Introduction

When Frances was twenty-two, she was drifting, scraping by giving English lessons in Mexico, when she met up with a glamorous group of vacationing Americans staying in a mansion on a private beach. Two decades later in rural England, she discovers a love letter from a younger woman addressed to her husband almost at the same time as she learns that she's facing a life-threatening illness.
 
As her contented existence begins to unravel and she tries to decide how and if she will confront her husband about his infidelity, Frances finds herself haunted by the memory of her heady desert encounter with the charmed circle of the Severance family. That summer in 1976 seemed, until now, like another lifetime. As she recalls this long buried episode from her past, she is forced to face for the first time her own role in an illicit romance and the betrayal and tragedy that marked its ending.

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Excerpt

The midwinters here are never pale. Paleness

suggests translucence, and our winters are swampy,

no hint of crisp blue overhead. Just now, near

Christmas, there is gray rain and a slip of mud at every

doorway, and I am thinking a great deal about death.

The season, its associations with joy and birth, denies me

the opportunity to speak of such a smothering topic, despite

the circumstances, despite my hope, which is to die, softly and

soon. Of course even once the fresh twelve months is upon

us, I will not express this wish, not in words, at least not to

Phillip or Chloe. I suspect, anyway, that they know and that

it is this knowledge that hushes them sometimes and hurries

them from my presence, though they never confront me with

it, or anything else. I am fragile now, as glass, in their eyes.

No matter the rage of my thoughts.

I remember the pain, the first that signaled this ending. I

remember it quite vividly; it came not long after last Christmas

on a day as dull as this one. Evidently we remember things

because they are anchored in some way, but anchoring is a

weighty concept, and I was, just then, in the grip of something

shrill . . . panic. I was reading a letter.

The letter was signed Josee, like that, with an ee. I knew

who Josee was, but the ee fixated me, since it signaled so

clearly the age of the signer, until the pain interrupted and

shook my concentration for a half beat. Nobody over forty

is called Josee with an ee, are they? Though of course, soon

enough, that must change. As I said, I knew who Josee was,

so her youth was already familiar to me, and had seemed, in

that different context, unremarkable, but at that moment it

glared, suddenly scarlet. I stared at her signature—fat and

a little wild—for a few more unwinding moments, though

it was the line above it that held the real clout, and then

left off the slow distracted pat that my left hand had set up

at my midline, the pain having receded into what doctors

call “discomfort.”

I folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. And

I put the envelope back into the drawer of my husband’s

desk, Phillip’s desk, where I had found it. Where I had gone

looking for it, or something like it—something that would

tell me what it had told me.

I will be forty-six years old next July, if I live until then,

which I doubt. Almost no age at all if you look at it from a

mathematical perspective. To me, though, forty-six seems

fairly aged, perhaps because my forty-plus years have afforded

me so many lives, this last the most content and therefore

the least notable of all. That is, until Josee’s letter came, and the discomfort came, and with those things the story and,

worse, the reminders of stories past.

• • •

Richard Luke was a scrubbed-looking man, athletic and

good-schoolish. His coloring was fair, the kind that tends to

redden slightly with sunlight, and his features, though handsome

enough, were so even that they rendered him not commonplace

exactly, but unexceptional. He looked as though he

should be advertising something wholesome. When he asked

what had brought me there he dropped the x in Mexico.

“A boyfriend,” I replied, shrugging to complete the

explanation.

“Mexican?”

“At heart,” I answered.

It was the woman to my left who laughed in response. She

was Richard’s wife, Patsy, and her magazine-cover lips were

tilted into a suggestive curve.

I laughed too.

It was a cocktail party, delicately backlit pink, the temperature

clement enough to encourage bare shoulders among the

women, and the sounds of ice cubes against glass and water

against the stone of a courtyard fountain wove in and out of

the easy small talk. The year was 1976, and Mexico was a

place where people went looking for a good time.

Six carefree, attractive Americans to whom I had recently

been introduced were strung along the happy balcony.

Watching them exercising their practiced charm on a few of

the better-heeled locals, I decided that they were probably

always having a good time. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. Central to the plot of The View from Here is Frances’s notion that events from the past are
relevant to her current circumstances, not only in terms of parallels, but also as ‘driving forces.’
Is this idea rational?
2. In 1969 California became the first state to adopt ‘No Fault Divorce’ legislation. Throughout
the 1970s, divorce—particularly in the United States—became more prevalent and subsequently
more accepted. To what extent does the apparent moral decadence of the Severance circle reflect
the era? Do external social circumstances of this type have an impact on the way that people
conduct themselves in their private lives?
3. Frances and Sally each decide to accept their husbands’ infidelities and to ‘manage’ rather
than leave their marriages. Is this realistic?
4. To what extent is Frances a reliable narrator? How might some of her actions appear to other
characters? Would Josee, for example, see Frances the way that Frances once saw Sally?
5. Frances eventually reveals her role in Patsy’s death. How culpable is she? How far should
people be expected to go in order to prevent a death?
6. The View from Here is essentially a confession, but at the end of the novel Frances implies that
she may burn her story. Would that be better for her family? Is confession generally a healing
force or are some secrets best kept?

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