write a novel about, say, marriage, without writing about infidelity. Even Tolstoy had to do it in Anna Karenina Anna Karenina, and that was more than a century ago. These are the ways of the world. We just call them social issues when we're trying to quantify and a.n.a.lyze them somehow. I only do that when I'm wearing my columnist's hat.

JMG: I was struck by a statement of Connie's at the end of the book: "Everything in your life is who you marry." Would Tommy agree with this? Has Connie truly forgiven Tommy and accepted the realities of her marriage? was struck by a statement of Connie's at the end of the book: "Everything in your life is who you marry." Would Tommy agree with this? Has Connie truly forgiven Tommy and accepted the realities of her marriage?

AQ: Oh, sure. I don't think you can even argue with that. Who you marry determines what sort of children and family you'll have, and that shapes your entire life. I don't think Connie understood that going in. She thought it was all about her and Tommy, when of course a marriage is a much larger circle than that of two people holding hands. I think she's made her peace, but she's going to keep kicking at the larger indignities. Frankly, she'll be a much happier woman the day after John Scanlan's funeral.

JMG: You open and conclude the book with the concept of "here and hereafter." How do John Scanlan and Maggie share a similar worldview with respect to those two concepts? Does this jibe with your perception of the world? You open and conclude the book with the concept of "here and hereafter." How do John Scanlan and Maggie share a similar worldview with respect to those two concepts? Does this jibe with your perception of the world?

AQ: Well, the obvious reference is a religious one. In many ways this is a profoundly Catholic book, and I am a profoundly Catholic writer. But it also refers to the future. John knows that things are changing, in his business and in the lives of his children. He has only to consider his half-Italian granddaughter to know that. And I think he suspects that the hereafter for her will be in a much different society. So does she. That's the moment at which both of them are poised. One regrets, one embraces. But both understand.

JMG: In a commencement address at Mount Holyoke, you said, "Listen to that small voice from inside you that chooses to go the other way." Who in this novel truly takes this advice to heart? How does it represent a struggle for them? How do you try to heed your own advice? In a commencement address at Mount Holyoke, you said, "Listen to that small voice from inside you that chooses to go the other way." Who in this novel truly takes this advice to heart? How does it represent a struggle for them? How do you try to heed your own advice?

AQ: I never made the connection before, but of course that line in the Holyoke speech describes precisely the moment at the end of Object Lessons Object Lessons when Maggie first hears her own voice in her head. So I would say it would be her, first and foremost. As for me, I have the opposite problem. Because of my life as a novelist and as a columnist, I'm always hearing voices in my head. It's getting them to shut up and give me a little peace that's the problem! Usually I have to write it all down first-then I get to watch some TV! when Maggie first hears her own voice in her head. So I would say it would be her, first and foremost. As for me, I have the opposite problem. Because of my life as a novelist and as a columnist, I'm always hearing voices in my head. It's getting them to shut up and give me a little peace that's the problem! Usually I have to write it all down first-then I get to watch some TV!

JMG: Object Lessons was your first published novel. Do you have a particular fondness for it because of that designation? was your first published novel. Do you have a particular fondness for it because of that designation? As As you look back at it after more than a decade has pa.s.sed, is there anything that you'd approach differently? Has your writing process changed over that span of time? you look back at it after more than a decade has pa.s.sed, is there anything that you'd approach differently? Has your writing process changed over that span of time?

AQ: I'm more sure-handed as a novelist now. You hope that's true, after publis.h.i.+ng four novels and beginning work on the fifth. You just know your way around a fictional misc-en-scene misc-en-scene better than you did the first time out. I had to do three full drafts of this book. On my last novel, better than you did the first time out. I had to do three full drafts of this book. On my last novel, Blessings Blessings, I did a draft and a fairly light reworking and then it was fine. So I suppose it's like anything else; the more you do it, the better you become. I can't tell you whether I'd do anything differently because I've never reread Object Lessons Object Lessons. The last time I read it was the day I handed the final draft in. Reading my own work makes me sweat; all I can see are the mistakes and the clunks, never the felicitous phrase or the apt characterization. So I just keep pus.h.i.+ng on.

JMG: What are you working on now, either fiction or nonfiction in nature? What are you working on now, either fiction or nonfiction in nature?

AQ: I'm writing a novel about two sisters in New York City at the turn of the century. One's famous, the other's not. More than that will have to become clear when the thing's actually done.

