Anywhere But Here

Ann is an unusually attentive and observant child who reflects ruefully on the life she leads with her mother. Left behind in Wisconsin are the two people Ann loves best in the world: her grandmother Lillian and her cousin Benny. Adele is at the center of Ann's troubles: always hoping to get rich, to get married again, to have a more comfortable life, she takes an apartment in Beverly Hills that she cannot afford to furnish. Here they try to appear normal among the rich and fashionable while Adele dates wealthy men, spends too much on clothes, fails to pay the bills, and bounces checks. Lending depth and context to the story of Adele and Ann are narratives by Adele's mother, Lillian, and her sister Carol.

Adele and Ann are unique and powerful characters, fully created, who linger long in the reader's mind. Mona Simpson says about Anywhere But Here, "The book is about roots and the people who went west and tried to get more from life, because that seems to me the story of life in America.... Adele is unstable, but troubled by American troubles: by the striving for gentility, the striving for a higher station. I wanted her dreams to be what got her into trouble."¹

For discussion: Anywhere But Here

1. The opening of Anywhere But Here shows Ann and her mother in a wrenching scene of abandonment and reconciliation. How does this episode reverberate throughout the novel? What happens when Ann decides she doesn't want her mother to come back for her?

2. The novel centers upon a mother-daughter relationship that is often painful, sometimes even violent, yet often loving as well. What is at stake in Ann's fights with her mother? How are love and hatred bound together here? What is distorted about the roles of mother and daughter? Later in the novel Adele begins to threaten suicide; what part does this behavior play in the ongoing struggle between Ann and Adele?

3. Anywhere But Here explores the role of family roots, rootedness, and uprooting in contemporary American life. Is there a qualitative difference between the lives of Ann and Adele, who left home, and the lives of those they left behind? Are those who leave necessarily the more ambitious and adventurous ones? Do you see the passivity that seems to be characteristic of both Lillian and Carol as a reflection of or as a reason for their rootedness?

4. Who is the ideal parent in the novel and why? Is Adele the sort of person who should not have become a parent? Is there anything positive about Adele as a mother? What role do fathers play in the novel?

5. Why does Simpson avoid giving Adele a speaking part until the end of the book? What is the effect of the first-person narratives of Lillian and Carol? Do you think these provide a useful perspective on Ann's story, or that the narrative might have been better spoken entirely by Ann?

6. Mona Simpson has said that in the beginning of her work on this novel she disliked Adele, but developed a kind of affection for her as the work went forward. How do you feel about Adele? What might be at the root of her spectacularly poor judgment? What are we able to learn about her own emotional history, her own childhood?

7. How does the novel portray sex for women and girls? What role does sexuality play in the lives of each of the four main female characters--Lillian, Adele, Carol and Ann? Why do you think Ann wants to take nude photographs of other children? Does Ann's upbringing affect her ability to love?

8. Adele spends large amounts of money on expensive clothes that she can't afford in the belief that her physical attractiveness is necessary for getting Ann "a new daddy." What is the place of material objects like clothes and cars in Adele's sense of who she is? Is this a trait she passes on to Ann?

9. Apart from her grandmother, Ann's closest and most secure relationship is with her cousin Benny. How does Ben's death impact upon Ann's life? What do you find strange about the description of the family's gathering for the funeral visit?

10. How does food--especially ice cream--figure in the relationship between mother and daughter? Consider the place of food in Ann's visit to her mother near the end of the book: why does Adele have so much food in the house? Why does Simpson include the detail of the ants on the carrot cake?

11. As noted earlier, Simpson has decided to save Adele's narrative for the end of the novel. We have previously seen her through the eyes of her daughter, her sister, and her mother. Does this final section change your perspective on her in any way? Adele tells us that she has learned to feel better about herself through "The Course of Miracles," a popular self-help program (533). What does this section suggest about Simpson's view of the current state of spirituality and moral self-examination in our culture?

12. Is there such a thing as "home" in Anywhere But Here? What would you say is the difference, symbolically, between Wisconsin and California in the novel? Is life shaped by place and social context as much as by one's parents and upbringing? What is most unmistakably American about the novel?

In a beautifully rendered novel that examines the consequences of abandoning children as well as the psychology of obsession and female dependency, Mona Simpson has created a heroine who is wry, self-deprecating and intelligent--whose troubles are utterly absorbing, whose journey becomes our journey.

