The American Wife: Stories
Elaine Ford, 2007
University of Michigan Press
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780472116201
Summary
Of Elaine Ford’s novel, Missed Connections, the Washington Post wrote that it is a work "of small episodes, of precise sentences, of unusual clarity." That same clarity proves an unsettling force in Ford’s collection of stories, The American Wife, where precision of prose often belies uncertainties hidden beneath.
In the title piece, an American woman in England, embroiled in a relationship doomed to fail, discovers how little she understands about her own desires and impulses. In another story, another American wife, abandoned in Greece by her archaeologist husband, struggles to solve a crime no one else believes to have been committed.
Throughout her stories Ford touches on the mysteries that make up our lives. Each story in itself is a masterpiece of such detail and power as to transform the way we see the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Elaine Ford is the author of five novels. For her fiction she has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Maine, where she taught creative writing and literature. She lives in Harpswell, Maine. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Miss Ford makes every inch of her fictional territory count.
New York Times Book Review
Ford's prose has a poised, finely tuned quality that doesn't scream because it doesn't need to.... Her keen grasp of the inescapable and convoluted effects of family ties is one of the finest achievements of the book.
Harper's
Elaine Ford’s collection roams the territory between the intellect and the heart. She writes of the human condition with precision, in language that is both grave and conversational. Her characters step out of the real world onto the page, where she develops them quietly, but with compassionate fullness. This writer grips the reader with her keen knowledge of the psyche of individuals—their motives and secrets—and also with the surprising things that happen to them.”
Laura Kasischke - Michigan Literary Fiction Awards
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, try these LitLovers talking points for several of the stories to help get a discussion started for The American Wife stories:
1. In the "Garage Artist," what is the significance of Daniel's snowscapes? Why is it the only thing he paints?
2. In "The Changeling," can you personally relate to Sandy's fear that her infant has been replaced by another? Do you believe that's actually what has happened here? How might her fear be emblematic of a troubled marriage?
3. Talk about the relationship of the young woman and her mother in "Levitation." How does the title of the story relate to the protagonist's attempt to establish independence from her mother and lead a life of her own making?
4. Talk about the humor—or pathos—in "Cousins" regarding Edie's mother, who "has largely dispensed with politeness." Edie sees this as a "conservation-of-energy move." Also, in what way does this story illuminate obligations to family and kin?
5. In "The Scow," how does the protagonist come to believe that her parents may have ended their own lives? How does such a discovery affect the way she views her own life?
6. In the title story, what does the American wife come to learn about herself while living in England? What prompts her self-discovery?
8. In what way does "Since You've Been Gone" explore the dangers of interracial relationships?
9. How do many (or all) of Elaine Ford's short stories explore this thematic idea: "In making poems, as in living, non c'e trucco. There is no trick, no secret, no shorcut. You must find your way yourself. That is what...we all must [learn]"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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