our short history An Interview with the Author * Questions for Discussion Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 343 A I N L G O N Q U

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1 READERS ROUND TABLE our short history An Interview with the Author * Questions for Discussion A I N L G O N Q U Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 343

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3 An Interview with Lauren Grodstein and PhillyVoice.com by Elizabeth Licorish Provided courtesy of PhillyVoice.com PV: What was your inspiration to write the novel? LG: A few things got me thinking about and then writing this book. The first was that my sister-in-law s mother, a woman I was incredibly fond of, was dying of ovarian cancer when I met her. But she was still spunky, still funny, still whip-smart. Cancer slowed her down sometimes but it never took away who she was. And oh, how she worried about her daughter what it would mean for her to get married, have children, and grow older without her. I couldn t meet this woman and know her story without wanting to write it. The other, more mundane but even more powerful thing for me was that I wanted my son to know how much I love him. But fiction is my medium, and so this is the way I did it. One day I Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 345

4 346 an interview hope he reads the book and knows that I could never have written about Karen s love for Jake if I didn t love him so desperately. PV: How was the writing of OSH influenced by the political atmosphere in today s America? LG: I wrote this book way before Trump; I started it in 2012, around the time of Obama s reelection. I thought that was an interesting time, politically, but then again I ve always been interested in politics in a sort of amateur way. Trump s election, of course, changed that. Now I m interested in politics in a lifeor-death, what is happening and how do we make it stop way. I m not certain I would have written a story about a campaign consultant if I started the book again today. It s just too horrifying. PV: How did you research your protagonist s career as a political consultant? LG: I m blessed with many interesting friends. One of them my college roommate and still a dear friend worked for [former New York mayor Michael] Bloomberg in City Hall and was an absolute encyclopedia of campaign info. She introduced me to the right people, who then introduced me to the right terms, the right game plans, the right attitudes a political consultant like Karen would have. There was so much I didn t know! How much money she d make, for instance, or the kinds of resources that would be poured into the campaigns she d run. I loved writing about her job and I loved talking to people who do her job in real life. Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 346

5 An Interview 347 PV: Your previous novels are written from the perspective of male protagonists; how did the experience of writing a female protagonist compare to your past work? LG: I never set out to write a character whose gender is one thing or another. I set out to write a specific character, and if that character happens to be male, that s the one I write, and if she s a woman, I write a woman. Writing Karen wasn t easier or harder than writing other protagonists I ve created, because I ve felt them in my bones just as strongly as I felt her. And even though she s a woman, her experiences are so different from mine, from her parenting (she s a single mom in Manhattan, and I m a married one in the burbs) to the state of her body. I had to imagine her just as deeply as I ve imagined my male characters. I couldn t rely on my own experiences. PV: Even while she s dying, Karen feels pressure to constantly apply makeup and wear a wig, which seems unique to the female experience of terminal illness. What are your thoughts regarding the pressure that sick people (especially women) feel to appear well? LG: It s very important to Karen that she doesn t end up marginalized (even though she does, again and again), and so she relies on what she calls her healthy drag, the wig and the makeup and the decent clothes, so that people will still include her in the land of the vital. I think this is an exaggerated form of what many women my age and older do all the time Botox, and competitive exercising, and SPANX, and highlights, and all the rest of that (and believe me, I m not immune). We need to keep Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 347

