Mrs. Everything (60 page)

Authors: Jennifer Weiner

BOOK: Mrs. Everything

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“This is Michigan,” said his big cousin Flora. Flora put her hands on his shoulders and turned him to face the redbrick house on Alhambra Street. “I go to college here.”

“Right here?” Tim regarded the house dubiously.

“Not right here,” said Flora. “Remember what I told you? I go to college in Ann Arbor, where my grandma went. This is Detroit, where Auntie Bethie and my grandma grew up.”

Tim gave the house a moment of his consideration. Bethie wondered how it would look to him—just a house with a pointy triangle-shaped roof and a white aluminum awning. Down the street was a house he’d probably like better, yellow with green shutters, like the colors on the cover of
Frog and Toad Are
Friends. Frog and Toad Are Friends
was his favorite book. They’d all read it to him a hundred times.
Not this again
, Lila would say, but she’d read it, patient as ever, as kind and doting a mother as Jo could ever have hoped.

“Did you live here?” Tim asked Lila.

Lila shook her head. Her long, dangling earrings chimed. The earrings used to belong to Bethie, but she’d given them all to Lila: bell-bottom jeans and soft velvet scarves, her traveling bag made of colorful squares of fabric that she’d bought in India.

“No,” Lila said. “Aunt Bethie lived here. And my mom.”

“Your mom was my grandmama,” Tim said. “Only she died.”

“She did,” said Lila, as Kim sniffled and Missy looked away. “But she would have loved you very much.”

Tim nodded. Of course he knew that Jo would have loved him, Bethie thought. Everyone loved Tim. Harold loved Tim, and Sharon and her kids and grandkids loved him. Everyone who worked at Blue Hill Farm treated him like a beloved mascot, making him nut butter and jam sandwiches, slipping him squares of chocolate, giving him piggyback rides.

“Do you miss her?” Tim asked.

In a choked-sounding voice, Lila said, “I wasn’t always the best kid. I wish she’d known me now.”

“Oh, honey,” Bethie said. “You were fine.”

Lila made a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and Kim patted her sister’s back, and Missy took her hand.

“Are we going to get ice cream?” Tim asked.

“I can take him,” Flora volunteered, “if you guys want to stay.”

“No,” said Bethie. She pulled her phone out of her bag, aimed it, and took a few pictures of the house that she and Jo had been so eager to escape, so certain that their lives would be bigger, and better. Tim was looking at her carefully.

“Are you crying, Aunt Bethie?”

Bethie shook her head. “Just remembering,” she said. She watched as Lila lifted her son in her arms. Together, they walked back down the street to where the cars were waiting.

Acknowledgments

M
y thanks to Carolyn Reidy; Jon Karp; my agent, Joanna Pulcini; and Libby McGuire, my brilliant new publisher.

Thanks to the editors: Sarah Cantin, who was there at the beginning, and Emily Bestler, who was there at the end.

Kristin Fassler, Dana Trocker, and Ariele Fredman have been a pleasure to work with and have already worked wonders. Thank you for making this publication such a pleasure.

Thanks to everyone on the Atria/S&S team: Suzanne Donahue, Gary Urda, Lisa Keim, Chris Lynch, Paige Lytle, Katie Rizzo, Sarah Lieberman, and Elisa Shokoff; to Joanna’s assistant, Jenna Walker, and to Emily’s assistant, Lara Jones.

I’m grateful to James Iacobelli for giving this book such a gorgeous cover, and to Andrea Cipriani Mecchi for taking such a beautiful author photo.

Thanks to Dhonielle Clayton for her smart, perceptive read, and to Curtis Sittenfeld for her sharp suggestions, and for liking the sex scenes.

My assistant, the delightful Meghan Burnett, has always been invaluable, but never more so than for her work on this book.

Thanks to Moochie, furry muse, who curled up at my feet, slept while I wrote, and mostly kept the snores on the quieter side.

All of my love to my husband, Bill Syken, who makes me dinner, makes me laugh, and came up with the title, and to my delightful daughters, Lucy and Phoebe. You are my light at the end of the tunnel.

And thanks to Frances Frumin Weiner, mother, grandmother, inspiration, and all-time good sport, who was there. I love you, Mom. I hope I got it right.

Mrs. Everything

Jennifer Weiner

This reading group guide for
Mrs. Everything
includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

From Jennifer Weiner, the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of
Who Do You Love
and
In Her Shoes
, comes a smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places—and be true to themselves—in a rapidly evolving world.
Mrs. Everything
is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history—and herstory—as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Jo and Bethie are very different people. But in what ways do you find them similar? Do their similarities outweigh their differences? How do their similarities cause problems in their relationship?

2. Forgiveness, of others and of the characters’ own selves, is an important theme in the novel. Discuss how the characters work through their conflicts and how they do or do not resolve the issues.

3. Compare and contrast how Jo and Bethie are influenced by their mother. Is there a defining element of their relationship with their mother? How does it weave its way into the sisters’ lives?

4.
Mrs. Everything
spans half of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first. What period details make you feel immersed in each decade? Were there any details that you remembered from your own past? Were there details about life in earlier decades that surprised you? What effect did this have on your reading experience?

5. In
Mrs. Everything
, Jennifer Weiner has created many memorable secondary characters, from Mrs. Kaufman to Lila to Jo’s and Bethie’s partners and beyond. Did you have a favorite? What qualities made them come alive for you?

6. Were you ever frustrated by the choices Jo and Bethie made? Did you empathize with their choices, despite feeling frustrated?

7. Literature is full of sisters with complex relationships. Do Jo and Bethie remind you of other favorite sister duos? What is it about the sister relationship that captivates us as readers?

8. What draws Jo and Shelley together? After they’ve reunited, what keeps them together?

9. What do Bethie and Harold learn from each other throughout their relationship?

10. Because
Mrs. Everything
takes places over several decades, it touches on many political and social movements. Did you learn anything about American history while reading? Was there a cause or issue that particularly interested you?

11. When Lila visits Bethie for the summer, they have a heart-to-heart about the pressure Lila feels from her mother to be special and achieve great things. Bethie tells Lila that it comes from the lack of options the sisters had growing up in a different era: “
Some girls did grow up and became doctors and lawyers and school principals. . . . A few girls did grow up and do things, and got those jobs, but for the rest of us, we were told that the most important thing was to be married, and be a mother. . . . She just doesn’t want that to be the only choice you have
”. Though Lila does have more opportunities available to her than her mother and aunt did, she (and her generation) faces new challenges. Did you relate to Lila’s concerns?

12. How does faith—both religious and in a more general sense—inform Jo and Bethie? What does faith mean to the sisters?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. If your group hasn’t already read Jennifer Weiner’s novel
In Her Shoes
, consider reading it together and comparing its themes of sisterhood with those of
Mrs. Everything
. What similarities do you notice between the sisters in these two novels? What ideas and feelings does Jennifer Weiner explore in both?

2. Choose one of the eras from the novel and come to your book club dressed in clothes or donning fun accessories from the period. Pick a film set in that same decade and discuss how the director and Jennifer Weiner each evoke that moment in history.