Home Field (37 page)

Reading Group Guide

   
1. Aside from a pure and genuine love of the game, what do you think Dean gets out of his team that he doesn't get from his home life?

   
2. The author sets the story in 1996. How does this choice affect the tone and atmosphere of the novel? How did it affect your reading?

   
3. Both Stephanie and her brothers have an episode with their mother's clothing after her death. What do the differences in their responses mean to you? How are they using the clothes to cope with their loss?

   
4. Do you think Dean made the right choice in stepping down from his position? Why or why not?

   
5. Do you think Stephanie made the right choice in going to college right away? Why or why not?

   
6. Do you think Dean and Laura end up together? Why or why not?

   
7. A particularly evocative memory Stephanie has of her mother involves stopping by the side of the road to eat a peach. Why is this image so powerful? What does it signify?

   
8. Another very evocative memory is of Nicole being unable to cut a lemon and Stephanie pulling over to the side of the road to cry. Why do you think this is such a successful illustration of depression? How does it complement the moment with the peach?

   
9. Do you relate to Stephanie's experience in her first months of college? Why or why not?

  
10. One of the most heartbreaking moments in the book is when Jessica's mom is speaking with Dean and unwittingly begins talking about Nicole, referring to her as “that sweet woman.” Why is this moment so powerful? What is the author trying to show us?

  
11. What are some of the leitmotifs the author employs in her writing and how do they work to advance the themes of the novel?

Suggested Reading

Snow
, by Orhan Pamuk

If there's any one book that inspired this novel, it's
Snow
. It's the story of an exiled Turkish poet, Ka, who returns to Turkey to investigate a rash of suicides among young, religious girls in a small village. I love the mysterious, uncertain atmosphere of this novel; it enveloped me immediately, from the first scene when Ka boards a bus that almost seems to take him back in time. Although I read
Snow
years before I started working on
Home Field
, there was something about its odd angles that got me thinking about where I grew up and how I might write about it.

Independence Day
, by Richard Ford

I read this at the recommendation of my husband, who doesn't read much fiction, so when he likes a book I pay attention. It took him several months to finish it, and I teased him about that until I started reading it. Even though the story takes place over only a few days, it's densely narrated by Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of several of Ford's books. I love Bascombe's narration, especially his vocabulary, which is so American in the way that he mixes poetic language with regional slang, technical terms with academic allusions, and ten-dollar words with the simplest endearments and place names.

The Stories of John Cheever
, by John Cheever

I discovered these stories when I was in my early teens and have been reading them ever since. My favorites are “The Country Husband,” “The Death of Justina,” and “Goodbye, My Brother”—a story I read pretty much every year. I love Cheever's sensibility: his jokes; his vocabulary; his feeling for landscape, mood, childhood, color, and light. His narrators are melancholy, dissatisfied, and ashamed, but they love life, and that mix of sadness and delight is what always brings me back to Cheever. I think of scenes from his fiction every time I go to the beach, take a walk in Manhattan, or board a train on the Hudson line.

The Autobiography of My Mother
, by Jamaica Kincaid

I first read this at age nineteen and it floored me. It's the story of Xuela, a motherless child who grows up on the small Caribbean island of Dominica. Xuela is a survivor, a woman who finds her way in the world on her own terms, rejecting motherhood, daughterhood, siblinghood, and all kinds of inherited identity. At the same time, there's an embrace of the natural and material world that gives Xuela's writing an incredible vitality.

Sweet Talk
, by Stephanie Vaughn

This is one of my favorite short story collections, simply because the stories are so full of emotion and evocative of childhood. My favorite story is “Dog Heaven.” I still can't get through it without crying—and I'm not even a dog person.

A Home at the End of the World
, by Michael Cunningham

I love the title of this book, I love the characters in this book, I love the warmth and elegance of the prose in this book, and I even love the movie adaptation of this book, which introduced me to the wonderful actor Dallas Roberts, whose performance I admired so much that I went to see him in a revival of Edward Albee's
The Zoo Story
. So, just read this book: it will enrich your life in unexpected ways.

