“Don’t be.”
“I am. Are you still in Garvey?”
“No. I moved out. I’m in Savannah now—a studio apartment overlooking the river. You’d love it.”
She wanted to groan, but didn’t. “Are you okay? You and Eliza?” Her hand fluttered in the air.
He looked away. “No.”
This time she did groan. “My fault. God, I’m so sorry.”
“No.” His hand lifted as if he would touch her; then he dropped it. “Never your fault. It’s all mine. Everything’s mine.”
“If I hadn’t—”
He placed an index finger on her lips. “Shh. No.”
She was dizzy. “Your kids.”
“Well, Lisbeth is involved with school and not speaking to me . . . but I hope, every day, for it to get better. I keep on tryin’. I see the boys as much as I did when I lived at home. They stay with me on the weekends and”—he lifted her chin with his finger to make her look up at him—“and I miss you.”
“Oh . . . oh.”
“I’ve wanted to tell you so many things—like how I’d always blamed you, then Eliza, and now . . . well, now I just blame myself. I’m the only reason we’re not together.” He was whispering now. “I used it all as an excuse not to do what I wanted, needed to do. But, Amy, knowing all this doesn’t stop the love.”
She covered her face with both hands.
“The hell of it is that, of all the parts of you that I love, one of them is your devotion for your family. And that same quality in you is what keeps you from me. But I need to know that you’re gonna be okay . . . that you are okay.”
She looked down to the leaf-strewn ground, shifted her feet. “It’s been so hard.”
“What we were—no, what we have, doesn’t that ever just come . . . crashing in?”
“Yes . . . once in a while, in a wave or a flash, and I try to let it pass and continue on my way . . . home.”
“For me, nothing about us passes.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t . . . fix that.”
“I know you can’t.”
She reached out her hand to him, then pulled it away. “I have to . . .” She motioned toward her class.
“I know.”
“Please be okay,” she said.
“I’m trying.” He placed his fist over his chest. “You live here, Amy.”
She began to turn away, then looked back at him, hugged him. He folded her in his arms and grasped the back of her neck.
“God, I love you, Amy.”
She touched his cheek, turned, then walked toward her students. She placed her hand over the space between her breast and stomach: the resting place of Nick and all he seemed to occupy within her, and told herself that he was the sand pattern left by the wave, not the wave itself.
She turned to look at him one more time, backlit against the sun. But he was gone—only a shiver of disturbed air remained.
CONVERSATION GUIDE
This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.
A CONVERSATION WITH PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY
Q. What inspired you to write this novel?
A. I wanted to portray the multiplicity of ways in which desire affects even the most settled life—how desire can reveal to people who they really are, and shine a light on aspects of their character that they have been ignoring. As often happens when a writer tackles a vague idea, I began to ask, “What if?” What if your son or daughter began to date your first love’s son or daughter? What if there were unresolved issues that echoed during the years when you and your first love didn’t see each other?
The endless complications and multifaceted dimensions of love and desire fascinate me—the promises these feelings prompt us to make. I have been married for thirteen years and dated my husband for four years before getting married. The richer connection that grows in a stable marriage is often different from the relationship one has with a first love. I didn’t begin to date my husband until after college, so he was not my first “boyfriend,” and although my husband is nothing like either Phil or Nick in Losing the Moon, I wanted to portray two entirely different types of love: first love, with its intense emotions; and marital love, with its subtler, potentially deeper rewards.
Q. Losing the Moon is your first novel. Can you tell us something about how you became a writer, and what led to this publication?
A. My first novel—actually a memoir—was called “My Life” and was never published. I wrote it when I was twelve years old. Although I’ve been writing ever since then, professionally I pursued a medical career. I am a nurse with a master’s degree in pediatrics.
Four years ago, I finally understood that writing is all I’ve ever really wanted to do. When I knew I had no choice—that writing was a necessary part of who I was—I pursued it as seriously as I did my master’s degree. It became essential that I take classes, read books on writing, and actually write every day.
Writing and selling this novel required an incredible belief in myself, along with persistence, courage, faith, serendipity, and a willingness to study the craft of writing. The catalyst for each step of the journey was the decision—the commitment to write. For more on my writing and publication history, visit www.patticallahanhenry.com.
Q. The setting of Losing the Moon, Georgia’s Lowcountry, plays an important role in shaping the story and its characters. Why did you decide to set the novel there, and what about that part of the country particularly inspired you?
A. The moss-draped Lowcountry is where my heart truly resides, where I feel the most alive—as if I can hear the earth’s heartbeat. I believe people have a landscape or geography that speaks most clearly to their spirit. I grew up spending summers on the craggy coast of Cape Cod and maybe that’s where the sea and marsh began their call to me.
