Cradle (Somerville)

The Cradle
Patrick Somerville, 2009
Little, Brown & Co.
204 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316036115


Summary 
Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again.

Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know—does not want to know—where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister near by and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner.

Only as Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known.

Elegant and astonishing, Patrick Somerville tells the story of one man's journey into the heart of marriage, parenthood, and what it means to be a family. Confirming the arrival of an exuberantly talented new writer, The Cradle is an uniquely imaginative debut novel that radiates with wisdom and wonder. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—University of Wisconsin, Madison; M.F.A., Cornell    University
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois

Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He is the author of the story collection Trouble (Vintage, 2006), and his writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007.

He lives with his wife in Chicago, and is currently the Blattner Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University. This is his first novel. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[M]magical…Mr. Somerville has the chops to keep this story from softening into the generic mush suggested by his premise…In a streamlined 200-page book that works as a fully conceived novel, he tells an endearing story full of genuinely surprising turns.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

One gets the sense that somewhere, near Patrick Somerville's writing desk, hundreds of unpublished pages of his first novel, The Cradle, litter the floor. The scope of the story indicates that many hours of imaginative sweat went into the production of this lean, moving tale. Happily, The Cradle emerges swift and cinematic, an epic story told in a series of artfully curated, wonderfully rendered scenes.
Dean Bakopoulosis - New York Times Book Review

Somerville builds a road narrative that gradually accumulates the mythic echoes and dreamlike inevitability of allegory…What gives The Cradle its potent emotional resonance, however, is the way Somerville's prose calmly, relentlessly pulls at the Gothic skein of family tragedies that lurks behind the peeling paint and sagging porches, where a sense of inherited sin settles like a thick fog.
Michael Lindgren - Washington Post

A lovely, finely wrought tale of unlikely redemption. In prose that floats so lightly as to seem effortless, Somerville takes the reader on unlikely journeys that results in unexpected consequences.... The Cradle is a slim volume, with prose that slides down easily—so easily that the emotions it explores can sneak up on the reader...The final pages of the novel are surprisingly satisfying and right. Somerville has many gifts, not the least of which is the ability to sketch his characters with firm strokes that leave no doubt as to their distinct and varied humanity. The resulting work is nothing short of a surprising treat.
Robin Vidimos - Denver Post

An elusive heirloom cradle symbolizes childhood's pains and possibilities in Somerville's spare, elegant first novel (after a story collection, Trouble ). Marissa, pregnant with her first child, becomes obsessed with tracking down the antique cradle her mother took when she abandoned the family a decade earlier. Marissa's husband, Matt, is sure he's been dispatched on a fool's errand, but his journey soon connects him to Marissa's family and his own history of abandonment, neglect and abuse amid a string of foster homes and orphanages. Matt's quest through four states is interwoven with another drama that takes place 11 years later, in 2008, in which poet and children's author Renee Owen is haunted by memories of war and a lost love as she prepares to send her son off to fight in Iraq. Again, long-buried secrets come to the surface, one of which poignantly links the two story lines. Though the connection will not shock, Somerville's themes of a broader sense of interconnectivity and the resultant miracles of everyday existence retain their strength and affirm the value of forming and keeping families.
Publishers Weekly

It's 1997, and 25-year-old Marissa Bishop could be a bit crazy, or perhaps it's just pregnancy that makes her send her adoring husband, Matt, on an impossible quest: find her own childhood cradle, which was removed from her home ten years earlier when her mother left Marissa and her dad. To appease the woman he loves, Matt leaves their Wisconsin home to traverse the Midwest on a journey that might leave the geographically challenged running for an atlas. In 2008 Chicago, children's book author and sometime poet Renee Owen is dealing with her 19-year-old son's enlistment in the military, with the likelihood of his shipping out to Iraq. The stories alternate chapters and eventually come together in this satisfyingly sweet tale of love, commitment, and self-discovery. First novelist Somerville keeps us engaged in this slim novel from the outset. Though readers might guess the connections, they will want to see how the author provides the perfect denouement. Highly recommended for public libraries.
Bette-Lee Fox Library Journal

With highly charged lyricism and dramatic concision, Somerville gracefully illuminates what children need, all that war demands, and how amends are made and sorrows are woven into the intricate tapestry of life.
Booklist

Critics uniformly praised Somerville’s moving debut about the meaning of family and its power to heal. Somerville’s spare but buoyant prose strikes the right emotional balance, expressive without being sentimental.
Bookmarks Magazine

In this first novel by the author of the story collection Trouble (2006), a young man and, separately, a middle-aged woman test their capacity to love and be loved. As a favor to his pregnant wife, Matt takes a few days off from the plant where he works to try to find the cradle Marissa had as a baby. She wants it for their son. The cradle dates back to the Civil War, and it was stolen when Marissa was 15, around the same time Marissa's mother walked out. Neither has been seen since. With a relative's former address as his only clue, Matt sets off, traveling through towns large and small, from Green Bay, Wis., to Walton, Minn., to Rensselaer, Ind., with a brief detour (via Internet video hook-up) to Antarctica. Along the way, Matt finds much more than he anticipated, including how his own childhood—18 years of foster homes and state agencies—shaped his feelings about family. Ten years later, in a well-heeled neighborhood of Chicago, Renee and her husband Bill prepare to say goodbye to their only son Adam, a Marine who is leaving for Iraq in a matter of days. Affable and bright, Adam believes he has a duty to serve his country—a position not shared by Renee, a children's-book author turned poet who passionately protested the Vietnam War when she was in college. As the family works to keep their last days together normal—they go out for donuts; watch a football game on television-Renee's feelings about Adam's impending departure threaten to tear from her lips a long-buried secret. One not even her husband knows. Somerville's two story lines unfold and ultimately dovetail with a quiet confidence. This meditative novel dignifies small gestures, which bring to life the compelling characters. A bonus is the fresh regional sensibility the author brings to Matt's road trip through the Northern Middle West states. Fresh turf for American fiction from a talented young writer.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. What does Matt mean when he tells Joe, "You’re free," as they eat breakfast in the diner?

2. In your opinion, what is the significance of the cradle?

3. Renee’s story occurs more than a decade after Matt’s, and in many ways the two characters exist in different worlds. How are their respective quests similar? How are their journeys different?

4. Why does Marissa cry on her wedding day?

5. Why do you think Matt rips the showerhead out of the wall?

6. In the novel’s first chapter, Marissa claims, "There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who understand that everything matters  and people who don’t understand that everything matters" (page 6). What does she mean by this? Is she serious? Use her statement as a way to think about the various characters in the book.

7. How is writing poetry different for Renee than her work writing children’s books? Why do you think she struggles so much with the former, and how  does that struggle change in the course of the novel? How does Renee’s understanding of Walt Whitman’s work play a role?

8. Matt comes to the realization that "the world never just happened but rather was made by people, each and every aspect of it" (page 157). How does this realization affect his sense of personal responsibility?

9. Who was the character you most identified with at the beginning of the novel? Did that change by the conclusion of the story?

10. Why do you think that, following Matt’s return, Marissa never again asked about the cradle?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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