Far from the Tree
, by Andrew Solomon

As part of my research for this novel, I read Andrew Solomon's
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
, which is an excellent and intensely personal nonfiction book about the history and treatment of depression. Around the time I finished
The Noonday Demon
, Solomon's next book,
Far from the Tree
, was published. It addresses what happens to families when a child turns out to be very different from his or her parents; for example, a deaf child born
to hearing parents, a child prodigy born to parents of ordinary intelligence, or a transgender child born to cisgendered parents, to give just a few examples. Once I started this book I couldn't stop reading it. Every chapter brings a new family portrait, a new set of complications. It's like a series of linked novellas, except they are all founded in an extraordinary amount of reporting and research. Solomon's compassion radiates off the pages as he interviews families about their fears, joys, disappointments, and triumphs as parents of the children that they never expected to have.

Fun Home
, by Alison Bechdel

I've been a fan of Alison Bechdel since the 1990s, when I started reading her syndicated cartoon, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” But it wasn't until I read
Fun Home
that I truly appreciated her depth as a writer.
Fun Home
is a memoir, telling the story of Bechdel's complicated relationship with her late father, a closeted gay man who taught English and ran a funeral home, which was also the house Bechdel grew up in. Bechdel's childhood is strange, bookish, morbid, and haunted by her father's tormented identity. It isn't until she leaves home that she is able to come out as a lesbian; around the same time, her father dies suddenly in a possible suicide, leaving Bechdel with even more mysteries to unravel. Somehow, this is a very funny book, and also full of literary allusions and quick, sensitive pieces of literary criticism.

Americanah
, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This book showed me how to write the voice of Stephanie. I wanted her to be genuinely naive and lacking in experience, but I didn't want to condescend to her.
Americanah
follows two high school sweethearts, Ifemelu and Obinze, Nigerian students who are separated by war and by economic and social forces beyond their control. Ifemelu ends up in America, where she struggles with what it means to be black and African in a new country, while Obinze barely gets by in London on an illegal work visa. Both are unprepared for what life throws at them, and Adichie depicts their naïveté as well as their bravery and strength. It's a full, sympathetic portrait of youth and young love, and in general this novel is so full of life, so overflowing with observations, jokes, and dialogue, that I couldn't help feeling as if Adichie poured everything she knew into this book. That's always the kind of novel I like best.

Playlist

“Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam,” by Nirvana

Which Nirvana song to pick for a book set in the 1990s? This is the one that immediately came to mind, even though it's not my favorite Nirvana song and isn't actually a Nirvana song—it was originally written and recorded by The Vaselines. But I like it for this story because it's a parody of Christian children's songs, the kind of music that Stephanie would have learned as a kid and rebelled against as a teenager.

“Violet,” by Hole

At the beginning of the novel, Dean spots Missy wearing a Hole T-shirt and has no idea what it means. I probably never would have heard of this band if my older sister hadn't been living in Olympia, Washington, at the time and sending me mixtape dispatches. (My sister also got me a subscription to
Sassy
magazine—why, oh why didn't I keep the one with Kurt and Courtney on the cover? Why didn't I keep all of them?)

“Feel the Pain,” by Dinosaur Jr.

I can't listen to this song without picturing the album cover, that sad-looking animal in a red jacket. I didn't even own this album; I didn't have to, because everyone I knew had it and this song played nonstop on the alternative stations.

“Basket Case,” by Green Day

I was recently talking to my fifteen-year-old nephew about what music he likes and was surprised—and then not surprised—when he said Green Day. Their songs are so durable and catchy and unexpectedly timeless. As Stephanie observes, they're the one band that seemed to transcend all clique lines in her high school. That was certainly the case at my high school, which was divided between country music lovers, indie rock nerds, and hip-hop/pop fans. But everyone listened to Green Day.

“Walk This World,” by Heather Nova

In college I had a mixtape with this song and a bunch of other Lilith Fair types. My work-study job in college was in the dish room and there was an old beat-up stereo where you could play your tapes while you worked. I remember bringing my Lilith mix one Sunday morning, slightly worried that my coworker, a guy I didn't know that well, would hate it. As it turned out, he loved Heather Nova in particular and said her voice reminded him of Laura Nyro, who I had never heard of. He ended up introducing me to a bunch of other female singers with gorgeous voices.

