Synopses & Reviews
Life is a challenge for 36-year-old Kate Cavanaugh, high school guidance counselor to a motley group of at-risk students. Two years after finding her young husband dead in bed beside her, Kates storybook life has vanished, and she and her two children are still reeling. Her daughter Charlotte, once a sweet girl, has morphed into an angry, tattooed, tongue-studded teen; and Hunter, Kates four-year-old, keeps his feelings sealed tight inside and an empty ketchup bottle clasped to his heart. When a tragedy occurs at the Alan B. Shepard High School, its Kate who finds herself in need of counsel and guidance. What she does next catapults her and her family down an unfamiliar road, on a trajectory into space—toward understanding, forgiveness and healing.
Review
Mitchell (Starting Out Sideways, 2007) arrestingly depicts a family consumed by grief.
Two years after the sudden death of her husband from an undiagnosed heart condition, Kate Cavanaughs family is virtually unrecognizable. Her daughter, Charlotte, has morphed into a sullen, tattooed teenager. Her four-year-old son Hunter, the books most affecting and lovable character, quietly toddles around clutching a ketchup bottle to his chest. The only person keeping the Cavanaughs functioning, it often seems, is their neighbor “Auntie Marge,” a wealthy tech geek with the body of a linebacker and a heart of gold. Kates professional success as a guidance counselor at Charlottes high school underscores her difficulties with her personal life. She effortlessly soothes the problems of the likable, charismatic misfits in the schools “touchy feely” support group, but she is unable to have a conversation with her daughter that doesnt devolve into yelling and slamming doors. Kates further breakdown after a school tragedy is painful to witness, but well handled by the authors delicate description and organic dialogue. The myriad relationships—between mother and daughter, sister and brother, husband and wife, children and grandparents, friends and co-workers—are artfully rendered. The characters give the novel its shape; each acts as a window into seemingly inescapable grief and the strength required for revival. Mitchell keeps it honest by painting multidimensional people whose dark sides shes willing to expose. Readers will be surprised at how quickly they are sucked into the Cavanaughs grief and how much they root for this small clan. The title alludes to the isolation and ungrounding of Kate, Charlotte and Hunter after a quarter of their family is unfairly taken away. Mitchell lets her characters drift further apart, their individual trials breaking our hearts until, mercifully, she brings them back down to earth.
Get out the tissues, but plan on reading this impressive, stirring novel straight through.
--Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
"Originally published as Americans in space by St. Martin's Press"--T.p. verso.
About the Author
is author of the novel Starting Out Sideways. A writer of fiction, non-fiction and essays, she has published her work in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Contrary Magazine, The Writing Self, Family Circle, First for Women, and online at Kaplancollege.com. She is a recipient of the New England PEN Discovery Award for her novel, The Nearness of You. For years she has taught writing at the Joan Brack Adult Learning Center and Bethany Hill School, a living and learning community, both in Framingham, Massachusetts. She lives with her husband in Massachusetts.
Reading Group Guide
1. Discuss the ways in which Kate Cavanaugh and her family grapple with grief, even two years after Kyles death. Should Kate and the children be further along in the grieving process by now? What holds them up? Is the grieving process longer and more gradual than perhaps our society permits? In what ways can you relate to Kates struggles? What is universal about grief, and what about it is more specific to our culture?
2. How do you feel about Kates friendship with Marge? Would you welcome a friend like Marge or resent her intrusions into your life? What does Marge lack in her own life that Kate supplies? Conversely, what does Marge give to Kate and her family? Consider how this relationship grows and changes during the course of the story. How does Kyle factor into the friendship? Would there have been a friendship between Kate and Marge without Kyle in the picture?
3. Consider the relationships between Kate Cavanaugh and her daughter, Charlotte. Is Kate a bad mother? Can you raise an adolescent child without addressing at least some of the problems Charlotte introduces in this novel? For example, to what extent are children today at risk because of the Internet and relentless media exposure to sex?
4. Should Kate do more for her son, Hunter, to bring him out of his shell, or to help him express himself “in complete sentences”? What is the symbolism of the novels title, Love in Complete Sentences? What was the author trying to say about this family and their struggle to become whole again?
5. Early in the story, Kate confesses, “I try to hide my loathing for my work by walking into school with a happy smile each morning.” Later, however, while referring to the students in her New Frontiers group, she says, “Im grateful for the sight of these children who come to me willingly, unlike my Charlotte. They honor the tiny, undamaged part of me still capable of comforting someone else.” Discuss the importance of Kates work as a guidance counselor at the Alan B. Shepard High School. In what ways is Kate perhaps more effective as a counselor than she is as a mother? Does this change? If so, how and why?
6. How does Phoenixs suicide compound Kates grief and compel her to act in wise and unwise ways? Did Phoenixs suicide seem realistic to you? Why or why not?
7. Kate walks the tricky line between professional colleague and personal friend in her relationship with department head Tom Johnson. Does Tom want more than a friendship with Kate? Does Jack? When Kate approaches Tom to ask for a leave of absence, he tells her a story of his own loss. What motivates Tom to share this with her?
8. What are your impressions of Foster Willis and Kates rocky romance? Do you think their relationship might evolve into something more serious? Why do Kates children so dislike Foster? What holds Kate back from being closer to him? When can one be ready for love, again, after a great loss?
9. Was Kates failed road trip to Texas ill advised, or did she and her family perhaps reap unexpected benefit in leaving behind their home and work and schools? Have you ever made a major life decision that in retrospect seemed clearly unwise? What triggered that decision? Did any good come of it? What triggered Kates doomed road trip?
10. How does the author make use of humor in this novel? Did you find the presence of Kyles ghost amusing or sad, or both? Do you think there is a place for humor in a story about a familys tragic loss? What is the role, if any, of humor in the process of grief?
11. Kyles mother offers Kate a new perspective on her marriage to Kyle. How does this perspective influence Kates thoughts about her marriage? What role does Kates parents, or anyones parents, play in the decision to marry?
12. Kate refers to her daughter, Charlotte, who is missing from school, as just another American in space. Throughout the book, Kate refers to herself and others in this way. What is the meaning of this metaphor and how does it apply to Kate, her family, and American society in general?
13. Did certain parts of this book make you uncomfortable? If so, why? Did it lead you to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of your life you might not have thought about before?