Synopses & Reviews
A vibrant story of female friendship and midlife sexual awakening from the acclaimed author of The Great ManJosie is a Manhattan psychotherapist living a comfortable life with her husband and daughter—until, while suddenly flirting with a man at a party, she is struck with the sudden realization that she must leave her passionless marriage. A thrillingly sordid encounter with a stranger she meets at a bar immediately follows. At the same time, her college friend Raquel, a Los Angeles rock star, is being pilloried in the press for sleeping with a much younger man who happens to have a pregnant girlfriend. This proves to be red meat to the gossip hounds of the Internet. The two friends escape to Mexico City for a Christmas holiday of retreat and rediscovery of their essential selves. Sex has gotten these two bright, complicated women into interesting trouble, and the story of their struggles to get out of that trouble is totally gripping at every turn.
A tragicomedy of marriage and friendship, Trouble is a funny, piercing, and moving examination of the battle between the need for connection and the quest for freedom that every modern woman must fight.
Review
"Christensen's characters are not evil but they are foolish in ways all too familiar to many of us. If they aren't exactly admirable, they are complex and ultimately likeable. And whatever dingbat shenanigans they get up to, Christensen lights them with generous affection." Katherine Dunn, The Oregonian (read the entire )
Synopsis
A vibrant story of female friendship and midlife sexual awakening from the acclaimed author of The Great Man
Josie is a Manhattan psychotherapist living a comfortable life with her husband and daughter--until, while suddenly flirting with a man at a party, she is struck with the sudden realization that she must leave her passionless marriage. A thrillingly sordid encounter with a stranger she meets at a bar immediately follows. At the same time, her college friend Raquel, a Los Angeles rock star, is being pilloried in the press for sleeping with a much younger man who happens to have a pregnant girlfriend. This proves to be red meat to the gossip hounds of the Internet. The two friends escape to Mexico City for a Christmas holiday of retreat and rediscovery of their essential selves. Sex has gotten these two bright, complicated women into interesting trouble, and the story of their struggles to get out of that trouble is totally gripping at every turn.
A tragicomedy of marriage and friendship, Trouble is a funny, piercing, and moving examination of the battle between the need for connection and the quest for freedom that every modern woman must fight.
About the Author
Kate Christensen is also the author of the novels In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane, The Epicure's Lament, and The Great Man, winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulker Award. She lives in Brooklyn.
Reading Group Guide
1. Do you empathize or disagree with Josie's decision to leave Anthony and her reasons for doing so? Did you find Josie to be a sympathetic character at the beginning of the novel? In the end? Why or why not?
2. In Chapter Two, we see Josie in four psychotherapy sessions with her clients. Why do you think the author included these scenes in the novel? Do Josie's training and experience as a therapist enable her to have increased insight into the people around her?
3. Mexico City serves as a needed escape valve for both Josie and Raquel. Why do you think the author chose this city for the setting of converging and diverging paths of these two friends? What role does Mexico itself play in the unfolding story?
4. There are several instances and places during the novel in which a ritualized encounter takes place, among them the paparazzi descending on Raquel, a bullfight, and references to the human-sacrifice rituals of the Aztecs. Are there other instances of such encounters? What do you think the author is suggesting about the apparent ongoing human need for them?
5. On page 307, going home from Raquel's mother's house in a taxi with Wendy, Josie reflects about the kind of friend she has been to Raquel: “Maybe she and I had failed each other by allowing each other the freedom to be ourselves, and maybe that was the inevitable consequence of true friendship.” What do you think she means by this? Do you agree?
Author Q&A
Q: TROUBLE focuses on the bonds between women and the strength of those friendships. Why did you choose to write about these themes now? Was there a personal impetus for the plot or was this something you'd considered writing about for a while?A: This book came to me when I was down in Mexico City in February of 2006, finishing the final draft of The Great Man. Walking around the city, hanging out in cantinas, hearing music, going to art openings, I was struck by the idea of two long-time middle-aged female friends, both in a lot of trouble in their lives, meeting in Mexico City to offer each other moral support, escape, and a return to their lost, younger selves. I was inspired to write about their friendship because of a very painful misunderstanding I had had with my own best friend, a rift that, once healed, brought to my consciousness the fact that there are no formal codified structures for female friendship, no commitment or breakup ceremonies, no structures in place for intervention during times of crisis, such as friendship therapy. Close female friendship is a relationship that often goes as deep as, or deeper than, marriage or family, but which has no rights or rules. I wanted to write about this in a direct, visceral, emotional way.
Q: Both New York City and Mexico City are main characters in TROUBLE (arguably as much as Josie, Indrani and Raquel). What do both cities represent to the women of the book? And why did you choose Mexico as your setting for Josie and Raquel's escape?
A: In New York, Josie's life is structured in certain ways: she is a wife, a therapist, a mother, a grownup. At the beginning of the novel, she recognizes that she must leave her marriage, which sets in motion a questioning of each of her other roles, to varying effects. Raquel lives in Los Angeles, city of eternal youth, celebrity culture, and life in the public eye. Mexico City is a Catholic, colonial, vast city built on Aztec ruins; it is a place of both elemental ever-present death and wild, untrammeled life. Things happen in Mexico City; both life and death are constant and powerful there. It's a very good place to go to shake something loose, to overcome psychic stasis or paralysis.
Q: You're a writer who can pretty much do anything. Each one of your novels encapsulates such vivid yet contrasting people - a world-renowned painter and the women in his life; a gay man in Manhattan looking for true love; a chain-smoking misanthrope; and a secretary who imbibes too much whiskey. Yet there are underlying themes of redemption and connection in your novels. How do the ideas come into being? Is it important to you to switch gears so completely with each new novel?
A: It isn't something I think much about except in the case of The Great Man, when I deliberately set out to write a third-person novel. Each of my other four novels has begun as the idea of a character, developed into a distinct narrative voice, and unfolded from there; I hear them talking, and then I allow them to start narrating their story through me. Not channeling exactly, more like taking on a persona. And yes, redemption and connection are two themes I seem to keep returning to again and again, maybe because they, or rather the inability to find them and the possibility of eventually emerging into them by undergoing various troubles and experiences, are at the root of so much of storytelling, including satire and dark comedy.
Q: Food and the preparation of meals are integral to your books. Yet food seems to have taken a back seat to music in TROUBLE. Was this a conscious decision? And what's on your iPod?
A: I've definitely been listening to a lot of music, and I've been playing a lot of music with musician friends, as well. But I don't have an iPod; I only like to hear music live or through speakers. Earbuds seem to seal me off from the world and conversation. I'm no Luddite, but I get a little claustrophobic with no air between me and the music I'm listening to.
Q: What are you working on now? Has your writing life changed since THE GREAT MAN won the PEN/Faulkner and became a national bestseller?
A: I'm working on a new novel called The Astral. My life has definitely changed, entirely for the better; I have more opportunities, money, and fun. No joke. That prize was a sheer blessing.