I consider the Lowcountry setting to be as essential a character in the novel as the people who occupy it. I chose the Lowcountry for Amy and Nick because it is seductive—lush, overgrown, frivolous, passionate, mystical, and dangerous, just like Nick and Amy’s relationship. My intention was to use the setting both to bring them together and to echo their dilemma.
Q. The idea of a former lover who reenters a woman’s life in her middle years seems to have enormous appeal to women. Judging from your own experiences, and those of your friends and family, why do you think that is?
A. A woman’s middle years seem to be a time for reevaluating life. How did I get here? Do I want to be here? Have I made the right decisions? This is when questions rise to the surface, when the exhaustion of raising young children may have worn off and women revisit their life goals. Memories of a past love, and the feelings associated with it, may also return when times are hard or when life seems emptier than one expected—one may then imagine the “road not taken.”
Often (not always, by any means), memories of a first love carry a strong sense of possibility and passion. Memories of these feelings—the pungent, almost innocent and intense emotions of first love—seem easier, simpler than the complicated emotions involved in committed or broken relationships. Of course this is just an illusion, but first love seems to carry a certain longing and reminds some women of a time when love wasn’t so much an act of will, but of pure, raw sensation.
Q. At the beginning of the book you quote a passage from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Why did you choose that particular sentence? How does it relate to the book, and what personal meaning does it have for you?
A. C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), a scholar and teacher at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities who is best known for his Narnia Chronicles for children, was an atheist for most of his early life, but he converted to Christianity in 1931.
A talented debater and writer, Lewis
published many works on a wide variety of topics—but the subjects that most interest me, especially as a writer, revolve around his exploration of human longing and the search for meaning. His writing has inspired me since I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a child. The Screwtape Letters offers profound insights into human nature.
The quote I chose echoes the theme of Amy and Nick’s story. When the novel opens, both of them have become deadened to their feelings about their lives, marriages, and goals. First, they need to feel again. Seeing each other is the catalyst that raises “them to a level of awareness where mortal sin [becomes] possible.” But the sin is only possible—they must choose whether or not to act on the temptation. I believe it is most often a person, and the emotion that person evokes, that raises another person’s awareness.
Amy and Nick have become “passively responsive” to their lives, marriages, and circumstances. They’ve quietly accepted the way things are. Seeing each other, remembering what they felt for each other, and what they meant to do and be in life marks a new beginning and a major dilemma for them.
Q. Losing the Moon is told in the third person, using “she” and “he,” from Amy’s and Nick’s points of view. Yet as a reader, I feel as if I am right inside their heads, almost as if the book were told from the first-person “I” point of view. Can you tell us why you chose to use third person, which sometimes creates more distance between the character and the reader, and how you keep the reader so in touch with Amy’s and Nick’s thoughts and emotions?
A. I originally wrote this story in the first person, from Amy’s point of view, until I realized how strong Nick’s story and motivations were. When he stepped (or, rather, strode) onto the page, I understood the story must also be told from his point of view. The novel then moved into the third person in the next draft. There went my original idea that I just had to write the novel once, and it would be ready for publication!
The third-person point of view can create some distance, but in this case I worked hard to not just narrate the events but also to convey Nick’s and Amy’s unique emotional perspectives . Amy’s “voice” as well as her perspective is completely different from Nick’s voice and his perspective on the same events.
Memory and desire are the key ingredients in this story. The reader must be able to feel Amy’s and Nick’s longing and understand their reasoning to become fully engaged in the story. I wrote each scene asking what each felt—what the particular place, action, interaction meant to them.
Q. You’re a wife and the mother of three small children. How do you manage your hectic schedule and still find time to write?
A. Ah, the bottom line is that I don’t find the time—I make the time. Right now I am typing downstairs early in the morning while my three children are asleep upstairs. I have about fifteen minutes before I must wake them for school.
Although writing has always been a constant desire, the commitment came to me four years ago. We tend to fill our lives with so much “to do” that we forget “to be.” And part of writing involves allowing the “being.” I had to reassess my commitments and obligations, then let go of certain activities to allow room to write. But I felt I had no choice—the writing was too important.
Most days I rise before the sun to write. I also carve out specific times during the day. I believe this is very hard for all writers—especially when they are unpublished. Making and committing time is difficult in the blazing glare of the critical world with its demand to know exactly what you are doing with your time.
I’ve made a commitment that I believe in and I do it even when I don’t feel like it. That said . . . achieving balance is a battle I win some days and lose many days. But writing is a joy and a journey. When I get it all just right, I’ll let you know.
Q. What did you hope to achieve in writing this novel? What did you want to convey most strongly to readers? Do you feel you succeeded?
