What We Keep (Berg)

What We Keep
Elizabeth Berg, 1998
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345423290

Summary
In this rich new novel by beloved author Elizabeth Bert, a reunion between two sisters and their mother reveals secrets and complexities in the lives of the women in a family.

Ginny Young is on a plane, going to visit the mother she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she was twelve years old and a series of dramatic events divided her family, separating her and her sister from their mother, seemingly forever.

Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny confronts painful choices in a woman's life—even as surprising secrets are revealed about the family she thought she understood. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1948
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—A.A.S, St. Mary’s College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois


Before she became a writer, Elizabeth Berg spent 10 years as a nurse. It's a field, as she says on her website, that helped her to become a writer:

Taking care of patients taught me a lot about human nature, about hope and fear and love and loss and regret and triumph and especially about relationships—all things that I tend to focus on in my work.

Her sensitivity to humanity is what Berg's writing is noted for. As Publishers Weekly wrote in reviewing The Dream Lover, her 2015 portrayal of George Sand, "Berg offers vivid, sensual detail and a sensitive portrayal of the yearning and vulnerability" behind her main character.

Background
Berg was born in St. Paul Minneapolis. When her father re-enlisted in the Army, she and her family were moved from base to base—in one single year, she went to three different schools. Her peripatetic childhood makes it hard for Berg to answer the usually simple question, "where did you grow up?"

Berg recalls that she loved to write at a young age. She was only nine when she submitted her first poem to American Girl magazine; sadly, it was rejected. It was another 25 years before she submitted anything again—to Parents Magazine—and that time she won.

In addition to nursing, Berg worked as a waitress, another field she claims is "good training for a writer." She also sang in a rock band.

Writing
Berg ended up writing for magazines for 10 years before she finally turned to novels. Since her 1993 debut with Durable Goods, her books have sold in large numbers and been translated into 27 languages. She writes nearly a book a year, a number of which have received awards and honors.

Recognition
Two of Berg's books, Durable Goods and Joy School, were listed as "Best Books of the Year" by the American Library Association. Open House became an Oprah Book Club Selection.

She won the New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, and Boston Public Library made her a "literary light." She has also been honored by the Chicago Public Library. An article on a cooking school in Italy, for National Geographic Traveler magazine, won an award from the North American Travel Journalists Association.

Personal
Now divorced, Berg was married for over twenty years and has two daughters and three grandchildren. She lives with her dogs and a cat in Chicago. (Author bio adapted from the author's website.)

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Book Reviews
Beautifully written.... [Ginny Young] crosses the country for a reluctant reunion with the mother she has not seen in 35 years. During the long hours of her flight, she returns in memory to the summer when she turned 12 and her family turned inside out.... What We Keep is about ties that are buried but not broken, wounds that are dressed but never heal, and love that changes form but somehow survives,
USA Today

Compelling... Reading [this] book is like having an intimate conversation with a friend who is baring her soul.”
Charleston Post and Courier

Berg knows the hearts of her characters intimately, showing them with compassion, humor, and an illuminating generosity.
The Seattle Times

"I don't like my mother. She's not a good person." So declares Ginny Young on a trip to California to visit her mother, Marion, whom she hasn't seen in 35 years. Ginny is only making the trip as a favor to her sister, Sharla, who has called to say she's awaiting the results of a cancer test. In flashback, Berg (Talk Before Sleep) revisits the events of the girls' childhood and the moments when their mother's problems began to reveal themselves. One night, Ginny and Sharla overhear their mother screaming at their father about her unhappiness and telling him that she never wanted children. Then she walks out with no explanations, returning briefly a few months later to explain that she's not coming back. The following years bring occasional visits that are impossibly painful for all concerned and so full of buried anger that the girls decide to curtail them altogether. When Sharla meets Ginny (now a mother herself) at the airport, and the two see their mother again, there are surprises in store, but not especially shocking ones. The reader, in fact, may feel there is less here than meets the eye: Marion's flight is never made psychologically credible. Berg's customary skill in rendering domestic details is intact, but the story seems stitched together. Crucial scenes feel highlighted rather than fleshed out, and Ginny's bitterness disappears into thin air as she reaches a facile, sentimental conclusion about her mother's needs.
Publishers Weekly

