Wife 22: A Novel
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5. What would your spouse say your favorite food is?
6. When is the last time you ate your favorite food?
7. Tell us something you do that your spouse doesn’t know about.
8. What medications are you taking?
9. List three things that scare you.
10. Do you believe love can last?
11. Are you still in love with your spouse?
12. Do you ever think about leaving your spouse?
13. If so, what would stop you?
14. List five positive things about your spouse.
15. List three negative things about your spouse.
16. What is your favorite book?
17. How well do you think you know your spouse?
18. What did you used to do that you don’t do now?
19. What do you do now?
20. List your jobs chronologically.
21. Are you religious? Do you believe in God?
22. List your favorite part of your spouse’s body when you were in your twenties.
23. List your favorite part of your spouse’s body now.
24. Describe your first impression of your spouse.
25. Where did you go on your first date?
26. List some little irritations of marriage.
27. How many credit cards do you have?
28. How often do you Google yourself?
29. How does your marriage compare to your parents’ marriage?
30. What is the last anniversary gift you received from your spouse?
31. Describe your spouse when you first met him/her.
32. What do you wish you had known/been warned about regarding marriage?
33. Is your spouse a good listener?
34. Have you ever been ashamed in front of your spouse?
35. Do you and your spouse exercise together?
36. Is it okay for spouses to keep secrets?
37. Does your spouse do a good job communicating his/her needs to you?
38. What do you consider flirting?
39. What’s the last mean thing you said to your spouse?
40. What’s the last mean thing your spouse said to you?
41. Would your friends say you are happily married?
42. Would you say you’re happily married?
43. Describe your first kiss with your spouse.
44. What do you believe should NOT be done in public?
45. What’s the worst emotional state a person can be in?
46. Do you fake things? If so, give examples.
47. How many times a week do you exercise?
48. Finish this sentence: I feel loved and cared for when …
49. Whose marriage do you most admire?
50. If your spouse gave you one free pass to have sex with another person, whom would you choose?
51. If you gave your spouse one free pass to have sex with another person, whom would your spouse choose?
52. Do you and your spouse find the same things funny?
53. What is the most memorable place you ever had sex?
54. Do you and your spouse agree on how to educate your children about issues such as drug and alcohol use?
55. Do you get along with your in-laws?
56. What’s the last loving thing you said to your spouse?
57. What’s the last loving thing your spouse said to you?
58. What’s your favorite movie?
59. How often do you quarrel with your spouse?
60. What’s the sexiest book you’ve ever read?
61. Describe the moment you knew your spouse was “the one.”
62. Did you participate in any secular premarital counseling? If so, give an example of a question you were asked during counseling and your answer. Does it still hold true today?
63. Where did you get married?
64. Describe a situation when your spouse let you down.
65. What do you think about the current trend of couples divorcing based on spouses feeling more like roommates than lovers?
66. When is the last time you flirted with a person other than your spouse?
67. What does it mean to be good?
68. Describe how your marriage changed during your first pregnancy.
69. Write a letter to your daughter telling her what you can’t say in person.
70. Describe something you wouldn’t admit to your best friend.
71. List some things you wish you could stop doing but can’t.
72. Describe a cliché of parenthood that took you by surprise.
73. Was your second pregnancy different from your first?
74. Was your marriage adversely affected by the addition of another child?
75. Write a letter to your second child telling him what you can’t say in person.
76. How much money would it take to be happy, and does money make it easier to stay happily married?
77. Is marriage a dictatorship or a democracy?
78. If you had to explain marriage to an alien who had just arrived on earth, what would you say?
79. If somebody asked you to share a life lesson that you learned in your forties, what would it be?
80. Define passion in one sentence.
81. What did you imagine falling in love would be like when you were young?
82. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your children about romance?
