BKMT READING GUIDES
Shout Her Lovely Name
by Natalie Serber
Paperback : 240 pages
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2 members have read this book
“Nuanced and smart . . . Serber knows that neglect or disconnect doesn’t always turn into trauma or damage. Life isn’t algebra. Which events lead to pain, and which to growth and awareness, remains unpredictable. The one reliable truth is that mistakes ...
Introduction
“Nuanced and smart . . . Serber knows that neglect or disconnect doesn’t always turn into trauma or damage. Life isn’t algebra. Which events lead to pain, and which to growth and awareness, remains unpredictable. The one reliable truth is that mistakes illuminate the most, albeit with fractured light.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Mothers and daughters ride a familial tide of joy, pride, regret, guilt, and love in these acclaimed stories of flawed, resilient women. Wheat bread and plain yogurt become weapons in a battle between a teenage daughter and her mother. An aimless college student, married to her much older professor, sneaks cigarettes while caring for their newborn son. On the eve of her husband’s fiftieth birthday, a pilfered fifth of rum, rogue teenagers, and an unexpected tattoo has a woman questioning her place in her children’s lives. And we follow through two decades the family created when capricious, magnetic Ruby, an ambitious college student, becomes a single mother to cautious daughter Nora in 1970s California. Shout Her Lovely Name is a “funny, bittersweet” (Vanity Fair) book that announces the arrival of a stunning new writer.
“Powerful and disquieting . . . Serber writes with exquisite patience and sensitivity, and is an expert in the many ways that love throws people together and splits them apart, often at the same time.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Always, Serber's writing sparkles: practical, strong, brazenly modern, marbled with superb descriptions . . . Take my word: Shout Her Lovely Name will reach inside readers and squeeze. On second thought, don't take my word. Read these lovely stories.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
Editorial Review
Natalie Serber on Shout Her Lovely Name
I had a dream last night about a geode. I was carrying it in my purse. It was the size of a coconut and I didnâ??t want to crack it open because I wanted to guard the feeling that I had unlockable wonder with me. I often feel this same tingly potential when I have a new book on my bedside table. All I have to do is crack it open to step into someplace new.
As a child, because my mother and I moved a lot, I sought friendship and solace in books. Reading novels and stories taught me that I was not the only kid who sometimes felt lonely and afraid, who longed for a swan or a babysister or a secret entrance through a wardrobe to a wild and amazing place. One of the beauties of literature is that you come to know your individual longings are universal; you are not isolated or strange...well maybe you are a little strange, but reading books teaches you that so is everyone else. You are not alone.
Writing does this for me as well. The characters in my stories are enmeshed in big precarious moments--breaking up, bringing home a new baby, caring for a sick child, leaving home. Each story offers potential for change and understanding; sometimes the characters take it, sometimes they donâ??t. Just like life.
I was a stay-at-home mom of two small children when I wrote my first published story, "This Is So Not Me." When I wrote the last story in the collection, "Developmental Blah Blah," my youngest was leaving home for college. That the writing of these stories spans such a swath of time is a gift. They explore lost pets, leaky pools, backseat groping, pregnancy tests, cocktail waitressing, unwelcome confessions, visiting in-laws, and middle-age tattoos. And this crazy-messy mix, big changes wrapped up in the gritty details of everyday family life, is where my stories dwell. It is my hope that when you read my book youâ??ll feel in good company.
Finally, while I relish the long luxurious soak a novel offers, staying with characters you come to know and care about for a stretch of pages, the great thing about a short story collection is that youâ??ve got multiple characters to meet and worlds to enter. Shout Her Lovely Name offers the best of both. Many of the stories follow the lives of Ruby and Nora, a mother and daughter growing up together, experiencing pride and disappointment, love and forgiveness. Their stories take you from Key West and New York City in the 1960s to Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in present day. Other men and women populate the collection as well, and I hope you come to care about them all as much as I do.
A story collection is a virtual bag of geodes, each ready to crack open and reveal a sparkling new place.
Discussion Questions
• The title story of Shout Her Lovely Name is about a family struggling with a daughter’s anorexia and told in the second person through the eyes of her mother. Why do you think that Serber chose to write the story from that perspective? How does this choice change your experience as a reader?• The mother in “Shout Her Lovely Name” begins to gain weight as she attempts “to eat like a role model” for her daughter. In what other ways do she and her husband take on the weight of their daughter’s illness?
• In an interview on BookRadio, Natalie Serber suggested that the experience of raising a child with an eating disorder is similar to that of raising a child struggling with drug addiction, in large part because they both require a delicate balance between taking charge as a parent and allowing your adolescent child to grow into an adult. Do you agree with that comparison? Where do you see it echoed in “Shout Her Lovely Name”?
