Authors: Mary Gordon
In 1942 she and her parents had the opportunity to flee occupied France for America, where André Weil had a position at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. She lived in New York City for a time. After three months she sailed to England, where she worked in the Propaganda Department of the Free French. There, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and hospitalized. Always uncomfortable with many kinds of food, with everything having to do with eating, she worsened her condition by refusing to eat what the doctors recommended, insisting that she eat only what she imagined was the ration of those suffering in occupied Franceâan amount that she had arbitrarily determined. She died in Ashford, Kent, in August 1943, at the age of thirty-four. The circumstances of her death were as controversial as the rest of her life: some, particularly her doctor, believing she starved herself, others insisting that there was nothing that could have prevented her death by tuberculosis.
The work on which her reputation is based was published posthumously. Among the strongest supporters of the publication of this work was Albert Camus. Camus paid a visit to the Weil apartment on his way to receive the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, asking Simone's mother if he could have some time alone in Simone's writing room. Camus referred to Simone Weil as “the only great spirit of our age.”
Thomas Mann
By the time of Hitler's rise to power, in the 1930s, Thomas Mann was indisputably the most famous, most honored, most “German” of German writers. He could have supported the regime and lived comfortably and safely in Nazi Germany but, urged and inspired by his son and daughter, outspoken anti-Fascists, he criticized the regime and paid dearly for it. His luxurious and privileged life was threatened; he fled first to Switzerland and then, in 1939, to the United States, where he made numerous broadcasts and tirelessly spoke to American audiences about the dangers of Nazism and the threat to democracy. He did
not, in fact, speak at the Horace Mann School in Gary, Indiana, but he was in Chicago in the early forties, as his son-in-law was a professor at the University of Chicago. Disgusted by America's failure to live up to its promise and appalled by the rise of phobic anti-Communism, he returned to Europe in 1952 and died in Switzerland in 1955.
Mary Gordon is the author of six novels, including
Final Payments, Pearl
, and
The Love of My Youth;
the memoirs
The Shadow Man
and
Circling My Mother;
and
The Stories of Mary Gordon
, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received numerous other honors, including a Lila WallaceâReader's Digest Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.
This guide is designed to enhance your reading group's focus on some of the main concepts in these novellas and to enable readers to explore and share different perspectives. Feel free to wander in your discussions, and use this as a guideline only.
Discussion Questions
  1. What links the four novellas? Are there any themes that are present in all four? Why is
The Liar's Wife
used as the title of the collection?
  2. Why do you think the author has set two novellas in the past and two in contemporary time, bookending the collection with the contemporary pieces and placing the two historical stories in the middle?
  3. Each of the four protagonists learns something important from pivotal moments that shed understanding on their lives and affect their futures. For each novella, what is this moment? And what has the main character learned?
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4. What is the significance of lying and performing in “The Liar's Wife”? How are lying and performing connected? And how are they connected to Johnny's love of language and stories?
  5. What does it signify that Jocelyn can't say “I love life” as Johnny can?
  6. How does Jocelyn know that Johnny isn't good for her and why? Looking back now on her life, do you think she made a good decision to leave him?
  7. What is the importance and meaning of the monologue from Shakespeare's
The Tempest
with which Johnny ends all of his sets? What does it say about him and the way he lives his life?
  8. What is the importance of house and home for all four of the protagonists? What does home mean for each? In the first novella, why will Jocelyn never sell the house?
  9. What is the role of science in these novellas? Jocelyn is a scientific technician who works in a lab. Why doesn't she pursue science further? Why is she interested in mosquitoes, and what does this say about her personality?
10. How does Simone Weil play into Genevieve's life? And how does this role change as time passes and the war starts, with their being
on different continents? How does time and space affect their relationship?
11. What is the importance of mothers in “Simone Weil in New York,” both Genevieve's mother and Simone's mother, as well as Genevieve herself as a new mother?
12. Why do Simone and Genevieve's brother have such a bond?
13. Describe the story of the intellectual in the factory. Why does the author include this story?
14. What is the importance of religion, and the role of God, in the second novella?
15. What role does World War II play in the second and third novellas?
16. What are the trans-Atlantic (Old World-New World; EuropeâUnited States) interactions and differences expressed in these novellas? Contrast Europe and America in the 1940s as set in the third novella. What does America represent?
17. Three of the novellas are told in the third person, while “Thomas Mann in Gary, Indiana” is told in the first person. Why do you think the author has decided to use a first-person male narrator to tell the story in this novella? How does this affect our reading?
18. How does Thomas Mann change the life of the high school boy? What does he symbolize for the boy when his brother's friend is killed?
19. The narrator contrasts Mann with his mother: “What I came to understand was: Thomas Mann was great. Thomas Mann had greatness. And my mother did not” (
this page
). Why?
20. Describe Theresa's various teachers, from the nuns of her high school to her art history professor to Gregory Allard. What does she learn from each of them?
21. What is the importance of great teachers in the other novellas? Who are the teachers? Are they the people we expect to be our teachers?
22. Had you previously heard of the fifteenth-century sculptor Matteo Civitali? What do you think of his art? Does reading “Fine Arts” change your opinion of him or introduce you to his work?
23. Why does Theresa commit an uncharacteristic act of vandalism near the end of “Fine Arts”? How does it change her life?
24. What is Theresa's relationship with the nuns at her high school? What do they represent for her, and what do they do for her ultimately?
25. All of the stories concern the power of great literature and words and/or art. What do you think the author is saying about the importance of art and literature in our lives? In our histories?
Suggested Reading
Mary Gordon,
The Stories of Mary Gordon
Ali Smith,
The First Person and Other Stories
Lorrie Moore,
Bark
Francesca Marciano,
The Other Language
Charles Baxter,
Gryphon
Mary Gaitskill,
Don't Cry