Southern Living

by Ad Hudler

  The bells on the door knocked against the glass, tinkling, as Donna and Margaret came inside.

  “Hey, hey!” he welcomed from over the counter.

  “What is that attached to your body, Dewayne Case? Bring that little baby over here so she can see her aunt Donna. Oh, my gosh, Margaret—she looks so much like you! Oh, look at those little lips. Those are your lips, Dewayne.”

  They sat and talked, each of them taking a turn with Ruth, passing her back and forth. The daily rush did not begin for another forty minutes—three o’clock was proving to be the hour in which most north Selby women decided they did not want to cook dinner that night—so Margaret cut them all a small piece of a Greek casserole. Flavored with lamb and feta cheese, fresh mint and roasted fennel bulb, it reminded Donna of the casserole Suzanne Parley so desperately needed to have re-created that one day more than a year ago.

  “I almost forgot,” Donna said. “I brought you somethin’.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Southern Interiors. “Have y’all seen this?” Both Margaret and Dewayne shook their head. Parents of a new baby and new business, they had read nothing esoteric or recreational in weeks.

  “It’s Miss Suzanne—look. On page ninety-two.”

  A frequent customer of The Casserole Shop after the divorce, Suzanne Parley had suddenly, inexplicably disappeared a few months back. Margaret heard rumors that she’d moved out of town. St. Simon’s Island, someone said. Brunswick, said another.

  “There she is,” Dewayne said.

  “It’s John David!” Margaret added.

  Posing in a traditional, mahogany-heavy den, the two of them were dressed all in royal blue, John David in a suit and Suzanne in a simple, scoop-necked sheath dress.

  The ad copy said: Finally, one decorating firm that can do it all—cutting-edge, coastal contemporary, and the traditional look of Dixie … BluSouth … for drop-dead gorgeous interiors that will be the envy of the Georgia coast and beyond.

  Margaret looked at the picture of Suzanne, deconstructing it in her mind to figure out what exactly it was that made it seem so odd and unreal. She noted the all-blue wardrobe, the new haircut, the lack of the large diamond on her finger. Suzanne had not gained weight; she hadn’t lost any either. Plastic surgery? Different eyebrows?

  And then, finally, Margaret realized the once-foreign addition to this perplexing image.

  “You know,” she said, “contentment becomes her.”

  Southern Living

  AD HUDLER

  A Reader’s Guide

  A Conversation with Ad Hudler

  Q: As it did in your first book, Househusband, food plays a prominent role. In fact, there’s hardly a page that doesn’t contain some sort of reference, describing Robbie as resembling a stalk of broccoli, likening a scar’s shape to uncooked linguini and a Bible to a raw porterhouse steak. Where does that come from?

  A: My mother was an excellent cook. She introduced me to good food at an early age. Food and meal planning play a big part of my life. It’s nothing I do consciously but I am the caregiver for my family. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen so it’s one of the few worlds I know very well.

  I’m also a sensual person. I especially notice smells. Maybe I was poisoned in a previous life. Maybe that’s why I smell everything first.

  Q: From the outset of Southern Living, there’s an adversarial relationship between mother and child. Ruth Pinaldi’s deathbed letter to Margaret reveals much about their tumultuous relationship. Both Suzanne and Donna have a similar conflict in their relationships with parents, as did Linc in Househusband. Why are these people so full of angst?

  A: I was raised by a very strong woman. She was the only hell-raising feminist in the eastern half of Colorado. We were boycotting Florida orange juice and Hawaiian Punch, which were against my mother’s agenda because of the spokespeople (Anita Bryant, an orange juice representative, condemned gays; and Mormon siblings Donnie and Marie Osmond pitched the punch while Mormons were working to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment). My mom is a wonderful parent and wonderful woman, but as with every child who has a strong parent, I still find myself struggling for independence.

  Q: Let’s talk about the role gender plays in both of your novels. In Househusband, Linc is a stay-at-home dad who gets in touch with his feminine side. Many male authors have trouble writing from a female perspective, yet you chose to delve deeper still into the female psyche with a book in which the three main characters are all female. What were you thinking?