For discussion: The Lost Father

1. In one of The Lost Father's most striking aphorisms, Mayan says, "All you have to do to be somebody's God is disappear" [p. 38]. What psychological truth do you find in this statement? How does this sentence encapsulate the concerns and meanings of Mayan's life?

2. Although this book is a sequel to Anywhere But Here, Mona Simpson says that she had not intended to write one. The germ of The Lost Father emerged one afternoon while she was at work on another novel: "I started writing a story about someone looking for her father, and it kind of took over. It was a surprise to me." Only later did it become clear to Simpson that the narrator was the girl from Anywhere But Here.² Is The Lost Father nonetheless complete in itself? How are the two books different from each other? What are some of the differences in the way that Adele and Ann-Mayan are portrayed? What are the most important shifts in emphasis?

3. The Lost Father is a brilliant study of obsession and of a life hopelessly in its grip. Why does Mayan have to do what she is doing, despite its outwardly self-destructive aspects? Why does she say that not even the most terrible discovery about her father could make her give up? Does she expect that finding her father will be an ending or a beginning?

4. In what ways does Mayan behave as a woman who believes herself to be unlovable? What does the novel tell us about the particular role a father plays in shaping a daughter's self-esteem and identity?

5. Mai linn, Emily Briggs, and Mayan are three young women who have been friends since childhood, and their upbringings contrast greatly with each other. Mai linn is an orphan who was sexually abused by her foster father; Emily is the adored daughter of a rich father; and Mayan, of course, is the neglected daughter of an unknown father. What does Simpson accomplish by juxtaposing Mai linn, Emily, and Mayan as three very different kinds of daughters?

6. What role do solitary, eccentric people play in Mayan's life--people like Emory, whom she befriends in the hospital, or the old Chinese man who lives upstairs from her? Why do you think that Mayan is at her best with people who are alone, like herself?

7. What does Mayan learn about her father at Firth Adams College? Why isn't she discouraged by this information? Do you think she would have done better to stop at this point? Why does the box in the back of her car make her feel that she is finally doing what she was always meant to do, that "Still, away from it all, I felt I was living my one true life" [p. 265]?

8. In Egypt, while searching for her father's family, Mayan finds an Egyptian lover. Why is this relationship necessary for her? Why does she ignore his letters once she returns home?

9. One of this novel's most brilliant aspects is its examination of the damage done by people who evade their responsibilities. As an adult herself, Mayan observes, "We are all endlessly telling the explanations of why we are not more. At a certain age, this begins. And for my mother and father, the explanation was still, after all these years, the other's name" [p. 468]. Is her father as self-deluding as her mother? Are you surprised that he doesn't seem to notice that he has done Mayan great harm?
10. Mayan's friends--Mai linn, Emily, Stevie, Jordan--all are engaged in some aspect of Mayan's quest and try to help her in whatever ways they can. Is Simpson calling attention to a contrast between these loving friends and Mayan's uncaring father? Would you argue that the novel ultimately places more value on friendship than on family? What is the relation between the two?

11. What sort of a person is John Atassi? In what sense is he "lost"? How does he strike you, after all you've learned about him prior to his appearance in the novel? Why has he stayed with Uta as long as he has? What does Mayan learn from this seemingly anticlimactic completion of her quest? What does she mean when she says, "Maybe all searches end the same. You are changed forever but not by what you were looking for" [p. 431]?

12. The Lost Father seems to draw upon elements of a variety of narrative genres--the coming-of-age novel, the psychological case study, the road novel, detective fiction, etc. How would you categorize it? Can you think of other novels that it is indebted to or similar to?

Gradually Jane insinuates her way into Tom's life, though she and her mother remain at the mercy of his odd ideas and his blindness to the needs of those around him. The novel presents us with an array of other characters whose lives circle around Owens--Noah, the brilliant biologist confined to a wheelchair, whose strongest desire is to be loved; Olivia, Tom's beautiful and long-suffering girlfriend; Julie, the lawyer whose true desire is for the domestic life. These and others create the world that Jane inhabits as she tries to find her way into her father's heart. Their interconnected lives create the web of a deeply satisfying novel that explores the relationship between such central life issues as love, community, ambition, and money.

For discussion: A Regular Guy

1. "The most terrible and wondrous experience in Jane di Natali's life was over by the time she was ten, before she'd truly mastered the art of riding a bicycle" [p. 28]. With these words Simpson concludes her description of Jane's nighttime journey west from the Sierras in a battered truck. What is wondrous and what is terrible about this passage out of childhood? Why does Mary decide that it's time to send Jane to her father, and why do you suppose she does it in this way?

