Family and Other Accidents
by Shari Goldhagen
List Price: $14.00
Pages: 272
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0767925882
Publisher: Random House
Separated by a decade and 200 points on their SAT scores, Jack and Connor Reed have a life in the Cleveland suburbs held together by spit and Chinese takeout. With his self-absorbed, over-the-hill parents dead by his twenty-fifth birthday, Jack has abandoned his own plans and returned to his parents’ house where he works marathon hours at his late father’s law firm, beds young paralegals, and throws money and advice at his teenage brother. Connor meanwhile wants nothing more than to leave the Midwest, start a family early, and do everything the way his parents didn’t. But over the years, through the car crashes and bad breakups, the illnesses and illicit affairs, both realize that while circumstances are sometimes beyond control, there are always choices to be made.
Family and Other Accidents tells the story of these brothers from their viewpoints as well as from those of their girlfriends, wives, and children. It is a story of what it means to be a family, to love unconditionally in the face of confusion, anger, and regret. Shari Goldhagen’s debut is a finely nuanced, universally resonant portrait of the ties, however strange or awkward, that bind families together through the decades.
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1. What do you imagine the relationship between Connor and Jack was like when both of their parents were alive? What about when only their mother was alive?
2. What does this title mean? What “accidents” happen, and do you agree that they are accidents? Or are Jack and Connor fully in control of their destinies regardless of their pasts?
3. Where do you think the climax of the novel occurs and why? Do Jack and Connor ever reach any understandings about each other? If so, what might some of those understandings be?
4. What motivates Jack’s and Connor’s infidelities? Are those motivations the same or different?
5. What effect does the irregular passage of time between chapters have on the plot? Why did the author write it this way instead of in a straightforward, linear way? Similiarly, what effect do the multiple narrators have on the movement of the plot?
6. Jack and Connor view themselves as very different people, but in what ways are they more similar than they think? In what ways are they truly different?
7. By the end of the novel, Jack and Connor have one son and two daughters, respectively. In what ways does the next generation of Reeds carry on the family traditions and the characteristics of their parents?
8. The author gives Mona, Laine, and Kathy the opportunity to narrate chapters and give their perspectives. How do the narrative, plot, and perspectives differ from Jack’s and Connor’s when the women are given the narrative power?
9. How do you think that Mona and Laine feel about each other? About the other’s marriage?
10. What changes Jorie’s perspective at the end of the novel? Is it just fear or a genuine maturing? Can you speculate on what happens in each of the other characters’ lives after the last page of the novel?
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“This novel of brotherly love—of brothers, of their loves, of their lovers—explores the intersection of domestic urgencies and erotic requirements. The dialogue is witty, the sex is constant, and the wounded, small child inside each character is persuasively wrought. Shari Goldhagen’s writing is sympathetic and smart.”
—Frederick Busch,
author of North and
The Night Inspector
“Jack and Connor are by turns joyous and sad, wise and foolish, fragile and tough, kind and mean, even cruel—but they are always human, always fresh, always surprising, always lovable even when we least want to love them.”
—Bill Roorbach,
author of The Smallest Color
and Big Bend
“Shari Goldhagen has the sharp eye and the keen ear—not to mention the generous heart—to make these characters’ stories ours.”
—Lee Abbott,
author of All Things, All At Once
and Love Is the Crooked Thing
“Goldhagen illuminates with some of the deftest, unchillingly ironic, emotionally complex, understated, subtly tender, winning writer I have ever read.”
—Michelle Herman,
author of Dog