  A: Women are more interesting creatures than men. Women are more complex. They express themselves better. They’re not as linear in their behavior and the way they process information. They are tuned in to subtle nuances. That makes them more interesting.

  But my next book will be written in the male first person. I need a break.

  Q: Were there any aspects of writing from a female perspective that gave you particular trouble?

  A: The only parts that were hard for me were writing about makeup, and the research I had to do to describe what a female orgasm feels like. My wife, Carol, helped a lot. I really had to get deep into girly land for the sex scene. It was the hardest thing to write in the book, harder than moments of epiphany—and they’re really hard. It’s easy to make people go “ewww” when writing sex.

  I also had to find out what a woman sees in a man. I asked a lot of my friends, and my mom always shared that sort of information with me.

  Q: Is there a moral to the story?

  A: I don’t think so. I don’t like to give a moral for readers. I think it’s kind of heavy-handed.

  But themes are good—they’re more subjective. It does have a theme. It’s about tumultuous change in life, the microcosm of each woman, and the macrocosm of Selby in general, and what they’re going through. It’s about the effect of a new foreign influence on people and reacting to potentially frightening elements. In terms of evolution, they must change and adapt, or die. In each woman’s case, she survives. That’s what I like about the story—all three women are at a loss, yet they all come out on top.

  Q: I notice that the black characters have minor, mostly subservient roles in relation to the white ones in the book. Was that intentional?

  A: At first I was concerned about the lack of black culture in the book, but the story is about, for the most part, the affluent white South, and blacks are absent from the affluent white South except for housekeepers and hired men. There are lots of books about the South and about race. There are people more qualified than I to write those. This was a book about class. One thing I was amazed at while I lived in the South, was that Southerners seem preoccupied more with class than race, and in that respect, the region’s British roots are still very evident.

  Q: Southern Living contains many funny, even bizarre, moments—such as the heart-shaped potato and the colloquial Chatter items—yet there’s a lot of serious subject matter, too, about class differences, honesty, love, and ethics. How do you take such diverse subjects and meld them into one story?

  A: I think people like to laugh but I think people also want to think. I think you can write a funny book that has depth and is provocative and makes you feel deeply about things. When people tell me my books are funny, that’s good. Making people laugh is a great thing. But I’m also pleased when someone says that it’s something with deeper meaning.

  Q: You began your writing career as a journalist, albeit one drawn to offbeat subjects, such as the love lives of lizards and why single shoes wind up on roadsides. What caused you to change genres? Do you find your newspaper and magazine experience helps you as a novelist?

  A: I was drawn to fiction because I was home taking care of a child, and it was the kind of writing I could do in the wee hours of the morning. Being a journalist has helped me a lot in that journalists are armchair anthropologists. They’re taught to scrutinize and look at culture from afar. It’s been very helpful for me.

  I also know how to meet de
adlines. My editors love me because I hand everything in on time. You’d be shocked at how many writers who haven’t been journalists are always late.

  Q: One technique you used as a journalist seems evident in both books. You draw the reader an intricately crafted world, created from lots of small details woven into the narrative. What attracts you to them?

  A: I’m obsessed with visual details. I really, truly believe the details people surround themselves with—whether they use an electric toothbrush, the kind of car they drive, what they cook for breakfast—these things are more telling than what a character will say because frequently what we tell others are wonderful little lies. I like including details about characters because it lets the reader decide for him- or herself very slowly what that person is like. It’s dropping little details along the way like cookie crumbs.

  Sometimes I get in trouble for using brand names, but, frankly, I live in twenty-first-century American culture and we’re a very brand-oriented society. It makes the writing more visceral, more real.

  Q: Given the fact that you were a stay-at-home dad and primary caregiver while your wife successfully scaled the corporate ladder, it’s not difficult to see where the inspiration came from for Househusband. What was it that motivated you to write about women of the Deep South?

  A: Southern Living was actually the first book I started to write. I was inspired by the beauty and weirdness of Macon, Georgia. It was the first time I had lived abroad. It was a culture I found fascinating because of its gentility, its attitudes about gender behavior, its openness in discussing racial issues, its food, its plants. I hope to live in the South again sometime.

