Family History
by Dani Shapiro
List Price: $23.00
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 1400032113
Publisher: Anchor Books
Rachel Jensen seems to have it all: a husband she adores, challenging work in art restoration, a beloved teenage daughter, and a new baby on the way. But when Rachel's delivery of her infant son turns dangerous and frightening, requiring an emergency caesarean, her daughter, Kate, rushes out of the hospital alone—one of the first indications that something is not right with Kate's state of mind. After Rachel comes home with the baby, Josh, all seems well enough until he is badly injured in a fall from Kate's arms while she is taking care of him. Soon Rachel's happy marriage has collapsed; Kate has been placed in a school for emotionally unstable adolescents, and normal family life seems a distant memory. Set in a small Massachusetts town, Family History is about a family spiraling toward disintegration, the terrible force of guilt in children, and a mother's nightmarish realization that she cannot protect her own child.
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1. The novel is told from Rachel's point of view. Judging from her character as she presents it, is Rachel a good person? What does she want for herself and for her family? What kind of a mother is she?
2. In Dr. Zelman's office, Ned and Rachel are asked for information about their families' psychiatric history. Rachel admits that her mother has a "narcissistic personality disorder" and begins to feel panic: "It was if an invisible hand had seized me by the throat and forced me to swallow the ugliest possible truth. I came from a sick and faulty genetic line and had passed it all down to my daughter" (p. 134). Judging from her mother's and her daughter's behavior, do Rachel's worries about this possibility seem justified?
3. Why does Ned move out? Does he assume that Rachel believes Kate's accusation that he sexually abused her? How does Ned come across as a father and as a husband?
4. Comment on the novel's structure and on Shapiro's decision to disrupt the narrative chronology. What is the effect of this style of revealing what has happened to the family?
5. Family History engages the question of how we become who we are, and how much control we have over our lives, considering our genetic inheritance. When pregnant with Kate, Rachel thinks, "How could anything good come out of me, when I came from this angry messed-up woman?" (p. 31). Why does Rachel feel so preoccupied with what her children have received from her side of the family, when Ned does not? Does Rachel worry too much about things she can't possibly control? Or is the problem that a mother can't help but feel that she has to control everything that affects the lives of her family?
6. How have Kate's troubles exacerbated the stressful aspects of Ned and Rachel's marriage? Rachel says, "Even during the best of times, the subject of Ned's work was the no-man's-land of our marriage" (p. 70). Was moving to a small town, and away from the art world, the wrong decision for both of them?
7. Learning that Kate has been hurt in a fight with another girl at Stone Mountain, Rachel thinks, "We don't know our daughter. How is it possible? I could find her if I were blindfolded in a room of a hundred girls, but I don't know what's going on inside her" (p. 71). How accurately does the novel depict the confusion and bewilderment of parents whose child is going through a rocky adolescence?
8. Rachel makes it clear that her mother is impossible to deal with, a person who oversteps boundaries and doesn't respect her daughter's privacy. Would Rachel be justified in cutting off contact with her mother? What would be gained, and what lost, from such a decision?
9. Judging from Kate's description of the accident on the stairs (pp. 152–64) and her emotional state during the scene at the hospital, does it seem possible that she is concealing the truth about what happened? Or, on the contrary, is it clear that what happened was purely accidental? Does this issue remain ambiguous? If so, why?
10. How accurate is Liza's comment that Rachel and Ned shouldn't worry so much about money? Is Liza's philosophy of living "as if" a useful one (p. 177)? Is it better, for Ned and Rachel, to have financial security or fulfilling work? Might Ned and Rachel have been happier if they had taken more risks?
11. Rachel reflects, "You can live a good life, be the best mother and wife you know how to be, and still it can explode all around you" (p. 251). What particular insights does Family History offer about motherhood and the kind of inner strength being a mother requires?
12. Discuss the significance of the paintings Rachel finds in the barn (pp. 199–203). What is the meaning of Ned's new style and subject matter? What role do the paintings play in bringing Ned and Rachel back together?
13. Kate's actions leave her parents in the unusual position of having to forgive their daughter for the extensive damage she has done to the family. After visiting Kate at Stone Mountain, Rachel realizes, "I was furious with her, angry beyond comprehension . . . the truest test of unconditional maternal love was being exacted upon me" (p. 159). How well does Rachel perform in this test?
14. What does the final chapter suggest about the future of the family? Why do Ned and Rachel change their minds and decide to leave Kate at Stone Mountain for a while longer? How hopeful an ending does the novel offer?
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"This gripping narrative has the deeply felt emotional fidelity of a true story; it's a book readers will finish in one sitting. The physicality of Rachel's maternal love—the need of a mother to touch her child, to feel it breathe—is almost palpable. Shapiro writes luminously about marital love and contented domestic routines, and with brutal insight about the corrosive misery of guilt and shame. Crafted with assurance, this novel holds a mirror to contemporary life."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"From the first page to the last, Family History is virtually impossible to put down: a beautifully structured, tightly woven exploration of the mysteries of adolescent pain, and the brutal efficiency with which a crisis can engulf a family and transform it into something unrecognizable."
—Jennifer Egan
"No family is ever entirely fathomed, even by itself–the map must be drawn new each time. In Family History, Dani Shapiro trains her abundant gifts as a writer on one family struggling at the brink of dissolution, and the map she so powerfully draws is heartbreaking, and impossible to turn away from."
—John Burnham Schwartz
"Dani Shapiro has the gift. That a book as harrowing as Family History can be such a pageturner is testimony to the primal power of storytelling and the saving grace of art."
—David Gates
"Few novels demonstrate the worth of and need for family in the way that this one does. None have made me more aware of its ongoing fragility. To read Family History is to understand in the most visceral of ways that nothing in our closest relationships can ever be taken for granted. And though that realization might make you uncomfortable, it will also make you deeply grateful for the blessings that you enjoy."
—Elizabeth Berg
"Dani Shapiro has written powerfully and lovingly about that most complicated, interesting, and dangerous of subjects, the family."
—Roxanna Robinson
"A bona fide page turner . . . a poised, absorbing book . . . Shapiro describes the cold new world Rachel and her husband inhabit in graceful and nuanced prose."
—Emily White, New York Times
"One of those books most readers will finish in one sitting . . . because it is so intense you can't take a break. In gripping, moving prose, Shapiro reminds us of any family's essential fragility, but also of the tenacious strength of love."
—Linnea Lannon, Detroit Free Press
"Riveting."
—Harper's Bazaar
"Shapiro has both a best-selling writer's instinct for plot and pacing and a fine literary sensibility . . . a powerful, penetrating illumination of the hidden agendas and consequences of family relationships."
—Lisa Shea, Elle
"Absorbing . . . elegantly written, wry and unsettling."
—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