Berg excels at writing novels about the close personal relationships between women. As this new work opens, Ginny is flying to California to join her sister in a meeting with their mother, whom neither daughter has seen for 35 years. Ginny uses her travel time to reflect upon her memories of the summer when her mother withdrew from the family and became an outsider in her daughters' lives. Berg's precise, evocative descriptions create vivid images of Ginny's physical world, while Berg's understanding and perception are an eloquent testimony to Ginny's emotional turmoil. Berg cleverly examines the roles and relationships of mothers and daughters and reveals how truth, forgiveness, and understanding are possible in healing intergenerational rifts between women. Highly recommended. —Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Ontario
Library Journal

The prolific Berg's fifth novel pays an unremarkable visit to that overworked territory where mothers and daughters visit to blame and explain, this time in the story of a daughter on her way to meet the mother she hasnþt seen for 35 years. Berg has an easy style and good ear, which makes for agreeable storytelling, but, here, the story itself is less impressive. The trouble is that the plot fails to seem plausible or compelling, draining the emotion from what a supposedly dramatic meeting, with attendant explanatory revelations, of a mother and her two estranged daughters. The narrative is told in flashbacks younger daughter Ginny as she flies to San Francisco. There, she joins sister Sharla, who has persuaded Ginny to come along only by hinting that sheþs terminally ill and wants to make her peace with their mother. As for Mother, she seems a parody of a 1950s Mom: baking from scratch, dressing immaculately, even hosting a Tupperware party. Dad's also a stereotypeþa well-meaning man who works hard at a boring job, but isnþt sensitive (he doesn't get it, for instance, that his wife wants to go dancing). The two girls are happy, though: They love Mom's cooking and the way she helps them create nifty projects. And yet one summer, when glamorous free spirit Jasmine, allegedly on the run from her rich but abusive husband, moves next door, their lives fall apart. Mom gets restless and decides to leave Dad and the girls to become an artist. Which she does, and isn't forgiven until they all meet up again, realizing then just how unhappy Mom was. But why Mom had to make so extreme a gesture is never persuasively explained. An easy read, but intellectually and emotionally lite-fare, despite the suggestions of profundity ("I now believe we owe our mothers and our daughters the truth").
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. Ginny possesses an extraordinary memory. In fact, she suggests that, through memory, "I become again the person I was then" (page 10) and thus captures a "true vision of the past" (page 11). What is a "true vision of the past"? Is it Ginny's twelve-year-old vision? Is it her adult vision? Does Ginny's effort to remember the past cause her to think about it differently?

2. Berg dedicates What We Keep to "women who risk telling the hard truths." What do you think of Martha Hamilton, the passenger on Ginny's flight who asks Ginny some very hard questions and makes a few tough statements? Does Martha push Ginny closer to "telling the hard truths"?

3. Martha notes that people like "differentness" (page 26) in everything except their mothers. What does Martha mean? Do you agree?

4. Throughout the novel Ginny suggests that she knows her mother intimately. In fact, Ginny's early fantasy about discovering her mother's "link with royalty" (page 17) suggests that Ginny knows her mother better than Marion knows herself. Why is this knowledge so important to Ginny?

5. When Sharla dreams that Marion has a third eye, Ginny expects that Marion will comfort Sharla: "Never mind the dream; no matter what it was, she would take it away" (page 105). Why is this dream so startling? Is Marion able to comfort her daughter? Why or why not?

6. Knowing, in retrospect, that neither shenor Sharla knew Marion as well as they thought, Ginny feels that her mother should have attempted to communicate with them that summer: "To say something about what she must have been thinking" (page 85). However, the narrative is full of moments in which Marion tries to tell her daughters about herself only to be interrupted or ignored. Stories of past boyfriends (page 66) and hints of Marion's own desires (page 89) are constantly squelched by Ginny and Sharla's demands. Why didn't the daughters listen? Why couldn't Marion communicate with her daughters successfully?

7. After her first long absence, Marion tries to tell her daughters about her experience. From the moment of its "odd beginning" (page 209), it's a story Ginny doesn't like. Marion isn't, Ginny suggests, a very good storyteller: "She would make up stories that were not very good, as this one was not" (page 211). Finally, Ginny interrupts her mother's story for another: "'I have so much history, ' I said. 'My teacher, Mr. Stoltz, he's nuts. He thinks all we have in our lives is history'" (page 214). Why is the word "history" emphasized in this way? What does Marion's story have to do with Ginny's "history"? Why does Ginny think her mother is a bad storyteller? What do you think of Marion's storytelling?