  Q: You’ve always been a voracious reader, seeking out esoteric titles and challenging writers. What authors do you find most influential and inspirational?

  A: I like Margaret Laurence, Anita Brookner, Robertson Davies. I have an affinity for Canadian writers. I think they are deeper, more thoughtful. They remind me of the older Russian writers.

  The books I read are usually much more highbrow literature than I’m capable of writing. I would love to write a book like How Green Was My Valley, which is one of my favorite books of all time, but I can’t. Not yet, anyway.

  Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

  1. Food plays a prominent role in the lives of each of the three main characters. Discuss those relationships, their similarities and differences.

  2. The theme of religion is woven through the book, too. Margaret has an aversion to it, after countless run-ins with antiabortion activists. Donna’s father hammers it home to her but she, too, remains a religious outsider. How does religion shape the two women’s lives?

  3. Selby, a sleepy old Southern town, is in the midst of a transformation with the sale of the newspaper to a big Northern chain and the influx of Asians and Northerners who have relocated to work at the Toyota plant. Discuss what those changes are and the positive and negative effects.

  4. Donna and Margaret come from seemingly different worlds. Donna is a hometown Southern girl, a high school graduate who strives to fill her homemaker mother’s role in her domineering father’s life. Margaret grew up fatherless, has a master’s degree, and was raised in the North by a well-educated, feminist mother. What is it that makes them bond despite those differences? Conversely, Suzanne and Donna have quite similar backgrounds yet never develop much of a relationship. Why?

  5. Margaret, Donna, and Suzanne all undergo change. Discuss what their metamorphoses have in common and what’s different? What role do men play in each woman’s transformation?

  6. Does the fact that Margaret doesn’t know who her father is play a role in how she views men?

  7. What role does makeup play in Donna’s life? If she’d had her scar repaired early on, might she have been so driven to become a supermarket success?

  8. Which character do you find the most interesting? Why?

  9. In her letter to Margaret, Ruth Pinaldi tells her: “If you choose to be a gentle breeze for most of your life, also remember there will be times that call for the roar of a hurricane—and you must blow the bastards away. History does not remember the ‘good girls.’ ” Do you agree? Why or why not?

  10. Randy is a well-educated Northerner who loves fine food, which initially appears to give him much in common with Margaret. Why then does she turn away from him in favor of Dewayne?

  11. What role does race play in the book? Are Boone and his Sugar Day Country Club peers racist, or is the club all white because blacks and whites are more comfortable with that arrangement?

  12. The Chatter items sprinkled throughout the book change in tone and nature as the plot progresses. Discuss those differences and what they appear to show. What purpose do they serve?

  To the fine people of Macon, Georgia,

  for their grace and civility

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without my friends in central Georgia, where we lived for five years in the late nineties. Space does not allow me to mention everyone—and indeed there are hundreds—but special thanks goes to Tom and Tricia Bass, Pamela and Charles Richardson, Joni Woolf, Carey Pickard, Josephine and Gordon Bennett, and the Macon Telegraph.

  For their expertise and advice, thanks to my agent, Wendy Sherman, Beverly Bremmer, Gary and Marlene Price, Cindy Long and the Vance Publishing Corporation, and Carol Fitzgerald of Bookreporter.com, who understands online marketing better than anyone. For friendship, keen eye, and judgment, I thank Karen Feldman, Joann Haley, Mary Ellen Eagan, and Leah Barr.

  Thanks to everyone at Ballantine Books who works so hard to sell my novels and connect me with readers. Special thanks to Maureen O’Neal, my brilliant, fun editor whose thoughtful critiques make my job much easier.

  Thanks to my daughter, Haley Joy, for brainstorming during the morning drives to school, and to Carol, my supportive wife and frontline editor whose smile can still make my heart melt into my stomach.

  Lastly, thanks to my supportive readers, who can always reach me at ad@adhudler.com.

  Also by Ad Hudler

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Househusband

  About the Author

  Ad Hudler is a stay-at-home dad and the author of the novel Househusband. He lives in Florida and can be reached through his Web site at www.adhudler.com.