A. I hoped to write a story that would accomplish several things: touch the heart, maybe inspire a few people to consider what they most long for, and finally, to entertain and spark some interesting discussion.
I attempted to show that we all have places or people in our lives that—if only for a moment—make us feel like the people we were always meant to be. Often people abandon their dreams until someone or something comes along and awakens them. Then the question becomes—can the person, place or thing that awakened our desire satisfy it, or are they only a reminder of what we really want, who we really are? Each person will have his own answer to this question. I only give you, the reader, Nick’s and Amy’s answers.
Only you, the reader, can tell me if I’ve succeeded in all I set out to do when I wrote Losing the Moon.
Q. What writers are particular favorites of yours and how have they inspired you? What are you working on now?
A. As I mentioned before, my avid reading began in childhood with C. S. Lewis and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. As a teenager, I read Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Madeline L’Engle, Anne Lamott, and Julia Cameron have deeply influenced my view of the art of writing. These days, I adore the wit and wisdom of Deborah Smith and Dorothea Ben-ton Frank. I admire the imagery of Elizabeth Berg and Anita Shreve.
The lyrical prose, deep emotion, and excellent craftsmanship of novels by Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy amaze me. These writers somehow know how to take the deeper places of hurt and transform them into poetry. I don’t believe there is anything they’ve published that I haven’t read. That Deborah Smith has compared my work to theirs leaves me speechless.
Beyond that, I’m now deep into writing my second novel and am saving for another time lots of wonderful work by writers I greatly admire.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Seeing Nick again produces a strong reaction in Amy—a heightened awareness of her physical surroundings, a rush of memories, conflicting feelings of attraction and wariness. Why do you think her response is so immediate and intense? Have you ever encountered someone from your past and responded similarly?
2. Meeting each other again reminds both Amy and Nick of the young people of passion and promise that they were long ago, and makes them aware of the compromises and accommodations they’ve made in their marriages and in their lives. Discuss how each character is different now from what s/he was in college, and list some of the dreams they’ve given up or modified. Is “giving up” a natural and inevitable part of life? What dreams have you abandoned? What accommodations have you made?
3. What role do you think desire plays in bringing Nick and Amy together again? Both of them feel abandoned—how much does that unresolved abandonment play into the desire they now feel for each other? Have you ever been abandoned, rejected, or betrayed by someone, and yet continue to feel strongly drawn to him or her?
4. The rebirth of desire comes to Amy as her children are growing up and beginning to leave home. Does that have any influence on her new relationship with Nick? Is Amy more vulnerable at this time of life, or could their affair have happened at any time?
5. As the novel progresses, Amy comes to believe that the universe is bringing her and Nick together—through their children, their mutual interest in Oystertip Island, and all the circumstances of their lives. Is this just a way for Amy to excuse her behavior with Nick? Or do you agree that some larger force is at work to unite them, and if so, why?
6. What does it mean when Amy says she has “lost the moon,” and how does she find it again?
7. Discuss the roles of Eliza and Phil in the novel. Do you like them and sympathize with them? Do you feel you know them by the end? How do they change during the novel and what new understanding do they gain?
8. Do you like the way the book ends? Did Amy make the right choice? How do you see Amy’s and Nick’s futures unfolding?
9. Part III is prefaced with a quote by Alfre
d North Whitehead: “The only joy to be trusted is the joy found on the far side of a broken heart.” What does this mean? How do you think it applies to Amy and Nick? Does your own experience support or contradict this statement?
10. Do you have a former lover or spouse with whom you’ve lost touch? How do you think you would react if you saw her/him? Are there things you wish you could say now that you didn’t say then? Is there a small part of you that is still bitter or regretful because s/he got away?
Don’t miss Patti Callahan Henry’s new novel
THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER
Now on sale from Berkley
Prologue
Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
The wedding for Colleen Donohue, Lena to her family and friends, and Walter Littleton was ready to begin one spring afternoon. The Lowcountry of South Carolina preened, the temperature in the seventies without a hint of the summer humidity that would arrive soon, the river shimmering with glints of sunlight captured in its crests, the blooms of the azaleas and gardenias competing for attention. The air was soft as cashmere.
For this very day much dreaming and planning had gone on behind the scenes, starting with the gown. Lena’s cream-colored lace dress, originally worn by Aunt Rosalind forty years before, had been remade for Lena’s taller body. Her ethereal and younger sister, Hallie, as the maid of honor, was adorned in a pale pink sheath dress with a circle of baby gardenias on her head, her straight blond hair falling to her shoulders. Lena’s loose curls had been tamed for the day and pinned high under a pearl crown and a veil edged with tiny Swarovski crystals.
Losing the Moon Page 32