6 348 an interview looking as young as possible because we know that in our culture older women are often marginalized. I work out much harder than I did when I was younger, take more care with my makeup, and frankly look better than I did in my twenties, in some ways, because suddenly it matters in a way it didn t before. It s like, if I want to be paid attention to (and I do!) I should have the wisdom of a sixty-year-old and the body of a twenty-year-old. PV: OSH addresses facing death without faith in God. As more Americans embrace this humanist worldview, how do you think that affects our attitude toward dying? LG: Well, the only time in my life where I wished I believed in God was when my grandmother was killed by a car crossing the street. I loved her so much and just couldn t believe she was taken from me like that, in a snap, in a second. I really wanted to imagine her somewhere in the heavens, looking down on me. Even more than that, I wanted to think that one day I d see her again. In my heart that felt ridiculous, but that sentimental urge to believe in the supernatural was hard to get over. I was just so overwhelmed by grief. But as time passed, and the shock lessened, I also felt great comfort in the idea that nature has its own rules, and that life if you re lucky, like my grandmother was life runs its course over many years, and then ends, to be replaced by new life. My grandmother is gone, but she has six great-grandchildren, and more on the way, and her life is renewed in theirs. I guess what I mean is that Karen s life will end, but her life will continue in her son, Jake. You don t need a supernatural God to see that there is no greater blessing. Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 348

7 Questions for Discussion 1. What do you think Jake will make of this book if he does, indeed, open it when he turns eighteen? 2. Do you think Dave really called Karen after she told him she was pregnant? 3. Reading is very important to Karen, and she leaves a list of book suggestions for Jake when he s older. If you were going to make such a list, what would you include? 4. If you were Karen, would you let your son s father back into your life, even though he rejected you when you told him you were pregnant? 5. How do you think Megan, Dave s wife, feels about Jake? How would you react if it turned out your partner had a child he d never known about? Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 349

8 350 questions for discussion 6. It s been said that you can either love your child or hate your ex, but you can t do both. Do you think that s true? If not, why not? 7. Was it the right decision to explain to Jake that his mother was going to die? 8. Karen grew up in a working-class family. What effects do you think her childhood had on the way she thinks about money in her adult life? 9. Why do you think Karen seeks out Beverly Hernandez in her office? Is she acting more as a campaign adviser or as a cancer patient? 10. Karen s grandparents were Holocaust survivors who barely escaped Hungary in World War II. How do you think her understanding of their experience makes her think about her own fight with cancer? 11. Karen s advice for the adult Jake she ll never meet: read a lot, be a good neighbor, don t spend too much on useless stuff, be nice to the women you date. Would this be the advice you d give to the generation that comes after you? What else would you say? 12. If you were Karen, would you have gone back home to New York City to try to work, or stayed in Mercer Island with Allison and allow yourself to be taken care of? Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 350

9 Questions for Discussion Karen has a hard time connecting to her father, who has dementia. Do you think she should have told her father that she was dying? Do you think he understood? 14. Why do you think Karen hints to the reporter what Ace did? Was she disgusted with Ace s behavior, or was she looking for a final crisis to manage? 15. Do you think Jake would have wanted to meet his father if Karen hadn t gotten sick? 16. Karen relies on something called healthy drag when she s out in the world: a wig, makeup, and nice clothes. Why is healthy drag so important to Karen? What would have happened if she d let more people know how sick she was? 17. Are Karen s choices about work and motherhood feminist choices? 18. Do you agree with Karen that being a mother is the condition of helping the people you love most in the world leave you? 19. After Karen dies, do you think Jake will go to Mercer Island to be with his aunt, or do you think he will live with Dave? Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 351

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KEN YANOVIAK Lauren Grodstein is the author of four works of fiction: the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family, The Explanation for Everything, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love, and the

11 KEN YANOVIAK Lauren Grodstein is the author of four works of fiction: the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family, The Explanation for Everything, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love, and the story collection The Best of Animals. She directs the creative writing MFA program at Rutgers-Camden and lives with her husband, son, and daughter in New Jersey. Grodstein_OurShortHistory pbk_2nd_bp.indd 353

SID: So it was too late, in other words, for anything. Now they offered you chemo and you took it.

SID: So it was too late, in other words, for anything. Now they offered you chemo and you took it. 1 SID: Have you prayed for years without seeing any results? Discouraged, almost ready to throw in the towel? My guest will show you how to recapture childlike faith to see the impossible become possible