Compass Rose (Casey)

Compass Rose 
John Casey, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375410253


Summary
It’s been more than two decades since Spartina won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being “possibly the best American novel... since The Old Man and the Sea” (The New York Times Book Review), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical landscape of salt ponds and marshes in John Casey’s fictional Rhode Island estuary.

Elsie Buttrick, prodigal daughter of the smart set who are gradually taking over the coastline of Sawtooth Point, has just given birth to Rose, a child conceived during a passionate affair with Dick Pierce—a fisherman and the love of Elsie’s life, who also happens to live practically next door with his wife, May, and their children. A beautiful but guarded woman who feels more at ease wading through the marshes than lounging on the porches of the fashionable resort her sister and brother-in-law own, Elsie was never one to do as she was told.

She is wary of the discomfort her presence poses among some members of her gossipy, insular community, yet it is Rose, the unofficially adopted daughter and little sister of half the town, who magnetically steers everyone in her orbit toward unexpected—and unbreakable—relationships. As we see Rose grow from a child to a plucky adolescent with a flair for theatrics both onstage and at home during verbal boxing matches with her mother, to a poised and prepossessing teenager, she becomes the unwitting emotional tether between Elsie and everyone else. “Face it, Mom,” Rose says, “we live in a tiny ecosystem.”

And indeed, like the rugged, untouched marshes that surround these characters, theirs is an ecosystem that has come by its beauty honestly, through rhythms and moods that have shaped and reshaped their lives.

With an uncanny ability to plunge confidently and unwaveringly into the thoughts and desires of women— mothers, daughters, wives, lovers—John Casey astonishes us again with the power of a family saga. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—1939 
• Where—Worcester, Massachusetts, USA 
• Education—B.A., L.L.B., Harvard University; M.F.A.,
   University of Iowa
• Awards—National Book Award
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia

John D. Casey is an American novelist and translator. He graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. cum laude in 1962, Harvard Law School with a LLB in 1965, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa with a M.F.A. in 1968.

Casey's work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Harpers, Esquire, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah.

He and his current wife, artist Rosamond Casey, live with their two daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia. His papers are held at University of Virginia library.

His has two adult daughters from his first marriage to novelist Jane Barnes: Nell Casey and Maud Casey. Maud Casey is a published author in her own right, with two well-reviewed novels and a collection of short stories to her credit. Nell Casey is the editor of the best-selling essay collection "Unholy Ghost" on depression and creativity, including essays by herself and her sister, and editor of a second essay collection "An Uncertain Inheritance" by contributors caring for family through illness and death. (Adpated from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
[B]eautiful, elegiac…Like the love affair that is the novel's magnetic pole, Compass Rose gathers its quiet strength from a slow accretion of instants of intimacy "both ferocious and serene," moments that bubble up, collapse and decompose in the natural order of things, on their way to becoming the history of a place…Casey's portrayal of that patch of South County is carefully observed, lovingly rendered and delicately parsed—a full-throated celebration of the natural world.
Dominique Browning - New York Times Book Review

Much of the enjoyment of this novel is derived from the unobtrusive skill with which Casey charts the entanglements, convergences, repulsions, and compromises of life in a close-knit community…Perhaps the greatest achievement of Casey’s unadorned, clear, and flexible writing is its setting [of] rare moments of individual displacement and transcendence within a narrative that dramatically relates the complex procedures of human relations both public and intimate.
Boston Globe

Casey tepidly returns to characters orbiting Rhode Island fisherman Dick Pierce, the lynchpin of his 1989 National Book Award-winning novel, Spartina, in this uneven outing. Game warden Elsie Buttrick has just given birth to Dick's illegitimate daughter, Rose, and over the next 16 years the fiercely independent Elsie grapples with motherhood, aging, and love, and throws herself into a crusade to stop her land-grabbing brother-in-law from expanding his seaside resort. Meanwhile, Dick's wife, May, reconciles a public humiliation with an intense love for Rose. As Elsie's lust flares, May sinks deeper into her devotion to her children and Rose. Though the lyrical narrative has strong roots in the women's interiors, it's the connectedness of their "tiny ecosystem" that the book best evokes. Yet plodding moments—clearing a field of stones, for example—slow the pace, and the omission of many potentially dramatic scenes—a father admitting his infidelities to his sons, a woman capitulating to a landowner's demands—limit the story's emotional range. While fans of Casey's previous books will enjoy this encore, many readers will be left lukewarm by the lack of narrative consequence.
Publishers Weekly

With its emotionally intricate interior monologues and many complicated relationships among multiple characters, this is a novel best suited to those who have read Spartina. They will most readily appreciate Casey’s rich paean to the prideful seaside residents of a Rhode Island community and their long and tangled history with the land and each other. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist

Casey writes old-fashioned novels in the best sense—character driven, thick with dialogue, nuanced and multilayered as they reveal relationships.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. Have you read Spartina? How did your knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the characters affect your reading experience?

2. A compass rose is the circular design on a nautical chart, with directional points resembling the petals of a flower. What is the metaphor of the title? In what ways is Rose like a compass?

3. Miss Perry compares the end of her life to the last days of Rome (page 62). Where else might that metaphor apply?

4. Which characters care the most about class distinctions? How does that enhance or detract from their lives?

5. Elsie seems to relish being an observer. What does that say about her as a character? Where does it lead her?

6. On page 96, Johnny says, “Shame is a group thing. When a group mistrusts the outside, they have to trust the inside.” Where else does this play out in the story? Are there characters who should feel shame but don’t?

7. Reread Dick’s monologue on pages 100–101. What message is he sending to his sons? How do they use the insights he’s sharing?

8. On page 124, Miss Perry says, “It is disconcerting that someone I don’t much care for, I mean Phoebe Fitzgerald, has taken a wider interest in everyday life than Jack has.” What is she talking about? Compare and contrast the ways in which Phoebe and Jack interact with the other characters.

9. Discuss the triangles in the novel: Rose, Elsie, Mary; Rose, Elsie, May; Elsie, May, Dick. How do the characters benefit from these relationships?

10. On page 161, Phoebe quotes Deirdre: “It was a metaphor for how to deal with anything—you just start taking care of little things and pretty soon you’re feeling better about everything.” Which characters in the novel behave this way? How does it affect the others?

11. What is the significance, both metaphorical and to the characters, of the loss of Spartina?

12. On page 264, Mary talks about heroism and what men and women perceive as heroic. Which characters do you consider to be heroic, and why?

13. Discuss the passage on pages 286–89 in which Elsie watches a snake raid a bluebirds’ nest. What is its significance?

14. “It wasn’t fair that men got the verbs and she ended up with adjectives” thinks Elsie (page 305). What does she mean by this? Are there women in the novel who “get the verbs”?

15. Rose is a natural-born singer, while Elsie has a tin ear. What does this signify about their relationship?

16. Which of her three mother-figures is most influential for Rose: Elsie, Mary, or May?

17. Discuss Rose’s relationship with Dick. Do you think he regrets that she was born?

18. Why does Elsie seek out Dick for a sexual encounter after so many years?

19. Miss Perry once said to Elsie, “Do we stand outside of nature, or do we stand inside it? Is nature everything but us? Or is it simply everything?” (page 352). What is the role of nature in the novel? How does Casey use nature as a metaphor?

20. The last line of the novel is “Here we are. We live in South County.” Why is this such an important notion? What does it mean to live there?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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