She Was Like That
Page 18
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. From a mother losing her daughter in the consumerist chaos of a Times Square store in “M&M World” to a father checking his phone during a group meeting of parents and children in a rehabilitation facility in “Slow the Heart,” many of Walbert’s characters are distracted and overstimulated. What role does technology play in these stories? What do you think Walbert is trying to convey about the modern condition?
2. The past figures significantly in Walbert’s stories. In many of them, flashbacks infuse the present scenes with greater depth and significance. Why do you think she chooses to do this? Is there a flashback that had particular resonance for you?
3. Men are frequently absent from these stories. In “M&M World,” the narrator's ex-husband is never named, simply called “the girls’ father.” How are men portrayed in these stories, as fathers or as husbands?
4. Many of these stories, from “M&M World” to “Radical Feminists” to “A Mother is Someone Who Tells Jokes,” take place in New York City. In what ways does post-9/11 New York inform the sensibility of these stories? How does the environment, and the city in particular, affect the characters’ psyches and lives?
5. Several of these stories feature women telling stories, including “To Do,” “She Was Like That,” and “Conversation,” among others. Discuss the theme of storytelling in this collection. What is the significance of the characters’ attempting, and often failing, to be heard?
6. Walbert’s characters frequently mention canonical women writers, from Edith Wharton in “A Mother is Someone Who Tells Jokes” to Virginia Woolf in “She Was Like That.” How do these women interact with these texts? How do you think these writers have influenced Walbert’s writing?
7. In “Do Something” the narrator, Margaret, announces that she is “trying to Do Something . . . trying to be real when everything is an approximation” (page 204). In what ways do we see Margaret, and Walbert’s other characters, attempt to do something throughout this collection? How is the drive to do more or connect more reflected in other stories in the collection?
8. In “A Mother in Someone Who Tells Jokes,” the children are asked to complete the sentence: “A mother is someone who . . .” The narrator’s son chooses “A mother is someone who tells jokes.” What do you think of this answer? What do you think it says about the story?
9. “Radical Feminists” features a man, Jonathan Fontaine, who years earlier derailed the career of the protagonist, Beatrice Wells, by asking if she planned to get pregnant while on the job. The two bump into each other in a busy park, and Beatrice proceeds to imagine all the ways in which she might have confronted him at the time—though she did not—while simultaneously doing him a favor. What does this story say about what women were up against in the workforce at the time? And now? What does it say about the shadow of sexism over a woman’s life?
10. What do you think are some of the threads and common themes through the twelve stories? What do you make of the title She Was Like That, and how do you think it represents the collection as a whole?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Read A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert’s much-acclaimed novel, which features some of these stories, and offers a moving portrait of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters.
2. Bring in a favorite passage from one of the many women writers who have reflected on female interiority over the past century, from Virginia Woolf to Jenny Offill, that you think complements these stories. Discuss how it resonates with your own story.
More from the Author
His Favorites
The Sunken Cathedral
A Short History of Women
Our Kind
The Gardens of Kyoto
About the Author
© DEBORAH DONENFELD
Kate Walbert is the author of six previous books of fiction, including His Favorites; The Sunken Cathedral, named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle; A Short History of Women, one of the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Our Kind, a National Book Award finalist.
She is a recipient of a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Connecticut Commission for the Arts Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She lives in New York with her family.
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ALSO BY KATE WALBERT
His Favorites
The Sunken Cathedral
A Short History of Women
Our Kind
The Gardens of Kyoto
Where She Went
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These stories originally appeared, sometimes in different form, in the following publications: “M&M World” and “Playdate” in The New Yorker; “Conversation” and “Slow the Heart,” in The Yale Review; “The Blue Hour,” in The Paris Review; “Do Something” in Ploughshares; “Radical Feminists,” in A Public Space; “Paris, 1994,” in Press.
“The Blue Hour” and “Paris, 1994” were previously published in Where She Went (Sarabande Books, 1996). “Playdate,” “Conversation,” and “Do Something” were previously published in A Short History of Women (Scribner, 2009).
“M&M World” and “Do Something” were selected for The Best American Short Stories, 2012, 2007.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Kate Walbert
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First Scribner hardcover edition October 2019
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-9942-1
ISBN 978-1-4767-9945-2 (ebook)
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