Days of Awe (Fox)

Days of Awe 
Lauren Fox, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
262 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307268129


Summary
Days of Awe is the story of a woman who, in the wake of her best friend’s sudden death, must face the crisis in her marriage, the fury of her almost-teenage daughter, and the possibility of opening her cantankerous heart to someone new.

Only a year ago Isabel Moore was married, was the object of adoration for her ten-year-old daughter, and thought she knew everything about her wild, extravagant, beloved best friend, Josie.

But in that one short year her husband moved out and rented his own apartment; her daughter grew into a moody insomniac; and Josie—impulsive, funny, secretive Josie—was killed behind the wheel in a single-car accident. As the relationships that long defined Isabel—wife, mother, daughter, best friend—change before her eyes, Isabel must try to understand who she really is.

Teeming with longing, grief, and occasional moments of wild, unexpected joy, Days of Awe is a daring, dazzling book—a luminous exploration of marriage, motherhood, and the often surprising shape of new love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976
• Where—Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Minnesota
• Currently—lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin


Lauren Fox is the author of Days of Awe (2015), Friends Like Us (2012), and Still Life with Husband (2007). She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota in 1998, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Seventeen, Glamour, and Salon. She lives in Milwaukee with her husband and two daughters. (From the publisher.)

Visit the author's website.

Book Reviews
What's wonderful about reading a novelist's books in back-to-back sequence is that you witness the writer grow not gradually, but seemingly overnight.... Fox's latest novel, Days of Awe...treads on new territory: parenthood, loss and death.... Fox paints touching portraits of the bonds between mothers and daughters. Helene has a wonderful verve.... Iz wins the reader's sympathy by continually putting herself out there.... Careful and nuanced.
Patricia Park - New York Times Book Review


Darkly hilarious…. Fox is a master of emotional misdirection, and what she presents here tastes like carbonated grief, an elixir of sorrow gassed up with her nervous humor… With Days of Awe, Fox has created a winding internal monologue as Isabel tries to catch her bearings in a world that suddenly seems out of kilter…. Leavened with wry silliness that fans will remember from Fox’s previous novels, Friends Like Us and Still Life with Husband… [Isabel is] an extremely endearing narrator, the kind of woman who makes straight-faced jokes that her uptight colleagues don’t get, and then feels both superior and mortified…. There are veins of Anne Lamott running through these pages, a sweet blend of sentimentality and wit… And Fox is a great comic on the subject of aging, too. Her narrator wears sweatpants that are "a blend of cotton and self-loathing." She could be channeling Nora Ephron…. Surprisingly buoyant.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


The hands of time stop for no one, not even Lauren Fox. With each new novel, the characters of this irrepressibly comedic chronicler of friendship, marriage and romantic foibles among white Milwaukeean Generation X-ers advance and mature in concert with their author. And yet her prose remains as fresh as if it spritzed from the wordsmith’s fountain of youth. With Days of Awe, however, Fox’s insouciance is tempered by an omnipresent awareness of "that cold lick of mortality...." The fearlessness with which Fox frees her women to behave badly heightens both the credibility and the pleasure of her fiction.
Jan Stuart - Boston Globe


As Fox deconstructs the myth of perfect womanhood, her humor and humanity remind us that love’s the only lifeboat through grief. (Book of the Week)
People


Days of Awe will keep you reading… Fox's previous novels, Still Life With Husband and Friends Like Us,  were celebrated for witty and intelligent examinations of friendship and marriage. Days of Awe is no exception.
Mary Ann Grossman - St. Paul Pioneer Press  


Her latest work explores the ever-shifting landscape of a woman in her 40s with the same sly humor and snappy dialogue that has made Fox one of my favorite novelists to recommend… Days of Awe is an examination of grief and how one can move past it, or at least make it through each day without succumbing to its persistent demands.
Meganne Fabrega - Minneapolis Star Tribune