“The Bends,” by Radiohead

I chose this song for the lyric “I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen.” There's no better description of what it feels like to be a teenager,
especially a teenager in a small town.

“Hyperballad,” by Björk

My boyfriend's twin sister introduced me to Björk. I remember when she played the CD for me because Björk's lush, emotional dance music was in such contrast to her spartan dorm room, which was really minimal with bare walls, all-white bedding, and hardly any furniture. Years later, one of my roommates lived in a similar fashion and blasted Björk whenever he felt depressed. “Hyperballad” was his favorite song and he had several different versions of it. I came to love it too, especially its dramatic and enigmatic lyrics.

“Marianne,” by Tori Amos

Tori Amos had a huge influence on me as a teenager. Aside from Claire Danes in
My So-Called Life
, there was no one else who seemed to speak to the emotional and sexual confusion of being a teenage girl. She was a big influence on a lot of girls I knew; I remember my chorus teacher accusing soloists of “Tori Amos–izing” their melodies. To an adult with tempered emotions, Tori Amos can sound over-the-top, and in my twenties, I was somewhat embarrassed by my love for her theatrical, angsty, hyperfeminine music. Now I appreciate her again, especially the way that so many of her
songs are stories with a female character at the center. “Marianne” is one of my favorite of her story-songs, and apparently it's based on someone Amos really knew.

“Man on the Moon,” by R.E.M.

Is this my favorite R.E.M. song? No, but it's probably the most comforting one, which is why I chose it as the song that Stephanie hears when she's coming down from a really bad ecstasy trip. The lyrics are mellow and easy to understand, especially for an R.E.M. song. I read somewhere that Michael Stipe was trying to write lyrics with more “yeahs” than Kurt Cobain's.

“Who Will Save Your Soul,” by Jewel

There was no escaping this song in 1996. The chorus was so catchy and sincere that you couldn't help remembering it. It played on both alternative and pop stations and it sprang to mind when I was thinking about what might be playing on Dean's car radio.

“Onion Soup,” by Vic Chesnutt

I only recently discovered Vic Chesnutt. Unfortunately, it was his death in 2009 that brought his music to my attention. I wish I'd known about him when I was a teenager because I think I would have loved his lyrics, which are full of literary allusions. He's a southern oddball who was discovered by
Michael Stipe, and like Stipe, he has a distinctive singing voice and lyric vocabulary, a regional sensibility that's part country and part art school—with a dash of Americana. I've just started getting into his music, but I thought this might be one of the songs that Stephanie would relate to, with its references to unsent letters and nostalgia for an old friendship.

“Castle on a Cloud,” from
Les Mis
é
rables

Les Mis
é
rables
was touring the country when I was in high school, and my church choir got together a big group to go see it. I loved the music when I was a teenager, but I must admit that it has gone stale for me over the years. However, this song has a sweet melody that I remember singing in middle school choir, and I feel certain that Robbie would have learned it in school and perhaps taken comfort in it.

“Ghost,” by the Indigo Girls

Indigo Girls rank right up there with Tori Amos as a Big Teenage Musical Influence. This heartbreakingly pretty song is the perfect one to listen to when, as my three-year-old likes to say, you need to “get the tears out.”

“Sunshine on My Shoulders,” by John Denver

I was recently listening to an interview with Nick DiPaolo on Marc Maron's
WTF
podcast and was amused to learn that DiPaolo listens to
John Denver's Greatest Hits
when he's in bad traffic because it helps to calm his road rage. When I heard that, I thought, that's exactly why I disliked Denver when I was a teenager, but why, as an adult, I understand his appeal. When I was trying to think of the kind of music that Stephanie's mother would like but which Stephanie would think was unbearably cheesy, I chose Denver because his music would have been popular when Nicole was younger. I also thought Nicole would like his sweet voice and earnest lyrics—and that Stephanie might find them comforting after her mother's death.