Introduction

On the surface, sixteen-year-old Lesley Holloway is just another bright new student at Hawthorn Hill, a posh all-girls’ prep school north of London. Little do her classmates know that she recently ran away from home, where her father had spent years sexually abusing her. Nor does anyone know that she’s secretly cutting herself as a coping mechanism...until the day she goes too far and ends up in the hospital.

Lesley spends the next two years in and out of psychiatric facilities, where she overcomes her traumatic memories and finds the support of a surrogate family. Eventually completing university and earning her degree, she is a social services success story—until she becomes unexpectedly pregnant in her early twenties. Despite the overwhelming odds she has overcome, the same team that saved her as an adolescent will now question whether Lesley is fit to be a mother. And so she embarks upon her biggest battle yet: the fight for her unborn daughter.

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Excerpt

Have you ever wanted something so much, it’s not a desire so much as a beacon? Have you ever prayed for it so hard your fingernails curl into your palms and your eyes squinch shut and your whole body just hums?

My daughter is that simple, shining thing. Taken from me under bright lights in a white room, my stitches still raw. I fought so much they put me in hard restraints. I screamed so loudly they shot me up with sedative.

When I resurfaced, the blood had soaked through my hospital gown. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. It was as if my body was weeping for me. Just like before, only this time it wasn’t me who was making it happen. I felt floaty and exhausted. Closed my eyes.

“Come on, Les, stay awake.” Immi, shaking my tied-down arm from the left side of the bed. “Your solicitor’s going to ring soon.”

I opened my eyes again. Stared at the opposite wall’s watercolor portrait of a budding rose, its outlines like those of the mandala coloring book pages Clare and I used to fill in at The Phoenix.

Shit. Now I was crying, flapping my tethered hands in useless flail.

Behind me, I felt Gloria’s hand stroking my hair. “All right. Shh. Just try to stay calm, sweetheart.”

Yes. Calm. That was what I needed to be, so I could get unbound, so I could reach for the phone when it rang, hold it in my own grip. I’ve grown pretty used to extreme highs and lows in my twenty-two years of life, but that had to be the nadir: aspiring to have my restraints taken off, in order to take a call from my solicitor to discuss my child protection case.

They’d just untied me when he came on the line. “It’s a temporary order, not a long-term arrangement. We’ll demand full visitation rights whilst she’s being fostered. Battle this all the way to the European High Court if we have to.”

Six months later, we’re still battling. In silence. I can’t say a word to the media now, no matter how much I might want to go back on breakfast TV, no longer mild-mannered and plaintive, but a warrior mum instead. One public statement, and my face could wind up in a mugshot taken at a North London women’s prison. So I keep my mouth shut, and wait in drafty corridors, and scribble notes on my solicitor’s cast-off pads. Some of them are to him (Mention positive parenting evaluation? Ask for evening and weekend visit hours?), but most of them are for me, and for her. No sappy “Dear Daughter” missives, just fervent snippets: I want to bury my face in your fuzzy hair until the end of time. If I win, it’ll be for all of us phoenix-girls.

I hadn’t wanted to write this story down, at first. Some of it I didn’t have words for, and other bits just made me convinced I didn’t deserve her. Hardly needed more fuel for that fire, right? So I stopped for a while. But then I thought (a tiny thought, dangerous but powerful): What if we go all the way to the European High Court, and they still shake their heads and say, “No, so sorry, birthday cards and photo exchanges once a year it is, thanks very much for playing, Miss Holloway”? What of the massive silence that will descend then?

Not just massive, but final. Either I get her back at our next hearing, or I lose her forever.

I’d like to think, of course, that her adoptive parents would be sensitive and respectful, but what if they aren’t? If they put on syrupy, rueful voices and sigh, “Oh, darling, your mummy loved you so very much. She just had some . . . well, some issues with her mental health, and couldn’t take care of you properly”? You’d best believe I’m sneaking a letter into the birthday card, just in case. Not talking smack about her new mum or dad, of course. I’ve been a team player all through this (not that it’s got me anywhere), and I’m not about do anything that will make my girlie think poorly of me. I just want her to know someday, when she’s old enough, if it comes to that, that I was meant to be her mother. That, fully admitted “issues” aside, we were both robbed. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. How does Crowell use visual imagery to give the reader greater access into Lesley’s psyche? For example, how did you understand the “ceiling” metaphor?

2. Discuss the importance of music to Lesley. How does its role in her life evolve as the novel progresses? You might also consider the role of music in your own life, and how your taste or relationship to it has evolved. Have certain types of music (or certain artists or playlists) been influential to you at specific moments in time?

3. How does the trip to Russia change Lesley’s relationship with the Kremskys?

4. A poster that catches Lesley’s eye in the social services office asserts “You CAN break the cycle of violence.” What do you think this means for her– and what do you think the novel saying about the possibility for second chances? How is the past shown to reverberate into the present within the narrative? Is this necessarily a bad thing?

5. Lesley acutely experiences both dissociation and embodiment throughout the novel. Discuss some examples of these as a group. How do instances of each also serve as coping mechanisms for Lesley, and how does embodiment, in particular become a sign of growth and mechanism for her healing?

6. Turn to pages 47-48 and re-read Lesley’s analysis of self-harm, and her explanation as to why she does it. Do you think that causing deliberate physical injury to oneself, such as cutting, is different from other forms of self-inflicted harm (like addiction to harmful substances or eating disorders)? In what ways do you think we all engage in self-harm, to some degree?

7. Did Lesley challenge your assumptions about sexual identity? If so, what surprised you? Why do you think she ultimately described her sexual orientation as “queer” to Dr. Orton, rather than “bisexual”? In your discussion, you might also consider the historically fraught conflation of a minority sexual identity with mental illness (for example, the DSM-IV labeled homosexuality as deviant behavior until as late as 1974).

8. Both Gloria and Lesley find that their identity as a mother enables them, in key moments, to draw upon a deeper reserve of strength than they otherwise felt they had. Can you find these instances in the text? Regardless of whether or not you are a mother, have you ever experienced something similar?

9. Did you think that Lesley should have contacted Declan once she discovered she was pregnant? What would you have done in her situation? You might also consider Lesley’s attempt to flee the UK and travel to the United States. Did you empathize with her struggle to make that decision? Would you have taken that kind of risk?

10. Consider the women who take on maternal roles for Lesley. What is each character uniquely able to offer or teach her—and how do their influences manifest in her choices, and her own experience of motherhood? Conversely, what does Lesley offer or teach these women?

11. Aurelia and Clare are spectral presences in Lesley’s subconscious throughout the novel. Why do you feel they haunt her as vividly as they do? In particular, why do you think Lesley seems more haunted by the ghost of her mother than that of her father? You might also consider whether there are people from your past who similarly “haunt” you, and what it is about those relationships that have stayed with you.

12. For many characters in Etched on Me—Sophie, Gloria and Jascha, Lesley, even Clare’s parents—bringing a child into the world proves to be an uphill battle. Alternatively, Lesley’s parents both fail her, in critical ways. With this in mind, what do you think the novel is ultimately saying about family?

13. The British system of healthcare and social services is clearly different from that of the United States. Do you agree with Imogen that the investigation into Lesley is an example of “socialism gone awry”? Or does the case of Ainsley McIntyre, and the possibility for other, similar scenarios, justify a certain level of scrutiny towards future mothers?

Weblinks

»	Author Jenn Crowell's web site
»	Publisher's Book Info

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