NMK: Lily, Jessie's mother, is so wonderful. Her “rebirth” after years of widowhood—finding a rich younger love (a dentist, no less!), letting her hair go gray, and jaunting away on a transatlantic sail with her lover—makes us all say “You go, girl!” It's interesting that Jessie has such a difficult time with her mother's new life.
AL: Well, change can be such a threat and a challenge, especially when it occurs in someone close to us. Jessie wanted Lily to continue as she always was, her dependable foundation, and the glorious thing about Lily refusing the role is that it forced Jessie to set down her own roots.
NMK: At one point, you have Lily tell her daughter, “Sometimes you have to take a journey to find yourself.” What journey did you take when you wrote The Lavender Hour?
AL: What a great question. Obviously I took a journey into grief and loss and the arena of the dying. Years ago, when I was writing Entering Normal, I came across a quote by Oscar Wilde: “Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.” I just love this quote and keep it by my computer. I think what Wilde meant was that it is in the times when we are brought to our knees with grief, absolutely humbled by loss, that we are doing soul work. That is when the heart cracks open and all our defenses are useless. You know this better than most, Nicole.
NMK: The human heart is an unwieldy thing—I think that's what I'll admit to. Everybody knows sorrow. As I always say, “Life is a morbid adventure—so let's try to have some fun.”
AL: I'm with you there, sister.
NMK: You know, when I write, I always fall in love with my characters. After spending day after day with them, making them real, they seem real to me. I sometimes even dream of them. So I really hate killing them—even if they deserve it.
Was there ever a time in the process of writing this book that you found yourself pained over Luke's looming death? Or maybe regret the pain you cause his mother, Nona?
AL: Only every day. I kept thinking, there must be a way to save him. But as a wise editor once told me, you can't save them all. And she was right.
Being a mother myself, I felt Nona's pain deeply, but I couldn't rescue her either. Giving people the dignity of their own pain is a tough thing to do, in writing and in life.
NMK: The shades of grief that are portrayed in this book are amazing. From Paige, Luke's in-denial daughter, to his exhausted care-taking mother to his tough-guy best friend, it seems as if you've touched on every possible reaction to the death of a loved one. After my daughter died, I spent many years trying to avoid my grief. Only when I discovered the transformative power of writing, a decade later, did I begin to understand what I can learn from her death and how that loss enriched me as a person. Only since then have I been able to properly grieve. Do you see Luke's loved ones ever coming to grips with their grief?
AL: Yes. Especially Nona. It will take Paige longer, I suspect. None of us would choose to go through the kind of devastating loss that you experienced, nor would we wish it on anyone. But loss is inevitable for all of us. It is the human condition.
I suspect it wasn't only your writing that transformed you but your experience. Even when you thought you were avoiding grief, you were living with it. Like the crucible in a science lab class, it burned away the crust and left you with the essence.
NMK: I think you're right. That “essence” throws the rest of life into relief—it makes the joys more profound and the pleasures richer.
AL: It awakens us to life.
NMK: You seem to have done a good deal of research on hospice volunteers.
AL: I was fortunate in that a number of people with extraordinarily generous hearts gave me insight into their experiences. I have also had three friends die and have witnessed the key role hospice workers played during their last months.
NMK: In this book, you provide the reader with a wealth of information on the Victorian practice of making jewelry from hair. The poet in me loves the idea that our heroine makes hair jewelry and some of her clients are cancer patients—it seems such a wonderful and gripping artistic expression for her. However, the shopper in me says “ick.”
Of course, I think this is what you were going for—that lovely conflicted feeling we have for Jessie—but I had to ask myself, what drew you, as a writer, to make this particular choice? Do you know someone who actually does make hair jewelry for people going through chemo?
AL: I don't know of anyone who makes the jewelry for people in chemo, but through the Internet, I found a wonderful woman named Jeanenne Bell, author of Collector's Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry, who gave me tons of information.
The aversion we have toward hair jewelry is fairly recent and reflects the conflicted feelings we have about death and our bodies. For centuries and centuries—well before the Victorian age so often associated with the craft—people have been making hair jewelry.
And, of course, as a symbol, hair is so rich, so absolutely loaded.
NMK: You set your story in Cape Cod. You obviously have some strong feelings about the healing powers of place.