8. What We Keep is full of descriptions of houses. Ginny and Sharla sneak through Mrs. O'Donnell's dusty, empty rooms, and rifle through Jasmine's drawers. Both daughters are aware of Marion's "house folder" (page 87), and offer opinions about her furniture rearrangements (page 88), her Clear Falls apartment (page 225), and her California home (page 259). What is the significance of these spaces?

9. Marion appears to be the typical 1950s housekeeper—at ease in an apron, involved in the weekly neighborhood coffee klatch, a willing Tupperware party hostess. However, she seems to transform the ordinary meaning of even these events. For instance, why does Marion host a Tupperware party on her birthday? Why are her daughters so startled by this decision? What significance does her action have in their minds? In her own mind? In yours?

10. In what ways is Jasmine different from Marion? In what ways is she similar? How do you feel towards Jasmine initially? How do you feel about her at the conclusion of the novel? How responsible do you hold Jasmine for Marion's decisions?

11. Marion gives her daughters paintings for the first Christmas they spend apart. Ginny receives a painting of mother and child. Sharla receives a painting of a bird. What stories do these paintings tell? How are they related?

12. Sharla says that her painting "doesn't make any sense" (page 245), but the image of the bird certainly has meaning for Marion. Ginny realizes during her own flight to meet her mother that Marion freed the family parakeet, Lucky, during that summer (page 141). Ginny also remembers the moment in which she and Wayne witnessed Marion "flapping her arms like wings, and walking about in circles" (page 153), as well as the afternoon during which her Parents constructed collages with wings and airplanes. What meaning did these images hold for Marion?

13. Our earliest introduction to Ginny's father comes through her memories of him. How do you feel about Steven? Does Marion's story alter your feelings about him? Consider Steven's defense of Marion's absence: "I believe she thinks she has reasons" (page 241). Consider his silence when confronted with Sharla's conviction of her mother's lesbianism: "'What did he say?' I asked, and Sharla said, 'Nothing. He must have known'" (page 246). Do you think that his statement and his silence are defensible or not? Do you think he's a good father?

14. Wayne is the only other significant man in Ginny's life that summer. While Ginny feels a constant affection for her father, her feelings toward Wayne are rather ambivalent. She doesn't want her relationship with Wayne reduced to a "that-summer-at-the-lake story, " but suggests herself that she was acting out of a "pied-piper delirium" (page 165). Why does she describe her relationship with Wayne so ambivalently? Why is she relieved when he leaves so suddenly?

15. In what ways does Ginny's relationship with Wayne parallel her mother's relationship with Jasmine? Does her own relationship with Wayne help Ginny understand her mother?

16. Wayne tells Ginny that "people want to be fooled" (page 157). What does he mean? Do you think he's right?

17. The climax of the novel—the meeting of Ginny and her mother—is, in fact, not written. The women come face to face and, suddenly, the text stops. Ginny can't speak. Marion begins "saying syllables that are not words" (page 254). Why is this moment in the novel not written?

18. Marion confesses misgivings about her mothering while sitting on Ginny's bed: "I think I've raised you so wrong.... I did something wrong. I did everything wrong, and I'm sorry" (page 187). Do you think Marion's mothering was "wrong"? If so, was her choice to leave "right"?

19. Ginny is clearly aware of the impact that Marion's actions have had upon her own mothering. Has Ginny learned from Marion's errors? Do you consider Ginny to be a good mother?

20. Ginny herself asks the novel's most pressing questions: "I am wondering what it is that we ask of our mothers: what do they owe us? What is it that we owe them?" (page 270) How does she answer these questions? How do you answer them?

21. At the beginning of the novel Ginny acknowledges her love of science: "I would stare at formulas and admire them for their spare beauty without being able to grasp their meaning. The fact that they cleanly explained some higher law to someone else was enough for me. It comforted me" (p. 14). At the end of the novel, Marion makes a similar confession: "I would read something like the first law of thermodynamics, and just find it enormously comforting. I still do" (p. 261). What is it about science that comforts Ginny? Marion?

22. Why is the novel titled "What We Keep"? What is it that Ginny "keeps" from her experience?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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