• In “Ruby Jewel,” we see Teddy and Sally reunite with their daughter, Ruby, as she comes home from college. How does Serber show us the fractures in their relationships? When do you think they’re being open with one another, and when do you think they’re putting on a show to impress or to hide their true feelings? Do they remind you at all of your own family?
• Both “Ruby Jewel” and “Alone as She Felt All Day” are full of coins. Ruby and her father spin coins while they’re drinking. Ruby uses dimes to play songs on the jukebox and to call her father. Do you think this is intentional? What connections is Serber drawing here and why does she use the coins to do so?
• At the end of “Alone as She Felt All Day,” Ruby goes home with a stranger she met at the bar. When the man first kisses her, he asks if she likes the way he tastes and she says, “Nothing I can’t fix…Now you taste like me.” Why is that important to her in that moment? What, if anything, is she taking control of here?
• Where do you see the lasting effects that Sally’s miscarriages have had on her and Teddy and Ruby? Do Ruby’s attempts to induce a miscarriage seem callous in light of the grief her parents have endured over Sally’s?
• One of the other new mothers in the hospital tells Ruby, “Una hija will never leave you. Girls stick together.” In what ways do women and girls stick together throughout this book? How does Serber complicate that notion in the way she writes about mothers and daughters?
• “This Is So Not Me” ends with the narrator nursing an orphaned baby and surrounded by three men, all of whom seem moved by the scene in very different ways. What do the responses of these men suggest about the relationships that men have with mothers? What do they say about the collision of the internal world of a family with the external perceptions of one?
• In “Manx,” we see Ruby in juxtaposition to Margaret. A lot is said about both women in the details that Serber uses to describe them and the ways they interact with Nora. Which of these details feels especially significant to you? How do Nora’s feelings about each woman evolve throughout the story?
• In “Take Your Daughter to Work,” Ruby displays a self-assuredness that is rare for her. When else has she seemed as resolute in her actions as she does when reaching out to her students and saving Elena’s life? What do you think inspires her to work so hard to connect with her homeroom?
• After reading the girls’ journals, Nora decides that “she would like to save Celia but she would like to be Elena, with her amazing tragedy…”. Does this seem like a desire inspired by Ruby? As Nora grows throughout the book, how does she respond to her mother’s personality? What qualities has she inherited from Ruby?
• What do you think Nora is feeling as she’s talking to her father and thinking, “With my full life in California, there were so many other places I could be…But I was here, a whole weekend of my life, doing this thing I’d imagined forever”?
• What does the plum tree represent to Nora in her and Ruby’s new house in Santa Cruz? Why is she so attached to it?
• At the end of “Plum Tree,” Ruby and Nora have a conversation that seems to echo the one that Ruby had with Sally at the end of “Ruby Jewel.” What was Sally trying to say to Ruby then, and how is it different from what Ruby is trying to say to Nora now?
• In “Rate My Life,” why does Nora feel that Aaron understands her in a way that Thad doesn’t? Do you think that feeling is grounded in reality or a response to Ruby’s behavior toward Thad? At the end of the story, is Nora hoping that she will be “unforgiveable” or is she resigning herself to that fate?
• At the beginning of “Developmental Blah Blah,” Cassie wonders if little cupcakes are “too hopeful” for her husband’s fiftieth birthday party. What do you think that means? Why is it a concern for her?
• In the final paragraph of the story, Cassie watches her children sing a song to their father shortly after she has gotten in a fight with her daughter, Edith. Serber ends the story with the lines, “Cassies’s swelling heart split wide and Edith mouthed something: I love you or fuck you, or both. All Cassie knew for certain was that Edith was everything.” How do these lines fit into the book as a whole? What closure do they bring to the story and to the full collection?
Weblinks
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Read an Excerpt
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Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
“From the very first page, this extraordinary collection of short stories grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go. It is filled with poignant, thought-provoking observations on the delicate yet unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters. Serber has given readers a remarkable, heart-felt book to be savored, shared and passed on from one generation to another.” —Anderson McKean, Page & Palette, Fairhope, AL “Shout Her Lovely Name joins the ranks of the finest books ever to address relations between daughters and their mothers —equal parts love and sandpaper. I ached for these characters and cried at their hard-earned moments of joy. A book to make you marvel that someone really does understand, to make you grateful that she wrote it all down so fiercely, so tenderly.” —Robin Black, author of If I Loved You I Would Tell You ThisBook Club Recommendations
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