AL: You yourself know the power of place, in life and in fiction. And you use it beautifully in your work. That is one of the things I loved about Whale Season.
Certainly there are sacred spots we are drawn to for healing, and I think Cape Cod is one.
NMK: In Whale Season, the unspoiled subtropical beauty that was once Florida does heal and transform. It's a shame those places don't exist anymore. At least the Cape still has that mystic power. I remember the first time I drove out through the dunes, I turned to my husband and said, “It looks like the moon dreaming of itself.”
AL: Jeez, Nicole, that line deserves a poem. I don't think I'll ever again walk a dune without recalling it.
NMK: I know that both you and your husband are pilots. How does flying, maintaining that delicate balance between life and death, inform your writing?
AL: Flying requires a certain healthy detachment that is a good thing to nurture. And looking down on the land provides a pilot with perspective, the visual reminder that there is always a larger picture to be seen, one we miss when we are absorbed by the closer surrounds. In writing, it is key to remember the larger scope—the humanscape and the landscape—within which the story takes place.
Paying attention, rigorous preparation, faith, trust—all things required of a pilot—are also required of the writer. And, like writing, flying is exhilarating exactly because it requires dancing on the edge.
NMK: That's true. As writers, we all dance on the edge—of our hearts.
AL: More poetry!
NMK: And more love! Seems like you, and your work, inspire that reaction in people—so, many thanks for that. Can't have enough love and poetry in the world. Lots of pizza is good, too.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why does Jessie call her mother by her first name? What does this say about their relationship? Does your family have nicknames or use specific names in different contexts?
2. Jessie is disappointed with her first visit to Luke's, much of which she spends alone: “I sipped the coffee, bitter, and felt… What? Let down? This was so not what I expected” (p. 10). What do you think Jessie did expect out of her work with hospice? Why do you think she joined?
3. What do you think first attracts Jessie to Luke? Why do you think she has such an intense reaction when she sees his photograph?
4. Have you ever felt connected to a person simply by seeing his or her photo, as Jessie was in the novel?
5. Why does Jessie have such a strong aversion to her mother's relationship with Jan? Why, in particular, is she so opposed to her mother's transatlantic trip? How does this particular attitude reflect her own romantic insecurities? Her fears of death? Her belated grief for her father?
6. While she is on the Cape, Jessie's close friendships are with two older women—first Faye, then Nona. Why does she gravitate toward these two women? How do her relationships with each differ? How are they the same?
7.
Jessie says, after Luke gets sick on their outing to Dairy Queen, “Later I would see that, from the beginning, I wanted too much. Wanted too much in a fierce and violent way that could only lead to trouble” (p. 105). What does she mean by this?
8. The use of hair as a metaphor threads through much of the book. Faye points out that hair, out of which Jessie makes her jewelry, is actually already dead. She says, “Odd, then, that that part of us which is dead will outlast the living—the blood, body, bones” (p. 28). Later, on the first night they spend together, Jessie tells Luke a story about a woman who is saved by her own hair. Finally, a piece of Luke's hair that Jessie had clipped is used as evidence against her. What do you think hair represents in the novel? Why is it so important?
9. When Jessie is first questioned by the police, she is still overwhelmed with grief for Luke. How does this harm her case? How, if at all, does the trial help her deal with Luke's death?
10. Luke's daughter, Paige, becomes the linchpin in Jessie's trial. How would you describe Paige's relationship with her father? How, if at all, are she and Jessie alike? Why do you think she is so interested in pursuing the investigation?
11. Why does Jessie choose to stay on the Cape, after it has caused her so much pain? What does it hold for her that Virginia does not?
12. Faye tells Jessie, “The dying can teach us how to die…. Maybe that serves as a model for how to live” (p. 18). How is that true for Jessie and Luke's relationship? What does Luke teach Jessie?
13. Was Jessie guilty of a crime?
14. Have you ever been close to someone throughout the dying process? How did your experience differ from Jessie's?
Anne LeClaire is the author of eight novels, including the critically acclaimed Leaving Eden and Entering Normal. Her books have been published in twenty countries and translated into eighteen languages. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, a black cat, and fifteen chickens.
Visit the author's website at www.anneleclaire.com.
A Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2007 by Anne LeClaire
Reading group guide copyright © 2007 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48733-9
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