The Shadow Man

For discussion: The Shadow Man

1. Why did the adult Mary continue to feel that her father's death was the single most significant part of her life? Do you think this is a common feeling in people who have lost a parent early?

2. Mary Gordon remembers her father as handsome, "but when I look now at pictures of him," she says, "he doesn't look at all handsome" [p. xv]. The Shadow Man proves that memory, certainly childhood memory, is subjective and inaccurate, an unreliable guide to the past. What other examples does the book offer of faulty memory? Why could memory be stable or unreliable? Gordon says that memory is composed of "invention and interpretation" [p. 38]. Do you agree with that statement?

3. What does Gordon mean when she says that her father--surely an unusual individual--was "a man of his place and time" [p. xxiii]? She calls The Shadow Man "a book about America" [p. xxiii]. What does she mean by this? What does the memoir say about America and the immigrant experience?

4. Gordon asks: "Does the fact that he is, by every standard, a failure, relieve me of the responsibility of exposing him?" [p. 95] Do you agree with Gordon that she had a "responsibility to expose him?"

5. "Why is it that I was undisturbed by the news that my father lied about a sister and a wife but am shaken that he lied about his place of birth? And particularly, that he first spoke another language?" [p. 117] Why does Gordon find it easy to accept some of her father's lies, difficult to confront others?

6. "My desire, my need, to punish my mother is very great. I am conscious of no need to punish my father" [p. 220]. Can you explain Gordon's hostility toward her mother? What does she see her mother as standing for? Why does she feel she has no need to punish her father?

7. When Gordon considers wearing a mantilla at her father's disinterment, a friend says, "I guess it's the closest you can come to a bridal veil" [p. 266]. Do you believe that there are sexual overtones in Mary Gordon's feelings for her father? How else, and where else, are they expressed?

For discussion: First Comes Love

1. Marion Winik has chosen a quotation from Giacomo Casanova to begin her narrative. How does this quotation apply to her life, and to Tony's?

2. Why do you think Marion was so strongly attracted to Tony, knowing as she did from the first that he was gay? How can you explain their mutual need for one another? How does Marion explain it? Do you find her explanation convincing?

3. "Miz Rain say value. Values determine how we live much as money do. I say Miz Rain stupid there. All I can think she don't know to have NOTHIN'"[p. 66]. Which opinion do you agree with, or is there something to be said for both? What answer, if any, does the novel offer?

4. Leaving New Orleans after meeting Tony, Marion says, "Lines from love poems by Frank O'Hara and Allen Ginsberg were in my head, and that's who I wanted to be--that passionate outlaw poet with his beautiful taboo love" [p. 32]. Is Marion a romantic? Does her self-perception change during the course of the memoir? Does she still see her life as romance at the end?

5. Tony decides to take Marion's last name, and Marion says, "I. . .loved what it said about us. I was the man of the family. Tony was mine" [p. 95]. What does she mean by saying she's the "man of the family?" What sexual stereotypes do Marion and Tony transgress? What role does each one play within the family?

6. "Nobody but us thought trying to have a baby was such a good idea" [p. 99]. Do you think it was a good idea?

7. How can you explain Tony's violence toward Marion: is it because his own father abused his mother? Because of drugs or instability? Because of insoluble elements in their relationship?

8. "I was determined to stay with him no matter what. That was my commitment" [p. 183]. Do you think that Marion was right to stay with Tony as long as she did? Was his presence, his violence, and his dependence on drugs harmful to the children? What might you have done in her position?

9. After Tony and Marion argue over the possibility of the lethal injection, Marion weeps, saying to herself, "He does not wish me well. He does not wish me well" [p. 243]. Later, she says, "Tony always said that he loved me unconditionally. I believe that he did" [pp. 254-55]. Can both of these statements be true? If not, which is true and which is false?

For discussion: The Shadow Man and First Comes Love

1. Mary Gordon describes her search for her father as "a journey of discovery and loss, of loss and re-creation, of the shedding of illusion and the taking on of what might be another illusion, but one of my own" [p. xiii]. Could Marion Winik's memoir also be described in this manner?

2. Both Gordon and Winik are writing about another person--in Winik's case, her husband, in Gordon's, her father--but they both say a good deal about themselves in the process. What does each writer learn about herself in the course of writing?

For discussion: Women's Memoirs

1. What other memoir have you read recently? What aspect of the writer's life do you think inspired the author to share her experiences with the public? What do you feel about authors who share their most intimate secrets with the reader?

2. What can a memoir achieve, both for the reader and writer? What is the author trying to capture, or to lay to rest, in writing it? Is the experience of writing, and re-creating the past, a voyage of self-discovery, of catharsis, or both?

Suggestions for further reading