My Russian
by Deirdre McNamer
List Price: $14.00
Pages: 278
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0345439511
Publisher: Ballantine
While her family thinks she is vacationing in Greece, Francesca Woodbridge-
disguised by the wig, the dress, and the limp of an elderly woman - checks
into a local hotel just blocks from her home. The reason for her deceit
is twofold: to step outside of her life and observe it from a distance
and to watch the comings and goings in her neighborhood for clues to potential
suspects in her husband's shooting.
Ever since the night her husband Ren was wounded by an intruder's gun, Francesca has felt uneasy in their
marriage and resentful of how Ren has changed over the years. Now, as
an undercover spy on her own life, she scans her history in her unsparing,
sometimes darkly funny search for clarity - from the idealistic days of
college when she first fell in love, through the quiet disappointments
that have collected in the depths of her soul, to her recent, unexpected,
passionate affair with her Russian gardener, Yuri, whose sudden, unexplainable
disappearance leads her to question just who she has become. As she seeks
an answer, she meets people she could never have known in her "real" life
and views people she thought she knew as strangers. As she reveals who
shot her husband, she is forced to see herself in a bold, new, and entirely
unexpected light . . .
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1. Reviews of My Russian have praised McNamer's portrait of Francesca
as being one of "the most original" explorations of a woman's mid-life
crisis in recent fiction. What are some of the elements that make her
such an original creation?
2. "Who shot Ren?" is one of the central questions that carries the plot forward. Were you
surprised to learn who did it?
3. Look back and examine the passages in which McNamer alludes to the possible culprits
who shot Ren. How does she lead you to think it is someone other than
the person it turns out to be while not technically "deceiving" the reader?
4. By the end of the novel, we learn who shot Ren and whether Francesca will assume a new
identity or embrace her old one. What does Francesca learn by the end
of the book?
5. What roles do the elements and the natural world play in this novel? How are they woven
into the plot and themes of the book?
6. Many of McNamer's characters mark time with historical events; their lives and perceptions
are changed significantly by some of these events. In what ways have the
events she describes–or any of similar magnitude–altered your
life or your outlook on life?
7. If Francesca decides to fake her death and assume a new identity, she will have to forfeit
her role as a mother. Can you recall other novels, recent or historical,
in which women entertain the possibility of "unbecoming" mothers, or in
which women actually abandon their children?
8. Though Francesca's Russian gardener has a relatively small role in the actual text, why is
My Russian an appropriate title?
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"McNamer writes with extraordinary emotional acuity and with a keen sense of the small detail that says it all. . . . Quietly devastating."—Chicago Tribune