83. Give three reasons people should stay married.
84. Give one reason people should get divorced.
85. Have you had romantic feelings in the last year for a person other than your spouse?
86. Have you had sexual fantasies in the last year about a person other than your spouse?
87. Are you an advocate of gay marriage?
88. Has your life turned out the way you hoped it would?
89. List three things a spouse would do that you would find unforgivable.
90. Write a letter to your spouse telling your spouse what you can’t say in person.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude goes out to my agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman, who never stopped believing in this book. Abiding thanks to Jennifer Hershey, Jennifer Smith, Lynne Drew, and Sylvie Rabineau, as well as Gina Centrello, Susan Corcoran, Kristin Fassler, Kim Hovey, Libby McGuire, Sarah Murphy, Quinne Rogers, Sophie Baker, and Betsy Robbins—a writer couldn’t ask for a more crackerjack team. I’m very thankful for the keen insights and editorial acumen of Kerri Arsenault, Joanne Catz Hartman, and Anika Streitfeld, who were in the trenches with me right from the beginning. I’m also indebted to the readers who were kind enough to muddle through the first draft and give me honest and helpful feedback: Elizabeth Bernstein, Karen Coster, Alison Gabel, Sara Gideon, Robin Heller, and Wendy Snyder. A loud shout-out to my colleagues at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. And as always, none of this would be possible or mean anything without the two Bens.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MELANIE GIDEON is the bestselling author of The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After, which was named an NPR and San Francisco Chronicle best book of the year. She is also the author of three young adult novels. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, More, Shape, The Times, the Daily Mail, and Marie Claire. She was born and raised in Rhode Island. She now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son. Wife 22 is her first novel for adults.
Wife 22 Discussion Guide
1. Consider the epigraph by E. M. Forster: “Only connect.” How did this inform your interpretation of the novel before and after reading? What is the significance of this quote in a book that so often satirizes our reliance on technology in achieving immediate and constant connectivity?
2. What do you make of the structure of the novel unraveling in part through Alice’s narrative and elsewhere through Google searches, Facebook status updates, and email and text messages? Did you find this made for an organic reading experience, considering how much social media is enmeshed in o
ur daily lives? What did this mode of storytelling reveal about the characters that you might not have otherwise learned? How about the effect of seeing the answers to the marriage survey without first having read the questions? When you arrived at the appendix, did you then match any of the inquiries to their respective responses? Did you find anything surprising?
3. Of her marriage, Alice says that she and William are “floating around on the surface of our lives like kids in a pool propped up on those Styrofoam noodles.” She longs for a deeper connection to her husband, yet struggles to move beyond the monotonies apparent in everyday life. Why, then, does she find it so natural to be candid with Researcher 101? Do you think it’s that much easier to confess truths about ourselves under a veil of anonymity?
4. Researcher 101 writes, “Waiting is a dying art. The world moves at a split-second speed now and I happen to think that’s a great shame, as we seem to have lost the deeper pleasures of leaving and returning.” Do you agree that our access to people and information comes at the expense of developing meaningful connections over time, through patience and dedication? Is it possible to cultivate this kind of slow-budding relationship in a digital age, or are we too hardwired for instant gratification?
5. Alice’s answer to the question of what she used to do—“run, dive, pitch a tent, bake bread, build bonfires”—is much at odds with what she does now—“make lunches, suggest to family they are capable of making better choices; alert children to BO.” Why is it that Alice, in William’s words, insists on keeping herself from the things she loves? How does she go about reclaiming these pieces of her former self throughout the novel, and in what ways do you think she’s transformed by the end?
6. Alice struggles with crossing the threshold into her tipping point year, when she will turn the same age her mother was when she died. She sees this as having to say goodbye; as facing the fact that her mother will never age, never meet William, never watch Zoe and Peter grow. When, if ever, does she begin to perceive this milestone as not so much leaving something behind, but moving into a new future?
7. At one point, Alice recognizes that she “can be overbearing and intense” when it comes to parenting. In what ways do you think her relationships with Zoe and Peter have been affected by her mother’s untimely death? How does Alice’s realization that she has more than just her children enable her to take responsibility for her own life?
8. Much of the novel deals with Alice’s feelings of displacement, of wandering off the trail and trying to find the lamppost. But whenever she strays, William is always the one to remain on course and bring her back home. Why do you think that in an attempt to save their marriage, he finds it necessary to search for Alice behind a guise and not “in real life?”
9. A principal theme of the novel deals with relationships between mothers and daughters, particularly between Alice and her mother, Zoe, Bunny and the Mumble Bumbles. What do the Mumble Bumbles teach Alice about what being a parent means and how does this uniquely constituted group function in her life in general? Did you detect any instances in which Alice was invited to assume the role of a daughter, and how does she apply the lessons learned therein to her relationship with Zoe?
10. How does Gideon use humor to address the challenges inherent in love, marriage, parenthood, friendship and life?
11. Alice admits that she hopes for a richer life with William—“rich in the ability to feel things as they’re happening, to not constantly be thinking of the next thing.” Do you think she’s achieved this after all?
ALSO BY MELANIE GIDEON
The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After