2. A Regular Guy is the first of Mona Simpson's novels to be narrated entirely in the third person. Does this mode of narration have the effect of giving you equal access to the interior lives of various characters? Who is the novel's central character? Which of the characters do you most care about, feel closest to? Is your empathy with some characters and not others an effect of the mode of narration, or of some other aspect of Simpson's technique?

3. In his speech at the teachers' convention, Owens claims that "People being related biologically is irrelevant. What matters is if you like 'em." [p. 111] Why, then, is he anxious about whether Jane looks like him? Would he have accepted Jane as his daughter if she weren't attractive, bright, and healthy? Do you believe that he is capable of loving?

4. Two abortions take place during the course of the novel: Mary aborts the child she has conceived with Eli because Jane expresses some negative feelings about having a sibling, and Olivia aborts the child she has conceived with Owens because Owens is ambivalent about marrying her. What issues do these two abortions raise in Jane's life? Why are they important to the concerns of the novel as a whole? Why does Mary put Jane in the position of deciding the fate of her and Eli's unborn child?

5. What is the relationship between ambition, success, and love in A Regular Guy? Does the choice of either love or ambition tend to be different for the women and the men in the novel?

6. Owens's loss of status seems to turn his focus to simpler things: love, children, gardening. Is Owens, after his fall, a more likable character? Do you think his newfound devotion to family is authentic? Is Simpson inviting us to conclude that the domestic, private life is inherently of more value than the public life?

7. Tom Owens has a number of strong opinions about how society should be run, and he seriously considers running for political office. Do you think he would have been a successful politician? Or president? Which of his beliefs derive from his hippie past, and which seem to contradict the ideals of the sixties? Is there a coherent philosophy behind his various beliefs? If not, how do you interpret this aspect of his character?

8. Simpson juxtaposes the rise of Noah Kaskie with the fall of Tom Owens, and from the beginning of the novel seems to set up the two men as a study in contrast. In what other character juxtapositions are we invited to reflect upon and compare aspects of personality and various approaches to life?

9. Jane takes her father's name at the end of the novel and seems to be finally and securely accepted by him. What kinds of changes has Jane gone through? Does she come to resemble her father's character more than her mother's?

10. Asked about her motivation as a writer, Simpson answered: "I hope to reach the readers who read the way I read, passionately and with much yearning and abandon, readers ardently questioning how they should live, both personally and in a larger context of community and world-wide community, and who find the context for their questioning to be books and the process of reading."³ Such issues are clearly being examined in this novel: how does your reading of it affect the way you think about what you value in your life, and how to achieve the right kind of life?

Comparing the Three Novels:

1. What are some of the ways in which these novels identify the problems of family life in contemporary American culture? What is Mona Simpson's ideal of the family, and how do the families in these three novels fail or succeed in providing love, protection, identity, self-respect? Why is the importance of the child's point of view central to all three novels?

2. In The Lost Father, Mayan says, "So much of what determined what was life and what dream was still only money" [p. 116]. In each of these works, one's economic condition has a strong shaping influence on one's life. Is money--or its lack--the most fateful element in life? Which characters in these works are most dependent on money, or on the idea of wealth, in imagining and creating the kind of life they desire?

3. There is a range of narrative techniques in these three novels. There are several first-person narrators in Anywhere But Here, a single first-person narrator in The Lost Father, and a third person omniscient narrator in A Regular Guy. How do these technical choices on Simpson's part affect your experience of each of the novels?

4. About her approach to structure, Simpson has said, "I work paragraph to paragraph or even line to line.... I have an emotional sense of where things are going to, but I don't do a whole chart or anything like that."⁴ How would you describe and differentiate the structure of these novels? Henry James fondly called the novel form "a loose baggy monster." Do you think that Simpson's novels particularly fit this description?

5. How does Simpson control and convey the sense of time and of past and present? How important a role does memory play in these works?

6. Simpson started out as a poet, and her writing is often powerfully lyrical and imagistic. For example, in The Lost Father Mayan says of her mother, "in her private soul she is a child holding an empty glass jar waiting for the sky to fill it..." [p. 3]. What are some of the more striking images and descriptive passages you've noticed? How do such images affect or deepen your experience of the work?

Suggestions for further reading