They May Not Mean To, But They Do (Schine)

They May Not Mean To, But They Do 
Catherine Schine, 2016
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374280130


Summary
From one of America’s greatest comic novelists, a hilarious new novel about aging, family, loneliness, and love

The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don’t just grow, they grow old, and the clan’s matriarch, Joy, is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would have wished.

When Joy’s beloved husband dies, Molly and Daniel have no shortage of solutions for their mother’s loneliness and despair, but there is one challenge they did not count on: the reappearance of an ardent suitor from Joy’s college days. And they didn’t count on Joy herself, a mother suddenly as willful and rebellious as their own kids.

Cathleen Schine has been called "full of invention, wit, and wisdom that can bear comparison to [ Jane] Austen’s own" (The New York Review of Books), and she is at her best in this intensely human, profound, and honest novel about the intrusion of old age into the relationships of one loving but complicated family.

They May Not Mean To, But They Do is a radiantly compassionate look at three generations, all coming of age together. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Where—Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Currently—lives in New York City and Venice, California

In her own words:
I tried to be a medieval historian, but I have no memory for facts, dates, or abstract ideas, so that was a bust. When I came back to New York, I tried to be a buyer at Bloomingdale's because I loved shopping. I had an interview, but they never called me back. I really had no choice. I had to be a writer. I could not get a job.

After doing some bits of freelance journalism at the Village Voice, I did finally get a job as a copy editor at Newsweek. My grammar was good, but I can't spell, so it was a challenge. My boss was very nice and indulgent, though, and I wrote Alice in Bed on scraps of paper during slow hours. I didn't have a regular job again until I wrote The Love Letter.

The Love Letter was about a bookseller, so I worked in a bookstore in an attempt to understand the art of bookselling. I discovered that selling books is an interdisciplinary activity, the disciplines being: literary critic, psychologist, and stevedore. I was fired immediately for total incompetence and chaos and told to sit in the back and observe, no talking, no touching.

I dislike humidity and vomit, I guess. My interests and hobbies are too expensive or too physically taxing to actually pursue. I like to take naps. I go shopping to unwind. I love to shop. Even if it's for Q-Tips or Post-Its.

When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:

When I left graduate school after a gruesome attempt to become a medieval historian, I crawled into bed and read Our Mutual Friend. It was, unbelievably, the first Dickens I had ever read, the first novel I'd read in years, and one of the first books not in or translated from Latin I'd read in years. It was a startling, liberating, exhilarating moment that reminded me what English can be, what characters can be, what humor can be. I of course read all of Dickens after that and then started on Trollope, who taught me the invaluable lesson that character is fate, and that fate is not always a neat narrative arc.

But I always hesitate to claim the influence of any author: It seems presumptuous. I want to be influenced by Dickens and Trollope. I long to be influenced by Jane Austen, too, and Barbara Pym and Alice Munro. I aspire to be influenced by Randall Jarrell's brilliant novel, Pictures from an Institution. And I read Muriel Spark when I feel myself becoming soft and sentimental, as a kind of tonic. (From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview.)

Book Reviews
…combines black comedy with shrewd observation of family dynamics…Joy is a persuasive character, intelligent, independent, with a flair for witty responses and wry thoughts, though in fact everyone in Schine's narrative is given to sharp comment and occasionally manic behavior. Despite its subject matter, They May Not Mean To, but They Do is a very funny novel…Cathleen Schine writes with economy and style—saying most by saying least, employing brief staccato sentences, with much of the action unfolding by way of dialogue. Some readers might feel that too much levity surrounds some disturbing matters…But others will see this as a proper form of defiance, the best way to face down the most disagreeable of circumstances. This is a novel in which serious subjects are treated with a deliberately light touch, a tactic that doesn't imply insensitivity or lack of empathy but simply accepts the fact that humor may be the best way of dealing with the unavoidable.
Penelope Lively - New York Times Book Review


Cathleen Schine [is] one of our most realistically imaginative, dependably readable novelists.... [H]er ten books comprise a sly, illuminating corpus that seems more related to the English comic novel than to most contemporary American fiction. [S]hapely and precisely structured... ruefully satiric... buoyant... sharply observant.... Her tenth and newest novel... cuts deeper, feels fuller and more ambitious, and seems to me her best.
Phillip Lopate - New York Review of Books


A seamless blend of humor and heartbreak
Miami Herald


Schine has a gift for transforming the pathos and comedy of everyday life into luminous fiction.
Entertainment Weekly


With its unexpected moments of profundity and laugh-aloud humor, Cathleen Schine’s novel movingly demonstrates how parents and children may not mean to but they do, ultimately, strain yet sustain one another.
Lilith Magazine


Schine’s latest novel combines the dark, pithy humor of a Lorrie Moore short story with quieter insights into aging, death, and the love, loneliness, and incomprehension that gets passed back and forth between generations.
Tablet


[A]droit observations about family, loss, and aging....showcasing Schine’s intuitive empathy, and any adult with an aged parent will recognize [Joy's] children’s well-meaning concern. Unfortunately, the ending peters out without a real conclusion.
Publishers Weekly


Schine is a master at limning family dynamics in all their messiness.... [T]his could be any reader’s clan. In addition, Schine’s ability to shift seamlessly from one person’s point of view to another’s adds depth and richness. —Andrea Kempf, formerly Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal


A deeply affecting yet very funny intergenerational novel...the novel is as humorous as it is compassionate.... They May Not Mean To, But They Do has an extra layer of depth and dignity, making for a profound but very readable novel that is among her very best.
BookPage


"It's hard to be an old Jew," as one of the characters comments, and it's not so exciting to read about them, either. If this is the beginning of a tsunami of books about aging by baby-boomer authors, let's hope things pick up.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How do the aging parents described in the novel compare to your relatives? Who will your longterm caregivers be when you’re not able to care for yourself?

2. Aaron is "sentimental and unreliable and brimming with love and obvious charm," while Joy is"distracted, forgetful, thoughtful, brimming with love, too." How were Molly and Daniel affected by having lovebirds for parents? In their own marriages, and as parents themselves, are Molly and Daniel very different from their parents?

3. As Aaron and Duncan lose their grip on reality, which one fares better?

4. What is the ultimate role of Walter, Wanda, and Elvira? How does Joy navigate the fact that they are paid workers, yet they are performing deeply personal work for a family that has become attached to them?

5. Cathleen Schine is a master of tragicomedy. Which scenes made you laugh out loud, inappropriately?

6. Where should Freddie and Coco fit into the decision-making for their in-laws? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being on the fringes of a family in crisis?

7. Is "selling Upstate" the best solution to Joy’s financial conundrum? Should children help pay for their parents' retirement?

8. How does Joy’s life as a museum conservator reflect her perception of the past?

9. Chapter 41 is just two sentences long: "Daniel asked his mother if she was depressed. She said, 'Naturally.' " What do these seemingly simple sentences say about the nature of grief?

10. How do you predict Ben, Cora, and Ruby will treat their aging parents?

11. Would you have said yes to Karl’s proposition, even if it meant giving up a rent-controlled apartment?

12. In the closing scene, as Joy helps Ben with a legal situation, why does she finally feel at home? What does she want her purpose in life to be?

13. In the last paragraph of chapter 20, Joy turns the Philip Larkin lines cited in the epigraph on their head; in her version, "they" refers to the children, not the parents. What do her children mean to do, and why do they create such havoc for her?

14. In each of her novels, which portraits of companionship and solitude does Cathleen Schine create? How do her characters tolerate loneliness, and each other?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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