Synopses & Reviews
Acclaimed author Alice Adams introduces five women who are very different from one another -- from their looks to their personalities to the life choices they make -- in this hauntingly sensitive novel. Sage, the beautiful struggling artist, is caught in a hurtful marriage to a younger man; Lisa, overweight and happily married mother of three, fantasizes about living a different, more daring, life; Jill and Fiona are both blond, thin, and career-driven. Finally, there is Portia who, at twenty-five, suffers from chronic indecision and finds herself feeling very alone in the world. These women, who might ordinarily have little in common, are inextricably intertwined, for they are all Caroline's daughters.
Now that her daughters are grown, Caroline feels an aching distance between herself and her children. Helpless to intervene in their lives, unableto spare them pain, she still finds that the love that ties a family together is more powerful than the mistakes they all make. Through the heartaches andthe celebration, Caroline learns to step back and watches as her daughtersgrow into the kind of women she could never have expected.
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San Francisco ChronicleAn undisputed master of the group novel.
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The New York Times Book ReviewWell told and moves surely and deftly....The lives of the five very different women and their cool, nonjudgemental mother become important to us.
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The New York Times Book ReviewWell told and moves surely and deftly....The lives of the five very different women and their cool, nonjudgemental mother become important to us.
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San Francisco ChronicleAlice Adams has a genius for crystallizing a character's state of mind with just a few lines of internal monologue and can switch points of view effortlessly. These multiple levels of consciousness create a rich, busy texture!
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Chicago Tribune A sharp portrait of America in the 1980s....A consummate storyteller, Adams draws us from character to character and incident to incident with an effortlessness that belies the intricacy of her tale.
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The Washington Post Book WorldThe best book Alice Adams has ever written.
About the Author
Alice Adams, born in Virginia and educated at Radcliffe College, is the author of ten highly praised novels. Her short stories have appeared in twenty-two O. Henry Awards collections and several volumes of Best American Short Stories. She has been the recipient of an Academy and Institute Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ms. Adams' other novels include Superior Women, a New York Times bestseller, Almost Perfect, Medicine Men, and Second Chances, all published by Washington Square Press. She lives in San Francisco.
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide
- Although set in San Francisco, the atmosphere of the book makes the city seem like a small town. Discuss the author's West Coast point of view: is the novel uniquely Californian? Could it have taken place on the East Coast?
- Would Caroline Carter be considered a good mother or a good wife? After all, she has had five children with three different men. Is she to blame for her daughters' faults or failures?
- Although Fiona and Jill seem to have the most stable and "important" jobs, by the end of the book, they have both been reduced to joblessness. Discuss how women identify with their jobs and how that identity has changed over the last twenty years.
- Is it plausible that Roland Gallo would arrange to have Buck Fister killed after finding out that Buck was responsible for Jill's short career as a call girl? Does Roland prize Jill for what he thinks she is (an independent career woman with no romantic involvements) or for what she truly is (a highly vulnerable woman with a desperate need for security)?
- Are Fiona and Jill drawn sympathetically? Does the reader feel a camaraderie with them or are they merely catalysts for the action around them?
- What is Noel's attraction to Sage? Is it merely to get to her sister, or is there an emotional attachment between them?
- Liza feels that her children are keeping her from a writing career. Even today, women feel that they must make choices between career and children. Contrast the two eras. Is it possible for women to "have it all?"
- Does Portia's discovery of her lesbianism seem at odds with her conventional upbringing? Does environment influence sexuality and our sexual choices, or is it an innate trait, something we are born, with?
- Although Jill vows her prostitution is a "game," the consequences are deadly serious for her and those around her. Is it likely that a woman today would sleep with men for money even if she did not need the money? Is it a thrillseeking mechanism?
- At one point, Sage makes a pass at her stepfather after being spurned by her husband. Discuss the consequences of her actions: is it incest even though they are not related by blood?
- Only one of Caroline's daughters, Liza, has had children, and that daughter is the one she seems closest to. Is it because of her children that they enjoy this closeness?
- What is the significance of "Higgsie," the homeless woman who might have, at one time, been a doctor's wife? Is it a warning not to get swallowed up in a husband's identity, or an alarm to say, "this can happen to you?"