Lauren Fox ... takes women who are falling apart and pulls wit, snark, pith, and occasional insight out of them. No contemporary novelist makes me stop as often to mark or admire one of her sentences. Plenty of people can write limpid or fancy prose, but Fox ladles out one flavorful reduction ... after another.... Days of Awe draws its title from the period of the solemn introspection urged upon Jews between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, though Fox's narrator, Isabel Applebaum Moore, also experiences gentler moments of wonder and appreciation.... Were Days of Awe the pilot script for a TV series, elderly actresses would throw elbows to audition for Helene... Poignant.
Jim Higgins - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


[A] tale about a woman’s attempt to piece her life together following the death of her best friend.... Isabel’s nuanced character is relatable—her struggles are universal and the reader will root for her to succeed. Raw and darkly humorous at times, Fox’s novel is a winner.
Publishers Weekly


An insightful novel by Lauren Fox that explores how grief can make every arena of life feel suddenly disorienting… Humor brings levity to Fox's frank, thought-provoking story that adds surprising depth and meaning, layer upon layer, page by page… Fox once again explores, with a smart and refreshing perspective, the underside of friendships, marriage, love and loss—and the range of emotions that can plague and liberate the human heart.
Kathleen Gerard - Shelf Awareness


[Fox] has such an offbeat way of looking at things that you'll eagerly keep reading just to see what she's going to say next. Read it for the magnetic voice and Fox's ever interesting perspective on work, love, friendship, and parenthood—because, really, what else is there?
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. This novel touches on multiple themes—friendship, marriage, loyalty and betrayal, parenting, responsibility, and blame. Which emerges as the most important? What larger points is the author making?

2. What does the title mean?

3. Before Josie’s funeral, Mark tells Isabel that his wife’s death is his fault. She thinks, "Of course it was his fault. And it was my fault, and possibly Chris’s, and most definitely Josie’s, and some other people’s faults, too: we were all guilty, to varying degrees..." (page 4) Why does Isabel believe this? How were they responsible?

4. Josie’s death ripples through the relationships of her friends and family, whose lives change dramatically in the following year. How does one event set so much in motion?

5. Discuss the episode at the Lake Kass Wetlands Preserve. Why does Isabel think, "Some darkness descended on Josie that weekend, and it never quite lifted"? (page 63)

6. Josie’s theory of art: "...when you see a work of art flipped on its side, you ask questions of it that wouldn’t have occurred to you otherwise." (page 77) How does this figure into what happens after her death?

7. When Mark tells Isabel he’s dating one of the Andes, why does she take it as such a betrayal?

8. Discuss Isabel’s relationship with Hannah. Why doesn’t she notice that Hannah isn’t sleeping?

9. The concept of loss weaves through the novel—Josie’s death, Isabel’s miscarriages, Helene’s family in the Holocaust. Helene would say, "The worst has already happened to us." (page 103) How do these losses influence Isabel?

10. What do we learn about Cal when he takes Isabel on a visit to his mother? What do we learn about Isabel?

11. When Josie confesses her relationship with Alex, Isabel immediately takes Mark’s side. Why? How does this affect her friendship with Josie?

12. During a session of couple’s therapy, Chris says to Isabel, "You’re not who I thought you were." (page 157) What does he mean? What has Josie’s death revealed?

13. After Isabel suggests that Cal take her back to his place, why does she change her mind? What is she afraid of?

14. Mark and Andi’s holiday party marks a turning point in several relationships. How might things have gone differently if Isabel had subdued her discomfort?

15. Why does Isabel meet with Alex? What does she learn from his story about Josie threatening to tell his wife?

16. In retrospect, Isabel recognizes several signs that Josie was unraveling: calling a student a bitch, stealing a coat, bringing a rum-laced soda to school. If she had put the pieces together sooner, what might she have done?

17. When Hannah asks to move in with Chris for a while, why does Isabel say no? Why does Hannah accept that decision so readily?

18. Does the idea that Josie committed suicide make sense to you? Why does it suddenly occur to Isabel?

19. Is Cal "the kind of person who would hide us in an attic"? (page 45)

20. The novel closes: "It’s a shock of nerves, embarrassed thrill, and it is also the saddest story I’ve ever heard. It sounds like this: goodbye, goodbye, goodbye." (page 256) What does this mean?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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