READING G GROUP Q QUESTIONS AND T TOPICS FOR D DISCUSSION

1.Object Lessons unfolds mostly through the eyes of twelve-year-old Maggie. In which ways is Maggie older and more perceptive than her age would suggest? How is she naive? How do you envision Maggie's evolution as she grows older and away from her family? unfolds mostly through the eyes of twelve-year-old Maggie. In which ways is Maggie older and more perceptive than her age would suggest? How is she naive? How do you envision Maggie's evolution as she grows older and away from her family?2.Does the book have the elements of a traditional coming-of-age novel? If so, what are they? Do you agree with Connie's a.s.sessment at the end of the book that her daughter has become a woman? In what ways is Maggie still a little girl?3.What does the development being built near Tommy and Connie's house represent to the various Scanlans? To the neighborhood kids, including Maggie, Debbie, Bruce, and Richard? To the town of Kenwood as a whole? How does it represent a larger theme or symbol in the novel?4.How do Maggie and Connie have a typical mother-daughter rapport? An atypical one? How is Connie's att.i.tude toward Maggie influenced by the att.i.tudes of her parents toward her?5.What factors motivated Tommy and Connie to marry? What initially draws one to the other? How are they well-matched? What causes their marriage to flounder?6.Why is it significant that Joey Martinelli appears on Connie's doorstep when he does? How has she become a different person from the girl he once knew? What attributes would she like to bring to the surface once again?7.When he learns of Connie's driving lessons, Tommy thinks that he "could take her anywhere she needed to go." Why does he view her learning to drive as a betrayal? Are Connie's driving lessons symbolic? If so, how?8.What role does the Roman Catholic Church play in Object Lessons? Object Lessons? How does the Church and its rituals represent a spiritual force for the characters? In which ways is it a business ent.i.ty? How does the Church and its rituals represent a spiritual force for the characters? In which ways is it a business ent.i.ty?9.At the beginning of Object Lessons Object Lessons, John Scanlan rules over the family as an indomitable patriarch. What about his personality is so arresting, both to those within the family and outside of it? How does he inspire emotion-whether it's fear, respect, or loathing? Why do he and Maggie get along so well? How do you see the family evolving as they adjust to his death?

10.Whom does Maggie look up to as a role model, both within her family and outside of it? What attributes do these people have in common? Why does she so dislike her cousin Monica?

11.The friends.h.i.+p between Maggie and Debbie Malone evaporates during the course of the book. Why do you think that Debbie turns on Maggie? How is their friends.h.i.+p different from the relations.h.i.+p Connie has with Celeste?

12.What does the Malone family represent to Maggie? Why does Debbie's sister, Helen, take a liking to Maggie?

13.After his stroke, John Scanlan says, "It's not the dying I mind, it's the changing." How is this statement typical of his character? Which members of his family would agree with him; who in this novel would disagree?

14.How do Maggie's two grandfathers compare and contrast with each other? Which attributes from each does Maggie seem to have? To which one does she seem most similar? Why?

15.Debbie decries always being known as "Helen Malone's sister;" Maggie counters that she's always "John Scanlan's granddaughter." How do the two girls grapple with the idea of ident.i.ty, especially as it relates to their relations.h.i.+p to other family members? How does each girl try to form her own individuality? How do names and nicknames play a part in ident.i.ty in Object Lessons? Object Lessons?

16."Until this horrible sweaty summer, lines had been drawn," Maggie recalls sadly. What connections and boundaries are erased from Maggie's life during the course of the book? Which fissures are the most apparent? How does Maggie handle the disintegration of these connections?

17.In your opinion, why do the kids begin setting fires in the development? Why does Maggie initially partic.i.p.ate? At the last fire, are Maggie's actions heroic or cowardly, or a combination of the two? Why? Do you think that her behavior hastens the end of her friends.h.i.+p with Debbie?

18.In which ways does John's death free Mary Frances? Why is she consumed by the memory of her dead daughter, and why does she want to be buried with her? Why does Mary Frances prefer Connie and Tommy living with her to her other children?

19.At the beginning of Object Lessons Object Lessons, Maggie "listens too much;" by the end of the novel, she's found her voice. Why did it take so long for her true self to emerge? How do you think she'll merge her newfound consciousness with the competing voices of her past influences?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANNA QUINDLEN is the author of three bestselling novels, is the author of three bestselling novels, Object Lessons, One True Thing Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue Black and Blue. Her New York Times New York Times column "Public & Private" won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and a selection of those columns was published as column "Public & Private" won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and a selection of those columns was published as Thinking Out Loud Thinking Out Loud. She is also the author of a collection of her "Life in the 30's" columns, Living Out Loud; Living Out Loud; a book for the Library of Contemporary Thought, a book for the Library of Contemporary Thought, How Reading Changed My Life; How Reading Changed My Life; the bestselling the bestselling A Short Guide to a Happy Life; A Short Guide to a Happy Life; and two children's books, and two children's books, The Tree That Came to Stay The Tree That Came to Stay and and Happily Ever After Happily Ever After. She is currently a columnist for Newsweek Newsweek and lives with her husband and children in New York City. and lives with her husband and children in New York City.

ALSO BY ANNA QUINDLEN

One True Thing