The Problem with Murmur Lee
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10. Murmur Lee didn’t know that she was the product of a rape until after her own death. In what ways did it affect her while she was still living?
11. Compare and contrast Zachary’s behavior while Katrina was dying with Erik’s during Blossom’s illness. Do you see a parallel? Does Murmur Lee’s compassion for Zachary result from her own experience with Erik?
12. In the middle of the book Charlee wonders about Murmur Lee’s will: “Did she know her time was up? Had she made a decision—watery and vague, but a decision nonetheless—that she’d best set her affairs in order? How does a healthy thirty-five-year-old woman come by that sort of precognition?” How would you answer those questions? Does the existence of a relatively young woman’s will indicate a subconscious readiness to die?
13. After Murmur Lee has sex with Billy for the first time, she asks him if he loves his mother; he replies that he was happy when she died. Murmur Lee is tremendously upset by his response, recognizing an old pattern of hers. What is the significance of this? If Murmur Lee hadn’t died do you believe she and Billy would have ended up together? Why, or why not?
14. Discuss the characters of Lucinda Smith, Edith Piaf, and Ariela van den Berg. What purpose(s) do they serve in the novel?
15. Why does Zachary punch Billy?
16. Throughout the novel there are countless references to ghosts and wind. After death, in fact, Murmur Lee is surrounded by gusts and flows. What do you think this means? What do you think happens to us after death?
17. What does the title mean? What is the problem with Murmur Lee?
For free supplementary materials including information on book groups, suggestions for further reading, chances to win books, phone-in author appearances, and much more, e-mail BroadwayReads@RandomHouse.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Connie May Fowler is an essayist, screenwriter, memoirist, and novelist. Her novels include Remembering Blue and Before Women Had Wings, which received the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and was made into an Emmy-winning Oprah Winfrey Presents movie for television. She founded the Connie May Fowler Women with Wings Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding women and children in need. She is the Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.
Also by Connie May Fowler
SUGAR CAGE
RIVER OF HIDDEN DREAMS
BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS
REMEMBERING BLUE
WHEN KATIE WAKES
PRAISE FOR
The Problem with Murmur Lee
“The Problem with Murmur Lee is a brave and beautiful book. It might be called a mystery, but the questions it asks are not who killed or even how or why. The questions Fowler asks are the ones we all ask: What is the meaning of one human life? How do we cope with loss, sorrow, or with our deepest fears? Where she takes us is not to mourning but to celebration. I loved Murmur Lee and will never forget her.”
—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
“A powerful book full of mysticism and wisdom about life, the life ever after, and the wonder of it all.”
—Southern Living
“The verdict: Heartbreaking and hilarious. . . . If Fowler’s characters are guilty of anything, they’re guilty of living as close to the edge of heartbreak as they can. Fowler puts into everyday language the notes and chords of Welch and Hooker, along with Lucinda Williams and Edith Piaf. It’s a moving, lyrical feast.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Fowler portrays small-town Florida life in all its gritty energy—with lyricism, humor, and an obvious love for the people and place. This skillful piece of writing . . . will please Fowler’s fans and entertain devotees of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and Alice Hoffman’s novels.”
—Booklist
“Fowler has created a touching story of death, family, love, and the power of friendship.”
—Library Journal
“This elegiac novel, chronicling the life and death of idiosyncratic Murmur Lee Harp, showcases Fowler’s easy, loose-limbed prose and sympathetic eye for human fallibility . . . beautifully craft[ed].”
—Publishers Weekly
“Like the poetry of Baudelaire, or later, Wallace Stevens, Fowler’s lyrical novel uses the nuts and bolts of the everyday world as a way to ruminate about the very nature of consciousness.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“A new Southern novel loaded with eccentrics may sound like well-traveled literary territory…They also cavort across the pages of Connie May Fowler’s new novel. But the more you read, the more it becomes clear that Fowler has reclaimed the unofficial state bird—the Florida cuckoo—for her own universe, with wonderful results.”
—Miami Herald
“Fowler tells a story that’s far more reassuring than mysterious, which shows where her real strengths as a writer lie. She’s at her best pondering human fallibility and the possibilities for unconditional love.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“Never sentimental, highly original, it’s a treatise of love and death, on how sorrow can turn into hope and hope into action. With language that is both languid and energized and characters who are not only self-aware but endearingly unique, Fowler’s writing vibrates with good storytelling. More importantly, she shows how one life and one character . . . can leave an impression that is lasting and hauntingly truthful.”
—Nashville Scene
“Fowler did not assign herself an easy task in the creation of this, her latest of five novels, but the result of her literary labor goes down as warm and smooth as good bourbon on a chilly Mantanzas River night.”
—St. Augustine Record
A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 2005 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.
THE PROBLEM WITH MURMUR LEE. Copyright © 2005 by Connie May Fowler. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Visit our website at www.broadwaybooks.com
First Broadway Books trade paperback edition published 2006.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover as:
Fowler, Connie May.
The problem with Murmur Lee : a novel / by Connie May Fowler.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Women—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Dream interpretation—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. 4. Drowning victims—Fiction. 5. Future life—Fiction. 6. Islands—Fiction. 7. Florida—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.O8265P76 2004
813'.54—dc22
2004055124
eISBN: 978-0-7679-2394-1
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